About a week or so ago I borrowed a book of Hemingway's complete short stories from the library. By coincidence around the same time I pulled off our shelf our old copy of The Stranger by Camus.

As I began reading both at once it struck me that the elegiac tone of both writers seemed quite similar.

I recently recalled an incident involving Jerry Rosen. This was back not much after my first meeting him in the early 70s.

Jerry told me to watch an interview with him to be broadcast on local television.

Watching it I remember being stunned because he was simply speaking the heartfelt and whole truth--which differed diametrically from normal television speak. Normal television speak is a skein of fabrications, more or less. Normal television speak doesn't inolve giving voice to the reality of American life.

It is the first and perhaps last time I've ever witnessed someone being truthful on television.

I may have spoken too soon when (earlier post) I noted how limited is our diet.

Actually, we've recently added a new dish to our repertoire: tacos.

Each taco consists of 1 Mexican corn tortilla, red kidney beans (made from the dry beans, not canned), avocado pieces, hacked white meat chicken, salsa and yogurt.

The salsa is probabaly the magic ingredient. It's Bonnie's own recipe mixing tomato, onion, spices, cucumber...

These tacos are incredibly good. Eating them is perfect for either forgetting one's woes or celebrating something positive.

The other night I watched a movie called "Cadillac Records." It's the story of Chess Records, the famous independent label that introduced Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Etta James, etc.

One of the early scenes depicts Alan Lomax appearing in the fields to record Muddy Waters, then a Mississippi sharecropper.

It was kind of disconcerting to me because the actor playing Lomax didn't look much like him and hadn't his presence. Alan was a big man, with a vestigial Texas drawl. This actor looked and talked like, I don't know, maybe a less than brilliant New Jersey car salesman.

Of course it's not a flaw in the movie, unless you happened to have known Alan.

I had just recovered from that when there was a scene with, of all people, Eric Bogosian playing Alan Freed the disc jockey!

Is the world such a small place that I can't even be left in peace to watch a movie anymore?

Yesterday I began re-reading Jerry's magnum opus autobiography: Cold Eye, Warm heart.

I was grateful that Jerry could see it through to publication before he died. I think this may be the book he most wanted and needed to write.

To read it is to have him here again speaking in his familiar voice.

I wish I could drop him an e-mail to tell him how much I appreciate it.

On Sunday I received a note from his wife, Marijke. that my old friend Jerry Rosen had died on Friday, August 13.

He succumbed following a long battle with leukemia and had been in seclusion for a while now.

I will miss Jerry. Life without him will feel measurably more hollow.

It is some comfort that I can reread his books if I wish to hear his voice again. I will always be guided by him, the thought of how he would have reacted to the various things that happen in life. But no more pleasure in telling him about these eventualities in person!

A great friend.

In writing my post on our eating habits I completely forgot to mention that on Sunday we take a break from our weekday routine and have an omelet for breakfast--which I make in our non-stick silicon-coated frying pan.