February 25, 2014
Someone who left Manhattan to live in Minneapolis and returned two years later once told me that Minneapolis had no "edge". Somebody else told me that when you leave New York for parts west, those places just don't have "edge". "Edge" I was told once, is the quality that attracts you to something, but that simultaneously, makes you afraid of the attraction. Well, I'm afraid that I'm tired of "edginess", so defined. New York has a great deal that attracts me, but its edge is beginning to feel more than I want to handle.
Case in point: Around 7:00 p.m. this evening I was on the subway returning home from a trip to 96th Street. The car I boarded was crowded, but there were still three or four seats to choose from scattered around the center of the car. I chose to sit between a large African-American woman all dressed in black and a young man in a noticeably new red baseball cap and baggy light tan trousers immaculately pressed. He was listening to hip-hop and mouthing the words.
His legs were, as is often the case with some men on the subway, spread so far apart he was taking up more than a seat, although he was far from overweight. He was also sitting slouched, legs projecting into the center of the car, further maximizing the space taken up. There was just enough space left for me to squeeze in and sit. So I shimmied onto the seat, but the wide "V" the young man had made of his legs prevented me from sitting securely.
So I said, "Honey bunch, would you move a little so I can sit?" I could not have asked more sweetly, I think.
Nothing doing.
I actually touched the side of the trousers with the fingers of my hand to put a bit of space between me and the young man, something I know most people would never dare do on a New York City subway. When I did, the young man's head shot straight up and I realized --the boy was a young woman.
Based on long experience riding the New York City subways --more than half a century-- the young woman behaved exactly as her male counterpart would have in the same circumstance. That is, she ignored me, except to mumble something under her breath I could not make out. I was, however, able to sit until I needed to get off, and when I got off I did not hear her yelling obscenities at me --which has happened over less on other subway rides.
The young woman's look was certainly edgy, but in my book, that someone looks interesting ranks second to their ability to accommodate themselves to riding on a New York City subway car with other people. That's a skill this young woman clearly does not possess.
"When the daily rudeness, the incivility and the expense of living here are not compensated for by what you get out of being here, New York isn't attractive anymore." So said another friend, who stays because he can't leave --yet.
Edginess is a young person's game. Rather than edginess, I want "Fantin La Tour moments", as the writer Mary Cantwell called them in "The Mauve-ing Of America", an article she wrote for The New York Times in 1991. In the article, Cantwell gently lampooned the "cult of the beautiful" Martha Stewart and her then-rival, Alexandra Stoddard, celebrated, evoking the name of the French painter of cut flowers in cut-glass vases.
When we are young, we want excitement. When we are older, we want peaceful moments. Or so a psychologist told me. Edginess's stock is tending lower in my eyes, while Fantin La Tour is looking better and better, there's no denying it.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Monday, February 24, 2014
Simple Pleasures; Still Life With Breadcrumbs; Memoir of the Bookie's Son; and "Q"
February 24, 2014
With panic about the snow storm Wednesday mounting (some think as much as ten inches will fall), I did what any reasonable person faced with the twelfth snowstorm of the season would do: I ate and drank.
I cooked giant ravioli stuffed with chicken and herbs, then made a sauce of several cloves of garlic sautéed in Italian olive oil till crispy brown, into which I plunged the ravioli. A bunch of fresh arugula thrown in served as the salad course, chased with a half bottle of Bordeaux from Cadillac. Dessert was fresh blackberries, followed by a pint of Talenti Southern Pecan gelato garnished with Calmyra figs. I can be as austere as a Carthusian in my eating habits, but when winter hangs on too long, I am Rabelaisian.
A friend lent me two books that reflect our mutual obsession with making ends meet: Frugal Is Not Cheap, and Still Life With Breadcrumbs. The first is the memoir of an accountant who has shaken herself free of the credit-card mentality that plunges so many into a lifetime of debt; the second is former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen's novel about a 60-year old woman, a celebrated photographer, who finds her celebrity no insurance against the rising cost of living in Manhattan, taking care of her mother and raising her son alone.
As I just wrote a short story along the same lines (never having known of Still Life), it is evident that the novel's strain is part of zeitgeist of Baby Boomers. Writing about " the old" as fully-developed human beings (with lusts and yearnings) is becoming more and more acceptable. Quindlen is more skillful than I am in evoking a setting a scriptwriter could make a movie out of and she's received favorable reviews for the book in outlets as distant as London's Financial Times. She's put her stamp on later life, which has optimism and underlying resilience going for it. There are no "bad guys" to blame for the penuriousness of her heroine, unless it's her financial advisor, who failed to explain that her expenses were rising even as her income was declining. He, however, is not a character in Still Life, and I'm a killjoy to mention him.
On the other hand, in Memoir Of The Bookie's Son, a remembrance of Buckley Offitt, a Balitmore bookmaker many believed the smartest bookie in the country, Sidney Offit, his son, never asks for our indulgence. His father made the money to support Sidney, his brother Benson and their mother, by taking bets on horses, an illegal activity until the Kefauver Commission and Off-Track Betting destroyed bookies' livelihood.
Offitt, who came to New York and succeeded, brings to life the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who had a unique skill handicapping horses, and made it his life's work. That is "life's work" in the way Picasso thought of painting, Hemingway of writing and Gene Krupa drumming. Arrested late in his career, he fixed a judge, the policeman giving evidence and the prosecuting attorney --without a qualm, because he believed that the laws prohibiting gambling went against human nature. However, he never took a bet again after the case against him was dismissed for lack of evidence. (Which suggests he read odds very well indeed.)
What is significant about the book is its depiction of childhood as it once was: a family matter. Sid and his brother Benson go to Baltimore schools, spend the summers at camp, and listen when their parents say something. They might read books or go to a movie, but the Baltimore they live in operates by Baltimore's rules, not those of the Internet or broadcast news or cable television or IPhones.
Sidney grows up to become a New York writer, milking his background the way Pete Hamill milked his to write his novels and memoirs. These men were grounded in the college of the streets, and having survived the course, were better adults for it. Basic lessons about how human beings will behave in variety of situations were illustrated daily, and more forcibly than any textbook.
In further contrast to Quindlen's novel, "Q", composer, musician and arranger Quincy Jones' autobiography, a widely celebrated book when it first appeared a few years ago, starts out similarly, but then vaults into the stratosphere of celebrity. It is probably true that when he was a boy, Jones and his brothers had to eat fried rats because that was the only meat his grandmother could lay hands on to feed them. Jones earned every moment of his success, but hearing him tell the story of his ascendancy doesn't make me feel he has any lesson to impart. Whereas Sidney Offitt's tale of his father --a man who always insisted "The world doesn't owe me nothin'" offers a study in character annealed in the crucible of Baltimore's back streets. Buckley's parents were Old Country in values and outlook, wanting to "fit in" in their adopted country; but their son turned to lucrative use in an illegal activity his mathematical bent, becoming in the process "his own man".
The story of his son's discovery of his father's uniqueness, and his father's uncompromising acceptance of the parameters his choice of profession obliged, makes Memoir Of The Bookie's Son more uplifting than Q's tale of ascent and stardom. Then, too, Q is about defining success by the number of flashbulbs that go off when you walk onto a stage. Memoir of the Bookie's Son is about a life conducted very much off-stage, necessarily off-stage. Buckley Offitt, "maybe the biggest bookie in the country", preferred to be invisible, preferred to be discreet, because in the business he had chosen, that preference reflected his sagacity. Memoir of the Bookie's Son is about how the way a man conducts himself becomes an example to his children, whether what he does is within or without the law. Reading it has been one of the small pleasures of this winter.
With panic about the snow storm Wednesday mounting (some think as much as ten inches will fall), I did what any reasonable person faced with the twelfth snowstorm of the season would do: I ate and drank.
I cooked giant ravioli stuffed with chicken and herbs, then made a sauce of several cloves of garlic sautéed in Italian olive oil till crispy brown, into which I plunged the ravioli. A bunch of fresh arugula thrown in served as the salad course, chased with a half bottle of Bordeaux from Cadillac. Dessert was fresh blackberries, followed by a pint of Talenti Southern Pecan gelato garnished with Calmyra figs. I can be as austere as a Carthusian in my eating habits, but when winter hangs on too long, I am Rabelaisian.
A friend lent me two books that reflect our mutual obsession with making ends meet: Frugal Is Not Cheap, and Still Life With Breadcrumbs. The first is the memoir of an accountant who has shaken herself free of the credit-card mentality that plunges so many into a lifetime of debt; the second is former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen's novel about a 60-year old woman, a celebrated photographer, who finds her celebrity no insurance against the rising cost of living in Manhattan, taking care of her mother and raising her son alone.
