"You're promised nothing. Ever." Marlon Brando

Every time I think of saying good-bye to Facebook, I will get a snippet in my feed from Joanne Woodward.  I don't know Joanne and I'm not sure how I became one of her FB friends but almost daily she posts quotes from two works by James Grissom: Tennessee Williams biography, "Follies of God" and from Marlon Brando's portrait "Come Up A Man: The Hungers of Marlon Brando. We knew Tennessee was brilliant but who knew Marlon Brando was a brilliant thinker?  All of Brando's quotes are so incisive it makes you realize he could have been a great writer as well as a great actor.  He gets to the deeply buried truth about things.  In the quote below he talks about talent in a way I hadn't considered.

"Work the talent. Hone the talent. Share the talent. This has been my life, and this was seen as healthy and necessary. Talent gives nothing to its owner: It only gives momentary pleasure to those to whom it is given. The application of talent depletes a person, while the study of things and people to feed it give great pleasure. But when you're done sharing the talent, you're empty and tired and terribly vulnerable, and if you have no one in your life to tell you to do things and to be there for them, you're dead. Talent is not enough. Judy Garland is proof of that: She gave and she gave, and she had, in the end, nothing. No one to hold her--I mean HER, not the person known as Judy Garland. I am an example of this: I pursued talent and work and the marketing of it, and what do I have? What do any of us have? A lonely phone call in the night."--Marlon Brando/ From Grissom's "Come Up A Man: The Hungers of Marlon Brando

And also from Brando: "You're promised nothing. Ever. Without becoming entirely nihilistic, keep this always in mind. The pursuit is everything. The reaching. The straining. Harold [Clurman] told me once that to die with your arm stretched toward something that is impossible for you is the greatest goal to have. Keep reaching. Expect nothing. And then--one day, amazingly--you grab hold of the play, the film, the book, the person. And life is that amazing thing you hoped for, dreamed of." 

The other quote is from  Grissom's extraordinary portrait of Tennessee Williams' and his take on Ernest Hemingway.  It is exactly the way I feel about Hemingway, "he altered the literary scene for all of us and his rhythms are now our rhythms....."  By the way, this book is a masterful biography of Williams' creative process which can overlap to include even the least of us.

 "Whatever we may feel about him personally--whatever his particular demons may have been--he altered the literary scene for all of us, and his rhythms are now our rhythms, and his nightmares our nightmares. We are all indebted to him even in small ways."--Tennessee Williams on Ernest Hemingway.

 Off subject:  on a personal note, I have been fortunate to sell another book (one that isn't written yet) and my posts may be farther (further?) apart.  I'm a little scared if I will be able to fulfill the enthusiasm and expectations of the publisher but I'm going to keep writing and do my best.  Writing this blog has helped me become a more facile writer.  By that I mean I can summon the emotional context in which to place events without too much agonizing.  My mind is used to finding the best way to present even small ideas.  I notice the writing process is markedly different from when I wrote my last book.  

The best bs ever!

As some might know, I live in East Hampton and not too far from my house, is the gorgeous barn of Ina Garten, the doyenne of all things culinary and tasteful and high end.  I love watching Ina and Jeffrey giggle and adore each other.   I love watching Ina cook with her beautiful commercial grade equipment and her gorgeous produce and her first-name relationships with the shopkeepers of the high end food that she buys.  Ina tells us to always have chicken stock in the freezer and then she pulls out gallons of clear earthy stock that must have required a hundred chickens to produce and then also strained through unbleached muslin.  I marvel that any earthly being lives in such a perfect yet relaxed world. 

Yesterday, I found a headline on my Yahoo news feed with these words:  

Ina's Barnlike Abode

On  a shady side street of East Hampton, New York, Ina Garten built her "barn," inspired by the simple country buildings of Belgium and designed by architect Frank Greenwald.  Ina loves to entertain outdoors, and "all my guests love to sit on the stone sitting wall before dinner, having a glass of wine," she says.  After dinner, everyone gathers around the big iron fire bowl to roast marshmallows and make s'mores.
In the entry, a 19th century muslin-covered settee from Bloom is just right for donning summer flip-flops or shucking winter Wellies.  A 17th-century Venetian mirror hangs on a wall painted Farrow and Ball's Light Gray.

