I have never bought a home before; consequently, I have never before renovated a home. In the past few weeks, I have come to know firsthand what a toddler feels like when confronted by an overwhelming plethora of unfamiliar choices, all of them available and none of them making any sense from an experiential frame of reference.
In other words, only my last shred of I am an adult and thus must pretend to act like one kicked in to prevent me from having an epic meltdown in the bathroom tile store. At my age, I probably should know the difference between ceramic tile and porcelain tile, but I sadly confess that it is not so. They both looked pretty good, although my husband told me one of them is better, and I've already forgotten which. On the other hand, marble tile appealed to me because it sounded fancy and made me think of the extravagant follies of the Newport robber barons, and also because it looked so easy to clean. My inner Alva Vanderbilt urged me towards the white marble for the master bathroom. After all - the tub and the toilet are white.
But then my husband produced a highly-polished dark granite that he claimed was the only tile that would "work" for the floor, if the beautiful white marble that was on sale at such a truly ridiculously cheap price was what I definitely wanted for the walls. Well, I have highly-polished dark granite in the bathroom of my rental apartment right this minute, and the stuff looks divine for about 30 seconds after you've cleaned it, and after that every speck of dust and every driblet of water that gets on it makes it look like hell. I do not want to spend my life in active resentment of everyone who has the audacity to actually use the bathroom for its intended purpose after I've finished polishing it and sat back on my heels with a proud, "There!" I was forced to rethink the walls entirely, and pretty soon I was ready to lie down on the lovely terra cotta display floor, hiccoughing with sobs, drumming my heels, banging my head against the tiles, and seeing which would crack first - me, or the pretty tiles.
It turned out this was all a complete waste of good gastric juices, because (and do not for a moment, Gentle Reader, think that I blame my dear husband for this, although I do think that somebody should have told me) it seems that the choice of tile color and texture is going to be directly dependent on the kind of vanity we are going to install. So after all that tsuris, we left without buying any tiles and had to go look at vanities, all of which were either too big or too small, too cheap-looking or too expensive, too starkly modern or too baroquely carved (and which latter reminded me of Bavarian cuckoo clocks). It was like being Goldilocks in the bath fixture aisle of the Home Depot.
Now, first of all, I have trouble with the word vanity. The fact that I am buying something called a vanity to put in the bathroom right under the mirror brings back unpleasant recollections of having spent hour upon wasted hour as a teenager leaning across a pressed-wood cabinet with dark walnut-looking veneer and getting the imprint of the cabinet edge etched into my stomach while I made lovely and/or interesting faces into the bathroom mirror. Just in case I ever became an actress, I wanted to see what I was going to look like on the big screen as my by-then-famous face registered horror or pathos or tenderness. Horror involved making my lips writhe back from my teeth in a sort of rictus while widening my eyes to the point where the whites showed on all sides, like a horse frightened by the sight of a rattlesnake. For pathos, the eyes remained wide, but rolled upward as though I was trying to glimpse my own the hairline, meanwhile pursing my lips into a Cupid-bow pout. (My model for pathos, of course, was Lillian Gish, whose Broken Blossoms was playing on PBS several times that week.) As for tenderness, I combined the basic pathos look with rapid eye-batting and soft exhalations of simpering sighs; the result was such a caricature of tremulous goopiness that even now I want to dive under a chair whenever I think about it.
So it is quite difficult enough to wrap my head around the idea that just because a piece of furniture is known as a vanity does not mean I have to revert to adolescent behavior and stand there in front of it being vain, once we have acquired it and bolted it to the wall. I am also tentatively grappling with the concept that I will probably not be required to litter the vanity's surface with perfume atomizers and Venetian glass stopper-bottles, nor will I, in all likelihood, be forced to purchase a set of monogrammed silver-backed brushes or a quaint Victorian hair receiver. Indeed, my husband has mentioned in passing that he expects to put his toothbrush and his shaving equipment somewhere in our newly-appointed bathroom as well, and I suppose I will have to accommodate his request somehow...the brute.
Now that I think of it, it might be best to go with my original idea and just put a nice big pedestal sink in the master bathroom, and put the vanity in the guest bathroom. Nobody I've heard of ever got into trouble with a pedestal sink, and there's all that lovely room for his'n'hers toothbrush mugs on either side.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Disrespecting the Dane: H.C. Andersen Gets Gobsmacked for Wicked Wednesday
Here it is, Wicked Wednesday again, and the most iniquitous thing about it is that I've got a cold and yet I don't get to stay home under the covers, looking pale and interesting and sending people off to the kitchen to fetch me tea and dainties that might tempt my capricious appetite. (Although, in all fairness, I have to concede that this is what I do on my Wicked Weekends.) Pauvre petite moi!
But were I so fortunate as to have a day to spend in bed, in between dunking scones in Lady Grey, nibbling at blood oranges, and heaving a wad of Kleenex in the direction of the wastebasket and cursing when I miss (and then having to quickly get out of bed to retrieve it, because the dog likes to shred used Kleenex, the nastier the better)...I'm sorry, where was I? Oh - yes - if I had the day to spend in bed, why, then I could be productive! That is to say, I could spend the day thinking of imaginative designs for the cover of my forthcoming book:
Both John's book and mine are firmly rooted in the nineteenth century, but our books differ in significant ways. Phineas at Bay takes existing characters invented by the author to whom John is paying hommage - Anthony Trollope, of Masterpiece Theater's The Pallisers fame - adds a few more of John's own invention, and then takes up where Trollope left off, with an entirely new plot. Basically, the six volume Pallisers series is now a seven volume series - with the difference, if you'll pardon my intruding my opinion here, that Trollope's six books can, at times, flounder into tediously lengthy passages that don't seem to get us anywhere, whereas John's book, while scrupulous in maintaining the Trollopian tone and adhering to the motivations and emotional make-up of the characters Trollope created, clips along at a brisker pace and has a sly, subtle wit and a certain sparkle that are uniquely John's own. In kindness to the earlier author, one must remember that Trollope was writing back in the day when authors got paid by the word, and so it behooved them to pad.
Andersen Alterations, on the other hand, started out as a straight re-telling of existing well-known fairy tales by the Danish master, such as The Emperor's New Clothes, The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Red Shoes, and six others (the most arcane is probably The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf). I truly had it in mind to put some of Andersen's loveliest tales into lyric verse, and that was how I began. Before I'd gotten a quarter of the way into the first one I attempted - it happened to be The Red Shoes - I found myself unable to adhere to my original intentions. As I say in my Foreword - a sort of Apologia Pro Carmina Sua -
As I composed, hommage turned to a snort;
I started on my task respectfully
but pretty soon was snickering with glee.
For H.C. Andersen, the Danish bard
loves telling tales in which the luck is hard -
and, while I've stuck severely to his story,
the tone has morphed to quasi-Edward Gorey.
And so, Gentle Reader, I am musing on a cover illustration that will fitly set forth the spirit of the collection, and I think I have come up with something. What I have in mind is Breughel's Landscape With the Fall of Icarus, only instead of Icarus' little white legs kicking helplessly in the water beside the ship, we will, perhaps, have the Little Mermaid diving off the side of the ship to her own destruction, while the plowman in the foreground peruses a volume of Andersen's Tales and therefore fails to notice that he has just harrowed Thumbelina in two, and the shepherd to his right gazes raptly upward at a naked Emperor.
If you have any more ideas for dreadful visual things to do to Hans Christian Andersen's iconic fairy tale folk, I'd be delighted to hear them.
But were I so fortunate as to have a day to spend in bed, in between dunking scones in Lady Grey, nibbling at blood oranges, and heaving a wad of Kleenex in the direction of the wastebasket and cursing when I miss (and then having to quickly get out of bed to retrieve it, because the dog likes to shred used Kleenex, the nastier the better)...I'm sorry, where was I? Oh - yes - if I had the day to spend in bed, why, then I could be productive! That is to say, I could spend the day thinking of imaginative designs for the cover of my forthcoming book:
Andersen Alterations:
Tales of Hans Christian Andersen
Rendered into Perverse Verse
The book is now undergoing a thorough editing by my partner-in-crime John Wirenius, whose own Phineas at Bay I so recently and so ruthlessly fine-tooth-combed, and when he's through with it, if there's anything left, I shall publish it under the aegis of The Monocle Press.
Both John's book and mine are firmly rooted in the nineteenth century, but our books differ in significant ways. Phineas at Bay takes existing characters invented by the author to whom John is paying hommage - Anthony Trollope, of Masterpiece Theater's The Pallisers fame - adds a few more of John's own invention, and then takes up where Trollope left off, with an entirely new plot. Basically, the six volume Pallisers series is now a seven volume series - with the difference, if you'll pardon my intruding my opinion here, that Trollope's six books can, at times, flounder into tediously lengthy passages that don't seem to get us anywhere, whereas John's book, while scrupulous in maintaining the Trollopian tone and adhering to the motivations and emotional make-up of the characters Trollope created, clips along at a brisker pace and has a sly, subtle wit and a certain sparkle that are uniquely John's own. In kindness to the earlier author, one must remember that Trollope was writing back in the day when authors got paid by the word, and so it behooved them to pad.
Andersen Alterations, on the other hand, started out as a straight re-telling of existing well-known fairy tales by the Danish master, such as The Emperor's New Clothes, The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Red Shoes, and six others (the most arcane is probably The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf). I truly had it in mind to put some of Andersen's loveliest tales into lyric verse, and that was how I began. Before I'd gotten a quarter of the way into the first one I attempted - it happened to be The Red Shoes - I found myself unable to adhere to my original intentions. As I say in my Foreword - a sort of Apologia Pro Carmina Sua -
As I composed, hommage turned to a snort;
I started on my task respectfully
but pretty soon was snickering with glee.
For H.C. Andersen, the Danish bard
loves telling tales in which the luck is hard -
and, while I've stuck severely to his story,
the tone has morphed to quasi-Edward Gorey.
And so, Gentle Reader, I am musing on a cover illustration that will fitly set forth the spirit of the collection, and I think I have come up with something. What I have in mind is Breughel's Landscape With the Fall of Icarus, only instead of Icarus' little white legs kicking helplessly in the water beside the ship, we will, perhaps, have the Little Mermaid diving off the side of the ship to her own destruction, while the plowman in the foreground peruses a volume of Andersen's Tales and therefore fails to notice that he has just harrowed Thumbelina in two, and the shepherd to his right gazes raptly upward at a naked Emperor.
If you have any more ideas for dreadful visual things to do to Hans Christian Andersen's iconic fairy tale folk, I'd be delighted to hear them.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
The Domineditrix Will Clothe You Now!
"Much of this week has been taken up by doing by what I'd sworn I was not going to do."
As I started typing the above sentence, I had it in mind that my next sentence would begin with, "I had told John Wirenius that I simply had to focus on my own work and would not be able to turn my attention to doing a third and final edit of his novel, Phineas at Bay, and he had been completely gracious about it, since we do have a little wiggle-room before it is published by The Monocle Press, and therefore -"
But of course, I had gotten no further than "by what I'd sworn I was not going to..." than my fingers were stilled upon the keyboard by an overwhelming rush of mental images of all the things I had sworn to myself I wasn't going to do in the week just past, and then had wound up doing anyway. Several of these things involved cheesecake. Others involved not going over budget on what we would spend on bathroom tile layouts. In both cases, I should have mentally added, "Unless I happen across a really nice one that nobody in their right mind would even try to resist.
Other things I wasn't going to do included going out to breakfast with my friend,s instead of hastening home to work on finishing my own novel. 85% of the way to the book is done! seems to be where I hit what is known on Facebook as "Hump Day," except I seem to have more trouble getting over it, and gazing at cartoon camels in risqué positions does nothing to help the situation, because then I'm fooling around on Facebook instead of finishing the book.
I also wasn't going to give my teenager any hint of which of the three colleges he is considering is the one I wish he would select - carrying out that one, of course, was a truly epic fail on my part - I cracked in under 15 minutes. This happened right after I wasn't going to go to Broadway Bagel for his daily breakfast bagel (despite the fact that I was out already, running errands) because he has two perfectly good legs of his own, and should get a little fresh air and exercise, and who does he think is going to be fetching him bagels when he's forty, and - "Yes, please, sesame - ha-ha, that's right, he did sleep in because it's Saturday. Yep, that's true, I am a nice Mom..."
This, Gentle Reader, is but a partial list, and only cites the least embarrassing items.
