This is why I love Peter O'Toole

He was born in Ireland, he played T.E. Lawrence (who is epic, and had a romantic young motorcycle death) and he's downright beautiful and of course charmingly British. IMDB lists as one of his trademarks "His blue eyes" and says under trivia that nuns in the Catholic school he attended beat his left-handedness out of him. Also in his IMDB profile is a quote from Noel Coward to O'Toole:  "If you'd been any prettier, it would have been Florence of Arabia."

The great thing about being an actor, or really any performer who gets filmed a lot, is that they can preserve themselves at their most youthful and attractive for generations and generations. Sure they can't escape aging like the rest of us mortals, but it's probably the closest thing to it. It's kind of like the way memory freezes people if you stop seeing them, or if you only knew them for a short time. Then if you happen to meet up with them years later, unless they haven't aged/developed at all, they occupy a totally new entry in your brain, as if they're a new person. This is kind of a weird example, but I remember when I helped direct a high school musical and I worked with the same kids intensively for two months straight, I realized I would probably never see these kids again, and they would be 16, 17 and 18 in my head FOREVER. And I would be a 22-year-old college senior in their heads forever.

I remember being shocked and a little depressed when, after I went on a Robert Plant kick and checked out a bunch of Led Zeppelin concert DVDs from the library and drooled over his shirtless/long haired/androgynous/microphone thrusting sex appeal, I google imaged Plant and found what looked like a shriveled troll who looked like he belonged under a bridge somewhere. And it's not much better for O'Toole. Or Ginger Rogers for that matter. I will allow Fred Astaire to be one example of someone who pretty much kept the same appeal until death, but that's because he was ALWAYS ugly-hot. Anyway, once I got past the disturbing fact that people, including my beloved film icons, don't always age well, I reveled in the beauty of film, photographs, memory, and frozen time. It's kind of how I feel about people in my past, who, for whatever reason our friendship or relationship or whatever didn't work out. Good memories are always there to be replayed, and that's kind of comforting.

Meeoww

"He signed with cat’s silhouette. And the (dismantleable) cenotaph that was solemnly honored, following his death, in the Louvre’s Cour carr¾ , was topped by a late Egyptian bronze: the cat-goddess, Bastet, her nose raised toward the cosmos. Cats sign by scratching. Not long ago, people called them clerks and griffins. They also sign the indeterminacy of space and time by their whimsical comings and goings – some cheery, some nasty – stopping at thresholds we cannot see where they sniff some ‘present beyond’. The beyond of a just-this-side – the one that roars or rumbles or purrs in their throats. ....Of the ellipsis, they understand much. And the name for this, the name for this life at the threshold, for the door that’s ajar, for questioning: is limbo."

Mah-tay

It's amazing how different I can feel from day to day (and the difference is especially pronounced when I don't have my tea). I think a quote from Borges is appropriate.

"Years of solitude had taught him that although in one's memory days all tend to be the same, there wasn't a day, even when a man was in jail or hospital, that didn't have its surprises."

And then

"The taste of the mate, the taste of the black tobacco, the growing band of shade that slowly crept across the patio--these were reason enough to live."

From The Wait.


On a side note
After my interview with KitchenAid, I REALLY want to work there. They made the job sound great. I can see a FUTURE with them. I just want to wear that red apron and go around operating stand mixers all day!

It's job time. Everyone get your jobs!

I have an interview with KitchenAid tomorrow. I'm also applying at the library. I can see myself becoming a librarian if music doesn't work out. I don't know if I can see myself becoming a housewife.

...

I think there's a small rodent caught in my wall. I heard clawing and thuds periodically throughout the afternoon, and then I heard some breathless moans, if that's the right word, because I can't think of the word to describe the guttural emanations I heard, starting loud and gradually dying out as if the thing were losing a fight.

The apartment either below me or directly across the hall from me always wafts smells and sounds of good food and merriment in my direction. Today, coming in after a fruitless attempt to get a retail job and print out piano lesson fliers at the zombie-infested library, I detected barbecue chicken.

Kay Nielsen has tapped into my subconscious

I came across this picture randomly, with no explanation of where it was from or who did it but I knew immediately. It was from East of the Sun and West of the Moon. A book my great great aunt gave me when I was 5 when my family visited her in St. Louis. I have such fond memories of that book, and of the glossy color illustrations. So when I came across the picture I decided to get out the book (which I've always kept--now it's 82 years old) and look at it again and remind myself which story this picture came from. But it was not to be found. My book has art from an entirely different illustrator (Hedwig Collin, not the famous Kay Nielsen who did the one I pasted above). I'm completely at a loss as to why this picture exists in my memory.

For more Kay Nielsen: http://www.animationarchive.org/2005/12/media-kay-nielsen-twelve-dancing.html