The Weather in the Streets

The Best Years of Our Lives

2011-09-25T09:30:00.004-04:00

The Jewish new year races in on dark autumn clouds and I'm cleaning house: throwing ballast, the rubbish and old rain boots, the matchless socks and phone bills from a number long erased, electric bills of an apartment that now holds the life of strangers; lidless burned out pots and pans, the clocks that stopped forever.

Reaching up to dust the shelves, I find again the journals, a row of frayed black sketchbooks filled with three decades of my story.

It's extraordinary to be able to look back in this way, as a historian examines primary source material. Grand themes in the pages: loves, lost and found, sex, marriage, birth, death. The world seen through the eyes of a schoolgirl, the growing up years, the years of uncertainty, dreams, desire, and loss, the quest for love and acceptance. My parents and grandparents are in there, all my family, from that precious time when I could still refer to them in passing, as we met often in the hall and I was always on my way to somewhere else, not really knowing how quickly things change and people leave, and that I should have stopped for a moment to listen and hear while I still had the chance; the new dress on its hanger was in no rush to be worn, and the boy could wait, slouching at my door. I could still refer to the dear ones dismissively, peripherally, when everyone was still together and alive and could be taken for granted.

There are empty spaces here and there: it is 1996 and then, all of a sudden, 1998: "...Alex and I have been married two years now!"

There are periods of garrulous, compulsive recounting: years of pages filled to the margins with tiny detail of wardrobe and crush, the things said, eaten, music of the moment and books read, little obsessions. Parties are vivid here, the little toy favors of childhood birthdays, and, later, those innocent debauches when the Brooklyn cops came, impatient and preoccupied, to spare the neighbors. Mementoes fall into my hands: last remaining petal from a rose tossed to me, by the Rev Al Green, at a concert in the park. Photo booth strip of young me and Alex, black-and-white looks between us so tender that they animate the static frames. And a tiny secret note from the eight-year-old daughter of a roommate I had in graduate school, slipped into my hand as she brushed by: "you are the best friend I evar had and I hope you new that."

In all those pages I'm there, as a child as a teenager a young adult as I am now. My flaws and faults are clear: vain, proud, arrogant, anxious, hot-headed, distractible. I like to talk about myself, I like clothes and shoes a bit too much. I retreat from people, sometimes, when I'm needed.

But there's something else too, a certain recapitulated variation on a theme. Through it all, through the very hard times and the very good times, I can count on the fact, as surely as I can count on rain and sun and day and night, that I will never tire of the clamor of life: its steady routine and its exigencies, the profane dreams and the clean sheets, the bittersweet flow of days and years, mad and sane, troubled or peaceful, all its variation and endless possibility.

photo of a stack of my old journals

Rejected Post Topics Part 3

2011-09-18T10:49:00.001-04:00

My mind is traveling here and there without fully alighting anywhere. So here, in relaxing list format, are some post topics I've considered and then rejected:

1. My romantic dream about Adrian Monk

2. Lesson that should've been learned from Valley of the Dolls: pills and vodka do not mix, my friend. Not even one pill and one vodka shot, not even in a moment of frivolity.

3. Before you lambast the NYPD, consider this: the nature of their jobs and the fact that, while you are hiding in your vestibule, or behind a bush, cheerfully hurling accusations of racism and police brutality into your camera phone while sipping cocoa and peeking out at the scene through double-paned glass or thick shrubbery, they must actively engage with it.

4. The grumpiness of tweens and how sometimes an offer of a cookie and a hug will diffuse that. Just like when they were three!

5. Too bad the focus was taken away from (creepy I'll admit) Michele Bachmann's initial take-down of Perry's mandatory HPV vaccine. And since when did hard science or objective evaluation research findings EVER STOP monomaniacal lobbyists on either side of the political spectrum?!

6. I propose that we employ a law enforcement staff who will serve the sole purpose of lurking around adolescents on dates and then holding them down to forcibly strap on rubbers at the moment of sexual contact. And if said law enforcement were kitted out in mirrored sunglasses and leather boots, I suppose they could serve as a Third! And let's call them The Rubber Squad. And fund them with tax dollars.

7. While we're at it, Mayor Bloomberg, let's use tax dollars to fund an attractive band of yoga instructors who will roam the city, knocking cigarettes and Cokes out of our hands, pin us down between their yoga thighs, and stroke our brows with calming flower essence. Yes, let's!

8. Department of Transportation public service ads importuning the NYC bicyclist: "don't be a jerk!" Suggests too many NYC bicyclists are being jerks. Doesn't help their public cause...maybe a private mail campaign sent only to jerks?

9. pumpkin-flavored food items celebrating autumn: do we like them or are we wary?

10. Although women certainly don't ask to be raped, unless they're into role-playing B and D, it is to say the least ill-advised to stumble off from your group of girlfriends, at 2 a.m., heavily drunk and a walking bullseye. Harden your target, ladies!

11. Men who take up women's causes and then argue with women over women's causes are immediately suspect. I call it the New Sexism.

12. Pounding three shots of espresso wakes you up but then gives you the shakes: cost-benefit analysis?

13. Telling military men and women that you support them but not their job is like telling your mom that you love and respect her even though she sucks as a parent and well actually now that you have considered it, you don't love or respect her that much after all.

14. For the love of god, think before you hit send on that email.

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Ad Astra

2011-09-15T14:55:00.008-04:00

These rocket thrusters, photographed at NASA in Houston, Texas, were some of the most hauntingly beautiful things I've ever seen: the inner rounds of them like whorls on a massive seashell, like things found in nature, realized in metal.

New Boots

2011-09-14T17:01:00.003-04:00

I've been trying to figure out what one does with a commentless blog, because I am so used to blogging with an eye to receiving comments.

I had another rant planned, but I was too busy to indulge myself today, so instead, I'm posting a photo of my new boots.

On September 11, 2011: Disappointed in My Fellow Man: a Very Harsh Post in Response to My Now Impossible-to-Ignore Feelings of Furious Disgust

2011-09-11T15:43:00.012-04:00

On this tenth anniversary of 9/11, I have been reflecting.

Not on the meaning of the event, for I have already explored that from every angle. I know what it means to me, what it means to my family.

Rather, I have been reflecting on a great deal of what I have been reading lately on the subject of 9/11, and it has only convinced me of what I already suspected: that there is a certain frightening lack of depth, of soul, of generosity, of historical understanding, of imagination, of sophistication, of compassion, of humanity.

In place of those worthy attributes, there is a void.

What makes me say this? It is a harsh statement, after all, and deserves some explanation.

Well...

It seems that many people feel this way, mostly people from other countries, but also a great number of Americans, and in some cases (hard to believe, but true), New Yorkers. Their statements include, but are not limited to, and I paraphrase, but do not wander from the meaning:

Shut up with your infernal bitching, you spoiled Americans.
The world has it worse than you. Many places experience war, trauma, bombing, terror, atrocities.

You're a bunch of whiny pikers.

I'd rather remember the good times. (footnote 1)

The English are stoics. (footnote 2) Take a lesson.

Americans are stuck in the past, and can't stop whining about it. (footnote 3)

You people make war and then complain.

You're history's cruelest monsters. (footnote 4)

You asked for it. (footnote 5)

It is "typically American" to over-emote.

You're a bunch of drama queens.

Why do you think your tragedy is so all-fired terrible?

Get over 9/11 already.

We are sick of hearing about it.

Your misery is phony baloney. Or at least overstated. Or at least gets too much attention.

I mean, I got over it, so what's your problem?

PTSD doesn't exist.
Or is the product of an opportunistic imagination.
Or just kinda American, in that bad way I mentioned before, you know, whiny and self-involved. (footnote 6)

Oh and did I mention you're a bunch of selfish whiners?

Footnote 1. Pretty sure if you feel this way, you weren't really affected, and that's fine, but don't put your plastic psychopath sunshine hassle on the rest of us.

Footnote 2. By the way, if you point out your stoicism? Guess what, you're not stoical. Also, stoicism? The product of repression. Repression? Gives you neuroses and a stomach ache. Also makes you super-boring.

Footnote 3. Okay, so personal and collective history has no meaning to you. It must be fun and relaxing, living in a disconnected vacuum.

Footnote 4. Um, really? call me and I'll give you the history lesson you so desperately need.

Footnote 5. Please shut up now.

Footnote 6. Guess what. Generations of soldiers in England (!!!) and everywhere else were told in no uncertain terms to "man up" and face battle over and over again, that their anxiety attacks and numb body parts and repetition compulsion and screaming nightmares were womanish and hysterical. Guess what didn't help? People telling them to "get over it." Guess what else? Psychologists wised up and began to take it seriously. And you know what else? I will tell you what else: yes, yup, and you betcha, people can suffer PTSD after merely watching planes hit buildings, people plummeting to their deaths, a dust plume coming at them, and buildings falling at their feet.

Aaaaahhhhhhh....I feel so much better now. And I have turned off comments, probably permanently, because I don't want to hear what you have to say unless you agree with me. Because for once I can honestly say: I'm right. And if you disagree with me? You're wrong.

Two Lights above the Sea

2011-09-09T09:56:00.003-04:00

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea--

(from 'Ars Poetica' by Archibald MacLeish; photo of the twin tower memorial lights taken outside my house in Brooklyn)

What Do I Tell My Daughter about September 11?

2011-09-02T13:49:00.001-04:00

My daughter is the child of a 9/11 First Responder, and at ten-going-on-eleven, she's finally beginning to ask questions.

In the last 10 years, like so many children her age, she's held onto the specter of apocalypse, of falling skyscrapers, dust plumes that billowed as high as buildings. Daddy ran out of the house that morning to do his job, but wasn't missed during those long 3 days of absence by a baby who knew nothing of life but nursing and the cardboard block tower she built and wrecked over and over, in unwitting metaphor. In these last years, the threat was as dim as the threat of volcanoes learned in lower-school science unit, or a long-ago hurricane tempered by a funny anecdote of Daddy, in its quiet eye, asking to go out for ice pops promised in the heat of a South Texas afternoon.

We are a family that likes to keep memories. Writers, journal-keepers, recounters of stories--we keep history in words and telling. I knew once a generation of soldiers, back from the war, many of whom kept their secrets to themselves--Grandpa Ozzy, a tall, kind, and taciturn man, crawled the beach at Normandy on D-Day, amidst the bodies, dead or screaming, the sand and blood under his nails, the radio pack on his back slowing him down like the worst anxiety dream. He returned from the war quite deaf from the explosions all around him, and very very quiet on the subject, an anomaly in a family of Chroniclers. His memories were never told, and died with him.

As a child, I knew, and wondered, and knew not to ask him.

And now Elanor wonders, and, as we are consummate Tellers, we'll tell. Even Daddy, who is the chief memory-keeper of this particular bad dream, the one who, when the light hits him just right, is covered still in ghostly remnant of toxic dust and all the sights and sounds, even Daddy will tell.

But tell what, and how much? What details to tell, what to keep?

It is always said of children that they like an ordered, safe, predictable world. They like a hint of danger; to build pillow forts against it; to keep a tin of snacks and a flashlight for the tiny apocalypse or the little storm--but they want to believe in their own bodily integrity, and that life will move on smoothly, that bedtime will come, and after it the boring school day.

So there is a choice now. What to tell? The falling bodies of those who committed suicide rather than burn alive, or suffocate. Nightmare unending dusk, when Daddy and his comrades paced the unpeopled city, protectors of a mass grave. The fear that seizes us when we know real chaos and dust, blood and sand, noise and finally the silence of the low road.

Or the idea of a bravery so profound that it sent people down in an airplane to crash and die, knowing they would crash and die, knowing they were being used as a missile and choosing not to be that missile, choosing to die instead and spare others?

I started to tell her the story of that plane, and in doing so hoped, in my usual grand but well-meaning style, that I was telling her the whole history of great and terrible acts of human courage. But my story caught and stopped, and though not crying, I couldn't go on.

Well, perhaps another day. For I have to believe we have all the time in the world.

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Afterparty

2011-08-29T04:32:00.001-04:00

A tree spear came down from the stormy sky and skewered the roof of our little guest cabin, pierced right through and through, driven by force all the way down to the floor inside.

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Hurricane Irene Party

2011-08-28T08:52:00.001-04:00

The day ended with a swim in the lake and a picnic. The air was supernatural: completely still, a wild and lovely pink sunset, then darkness: close, hot, and humid. 24 New Way Lunch hot dogs with The Works: diced onions, mustard, a bit of cuminy meat sauce. Onion rings, ginger ale, beer, saki, candles, lanterns.

Now for the rain, the wind!

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But I Can't Fly Without Caffeine, Road Trip Part 6

2011-08-05T15:07:00.001-04:00

Now that I've come down from that angel dust high of the South Texas beach, whose mad bright sexy come-on line made me think I might just launch myself airborne...well, sobered up, I can bitch about the other side of a road trip: the devastating lack of decent coffee. It is a sad state of affairs indeed when the Starbucks logo appears to me as a luminous emerald herald of all that is Good and Right...

Oh South, what is it with you and your weak-ass coffee? Why are you playing me like this? Even Cafe Du Monde--shame on you, former chicory haven--presented me with a pale drink as milky as an opal. Hot shops, truck stops, cafes, homes, hotels, motels, dives and fancy restaurants: uniformly pallid brew.

One lone beacon of hope was Tootie's, where finally I procured a deep dark cold murk of delight...as well as coconut custard pie...but we weren't speaking of pie, so I won't elegize, or rather fetishize, the smooth pale yellow creamy spoonsful, the toasty tender flakes, the thick crumbling crust...for while the South can't make a cup of coffee to save its Confederate life, it can certainly win the war with its pie!...

Anyway, bless you bitter expensive Starbucks, because three espresso shots and a few headlines later, I am for the nonce as right as rain.

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South Texas Lullaby, Road Trip Part 5

2011-08-04T11:45:00.001-04:00

I went to sleep last night in a huge soft white boat of a bed, toes tucked in cool cotton sheets, air conditioner humming me free of the murderous, humid heat, and as my eyes closed, the last thing I saw outside our bedroom window was the dark water moving and the last thing I heard was the singing of ocean wind, the lullaby of South Texas...

I woke again to water, a bright heat, and a lone crane visiting the neighbors across the way.

How funny it seems to me that a
Brooklyn girl, a lifetime back East spent on concrete and under immense dusty old-growth trees, or in the rumination of pine-dark, cold mountainscapes, could feel so right, here: the strange heat, the scrubby thirsty land remind me of my own bones, my foundation; and the vast sky, alive with clouds, releases the bonds of gravity. Looking up I am convinced I could fly!

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The Weight of a Snake, Road Trip Part 4

2011-07-31T10:35:00.001-04:00

The Voodoo priest was a very nice man, who giggled at his own little off-color jokes. Yet, behind the thin distortion of lenses, his eyes, preternaturally blue, held mine without once wavering. Even in the damp close hot courtyard where we met to talk, even in the close air of a Louisiana midsummer, I felt a prickle on the back of my neck, under that gaze.

He spoke in such a soft little voice that it was necessary for me to put my hands on the table and incline my head intimately toward his, all the way forward, as if leaning in for a lover's kiss. Even then, I could only catch every fourth word, like whispers on a rustling wind: "death...snakes...look...hear...old path...new path." I knew that I was allowed to assign any meaning I wished to his words, or no meaning at all; in the end, the words were of no great importance, just something to say.

The priest stroked sweet oil on my forehead, and on my palms, and he laid the resting coil of python across my upturned hands, and blessed me, and the weight of the inscrutable snake was a new experience of sensation: cool, still, heavy, quietly alive. A message, a lesson: a way to be in the world!

The snake raised her head and stared at me for a moment and her eyes were, improbably, as blue as the priest's eyes.

(photo taken at the Voodoo
Museum, New Orleans)

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Voodoo Letter, Road Trip Part 3

2011-07-29T14:22:00.003-04:00

Dear Jack,

I hope that you will feel this pin through your heart as I feel the sharp prick of the pin you slid into mine. I dream about you every night, strange dreams, cruel dreams, baroque dreams, drawing room comedy dreams where the polite laughter is always at my expense, and, right before I wake, I'm left alone at the roadside, the seaside, the dinner party, the carnival.

If only magic and prayer would keep you bound to me...

Love,

X

visit Theme Thursday: Letter!

