to those of you who celebrate...

... Merry Christmas from me.

dear jane

I gobbled down a book yesterday, in two big gulps, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Really, is there anything better than finding a book that so ensorcells you that you can barely tear yourself away, and when you do manage to put it down, it pulls at you like a talisman from a Grimm tale, or something out of Poe, or Bluebeard’s closet, distracting and enticing you until you can stand it no longer.

The book in question was The Man in the Wooden Hat, Jane Gardam’s follow-up to her earlier Old Filth (which I also wolfed down). It’s lying now on the bed, its spell over me quite gone, looking very innocent and calm, with nary an echo of its earlier bewitching power. It’s a brilliant book—intricate, smart, and entertaining—so someday I’ll pick it up for a re-read, and it will hypnotize me all over again.

Which answers my earlier question, about whether there’s anything better than finding an irresistible book. The answer is, yes: picking up a book that you’ve already read and already loved, and flipping out all over again.

In a recent post on the joys of re-watching favorite movies, Self-Styled Siren referenced a New York Times column by Verlyn Klinkenborg about re-reading beloved books. “The point of reading outward, widely, has always been to find the books I want to re-read and then to re-read them,” he writes, and you know, I couldn’t agree more. When I was young, I could have made it through all of Shakespeare and most of Proust and a good chunk of Gibbons in the hours that I devoted to re-reading Narnia, and Anne of Green Gables, and the gothic trifecta of Rebecca and Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, and Where the Red Fern Grows (crying every single time), and Louisa May Alcott and Frances Hodgson Burnett, and all of Madeline L’Engle but especially A Wrinkle in Time. Those books of my childhood: I can picture the words on the page, clearly see the illustrations, remember lines intact, recall the then-unappreciated sense of hours stretching ahead of me, an afternoon spent blissfully isolated thanks to my book and the always accepted excuse of “I’m reading.”

In his Times column, Mr. Klinkenborg writes, “Part of the fun of re-reading is that you are no longer bothered by the business of finding out what happens.” Again, nail on the head: knowing what happens means I don’t have to race to the finish line and can instead savor each delicious phrase. I can experience the joy of the page in front of me, rather than reading as fast as I can in an effort to find out what happens on the next page, and the next, and the one after that.

Still, even with a book that I’ve read umpteen times, I can find myself just as nervous as ever on behalf of my favorite characters, perhaps even more so, since I know what’s coming down the line for them, while they remain unaware of their fate. At times it’s almost unbearable to watch them make the same mistakes, suffer the same blows. When I saw Streetcar Named Desire the other night (with Cate Blanchett breaking the audience’s collective heart), I wished the play could come to an end when Blanche and Mitch are alone in the apartment, after their date, and Blanche tells him about her brief and tragic marriage. Mitch says to her, “You need somebody. And I need somebody, too.” They kiss, and Blanche says, “Sometimes—there’s God—so quickly!”

Curtain, please. Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen, we hope you enjoyed our condensed happily-ever-after version of Streetcar. Exit to the rear.

When it comes to authors that I read over and over and over again, no one holds a candle to Jane Austen. I cycle through her novels every couple of years, spacing them out only enough so that I don’t accidentally memorize them word for word. You’d think these books would be wrung dry for me at this point, and yet every time I return, I get caught up all over again. Those books pull me in so deeply that, when I’m forced to put them down for a bit, I feel only half present in the rest of my life, and I can’t wait to return to Austen’s world.



I am far, far too close to the Austen books to have any sort of critical perception of them. I can’t even explain why I love them. They’re like family, I suppose. Which may be why I was so unexpectedly bowled over the other day, when I went to see the Jane Austen exhibit at the Morgan Library: to see an actual letter written by Jane—her thoughts of the moment, her handwriting, her paper, her ink—was so surprisingly moving and intimate that I could barely take it all in. Looking at her letters, I had the strangest and most vivid sense of her as a real person. It was as if she’d walked into the room and said hello—the most thrilling star sighting ever.

Rather like the narrator of The Little Prince, who shows his Drawing Number One (of a boa constrictor that has eaten an elephant) to any new acquaintance to find out if he or she is “a person of true understanding,” I use Austen as a litmus test of sorts. I confess to feeling slightly suspicious of those who do not truly and deeply appreciate Austen, so when someone tells me that he doesn’t love Austen, or that she hasn’t gotten around to reading at least the big ones, I make a barely conscious note that this is probably not a kindred spirit situation.

