Sunday Matinee - "Nights of Capiria"

As a dedicated cyclist my Sundays follow a pattern. You could say they were set in a certain way. I wake up at my usual time, make coffee and a batch of waffles, then read the Times and hang out till about 9:oo. Then it's time to tog up and hop on the bike for three to five hours of riding. It goes without saying that I'm not very energetic or productive afterwards. This past Sunday followed a very different path as Karl and I had done "The Fig" counterclockwise from Los Olivos on Saturday. After four hours and 5,500 ft of climbing Sunday was set to be a day of rest. I ate breakfast early then did a few chores around the house. At 11:00 I lit up a Habana and settled onto the front porch to read the paper. It's been a very long time since I've smoked a cigar with the Sunday Times. The deeply nostalgic flavor of the smoke carried me back to my thirties when after breakfast nicotine was a common activity. After that I walked downtown to the theater to see "Nights of Capiria" the Fellini movie that sits between "La Strada" and "La Dolce Vita". What a wonderful movie, and especially as I have never seen this gem before. The films that bookmark it I have seen countless times, but somehow I had missed this masterpiece. There's something about these Italian movies from the '50s that really appeals to me. They are so human and so fantastic at the same time. People talk about Fellini's surrealism, but really he's just portraying the circus of the human heart in all its strange flare lit beauty. I arrived home about 3:00 just as Heidi and Zoie were arriving so we all sat down to an impromptu lunch of bread, ham, cheese and red wine. It seemed in keeping with the mood of the movie somehow. An espresso followed as I still needed to run some errands and cook dinner. I didn't feel all that great later in the evening as the wine and coffee wore off simultaneously, but I regret none of it.