Tag: Personal

Categories
Love

Tumblr

I am obsessed with my Tumblr account.

Sitting with 12 year old Hannah learning how to do it properly.

Sitting up all night searching for images, videos, quotes from a long life.

Constructing a narrative where all events harmonize.   Where color and texture blend from one image to another.  Telling public and private stories simultaneously.

As for the rest?  My other life?

I had tea with a producer on Friday ostensibly to talk about my new film…then unexpectedly he asked me to read a script which they are looking for a director.

It arrived immediately and it is beautiful.  It will take me to Europe for a year.  To Italy.

I drove back up the 10…happy, joyous and free.  Perhaps the hell of the last two years is truly coming to an end?

Dinner in Venice, then bumped into my ‘friend with benefits’.  He said, although drunk, that he was embarrassed to introduce me to his friends because I am so much older.  I told him that was like me being embarrassed by his being a jew or gay…I walked away.  He’s a kid.  What do I expect?

He needs to learn to own his own life.

Today it’s lunch on the beach with British friends then tomorrow a magazine editor friend of mine from NYC is here.

I explained to Robby why I was feeling so optimistic, hours before the script was mentioned.  Looking out over LA from the 13th floor.

I explained why seeing the man I once loved in love was so reassuring.

To be excluded from the life of one for whom I had been so instrumental…had driven me insane.

The emotional investment in another, even when that relationship changes into something else…well…one is always looking to recoup.

The dividend…was to see him happy.  I saw irrefutable evidence that all our hard and painful, beautiful and passionate time together…was worth it.

I don’t need, nor do I deserve to have the enduring love of another to make me happy…all I needed to know was that he, he who I love…was loved.

It is very simple to me…though confusing for most.

My ‘failed relationship’ has meaning now.  A context.

During the past two years I have written so often about finding peace.  Peace and understanding.  This is it!  I announced grandly…this is the peace I have been searching for!  Well, I was wrong.

It was merely an illusion.  A false hope.  The glaring eyes of many storms…a momentary peace…which I mistakenly assumed would last.  The 100 foot waves continued to break over the bow and I was lost again.

Seeing those two men pressed together, harmonious, happy…well…who couldn’t want for them what I was never able to achieve?

I know what you think…that I deserve what I get, that I am not very nice, that I have been very cruel.  Well, it’s true.  I have been cruel and mean but I don’t think it was anything other than necessary for us to go through what we went through.

The only people, as I have written before who are deserving of my apology…are his parents and sister who I demanded into our violent storm, who I insulted and maligned.

For that I am truly sorry.

I have no idea, ultimately, if he intended for me specifically to see those things but he must have known.  Wether he intended to try making me jealous..well..that’s another consideration and we’ll leave it at that.

What I have learned these past few years is that (in a quieter less public way) so many men and women are tortured by love…in and out of love.  Choosing inappropriate partners, chasing hopeless dreams.

Sadly, there is no cure for curiosity.

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.

Categories
Rant

Right Now

Duncan and Gabe

The garden.  Watering the garden.  Tending the garden.  Seedlings.  Deer at night.  Snakes by day.  Warm sun, a cool breeze blowing off the ocean.  It is just all so beautiful and thrilling.

I take my afternoon nap.  I write my blog.  I walk by the ocean. Gabe is here.  The tide is high.  The Little Dog runs from the waves, darting in and out of the rocks.  The surfers ride them high, crashing into the water.

News items that disturb me:  The mutilated 13-year-old Syrian boy.  The care workers in England who tortured their mentally ill charges.  The other little boy who may win a fixed British talent contest.  The corrupt and uncaring government.

Yet, despite these horrors I can still find peace.  I am at one with who I am.  Will this last?  No it wont, but why bother worrying about what may or may not come next?

Spirituality means dealing with our intuition.   The divine is looking kindly upon me?

I am here and now.  Experiencing right now.  No point in dwelling on the past or imagining the future.  This very moment.  Nothing mystical.  Precise.

Why be threatened by the now?  Jumping to the past or the future.  The now is good.

I am no longer waiting to be dead.

Trust right now.  It is very powerful.  Interacting with the now.  Everything I experience is unconditional.

Borrowing from the past and inviting the future.   No, not today.

Perhaps this is why I want God to look kindly upon me?

This morning I fight with AT&T because they have over charged me.  I take the twins and Gabe to breakfast at the Lumber Yard.  I water the citrus trees. Yesterday I stayed at the house all day gardening.

Enough is all I have so I must trust that enough is all I need.  My needs are met. Right NOW.  Look around me and experience what for the past year has been so elusive.   I live in a paradise.  My own paradise.  It is no use dwelling on future catastrophes when I love what is happening right now.  It is no use hankering after what could have been. It is no use comparing what I have with what others own and despairing that I want even more.