(photo of a voodoo doll taken at the New Orleans Voodoo Museum)

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Tennessee Morning, Road Trip Part 2

2011-07-27T09:47:00.001-04:00

A nice bottle of Cheerwine soda pop and a leisurely browse through the Just Busted pages...Cheerwine is a subtle gustatory mix of faux cherry, off-brand cola, and poison. I will say that it woke me right up.

The mountains here are spectacular, and thanks to the hallucinatory effects of Cheerwine, they are looking larger and smokier than ever on this bright morning. Thank you for your hospitality, Tennessee! I mean that.

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Road Trip Part 1: Hotel Room

2011-07-26T08:52:00.001-04:00

On the road to Texas...so far the sights: a truck stop, a bible, and rain on the windshield.

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Buttons

2011-07-22T01:17:00.001-04:00

Our fragments of Grandma are ruined, mostly. The comb misses its teeth, the straight pins are rusted. The lace yellow, beyond bleach; china chipped, beyond glue; sweater frayed, beyond darning; beads loose, beyond stringing; books grey, beyond dusting.

As if the violent storm of years tumbled the leftovers to, fro, in winds and waters, leaving them wrecked and broken, swept gracelessly back into the closets and drawers of a very old white cottage by a very old lake.

Alone of a lifetime's treasure, the buttons are whole, fine, perfected in their lovely utility, their softly crowding, clicking handfuls. Even the herring jar says: now I am beautiful!

[photo of a button jar found in my grandma's country house; for more writing on a theme, visit Theme Thursday]

Phebe Jane, Clarissa, Rebecca, Allice, Olive, Nancy

2011-07-16T16:27:00.001-04:00

My daughter and I walked among the women on the hill, where they rest in the sunshine, hot sunshine buzzing with flying things, rest from their housekeeping, the washing and washing up, the clearing away and folding, the stacking of platters. I took away, when I left, a hundred questions: for which the shameful secret, the secret love; for which the nerves and headaches; for which the murdered child; for which the bottle; for which a sheaf of letters never out of mind; for which the locked box, full of pennies saved toward a leave-taking?

The soil stirs, still warm, under their names.

Please visit Sepia Saturday

Sparkle

2011-07-10T07:48:00.001-04:00

Wild raspberries, blueberries, tiny strawberries in the fields behind the house, if you know where to look before stepping, and I do. Freshly planted lavender and a thousand free-growing tiger lilies, all bending toward us, confiding; and the pines, a hundred feet tall, their top branches mobile and creaking, reeds on the lake, and daisies on the shore, all moving together in flow and rush of wind. The nights are short between deep dusk and pale dawn, and in the afternoon the water catches sun, filling the eye with sparkle so that we're sparkle blind, nothing but sparkle and sun and the wind rush: summer.

Brooklyn, July 4th

2011-07-05T10:34:00.005-04:00

Elanor and her friend were, for one afternoon, captains of industry on a bright hot corner of Brooklyn. The lemonade, squeezed by hand in a sticky orgy of juice and seeds and pulp, served in pressed glass pitchers, took pride of place. Ice was dipped with tongs, again and again, money changed hands, a great deal of money for little girls; the chocolate in the cookies, the marshmallow in the treats, melted a little, but no customer complained, and the heaps of sweets were decimated by day's end. With frequent breaks for cold seltzer and visits to the sprinklers across the street in the park, and quick intense water fights, sudden dripping little clouds of activity, another summer afternoon passed in the dusty diffuse light of old-growth trees and the heat of children. Another afternoon, like so many others before and to come.

Expectant Before:

Aftermath:

(a piece of my summer, for Jimmy and Mr M)

Bomb'n Belle

2011-05-14T07:09:00.005-04:00

An example of WWII-era plane art! From Sarge's archives.

Note: I have posted this photo before, of Sarge's dear cousin Andrew, and thought it was a fitting re-post for today's Sepia Saturday theme. Andrew, a Technical Sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps (later became the Air Force), circa 1944. Rattlesden RAF Airfield, England. The plane with the wonderful art, a B-17 G, was later shot down over Belgium, although the pilot survived.

Tsu Zetik far Maydelehs (Too Rich for Little Girls)

2011-05-13T16:01:00.004-04:00


*"...And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot"*

My grandmother and a chicken: as was the wont of that generation, no bit went unexploited. Chewy heart, tender liver--fried with onions, the smell of it hot and golden. Neck--boiled in a soup, the bone like a strand of coral pieces, sucked, industriously, for every last hiding morsel. The carcass--picked smooth.

And the fat. The fat had its own calling: to become grebenes, the cracklings. My grandma offered me and my sister just one little irregular bit apiece. I don't remember the texture or the taste, or whether I liked it, but I like to think I did.

Grandma Eva's Jewish cookbook, on my bookshelf now, worn to fragments

a recipe for chicken fat cracklings, should you want to make them

for more memory posts, visit the Sepia Saturday blog

Unstoppered

2011-04-09T06:18:00.005-04:00

*Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,*
*Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused*
*And drowned the sense in odours...*

Since the beginning of time

(or let me not exaggerate, since Eva first knew Maxie)

there was the bottle on the dresser.

My grandfather didn't believe in doing things by half-measures, and it was real perfume, not cologne. Like the fabled bolt of cloth, it would never run out, for no sooner did my grandmother apply the last precious drop to her skin, than a new bottle would appear nested in its blue velvet box with looping gilt writing: Shalimar.

I remember standing by that dresser, a little girl much too young for ablutions designed to seduce, tilting my head back, exposing my own soft neck like a vampire's girlfriend waiting for the bite...or in this case, grandma's fingertip dabbing the potion...

(I'm making this part up, for my usually generous grandma Eva was decidedly miserly when it came to sharing this gift, and so I never got the chance to wear it, and to smell like her)

So the bottle sat, unshared, sapphire stoppered, lightly signalling, in diffuse sunlight and lamplight, its private message: something I couldn't decipher at the time, a romantic love between two old people, who had once themselves been young. Mouth to neck, inhaling the scent...for why would such a gesture cease with age? After the children, ten thousand nights in the big bed, the mountains and deep shadowed valleys of years and years together, the private jokes and whispers, love letters re-read?

Now I know it all, and none of it: the idea of a love of decades, but not the secrets in the bottle, the letters, the Yiddish whispers, the bedroom after the door closed.

There was always a look that passed between them, not meant for children to see, a glance that contained, like a password to an arcane mystery religion, the whole ancient hidden meaning of love itself.

For more remembering, visit the Sepia Saturday blog

Ne Igrushki (No Toys)

2011-04-05T08:16:00.008-04:00

*You cannot say, or guess, for you know only*
*A heap of broken images, where the sun beats*

This is my Grandpa, and his two sisters, Liba and Tilda. They must have been new immigrants in America when this picture was taken. My grandfather rarely spoke of his early years in Soviet Georgia, and I was left with just a few dark images...foremost among these bits and pieces was the fact, oft repeated and with a stark solemnity, that there were no toys for the children. None.

But none? My young mind couldn't accept a child's life with no toys, and I made for myself a little fiction about the peculiar wooden man and bear, who would take turns clacking at the stump with their axes if you pulled the handles back and forth (and I did this very often when I was little). I imagined it was the lone gimcrack entertainment of Max's childhood, and that he derived great pleasure from its existence in the fashion of one unused to more. After all, even Laura Ingalls, living deep in the dark woods of Wisconsin, had the homely rag doll Charlotte, and paperdolls cut by Ma from butcher paper.

I hoped for so many decades that this had been his toy, when he was a boy in the Old Country, that I came to believe in the saving truth. So it was with sadness, this morning, that I was forced to forfeit this constructed memory. I took the bear and the man off its shelf and showed it to my mother, who told me that it had been among the leavings of the previous owners when she and Max and Eva and Abby moved into their brownstone in the 1950s. My grandpa had not, in fact, had any toys.

Ne igrushki.

Acquainted with the Night

2011-04-02T21:46:00.008-04:00

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you

When I was feeling low one day my grandpa Max told me something. How when he was a young man, feeling low, he would walk and walk and walk the streets of Brooklyn, smoking Sobranie oval cuts and thinking to himself until dusk turned to evening and evening to night, in and out of the pools of light from the street lamps, even in the rain, in the cold, in the heat, until something righted itself in his mind and he could go home again.

The vision of the young man walking, walking, smoking oval cuts superimposed itself and made me the same, made me as he was, as we all were, young people everywhere in every time. I am sure that if I were to go now, some drizzly April night, down to the Promenade that overlooks the harbor and the cityscape across the harbor, I would see the un-substance: brooding and walking, walking, brooding, the only solid thing the curls of smoke disappearing on the wind off the water. And I could take my place beside him and walk along there, until my mind cleared and I could go home again...

Emilia Romatowska

2011-04-01T13:21:00.006-04:00

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

I woke to the memory of a name: Emilia Romatowska. Sometimes it comes to you this way, sudden and contextless as the scent of salt on the wind when you are not near any ocean.

The scene followed in a rush of detail. Curled up in the big leather armchair in my grandparents' formal parlor, hugging my knees, downcast over a romantic reversal. I'm fifteen. My grandfather Max listens to my story and counters with one of his own. The name of my heartache is long gone now, but the name of his remains: Emilia Romatowska.

She was dark-haired and dark-eyed, he tells me, a real beauty. A heartbreaker, I loved her once. But alas, he says, it wasn't in the stars for us. Good thing too or you wouldn't be here!

Is is not in the details that I find comfort--of his days working at great-grandpa Benjamin's tailor shop in Brooklyn, long evenings of night school, fortuitous hours that yielded the prize of Emilia, of the girl and her pretty ways, how he took so boldly her young immigrant hand--not so much in these details, but in the telling itself. He says her name again and there is a note in his voice, a certain delight in the tale of his downfall, as if he has just unwrapped a caramel, and eaten it, and his mouth is still full of the taste.

Sixty years after the fact, there is a fresh feel to it--the hunt, notes passed and walks taken, a pleasant yearning, the very loss of love itself--even at fifteen, I hear my grandfather's words, see his smile (half rueful, half wry, no part sad), and am reeling from sudden epiphany: these old pangs are what keeps one really alive.

p.s. don't forget to check out more Sepia Saturday posts HERE

Freedom from Fear

2011-03-13T11:02:00.003-04:00

On the night of September 11 into the dawn of September 12 2001, when Sarge was in a living hell of coordinated chaos and fear, ending his first of three days of non-stop disaster response work, I kept vigil quietly at home, cuddling my 9-month-old daughter tight against me. Unable to sleep in our bed, I gathered every quilt in the house and made a cozy nest for myself and our little girl on the living room floor, turned off the horrifying news coverage, and lay down with Hedgehog. Through that night, I nursed her and cozied her and kept us safe from imagined disaster. She was free from fear, unknowing in her sweet bubble of babyhood, though I was not.

In March of 2011, she is ten, lucky in the calm regularity of her life, lucky to end each day of school and friends and light and play in her own warm bed, under the cheerful pink and green smiling owl coverlet we chose for her last August, her arm around her stuffed dog; a lamp in the hall glows in steadfast reassurance, keeping the monsters and the darkness away.

But upstairs, after her bedtime, we sit close together on the couch talking in frowns, because her father and I know better--that the world is terrifying, that darkness can only be held back so much and so long, that we can only make our best effort to keep her out of harm's way, and that for some people in some places, even a best effort is not enough. So we can only try--and probably--please God--succeed...

But how to keep her free from fear?

How do you keep your awake and aware ten-year-old child free from fear?

nervous but excited

2011-03-09T09:25:00.003-05:00

I am in the process of booking a flight to L.A. for the most thrilling blogger meet-up ever. People I have known for years, but never met in person, people I love, flying in from--literally--all over the world (okay, one of us anyway).

The catch is that I am an extremely nervous girl. I mean, prone-to-level-10-panic-attacks nervous. I've not flown alone since I was in my early 20s, daring myself to take a journey to Jerusalem to live and study. Leaving Sarge. Stop-over in England for three days of solo meanderings. I was nervous the whole time, but it was worth it, oh so very worth it. It is a challenge for me to do this again; even the planning is making me breathe a little faster.

It's not the flying so much as it is the being away from home. And I know many many people who do it all the time, carefree. Alas, I'm not one of them.

But it's good to keep challenging one's self, isn't it? To keep the blood flowing, the heart beating?

Peanut-Ham Spread: Excruciating, or Delectable?

2011-02-25T13:56:00.010-05:00

I collect old cooking pamphlets, and the 1950s appetizer publications are chock full of concoctions that read like a passage from de Sade as rewritten by William Burroughs. Naturally, I'm fascinated to know: are some of these woefully misbegotten ingredient combinations somehow alchemized in the mixing, into something scrumptious?

Case in point, Good Housekeeping's 1958 peanut-ham spread:

Those guests look cheerful enough, as they begin their delicate ravaging of the hors d'oeuvres table, don't they? Nothing seems particularly amiss, does it?

I laid out my ingredients, each individual food item much beloved:

I measured and observed, how the impending mixture might be so insulting to the senses as to induce existential nausea:

I mixed, and looked again. Aesthetically unthinkable:

Attempted to plate it, a heaping dose or two on wheat rounds:

Choked it down with the help of ice-cold Dr. Pepper:

THE VERDICT: If you can get past the texture, the taste is, remarkably, quite inoffensive. The appearance and feel of it are quite another matter. I can only use the adjective: malevolent.

I wouldn't serve this to guests, not even if I were to be transported back in time to the 1950s, when, I believe, enough hard liquor flowed at these events to render visitors helpless before the truth of a dubious repast.

However, luckily the same booklet offers some other options, including this:

p.s. a friend suggested Miracle Whip instead--I think I should have gone with that...

Secret Oeuvre

2011-02-21T21:46:00.004-05:00

Just working up the cover for my low-budget, non-consensual-sex-filled, printed-on-high-acid-paper-soon-to-yellow-and-then-crumble, hidden-in-your-mom's-top-dresser-drawer, Danskin-wrap-dress-clad 1970s-style erotic romance novel. You didn't know I was writing one, did you? Neither did I but doesn't it seem like a good idea?

...just as soon as it is written, xeroxed, collated and stapled, I will be taking orders!

thank you Sarge for the pearl

Blackbeard's Challenge, or, Naughty-Naughty Putt-Putt

2011-02-02T11:16:00.006-05:00

We had a few hours to enrich before we left Orlando, so we took Hedgehog to Pirate Putt-Putt near the hotel.

This is what greeted us at the first, er, hole.

Sarge and I stood staring, balls and sticks firmly in hand, squinting to determine whether it was just a trick of light and shadow. Then we exchanged a glance. Blackbeard's Challenge was apparently of the concupiscent rather than mercenary variety.

High and Tight and Sophomoric

2011-01-31T13:45:00.002-05:00

I was sitting in the old-school, no-frills Brooklyn barber shop the other morning, waiting for Sarge to get his high-and-tight. Sounds dirty right? Not if you've ever been in the military, but I won't interrupt the image with an explanation.

So anyway. I was bored. The only reading material was a year's worth of issues of Maxim magazine, a "men's interest" publication not quite as naughty even as Playboy, but still chock full of those ubiquitous shiny-skinned knee-socked ladies with their racks and asses (see? I can talk like a proverbial "man") at 3/4 visibility.

Okay I'll admit I was intrigued if skeptical. Then more intrigued and less skeptical. Then completely won over. Maxim is my new favorite reading material. I laughed my way through two issues. And had a realization that my sense of humor is totally sophomoric. I'm not even going to analyze my enjoyment as I usually do.

But I am going to subscribe. Yes I am. And I look forward to seeing which mailing lists this puts me on. I will keep you updated.

Disney World: a Journey into Meh

2011-01-27T14:27:00.003-05:00

Flight cancelled, stranded by the fancy pool in the fancy hotel in Orlando (courtesy of the MIL, whose brainchild this trip was)...I suppose I can't complain...

Or can I?

Not capable of well-phrased linear sentences, so will instead resort to lists

Things I Hate about Disney World:

1. Disney World
2. Walt Disney
3. Mickey Mouse
4. The extortionist prices of everything from postcards to hot dogs.
5. The dictatorial nature of the place: you must do certain things in certain ways and feel a certain way about it.