As I just wrote a short story along the same lines (never having known of Still Life), it is evident that the novel's strain is part of zeitgeist of Baby Boomers. Writing about " the old" as fully-developed human beings (with lusts and yearnings) is becoming more and more acceptable. Quindlen is more skillful than I am in evoking a setting a scriptwriter could make a movie out of and she's received favorable reviews for the book in outlets as distant as London's Financial Times. She's put her stamp on later life, which has optimism and underlying resilience going for it. There are no "bad guys" to blame for the penuriousness of her heroine, unless it's her financial advisor, who failed to explain that her expenses were rising even as her income was declining. He, however, is not a character in Still Life, and I'm a killjoy to mention him.
On the other hand, in Memoir Of The Bookie's Son, a remembrance of Buckley Offitt, a Balitmore bookmaker many believed the smartest bookie in the country, Sidney Offit, his son, never asks for our indulgence. His father made the money to support Sidney, his brother Benson and their mother, by taking bets on horses, an illegal activity until the Kefauver Commission and Off-Track Betting destroyed bookies' livelihood.
Offitt, who came to New York and succeeded, brings to life the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who had a unique skill handicapping horses, and made it his life's work. That is "life's work" in the way Picasso thought of painting, Hemingway of writing and Gene Krupa drumming. Arrested late in his career, he fixed a judge, the policeman giving evidence and the prosecuting attorney --without a qualm, because he believed that the laws prohibiting gambling went against human nature. However, he never took a bet again after the case against him was dismissed for lack of evidence. (Which suggests he read odds very well indeed.)
What is significant about the book is its depiction of childhood as it once was: a family matter. Sid and his brother Benson go to Baltimore schools, spend the summers at camp, and listen when their parents say something. They might read books or go to a movie, but the Baltimore they live in operates by Baltimore's rules, not those of the Internet or broadcast news or cable television or IPhones.
Sidney grows up to become a New York writer, milking his background the way Pete Hamill milked his to write his novels and memoirs. These men were grounded in the college of the streets, and having survived the course, were better adults for it. Basic lessons about how human beings will behave in variety of situations were illustrated daily, and more forcibly than any textbook.
In further contrast to Quindlen's novel, "Q", composer, musician and arranger Quincy Jones' autobiography, a widely celebrated book when it first appeared a few years ago, starts out similarly, but then vaults into the stratosphere of celebrity. It is probably true that when he was a boy, Jones and his brothers had to eat fried rats because that was the only meat his grandmother could lay hands on to feed them. Jones earned every moment of his success, but hearing him tell the story of his ascendancy doesn't make me feel he has any lesson to impart. Whereas Sidney Offitt's tale of his father --a man who always insisted "The world doesn't owe me nothin'" offers a study in character annealed in the crucible of Baltimore's back streets. Buckley's parents were Old Country in values and outlook, wanting to "fit in" in their adopted country; but their son turned to lucrative use in an illegal activity his mathematical bent, becoming in the process "his own man".
The story of his son's discovery of his father's uniqueness, and his father's uncompromising acceptance of the parameters his choice of profession obliged, makes Memoir Of The Bookie's Son more uplifting than Q's tale of ascent and stardom. Then, too, Q is about defining success by the number of flashbulbs that go off when you walk onto a stage. Memoir of the Bookie's Son is about a life conducted very much off-stage, necessarily off-stage. Buckley Offitt, "maybe the biggest bookie in the country", preferred to be invisible, preferred to be discreet, because in the business he had chosen, that preference reflected his sagacity. Memoir of the Bookie's Son is about how the way a man conducts himself becomes an example to his children, whether what he does is within or without the law. Reading it has been one of the small pleasures of this winter.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
"Eminent Victorians" and "The Uncommon Reader"
February 18 2014
I had an eighth grade English teacher, Richard Peck, who used to say that "our age likes to see the feet of clay of its idols". That trend was created by one man, Lytton Strachey, whose "Eminent Victorians" offered brief biographies of "the great and the good" that punctured their magnificence. Alexander Woolcott, who included Strachey's biography of Cardinal Manning in his "Woolcott Reader", observed that what Strachey practiced was not so much biography as "ironical deflation". Woolcott includes in his anthology Strachey's brief biography of Cardinal Manning, who took holy orders in the Church of England, and died a Roman Catholic cardinal, having, in between, become a well-known champion of the Pope and London's poor.
Strachey suggests that Manning --who became archbishop of Westminster Cathedral, and thereby spiritual leader of Britain's Roman Catholics-- was astutely self-effacing. He took himself out of consideration for advancement only to emerge as the only acceptable candidate for this committee or that commission; with the result that his reputation and influence grew. In 1889 he successfully mediated the London Dock Strike, which threatened social peace there. He expanded the number of Catholic schools in London, and gave of his time tirelessly in pursuit of better conditions for the poor. He had gone to Oxford and been close friends with Gladstone, who ended his friendship with Manning after the latter's conversion. Gladstone was deeply suspicious the doctrine of "papal infallibility", promulgated by Pope Pius IX, to whom Manning owed his ascendancy. In numerous newspaper articles, he attacked the doctrine as "undemocratic"; Manning defended it, alluding to Gladstone as a friend without reference to their breach. The two men were similar in their taste for self-denial: Gladstone would visit prostitutes, hoping to convert them away from their profession. Excited by the encounters, he would then go home and flagellate himself in punishment for the urges the women aroused in him. Manning seems to have had no similar urges, but the austerity of his life made a wraith of him in old age. Strachey acknowledges all of this, but suggests that the eminence Manning achieved reflected a deep-seated ambition. That ambition was frustrated in its original direction,politics; but Manning being Manning, he found a way to fulfill his ambition for glory in a way that would never bring reproach. By the biography's end, unless you know more about Manning, he might be a Victorian Julian Sorel. It is Strachey's innovation to plant seeds of doubt about the reputations of those who once went to their deaths secure in the knowledge their reputations would stand, intact --something no eminent person in contemporary life can ever be sure of.
Alan Bennett, on the other hand, exalts Queen Elizabeth II, the subject of his 2007 novella, "The Uncommon Reader". A keen observer of the rituals that ring the British monarchy and preserve its lustre, Bennett creates a Queen who is very much as most of us imagine her: conventional, yet intellectually sharp. The two qualities never collide, Bennett lets us see, because her "job" --to travel in her dominions and to spend as much time as she can lending an air of specialness to what would otherwise be mundane plant openings, ship launchings and garden shows-- never requires her to delve deeply into the life circumstances of the people she meets, her subjects. Similarly, her subjects don't expect her to be anyone other than the person they've seen in the photographs in Majesty and other, similarly hagiographic outlets for information about the Royal Family.
Bennett takes the Queen we think we know and puts her in a place she never expected to find herself in: a mobile lending library parked outside the Palace grounds, behind the kitchens. Following one of her corgis, which has strayed, she comes upon the library truck and enters to find a young man who works in her kitchens browsing the shelves and another, the man in charge of the lending library, shelving. Acutely sensitive to the disturbance her presence causes, to be polite, she takes away a volume by Ivy Compton-Burnett --and gets hooked on reading.
The transformative power of the book is celebrated in "The Uncommon Reader". The title plays with the title of Virginia Woolf's book of essays on writing and reading "The Common Reader". In the collection, Woolf implicitly argued that reviewers ought to look at books, not from their perches as specialists, but as better-informed stand-ins for the intellectually curious, but average book-buyer, Everyman.
No one could be less Everyman than the Queen, but Bennett is able to maker her character a vessel for the idea that reading is transforming, whether you are a king or a commoner. The novella has a plot and a clever dénouement, but because I think The Uncommon Reader a book everyone ought to experience unadulterated, I will not write of it. Lots of good writers pen defenses of reading, but Bennett manages to simultaneously indulge our fantasies about the Queen while reminding us of the deep pleasures of reading, and their private nature. Being (unlike Lytton Strachey) no iconoclast, the Queen of The Uncommon Reader is one even the present incumbent could unreservedly enjoy getting to know --if she ever gets the time to read.
I had an eighth grade English teacher, Richard Peck, who used to say that "our age likes to see the feet of clay of its idols". That trend was created by one man, Lytton Strachey, whose "Eminent Victorians" offered brief biographies of "the great and the good" that punctured their magnificence. Alexander Woolcott, who included Strachey's biography of Cardinal Manning in his "Woolcott Reader", observed that what Strachey practiced was not so much biography as "ironical deflation". Woolcott includes in his anthology Strachey's brief biography of Cardinal Manning, who took holy orders in the Church of England, and died a Roman Catholic cardinal, having, in between, become a well-known champion of the Pope and London's poor.
