It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive

Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, Gillette Stadium, 8/18/12 

Dreaming of Eleanor Parker

For some unknown reason (outside of the obvious one that my subconscious is like a Dada toy chest), I have had two (not one but two) dreams about Eleanor Parker in the last three weeks. 

You will probably know her best as The Baroness from The Sound of Music, but she also played Kirk Douglas’ wife in The Detective and the redheaded actress/courtesan bad girl Lenore in Scaramouche.  (Guess which one I prefer.)

7/20-7/21.  In this dream, she’s herself, Eleanor Parker, and a friend of my bartender friend Joan (ingénue, Audrey Hepburn thin, brown hair streaked with blonde highlights, no relation to anybody I know in real life).  “Call me Parker,” she says when we’re introduced, and explains that she’s given up acting to paint, and she’s in town to see her friend’s art opening.  She pronounces the word  “friend” that Capital F way women use to denote somebody with whom they have more than just a platonic friend relationship.  Oh well, I think to myself, there’s that door closed.  Which is too bad, because we talk all night at Joan’s bar, and take a cab back to Parker’s hotel room, where I take the couch and she sleeps in the corridor between the living room and the bedroom with her body wrapped in a plush dark rug.  “When is the opening?” I ask in the dark.  “Three,” she says. “Why don’t we sleep in then?” I offer, but she’s already out like a light.

I wake up around noon.  Do I go into the corridor and wake Parker up?  While I’m thinking about it, I hear keys in the door and a guy in a suit walks in.  He goes right over to where Parker is sleeping and wakes her up.  They hug, and start talking in low voices.  I get up and close the door between the living room and the corridor, then yell out that I’m taking a shower.  “Okay, dear,” Parker calls back.  Dear, I think; yeah, right.

When we’re all dolled up, Parker introduces her friend as Bill, and the three of us go to an art gallery on West Broadway where Bill is exhibiting portraits that mix Andrew Wyeth photo-realism with acid-etched abstract art.  It’s called The Daaé Series, after Christine Daaé in Phantom of The Opera--every painting has at least one female face that has acid etching scarring her features.  “If this was a mystery novel,” I say to Bill, “you’d be the prime suspect in a series of acid attacks on beautiful streetwalkers.”  “There are no beautiful streetwalkers,” says Bill.  “Are you speaking from instinct or experience?” Parker asks.  Before Bill can answer, she pirouettes in her silver gown and heads off to get more champagne.  I join her at the bar.  “I wouldn’t mind the fact that he’s annoying,” she says, “but he’s annoying and he’s family.”  I do a little double-take, mouthing the word “Oh,”  and Parker explains that she and Bill are distant cousins whose families lived near each other outside Washington DC when they were teenagers.  “If this was ancient Egypt, we’d have three kids by now,” she says,  and I get this vivid flash of her playing the Joan Collins part in Land Of The Pharaohs.  Which immediately makes me realize that this is a dream, and the next thing I know I’m lying in bed in Ocean Bluff blinking against the morning sun.

 

8/12-13.  Last night’s dream was a Western, but no relation to the Western Parker was in (Escape from Fort Bravo, 1953, John Sturges--hah!--it’s one year younger than I am!).  She and I are hiding from the outlaw who’s trying to kill her because she can identify him as the man who killed her smarmy husband (some bit player with a moustache).  We’ve been ducking in and out of buildings in town to get away from him, and we’re in the General Store now.  Parker--Mrs. Smarmy Husband--is hiding behind the counter.  I’m standing to one side of the back door, my back to a wall that has hanging from it a lot of stagecoach reins, harnesses, and horse tack.   The outlaw is outside, I can hear his spurs as he walks.  What can I do?  I look over at Jake, the General Store’s delivery boy.  He looks like Clint Walker’s twin brother: big, thick, and dumber than a sack of snaffle bits.  If the outlaw sees Jake at the door instead of me, he’ll hesitate long enough for me to get a shot off.  I wave my gun at Jake and get him to stand in front of the door. 

“Get down,” I yell to Parker.  Because she’s the female lead, she ducks behind the bar for a full second, then slowly raises her head to get a good look at what’s going on.  The door bangs back against the wall as the outlaw kicks it open and aims at Jake.  But because it isn’t me or Parker, and because it's a 50's Western, he holds his fire, which gives me a chance to shoot his gun hand.  The gun spins away, Jake dives for cover, and the outlaw raises his other hand, which also has a gun in it, and starts firing in my direction.  I duck behind a barrel of nails.  Bullets thump through the wood of the barrel and then jangle metallically inside as they ricochet off the barrel’s contents.  I’m worried about Parker because the counter is right in the line of the outlaw’s fire if I stay behind the barrel.  I have to move.  Do I do the smart thing and try to flank him or do I do the dumb thing and try to surprise him with a head-on attack?  Because I am the male lead, I do the dumb thing and kick over the barrel of nails, fire three quick shots, and leap towards the outlaw in slow motion.  I can hear Parker yelling my name as time slows down and the sound of her shouting becomes a rushing noise in my ears, and I wake up in bed literally three deep breaths before my alarm goes off. 