Things I Love about Disney World

1. Daisy Duck
2. The bizarre, stylized way the beautiful princesses hug the little girls.
3. The exuberant loveliness and well-meaning racism of "it's a Small World."
4. Watching dads posing with Ariel and trying to cop a feel.
5. Watching Ariel evade dads' pinchy fingers.
6. Listening to Sarge do his Evil Mickey impersonation.
7. Getting to deconstruct my experience rather than being in the moment.

Things I hate about Universal Studios

1. Universal Studios
2. Not meeting a costumed Snape character in Hogsmeade

Things I Love about Universal Studios

1. Hogsmeade
2. Hogwarts
3. Animatronic owls
4. Frozen butter beer
5. Cold pumpkin juice
6. The Hogwarts Express
7. My new Slytherin scarf
8. The possibility of meeting Snape around any given corner. I didn't, but I might have.
9. The Hogsmeade postmark.
10. Did I mention, Wizarding World of Harry Potter?

Well, suffice it to say, I am a cynical cynical woman, and prone to self-conscious analysis and social commentary. In the end, these places are not for me.

You Know You Want a Disney Princess Postcard

2011-01-22T09:03:00.002-05:00

Hey you!

I'm off to Florida in a few hours, and I suspect it may well be The Land of Postcards, a veritable dragon's hoard of them.

So...if you would like a postcard from Orlando, leave a comment here to remind me, and then send me your addy at

theweatherinthestreets@gmail.com

even if you think I have it, send it again! I'm feeling disorganized this morning.

xo

Leah

Travels

2011-01-21T10:31:00.002-05:00

Looking back on my last few posts, I realize just how dark and gloomy this place has become. While I can't fake it, I suppose I could take a little break from the angst, so...

we leave tomorrow for Disney World and I'm looking forward to blogging "on the road" from my iPad. I will try anyway. Stay tuned!

Missing Still

2011-01-17T10:47:00.004-05:00

My dad died six years ago. I don't think about him very often because when I do I can hardly stand the feelings.

Dad was a complicated person. Not always nice, and sometimes even cruel. Even a little bit scary. But also:

Loving. A wonderful person to talk to about books and about problems.

Charismatic. His light shone on everything around him. He was brilliant. He knew things, and he knew how to think about things. He understood jokes. He understood me.

He never laughed at me, not even when I was at my most puerile. He made me feel as if I was a force to be reckoned with, even when I was young and stupid. He loved me for my writing, my conversation, my poetry, my soul, my spirit. His eyes told me I was a worthy friend.

When he hugged me close his big red beard tickled my cheek.

.

What do Alan Rickman and sticky toffee pudding have in common?

2011-01-08T01:42:00.005-05:00

Well, I can't put my finger on it but I will say that both featured prominently in my pre-birthday festivities.

Last night I went with a friend to see a production of "John Gabriel Borkman" with Alan Rickman and Fiona Shaw. I'm coming right out and saying that i don't like Ibsen--his plays are silly and overwrought, but on the other hand, this was so Gothic and darkly Norwegian, with shadows and snowscapes, very suggestive, and there was a staggeringly lovely scene of falling snow and a none-too-subtly erotic scene where Borkman listens in closed-eyed ecstasy to a young girl he has procured to play the piano in a private audience in his dark lair, by the light of a dripping candelabra no less...and most importantly, we had the. Best. Seats. Ever.

Not fifteen feet away from Alan Rickman at his gloomy and drawling finest. Wearing a frock coat.

We rounded out the evening with a lovely gossip over a plate of sticky toffee pudding. Have you ever had sticky toffee pudding? The experience of eating it is as erotic as the experience of listening to Alan Rickman's voice.

6:15 a.m.: a Brooklyn Street Scene

2011-01-06T06:55:00.004-05:00

I'm walking Remus. His usual early-morning pee and a nice sniff around to see what's doing.

Sunlight hasn't yet reached our world down here. It's cold.

The van--black inside, rocking and banging frantically. Right in front of my house. I stand by it, pissed off. Sometimes they come to our end of the street for this--the quiet end, thinking what? No one lives here? Do they know, somehow, that before the loud and dirty highway was built, our antique house was right on the docks? That the Brooklyn waterfront is historically the place to be for these sad stolen activities?

Once or twice I find a used condom in the gutter, when I'm taking Hedgie to school.

I stand motionless staring my fury into the back of the van. One of them notices, I guess, my shadow, thrown over them in the beam from the lone street lamp, and there is a sudden movement. He crawls backward out of the van, opening the hatch, shedding light on the scene, zipping his fly, angry.

The hooker lies prone on the floor. Naked from the waist down, cheap clothes hiked around her waist. Four-inch red heels. I tell him to move along before I call the cops. He tells me to fuck off, but he's getting in the driver's seat. I tell him "you have 5 seconds." The hatch is slowly closing, and the woman stares at me, without expression. There's nothing in her face: no shame. No opinion. She doesn't even move to cover herself.

As they drive off he rolls down the window and shouts, "get a fucking life."

I don't feel the need to school him on the pathos and irony of this suggestion.

On the curb in the quiet dark regular Brooklyn morning, holding Remus' leash (he sits and waits), two thoughts go through my mind:

I'm not afraid of anyone anymore.

And I have looked into a dead man's eyes, and her eyes were just as dead as that.

Am I a Ghost?

2010-12-29T09:21:00.009-05:00

How to explain what has happened, is happening, to me. It's as if my real life exists, and I can see it unfolding, and I'm alive in it...sort of...but I'm also observing it, as if from a great distance away. A continual out-of-body experience, every waking moment of my day. I can see myself folding laundry and doing dishes, walking the dog through the snowy landscape of Brooklyn, choosing apples in the grocery store, and Nutella on sale, and tomatoes and onions, and chicken for the soup, but all of this takes place in one realm while my mind wanders freely, intently, elsewhere.

Other lives I live, other scenes, possibilities, the characters from my book, the ones I invent, fleshed out more tangibly than the corporeal people who surround me.

Daydreaming has superseded living life, and I fear (hope?) that I'm becoming a spirit only half inhabiting my own world as my edges fade and an exchange is made: my form takes on substance in that other place, the one that exists only in my mind and on paper. Could that really be? Do people still see me, or am I truly becoming indistinct, haunting the edges of real life? The peripheries of the solid world? Am I becoming a ghost? Do they even notice that the woman at her chores and errands is fading into a blur, a smudge, a transparent wraith?

Occasionally something will bring me back: a voice. A look from Alex that pierces the eldritch mist, reminding me that I am there, that he sees me. In that moment, I exist again, outside my own mind. But it is uncomfortable; I am now better suited to the images of the half-world, where time is non-linear, where I can be and un-be on a whim, where everything outside the moment of intensity recedes into twilight.

No one can live this way indefinitely, unless they are truly mad, and I am not. So I try to pull myself out of it. It is quite painful, disappointing, like waking up from a good dream and wishing you were back there.

Ghost. Real. Ghost. A struggle.

note: I felt compelled to add, in rereading this: this post is about my overactive imagination, nothing more sinister! You all know that, right? Right?!

I know it is so wrong to post this but I can't help myself and besides I'm Jewish, right? so it doesn't really matter anyway...

2010-12-23T16:24:00.008-05:00

My annual Krampus post.

Not that I don't want you to celebrate Christmas with great joy, if you do celebrate, and enjoy the heck out of the sweet warm smell of cookies baking and watch the little gleam in your loved one's eyes from the reflected light of your fragrant tree...and revel in the bittersweet holy music of midnight mass...and hold your children close...I mean all that, my friends

but,

the short cold days and long, cold, dark nights send me to a wrong place, where I think a little too long and hard on fetishes and bad behavior and the strange cruelties people act out on each other, sometimes in meanness and sometimes in delight--how my pain is his pleasure, and my pleasure is his pain--understand now that I mean "he" in a general sense, but I didn't need to tell you that did I?--how sometimes the joke that seems so wrong to one person is the funniest thing in the world to another--how my absolutist tendencies break down during the Solstice, to make room for dreadful imaginings that I admit to liking.

I'm only a little odd really. Whether it's swaddled and smothered and repressed in a cozy psychic sweater, or whether we take it out and examine it from time to time, the darkness is alive in us all I think.

A Little Push

2010-12-18T14:35:00.002-05:00

Sometimes ghost stories happen in broad daylight. Apparitions appear in sunshine, their edges ruffled by a cold wind that springs from nowhere, on a city street.

It's happened a couple of times lately. This week, doing errands in the afternoon. I felt a push; a hand on my back, deliberately pushing. I stumbled, turned around. Not a soul in sight near me. No one anywhere, for half a block in each direction. Just me and the push. Not hostile, exactly, that push. But not exactly friendly either.

Then again, lying in bed, on my side, drifting sleep-wards. The hand on my back. All fingers against me, clearly palpable. And the push.

Who?

Apology: in honor of the Gothic Romance

2010-12-08T09:07:00.006-05:00

That afternoon they had gone for a wild ride on the worn and splintery sled of his boyhood, and came as close to flying as a human body could, and when they alit again, he laughed unexpectedly, hardly recognizing the sound, for he was never one to laugh. He knew right away that she would like him a little too much for it.

He would send her away very soon.

And yes, he told himself honestly, remembering it now, he missed the physical closeness, the unrefined howling thrill of feeling, the delicious smell of it, the gripping flesh, unbinding of muscles and sinew and surge of blood and the biting, sucking, swallowing raw lust…she looked sideways at him, in the darkening room, and gave him a very odd apology; what had she to apologize for?

He didn’t answer, but disengaged himself and went to close and latch the window, for it had blown open in the storm. He stood for a long time looking with dispassion at the white fields behind the house, all the way down to the little river, winding its way through whiteness. The snow made the village into something very nearly beautiful, he thought. It did not happen often that loveliness visited here.

P.s. I've been lately enjoying a variety of Gothic tales, with rotten overly controlled and dark heroes, hence this bit of folly

Please visit HERE for more Magpie Tales!

Liba

2010-12-03T22:53:00.011-05:00

By the time I met Liba, she was no longer the girl with the huge dimpled smile and dark tangled hair. She was Great-Aunt Libby, teeny-tiny and very very old. Libby had always been a fine seamstress, and in her 90s, nearly blind, she continued to sew, though in the end her creations ran less to fine fitted garments. My sister and I treasured the collection of simple elastic-gathered little skirts she sent us in frequent batches. What she lacked in fine motor coordination and eyesight, she made up for in choice of fabric--wild, busy, bright and sometimes startling. My most favorite Aunt Libby skirt was of improbably plush faux-leopard skin. I study the clothes in these pictures now, see how stylish and whimsical she was once, and I can imagine that she knew, even in extreme old age, just what would bring delight.

No doubt about it, she was a grand girl. I notice now, too, how there is something about her expression: a passing shadow, a quality of secrecy, common to all the Pollack family; though possibly you wouldn't see it, unless you knew to look.

find more links to wonderful Sepia Saturday reminiscences here.

Magpie Tales

2010-10-30T00:38:00.006-04:00

In a Clearing in the Cemetery I Found a Broken Stone

I've been wondering:
who now alive remembers
the words that told your life?

I lift the branch, look:
moondrift light, a dry light breath,
a stone set adrift
in the dry leaf-sea clearing
You were written, read, erased.

(Sarge and I wrote this together. It was fun!)
find more Magpie Tales here.

Three Generations, 1972

2010-10-15T16:26:00.007-04:00

Deb, Leah, Eva, and Abby, Brooklyn 1972

I've always loved this portrait, my Grandma Eva flanked by me and mom on the left and Aunt Abby on the right.

Mom was only 27 years old here, and entering her very stylish Grad Student phase, which was to last a number of years, as she traveled back and forth from Brooklyn to Columbia University on the subway, and juggled books, research, young daughters, and a household until the completion of her doctorate. I admire her so much for what I now recognize to be a heady success--but I admire her sartorial splendor of this era even more! I remember staring at her as she set off for class or dissertation meetings, always beautifully dressed. I particularly loved one look; I called it her brown outfit--a tailored chocolate brown wool suit that she paired with silk blouse, plentiful gold jewelry, and a wonderful floppy brown felt hat. She looked amazing but never minded a squeezy sticky hug from her young girls; she was warm that way. She even let us wear that hat around the house, and her brass-buckled heels as well! Oh what a mother.

If you notice her bell-sleeved minidress and stocking-tops in this photo, well, you've got a good eye for fashion. Those thick real gold hoops in her ears are still with us, and turn up from time to time on someone's ears, a tangible memory of my childish admiration.

Also still with us is that dark green and blue sweater my aunt wears so fetchingly. The gamine haircut Abby sported from high school until the time of her death, in Tel Aviv, in 2001--so soft and brown right til the end. I loved to sit in her lap and wind the short curls, so different from mom's long thick dark waves, around my stubby little fingers...

I was two years old here, and so obviously fussing it's almost palpable. I suppose that was my regular state. I was often caught between cracking a ribald joke, and fussing. Much as I am now.

If you look, you can see that we're arrayed before my grandparents' formal fireplace in their living room. My grandfather certainly arranged it that way, and framed the photo in perfect symmetricality. Symmetrical furniture placement was the style of my grandparents' time, and in these modern days, when feigned insouciance in home decor is the way, I've continued to cling, almost despite myself, to these formal conventions of a bygone era. Note the matched end tables, china lamps, and doilies (crocheted and tatted by Grandma). There was something so comforting in the regularity of these pairings, and I've recapitulated this in my own living room, almost without thought, as an animal will act on inherited instinct alone.

Peeking out from behind Abby is a bunch of dried hydrangea, cut in the pink flush of their prime from Grandma's bushes outside her Adirondack summer house, and transported by car, carefully, all the way back to Brooklyn. It was an end-of-summer ritual as regular as the phases of the moon, and to this day those bushes survive and we cut branches every Autumn, carry them to Brooklyn, and tuck them in vases to bolster us with summer memories, much as people will can and preserve foodstuffs to line their pantry shelves against oncoming winter.

Three generations. Only half of us, pictured here, remain. A generation passed, but the colors are still so vibrant, the habits so strong, the wool, though moth-eaten, so soft, and the gold still glinting, comfortably...

Public

2010-09-30T10:54:00.002-04:00

I started to worry that people might think I'd shut them out of my blog, so I'm taking the block off while I figure out what to do with it.

The Weather in the Streets is stormy, literally and figuratively. You know how it goes...

I am more cheerful here, though:

Yarn Ends

xo Leah

Darkling Plain

2010-09-10T20:17:00.012-04:00

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night

--Matthew Arnold, from "Dover Beach," 1867

visit Sarge's September 11, 2009 post here

Jew Girl

2010-09-07T20:13:00.001-04:00

This is my Roumanian cousin; her name and story, both lost, though I believe she died in the Holocaust.

A Jew Girl, like me.

Upstate New York, at puppy class, I stood next to the corpulent, ruddy man, each of us with our dogs--his an improbable yappy "morkie." He told me with an eye roll that his wife had picked it at the puppy shop, lest, I suppose, I should believe he'd emasculated himself deliberately. I had the manly hunting dog, handsome hound Remus. I know he wished we could swap dogs.

He asked me "where in Brooklyn you from?" and told me he had been a truck driver, often delivering to Flushing, Queens. He hated, he said, to make deliveries there. Because, you know, those people ran the warehouse there, "those people of the Jewish persuasion," his lip lifted in a wet sneer, his face too close to mine.

I looked at him.

"You know," I said mildly. "I'm Jewish."

He flushed a dark, ugly red.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean anything by it. You've gotta understand, I didn't mean you anyway. I meant those ones, you know, the ones with the weird beards. But not you."

I was tempted to stomp on his foot, tempted to pull my blonde hair back from my forehead and show him my horns, tempted to curse him with a very evil Yiddish curse and spit on the ground in front of him.

But I did none of those things, thinking of Ella, and myself, and then for a moment, in an unexpectedly clear memory-flash, of the beautiful nameless Roumanian cousin...

...horned, hook-nosed, sheydl-wearing, stingy money-horder, smelling of pickles and the Old Country, praying in a language that no one understands, that keeps me separate and strange...

Jew Girl.

Finished Book One

2010-09-06T10:52:00.003-04:00

While I'm working on another post, I will update with the thrilling news that I've finished Book One on my list--wasn't able to find the old copy of "In Cold Blood" that I thought was lying around here somewhere, and unfortunately had misplaced "Three Men in a Boat," so began with a book I'd been looking forward to--"Songs of Three Islands," an autobiography about mental illness in the Carnegie family. Sounds good, right?

Well, it wasn't.