Strachey suggests that Manning --who became archbishop of Westminster Cathedral, and thereby spiritual leader of Britain's Roman Catholics-- was astutely self-effacing. He took himself out of consideration for advancement only to emerge as the only acceptable candidate for this committee or that commission; with the result that his reputation and influence grew. In 1889 he successfully mediated the London Dock Strike, which threatened social peace there. He expanded the number of Catholic schools in London, and gave of his time tirelessly in pursuit of better conditions for the poor. He had gone to Oxford and been close friends with Gladstone, who ended his friendship with Manning after the latter's conversion. Gladstone was deeply suspicious the doctrine of "papal infallibility", promulgated by Pope Pius IX, to whom Manning owed his ascendancy. In numerous newspaper articles, he attacked the doctrine as "undemocratic"; Manning defended it, alluding to Gladstone as a friend without reference to their breach. The two men were similar in their taste for self-denial: Gladstone would visit prostitutes, hoping to convert them away from their profession. Excited by the encounters, he would then go home and flagellate himself in punishment for the urges the women aroused in him. Manning seems to have had no similar urges, but the austerity of his life made a wraith of him in old age. Strachey acknowledges all of this, but suggests that the eminence Manning achieved reflected a deep-seated ambition. That ambition was frustrated in its original direction,politics; but Manning being Manning, he found a way to fulfill his ambition for glory in a way that would never bring reproach. By the biography's end, unless you know more about Manning, he might be a Victorian Julian Sorel. It is Strachey's innovation to plant seeds of doubt about the reputations of those who once went to their deaths secure in the knowledge their reputations would stand, intact --something no eminent person in contemporary life can ever be sure of.
Alan Bennett, on the other hand, exalts Queen Elizabeth II, the subject of his 2007 novella, "The Uncommon Reader". A keen observer of the rituals that ring the British monarchy and preserve its lustre, Bennett creates a Queen who is very much as most of us imagine her: conventional, yet intellectually sharp. The two qualities never collide, Bennett lets us see, because her "job" --to travel in her dominions and to spend as much time as she can lending an air of specialness to what would otherwise be mundane plant openings, ship launchings and garden shows-- never requires her to delve deeply into the life circumstances of the people she meets, her subjects. Similarly, her subjects don't expect her to be anyone other than the person they've seen in the photographs in Majesty and other, similarly hagiographic outlets for information about the Royal Family.
Bennett takes the Queen we think we know and puts her in a place she never expected to find herself in: a mobile lending library parked outside the Palace grounds, behind the kitchens. Following one of her corgis, which has strayed, she comes upon the library truck and enters to find a young man who works in her kitchens browsing the shelves and another, the man in charge of the lending library, shelving. Acutely sensitive to the disturbance her presence causes, to be polite, she takes away a volume by Ivy Compton-Burnett --and gets hooked on reading.
The transformative power of the book is celebrated in "The Uncommon Reader". The title plays with the title of Virginia Woolf's book of essays on writing and reading "The Common Reader". In the collection, Woolf implicitly argued that reviewers ought to look at books, not from their perches as specialists, but as better-informed stand-ins for the intellectually curious, but average book-buyer, Everyman.
No one could be less Everyman than the Queen, but Bennett is able to maker her character a vessel for the idea that reading is transforming, whether you are a king or a commoner. The novella has a plot and a clever dénouement, but because I think The Uncommon Reader a book everyone ought to experience unadulterated, I will not write of it. Lots of good writers pen defenses of reading, but Bennett manages to simultaneously indulge our fantasies about the Queen while reminding us of the deep pleasures of reading, and their private nature. Being (unlike Lytton Strachey) no iconoclast, the Queen of The Uncommon Reader is one even the present incumbent could unreservedly enjoy getting to know --if she ever gets the time to read.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Comic Relief
Monday, February 17, 2014
Just when you might have thought that I was hopelessly mired in clinical depression, let me hasten to reassure you: this evening I found a way to make myself laugh --and heartily.
--I signed up on "OK Cupid", one of the no-fee dating sites available on the Web.
First off, no sooner had I begun to post my photo and supply some personal data than I began receiving "indications of interest" as they used to call them in the brokerage business. The inquiries came from men aged 37 to 70. I was most interested in the former, to tell the truth: So I began a conversation with a young Indian man who "works all the time" and whose name on the site looked like a pun meaning "not interested".
When I asked about the "tag" he didn't seem to get the joke and went on to ask me whether I was interested in finding 1. a friend; 2. a friend with "benefits"; 3. a lover; or, 4. a husband. He went on to tell me he was sensual and a sensitive lover. "Too much information!" I thought, ending the conversation.
Another man, also in his late thirties, told me that I seemed "lovely" and to "ignore the barriers". The first line of his message read "Well, om, I like your photo."
When I asked whether he had deliberately written the world "om" in allusion to the mantra "Om"; he, too didn't get the joke and told me it was "an autotype". (What's an "autotype"?) When I asked "What barriers were you thinking of?" he told me "That you are not in my favorite lounge having a drink with me." I guess he was wishing we could surmount the barriers of space and time by vaporizing there. (--Perhaps he's a "Trekkie".)
The younger generation seems not to know how to flirt. Perhaps there are too many computer engineers among them, too preoccupied with how to get something to function to realize there are nuances to pay attention to when getting a relationship "off the ground". (There's another aerospace metaphor!)
Then there are the men who write from places impossibly far away: Arizona, Florida, Princeton, New Jersey. Eight million people live in New York, some of them are men who only like women and traveling as far as Brooklyn is how far I'll go to meet one of them.
Actually, at this point I can see myself having lots of conversations of five minutes maximum with men who use the site. Despite the fact that the Internet is an unequaled tool of communication, if those who use it aren't articulate, I at least, can't take it too seriously as a source of romantic adventures.
On the other hand, after having felt as morose as I did earlier in the day, having (at least at the outset), a steady source of "nibbles" in response to my solicitation of offers of companionship, is like starring in my own situation comedy:
--The episodes are brief and the comic potential is enormous.
Just when you might have thought that I was hopelessly mired in clinical depression, let me hasten to reassure you: this evening I found a way to make myself laugh --and heartily.
--I signed up on "OK Cupid", one of the no-fee dating sites available on the Web.
First off, no sooner had I begun to post my photo and supply some personal data than I began receiving "indications of interest" as they used to call them in the brokerage business. The inquiries came from men aged 37 to 70. I was most interested in the former, to tell the truth: So I began a conversation with a young Indian man who "works all the time" and whose name on the site looked like a pun meaning "not interested".
When I asked about the "tag" he didn't seem to get the joke and went on to ask me whether I was interested in finding 1. a friend; 2. a friend with "benefits"; 3. a lover; or, 4. a husband. He went on to tell me he was sensual and a sensitive lover. "Too much information!" I thought, ending the conversation.
Another man, also in his late thirties, told me that I seemed "lovely" and to "ignore the barriers". The first line of his message read "Well, om, I like your photo."
When I asked whether he had deliberately written the world "om" in allusion to the mantra "Om"; he, too didn't get the joke and told me it was "an autotype". (What's an "autotype"?) When I asked "What barriers were you thinking of?" he told me "That you are not in my favorite lounge having a drink with me." I guess he was wishing we could surmount the barriers of space and time by vaporizing there. (--Perhaps he's a "Trekkie".)
The younger generation seems not to know how to flirt. Perhaps there are too many computer engineers among them, too preoccupied with how to get something to function to realize there are nuances to pay attention to when getting a relationship "off the ground". (There's another aerospace metaphor!)
Then there are the men who write from places impossibly far away: Arizona, Florida, Princeton, New Jersey. Eight million people live in New York, some of them are men who only like women and traveling as far as Brooklyn is how far I'll go to meet one of them.
Actually, at this point I can see myself having lots of conversations of five minutes maximum with men who use the site. Despite the fact that the Internet is an unequaled tool of communication, if those who use it aren't articulate, I at least, can't take it too seriously as a source of romantic adventures.
On the other hand, after having felt as morose as I did earlier in the day, having (at least at the outset), a steady source of "nibbles" in response to my solicitation of offers of companionship, is like starring in my own situation comedy:
--The episodes are brief and the comic potential is enormous.
