This is how I do my Henry Miller.

This big beauty opens only once every few years. It opened for us on a Sunday morning in the hothouse at that bastion of liberal lesbianism, Smith College. The thing is enormous and proud, the stick next to it is a yard stick! And the scent, which comes in breezy whiffs is politely described as reminiscent of rotting deer meat. Somehow the fawn reference tarts up that stench a bit. What a beauty! Tall and bold, steeped in sapphos, the amorpho-phallic nature of a turgid tropic.

Can anyone tell us what these are? Found in the courtyard of one of my favorite photo galleries in LA, M+B. They’ve just finished today an amazing show of Howard L. Bingham’s photos of Ali and Forman in Zaire for the Rumble In The Jungle. Ali’s his best friend, he told me, and he’s been with him, photographing him all his life. There was this jewel of an old lady there and she told me, “I met Ali once, and I told him, ‘You really are pretty.’” And he really was. You have to look at his eyes as he stares at Forman who’s got him up again the ropes, slugging him. He’s so impassively looking at Forman’s face, like seeing a lover across the park. He was pretty.