If you care to read my railings against it, feel free to visit my new book journal blog, A Year of Books. If not, I'll have something new here soon...

12 Books in 12 Months--final list

2010-09-01T16:14:00.003-04:00

Thank you so much for the completely intriguing suggestions, everyone! I now have a final list and a list of alternates.

I'm oddly excited about this simple little undertaking.

Anyway, in no particular order,

1. Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

2. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

3. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

4. La-Bas by J-K Huysmans

5. Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

6. The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault

7. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

8. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (I've read "Foucault's Pendulum" and am looking forward to this one)

9. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

10. Songs of Three Islands by Millicent Monks

11. The Castle of Ontranto by Horace Walpole

12. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (this looks fabulous--thank you Carnalis)

I'll be posting little bits and pieces as I finish each one.

Twelve Books

2010-08-30T10:59:00.003-04:00

Today I've decided to go a little lighter, be a little more forward-thinking...

I discovered a really nice project on The Latter Day Bohemian's web site, and have decided to give it a go: 12 Books in 12 Months.

I haven't been reading lately as much as I would like, or rather I've been dipping in and out of books, mostly old favorites, poetry, and bits and pieces of new ones. This project is perfect for me: read 12 books from my reading list in the next twelve months, and post as I go along.

I've come up with a list of six so far that I would love to get to:

1. Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

2. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (I've gotten into it a bit, it's wonderful, but I need some discipline to finish it!)

3. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

4. The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault (if you follow this blog, you know it's on my bedside table, silently chiding me)

5. Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, in honor of Sarge and AKPW, and let's see whether it takes me to the next one...

6. The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault

And now, dear friends, I call upon you to help me come up with six more for my series.

I ask, what are some books on your must-read list? I would love to compile the rest of the list from your favorites, and I'll post my final 12 on September 1st.

Thank you in advance!

EDITED: I am replacing History of Sexuality with something more exciting, "La-Bas" by Huysmans. It's been waiting for me, and I couldn't be more psyched to read it.

A Passing

2010-08-27T19:20:00.005-04:00

our memorial garden where I sit and knit and watch the passing shadows

It never really changes in the Adirondacks, though summer concedes, early, to fall, and then all goes to cold, and snow, and howling winds...and back again. The samenesses of Julys and Augusts for all the generations I can think of and all those to come...tart blueberries dropping in a pail held by some child or other, startling fragrance of the lemon lilies, glinting sharp sun darts caught in the little ripples of a little lake...and mountains, soft and primeval, sloping from sky to water as great sleeping beasts might, in a dream of great beasts.

Late August is often a sad time for me. The crows fly low, muted. The dark, though not bitter yet, comes sooner each day, minute by lost minute. Leaves fall through the raindrops, bright and dead...

And my little girl grows up, and summer ebbs in diffuse light through ancient pines, that were here before me and will be here still, long after I'm gone.

Baby Carriage

2010-08-06T18:48:00.007-04:00

Mom in the baby carriage, 1945
click to enlarge

I played sometimes on the fifth floor of the Castle, high above the streets of Brooklyn, in the old servants' quarters.

Sometimes I lit a ghost fire in the long-unused fireplace there, kneeling at the marble hearth to warm myself in its phantom flames.

I peeked into the bathroom, at the enormous claw-foot tub under a steeply slanting ceiling, or into the china storage room, where I liked to imagine the sound of dinner parties, the laughter and conversation, the clink of glass against glass.

I would dare myself to enter the trunk room, a dark interior closet filled with the luggage of long-ago trips--many steamer trunks, their brass fittings blinking in the sudden light.

And it was there I discovered the derelict baby carriage, and filled it with the toys of another childhood, and tended them: the celluloid-faced Humpty-Dumpty, his stripy legs uselessly dangling; the dusty Steiff dogs, a Boxer and an Airedale; the naked baby doll, its two tiny pearly teeth and eyes that opened and shut, eerily, on clever hinges...

I like cream in my coffee, and I like to sleep late on Sunday, and I like eggs over easy, with flour tortillas

2010-08-04T18:51:00.004-04:00

Well, really I prefer whole milk in my coffee, and egg white omelets with feta cheese, and I like to wake up early on Sundays so that I can have a minute to myself before the house begins its hum all around me. But I do like warm flour tortillas, and I love Lyle Lovett.

My friend Murali, at Miscellany of Me (an aesthetically beautiful blog that is just so inspiring) has asked me to come up with 10 things I like. Simple enough, no?

1. My new blonde hair, which makes me feel sneaky, like I'm dissembling to the world. But I realized I'm just far too real a person, and I have to strive to be more false.

Frowny blonde me

2. The sight of Hedgehog, swimming in the lake, wearing homemade crowns and bracelets of watery lake ferns.

3. The prick of tears in my eyes

4. When my sister and I are chatting and we realize we sound like a scene from a Woody Allen movie.

5. When Sarge embraces me and kisses me and then Hedgehog and Remus both try to force their way in.

6. rescue dogs

7. stargazing

8. dirty jokes

9. Cannabis Rose perfume

10. ice in bed on a hot summer night

and p.s. I am sorrier than sorry that I cannot easily get out and about to visit many of you--the internet connection in the North Country really is infernally touch and go...

Shadowstalking: Kat Mortensen Visits Brooklyn

2010-07-30T09:34:00.005-04:00

the author at home in Kitchener, Ontario

I am so pleased to host my friend Kat Mortensen on the Brooklyn, New York leg of a world blog tour to tell us about her soulful, funny, poignant, and wonderful collection of poetry, "Shadowstalking."

In honor of the release of her book, I was given the opportunity to ask Kat a few questions about her poems and her writing process:

Leah asks: I was moved by your poem "Dear Mother," and was wondering where the idea for that particular poem came from; was there was a specific inspiration? I happen to love the war poets, especially those writing during and after WWI (Spender, Owen, Brooke, Rosenberg, and Kipling, to name a few). Have you read any of those poets, and do you have a favorite war poet?

Kat answers: I wrote the poem in November of 2008, a day before Remembrance Day here in Canada. I was always moved by the poem "In Flanders Fields," by Canadian John McCrae - in fact, as a young girl, I learned it by heart and can still recite it word-for-word. In 1977, my father took our family (my Mom, my sister and I) to Europe and the U.K. This was not your typical family vacation; it incorporated a visit to relatives in England, but the European tour was all about battle-sites from The Second World War. How many 16 year-olds do you know who have visited the site of the Battle of the Bulge, Flanders and Dachau Concentration Camp? These places made an indelible impression upon me that is part of who I am as a person. As a result, I have never shied away from movies or books that take place during wartime. Some of my favourite films are war movies, such as "Three Kings," "Bridge on the River Kwai," or even the Serbo-Croation film, "No Man's Land." Earlier this year, I read Mark Bowden's incredible account of the real story of "Black Hawk Down" (another one of my favourites). It is for this reason that I wanted to write a poem in remembrance that incorporated the experience of the soldier from all different periods of war. I wanted the idea to be that a veteran is a veteran, or a hero is a hero, whether he fought in WW I, or he is fighting in Afghanistan today. The repetition in the verses links each of these figures inextricably in their common experience. I hope the poem is successful. Sometimes I think it is too simplistic, but then I also think it reflects exactly the simple lines a soldier would write to his mother back home.

Leah asks: I am very interested in a theme that runs through some of your most beautiful poetry, that of a woman seeing her girlhood through the lens of experience. Do you think your poetry has helped you see your historical self more clearly, and in what particular way? What aspects of your younger self are still with you now?

Kat answers: A word I am compelled to use again and again is "catharsis." I'd like to say it differently, but there doesn't seem to be another word that works as well.

Much of what I write is designed to exorcise the "ghosts" of my past. We all have them, don't we? Those nagging thoughts about moments where we could have been smarter, wiser or stronger. I often feel that in my youth I let myself be taken in without getting much in return and these poetic journeys are my way of saying, "So there!" I think we assume that people who have wronged us have this notion that they put one over on us and we're still in a corner somewhere pining away. Well, I suppose the "girlhood poems," if you want to call them that, are to let them know they couldn't be more wrong.

One might argue that if I'm still thinking about these "ghosts," I must harbour feelings for them, but the truth is, I'm just looking for vindication. (smiles)

The other thing about these poems is that they just tumble out of me and they are fun to write. When they're done, I have a feeling of satisfaction that most of my work doesn't afford - at least not in the same way. I also think that anyone who reads them can share in the catharsis, because I haven't met a woman yet, who doesn't have these stories to tell herself.

Leah asks: Okay, as a writer myself, I'm always curious about setting. Can you describe your favorite poetry-writing setting? (what you like to drink, look at, wear, listen to for inspiration).

Kat answers: Oh, now you're asking me to reveal my secrets. Dare I let you in on my milieu and my appearance? Hmm.

Typically, I work in one of two places: either my dining room table, where I can look out my sliding glass doors to the nature park that is my backyard (an urban garden, pesticide-free that attracts all manner of wildlife), or upstairs in my office at the desk in the corner. There is a large side window with light-coloured linen drapes that blow in the breeze. Behind me are two large shelves chock-full of books I discover in thrift-shops and used-book stores (I need another shelf because I'm running out of room).

I don't always listen to music. I have iTunes and occasionally put something on - anything from Led Zeppelin to Norah Jones, to the "Gladiator" soundtrack, but this is rare. I prefer quiet when I work.

The sort of music that inspires me is something from my Celtic heritage - Clannad, Sinead O'Connor even, or perhaps something really Canadian like Gordon Lightfoot. I sing. If I like a song, I sing - loudly.

You know from my blog that I like to eat. I talk about what I'm going to have for breakfast, just as my head hits the pillow the night before. I'm a toast fanatic, so I will often have that with black, Free Trade, Organic coffee, or a fresh, multi-grain bagel from the local City Bakery. And water, lots of water!

What do I wear? Well, as my husband will tell you, I am all about comfort. If it's cozy, and comfy (or in this season, cool), I'll wear it. I don't care much about if it matches, but that's only when I'm in the confines of my home. Outside, I am colour-coordinated to a tee. By the way, I like my Crocs. Just saying.

As for what I look at, my house is filled with original artwork that I'm certain must contribute to the artist-mindset that conceives of poetry. In my office, I have a framed photograph of my father's mother, a framed batik fish that my husband made as a kid and my treasured "Mikado" poster from the 1982 production at Stratford, Ontario (one of my favourite places to spend the day).

Oh, I also have a stationary bike taking up way too much space and subliminally nagging at me to get on and do some spinning. Back to work!

Thank you, Kat, for your illuminating (and funny) answers, and most of all, thanks for swinging by Brooklyn to share yourself and your poetry!

TO ORDER KAT'S BOOK, VISIT HERE or SEE THE LINK IN MY SIDEBAR

To see other stops, and more interviews, on Kat's world tour, visit her blog, Shadowstalking.

Blonde

2010-07-21T14:15:00.005-04:00

I've always wanted to go blonde. Not nice natural blonde, but garish obviously faux blonde. Don't ask me why, but it's been a dream long in the making. The time never seemed quite right, i.e. I had to be seen in public by people I hoped would take me at least somewhat seriously. Now here I am in the North Country--far North, without internet access, or human interaction--and finally I could realize the tiny fantasy, the duality of inner darkness with outer light. It took me two tries, two rounds of peroxide saturation, before I got the color I've been after--that hair-murdering negation (or is it, paradoxically, substantiation?) of the true brunette me.

When the Adirondack wind starts up, as it daily does, and whips my face with white-gold snakes, and I catch their glint in my peripheral vision, I feel as if I've misbehaved, but, too, I'm strangely vindicated...

Monsters

2010-07-18T08:27:00.004-04:00

I met the little girl on a public beach in the Adirondacks--my parents had taken me there to break up the monotony. She was just my age, lived right there in town, and we got along famously, so my mother asked her mother whether she might not come with us for a couple of hours to play at my house.

I looked forward to that playdate, almost (do I remember it correctly?) counting down the hours. She didn't disappoint. We ran in the woods, swam off my dock, splashed and shouted in the sunshine, concocted water fairy games. In the afternoon, when we were hungry, my mother sent us for peanut butter sandwiches. Walking companionably up the country lane to my cabin, she turned to me, and in her sweet, soft voice, asked,

"Do you believe in God?"

I was not in the least taken aback--even at a young age, I had a formed idea of my belief system, and loved to discuss it.

"Yes," I said. "I do."

"Me too." I smiled at her, and she continued her questioning.

"Do you believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior?" she asked, kindly. Not wanting to offend her, but feeling the truth was the right thing to offer, I carefully delivered my default statement, taught me by my mother.

"I'm Jewish, and we don't believe that Jesus was God, but he was a good man who really did exist."

I thought that was a nice compromise, but immediately her face fell. She looked genuinely frightened.

"Then you're going to hell," she said, so sadly. "You're going to burn there. In the flames. It's going to be horribly painful, and it will last forever, the burning."

"That isn't true!" I said, already blinking back tears.

"It is. You're going to burn in hell, if you don't believe in Jesus."

We argued back and forth for a few more moments, and then gave up at the impasse. We both managed not to cry, but the playdate was over. We spent the rest of it in silence, trying to choke down the peanut butter sandwiches. Her parents picked her up, and we said goodbye. I never saw her again, after I confessed that night to my mother the conversation that had passed between us. I know now just how furious mom was, but she didn't let on, not entirely. She reassured me that God was good, and that hell was a made up story to frighten people into behaving. That made sense, and it helped, but the image of the burning hellfires, and me, a little girl screaming helplessly in the middle of the inferno, had stamped itself indelibly on my subconscious...

I think now about what mom said--hell is a story made up to scare people into behaving.

I believe that interpretation, with all my heart and soul, and I question the merit of such a threat. It might work--temporarily--but does a tale of terror, in the end, really nurture and sustain the moral development, the strong superego, that restrains bad behavior?

Hedgehog came home this week from her indigenous camp with two books, written by the camp director, full of Native American monsters. These were passed down through the generations, truly frightening stories of howling murderous hideous creatures of the natural world...told explicitly to frighten children into "being good."

The threat of monsters, of supernatural punishment, is a tradition that crosses all boundaries of time and culture. I clearly remember being threatened with a visit from the Boogeyman--just once, by my paternal grandmother, who was roundly chastised by my parents. She never pulled that one on me, or my sister, again. But like the cruel hellfires that light one's psyche with flickering fear, the Boogeyman will be with me forever--scaring me, but also delivering a tiny frisson of delight. Mightn't we tempt him to visit, just once, to see what he's really like? Or will we be satisfied with the awful stories of others whose bad behavior invited him in?

Motives and morality aren't so clearly drawn as they would have us believe. Simplistic terror texts are met with all the complex range of human reaction--fear, yes, of course--but also fascination, desire, and a welling up of natural wicked curiousity...

note: I would be very interested to hear whether you were, in your childhood, threatened with any sort of fictional monster in order to get you to behave. I imagine the Monster takes many forms, depending on one's background.

Leave Me a Comment; I am Curious about You!

2010-07-05T18:43:00.010-04:00

I always enjoy it tremendously when bloggers invite readers to de-lurk. So to speak. And I'm jumping on that one. Not that I think anyone is really lurking per se, but today I cordially invite anyone who happens by here: feel free to make my day and comment, especially if you're new or haven't commented before.

Recently I took the radical (for me) step of posting my blog link on facebook. Worlds colliding!!! So the invitation goes out also to any of my facebook friends who stop by--leave a comment if you like! You can just comment anonymously and then sign your name.

The rest of you regular readers--I pose you this question: do you keep your blog and your "other life" separate? Why or why not?

xo Leah

Somber Little Faces

2010-07-02T21:34:00.003-04:00

As noted in that funny old-fashioned hand on the back of the photo, this is my grandma Eva by her sister Honey in the fancy stroller, their older brother Simon (from whom I get my middle name, Simone), so protective behind them.

What strikes me is the formality of the children. The white fur and black astrakhan, the bonnets, the embellished hat: in contrast to the modern babies I see, in cotton onesies and bare toes, these children are stiff and overdressed, their expressions serious, worried and a little melancholy.

In his grown-up life, though, Uncle Simon was a kind and garrulous man, generous and funny. My mother remembers him bringing a huge strong-smelling salami, in its casing, often when he came for dinner, and one memorable time, a whole bag of candy-store malted milk balls scooped and measured just for mom...