Trying To Read The Signs
Sunday, February 16, 2014
I once described my personality as like a tuning fork: however lightly struck, it sounds. There's no phlegm in me --I think I'd be happier if there were. Instead, I know elation, but downcast moments, too. I long ago decided I would not medicate myself to alter my mood --it would be too boring. I believe that learning to know myself better is at least as good for me as anything that would dull my low moments' bite. So as long as I can forego drugs, I will.
Today I had an interesting experience in this regard. I passed a restless night, sleeping fitfully. So I could get a bit more rest, I played with the alarm to give myself a smaller margin of time to both walk Beau and get to Mass. I made it to Mass on time and after breakfast with a friend who also goes to the 8:15 a.m. service, dutifully gave Beau his first long walk of the day.
I tried to rest for an hour, but found myself lying on the bed, swamped by sad thoughts --which led to tears. I'd set the kitchen timer for the hour, it's soft "tick" a soothing constant. By the time the ticking stopped, I was ready to get ready to go out for the afternoon: I had a ticket for the last performance of "Twelfe Night" a triumphant rendering of the play by a same-sex cast headed by Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry.
I know the play well by now, but my great pleasure in the production compelled me to see it as many times as I could. On my way to the theatre, in my mind's eye, I could imagine the production's beginning: a Scottish actor, playing the Duke of Orsino, standing in his nightshirt, putting on purple while declaiming his love for the Countess Olivia, in deep mourning for her dead father and brother. I could also imagine Mark Rylance, appearing later, in white-face and red lipstick over elaborate Elizabethan costume, playing Olivia, mincing across the stage like a frenzied wind-up doll. To say nothing of the lovely young man who played Viola, disguising herself as "Sebastian", so as to obtain employment from the Duke. These characters and many others brought to life by the marvelous actors in the cast I can summon at will, although I thought seeing them in performance again on the last day the play would ever be performed in this production with this cast would be memorable.
So I walked towards the line of ticket holders entering early to watch the cast being costumed on stage, another of the production's wonderful conceits. As I approached the line I heard a voice behind me call "Extra ticket? Extra ticket?" I ignored the first appeal, but at the second, turned around behind me to see a middle-aged African-American man standing a few feet from the stage door. In less than five minutes, I had sold him my $25 ticket.
Once I had done so, I felt an enormous relief: I could go home and return to my cave now. I'd left the wash in the dryer, I could pick it up sooner, rather than later. I was also $25 richer. I'd identified some books of interest at the bookstore around the corner: I could now allow myself to buy them, if I chose. (The jury's still out on that.) I would be having neighbors come to watch "Downton Abbey" at nine o'clock, but because I'd be back at home three hours early I would not have to rush to walk Beau while setting up for my visitors.
In a word, I am getting to the point where, during a gloomy winter, I'd rather not be pressed for time than take in again a play I've loved. Not being pressed for time was more meaningful than the excitement of the play.
Learning to read the signs that I don't want what I used to want is becoming more and more important to me. When I don't feel happy, I can't drink to forget it --I only get sick. Mood-altering drugs aren't as appealing to me as chasing my emotions wherever they may lead. The days are sometimes hard: the minutes stretch by, my life seems a blank. However, I get rewarded for my efforts if I can find out one more thing about myself I didn't know before. Like a dog with its nose in the air, I want to pick up the scent of the track, then, having found it, follow it to its end.
I once described my personality as like a tuning fork: however lightly struck, it sounds. There's no phlegm in me --I think I'd be happier if there were. Instead, I know elation, but downcast moments, too. I long ago decided I would not medicate myself to alter my mood --it would be too boring. I believe that learning to know myself better is at least as good for me as anything that would dull my low moments' bite. So as long as I can forego drugs, I will.
Today I had an interesting experience in this regard. I passed a restless night, sleeping fitfully. So I could get a bit more rest, I played with the alarm to give myself a smaller margin of time to both walk Beau and get to Mass. I made it to Mass on time and after breakfast with a friend who also goes to the 8:15 a.m. service, dutifully gave Beau his first long walk of the day.
I tried to rest for an hour, but found myself lying on the bed, swamped by sad thoughts --which led to tears. I'd set the kitchen timer for the hour, it's soft "tick" a soothing constant. By the time the ticking stopped, I was ready to get ready to go out for the afternoon: I had a ticket for the last performance of "Twelfe Night" a triumphant rendering of the play by a same-sex cast headed by Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry.
I know the play well by now, but my great pleasure in the production compelled me to see it as many times as I could. On my way to the theatre, in my mind's eye, I could imagine the production's beginning: a Scottish actor, playing the Duke of Orsino, standing in his nightshirt, putting on purple while declaiming his love for the Countess Olivia, in deep mourning for her dead father and brother. I could also imagine Mark Rylance, appearing later, in white-face and red lipstick over elaborate Elizabethan costume, playing Olivia, mincing across the stage like a frenzied wind-up doll. To say nothing of the lovely young man who played Viola, disguising herself as "Sebastian", so as to obtain employment from the Duke. These characters and many others brought to life by the marvelous actors in the cast I can summon at will, although I thought seeing them in performance again on the last day the play would ever be performed in this production with this cast would be memorable.
So I walked towards the line of ticket holders entering early to watch the cast being costumed on stage, another of the production's wonderful conceits. As I approached the line I heard a voice behind me call "Extra ticket? Extra ticket?" I ignored the first appeal, but at the second, turned around behind me to see a middle-aged African-American man standing a few feet from the stage door. In less than five minutes, I had sold him my $25 ticket.
Once I had done so, I felt an enormous relief: I could go home and return to my cave now. I'd left the wash in the dryer, I could pick it up sooner, rather than later. I was also $25 richer. I'd identified some books of interest at the bookstore around the corner: I could now allow myself to buy them, if I chose. (The jury's still out on that.) I would be having neighbors come to watch "Downton Abbey" at nine o'clock, but because I'd be back at home three hours early I would not have to rush to walk Beau while setting up for my visitors.
In a word, I am getting to the point where, during a gloomy winter, I'd rather not be pressed for time than take in again a play I've loved. Not being pressed for time was more meaningful than the excitement of the play.
Learning to read the signs that I don't want what I used to want is becoming more and more important to me. When I don't feel happy, I can't drink to forget it --I only get sick. Mood-altering drugs aren't as appealing to me as chasing my emotions wherever they may lead. The days are sometimes hard: the minutes stretch by, my life seems a blank. However, I get rewarded for my efforts if I can find out one more thing about myself I didn't know before. Like a dog with its nose in the air, I want to pick up the scent of the track, then, having found it, follow it to its end.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Mid-Winter Carnival
Saturday, February 15, 2014
There were rose petals on the sidewalks this morning, leftovers from Valentine's Day. At first I thought they were lost dog boots, then realized the pink-red petals fell from bouquets of roses purchased to celebrate the day with a beloved.
It was 8:45 a.m. when Beau and I left the apartment, with the temperatures in the almost-balmy thirties. I had no plans for the day, but thought a trip to Central Park was in order: the last time we attempted it, in a snowstorm, we got no further than Central Park's northern border. Today the paths would be more accessible and I thought I'd enjoy looking at the vitrines on Madison Avenue.
It was treacherous walking along the Harlem Meer, lots of "black ice" making passage along the pond a constant test of balance. In the middle of the Meer, a flock of a dozen Canada geese were enjoying being far beyond the reach of man or dog.
Beau and I trudged on to the Vanderbilt Garden then towards the East Meadow and the former bridle path around the Reservoir. At the Engineer's Gate, where the running path around the reservoir is easily broached, there were already runners warming up and a table of cookies set up for them by Road Runners, whose headquarters are down the street. The runners weren't the only ones in the area, though: there were plenty of people dressed for the weather walking their dogs, as well as individual walkers and pairs of tourists.
We took the road that winds around the back of the Metropolitan Museum of Art towards the Egyptian obelisk and from there headed to the Conservatory Pond. When I was a seventh grader at Hunter College High School, I had a job picking up a first grader named Susie Rupp at P.S. 6 on Madison and 81st Street and bringing her home to the brownstone she lived in with her parents and new baby brother on 74th between Fifth and Madison. On my way home, I'd often pass the Conservatory Pond, where small sailboats held sway amid the nannies, children and mothers. Today the pond was frozen solid, although the café was open and attracting trade.
We reached the Bethesda Fountain, where a large high school group from the Midwest was taking photographs. One intrepid young man scaled the fountain, the better to be photographed wearing his long wool overcoat and brimmed hat. In the Bethesda Arcade the Minton tiles were gleaming and a group of young black hymn singers were taking advantage of the acoustic to solicit contributions and perhaps, sell a few copies of their CD.
