Not that you're all dying to know the development of my ailments, but it turns out I am allergic to my antibiotics and thus suffering not just a neck full of swollen lymph nodes but also a rash and a fever. Thus I spent this beautiful day in bed. However, I've just dragged myself into the kitchen to make my own brand of comfort food -- not, perhaps, as perfect as Mom's mac n cheese, but pretty close. (I'd say spaghetti sauce is my comfort food specialty.) Taking a page from my dear former roommate's blog, I thought I'd share the recipe with you in case you ever need a little home-made TLC from the self.
Lara's spaghetti sauce
ingredients:
*1 29 oz can of tomato sauce (I use Hunts) (you can also of course cook down fresh tomatoes)
*1 6 oz can of tomato paste
*1 green pepper
*1 onion (I use red, or Vidalia when they are in season)
*1 or 2 teaspoons of crushed (or fresh) basil
*1 or 2 teaspoons of crushed (or fresh) oregano
*a dash of salt
* 1 lb. ground beef
*olive oil
1. Pour the tomato sauce into a large sauce pan or soup pot. Add one-third of the can of tomato paste, and stir it in. Set the burner to low heat.
2. Add the basil and oregano. I don't know the true proportions; I give a couple of heavy shakes, which leaves a thin layering of maybe three-inches in diamater of each herb. The more, the better, I think; but you can do it to your own taste.
3. Add a shake of salt, too.
4. Chop the pepper into cubes. Throw them in the pot.
5. Peel the onion and chop it into thin slivers. Cry a little. Chop some more. Cry a little more. Then sautee the onions in olive oil.
6. When tender, pour the onions into the sauce pot, avoiding dumping any excess oil if you can. Don't clean the onion pan.
7. Shake some salt into the onion pan -- two dashes would be good. If you have kosher salt, that's even better. Then break the ground beef up into the same pan (it'll absorb the leftover onion juices nicely). Set the temperature to medium and cook the meat until it's brown. As it cooks, break any big chunks into small pieces so they fall into the sauce well.
8. When the meat is ready, drain the fat from the pan and add the meat to the sauce.
9. Stir the sauce well. Then let it sit on low for at least 20 minutes. (Note: I cook my sauce in a Dutch oven, which really heats up. If your sauce is not hot on low, put a lid on it or turn up the heat a bit.) Stir the sauce periodically.
10. Cook some noodles. I usually use thin spaghetti or spaghetti noodles.
11. Serve the sauce over the noodles when all is ready. And enjoy!
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
love-hate
I am beginning to develop a love-hate relationship with the doctors at Kaiser. On the one hand, I was delighted the first time I saw my doctor about the persistent ear aches I've been having since October that she immediately recommended I get evaluated for TMJ—a jaw problem that could well be causing the pain. This seemed proactive and appropriate, and I was further delighted when a physical therapist confirmed the diagnosis and gave me three easy exercises that take about six minutes a day and make a big difference in how my entire upper body feels. The second time I saw the doctor, she gave me antibiotic-plus-cortisone-laced ear drops for the distinct infection that had developed in my ear, and I again thought I was in good hands. But the THIRD time.... . Need I say more?
I feel ridiculous admitting it, but tonight was the fourth time I saw a doctor there about something related to my ear. My face is swollen right next to my ear, and it's tender to the touch and my entire head aches, so I called this morning, and my doctor said I needed to come in—today. The only opening was in the evening and with someone else, but I took it.
When the doctor walked in, I just stared at her. Kaiser is not the kind of place you expect to see a doctor who is all legs, with high-heeled, patent-leather mary janes, thin black stockings, and diamonds all over—in her ears, at her neck, on her fingers. She stared at me too. She looked from my cozy gray turtleneck sweater down to my pink Converse and then crossed her arms as though in irritation. Comfort clothes, I wanted to say, defending myself; I don't feel good and am in comfort clothes! But she moved on, asking what the problem was.
I explained the swelling. She pressed on it, pushed on it, tugged at it. "You have a pimple there." I held my tongue but then let it go. "I've had plenty of pimples; they don't cause this." She turned and looked at me from another angle—not up close, but from a few feet away, with her arms crossed more firmly now. "Your face is lopsided." It was a good thing I'd just taken 800 mg of iboprofin or I might have lept out of my skin. Calmly, I assured her, "No, it's not." "Well, it looks lopsided. Maybe your cheek is swollen too." I got up to face the mirror. But before I could agree that it did in fact look swollen, she commented dryly, "Or maybe your face is just lopsided." I had to get out my driver's license to deter her from pursuing this track further; viewing it, she conceded I seemed symmetrical there. "But it's such a small picture," she had to add.
