The Wandering Eye

My neighbor across the courtyard has a funky mattress. It's not so fragrant that anyone can smell it, but we call all most definitely see it, and it's annoying. It's just sitting there, or rather standing there, leaning up against the red brick wall. Sort of like James Dean in that still shot from Giant. Except it's not James Dean, it's a fucking nasty, wet, semen and piss stained mattress. Perhaps I could put a cowboy hat on it.

Rich people call such things "eyesores." Normally I care not about this sort of problem. If you want to store an old television set next to your stoop, or let your kids write things on the sidewalk in chalk like, "The guy at 104 has man BOOOOOOOBS," who am I to stop you. Living in a free society requires tolerance of your neighbor's ugly yard, ugly kids, ugly politics, second hand trampoline or overly-enthusiastic patriotic comment via a humongous, sheet-sized American flag. And I am tolerant. I understand that life is messy, and that parents don't have the time to pick up all the toys outside. Living in close quarters with others requires understanding.

That said, the fucking mattress has got to go.

Your eye moves from the new buds on the maple tree to the blue jay resting and peeping on one of the branches. From there, your eye picks up the red brick, the green copper on the connected townhouse roof, and then perhaps to one of the better looking residents. Not that guy, not her, either...yeah, her. The green grass is poking through the dark soil and daffodils threaten to bloom soon. But like a fart in a bakery, the visual stench of that fucking mattress ruins an otherwise pleasant experience. It has to go, and I'm going to show it the door.

We move after dark. I shall drag it to the apartment building nearby where there is a dumpster. I shall keep you, dear readers, posted.

The Death of an Activist, Teacher and Comrade

Today I simply want to mention the passing of a comrade and member of the Socialist Party USA. Death is a common thing, but impossible to fully comprehend, like Nicholas Cage. Life is full of mysterious goings-on; birth, the size of the universe, the concept of "god," and the success of Glenn Beck. So we just have to get used to these ugly and amazing events and places because we have to, there is no choice.

At any moment someone you love more than yourself could drop dead of a cardiac arrest and you'll never, ever see them again. It's best to try and think of other things. Like sex. Or American Idol. Something.

The name of the departed is Rob Tucker, and back in the early to mid-nineties he submitted many articles to my "Socialist Health Care Forum," the newsletter for the Socialist Health Care Commission I chaired at the time. I edited the SHCF, and published it using the copy machine at work. Literally cut and paste.

Comrade Tucker was a tireless advocate for socialized medicine in the US. That's not an easy thing to be. Like banging your head against the wall. We banged our heads against that wall together for a few years, mostly via correspondence, although I did meet him three times. Conventions in Chicago and Milwaukee, I think.

Rob, my friend and comrade, we will prevail. It may take longer than we thought it would, but we will get socialized medicine in the US. It just makes sense. Now the short obituary.

Robert Whitney Tucker Jr.
Age 77, of Center City Philadelphia died Thursday Feb. 26, 2009. He was born May 7, 1931 in Selinsgrove, PA the son of R. Whitney and Kathleen (Sofley) Tucker. He was a writer and teacher. He is survived by his wife of 45 years, Cornelia, and by a brother, David of Sterling, VA. Services are private. Memorial contributions may be made to American Friends Service Committee, 1515 Cherry St., Phila., PA 19102.

One in Six Billion

I know this actress primarily from Marty, an exceptional movie that also happened to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1955. She appears to have led a remarkable life, in the truest sense of the word. Another actress, Natasha Richardson, died this week, as I'm sure everyone knows. No accident claimed Betsy Blair, time did, which is less newsworthy. And I don't mean that sarcastically, it just is. I mention her here because she was a fine actor who was blacklisted. Some of the greatest artistic talent in the world was assembled in Hollywood and New York in the 1950's, with film and/or live theatre as their medium. So much of that talent was stymied, silenced or scared to foreign shores for artistic statements that were given political and emotional currency in a fashion clearly designed as an intellectual purge of "subversive" thought. It saddens me, but it was a time of heroism, as well.

Over the years, as a Socialist myself, I've tried to stay away from pointing the finger at those artists who aided in the Communist witch hunt. It's distasteful to judge such people. That said, there is a compulsion to celebrate those who chose not to cooperate. Not that my considerations in this matter are of any more importance than a hummingbird fart. Regardless, here are some heroic people worth mentioning: Dalton Trumbo, Sam Ornitz, Adrian Scott, John Howard, Al Bessie, Herb Biberman, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner, Ed Dmytryk and Al Maltz. They are the "Hollywood 10" who refused to cooperate with HUAC.

