Here’s a peak at the shoot we did this week with Shpetim Zero and his amazing hand crafted couture in the green of our Lincoln Heights heights above Skyfarm. Collaborating I had Sharon Gualt, LaChapelle’s brilliant make up artist, providing face like only she can and Larry McDanial spinning up into existence the extreme hair peaces he stayed up the whole night before building and the lovely Maria Bernaldez who Larry had met at Starbucks, lucky, and who was full pro and didn’t moan a bit as she froze and ached, instead she just shined. And of course my strong men, The Alex and new teammeeno handyman, Gabriel Brazil. Genius all around. Bravo, I love the fertility of our hillside.

What a beautiful meeting of the tribe tonight. Thank you so much for your generosity of gift and of spirit. I came home, jolly and spent. The rain is coming though and there was a 1/2 cord of wood filling the entire back of the pick up. I hauled up my girls, hauled up my booty of gifts, and then while Ilse put the babes to bed I went solitary into the job of trip after trip bringing up the wood. It was invigorating and relaxing, it was an assurance, among all the other lovely bits assembled in my life just now, that I’m a man, and not a broken or lame one at that. The back has been made strong again, and when it aches, I simply remember to lift with my belly. That’s really the trick, bear backward into that Chi center and it spurts back power, out into all the rest of you. And promise yourself the ice pack when all the activity’s past. And so now I’m here, bathed and oiled and am sitting with Miller, beginning again now from the start, from The Tropic of Cancer, because he began writing it all when he was 40, and the ice is wedged behind me and my feet are so gratefully in their new soft wool. What amazing slippers you’ve given me. By all these strappings I am a Prince indeed. And this is a courtly passing, the entrance into 40 and all the four decades under the belt entails. All hail the coming of the new age! All hail the middling of life, when life is as sweet as it may be. Hail! And read, and heal, and work the heart up into a pumping froth and see and enjoy and record it all and eventually get a little sleep. Thanks again, it’s wonderful turning 40.

At table at Cafe Figaro, this table, my family here, an ark of all that’s been promised me and fulfilled, the sum of all my blessings well counted, I am so well fed and feted, at this table.

I’m 40, I’m the happiest man alive. When I looked from 20 at Miller beginning to write at 40 it seemed so old. It seems a wee bit stiff and creaky in off moments now, but otherwise, I’m in the prime of it. Fantastic gift my beloved wife gave me tonight, she got us Lauren into sit and took me to Ajami, an Israeli movie about Arabs, and a couple of Christians, and some Jews. And it tears your eyes out. All that honest film making. I am moved and shoved right along quite nicely. And we saw it at an empty Lemmele’s Sunset 5. How many year I’ve seen films there. Such history. Thirty-five years ago it was breakfasts at Shwabs with Virgil at that site. Now, a few stories straight up there’s a portal – same one that’s taken me all over the world in any given night – now unto Ajami, Jaffe, just minutes from Tel-Aviv. And as some of the best nights there, I’m ripped open for my own viewing. And I feel I’ve clicked forward in a maturation like wine, or cheese, into something with a broader bouquet. That amazing 5 eyed portal and all the gold mine of things I’ve seen there. And one of the exciting bits of 40, with all the expertise I’ve garnered finally, is that through those portals I know there’s so much more to come.

Count your blessing, man. 4 decades have really brought you a feast. My ladies, my family still all assembled, my craft, our home, the farm and it’s husbandry. Count your blessings, man. I do, every day. Inshalla.

Out seeing Dengue Fever at KidRockers at The Echo.

The day of hearts was made by the essence of CHICK power.

Bindi takes it all in stride, my dear coltish lass.

Mette holds her own on the planks of rock.

He’s jolly, and peaceful. How lovely to still have him to enjoy this with.