Needless to say, I came home this time with no new cures and no new love of health care. My lymph nodes are swollen or my TMJ is acting up or any number of benign things are causing my discomfort. That's good, and I'm glad, but would it have killed her to tell me she hopes I feel better? All she left me with was her lack of concern. "This is nothing I'm going to jump up and down about," she stated flatly. Fine, I thought. Good, I thought. You'd probably break your ankle in those heels of you did.
I hate ending on a negative note, but she left me with one!
I feel ridiculous admitting it, but tonight was the fourth time I saw a doctor there about something related to my ear. My face is swollen right next to my ear, and it's tender to the touch and my entire head aches, so I called this morning, and my doctor said I needed to come in—today. The only opening was in the evening and with someone else, but I took it.
When the doctor walked in, I just stared at her. Kaiser is not the kind of place you expect to see a doctor who is all legs, with high-heeled, patent-leather mary janes, thin black stockings, and diamonds all over—in her ears, at her neck, on her fingers. She stared at me too. She looked from my cozy gray turtleneck sweater down to my pink Converse and then crossed her arms as though in irritation. Comfort clothes, I wanted to say, defending myself; I don't feel good and am in comfort clothes! But she moved on, asking what the problem was.
I explained the swelling. She pressed on it, pushed on it, tugged at it. "You have a pimple there." I held my tongue but then let it go. "I've had plenty of pimples; they don't cause this." She turned and looked at me from another angle—not up close, but from a few feet away, with her arms crossed more firmly now. "Your face is lopsided." It was a good thing I'd just taken 800 mg of iboprofin or I might have lept out of my skin. Calmly, I assured her, "No, it's not." "Well, it looks lopsided. Maybe your cheek is swollen too." I got up to face the mirror. But before I could agree that it did in fact look swollen, she commented dryly, "Or maybe your face is just lopsided." I had to get out my driver's license to deter her from pursuing this track further; viewing it, she conceded I seemed symmetrical there. "But it's such a small picture," she had to add.
Needless to say, I came home this time with no new cures and no new love of health care. My lymph nodes are swollen or my TMJ is acting up or any number of benign things are causing my discomfort. That's good, and I'm glad, but would it have killed her to tell me she hopes I feel better? All she left me with was her lack of concern. "This is nothing I'm going to jump up and down about," she stated flatly. Fine, I thought. Good, I thought. You'd probably break your ankle in those heels of you did.
I hate ending on a negative note, but she left me with one!
Friday, March 14, 2008
rituals of spring
When I was 16, I spent a semester of high school living on a farm in Maine. I had never been away from home for more than six weeks, and that was only to visit my grandparents, which wasn’t a whole lot like being away. I didn’t think about it at the time, but it was a big deal for my mom that I went, as it left her living at home alone. To stay in touch, she would of course call me too often, and she sometimes sent me letters. One afternoon in February, I came home to find a postcard from her waiting on my bed. The front was illustrated, a line drawing of flowers or something simple like that. But when I flipped it over, it said something I marveled at. You don’t, as a child, realize how much your parents are watching you in wonder. You don’t realize what they are taking note of, feeling proud of, feeling they know you because of. What my mom wrote on that postcard was also simple, and it was this: You aren’t here to count the daffodils, so I’ve done it for you. There are 72 buds on the front slope and another 15 or so out back. I’ll write you more about them when they blossom; in the meantime, I thought you’d want to know.
How did she know about this ritual of mine? Sitting on my bed in Maine, looking out the window at four feet of snow, it was hard to imagine the first flowers of spring reaching up toward the sun so far south of me. How could my mother so acutely sense that I’d be missing them, missing taking stock of each day’s changes? I had always loved spring, being born at the height of it in Atlanta and feeling that the coinciding of my birthday celebrations with life bursting forth from the leaves gave me a special bond with the season, a more personal involvement with it. I loved to keep track of its progress, knowing that the daffodils and crocuses came first, in early February; that soon after would poke out the purple tips of redbud branches and then the pink and white florets of dogwoods, the pompom-esque flurry of azaleas, the light dusting of petals around the Bradford pears. In Maine, I would learn, first came forsythia, and long before anything else. The little yellow flowers would light up the skyward-reaching branches like small flames, and I thought this exceptional, and incomparable, until I found a hillside covered in forget-me-nots and learned that spring comes in all colors, even almost-florescent ones, and I had to make a mental note that these might be flowers to take a census of too.