Unfortunately, these days Austen’s books—perhaps because of the slew of Masterpiece Theatre adaptations and ripped-bodice movies—seem now to be slotted as the original chick lit, not “serious” literature, but barely one step up from a beach read. Austen often seems to be considered a lacy, dainty, missish story-teller, best suited for lightweight book clubs, rather than the sharp, witty, clear-eyed, tough-minded, unflinching writer that she was, and she’s rarely given her due as the precursor to Dickens, Chekhov, Flaubert, even Fitzgerald.

The short documentary that accompanies the Morgan exhibit includes a quote from Virginia Woolf on Austen: “Of all the great writers, she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.” Perhaps this helps explain both why so many seem to take her for granted (or even dismiss her, as Emerson did—but then, he had no sense of humor), and why it’s so tough for me to put my finger on what I love so much about the novels. Their seeming effortlessness, their no-nonsense pacing, and the utter naturalness of the language, the situations, and the characters—it all combines to make the books a pure pleasure to read, and to effectively hide the sophisticated and utterly rare craft behind them.

Several writers (most amusingly the always-entertaining Fran Lebowitz) are interviewed in the Morgan documentary, including Colm Tóibín, who has this to say:

If you said you were going off for the weekend and you were doing nothing except re-reading Emma, or taking Mansfield Park to bed—that image for me would be one of pure happiness. I mean, you could bring maybe a person to bed and that would be nicer in some way, but it wouldn’t be as fully satisfying.

I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I take his point, and love him for it.

In a never-visited storage unit in the Bronx are nearly all my belongings (at least, I hope they’re there; I send the check every month with the idea that someday I will see my stuff again). Among the furniture and pots-and-pans and tchotkes are boxes and boxes of books, and in one of these boxes are my Austen novels, agonizingly out of reach for the time being. When I do finally retrieve and unpack that box, I may just take Tóibín's advice and hole up for a few days to reacquaint myself with Austen’s worlds—the perfect way to inhabit that next apartment, when I find it, which will hopefully be soon.

Or maybe Santa will bring me these gorgeous new editions....





Top image: detail of a Jane Austen letter; second image: example of one of Austen's "crossed" letter, in which the writer, after filling the page, turned the paper 90 degrees and continued writing, thereby getting as much as possible out of each valuable piece of paper, and saving on postal charges to boot; bottom images: new Penguin editions of two of Austen's novels, designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith.

shop-a-holic

In his mean post-break-up email, my ex accused me of being shallow (or wanting to be shallow, or heading toward being shallow, or something like that—still can’t bring myself to re-read it), of being concerned only with surfaces.

I wish.

How great would it be to care only about surfaces! Oh, to be shallow, to skip along through life, taking it as it comes, letting all the junk just bounce off, not caring what other people think about you, not feeling a need to self-analyze and self-criticize and so forth, reading paperback best-sellers, seeing blockbuster movies, caring about Jon + Kate. Quel joy!

My friend Laura and I had a detailed discussion about the break-up, in which she offered a classy and helpful metaphor to sum up the situation. “It’s like finding something in an antique shop,” she said, “something that would be great if only, and you think, ‘Oh, I’ll buy it and get it fixed, or get it refinished, or cut the legs down,’ or something like that. But you know it’s not what you really want, and it’ll never be right, and you have to walk away and keep looking.”

I have another analogy, one that shows off my shallowness quite nicely, I think, especially when I develop it into a theory of life. Here goes: You’re shopping for clothes, and you’re in the dressing room, trying stuff on. You try on a black shirt and think, “Nothing wrong with that, I could use a black shirt,” or you try on a jacket and think, “Not bad, I suppose, and it’s a good deal.” Then you try on something else—a sweater, or a t-shirt, or the perfect little black dress—and you look in the mirror and say, “I frickin’ love it. I look amazing.”

Here’s what I’ve learned: don’t buy the other stuff, the “good-enough” stuff. Hold out for something that makes you feel like a rock star. And more important: trust that you’ll know it when you see it.

I’ve been applying my clothes-shopping philosophy to other aspects of my life. I don’t stick with a book unless I love it, I try not to waste calories on something that’s not super-delicious, I don’t pursue a job opp if the initial meeting feels sour… Basically, I try to check in with myself—be mindful, as they say—and make sure all’s well.

