It is a funny thing -- or maybe it's not -- but every time someone close to me has died, I have had an overpowering desire to watch ghost movies. As you know, I like Gothic themes any time -- and it being Halloween season doesn't hurt -- but at such times nothing else will do. I am especially drawn to those set in the 1970s, in which everyone is seemingly punished for the naivete of belonging to a happy family (just as a decade later one would be punished for being a teen girl.) In the past week I watched two I liked a lot: Burnt Offerings and, especially, Audrey Rose. Both feature amazing architecture as well as more than usual chills and genuinely surprising denouments.

A publicist sent me a book I ended up loving: Haunted Houses, by the photographer Corinne May Botz. The book's made up of carefully-culled images and first-person accounts by residents of haunted spaces. There are a number of spine-tinglers, and the combination of subtly evocative visuals and frank narration is highly effective. But there was one part that stood out especially for me, and not just because it concerns St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, not far from where I grew up (and site of an excellent annual rummage sale.) The former minister testifies to the many instances of hauntings in the church and then says,

"I don't know how you scientifically deal with that. I'm sure there are ways of saying that it was a bad dream or a projection, but it happens and it's not surprising believing in the communion of saints as I do. I think, "Yeah so? What's so surprising about it?" There's a fine line between the next world and this. It's all one reality and we can't divide it up, reality is reality. We know a little bit from Einstein about time, relativity and space, and that one interacts with the other. Time is a human construct anyway... who says there's a great division about past, present and future? Who says we can't visit those places in the so-called past? Now is all we have."

I love that. And when I read it, I sat up, struck by the simplicity of the idea. Because things are not uncanny unless they are breaking rules -- and rules are arbitrary. It seems to me great arrogance to always let logic supercede intuition, anyway.

I want to talk about something I don't often write about and that something is Matthew. But first I need to tell you that I was in a bad way yesterday. You see, I'd gone off my medication because -- wait for it -- I am neurotically afraid of the pharmacist yelling at me (don't ask -- my brother, when told, described this as "irrational but logical.") And I had run out of both my medications, the one that keeps me happy and the one that keeps me stable. Anyway, I was fine, and then yesterday I crashed spectacularly and locked Matthew out, then realized I didn't have any sleeping pills either so I'd have to go get those anyway, then was intercepted by Matthew who was lurking outside and who forcibly filled the prescription and made me take my pills and held me and rocked me and sat with me until the calmer-downer one had worked and put me to sleep. He also called my brother. (There was also a period of my sitting on the sidewalk sobbing piteously and making a spectacle of myself in front of various neighbors plus the mailman, Derek and, now that I'm not dead, I sort of regret that part.)

Matthew takes wonderful care of me. (I should mention that my old boyfriend was also very adept at managing my black moods.) Matthew, meanwhile, would surely deny that he does anything save love me and he'd say something kind about how it's a small price to pay, which isn't true. When I get low he'll take me to look at puppies in the window of the pet store on 6th Avenue if things are really acute, or present me with a sweet taste. Or wordlessly bring me a cookbook, or a Betsy-Tacy, or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Matthew is the kindest person I know -- the first to approach someone who's shy or retiring, and the last to begrudge anyone success. He's without schadenfruede. His intelligence is penetrating and specific, and he admits that he doesn't know the other things, even when that isn't done. You shouldn't underestimate him, but he won't hold it against you when you do, because he's like that. He makes me feel attractive for the first time. He also makes me feel I can succeed at anything -- but that he'll love me just the same if I don't.

He also bears a striking resemblance to Laurence Harvey.

He would have loved that funeral. It was funny, and it was touching, and it was a full house, which he would definitely have appreciated. Various collaborators of his performed numbers from their shows, and a bunch of us spoke, and there was a lot of laughter.

I held it together until yesterday. They dimmed all lights on Broadway in his honor, and Grandpa Joe would have loved that so much: he lived for his work and truly loved the theatre. Anyway, something about that, in combination with leaving the apartment and saying goodbye to the doorman, just made me lose it, and I cried and cried.

I can't say enough how very kind my friends are. The night we came home from the funeral, after a long and exhausting day, I found a pot of daisies on my doorstep, from LD. In the mailbox was a package from my friend Virginia, containing Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. In the words of that bear of very little brains, "A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference."

And although we have another three days of formal mourning allowed, he always said everything runs too long, so.

Some of you know that my grandpa has been very ill for much of the past year, and this past Sunday, after suffering what the obit called "complications from a fall," he died swiftly and peacefully. As if it needs saying, we were lucky to have him around for 98 remarkably healthy years (I wasn't there for all 98 of them but, y'know, the world) and as my friend David put it, "laughing all the way."