But in San Francisco, spring has been a bit of a shock. While there are a delightful number of new flowers and trees for me to learn the names of here, and while their year-round blooming certainly adds to the city’s ambiance, I feel thankful for the jacarandas, which really do bloom at a spring-like time of year. The unwillingness of the rest of the trees to do this throws me. The first two years I lived here, I couldn’t believe that Japanese magnolias were flowering in January or that the millions of trees with red and yellow balls of fluff for flowers (whose name I still don’t know) come to life by then too. Then there are the moon flowers, also known as princess bush, which, like bouganvillea, seem to blossom throughout the year, either eight times over or just plain constantly. And while I should rejoice in living somewhere with a twelve-month-long spring, I get frustrated, because I am shut out of experiencing the inching toward and then exuberant bursting into spring that I so love.
This year, however, the weather gods seem to be on my side. We had a longer, colder winter than usual, and we had that terrible rainstorm that blew all the trees to pieces. I assume these things are what gave us the delayed spring I’ve been taking note of—the sudden, at a very appropriate time, flowering of fruit trees around the city; the poking out all at once of the green tips of new leaves; the sidewalk beauty of clusters of my beloved daffodils. Observing these small changes is a simple but precious pleasure of mine, and in honor of it, I annually get out the 1100-page tome of e.e. cummings poetry that I consider a scripture and read some of his marvelous musings on spring. I thought I’d share with you a poem of his that describes it so much better than I ever could.
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.
How did she know about this ritual of mine? Sitting on my bed in Maine, looking out the window at four feet of snow, it was hard to imagine the first flowers of spring reaching up toward the sun so far south of me. How could my mother so acutely sense that I’d be missing them, missing taking stock of each day’s changes? I had always loved spring, being born at the height of it in Atlanta and feeling that the coinciding of my birthday celebrations with life bursting forth from the leaves gave me a special bond with the season, a more personal involvement with it. I loved to keep track of its progress, knowing that the daffodils and crocuses came first, in early February; that soon after would poke out the purple tips of redbud branches and then the pink and white florets of dogwoods, the pompom-esque flurry of azaleas, the light dusting of petals around the Bradford pears. In Maine, I would learn, first came forsythia, and long before anything else. The little yellow flowers would light up the skyward-reaching branches like small flames, and I thought this exceptional, and incomparable, until I found a hillside covered in forget-me-nots and learned that spring comes in all colors, even almost-florescent ones, and I had to make a mental note that these might be flowers to take a census of too.
But in San Francisco, spring has been a bit of a shock. While there are a delightful number of new flowers and trees for me to learn the names of here, and while their year-round blooming certainly adds to the city’s ambiance, I feel thankful for the jacarandas, which really do bloom at a spring-like time of year. The unwillingness of the rest of the trees to do this throws me. The first two years I lived here, I couldn’t believe that Japanese magnolias were flowering in January or that the millions of trees with red and yellow balls of fluff for flowers (whose name I still don’t know) come to life by then too. Then there are the moon flowers, also known as princess bush, which, like bouganvillea, seem to blossom throughout the year, either eight times over or just plain constantly. And while I should rejoice in living somewhere with a twelve-month-long spring, I get frustrated, because I am shut out of experiencing the inching toward and then exuberant bursting into spring that I so love.
This year, however, the weather gods seem to be on my side. We had a longer, colder winter than usual, and we had that terrible rainstorm that blew all the trees to pieces. I assume these things are what gave us the delayed spring I’ve been taking note of—the sudden, at a very appropriate time, flowering of fruit trees around the city; the poking out all at once of the green tips of new leaves; the sidewalk beauty of clusters of my beloved daffodils. Observing these small changes is a simple but precious pleasure of mine, and in honor of it, I annually get out the 1100-page tome of e.e. cummings poetry that I consider a scripture and read some of his marvelous musings on spring. I thought I’d share with you a poem of his that describes it so much better than I ever could.
