square one

There are certain relationships that seem so perfect, so meant-to-be right, so love-at-first-sight, that you almost can’t believe it’s really happening to you. Everything just seems to fall right into place, and you walk around in a happy glow, so thrilled that life has given you such a winning hand.

Well, as they say, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. You may remember my lovely new apartment, the one I just moved into on Feb. 1, the one where I was finally feeling settled after nearly two years of shuttling from one spot to another. It had seemed so serendipitous, the way we found each other — it was enough to make me believe in fate, or the universe looking out for me, or something.

I’d loved the industrial feel of the apartment, with its lofty ceilings and huge metal-framed windows — it clearly had started life as a manufacturing space. The owners had taken care to create 54 quite nice apartments, with good kitchens and big bathrooms and great layouts. Unfortunately, in all the to-do of converting the building into rental apartments, no one seems to have taken a moment to officially convert the building from commercial to residential. And somehow, after years of tenants and leases and amenities and staff (and years of annual inspections by the Fire Department), the city apparently never noticed this minor detail, until this past Tuesday, when the Department of Buildings somehow got prompted to take a look at the situation, with the result that the building was shut down on the spot, and I and the rest of the tenants were given a couple hours to pack up some necessities and find a place to stay.

And it doesn’t look like this is a paperwork issue that’s going to be cleared up in a week or so. Not only was the building never zoned as residential, but it violates some fairly serious codes, like the one about residential buildings having more than one staircase or “egress” (no one ever says “exit” in the world of planning and zoning), or the one about residential buildings having a fire escape, or the minor one about residential buildings having sprinkler systems. As the very sympathetic cop said on Tuesday, as he briefed us shell-shocked tenants in the lobby, “I feel for you guys, I really do, but there’s no way we can let you stay here. God forbid [pronounced ‘Gad fehbid’] there’s a fire in the stairwell — you’d all die. This place is a deathtrap.”



Hard to argue with that logic. (And very hard to understand how those fire department inspectors managed to miss all this over the years.)

That sympathetic cop was joined by several other of New York’s Finest, along with a contingent of New York’s Bravest in three fire engines, the OEM, the Department of Buildings, the Red Cross (to make sure everyone had somewhere to go that night), and, of course, a few intrepid reporters who were salivating over the story of an entire “luxury” apartment building (no one told me it was luxury!) being evacuated, and all its occupants being vacated with almost no notice.

So, crazy as it seems, I’m back on the hunt for an apartment, less than two months after finding this place. I have no brilliant insights to draw, other than increased appreciation for Cindy Adams’ sign-off: “Only in New York, kids, only in New York.” In terms of my sanity, I’ve managed to not utterly freak out (after a few minor breakdowns in the first 48 hours), and I haven’t gone back to my apartment for more than a couple minutes at a time, so I’m already moving on, and not getting too stuck in “But this place was perfect for me!”

Hopefully, my return to living out of a suitcase will be limited to a couple weeks; as much as I enjoyed some of the adventures of the past two years, and the footloose-and-fancy-free-ness of it all, it had been such a relief to finally have a place of my own again, to start to put together a routine and some (relatively) long-term plans. I must admit that, in the immediate aftermath of the evacuation (the Post referred to us as “evict-ims,” which I thought was pretty cute), a part of me wanted to toss everything back into storage and pull a 25 days in _________, skipping town on the drama and hassles.



But my five weeks in the deathtrap were great, really, and I want to have some kind of focus and direction right now, to set up a bit of a life for myself. So this afternoon (a nasty, cold, rainy, windy, raw afternoon), I’ll be back out there with a broker whose instructions include “no illegal conversions,” looking at apartments and hopefully (please, Universe, please) finding the next next apartment without too much trudging and angst.

hearts and minds

He was sure that he wouldn't feel at ease for even a moment until he knew exactly when he would once again press her tightly against himself. She said yes. And the sense of relief that came flooding into his soul was so powerful that for a brief moment he even questioned if their getting together the next day really mattered to him at all or not. But that doubt was quickly dispelled, for he had read enough literature to believe that anxiety, even more than jealousy, is the great driving force of passion.
— Françoise Sagan, That Mad Ache

There’s nothing like romance for dredging up slag heaps of irrational, overwhelming fears: fear of pain, of humiliation, of abandonment, of need and neediness, of vulnerability, of rejection, of loss — et cetera, et cetera — all leading to an antsy anxiety that makes it difficult to simmer down and focus on anything else (like, say, writing a blog post).

