Your Own Mind

I’ve been given an assignment by the rest of the team. Act 1, scene 2. To say that this will be cinema’s most memorable scene involving artisan cheeses and the people who cultivate them is an understatement. It is also an overstatement.

The morning rain turned the rush hour sky a gorgeous shade of blue. It was like the blue you’d see on an architect’s drafting table. As I drove to work, to my left, the Hollywood Hills pulsated with Raymond Chandler’s overwritten hangovers. To my right, I swore I saw Stew making giant footprints with a paintbrush on Arlington Hill. I can’t wait for lunch. The rain always fades into a drizzle by noon. I’ll walk briskly down 3rd street, appreciating the little fountain next to the little footbridge next to the giant bank building. Fountains sound sweet in the rain. I’ll eat my tofu and brown rice and black beans on the covered patio, unless the sun surprises us. I’ll stop by this neat little café called Starbucks. They have a logo of a lady deadhead offering fruit.

It won’t just be the cheeses. The sources of the cheeses will be in the movie too. Goats, sheep, and the poor poor cow, ignored by the ovine-preferring artisans. The girl will have red hair, her father black. Picture a dyed Lindsey Lohan and a bewigged John Lithgow. The hills will be rolling and the chasers giving chase.

I spent 1,005 dollars fixing my car yesterday. This is a lot of money but not so much when you consider I haven’t spent a penny on repairs for two years. I just put everything off. I could have been more attentive. But it’s just a car. It’s not a person.

I’m rebelling against casual Friday by wearing a tie – for only the 3rd time in a month – and my finest blue and gray striped shirt. I’m treating today like it’s Monday. No one tells me what to wear. The second darkest of the blue stripes is like the blue in Donald Fagen’s college girlfriend’s pin shot.

Tonight is Friday night. That means two things. Sleeping late tomorrow. And watching “Monk” tonight. Maybe we can get Tony Shalhoub to play Bill. Or Gil. Or whatever we’re calling him today.

I finished Bob Dylan’s autobiography recently. Although I’ve grown to accept the fact that most of what’s in his autobiography is true (I had my doubts before), there’s another issue. Why is it that the “voice” of the author of his autobiography sounds maddeningly like that of Don Delillo? I’m not complaining. Don can write. But if he wrote the book from Bob’s scribbled notes in a stack of warped Mead top-rings, then he should at least get co-authorship. Or an “as told to.” Maybe they made a deal. Bob wrote “Cosmopolis.” Don wrote “Chronicles, Vol. 1.” I hear Margaret Atwood is up for Vol. 2.

And when the girl realizes that she is the sheep, the goat, the poor poor cow, that she is John Lithgow, and the soundtrack swells and the camera pulls away swiftly then slowly, you’ll shed a little tear and understand that love is not the instrument of pain.