As I’ve written before, I have a lot of issues that come out in full force when I’m in a relationship, and it can become very difficult for me to get my bearings. Like this time: I doubted the gut feeling that was telling me to bail; I felt I should keep trying to make a go of it, because maybe, if I worked through my stuff, everything would click into place, and we’d live happily ever after. I thought my doubts could be coming from relationship-induced craziness, and not from the reality of the situation, which was simply that it wasn’t working, period.

During the drawn-out misery that led up to the split, I felt uncomfortable in my own skin, completely at odds with myself. It’s like when you’re wearing a pair of pants that’s too tight, and all day, you’re fidgeting and squirming and you just can’t wait till you can get home, change into your sweats, and breathe easy. That’s what it felt like, when it was finally over: relief.

(Unfortunately, the break-up process wasn’t in fact over, though I didn’t know that at the time. There was a slew of drama awaiting me, including his most recent email, which looks like an apology and sounds like an apology, but, honey, that ain’t no apology—you know, “I’m sorry if I hurt you, but”—in which he said he should have “corrected” me more along the way. Oh, really?)

Bottom line, despite the fact that the relationship started so romantically, and despite the fact that in certain lights it looked destined by Fate, it didn’t fit—we didn’t fit—and there’s nothing I can do about it now except change into my sweats and lick my wounds.

Now, as I do a round of Monday-morning quarterbacking on the past few months, there are a couple lessons for me to remember, the most important of which is this: I have to believe that when the right relationship comes along, no matter how much stuff I have to work through, I will feel in my bones that it’s worth it. I have to trust that I’ll know it when I see it.

introspection's a bitch

Buddhism teaches that it is not how much you know about yourself, it's how you relate to what you do know that makes a difference.... The common tendency, Buddhism teaches, is to use whatever is happening to reinforce a distinct feeling of self: to take everything very personally. The alternative, as discerned by the Buddha, is to hold that very feeling of self up for critical examination whenever it arises. How real is this feeling that drives us, which we ordinarily take so much for granted?
— Mark Epstein, Psychotherapy without the Self: A Buddhist Perspective

Years and years ago, after a particularly bad breakup, my newly minted ex-boyfriend came to my apartment one evening, grimly unpacked a box containing everything I’d given him, as well as the things I’d left at his place, then went up to my bedroom, unplugged the TV he’d loaned me, lugged it out to his truck, and drove off, all without a word. Game over.

Today, I’ll play a variation on that theme: pack up the camera my latest ex loaned me, the book he wanted me to read, the earrings he gave me for my birthday that I can’t imagine wearing now, knowing how he feels. It’s almost a ritual, this type of modern breakup: angry emails, screened calls, bitchy late-night texts, and a trip to Mail Boxes Etc.

I would have thought that, after all these years of practice, breakups would get easier. After all, I’ve got more in my life that can help fill in the hole, I’ve learned that I can take care of myself, and I know I’ll get through the pain. But there’s an added level of dreariness to the whole thing now, a depressing sense that I should have known better — that I should have avoided some of my typical pitfalls and patterns, should have been more in control, more grown-up.

And so 2009 draws to an end with yet another crisis of the soul. (It’s been a year of those, I must say. I hope 2010 is gentler.) As break-ups go, this one initially seemed to be as moderate as possible — not too acrimonious, no big blow-out. Of course, it’s just when you’ve decided that the seas are calm that a giant wave comes out of nowhere and smacks you down, hard.
You never saw it coming.

This particular wave took the form of an unexpected, vividly detailed, excruciating email from my ex. It packed a whallop, furiously listing one after another my faults and failings as a human being. In his anger, he craftily aimed a lot of his blows at what he knows to be my most vulnerable areas, the parts of me that already cause me the most pain and self-doubt. Hence the soul-in-crisis.

I’m terrible at coping when someone is angry with me — and boy, is he angry, a rage that is hard to face, and that makes me antsy, preoccupied, nervous, like I need to be looking over my shoulder. (This is a strange post to write, by the by. It's uncomfortably revealing, yes, but also, it could very well be read by the person who instigated the crisis. I don’t want to hurt him any more than I have, and then my Irish-German pride hates for him to know how much he hurt me, which is making it tougher than usual to scrape together these paragraphs. But this blog is for me, a way for me to try to write through my experiences and find my way out of the forest, so I need to disregard his reaction and soldier on.)

There were definitely a few things in the email that were unfair; had they been delivered in person, they would have sparked quite an argument. There were also a few "huh?" moments, which I guess will always remain a mystery. And then there were a couple real below-the-belt hits, not all of which I can recall, but I’m not up for a re-read. But there was enough in there that tapped into my deepest fears about who I am as a person, and what my life is and will be, that my therapist had her hands full. (As she put it, after reading the email, "I can only imagine the number you're doing on yourself.")