People are so kind. Friends have been calling and emailing and it's so appreciated. This morning the doorbell rang -- and Dan had sent a care package from Russ and Daughters!!! I didn't know whether to cry or immediately eat a bagel and lox. (I did both.)

My dad has done all the stuff like dealing with Riverside and identifying the body, closing out accounts and all the real business of dying. I have very little to do myself, and even those few things are proving challenging. 1: I am preparing my "remarks" which is tricky for all the obvious reasons. But on a more mundane level, I can't find anything to wear! I don't know what I expected -- that I could just waltz down Broadway and find some classic LBD. It seems the high street doesn't truck in these. I tried J.Crew, Banana Republic, Gap, Zara, H&M, Bloomingdales, Club Monaco, even Top Shop -- and after wandering in and out of stores like a zombie for 2 hours, listlessly trying on a series of embellished tops and things that didn't fit and that couldn't be ordered or altered in time, I called it a day. I hate having to think about such nonsense, but there you have it. As one person wrote me yesterday, "It's like Tolstoy said - somehow daily life goes on, even in impossible circumstances." The death of someone who's lived a long, happy life, at 98, is never a tragedy -- more a time for reflection and celebration. Not least because Grandpa Joe was, quite literally, the happiest person any of us has ever known.

Now, if only I could somehow communicate that in a few paragraphs...

Something I am excited about: Chock Full 'o Nuts has opened a full-service cafe on 23rd Street! This may not seem like much of a big deal, but I have been into Chock ever since I read about its history. You see, having experienced antisemitism, founder William Black was sensitive to discrimination, and he made a point of hiring integrated staff, whom he paid a living wage and benefits. Later, Jackie Robinson was brand spokesman and after his retirement, Vice President of the company. In addition, the chain was known for high quality and uncompromising hygiene.

But I wouldn't be so excited if the menu wasn't totally retro and awesome: chicken croquettes, cream cheese on date-nut, and the "Chock Special" of "nutted cheese" on raisin bread! How I wish I still worked in the Flatiron! What a fab alternative to Eisenberg's Sandwich!

Sweet dreams!

S

Best. Weekend. Ever.

Why? Well, try a show on Victorian post-mortem photography at the Merchant House Museum; tea with Mady at Podunk; dinner with the gang at Grand Sichuan; wine and gougeres with the girls; corn-bacon panna cotta at the Basis food fest; a housewarming at I.'s, and PAVEMENT at the Williamsburg waterfront! And just to give you an idea of the glory of that show, they opened with "Cut Your Hair," did a 15-song set that included "Father to a Sister of Thought," then played, like, a six-song encore that started with "Spit on a Stranger," seemed like it was over and instead went into "Gold Sounds" and ended with "Kennel District." Plus, despite being really old, still reminded me of why people become groupies. Yeah, I cried, so what?

Ugh

Last time we went to Staten Island, to visit Killmeyer's Old Bavaria Inn, we stopped at the Snug Harbor museum. Snug Harbor was designed as a retirement home for merchant seamen -- a sort of Les Invalides for men who might otherwise have ended up with nowhere to go. The museum is beautifully done and worth a visit, and the sample room they have done up with the original furniture is actually beautiful. (Indeed, all the furniture was Stickley.) I was shocked to read that the whole place was nearly the victim of developers only ten years ago, and was only saved by the volunteer efforts of some very dedicated locals. I got to talking with the (rather eccentric) volunteer working the gift shop, who told me that before they intervened, the developers had managed to toss all the original Stickley into a dumpster -- a few enterprising people managed to rescue a few pieces before the garbage trucks came.

I was shocked and asked if this was common (I'd heard about the destruction of Dorothy Day's Spanish Town.) By way of example, he said that as we spoke, a developer was destroying the first free-black community in America: a hamlet settled by oystermen in the 17th Century! He explained that the borough is so mobbed up, and the developers so corrupt and insensitive, that things go on all the time that would appall folks just across the bridge.

So it was dismaying to see this week's Village Voice cover story, (by the terrific Foster Kamer) about the destruction of Cedar Grove Beach Club. Read the story, but here's the gist: for the past 40 years, a group of 41 families has leased this Staten Island beach from the city and had a summer community which is now the last remaining bungalow village in NYC. (Moses did away with the rest.) They've kept the beach in beautiful condition. Now the Parks Department, seemingly rather arbitrarily and vindictively, is reclaiming it and evicting them all, with the stated intent of tearing down all the (darling) bungalows and making the beach public space. Okay, except they have no plan, no budget and the adjoining beach -- from which they evicted everyone 40 years ago -- is filthy and neglected. This beach is only nice because it's been privately maintained. You don't need to have finished The Power Broker (seriously, has anyone?) to be wary of Parks Department muscle, and after my visit to Snug Harbor, I have a dim view indeed of SI's regard for history.