The new romance in my life, while pretty great in many ways, faces a few significant hurdles / potential dealbreakers that leave me feeling very unsure and hesitant about how to proceed: Should I dive in and shoot for happiness, even if it’s short-term and ends in tears, or should I hedge my bets and adopt a cautious, practical, wait-and-see attitude? Should I be open and trusting (major effort for me), or should I be guarded and self-protective? Should I bolt?

How you would respond to these questions probably reveals how much of a romantic you are (it’s kind of like a Cosmo quiz, without the exclamation points and sex tips). My path in the past would have been a demented combo platter: throw myself in full force without any due diligence, committing my heart 100 percent, but not tell anyone, least of all the object of my affection, and instead maintain a brittle veneer that was somehow supposed to hide and protect me.



Of course, that brittle veneer doesn’t do much, in the end. I remember one boyfriend, at the messy denouement of our relationship, saying, “Funny: I’d always thought you were so tough.”

Yes, very funny. Actually, I’m tough in all sorts of ways and in all sorts of situations, but when it comes to romance — not so much. Instead, I veer recklessly from utter giddiness and delight to utter dejection and despair, with occasional forays into a state of being curiously unmoved and resigned — the “whatever” mode.

For example: In this current situation, with the aforementioned hurdles, if he’s being prudent and advocating caution and talking up the importance of behaving sensibly (as if!), I can feel myself, as the words are coming out of his mouth, wanting to say, “No! Let’s go for it! Let’s do that fools-rush-in thing!” and simultaneously wanting to retreat to my corner and get that chip back on my shoulder, the one that indicates that I don’t care at all, fine, do what you want, makes no diff to me. Whatever.

Anxiety might be “the great driving force of passion,” per Mlle Sagan, but I’ve had enough of it, thanks. I’d be happy to move past this stage, into one of happy anticipation of what is to come, with a reassuring sense of security. I hate feeling (especially at this point in my life) that wanting what I want is a mistake, that being vulnerable is something to hide, or to conquer, or to be ashamed of.

I suppose the goal right now should be to live in the moment as much as possible and have fun and enjoy. I mean, it’s a new romance, it early days yet, it could go in a million different directions, why borrow trouble… And yet, I do feel I need to somehow also keep tabs on the potential for serious damage and decide at some point if I need to cut my losses.

This, of course, would involve handing over the reins to Reason, being practical, exercising Good Judgment. Just as I can be tough at times, I can also be rational and reasonable with the best of them, only not when it comes to love and all that. Faced with love and all that, my rational side is tossed into the back seat, and the foolish romantic me is at the wheel, careening recklessly down the highway, flattening signposts and passing on the right.



I don’t think it’s so much about which is stronger, the heart or the mind, as it is about which listens better. Our minds are right there, part of the conversation; we can create compelling arguments, remind ourselves of past mistakes, resolve to act differently from now on, logically and reasonably try to choose a smarter, safer path. Our hearts, however, remain stubbornly deaf to all of this logic and reason and continue to feel whatever they damn well please, regardless of whether it makes any sense at all. The split between the heart and the mind can be a torment, as we toggle back and forth from one extreme to another, trying to find some kind of solution that appeals to both. (How great would that be!)