Beau and I made our way to the Bandshell, where another group of teenagers were belting out "The Star Spangled Banner" before starting a snow fight. We walked north: On the slopes there were children and parents everywhere, sledding. At all the entrances we passed, children and parents continued to enter the park, brightly colored ski gear of every sort contrasting with the color of the sleds they carried. It was a mid-winter carnival: circular purple plastic "trash can" sleds, forest green lozenges, more traditional wooden sleds with metal runners painted red.
Back on Broadway, everyone looked a bit less enthusiastic about winter than the dog owners, tourists and sledders. At 10:30 a.m. it began snowing, little flurries which had become good sized ones by 11:00 a.m. Beau and I walked all the way home, arriving by 12:15 p.m., three and a half hours later. If I hadn't made myself do it, I'd have been miserable the entire day. My exertions in the snow-covered park more than made up for not having seen Madison Avenue's vitrines.
I once read that when Warren Beatty and Madonna were dating, he observed that her mania for exercise was nothing more than a cover for depression. His advice to her was to allow herself to experience it. I think Warren was wrong.
There were rose petals on the sidewalks this morning, leftovers from Valentine's Day. At first I thought they were lost dog boots, then realized the pink-red petals fell from bouquets of roses purchased to celebrate the day with a beloved.
It was 8:45 a.m. when Beau and I left the apartment, with the temperatures in the almost-balmy thirties. I had no plans for the day, but thought a trip to Central Park was in order: the last time we attempted it, in a snowstorm, we got no further than Central Park's northern border. Today the paths would be more accessible and I thought I'd enjoy looking at the vitrines on Madison Avenue.
It was treacherous walking along the Harlem Meer, lots of "black ice" making passage along the pond a constant test of balance. In the middle of the Meer, a flock of a dozen Canada geese were enjoying being far beyond the reach of man or dog.
Beau and I trudged on to the Vanderbilt Garden then towards the East Meadow and the former bridle path around the Reservoir. At the Engineer's Gate, where the running path around the reservoir is easily broached, there were already runners warming up and a table of cookies set up for them by Road Runners, whose headquarters are down the street. The runners weren't the only ones in the area, though: there were plenty of people dressed for the weather walking their dogs, as well as individual walkers and pairs of tourists.
We took the road that winds around the back of the Metropolitan Museum of Art towards the Egyptian obelisk and from there headed to the Conservatory Pond. When I was a seventh grader at Hunter College High School, I had a job picking up a first grader named Susie Rupp at P.S. 6 on Madison and 81st Street and bringing her home to the brownstone she lived in with her parents and new baby brother on 74th between Fifth and Madison. On my way home, I'd often pass the Conservatory Pond, where small sailboats held sway amid the nannies, children and mothers. Today the pond was frozen solid, although the café was open and attracting trade.
We reached the Bethesda Fountain, where a large high school group from the Midwest was taking photographs. One intrepid young man scaled the fountain, the better to be photographed wearing his long wool overcoat and brimmed hat. In the Bethesda Arcade the Minton tiles were gleaming and a group of young black hymn singers were taking advantage of the acoustic to solicit contributions and perhaps, sell a few copies of their CD.
Beau and I made our way to the Bandshell, where another group of teenagers were belting out "The Star Spangled Banner" before starting a snow fight. We walked north: On the slopes there were children and parents everywhere, sledding. At all the entrances we passed, children and parents continued to enter the park, brightly colored ski gear of every sort contrasting with the color of the sleds they carried. It was a mid-winter carnival: circular purple plastic "trash can" sleds, forest green lozenges, more traditional wooden sleds with metal runners painted red.
Back on Broadway, everyone looked a bit less enthusiastic about winter than the dog owners, tourists and sledders. At 10:30 a.m. it began snowing, little flurries which had become good sized ones by 11:00 a.m. Beau and I walked all the way home, arriving by 12:15 p.m., three and a half hours later. If I hadn't made myself do it, I'd have been miserable the entire day. My exertions in the snow-covered park more than made up for not having seen Madison Avenue's vitrines.
I once read that when Warren Beatty and Madonna were dating, he observed that her mania for exercise was nothing more than a cover for depression. His advice to her was to allow herself to experience it. I think Warren was wrong.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Frugality and Generosity
Friday, February 14, 2014
Henry David Thoreau, the Transcendentalist thinker who wrote Walden, celebrates frugality. His ideas caught on and have inspired generations of the would-be self-reliant, including me. Thoreau essentially proposed that we make our lives simpler so that they could be more meaningful, inner fulfillment replacing the quest for things, status and riches. Of course, you have to be in a position to choose, rather than be compelled to give up things to find appreciation in a simpler life: if you've always struggled to meet basic needs, the wisdom of Thoreau's philosophy may not be as apparent as it was to him.
Emerson, another Transcendentalist, wrote an essay, "Self-Reliance", and warned "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes". The warning seems, at first reading, more practical than philosophic: if, at your own expense, you have to make an investment in a completely new wardrobe in order to take up a project, you probably won't recoup it if the business fails. However, there's also a suggestion that using clothes to change the way you look to the world is inherently suspect, that it involves deception --not just of the world, but perhaps of yourself. The axiom is not a prohibition, but means to strike a cautionary note against frippery.
Ascetic religious orders have long practiced asceticism --an extreme form of frugality-- in their mode of living. Stripping away all the externals is supposed to unclutter the mind and spirit, the better to know the divine. Anyone who has ever spent any time doing the Buddhist practice of za-zen, sitting in meditation on a bare floor for a long practice, trying to empty the mind of thoughts; or anyone who has ever said a series of rosaries, knows that it is not easy, even with the best will in the world, to reach a state of inner peacefulness in the face of our restless minds and hearts. The inner release some faiths call "grace" is not easily won, or willed.
Frugality in daily life is a capacity that can be developed, although I know that, for myself, I veer towards it only to want to go in the other direction after a while. I can cook a pot of pasta and live on it for two days, but by the third, I want to enjoy richer foods. I can turn down restaurant invitations, but when neighbors and I organize a potluck, I want to bring a good bottle of Bordeaux, not mineral water.
The French will speak of a glass of champagne as "lifting the spirits" (faire remoter la morale). It doesn't work for everyone, though. Sometimes it lifts them temporarily only to bring them crashing down again, requiring a re-administration of the dose in larger numbers. And sometimes it seems nothing could possibly make better the inner forlornness many of us live with, day-in-and-day out, whether because we're sick of the lousy weather (count me among that group this winter); or for deeper, more intractable reasons.
For most of us the life we have to lead is as good a life as we're going to have --there's no fairy godmother to whisk us away to a life less ordinary. We have to find a compromise between despair and dumb optimism. (Which reminds me that a study done a few years ago found that optimists' assessments of facts were more unrealistic than those of depressives, whose assessments were largely correct.) We crawl through a dark tunnel, life, feeling our way as we go, sometimes seeing, in the far distance, enough light to move forward rapidly towards our goal --greater advancement through the tunnel-- and at other times learning we've taken a wrong turn and have to return to the last place where we were sure of our direction. Then sometimes, we think we've taken a wrong turn, which turns out to be a right one.
All we can do is try not to overburden ourselves with paraphernalia that does not serve to move us forward. Some burdens we have to carry: the child we brought into the world, the sick parent or spouse. The Transcendentalists (some of whom read the foundational texts of Eastern religions and were inspired by them) recognized that frugality in the outward modes of living can reap inner rewards more valuable than the material things foregone, an inner clarity and calm which translates into generosity, the antithesis of frugality.
I can articulate the concept, but living it is another story. Emotional generosity can be difficult for me --it's easier to be frugal with my feelings than open-handed. Growing up it was essential to discipline my emotions (of which I had more than my share) to get past them. Now that I'm at the other end of life's curve, the habit of emotional restraint can sometimes lead me to be less charitable towards others. The discipline of daily life this season --having to make an extra, prolonged effort to gird the body to face the elements, staying in more than going out-- has tested me. At home, writing here, settled for the night, I heard the phone ring: it was a neighbor who has helped me in the past, I could see from the phone's screen. I didn't want to interrupt my routine and was going to let the answering machine stand in for me, when I realized how cheap I was being with my heart. I took the call: The person on the other end was generously returning mine of earlier today after a long day shoveling out cars stuck in the snow, something he has no choice but to do to make ends meet.
Let it be a lesson to me.
Henry David Thoreau, the Transcendentalist thinker who wrote Walden, celebrates frugality. His ideas caught on and have inspired generations of the would-be self-reliant, including me. Thoreau essentially proposed that we make our lives simpler so that they could be more meaningful, inner fulfillment replacing the quest for things, status and riches. Of course, you have to be in a position to choose, rather than be compelled to give up things to find appreciation in a simpler life: if you've always struggled to meet basic needs, the wisdom of Thoreau's philosophy may not be as apparent as it was to him.