But getting back to Phineas at Bay - I might have stuck to my resolution, but the fact is, it's all Theodore Dreiser's fault. I finished re-reading Sister Carrie in record time, having found an edition with nice big print that didn't strain my eyes - and, after that was gone, I needed something good to read. Well - John's book fit the description like a kid elbow glove on an Edwardian Professional Beauty. It's a good read. In fact, third time around, it's an even better read. (You will, I hope, pardon me for preening a bit if I say, "And that's because I edited the first two drafts.")
Don't get me wrong - it was an excellent novel the first time around, before I ever had anything to do with it. But John is one of those rare writers who can take his ego completely out of the way and think about "What is the best thing we can do in the service of this book?" The book itself - das Buch an sich! - and getting it as good as it can be, is all. By the time I had finished Round One of the editorial process, I was already rejoicing in the half-affectionate, half-sardonic nickname John had bestowed upon me - Domineditrix. I think the fiercest crack of the whip I gave was when I sent John and his main character, Phineas Finn, down into a Welsh coalmine...he hadn't written a description of the horrors endured by nineteenth century colliers, and I implored and argued and harangued, and finally used my ultimate weapon - "Your reader will feel cheated if it's not in the text!" - until he said, "Right, I'll give it a go and see how it turns out," and wrote it just to shut me up. And it's one of the best things in the book, by gum.
And then, of course, there was the fact that John allowed me to dress his ladies. I like fabric. I have always liked fabric. When I was young and introverted, I embroidered tablecloths and pillow slips with all the fervor of Catherine Sloper in The Heiress, and probably for the same reason - I couldn't seem to find anybody to take me to the dance on a Friday night. I make my own curtains. I go into a fabric shop, and they have to send in a bloodhound three hours later to fetch me back out. Like a deranged magpie, I pick up spools of satin ribbon at garage sales without having the least idea of what I'm going to do with them, because they're so pretty and they're only twenty-five cents. In short - textiles get me where I live.
John, on the other hand, while always impeccably dressed (he is the only person I know who routinely wears a gold pocket watch tucked into his vest pocket...and consults it when he is asked the time) probably can't tell a pelisse from a mantua, and most likely thinks that a peplum is something one puts in a bottle to feed infants.
Therefore, I had a field day making suggestions, explaining the difference between handmade French and English lace of the period, and decreeing that one particularly raffish Society lady must always appear in various shades of blue to complement her famous eyes, while another - a wise, warm-hearted, yet withal wily Woman With a Past - would habitually dress in more somber shades, yet always spice them up them with a dash of something brilliant and exotic. One of my favorite characters - a woman already known to Trollope readers as "Lizzie the Liar" - was permitted to revel in the kind of seductively sumptuous clothing she'd always wanted to wear. I felt we should indulge her freely, for one does not want to get on the bad side of Lady Elizabeth Eustace. She has such a way of turning nasty and petulant when anyone tries to prevent her from having anything she thinks she ought to have. Spoiler alert - the author was kind enough to marry off one of the characters, so I had the joy of researching Late Victorian wedding garb and in the process dredging up details I recollected from a recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of art that had paired authentic period gowns with Impressionist paintings of the women who wore them.
So that is how I spent my week, and a very good week it was, too. I'm awfully sad, though, because now I've finished John's book and there's nothing left to read except Oliver Twist, and nobody wears anything nice in that.
As I started typing the above sentence, I had it in mind that my next sentence would begin with, "I had told John Wirenius that I simply had to focus on my own work and would not be able to turn my attention to doing a third and final edit of his novel, Phineas at Bay, and he had been completely gracious about it, since we do have a little wiggle-room before it is published by The Monocle Press, and therefore -"
But of course, I had gotten no further than "by what I'd sworn I was not going to..." than my fingers were stilled upon the keyboard by an overwhelming rush of mental images of all the things I had sworn to myself I wasn't going to do in the week just past, and then had wound up doing anyway. Several of these things involved cheesecake. Others involved not going over budget on what we would spend on bathroom tile layouts. In both cases, I should have mentally added, "Unless I happen across a really nice one that nobody in their right mind would even try to resist.
Other things I wasn't going to do included going out to breakfast with my friend,s instead of hastening home to work on finishing my own novel. 85% of the way to the book is done! seems to be where I hit what is known on Facebook as "Hump Day," except I seem to have more trouble getting over it, and gazing at cartoon camels in risqué positions does nothing to help the situation, because then I'm fooling around on Facebook instead of finishing the book.
I also wasn't going to give my teenager any hint of which of the three colleges he is considering is the one I wish he would select - carrying out that one, of course, was a truly epic fail on my part - I cracked in under 15 minutes. This happened right after I wasn't going to go to Broadway Bagel for his daily breakfast bagel (despite the fact that I was out already, running errands) because he has two perfectly good legs of his own, and should get a little fresh air and exercise, and who does he think is going to be fetching him bagels when he's forty, and - "Yes, please, sesame - ha-ha, that's right, he did sleep in because it's Saturday. Yep, that's true, I am a nice Mom..."
This, Gentle Reader, is but a partial list, and only cites the least embarrassing items.
But getting back to Phineas at Bay - I might have stuck to my resolution, but the fact is, it's all Theodore Dreiser's fault. I finished re-reading Sister Carrie in record time, having found an edition with nice big print that didn't strain my eyes - and, after that was gone, I needed something good to read. Well - John's book fit the description like a kid elbow glove on an Edwardian Professional Beauty. It's a good read. In fact, third time around, it's an even better read. (You will, I hope, pardon me for preening a bit if I say, "And that's because I edited the first two drafts.")
Don't get me wrong - it was an excellent novel the first time around, before I ever had anything to do with it. But John is one of those rare writers who can take his ego completely out of the way and think about "What is the best thing we can do in the service of this book?" The book itself - das Buch an sich! - and getting it as good as it can be, is all. By the time I had finished Round One of the editorial process, I was already rejoicing in the half-affectionate, half-sardonic nickname John had bestowed upon me - Domineditrix. I think the fiercest crack of the whip I gave was when I sent John and his main character, Phineas Finn, down into a Welsh coalmine...he hadn't written a description of the horrors endured by nineteenth century colliers, and I implored and argued and harangued, and finally used my ultimate weapon - "Your reader will feel cheated if it's not in the text!" - until he said, "Right, I'll give it a go and see how it turns out," and wrote it just to shut me up. And it's one of the best things in the book, by gum.
And then, of course, there was the fact that John allowed me to dress his ladies. I like fabric. I have always liked fabric. When I was young and introverted, I embroidered tablecloths and pillow slips with all the fervor of Catherine Sloper in The Heiress, and probably for the same reason - I couldn't seem to find anybody to take me to the dance on a Friday night. I make my own curtains. I go into a fabric shop, and they have to send in a bloodhound three hours later to fetch me back out. Like a deranged magpie, I pick up spools of satin ribbon at garage sales without having the least idea of what I'm going to do with them, because they're so pretty and they're only twenty-five cents. In short - textiles get me where I live.
John, on the other hand, while always impeccably dressed (he is the only person I know who routinely wears a gold pocket watch tucked into his vest pocket...and consults it when he is asked the time) probably can't tell a pelisse from a mantua, and most likely thinks that a peplum is something one puts in a bottle to feed infants.
Therefore, I had a field day making suggestions, explaining the difference between handmade French and English lace of the period, and decreeing that one particularly raffish Society lady must always appear in various shades of blue to complement her famous eyes, while another - a wise, warm-hearted, yet withal wily Woman With a Past - would habitually dress in more somber shades, yet always spice them up them with a dash of something brilliant and exotic. One of my favorite characters - a woman already known to Trollope readers as "Lizzie the Liar" - was permitted to revel in the kind of seductively sumptuous clothing she'd always wanted to wear. I felt we should indulge her freely, for one does not want to get on the bad side of Lady Elizabeth Eustace. She has such a way of turning nasty and petulant when anyone tries to prevent her from having anything she thinks she ought to have. Spoiler alert - the author was kind enough to marry off one of the characters, so I had the joy of researching Late Victorian wedding garb and in the process dredging up details I recollected from a recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of art that had paired authentic period gowns with Impressionist paintings of the women who wore them.
So that is how I spent my week, and a very good week it was, too. I'm awfully sad, though, because now I've finished John's book and there's nothing left to read except Oliver Twist, and nobody wears anything nice in that.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Whoopsie Wednesday
I know you are all growing tired of my excuses for why I am not nearly as wicked as I aspire to be when Wicked Wednesday rolls around. (Could this continual evasion of duty on my part be counted as Wickedness? Hmm. Something to ponder.) All I can say is, I am justly punished for sloth and inactivity, because ten minutes ago I was happily editing my friend John Wirenius's manuscript, Phineas at Bay - his tour de force sequel to Anthony Trollope's "Palliser" novels. It's a hell of a good book, and the reason I know it's a hell of a good book is that I am now reading it for the third time (because I am what we both fondly refer to as John's domineditrix - meaning that I crack the whip on any inconsistencies and am a veritable scourge of the typo and the very occasional run-on sentence, and John, bless his heart, rolls over on his back, purrs, and waves his little paws in the air, he loves it so) and, if anything, I am enjoying reading the book more than I did the first time around.
The other reason I'm enjoying the novel so much is that John let me dress all the ladies who appear in it. Not that he'd sent them out naked - no, no, nothing of the sort. It's not that kind of a Trollope book. But I begged and pleaded and made a great to-do about how nineteenth century novels are ever so much more fun to read if you get to relish a few sumptuous descriptions of the gowns worn by the female characters, and that, in all events, costume can be an excellent device for indicating the character and motivations of she who wears it. So I was reveling in cobalt blue evening gowns, severely-tailored black riding habits with scarlet trimmings to give them a bit of a dash, and a truly delightful digression on the differences between handmade French lace and English lace of the period, when the telephone rang, as it always does ring when you're doing something you don't want to stop doing.
It was, of course, my husband, calling to give me the good news that renovations on our newly-acquired house are proceeding apace; that, in fact, things are going so splendidly that the contractor wants the new bathtubs, toilets, sinks, and vanities (not to mention the tiles - did I mention the tiles?) delivered by next Monday, because that is when the plumber is coming to install them.
Which is wonderful news, and I am thrilled that we have such a proactive and responsible contractor.
The only problem being, of course, that we've gone bathroom-shopping twice already, and haven't ordered anything yet.
So, Gentle Reader, like dear Groucho Marx, I only popped in to tell you, "Hello, I must be going!"
The other reason I'm enjoying the novel so much is that John let me dress all the ladies who appear in it. Not that he'd sent them out naked - no, no, nothing of the sort. It's not that kind of a Trollope book. But I begged and pleaded and made a great to-do about how nineteenth century novels are ever so much more fun to read if you get to relish a few sumptuous descriptions of the gowns worn by the female characters, and that, in all events, costume can be an excellent device for indicating the character and motivations of she who wears it. So I was reveling in cobalt blue evening gowns, severely-tailored black riding habits with scarlet trimmings to give them a bit of a dash, and a truly delightful digression on the differences between handmade French lace and English lace of the period, when the telephone rang, as it always does ring when you're doing something you don't want to stop doing.
It was, of course, my husband, calling to give me the good news that renovations on our newly-acquired house are proceeding apace; that, in fact, things are going so splendidly that the contractor wants the new bathtubs, toilets, sinks, and vanities (not to mention the tiles - did I mention the tiles?) delivered by next Monday, because that is when the plumber is coming to install them.
Which is wonderful news, and I am thrilled that we have such a proactive and responsible contractor.
The only problem being, of course, that we've gone bathroom-shopping twice already, and haven't ordered anything yet.
So, Gentle Reader, like dear Groucho Marx, I only popped in to tell you, "Hello, I must be going!"
Monday, March 17, 2014
Auto Eroticism: Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Car
On Saturday, my husband came home with that triumphant expression that I have come to know rather well over the years as meaning "Here it comes!" and announced, "Well, I did it! I bought us a car!" Then he looked expectantly at me and waited for me to get all excited, which didn't happen. (A bit of a let-down for him, that.) You see, we are moving to Rockland County, and they don't have a subway up there. I know. I can't believe it, either. I'm telling you, it's a considerable shock to my City Girl system. Worse - after all these years of having a driver's license for purposes of cashing my checks at the bank only, I am now expected to get into the car, turn on the engine, and make the thing go.