But when there isn’t a solution that works all around — when our minds are saying “bail” and our hearts are blithely whistling a happy tune and not listening — it can be such a relief to finally admit that you can’t win an argument with the heart (mainly because the heart isn’t even participating in the argument — it’s pulling a Bartleby, calmly stating “I prefer not to” no matter how forcefully you try to engage it in battle). The moment of surrender — of throwing in the towel and letting the heart lead the way — is to feel the relief of giving in: you stop fighting, stop trying to take the wheel, and just sit back and check out the scenery.

Of course, I’m headed god knows where, but maybe that’s not all bad.

Right?

open house

Well, here I am, finally: in the next apartment! I moved on Feb 1, into a sunny, quirky pad smack in the middle of the city. This being New York, looking for the apartment was incredibly stressful and grueling, and it became another test of my ability to trust my instincts and to keep in mind a sense of what’s important to me. As usual, I didn’t quite ace the test: I forgot that I even had instincts, felt completely overwhelmed and rushed, and got utterly rattled by various brokers doing a hardsell on “building amenities” like roof decks, lounges, gyms, climbing walls (!!), and room service (!!!), or expecting me to be bowled over by a teensy “terrace” or a glam and glossy high-end kitchen.

But I don’t really picture myself sprawled on a chaise on a Financial District roof deck or splurging on room service on a daily basis, and to me, New York balconies and terraces seem kind of sad and gray and grimy, and just something else that you have to furnish and clean. And I have survived my entire life — and cooked countless meals — without the aid of a fancy-schmancy kitchen.

Somehow, despite my feet being so tired and my head hurting from hours on craigslist, and in spite of my near-irresistible desire to just throw in the towel already, I was able to deflect the deals being lobbed my way (free two months’ rent! no fee! no deposit!) and hold out till I found the Mr. Right of the apartment world. After a particularly frustrating morning of looking and not finding, I had lunch with a wise broker friend who told me, “I’ve seen it over and over again: It’s fate, your home is out there, you will find it, it will all fall into place.”



Yeah right, I thought, with absolutely no faith in the idea of fate, and went off to meet yet another broker to take a second look at a few apartments I’d see earlier, in a building on Broadway. Each of the three apartments he’d shown me before had had a fatal flaw; one got no light, one faced the back of another building, and one was on a low floor and seemed too noisy. But they were big and spacious and not too madly expensive, so I figured what the hell, might as well look again.

The broker and I zipped up to the tenth floor, and he marched down the hall into an open apartment. I followed, took a look around, and said, “This is not the apartment you showed me before.” “Yes, it is,” he said, kind of belligerently. “No, it’s not,” I said. “Yes, it is,” he said, peevishly. “No, it’s not,” I said, equally peevishly, “and I’m 100 percent sure, because I love this apartment. I love it, and I want it.” He looked at his paperwork and said, “Oh my God, we walked into the wrong apartment.” We’d barged straight into a recently vacated place that was still being primped and had not yet been listed, and wasn’t supposed to be shown for another week, and… well, you know how it ends. (I apologize to my broker friend for doubting his wise, wise words.)



So here I am, living life in the next apartment! I love the neighborhood — it’s half gritty and seedy old New York, and half buzzy hipster New York — but mainly, I love having my very own home once again. I love having my long-lost stuff* back with me (though when the mover was bringing it all in — box after box after box — I nearly had a meltdown at the sheer mass of it all). I love being able to make spontaneous plans with friends that require only a quick stroll across town, rather than a schlep to the station, a boring train ride, subway hell, and so forth. I love having things delivered — Indian food, a new table, groceries, books — and I love the doormen and porters who make everything so damn easy. I love that my pals stop by for a chat and a glass of wine. I love watching the constant happenings on Broadway. And man do I love the giant industrial windows that are let floods of sunshine into my afternoon.

In fact, overall — despite the fact that I should probably be panicked at the prospect of paying an outrageous Manhattan rent — I’m actually quite relaxed. I have found the elusive feeling of being open to what’s around me, curious about what’s coming my way, not too caught up in anxieties or expectations or fears. And the openness is clearly perceptible to others: I’m meeting people left and right, cool projects are popping up, and my calendar is just full enough to keep me busy without driving me to insanity.



