At another time, she will have said, not quite leering, "It's all in the details, Buttermilk."
Eloise Lee is, as we read these words now, dead. Been dead for a while, actually. Which on the one hand, makes her suitable to be our Beatrice. On the other hand, it was always hard to imagine her as anything other than a convenience, even with her drawl, the soft voice designed to seduce and abandon.
Buttermilk?
Well, if the past is prologue and the outline father to the manuscript--I do not have the time or patience to check every word for asexual preferences--then it's high time we took a look at where we are and why.
Right: Broadway at 65th. On our right, the new-ish Julliard campus; across the street, Lincoln Center. To our left, across Broadway and Columbus, the NYCLDS tabernacle, Moroni on top, trump to his lips. I figure if we listen carefully enough we'll hear a battle of the brasses between the angel and Wynton Marsalis down at Jazz at Lincoln Center. I like Wynton's fingering.
So there you are. Cool. No, cold. We're caught in a polar vortex; I think it used to be a polar express but in any case it's cold. Everyone's walking head down to keep eyes from freezing...that kind of cold. Also huddled into their coats. And here comes the guy, the Johnny Appleseed of these meanderings, walking up Broadway, facing us. Talking to himself. Not on a phone, which is probably worse, because in that case he thinks what he's saying is important to someone, but simply flapping lip in the wind, adding a mumble under the keening of the big noise from Winnetka; at least he isn't wearing an aluminum foil yarmulka. Seeing him, I wonder if I've been moving my lips as I crouch into the icy concrete canyon.
I've got a habit of talking back. Usually it's the newspaper, the tv reporters, the cast and writers of "General Hospital," or whatever show is providing the white noise. I've even done it, a lot, in movie theaters. Part of it is that having spent my life editing, the habit of suggesting changes is hard to break, and I've got a lot of changes in mind...most of which won't get any further than this sentence. I also ramble. And speak in parenthetical side trips and lose my place in my own stream of consciousness. Which can be scary. Where was I? .
Yes, there. What you'll find here, mostly, are asides about whatever happens to be interesting at the moment. Sudetenland, anyone? Should Draper have gone back to the agency? How did we get anything done before mobile phones? Why don't people stop and think before the speak on their cellphones in the middle of busy streets? Not of all of us have grown headsets and earbuds; we hear what you're saying, in spite of ourselves.
There may also be stories or snippets of stories, stillborn tales. Incidents from a past that are ambushing my quiet moments with disquieting jabs. And like that.
Talking to myself in pixels.
It's also pretty clear that I haven't figured out all the ins and outs of blogging and using the templates and all the rest of whatever goes into doing this. As I figure it out, the format will improve; I offer not guarantee abut the text.
And finally, my "other" imaging, photographs and the Photoshop manipulation of them that has occupied so much of my time for the last ten years or so, can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mseidman/. I stopped posting several months ago because I'd run out of steam and I was disappointed with the changes instituted by Marissa Mayer, the overpriced new head of Yahoo (the company that began the deterioration of Flickr several years ago), in spite of the needs, requests and desires of those who've supported the site. I may go back to it; pixelating my days in words and images. Or maybe not.
All that's left to say is more to come, Buttermilk.
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