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
comfort, plain and simple
My mom is the kind of mom who believes in comfort food. She believes in comfort everything; she is a pampering, cozy mom. When I was little and we’d be at the beach in Rhode Island where she grew up, I loved nothing better than running out of the cold ocean and into her towel-laden arms, which she would wrap snuggly around me and then rock me with as I curled up in her lap and stopped shivering. When I was even littler, I had trouble sleeping unless she lay by my side at night and talked with me. “Come lie with me,” I’d holler from my bedroom, repeatedly, until she arrived. Sometimes my dad would come instead, and that was fine too. Truth be told, those late-night chats were the beginning of my loquaciousness, and I just needed someone to let me get all those thoughts out of me before I could fall asleep! But as I wore myself out and started to quiet down, mom would sing to me—in a high, wavering voice that I knew wasn’t that “good,” as singing voices go, but loved anyway. She would sing “Frère Jacques” and “Lullaby And Good Night,” and I’d lie in the dark and smile until I fell asleep. But best of all, when I’d get sick, she’d always treat me to her home-made mac n cheese, which is better than any other I’ve ever had. It’s especially good when you’re sick because she doesn’t bake it; she makes a thick, cheddary sauce and then serves it, moist and hot, and brings you seconds if you need seconds to soothe your throat some more or help your head stop aching. It’s the best comfort food imaginable—even if she disagrees, thinking nothing in the world rivals a thick bowl of New England clam chowder—and for me, it’s what I dream of whenever I’m sick. I’ve tried a few times to make it for myself, thinking it might help me through a rough week of sore throats or migraines, but mine is just not the same as hers. I keep thinking she must pick out a better cheese than I do, or use better milk. But the truth of it, I think, is that it’s not so much the food that provides such comfort (though it really is very good); it’s the TLC it’s served with. And given that the ear infection I dealt with all of last week has now taken up residence in the opposite side of my head, I really wish that TLC didn’t live 3,000 miles away!
Monday, March 10, 2008
(channeling my inner Carrie Bradshaw)
Picture a typical New England city house. It’s tall and narrow, with shutters on the windows and shingles on the walls, with a little bit of yard in front and a little more out back. The next house is fairly nearby because this is Watertown. It could be Somerville or Brighton or any of the other towns that ring Boston; they all have streets lined with just this house.
Picture that it’s early fall; it’s a little crisp outside, and it’s nighttime, so we’re indoors; the windows are all shut. We’re in the basement, in fact, where there aren’t windows, and it’s just the three of us—me, the guy I want to be my guy, and the guy who’s been his best friend since they both were little kids. It’s just the three of us, and we’re in the basement, in the weight room. They are each lounging in an armchair, whereas I’m sitting on the bench press, because no one else is usually allowed down here so there is no other seat. They’re each sitting in an armchair, because this is where they drink 40s in the winter when it’s too cold to sit on the basketball court, because this is where they lift weights and drink 40s; this is their pad. They love this pad; it’s where they feel most like men. They’ve been sitting here since they were kids; it’s been their man place for all that time.
I am only allowed in here because I have offered to teach them how to smoke pot. This is hilarious because I’ve only done it twice before myself, and it’s hilarious because it took a lot for them to admit that there was something like this they hadn’t done, for them to ask me to bring the pot over and show them how to smoke it. But I am in love with one of them so I do it happily, and I get the chuckles from the high but also from watching them, because these are big boys, ripped with muscles, and they are lounging in armchairs with their athletic-socked-feet resting on some very heavy weights, and they are practicing blowing smoke circles and falling out of their chairs like idiots. I can’t hold it against them because this is what happens the first time you smoke pot; I can’t hold it against them because this is how I think the first time should be, like it was for me, with a good friend there to laugh at you and love it.
But I do get bored at some point, so I go upstairs. I don’t know how long it takes them to follow me, but they do, both of them, and I find myself in the living room, on the sofa, in the dark. The one I love is on one side of me; I am, in fact, resting against his chest. He is stroking my hair, his lips are gently pressing against my cheek, and I am suddenly sober, because we have spent a lot of time almost this close together but not quite. But there is something else taking place now. The other one is here too, on the sofa, in the dark. He is on my other side, and he, to my surprise and not-surprise (because I know all about him, a friend of mine used to date him, and she has told me just how sexy, dirty, kinky he can be), is putting his hands on me. What is startling for me is not that he’s doing this (because I know him, and I know he’s wanted to) but that he and the other one are both making their different kinds of move at the same time, on the same girl, and they are too stoned to know they’re both at it at once!
When I realize what is happening, I find it marvelous, and empowering; I am elated that I am both loved and wanted; I am stoned and think this must be so. But I am a good girl, a practical girl, and so I squirm my way out of there, I make my way to bed. In the morning, when I arrive at the breakfast table in the pajamas of the one I love, the other one glares at me and begins not to speak to me for months.