Paradoxically, I want to keep a tight grip onto this sense that I’m not latching onto things. I’m trying right now, as a practice, to let each experience stand by itself. If I can stay focused on the moment, I have a better chance of staying tuned in to what I’m feeling, rather than getting caught up in what it all means, or judging an experience based on what it leads to, or what I want it to lead to, rather than what it is.

Of course, there’s a reason this is all referred to as a practice. Especially during a time of great change like this one, I can get swept up into all sorts of anxiety about what will make me happy, where I’m going, what I should do, what I should feel. When I crawl back inside from that particular ledge, I try to come back to the moment, to stop spinning way ahead of myself, to enjoy the here and now. Yet herein likes another paradox: I may not want to get caught up in a cycle of predicting and controlling and fretting, but I also have to take into account the need to plan ahead somewhat, and the need to take care of myself. It's as if I have to try to create a framework in which to operate, so that I can stop myself from zooming into situations that seem hardwired for disaster and still find a way to be awake and aware and in the present — to feel the flow — and to trust in the fate that helped me find my next apartment.



* Examples of my beloved stuff pictured here — how did I survive without it??

new construction

Let me give you a piece of advice (and I speak from experience): If you’ve suffered a romantic disappointment, or if you woke up with a nagging sense that love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, do not that very day go see South Pacific at Lincoln Center Theater, in which Paulo Szot’s gorgeous, compelling baritone first overwhelms you with the promise of romance (“Some Enchanted Evening”), then destroys you with the pain of lost love (“This Nearly Was Mine”), before you’re completely undone with a last-minute true-love happy ending (orchestra goes mad, music crashes over you, stage goes black — oof). I staggered out of the theater into a bitterly cold Sunday afternoon and felt about as far from a tropical happy ending as is possible.

My romantic disappointment this time around was a minor one, on paper, yet somehow felt crushing. The only loss, really, was of the castle in the air that I’d built in mere moments, out of nothing but a few thrilling moments and promising “signs” and lots and lots of daydreaming.

“You’re letting your imagination run away with you,” my mother always said to me when I was a child. And it’s true: I did feel that once my imagination got started, I had no control over it. If it wanted to freak me out with thoughts of disaster and danger, off it would go, heedless of my growing terror and quickly working me up into quite a state, where a slow creak or a shifting shadow in our old house would make me nearly implode with panic.

That imagination still causes me plenty of trouble. I may not have to check under the bed at night, or fret about something dropping down onto me from a tree in the dark, but give me a little material and I can build a lovely 3D vision of the future—or rather, a future—that is so lovely and captivating that I can find it rather crushing to come back to earth and return to my real—and much more prosaic—life.



There’s nothing like romance for derailing my ongoing attempts to try to follow the Buddhist advice of living more in the moment. Perhaps this is because romance, bottom line, is all about anticipation of the happy future, about projecting into an imagined bliss. Not matter how enjoyable the romance might be in and of itself, the thrill comes from dreaming of what may come, from hoping that what’s happening now is a promise of what we want to happen later.

So a disappointment can feel wildly out of proportion, because it’s not about missing the actual person, or feeling their absence. It’s about mourning the loss of an entire envisioned life, a relationship and a person that didn’t even exist and yet have left a yawning absence behind. It’s about wrenching your gaze away from some glorious vista of love and happiness and enchanted evenings and returning your attention to what, in comparison, can seem as drab and flat as a cold, gray January afternoon.

My other current struggle with my imagination involves my now-active search for that ever-elusive next apartment. I’ve seen literally dozens of apartments; if it weren’t for the stress of having to make a decision, it would be nothing but fun to see all the different apartments—and all the different lives—available in Manhattan. You can do quirky in the West Village, rugged in Flatiron, perfectly nice in Gramercy, mad luxury in the Financial District (lap pool! three roof decks! room service! ping pong! billiards! indoor rock-climbing! free breakfast!), corporate in Chelsea, charming on the Upper West. (Can you tell I’ve been reading a lot of real estate listings? I’m actually having nightmares about floor plans and obstructed views and closet space.)