He did tell me what kind of car it was - a Honda - and I'm sure he told me the model, or brand, or make, or whatever it is that indicates that not every Honda looks like every other Honda. (The problem being that, to me, every Honda does look like every other Honda...and every other Toyota...and every other...ummm...what are the names of some other cars, please?) I am proud to state that I can, however, tell a Jeep from a Ferrari, which latter I refer to as, "Oh, look at that cute little car. I wonder if those are expensive."
Then there was a quiz. My husband, after telling me all about Our Honda, wanted to know if I knew what kind of a car we now own, and after some umm-ing and errrr-ing, I finally blurted, "The kind with four wheels and an ignition." I figured this was a safe guess...although, for all I know, there could be five, or even six wheels - stranger things have happened.
I was relieved to learn that the used car dealer is going to have to hold onto the car for a week while we get it insured, after which somebody who isn't me will, I hope, drive it up to our new house and leave it in the driveway until we actually move in and I have to start driving it myself. (Any volunteers?) To my husband's wistful suggestion that this would be an excellent opportunity to hone my (nonexistent) city driving technique, I returned that it certainly would be a pity if the car were to be totaled on the very first day we got it home, and that was the end of that.
It wasn't until around 2:00 a.m., when, judging by the look on his face, my husband was dreaming blissfully of the kind of cars (the plural is not a typo) he would have liked to buy, and I was staring, wide-awake, at the ceiling, thinking about how much fonder I was of the IRT #1 train and of the fact that it stops a block away from my apartment than I'd ever imagined, that I remembered I'd neglected to ask what color our new car is. Not that it matters much. I am all too well aware that, since all cars look pretty much alike to me, I am going to have to find a couple of distinctive bumper stickers and put them on the back of the car, or, like the shades in Dantes Inferno, I am going to spend Eternity wandering around aimlessly, probably in the Walmart parking lot, trying to remember which one among the thousands is ours.
.
He did tell me what kind of car it was - a Honda - and I'm sure he told me the model, or brand, or make, or whatever it is that indicates that not every Honda looks like every other Honda. (The problem being that, to me, every Honda does look like every other Honda...and every other Toyota...and every other...ummm...what are the names of some other cars, please?) I am proud to state that I can, however, tell a Jeep from a Ferrari, which latter I refer to as, "Oh, look at that cute little car. I wonder if those are expensive."
Then there was a quiz. My husband, after telling me all about Our Honda, wanted to know if I knew what kind of a car we now own, and after some umm-ing and errrr-ing, I finally blurted, "The kind with four wheels and an ignition." I figured this was a safe guess...although, for all I know, there could be five, or even six wheels - stranger things have happened.
I was relieved to learn that the used car dealer is going to have to hold onto the car for a week while we get it insured, after which somebody who isn't me will, I hope, drive it up to our new house and leave it in the driveway until we actually move in and I have to start driving it myself. (Any volunteers?) To my husband's wistful suggestion that this would be an excellent opportunity to hone my (nonexistent) city driving technique, I returned that it certainly would be a pity if the car were to be totaled on the very first day we got it home, and that was the end of that.
It wasn't until around 2:00 a.m., when, judging by the look on his face, my husband was dreaming blissfully of the kind of cars (the plural is not a typo) he would have liked to buy, and I was staring, wide-awake, at the ceiling, thinking about how much fonder I was of the IRT #1 train and of the fact that it stops a block away from my apartment than I'd ever imagined, that I remembered I'd neglected to ask what color our new car is. Not that it matters much. I am all too well aware that, since all cars look pretty much alike to me, I am going to have to find a couple of distinctive bumper stickers and put them on the back of the car, or, like the shades in Dantes Inferno, I am going to spend Eternity wandering around aimlessly, probably in the Walmart parking lot, trying to remember which one among the thousands is ours.
.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Isn't It Romantic? Lyricism at The Library Hotel
I fear the snark factor will be sadly lacking in this post, because I just can't get all cynical here - the story is simply too nice. You stand warned - don't say I didn't tell you.
OK, if you're still with me, Gentle Reader, this is what I did yesterday.
I was meeting clients at The Library Hotel for a poetry writing workshop - a young couple whom I had never met before. I had, however, been given the heads-up that the gentleman who'd booked the workshop was planning to cap the session by proposing marriage to the young lady whom he was surprising with a romantic poetry-for-two event. Naturally, I was thrilled. Show me a poet who doesn't get all goose-bumpy and tingly at the prospect of assisting in a romance, and I'll show you Charles Bukowski. (OK - so I sneaked in a snark, after all. What can I say? You knew I was a snark when you picked me up.)
Naturally, this involved a certain amount of feverish emailing between myself and the gentleman in question. We set up a prearranged sentence that he would utter when it was time for me to vamoose so that he could get to the main event - the proposal - and I queried him as to what kind of poem he felt they would be most comfortable writing. We decided on free verse, and I made up a little list of prompts and ideas so as to get everybody's creative juices flowing.
The couple arrived a little late. Being from out of town, they had been taken somewhat by surprise by the combination of ingenuity and luck required to find a parking spot in the vicinity of Madison and Forty-First in the early afternoon. But they had managed it, and arrived, a trifle out of breath, and he explained that he would have to run out to hit the one-hour meter at some point. The lady was a trifle mystified as to why she was being ushered into the Reading Room of the Library Hotel to meet with a total stranger who was sitting at a large table that had a laptop and a lot of pens and paper on it; she also seemed a bit taken aback at the news that she was now to sit down and start writing a poem. However, she recovered gamely, and after a few false starts, we got into the groove.
Initially, they were going to write the poem together, trading the paper back and forth - he writing a line, then she writing a line, then he another line, and so on. But that didn't feel comfortable after a bit, so we decided to switch techniques. We had hit upon a theme - "The Journey." After all, they were on a journey, and here they were, far from home in New York City. But they were also on the bigger journey of life, and the journey of discovering one another - although, of course, only one of them was aware that the journey was about to take a much more interesting twist.
And here I have to put in, Gentle Reader, that the writing would probably have gone a little more smoothly if the about-to-be-proposed-to lady had not been so beautiful that he simply couldn't keep his eyes off her. She, for her part, struck me as shy, serious, very, very smart, and very, very sweet. I was hoping with all my heart that this was going to have a happy ending.
He suddenly got very inspired and wrote out an entire page in one fell swoop, one arm crooked around the paper so that she couldn't see, and I was enlisted to type it up on the laptop and email it to him so they would have a nice copy to print out later. It was a lovely poem - really beautiful and heartfelt. I know I would have melted on the spot if someone had penned those words in my praise. As soon as he was done, he ran out to put money in the meter, and she and I turned to her poem.
She was still having a hard time - we would start, and we would stall. I suggested an acrostic - write out the letters J-O-U-R-N-E-Y, one letter to a line, and then see what lines suggest themselves, with those letters as the first letter of each line. That got us jump-started, and we had gotten several lines written when we stalled out again. It probably didn't help matters that, as I said, she was clearly very intelligent and could sense that something was in the wind. She just didn't know what, and to tell the truth, I think it had her a bit uneasy.
I decided to give her a little "alone time," so I went off to the bathroom to wash my hands. I don't know about you, but it is my particular blessing - or curse - that I tend to get all my best ideas when I'm in the bathroom, usually while staring off into space with the hot water running as the soap turns to a big mush in my hands. Ask my husband how many times I've yelled out of the shower, "Hey, honey - can you write this down before I forget it?!" So it was, of course, in the bathroom that it clicked. Good heavens! Why hadn't I thought of it before?
I came back and announced, "I've figured it out. You shouldn't finish the poem now. We have a finished poem - the one your boyfriend wrote. And it's a terrific poem. But, you see - your journey doesn't finish here at this table. Your journey goes on. And you don't know where it's going to take you. You've got this great second line - Obstacles turn into opportunities. And you've talked about how you can't see the whole road past the little part that's illuminated by the headlights. So how about if we stop here, and you come back to it again in an hour, or a day, or a week, or even in six months, and fill in more after the next part of the journey has revealed itself?"
She beamed, and just at this propitious moment he came hurrying back, announcing that he'd made it to the car a few steps ahead of the Traffic Enforcement agent. I looked at my watch just as he was saying the line that was my exit cue, exclaimed that I would have to run, packed up my gear, and got myself out the door as quickly as possible so that they'd have some privacy. Fortunately, the Reading Room was fairly deserted in mid-afternoon. I cast a glance over my shoulder as I left. They were smiling at one another.
All afternoon, as my family drove upstate to a college interview for my teenage son, I wondered what had happened. I shot a text to the Library Hotel - "What happened? Did she say yes???" They wrote back, "Don't know yet. We'll keep you posted!"
We were all done with the interview, which went splendidly, and were back on the road after a celebratory dinner when I checked my phone again. And there it was:
I just heard - She said yes!
At this, my entire family erupted into cheers, and my son beat on the dashboard like a bongo drum.
So you'll have to give me a few days before I can get back to being my cynical self, Gentle Reader. Right now I am walking around with a big, goofy smile on my face, thinking how wonderful it is that these two charming, delightful, perfectly-matched people have found one another and are going to get married, and that I had the privilege of playing a small part in their important day. My wedding wish for them? May they always be as happy as they were when I last glimpsed them, smiling into one another's eyes.
OK, if you're still with me, Gentle Reader, this is what I did yesterday.
I was meeting clients at The Library Hotel for a poetry writing workshop - a young couple whom I had never met before. I had, however, been given the heads-up that the gentleman who'd booked the workshop was planning to cap the session by proposing marriage to the young lady whom he was surprising with a romantic poetry-for-two event. Naturally, I was thrilled. Show me a poet who doesn't get all goose-bumpy and tingly at the prospect of assisting in a romance, and I'll show you Charles Bukowski. (OK - so I sneaked in a snark, after all. What can I say? You knew I was a snark when you picked me up.)
Naturally, this involved a certain amount of feverish emailing between myself and the gentleman in question. We set up a prearranged sentence that he would utter when it was time for me to vamoose so that he could get to the main event - the proposal - and I queried him as to what kind of poem he felt they would be most comfortable writing. We decided on free verse, and I made up a little list of prompts and ideas so as to get everybody's creative juices flowing.
The couple arrived a little late. Being from out of town, they had been taken somewhat by surprise by the combination of ingenuity and luck required to find a parking spot in the vicinity of Madison and Forty-First in the early afternoon. But they had managed it, and arrived, a trifle out of breath, and he explained that he would have to run out to hit the one-hour meter at some point. The lady was a trifle mystified as to why she was being ushered into the Reading Room of the Library Hotel to meet with a total stranger who was sitting at a large table that had a laptop and a lot of pens and paper on it; she also seemed a bit taken aback at the news that she was now to sit down and start writing a poem. However, she recovered gamely, and after a few false starts, we got into the groove.
Initially, they were going to write the poem together, trading the paper back and forth - he writing a line, then she writing a line, then he another line, and so on. But that didn't feel comfortable after a bit, so we decided to switch techniques. We had hit upon a theme - "The Journey." After all, they were on a journey, and here they were, far from home in New York City. But they were also on the bigger journey of life, and the journey of discovering one another - although, of course, only one of them was aware that the journey was about to take a much more interesting twist.
And here I have to put in, Gentle Reader, that the writing would probably have gone a little more smoothly if the about-to-be-proposed-to lady had not been so beautiful that he simply couldn't keep his eyes off her. She, for her part, struck me as shy, serious, very, very smart, and very, very sweet. I was hoping with all my heart that this was going to have a happy ending.
He suddenly got very inspired and wrote out an entire page in one fell swoop, one arm crooked around the paper so that she couldn't see, and I was enlisted to type it up on the laptop and email it to him so they would have a nice copy to print out later. It was a lovely poem - really beautiful and heartfelt. I know I would have melted on the spot if someone had penned those words in my praise. As soon as he was done, he ran out to put money in the meter, and she and I turned to her poem.
She was still having a hard time - we would start, and we would stall. I suggested an acrostic - write out the letters J-O-U-R-N-E-Y, one letter to a line, and then see what lines suggest themselves, with those letters as the first letter of each line. That got us jump-started, and we had gotten several lines written when we stalled out again. It probably didn't help matters that, as I said, she was clearly very intelligent and could sense that something was in the wind. She just didn't know what, and to tell the truth, I think it had her a bit uneasy.
I decided to give her a little "alone time," so I went off to the bathroom to wash my hands. I don't know about you, but it is my particular blessing - or curse - that I tend to get all my best ideas when I'm in the bathroom, usually while staring off into space with the hot water running as the soap turns to a big mush in my hands. Ask my husband how many times I've yelled out of the shower, "Hey, honey - can you write this down before I forget it?!" So it was, of course, in the bathroom that it clicked. Good heavens! Why hadn't I thought of it before?
