Kay and I are going to see two Lina Wertmüller movies and I am bouncing with anticipation. I have gone by to pick her up and feel a twinge of envy when I see her private office space. I don’t go in the room without her and she comes downstairs with one shoe still in her hand. “Did you go in my office,” she says. “No,” I say, smiling. I understand the idea of territorial imperatives and sacred space. “Close your eyes,” she says. I hesitate. I do not like to close my eyes standing up, even for my friends. “Please,” she says. “I want to show you something.” “Okay,” I say, “but if I fall down, that is going to be your ass!” “You won’t fall,” she says, leading me into the office. “Sit down,” she says. “You are right over a chair.” The backs of my legs are touching it and a modicum of trust returns. She is not trying to make a fool out of me. I really am over a chair. I sit down, squinting at the effort not to peek. “Now open your eyes,” she says proudly. “Open them.” I do and I am faced with a huge, wall-sized painting/collage which I know is the portrait that her friend has done of her. It is huge and wild and lovely. It is not literal, but the mouth somehow, without being her mouth, is completely her expression. I am impressed and startled. I tell her how much I like it and get up to take a closer look. It has real feathers and various bits of this and that on it. It is so wild and free that I am attracted to it immediately. It is so sure of itself. I love it! I am jealous all over again. The private office and now an amazing portrait. I tell her she is lucky and that she should write something for her friend about the sittings. That is all a writer can give, which is unfair somehow. We have only words while people who are visual artists can give real images of one kind or another. Words are kind of a sad, once-removed excuse when you get down to it, but we are writers, so what can we do?
We head out to the movies: Seven Beauties, and Swept Away, both with Giancarlo Giannini, who is gorgeous and whose eyes say it all. Great movies. I want to write about my reactions to both, but Deignan is in bed and she is saying, “Stop waking me up!” so I have to stop typing. One last note, the Domino sugar people have done a women’s series with pictures of women on the little sugar packets. What a ripoff! Margaret Sanger on the sugar packets at the International House of Pancakes? Is nothing sacred?