Emerson, another Transcendentalist, wrote an essay, "Self-Reliance", and warned "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes". The warning seems, at first reading, more practical than philosophic: if, at your own expense, you have to make an investment in a completely new wardrobe in order to take up a project, you probably won't recoup it if the business fails. However, there's also a suggestion that using clothes to change the way you look to the world is inherently suspect, that it involves deception --not just of the world, but perhaps of yourself. The axiom is not a prohibition, but means to strike a cautionary note against frippery.
Ascetic religious orders have long practiced asceticism --an extreme form of frugality-- in their mode of living. Stripping away all the externals is supposed to unclutter the mind and spirit, the better to know the divine. Anyone who has ever spent any time doing the Buddhist practice of za-zen, sitting in meditation on a bare floor for a long practice, trying to empty the mind of thoughts; or anyone who has ever said a series of rosaries, knows that it is not easy, even with the best will in the world, to reach a state of inner peacefulness in the face of our restless minds and hearts. The inner release some faiths call "grace" is not easily won, or willed.
Frugality in daily life is a capacity that can be developed, although I know that, for myself, I veer towards it only to want to go in the other direction after a while. I can cook a pot of pasta and live on it for two days, but by the third, I want to enjoy richer foods. I can turn down restaurant invitations, but when neighbors and I organize a potluck, I want to bring a good bottle of Bordeaux, not mineral water.
The French will speak of a glass of champagne as "lifting the spirits" (faire remoter la morale). It doesn't work for everyone, though. Sometimes it lifts them temporarily only to bring them crashing down again, requiring a re-administration of the dose in larger numbers. And sometimes it seems nothing could possibly make better the inner forlornness many of us live with, day-in-and-day out, whether because we're sick of the lousy weather (count me among that group this winter); or for deeper, more intractable reasons.
For most of us the life we have to lead is as good a life as we're going to have --there's no fairy godmother to whisk us away to a life less ordinary. We have to find a compromise between despair and dumb optimism. (Which reminds me that a study done a few years ago found that optimists' assessments of facts were more unrealistic than those of depressives, whose assessments were largely correct.) We crawl through a dark tunnel, life, feeling our way as we go, sometimes seeing, in the far distance, enough light to move forward rapidly towards our goal --greater advancement through the tunnel-- and at other times learning we've taken a wrong turn and have to return to the last place where we were sure of our direction. Then sometimes, we think we've taken a wrong turn, which turns out to be a right one.
All we can do is try not to overburden ourselves with paraphernalia that does not serve to move us forward. Some burdens we have to carry: the child we brought into the world, the sick parent or spouse. The Transcendentalists (some of whom read the foundational texts of Eastern religions and were inspired by them) recognized that frugality in the outward modes of living can reap inner rewards more valuable than the material things foregone, an inner clarity and calm which translates into generosity, the antithesis of frugality.
I can articulate the concept, but living it is another story. Emotional generosity can be difficult for me --it's easier to be frugal with my feelings than open-handed. Growing up it was essential to discipline my emotions (of which I had more than my share) to get past them. Now that I'm at the other end of life's curve, the habit of emotional restraint can sometimes lead me to be less charitable towards others. The discipline of daily life this season --having to make an extra, prolonged effort to gird the body to face the elements, staying in more than going out-- has tested me. At home, writing here, settled for the night, I heard the phone ring: it was a neighbor who has helped me in the past, I could see from the phone's screen. I didn't want to interrupt my routine and was going to let the answering machine stand in for me, when I realized how cheap I was being with my heart. I took the call: The person on the other end was generously returning mine of earlier today after a long day shoveling out cars stuck in the snow, something he has no choice but to do to make ends meet.
Let it be a lesson to me.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Facing Facts
February 13, 2014
Estragon: I can't go on like this.
Estragon: I can't go on like this.
Vladimir: That's what you think.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting For Godot
Last night I did all the laundry. I washed Beau's coat, leash and blanket, my warmest gloves, my bathrobe and the accumulated week's worth of workout wear, socks and dainties. I wanted to go for another "spinning" class this morning at 9:30 a.m., reasoning that, with 8"-12" of snow expected to fall by midnight tonight, if I didn't force myself to be active, I'd give way to depression.
So I went to bed early, and awoke a few minutes before seven, in more than enough time to exit with Beau and head for Riverside Park in a snowstorm. The flakes were fat as golf balls and they felt soft as fur. Dogs and owners, while not out in droves, were numerous enough to, again --on the occasion of the season's ninth snowstorm-- attest to the hardiness of the neighborhood's dog owners. Beau and I tromped through the piles of snow to the dog run, where Maurice, a tall bass viol player, was tending to an elderly Shetland sheepdog; and a lady (whose name I didn't catch), to "Mocha", her labra-doodle. Beau and Mocha took to each other on sight, roughhousing, rolling on the fresh snow, bounding and chasing each other all over the run. Only when Mocha managed to pull Beau's coat off did he back off and run to a corner. Safely out of harm's way there, he waited for me to retrieve his coat and take him home, which he made a "beeline" for once we were out of the run.
Having made it home early, I made it to the "spinning" class on time, leaving Beau behind in his crate, chewing on a treat. "Double header!" cried the instructor when she saw me, recognizing me from the day before. As we started the warm-up cycle she announced, "I like to match up the music to the class. So today, our theme is going to be 'love'!"
I groaned inwardly --but then, I don't pay attention to the instructors, whatever they say. I pedal at the best pace I can throughout the forty-five minutes of class, just happy I work up a sweat. The teacher calls "Can we push it harder?" as the pace escalates in the hill-climbing segment. As other members of the class --more team-spirited than I-- shout back "Yeah!", I am content to look down at my legs and pedal in time to the music, my thoughts my own, the class time going pretty quickly. When I'm through, thankfully, I do have the sense that I've fought back against the old ennui.
Because so many of us become reclusive in the face of inclement weather in winter, curtailing our social events and staying home, it's easy to let sloth take over. "I can't go on --I'll go on" often sums up my state of mind, life seeming more a matter of marking time than an adventure. My late husband, Bill, always thought of our relationship as one, so with Valentine's Day tomorrow, perhaps it's not surprising that lately, it feels as though the air has gone out of my balloon.
To bring the subject to Bill, one of the Valentine's Day cards he gave me featured a still from "City Lights", the silent film Charlie Chaplin made with the teenaged Claire Bloom. Chaplin is Everyman in love --unprepossessing, doing his best to win the heart of the beautiful Bloom by giving her a blossom, which she takes, shyly, sealing their love. "The adventure continues" Bill wrote on the inside of the card. It was what he always penned in his Valentine's Day cards to me, year after year.
Now it's almost three years since his death May 13, 2011. I'll never know what he would have looked like as he aged, although I keep aging. This winter I've lines in my face I spent forty years keeping at bay: they came over my face all at once, deep lines spread along my forehead. No amount of moisturizer or oil will make them disappear. I have to face facts: I'm sixty.
And at sixty, I meet all my obligations, I think I'm a good neighbor and I sleep well at night now. Bringing Beauregard into my life has imposed a discipline onto it I would not necessarily have exerted on my own. It's a discipline I'm coming to like, although it restricts my life. Beauregard demands that I not stay out all night, or relegate his care to others --which leads to my staying home more evenings than not. So I can no longer experience the excitement of dinner and a movie or a play or show, but I fall asleep sooner and sleep through the night. Life is simpler, and calmer.
Beau came into my life on November 13 of last year. In proof of the effect he's had on me, below, I publish the draft of a posting I began on November 7, but never made public. I'd entitled it In the Wee Small Hours Of The Morning:
The lyric above, made famous by Frank Sinatra, is my theme song tonight. Just substitute the gender, and you have it.
It doesn't make a lot of sense, it's more than two and a half years and I've almost forgotten, but just when I think I'll have an uneventful night, the blank, black hours stretch out across my consciousness and flagellate my spirits. It's a good thing that, as my life stands now, I rarely have to be in a specific place early in the morning, as I can't predict when I'll fall asleep or that I'll sleep through the night. I am blessed, though, to be able to sleep late enough, whenever I get to sleep.
When I awake, purged of the emotions that beset me, I can return to my routines. Churchill spoke of a "black dog", in describing his depressions: mine nips at my heels; fortunately, it doesn't overpower me. I have always been lucky enough to know that however bad my gloom, I know it won't last forever.