I came back and announced, "I've figured it out. You shouldn't finish the poem now. We have a finished poem - the one your boyfriend wrote. And it's a terrific poem. But, you see - your journey doesn't finish here at this table. Your journey goes on. And you don't know where it's going to take you. You've got this great second line - Obstacles turn into opportunities. And you've talked about how you can't see the whole road past the little part that's illuminated by the headlights. So how about if we stop here, and you come back to it again in an hour, or a day, or a week, or even in six months, and fill in more after the next part of the journey has revealed itself?"
She beamed, and just at this propitious moment he came hurrying back, announcing that he'd made it to the car a few steps ahead of the Traffic Enforcement agent. I looked at my watch just as he was saying the line that was my exit cue, exclaimed that I would have to run, packed up my gear, and got myself out the door as quickly as possible so that they'd have some privacy. Fortunately, the Reading Room was fairly deserted in mid-afternoon. I cast a glance over my shoulder as I left. They were smiling at one another.
All afternoon, as my family drove upstate to a college interview for my teenage son, I wondered what had happened. I shot a text to the Library Hotel - "What happened? Did she say yes???" They wrote back, "Don't know yet. We'll keep you posted!"
We were all done with the interview, which went splendidly, and were back on the road after a celebratory dinner when I checked my phone again. And there it was:
I just heard - She said yes!
At this, my entire family erupted into cheers, and my son beat on the dashboard like a bongo drum.
So you'll have to give me a few days before I can get back to being my cynical self, Gentle Reader. Right now I am walking around with a big, goofy smile on my face, thinking how wonderful it is that these two charming, delightful, perfectly-matched people have found one another and are going to get married, and that I had the privilege of playing a small part in their important day. My wedding wish for them? May they always be as happy as they were when I last glimpsed them, smiling into one another's eyes.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
The English Major’s Guide to Eating a Hot Fudge Sundae
Way back when I was applying to graduate school, I had to take the Very Nasty Graduate Record Exam (VNGRE) and also the Supremely Nasty Graduate Record Exam Subject Test (SNGREST) in order to Get Into a School. The plain old VNGRE was Nasty in that it had a math section. Since I was applying to English Departments I did what I always do on math sections. Because it is multiple choice and your options are A, B, C or D, I just filled in the little bubble for "A" on all the answers and figured that I would get at least 25% of the answers right. As it turned out, I didn't, because they take off a quarter point for every wrong answer, which of course I hadn't factored in, being math-challenged, and so I got the lowest possible score, 200. I don't know why I got 200 points instead of 0 points - as I say, math is a mystery to me.
It didn't matter, because I did extremely well on the English section, which left only the SNGREST to conquer. I would have been fairly confident on that one, too, but there was an Issue. The Issue was Critical Theory. I had been an undergrad back in the halcyon days before Critical Theory came along to torment everybody who had the childish notion that the way to be a critical thinker was to read the book and then think about the book and then write about the book, and in my secret, subversive mind I still wanted to do just that. So I knew I was going to sail through the parts of the exam that wanted to know which of the following was not one of the Pre-Raphaelites: Dante Gabriel Rossetti; William Morris; William Wordsworth; Edward Burne-Jones (it's Wordsworth, but I'm sure you knew that.) But I knew I was never going to wrap my head around the difference between De Saussure and De Man, because, frankly, I didn't care. And only last weekend I was viciously pleased to see that somebody - an Upper West Sider, in fact; go, us! - just wrote a book about Paul De Man, one of the Head Gremlins who started this whole Critical Theory mishegas, in which it is shown that De Man was a "(Nazi) collaborator, a scheming careerist, an embezzler and forger who fled Belgium in order to avoid prison, a bigamist who abandoned his first three children, a deadbeat who left many rents and hotel bills unpaid, a liar who wormed his way into Harvard by falsifying records, a cynic who used people shamelessly" - and, for all I know, a secret nose-picker as well. It would have been just like him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/books/review/the-double-life-of-paul-de-man-by-evelyn-barish.html?rref=books/review&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Sunday%20Book%20Review&pgtype=article
So I had an awful lot of trouble with Critical Theory, and, in order to try to memorize it for the exam, I wrote a Prose Poem incorporating salient points from the Kaplan Study Guide. It must have worked, because I scored in the 98th percentile and got into the school of my choice (it happened to by CUNY/CCNY, and I can tell you that their English department rocks. Even I managed to fit in. )
And so, in honor of Wicked Wednesday, I present:
The English Major’s Guide to Eating a Hot Fudge Sundae
Materials:
1. Parfait glass
2. Vanilla ice cream
3. Generous quantity of hot fudge
4. Aerosol spray can of whipped cream
5. Maraschino cherry (optional)
6. Spoon (long-handed iced tea variety, if available)
Fill Item 1 with Items 2-5, in listed order. Insert 6.
Next:
Choose a method of critical approach to the resultant confectionery. Possibilities include:
The Marxist approach: Consider the hot fudge sundae not as a timeless, fixed creation, subject to universal standard of evaluation, but rather as a product of a specific cultural and historical context. Bear in mind that, this being the case, the sundae is not a timeless, fixed creation, and it will melt if you think about it too long.
The Feminist/Black/Post-Colonial approach: Discuss the marginalization of Other postprandial sweets (such as bananas akara, cassava cake, and black sticky-rice cake in coconut juice) by the hot fudge sundae, a typical product of Euro-American patriarchy. You may wish to consider the phallocratic hegemony implicit in the upgrading of hot fudge sundae to banana split. How does the encoded ideology of the vanilla ice cream support the dominant class? You may make an argument for the fudge as an encrypted form of the struggling voice of the oppressed ideological subject.
The Freudian approach: Juxtapose the conflicting impulses to fill one’s mouth with sweets (the oral stage) against the indubitable resemblance melting ice cream mingled with swiftly cooling fudge bears to fecal smears (the toileting or anal stage = rage against the Mother.) Please give archetypal examples, perhaps making specific reference to The Golden Bough.
The New Historicist approach: Analyze the cultural-ideological layers of the sundae (3-4 parts, depending on whether or not you opted for the cherry.)
The New Critical approach: Avoid falling into unsustainable speculations as to whether the creator of the sundae actually intended to create a sundae, rather than, say, a crème brulee (the “intentional fallacy”) and subjective effusions about the sundae’s beauty and toothsomeness (the “affective fallacy”.) Beware of “the heresy of paraphrase” when contemplating the calorie content of the sundae; instead, do a “close reading” of the state-mandated “Nutrition Information Chart.” Avoid such ambiguous (and ultimately meaningless) phrases as “energy-boosting” and substitute robust Anglo-Saxon words, such as “fattening.”
The Structuralist/Semiotic approach: Discourse on the meaning of the sundae as produced by its structure. What, for example, might it signify if the cherry were at the bottom of the glass? You may wish to consider the ice cream as the center and the hot fudge and whipped cream circumscribing it as periphery. Or not.
The Deconstructionist approach: Take everything out of the parfait glass and stuff it back in its original container (no whining about how hard it is to get the whipped cream back into the can, please.) Avoid slippage, taking care to achieve full erasure and leave no trace (not to be confused with the environmentalist approach.)
The Reader-Response approach: Refrain from eating the hot fudge sundae. The experience of the sundae is the event; the sundae is what occurs in the diner’s head, not in the interaction between mouth and spoon.
Finally, there is this Obsolete (yet oddly satisfying) method of approach: Linger happily over the sundae, savoring its many delights; turn every morsel many times upon the tongue. Digest it well. Meditate upon it. Produce a pithy and carefully formulated opinion as to its successes, its failures, and its overall structure. When you are done - go have another one.
It didn't matter, because I did extremely well on the English section, which left only the SNGREST to conquer. I would have been fairly confident on that one, too, but there was an Issue. The Issue was Critical Theory. I had been an undergrad back in the halcyon days before Critical Theory came along to torment everybody who had the childish notion that the way to be a critical thinker was to read the book and then think about the book and then write about the book, and in my secret, subversive mind I still wanted to do just that. So I knew I was going to sail through the parts of the exam that wanted to know which of the following was not one of the Pre-Raphaelites: Dante Gabriel Rossetti; William Morris; William Wordsworth; Edward Burne-Jones (it's Wordsworth, but I'm sure you knew that.) But I knew I was never going to wrap my head around the difference between De Saussure and De Man, because, frankly, I didn't care. And only last weekend I was viciously pleased to see that somebody - an Upper West Sider, in fact; go, us! - just wrote a book about Paul De Man, one of the Head Gremlins who started this whole Critical Theory mishegas, in which it is shown that De Man was a "(Nazi) collaborator, a scheming careerist, an embezzler and forger who fled Belgium in order to avoid prison, a bigamist who abandoned his first three children, a deadbeat who left many rents and hotel bills unpaid, a liar who wormed his way into Harvard by falsifying records, a cynic who used people shamelessly" - and, for all I know, a secret nose-picker as well. It would have been just like him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/books/review/the-double-life-of-paul-de-man-by-evelyn-barish.html?rref=books/review&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Sunday%20Book%20Review&pgtype=article
So I had an awful lot of trouble with Critical Theory, and, in order to try to memorize it for the exam, I wrote a Prose Poem incorporating salient points from the Kaplan Study Guide. It must have worked, because I scored in the 98th percentile and got into the school of my choice (it happened to by CUNY/CCNY, and I can tell you that their English department rocks. Even I managed to fit in. )
And so, in honor of Wicked Wednesday, I present:
The English Major’s Guide to Eating a Hot Fudge Sundae
Materials:
1. Parfait glass
2. Vanilla ice cream
3. Generous quantity of hot fudge
4. Aerosol spray can of whipped cream
5. Maraschino cherry (optional)
6. Spoon (long-handed iced tea variety, if available)
Fill Item 1 with Items 2-5, in listed order. Insert 6.
Next:
Choose a method of critical approach to the resultant confectionery. Possibilities include:
The Marxist approach: Consider the hot fudge sundae not as a timeless, fixed creation, subject to universal standard of evaluation, but rather as a product of a specific cultural and historical context. Bear in mind that, this being the case, the sundae is not a timeless, fixed creation, and it will melt if you think about it too long.
The Feminist/Black/Post-Colonial approach: Discuss the marginalization of Other postprandial sweets (such as bananas akara, cassava cake, and black sticky-rice cake in coconut juice) by the hot fudge sundae, a typical product of Euro-American patriarchy. You may wish to consider the phallocratic hegemony implicit in the upgrading of hot fudge sundae to banana split. How does the encoded ideology of the vanilla ice cream support the dominant class? You may make an argument for the fudge as an encrypted form of the struggling voice of the oppressed ideological subject.
The Freudian approach: Juxtapose the conflicting impulses to fill one’s mouth with sweets (the oral stage) against the indubitable resemblance melting ice cream mingled with swiftly cooling fudge bears to fecal smears (the toileting or anal stage = rage against the Mother.) Please give archetypal examples, perhaps making specific reference to The Golden Bough.
The New Historicist approach: Analyze the cultural-ideological layers of the sundae (3-4 parts, depending on whether or not you opted for the cherry.)
The New Critical approach: Avoid falling into unsustainable speculations as to whether the creator of the sundae actually intended to create a sundae, rather than, say, a crème brulee (the “intentional fallacy”) and subjective effusions about the sundae’s beauty and toothsomeness (the “affective fallacy”.) Beware of “the heresy of paraphrase” when contemplating the calorie content of the sundae; instead, do a “close reading” of the state-mandated “Nutrition Information Chart.” Avoid such ambiguous (and ultimately meaningless) phrases as “energy-boosting” and substitute robust Anglo-Saxon words, such as “fattening.”
The Structuralist/Semiotic approach: Discourse on the meaning of the sundae as produced by its structure. What, for example, might it signify if the cherry were at the bottom of the glass? You may wish to consider the ice cream as the center and the hot fudge and whipped cream circumscribing it as periphery. Or not.
The Deconstructionist approach: Take everything out of the parfait glass and stuff it back in its original container (no whining about how hard it is to get the whipped cream back into the can, please.) Avoid slippage, taking care to achieve full erasure and leave no trace (not to be confused with the environmentalist approach.)
The Reader-Response approach: Refrain from eating the hot fudge sundae. The experience of the sundae is the event; the sundae is what occurs in the diner’s head, not in the interaction between mouth and spoon.