And you know, it all sounds pretty great. I walk into an empty apartment and instantly visualize my brand-new life—making breakfast in a cool open kitchen, working at my desk overlooking killer river views, kicking back in a sleek design-y pad, all of the above set to a groovy soundtrack and starring a completely organized and with-it version of me.

Early in my search, I found a really fantastic place, which I now refer to as The One That Got Away (damn that broker!). In this one, my fantasies of my future life got seriously out of hand. I had already picked out my outfit for the great housewarming party, had met with clients at the giant metal desk that sat in the middle of the space, had trotted to and from the yoga studio around the corner, zipped over to Whole Foods to pick up some yogurt and apples…. You get the picture. After I had created such elaborate visions, not getting this apartment felt like someone had ripped my whole future away from me. (Again: damn that broker!)



And then there’s the fear of picking the wrong apartment! Of making a mistake! Then what? How will I live with myself and my poor decision?

With all of this pointless anxiety and self-inflicted disappointment, I need strong reminders of why living in the moment is so key. I got one the other night, again at the theater, this one the Sunday following the emotional tidal wave of South Pacific. This time, I had my wine before the show, and this time, the tidal wave was of an entirely different variety.

It was a performance of Thorton Wilder’s Our Town, at the Barrow Street Theater. (Go, now—don’t miss it.) Our Town has a reputation, I believe, of being corny and old-fashioned—sentimental nostalgia—but I’m here to tell you that it’s not. It’s lean and poignant and packs a major wallop at the end that smacked some sense of perspective back into me.

For those of you who didn’t pay attention in high school English class, Our Town is set in a small town (Grover’s Corners) in New Hampshire, beginning in 1901. Wilder wrote that, with Our Town, he wanted “to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life.” He specifies right up front that there’s to be no scenery, no curtain; we’re just plunged right into life as it’s happening, with no sets or props to distract us. As our guide to the town, the Stage Manager, tells us after the first intermission, “The First Act was called the Daily Life. This act is called Love and Marriage. There’s another act coming after this: I reckon you can guess what that’s about.” Daily Life, Love and Marriage, and the final act: That about covers it, right?

That final act is set in the graveyard, up the hill from town, with the dead sitting calmly and patiently, remote from the drama of the living. A young woman who has just died in childbirth—a character we watched in the first two acts—comes to join them, but can’t quite let go of her life yet. She asks the Stage Manager to let her go back and live one more day (her twelfth birthday). He warns her against it (“As you watch it, you see the thing that they—down there—never know. You see the future. You know what’s going to happen afterwards”), the others warn her against it, but she must see for herself.



She goes back, with all her knowledge, and tries to live in her life again—her mother making breakfast, her father back from a trip with a birthday present for her, the cold winter weather—but it’s too much. It’s not only that she knows the future; it’s that now she knows the great tragedy of life. She knows that we all die, and yet we don’t pay attention to life while it’s happening. She sees (and so do we, thanks to an astonishingly powerful coup de théâtre that I'm not going to give away) everything that she missed the first time around, everything that was too familiar to be noticed. And she delivers one of the great devastating speeches in theater:

Emily

I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. {She breaks down sobbing.} I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back—up the hill—to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.

Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners… Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking… and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths… and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?

Stage Manager

No. {Pause.} The saints and poets, maybe—they do some.

Shattered. I was simply shattered, and reading the lines now, I’m hit all over again. It’s so obvious, so simple, and yet so shocking: The clock is ticking, we’re all rushing toward the end, and yet, as Emily puts it, we’re “shut up in little boxes…. That’s all human beings are! Just blind people.”