Some BS is bad, some BS is good but this is the best BS ever!

Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed. So what?

When I came upon a book titled, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Well.  You know.  Magic. Life-changing. The author is foreign giving her message more weight. The book's suggested regimen is so radical, we assume a payoff of spectacular personal change.

My life, by the way, is already magically transformed.  Logically I had no right to succeed at anything. I perfected the maneuver of sounding smart by remembering everything and knowing nothing completely. It has brought me far.  I have received almost everything I've ever wanted and expect to get the few items left very soon. I share this because, like many, I enjoy any documentation of all the things that are seriously wrong with me and are blocking any hope of a good happy life. 

Are books like this of any use?  Yes.  Books like these are useful when there is something mildly wrong with us and we need a little kick to try out a new idea and challenge some dusty status quo.  A new idea that requires action (getting rid of all useless possessions) takes hold in stages.  There's the first layer where you get rid of obvious trash: torn clothing, broken utensils, etc.  A few days later, your eyes and mind open a little wider and you get rid of stuff that isn't broken but is useless and possibly worthless.  All subsequent stages are true awakenings wherein you realize how all this stuff is mentally weighing you down and you can't get rid of it fast enough.  No regrets!

Let's take the book, Stuff - compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things. I had all the classic symptoms of a mild hoarder and the evidence was in my garage. I was certain I would one day sell the stuff in my garage so why should I throw it away?   I don't feel that way anymore and although I have sold a few things, I have also given away or thrown away much more.  Sadly, I still hoard some clothes from when I was thinner. 

I received two useful messages from these books and both improved my life.

It's okay to let go of stuff.  It takes a while for this idea to take root. Familiarity is not a reason to retain anything.  Let it all go by whatever means.  It's beneficial. Think of it as psychic income.  Visually, it's liberating to see empty space.  Emotionally, there's a sense of relief not to be responsible for fixing, refurbishing or using any of the stuff.  Mentally, you now have room for other thoughts.

It's not a sin to throw away/give back sentimental keepsakes and you won't regret it later.

All the "awwh" stuff you kept from when the kids were little, including handprints in clay, macaroni portraits, abstract paintings, sat scores, mother's day cards, etc. can be boxed and given to each child to do with as they wish. 

My favorite title by far is  Selfish, Shallow and Self-absorbed.   That should be my autobiography.  If we are realistic, it is probably the universal autobiography. We want everything to be about us. So what?  Think about it.  That's the way it has to be. By the way, the above book is about deciding not to have children but you can have children to enhance your selfishness, shallowness and self-absorption because what are children but miniature versions of us.

Editors who used to show up at your house to hold your hand

I belong to a site named "Narrative"

I don't feel worthy of being anywhere near this site because they are the kind of serious writing place that will publish a story by Virginia Woolf  which they did in the current issue.  It is called Monday or Tuesday.

The poem of the week Scars  by Tod Marshall is about the debris that lives under a trailer that is exposed when a windstorm blows off the skirt. 

Everything they publish is literary as in Farrar Straus and Giroux when Roger Straus ran the ship and Michael di Capua was an editor,   as in Viking Press when Tom Guinzberg was editor in chief, as in when the first Tom Wolfe was screaming out in the street at one in the morning that he had written ten thousand words that day.  As in, people who remember who Ford Maddox Ford was and the name of Hemingway's editor. As in Maxwell Perkins. As in, editors who used to show up at your house to hold your hand.    As in, more recently, Jennifer Egan. They have writing contests and award prize money.

Today this magazine arrived in my e-mail box and offered a free - as in free - ad of  100 words.  Just in case I misunderstood, they said it was free about eight times.  Just place the ad between aug 6 and aug 8. 

Anyway, I'm passing this along to my blog readers in case they want to take advantage of it.    

http://www.narrativemagazine.com
       
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