Dalton Trumbo is probably the most famous, and other actors (Like Humphrey Bogart) fought back. Many cooperated, and some caved-in only after years of exile, like film director Ed Dmytryk. He tried to save his name by naming others. But it was clearly done out of desperation. His failed struggle is the most beautiful and compelling to me. He fought HUAC and they crushed him with a Contempt of Congress charge that got him a year in jail. After being financially destroyed by HUAC and the blacklist, he succumbed. That is infinitely more noble than Ronald Reagan's frantic, smiling cooperation from the very beginning. As President of the Screen Actor's Guild, Reagan had a powerful bully pulpit, which he used to attack the membership of his own union. A spineless punk who could have done a great deal for those he represented, but chose a different road. Like I said, I try not to judge.

But I digress.

The photograph shows Montgomery Clift (one of the greatest actors of all time in my view), Betsy Blair and a dapper Gene Kelly. It's going around with Blair's obituary. They are all gone now, of course.

----------------

Blacklisted actress Betsy Blair dies in London

By DAVID STRINGER – 3 hours ago

LONDON (AP) — Betsy Blair, the Oscar-nominated actress and teenage bride of Gene Kelly, has died in London at the age of 85, her publisher said on Thursday.

The New Jersey-born actress, who later married film director Karel Reisz, suffered from cancer and died on March 13.

Mark Searle, at Elliot & Thompson, the British publishers of Blair's 2003 autobiography, confirmed her death.

Blair swapped suburban high school for life as a nightclub dancer in New York, where she met Kelly, then a choreographer on the brink of success.

Blair and Kelly married in 1941 and moved to Hollywood, where he became a major star. She was 17 and he was 29. The couple divorced in 1957.

Beginning in the late 1940s, Blair took parts in "The Guilt of Janet Ames," and "A Double Life." But her movie career stalled after her enthusiasm for leftist causes landed her on Hollywood's blacklist.

"To be very left-wing in Hollywood was to work for the unions, to work for the blacks, the ordinary things that are social democratic principles," Blair told Britain's The Guardian newspaper in an interview in 2001.

Following a part in "Kind Lady" in 1951, Blair struggled to win new movie roles for several years, focusing instead on caring for the couple's daughter, Kerry.

In 1955, Blair took her most famous role, in "Marty," playing a dowdy school teacher who captures the heart of a lonely Italian-American butcher. The movie brought Academy Award nominations for both leading actors_ but Blair lost out on the best supporting actress award, though her co-star, Ernest Borgnine, won for best actor.

Two years later, Blair and Kelly separated. She rarely discussed their split in public, and refused to criticize Kelly, who died in 1996. "I have nothing bad to say about Gene in any way ... We were married 16 years and it just came to an end," she told The Guardian in 2001.

Finding herself more popular in Europe than in the U.S., Blair moved to Paris and took roles in movies in France, Spain and Italy.

Blair later moved to London and in 1963 she married respected Czech filmmaker Reisz, director of the 1960 movie "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning."

For several years, she worked mainly in theater and television and briefly halted her acting career to train as a speech therapist.

However, in 1988 — three decades after her last Hollywood film, Blair returned to the United States to star in "Betrayed" alongside Tom Berenger. A year later, she took a part in the television series "Thirtysomething."

British comedian Arabella Weir, a friend of Reisz's children, said she developed a close bond with Blair.

"She was a tremendously loving, loyal and ceaselessly supportive friend — and really good, often wicked, fun. You could talk to her about absolutely anything — nothing shocked her," Weir told The Guardian newspaper.

Blair was offered a role in 2002 in "The Hours" alongside Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore, but turned down the part to care for Reisz, who died in the same year.

She is survived by her daughter, Kerry, from her marriage to Kelly.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Mind & Body Bundle

It's after one in the morning and, unable to sleep, I'm digesting the events of yesterday. It was a good day, and I don't like to let them pass unrecognized. Linda and I had time to be with each other, we laughed at each other and the world, made dinner and listened to music. She rouses my mind and heart in such a way that compels me to understand something that other people seem to think is obvious, but is not so clear to me. That life can be good.