From the Clamor of Traffic

2010-07-01T13:06:00.004-04:00

Happy is the man who drinks

his final egg cream

before leaving the smog

and the heat of the city.

From the closed, shadowed streets

to the wide, open skies.

From the clamor of traffic

to the song of the wind.

Under a tree in the country

all the things in the world

are fulfilled.

--written by Hedgehog, June 2010

The Road Trip that Was and Wasn't

2010-06-28T17:01:00.005-04:00

Photo taken by Hedgehog somewhere in Louisiana

It's nearly a year from the day that my sister and I and then-8-year-old Hedgehog set out on our epic road trip through the Deep South, and I've been reminiscing lately.

The most remarkable thing, in hindsight, is the fact that Hedgehog missed the trip in its entirety. When I say she missed it, I don't mean she wasn't physically there, a fixture in my rearview mirror, stoically passing the thousands of miles strapped to her booster seat. I mean that she wasn't there with us, looking out the window, marveling over the eternities of strange sights: the strangling forests of kudzu, the eerie dusklit swamps and marshes, the signs enticing us toward Stuckeys and boudin, fireworks, peaches, pecans, above-ground cemeteries, the old mansions and slave quarters, alligators, dancehalls, and boiled peanuts.

A committed and compulsive reader, Hedgehog saw the trip as nothing more than an opportunity to read all day every day, across the hours and through the states, all the way across the country, four thousand miles total: a great tipping, sliding pile of books at her side. For her, Mississippi and Alabama will be remembered as a land of dragons and battles, Louisiana and Georgia full of magical swords and brave girl warriors--all punctuated by momentary flights of reality in the form of waffle houses and bright truck stops, necessary leg-stretchings, and portable lunches of tuna salad crackers.

Just once I insisted she catch a glimpse, when we passed through the French Quarter, and she obliged, looking up from her book with glazed eyes. I'm not sure to this day what she actually saw--the ornate little houses and rambling streets, or something else entirely, her mind still in the printed word?

Often as parents we have expectations of just how we want our children to experience some event, outing, or even a sculpture, painting, or story we tell; the truth is that, often, it just won't go as we hope. It can be hard to let go of our expectations, hard not to badger ("put down your book and look at that amazing view!!!"), hard not to pressure, hard not to feel disappointed when things don't go as planned or the enthusiasm just isn't there.

The biggest lesson I've learned as a parent is to try as hard as I can simply to let Hedgehog be. Not to force experiences on her. Not to feel let down when she doesn't react as expected, not to be overly invested in her reactions. That road trip was a real turning point for me in this regard. I very quickly came to a decision to let her read as much as she wanted, and not to insist she look at, or even pretend to care about, the marvels of the road.

I like to think that she will look back with fondness and satisfaction on our odyssey. The voices laughing chatting and arguing from the front seat, the country music on and off as we passed through local bandwidth, all a background murmur. Free from parental vigilance and pressure, in a cozy car full of books she could lose herself in the intensity of her stories. We had our adventures...and I am very certain she had hers.

My '80s

2010-06-23T19:56:00.020-04:00

My '80s were sort of mixed up with the '40s and '60s...

Kat has pulled me out of my inadvertent bloggy retirement for this! If you stop by, and feel like it, join us and post your own '80s memories.

The 1980s spanned my coming-of-age years, from 10 to 19, so I think back to the chinese jacks of my early tweens, the middy blouse and drop-waisted skirt worn to the 8th grade dance, and my first pair of kitten heels...staring at a two-page spread on Boy George in People Magazine, listening to Yaz and Yellowman on a clunky cassette player...

But the really significant period for me was 1985-1987, my teen years.

I always love a list, the lazy woman's way, so here it is--what I was doing, thinking, wearing, yearning after, reading, listening to, and watching as a 15, 16, and 17 year old living in NYC:

makeup: matte claret lipstick by Lancome. It came in a long, shiny black tube and had to be ceaselessly reapplied throughout the day, but I think of it fondly as one of my early objects of fetish.

perfume: my first perfume, circa 1982, was the dreadful cloying Anais Anais. I graduated to Diorissimo and simply reeked of lily-of-the-valley.

music: I listened to pop radio late at night, but it was The Velvet Underground and David Bowie and Bob Dylan who provided the soundtrack to my adolescence, to my crushes, daydreams, and homework. I didn't really understand "Some Kinda Love" till much later, except in inchoate fashion, but it sparked my imagination.

movies: Spinal Tap. The Man Who Fell to Earth. Uncut. Just like David Bowie's fully revealed manhood. Did I mention, my obliging parents took me to see a double feature of that and The Hunger?

role model: Edie Sedgwick. The black leotards under impossibly short dresses, the swingy earrings, the suicidal despair--I rocked them all, from time to time.

hangouts and haunts: The Blue and Gold, a seedy old-man bar in the East Village, where I could pretend to be bad at pool so some obliging boy would assist me with my stick. Likewise, a vast pool hall on 14th street right next to the old Limelight club. For my daily hangout needs, there was the Promenade Restaurant, an old diner in my nabe where we could sit for hours over an endless cup of coffee, gossiping and dramatizing loudly, then sheepishly peering around to make sure we weren't being overheard by the wrongest person. Sometimes of an evening, the self-consciously spare whitewashed lofts of our friends' artist parents. There were a lot of those, ubiquitous '80s NYC of a type.

boys: skinny, introverted, cerebral. The more prominent were these qualities, the more desirous was I of his company.

books: to carry around as props, Kierkegaard and Lukacs. Never without some Latin: Horace-Catullus. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Brideshead Revisited.

jewelry: five sterling silver hoops in graduated sizes, one for each of my five asymmetrical ear piercings. Sterling bangles and lots of 'em. Eyeball ring from C'est Magnifique.

clothes: vintage dresses. Vintage skirts and sweaters. Boots. Suede jackets. My grandpa's old black woolly sweater.

hair: after one year of short bangs-in-one-eye 'do, dyed various unpleasant shades of red, orange, and blonde, I reverted to my natural state: very long and a little unmanageable.

drink: Rolling Rock. Why? It was all I knew how to order. And they never carded us, back then.

cigarette: Viceroys. Just like Edie.

ambition: to be a housewife to one of the misunderstood skinny, introverted, cerebral boys. Yes, that was my ambition.

transportation: subway. Taxi. Dad.

yearnings: prom. We didn't have one at my school, but I had heard of such a thing and wanted to attend one, with a total pretense of irony. The yearning was real and non-ironic.

pet peeve: John Hughes movies. I liked to think I was above a John Hughes movie. Of course, I saw them all...

and finally, a post script: Happy birthday Kat!

p.s.: more things of '80s significance keep occurring: neon fishnet stockings; the cheap and fabulous vintage clothes at Canal Jeans or Antique Boutique on Broadway; Betsey Johnson; Capezio's; ABC Afterschool Specials; The Specials; Bleecker Bob's records; Rocks in Your Head records; B. Altman's; taxicab yellow nail polish; my New York Dolls t-shirt, cut off at the collar; when parts of Soho were still dangerous at night (!!!); my discovery of Steely Dan and King Crimson...

Scarlet's Meme: a Family Effort

2010-06-04T13:40:00.008-04:00

Funny, sweet, and acerbic Miss Scarlet has memed me with a ten-question virus that I very much enjoy. There is a little award involved, but I will leave it in her care for now.

It goes like this: she made up ten questions for six people, and I in turn will answer those and ask ten of my own to six people. I decided to share the questions with the whole family:

1. Do you prefer asking questions or answering them?

Me: I like answering questions because I'm a huge egomaniac and I like to talk about myself, and I like asking questions because most people are fascinating if you know the right questions to ask.

Sarge: that depends on the question, doesn't it.

Hedgehog: asking. Cause then you learn stuff.

2. What is your favourite joke? [Or favourite one liner?]

Me: "How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" "that's not funny!"
alternately, Dorothy Parker's New Yorker review of "The House at Pooh Corner": "Tonstant Weader Fwowed Up"
also Dorothy, "if all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised."
Boy, she was a nasty, funny piece of work, wasn't she? I'm sure I wouldn't want to have known her personally, but I love and adore her famous quips.

Sarge: That's my joke, by the way, thanks a lot! My favorite one-liner? From Mago in the comments section: "There sticks a mole-foot out of the side of your dog's mouth?"

3. Have you ever fantasized about being on Big Brother [the well known TV show... I'm not alluding to incest]?

Me: Despite my egomania, I'm a very private person, and at the end of the day I like to take refuge in my home, close and lock the door, and not be bothered. Thus, Big Brother is not for me. Also, I worry that I would be quickly known as the house kokhleffl (funny Yiddish word for "pot-stirrer" in the non-literal sense).

Sarge: No.

Hedgehog: What's that?

4. Have you ever wanted to enter a talent show?

Me: Flat out no. My talents lie in very odd areas that wouldn't be usefully displayed on a stage.

Sarge: Actually, yes! Totally.

Hedgehog: No...no.

5. Is Simon Cowell really necessary?

Me: Oddly, I would say yes. I've only seen the show a couple of times, but I love the idea that he doesn't mince words, spare feelings, deliver empty flattery or promises, or hem and haw--all his bald statements support the truth as he sees it, no phoney-baloney. People can learn from him--especially politicians.

Sarge: Nothing on that show is really necessary. Nothing on tv is necessary.

Hedgehog: Well, no because the show itself isn't necessary.

(oh my god, she's her dad's daughter all right, isn't she? She came up with the same answer totally independently)

6. Tea or coffee?

Me: Coffee. Tea usually just makes me shudder, unless brewed properly. Not for me the casually dunked teabag. Iced tea, on the other hand, is delightful.

Sarge: Dr. Pepper

Hedgehog: tea

7. What is your favourite perfume? Or smell?

Me: Anick Goutal's "Mandragore." "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Fresh (sadly discontinued, though I have a few bottles stashed in the fridge). Dog paws. Those little pink sweet and peppery roses that come in the spring. Sarge.

Hedgehog: baking cookies.

Sarge: vanilla

8. What is the quickest route to Wales from where you live?

Me: My daydreams.

Sarge: transatlantic flight to Cardiff? Is there an airport in Cardiff?

9. What does the word 'Wales' conjure to your mind?

Me: The Welsh Separatist Movement.

Hedgehog: The ancient Welsh sea-god Llyr

Sarge: hills

10. Are you dreading dreaming up ten questions to ask six bloggers?

YES.

Here are my ten questions:

1. What is your least favorite piece of clothing that you own? (from Hedgehog)

2. Gravity or magnetism? (Sarge)

3. Would you rather fantasize, or act it out in real life?

4. What is a name, other than your own, that you think suits you?

5. Tell us about a nice thing a stranger did for you.

6. What was your favorite childhood toy?

7. Do you hold a grudge, or let things go easily?

8. Favorite children's book?

9. Something you're proud of?

10. Which of the following four artworks do you relate to most, on first glance, and why?

A.

B.

C.

D.

Okay, now I tag the following to answer these ten questions, come up with your own ten, and so on...

feel free not to! Although I would enjoy reading your answers:

1. Mapstew

2. The Unbearable Banishment

3. Hunter (a break from your manuscript?)

Oh crap, that's only three. Oh well, I've petered out. This was much more elaborate then I'd expected, and I'm exhausted. If you've made it this far, you are truly a blog reader to be reckoned with.

Bedside

2010-05-29T19:34:00.013-04:00

My bedside table reveals a lot about who I am, I think--especially the books--it's crammed with books: the ones I'm in the middle of, the ones I fully intend to read but possibly won't, a few favorites for bedtime comfort. There are occasionally other things on that little table (my glasses, earrings, a cup of coffee, a glass of icewater), but mostly it's books.

Here's the current lineup:

You can see that it runs the gamut from "Twilight" to Snoopy. Hey, I'm not embarrassed! Or maybe a little bit. About the Twilight, not Snoopy...

Closeup #1: we won't even discuss the Stephenie Meyer. Or will we? My dear friend (you shall remain nameless) kindly sent me all four of these. In the final analysis, these are extremely peculiar and disturbing books. I keep them on the bedside because I'm as yet unwilling to pass them along to the next curious reader, and I like the glossy black covers and the heft and bulk of them. Oh Edward. Find someone your own age, won't you?

Also here is "History of Sexuality," which I've yet to get through. Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" is one of my favorite books, and if you're not familiar with it, don't be disappointed but it's not a sexy s&m manual, but rather a thoughtful historical/sociological treatise on schools, prisons, and sanitoriums, and the ways in which they are, disturbingly, similar.

"The Pity of it All," a beautifully written history of German Jews, on loan from my extremely well-read sister in an attempt to better me. Sissy, I promise I'm reading it...but slowly.

My favorite in this pile: Le Fanu's ghost stories, recommended by Megan, scrumptiously well-written and atmospheric. On a rainy night, it's pure magic.

Closeup #2: my red-leather-bound journal (no review necessary, anyone who reads the blog can guess at its maundering contents); "A Reliable Wife" (just finished its gothic overwroughtness), "The Difference Engine" (finished a year ago, but I treasure its little presence); the collected Robert Burns that I retrieved after hearing the beautiful rendition of "Ae fond kiss" over at Mapstew's (go have a listen; it is to weep); "So Innocent...," a self-published true crime masterwork found in a roadside Stuckey's on the Grand Tour road trip last summer. The Mencken belongs to Sarge, but there was no room on his bedside table.

Closeup #3: "World War Z" (you'll like it if you like zombies, which odds are you do); de Sade (I read every word of this, and can attest to the fact that he was mad sick; a hero of free speech; disgusting; re-readable); "Wisconsin Death Trip," my sine qua non, cause of more than a few nightmares when indulged in before sleep, as it is quite hard to digest and often results in psychic dyspepsia.

Tucked in there, hard to see, is my score to The Goldberg Variations, a gift from my mom. I must here stop to give some advice: if you read music, and you are obsessed with a complex piece of classical music, do yourself a favor and purchase or download the score so that you can follow along. It is great fun, highly illuminating, very satisfying. I'm serious!

Lastly, but hardly leastly, is my large Peanuts anthology, abandoned there by Hedgehog. But who among us can deny the lure and appeal of that strange little gang? So I keep it, for its gift of cheer amid the Gothic, the dead, the zombies, the sadism, and all that biting.

Puppy Wrinkles

2010-05-26T11:08:00.006-04:00

I can't get enough of Remus' flappy wrinkly dewlap and flews. I am thinking of buying those soft soft delectable wrinkles some flowers, and taking them out for a nice Italian meal, that's how much I love them.

A Letter Home

2010-05-21T12:37:00.010-04:00

In August 1945, my dear aunt Abby Rachel was five years old, living in Brooklyn on Clinton Street with my infant mother and her parents, Eva and Max. In France, Uncle Harold waited for those official orders that would bring him home again. I believe that the waiting was, for him, not without its ambivalence, for the War had been something of an adventure for that Brooklyn boy, showing him the wider world, a new language, another culture.

But wait he did, for what other choice was there, really? The war had ended, the terrible monster vanquished, and his family wanted him home, so homeward he would eventually travel, not war-weary like many, but rather enlivened, and alive in all the true meaning of that word.

With nothing much to do in the army camp (save, apparently, nap, chat, and eat ice cream), he wrote a letter, now a family treasure, to his niece Abby:

(Abby Rachel Pollack, 1940-2001; Harold Pollack, 1916-2004. May their memory forever be a blessing...)

...and please do take a look at the other wonderful entries for Sepia Saturday...

Cousin Sam, Head Cashier

2010-05-07T12:40:00.008-04:00

Sam Kisberg, the stuff of small family legend, was a cousin of my great-grandmother Katie Littwin (nee Kisberg).

In his middle age, he lived with Great-grandma Katie in her big boarding house on Ocean Parkway. My mom describes his room as so tiny, overlooking the railroad tracks, furnished with nothing but a bed, a dresser, and a little bookshelf. It smelled of soap; she says he was the cleanest person she ever met. Sometimes she would peek in his drawers just to marvel at how perfectly folded and glowing white his undershirts were.

Sam was the the head cashier at the famous NYC institution, Keen's Steakhouse:

Every Thursday, he came for dinner at my Grandma Eva's, bringing treats from the Steakhouse as a hospitality offering. The Steakhouse staff was allowed to leave work each evening with the best leftovers from that night's dinner seating. Sam would arrive at grandma's house with single portions of cherry cheesecake and brownies. Mom tells me the cake slices would often have a single bite off their pointy ends. Grandpa Max found this shocking, disgusting, and would rail against Sam for his gauche beggarly habits. But Grandma Eva would always whisk the cheesecake into the kitchen and cut off the offending bitten end, whispering to mom "shhh...don't tell daddy..."