In her brief time back among the living, Emily can only be heard by her family when she is speaking as her twelve-year-old self, so her mother cannot hear her great plea, but we, in the audience, can hear it:

Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I’m dead. You’re a grandmother, Mama. I married George Gibbs, Mama. Wally’s dead, too. Mama, his appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it—don’t you remember? But, just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama, just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s look at one another.

upson downs

Well, here we are: Twenty-Ten. (Such an odd-sounding and -looking year, isn’t it? Very Space Age.) No matter how much I resist assigning meaning to New Year’s, it was still a thrill watching the clock hit midnight straight up, and the calendar flip over to 01/01/10. I suppose, surrounded as we are by top-ten lists and post-holiday diet tips and tax forms (already!!), it’s impossible to stop ourselves from looking back and looking ahead, from taking stock and making resolutions.

My favorite resolution ever came from a friend in L.A., years ago: “No more cheap shoes.” As much as I applaud and support her admirable goal, my 2010 resolution, such as it is, is a bit less concrete: I want to work on my court vision. In basketball, court vision refers to a player’s ability to take in the whole picture—to see everything that’s happening on the court, and to strategize the right moves given the situation and the various ways it could potentially unfold.


I want court vision for my life—to be able to see the whole, not just the parts, to figure out the different ways a scenario can play out. This would be a change for me: I tend to get focused on some fraction of a given situation, and to react solely to that one aspect—good, bad, or indifferent—and to tamp down any distracting awareness of the whole shebang.

This is especially true of high-emotion moments, whether positive (going on a fun first date) or negative (being yelled at by an evil boss). In the past, it’s been nearly impossible for me to step back in such a moment and weigh the situation; instead, I just react out of my own tangled emotional history—in the first example, by projecting way ahead into a happily-ever-after future, in the second by zooming straight into “fight or flight” mode.

I have really tried, over the past couple years, to learn to be “in the moment” as much as possible. For me, this means looking at what is right in front of me, right now—not what it was, or what I hope it will be, or what I wish it were, or what it represents—and, given that, to figure out my options and my best move.


I’ve had a lot of guidance in this effort—from books, from yoga, from therapy, from wise friends—and have managed to get myself in a much better place than I was just a couple of years ago. Of course, a huge part of this can be attributed not to any innate yogic goodness on my part, but instead simply to the fact that I left my hateful job; it’s much easier to be more mindful (and grateful) if you’re not in a continuous state of exhaustion and jerk-induced panic.

But while the lessons I’ve learned are valuable, and while I can see the progress I’ve made, it doesn’t take much to plunge me back into an inchoate emotional turmoil. I was initially going to call this post “nothing but net,” and blather on for the whole time about my astonishing spiritual development, but then I had a setback that forced me to face how far I have yet to travel. Simply put, that fun first date (on Christmas Eve, no less) doesn’t seem to be leading to the finish line of bliss that I’d envisioned. I’m disappointed, naturally enough. The issue is that I’ve instantly taken a relatively minor incident and blown it up into a symbol of everything that’s wrong with me and my life, and, to be honest, I’m wallowing.

Still, I’m trying to put into practice what I’ve learned—to try to create a bit of space where my rational self can step in and prevent my slipping straight back into an emotional mess. I hope I can keep my sense of the big picture—that this one incident has no larger message, that I’m not stuck, that I have choices, that I can act in different ways than I have in the past.

What I’m working to remember right now is that, as much as I wanted this potential romance to work out, the disappointing outcome is not a measure of failure. As the ever-helpful Buddhists remind me, “Your journey is to know yourself.” The goal isn’t romance, or a new job, or a fat bank account. The goal is being aware, and learning, and appreciating. And if I don’t get the outcome I wanted, whether in a romance, or a work project, or what have you—well, no harm, no foul.



Speaking of outcomes: I hope that in 2010, I can more fully understand this concept, so that my sense of the big picture—my court vision—can carry me through rough times, without crazy roller coaster rides like the one of the past couple weeks.

An admirable intention, to be sure. And I’ll get right on it—after a bit more wallowing.

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.