I've already told Linda that if we ever break up, I'm not going to date again. It's a practical declaration that we've both made. Dating is brutal. An unsavory, undignified process which requires a youthful vigor and, ideally, a job that provides a bit of disposable income. It helps to be naive. It's not a hard decision to make, as these days I'm more of a mind to sit at home and read, or watch an old movie on TCM. Music is good. And carrying a torch for someone is romantic and pathetic in a way that appeals to my sensibilities. It's sort of an emergency plan.

What I have now is infinitely superior, though, and all looks and feels well. Naturally, I obsess over not having enough money, but that's about as common as having a nose. And I have to reign in the self-loathing, at least when I'm with her. Simple.

Yesterday, my doctor looked at the torn skin on my leg (a quarter sized hole) and said, "Oi vey." I agree. As he examined the isosceles triangle-shaped gore, my eyes moved down the white skin of my thigh, to my hairy knee and down to my size 12 foot. I squinted and tried to pretend the wound wasn't there, which was almost possible even in the harsh light of the examining room. Despite that, it's hard to ignore. My skin is so white and the wound is so dark, crimson and black from dried and drying blood. The whitish fat cells within the pink border reveal the real me. Not "me" as an abstract construction of the mind, but as a hunk of meat for which I'm responsible. Insistent nerves will alert my mind if my meat gets into a jam, and one needs a body to live, but the whole arrangement seems odd to me.

My doctor was unable to rid me of the wound. It's too jagged to sew up, so I will apply bandages and wait, probably for months. By that time I may be fond of my colorful little injury.

Walter Benton For My Linda

You rise out of sleep like a growing thing rises

out of the garden soil.

Two leaves part to be your mouth, two tender seedleaves---

and your eyes are wonderfully starlike,

your eyes are luminous and soft as the velvet of pansies.

Darling, good morning.

Our arms are empty of each other for a moment only.

How beautifully you turn --- your mouth tilts to let my kisses in.

Lie still - - - we shall be longer.

We need so little room, we two --- thus on a single pillow ---

as we move nearer,

nearer heaven --- until I burst inside you like a screaming rocket.

Then we are quietly apart - - - returning to this earth.

The Violated Goo-Gah

The inclination to humiliate myself simply will not cease. Day after day, I just keep getting out of bed. Today I have a very short story...with a picture!

Anywhere between two weeks ago and, say, 3 months ago I was, as a friend of mine calls it, "high as shit." I'm not sure if there was sake involved, but if not, something fermented was in the mix. The point I'm making is that my judgment wasn't what it should...no, actually, scratch that.

What I did, simply put, is piss in a vase that I keep on my bureau in my boudoir. It wasn't a random act of nastiness, nor do I have a problem with the Southwestern motif. It was just that the bathroom in my flat was occupado. And even though I live in a very densely populated neighborhood, packed with stinky human goodness, I had no problem with pissing outside. Thankfully, they never fixed the light in the courtyard outside. There could be 1,000 mimes out there and you would never know.

Now I have to move.

Anyway, that wouldn't work since I was buck naked and the matter was urgent, so yeah, I pulled the vase down and let fly through the tiny opening (see photo). This is indicative of either a tiny prick or incredible aim, or both. Probably just a tiny prick. Like Kim Jung Il. My plan was to empty it as soon as possible. It's noteworthy that the very small neck of the vase prevented evaporation or any kind of olfactory declaration.

So today I was cleaning my knick knacks and goo-gahs and whatever other shit I own and found that the vase was strangely heavy. A half hour into questioning my neighbors I realized, it was my pee! Imagine my embarrassment. It's going to take a long time to smooth that out.

You may wonder why the vase has a black bar over it's eyes. That's because this vase has a sensitive past, and I wouldn't want the wrong person to identify it. The poor thing has been violated.

The Radley/Bickle Ratio

Imagine a neighbor, or even a friend or family member, who never seems comfortable in your presence. At first you think it is you, perhaps something you've done. Over time, however, you begin to realize that this person seems odd to everyone. Harmless, perhaps, but who really knows. There may be a modicum of curiosity at first, but over short time you lose interest. He or she is there, doing whatever people do, but sort of transparent. Not so much a man who isn't there but a man who is desperately trying to hide. A man who wants to not be here.

Then the shit hits the fan. Or as Kurt Vonnegut used to say before he got old and fell down, "The excrement hits the air conditioning." The mettle of this loner is tested, as is his or her sanity and values.

