Hearst Castle and Celeste
Sep. 6th, 2007 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraAfter the – profitable! – madness that was the Labor Day Weekend, I took a couple of days off.
This is actually harder than it sounds. For me at any rate. I’m completely obsessed with the Little Store. Being there is a kind of therapeutic performance art, not drudgery at all.
But I felt great after I got back from Europe. Upbeat, clear-headed. Productive. Plus I was writing like an angel. The palliative effects of downtime I decided and resolved to program downtime in from now on, a contradiction in terms but you get what I mean.
It’s rare to have both my boys together these days, so Tuesday I decided we would all go on a group adventure. Since none of us had ever visited Hearst Castle, that’s where we went.
We had a great time.
Hearst Castle is a monstrosity, of course, but a fascinating monstrosity; all this interesting stuff that just cries to be set off in isolation jumbled together so that the famous medieval French tapestry you remember from an art history class (The Hunt of the Stag?) is hanging right next to a 4th century BC erotic Persian mosaic, both of them looking down upon a 14th century Venetian table on which Torquemada's personal collection of silver thumbscrews are displayed.
A mess.
One lovely thing though, the indoor swimming pool. There’s a smaller version in the Berkeley City Club (also designed by Julia Morgan) and I’ve swum in it!
Then yesterday I had lunch with Celeste at the Fishwife. I’m not sure why everyone thinks the Fishwife is such a great restaurant. I had grilled tuna with a wasabi sauce that was quite uninspired. The Fishwife does have the world’s greatest lunch hostess though. She’s about three feet tall and 150 years old, dresses in these bright Isadora Duncan knock-offs with garish red lipstick outlining the most cavernous mouth I have ever seen – I mean, they could find missing mine workers behind that bridgework.
Afterwards Celeste and I went off to the PG cemetary to take photographs. She’s leaving Monterey soon and I’m not sure if or when I will ever see her again.
As the mothers of everybody’s favorite Damon and Pythias update, Max and Nathan – I’m not entirely sure that the two boys have as much invested in that particular friendship as the respective Bigs in their lives do – Celeste and I have been thrown together a great deal over the past decade. Frequently she’s rubbed me the wrong way. (Vice versa, I’m sure.) But I gained a new-found respect for her at the beginning of this summer because of the way she’s handled the Big C. If I got handed a diagnosis like that I would use it as an excuse to be bitter and act out. But she has remained remarkably serene throughout it all, as though she’s looking down at her life from the peak of a high mountain. Admirable, I calls that.
Celeste is a remarkably gifted film photographer but has never gotten into digital cameras all that much. On the spur of the moment I told her I would give her my old Nikon – I mean, it’s not like I get any use out of it, right? It just sits there on the shelf. But immediately I regretted the generous impulse. What's that about, I wonder? I don’t use that camera at all but I grow strong hoarding its mana. Or something.
Anyway I'm dropping it off at her house tonight.
This is actually harder than it sounds. For me at any rate. I’m completely obsessed with the Little Store. Being there is a kind of therapeutic performance art, not drudgery at all.
But I felt great after I got back from Europe. Upbeat, clear-headed. Productive. Plus I was writing like an angel. The palliative effects of downtime I decided and resolved to program downtime in from now on, a contradiction in terms but you get what I mean.
It’s rare to have both my boys together these days, so Tuesday I decided we would all go on a group adventure. Since none of us had ever visited Hearst Castle, that’s where we went.
We had a great time.
Hearst Castle is a monstrosity, of course, but a fascinating monstrosity; all this interesting stuff that just cries to be set off in isolation jumbled together so that the famous medieval French tapestry you remember from an art history class (The Hunt of the Stag?) is hanging right next to a 4th century BC erotic Persian mosaic, both of them looking down upon a 14th century Venetian table on which Torquemada's personal collection of silver thumbscrews are displayed.
A mess.
One lovely thing though, the indoor swimming pool. There’s a smaller version in the Berkeley City Club (also designed by Julia Morgan) and I’ve swum in it!
Then yesterday I had lunch with Celeste at the Fishwife. I’m not sure why everyone thinks the Fishwife is such a great restaurant. I had grilled tuna with a wasabi sauce that was quite uninspired. The Fishwife does have the world’s greatest lunch hostess though. She’s about three feet tall and 150 years old, dresses in these bright Isadora Duncan knock-offs with garish red lipstick outlining the most cavernous mouth I have ever seen – I mean, they could find missing mine workers behind that bridgework.
Afterwards Celeste and I went off to the PG cemetary to take photographs. She’s leaving Monterey soon and I’m not sure if or when I will ever see her again.
As the mothers of everybody’s favorite Damon and Pythias update, Max and Nathan – I’m not entirely sure that the two boys have as much invested in that particular friendship as the respective Bigs in their lives do – Celeste and I have been thrown together a great deal over the past decade. Frequently she’s rubbed me the wrong way. (Vice versa, I’m sure.) But I gained a new-found respect for her at the beginning of this summer because of the way she’s handled the Big C. If I got handed a diagnosis like that I would use it as an excuse to be bitter and act out. But she has remained remarkably serene throughout it all, as though she’s looking down at her life from the peak of a high mountain. Admirable, I calls that.
Celeste is a remarkably gifted film photographer but has never gotten into digital cameras all that much. On the spur of the moment I told her I would give her my old Nikon – I mean, it’s not like I get any use out of it, right? It just sits there on the shelf. But immediately I regretted the generous impulse. What's that about, I wonder? I don’t use that camera at all but I grow strong hoarding its mana. Or something.
Anyway I'm dropping it off at her house tonight.