I'm not a masochist, and I don't think I have an "unconquerable" soul, to quote "Invictus". I have changed from the days when I was teenager and an undergraduate, though. Then, I used to think that I had to go through walls to come out on the other side of a besetting funk. Now, rather than permit agitation to take hold alongside the "blues", I give in to the moment in all its misery, but focus on not reacting to it. And I get through the hours.
Beau came into my life on November 13 of last year. In proof of the effect he's had on me, below, I publish the draft of a posting I began on November 7, but never made public. I'd entitled it In the Wee Small Hours Of The Morning:
November 7, 2013
In the wee small hours of the morning
While the whole wide world is fast asleep
You lie awake and think about the girl
And never ever think of counting sheep
When your lonely heart has learned it's lesson
Youd be hers if only she would call
In the wee small hours of the morning
That's the time you miss her most of all
The lyric above, made famous by Frank Sinatra, is my theme song tonight. Just substitute the gender, and you have it.
It doesn't make a lot of sense, it's more than two and a half years and I've almost forgotten, but just when I think I'll have an uneventful night, the blank, black hours stretch out across my consciousness and flagellate my spirits. It's a good thing that, as my life stands now, I rarely have to be in a specific place early in the morning, as I can't predict when I'll fall asleep or that I'll sleep through the night. I am blessed, though, to be able to sleep late enough, whenever I get to sleep.
When I awake, purged of the emotions that beset me, I can return to my routines. Churchill spoke of a "black dog", in describing his depressions: mine nips at my heels; fortunately, it doesn't overpower me. I have always been lucky enough to know that however bad my gloom, I know it won't last forever.
I'm not a masochist, and I don't think I have an "unconquerable" soul, to quote "Invictus". I have changed from the days when I was teenager and an undergraduate, though. Then, I used to think that I had to go through walls to come out on the other side of a besetting funk. Now, rather than permit agitation to take hold alongside the "blues", I give in to the moment in all its misery, but focus on not reacting to it. And I get through the hours.
-------------------------------
So, thanks to Beau perhaps I'll have no more adventures, but I'm at peace. And I can go on. --And I know Bill would have loved him.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Westminster 1 and 2
February 11, 2014
Watching the "Best of Breed" judging at Westminster is like being at a Superbowl of canine teams: you start with many entrants, then watch them narrowed down across the group categories: Sporting Group, Hound Group, Toy Group, Non-Working Group, Herding Group, Terrier Group, Working Group. Spaniels are Sporting Group dogs, by the way, judged today.
Yesterday I met a former vendor at Westminster, a maker of equestrian blankets for "turnout", exercise of horses in paddocks, who I'd invited to join me for the morning. She had made me a skirt of the same waxed cotton fabric Barbour jackets are made of, a perfect fabric for a skirt to walk dogs in in rough weather --and to wear to Westminster. She didn't take a vendor's spot at the show this year because the price of the booths doubled between last year and this. Yesterday we walked through the show, which she enjoyed thoroughly, never having had the chance to see it before.
We met a lovely woman showing a Pyreneen Shepherd, a dog that looks like the proverbial "shaggy dog", but actually hails from the steep mountains that divide Spain from the rest of Europe. Like so many of the women who show up for Westminster, she is rotund. I don't know why so many of the women who own and show dogs are obese, but they are, without question, seriously overweight. Their dogs, on the other hand, are in perfect condition.
Today I had two missions at Westminster: 1. to see the Boykin Spaniels judged at 10:00 a.m.in Ring 6 a Pier 90; and, 2. to meet a friend for the judging of the West Highland Terriers ("Westies") at 12:30 p.m.. The show is so big that two buildings, attached to Piers 90 and 92, are needed. Pier 90 has the most activity, being where the vendors are located, as well as the American Kennel Club, the national organization; and the Westminster Kennel Club, which organizes the show.
I left the house at 9:15 a.m., having given Beau a 45 minute walk and left him with a pig's ear. I gave my house keys to Peter, my next door neighbor, who is both bothered by Beau's barking when left alone and willing to visit him to still it. I made it to Pier 92 just in time to catch the judging of the Boykins and to grab a seat in the front row next to another heavy-set woman showing her Field Spaniel, which was judged just before the Boykins.
This lady, "Corkie", lives in Chicago and drove here to have "Petey", her Field Spaniel shown. She took photos of the Field Spaniels shown throughout the judging and cheered for her dog's opponents as well as for her own. She was a perfect example of the gracious contestant: to have been invited to Westminster her dog had to rack up a certain number of points. To her, that was accomplishment enough and made her gracious. Her dog took "Best of Select", 4th place, and she was happy. She lives with three Field Spaniels and one Curly-Coated retriever in a house with half an acre of land. All her Field Spaniels are named after sandwiches: Reuben, Colby, Pastrami.
Judging the West Highland Terriers, which followed the Cairn and the Skyes, was Dr. Deen, a tall, elderly and portly Canadian gentleman in a three-piece suit and green-patterned bow tie. He is expert on all three terrier breeds and wears his expertise lightly: when I crossed paths with him in the elevator after the last of the judging, I asked --prefacing my question with a confession of abject ignorance-- how many criteria he took into account in judging. He answered me trenchantly:
"First, I look for how 'true to type' they are. Sometimes it's hard, because there isn't one dog that fulfills the type for the breed. Today it was easier: there were three or four "typey" dogs, so I could make distinctions from there."
Any dog that is at Westminster has to have racked up a certain number of points by winning at dog shows earlier in the year. There are all sorts of awards and a point system I have yet to figure out. What is clear is that those who show their dogs have a passion for doing so. It's an expensive game, with it costing as much as $100,000 to campaign a dog for Westminster. The participants within a breed all know each other and know what their dog's chances are, pretty much. When a particular dog won, I often heard the owner of a competitor say "Yup, the winner" --or words to that effect. Some were breeder-owner-trainers, but most dogs were shown by professional trainers.
I think it is a kind of addiction to show dogs, like gambling. It is an obsessive pursuit which requires rearrangement of schedules to a degree comparable only to having a child that wants to compete for the Olympics. -Except that there's no outside funding for it.
My own experience of watching the Boykins judged confirmed for me my choice of Beauregard as a pet --while simultaneously making me feel that my little friend was every bit the equal of any of the winners-- and grateful I didn't have to put him up to prove it.
Watching the "Best of Breed" judging at Westminster is like being at a Superbowl of canine teams: you start with many entrants, then watch them narrowed down across the group categories: Sporting Group, Hound Group, Toy Group, Non-Working Group, Herding Group, Terrier Group, Working Group. Spaniels are Sporting Group dogs, by the way, judged today.
Yesterday I met a former vendor at Westminster, a maker of equestrian blankets for "turnout", exercise of horses in paddocks, who I'd invited to join me for the morning. She had made me a skirt of the same waxed cotton fabric Barbour jackets are made of, a perfect fabric for a skirt to walk dogs in in rough weather --and to wear to Westminster. She didn't take a vendor's spot at the show this year because the price of the booths doubled between last year and this. Yesterday we walked through the show, which she enjoyed thoroughly, never having had the chance to see it before.
We met a lovely woman showing a Pyreneen Shepherd, a dog that looks like the proverbial "shaggy dog", but actually hails from the steep mountains that divide Spain from the rest of Europe. Like so many of the women who show up for Westminster, she is rotund. I don't know why so many of the women who own and show dogs are obese, but they are, without question, seriously overweight. Their dogs, on the other hand, are in perfect condition.
Today I had two missions at Westminster: 1. to see the Boykin Spaniels judged at 10:00 a.m.in Ring 6 a Pier 90; and, 2. to meet a friend for the judging of the West Highland Terriers ("Westies") at 12:30 p.m.. The show is so big that two buildings, attached to Piers 90 and 92, are needed. Pier 90 has the most activity, being where the vendors are located, as well as the American Kennel Club, the national organization; and the Westminster Kennel Club, which organizes the show.
I left the house at 9:15 a.m., having given Beau a 45 minute walk and left him with a pig's ear. I gave my house keys to Peter, my next door neighbor, who is both bothered by Beau's barking when left alone and willing to visit him to still it. I made it to Pier 92 just in time to catch the judging of the Boykins and to grab a seat in the front row next to another heavy-set woman showing her Field Spaniel, which was judged just before the Boykins.