The overarching theme was that I'm selfish, shallow, cold, and incapable of being in a relationship. Of course, on the one hand, this is just the typical angry post-breakup attack — the pouring out of all the pent-up resentment and grievances — and needs to be read in that light. On the other hand, these accusations are not new to me — I've heard them before, and I've worried that they are, in fact, my great failings.



And you know, he's right about a lot of things. I was terrible to him, and difficult and mean and cold. He didn’t deserve it, I didn't want to be that way, but I was, a lot. It seems that in any kind of emotionally vulnerable situation, my more rational self gets shoved out of the picture, and the crazy, angry, frightened part of me steps up to bat. After all, the crazy part has a lot more experience in emotional situations (lived through plenty of those as a kid), while the rational part hasn’t been given a lot of opportunity to figure out how to handle those moments and so ends up pushed aside.

And there’s a good chance that I’m building some fairly horrible self-fulfilling prophecies. When someone thinks highly of me (like this boyfriend did, initially — he put me on a pedestal, it seems, which probably helps explain his extreme anger now: my feet of clay have been a big disappointment), I feel, "He doesn't really know me; if he did, he'd be out of here." Then, to confirm my screwed-up self image, I do my best to drive him away, at which point I say, "See, I knew it: I'm a terrible person."

This, by the way, is why this particular post is uncomfortably revealing for me. I’m afraid that I'll show you, my friends and readers, too much of myself, my ugly parts, and you, too, will turn away.

This is also why god invented therapy. Over the past year, these are the very issues I've focused on (along with that whole what-do-I-want-do-do-with-my-life thing), which is perhaps why my ex's email hit me so hard: after all this work and struggle, I'm still making the same mistakes, falling in the same traps. I have to have some faith, I suppose, that my growing awareness of these mistakes and pitfalls will help me down the line, but for now, I can panic at the idea that I'm stuck — no progress, no light at the end of the tunnel.

So what now. More therapy, more introspection, more attempts to take responsibility for my mistakes without going down the path of thinking that I'm a terrible person. More effort to look at myself honestly, but not to beat myself up mercilessly. And a hope that the lessons I’ve learned from my mistakes will help me avoid similar ones in the future.



As an attempt to begin to change my patterns, I set aside my anger (and my near-overwhelming defensive desire to rebut some of his more unfair accusations, and perhaps lob a few of my own) and tried to write a sincere apology. Once I got started, I found it a relief to say how sorry I am; I felt calmer, as if I got the crazy part of me to quiet down (after all, that part of me isn’t much interested in making apologies) and the more rational part to take charge.

In fact, I found that I was able to thank him for what I learned from him, even for the harsh lesson that his email embodied. That doesn’t mean I’m glad I got that email — it was far too bruising, and I’m no martyr — but I think he’d bottled up his emotions for so long that I hadn’t seen the hurt I was causing. Now, thanks to that tsunami of an email, wow can I see it, quite clearly, thank you, and can hopefully remember it in the future.

Unfortunately, the only reply was a curt text demanding the return of his camera, but at least now I know that there’s not a lot I can do about how he feels, so I can stop trying to figure out if there’s a way to move us past the resentment to a less hateful place, perhaps give us both some relief. All I can do is try to figure out my own lessons — and send him back that damn camera, pronto.

LA, the weird and the wonderful

A creepy display at a manicure joint on Melrose, Technicolor graffiti, classic mid-century signage, a thrift shop's guardian spirits... as well as the flowers, the palm trees, and my little cottage in the woods of West Hollywood - here are a few glimpses of Los Angeles from last week.

eating los angeles

Well, it was a wonderful trip. LA really rolled out the red carpet: gorgeous weather, amazing food, more wine than you could shake a stick at, an ongoing conversation about which madly expensive perfume I should buy from Scent Bar / Lucky Scent, and plenty of that helpless laughter I wrote about previously.

Once I get a sense of what 2010 is going to bring, work-wise, I may very well look at making the cross-country move for the third time.



