⚡ March 23, 2014
Saved Time Capsule Has Landed 💊
OK. Beginning to take charge here. A momentous thing has happened: Our car has arrived from its long stay in California, packed by unseen hands with some of the stuff from our boat when we sold it. It’s a lot to take in, and some of it is quite musty with powdery mold from the past. All of it smells like the inside of the boat, a spectacular blend of mahogany and sea breeze.
I realize now that I should have taken photos so that you’d have something to see, especially the moss-covered Bibles and Bill’s various Torahs decorated with powdery mold. These books are beloved, and the unseen hands who packed them into the car must have known that. Care was taken, and I’m glad to have them back now that they are no longer working to keep the boat afloat.
You can never have enough prayerbooks in your home, quiet and snug on the shelves and always there in case you need to read them when the power goes out and hopes are dim. The ones we have here at home contain magic print that gets smaller each and every year, making reading nearly impossible without help. Now that the boat books have arrived, maybe they can keep the others from sinking into irrelevance here on dry land.
That picture was taken with a really nice Olympus borrowed from the green salad days of the magazine, back when the owner of the company paid for everything and I was not involved. Bill was titular publisher, but it was really a nonpaying consulting title that only required he come in to a meeting or two a week and grab up lots of bagels with all the fixings.
That’s why he did it.
When people ask: “Why did you do it for no pay – no finder’s fee, no nothing? – the truth is that there was a free lunch or two hundred in the offer and that was good enough. Plus, you get a bunch of instant friends. No muss, no fuss, and this was Hollywood, after all.
And I was allowed to borrow the camera for reasons unknown, and so there you have it. Full circle with one camera after another coming with strings attached. Someone gave Bill a camera when we were dating, and the guy said it had fallen off a truck.
I continually looked for damage on it but never found any, and it wasn’t until a few cameras later that I found out what that phrase meant. There was no truck.
There is only this truck. It’s very Kerouac. Beaten by the relentless sun ricocheting off the Venice canals, this car has arrived, worse for the wear but almost ready to go back on the road again. 🐔