Thinking like a mammal
Sep. 19th, 2004 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraIf only Robin had been looking up, I think this might have been the perfect photograph:
During the approach to the K_____s’ house, I felt as though I was living out the opening paragraphs of one of those English “Great House” novels – Brideshead Revisited perhaps, or The Go Between. Every rustle of the trees was foreshadowing, every twist in the road a premonition of preordained event.
The property is magnificent – an old apple orchard at the top of a redwood forest, the very epicenter of the ’89 Loma Prieta quake. The grandfather discovered it on a long bike ride down from Los Altos fifty years ago. Maya’s father, Nicolas, ran away from home at 16 and built a hippie shack on the side of the mountain.
He pointed out the site from one of the immense living room windows. “See those two cypress trees? They have names – John and Yoko.”
“I was just wondering about those trees,” I said. “They’re so Italianate. I was wondering if they’d been planted by the original homesteaders.”
“No, that was me.” He smiled but it was not a particularly warm smile. I thought perhaps he had made up his mind to dislike me. Or maybe he was not a particularly warm man.
The house, equally magnificent, is new. Designed ten years ago by the afore-mentioned grandfather, a famous architect.
Nicolas and Puria, Maya’s mother, met at Stanford. Puria immediately got pregnant; they married very young. One can imagine the famous cycling architect grandfather was not pleased.
Nicolas went on to become an artist. At first he painted and made sculpture; then he started doing work for hire in Hollywood. “I’m a commercial artist,” he told me. This time the bitterness was palpable.
“I’ve never quite understood the term ‘commercial artist’”, I said. “What does that mean? Was Michelangelo a commercial artist because he worked for the Pope when he did the Sistine chapel? Illustrator. That’s another word I don’t understand.”
“Touché,” said Nicolas. He’s a slight slender man who wears his hair in the manner of an English rake, a forelock springing boyishly over his forehead.
Nicolas and Puria are both attractive people but their children are a bit of a surprise, they’re so outrageously beautiful. Maya, very tiny and very blonde, has a round Polynesian face; Paul looks exactly like a younger version of the actor who played Sebastian Flyte in the PBS miniseries of Brideshead.
Puria had called me up earlier in the week to invite us over after Max’s football game in Watsonville. “You’re very sweet,” I said. “But you know, Annie is coming too and also Alicia and her family –“
“Bring them,” said Puria.
I can’t read Puria at all. She’s utterly opaque to me, possibly because though blonde and fair-skinned, she’s Tahitian and thus has a radically different subtext from my own, which makes the old carnie psychic trick – well, if I was in that situation, I’d be thinking like this – difficult to play. There’s an undercurrent of sadness to both the K_____s even though they live in paradise.
“Really the only difference between an artist and a commercial artist is that an artist has turned into a brand,” I continued to Nicolas. “But being a brand carries its own set of problems.”
“I suppose that’s true,” he said.
“Gallery owners to suck up to, and agents, and rich people –“
“You’re right,” he said. But he didn’t sound happy about it. “I suppose nobody is ever free.”
“Not in this lifetime,” I said.
From nearby Annie who had not been listening to our conversation but staring out the window said, “I suppose when it’s foggy up here, you feel like you’re inside a ship.”
“Exactly as though you’re in a ship,” said Nicolas. “It makes it difficult to motivate yourself to leave.”
“If I lived here I’d never want to leave,” said Annie.
Later, as I was making my farewells, I complimented Nicolas on his beautiful daughter. “Such an exceptional girl, intelligent, sensitive, kind, and of course beautiful –“
He laughed shortly. “Oh, yes. She’s a piece of work.”
Somehow that wasn’t the response I expected.
During the approach to the K_____s’ house, I felt as though I was living out the opening paragraphs of one of those English “Great House” novels – Brideshead Revisited perhaps, or The Go Between. Every rustle of the trees was foreshadowing, every twist in the road a premonition of preordained event.
The property is magnificent – an old apple orchard at the top of a redwood forest, the very epicenter of the ’89 Loma Prieta quake. The grandfather discovered it on a long bike ride down from Los Altos fifty years ago. Maya’s father, Nicolas, ran away from home at 16 and built a hippie shack on the side of the mountain.
He pointed out the site from one of the immense living room windows. “See those two cypress trees? They have names – John and Yoko.”
“I was just wondering about those trees,” I said. “They’re so Italianate. I was wondering if they’d been planted by the original homesteaders.”
“No, that was me.” He smiled but it was not a particularly warm smile. I thought perhaps he had made up his mind to dislike me. Or maybe he was not a particularly warm man.
The house, equally magnificent, is new. Designed ten years ago by the afore-mentioned grandfather, a famous architect.
Nicolas and Puria, Maya’s mother, met at Stanford. Puria immediately got pregnant; they married very young. One can imagine the famous cycling architect grandfather was not pleased.
Nicolas went on to become an artist. At first he painted and made sculpture; then he started doing work for hire in Hollywood. “I’m a commercial artist,” he told me. This time the bitterness was palpable.
“I’ve never quite understood the term ‘commercial artist’”, I said. “What does that mean? Was Michelangelo a commercial artist because he worked for the Pope when he did the Sistine chapel? Illustrator. That’s another word I don’t understand.”
“Touché,” said Nicolas. He’s a slight slender man who wears his hair in the manner of an English rake, a forelock springing boyishly over his forehead.
Nicolas and Puria are both attractive people but their children are a bit of a surprise, they’re so outrageously beautiful. Maya, very tiny and very blonde, has a round Polynesian face; Paul looks exactly like a younger version of the actor who played Sebastian Flyte in the PBS miniseries of Brideshead.
Puria had called me up earlier in the week to invite us over after Max’s football game in Watsonville. “You’re very sweet,” I said. “But you know, Annie is coming too and also Alicia and her family –“
“Bring them,” said Puria.
I can’t read Puria at all. She’s utterly opaque to me, possibly because though blonde and fair-skinned, she’s Tahitian and thus has a radically different subtext from my own, which makes the old carnie psychic trick – well, if I was in that situation, I’d be thinking like this – difficult to play. There’s an undercurrent of sadness to both the K_____s even though they live in paradise.
“Really the only difference between an artist and a commercial artist is that an artist has turned into a brand,” I continued to Nicolas. “But being a brand carries its own set of problems.”
“I suppose that’s true,” he said.
“Gallery owners to suck up to, and agents, and rich people –“
“You’re right,” he said. But he didn’t sound happy about it. “I suppose nobody is ever free.”
“Not in this lifetime,” I said.
From nearby Annie who had not been listening to our conversation but staring out the window said, “I suppose when it’s foggy up here, you feel like you’re inside a ship.”
“Exactly as though you’re in a ship,” said Nicolas. “It makes it difficult to motivate yourself to leave.”
“If I lived here I’d never want to leave,” said Annie.
Later, as I was making my farewells, I complimented Nicolas on his beautiful daughter. “Such an exceptional girl, intelligent, sensitive, kind, and of course beautiful –“
He laughed shortly. “Oh, yes. She’s a piece of work.”
Somehow that wasn’t the response I expected.
