In the movie “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, Lana Turner stands with her hands on her hips and snarls at John Garfield: I used to think the reason I fell for you was because you were smart. Now I find out that you are smart, she says. It’s a really great line in a really great film. I mention it here apropos of nothing. Or everything maybe. I get those two mixed up all the time.

***

"Everything is everything." I wrote that once when I was on acid. Scribbled it. Scrawled it. Boy was I proud. It sounded deep. It sounded profound. I said to myself, I bet no one else ever thought that before. Turns out I was wrong. Everyone has.

***

In '94, I went to Mardi Gras with the boyfriend du jour. A few weeks later, Kurt Cobain died. He joined that club. The 27 Club. It was very sad. But not a surprise. Everyone thought he would join that club.

**

(German noun)Vicarious embarrassment, feeling shame for others' actions.

"from Proto-Germanic *framaþiz (“foreign, not one's own”) and German scham, shame"
—wiktionary

A handy little German word for which there's not an English equivalent. I think of it as being opposed to schadenfreude, which is taking pleasure at someone else's misfortune.

It's come up today as

I got the telephone call at approximately 8:15PM.

My father had passed away.

I had just seen him earlier in the day, in his assisted living residence, on hospice care. He had a full time care aide with him, and his facility had their folks coming in to see him frequently - more frequently than they were obliged to, he was (as I was told by more than one of them) popular with the staff.

I had left him around noon. My brother had brought his wife and youngest son over to say