I've begun to notice the extent to which I'm a loner, but one who is unable to go the Full Hermit. In the abstract, I enjoy the idea of being around people. When the time comes to go public, however, it simply isn't going to happen. And I'm not talking about giving a speech or finding a job. This is minor stuff; cook-outs, Christmas dinner at Uncle Blooey's, going to the library, that sort of thing.

The Radley/Bickle Ratio is my way of using American cinema, which never lies, to figure out how well I'll serve the community, or terrorize it. I am, of course, referring to "Boo" Radley from To Kill a Mockingbird and Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver.

It's very difficult to figure what the ratio is here, but it doesn't matter what are the numbers. Let's say there are 100 Radleys for ever 1 Bickle (you always hear about a Bickle in the news). That guy in Canada who went Creepshow on the bus, he's a Bickle. Crazy but harmless one day, and the next...well, you read the story. Look up "Canada, Bus, Beheading" in Google. The biplar and disabled fellow in NYC who pushed a woman onto the tracks at a subway station, he also pulled a Bickle. Before that happened, he was quiet, poor and crazy. And in treatment.

The Radleys are more difficult to find. They tend to go crazy anonymously. But one damn day, a fire breaks out or a kid sticks a candlepin bowling ball up his nose, and there he is, ready for action. Afterward, he slinks away. He will most likely never do anything of consequence again, but when needed he was there for a stranger. Even if most of the time he likes to be alone in his flat, doing God knows what.

Most loners are neither a Radley or a Bickle, but that's no fun from my perspective. You know, at one time I wanted to be a college professor. These days, the most I can hope for is to either go unknown and die or rise to the level of "Boo" Radley, successfully avoiding a Bickle.

Spiders and Blood

A white spider, about the size of an aspirin, scuttled across my counter and did what spiders do. If motion pictures are accurate, they play the drums, hate Hobbits, swarm and menace and catch flies. There are no flies in my flat, but there must be something edible for the spiders, because I see one about twice a week.

Sometimes they make a little web in the crease where the wall and ceiling meet. Every so often you'll see one hanging from the ceiling. This morning I saw one, but he wasn't eating or making a web or hanging from anything, he was doing the backstroke in my coffee. An awful way to die, scalded to death by hot, strong coffee. One can only hope that it was quick.

From my perspective, there was something in my coffee, and then in my mouth. Kugel? English muffin? Dabney Coleman's soul? I didn't know, but I carefully felt it with my lips and tongue and then deposited it onto my finger. And then that moment happened. The spider and I were forever woven together in a skein of destiny. We crossed paths, as it were, and it didn't work out well for "Toby. " The spider's name, I've decided, is Toby.

Toby clearly mounted the crest of my "Le Chien" coffee mug and climbed in, or fell in. Unknowingly, I poured hot coffee on his poor little noggin. Fin.

In retrospect, I should have done more than just flick him off my finger and get the heebies. Everyone has a story. Toby could have been a great webber, an enemy of every fly and bug for a mile in every direction. For all I know, he could have been a magical spider, capable of granting three wishes, or some fucking thing.

But that never works out. Remember the Monkey's Paw?

Beyond that there isn't much to talk about in my life. Linda has a dental appointment, and I'm worried about her. Dental appointments are never any fun, what with all the pain and metallic intruments. Vicodin makes it worthwhile, but they offer it rarely. To me, anyway.

Last night, around 2am, I slithered out of bed to pee and listened to the silence as I held my wang in my hand and darted into the bathroom. There was some blood on my hand, but it didn't register. My leg wound is bleeding still, but it shouldn't have been on my hand. Then I was treated to an exciting and beautiful display, as blood took the place of urine and a fountain of red briefly colored the bowl orange. Eventually it stopped and yellow urine was flying.

But I thought it important to make a mental note of it; pissing red, check. Must mention to doctor in a couple of weeks.

It's disconcerting to see blood when you're expecting something else. Like in The Shining when the elevator doors open up and blood gets off. I was expecting Ethel Nichols and her Cocker Spaniel, Harriet! But there was blood. Suprise. Surprise!

Before I go and do whatever it is I do, I want to mention "Anonymous," the person who has been posting nasty and unfunny remarks to my 'blog. They never really bothered me, but my friends thought I should erase them. I figure let it go. I'm glad I did, because this person said some very nice things about me. I'm shocked, really. Just look at the comments at the end of the NPR entry. Just so odd, but appreciated!

---

Look for me on that streetcorner, in that car, outside that window. I'll be there.

Know Your Leaves