A conversation I had with friends recently brought this story to mind. It was a funny chat over dinner about the mapping of sex connections among friends. Picture a social networking web, but instead of linking people based on where they went to college or where they’ve worked, it’s by who they’ve slept with. Now my innocent reaction to this was, but do you really know people who’ve slept with each other’s people? And I seemed to be the only one in the room who did not. I’ve spent a day thinking about it, and the closest I come, personally, is the story you just read. I did have one friend who slept with her good friend’s then-boyfriend-now-husband in a hot tub late one night in high school, but I really can’t think of any crossing-overs of friends and beaus or exes in my adult life or my friends’ adult lives.
I’m sure, however, that some of you could tell me I’m wrong about that. I don’t actually need to know the details of other people’s sex lives, so no need to share if so. But as I’d already been pondering a similar question but in relation to things more serious, I asked these friends if their sex web would work just as well for dating—and sure enough, they said yes. In fact, a couple of them said they’d dated the same people as their friends had more than once. I was surprised because they said this didn’t damage any friendships; they said it was cool on all parties’ fronts.
I once learned the hard way that it isn’t always like that. Years ago, I made the seemingly innocent mistake of asking a co-worker for the email address of her ex-boyfriend, and I got virtually slapped in the face. Now mind you I thought I was completely in the clear. These two had not dated since high school; it was almost ten years since they’d had sex. I didn’t think anything of liking the guy; if my friend was still friendly with him so many years later, I figured he was fair game. But she was horrified that I’d asked; and when I brought it up with a mutual friend, she told me to think about it: he was her first time, her first love. You don’t let go of that. So I conceded; she was right. And I certainly didn’t like the guy enough to make my friend feel any worse.
I think something similar happened with the two guys and the pot. The one who was pissed at me in the morning wasn’t upset because I’d rejected him; we all three knew full well who in that pair I wanted to be with. I think he was pissed because he felt like a jackass. It was his best friend he was competing with that night, and I assure you, those are two guys who never would’ve focused on the same woman sober. There’s just a pact among friends, I think, that says you don’t do that.
I was surprised last year to find that not everyone knows about that pact. A guy I briefly went on some dates with later asked out one of my friends, and I was hurt. She did what I thought was the right thing, which was to tell me about it and ask how I felt. I acknowledged that it made me feel crappy, and she immediately let it drop. But I felt bad, knowing she would’ve liked to say yes. So I got in touch with him, and I let him know that I thought she’d only said no because of my feelings, because of that pact. And though we hadn’t dated in any serious way, he got that.
Ironically, a few months later, I reflected on that experience and thought I’d made a mistake. In reality, the two seem great for each other, a much better fit than he and I would be. And that let me realize that, like with everything, there are gradations of the rules on this. Sometimes there is too much history, too much baggage, for it ever to feel good to have a friend cross your dating path. But other times there aren’t open wounds; other times you’re happy to see that person you dated happier with someone else. The tricky thing, I think, is knowing what’s what—knowing when you might be putting a friendship on the line and when you might not.
Picture that it’s early fall; it’s a little crisp outside, and it’s nighttime, so we’re indoors; the windows are all shut. We’re in the basement, in fact, where there aren’t windows, and it’s just the three of us—me, the guy I want to be my guy, and the guy who’s been his best friend since they both were little kids. It’s just the three of us, and we’re in the basement, in the weight room. They are each lounging in an armchair, whereas I’m sitting on the bench press, because no one else is usually allowed down here so there is no other seat. They’re each sitting in an armchair, because this is where they drink 40s in the winter when it’s too cold to sit on the basketball court, because this is where they lift weights and drink 40s; this is their pad. They love this pad; it’s where they feel most like men. They’ve been sitting here since they were kids; it’s been their man place for all that time.
I am only allowed in here because I have offered to teach them how to smoke pot. This is hilarious because I’ve only done it twice before myself, and it’s hilarious because it took a lot for them to admit that there was something like this they hadn’t done, for them to ask me to bring the pot over and show them how to smoke it. But I am in love with one of them so I do it happily, and I get the chuckles from the high but also from watching them, because these are big boys, ripped with muscles, and they are lounging in armchairs with their athletic-socked-feet resting on some very heavy weights, and they are practicing blowing smoke circles and falling out of their chairs like idiots. I can’t hold it against them because this is what happens the first time you smoke pot; I can’t hold it against them because this is how I think the first time should be, like it was for me, with a good friend there to laugh at you and love it.
