Grazie

So Antonioni died a day or two after Bergman. Seems fitting somehow. And here's inspiration for you...The man had a stroke twenty years ago and couldn't move his right side and couldn't talk but he kept on directing. He had others speak for him. I love what Jack Nickolson said about him..."His whole life was dedicated to modestly being a brilliant artist." Modestly. I think Italian artists are much more grounded in their lives as people as well as artists. (Bergman too, actually, in his Swedish way.) No tabloid antics, no cameras surrounding them twenty four hours a day. They live their lives, drinking wine, talking politics, having sex and doing their art. Modestly. Doesn't that make you want to have a glass of Campari and soda right now? And sit outside in Piazza Navonna and watch all the beautiful people. You know, and this is true, I had a meeting once with Marcello Mastroianni. Yes I did! In Rome. Sat with him in a room for more than an hour. He smoked like a Frenchman and drank black mud and told me he only kept working because he had so many women to support. So many apartments they lived in around Europe and he had to pay for all of them. And he had to go to a weight loss spa everytime he worked because, even though he was married, he went home every night to his momma's for dinner and ate pounds of pasta. The funniest thing he told me was that he had gone to a play the night before that a friend of his had written. And the play was so bad that in the second act he crawled on his hands and knees BACKWARDS up the aisle so no one would see him leaving. Most charming man I've ever met.

If you haven't read Lawrence Ferlinghetti lately, do. He is beyond cool.

I do not hate men. (Why would I even mention that? Why would that even come out of my mouth? Anyone out there an analyst?) Anyway, I have a problem with men sometimes, yes. Because they love women, they need women and they hate them all at the same time. I occasionally have a real problem with Hemingway and Picasso. It becomes hard for me to separate their art from their lives.

They had so many women and you know most of those women were hurting when they left them so my female side looks at a Picasso and thinks, "You little shit. Who cares if you can draw? If you can't treat someone with kindness than to hell with you." But, he is Picasso. And Guernica is a pretty damn good painting. But I would still like to grab him by the ear (thank goodness I wasn't talking Van Gogh.) and scold him. "You can't do things like that for your own pleasure, Mr. Smartypants." I often think if there were talk shows when Hemingway was alive he would come off as one gigantic asshole. More narcissistic than Norman Mailer. And that is saying a lot. I used to listen to Mailer talk on Dick Cavett and think, yuck, what a jerk. And then I read Armies of the Night and I hated that I liked it so much. And Marcello. Imagine the women he left crying in the gutter. Me included. I should have worn a low cut blouse that day. What a fool.

Tomorrow I have my third and possibly last chemo until after surgery. And for the first time I am not worried about my outfit. It's whether to wear a tinted moisturizer or just a light concealer with a little blush. And always, of course, mascara. I walk into the chemo situation looking fine but by the end of the treatment I must admit I look a bit peaked (or peek ed?) I know, I'll bring some touch up products. Remember, this chemo is sort of like my own personal singles bar and you just never know who's going to be hooked up right next to you. Of course, the last time I had chemo the man next to me was wearing his bedroom slippers. Cannot go out with a man who wears bedroom slippers on the street in the daytime. Or actually, cannot go out with a man who wears bedroom slippers at all! For some reason a man with slippers makes me want to shoot myself. Slippers should not bother me that much, should they? Another overreaction and yes, another question for an analyst.

Bye bye Michelangelo. Grazie.