the three ages of man/le tre età dell'uomo

5 years old: If a bad guy comes along Stef... just call me with your cell phone, and I'll come flying, LIKE SUPERMAN! And I'll knock him out - LIKE THIS!!

19 years old: You really do my head in Stef - can we get together? I know all there is to know about love.

46 years old: It's the feminists' fault all the men turned gay - not me though - I can handle a liberated woman like you.

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5 anni:  Se arriva un cattivo Stef… mi chiami col tuo cellulare e io arrivo volando, COME SUPERMAN! E lo faccio fuori…così… guarda…. COSI!!!

19 anni: Mi fai stare troppo male… posso venire a casa tua? Sull’amore non ho niente da imparare.

46 anni: Colpa di voi femministe se adesso sono tutti gay… tranne io, quelle come te le so gestire.

girlSentimental

I remember lying under you on that bathroom floor as we slowly reverted back into human form.

You felt so warm, so close, so utterly tender as you whispered, “We’d make a good couple… don’t you think?”

I said, “You must never, ever leave your wife.”

“Why not? Don’t you want to be with me?”

“Because without her you would die,” I said, feeling more wedded to you than ever.

Was it hard to give you up? No, because I love you. (Something neither of my alleged husbands found the strength to do while there was still time to, you know: end it honorably.)

Women chew up their lives trying to heal themselves from the bad arrangements they’ve made with men says lorrie moore (lorrie te amo)

my arrangement with you being the only one I still draw strength from after all these years; and this must be why a part of you comes out of me in these lines from time to time. 

you'll find me in a berlin bar in a corner brooding

The only true paradise is the one we've lost and regained. I sit on the balcony with the pale early spring sun on my bare skin as the first bee of the season in this northern city hovers in front of my face, drawn by christopher’s lavender perhaps, all the way from the park threading along the nearby canal with its ducks and swans,

which I can see from here as I look out over the wide gritty avenue, at the gigantic mural on the side of the ex red brick factory across the empty lot where a muscular old lady in a parka watches her rottweiler nosing around gently in the unkempt grass and a lone sapling stretches a silvery crown of leaves towards the sky,

and rickety vintage café tables spill out onto the sidewalks which are interspersed at regular intervals with thickets of parked bicycles, across the street the age-old rock and roll club spells Lido in cursive blue

and it’s all as seamless and specific, as familiar and serene to me as Avenue C, as though I never left, or had just this moment returned, and I go very quiet as I listen to the city's heart, which is glamorous and louche as suzanne would say, also radical and mellow, welcoming and courageous, transgressive and civilized, and it's beating so very close to me, something special indeed.

of marley and (im)mortality

We have many different games. Morning ones, evening ones. The shower curtain game, the moving-the-lighter-off-the-edge-of-the-coffee-table-while-you-aren’t-looking game.  The game of hiding under the sheets while I make the bed.

You have fangs, I have opposable thumbs and yes you are the apple of my eye. I lovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelove you.

Do you have a kitten? asks the Sole 24 Ore editor in the posh 15^th floor midtown Manhattan conference room twelve years ago. He’s observing my hands. Which are criss-crossed with baby claw marks. It’s just that I’m allergic to cats, he adds, carefully keeping the vast polished mahogany table between us.

I know it’s not the same, but it is. They play, run, fight, fall, get up, learn. (Dream, fear, hope, remember, demand. Mourn.)

They’re made of rubber – no use trying to be everywhere at once. They’re bound to get scratched - eat something they shouldn’t. They teethe, catch cold, need vaccines. They need.

They’re so needy – sometimes you feel like screaming at them. And you do.

They could so easily end up tortured by psychopaths. Neglected, abused, abandoned. Bought and sold on the internet, caged. Vivisected, gassed, clubbed, injected. 

You are the only thing standing between them and the evil fate that is being meted out to the innocent everywhere in the world, every minute every second. You are their guardian.

They’re possessive – won’t let you out of their sight. Follow you into the kitchen, the bathroom. Accompany you while you cook, freak out, fall in love, dance, take pictures fold the laundry. They make you laugh. Lay their paws on you where it hurts.

They bring you trophies – an eviscerated toy. Moth corpses. Once, a complete set of feathers. (Where’s the rest of the bird? You will never find it. Not even the beak.)

They have their preferences: classical music of any kind bewitches them. Led Zeppelin drives them out of the room.

They die so much sooner than us, said Francis the other day in the park. But I like to think we’ll find them waiting for us on the other side. Francis and his wife are in their sixties, their kids grown up; their rescued dog, Sophie, is two. So chances are – chances.

