Conscious Weekend and Anjelica Huston

Had a good giggle over old FF's Consciously Doing Everything following Gwyneth Paltrow's announcement. This conscious living suits me. It's a land where all choices - wobbly or otherwise - are not just valid, they are elevated! Instead of writing for a plethora of deadlines, I lay a-bed finishing Anjelica Huston's A Story Lately Told about her life until 22 years old, growing up in old pile in Ireland and modeling in London and Paris. She says she willed herself to be photogenic, despite big nose, narrow eyes, weak chin and too wide shoulders (her description). I ate two donuts in bed with a toast and rhubarb jam chaser. All absolutely consciously.

Anjelica with her family

Anjelica, 18, with her beloved Dad on the set of A Walk With Love and Death, directed by her father, which she hated being in. More stories here

Modeling for Zandra Rhodes in 1973

Angelica says one childhood summer in Ireland there were no adults present. Later,  tired of her father's numerous affairs, her mother left and no one mentioned it. Full of family friends like Marlon Brando and Betty Bascall (someone has to be their friend!) She writes like Hemingway - can't wait for the next one where she meets Jack.

By the way the NY Times says there's a bit of a (passive aggressive) storm in a psychologist's teacup over the provenance of the CU saying. Apparently Gwynnie's person had failed to attribute the phrase to the colleague who had registered it. The colleague had actually heard the phrase from a friend. Don't you wish you could coin a phrase (maybe you have?) I have banned eclectic and plethora (oops) which will provide some impetus to find one.

On Saturday night we went to Juhu Beach Club (Indian street food) a bars-on-the-windows right-under-the-highway place which Oakland does so well. Spicy curryleaf prawns and beet salad.

Juhu Beach Club which could be described as eclectic if I used that word

Loved the monkey wallpaper

Kevin wore the shirt my sister bought him from H&M in Qatar, "cheap as chips" as no one seemed to know who Martin Margiela was. Consciously decontructred.

Wore my birthday zip-up arrangement. Could have got a nice frock but I'll wear this more

Tried a Lorde lip, had to tp most of it off. She was in Oakland but tix all sold out

The clematis consciously unfurled on Sunday like nobody's business.

Teddy likes to eat the succulents to settle his stomach.

Platinum, my dance group, performed a tribute to Stevie Wonder at Broadway Boogie (Yes Oakland has a Broadway too). A really great show with two professional groups. Little kids stole the show which is as it should be.

Platinum performing on Friday. Photo by Terry's husband

We followed our current spate of overhyped movies with  Bad Words, a "comedy" about a 40 year old man who enters a kid's spelling bee. Inappropriate where it didn't need to be (giving a nine year old boy a tequila shot? tomato sauce under a  girl's chair? yuk) I watched it so you don't have to. Then Gravity ...I have vertigo just putting my hair in a ponytail so incredibly discombobulating - but not Oscar.

What conscious news from your weekend?








                           

Lauren Bacall

It's hard to imagine another actress who could deliver the whistle lines spoken by Lauren Bacall in To Have And Have Not. (Maybe Cate Blanchett?) "You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow." Betty was only 19 and she had knowing power like nobody's business. From anyone elses' lips those words would have sounded coy or subservient or just ridonculous.

Everything she wore still looks so current don't you think?

Here's the whistle video (it's at the end).  Wasn't just everything about her a curly flourish - from her green eyes to her lips to her glossy hair. Even her signature was a curly flourish!

You've probably realised my blog is very "brush with fame." No horse's mouth stuff here, no actual meetings with celebrities. Here we talk to people who walked past their house once five years ago. Who served them a cup of tea last year. So much more telling, I feel...

With Humphrey Bogart and their children

Wow. With Humphrey Bogart in Dark Passage

And so in that very spirit: here's my Betty Bacall story.  When I first moved to London, my friend got a job nursing Lord Somethingorother who had owned a telly studio there (all us Kiwi girls were most impressed he'd made Coronation Street, though the family banned staff from watching soaps in his presence). Anyway, poor Lord S. had advanced alzheimers (called the nurses effing "whores" when they took him out of the bath). His old friend Betty Bacall turned up all the time to visit, much to the nurses' delight. Sorry that's it. That's all I've got.

