Visual Diary #22

Goin Up the Country, New Year's Nest, Kim Novak and other House-wrecks

Hello -

Thanks for reading. This post is free and will be up for a month before it gets archived. Upgrading to paid will help keep me in coffee and watercolour wheels. If you click on the title you’ll be taken to the page on the Substack site which will be easier to read, comment, heart, and share.

I went up the country on NYE and while I was there did a drive by of my old house . Whoever bought it has been doing it up, and it looks very classic and pristine (and not at all like the picture above, which is more the house of my imagination-memory). While I was gawking at it a woman walked by and said, “I’m so glad they’re fixing it up.” She told me she’d put in an offer (a low one). I was happy to see the treehouse still there, but the other trees had been removed - olive trees, some Japanese maples, a pomegranate and an almond tree - I guess for access. Anyway. I’m sure it will look beautiful when it’s done - I think there is just one guy doing the reno and he’s going wall by wall. So not quite the Venetian Ship but confronting all the same to see the old and shabby up close to the new and classy. I took a picture and showed it to w, who said “It doesn’t look like a birdeater anymore.” This was what he called it when he was small and his whole life was there and every map he drew (dozens!) had that title with all the rooms carefully labelled. I was really tired when I came home. Whenever I go there I have too many feelings, like I know every inch of town and it is layered over with my memories. But what are you gonna do - live in the same place your whole life? No. No. Still I doubt I will ever again live in a house on a hill with a tree so big I could see it from the train. And I just now remembered the autumn leaves …

Then on New Year’s Day, back in the city, I went outside to find this New Year’s Nest waiting for me. Last week I’d seen the bird in it, so I don’t know whether it got pushed out, or if it was the wind. I think it’s a pigeon’s nest - the skerrick of egg left looked pigeon-ish - and it was a seemingly haphazard and loose collection of twigs. Other possibilities are honeyeater or blackbird, but I think they are both more finicky. Pigeons are rumoured to be “lazy” and “bad” builders, and then I read that their nests have evolved from when they used to use the crevices of rocks, so they never worried too much about binding. Now that they are more likely to be found in urban environments they are minimalist builders, using materials close to the ground, there for a good time not a long time. You can read a thorough explanation of the whys and wherefores of pigeon’s nests here. If I am looking for a metaphor then maybe the nest is a reminder to keep things simple (like Virgina Woolf wrote, “No need to sparkle” ) … But I hope it’s not an omen.

This is Kim Novak in Strangers When We Meet (Richard Quine 1960), which I first saw and loved as a teenager. It’s a big budget suburban melodrama about a love affair based on the the novel by Evan Hunter (who wrote Last Summer). Kirk Douglas plays Larry, a modernist architect who wants to stay excited, who has has just taken on the assignment of a house for a newly successful writer (a very Hemingway Ernie Kovacs). Larry’s married with two kids (as Walter Matthau says, “Hey, we’re all married with two kids.”) and his excitement extends beyond work to the new blonde at the school bus-stop. Maggie (Kim Novak) is a lonely lady with her collar (and guard) up. She’s married to a lump of ice who expects her to get the phone when it rings even when he’s sitting right next to it, and doesn’t like her to talk “that way” (about sex, intimacy, desire). The film looks so beautiful with its saturated colours - Kirk’s blue car and red jacket, Kim’s silvery hair and cream coat. In the Malibu scenes, the sea is deep blue and the rocks are grey and the undergirding of the pier is black and the sea foam is white and Kirk and Kim are two small pale figures in paradise.

*SPOILER

In this scene, for a time we just have the partial of Kim’s face - her lips as she tells Kirk Douglas something he does not want to hear. Her husband was away and she was so lonely, and this truck driver was so persistent. He followed her home, he kissed her, he called her up to say he was coming over. So she took some sleeping pill s…(“You took the pills, even then? You didn’t lock the door?” Kirk can’t hide his disgust.) Maggie’s sure she locked the door, but the man came in anyway …

Stranger When We Meet is characterised by MCM sexual repression. Even with Kirk, Kim is all No, no, no, yes! Walter Matthau has a small but vital role as Felix, ex-butcher, relentless observer, would-be-rapist.

Larry Coe: You don’t think much of women, do you, Felix?

Felix Anders: I love them. Every last one of them. But they’re all the same. They want romance. There’s nothing romantic about the slob they see shaving in his pajamas. You and me, Larry, we’re furniture in our own homes. But if we go next door... Next door, we’re heroes. A guy like you, works at home, you got plenty of opportunity for going next door.

Special mention must be made of the house Larry is building in Bel Air, the frst custom-built for a film (like Laura’s cabin in the Sandpiper, another favourite.) As the affair progresses, so too, does the build. We have scenes of love, and scenes of construction. (Once the future arrives, they have no future.) The house was designed by Carl Anderson and Ross Bellah and rumoured to be the new abode for Kim Novak and Richard Quine, but they split, and the house went on to someone else.

If you want a deep dive there’s a good article on the building of the house here, and a documentary here, with a tour at 16.52. (Also a masterclass in real estate writing: “Once again we experience the sensation of freedom that only a cathedral wood ceiling can give us.”) And, if you really want to cry, have a look at how it looks now:

You can watch the film on Youtube - if you’re a Mad Men fan you’ll probably love it.