Is This The Face

The moment I was born, Death took my hand

   And said, “One day, I’ll kiss you, little boy.”

Since then, she’s hovered close to where I stand,

   Eyeing me like a baby eyes a toy.

She flirts with me with each new risk I take.

   She tries to catch me every time I fall.

I slip her clutches every dawn I wake;

   And when I drink, I hear her thirsty call.

Hers is the lechery that will effect

   The consummation of my virgin years--

Each pass she makes at me I will reject

   Until the one I don’t--and with hot tears

      She folds me in the arms of the abyss

      And sweetly makes me mortal with her kiss.

Copyright 2012 Matthew J Wells

Thanks, Ava!

"Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition." -- Marilyn Monroe, 6/1/26-8/5/62

Topic A

You’ve no idea, my love, how much I love you.

   It makes me want to tell you things like this:

“There is no other soul on earth above you,”

   Or, “Heaven’s here on earth each time we kiss.”

The kind of praise a mortal woman will

   Find it hard to live up to, never mind

Believe, for love’s superlatives must kill

   The mundane, and to flaws be ever blind.

And what sane woman wants a man whose eyes

   See the unreal each time they look at her?

Oh, she may swallow one or two sweet lies,

   But when she dines, truth is what she’d prefer.

      That’s why, my love, you’ll always hear me say

      That I adore you for the everyday.

Love is like pain--you must lean into it

   Until the ache becomes a part of you

And warms you from the inside, like a spit

   That roasts your bubbling heart till it cooks through.

Love is the hurt you never want to heal--

   It cuts away the tendons of the life

You walked alone, till each stride makes you feel

   The sweetly moaning torture of the knife.

Love is the gravity of soul to soul--

   It weighs us down to make us light and daring--

It carves us into pieces till we’re whole

   And shattered by the holy ache of caring.

      The healing pain of scalpel slicing true:

      That’s what I feel when I lean into you.

We touch, but skin to skin, not soul to soul--

   Scratching each other to relieve the itch

Of Love’s mosquito bite--digging a hole

   Into a wound that Time will try to stitch

And heal, so we can keep it fresh and raw--

   Searching for what is hidden in the bone,

Love’s marrow; and so, hungrily, we gnaw

   Away at flesh so we won’t feel alone.

But flesh is not the answer: it will feed

   Never the hunger, just the appetite.

To crave and gorge will always leave the need

   Starving for more than something sweet to bite

      Until we make meals of what makes us whole

      And love, not skin to skin, but soul to soul.

Copyright 2012 Matthew J Wells

Cate Blanchett in Uncle Vanya

The Hitchcock blonde, sheathed in a scarlet dress,

   Curls her sleek body in a siren’s pose--

A cool, aroused, unfathomable mess,

   She squares her shoulders and looks down her nose

At all this sullen canine male display.

   She’ll slip a kiss to kiss on her own terms,

Return a hug and smoothly squirm away,

   Then roll her eyes and think, “Men are such worms.”

But she’ll do just what each man needs to think

   He’s her worm--warmly reach to hold a hand,

Pat this one’s knee, thrown that one a sly wink.

   She maps her country with a silky hand

      And waits.  Waits for one of these smitten curs

      To make a move, so she can make it hers.

Copyright 2012 Matthew J Wells

How it feels to turn 60: the verbal

“How does it feel?” people keep asking me,

   As if my turning 60 was a weight--

As if each decade had a density

   That made me suffer and not celebrate--

As if it was a wound to have more years

   Behind me than I have ahead of me--

As if, just like the closing of frontiers,

   The one thing missing is a eulogy.

I have to say, I don’t feel any change:

   The ticking of the clock is still a call

To take new chances and expand my range.

   The moment’s in the movement, after all,

      And Life’s a tune that each new moment sings.

      How does it feel?  Like wings.  It feels like wings.

Copyright 2012 Matthew J Wells

How it feels to turn 60: the visual

Before:

After:

 

Temperatures in the 60's

Which is depressingly allegorical . . .