Finally, there is this Obsolete (yet oddly satisfying) method of approach: Linger happily over the sundae, savoring its many delights; turn every morsel many times upon the tongue. Digest it well. Meditate upon it. Produce a pithy and carefully formulated opinion as to its successes, its failures, and its overall structure. When you are done - go have another one.
Monday, March 10, 2014
I Purchase a Country Estate and Lose My Mind
Gentle Reader! When I reflect upon the last few days, all I can think of are the words of our former Vice President Dan Quayle, who somehow mangled that old public service announcement that "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" into:
"What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is."
How true, indeed. (And who, for that matter, would know this better than Mr. Quayle?)
But to return to the loss of my own mind, which occurred directly upon the signing of the sales contract that rendered my husband and myself owners of a 4600 square foot house in Rockland County, NY. I could feel it leaving my body - my mind, that it - and a most peculiar sensation it was, too. You, Gentle Reader, are probably thinking that the mere fact that I was signing a contract on a house in Rockland County, rather than on a terribly smart little condo in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Manhattan that hasn't been gentrified out of the price range of anybody whose last name is not Jagger, is prima facie evidence that said mind had already gone kiting off into the stratosphere. Unhappily, I am compelled to report that there don't seem to be any delightful under-priced residential gems to be snapped up by the savvy would-be Manhattan homeowner at the moment, and that by expanding our parameters northward on the other side of the river (what river? the river - the Hudson River!) we instead got something along the lines of Mr. Rochester's Thornfield Hall estate for two-thirds of the price we were contemplating paying for a rather minuscule two-bedroom co-op at the northernmost tip of Manhattan.
So - we have house. And quite a lot of it, too.
The house itself is an interesting proposition. Its former owner (and sole resident, until now) built it to suit herself, and it is best described as a Tudonial - meaning that it is built like a center hall Colonial, but with a Tudor facade and four huge mullioned bay windows. I happen to like mutts, so the fact that our house is one is a plus, as far as I'm concerned. In my family, we are all mutts, including the dog, so it is perfectly appropriate for us to be living in a mutt of a house, especially since this is a very big mutt of a house.
The former owner had soaring ambitions, but a limited bank account, and so a full quarter of the house was never actually finished. There are two floors - ground level, and second floor; no basement; and an attic (I looked, but could find no trace of Bertha Rochester.) The owner lived on the second floor in somewhat dusty and dilapidated early-eighties grandeur. There are enough floor-to-ceiling mirrors to furnish Versailles, or at least a large bordello, as well as a rather distressing pair of "arty" Lucite nudes, coyly looking away from one another on either side of the humongous mirror that forms the entire rear wall of the master bedroom. Her Ladyship was a chain smoker who apparently liked to enjoy a post-coital cigarette, so the nude statuettes have turned yellow.
Speaking of yellow - when we went over to the house after the closing to meet with the contractor who will be doing the much-needed renovations, I opened the magnificent walk-in closet in the master bedroom (the closet is quite literally the size of my college dorm room) and was confronted with the saffron splendor of Her Ladyship's upper plate, as well a few assorted supplementary artificial teeth with wires sticking out of them, which had been left behind on the closet shelf in half a Chinese soup container of water. It was a grisly sight, and put me unpleasantly in mind of the character known as the Tooth Fairy in the first of the Hannibal Lecter books, Red Dragon. You know - the one who ate up a William Blake etching.
But getting back to the house itself - the second floor could, in theory, be inhabited right now, assuming one is not overly fussy about the fact that nothing has been done to the place since it was built more than thirty years ago, and also assuming one is willing to live with thirty year old wall-to-wall smoke-infested carpeting and nicotine-stained wallpaper. The rooms are large, and there is definitely grandeur - decayed grandeur, to be sure, but grandeur, nonetheless. Naturally, I did not fail to point out to my husband that we are leaving an elevator building to move into what is, essentially, a walk-up - and nobody here is getting any younger.
Now, the first floor, unlike Caesar's Gaul, is divided into only two parts. One side of the house is the "daughter" side, for the house is what is quaintly called a "mother-daughter," meaning that it is suitable for one of those dysfunctional families where Mother gets to live upstairs in the attractive, sprawling apartment that has a big kitchen and a fireplace, and Daughter, who presumably has no job, no prospects, no boyfriend, and no hope for any future of any kind, except helping Mother carry the groceries and the firewood upstairs to the nice quarters, gets the junior suite of rooms downstairs (the ones under the deck that don't get much sun) and what is known as a kitchenette, meaning that the zoning laws decree you can have anything down there except a stove with an actual oven, because that would make it an apartment and then your taxes would be higher.
This, of course, is where we're going to put my 18 year old son. He hasn't figured out yet that he's not getting the best deal out of this move. So don't you go and tell him. He's perfectly happy that he'll have a fridge, a microwave, and unlimited frozen dinners from Trader Joe's, not to mention a big empty wall to hang the TV on and a nine-foot sofa Her Ladyship left behind, so he can have all his friends over to play XBox.
On the other side of the house is a huge, unfinished space with the insulation showing amid the rafters and wall studs and uprights. That's right - no sheetrock. No nothing. Her Ladyship ran out of cash, shrugged her shoulders, and decided that she already had plenty of house and didn't need to do anything about the fact that half of her first floor resembled a barn that no self-respecting cow would consent to spend the winter in.
In short, what we have here is Room For Improvement.
Now there are two kinds of people who buy homes in this world. There are people who like it when everything has already been done for them, and all they have to do is show up, move in, and start enjoying themselves. They are probably the smart ones - but I, unfortunately, am not one of them. Show me a reclamation project, and my eyes brighten, my ears perk up, and I start pulling on my heavy-duty gloves, the ones with the leather palms. There must be a DSM-V category for people who simply can't resist a fixer-upper; I'm sure it's a pathological condition. We're the ones who like those Charlie Brown Christmas trees. We are that sub-species of perfectionists who simply loathe perfection, because if it's already perfect, then there's nothing left for us to do, which we find boring.
So, like a latter-day Scarlett O'Hara, I have spent much of the weekend jerking the curtain rods out from above the mullioned bay windows (Her Ladyship was kind enough to leave the custom-made crimson velvet poitiers, reluctantly acknowledging that she probably wouldn't be moving into a Florida condo that boasted four bay windows measuring nine feet apiece across) but then unlike Ms. O'Hara not turning them into a ballgown, but rather stuffing them (all the while gagging convulsively on the dust) into plastic bags, to be taken to the cleaner's for the first time in their lives. I have discarded whimsical sepia-tinted framed pictures of bearded hillbillies scrubbing themselves in tin washtubs that once adorned the walls of the powder room off the kitchen, and have picked up the endless trail of used Q-tips and assorted headache, thyroid, and sleeping pills that were freely scattered about the master bedroom - not to mention emptying out half a bottle of Smirnoff that didn't have its screw-top anymore. I have sorted through the contents of the kitchen cabinets (why do so many people have so many never-used coffee mugs that say WORLD'S GREATEST GRANDMA ?) and have carted endless bags and boxes of Norman Rockwell crockery, electric knives and frying pans, men's suits from the 1980's, and decorative plates enameled with Mary Magdalens - all of whom seem to be wringing far more than their allotted share of ten fingers apiece - to the thrift shop.
I read once that John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, once said to a dog that had bitten him, "I wish you were married and living in the country," and I have to say, I can see what he meant.
I have quietly lost my mind, and it probably won't be coming back for quite a while. If you should happen to see it, do tell it I said, "Please come home - nothing is forgiven."
"What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is."
How true, indeed. (And who, for that matter, would know this better than Mr. Quayle?)
But to return to the loss of my own mind, which occurred directly upon the signing of the sales contract that rendered my husband and myself owners of a 4600 square foot house in Rockland County, NY. I could feel it leaving my body - my mind, that it - and a most peculiar sensation it was, too. You, Gentle Reader, are probably thinking that the mere fact that I was signing a contract on a house in Rockland County, rather than on a terribly smart little condo in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Manhattan that hasn't been gentrified out of the price range of anybody whose last name is not Jagger, is prima facie evidence that said mind had already gone kiting off into the stratosphere. Unhappily, I am compelled to report that there don't seem to be any delightful under-priced residential gems to be snapped up by the savvy would-be Manhattan homeowner at the moment, and that by expanding our parameters northward on the other side of the river (what river? the river - the Hudson River!) we instead got something along the lines of Mr. Rochester's Thornfield Hall estate for two-thirds of the price we were contemplating paying for a rather minuscule two-bedroom co-op at the northernmost tip of Manhattan.
So - we have house. And quite a lot of it, too.
The house itself is an interesting proposition. Its former owner (and sole resident, until now) built it to suit herself, and it is best described as a Tudonial - meaning that it is built like a center hall Colonial, but with a Tudor facade and four huge mullioned bay windows. I happen to like mutts, so the fact that our house is one is a plus, as far as I'm concerned. In my family, we are all mutts, including the dog, so it is perfectly appropriate for us to be living in a mutt of a house, especially since this is a very big mutt of a house.
The former owner had soaring ambitions, but a limited bank account, and so a full quarter of the house was never actually finished. There are two floors - ground level, and second floor; no basement; and an attic (I looked, but could find no trace of Bertha Rochester.) The owner lived on the second floor in somewhat dusty and dilapidated early-eighties grandeur. There are enough floor-to-ceiling mirrors to furnish Versailles, or at least a large bordello, as well as a rather distressing pair of "arty" Lucite nudes, coyly looking away from one another on either side of the humongous mirror that forms the entire rear wall of the master bedroom. Her Ladyship was a chain smoker who apparently liked to enjoy a post-coital cigarette, so the nude statuettes have turned yellow.
Speaking of yellow - when we went over to the house after the closing to meet with the contractor who will be doing the much-needed renovations, I opened the magnificent walk-in closet in the master bedroom (the closet is quite literally the size of my college dorm room) and was confronted with the saffron splendor of Her Ladyship's upper plate, as well a few assorted supplementary artificial teeth with wires sticking out of them, which had been left behind on the closet shelf in half a Chinese soup container of water. It was a grisly sight, and put me unpleasantly in mind of the character known as the Tooth Fairy in the first of the Hannibal Lecter books, Red Dragon. You know - the one who ate up a William Blake etching.
But getting back to the house itself - the second floor could, in theory, be inhabited right now, assuming one is not overly fussy about the fact that nothing has been done to the place since it was built more than thirty years ago, and also assuming one is willing to live with thirty year old wall-to-wall smoke-infested carpeting and nicotine-stained wallpaper. The rooms are large, and there is definitely grandeur - decayed grandeur, to be sure, but grandeur, nonetheless. Naturally, I did not fail to point out to my husband that we are leaving an elevator building to move into what is, essentially, a walk-up - and nobody here is getting any younger.
Now, the first floor, unlike Caesar's Gaul, is divided into only two parts. One side of the house is the "daughter" side, for the house is what is quaintly called a "mother-daughter," meaning that it is suitable for one of those dysfunctional families where Mother gets to live upstairs in the attractive, sprawling apartment that has a big kitchen and a fireplace, and Daughter, who presumably has no job, no prospects, no boyfriend, and no hope for any future of any kind, except helping Mother carry the groceries and the firewood upstairs to the nice quarters, gets the junior suite of rooms downstairs (the ones under the deck that don't get much sun) and what is known as a kitchenette, meaning that the zoning laws decree you can have anything down there except a stove with an actual oven, because that would make it an apartment and then your taxes would be higher.
This, of course, is where we're going to put my 18 year old son. He hasn't figured out yet that he's not getting the best deal out of this move. So don't you go and tell him. He's perfectly happy that he'll have a fridge, a microwave, and unlimited frozen dinners from Trader Joe's, not to mention a big empty wall to hang the TV on and a nine-foot sofa Her Ladyship left behind, so he can have all his friends over to play XBox.
On the other side of the house is a huge, unfinished space with the insulation showing amid the rafters and wall studs and uprights. That's right - no sheetrock. No nothing. Her Ladyship ran out of cash, shrugged her shoulders, and decided that she already had plenty of house and didn't need to do anything about the fact that half of her first floor resembled a barn that no self-respecting cow would consent to spend the winter in.
In short, what we have here is Room For Improvement.
