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Dogs Queer

Black and White Garden

Mountain

Categories
art Auto Biography Gay

hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed

“Between August 2010 and March 2011 Roy wrote a 50,000-word blog to Bauman.

Roy coldly examines his career to date, how he had been a colourful agent provocateur, his art, like his paradoxes, seeking to subvert as well as sparkle. His own estimation of himself was of one who “stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age”.

It was from these heights that his life with Bauman began, and Roy examines that particularly closely, repudiating him for what he finally sees as his arrogance and vanity: he had not forgotten Bauman’s remark, when he was ill, “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.”

Roy blamed himself, though, for the ethical degradation of character that he allowed Bauman to bring about on him and took responsibility for his own fall.

The first few months of the blog concludes with Roy’s forgiving Bauman, for his own sake as much as Baumans’.

The second half of the blog traces Roy’s spiritual journey of redemption and fulfilment. He realised that his ordeal had filled the soul with the fruit of experience, however bitter it tasted at the time.”

…I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world… And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.

Thank you Oscar Wilde, thank you Bosie.

Categories
Malibu Rant

Down to You

I am sitting at home with my foot in the air swaddled in ice, listening to Joni Mitchell.   Well, singing along to her less pessimistic songs.  Relieved of the bondage of self.

The dog had his stitches out yesterday.

Henry has been very kindly driving me around.  We popped into Gjelina for a late lunch with Anna and bumped into Louisa Spring and the fabulous Chrissy Illey.  Chrissy, as you know, is a wonderful writer and journalist from London.

Read her stuff here.

I will see them again this weekend.

I had to buy new towels.  All of mine are old and miserable.  Nothing worse than getting out of the shower and searing your skin with an old towel.

Meant to be having dinner with a friend in H’wood last night but my ankle blew up like a big pink balloon so I hobbled home and lay in bed.  Iced.

I had a Facebook squabble with a well known writer who damned me for appearing on the ‘A’ List.   Why the hell shouldn’t I?  Low and High culture are there to be experienced.  I have certainly had my fill of High Culture.  Performance Art, Art Films…even my book (nearly finished btw) feels like it was written for the exclusive few.

Sorry publishers…I know you don’t want to hear that.

When I got home I tried sleeping but ended up not sleeping.  Instead I sat at the desk tidying my prose.

Perhaps I am perplexed by seeing you know who next week?  Perhaps I am worried by the future.  At around 4am I finally fell asleep.  Exhausted.

Malibu Chile Cookout today.

Categories
Malibu

Garden News

Henry

This summer has not delivered the early morning, glittering sea views we are used to.  It is gray and wet.  The dew is so heavy that it drips like tropical rain off the plane trees.

By 10am the sun has burned off the marine layer but somehow never really recovers.  The weather is totally messed up.  The garden thrives although I worry about the cacti.

We lost three this year, rotting in the damp air.

I have huge and beautiful squash growing on the terrace.

Henry is dropping by today.  He is taking me to the doctor.  My foot is still very painful.  Swollen.  I can see that it gets better.  Slowly, slowly.  I take a stick with me into the garden.  Ever since the coyote attacked the little dog he stays close to me.

There is a very destructive squirrel chomping on anything and everything but mostly he/she picks oranges and peels them very carefully.

The plums have all been harvested.  The figs are ripening.  There are so many this year.

Tomatoes and beans, lemons, limes and grapes.

I cooked dinner for Andrew last night, we sat eating it watching Ted on Chopped.  I rarely veer from watching HGTV or MSNBC.

Late last night the dog started howling at the moon.  It’s impossible to get back to sleep.