Sam brought the dessert on Keen's china, blue and white sturdy Willow-ware plates. The family took to calling this china "Samware," and as a child I would often venture into the little attic room that housed the dishes no longer in frequent rotation, and stare at the hundreds of little Samware dessert plates, neatly stacked in the glassed cupboards...for nothing was ever thrown away in Grandma's house...

He brought, too, from time to time, the white ceramic smoking pipes for which Keen's was famous. Symbols of manly opulence just out of reach, for Sam himself, that soapy-clean Russian immigrant in the tiny room overlooking the train tracks, was a servant, an onlooker, possibly envious, possibly wistful. I'm certain he would have liked to join the ruddy crowds of men in their loud, laughing, drunken steak dinners.

Instead, he made his quiet livelihood behind the cash register, consoling himself with the ill-gotten souvenirs of half-eaten cake and plates and pipes...

The famous Keen's pipes

Servers and staff at Keen's Steakhouse

The Falling Man

2010-05-03T10:22:00.008-04:00

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Lately my mind is sunless and dim; my memories, like muted outlines of people lost wandering in a dense fog, appearing every now and again to remind me of some small or great event, are now more indistinct than ever. That is, I can barely remember what we ate for dinner last night...yet every so often a memory walks toward me, at random, gaining a bright lucidity as it draws near.

This morning such an image emerged from the hazy landscape, in complete detail, come to visit my shroudy mind.

In January 1988, just a few months before my grandma Eva's death, my grandparents attended a performance of Verdi's "Macbeth" at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. They had for many decades owned a near-priceless opera subscription, some of the very best seats in the house, mid-row just a few in from the stage for the very best sights and sound.

It was to be a regular Saturday afternoon, spent in music (and perhaps catching a cat nap when the recitative between arias dragged on a bit too long) and a light lunch in the city, at an understated restaurant where an old couple could pass an hour or two over lemon sole and dissection of the merits and flaws of the opera production...

The quiet enjoyment was broken apart in a sudden moment. I heard the disturbing news that evening, when my grandma, still in shock, called me at college to recount the tale: how she and Grandpa Max remained in their seats for the intermission, rattling their programs and chatting, taking a breather, forgoing the crowds searching out sustenance at the little bar...Grandpa said "Eva!", his lone cry lost in the collective gasp and cry of the audience remaining. Grandma looked sharply, grabbed Grandpa's hand and together they watched, as if in slow motion though it must have taken place in seconds: a man, falling straight from the very uppermost balcony, through endless air, the ruffling breeze from his descent and from the waving hands of the people unable to halt the terrible fall.

"It was so graceful," she told me.

I was not to know it yet then, but the falling man was a portent--his swift descent a suicide, a hard choice made in the final moments of despair--an awful sign (if I had known to look) of my grandma's death that warm May day a few months after, but hers an unwilling death, for she had more operas and luncheons to enjoy if she had only been able.

Though when I think of him, and her, now, the symmetry of their deaths, I'm comforted by an idea that takes shape: while he left his darkened world by fall, she left hers in flight.

To read in more detail of this strange and sad tale, visit the New York Times account.

Lines from "Musee des Beaux Arts" by Auden.

Inspiration

2010-04-29T13:18:00.002-04:00

If you're not familiar with one of my very favorite blogs, the extremely cool "The Unbearable Banishment," I must now ask you, no implore you, to visit his most recent post:

Happy Birthday Atticus Finch

If you love books, if you understand just how they can change your life, this post will move you as it moved me, and maybe just maybe you'll be a little choked up when you finish reading it...I know I was...

Tsaddik

2010-04-23T17:02:00.014-04:00

This is Andrew. The husband of my mother-in-law's cousin, he is no real relation to me, except in spirit.

There is no way to adequately convey the loveliness of old Andrew, except to repeat what Sarge has often said: that Andrew may very well be a tsaddik, one of the true righteous, living secretly among us, "for whose sake alone the world is not destroyed."

A good, righteous man. Funny, kind, quiet. Once a long time ago, he was an Army Air Corps boy, then a young man who worked hard for his family and played minor league baseball in his spare time ("I loved the way he smelled when he came from a game," his 87-year-old wife confided in me recently. "All sweat and sunshine--he was so sexy, I would lean in and sniff him...")

Devoutly Catholic, now eighty-nine, Andrew is one of the more open-minded and curious people I've met, with great tolerance for differences. He attended a Passover Seder I hosted and followed along in the Haggadah with great interest, asking questions and joining in the Hebrew and Aramaic songs. When it was over, he took my hands and thanked me for the service and the matzoh ball soup.

He is the only real grandfather Hedgehog has ever known. When we visit Texas, Andrew goes out early, trundling patiently along to help my daughter fill the birdfeeders and spread corn for the deer who come to graze on my mother-in-law's land. I love to watch them every morning from the picture window, industrious in their task, often returning to the house hand in hand.

Yes. Tsaddik.

Notes on the photo: Andrew, a Technical Sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Corps (later became the Air Force), circa 1944. Ratlesden RAF Base, England. The plane with the wonderful nose art, a B-17 G, was later shot down over Belgium, although the pilot survived.

Overwhelmed

2010-04-17T09:48:00.004-04:00

Life has a way of overwhelming me at times--which is often a nice thing, as it means I'm alive and busy, but then again it can be too much as it is now...

I am definitely the sort of person who needs down-time, just to think my odd little thoughts and sort myself out. I've not had time or energy to tend the creative fire that needs at least a little attention, or it flickers out...

But now, I'm issuing an open invite for lunch at my house! You'll trip over dog toys and I'll recruit you to help dry the dishes and fold the laundry. Oh, and you'll have to make your own sandwich (from bread-ends and peanut butter and leftover beans and lettuce 'cause that's all that's left in the fridge)--I'm preoccupied with other things, like chasing the puppy away from his activities (chewing the carpet and the books), and trying to figure out how to get out to run errands. You can also make the beds, which have been "airing" for the last week, and listen to Hedgie run her "Tempest" lines. And would you mind bringing a quart of milk and a dozen eggs while you're at it? But really, you're more than welcome to come over...

Leah and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

2010-04-09T19:05:00.003-04:00

It really was an awful day.

You know the deep crunch when your car makes that impact?

That's what I heard two hours ago. When the puppy threw up all over the seat on the way back from the vet's and I turned my head for a second and plowed into two parked cars.

Yes, that sound. Time slows and then speeds up and you're just sitting there, your car is wrecked, and you're hyperventilating along to the pounding of your heart.

In NYC, the least little bit of bad news draws an enormous crowd. It doesn't matter if it's a shooting victim lying on the ground in his slowly pooling blood, or a woman sitting shocked and weeping in a wrecked car full of puppy barf. I will estimate conservatively that my malfeasance drew a crowd of fifty or so onlookers.

I will tell you that a lone good samaritan helped me crawl out of the car and patted my back as we waited for the police, for whom it must be said my devastation was a tiny mishap in the scheme of their long tour of duty; this being NYC after all.

And oh, did I mention that my puppy is revoltingly ill?

Settling In

2010-04-08T07:53:00.005-04:00

I promise this is the last puppy post. But I miss my blog, and all I've got on the mind is Puppy, because he won't have it any other way. I think I'd forgotten, after sixteen years, the work entailed. Our terrified, shivering, silent rescue dog, the one who crept toward us on his belly rather than walk upright, is now in the full flower of his rambunctious puppyhood.

As I sit here, trying to have a coffee and write a little post, he's zooming and pouncing, chewing and grabbing. He seems to like, particularly, my special expensive yarn and the hundreds of books that are on doggy level. Mind you, he does have some very nice strong rubber and rope chewy toys. But those hold appeal only for a few minutes at a time, even when I dip his bone in gefillte fish aspic.

I've gotten more exercise in the past few days than in the past year altogether--and am thinking of cancelling my gym membership (seriously, no lie! why bother paying when I've got a very persistent four-legged personal trainer?). This is no sedentary hound.

Now pardon me while I wrestle my precious copy of "Wisconsin Death Trip" from his baby teeth and take him for a run or twenty around the block...

Another Naming Story Unfolds...

2010-04-04T07:50:00.005-04:00

Within an hour, I went from being totally unencumbered to completely encumbered. Turns out I've been very busy this holiday filling the sad little hole left in my life when Pippin died last year.

I've been waiting and waiting for the right dog to come along, and yesterday, as I made my way upstate, he just sort of appeared. A 4-month-old redbone coonhound mix (I can't figure out with what--lab? beagle? who knows what moment of love produced him): beautiful, rangy, ginger. A rescued pup from Tennessee (will he be a Tennessee wildcat like Mr. Edwards? Some of you know the reference).

I suspect he'll be a handful for awhile, but I've done the puppy thing and I know the drill. But he's got the silkiest ears, a soft droopy muzzle, and a good handful of dewlap, just like I like. Plus the enormous ill-fitting puppy paws.

The only problem is he hasn't got a name--he came with "Roger," but since he only had the moniker for a day, well, it's on us now. Any suggestions for a wildcat red coonhound Tennessee rescue with oversized paws and a penchant for chewing pinecones?

The Sun-Star: a Naming Story

2010-03-31T21:31:00.008-04:00

In real life, Hedgehog isn't called Hedgehog but rather something much lovelier, much less clumsy silly, and much more graceful. When she was soon-to-be but not quite here, Sarge and I were feeling that strong excitement that not-yet parents feel, and loving books as we do, inspiration came in part from a familiar bookish quarter, our beloved Tolkien's "The Return of the King."

At the end of that book a little girl is born to Sam Gamgee, and Frodo suggests a name: "what about elanor, the sun-star, you remember the little golden flower in the grass of Lothlorien?"

The year of Elanor's conception was known in the Shire as "...a marvelous year. Not only was there wonderful sunshine and delicious rain, in due times and perfect measure, but there seemed something more: an air of richness and growth, and a gleam of a beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-earth. All the children born or begotten in that year, and there were many, were fair to see and strong, and most of them had a rich golden hair that had before been rare among hobbits. The fruit was so plentiful that young hobbits very nearly bathed in strawberries and cream; and later they sat on the lawns under the plum-trees and ate, until they had made piles of stones like small pyramids or the heaped skulls of a conqueror, and then they moved on. And no one was ill, and everyone was pleased, except those who had to mow the grass."

So it is with us. We have always thought of Hedgehog as our sun-star, a beaming little yellow flower. If a person could be known as a color, she would be known as bright yellow, full of warmth, a tiny shiny blossom of happy promise, a sign of the best and luckiest of times.

Letting Go a Little

2010-03-30T20:33:00.004-04:00

This morning I sent Sarge and Hedgehog off to Texas to visit the mother-in-law. For the first time ever, without me. I did my job: packed Hedgie up with her new sandals and summer clothes (it's hot there, now), enough underwear and socks, sunglasses (fancy, with sparkly rhinestones), a little lunch and, because I'm neurotic, a package or ten of anti-bacterial handwipes. She packed her carry-on with bubble gum, her Tempest script, her DS, and a copy of "The Iliad" ("but wouldn't you rather take some comics?" I asked, sensibly I thought. "No," was the adamant reply. Which'll learn me). And I admit to shedding not a few tears as they left for the airport, watching my daughter wave at me from the back seat of the car. This will be the longest I've ever been apart from her: ten days.

But after the tears dried, I began to consider the ten days with interest. No one around, just me and the hamster. And the hamster never judges.

So what will I be doing this week, by myself?

Hmm. Watching horror movies, eating random food at random hours (matzah anyone? Kosher for Passover almond toffee? gefillte fish with horseradish? Real live non-diet Coke?). Pulling knitting all-nighters. Writing all-nighters. Tetris all-nighters. Sleeping in. Napping in the afternoon. Practicing new hair styles. Taking up the whole couch. Hogging the blankets. Sleeping horizontally across the entire acreage of bed. Taking myself out to breakfast. Gabbing on the phone. And driving upstate to a small-town court to try to plead out of that speeding ticket...

And what won't I be doing?

Dishes, apparently. I'm already working on using every single glass in the house before I touch finger to sponge. It's only been twelve hours, and I'm making quite a bit of headway...

What would you do with ten days free?

O Brave New World

2010-03-25T11:55:00.004-04:00

"O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is!

O brave new world,

That has such people in't!"

Hedgehog is so excited to play the part of Miranda in the third-grade production of "The Tempest" this spring...which only goes to show how very very different she and I are, the difference becoming more and more apparent with age. As a child, I always had certain deeply ambivalent feelings about being the center of attention. Within my comfort zone--in conversation, among friends--I enjoyed it. But performing? Oh goodness no. From the youngest age, I became weak-kneed and hyperventilatey at the mere thought of standing before an audience and saying lines.

In junior high and high school, I was very involved in puppetry (which gives you an idea of what my school was like, that puppetry was a serious pursuit). I loved the creative and mechanistic process of puppet construction, the engineering involved, and learning how to manipulate them in performance. But most of all, I was glad of the opportunity to go before an audience yet not be seen--hidden away behind a barrier--my puppets spoke for me, and were brave for me. Still, even then, crouching in the darkness, clutching my puppets' sticks in sweaty hands, I had stage fright.

Hebrew School plays were torture. I remember playing Potiphar's wife in a production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" and going through agonies beforehand. My mother had to literally stand in the wings and shove me onstage...a kindly shove, but a shove nonetheless...

When we had to recite memorized passages of poems and plays, as we frequently did, I could sometimes cajole my teacher into hearing my lines out in the hall away from my classmates. Even then, I would blush my way through the process.

My Bat Mitzvah was a crucible. Eighty pairs of eyes on me, watching as I chanted Torah and gave my homily...

I overcame this terrible performance anxiety to some extent, finally, when I taught college. I had to, or my then-livelihood would have been in jeopardy. Although I had to catch my breath before beginning class, and my palms were always clammy, I even came to enjoy the lectures, the feeling of power that came with commanding attention from a room full of people--and sometimes, when the lectures were good and the vibe was there, the connection between student and teacher, it was something like euphoria! And I could suddenly understand, just a little bit, the appeal of performing...

But never ever in childhood...which is why I admire my 9-year-old Miranda so much. She's excited--not scared, not self-effacing, but genuinely excited to learn lines and get dressed up and stand before an audience and act! Simply amazing to me.

Illustration of Miranda by Waterhouse

Just Sort of Figuring Out Where I'm At

2010-03-22T12:15:00.003-04:00

Breaking down the fourth wall here for a moment, something I don't usually do with my blog, to say hi to you lovely and very-much-more-even-than-you-know appreciated readers and commenters to say...

I have hardly been around at all even to say hi, but in a funny way I've been thinking about you all.

Just trying to get a grip on the vicissitudes of my life, being a good wife and mother and the trying weeks of Hedgehog's thankfully hopefully done-with winter illness (knock wood, rather pound on a gigantic oak armoire), the balance between dishes and laundry and meals, nurturing, keeping up a good conversation, a spiritual life and a religious practice and my own creativity (at a bit of a standstill, my poor neglected projects of novel and academia). All these pressures are a true blessing, because they are the signs of a vibrant home life, but also at times are besting, and something's gotta give--or in my case, everything all at once. It's not so bad really, and I'm not gloomy or hopeless but more pensive and considering...

considering my options, goals, dreams...all the possibilities, or some, or none at all...

I suppose it's okay to step back and just look at things for a few minutes...or days...or weeks...

Anyway, that's why I'm not so much around lately.

love and hugs, though--

Leather-Booted Great-Grandpa

2010-03-19T13:51:00.005-04:00

Will you check out those boots? The shine on them?

My great-grandpa Benjamin, on the left, in his Russian Army uniform, late 19th/early 20th century. I do remember my Grandpa Max (his son) showing me this photo when I was little, and telling me that his father had been in the Russian Army. Beyond that, I have no definitive information, though I'm desperate to know more--was he civil service (home guard) as someone suggested to me? Or was he infantry (less likely), serving in wartime? I'm just not sure of the exact dates, so I have no way of knowing whether his service coincided with the Russo-Japanese War, though I think this photo must be earlier than 1904-1905.