Angelica Huston in her fantastic autobiography A Story Lately Told  mentions Betty as a great friend to her during a discombobulated childhood and turbulent life. Well, I suppose my point is: Betty had compassion.

Yesterday I caught Cy, 10, watching the Kardashians (and I wonder why no one has called me to write a parenting book)
Kim was sobbing: "This vacation is turning into a nightmare!!!"
Cy called to Kim: "That's nothing! You haven't been away with my family!!"

Cy asked me: "Mum, can I have a few minutes on your computer? I need to look up why Rob Kardashian put on so much weight."
"What was it?" I asked Cy after he'd read through a few articles.
"Depression" answered Cy "he never got over his father's death and then Bruce and his mother broke up." Cy sighed: "Poor guy."

Compassion. My kids don't have it for each other. But they do have it for reality tv stars. Baby steps.

Riff'n'Rina

There are friends whom you haven't seen for years, but you pick up exactly where you left off.  Riffing for hours. Rina, also a Kiwi, is such a friend. This weekend she dramatically decided to fly over from London where she lives, while listening to a marathon of speeches at a hospital retirement party. As soon as I picked her up from the airport she told me about the final speech. One doctor said the retiring woman had been a perfect nurse: "Hard-working, pleasant...and fat." Rina always arrives well-armed with bon mots and bizarre anecdotes.

Mike, Me, Rina and Kenny

I met Rina 22 years ago in a hotel in Cairo. We were both backpacking through Egypt and at that stage I was traveling by myself.  We bumped into each other again climbing Mt Sinai. She was with bickering sisters and fleeing three randy Israelis vying for her favour and was relieved to have a buffer.

Rina, her entourage and I at top Mt Sinai

We met again back in London where I was working as a journalist and she as an anesthesiologist.  She was different from the rest of the Kiwi crowd - she had wheels, a Fiat Panda, and on several weekends we blatted off for mini-breaks in the wilds of Britain, ostensibly to ride horses. We both envisaged ourselves galloping over the green hills, the wind blowing through any strands of hair which escaped our black velvet riding hats.  As I've said before in another horsey post, Rina sighed: "All I want to say is: 'Whoah there my beauty!'"( in true Bronte style). Instead we were heaved onto farty old nags who could barely move one step without tugging their heads down and grabbing another gobful of grass.

Rina and I horse trekking in Wales

She was there when Kevin and I first met and we would frequent a Chelsea nightclub in which Kevin had a tiny investment. This was a place where Chaka Khan's sister, Taka, was the top-billed act. (You didn't know her?) We turned up one night to be told the kitchen had run out of food which was just as well because the cutlery had disappeared.  It was no surprise to learn the barman was an chronic alcoholic and the manager a gambler and the club closed it's doors.

Later I persuaded Rina to be in one of my articles for London Evening Standard about being single in London.  I don't write the headlines but you can image how thrilled she was to be smiling under this particular one. "Bright, single, 30-plus and...looking for a man." Oh, she was so happy. JK(Just kidding) as Cy would say, she was apoplectic.

Evening Standard, 2 October 1996

Once the constant JK-ing at her hospital died down and the rash of letters from sundry oddballs and stalkers trailed off, I wrote another article, this time on single men in London. "Desperately seeking someone single."But the previous headline flashed up again. Rina was still horrified but ruefully confided it was one of her most widely-read publications as a doctor.

One year later I contacted the five women to see if they were still single. "No comment" said Rina, hoping that would be the end of it. But there was that headline again. Happy ending though, phhew, she is married to a Kiwi architect and has a three-year-old girl called Pashmina. Hmm... maybe time to do yet another follow-up.

Her four-day visit here was an opportunity to be a tourist again in Oakland and San Francisco and we walked the length of the city for four hours, from the greasy Pier 52 to open Chrissy Field with views of the Golden Gate Bridge and back to North Beach with smells of pizza, garlic and hazy revellers from last night's comedy shows.

