the movie.  Marion Cotillard, the actress who inhabits Edith Piaf, is pitch perfect because the director, Olivier Dahan, refuses to let his La Vie En Rose embrace sentimentality.  My socks and heart and head were knocked off. 

Go to this website for a preview:    edithpiafmovie.com 

“It takes no imagination to live within your means.”

–  from Peter Biskind’s book

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. 

WANTING SUMPTUOUS HEAVENS

No one grumbles among the oyster clans, And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer. 

Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want Heaven to be, and God to come, again.

There is no end to our grumbling; we want Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.

But the heron standing on one leg in the bog Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

–  The New Yorker, Nov. 5, 2007.    

Happy birthday, Joni Mitchell.  I plumb forgot.  Jean Flynn and Drew Searing both called to remind me.  I saw you on the CBS Early Show last Sunday.  You are more beautiful and more inspiring than ever.  I’m grateful we’re on the planet at the same time. 

It’s that time of year, turn the clock back.  It gets dark earlier and the days are shorter and I don’t like it.  So I begin pondering the waxing of the light after the winter solstice.  When I was a boy I thought if I lived with Palm Trees it would never get dark. 

If a person ever gets to the mid-point of a life, I think I’m there.  It makes sense to me.  It is not a crisis, as in mid-life.  (That may not be true.)  It is letting go.  It is embracing a new direction.  I’m in between letting go and embracing.  It’s fascinating unless it’s not.  This mid-point dance will require learning some new moves, new steps.  Fuck it.

At least I still have my hair.