I know absolutely nothing about the personal details of this piece of his life, though I wish I did. What is most interesting to me, though, is how this photo fits into the very complex history of the Jews in the Imperial Army. I did a little research on this topic through the YIVO Institute, and learned that Jews in the modern world did indeed serve in the Russian Imperial Army, in droves really, although it was to say the least an uneasy relationship. Their civil rights were honored intermittently: during some periods, they were allowed to celebrate Jewish holidays and pray as Jews with Jewish chaplains, during other times they were segregated or even indoctrinated into Russian Orthodoxy as a requirement of conscription. It so happens that Benjamin served during a period of Jewish segregation.

Anyway, the details of Benny's service are now lost, though I find it very exciting to be able to place my family in a greater context of the meaning and movement of Jewish history.

Visit the other Sepia Saturday participants for more stories of the ancestors!

In Defense of the Death Portrait

2010-03-13T09:08:00.007-05:00

Maybe it's the time of year? That the first little knobs on the trees, the sunshine struggling against the chill, the longer days, turn my mind, paradoxically, to death.

Or maybe I'm always thinking about it, somewhere behind the everyday struggles and little bits of joy, the clouds.

Whatever the reason, I'm fascinated lately with Victorian Death Photography. That the Victorians seemed routinely to memorialize their loved ones in permanent death images, many of them posed like regular portraits...it amazes and impresses me. Of course, death was all around them all the time--life expectancies were short, and many died in babyhood and childhood, diseases that are now easily treated, then were lethal. Death was a part of the cycle, in a tangible and public way.

We don't do this now, of course, take photos and glue them in our photo albums among the wedding and baby pictures. My father died upright in his favorite red leather easy chair one morning in January, and my sister and I sat on either side of him as he left. I remember how lightly we breathed in the dim morning, trying our best not to disturb his passage that seemed so precarious--I didn't want him to suffer anymore, and I didn't want to make any noise that would startle him back to his pain. We spoke to him our encouragement in whispers that fell almost soundlessly into quiet air. And as I watched the life leave his eyes, as they opened suddenly, and fixed on a far point in the room, and then died--his eyes died before he drew his last rough breath--I still couldn't believe he'd gone, although no one with eyes like that could ever return to this world. Afterwards, we continued to speak in whispers, even as we hugged and kissed him...it was a long time before we could call the funeral parlor to take him away, we couldn't stand to let him go. In the end, the relatives came swarming and fluttering and hovering, and they made the calls. But I always felt that they simply couldn't stand the sight of us with the dead body, sitting with him, holding dad's cold hand. My sister and I knew that the passage between life and death, though irrevocable, is not such an absolute. Dad was alive, we held his hand, and he was dead--why would we throw the hand away in sudden horror? I saw a terrible fear in their faces; but I was unafraid.

In the weeks and months that followed that day, I thought often about those moments beside dad, and I began to wish that I'd had the presence of mind, or the nerve, to have taken a photo of him, dead in his chair. I had not yet become interested in the Victorian death portraits, and my strange impulse was somewhat sui generis. A photograph would have marked the passing, whose details I returned to, obsessively, again and again in my mind over those weeks and months. Anyway, my mind returned to it: the last breath, the dead eyes, dad cold in his chair. The photo would have helped me, I am sure of it, to be certain of that moment. Was I really there? Did it happen that way? And...was he dead?

Had I been a Victorian girl, I might have had the assistance of the relatives--together, we would have dressed him in his favorite trousers, his suspenders, his special gaudy tropical print shirt, and arrayed ourselves around him arms over his dead shoulders, living cheeks pressed to the dead face, and we would have stared into the camera, eyes filled with grief, but with a certainty also.

As it was, the relatives were disgusted, afraid, and dismayed already by our tender proximity to the dead one. Such a portrait was unthinkable; they would have thought me utterly mad.

But I know the truth. That the dead are among us, that we are among them, that there is nothing to fear, that we should not so quickly hide the body away and with the body, hide away our abject sadness and longing. The need is strong, to rush away to life. But it is, after all, an impossibility: for the ones who attend, who sit vigil as life ends, that death scene is real and we will always carry it with us, the images of it, the feel of it and the sounds and smells in the quiet room. To externalize it, to take it outside of the darkest recesses of one's soul, in a simple portrait--unafraid, unashamed, unhidden, pasted up in an album that could be taken down from a shelf and looked at, until one didn't feel so alone with the secret memories...

Washing Day, Brooklyn, Many Years Ago

2010-03-05T22:19:00.009-05:00

Eva Bella hanging wash in the courtyard of her apartment building on Ocean Parkway. It's one of my favorites, and I never tire of its details--the sunshine on her face, the raggedy apron (a hand-me-down from her mama, too worn out for any but the roughest chore), the bag of clothespins.

Although by the time I knew her as Grandma Eva she had at her disposal a very efficient electric washer and dryer, I do think she always preferred to hang her wash, and continued to do so during all our summers at the lake. Though she's not as clear as she used to be, I can still imagine her working at her clothesline in the sunny windy field, reaching up to hang her sheets, a clothespin in her mouth.

Join us for Sepia Saturday!

Playing Nurse. Not the fun way.

2010-02-25T15:03:00.005-05:00

I usually enjoy Theme Thursday and the writing prompt, and this week's--"bottle"--seemed so potentially rich and ripe with possibility. Alas, however, all that comes to mind today is the bottle of hot pink amoxicillin sitting on the top shelf of our fridge. This really has been a rough winter for us. We've been sick so many times--culminating in Hedgie's seemingly intractable strep throat that's now become scarlet fever.

Hedgehog just said..."It's like I'm trapped in a room, and the room is my body."...we've all had that feeling at some time or another, haven't we? The worst part is that there's nothing I can really do for her besides the usual pillow-fluffing and bringing of cold gingerale, cool compresses, and of course another festive round of hot pink fake cherry flavored antibiotics.

It could be worse--I think of poor Mary Ingalls, blinded by scarlet fever in the days before antibiotics. Actually, scratch that--let me not think of poor blind Mary.

Instead, I'll think of spring--although it's blizzarding outside right now, the trees are starting to show the first little knobs. It'll be warm again soon, and then there will be flowering dogwoods and ball games in the park and ice cream cones, fresh air blowing through the house from the open windows...

A Week of Cheap Thrills

2010-02-19T16:57:00.013-05:00

speeding: driving as fast as I can because I can...or could...get my first ever speeding ticket, and am oh so embarrassed although Hedgehog queries, "mama if you're so embarrassed why did you tell daddy about it like you were kind of proud?"

Dwight Schrute: I'm not giving up on Severus, but I think I've found the man who's gonna give the Potions Master a run for his galleons, sickles, and knuts (if you have to ask, you're not the nerd I hoped you were).

strong drink midweek midday: everyone's out of the house and I'm supposed to be doing the things that a housewife does midday midweek but instead I'm raiding the stash. And maybe even watching "Everybody Loves Raymond" while doing it. Laughing like a maniac. Toasting myself.

reading menus: I'm online at the Russian Tea Room obsessing over the caviar menu and thinking about Caspian Sea Sevruga, how the frail gleaming beads pop on the tongue releasing their expensive salt.

Bugles: I'm eating 'em. Crispy corn horns of delight.

fake shopping: I wander the bright and cheerful aisles at Target, carefully choosing anything I want (new lipstick, note cards, stripey knee socks etc etc etc)...till I'm completely satisfied...then I go and put it all back. Cheapest shopping spree in the history of shopping. You should try it.

riding the scooter at Target: is this an American thing? That the superstores have motorized scooters for the elderly and disabled, and also (shhh...I didn't say it) the chronically lazy? Anyway, after a fake shopping spree this week, an older lady asks me to ride her motorized scooter back through the parking lot to the store for her. Omigod it is awesome. Those things really get up a little burst of speed, and can you guess what I go and do? I get too happy and crash it into the Dollar Spot shelves.

Then I hop off, adjust my skirt, and walk out like nothing happened...

It really was not a bad week.

White Coral Bells

2010-02-18T02:22:00.008-05:00

A summer afternoon very long ago, on an old woolen camp blanket spread in the pine shade, I reached a hand out and dug my fingers comfortably in the moss and listened as Grandma Eva sang to us in her smiley creaky voice for oh the hundredth time, but we never tired of it,

white coral bells
upon a slender stalk
lilies of the valley
deck my garden walk
o how I wish
that I could hear them ring
that will only happen
when the fairies sing...

we three exist there faintly still, world without end, on the old woolen camp blanket, under the pines, in the circle of song

read along or join in at Theme Thursday (where you can read more about how bloggers are ringing their bells in honor of Barry)

A Little Sideways Smile

2010-02-13T09:09:00.008-05:00

It's hard to imagine, in the long years since her death, hard not to redact oral history in her favor, but Grandma Eva had no sense of humor. This is not to say that she was stern, or judgmental, or quelling. She wasn't any of those things. She just didn't really get or make jokes--and I'm not referring to the "so a man walked into a bar" variety, but rather to the true wit and acerbity, the everyday hilarity and the bon mots indulged with wicked abandon by my family.

Grandpa Max adored his bride, despite the disability. He could find solace with his confederates--his daughters, brother, grandchildren, all in possession of genetically encoded, environmentally honed funniness. He knew grandma would always be there, standing to one side of the laughter, smiling a little sideways smile.

for more posts, or to join in with your own photos and reminiscences, please visit the Sepia Saturday blog!

I Have to Look Away

2010-02-10T19:07:00.005-05:00

We have two mirrors only in our house, I realized today. They hang in our bathrooms, rudimentary vanities to aid in the minor ablutions of tooth-brushing and hair-combing, my bit of lipstick, Sarge's shaving ritual, and nothing more.

I grew up in a house of many mirrors--the tomblike wardrobes fronted with mirrors, the entry hall and its floor-to-ceiling beveled mirrors, the little decorative mirrors framed with brass candle sconces; possibly the Victorians who built the house had grown up lacking such abundance--in place of the enormous mirrors, a piece of copper, hammered out and polished, hanging on the wall? or silvered looking glasses that held only the tiniest bit of face, warped and tantalizingly abbreviated? In adulthood, they loved the novelty of their full-length doubles and desired limitless access to their own images. I am just surmising, but whatever the reason, my own adolescent self from crown to foot could be found reflected--doubled, trebled, and quadrupled--throughout the five stories of that castle. And as the Victorians before me, I liked to look at myself.

Now, a grown woman, I'm ambivalent. But I found the answer to this quirk of mine tonight as, suddenly mindful, I caught my own gaze in one of the two mirrors, and was overwhelmed with the feeling of being looked at and truly, deeply known.

I'm unnerved by the intense brown regard, the eyes that, staring, reflect back my sins and strangenesses and secrets, my psyche overflowing.

I can't bear to be so known, by anyone

and I have to look away.

Join us HERE for Theme Thursday

Beating back the blues

2010-02-09T19:49:00.006-05:00

Illness, general blues, total lack of creativity/inspiration, long nights, self-pity and anxiety, just all-round ickiness...

trying to enjoy the little things:

coffee from my Chemex tastes so good

knitting a new pair of fancy socks for myself, in beautiful raspberry wool

making little tiny origami lucky stars (see above photo)

a blizzard on the way, and my pantry stocked

Sarge being his awesome funny self

smart naughty little Hedgehog.

It's not much, but it's a lot, which is what I'll keep telling myself!

(I had to post something over the post below, as I was tired of looking at it)

Great-Uncle Harold: A Photo History without Words

2010-01-30T10:29:00.004-05:00

Riddle of an Oyster

2010-01-28T16:18:00.004-05:00

Riddle of an Oyster

Silver as a seashell,

Round as the moon,

My outsides unassuming

but inside a craggy room.

That's where my beauty is, my beauty untold,

and what my insides hold.

by Hedgehog

On-again, off-again

2010-01-25T23:18:00.005-05:00

I've been thinking lately about the state of my relationship with theweatherinthestreets. My blog and I have our ups and downs, and sometimes I love it a lot and I'm attracted to it and it inspires me, and sometimes I can't stand it and feel angry with it, and then I ignore it (even a little huffily, almost like I'm pouting). But when I ignore it for too long, I begin to worry that it will feel neglected or it will leave me for someone else who gives it more love and maybe better sex...and maybe it won't be here when I finally come back to bed.

Anyway, we're definitely in an off-again moment, I am out of love again and it looks like I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight...but I suppose after three years together, I can count on some forgiveness.

Unexpected Visitor

2010-01-22T17:02:00.004-05:00

My Grandpa Max took pleasure in the odd, the surprising. He loved strangenesses and misadventure. If something was out of place, off-kilter, amiss, wrong...even worrying or macabre...I could always catch that glint in his eye (recognizing it because I was exactly the same way). He carefully documented life's mishaps, great and small, with his camera...and he was always on the lookout for mishaps to document.

Imagine his delight, then, when a car landed in his dooryard on an otherwise unremarkable afternoon.

Facebook Freed Me

2010-01-20T13:31:00.011-05:00

The following post is somewhat out of character, and may seem a wee tad crazy-like, but rest assured I'm no crank, just a woman in search of honesty.

But please feel free to ignore this post, and I will be in no way offended.

Let me begin by saying that Facebook is not totally ill-conceived as a mechanism of social connection. That is to say, I kind of like it. I'm not on it 24-7, but when I am, it's quite cozy, usually, and as the Yiddishers say, heimishe. I'll trot out the usual facebook litany of positives--I've reconnected with dear old friends who got lost in the shuffle of life, I can keep up with the little bits and pieces of my friends' day-to-day existences (I like to know what people are thinking, cooking, reading, what movies they're seeing, what they're growing in their gardens, what they're teaching, and what their children and pets are up to!). I like to be able to say "happy birthday." I enjoy the joking around, the cameraderie, and I get to sympathize with the bad days, the rainy weather, the influenza bouts.

However. And there is a big however. I have become depressed by the style of political "dialogue" rampant in my milieu. And let me tell you, my facebook milieu is a microcosm of my general real-world social milieu.

I'm not opposed to differing opinions. I enjoy debate, in fact I get a thrill out of it.

But in my facebook world, as in my real world, there is a sorry tendency to generalize. In my neck of the woods, Republicans are creeps, conservatives are monsters and worse, they're all stupid. I see many facebook status updates that lob thoughtless insults at "non-liberals" (every man woman and dog that doesn't think along a liberal party line on every frakking issue). That drives me nuts, as it's only done under the protective assumption that everyone thinks alike and will agree--but of course there's always always going to be a voice of dissent, that's what makes up our interesting nation!

Anyway, last night in the wake of the Massachusetts elections, the stunning upset that brought in a Republican Senator, I just finally got tired of not saying what I think.

But when I say what I think, politically, I place myself in the heretofore rudely defined "idiot" category. As I'm no idiot, I don't take kindly to being called one, just for having a differing political opinion, though people have no idea that they're calling me, Leah an idiot when they categorize certain groups as idiots.

It was a big deal for me to "come out" politically on facebook ( I will not flatter myself that it was really a big deal to anyone else...), as it is a big deal for me to be the political animal I truly am, out loud in my everyday life. But I finally realized that I'd rather people have a better idea of who I am politically, so that when they're lobbing insults they are at least aware that by doing so they're lobbing insults at me personally.

I'm a living, breathing, thinking human, not a party-line automaton, and my political self-definition is evolving as I grow up.

I realize more and more that my political side is a true and abiding, deeply felt part of who I am, reflecting my morals, beliefs, values. I'm not totally disillusioned with America, though I am profoundly disappointed by much of what I see, hear, and read about. Despite the disappointments, I am a thoughtful, questioning, critical patriot.

I've always said I wouldn't do a point-by-point summary of my beliefs, but now I'm going to. Why? I'm not sure. Only for myself, really, to take my own political pulse. Also possibly to demonstrate that a person can have all kinds of different takes on different issues that are important to them. That it is, when you get down to it, awfully hard to pigeonhole a person.

Here's my rundown as it stands now, on the issues that are important to me. Who can say what will change and when?

