Stacy Horn

We’re starting to ease up on the anxiety over here on Perry Street and allowing ourselves a moment of relaxation.  One of many good parts from the Anchorage Daily News endorsement for Obama:

“Sen. McCain describes himself as a maverick, by which he seems to mean that he spent 25 years trying unsuccessfully to persuade his own party to follow his bipartisan, centrist lead. Sadly, maverick John McCain didn’t show up for the campaign. Instead we have candidate McCain, who embraces the extreme Republican orthodoxy he once resisted and cynically asks Americans to buy for another four years.

It is Sen. Obama who truly promises fundamental change in Washington. You need look no further than the guilt-by-association lies and sound-bite distortions of the degenerating McCain campaign to see how readily he embraces the divisive, fear-mongering tactics of Karl Rove. And while Sen. McCain points to the fragile success of the troop surge in stabilizing conditions in Iraq, it is also plain that he was fundamentally wrong about the more crucial early decisions. Contrary to his assurances, we were not greeted as liberators; it was not a short, easy war; and Americans — not Iraqi oil — have had to pay for it. It was Sen. Obama who more clearly saw the danger ahead.”

(I actually took this picture because Finney and Buddy are fighting these days, I don’t know why, and this was a relatively rare moment of detente.)

I couldn’t post about it beforehand because it was a surprise party, but I went up to Vermont on Saturday for an 80th birthday party for my father. His birthday isn’t until Christmas Eve, but having it now guaranteed it would be a surprise.  We had it in a firehouse in … oh God, I forget the name of the town. Rupert!  (I think.)

I was walking back from Aly’s memorial, when Tom Waits came up on my ipod singing Waltzing Matilda. Not only is this a particularly mournful version of an already sad song, for me Waltzing Matilda will forever be tied to the movie On The Beach, and the end, when you see, shot by shot, the end of everything, all our loves, all our joys, everything we know, over.  It’s hard to watch without sobbing. Hard the first time, at least.  

So I was on 8th Avenue and 14th Street and all of a sudden shot after shot of Aly went through my head, the end of Aly laughing, the end of Aly playing with Sophie, the end of Aly being Kim’s and so many other people’s best friend, no more Elephant & Castle, no more music, I could see the look in his face, a thousand looks really, I could hear him saying my name, his manic energy, and then all the people I saw at the memorial just flashed in my head, and the things they told me about their experiences with Aly. Story after story.  I could see them easily even if I hadn’t been there.  Aly was so present it’s easy to see him in your head.  All of that is over now.  Aly is over now. Done. All of this with Tom Waits sing Waltzing Matilda in my head.  

So that’s it.  Aly’s light has gone out, his special, wonderful, insane light.  And we’ll all be right behind him.  Everything ends.  I’m sorry he is dead.  I will miss him.  Who else is there like Aly?? I’ll try to live better before I die. I don’t know what else to do with it.  Try to be as good with a few people as Aly was with many?  For some reason I found the story of Aly checking a friend’s new baby out of the hospital especially poignant.  I was actually distracted from asking questions to get the whole story, but sometimes he just knew the absolute right thing to do, and he was so good with kids.

I took the picture above at around 7am in Vermont this morning.  I’ll post about that tomorrow. It will be a happier post.

I had a set of all my concert photographs made for Laney and Sophie, and I had them re-do the very first one that I posted, because I made that print almost 30 years ago and I was just learning how to make color prints at the time.  The new version is so much better.  Plus I was able to use my software to sharpen it a little. I’m tempted to put the old one up so you can see how much better the new one is.  In fact, I will.

I had this sad thought this morning.  My software tells me what search terms brought people to my blog.  I wish Aly was alive so I could tell him how many people come to my blog every day, looking for information about him.

The Russians wave back.  (Except are they really from Russia?  I checked their profile, but they could say they’re from anywhere.  Well, it’s funny even if they are Americans playing Russians.)

[Video removed because the link no longer works.]