You’re twelve now Marley. At the same time it seems like yesterday I stood across that vast mahogany table and gushed, Yes! I just adopted a kitten… in fact, are we done with this meeting? I can’t wait to get home.

some people get by with a little understanding

FB wonders, girlontape recently reconnected with one of her loves of yesteryear. The kind that changes you, launching you on a whole new sequence of adventures

(in that case, it was the transition from uptown to downtown, activism to art, low-rent aspirations to buying real estate on Avenue C:

different sorts of self-definition, not that there is ultimately any separation, but at that age you feel it's just so important to draw those fine, non-existent lines)

and I told him "I'm heading to Berlin to reconnect with the rock n roll spirit I once knew in NY" and he said, "You are still rock n roll Stef"

which made me happy,

in the way that only the perception of someone who has known you this long can make you happy, and yeah I want MORE

when i was a child i knew...

As a kid I used to say: "When I grow up, I want to be...."
1. a painter
2. a writer
3. a dancer

Now I say: "In the next life, I want to come back as..."
1. a detective
2. a doctor without borders
3. a DJ! Like this:

art is a time machine

John Singer Sargent with his Portrait of Madame X, Paris 1885, photographer unknown

Some works of art enter through the eye into the mind and heart, and stay there forever. For example, John Singer Sargent's paintings. It's been years since I last looked at them in New York, and no matter: they communicate an indelible living world, in which his sitters from another century continue to breathe and give off their own special light.


La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles, Baudelaire wrote in 1857 of the interconnectedness of human experience across space and time; a truth everyone may glimpse to varying degrees, according to their individual sensibility, but which only a work of art, like Keats' Grecian Urn, can clearly spell out for us, in a way that we can all understand. The urn is a time machine from Mediterranean Antiquity, held inside another time machine, the English Romantic poem of 1819. 


In 1617, Marc-Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant gazed at certain trees and wrote a poem called La Solitude. Katherine Phillips translated it into English in 1664, Henry Purcell put it to music in 1684, and the countertenor Andreas Scholl, like me a huge Purcell fan, sings  it to us in the 21st century. 


Every time I listen to this song I think: "That's true...when I look at trees I feel the same way. How precious they are - how mysterious and life giving and perfect! I could lose myself in them - surely only a divinity could design such marvelous entities...?"





What content is mine
To see these trees, which have appear'd
From the nativity of time,

And which all ages have rever'd,
To look today as fresh and green
As when their beauties first were seen.

So Sargent's sitters, upper class 19th century women and men in their stuffy, complicated corsets and customs, whose particular private experiences were light years away from my own, nevertheless appear to me intelligible and graspable: I can relate to them, because his brushstrokes, just as the notes of Vinteuil's petite phrase  - itself one of many time machines within the meta time machine of Proust's novel - did for Swann, pluck something of the living essence of their psyche and ferry it to us, whole and intact, all the way across the constant streaming of space and time. 


Those who have stuck with me across the galaxies know that, whereas I once used to spend most of my time taking pictures and dancing, I now practically live in the fields with my dogs. Which is where, just yesterday, I saw a woman communing with a tree. She was alone - no dog or human companion. She was leaning into the trunk, and yes, kissing it. Does she know Purcell's song? I wondered, feeling a tiny thrill... 

I heard it on the facevine

Alexandra: Feed a spirit, starve an ego.

Laura: I own a miniature model of the Costa Concordia – why?!

Laura’s friend: Tilt it, it’ll look more realistic.

Rob: Our relationship was like a Lou Reed song. Waves of Fear, or The Heroine.

An Argie health minister: She’s an 11-year-old rape victim, and she wants an abortion? Niet! Nature is wise…if she ovulated, she can handle a pregnancy.

Liz: If I don’t think he’ll be good enough for me in the future, why do I think he’s good enough for me now?

Cameron: ███ ██████ ██████ ████████ ██ ████ ██ ████ █████████
 This status update has been found in violation of H.R. 3261, S.O.P.A and has been removed.


Stef: Attempted pick-up by crashing bore at the club where I work: "I'd really love to know what's inside that head of yours... I'm sure there's something."

Jesse: Curiouser and curiouser…

joe frazier rip

And now, a few words about boxing. I used to look down on it as nothing but a blood sport, a matter of brutish, brainless men, bashing it out before shady audiences of equally brainless, possibly mafioso punters. 


“Boxing is an art form,” my first boss, Lucio Manisco, told me when I was in my early 20s. Lucio was the chief correspondent for an Italian TV network in New York, and I worshiped him, for he was a true maverick reporter, in the way that Clarence Darrow was a maverick lawyer. A passionate defender of human rights, he did things like regularly interrupting his live news feeds with anti-Desert Storm rants. 


