On Tuesday we had dinner together as a family. I sat to my mother's left with my nephew, who now plays football and soccer. I was wearing a short black linen dress and a sweater and platform shoes and had rubbed rouge into my cheeks. My grandmother ordered champagne. My mother asked my nephew whether he likes school and whether he is a fast runner and he said yes he's fast. He and his brother, flanking my uncle, spoke about atom bombs; when he described an explosion, he made jerking movements with his body and flailed his arms and noticing our enjoyment repeated himself. His brother was curled in my uncle's lap, vacillating between restless energy and exhaustion. My uncle said my mother's name to call her attention (the first I've seen him act like a younger brother: "Jane" "Jane". I complimented her jacket; she said Laurence gave it to her she was lucky she gave her three. It retails for $----. My father's eyes drooped with sleep. My mother ordered the bronzino (although they only had the filet) and I the mushroom risotto with the poached egg but when it arrived, the egg, my uncle said, looked like a jellyfish: still raw around the edges. He asked her what she thinks of de Blasio and she said the jury's out. Everyone loves Jerry Brown. It's been so lush despite the heat wave. They noted he was governor in the 70s, too, the last time we had a draught (like in The White Album) and they liked him then, too. When they came over Wednesday, my grandmother gravitated towards the book called Fame. Today, I read a passage about the architects Alison and Peter Smithson:
Theirs was a particularly introspective architectural relationship in which they went far beyond either explaining how their own work came to be the way it was or shedding critical light on the work of others. They meticulously recorded, gathered and archived the meditations and classifications of their own lives... throughout their working career they were almost continually engaged in disseminating these, presenting themselves to others through articles, books and teaching. Their thoughts - occasionally arresting and incisive, but more often arrogant and naive -ultimately speak of one thing: the Smithsons were the Smithsons' favourite subject.