But I do get bored at some point, so I go upstairs. I don’t know how long it takes them to follow me, but they do, both of them, and I find myself in the living room, on the sofa, in the dark. The one I love is on one side of me; I am, in fact, resting against his chest. He is stroking my hair, his lips are gently pressing against my cheek, and I am suddenly sober, because we have spent a lot of time almost this close together but not quite. But there is something else taking place now. The other one is here too, on the sofa, in the dark. He is on my other side, and he, to my surprise and not-surprise (because I know all about him, a friend of mine used to date him, and she has told me just how sexy, dirty, kinky he can be), is putting his hands on me. What is startling for me is not that he’s doing this (because I know him, and I know he’s wanted to) but that he and the other one are both making their different kinds of move at the same time, on the same girl, and they are too stoned to know they’re both at it at once!
When I realize what is happening, I find it marvelous, and empowering; I am elated that I am both loved and wanted; I am stoned and think this must be so. But I am a good girl, a practical girl, and so I squirm my way out of there, I make my way to bed. In the morning, when I arrive at the breakfast table in the pajamas of the one I love, the other one glares at me and begins not to speak to me for months.
A conversation I had with friends recently brought this story to mind. It was a funny chat over dinner about the mapping of sex connections among friends. Picture a social networking web, but instead of linking people based on where they went to college or where they’ve worked, it’s by who they’ve slept with. Now my innocent reaction to this was, but do you really know people who’ve slept with each other’s people? And I seemed to be the only one in the room who did not. I’ve spent a day thinking about it, and the closest I come, personally, is the story you just read. I did have one friend who slept with her good friend’s then-boyfriend-now-husband in a hot tub late one night in high school, but I really can’t think of any crossing-overs of friends and beaus or exes in my adult life or my friends’ adult lives.
I’m sure, however, that some of you could tell me I’m wrong about that. I don’t actually need to know the details of other people’s sex lives, so no need to share if so. But as I’d already been pondering a similar question but in relation to things more serious, I asked these friends if their sex web would work just as well for dating—and sure enough, they said yes. In fact, a couple of them said they’d dated the same people as their friends had more than once. I was surprised because they said this didn’t damage any friendships; they said it was cool on all parties’ fronts.
I once learned the hard way that it isn’t always like that. Years ago, I made the seemingly innocent mistake of asking a co-worker for the email address of her ex-boyfriend, and I got virtually slapped in the face. Now mind you I thought I was completely in the clear. These two had not dated since high school; it was almost ten years since they’d had sex. I didn’t think anything of liking the guy; if my friend was still friendly with him so many years later, I figured he was fair game. But she was horrified that I’d asked; and when I brought it up with a mutual friend, she told me to think about it: he was her first time, her first love. You don’t let go of that. So I conceded; she was right. And I certainly didn’t like the guy enough to make my friend feel any worse.
I think something similar happened with the two guys and the pot. The one who was pissed at me in the morning wasn’t upset because I’d rejected him; we all three knew full well who in that pair I wanted to be with. I think he was pissed because he felt like a jackass. It was his best friend he was competing with that night, and I assure you, those are two guys who never would’ve focused on the same woman sober. There’s just a pact among friends, I think, that says you don’t do that.
I was surprised last year to find that not everyone knows about that pact. A guy I briefly went on some dates with later asked out one of my friends, and I was hurt. She did what I thought was the right thing, which was to tell me about it and ask how I felt. I acknowledged that it made me feel crappy, and she immediately let it drop. But I felt bad, knowing she would’ve liked to say yes. So I got in touch with him, and I let him know that I thought she’d only said no because of my feelings, because of that pact. And though we hadn’t dated in any serious way, he got that.
Ironically, a few months later, I reflected on that experience and thought I’d made a mistake. In reality, the two seem great for each other, a much better fit than he and I would be. And that let me realize that, like with everything, there are gradations of the rules on this. Sometimes there is too much history, too much baggage, for it ever to feel good to have a friend cross your dating path. But other times there aren’t open wounds; other times you’re happy to see that person you dated happier with someone else. The tricky thing, I think, is knowing what’s what—knowing when you might be putting a friendship on the line and when you might not.
(hard to put a title to)
When I was in college and sometimes felt homesick, I’d turn on the tv and watch a football game. I’d do that by myself, and I’d usually do something else in the meantime, not having the attention span for entire games most of the time. But I liked having the sound of the commentators and the crowd in the background; it reminded me of home, of being with my dad and my brother on a Saturday afternoon back when we all lived in the same house.
