Suddenly, I go to the movies again.
You would think that anybody who likes going to the movies would go all the time, living in Manhattan. But the only time I ever went to the movies on a regular basis, during my last decade of living in NYC, was during the summers when I would be in a tiny Adirondack town whose restored Art Deco theater had one show a night at 8:00 p.m., and the movie changed every Friday. What was so great about that theater? Well - it was charming. It looked like the movies looked when I was a kid. And the movie started on time. And people shut up during the movie and actually watched the movie. And - the icing on the cake - they only charged $7.00 per ticket.
That was one of the problems with New York movies. Sure - we got everything first, and we got the little oddball indie films that didn't open everywhere, and that was nice. But it was ten dollars more to go to the movies in Manhattan than it was to go to the movies upstate. If I was going to pay $17 a ticket, I had to know for a fact that I was going to love that movie. I was not about to take a chance on something that might prove mediocre. I didn't want to walk out feeling ripped off. And, far too often, the movie was over and I walked out of the big AMC near Lincoln Center wishing I'd saved my money.
Oh, there were some films that were good. Almost good enough to be worth $17. But would I have enjoyed seeing Daniel Radcliffe play Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings a lot more if the ticket had cost ten bucks instead of seventeen? You betcha.
So it was an unexpected bonus when I moved to Rockland County and found there is a small indie cinema chain, Bow Tie Cinemas, that is run on the order of the art movie house a few blocks south of the Lincoln Center AMC behemoth, and that Bow Tie Cinemas charges only $8 for an adult ticket - in fact, it's $7 if you're in before 6:00 p.m., and $6 all day long on Tuesdays.
And I started going to the movies. Because at these prices, I wasn't worried about making a mistake. And, to my joy, the features are a mix. There are some blockbuster commercial pictures (my son and I sat through Dawn of the Planet of the Apes rolling our eyes and muttering "I can't believe how bad this is"), some indie offerings (Belle, which I'd seen and liked at the small Lincoln Square theater before we moved showed up here, and I wished I had waited and saved myself nine dollars), a couple of things for kids, a drama or two - there are six screens, so there is generally at least one thing I'll take a chance on seeing every week.
So far, I have seen and enjoyed Chef, The Last of Robin Hood, The Hundred-Foot Journey, St. Vincent, and that Woody Allen thing with the seances and the scenery and Colin Firth playing Woody. I walked out of The Trip to Italy because I found it excruciatingly dull and talky. And you know what? It felt wonderful not to have to sit there through the whole thing, gritting my teeth and inwardly bemoaning the fact that I had just thrown seventeen dollars out the window. No hard feelings. No regrets. It just wasn't my thing. So I left, feeling good about leaving.
The movie industry wonders why people don't go to the movies anymore, and frets over how to get us out of our comfy home theaters and into the movie houses. Well - I can tell them. Lower the ticket prices, and we'll go a lot more.
One more thing. No matter where you are, the popcorn is a rip-off. Bring a bag from home.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Show Me Your Friends & I'll Tell You What You Are
Somebody said that today. "Show me your friends, and I'll tell you what you are."
A feeling came over me, and I'd be hard-put to describe it. Exaltation. Awe. Humility. Wonder. Those would be some of the words, but they aren't enough.
Yesterday Alison and Suzanne, whom I have known for a long time, and who are very dear to me, drove up from Manhattan to have lunch, see my new home and spend the afternoon. I introduced them to some of the new people in my life - women I have met up here in Rockland. I was so proud to have wonderful friends like these, who think enough of me to drive nearly an hour both ways, just to see me, knowing that I miss my home and my homegirls. Bright. Talented. Creative. Warm-hearted. Gentle. Kind. Funny. Beautiful, yes - that, too - but not just on the outside. Real beauty of spirit and intellect. Women of integrity. Women of value. Women whose worth is above rubies.
We went to visit another friend of mine - my screenwriting partner, Margarette Gulinello, who moved to Rockland a year before I did, after growing up in Harlem and spending most of her life as a New Yorker. Margarette is one of the main reasons I even considered Rockland County. I can see her now - nine months pregnant, literally in early labor (she birthed Nicky early the next morning, and I kept staring at her with rude fascination, fearing he would drop out on his head, right there on the floor) sitting in the cafe at Whole Foods on Columbus and Ninety-Seventh, munching on a salad and giving me a characteristic piece of her mind.
"Well, all I can say is, you have to be crazy, thinking about spending that much money on some shitty little co-op apartment in Inwood. Chris and I got a whole house for half that much - and when I get home from work, I have a parking spot! Pfft!" With a snap of her fingers, she scornfully dismissed Manhattan.
I must have been hypnotized by magic of the pregnant lady. The very next week, we started house-hunting in Rockland.
Now, here we were, at Margarette's house, her two small sons bouncing around like unusually vigorous particles in a cloud chamber. Like us, she'd bought a fixer-upper. The once-dilapidated split ranch is now a warm and gracious home, firmly imprinted with Margarette's personality and her passion for beauty and creativity.
Alison and Suzanne had never before met Margarette, but the embraces were immediate and the friendship was instant. We couldn't stop talking, We couldn't stop laughing and smiling and cuddling the kids and telling stories. As it turns out, Alison and Margarette had even attended LaGuardia High School at the same time - Alison to study acting, Margarette to study dance. Why were we not surprised?
Since yesterday, I have been thinking of the people I call my friends. Some of them are writers, poets, painters, photographers, actors, musicians. Some are lawyers, businessmen and women, entrepreneurs. Some are professors, or teachers, or work in some other capacity at a school. Some are social workers. Some are activists - for the environment, for LGBT rights, for civil rights. Some are more than one of these things.
All of them are the kind of people who would go out of their way to do the right thing. All of them are the kind of people who would stop to assist an injured animal, or intervene if they saw an injustice being perpetrated, or a child being bullied, or a purse being snatched. I have been on the receiving end of unsolicited acts of kindness from each and every one of them. They are, one and all, the kind of people who take pleasure in doing the right thing and in putting a smile on somebody else's face as often as they can.
And so today, when I hear the words, "Show me who your friends are, and I'll tell you what you are," my eyes fill up with grateful tears, and my heart with pride, and I think, "Oh, I hope so... I will truly try to live up to the amazing people I am blessed to have in my life."
A feeling came over me, and I'd be hard-put to describe it. Exaltation. Awe. Humility. Wonder. Those would be some of the words, but they aren't enough.
Yesterday Alison and Suzanne, whom I have known for a long time, and who are very dear to me, drove up from Manhattan to have lunch, see my new home and spend the afternoon. I introduced them to some of the new people in my life - women I have met up here in Rockland. I was so proud to have wonderful friends like these, who think enough of me to drive nearly an hour both ways, just to see me, knowing that I miss my home and my homegirls. Bright. Talented. Creative. Warm-hearted. Gentle. Kind. Funny. Beautiful, yes - that, too - but not just on the outside. Real beauty of spirit and intellect. Women of integrity. Women of value. Women whose worth is above rubies.
We went to visit another friend of mine - my screenwriting partner, Margarette Gulinello, who moved to Rockland a year before I did, after growing up in Harlem and spending most of her life as a New Yorker. Margarette is one of the main reasons I even considered Rockland County. I can see her now - nine months pregnant, literally in early labor (she birthed Nicky early the next morning, and I kept staring at her with rude fascination, fearing he would drop out on his head, right there on the floor) sitting in the cafe at Whole Foods on Columbus and Ninety-Seventh, munching on a salad and giving me a characteristic piece of her mind.
"Well, all I can say is, you have to be crazy, thinking about spending that much money on some shitty little co-op apartment in Inwood. Chris and I got a whole house for half that much - and when I get home from work, I have a parking spot! Pfft!" With a snap of her fingers, she scornfully dismissed Manhattan.
I must have been hypnotized by magic of the pregnant lady. The very next week, we started house-hunting in Rockland.
Now, here we were, at Margarette's house, her two small sons bouncing around like unusually vigorous particles in a cloud chamber. Like us, she'd bought a fixer-upper. The once-dilapidated split ranch is now a warm and gracious home, firmly imprinted with Margarette's personality and her passion for beauty and creativity.
Alison and Suzanne had never before met Margarette, but the embraces were immediate and the friendship was instant. We couldn't stop talking, We couldn't stop laughing and smiling and cuddling the kids and telling stories. As it turns out, Alison and Margarette had even attended LaGuardia High School at the same time - Alison to study acting, Margarette to study dance. Why were we not surprised?
Since yesterday, I have been thinking of the people I call my friends. Some of them are writers, poets, painters, photographers, actors, musicians. Some are lawyers, businessmen and women, entrepreneurs. Some are professors, or teachers, or work in some other capacity at a school. Some are social workers. Some are activists - for the environment, for LGBT rights, for civil rights. Some are more than one of these things.
All of them are the kind of people who would go out of their way to do the right thing. All of them are the kind of people who would stop to assist an injured animal, or intervene if they saw an injustice being perpetrated, or a child being bullied, or a purse being snatched. I have been on the receiving end of unsolicited acts of kindness from each and every one of them. They are, one and all, the kind of people who take pleasure in doing the right thing and in putting a smile on somebody else's face as often as they can.
And so today, when I hear the words, "Show me who your friends are, and I'll tell you what you are," my eyes fill up with grateful tears, and my heart with pride, and I think, "Oh, I hope so... I will truly try to live up to the amazing people I am blessed to have in my life."
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Octember
Suddenly we have gone from basking to shivering. It must be Octember.
Octember is when you get three consecutive days of chilly rain, and the leaves that fell onto the driveway are too wet to rake, so they just pile up and get squooshy track marks across them where you went over them with the car.
Octember is when you wonder whether you need to call the oil company, because God forbid it gets any colder inside the house (which, of course, it will, because you are nowhere near Decembuary yet.)
Octember is when it's 10:00 a.m., and you need lights on in the house or you can't read your library book.
Octember is when you hear all the trains tooting their horns five miles away, and it brings it home to you that you never hear trains when it's sunny.
Octember is when you want to light a fire in the fireplace, but you hesitate, because that would mean that the next time you want to light a fire in the fireplace, there won't be any dry kindling to light it with, because you forgot to go foraging during those 3 hours of fretful sunshine last weekend.
Octember is Halloween decorations that keep appearing in different places on your neighbors' lawns, because the wind blows the decorations down at night and the increasingly frustrated neighbors slam the fallen plastic skeletons, perambulating pumpkins, and the inflatable black cats down in great haste, in approximately the same place where they think the decorations were the night before, as they sling down their coffee and hurry off to the commuter bus.
Octember is the dog contentedly lying on her back on the sofa, wet paws drying in the air, dreaming of treeing more squirrels.
Octember is wondering whether you'll have enough money to buy that new dishwasher before Thanksgiving and its guests arrive, and still have enough left over to buy some food to put on the plates.
Octember is realizing that all the umbrellas have, one by one, made their way to your husband's office and stayed there.
Octember is bringing the potted plants in from the deck, and wondering whether dahlia bulbs really will produce more dahlias if you shake the dirt off the roots, pack them in Styrofoam peanuts, and stick them in a dark closet till you can plant them again in the spring, the way they said to do on the Internet. And then realizing that you may as well give it a shot, because the things will die anyway if you don't, so wotthehell.
Octember is picking all the leaves off your basil plant before they turn completely yellow and making pesto to freeze for the winter.
Octember is root vegetables and slow-cooked meals that stick to your ribs, after a summer of salads and panini.
Octember is the somber light that the Impressionists caught in their more melancholy moments.
Octember has its chagrins, but Octember also has its charms.
Octember is when you get three consecutive days of chilly rain, and the leaves that fell onto the driveway are too wet to rake, so they just pile up and get squooshy track marks across them where you went over them with the car.
Octember is when you wonder whether you need to call the oil company, because God forbid it gets any colder inside the house (which, of course, it will, because you are nowhere near Decembuary yet.)
Octember is when it's 10:00 a.m., and you need lights on in the house or you can't read your library book.
Octember is when you hear all the trains tooting their horns five miles away, and it brings it home to you that you never hear trains when it's sunny.
Octember is when you want to light a fire in the fireplace, but you hesitate, because that would mean that the next time you want to light a fire in the fireplace, there won't be any dry kindling to light it with, because you forgot to go foraging during those 3 hours of fretful sunshine last weekend.
Octember is Halloween decorations that keep appearing in different places on your neighbors' lawns, because the wind blows the decorations down at night and the increasingly frustrated neighbors slam the fallen plastic skeletons, perambulating pumpkins, and the inflatable black cats down in great haste, in approximately the same place where they think the decorations were the night before, as they sling down their coffee and hurry off to the commuter bus.
Octember is the dog contentedly lying on her back on the sofa, wet paws drying in the air, dreaming of treeing more squirrels.
Octember is wondering whether you'll have enough money to buy that new dishwasher before Thanksgiving and its guests arrive, and still have enough left over to buy some food to put on the plates.
Octember is realizing that all the umbrellas have, one by one, made their way to your husband's office and stayed there.
Octember is bringing the potted plants in from the deck, and wondering whether dahlia bulbs really will produce more dahlias if you shake the dirt off the roots, pack them in Styrofoam peanuts, and stick them in a dark closet till you can plant them again in the spring, the way they said to do on the Internet. And then realizing that you may as well give it a shot, because the things will die anyway if you don't, so wotthehell.
Octember is picking all the leaves off your basil plant before they turn completely yellow and making pesto to freeze for the winter.
Octember is root vegetables and slow-cooked meals that stick to your ribs, after a summer of salads and panini.
Octember is the somber light that the Impressionists caught in their more melancholy moments.
Octember has its chagrins, but Octember also has its charms.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Brown Girl Dreaming: An Appreciation
I don't often write a personal response to a recently-published book, but on occasion, when I am blown away by admiration and delight, I will make an exception. Jacqueline Woodson's memoir-in-verse, Brown Girl Dreaming, is one such occasion.
I might not have known about the book if I had not happened to know the author in a very six-degrees-of-separation way already. I was having dinner with my friend Odella, and we were, of course, talking about books. She casually tossed in that she has a sister and that her sister writes books. I said, "Oh, I wonder whether I've heard of her."
"You might have," said Odella. "She's pretty well-known in children's and young adult literature these days. Her name's Jacqueline Woodson."
"Holy shit," I yelped. "You mean the one who's friends with my poetry teacher Pam Laskin from the CCNY grad program? I was always a little jealous of her, because she lives on Pam's block, and every time Pam talks about Jackie Woodson and what a great writer she is and how much she loves having Jackie as a neighbor, I start thinking, 'Wahhh, Pam likes this Jackie better than she likes me!'"
I was half-kidding, of course. But the fact is, I'd heard Jackie Woodson's work spoken of with enormous respect and admiration by my friend and writing mentor Pam Laskin (herself no mean poet and children's writer) many times before I ever picked up a book Jackie had written. And one memorable day, during last winter's blizzard season, I'd gamely agreed to mush down to a small theater on the Upper West Side because Pam had tickets to a play that was a dramatization of Jackie's picture book Show Ways, about the legacy of quilting in a Black family, handed down from woman to woman since the days when the quilts were pieced by slaves as maps to show the northward route to freedom. Unfortunately, although we made it to the theater despite the chest-high piles of dirty snow lining the streets, the cast did not - so the performance was cancelled. Our outing turned into lunch at Zabar's and I never got to judge for myself whether Jackie Woodson was as fabulous as Pam kept telling me.
The poetry world is a small one, and people in it run across one another at regular intervals, so late in the spring of last year I had the opportunity to hear Jackie speak at a Poetry Outreach event at CUNY/CCNY, where I learned that she was funny, profound, succinct, and brilliant - basically, no surprise, because so is Odella. And in any case, I could have spotted Jackie in a roomful of strangers as Odella's sister, because they look very much alike, which is a plus on both sides, because both of them are beautiful and have smiles that light up the sky.
A confession: I have stopped reading the New York Times Book Review. Most of the time, when they are raving about some book and telling me I have to read it, I go to the bookstore, pick the book up, look it over, and quickly find out that the New York Times Book Review's tastes are no rule for mine. Nowadays, I just browse the books that catch my eye in the New Arrivals section and see if they grab me. Much of the time, I am sorry to say, they don't.
So I didn't know about Brown Girl Dreaming until Odella mentioned on her Gratitude List that her sister's latest book had been well-received and was being considered for a National Book Award. And that it was a memoir of their childhood, written in verse, and that - another item on the gratitude list - Jackie had only put in her nice memories about Odella. (Odella hinted darkly that this might not necessarily been a given, but I feel this was merely her usual self-deprecating wit.)
A Digression: What, my Gentle Readers may wonder, is the Gratitude List? Very simple - I am in a small group of women who daily exchange emails regarding things we are grateful for in our lives. We try to come up with 5 items a day, and it gives me a shift of perspective whenever I am feeling like my entire life had been nothing but a series of hoagie-sized shit sandwiches. There is something about being forced to acknowledge that I am looking at my blessings through that shard of distorting glass immortalized by Hans Christian Andersen in "The Snow Queen", perversely and deliberately turning them into burdens, that gives me a very healthy dose of Reality Check. And even when there is something legitimately dreadful going on in my day, usually one of the other ladies will say something so funny or profound that it kicks me off the pity pot. (Recent Gratitude Items, for example, have included "Husbands who make weird noises" - as it turns out, all of us married ladies have one of those. The married are grateful that the husband is around to make some of the weird noises and to be sent out of bed with a flashlight at 2 a.m. to investigate others, and the unmarried among us are grateful not to be hearing the weird noises generated by the husbands.)
Today I am grateful for Brown Girl Dreaming. Here's why.
1. It is wonderful to find a new author you love, whose books you haven't read all the juice out of yet. The fact that I loved this book means there are more of Ms. Woodson's books out there to gulp down in a day (as I did this one, reading it cover-to-cover, non-stop, all afternoon) and then revisit to savor afresh, time after time.
2. Having been fortunate enough to do a postgraduate degree in writing has given me an appreciation for craftsmanship that I didn't have before. When an author is in complete command of her voice and, with apparent effortlessness (the kind that betokens, as I well know, hour upon hour of painstaking and agonized revision and excision that the reader of the finished product never suspects took place, because everything on the page flows like silk thread off a spool) shifts us back and forth through time, perspective, and theme, all I can do is gasp with awestruck envy, thinking, "Wow, I can't believe how well she did that! Brava! Brava!"
3. I love a writer who can juggle a lot of balls at the same time. Take, for example, Part I - "I Am Born." Well, right there, I smiled, because it's an allusion to the title of Chapter 1 of David Copperfield, and so I know that a Bildungsroman is on its way. It is definitely cheeky and audacious to steal from Dickens, so that earns points with me as well - let's remember, as T.S. Eliot pointed out, that "Good writers borrow - great writers steal."
Ms. Woodson proceeds to lay her cards on the table with a magisterial aplomb that left me reeling with admiration. She instantly establishes that this is a book about legacy . . . the legacy implicit in being born, as the title poem "February 12, 1963" states, in
a country caught
between Black and White.
By the second day of her life - and the second poem of the book, "Second Daughter's Second Day on Earth," she is juxtaposing herself and her tiny, yet-barely-awakening consciousness, against the monumental events of the day. Martin Luther King, Jr. is planning the March on Washington; Malcolm X is preaching revolution from a soapbox in Harlem; six-year-old Ruby Bridges was walking into an all-white school past the jeers and threats a mere three years before, so that brown children not yet born or dreamed of would be able to follow; James Baldwin is writing novels and essays that would change the world; Rosa Parks is reflecting that seven years have now passed since her historic bus ride. It is an impressive heritage to live up to; how will she do it? The poet pans back on her infant self like a camera, focusing at last on those small, helpless baby hands that adults love to marvel at -
My fingers curl into fists, automatically
This is the way, my mother said,
of every baby's hand.
I do not know if these hands will become
Malcolm's - raised and fisted
or Martin's - open and asking
or James's - curled around a pen
I do not know if these hands will be
Rosa's
or Ruby's
gently gloved
and fiercely folded
calmly in a lap
on a desk
around a book
ready
to change the world...
4. Who doesn't like to glimpse people we only got to know as grown-ups through the lens of "Tell me a story about when you were a little girl"? Especially when you find out that you were that same little girl? Here is my friend, doing exactly what I did at her age when, like Odella, I was known as:
The Reader
When we can't find my sister, we know
she is under the kitchen table, a book in her hand
a glass of milk and a small bowl of peanuts beside her.
We know we can call Odella's name out loud,
slap the table hard with our hands,
dance around it singing
"She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain"
so many times the song makes us sick
and the circling makes us dizzy
and still
my sister will do nothing more
than slowly turn the page.
It's Odella under the table; it's me in the forked branches of the pink crab apple tree, licking a Good Humor bar I'm holding in my left hand while awkwardly trying to turn the pages of The Secret Garden without getting ice cream drips on them with my right; it's Francie Nolan on her Williamsburg fire escape, in the shadow of the Tree that Grows in Brooklyn, noshing from a little blue bowl of dime store candy and perusing her cherished library book (she is reading her way through the stacks, alphabetically), "as happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy." It's Everygirl who ever got teased for "always having your nose stuck in a book" but who knew being ragged on for being a bookworm was small potatoes compared with the the magic of being instantly transported into another and vastly more interesting world, merely by turning back the front cover with the alluring title and the fascinating picture and reading, "Chapter 1...I Am Born."
5. It is an immense joy to open a book by a living author and feel the tingle down my spine that tells me that greatness on the printed page still exists. In the age of the e-Everything, we bookworms get kind of nervous about that, you know.
I might not have known about the book if I had not happened to know the author in a very six-degrees-of-separation way already. I was having dinner with my friend Odella, and we were, of course, talking about books. She casually tossed in that she has a sister and that her sister writes books. I said, "Oh, I wonder whether I've heard of her."
"You might have," said Odella. "She's pretty well-known in children's and young adult literature these days. Her name's Jacqueline Woodson."
"Holy shit," I yelped. "You mean the one who's friends with my poetry teacher Pam Laskin from the CCNY grad program? I was always a little jealous of her, because she lives on Pam's block, and every time Pam talks about Jackie Woodson and what a great writer she is and how much she loves having Jackie as a neighbor, I start thinking, 'Wahhh, Pam likes this Jackie better than she likes me!'"
I was half-kidding, of course. But the fact is, I'd heard Jackie Woodson's work spoken of with enormous respect and admiration by my friend and writing mentor Pam Laskin (herself no mean poet and children's writer) many times before I ever picked up a book Jackie had written. And one memorable day, during last winter's blizzard season, I'd gamely agreed to mush down to a small theater on the Upper West Side because Pam had tickets to a play that was a dramatization of Jackie's picture book Show Ways, about the legacy of quilting in a Black family, handed down from woman to woman since the days when the quilts were pieced by slaves as maps to show the northward route to freedom. Unfortunately, although we made it to the theater despite the chest-high piles of dirty snow lining the streets, the cast did not - so the performance was cancelled. Our outing turned into lunch at Zabar's and I never got to judge for myself whether Jackie Woodson was as fabulous as Pam kept telling me.
The poetry world is a small one, and people in it run across one another at regular intervals, so late in the spring of last year I had the opportunity to hear Jackie speak at a Poetry Outreach event at CUNY/CCNY, where I learned that she was funny, profound, succinct, and brilliant - basically, no surprise, because so is Odella. And in any case, I could have spotted Jackie in a roomful of strangers as Odella's sister, because they look very much alike, which is a plus on both sides, because both of them are beautiful and have smiles that light up the sky.
A confession: I have stopped reading the New York Times Book Review. Most of the time, when they are raving about some book and telling me I have to read it, I go to the bookstore, pick the book up, look it over, and quickly find out that the New York Times Book Review's tastes are no rule for mine. Nowadays, I just browse the books that catch my eye in the New Arrivals section and see if they grab me. Much of the time, I am sorry to say, they don't.
So I didn't know about Brown Girl Dreaming until Odella mentioned on her Gratitude List that her sister's latest book had been well-received and was being considered for a National Book Award. And that it was a memoir of their childhood, written in verse, and that - another item on the gratitude list - Jackie had only put in her nice memories about Odella. (Odella hinted darkly that this might not necessarily been a given, but I feel this was merely her usual self-deprecating wit.)
A Digression: What, my Gentle Readers may wonder, is the Gratitude List? Very simple - I am in a small group of women who daily exchange emails regarding things we are grateful for in our lives. We try to come up with 5 items a day, and it gives me a shift of perspective whenever I am feeling like my entire life had been nothing but a series of hoagie-sized shit sandwiches. There is something about being forced to acknowledge that I am looking at my blessings through that shard of distorting glass immortalized by Hans Christian Andersen in "The Snow Queen", perversely and deliberately turning them into burdens, that gives me a very healthy dose of Reality Check. And even when there is something legitimately dreadful going on in my day, usually one of the other ladies will say something so funny or profound that it kicks me off the pity pot. (Recent Gratitude Items, for example, have included "Husbands who make weird noises" - as it turns out, all of us married ladies have one of those. The married are grateful that the husband is around to make some of the weird noises and to be sent out of bed with a flashlight at 2 a.m. to investigate others, and the unmarried among us are grateful not to be hearing the weird noises generated by the husbands.)
Today I am grateful for Brown Girl Dreaming. Here's why.
1. It is wonderful to find a new author you love, whose books you haven't read all the juice out of yet. The fact that I loved this book means there are more of Ms. Woodson's books out there to gulp down in a day (as I did this one, reading it cover-to-cover, non-stop, all afternoon) and then revisit to savor afresh, time after time.
2. Having been fortunate enough to do a postgraduate degree in writing has given me an appreciation for craftsmanship that I didn't have before. When an author is in complete command of her voice and, with apparent effortlessness (the kind that betokens, as I well know, hour upon hour of painstaking and agonized revision and excision that the reader of the finished product never suspects took place, because everything on the page flows like silk thread off a spool) shifts us back and forth through time, perspective, and theme, all I can do is gasp with awestruck envy, thinking, "Wow, I can't believe how well she did that! Brava! Brava!"
3. I love a writer who can juggle a lot of balls at the same time. Take, for example, Part I - "I Am Born." Well, right there, I smiled, because it's an allusion to the title of Chapter 1 of David Copperfield, and so I know that a Bildungsroman is on its way. It is definitely cheeky and audacious to steal from Dickens, so that earns points with me as well - let's remember, as T.S. Eliot pointed out, that "Good writers borrow - great writers steal."
Ms. Woodson proceeds to lay her cards on the table with a magisterial aplomb that left me reeling with admiration. She instantly establishes that this is a book about legacy . . . the legacy implicit in being born, as the title poem "February 12, 1963" states, in
a country caught
between Black and White.
By the second day of her life - and the second poem of the book, "Second Daughter's Second Day on Earth," she is juxtaposing herself and her tiny, yet-barely-awakening consciousness, against the monumental events of the day. Martin Luther King, Jr. is planning the March on Washington; Malcolm X is preaching revolution from a soapbox in Harlem; six-year-old Ruby Bridges was walking into an all-white school past the jeers and threats a mere three years before, so that brown children not yet born or dreamed of would be able to follow; James Baldwin is writing novels and essays that would change the world; Rosa Parks is reflecting that seven years have now passed since her historic bus ride. It is an impressive heritage to live up to; how will she do it? The poet pans back on her infant self like a camera, focusing at last on those small, helpless baby hands that adults love to marvel at -
My fingers curl into fists, automatically
This is the way, my mother said,
of every baby's hand.
I do not know if these hands will become
Malcolm's - raised and fisted
or Martin's - open and asking
or James's - curled around a pen
I do not know if these hands will be
Rosa's
or Ruby's
gently gloved
and fiercely folded
calmly in a lap
on a desk
around a book
ready
to change the world...
4. Who doesn't like to glimpse people we only got to know as grown-ups through the lens of "Tell me a story about when you were a little girl"? Especially when you find out that you were that same little girl? Here is my friend, doing exactly what I did at her age when, like Odella, I was known as:
The Reader
When we can't find my sister, we know
she is under the kitchen table, a book in her hand
a glass of milk and a small bowl of peanuts beside her.
We know we can call Odella's name out loud,
slap the table hard with our hands,
dance around it singing
"She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain"
so many times the song makes us sick
and the circling makes us dizzy
and still
my sister will do nothing more
than slowly turn the page.
It's Odella under the table; it's me in the forked branches of the pink crab apple tree, licking a Good Humor bar I'm holding in my left hand while awkwardly trying to turn the pages of The Secret Garden without getting ice cream drips on them with my right; it's Francie Nolan on her Williamsburg fire escape, in the shadow of the Tree that Grows in Brooklyn, noshing from a little blue bowl of dime store candy and perusing her cherished library book (she is reading her way through the stacks, alphabetically), "as happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and a little bowl of candy." It's Everygirl who ever got teased for "always having your nose stuck in a book" but who knew being ragged on for being a bookworm was small potatoes compared with the the magic of being instantly transported into another and vastly more interesting world, merely by turning back the front cover with the alluring title and the fascinating picture and reading, "Chapter 1...I Am Born."
5. It is an immense joy to open a book by a living author and feel the tingle down my spine that tells me that greatness on the printed page still exists. In the age of the e-Everything, we bookworms get kind of nervous about that, you know.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
The Belle of Amherst and the Belle of Rockland
Last week, as threatened, I rebelled against the Life Bucolic and spent the day in Manhattan. I saw some friends, had lunch with my husband (Thai) and, since I'd refused to go when the place first opened (because, according to the newspapers, the over-crowding was insane) and because the place is right down the street from his office, I said, "Hey, let's check out Eataly."
So I finally saw Eataly, and it will probably be the only time I see it - once was enough. I mean, they had nothing that you can't get better and cheaper up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, and it all costs three times as much as it does on Arthur Avenue. Everything at Eataly was very slick and streamlined; it looked like a glossy food magazine photo layout. For the record, the over-crowding is still insane. The ambiance and the chichi customers reminded me of the food court underneath the Plaza Hotel, where I also went exactly once (that, too, was enough to satisfy my curiosity.)
The Big Treat I'd planned for the day was seeing The Belle of Amherst in the evening with my dear friend Carrie. We had a nice Italian meal at Amarone on Ninth Avenue, where I'd last eaten a number of years ago. It's not the finest Italian I've ever had, but the food is good and you get your money's worth, and for a pre-theatre dinner it's perfectly fine. We split an arugula salad with thin-sliced pears in a lemon juice dressing; I had the home-made gnocchi with fresh mozerella and basil in tomato sauce, and Carrie had the linguine puttanesca, and our server was very kind about letting us drag out our meal for a long, long time, because the play didn't start till eight.
After dinner we walked down Ninth Avenue. At the corner of Forty-third and Ninth, just as I was pointing westward across the street, saying, "There's the theatre," Carrie gave a little shriek and pointed eastward, exclaiming, "Oh, my God, it's still here!"
"It" turned out to be a pawnshop that is an absolutely perfect time capsule. As I'd walked around Manhattan all day, I had been getting a trifle depressed about the way nothing in New York looks the way it did when I moved there 34 years ago. For example, Times Square in 1979 was squalid, dangerous, and, consequently, marvelous. It was a lot closer to the days of Hubert's Dime Museum and Diane Arbus photos than it was to Disney. There were sex shops and junkies and prostitutes in thigh-high boots, and a tired old HoJo's that sold flaccid, greasy clam strips and hot fudge sundaes that tasted like my childhood. It was easy to walk around Times Square then, too, because a lot of people were scared to go there. And now, there are about 5,000 tourists crowding the sidewalks day and night, and the crazy people wearing the Elmo costumes are scarier than the junkies ever were.
But this - this. How had I missed this wonderful little shop all these years? It belongs back in the old Times Square - my Times Square. I must have walked past it hundreds of times. I was always too intent on getting to the play on time, I guess.
In a trance of delight, I followed Carrie into a shop packed with bric-a-brac, used books in all stages of repair - from Fine to Deplorable - all priced at a dollar to three dollars. Carrie was explaining with great enthusiasm to the two elderly men who own the place - and Brooklyn Dickensian, is the best description I can come up with for them - that she used to live in Hell's Kitchen - back in the Good Old Days I've just been describing, when it was actually Hellish - and that she had been in the habit of dropping in frequently. The proprietors were nodding back and saying, "Of course, I remember you, you haven't changed a bit. Where have you been all this time?"
The shop had been on the verge of closing, but the owners let me poke around the stacks of books, while Carrie reminisced, agreeing with her newly re-found buddies that she'd made a huge mistake by ever moving to the Upper East Side. I found a biography of Roald Dahl that I hadn't read yet (Condition: Deplorable, but for $2, who was I to quibble?) When I fumbled for my change purse, the proprietors affably waved my money aside, insisting on making a gift of the book to me. In addition, they offered "you two lovely ladies" a couple of shots apiece from the bottles of Johnny Walker Black and Absolut with which, it seemed, they were wont to celebrate the end of the workday. (We declined with thanks.) After asking us repeatedly if we were sure we didn't want to raise a toast to the Return of Carrie to the Kitchen of Hell - No? - Are you sure? - and being apprised of the fact that we had to stay sober enough to watch a play about Emily Dickinson, our amiable hosts rolled up the steel gate (remember those roll-up gates that clatter like a subway train?) and bid us Godspeed.
Now, as to the play. I knew that the fact that I had last seen this one-woman play performed by Julie Harris, back in the days when Times Square was Times Square, was going to be a problem. Julie Harris, I knew, sets a standard that is hard to equal when she creates a role. So I tried to forget her performance and her inflections of the lines, and to give Joely Richardson a fair chance. But, inevitably, I was disappointed.
Ms. Richardson, to give her her due, takes on a heroic task in holding the stage solo for nearly 2 hours. It is a tremendous feat of memorization, just for a start - all monologue, with very little action. The actress playing the part of Emily Dickinson has nothing to hold her audience's attention but the playwright's words, and the words of the poet herself, for a number of Dickinson's poems are woven in as part of the monologue. Ms. Richardson was also suffering from a horrendous head cold, and had to keep sniffling and dabbing at her nose. (I had to wonder why it hadn't occurred to anybody to write in an impromptu line about Emily Dickinson's awful, awful hay fever, and have the props department equip her with a little white lace-edged hankie.)
Perhaps the fact that she was not feeling well accounted for the way that she rushed the delivery of the lines. The problem is - her timing was off. I only saw Julie Harris in the part once, but I perfectly recall her strategically-times pauses that gave the audience time to laugh appreciatively at an understated bit of wit. Ms. Richardson barreled through her lines like a freight train, as though she was afraid that if she didn't keep it rolling at top speed, she might lose her place and forget what came next. Indeed, several times she misspoke in her haste, and had to corrected herself in mid-word. It reminded me of little Tony Buddenbrook trying to recite her catechism in the first chapter of Thomas Mann's novel:
"What does this mean?" she slowly repeated. "I believe that God..." and then,her face clearing, swiftly continued, "made me, and likewise all other creatures," - and now, finding herself on smooth ice, raced along, beaming and unstoppable - she rattled off the whole article, true to the newly published catechism of anno domine 1835. Once you got going, she thought, it was just like being on the sled with your brothers and pushing off from the top of Mount Jerusalem - your thoughts flew past you as you pelted along, and you couldn't stop even if you wanted to.
In Ms. Richardson's favor, I will say that she was at her best when declaiming the actual poems. In those moments, she showed a fine understanding of the poet's delicate poetical structures, in which Dickinson's metaphysical speculations are so often expressed through her minute observations of Nature. I would hazard a guess that, long before taking on the role of "the mysterious E. Dickinson", the actress had often read the poet, with great love, and with the sensitive intuitive grasp of sense that only a reader's great love of a writer's words can impart.
In short, a noble effort. In a nut-brown wig and the obligatory white dress, Ms. Richardson looks the part of Emily Dickinson. The lighting for the production is so exquisite that I often thought I was viewing a tableau vivant of a Berthe Morisot painting - that "certain slant of light" here is a lambent, flattering glow - it kisses the actress like a sunbeam pouring through a window on a late-June afternoon. If Ms. Richardson can bring herself to slow down and take as much time delivering her lines as David Weiner took in designing the lighting, this could yet become a memorable evening of theatre.
So I finally saw Eataly, and it will probably be the only time I see it - once was enough. I mean, they had nothing that you can't get better and cheaper up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, and it all costs three times as much as it does on Arthur Avenue. Everything at Eataly was very slick and streamlined; it looked like a glossy food magazine photo layout. For the record, the over-crowding is still insane. The ambiance and the chichi customers reminded me of the food court underneath the Plaza Hotel, where I also went exactly once (that, too, was enough to satisfy my curiosity.)
The Big Treat I'd planned for the day was seeing The Belle of Amherst in the evening with my dear friend Carrie. We had a nice Italian meal at Amarone on Ninth Avenue, where I'd last eaten a number of years ago. It's not the finest Italian I've ever had, but the food is good and you get your money's worth, and for a pre-theatre dinner it's perfectly fine. We split an arugula salad with thin-sliced pears in a lemon juice dressing; I had the home-made gnocchi with fresh mozerella and basil in tomato sauce, and Carrie had the linguine puttanesca, and our server was very kind about letting us drag out our meal for a long, long time, because the play didn't start till eight.
After dinner we walked down Ninth Avenue. At the corner of Forty-third and Ninth, just as I was pointing westward across the street, saying, "There's the theatre," Carrie gave a little shriek and pointed eastward, exclaiming, "Oh, my God, it's still here!"
"It" turned out to be a pawnshop that is an absolutely perfect time capsule. As I'd walked around Manhattan all day, I had been getting a trifle depressed about the way nothing in New York looks the way it did when I moved there 34 years ago. For example, Times Square in 1979 was squalid, dangerous, and, consequently, marvelous. It was a lot closer to the days of Hubert's Dime Museum and Diane Arbus photos than it was to Disney. There were sex shops and junkies and prostitutes in thigh-high boots, and a tired old HoJo's that sold flaccid, greasy clam strips and hot fudge sundaes that tasted like my childhood. It was easy to walk around Times Square then, too, because a lot of people were scared to go there. And now, there are about 5,000 tourists crowding the sidewalks day and night, and the crazy people wearing the Elmo costumes are scarier than the junkies ever were.
But this - this. How had I missed this wonderful little shop all these years? It belongs back in the old Times Square - my Times Square. I must have walked past it hundreds of times. I was always too intent on getting to the play on time, I guess.
In a trance of delight, I followed Carrie into a shop packed with bric-a-brac, used books in all stages of repair - from Fine to Deplorable - all priced at a dollar to three dollars. Carrie was explaining with great enthusiasm to the two elderly men who own the place - and Brooklyn Dickensian, is the best description I can come up with for them - that she used to live in Hell's Kitchen - back in the Good Old Days I've just been describing, when it was actually Hellish - and that she had been in the habit of dropping in frequently. The proprietors were nodding back and saying, "Of course, I remember you, you haven't changed a bit. Where have you been all this time?"
The shop had been on the verge of closing, but the owners let me poke around the stacks of books, while Carrie reminisced, agreeing with her newly re-found buddies that she'd made a huge mistake by ever moving to the Upper East Side. I found a biography of Roald Dahl that I hadn't read yet (Condition: Deplorable, but for $2, who was I to quibble?) When I fumbled for my change purse, the proprietors affably waved my money aside, insisting on making a gift of the book to me. In addition, they offered "you two lovely ladies" a couple of shots apiece from the bottles of Johnny Walker Black and Absolut with which, it seemed, they were wont to celebrate the end of the workday. (We declined with thanks.) After asking us repeatedly if we were sure we didn't want to raise a toast to the Return of Carrie to the Kitchen of Hell - No? - Are you sure? - and being apprised of the fact that we had to stay sober enough to watch a play about Emily Dickinson, our amiable hosts rolled up the steel gate (remember those roll-up gates that clatter like a subway train?) and bid us Godspeed.
Now, as to the play. I knew that the fact that I had last seen this one-woman play performed by Julie Harris, back in the days when Times Square was Times Square, was going to be a problem. Julie Harris, I knew, sets a standard that is hard to equal when she creates a role. So I tried to forget her performance and her inflections of the lines, and to give Joely Richardson a fair chance. But, inevitably, I was disappointed.
Ms. Richardson, to give her her due, takes on a heroic task in holding the stage solo for nearly 2 hours. It is a tremendous feat of memorization, just for a start - all monologue, with very little action. The actress playing the part of Emily Dickinson has nothing to hold her audience's attention but the playwright's words, and the words of the poet herself, for a number of Dickinson's poems are woven in as part of the monologue. Ms. Richardson was also suffering from a horrendous head cold, and had to keep sniffling and dabbing at her nose. (I had to wonder why it hadn't occurred to anybody to write in an impromptu line about Emily Dickinson's awful, awful hay fever, and have the props department equip her with a little white lace-edged hankie.)
Perhaps the fact that she was not feeling well accounted for the way that she rushed the delivery of the lines. The problem is - her timing was off. I only saw Julie Harris in the part once, but I perfectly recall her strategically-times pauses that gave the audience time to laugh appreciatively at an understated bit of wit. Ms. Richardson barreled through her lines like a freight train, as though she was afraid that if she didn't keep it rolling at top speed, she might lose her place and forget what came next. Indeed, several times she misspoke in her haste, and had to corrected herself in mid-word. It reminded me of little Tony Buddenbrook trying to recite her catechism in the first chapter of Thomas Mann's novel:
"What does this mean?" she slowly repeated. "I believe that God..." and then,her face clearing, swiftly continued, "made me, and likewise all other creatures," - and now, finding herself on smooth ice, raced along, beaming and unstoppable - she rattled off the whole article, true to the newly published catechism of anno domine 1835. Once you got going, she thought, it was just like being on the sled with your brothers and pushing off from the top of Mount Jerusalem - your thoughts flew past you as you pelted along, and you couldn't stop even if you wanted to.
In Ms. Richardson's favor, I will say that she was at her best when declaiming the actual poems. In those moments, she showed a fine understanding of the poet's delicate poetical structures, in which Dickinson's metaphysical speculations are so often expressed through her minute observations of Nature. I would hazard a guess that, long before taking on the role of "the mysterious E. Dickinson", the actress had often read the poet, with great love, and with the sensitive intuitive grasp of sense that only a reader's great love of a writer's words can impart.
In short, a noble effort. In a nut-brown wig and the obligatory white dress, Ms. Richardson looks the part of Emily Dickinson. The lighting for the production is so exquisite that I often thought I was viewing a tableau vivant of a Berthe Morisot painting - that "certain slant of light" here is a lambent, flattering glow - it kisses the actress like a sunbeam pouring through a window on a late-June afternoon. If Ms. Richardson can bring herself to slow down and take as much time delivering her lines as David Weiner took in designing the lighting, this could yet become a memorable evening of theatre.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Oy, Pioneers!
Today was the day that my life was supposed to change significantly for the better. But you know what they say. If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.
Our new electric dryer was delivered today. That was supposed to mean that I would not have to wait for a sunny day to do the wash so that I could string it up between the trees in our backyard. It did not work out that way.
Now, I already have a dryer, It is a very nice, top-of-the-line dryer, and it is attached, as space-saving apartment-style appliances tend to be, to the top of the wonderful high-end washing machine I insisted was moving to Rockland County when we did. The problem with my Old Original Dryer is that it runs on gas. Guess what we don't have, out here at the end of the long, lovely woodsy road that the deer and the antelope play upon? That's right. Gas.
"No problem," said my husband. "We will be getting a propane hook-up. Then I can have a gas range in the kitchen, and you will be able to use your dryer again. Plus, we will need to get a generator for when the power goes out, and we will get a dual-fuel model so we can use our propane tank as a back-up in case the gas stations run out of gas due to the emergency, like they did right after Hurricane Sandy. Not," he added hastily, seeing my face, "that I expect the power to go out."
This was back in June, and I have been hanging the laundry out on a wash-line ever since.
The propane people have made innumerable trips, taken a great many measurements, given us an enormous amount of contradictory information, and the upshot of all this waiting for the Propane Miracle was that it made no sense to put in a propane tank, because it turns out that installing a propane tank costs a lot more than just buying a new dryer, dishwasher, and high-end stove, and since we need everything on the list, we abandoned the idea of propane and went out to buy an electric dryer last weekend, that being the most pressing item on our list - at least, if I am to stay married to my present husband. (Divorce, as it turns out, costs even more than a propane conversion.)
I was sort of glad, because I had been afraid the propane tank would explode and blow us all to Kingdom Come. My husband said that would never happen, but then, he also said I wouldn't be hanging the laundry up outside past the first couple of weeks we were living here. We moved here, as you may recall, in mid-June.
After we bought the dryer, I assumed a lot. Chief among these assumptions was that I assumed the brand-new electric dryer was going to work. So I gleefully did a load of laundry this morning, planning to pop it all in as soon as the nice delivery men brought me my lovely, lovely dryer and I could stop living like a latter-day Ma Ingalls. (Let me state for the record that, while I enjoyed reading the Little House on the Prairie books, I never actually wanted to be in one. Eloise at the Plaza is more my speed. Room service, and charge it, please.)
And so, as I say, I did laundry. Lots of laundry, The kind of laundry you don't do when you have a wash-line instead of a dryer, because the big stuff trails on the ground and gets all dirty again. But now, with the dryer on its way, I turned reckless. Clean sheets for everybody!
Did you know that just because the former homeowner had a clothes dryer in the laundry room (which didn't give off any heat, now that I come to think of it) and there is a vent in the wall for the lint to blow out of through the duct that hooks up to the clothes dryer, and just because there is already a big enormous outlet in the wall to accommodate the big enormous plug that is attached to the new electric dryer, does not mean that your home is wired for the big new electric dryer? And that, if your home is not wired for this machine, then the machine will turn on, and the drum will spin, and the clothes will turn and tumble and lollop briskly about, but they will never get dry, because there won't be any heat?
Gentle Reader - neither did I.
So there was, thank God, enough sunshine to get the clothes mostly dry, and the electrician is coming next Monday. And I planted another 33 daffodil bulbs, which leaves 32 for Thursday.
But, you will say, today is only Tuesday. Why not put those 32 daffodil bulbs in tomorrow?
Because, Gentle Reader, tomorrow I am going to catch a ride into Manhattan with my husband, see a few friends, eat a proper bagel, and then go to see a play in the evening. I will not do one damn pioneer-type thing all day. And they will have to tie me up and load me into the trunk of the car to make me come back, if the electrician calls between now and then to say he isn't coming after all next Monday because it's Columbus Day.
Our new electric dryer was delivered today. That was supposed to mean that I would not have to wait for a sunny day to do the wash so that I could string it up between the trees in our backyard. It did not work out that way.
Now, I already have a dryer, It is a very nice, top-of-the-line dryer, and it is attached, as space-saving apartment-style appliances tend to be, to the top of the wonderful high-end washing machine I insisted was moving to Rockland County when we did. The problem with my Old Original Dryer is that it runs on gas. Guess what we don't have, out here at the end of the long, lovely woodsy road that the deer and the antelope play upon? That's right. Gas.
"No problem," said my husband. "We will be getting a propane hook-up. Then I can have a gas range in the kitchen, and you will be able to use your dryer again. Plus, we will need to get a generator for when the power goes out, and we will get a dual-fuel model so we can use our propane tank as a back-up in case the gas stations run out of gas due to the emergency, like they did right after Hurricane Sandy. Not," he added hastily, seeing my face, "that I expect the power to go out."
This was back in June, and I have been hanging the laundry out on a wash-line ever since.
The propane people have made innumerable trips, taken a great many measurements, given us an enormous amount of contradictory information, and the upshot of all this waiting for the Propane Miracle was that it made no sense to put in a propane tank, because it turns out that installing a propane tank costs a lot more than just buying a new dryer, dishwasher, and high-end stove, and since we need everything on the list, we abandoned the idea of propane and went out to buy an electric dryer last weekend, that being the most pressing item on our list - at least, if I am to stay married to my present husband. (Divorce, as it turns out, costs even more than a propane conversion.)
I was sort of glad, because I had been afraid the propane tank would explode and blow us all to Kingdom Come. My husband said that would never happen, but then, he also said I wouldn't be hanging the laundry up outside past the first couple of weeks we were living here. We moved here, as you may recall, in mid-June.
After we bought the dryer, I assumed a lot. Chief among these assumptions was that I assumed the brand-new electric dryer was going to work. So I gleefully did a load of laundry this morning, planning to pop it all in as soon as the nice delivery men brought me my lovely, lovely dryer and I could stop living like a latter-day Ma Ingalls. (Let me state for the record that, while I enjoyed reading the Little House on the Prairie books, I never actually wanted to be in one. Eloise at the Plaza is more my speed. Room service, and charge it, please.)
And so, as I say, I did laundry. Lots of laundry, The kind of laundry you don't do when you have a wash-line instead of a dryer, because the big stuff trails on the ground and gets all dirty again. But now, with the dryer on its way, I turned reckless. Clean sheets for everybody!
Did you know that just because the former homeowner had a clothes dryer in the laundry room (which didn't give off any heat, now that I come to think of it) and there is a vent in the wall for the lint to blow out of through the duct that hooks up to the clothes dryer, and just because there is already a big enormous outlet in the wall to accommodate the big enormous plug that is attached to the new electric dryer, does not mean that your home is wired for the big new electric dryer? And that, if your home is not wired for this machine, then the machine will turn on, and the drum will spin, and the clothes will turn and tumble and lollop briskly about, but they will never get dry, because there won't be any heat?
Gentle Reader - neither did I.
So there was, thank God, enough sunshine to get the clothes mostly dry, and the electrician is coming next Monday. And I planted another 33 daffodil bulbs, which leaves 32 for Thursday.
But, you will say, today is only Tuesday. Why not put those 32 daffodil bulbs in tomorrow?
Because, Gentle Reader, tomorrow I am going to catch a ride into Manhattan with my husband, see a few friends, eat a proper bagel, and then go to see a play in the evening. I will not do one damn pioneer-type thing all day. And they will have to tie me up and load me into the trunk of the car to make me come back, if the electrician calls between now and then to say he isn't coming after all next Monday because it's Columbus Day.
Monday, October 6, 2014
Let Daffodil the Gardens Fill
There is a contemporary fairy tale I read when I was a child, about a princess named Daffodil. At Daffodil's christening ceremony, her fairy godmother gifts her with the following dubious cadeau:
Let Daffodil
The gardens fill.
Wherever you go
Flowers shall grow.
Needless to say, this results in certain inconveniences, once the poor girl outgrows baby bootees and strolls through the palace. Poppies, coreopsis and goldenrod spring up in her wake, and before you know it, the throne room needs mowing.
I am no Princess Daffodil - flowers do not spring up for me without effort on my part. When I want flowers in my yard, I generally wind up grubby, covered in sweat, and compulsively searching myself for ticks for days after I've finished planting.
Having yielded to temptation in the form of two fifty-bulb bags of daffodils at the Home Depot (they were under $17 for each bag, which seemed a bargain, and I was so very tired of looking at all the things in that store that are made of wood, metal, or bathroom porcelain) I realized in short order that the reason the previous homeowner had not planted any daffodils next to the long, long driveway that seems to cry out for such splashes of springtime frivolity is that the dirt off to the side of the driveway is clay-ey, full of rocks, and back-breakingly difficult to dig. Undeterred, I went at it, and today I managed to get 35 out of the 100 bulbs into the ground. This involved wheedling the dirt and rocks out of the holes to a depth of about 5" using a sharp digging instrument that resembles a pogo-stick designed by Professor Van Helsing for slaying vampires, throwing in a gloved handful of rich black garden dirt (also bought) sticking the bulbs into the ground pointy-end up, and then covering the darlings with more of the nice black garden dirt, finishing the job by tromping everything down with my ugly green rubber boots that, I hope, will keep the ticks at bay.
I turned up more broken bottles - the previous homeowner, it seems, was exceedingly fond of Bud Lite - and quite a number of recently-interred acorns, which of course set the squirrels to scolding violently. (The squirrels already dislike me because I let the dog out several times a day.) The sound of their chirruping naturally made the dog, who was locked up in the house, entirely frantic, so I carried out my peaceful task of ensuring us of a Beauteous Springtime to the cacophonous din of the dog and the squirrels shrieking insults at one another.
But I always think that beauty is more important than, say, nicely-ironed shirts, and anyway, I don't particularly like to iron, so tomorrow I will go out with another 35 bulbs and get all sweaty and itchy thinking about ticks and Lyme disease, and I'll piss off the squirrels and the dog all over again.
Unless, of course, it rains. Then I'll read that book about the Romanov sisters that I got out of the library.
Let Daffodil
The gardens fill.
Wherever you go
Flowers shall grow.
Needless to say, this results in certain inconveniences, once the poor girl outgrows baby bootees and strolls through the palace. Poppies, coreopsis and goldenrod spring up in her wake, and before you know it, the throne room needs mowing.
I am no Princess Daffodil - flowers do not spring up for me without effort on my part. When I want flowers in my yard, I generally wind up grubby, covered in sweat, and compulsively searching myself for ticks for days after I've finished planting.
Having yielded to temptation in the form of two fifty-bulb bags of daffodils at the Home Depot (they were under $17 for each bag, which seemed a bargain, and I was so very tired of looking at all the things in that store that are made of wood, metal, or bathroom porcelain) I realized in short order that the reason the previous homeowner had not planted any daffodils next to the long, long driveway that seems to cry out for such splashes of springtime frivolity is that the dirt off to the side of the driveway is clay-ey, full of rocks, and back-breakingly difficult to dig. Undeterred, I went at it, and today I managed to get 35 out of the 100 bulbs into the ground. This involved wheedling the dirt and rocks out of the holes to a depth of about 5" using a sharp digging instrument that resembles a pogo-stick designed by Professor Van Helsing for slaying vampires, throwing in a gloved handful of rich black garden dirt (also bought) sticking the bulbs into the ground pointy-end up, and then covering the darlings with more of the nice black garden dirt, finishing the job by tromping everything down with my ugly green rubber boots that, I hope, will keep the ticks at bay.
I turned up more broken bottles - the previous homeowner, it seems, was exceedingly fond of Bud Lite - and quite a number of recently-interred acorns, which of course set the squirrels to scolding violently. (The squirrels already dislike me because I let the dog out several times a day.) The sound of their chirruping naturally made the dog, who was locked up in the house, entirely frantic, so I carried out my peaceful task of ensuring us of a Beauteous Springtime to the cacophonous din of the dog and the squirrels shrieking insults at one another.
But I always think that beauty is more important than, say, nicely-ironed shirts, and anyway, I don't particularly like to iron, so tomorrow I will go out with another 35 bulbs and get all sweaty and itchy thinking about ticks and Lyme disease, and I'll piss off the squirrels and the dog all over again.
Unless, of course, it rains. Then I'll read that book about the Romanov sisters that I got out of the library.
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