I am a single man with far too much already.

Now.

PS My friend and backgammon foe Sam (Levinson) is dating Ellen Barkin. I celebrate their 31 years age difference.

My friend Alecia has had her baby.

This Morning on the Beach
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Categories
Malibu

Blogging…

Keeping what is in effect a public diary can have it’s glories and it’s defeats.  Ups and downs.  Well, we have all recently witnessed the downside.

When Jennie K was having a hard time with crazy stalker monsters contacting her she turned off her comments option.  I am considering doing the same.  What I realize now though is just how much the comments mean to me.  I enjoy that so many of you check in with me every day and it is those people who I imagine when writing this blog.

I have been thinking about the comments by Tres Triste.  It is most odd that he/she insinuated that I take down the pictures of Jake.   I mean, why should I? I have pictures of most of my friends in this blog.  He was not only my friend but also my lover.  The only reason that I hadn’t posted pictures of him before was that I had effectively climbed into his closet.  When I crawled out gasping for air I realized just how manipulated I had been.

It’s odd to think that someone who supposedly doesn’t know Jake would consider it an affront to his dignity to have his pictures on my blog.  Our holiday pictures.  I am guessing that Tres Triste thinks he would be ashamed to have his pictures associated with me.  Well, that may very well be the case but I am not buying into his shame.

30-year-old men are not children.  In fact, most 30-year-old men have children of their own.  They have responsible jobs.   They cannot claim to be naive adolescents.   They make decisions about who and what they want to do and then face the consequences of their actions.  As do I.

There is a beautiful line in the Stevie Nicks song Landslide that he might consider when he thinks about her, he could consider it..so might she.

“I’ve been afraid of changing because I built my life around you.”

Did you think I was thinking about Jake when I considered who or what I built my life around?  Well, I thought about drink and drugs and my lost daddy.  I thought about him too.

“I’ve been afraid of changing because I built my life around you.”

Every decision I take or make has a consequence.  It is up to me to think that through.  When he contacted me the outcome was clear.  When he kissed me he departed, once again, from his monogamous commitment to his girlfriend and would have to face a consequence.  We must never, ever underestimate the consequences of our actions.  Wether he was cheating with a woman or a man he was cheating.   As for him claiming youth as an excuse for his actions?  Honey, 29 is no youth.  Look at the lists of men killed in Iraq..most of them are younger than 29.

We are all naive about some things.  I was naive about Hollywood.  I was never naive about life tho.  I think I have always lived in the light.  It was his desire to crawl back into secrecy that finally made me ditch him.

I have no truck with secrets.  You know everything because I want it to be that like that.

There are moments when I think of him..but not in any way other than one might miss a drink after being a heavy drinker.  We had communicated almost every day in some way since we first met.  He is in the fabric of my being.  He rested in my most sacred heart for many months.  I am slowly washing that man out of my hair.

I was his most ardent supporter, his rock when he needed me.  I was on his side. I thought I could be there for him as he matured into an out gay man but I could not.  I regret having made that committment to him.

I return again and again to this question:  why didn’t he tell the truth sooner?

There is no reason in a liberal household in the modern world for a man not to be true to his nature.  To tell the truth about who he is.

It is a conundrum that has no end because only he can answer that question.   Frankly I am not interested, any longer, in anything he has to say about anything…so…I am left with the question.

I am left with the Manhunt account too.  It amuses me but I must tell you I am a little bit too eager to see who and what messages have been left for me.  A little bit too eager to meet new men and a little a bit too eager to revisit the site again and again.

Must keep this in check.  The paths wont get swept if I don’t.

I write every morning just before I start my day.  Presently I am looking over the ocean in Malibu. It is going to be a beautiful day.  Yesterday I swept and hosed the drive and the paths.  I wanted the garden to look beautiful for Jenny A who is presently staying in the guest apartment below.

I spent almost all of yesterday pottering around the garden, scrubbing the terracotta tile in the gazebo, weeding and generally decluttering the house.  I have a different attitude to being here since I last lived here.

Jenny arrived and we walked down to the new road with the dog.  We came home and Eric arrived for dinner.  We lit a huge fire and listened to Herbie Hancock and drank English tea.  I cooked and everyone went to bed.  It was simple.

We discussed Jenny’s cancer.  She was only given a 38% chance of living.

She said, “They gave me ten years to live.  Of course, that was five years ago..now I want another five years..”

Jenny saved my life.  It was she who I called this week 14 years ago to tell her that I couldn’t stop doing coke. It was she who took me to my first meetings and it was she who eased me into the recovery community.  I will always be thankful for that.

Our relationship has had its ups and downs.  We didn’t talk for two years after having a huge fight on a dusty road in Mexico but true friends always come back to each other.  Eventually.