But much as I tried to understand his admiration of boxing, I couldn’t get beyond my repugnance, and while I loved films like Rocky, Raging Bull, and Million Dollar Baby, I favored the characters over the fight sequences. 


Until I saw Tatanka. Based on the real life story of Olympic medalist Clemente Russo, as told by anti-mafia crusading journalist Roberto Saviano, it’s about how a boy from the wrong side of the tracks redeems himself from a life of crime through boxing. It’s not a great film, but for some reason, it made me understand what Lucio had said all those years ago. 


I saw how all the true champions – Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Jake La Motta, Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Robinson – were great because they represented something greater than themselves. And how at its best, boxing is not just about a contest of brute strength, but also of heart and courage and passion and integrity. 


So here’s to you, Smokin’ Joe. I think this fight is something to behold.

of dogs and men

Laika: When people show you who they are, believe them.

Stef: Did you just make that up?

Laika: It's Maya Angelou, silly.

Stef: Oh - right. But, the thing is... I Love Him!

Laika: Well he doesn't love you, he only loves what you give him.

Stef: Source?

Laika: Mina, of course.

Stef: Damn, girl. You're a regular treasure trove of quotations.

Laika: I can do it in Italian too, watch. Per lui non conta quello che sei, ma soltanto cosa gli daaaaiiii....

Stef: OK I get it - I get it! ***snif***

Laika: Maledetto il sesso, che picchia così forteeeee....

Stef: For god's sake shut up before my head explodes!

Laika: The road to sex is paved with good intentions.

Stef: Who said that??

Laika: You did. Remember? Way back in '86... you were standing in the kitchen at a party in Allston and suddenly, it came to you. And Joey was standing right there with you and he laughed.

Stef: Joey...Joey! What a monster he turned out to be.

Laika: Don't they all. Wanna go for a walk? I'm sure it'll make you feel better!

Stef: I'm beat...whatever you say.

la lista di ieri

• ottenuto un 50mm e delle ciglia finte
• firmato per il referendum anti-porcellum (da quelli dell'IdV)
• presenziato ennesima rissa al san calisto (ma ci tocca tornare perché, dove altro lo troviamo un bloody mary a 3,50? molto buffe le analisi post rissa dei faux intellettuali ai tavolini accanto; roma fai cascare le braccia ma ti voglio bene uguale...)

la lista di domani

• andare a trovare quelli del teatro valle
• non cadere mai nel conformismo mai 
• rivedere tutte le puntate della nuova squadra spaccanapoli
• e anche tutti i film del mio nuovo idolo: riccardo scamarcio

ibiza la blanca la très douce...

on Ibiza, girlontape learned that:

• to a testosterone-driven 19-year-old, she still looks like she's 28 - who knew?
• there are magical places where groovy people dance in the serious moonlight to ass-kicking DJs from France, Japan, and the UK, just a 90-min. easyjet flight away
• Catalan taxi drivers have a great sense of humor
• like the rest of her Mediterranean sisters, the island is enchanted; a fact best expressed by a little Italian boy on the beach: "See that big rock out in the bay? On the front it has goats, but behind it, there are pirates!"

we cheated ourselves, like we knew we would

EXT. RANDOM BAR SOMEWHERE IN TRASTEVERE - NIGHT

KAT

(gazing sadly at her iphone)

Why isn't he calling?

STEF

Because he loves you, and the girl from last night, and the one he's meeting tomorrow...

KAT

But it was so good! He can't possibly feel the same way about anyone else.

STEF

I'm sure he's thinking of you in the final throes.

KAT

OMG! Look over there.

STEF

You mean the ladyboy?

KAT

Those hands... that skin...

STEF

That beard - yuck!

KAT

I want him.

STEF

Soon you'll be crying for him on the kitchen floor.

KAT

These Bloody Marys are so strong.

STEF

But not stronger that us.

KAT

I feel like Amy died when we were in the Pantheon.

STEF

While we were looking up at the sky through the circle in the ceiling -

KAT

And all the tourists disappeared.

STEF

I know. I felt it too.

amores perros cap. 7

laika & stef by kat

EXT. PARK DAY - Laika throws herself slavishly at the feet of a ridiculously handsome, tall, dark, blue-eyed stranger with a piercing.

STEF

Funny...usually she hates men.

STRANGER

Really? I think she's the perfect dog.

STEF

Do you have any tattoos?

Suddenly, our heroine feels that life has hit a different groove.

funny/cry/happy

Strangely, I’m living in the most unhip location - city, neighborhood - in my adult life ever; equally strangely, I’m loving it.

