Monday morning

16 January 2017

— band of salmon behind the tree line

Good Morning All,

Busy day yesterday for Esther's birthday bash. Johs flew in from Washington. Holly would have loved to come, as well, but had appointments with her kids all week.

In Denmark, we have something called Round Birthdays, which come on the zeroes. They are big deals that include speeches. My Danish is still pretty spotty, but I understood enough of the speeches and watched the warmth in the faces of the people listening to the speeches to know just how loved and venerated is my sister-in-law. (I had what I thought was a pretty good speech one ready to go myself, but my reputation as a speechifer had preceded me, and she nixed it.)

Esther, who is her mother’s daughter, is entirely in her element when she has an audience. She let everyone know that when she was seventy-six she began saving for her funeral, but halfway through last year she said the heck with that, she was going to blow the cash on an eightieth birthday do. So, this was sort of an Irish wake that the guest of honor got to attend while still among the quick. Of course she got a laugh, an affectionate laugh.

My oldest continuous friend, Allen Jokinen, turns seventy today. He lived right behind our house. In fact, he still lives there. I have quoted him in today’s batch: “Nothing is impossible if not barred by time.” I remember this kernel of entirely annoying wisdom because all through junior high school on our walk to and from he saw fit to remind me of it minimally once a week, usually gleefully, and certainly often enough so that for the first time in my life I entertained the idea of doing another person grave bodily harm. I though I might fetch him a clap upside his head with my science book and exclaim, “Gee, you’re right, Allen, anything is possible if not barred by time."

Lastly, I have quoted Susan Sontang twice not only because I like the quotes themselves, but also because I had the great pleasure and good fortune of being in her film class while at Rutgers. She was nothing like famous then, but even the callow fellow I was back then knew this person to be in a league of her own. She made us watch the shower scene in Psycho eight times in a row, and I am here to tell you it never got any less scary. She also made us watch two consecutive hours of Andy Warhol’s Empire, which is a ten-hour epic that involves a stationary camera set up on the roof of a skyscraper near the the Empire State Building. 

We watched the segment from late afternoon until when the lights started coming on in the building. We were not allowed to talk or in any way avoid watching the footage. (And back then, of course, there were no cell phones or other handy devices by which people disengage from their immediate surroundings.) After twenty minutes or so, a very strange and wonderful thing began to happen: we really got into it, such that when a fly landed on the lens I swear to God it was at least as riveting and astonishing and dramatic as the sword fight between Hamlet and Laertes. And when the lights came on in the rooms one-by-one, we were filled with expectancy as to which window would light up next. She—and Warhol—had made us look at and see afresh all sorts of things we’d been taking for granted.

My regret is I did not pay as much attention as I should have in her class, partly because I was so young and stupid, and partly because I was mesmerized by her hands. She had fingers longer than mine, elegant, delicate, and—if anything—more exciting than the fly on the lens. She had—far and away—the most beautiful pair of hands I had ever seen up until then, matched today only by Holly’s hands. 

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron