Sleeping Alone…

It is by now a familiar process. Michael goes away and I have trouble sleeping. I’m not upset or lonely; I’m waiting for him to come home, so that I can go to sleep. So I stay up and watch movies or television and wait for him to come home. I can bear his absence with great equanimity during the daytime, but then night doesn’t seem to come at all and it stays daytime and I retain my equanimity. And that’s why I am here, 3 episodes of Glee, one of Bob Newhart and 10 minutes into Black Narcissus.

I want to be there…

Been so long! We’re back in Philly after the Muscle-Weekend-Of-Danger-and-Excellence in Boston. I’d like to relive it as long as possible, so…

Friday: The drive was gray, foggy and rainy and I kept rubbing my eyes, thinking I was going blind, before I realized I need new windshield wipers. So, the good news is, I’m not going blind. We spent the night with Sam and Adam and Alex, who, as promised, is delicious. The men braved the storm for excellent Chinese takeout (such good providers!), while the women talked Wedding and passed Alex back and forth. Michael proved to have unexpected talents minding the baby… good to know. We slept well.

Saturday: First stop – Harvard Square! A quick walkabout to orient my man, then to business. The Harvard Coop is exactly, precisely, bewilderingly the same, from the Staff Picks shelf ( I once almost got fired for putting up a book called ‘Cunt: A Declaration of Independence’) to the flowers in Sue’s hair (are they the same flowers?). My old (first) Starbucks was sadly changed and the Boston Chowda Co. in the Garage is now a Subway (blast and damn!), but Newbury Comics is indentically the way I remember it and if the kids waiting to get inked at the tattoo parlour across the hall are much preppier than they were when I was young, the tattoo artists haven’t changed (I suppose tattoo artists throughout the world, across the ages have always looked pretty much the way they do here and now). Bartley’s was open (for a wonder) and damn, if that wasn’t the best chocolate milkshake in the land. We were both too full to appreciate the Harvard Bookstore and after another turn around the block, we hopped it to Park Street…
…Where the Commons were in full swing. Berkeley students played, a brass band here, a jazz trio there, and we meandered to the Gardens, Comm. Ave, Newbury St., Copley Square, Faneuil Hall and the Holocaust Memorial, which I have always loved. Hotel for a shower and then Waltham for Little India (how do they get their Chicken Korma to taste like that?) and Lizzie’s for dessert.

Sunday: Breakfast with Josie’s family, which was brief and chaotic (her brothers were in various stages of coming and going), then back over to the Watson’s to see Cynthia, always the most worthwhile of endeavors. A few hours of sitting around, taking or comparing notes on marriage and mothers, admiring the baby (so endlessly admirable!) and eating an excellent apple pie; these are the days of our lives. Back to the Broussard’s for dinner, just Josie and her parents this time. How long do you think we can maintain this buzz? A little longer, for when we got back to the hotel, we turned on the tv (looking back, what a stupid thing to do! What better way to kill a buzz?) and immediately found Treme, the new show about NOLA by the creators of The Wire. So good, so good, so good. Truly what it was like to live. You don’t need to understand it all to love it; Lord knows I didn’t. We’re trying to figure out how to watch it without a television. Thoughts?

I just wandered over to my old blog for the first time in a long time. I’m going to link it to here. I find that I’m proud of it; it’s sometimes overly stylized and almost always oblique, but then, so was I. So was the time and the place.

I have other things to tell you, about Denmark and such, but I’ll give you a chance to take off your glasses, rub your eyes, get up and stretch first!

The Unbosomings of an Ugly Duckling…

Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife by Francine Prose (I’m about halfway through Anne Frank’s Diary in Spanish, to improve my Spanish literacy. Although I had the vague idea that the best-known version had been heavily edited, I never really knew which version I was reading. It turns out I read (and re-read) the first printing; this Spanish version is the second version, still edited, but much more complete. I kept coming across scenes that I didn’t recognize and so I began the Francine Prose to unmuddle my reading. It worked. Her book works best when analyzing the writing (especially comparing Anne’s own edits to her father, Otto’s) and the reasons for the book’s appeal; here she’s both convincing and thought-provoking. The last chapter feels like padding (what do I care for the responses of her undergrad students?) and my other irritation is with the publishing industry… why must they release books in cheap hardcovers at all? Either release them in paperback straight away (which is what they should have done with this one; it’s about the size of a Master’s thesis) or make beautiful, sturdy, sewn (not glued) hardcovers, like the old Modern Library or Viking Portables. Grrrr! In any case, I’m halfway through Anne’s Diary itself and it’s excellent, even better than I was able to appreciate as a ‘yute’. Also, the Spanish translation is better than the 1950′s translation I”ve read in the past, which occasionally veers into Gee Whiz territory.)

How is it that I have enough junk to make a trip to the Salvation Army every three months? Went again today and still see things that need to go. Some of my green changes will have to wait until we move out (I don’t want to subject Saleh to them), like the phasing out of paper towels or drying clothes on a rack in the bathtub rather than in the dryer. But we’ve cut down both our trash and our recycling by about half in just a few weeks!

I do not like it when I see people wearing headphones while walking their dogs (or their children, for that matter, although you see it less often). Now, I love my headphones as much as the next girl and I absolutely value my time with my ipod, But! That is a disrespectful thing to do.

This weekend, Michael and I are going to Boston. I will show him everything good, we will meet young Master Watson and I will have dinner with Courtney and Josie. In spite of the predicted rain, I imagine Epic Win posts will be forthcoming.

And, on an unrelated note, we watched ‘Touch of Evil’ a few days ago. Even if it had not been very good (which it was… weird and trippy and original), if would have been absolutely worthwhile for Marlene Dietrich as a Mexican, Gypsy, Fortune-Telling Saloon Keeper (or even as any one of those things!). “Vat does it mattuh vot you say about peepil?” is battling against “You should lay off ze candy bars” for Best Life Philosophy in a Movie Where Charlton Heston Plays a Mustachioed Mexican. “Brief Encounter’, on the other hand, was disappointing, although Stanley Holloway is always welcome. Overly genteelly tortured (and adverbed… Sorry!) Britons keeping stiff upper lips.

Epic Win!

I am going to have to create a new Category, called Epic Win!, and I shall inaugurate it tonight!

The New Yorker has a blog on books and literary life which Michael and I visit assiduously. They are running a feature called The Subconscious Shelf where they analyze bookshelves for insights about their owners. We sent in a picture of our bedside shelves and lo! This may be the closest either of us gets to being published by The New Yorker and we are proportionately thrilled. This is true fame, for only The Awesome read Book Bench!