Even by the time I started college, it had been a number of years since that was the case, as my brother went to college a year after my parents separated, leaving my mom and me to inhabit a house much too big for us, even if you counted the dog and handful of cats who dotted sofas and armchairs on both floors. More than half my life has passed now since I last lived with those two, so I cherish my visits with them a few times a year. And I cherish the little ways you can keep people with you, like through the silly sounds of football or the particular notes played in the jazz concert I went to over the weekend.
My dad only listens to jazz, no other genre of music being accepted into his CD player or onto the stand of his piano. Jazz has always been another sort of background sound of memories for me, as I learned to love it as one way of building a new kind of bond between us—something to have in common, to enjoy together even from afar. Before I could drive, my dad would pick me up on Wednesday nights and on Sundays, and we’d wind back to his house on the other side of the city in his old Toyota or the Honda he eventually bought from his new wife. When he turned 50, he purchased the first new car of his life—a low-lying, curve-hugging sports car that he still loves to speed carefully around the winding turns of Atlanta roads. We’d cruise through the streets, dark with shade under the tall boughs of the enormous trees that fill the neighborhoods there, and we’d listen to Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk, and many, many others.
Sitting in the Masonic Center auditorium on Saturday night, listening to Jarrett and his trio play some of those same tunes I’ve listened to in my dad’s car for years, I was aware of my friends seated on either side of me, but more so, I could feel the cool blowing of the air conditioner in the car and the low bucket seat pushing my knees up higher than my hips; could hear the gentle humming of the tune under his breath by my dad; could see the passing of woods, houses, and lawns as we took the music with us, took it into us, made a place for it where it could be ours together, no matter how much time or space passed between us. It was great to hear the songs of Keith Jarrett’s Blue Note album played live on Saturday, to see the man rising from the piano bench, shaking his rear a little as he cavorted all over the keyboard; but I found it didn’t compare to hearing it with my dad on a car stereo, turned low so as not to blow out the speakers; to tooling along on our way somewhere, not caring where we’re headed because the point is not the starting point or the ending, it’s simply having the time together.
Even by the time I started college, it had been a number of years since that was the case, as my brother went to college a year after my parents separated, leaving my mom and me to inhabit a house much too big for us, even if you counted the dog and handful of cats who dotted sofas and armchairs on both floors. More than half my life has passed now since I last lived with those two, so I cherish my visits with them a few times a year. And I cherish the little ways you can keep people with you, like through the silly sounds of football or the particular notes played in the jazz concert I went to over the weekend.
My dad only listens to jazz, no other genre of music being accepted into his CD player or onto the stand of his piano. Jazz has always been another sort of background sound of memories for me, as I learned to love it as one way of building a new kind of bond between us—something to have in common, to enjoy together even from afar. Before I could drive, my dad would pick me up on Wednesday nights and on Sundays, and we’d wind back to his house on the other side of the city in his old Toyota or the Honda he eventually bought from his new wife. When he turned 50, he purchased the first new car of his life—a low-lying, curve-hugging sports car that he still loves to speed carefully around the winding turns of Atlanta roads. We’d cruise through the streets, dark with shade under the tall boughs of the enormous trees that fill the neighborhoods there, and we’d listen to Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk, and many, many others.
Sitting in the Masonic Center auditorium on Saturday night, listening to Jarrett and his trio play some of those same tunes I’ve listened to in my dad’s car for years, I was aware of my friends seated on either side of me, but more so, I could feel the cool blowing of the air conditioner in the car and the low bucket seat pushing my knees up higher than my hips; could hear the gentle humming of the tune under his breath by my dad; could see the passing of woods, houses, and lawns as we took the music with us, took it into us, made a place for it where it could be ours together, no matter how much time or space passed between us. It was great to hear the songs of Keith Jarrett’s Blue Note album played live on Saturday, to see the man rising from the piano bench, shaking his rear a little as he cavorted all over the keyboard; but I found it didn’t compare to hearing it with my dad on a car stereo, turned low so as not to blow out the speakers; to tooling along on our way somewhere, not caring where we’re headed because the point is not the starting point or the ending, it’s simply having the time together.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
No Country For Old Men - or for me
It doesn't seem like Omar is the only one I disagree with about this movie; it seems the entire Academy and I have different tastes. Originally I had no interest in seeing the movie, but after it got such acclaim at the Oscars, I thought maybe I was missing out on something. But what I saw was exactly what I expected from the preview: violence, and violence that has no true motivation at that.
