Great Exudations

Things change. I don’t know why they wouldn’t. It happens all around us. Constantly. Taking place within us and on our very skin. Cells slowly slough. New ones arise, we hope anyway. Memories are lost — perhaps later reclaimed, but even then somehow modified. No two days are the same. The weather. The stock exchange. Even when closed the markets are shifting, like the fates that govern them. Clocks tick. And those that don’t collect dust and fall further behind. People die. Other people mourn. The mourning wanes but never really goes away. Birthdays pass us by. Another year gone. But alive and kicking. Games are won or lost (and ties are just irksome, which is itself an inconstant). School years end. Workplaces downsize. Promotions. Demotions. Even stasis has motion from the rise and fall adjacent. Pictures fade. Plants are tossed. Shoes wear out at the sole. Oh look, a new text message! Now another. Heart emoji. Laugh/cry emoji. A novel obsession replaces the old. Fast fashion. Fake news. Faux passion. Bird flu, new and improved. Currency rates. Tectonic plates. Landfills. Oil spills. Bridges collapse. Woodlands burn. Never a full stop. Always a churn. Some stars collapse while others expand. We turn with the Earth, even as we stand. Temperatures rise, then rise again. Calling to mind whether we can sustain. But there is one thing I’ve read that resisted such change. A McDonald’s cheeseburger that after ten years looked as good, or as bad, as when it first appeared. Though who would dare vouch for its taste??

“Ketel’s the One”

They say the spirit’s in the music

And the music’s in the man

When I’m chillin’, I like Dylan

Or else jazz, but not Chopin

They say the proof is in the pudding

And the truth is on the tongue

As for food, I take it spicy

In my martinis, Ketel One

(Oh, and fuck Tito’s!)

“… all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

— HL Mencken in The Baltimore Evening Sun from july 1920

MoMA Gallery Label (from website):

“In 1954, the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb—the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States—was tested at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. That year, Baskin, who often explored the effects of mortality and destruction on the human form in his sculptures and works on paper, produced a monumental woodcut in response to this action, which generated vast and unanticipated radioactive contamination. The Hydrogen Man is an imposing figure that is, at the same time, mutilated and misshapen, composed of partial limbs and exposed blood vessels. Indeed, for Baskin, the human body was at once magnificent and deformed: ‘Our human frame, our gutted mansion, our enveloping sack of beef and ash is yet a glory.'”

Eat your cœur out, people. We are moving, part time anyway, to Paris! We took le plunge and bought a small (Ha! It’s 5000 sq feet with parquet floors and a private elevator, as well as a champagne fountain) pied-à-terre on the Rive Gauche with a view of the Eiffel Tower. It’s 3 BR, 3.5 bath (with 1.5 solar-powered bidets). To putter around, we bought a new car in statement gold (above), heralding our arrival. We celebrated at an intimate dinner with the Macrons before spending the weekend at Johnny Depp’s Provençal village amongst Catherine Deneuve, Gad Elmaleh, Idris Elba, Audrey Tautou, Awkwafina, the Cubes (Mark Cuban), super-chef Bobby Flay, Charo, and U2. It was almost too much. Once we get settled in — we are taking the air in Zermatt for a month — please come for a visit. We have more Beluga caviar than should be legal!