Chrissy Fields

Rina in North Beach

Rina soon ascertained that the Bay Area prides itself on being a gastronomic haven, quality local produce served with passion and occasion. So that evening while friends Kenny'n'Mike treated us to a meal at Oakland's Camino restaurant, she proudly claimed that despite being a busy mother in central London she plucked the first crop of her tomatoes this summer.  Kenny quizzed her - which variety? - heirloom..? Those ones from the Black Sea? "Just cherry, basic cherry, but slightly orange," she replied visibly miffed that her only organic produce story had been upstaged so early in the evening.

Rina described our larder (pantry) as the size of a  "small aircraft hangar" and was incredulous that I've replaced cooking with "assembling." Then she admitted these days she merely "dipped" and did not even warm her pre-prepareds.

A dipping and assembling Barbie

Coming down to breakfast after a rowdy barbecue the night before, Rina found herself facing a kitchen littered with 15 wine bottles, two sliced un-eaten watermelon, pizza dotting the TV room and dirty plates piled up.  It was first day back to school and Cy, seven, was packing a lunch of left-over chocolate-covered pretzels with a face still painted from the night before. Then she was treated to a full-on fight between Jackson, 12, and Cy, culminating in Jackson whacking Cy with a Whiffle-ball bat.

A Whiffle ball dispute (surely the worst kind). It wasn't even 7.30am and I'm sure Rina was very ready to return home to her small but perfectly-formed cherry tomatoes.

Have you riffed with the Rina in your life lately?

What's The View From Your Window?

Have you ever lived in a "transitional" area? Maybe you still do? The sort of neighborhood I just wrote about, where your view is of a enormous billboard of a blonde Beyonce in white sweater and navy short shorts. (The view from my first flat in Acton, London was of a roaring motorway... probably now utterly gentrified and the home to Tara Palmer blahdeblah.)

I recently wrote an article for the SF Chronicle about a local architect building out "transitional" neighborhoods in Oakland, including Dogtown in West Oakland, and I had the chance to talk many residents about what it's really like to live there. The story ended up being very complex, taking a month to complete with interviews of around 30 people and days in the public library. The architect Matthew Baran works with developers re-modeling Victorians and building very modern homes on the double lots behind. The houses generally sell within two weeks for between $500,000 and $1million.

After: Backyard, 59th Street in N. Oakland. Photos: BaranStudio

Before: 59th street

After: Dining room, 59th Street

Before: Dining room

Hannah Street, Dogtown

Willow Street

Willow Street, inside

Louise St, Dogtown

Inside Louise St.

The views from Louise St

Many of the residents I spoke to said they were very proud of the award-winning new homes in Dogtown and they love to surprise friends with a tour of the area. One person added thought that some new residents really wanted to be living up the hill in Rockridge and they're bit bitter they've ended up in Dogtown.

Some of the houses are perfect; story-book Victorians surrounded by Sycamores and fruit trees and pristine cars parked out the front. On one fall day I saw a family hanging out Halloween decorations, their neighbours watering the succulents in their galvanised iron window boxes, a Grandma eating chocolate cake on her porch, a couple of teen girls in their Sunday-best walking home from church and two Steampunk guys fixing their car. But some of the other houses were run-down and at the ends of the roads were tags on the fences and spilled garbage.

There is a tension between new and old residents - one resident says he was burgled four times in his first year but he hasn't been touched in the last six years. He's annoyed by new residents who complain about gun shots when it's just a few firecrackers and a Norteno band on Friday nights at neighborhood parties.

One long-time West Oakland African American grandmother says new residents have complained about the joyful noises coming from their church and have called the police on their young men who are simply talking and laughing in the street.

Another resident says she goes back and forth about wanting to move out but makes sure she says "Hi" to everyone "even the guy who sells drugs at the end of our road."

For sure a sense of optimism and tolerance is key: you need to appreciate the urban views out the window including the massive billboard I mentioned, lately featuring a blonde Beyonce her in her blue shorts and white sweater. One Dogtown resident told me every night she says goodnight  to the large lit-up "E" for "Emeryville" sign that glows over the motorway: "People value the Hollywood sign but I love this E just as much"