I have no understanding of how one (or many) can find entertainment in such depravity. Certainly Tommy Lee Jones, as always, did a superb acting job, and the director and cinematographer deserve the rave reviews the film has gotten. The opening scenes are elegant shots of a gorgeous landscape that I have long had a major crush on, as the sagebrush-covered, mesa-backed, dry hills of New Mexico give desolation a rich feel. But does good film-making make for a good film? In my book, no; the story has to stand up to the quality of its production, and in this case, I don't see the elements of a well-told or well-formulated story.
I think back to 3:10 to Yuma, a film I did love that also included a lot of murder set against a stark but stunning western backdrop. That film, however, rang with meaning; there was a moral, and even if it was a clichéd lesson in the fight for human dignity, it was meaning; it gave the characters and the plot a driving purpose. The man under pursuit was the bad guy, not the other way around. The lone figure, accepting a task that was a test of his true character, gained knowledge of himself and knowledge of right behavior—as opposed to our lone thief in No Country, who expresses no ethics, no vision, no respect for his own life or those of his family; he simply hungers for money he has not earned, and he stupidly places himself in the path of every bad guy possible. And don't even get me started on the character of Anton; the psychopath with no purpose but to annihilate everyone who has laid hands on, seen, thought about, or imagined his money. What about that character is intriguing? Perhaps, if he had died in the car crash, the movie would have paralleled the absurdity of the character, and I would've found some grain of interest value there.
But as a ghost that cannot be killed, Anton became farcical to me; impossible to take seriously. Trying to understand how the character has any grab on the American psyche, I compare him to Daniel Plainview, another dour Oscar-winning character of 2007, and I think that at least with Plainview we understand his psychology; we understand the urges that drive him deeper and deeper toward loneliness and anger. I didn't like that film much either, as its plot moved a little slowly, but at least it was about something, it had an underlying point to make about the generation of the oil industry and money-hungerers in general. We know nothing similar about any character in No Country; we know nothing of what pushes them toward their decisions except in the lone case of the one old man, the sheriff, whose decision to retire we can understand absolutely, though we know, as he knows, that soon he'll be joining his late father in heaven. And from that knowledge, what of worth have we gained?
I have no understanding of how one (or many) can find entertainment in such depravity. Certainly Tommy Lee Jones, as always, did a superb acting job, and the director and cinematographer deserve the rave reviews the film has gotten. The opening scenes are elegant shots of a gorgeous landscape that I have long had a major crush on, as the sagebrush-covered, mesa-backed, dry hills of New Mexico give desolation a rich feel. But does good film-making make for a good film? In my book, no; the story has to stand up to the quality of its production, and in this case, I don't see the elements of a well-told or well-formulated story.
I think back to 3:10 to Yuma, a film I did love that also included a lot of murder set against a stark but stunning western backdrop. That film, however, rang with meaning; there was a moral, and even if it was a clichéd lesson in the fight for human dignity, it was meaning; it gave the characters and the plot a driving purpose. The man under pursuit was the bad guy, not the other way around. The lone figure, accepting a task that was a test of his true character, gained knowledge of himself and knowledge of right behavior—as opposed to our lone thief in No Country, who expresses no ethics, no vision, no respect for his own life or those of his family; he simply hungers for money he has not earned, and he stupidly places himself in the path of every bad guy possible. And don't even get me started on the character of Anton; the psychopath with no purpose but to annihilate everyone who has laid hands on, seen, thought about, or imagined his money. What about that character is intriguing? Perhaps, if he had died in the car crash, the movie would have paralleled the absurdity of the character, and I would've found some grain of interest value there.
But as a ghost that cannot be killed, Anton became farcical to me; impossible to take seriously. Trying to understand how the character has any grab on the American psyche, I compare him to Daniel Plainview, another dour Oscar-winning character of 2007, and I think that at least with Plainview we understand his psychology; we understand the urges that drive him deeper and deeper toward loneliness and anger. I didn't like that film much either, as its plot moved a little slowly, but at least it was about something, it had an underlying point to make about the generation of the oil industry and money-hungerers in general. We know nothing similar about any character in No Country; we know nothing of what pushes them toward their decisions except in the lone case of the one old man, the sheriff, whose decision to retire we can understand absolutely, though we know, as he knows, that soon he'll be joining his late father in heaven. And from that knowledge, what of worth have we gained?
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