Now there are two kinds of people who buy homes in this world. There are people who like it when everything has already been done for them, and all they have to do is show up, move in, and start enjoying themselves. They are probably the smart ones - but I, unfortunately, am not one of them. Show me a reclamation project, and my eyes brighten, my ears perk up, and I start pulling on my heavy-duty gloves, the ones with the leather palms. There must be a DSM-V category for people who simply can't resist a fixer-upper; I'm sure it's a pathological condition. We're the ones who like those Charlie Brown Christmas trees. We are that sub-species of perfectionists who simply loathe perfection, because if it's already perfect, then there's nothing left for us to do, which we find boring.
So, like a latter-day Scarlett O'Hara, I have spent much of the weekend jerking the curtain rods out from above the mullioned bay windows (Her Ladyship was kind enough to leave the custom-made crimson velvet poitiers, reluctantly acknowledging that she probably wouldn't be moving into a Florida condo that boasted four bay windows measuring nine feet apiece across) but then unlike Ms. O'Hara not turning them into a ballgown, but rather stuffing them (all the while gagging convulsively on the dust) into plastic bags, to be taken to the cleaner's for the first time in their lives. I have discarded whimsical sepia-tinted framed pictures of bearded hillbillies scrubbing themselves in tin washtubs that once adorned the walls of the powder room off the kitchen, and have picked up the endless trail of used Q-tips and assorted headache, thyroid, and sleeping pills that were freely scattered about the master bedroom - not to mention emptying out half a bottle of Smirnoff that didn't have its screw-top anymore. I have sorted through the contents of the kitchen cabinets (why do so many people have so many never-used coffee mugs that say WORLD'S GREATEST GRANDMA ?) and have carted endless bags and boxes of Norman Rockwell crockery, electric knives and frying pans, men's suits from the 1980's, and decorative plates enameled with Mary Magdalens - all of whom seem to be wringing far more than their allotted share of ten fingers apiece - to the thrift shop.
I read once that John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, once said to a dog that had bitten him, "I wish you were married and living in the country," and I have to say, I can see what he meant.
I have quietly lost my mind, and it probably won't be coming back for quite a while. If you should happen to see it, do tell it I said, "Please come home - nothing is forgiven."
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Wimpily Wicked Wednesday
I'm not sure I can dignify today's column with the word wicked. Wicked has been a favorite word of mine ever since I first heard it coupled with witch at the age of - what? - two, or so? To me, it has always incorporated an element of glee in the carrying out of badness - naturally, a very appealing thing to a small child, even a small child who is now on the AARP mailing list. Wicked queens and witches do not lie glumly on the therapist's couch, wondering what went wrong in childhood to made them want to act in this antisocial way. The wicked simply get off on being bad. They don't suffer fools gladly, but are glad to see fools suffer, especially if they've had a hand in causing the suffering.
There is a certain élan that accompanies wickedness - that air of derring-do that goes along with the curling of the stage mustache and the sneer of, "Now, me proud beauty, you're in me pow-errrrr!" - that provokes a gasp of admiring awe in the spectator. The wicked are both imaginative and creative in their invention of ways to plague humanity, and are entirely unabashed and unapologetic as they go about their evildoing. There is a sense of let-down whenever they're offstage. Think about Milady DeWinter in The Three Musketeers, pretending to be the demurest of Puritans, the better to seduce her religious fanatic of a jailer and set him to murdering the Duke of Buckingham on her behalf, or of Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop, who terrorizes his meek little wife by devouring hard-boiled eggs with the shells still on and then solemnly threatening that he will bite her with as little compunction as he would a hard-boiled egg if she ever asks her friends to tea again, and you'll get the idea.
This morning I was rudely awakened when my dog, whose name is Milady (named, of course, for the aforementioned Dumas villainess - like her namesake, she looks perfectly angelic while carrying out the foulest of deeds and hides the evidence with no compunction whatsoever) but who, I am embarrassed to confess, rejoices in the nickname of "Mrs. Wumples" - Mrs. Wumples, then, decided that 6:45 a.m. was long enough for anyone to lie abed, particularly since her established breakfast hour is 7:00 a.m., and so she jumped on my stomach as hard as she could, after which she sat back and loomed over my face, anxious that I should appreciate her cleverness. My response was to sit up with the same "galvanized corpse" lurch that made Uma Thurman's turn as Mia in Pulp Fiction so memorable, sputtering, "Oof! Miss Wickedness!" At which Mrs. Wumples looked terribly pleased with herself and leapt off the bed, making a beeline for the door to suggest that I should now get up and go into the kitchen to open a can of dog food. I am afraid that I obeyed her; the wicked frequently get their way, because their victims are often too cowed and bewildered by the sheer audacity of the wickedness to stoutly resist and perhaps discourage them from trying that shit again .
So having been victimized by a 37 lb. border collie/corgi mutt who, in the fine tradition of wicked adventuresses everywhere, finagled her way from her humble origins (in this case, the projects of the South Bronx) to a cushy lifestyle of ease and plenty (a doorman building on West End Avenue, with a side of Adirondack vacations every summer - not too shabby!), I feel I have been temporarily worsted in the wickedness department and am not at my own wicked best. I shall therefore apologize for being not being as bad as I'd like to be today, while nevertheless being far from as good as I could be, and I hope you will put the blame squarely where it belongs and accept my excuses, namely: The dog ate my Wicked Wednesday homework.
There is a certain élan that accompanies wickedness - that air of derring-do that goes along with the curling of the stage mustache and the sneer of, "Now, me proud beauty, you're in me pow-errrrr!" - that provokes a gasp of admiring awe in the spectator. The wicked are both imaginative and creative in their invention of ways to plague humanity, and are entirely unabashed and unapologetic as they go about their evildoing. There is a sense of let-down whenever they're offstage. Think about Milady DeWinter in The Three Musketeers, pretending to be the demurest of Puritans, the better to seduce her religious fanatic of a jailer and set him to murdering the Duke of Buckingham on her behalf, or of Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop, who terrorizes his meek little wife by devouring hard-boiled eggs with the shells still on and then solemnly threatening that he will bite her with as little compunction as he would a hard-boiled egg if she ever asks her friends to tea again, and you'll get the idea.
This morning I was rudely awakened when my dog, whose name is Milady (named, of course, for the aforementioned Dumas villainess - like her namesake, she looks perfectly angelic while carrying out the foulest of deeds and hides the evidence with no compunction whatsoever) but who, I am embarrassed to confess, rejoices in the nickname of "Mrs. Wumples" - Mrs. Wumples, then, decided that 6:45 a.m. was long enough for anyone to lie abed, particularly since her established breakfast hour is 7:00 a.m., and so she jumped on my stomach as hard as she could, after which she sat back and loomed over my face, anxious that I should appreciate her cleverness. My response was to sit up with the same "galvanized corpse" lurch that made Uma Thurman's turn as Mia in Pulp Fiction so memorable, sputtering, "Oof! Miss Wickedness!" At which Mrs. Wumples looked terribly pleased with herself and leapt off the bed, making a beeline for the door to suggest that I should now get up and go into the kitchen to open a can of dog food. I am afraid that I obeyed her; the wicked frequently get their way, because their victims are often too cowed and bewildered by the sheer audacity of the wickedness to stoutly resist and perhaps discourage them from trying that shit again .
So having been victimized by a 37 lb. border collie/corgi mutt who, in the fine tradition of wicked adventuresses everywhere, finagled her way from her humble origins (in this case, the projects of the South Bronx) to a cushy lifestyle of ease and plenty (a doorman building on West End Avenue, with a side of Adirondack vacations every summer - not too shabby!), I feel I have been temporarily worsted in the wickedness department and am not at my own wicked best. I shall therefore apologize for being not being as bad as I'd like to be today, while nevertheless being far from as good as I could be, and I hope you will put the blame squarely where it belongs and accept my excuses, namely: The dog ate my Wicked Wednesday homework.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Lunching at the Library
Today I had lunch at Madison & Vine, the charming restaurant that forms the corner of 41st Street & Madison Ave. and shares building space with the Library Hotel. My dining companions were Stacey Harwood, who is the managing editor of "The Best American Poetry," Nancy Franson of TweetSpeak Poetry/Every Day Poems, and Adele Gutman Milne and Ivana Bolf of the Library Hotel. The purpose of our lunch was to discuss ideas for the Library Hotel's upcoming Haiku Challenge, which will be held in April in honor of National Poetry Month. Here is a general outline of how to write haiku from last year's competition:
A haiku written in English is usually composed of three lines. The first line has 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables, and the third line has 5 syllables. A traditional Japanese haiku usually has some reference to nature & man's place in nature. There is a kigo, or "season word" that gives the reader a sense of what time of year it is in the poem. Sometimes there is contrast between two images or ideas, and in the Japanese form, there is a kiregi, or "cutting-word" that separates the two. When composing a haiku in English, one can separate two juxtaposed images with punctuation. A haiku conveys the poet's message in a few simple, carefully chosen words. It is the most economical of all poetry forms - a perfect fit for the Tweet Generation!
The composer of the winning entry will be awarded a prize: Last year's prize was a two night stay at the Library Hotel. Having spent a night there myself last month, I can say with authority that if you are a book person, this hotel is one of the world's sweet spots. It is a boutique hotel themed on the Dewey Decimal System (remember when the library had card catalogs in those little wooden drawers, and the books had pockets inside the rear board with the Due Date cards in them?) Each room is named after a category in the Dewey Decimal System, and stocked accordingly with books. I was in the Mystery Room, a luxurious corner aerie from which I could look straight west to the Main Branch of the New York Public Library.
They say that God is in the details. If this is so, there is a touch of the divine everywhere around when you stay at The Library. The books are well-chosen; the sheets are of the finest, softest, snowiest cotton; there is an embroidered bolster on the bed informing you that Book Lovers Never Go to Bed Alone. Forgot to bring your bathrobe? There are two of them hanging in the closet, the same immaculate white as the sheets, but woven of a thick, velvety terrycloth. Slippers? Under the vanity in the magnificently appointed
bathroom. I had an unholy desire to swipe the "Do Not Disturb" sign off the doorknob, for it says:
Shhh! Be Quiet and Let Me Read!
and I could really use one of those around my house. But I was too disarmed by the little chocolates wrapped in gold paper that bore such literary mottoes as:
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need - Cicero
and
When I step into a library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it - Sevigne
to indulge in such thoughts for more than a moment. It wouldn't be right to repay such kindness with sign pilferage...although I really wish the hotel would open up a gift shop, and then I could buy one.
And this brings me to the other thing about this hotel - which is that everyone you meet here, from the concierge, to the person who makes up the room with such impeccable daintiness, to the charming lady who beams at you as she helps you learn use the very fancy espresso machine in the second floor breakfast lounge that is available free to guests, and even to the other guests at the hotel, is just so nice. Book people are just nice people. I've always known this to be true. People who love books love quiet. They love peace. They love unobtrusive luxury and a complete absence of bling. They love to see that considerable thought, planning and skill has gone into producing the things they enjoy.
You couldn't ask for a better location, if you are a bibliophile. The night we stayed happened to be a Friday, which is Free Admission night at the Morgan Library, a mere four blocks south at Madison and 37th. Which meant that I could revel in the exhibition of the Edgar Allan Poe manuscripts, shivering at the sight of the original of The Bells in Poe's own hand - with scorch marks around the edges of the paper that showed with mute eloquence that this treasure had once nearly perished. An added bonus was the codices of Leonardo Da Vinci on the second floor, with his sketches for the Virgin of the Rocks. Afterward, we walked downtown a few blocks to dine at one of the Indian restaurants that have given Murray Hill its nickname of "Curry Hill." Of course, we had already been treated to a delightful snack by the hotel - wine, cheese, crackers, and fruit are available in the second floor lounge at five - but we'd walked it off. Well - we'd walked most of it off.
The next morning we had breakfast in the second floor lounge. I would have liked to have spent more time on the rooftop - there is an adorable Poetry Terrace - but let's not forget, this was in February. So we ate indoors instead, and enjoyed more fresh fruit, eggs, and of course the superb coffee, and tried to resist the delicious pastries. I finally caved in and asked the lady at the next table, who had thrown caution to the winds and was enthusiastically consuming an almond croissant, "Is that as good as it looks?" She nodded vehemently and, as soon as she could speak, proclaimed it "Delicious."
Her British accent led us to ask her and her husband what had brought them to the States, and we had a very pleasant conversation as we all ate our breakfasts and spoke of this and that. We parted with a cordial invitation on their part to look them up if we were ever in Brighton. See what I mean? Book people are nice people.
