I had this image last night of two different kinds of flowers, framing and shaping one another. When I went out to look at my garden, it was staring at me.

I’m not sure what’s going on, but it’s good. The flowers get more beautiful every day.

I had another voice in my head this morning; it was my wife speaking in my ear in bed: “you need to take the day off,” she said. “You’re tired and have been running around all day for weeks. Go take your flower photos and sign off for the afternoon.”

You know what? She is absolutely right.

I’m tired, although as I write this, I’ve been on the move without a break for some time. As I write this, she’s the one taking a nap.

Next week, just before my birthday on August 8th, we’re going to Williamstown and staying in a motel for one night so we can see two plays, back to back. My birthday celebration. We’re leaving Saturday and returning Sunday morning, as usual.

I’m going to be 75. All I can say about that is that I never thought I’d make it this far, and I don’t plan on wasting a single day.

We both agreed on a quiet weekend starting today, a time of rest, reflection, reading, talking, fresh produce, and soaking up some silence. I went out and put a few new flowers in my garden, thinned it out, and did some deadheading and watering.

I took Maria out for breakfast.

 

I don’t know what these flowers are, but I rescued them yesterday and added them to my garden. They need attention.

 

 

These gerbera daisies urgently needed rescuing, overwatered, choking in a small dry container. They’re in my garden; I’ll take good care of them.

Today, I’ll finish an excellent book about love and friendship set in the insane world of online gaming (I know little about gaming, but it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow and Tomorrow And Tomorrow is a beautiful, tender, and touching book by Gabrielle Zevin. She handles the tech stuff skillfully, I sailed right through it).

I recommend it highly.

I just ordered four new books, I haven’t read any of them, but I’m excited about them. If you’re looking for a promising summer book, check them out.

The Angel Of Rome, short stories by Jess Walter, The Great Man Theory by Teddy Wayne (a satirical story of a beleaguered man trying to survive the Trump years),  Tracy Flick Can’t Win by Tom Perrotta (a story about frustration and ambition), and How You Get Famous: Ten Years Of Drag Madness in Brooklyn by Nicole Pasulka. (I’m giving that one to Maria, and will read it after her.)

I just finished Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein And The Culture of Silence by Ken Auletta.

The book was gripping and sickening (I didn’t need to know every detail of Weinstein’s weird childhood, I did want to know how he managed to create this evil empire of sexual predation, humiliation, domination, and cruelty.

And Auletta explained it clearly and well.

Auletta is a solid reporter and writer; the book is a gripping recounting of a serial abuser, and a monster, perhaps the worst person in the world, as one of his lawyers described him.

It didn’t advance my understanding of the waves and waves of sexual abuse and misogynism uncovered by the me-too movement, mainly because there is no one on the earth I know about who is like Harvey Weinstein except Jeffrey Epstein, who had the decency to kill himself and remove his person from the planet.

Sexual dysfunction, compared with a completely immoral human mixed with unlimited money and power, is beyond any nightmare Mary Shelley might have cooked up. Weinstein really is a monster, not just another screwed-up man who humiliates, assaults, or pulls his pants down in front of women or abuses them in other now familiar ways.

Weinstein was in a class all his own.

Auletta’s account of his sexual horrors, his vast and terrifying machinery of intimidation, suppression, and sexual criminality, along with his dehumanizing viciousness and stunning abuse of power, is well told.

Woman after woman – many needy, talented,  some weak, and some ambitious and struggling – were pulled or walked into his awful trap. Most just wanted a chance to succeed.

Weinstein is a spider of a human being, disgusting in almost every way a human being can be disgusting.

I was heartsick at the end of it, sickened by all of it, and grateful that this twisted sociopath is behind bars and likely to stay there for the rest of his life. Much honor and praise to the brave women who brought him down, inside and out of the media.

I skipped the first fourth of the book. The rest was riveting, hard to read, harder to put down.

Okay, I’m signing off for today to enjoy quiet, silence, and renewal. See you tomorrow.