Current Currants. . .

— From EF —  I have three vivid memories of raw red currants. The first was at a sidewalk kaffe-konditorei in Austria, probably in 1969. We were feeling indulgent and ordered a “kännchen” of coffee, rather than two cups, then went to the pastry counter and looked at...

All the News. . .

— From EF — It isn’t often that the prelude to catastrophe goes “plink, plink,” and it isn’t always a blessing that my hearing is still unnervingly acute, but there you go. I had been doing an improvisation with our water heater for more than a year, addressing the...

King Lear and the Orange Cat. . .

— From the Fool — This lady, her name is Hazel, I see walking in the park sometimes. She’s maybe 60, but they say 60 is the new 20 or 20 is the new 60, one of those, so maybe she’s a bony-faced rickety 20. But anyway. . . She carries her cat. It’s an...

Aspirations. . .

— From the Fool — I ran into my friend Joe, who had a big dog till the dog tore a chunk off his butt. He was at the flea market, checking out a table of lampshades. I hadn’t seen him for a while. I asked him what’s new. “I might throw my hat in the ring,” he said. He...

Minuets & Monkeys. . .

— From EF —  The Merry Minuet They’re rioting in Africa They’re starving in Spain There’s hurricanes in Florida and Texas needs rain The whole world is festering with unhappy souls The French hate the Germans The Germans hate the Poles Italians hate...

Sagging Bumpers, Addled Skulls. . .

— From EF — If I get arrested for hunkering down on my knees in a parking lot and rolling onto my back to look up under the front of somebody else’s Prius, here’s my alibi. Our drive down the I-5 to San Diego (to do Lear as the opener of the sumptuous San Diego...

Unbranded. . .

— From EF — Extreme age can blur, or it can sharpen like a laser’s blade. We just spent an afternoon in the presence of the latter, a man of titanic intellect born in 1919 and as vitally creative as ever. We met when CB was at Stanford in the mid-sixties, drifted out...

May Day. . .

— From the Fool — I’ve got a friend in New Jersey, Reggie, who wants to be called Reginald, but nobody does, it just doesn’t fit. He writes me letters, real ones with stamps you stick on like the old days where they had stage coaches and cowboys, but I...

Touch. . .

— From EF — Touch is amazingly powerful. It can’t be packaged or monetized or tweeted — you have to get the real thing, in person. There’s a subset of child abuse that’s labeled “failure to thrive,” and one of its big elements appears to be an absence of loving touch....

Memories and Friends…

— From the Fool —             My friend Barnett still talks about high school. Thirty years ago, but it left its mark. He was smart, and in high school that doesn’t pay. Guys punched him in the arm and called him faggot a lot. He turned out to be a lawyer. I see...