Andrew Holleran's Grief

I'm finding it hard to acclimate myself to autumn this year. I am truly feeling a drive to hibernate, as I reset my alarm clock most mornings and hide in the bedroom before leaving the house (space heater, as we've somehow managed the miracle of not yet turning the house heat on since like last April). Plus I linger in my caldarium (is that the right Latin word?) or my hot reading tub muchly. My second floor bathroom--Lee has his own on the first floor--has a lot of fantasy art, sculpture and prints, so I'm happy in there anyway. Phlegmatic describes my temperament this past week. I have a space heater blowing on my insectarium at all times, but I fear the walking stick days are numbered as they are approaching senectitude fast. And no immortal line yet.

I tried watching this Russian sci-fi movie Lee ordered through Netflix because he said we both oohed and aahed at the preview we saw on another disc. But I couldn't get into it...it was trying too hard to be Blade Runner with a feminist edge and the flashy special effects alternated with horribly acted scenes with an over-the-top villain (but no glint of camp...utter seriosity). I was soon slipping below the threshold of consciousness and went upstairs for my "it will spoil your sleep later" nap. I think Lee threw in the towel on the Russian movie too. We weren't feeling it. I was happy to see I could still understand about twenty-five percent of the spoken Russian, but then it was so basic. The dialogue could have come out of a Conversational Russian paperback, with a few "sci-fi sounding" tech terms thrown in.

When I woke, we watched some more bad t.v. while noshing, then Lee told me the Holleran book was holding his interest so I took it to my tub. It's a small book, Grief, and I'm only halfway through but it's held my interest. It reads almost like an extended journalistic piece written for some decent magazine about the changes one goes through as a gay man hitting middle age when one is alone, and a study of Washington D.C. as a metropolis of a different and possibly unique kind. In both those capacities, it's convincing, but I was interested in reading this because of its alleged focus on the life of Mary Todd Lincoln, a figure who rather fascinates me. So far, the widowed Lincoln (a fascinatingly tragic figure after the assassination) has only been about two percent of the book's subject matter, and really only used as a historical "parallel life" somehow seen to illuminate the only two lives Holleran is interested in examining in any detail so far: his own and his gay landlord's. So this is all for the good, but frustrating, since the book is sort of sold in the publicity as a work with a focus on Mary Todd Lincoln. The publicists guessed correctly that people are interested in her. Splendor-promising raves are on the back cover from the likes of Edmund White (whom I admire quite a bit) and Ann Beattie (whom I have yet to learn to appreciate). We will see. But I think I just want to pick up the book Holleran was reading of Mary Lincoln's life (which includes her letters) which started the author on this project. I love the excerpts from her letters turned into that amazing collage poem in Robert Wilson's Civil Wars...I LOVE that spoken aria Laurie Anderson does such a stellar job on. It really captures that historical moment and its tenor, what was arguably the true pivot point of American history. What is it about the sixties and this country? Everything starts brewing or explodes in the sixties and seventies in each century. What do we have to look forward to in 2064 then?

Goonight Sweet Ladies.