Meanwhile, let me relive some of the food highlights:

- the sweetest uni at Hama Sushi
- pizza with oregano and salami at Pizzeria Mozza
- tacos with potatoes and rajas at Loteria
- escarole salad with almonds and sunchokes at Gjelina
- toasted sourdough bread from La Brea Bakery
- olive oil gelato and butterscotch pudding at Pizzeria Mozza
- spinach and goat cheese omelet at King’s Road
- chocolate-covered dried apricots and tamari-wasabi almonds from Erewhon
- honey-marinated hanger steak and pumpkin cupcakes at Joan’s on Third
- hamachi sashimi with XO sauce at Hungry Cat
- my final meal:scrambled eggs, sausage, homemade english muffin, potatoes, and black tea at bld



- and, best of all, Thomas’s lovely brunch: spinach salad with bacon, tarragon, chervil, and mustard vinaigrette; chicken with mushroom cream sauce and asparagus; a La Brea bakery baguette and fig-anise bread; and cookies with fresh berries. And several bottles of Champagne that I picked up from a store with an unbelievable selection of boutique wines, and an unbelievably rude proprietor. (When I asked if he thought I’d made good choices from his Champagne selection, he said, “I chose them first.” When I asked, “Well then, did I do a good job narrowing down to three bottles?” he said, “At that price point, yes.” Thanks, pal.)

funhouse

I lived in Los Angeles for eight years, after college. Those were significant years, I realize now: being on my own for the first time, and setting up my own life, and taking care of myself, in a place so utterly different from where I’d lived till then (New England, for god’s sake), and which I felt I made my own.

Of course, during those years, I itched to get back east, to live in New York, to be in a quote-unquote real city, to be around people who were quick and on a mission, who hustled.

Fast-forward a decade or so. I’ve been in New York (and environs) for a good long time now, and it just doesn’t feel quite right, somehow. I mean, I love it and all, but you know, I hate it.

It’s a completely schizophrenic relationship, with dramatic, turn-on-a-dime emotions. For instance, I’ll be walking down the street, think, "I'd like a pack of gum," and presto: a deli. There’s always a deli! I love that! Yay, New York!



And then my pack of gum and I will trudge down into the subway and wait and wait and wait for the train, with no announcements to let us know when/if the train will arrive, and when it does arrive, the wheels scrape along the rails like the world’s fiercest nails-on-a-chalkboard, and the train is so stuffed that it takes an eon for a few bedraggled souls to squirm their way out, and somehow the space they took up is absorbed by the remaining riders, so there’s no room for us. The doors close on a packed mass of people, quashing everyone so tightly together that if you could remove the roof of the train, you could pull out a solid loaf of humanness. The train leaves, my gum and I are left behind on the platform, and the whole farce plays over again.

Boo, New York. Boo.

I’m in Los Angeles now for a week — for the first time in years — and so far, it feels frickin’ great. I’ve had piles of delicious salads for lunch, and an incredible wine-soaked dinner at Pizzeria Mozza (so now LA has amazing pizza — another check in the plus column). I've settled into Thom's adorable cottage, which is right in the middle of the city and yet is so quiet (except for the crickets), and is surrounded by a lovely garden that makes me feel as if I'm a million miles from civilization.



I've laughed for hours at the most ridiculous things with the boys (wow, I really needed a few sessions of helpless laughing, after the week I’ve had), and last night had fantastic tacos at Loteria after cocktails in Thom's swank digs, and am now blogging away in a cafe on Melrose (that's another plus: there are available seats in the cafes, so I can settle in for a couple hours of Earl Grey and free wifi; however, a big minus is the parade of bozos in track pants and skate shoes, and bimbos in leggings and boots, all endlessly braying into their phones).

There might not be a deli on every corner (or a theater district, or City Ballet), but CVS sells Dom Perignon*, and I’ll be hitting Hama Sushi tomorrow, and getting pumpkin gelato in Silverlake, and there’s an entire store of Heath pottery just a few blocks from Thom's house, along with a shop that sells dead-stock vintage shoes (hold me back!), and my perfume source, which I've ordered from for a few years and now will finally visit in person.



I know, I know: it’s vacation, of course it’s fun, of course I’m relaxed and laughing and so forth. On the other hand: it's fun! Why question it. And right now, fun is a priority. I want to be with fun people, drinking Champagne from CVS and laughing loud enough to piss off the people at the next table, and feeling like we can’t talk fast enough, there’s so much to say. That’s a life I could embrace.

At the very least, I need to be here more than one week every couple of years.



*Alex and I in CVS, scanning the aisles: “Hair color, indigestion, external pain…” “External pain? What about existential pain?” “Look: external pain, existential pain,... Champagne!”