After checking out, we walked across 41st Street to Fifth Avenue, and I was astonished (and slightly chagrined) to learn that I have lived in New York City for 34 years and had never known that the sidewalk of 41st St. between Madison and Fifth is inlaid with bronze plaques that have quotations from various authors - that it is, in short, a Book Walk. Who knew? (Probably everybody but the lifelong Upper West Sider.)
We finished our bookish revelry with a trip up the stairs of the NYPL, where there was (and still is) a gorgeous exhibition of children's books. Exhibitions at the NYPL are free, and they are invariably superb. Among other gems, I saw an original Bemelmans drawing for Madeline and the Bad Hat, all of the stuffed animals that had once been the bedtime companions of Christopher Robin Milne (including Pooh, Piglet and Tigger), P.L. Travers' parrot-headed umbrella that she'd bestowed upon her creation, Mary Poppins, a photograph of Alice Pleasance Liddell taken by Charles Lutwidge Dodson, who, under the pen name of Lewis Carroll, had immortalized her as Alice in Wonderland, and a full-size re-creation of the Great Green Room from Goodnight, Moon, where quite a few selfies were being taken. Had we but world enough and time, I could have gone upstairs to see the A Raisin in the Sun exhibition as well.
The children's book exhibition was so marvelous that, after today's luncheon, when inquiry revealed that Nancy Franson (Tweetspeak Poetry) had not seen it yet, we two strolled over from The Library to The Library (I hope you are following me) and I got to see it all over again. There are definitely benefits to being a vagabond poet.
A haiku written in English is usually composed of three lines. The first line has 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables, and the third line has 5 syllables. A traditional Japanese haiku usually has some reference to nature & man's place in nature. There is a kigo, or "season word" that gives the reader a sense of what time of year it is in the poem. Sometimes there is contrast between two images or ideas, and in the Japanese form, there is a kiregi, or "cutting-word" that separates the two. When composing a haiku in English, one can separate two juxtaposed images with punctuation. A haiku conveys the poet's message in a few simple, carefully chosen words. It is the most economical of all poetry forms - a perfect fit for the Tweet Generation!
The composer of the winning entry will be awarded a prize: Last year's prize was a two night stay at the Library Hotel. Having spent a night there myself last month, I can say with authority that if you are a book person, this hotel is one of the world's sweet spots. It is a boutique hotel themed on the Dewey Decimal System (remember when the library had card catalogs in those little wooden drawers, and the books had pockets inside the rear board with the Due Date cards in them?) Each room is named after a category in the Dewey Decimal System, and stocked accordingly with books. I was in the Mystery Room, a luxurious corner aerie from which I could look straight west to the Main Branch of the New York Public Library.
They say that God is in the details. If this is so, there is a touch of the divine everywhere around when you stay at The Library. The books are well-chosen; the sheets are of the finest, softest, snowiest cotton; there is an embroidered bolster on the bed informing you that Book Lovers Never Go to Bed Alone. Forgot to bring your bathrobe? There are two of them hanging in the closet, the same immaculate white as the sheets, but woven of a thick, velvety terrycloth. Slippers? Under the vanity in the magnificently appointed
bathroom. I had an unholy desire to swipe the "Do Not Disturb" sign off the doorknob, for it says:
Shhh! Be Quiet and Let Me Read!
and I could really use one of those around my house. But I was too disarmed by the little chocolates wrapped in gold paper that bore such literary mottoes as:
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need - Cicero
and
When I step into a library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it - Sevigne
to indulge in such thoughts for more than a moment. It wouldn't be right to repay such kindness with sign pilferage...although I really wish the hotel would open up a gift shop, and then I could buy one.
And this brings me to the other thing about this hotel - which is that everyone you meet here, from the concierge, to the person who makes up the room with such impeccable daintiness, to the charming lady who beams at you as she helps you learn use the very fancy espresso machine in the second floor breakfast lounge that is available free to guests, and even to the other guests at the hotel, is just so nice. Book people are just nice people. I've always known this to be true. People who love books love quiet. They love peace. They love unobtrusive luxury and a complete absence of bling. They love to see that considerable thought, planning and skill has gone into producing the things they enjoy.
You couldn't ask for a better location, if you are a bibliophile. The night we stayed happened to be a Friday, which is Free Admission night at the Morgan Library, a mere four blocks south at Madison and 37th. Which meant that I could revel in the exhibition of the Edgar Allan Poe manuscripts, shivering at the sight of the original of The Bells in Poe's own hand - with scorch marks around the edges of the paper that showed with mute eloquence that this treasure had once nearly perished. An added bonus was the codices of Leonardo Da Vinci on the second floor, with his sketches for the Virgin of the Rocks. Afterward, we walked downtown a few blocks to dine at one of the Indian restaurants that have given Murray Hill its nickname of "Curry Hill." Of course, we had already been treated to a delightful snack by the hotel - wine, cheese, crackers, and fruit are available in the second floor lounge at five - but we'd walked it off. Well - we'd walked most of it off.
The next morning we had breakfast in the second floor lounge. I would have liked to have spent more time on the rooftop - there is an adorable Poetry Terrace - but let's not forget, this was in February. So we ate indoors instead, and enjoyed more fresh fruit, eggs, and of course the superb coffee, and tried to resist the delicious pastries. I finally caved in and asked the lady at the next table, who had thrown caution to the winds and was enthusiastically consuming an almond croissant, "Is that as good as it looks?" She nodded vehemently and, as soon as she could speak, proclaimed it "Delicious."
Her British accent led us to ask her and her husband what had brought them to the States, and we had a very pleasant conversation as we all ate our breakfasts and spoke of this and that. We parted with a cordial invitation on their part to look them up if we were ever in Brighton. See what I mean? Book people are nice people.
After checking out, we walked across 41st Street to Fifth Avenue, and I was astonished (and slightly chagrined) to learn that I have lived in New York City for 34 years and had never known that the sidewalk of 41st St. between Madison and Fifth is inlaid with bronze plaques that have quotations from various authors - that it is, in short, a Book Walk. Who knew? (Probably everybody but the lifelong Upper West Sider.)
We finished our bookish revelry with a trip up the stairs of the NYPL, where there was (and still is) a gorgeous exhibition of children's books. Exhibitions at the NYPL are free, and they are invariably superb. Among other gems, I saw an original Bemelmans drawing for Madeline and the Bad Hat, all of the stuffed animals that had once been the bedtime companions of Christopher Robin Milne (including Pooh, Piglet and Tigger), P.L. Travers' parrot-headed umbrella that she'd bestowed upon her creation, Mary Poppins, a photograph of Alice Pleasance Liddell taken by Charles Lutwidge Dodson, who, under the pen name of Lewis Carroll, had immortalized her as Alice in Wonderland, and a full-size re-creation of the Great Green Room from Goodnight, Moon, where quite a few selfies were being taken. Had we but world enough and time, I could have gone upstairs to see the A Raisin in the Sun exhibition as well.
The children's book exhibition was so marvelous that, after today's luncheon, when inquiry revealed that Nancy Franson (Tweetspeak Poetry) had not seen it yet, we two strolled over from The Library to The Library (I hope you are following me) and I got to see it all over again. There are definitely benefits to being a vagabond poet.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
The Platonic Playgoers Go A-Pleasuring
Last night I had the pleasure of a sitting in the nosebleed seats at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater for a production of Ibsen's A Doll's House that had received unmitigated rave reviews that morning. There is nothing quite as gratifying as scoring cheap tickets on a hunch while the play is still in previews, and then finding you're at a hit on the very day the reviews come out. I have been enjoying discounted tickets, courtesy of the Theater Development Fund website, ever since I became eligible for TDF membership - it must be around fifteen years by now. Since I never pay more than forty dollars for a ticket, I can get adventurous about what I'm willing to toss the dice to see. On very rare occasions, if the play is an absolute stinker, I walk out. Most of the time, though, I'm quite happy, or, at the very worst, leave at the end of the evening thinking, "Meh. Well, that was forgettable."
Last night's performance lived up to the hosannas I'd read in that same morning's papers. While it is nice to pay for cheap seats and then, through the mysterious magic that is TDF, suddenly find yourself in Row A of the Orchestra (and this has happened to me more often than you might think possible), I had been warned in advance by the website that I was going to be sitting way the hell up and that there were "seventy stairs to the mezzanine of this historic theater and no elevator access," so I was prepared.
In a way, our altitude was an enhancement. The "doll's house" quality of the revolving set gained a visual piquancy from our being seated that high up. I was reminded, gazing down, of the dollhouse I'd had as a child, of creating and directing the lives of the small stand-ins for who I thought I was going to be when I attained the coveted status of grown-up, and the twinkling charm of a peek from above at an unreal reality. So must the gods upon Olympus see our lives.
My companion for the evening was my most tried-and-true, reliable Theater Buddy, whom I shall call J.W. We are both married, but to other people; my husband and his wife shudder delicately at the thought of subjecting themselves to an evening of the kind of geeky stage delights that cause J.W. and me to bounce up and down in our seats, emitting stifled little squeaks of "This is great!" and happily poking one another with our elbows. Basically, J.W. and I are friends-with-benefits - the benefits, in our case, being that we are the only individuals in one another's immediate circle who consider an evening spent listening to Fiona Shaw reciting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a dramatic monologue to be a fantastic way to spend a Friday night. (Yes...we were at BAM for that one, too. In the second row of the orchestra. Want to see cell phone pictures of Harry Potter's Aunt Petunia, running around the stage pretending to shoot at an albatross?)
If you are a theatergoer who relishes the arcane and obscure, it is essential to cultivate a running buddy of similar tastes. Yes - you can go to the theater alone, and I have done it. And I have enjoyed it. But it is exponentially more fun if you're with a friend who has more or less the same interests and a roughly similar background as a reader. This is not to say that J.W. and I are carbon copies in our tastes. Far from it. While we frequently agree on literary era, we diverge widely on individual authors within that era when it comes to personal preference. (I am still reeling from certain critical remarks he has made about, among others, James Joyce, John Kennedy Toole, and sundry others who constitute my own Lares et Penates. I, in my turn, have gotten downright sniffy about what I consider the dubious pleasures of Anthony Trollope C.P. Snow, and George MacDonad Fraser.) But we share enough aesthetic common ground to make for pleasurable theater-going companionship, and of course, we also share the most important attribute of all, in our case - a strong sense of the absurd and an almost childish enthusiasm for ribaldry.
I have sat next to J.W. on some of the greatest theater nights of my life, and also at some of the worst. On one night that will shine in my memory forever as one of the Highlights of My Theater-Going Life, the worst was also the greatest. The Mint Theater, a tiny repertoire company that specializes in resurrecting obscure plays that have been unperformed for decades, was putting on The Power of Darkness, a deservedly forgotten masterpiece by Leo Tolstoy (better known as the author of War and Peace, and a jolly good thing it was for him that he wrote it, too.) Whom else to call upon but the faithful companion of my Theater Geek expeditions, the intrepid J.W.? Our spouses (whom we always invite, for form's sake - although, to be honest, we hope they won't come, because most of the time they spend the entire time shifting restlessly in their seats and blowing their bangs out of their eyes with heavy sighs, as they glance at the luminescent dials on their watches to see how much longer they are going to have to suffer) had, true to form, hastily invented other things they simply had to do that evening, but wished us joy. And indeed - joy - O, boy-oh-boy, what joy! - was ours.
To call The Power of Darkness melodrama is like describing Charlie Sheen as "someone who might possibly have an anger management problem." The sheer magnitude of the understatement is hardly possible to comprehend, unless one has observed the subject of the statement in all his beet-faced, spittle-flecked, convulsing glory. Let's put it this way - The Power of Darkness is like the Jerry Springer Show, except in Russian peasant blouses.
We knew we were onto a good thing right away in Act I, when the unhappily-married second wife of a prosperous aging (and ailing) farmer enlists her lover, the man-of-all-work on the farm, to help her bump off hubby, so that they can indulge their lust in the master bedroom instead of in the haystack. By Act II, things get even better. The former hired man, now master both of the farm and of his homicidal honey (this is the nineteenth century, remember, and the property goes to the man who marries the property-owning woman) has abandoned all pretense at being a Nice Guy (his bride and partner-in-crime is strangely surprised that a man who would commit a murder might exhibit moral and behavioral shortcomings in other areas as well.)
