The Clark, Stonybrook and Haiku

Visited T and D on Memorial Day weekend. On Saturday we drove more than two hours to the Clark Museum, newly redesigned by Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Tadao Ando. GH and I liked the Lunder Center at Stone Hill more than the main museum itself. The Center had a pure and simple form. The museum was cluttered with too many pools and differently colored walls. Great small collection of art, especially portraits by Renoir, Gainsborough, Delacroix, and Théodore Géricault. Also Piero della Francesca's "Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels" and William-Adolphe Bouguereau's "Nymphs and Satyr." George Innes's atmospheric landscapes were very beautiful.

On Friday night we watched a documentary on the La Sagrada Familia, but I was too tired and fell asleep for most of it. On Saturday night, we watched François Ozon's Time to Leave (2005), about a young gay fashion photographer who learns that he has only three months to live. He pushes away his sister and his lover cruelly, and confides only in his grandmother. The film ends with him agreeing to have sex with a waitress and her husband so that they can have a baby. Survival of a sort.

On Sunday, we moved to stay with DM at his home in Stonybrook, Long Island. Had dinner, sang karaoke and watched two episodes of Sex and the City, including the one on threesomes. The next day, Memorial Day itself, we spent on Fire Island. It was chilly in the morning but very quickly heated up. DM drove us back from Sayville to Ronkonkoma Station, where we took a train to Penn Station. DM was very amiable company.

At home, GH and I watched Mark Thiedeman's Last Summer (2013), about two Arkansas boys about to separate because the smart one is getting out of town to go to college whereas the dumb one will remain stuck in their small town. Ravishingly cinematography. The unspoken and the unseen became utterly eloquent. The most erotic scene shows only their caressing shoes while they lie in bed together. Samuel Pettit plays Luke who remains, and Sean Rose plays Luke who leaves.

We also enjoyed Four Moons (2014) directed by the young Mexican filmmaker Sergio Tovar Velarde. imdb: "Four stories about love and self-acceptance: An eleven year-old boy struggles to keep secret the attraction he feels towards his male cousin. Two former childhood friends reunite and start a relationship that gets complicated due to one of them's fear of getting caught. A gay long lasting relationship is in jeopardy when a third man comes along. An old family man is obsessed with a young male prostitute and tries to raise the money to afford the experience." The many phases of a gay man's life.


*

silken orchids
cut from the spring rain
by bandage scissors


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