Amsterdam and Paris

 

Notre Dame

"Before me all at once was the Place de la Concorde, beneath a deep navy sky. Fountains, Olympic statues, and music from within the park brought a profound harmony. I sat in this glow, staring out over the Seine, which itself was sparkling with lights and boats, toward the Eiffel Tower, to the side of which a crescent moon and Jupiter dominated the clear azure. On the other side of the tower, Venus shone. My blood rushed, moved by the perfect coherence of all the light, fountains, river, tower, parks, The Avenue des Champs-Elysees, and kaleidoscope of people who seemed to share my sense of wonder. " 

Journal 5: July 12, 1970. Paris.

Paris and Amsterdam have been such  major players in the episodes of my long life. Darryl and I went there many times. We first went with the Killian brothers, Steve and David, in the summer of 1993. We took the train from Paris to Amsterdam, meeting a host of zany people on the rides. Dar and I went to the French Open as well as lounging in the Luxemburg Gardens and seeing all of the glamour of Paris day and night with the Killians. We all naturally enjoyed Amsterdam.

In 1995 Dar and I met in Paris and watched Lindsay Lee play Amelie Mauresmo, future #1 in the world, at the French open. It went three sets. We all hiked up to Sacre Coeur after her match.

In 1998 Darryl played in the Gay Games in Amsterdam. He played tennis and appeared in a play about Poseidon and Pelops. He won a medal.  

In 1999 we took Mom to Paris and Amsterdam: She loved the art of the Louvre and the ambiance of Amsterdam. She met a favorite author of hers there at our hotel. 

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/13398697/1787205128942691823

Pont des Arts

  

Amsterdam. 

God

 

"There are moments when music is to me the very presence and magnificence of God. Pure ecstatic being flows forth, an ethereal fount to refresh the weary soul. My tattered spirit drinks with gratitude this morning, as fog billows through the towers of Midtown.

How is it that I am so blessed to be able to sit here contemplating the mystery of being, as I hear this purifying music, in the elegance of this high office? I hope my meditations will one day offer others recompense for this Epicurean Ataraxia. "

Journal 42: December 15, 1990 

(Written in the Library of the High Museum, which I designed, and decorated with furniture from the Decorative Arts collection, five flights above Peachtree Street, facing the Richard Meier building. It no  longer exists, alas.)

After viewing several art gallery openings with Darryl in Manhattan, I wrote,

"The best show by far, better than the contemporary art, was the show of Egon Schiele watercolor, gouache, and crayon studies of himself, his wife, other portraits, and children. The emaciated, powerful, multi-colored  figures, many nude, stared from the gallery walls with a presence missing from the works of the contemporary art we saw.

January 13, 1991

Reading my Journals from the early 1990s is more moving and rewarding than I expected. It is stepping back into the world then, stepping back into my prior person to experience him with all the immediacy and the passion. I post the two short quotes above for a reason; then, I was so aware that if god had any meaning, we find it not in church, but in art. I think I still believe that, god is manifest in gorgeous music, in painting, in literature, in dance. God is not some bearded old man full of judgment, not even a he or she, but rather the enduring beauty, the sublime manifestation of our collective spirit in, say, Mozart's 24th piano concerto, or Egon Schiele's self portraits. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5umKzcLwHPQ

Mozart's 24th played by Glenn Gould.

Red Glove

Darryl and I had this print of Schiele's study of himself in our living room for many years.

Home Sweet Home

 In the summer of 1991, I wrote in my 44th Journal:

" The emotions, the feelings coursing in my blood, in Darryl's blood, are so powerful, so intense, that I wonder when we are together that the world doesn't shatter and hurl all there is into oblivion."

In 1992, as we were both embarking on new jobs, Darryl as a medical editor for Emory Medicine, and I at the Ben Franklin Academy as philosophy teacher and Library Director, Darryl found us our new home:

We have lived here for 33 years.

 

A small sample of the art we both collected and loved:

 Buddha Handmade in Nepal     

Painting by

Larry Connatser

(detail)

 Whirling Dervish

   

Day of the Dead

Aristide Maillol:

Pan and Psyche

Woodcut

The City that Never Sleeps: New York

 

New York has been such a formative psyche shaper for me ever since Buz and I drove there in the 1960s in his Yellow Karmann Ghia. 