Having achieved all his nefarious aims, the former hired man now swaggers around all day long with a bottle in each hand, backhanding his former sweetheart if she has the bad judgement to object to his drunkenness, or to his sexual shenanigans with her teenage stepdaughter (and now his, as well) - who is, of course, also the daughter of the man they murdered. This Slavic Lolita takes a zestful pleasure in sticking it to her dear departed Daddy's second wife by flaunting her affair with the fellow who dispatched Dear Departed Daddy into the sweet hereafter (although, to be fair, it's not clear whether or not she's aware of the role the hunky farmhand who married her detested stepmother played in rendering her entirely an orphan.) The lady of the house is finding out the hard way that there's just no honor among thieves, adulterers and murderers. But before she can say, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" it's Intermission, and J.W. and I are gripping our aching sides, gasping with joy and trying not to make the actors hate us any more than they already do. TDF has been kind, and we are in the front row of seats off an un-raised stage; the unhappy actors who are struggling to say their overwrought lines with straight faces are forcibly confronted with the barely-stifled whoops of joy J.W. and I are not quite able to suppress, as One Bad Thing Leads to Another. We clutch one another about the neck, wiping the tears of joy that are streaming unchecked from our eyes, assuring each other that we must, we certainly must, get hold of ourselves...that it couldn't possibly get any worse in Act III, and we are going to prim up our mouths and behave ourselves, right after the Intermission.
We fail miserably. The excesses of Act III transcend anything we have seen before - or, indeed, since. The slutty stepdaughter gives birth to an illegitimate baby, and, for reputation's sake (what reputation, you may wonder?) she and her paramour decide they must do away with it in secret. As the stepdaughter wrings her hands onstage and emotes aloud about what horrible things they've done, what a horrible thing they are in the middle of doing, and what a horrible thing it's going to be to have to live with every horrible thing they've done, the former farm boy staggers off into a dugout cellar carrying the "baby," which an unfortunate slip of the blanket has revealed to be one of those unconvincing celluloid affairs small children leave upended wherever they happen to fall when something more interesting comes along. There is a terrific series of thunks that remind Manhattan audiences of those awful neighbors who used to let their kids jump up and down overhead at all hours of the day and night, and then the former farm boy emerges, wild-eyed and empty-handed, to describe in hilariously excruciating detail how he put the hapless infant under a wooden plank and jumped up and down.
"Oh!" he moans, "How its little bones crrrrunched, as I stamped up - and down - and up - and down - and up - and down - and crrrrushed its innocent little life out! How it mewled! How it pewled! How damned forever is my soul, that I took the life of this innocent babe! Oh, the crrrrunching of its little bones! Hark! I hear it now - crrrrunching!"
This was too much, and we gave way to such thunderous gales of belly-laughter that the actors paused to glare at us, and the people sitting around us, who had been making little sounds of horror and concern as to what was going to happen to the celluloid baby, gave us the dirtiest looks I have ever been on the receiving end of in a playhouse, including the time my cell phone started playing Beethoven's Ode to Joy just as George was telling Martha that their imaginary son had run his car into a tree while trying to avoid a large porcupine.
We were so weak with mirth and so ashamed of our inability to control ourselves that we thought about sneaking out before Act IV, but of course, we did no such thing. So we went on, and shortly attained that giddy, painful stage of euphoria that some of us remember from childhood, when an older sibling or a cousin would pin us down and tickle us so relentlessly that we were begging him to stop because we were afraid we were either going to die or wet our pants. By the time the now-remorseful former farmhand, who has been wandering around with a noose unable (on a farm!) to find anything to tie it to so he can express his contrition by hanging himself was seized by the authorities, charged with his crimes, and deprived of his noose so they could take him off to jail and hang him properly, we were so exhausted that we were barely able to leap to our feet to give a frantically appreciative ovation to the long-suffering cast who had enriched our lives so permanently and immeasurably.
J.W. and I have been waiting ever since for a revival of The Power of Darkness. We would gladly buy our tickets at face value in order to repeat this unrepeatable night of sheer magnificence. But then, it would probably be our last night of happy platonic play-going. The management of the Mint Theater Company has undoubtedly give orders at the box office to have us shot on sight.
Last night's performance lived up to the hosannas I'd read in that same morning's papers. While it is nice to pay for cheap seats and then, through the mysterious magic that is TDF, suddenly find yourself in Row A of the Orchestra (and this has happened to me more often than you might think possible), I had been warned in advance by the website that I was going to be sitting way the hell up and that there were "seventy stairs to the mezzanine of this historic theater and no elevator access," so I was prepared.
In a way, our altitude was an enhancement. The "doll's house" quality of the revolving set gained a visual piquancy from our being seated that high up. I was reminded, gazing down, of the dollhouse I'd had as a child, of creating and directing the lives of the small stand-ins for who I thought I was going to be when I attained the coveted status of grown-up, and the twinkling charm of a peek from above at an unreal reality. So must the gods upon Olympus see our lives.
My companion for the evening was my most tried-and-true, reliable Theater Buddy, whom I shall call J.W. We are both married, but to other people; my husband and his wife shudder delicately at the thought of subjecting themselves to an evening of the kind of geeky stage delights that cause J.W. and me to bounce up and down in our seats, emitting stifled little squeaks of "This is great!" and happily poking one another with our elbows. Basically, J.W. and I are friends-with-benefits - the benefits, in our case, being that we are the only individuals in one another's immediate circle who consider an evening spent listening to Fiona Shaw reciting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a dramatic monologue to be a fantastic way to spend a Friday night. (Yes...we were at BAM for that one, too. In the second row of the orchestra. Want to see cell phone pictures of Harry Potter's Aunt Petunia, running around the stage pretending to shoot at an albatross?)
If you are a theatergoer who relishes the arcane and obscure, it is essential to cultivate a running buddy of similar tastes. Yes - you can go to the theater alone, and I have done it. And I have enjoyed it. But it is exponentially more fun if you're with a friend who has more or less the same interests and a roughly similar background as a reader. This is not to say that J.W. and I are carbon copies in our tastes. Far from it. While we frequently agree on literary era, we diverge widely on individual authors within that era when it comes to personal preference. (I am still reeling from certain critical remarks he has made about, among others, James Joyce, John Kennedy Toole, and sundry others who constitute my own Lares et Penates. I, in my turn, have gotten downright sniffy about what I consider the dubious pleasures of Anthony Trollope C.P. Snow, and George MacDonad Fraser.) But we share enough aesthetic common ground to make for pleasurable theater-going companionship, and of course, we also share the most important attribute of all, in our case - a strong sense of the absurd and an almost childish enthusiasm for ribaldry.
I have sat next to J.W. on some of the greatest theater nights of my life, and also at some of the worst. On one night that will shine in my memory forever as one of the Highlights of My Theater-Going Life, the worst was also the greatest. The Mint Theater, a tiny repertoire company that specializes in resurrecting obscure plays that have been unperformed for decades, was putting on The Power of Darkness, a deservedly forgotten masterpiece by Leo Tolstoy (better known as the author of War and Peace, and a jolly good thing it was for him that he wrote it, too.) Whom else to call upon but the faithful companion of my Theater Geek expeditions, the intrepid J.W.? Our spouses (whom we always invite, for form's sake - although, to be honest, we hope they won't come, because most of the time they spend the entire time shifting restlessly in their seats and blowing their bangs out of their eyes with heavy sighs, as they glance at the luminescent dials on their watches to see how much longer they are going to have to suffer) had, true to form, hastily invented other things they simply had to do that evening, but wished us joy. And indeed - joy - O, boy-oh-boy, what joy! - was ours.
To call The Power of Darkness melodrama is like describing Charlie Sheen as "someone who might possibly have an anger management problem." The sheer magnitude of the understatement is hardly possible to comprehend, unless one has observed the subject of the statement in all his beet-faced, spittle-flecked, convulsing glory. Let's put it this way - The Power of Darkness is like the Jerry Springer Show, except in Russian peasant blouses.
We knew we were onto a good thing right away in Act I, when the unhappily-married second wife of a prosperous aging (and ailing) farmer enlists her lover, the man-of-all-work on the farm, to help her bump off hubby, so that they can indulge their lust in the master bedroom instead of in the haystack. By Act II, things get even better. The former hired man, now master both of the farm and of his homicidal honey (this is the nineteenth century, remember, and the property goes to the man who marries the property-owning woman) has abandoned all pretense at being a Nice Guy (his bride and partner-in-crime is strangely surprised that a man who would commit a murder might exhibit moral and behavioral shortcomings in other areas as well.)
Having achieved all his nefarious aims, the former hired man now swaggers around all day long with a bottle in each hand, backhanding his former sweetheart if she has the bad judgement to object to his drunkenness, or to his sexual shenanigans with her teenage stepdaughter (and now his, as well) - who is, of course, also the daughter of the man they murdered. This Slavic Lolita takes a zestful pleasure in sticking it to her dear departed Daddy's second wife by flaunting her affair with the fellow who dispatched Dear Departed Daddy into the sweet hereafter (although, to be fair, it's not clear whether or not she's aware of the role the hunky farmhand who married her detested stepmother played in rendering her entirely an orphan.) The lady of the house is finding out the hard way that there's just no honor among thieves, adulterers and murderers. But before she can say, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" it's Intermission, and J.W. and I are gripping our aching sides, gasping with joy and trying not to make the actors hate us any more than they already do. TDF has been kind, and we are in the front row of seats off an un-raised stage; the unhappy actors who are struggling to say their overwrought lines with straight faces are forcibly confronted with the barely-stifled whoops of joy J.W. and I are not quite able to suppress, as One Bad Thing Leads to Another. We clutch one another about the neck, wiping the tears of joy that are streaming unchecked from our eyes, assuring each other that we must, we certainly must, get hold of ourselves...that it couldn't possibly get any worse in Act III, and we are going to prim up our mouths and behave ourselves, right after the Intermission.
We fail miserably. The excesses of Act III transcend anything we have seen before - or, indeed, since. The slutty stepdaughter gives birth to an illegitimate baby, and, for reputation's sake (what reputation, you may wonder?) she and her paramour decide they must do away with it in secret. As the stepdaughter wrings her hands onstage and emotes aloud about what horrible things they've done, what a horrible thing they are in the middle of doing, and what a horrible thing it's going to be to have to live with every horrible thing they've done, the former farm boy staggers off into a dugout cellar carrying the "baby," which an unfortunate slip of the blanket has revealed to be one of those unconvincing celluloid affairs small children leave upended wherever they happen to fall when something more interesting comes along. There is a terrific series of thunks that remind Manhattan audiences of those awful neighbors who used to let their kids jump up and down overhead at all hours of the day and night, and then the former farm boy emerges, wild-eyed and empty-handed, to describe in hilariously excruciating detail how he put the hapless infant under a wooden plank and jumped up and down.
"Oh!" he moans, "How its little bones crrrrunched, as I stamped up - and down - and up - and down - and up - and down - and crrrrushed its innocent little life out! How it mewled! How it pewled! How damned forever is my soul, that I took the life of this innocent babe! Oh, the crrrrunching of its little bones! Hark! I hear it now - crrrrunching!"
This was too much, and we gave way to such thunderous gales of belly-laughter that the actors paused to glare at us, and the people sitting around us, who had been making little sounds of horror and concern as to what was going to happen to the celluloid baby, gave us the dirtiest looks I have ever been on the receiving end of in a playhouse, including the time my cell phone started playing Beethoven's Ode to Joy just as George was telling Martha that their imaginary son had run his car into a tree while trying to avoid a large porcupine.
We were so weak with mirth and so ashamed of our inability to control ourselves that we thought about sneaking out before Act IV, but of course, we did no such thing. So we went on, and shortly attained that giddy, painful stage of euphoria that some of us remember from childhood, when an older sibling or a cousin would pin us down and tickle us so relentlessly that we were begging him to stop because we were afraid we were either going to die or wet our pants. By the time the now-remorseful former farmhand, who has been wandering around with a noose unable (on a farm!) to find anything to tie it to so he can express his contrition by hanging himself was seized by the authorities, charged with his crimes, and deprived of his noose so they could take him off to jail and hang him properly, we were so exhausted that we were barely able to leap to our feet to give a frantically appreciative ovation to the long-suffering cast who had enriched our lives so permanently and immeasurably.
J.W. and I have been waiting ever since for a revival of The Power of Darkness. We would gladly buy our tickets at face value in order to repeat this unrepeatable night of sheer magnificence. But then, it would probably be our last night of happy platonic play-going. The management of the Mint Theater Company has undoubtedly give orders at the box office to have us shot on sight.
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