Light

The sun set today at 4:13 p.m. I plugged in the strings of colored lights on two windows that faced each other, and later managed to get a shot of one window reflected in another. In the distance are my neighbor's Christmas lights, or are they a reflection? I want all the lights to be at least doubled.

The little Chanukah lights burned down very quickly. It's the sixth day of Chanukah. The miracle of the lights is reported to have lasted for eight days. The Holiday will soon end, but there's nothing to stop me from lighting a candle every day.

Once walking on a Florida beach I found white candles washed up, the flames, of course, extinguished, but the wicks black, and the top of the candles with that shallow indentation, the dimple the heat had made. In Maine, on Swan's Island, we used to build a fire out of salt-soaked driftwood and let the incoming tide quench the flames. Sometimes a burning piece would drift on the water before the flame went out. There was so much blue in that fire.

Film Hang-Over

J. and I made the mistake of watching "The Bad Lieutenant" before we went to sleep. J. had a nightmare. I woke in the middle of the night, my head racing, full of scenes from the film. Harvey Keitel plays a cop gone bad. And I mean bad. Cross-addicted: he guzzles liquor, snorts cocaine, smokes crack, shoots heroin, all day, all night. His connection is a woman with red hair: a devilish, beautiful angel of death.

"Why are we watching this?" J. said at one point.

"For the plot," I said.

"Mim, there is no plot."

He was right. It was just one rotten thing after another. Some of the rotten things were exciting. I smothered my excitement.

One critic believes the Harvey Keitel character finds redemption in the end. Not so. The ending is muddled: he frees two men who may rape again. He gives them money. The truly redeemed character is the nun played by Frankie Thorn. She forgives the men who rape her. The film portrays a Manichean world: evil is as powerful as good. Is it really? Good and evil equally matched, forever warring?

The morning after this bad night, J. told me his dream as I emptied the washing machine. In the dream he had gone down a narrow tunnel, the end of which was death. But as he described the dream, he was alert with intelligence. He was sure of his interpretation. And he was alive! I went out for a walk. The weather had turned mild. I took off my gloves and opened my hands to the sun. I felt better in the tender air. For a moment it seemed as if I could see each particle of air.

Flowers and Fire

During the week of December 3 the temperature was in the high sixties. The early rhododendron near our back door got the message and began to bloom. This plant usually puts on color after the snow drops come up. I took these pictures today, December 11. The Easter pink and violet are holding. This is not a case of being nipped or blighted in the bud but of spring in winter. There's snow on the ground. I don't think the plant will bloom in the spring.

The wood stove has been going all day. The dead wood J. took off the cherry tree is ash; now we're burning mostly Norway maple.

The steam from the pot of water on the stove slicks the kitchen windows. The foggy coat on the glass breaks and drips. Beyond the glass you can see green--faint through the wet. If I stepped outside I would see vivid green grass.

"Winter under cultivation

Is as arable as Spring"--Emily Dickinson

While I find heat in winter, Dickinson may be writing of other things: true winter. How will I manage with when the temperature drops below zero?

"Talking of Pleasure"

Nothing I ate today could equal Keats's experience with a nectarine, at least not in the way he describes it. His is a very breast-like fruit:

"Talking of Pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my Mouth a Nectarine--Good God how fine. It went down, soft pulpy, slushy, oozy--all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large beautiful Strawberry. I shall certainly breed."

But the Italian wedding cookie and an apricot rugelach from Bella Moto (Beautiful Motion) in Arlington, Massachusetts (916 Mass. Avenue) were delicious, tender and absolutely fresh. The portions were dainty, not like the bloated pastry that overwhelms me. It's so easy to go from delight to disgust, but not at Bella Moto. Before opening the Arlington bakery, the owner Frances Grandinetti was a baker at the Blacksmith House in Harvard Square and at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston.

Bella Moto windows are poorly lit, which may be why I've never gone in until today. How many other pleasures have I passed up? I'll be stopping by again. Grandenetti handles her dough with bella moto.

David Hockney at Pace Wildenstein

Someone has called Hockney's recent paintings "pop Van Gogh." I agree about the Van Gogh influence, but I would say, "Klimt Van Gogh." The pictures at the Pace Wildenstein in New York are as intensely and obsessively patterned as a Klimt.

Hockney colors are a knock-out--except for the one above, these pictures don't do his colors justice. He puts together pinks, oranges and purples.

The other day, my friend S. said, "Who would have believed that melody would come back." At the height of abstract expressionism who would have believed landscape would come back.

Hockney has left California for his native Yorkshire, so you won't see any paintings of swimming pools at the Pace Wildenstein, or men in bathing suits.

The gallery, which you can enter without paying a cent, was empty of people except for us, until a lone man came in. There were no recorded guides--white walls, quiet except for our murmurs of pleasure. It reminded me of museums years ago in Boston when I would walk through the Fens to the MFA to see Gauguin's "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going." Most of the time, I was the only one looking at the painting. I'd glance down one of the long galleries and sometimes see one or two people in the distance, then go back to Gauguin with his unanswerable questions.

PS: My friend, the painter Nan Hass Feldman sent this message:

Thank you Mim for posting this. As you know, I am a Hockney fan and looks like his new works are a bit more surreal or infused with fantasy like a cross between Morgan Bulkely and Grant Wood! One of the joys of Hockney's work is his metamorphosis of mediums and subjects.

The High Line

Asters on the High Line, December 2, 2009--Katie Lorah

--Jonathan Flaum

--Joel Sternfeld

In London, a disused power station has been converted into the Tate Modern. Visiting the Tate was exhilarating: the past transformed, the past in the present, born again, fresh. I had a similar feeling when J. and I walked on the High Line, forty feet or so above ground level on the lower west side in New York. The High Line, built on what once was the track bed of an elevated freight railroad, now runs from just below 14th Street to 25th Street. When completed, it will reach 30th Street: a mile-and-a- half traffic-free park through the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea, and Clinton/Hell's Kitchen.

The design is brilliant; the path meanders, lush with flowering plants, accommodating with little tables and chairs, benches, and lounge chairs for sunning. West are the Hudson in full view, the Jersey Palisades, the Statue of Liberty. East are dramatic views of the crosstown streets. Above a view of a big big sky.

As we walked, two of us among many, I became hopeful: beautiful, good things can happen.

Jude Law in Hamlet

People are at their best when watching marvelous, beautiful things. They become thoughtful, entranced, enlivened. For my birthday I was glad to be part of the audience at the Broadhurst.

On the screen, Jude Law is movie-star handsome; on stage he is merely attractive, which is just as well, because his appearance does not detract from his brilliant acting. I've never seen a better Hamlet. Law's Hamlet is vulnerable, active, intelligent, and arrogant--an arrogant royal, who has good reason to think before he acts. Commanding the stage, Law uses his hands to good effect: embracing or touching friends, his ill-fated mother, the skull of Yorick. His enunciation is clear and natural sounding.

All the speeches we know so well were fresh!

I thought about the theme of obedience and loyalty, which Shakespeare, who lived as a subject of the Crown, knew inside and out. The ghost of Hamlet's father orders Hamlet to obey him and avenge his murder; Polonius asks his son and daughter to obey him; Claudius asks Laertes to be 'governed by him in all things'. They obey. Better not to obey. Obedience sets the engines of death in motion.

Geraldine James gives a fine performance as Gertrude; she plays Hamlet's mother as a gracefully mannered conventional woman completely out of her depth; and Kevin McNally as Claudius is the smoothest murderer, except when confessing his sin. Bravos for Jude Law. It was a pleasure to see this actor go all out to show us how powerfully a man can act when all the forces of destiny are against him.