Bolinas journal: Catullus and the Celts

Last night Patrick Flynn and I got royally stinkingly drunk, like true Celts, we polished off a bottle of wine each, the bottles night before had less effect. I've been on a Celtic reading binge. The Celtic mythology dictionary I read from cover to cover.

Finding that Virgil and Catullus were probably Celts, Gaulish citizens of the Roman empire, was a shock. My grandmother always claimed that much of Western civilization owed its origin to the Celts, and she was right.

The night before I had dreamed that Patrick and I were making love but he turned into a living skeleton but with flesh. He so gaunt. I remember being open to him and he ignored me twice. Then I lay down on his bed and he lay down next to me and I realize it all wasn't one-sided, but there was so little to his kisses. I woke up before anything much happened. Thankfully.

Herman came over yesterday and we went on one of our famous little hikes. Last night Patrick came over to join us. We had a late dinner and  for dessert, we read Catullus. Herman and I reading two translation versions of the same poem in tandem. It was quite bawdy indeed.

I remember Patrick's eyes widening in surprise, saying, This is 2000-year-old smut. And we all laughed and shrieked and finished off the night with Lucretius and Propertius. What was on their minds? I'd say there was a little more than flirting going on just in the retelling of our drinking exploits from the night before.

We drank each other under the table. And we polished off a bottle of wine with our curry chicken. After dessert, Patrick said, I wish I had some cognac. So I whipped out my flask of Hennessey's and we proceeded to drain the contents dry, staggering across the Mesa into ditches looking for the comet. They were friendly ditches, and kept to themselves, they didn't intrude upon us.

Patrick said to Herman, Never go out looking for comets after drinking brandy with Maureen. And I said why,? Nothing happened, did it? He said, True we didn't even see the comet.

On a roll, we rigged up the tape recorder and listened to Irish and Breton music (tapes I had in my truck) into the wee hours by candlelight. The delight of candles?

Perhaps my comments carried a little more double entendre than his, they were soon glossed over by our reading of Catullus aloud. Certainly a little more flourish was added in the recounting of our evening. We were having a real Celtic Renaissance, eating, drinking, telling tall stories, reciting poetry, and listening to music.

I've been reading my Celtic books all week long. A pleasant interlude in Bolinas where nothing happens and all is possible.

I'm interested in Patrick, and Herman's always interested in me. But truth to tell it's just spring, the hormones are returning to tease the blood. Today I will leave and nothing will have come of it, just the possibility of another daydream.

Patrick was saying as we talked about canning and cordial making, that he misses not having a wife, all those things that families do, winter food preparation which no one does anymore. Herman says, We will all be one family. I add, Yes and you can both be my wives.

Patrick begins to object, laughs, and says, Yes, I guess we are all a little bit like that already. He, who brings me dinners unannounced late at night. This flirtation, if it is one, will probably go no farther than it already has. Herman says Marian, Patrick's sometimes girlfriend, and he have a part-time arrangement. Ok?

I went out on the rowboat this morning, the first time this year. We chained it up with a lock. But kids took it out last year and it got a cracked edge and it leaks a bit more than it used to. The tide was going out, a brisk wind, and we rowed up Bolinas Creek until we ran aground in the mudflats.

Herman told me that Victor diSuvero was in town last week from Tesuque, NM, to read love poetry at Macy's, of all places. His wife has a new perfume out, Poême. I had to laugh because we had noted that it came out in April, which is National Poetry Month. Little did I know that this major perfume would have a connection with a poet that I knew.

Herman says Victor's wife made all her money on horses, and now she invents perfume based on the narcotic odor of Blue Himalayan poppies, and hallucinogenic desert datura. I was expecting Herman to say that she invented a perfume that smells like horse sweat or something, not to be named after poetry. Poême indeed.