Darryl and I had such brilliant times there. Our very first trip together in January of 1991 was to New York on the train with a stopover in Washington, DC. Teacher that I always am, I had to share every painting in the Metropolitan Museum that I love. We looked at every Post-Impressionist painting, the Picassos, and enjoyed a display of the art of Gilbert and George. 

Naturally, we also had to go to Cafe Reggio and Greenwich Village, old haunts of mine from the 1970s. No doubt Darryl had to roll his eyes at all the things I wanted to share. But this trip set the stage (so to speak) for so many visits to this high energy city for theater, art, tennis at the U.S. Open, calmly crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, eating wonderful dinners at the fabulous restaurants, and seeing shows in the Oak Room of the Algonquin, our favorite hotel.  

 

Of course, on our first trip to NYC, Darryl's experience of the Brooklyn Bridge was not so calm. After an exciting night at CBGB, Darryl was swept up by a protest march against the Iraq War. Some fell from the bridge when police cars pushed into the crowd. Darryl phoned me at 4 AM (we didn't have cell phones then) to tell me he would take a taxi back to our hotel. 

New York is so exciting in the winter. Here is Darryl walking on the Avenue, 5th Avenue, along Central Park which was so gorgeous in the snow: We even watched ice skaters gracefully enjoying the cold

Here is another fabulous stay we had there:

https://zonetotal.blogspot.com/2008/09/lights-were-bright.html

And another:

https://zonetotal.blogspot.com/2005/07/recalling-jamie-cullum-and-algonquin.html

We were always so engaged with New York, comfortable in its parks, enjoying gallery openings, one where I introduced Darryl to Allen Ginsberg who was showing his photographs, too comfortable at a club watching the Academy Awards when Brokeback Mountain won best director but lost best film. We took the subway everywhere, including the U.S. Open, enjoying every season, going to venues Darryl introduced me to, such as the Oak Room. Darryl often knew everything that was happening in the city, taking us to see the profound two parts of Angels in America on Broadway. 

Darryl even flew alone to New York a few weeks after September 11 (9-11) to see Strindberg's =Dance of Death= with Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren. Intellectually, and in the art world, New York was Darryl's Theater. 

 Darryl in Central Park

 

Darryl and Jack: Rendezvous in the Hallway

Karen Finley

 

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/karen-finley-performance-art-kembra-pfahler

The story of how we met deserves a retelling. One night in the apartment complex Darryl and I called Barcelona Heights, because it reminded us of the Spanish buildings we saw in Barcelona, the power went out. Darryl and I lived in adjacent rooms. Darryl emerged from his in a long nightshirt, carrying a copper holder and lit candle. He was to my mind Wee Willie Winkie.

We talked a while in the hallway. The power returned. I asked him if he had a VCR. "I am showing an artist to my class at the Atlanta College of Art," I told him. "I need an edited copy of a video I already have."

"Who's the artist?" Darryl asked.

"Karen Finley."

Not another person outside of ACA that I mentioned her to had ever heard of her. Darryl loved her work and her performances, he said. Yes, he would lend me his VCR to make the edited copy and wanted to see it when I was done. 

Years later when we saw her performance in Atlanta of "Martha and George," we met her backstage and told her how our love began because of her. Laughing, she replied how charmed she was, how glad she had played such a part in our relationship. 

After I had taped the copy, shown it to my eager class at ACA, Darryl and I watched the episodes over a glass of brandy. Thus began our romance.

_________

{ In 1990, the year that began our relationship,  Karen Finley mounted her poem, “The Black Sheep,” cast in bronze right at the corner of Manhattan’s First Avenue and Houston Street. “We are the sheep with no shepherd,” she wrote. “We are the sheep with no straight and narrow. We are sheep who take the dangerous pathway thru the mountain range to get to the other side of our soul.”} 

--From the Interview above. 

Everything and Nothing

 

Since you left

Absence has moved in

The rooms of our home

We filled with our art

Our travels our nostalgia

The Whirling Dervish

You brought to me from Egypt

The wooden Vermont cow

Shaking its head

At the loss of you

Feel the emptiness

For you are everywhere and nowhere

We are ghosts you and I

Among the spring azaleas

As the dogwoods open

As the honeysuckle fragrance

Reminds me of I forget what

The blooms fade as we have

And I am the sole vessel

Of our feelings our dreams

Our desire to grow old together

You are my compass 

With no magnetic pole

Our joy I can only recall

The guide to  every action adrift

My mind is filled by you

Though the sails of our lives

Can not unfurl

Though your fingertips tap

Subtle love upon my navel