Separation of Church and State--absolutely necessary, and I'll defend it to the bitter end.
Gun Control--we need some, but not to the extent that we are prohibited from lawful ownership. Obama has the wrong idea.
Gun possession--it's my right as a free American.
Abortion--I support choice. However,
Late-term abortion (including partial-birth abortion)--I'm against it in most cases; really it repels every fiber of my being. However, there are always exceptions.
Government-run health care--a horrible, hideous idea for America. Medicare and Medicaid are both diabolical, labyrinthine, poorly run institutions. Health care reform is on a desperately wrong track.
Gay rights--please, are we complete assholes? Equality now and forever.
Gay marriage specifically--of course!!!!
Death penalty--in certain cases.
Criminal justice system--I'm a serious hard-liner, who didn't even take exception with the Rockefeller Laws (and that puts me in a decided minority).
Police authority--they need it to function. When we tie their hands with legislation, we ultimately compromise our own safety as citizens.
Police brutality claims--in most cases, they were just doing their job against nearly insurmountable odds and in front of an unsympathetic audience. Let's just say I am fiercely pro-cop. Fiercely.
Government surveillance and the Patriot Act--it's a cost-benefit analysis and in these times, the benefits for the most part outweigh the costs.
Local governments banning trans fats and smoking--enragingly paternalistic.
Factory farming of animal products--horrendous.
Fat Cat Corporations--can kiss my paycheck-to-paycheck ass.
Environmental issues: please believe me when I tell you, the real problem is not you in your little house with your three lamps and your plastic bags and your teeny-tiny Carbon Footprint. It is the (see above) Fat Cat Corporations and their unapologetic, grand-scale ravages on the environment.
Unions--I am pro-union all the way, baby!! Unionize!!!! Unionize!!! Unionize!!!! Workers are screwed without unions.
Free trade--hasn't worked out for us.
Outsourcing--America needs to move production in all its forms back to our home soil.

Legalized medical marijuana: I am in favor of it. Rather strongly in favor.
Humane end-of-life decisions (ie, allowing families to "pull the plug" or assist in suicide): a harrowing topic, but I am in favor of giving the choice to families.
Israel: I support Israel, its right to exist, and its right to defend itself. This has been an interesting journey for me, as one half of a "mixed" marriage (Sarge being Lebanese). We have both mellowed with respect to this topic. (edited per Sarge's request: he is American. And, he adds, "a complex mixture of tastes and textures. I am to nationality as fusion is to cuisine.")

And finally.

The American Military--I support it without reservations. I support its funding.

Bush--I voted for him and I supported him, with reservations. (Yup, I voted for him, twice, and I supported him, with reservations. If that doesn't make me an actual pariah, I don't know what will)

Obama--didn't vote for him, don't support him.

The Iraq War and Afghanistan--I support these actions, with reservations.

Patriotism: I love America. With all my heart.

Letting My Freak Flag Fly: it's my inalienable right, and I take that right seriously.

And having aired all of that, I will say that I love the diversity and the nuances of politics in our country. I love that there are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Socialists, Libertarians, all living side by side and arguing and engaging all the time. But insulting or dismissing people for their differing beliefs? Very uncool.

Empire State of Mind

2010-01-18T10:52:00.009-05:00

You know me. How often do I post video links? Next to never. I had to break my general rule and post this. Let me just say--maybe it's a New York thing-- 'cause "baby I'm from New York." But I love the kids and the song and the whole feeling. Got me all choked up. I love that I'm from here. I love that Hedgehog is growing up here, in the middle of the "concrete jungle where dreams are made." Just forgive me my moment of NYC pride...

Hail a gypsy cab with me and just be a New Yorker for a minute...you'll love it, I promise.

And thanks P.S. 22 chorus for giving me a bright moment in my day.

Updated, just because I'm absolutely loving loving loving the original Jay-Z/Alicia Keys version too--much darker, still wonderful. Two sides of a coin:

Missing

2010-01-16T23:36:00.006-05:00

You died six years ago, and although I don't cry as much anymore I still miss you so awfully, big funny red-beard ebullient bon vivant interested in what I had to say smart booming voice rolling laugh dad.

My Other History: Part One

2010-01-15T12:50:00.003-05:00

As you're probably all too well aware by now, I am a self-defined fourth-generation Brooklyn Jew of European Jewish ancestry. It's the strongest association I have, the one with the most resonance, and when I see Leah in the mind's eye, she's superimposed over those generations of Jews, the old photos of the bearded ones and the Yiddish speakers. But there is another part of my past, as improbable in its time as a paw-paw tree in the arctic ice...

My father, Alexander Paul, was the son of a very unlikely union: a beautiful, volatile daughter of Hungarian Jewish immigrants, and a laconic Baptist scofflaw from Kentucky.

The story of that match is strange and sad, with a precipitous, romantic beginning and a tragic ending, and to think that it is in part my own story fills me with no small amazement.

My paternal grandmother Marion met a Southern boy, a Merchant Marine on leave: Leonard "Buster" Wilson. Where they met is a source of family debate. My mother claims the setting was a bar in NYC. I seem to remember something about a Long Island dancehall. But never mind. The fact is that they met, there was a kiss and a chemistry, and a romance. Marion was only seventeen. Buster was perhaps as foreign to Grandma as an American man could be, although I'm only speculating.

Grandma Marion, Oceanside NY, 1940s

click to enlarge

Grandpa Buster, insouciant slouch and tipped hat, Louisville Kentucky 1940s

click to enlarge

The initial meeting between Marion and Buster begat an inexorable chain of events: an unseemly pregnancy, a shotgun marriage by a justice of the peace, and, ultimately, my father.

My grandma, in love, made a trip to Kentucky to meet Buster's parents and his five sisters:

Grandma (#6) and the five Kentucky sisters, Russell Springs, Kentucky 1942

click to enlarge

What these born-and-bred Kentucky baptists must have thought of the Long Island Jew, a pregnant adolescent at that, I am not sure. They seem congenial enough, in the photo. They probably liked her, as she had an apparent sweetness and a definite charisma, even into her old age. She was funny and outspoken when I knew her, and she must have been that and more so as a girl. But still, she was a stranger in a strange land, in Kentucky.

Buster went off again with the Merchant Marines, Grandma Marion returned to her mother's house in Oceanside with my baby father in tow, and the marriage ended in divorce almost immediately. My mother tells me that Great-grandma Sadie, Marion's mother, had an order of protection against Buster, insuring that he could not come near his ex-wife or their son. Why? I don't know. But if true, it speaks to pain and turmoil, fights and anguish. Not a peaceful dissolution of a marriage, but a fraught beginning to my father's fatherless childhood...

to be continued in Part Two: wherein my family makes a secret journey to Russell Springs, KY to discover dad's past

My Kentucky Forbears:

My Kentucky-by-way-of-Scotland great-great grandpa Alexander Logan and great-great grandma Susan Josephine Wilson

Great-great grandpa Alexander Logan

Grandpa Buster, 10 years old

To see more wonderful photos and amazing ancestral stories of Sepia Saturday, I highly recommend a visit to News from Nowhere

I Will Never Know

2010-01-09T10:27:00.006-05:00

She called him Maxie.

The early love letters were written mostly in Yiddish, and she kept them carefully into her old age, tied up with an ivory ribbon and tucked into a corner of her sewing table where we discovered the packet after they had both gone on.

The letters went missing, for the first time in 70 years, when we packed up their house. I came to believe that they had not wanted us observing their secret moments and the letters were lost by design rather than accident...yet several years later, they turned up again, mysteriously. I looked at them this time, even removing the old papers from their envelopes, staring at the Yiddish written out in two very different hands, his bold, dark and straight, hers lighter and with a slant...yet, I put them back without translating.

I can't bring myself to intrude on their private conversation.

for more Sepia Saturday entries, visit Alan's blog

40 Cupcakes...

2010-01-07T16:47:00.003-05:00

I promise myself that I won't be the one who tries to hide her age, who lies about it, who quails at the prospect of a new zero, the midlife mark (one desperately hopes), who stares herself down in the mirror with a distinct lack of self-recognition (who is that woman, no longer a girl???), who wonders in the dead of night just what exactly she has accomplished with all these decades under her belt, who at the chime of midnight on January 8th takes stock and finds herself lacking...

But will I have the moxie to keep that promise? Will I forge forth with new resolve, to finish unfinished business, to be of good cheer, to forgo the unattractive and all-too-public midlife crisis in favor of healthy self-acceptance and secure ego integrity? Will I count my not inconsiderable blessings? Be happy in my own skin?

Possibly so...

with the help of cupcakes and love.

letterpress cupcake, illustration and hand-watercoloring by my clever sister

Whose woods these are

2010-01-03T11:05:00.002-05:00

the view towards our cabin

The quietest new year's eve. Not that my new year's eves were ever so wild. Although I have a few memorable ones tucked in here and there. Like the year that I and A. went to the Young Communist League party...turns out Young Communists are just like everyone else, but with cheaper champagne.

Hedgehog and I rang in 2010 in a hotel room in the Adirondacks--our camp isn't winterized, and it's all snowed in now, so although we drove in and Hedgehog rolled around and made snow angels, I just couldn't face roughing it at night. I really like being warm, and I like hot running water...

Still, the lake looked beautiful in all that intensity of white, with the towering pines against an ominous sky. Very very grand.

And we spent a companionable hour or two next door at my mother's cabin, which, although lacking central heating, is through sheer industry and planning and foresight quite snug for winter. My stepdad is a consummate woodsman, and, along with Sarge, the one I most want on my side in the post-apocalyptic wilderness...Hedgehog warmed up in the armchair by the woodstove, while her red mittens dried cozily on their spokes. Engrossed in the Green Fairy Book, crunching pretzels, she hardly seemed to notice the sudden wind rushing against the side of the cabin.

bare branches against the snow

my mom's lion with a snow crown

mom's woodpile

the wood that got away

woodpile in use--mom heats with a wood stove

ubiquitous snow-covered pine cone

our Adirondack chairs, scene of many a long hot summer afternoon

I know I'm so very Brooklyn, but part of my soul lives here in the pinetops...

Goodbye 2009...

2009-12-31T21:09:00.001-05:00

Wishing all you lovely bloggy folk a very happy new decade, full of thrills and satisfactions and sweetness and love...

Writer?

2009-12-25T19:44:00.003-05:00

Still a bit under the weather (gods, will it never end???) and it seems like a perfect time to do a wonderful meme that I was tagged for by Tina (check her out, she's really a great writer).

I especially appreciate this meme because it gives me a chance to think about my writing, and the opportunity to take myself seriously for a few minutes. I don't generally tend to take my writing seriously, although it is the thing I do most, besides taking care of my family and the household. I mean, I don't have an agent nor do I have any plans yet to send it anywhere, so it's hard to feel serious...who cares, right? at least it's fun...

And let me add the caveat: this may be of interest only to me!

But,

here goes...

1) What's the last thing you wrote? What's the first thing you wrote that you still have?

The first thing I wrote that I still have is a letter to my best friend. I must have been four. Next is my first-grade journal, full of strange disturbing images and dirty words and drawings. My school really let us fly our freak flag, as apparently no one said anything to stop me.

The last thing I wrote? A sentence in my novel.

2) Write poetry?

Not in a long time. I wrote two poems when I lived in Jerusalem many years ago. Before that, I wrote poetry all the time, ever since I was in first grade. But let me say that I have absolutely no tolerance for bad poetry, especially my own, and leave it at that...

3) Angsty poetry?

Of course, who didn't? But oh holy night it is fucking awful.

4) Favorite genre of writing?

Speculative fiction--gothic horror--steampunk. (these are my favorite genres of writing, not necessarily of reading, although of course I like to read them too)

5) Most annoying character you've ever created?

The most annoying character I've ever created--that's easy. The mother of the hero in my current novel. I realized she was cock-blocking my hero with her annoying presence, and the Oedipal overtones were uncomfortable to read, so I summarily dismissed her from my manuscript, and replaced her with a grandma who minds her own business.

In general, any character that cock-blocks another character is an annoyance. Let's call that an official Rule of Fiction Writing According to Leah.

6) Best plot you've ever created?

Definitely the plot of my current novel. I'm so pleased with it.

7) Coolest plot twist you've ever created?

Holy shit, he's alive?

also

Oh my God, it comes from her!!!!

8) How often do you get writer's block?

Every single time I sit down to write, I'm blocked. I have to get in the mood, set the scene, like for sex. That involves music, rereading old passages and really digging them, rumination, and sometimes a little whiskey or absinthe. I also have a pair of shimmery black fingerless mesh opera gloves that I wear while I'm writing my book. And please never mind that I bought them at Target in the Dollar Spot...

.
9) Write fan fiction?

Is the Pope Catholic? Is Italy shaped like a boot on the map of the world? Did Severus and I wear matching velvet cloaks to the Solstice Ball?

I write such good Severus that you can feel his warm breath in your ear. You can feel his fingers on your neck. I promise he'll be standing behind you as you read or your money back. Yes, I write fan fic.

10) Do you type or write by hand?

I write notes in a little spiral-bound notebook with a dragon on the cover. I like to see my handwriting forming the ideas--it keeps the romance alive. Then I type the meat of it. I type at the speed of light.

11) Do you save everything you write?

Yes. I've only just begun to force myself to throw out shopping lists...

12) Do you ever go back to an idea after you've abandoned it?

Nah, my attention span is short like that.

13) What's your favorite thing you've ever written?

Actually, a few things from this blog:

Here's Why Parents Shouldn't Have Weird Fantasies Involving Characters in Children's Books; The Thwarted Aspirations of a Would-Be Tupperware Lady; More Like a Girl Every Day

14) What's everyone else's favorite story you've written?

Definitely my current work-in-progress.

15) Ever written romance or angsty teen drama?

Yes, when I was an angsty teen. I wrote a book about a group of teenagers who lived in a derelict building (hey, and this was even before "Rent") and had a band called "The Familiars."

16) What's your favorite setting for your characters?

The Adirondacks: its spooky, pine-shrouded, cold, rural small towns.

17) How many writing projects are you working on right now?

Supposedly, two: my dissertation (although I am SO ABD and AWOL that it's not even funny anymore and I'm gonna have to BEG my doctoral program to let me continue!!!!) and my novel.

18) Have you ever won an award for your writing?

Yes.

19) What are your five favorite words?

Susurrus, tenebrous, glint, equilibrium, shade (as in ghost)...

"Fuck" is also a secret favorite. And, as you may have guessed, the expression to "cock block." It makes me laugh.

I love words.

20) What character have you created that is most like yourself?

Funnily enough, the male protagonist of my current work-in-progress. Although he's decidedly male and doesn't seem like me, he is exactly like me. My heroine, much much less so.

21) Where do you get your ideas for your characters?

My own warped imagination. And people, it is warped. Sometimes I am frightened by the depths of my own depravity.

I mean, not all my characters are depraved of course. But it's in there somewhere.

Also just from observing me and Sarge and how we live in the world and interact. I am starting to think that all my characters are some variation on the two of us, with that warped creepy thing thrown in for good measure.

22) Do you ever write based on your dreams?

Ugh, never. Dreams are so deadly boring. Can I tell you something and hope you won't be offended? You know when you tell someone your dream you had last night? Which we are all guilty of at some point? And they seem to be listening with interest? Trust me, they're dozing off behind those bright eyes.

23) Do you favor happy endings?

I do favor happy endings, but with unsettled questions and possible reaching shadows...just like life.

24) Are you concerned with spelling and grammar as you write?

I can't leave a sentence hanging with poor grammar or spelling. It leaps out at me, and must be corrected before I can move on. That said, I don't make too many of those mistakes, unless I'm employing strange grammar or syntax for effect. Not to be arrogant, it's just the truth.

25) Does music help you write?

I must have music. I tend to listen to the same songs over and over again. It's been The Raconteurs for awhile now, same three songs. Before that, The White Stripes. Before that, The Goldberg Variations. I listened to it so many times that I think I know every single note before it happens. And there are a lot of notes in those variations.

26) Quote something you've written. Whatever pops in your head.

"Again he flashed his audience a smile so genuine that it was taken, as intended, for insolence."

I'm not sure how to tag for this one, but if you're working on some piece of writing and you'd like to reflect a little bit, feel free to take these questions and run with them. Just let me know so that I can read it!

An Unwelcome Visitor

2009-12-21T22:57:00.002-05:00

As the blizzard covered us softly, stealthily, inexorably in a foot of lovely lovely snow...

I lay sick a-bed with influenza. Still not clear whether it is of the swinish or regular variety, but it hardly matters.

Dutiful wife and mother that I am, I made sure Sarge and Hedgehog had all their shots. Me? No, I'm invincible.

I'm still quite unwell, laid up pretty much completely. I do hope everyone else is faring better!