In the past few months, I've adopted a new addiction. It's not a bad one but it can be depressing at times.
I have cable television and an off-brand Apple TV. You can access YouTube on the thing and one night in May, I stumbled across a series of videos called, Intimate Portrait. It's a documentary show that ran from 1990 - 2005 on LifeTime television. Each episode focuses on a single actress and lasts about 1 hour. It's subjects range from Audrey Hepburn to Meryl Streep and have a comforting and sweet messages to each episode. There is gaudy piano music at the beginning with black and white photos of feminine Hollywood icons gliding across the screen. There is a nondescript soft voice saying things like, "It wasn't long till Hollywood came to accept Ms. Hepburn as a major figure in cinema." and, "Shortly after filming, Bacall found she was pregnant, yet on the set of Bogart's new ambitious project, a miscarriage interrupted the serenity of her newfound love." Everything is suddenly important.
The best episode is on Lauren Bacall. I watched it after reading Jamie Bernstein's memoir on her father, Leonard Bernstein. In the book, Jamie Bernstein spends many pages describing what it was like to live one floor below Lauren 'Betty' Bacall at The Dakota on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I never paid much attention to Lauren Bacall but after reading the addictive memoir, my interest inflated on Bacall specifically. I searched for some documentaries on Bacall one night and that is how I came across this great series of "Intimate Portraits." I admire the sweetness and unapologetic censorship this sensitive series presents each subject with. It's as if no woman in Hollywood has ever done a thing wrong. I like this because for once I am not looking for something controversial at the end of the night and simply just want to hear about how great Audrey Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman were.
Toni Morrison passed away this morning. I've never read any of her work but have known her name for as long as I can remember. I remember my mother reading a few of her books and when I look at them at the bookstore, they summon blurry memories of childhood. In the past month or so, I've picked up a few of her novels and considered buying them but I have yet to follow through. Maybe soon the time will come. I really have a hard time looking at social media when a celebrity, especially one within the hands literature, passes away. The myriad of people who haven't picked up a book since 8th grade post photos plastered with emojis of broken hearts, the fashion people who like the intellectual's iconic sunglasses more than the work they've left behind, and the Bard graduate who thinks it is unexpected for them to show interest in such a mainstream icon - it all instills such a strange anger in me I simply have to exclude myself for the day from looking at Instagram and other platforms. I dread the day Joan Didion dies, dear God.
I'm having a hard time overall with reading and writing in this week. The book I'm reading feels more of a burden than it does a pleasure. I wake up each morning and open it as if someone's holding a gun to my head and I have no other option. I start reading and before I know it I've read 2 words and it's been 1 hour. I don't know what I was looking at or thinking about. Today, while I was reading this terribly boring collection of essays, I was reaching in my bag for a cigarette and stared into nothingness when I noticed beyond my periphery a pair of dirty hands waving to my left. I looked over slowly to find the skater boy that I had slept with not-so-long ago. He himself declared we don't speak anymore to which I agreed but it is clear to me now that he has some desire left within him. I don't. I smiled with my lips tight and he walked off with his strange posse.
Writing has been equally as difficult this week. I meant to dedicate today to writing in my journal but had fallen into a deep sleep around noon. It was a terrible accident, this nap. I woke up on my bed at 5pm and felt as if I had been asleep for many days. I didn't know what time it was and couldn't remember much about my life prior to the deep and accidental sleep. I felt nauseas and fatigued - full of rage and sadness towards myself - a precious day-off spent mindlessly.
Autumn comes to town soon and it's all I can look forward to. My romantic life has plateaued into a rather dry and silly place. The only person I have true feelings for is miserably misguided and just as lost as I am, it seems. My attempts at moving forward are not so strong but I'm starting somewhere and that's enough to make me feel fine about myself. I'm just about over my job at the movie theater but I at the same time don't mind it all that much. These feelings are all too familiar as this becomes my life with each and every August. Come mid-October, my life seems to always take a wild and drastic change. I wonder what will come within October? 8 more weeks - I question how I'll fare!
kiss
m.
do you exercise?
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