Hard to believe I am leaving in six days. I really am sorry to go this season; in seasons past, I have been more than ready to go by this time. Part of it is the deepening of friendships here with the passage of the years, I think, and the comfort level of really knowing my way around. ....
It really was a quiet week. Dinner on Thursday with friend Geoff and his childhood friend Lee from Atlanta (I had met Lee previously when we were both visiting San Francisco - and Geoff - at the same time.)
Lee is quite a cultured guy...
....as is Geoff...
..so there was great conversation, as well as great food (we ate at Johnny Costa's, previously mentioned in these pages, and our current favourite for what we call "Mama Mia Italian", that is, Italian comfort food.)
Friday night was opening night for a world premiere of a play called Dare by gay playwright and activist Alan Baker. I think you will hear more about this play. The premise is that an old gay man, is in a nursing home - as it was put, one hour from Marin and one hour from Modesto. He has been through Harvey Milk and the Castro and AIDS, and wants no more. He has stopped eating. He is therefore attended by a psychologist, a married gay psychologist. A discussion of past and present ensues. At first I thought it too preachy, but then I was rapt, and have been thinking about the issues raised ever since. And that is my idea of a good play.
Let's be clear. These are very amateur productions. The acting is spotty (the old man was terrific, the doctor, not so much). And the play is no Normal Heart or Angeles in America. But it is a thoughtful look at gay life past and present, and worth seeing, if you get the chance.
Finished reading two books as well. The first, a Japanese mystery in the Professor Galileo series, well known in Japan, but not to me. Don't ask, I don't remember the author's name, although he is apparently one of the most read authors in Japan. It was called a Midsummer's Equation, and I liked it. I tend to like place and time specific novels - the descriptions of food eaten and cigarettes smoked and stops on the subway passed bring those places alive for me. And not a bad little mystery either.
And yesterday, just finished The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides. He wrote Middlesex a few years back, you might have read it (it was all over the New York Times Best Seller list.) In this book, in the middles of a so-so book on upper middle class youth angst, is one of the most harrowing descriptions of what it is like to be a manic depressive that I have ever read. Since that condition has tangentially touched my life in recent years, it was very meaningful to me, making an otherwise mediocre book worth while.
That's all folks. Next time I write, I will be in rainy Vancouver (I have soaking up as much sun at the pool as I can at the pool to store up some vitamin D...)
Til then....
It really was a quiet week. Dinner on Thursday with friend Geoff and his childhood friend Lee from Atlanta (I had met Lee previously when we were both visiting San Francisco - and Geoff - at the same time.)
Lee is quite a cultured guy...
....as is Geoff...
..so there was great conversation, as well as great food (we ate at Johnny Costa's, previously mentioned in these pages, and our current favourite for what we call "Mama Mia Italian", that is, Italian comfort food.)
Friday night was opening night for a world premiere of a play called Dare by gay playwright and activist Alan Baker. I think you will hear more about this play. The premise is that an old gay man, is in a nursing home - as it was put, one hour from Marin and one hour from Modesto. He has been through Harvey Milk and the Castro and AIDS, and wants no more. He has stopped eating. He is therefore attended by a psychologist, a married gay psychologist. A discussion of past and present ensues. At first I thought it too preachy, but then I was rapt, and have been thinking about the issues raised ever since. And that is my idea of a good play.
Let's be clear. These are very amateur productions. The acting is spotty (the old man was terrific, the doctor, not so much). And the play is no Normal Heart or Angeles in America. But it is a thoughtful look at gay life past and present, and worth seeing, if you get the chance.
Finished reading two books as well. The first, a Japanese mystery in the Professor Galileo series, well known in Japan, but not to me. Don't ask, I don't remember the author's name, although he is apparently one of the most read authors in Japan. It was called a Midsummer's Equation, and I liked it. I tend to like place and time specific novels - the descriptions of food eaten and cigarettes smoked and stops on the subway passed bring those places alive for me. And not a bad little mystery either.
And yesterday, just finished The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides. He wrote Middlesex a few years back, you might have read it (it was all over the New York Times Best Seller list.) In this book, in the middles of a so-so book on upper middle class youth angst, is one of the most harrowing descriptions of what it is like to be a manic depressive that I have ever read. Since that condition has tangentially touched my life in recent years, it was very meaningful to me, making an otherwise mediocre book worth while.
That's all folks. Next time I write, I will be in rainy Vancouver (I have soaking up as much sun at the pool as I can at the pool to store up some vitamin D...)
Til then....
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