Germán calls it our suburban Olympus because we’re up on a hill, from which we can see the dome of St. Peter’s floating out there in the distance. Also a bend in the river, a train station, various fields rolling away, and even an abandoned farmhouse.

Elinor Carucci says it’s hard to take a happy picture, to which I would add, it’s hard to take pictures once you’ve crossed beyond a certain threshold of unhappiness. Also when you have a day job. I love my job, but still.

I mentioned this to Germán the other day, and he said, As soon as Christian and I are done exploring Europe we’re moving to a farm in Norway, and when we do, you can come live there rent-free forever. You can just spend all your time taking pictures and playing with the dogs. And I so love it that I have a friend willing to make me such a promise, 

meanwhile Laika has joined us here, reconstituting the same old borderline dysfunctional family as ever was, minus Milo, who’s still missing in Argentina, and whom we yearn for like an amputated limb: Charly commandeers Laika’s pink ball, Laika harasses the cats, the cats wish for her untimely death; and I marvel helplessly at them every day, 

all of which reminds me of the Chinese 99 cent store sign on West 23rd Street, which is possibly the best New York sign ever, and which reads FUNNY/CRY/HAPPY.

the mystery of interspecies love

The dog barks and barks. I go out to look for it, can’t find it. It’s trapped in some apartment nearby: the owner died, or left it there. It’s been going on all day & all night. No one cares.

The police bring a puppy to the shelter: its owner hanged herself. For hours the puppy tried & tried to jump up, trying to save her but it couldn’t.

There are terrible, terrible people in this world. Also incredibly careless, stupid people like me and it's hard to say which is worse. One way or another, the innocent always pay.

It's all true what they say: denial rage bargaining depression acceptance. They come in waves, mix & switch. It goes on & on. 

Other symptoms: sleeping with the light on. Hauntings. Hate. Reading Sylvia Plath: “And the blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.” Every picture I take is shit.

laika wants to kill my shoes

Laika followed me into the Chinese deli one day. I turned around in the aisle and there she was, wagging her tail: seven months old and riddled with scabies.

I put my shopping basket down on the floor, picked her up and took her to the vet. And that's how Laika came into my life. She eventually killed these shoes, and many more... but always with a million-dollar smile.

The other day this journalist asked me, "How would you describe your life in Argentina?"
"I don't know," I said. "I came, I rescued some animals, I left."

when i was a child i knew that we would get closer (hercules & love affair)

Hoy paseando con le baron de charlus conocimos a beatrice, de un año y medio, y ella nos regaló estas flores.

Today in the park we met Beatrice, one and a half.
"Bau!" she said, and gave us these flowers.

What can I say...? I cried, which didn't bother her because like all children she could tell the difference between sad tears and happy tears.

le mot juste (flaubert)

A motto (Italian for pledge, sentence; plural: mottos or mottoes) is a phrase meant to formally describe the general motivation or intention of a social group or organization. In informal ways, it can be a rule or slogan someone follows, or lives their life by.


Mariel gave me the above-pictured object a couple of years ago, adding: "You'll be so much happier once you stop thinking with your p***y and start thinking with your head Stef."

Which was endearing in a way, because it meant that, against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, she had hopes for my ability to make sane choices in the four-letter department.

Thank god I just found her present again: some mottoes may be harder to live by than others, but then again, this is why we need good friends to give us recall from time to time.

longtemps, je me suis couchée de bonne heure (proust)

du coté de chez stef: here, every day, we take a stroll with le baron de charlus

peut-on aimer ceux qui n'aiment pas marcel?

Those who love girlontape know that her world is divided into those who read proust and those who do not; she's even been known to paraphrase the duchesse de guermantes on the subject of odette, as follows:

"There wouldn't be anything to talk about any more if one were obliged to make the acquaintance of the proust-less!"

But the heart has its reasons, which reason doth not know: so girlontape has sometimes formed passionate attachments to just such people. 

One of these is mariel: has any friend been more loyal, more tender, more fierce, more bravely loving?

Little did it matter that, a tough kid from a tough hood, mariel never finished high school, and thus could not be expected to know that marcel even exists.

Imagine my face the day I had the following conversation with her, three years ago:

stef: Hey... what are you up to?

mariel: I just started Within a Budding Grove.

stef: Come again?!?

mariel: Well I finished Swann's Way yesterday, so -

stef: I'm not sure I understand.

mariel: Didn't you say The World Is Divided Into Those Who Read Proust And Those Who Don't?

stef: Yeah, but -

mariel: It's a good book. Kinda trippy.

Now that was a proof of love, such as this world needs more of; and also proof that one may indeed sometimes love the unprousted (as long as they end up reading proust).