After a wretched, wakeful night, my hot head buzzing with annoyance, I sat squirming in my study waiting for Ollie to arrive. At nine he put his head in, smiling with his usual greeting, “How are we doing, Andy?”
Last day for the Rivera mural; we can see a narrow section from over the near rail. Against a ribbon of hills and low sky one man swings a hammer, another an axe.
I’m an old man-not as old as Robert Frank was when I last saw him, but old. And now that I’m old, most every night an overflow of memories, doubts, regrets, images, and yearnings chew at my brain and keep me from sleeping. Still, come...
On the train to the museum, at the Embarcadero stop with my father, I start to get emotional. Tender as ever, having told a woman who loves me I cannot, or can no longer, love her.
By my late twenties, it had gotten so bad I could barely sleep. Many people toss and turn after, say, a baked brie or Blazin’ Buffalo Wings. But at twenty-eight, even less-quarrelsome foods—steak, carrots, celery, pork chops, hummus, jicama...
Overhead the Kentucky sky was clear and went on forever. I don’t really remember how we parted or where I went after, only that he wanted to stay awhile, that at some point he hugged me, tucked a cig behind his ear, and started down toward...