This lady, "Corkie", lives in Chicago and drove here to have "Petey", her Field Spaniel shown. She took photos of the Field Spaniels shown throughout the judging and cheered for her dog's opponents as well as for her own. She was a perfect example of the gracious contestant: to have been invited to Westminster her dog had to rack up a certain number of points. To her, that was accomplishment enough and made her gracious. Her dog took "Best of Select", 4th place, and she was happy. She lives with three Field Spaniels and one Curly-Coated retriever in a house with half an acre of land. All her Field Spaniels are named after sandwiches: Reuben, Colby, Pastrami.
Judging the West Highland Terriers, which followed the Cairn and the Skyes, was Dr. Deen, a tall, elderly and portly Canadian gentleman in a three-piece suit and green-patterned bow tie. He is expert on all three terrier breeds and wears his expertise lightly: when I crossed paths with him in the elevator after the last of the judging, I asked --prefacing my question with a confession of abject ignorance-- how many criteria he took into account in judging. He answered me trenchantly:
"First, I look for how 'true to type' they are. Sometimes it's hard, because there isn't one dog that fulfills the type for the breed. Today it was easier: there were three or four "typey" dogs, so I could make distinctions from there."
Any dog that is at Westminster has to have racked up a certain number of points by winning at dog shows earlier in the year. There are all sorts of awards and a point system I have yet to figure out. What is clear is that those who show their dogs have a passion for doing so. It's an expensive game, with it costing as much as $100,000 to campaign a dog for Westminster. The participants within a breed all know each other and know what their dog's chances are, pretty much. When a particular dog won, I often heard the owner of a competitor say "Yup, the winner" --or words to that effect. Some were breeder-owner-trainers, but most dogs were shown by professional trainers.
I think it is a kind of addiction to show dogs, like gambling. It is an obsessive pursuit which requires rearrangement of schedules to a degree comparable only to having a child that wants to compete for the Olympics. -Except that there's no outside funding for it.
My own experience of watching the Boykins judged confirmed for me my choice of Beauregard as a pet --while simultaneously making me feel that my little friend was every bit the equal of any of the winners-- and grateful I didn't have to put him up to prove it.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Going to the Dogs: Westminster Weekend; "Barkfest"
February 9, 2014
Now that the Winter Antiques Show is done, the social calendar here focuses on Westminster and the associated events. Friday, the Pennsylvania Hotel (where the owners of many of the dogs showing at Westminster stay with their dogs) was host to "The Progressive Dog Show". the "Progressive" is host to "toy" dogs, the tiniest members of the dog species. It features dogs dressed up in all sorts of silly outfits, which no larger dog would be caught dead in. However, owners of toys are themselves a breed apart.
Yesterday, Saturday, was devoted to the first-ever "Masters' Agility Trials" at Pier 92, where dogs competing at Westminster are judged in their breed groups. The space was divided into two rings large enough for eight apparati testing agility to be positioned along the perimeter of each ring. They are: an open tunnel, a closed tunnel, a pause table, weave poles, an elevated walkway the dog approaches via a ramp, a seesaw, a tire jump and an A-frame. I watched toy dogs compete in the first trial of the day, which began just after noon, following the playing of the "Star Spangled Banner", which formally opens the show.
The first obstacle was the open tunnel, the last obstacle the "weave poles", a slalom of twelve poles for the competing dog to weave through. From start to finish, the dog and its trainer accompanied each other though the course, trying to finish each test as quickly and correctly as possible. The fastest dogs could do the course in under sixty seconds. They were mainly "Papillons", toy dogs with peaked ears that look like butterfly wings. Smart and swift, they flew through the tests, although the fastest dog of all was a rat terrier, not as pretty, but even faster -frighteningly fast if you're a rat.
This morning was "Barkfest", the annual benefit for the Rescue Fund of the American Kennel Club, sponsored by Bonham's, the English auction house. "Barkfest" is an opportunity for Bonham's to exhibit dog paintings to be auctioned the day after Westminster ends and simultaneously to support the activities of the Rescue Fund. I was extended an invitation this year and bought a ticket so I could bring Beauregard, who was a great hit. At one point, Beau was set upon by a pair of Italian Greyhound puppies not much older than he is. They were rampant, raising their spindly legs and bringing their tiny feet down on Beau's head: it was like being assaulted by butterflies. The activity of the greyhounds made little impression on Beau, who, when he'd had enough, sat down in front of them. --As he always does whenever he wants to make an excited dog calmer.
There were show people at "Barkfest". One woman was walking a champion Beagle around, asking the other beagle owners "Are you showing?" in a tone that suggested that if they were, she didn't think they were serious competition. There were poodles on display as well, along with a small brown and beige cocker spaniel shaved half way up, long-haired half-way down.
The strangest dog that attended was a black Xoloitzcuintli, a Mexican hairless of Mayan origin, tall and muscular. The owners, a mother and a teenaged daughter, delighted in repeating the name of the breed in the Mayan language, a tongue-twister which sounds like three separate words. With its jewel-like eyes, and peaked ears set in a triangular head over an athlete's body, the dog would give any potential assailant pause.
The paintings on exhibit were of especially good quality this year, mainly oil paintings and sketches of Springer Spaniels, Irish Setters, Foxhounds, and Dalmatians. Some of the images were full portraits of the dogs, others of the dogs' heads, and still others of the dogs hunting in the field. In Bonham's front window was an enormous painting of hunting dogs in a pack in the field large enough to grace a castle's hall --or a Fortune 100 company's boardroom. There was champagne and orange juice and pastries for the humans, biscuits and water for the dogs. You left with an enormous "goody bag" of treats, dog accessories, the catalogue of the exhibit and the latest Bonham's Magazine.
"Barkfest" started at 10:30 a.m. and we stayed about an hour. Beau and I walked home after, traversing the park in about an hour. Shortly after we got home, Beau settled himself comfortably in his bed and fell asleep for the afternoon. I am thinking of registering him for agility training --I'd like to see him this tired every day.
Now that the Winter Antiques Show is done, the social calendar here focuses on Westminster and the associated events. Friday, the Pennsylvania Hotel (where the owners of many of the dogs showing at Westminster stay with their dogs) was host to "The Progressive Dog Show". the "Progressive" is host to "toy" dogs, the tiniest members of the dog species. It features dogs dressed up in all sorts of silly outfits, which no larger dog would be caught dead in. However, owners of toys are themselves a breed apart.
Yesterday, Saturday, was devoted to the first-ever "Masters' Agility Trials" at Pier 92, where dogs competing at Westminster are judged in their breed groups. The space was divided into two rings large enough for eight apparati testing agility to be positioned along the perimeter of each ring. They are: an open tunnel, a closed tunnel, a pause table, weave poles, an elevated walkway the dog approaches via a ramp, a seesaw, a tire jump and an A-frame. I watched toy dogs compete in the first trial of the day, which began just after noon, following the playing of the "Star Spangled Banner", which formally opens the show.
The first obstacle was the open tunnel, the last obstacle the "weave poles", a slalom of twelve poles for the competing dog to weave through. From start to finish, the dog and its trainer accompanied each other though the course, trying to finish each test as quickly and correctly as possible. The fastest dogs could do the course in under sixty seconds. They were mainly "Papillons", toy dogs with peaked ears that look like butterfly wings. Smart and swift, they flew through the tests, although the fastest dog of all was a rat terrier, not as pretty, but even faster -frighteningly fast if you're a rat.
This morning was "Barkfest", the annual benefit for the Rescue Fund of the American Kennel Club, sponsored by Bonham's, the English auction house. "Barkfest" is an opportunity for Bonham's to exhibit dog paintings to be auctioned the day after Westminster ends and simultaneously to support the activities of the Rescue Fund. I was extended an invitation this year and bought a ticket so I could bring Beauregard, who was a great hit. At one point, Beau was set upon by a pair of Italian Greyhound puppies not much older than he is. They were rampant, raising their spindly legs and bringing their tiny feet down on Beau's head: it was like being assaulted by butterflies. The activity of the greyhounds made little impression on Beau, who, when he'd had enough, sat down in front of them. --As he always does whenever he wants to make an excited dog calmer.
There were show people at "Barkfest". One woman was walking a champion Beagle around, asking the other beagle owners "Are you showing?" in a tone that suggested that if they were, she didn't think they were serious competition. There were poodles on display as well, along with a small brown and beige cocker spaniel shaved half way up, long-haired half-way down.
The strangest dog that attended was a black Xoloitzcuintli, a Mexican hairless of Mayan origin, tall and muscular. The owners, a mother and a teenaged daughter, delighted in repeating the name of the breed in the Mayan language, a tongue-twister which sounds like three separate words. With its jewel-like eyes, and peaked ears set in a triangular head over an athlete's body, the dog would give any potential assailant pause.
The paintings on exhibit were of especially good quality this year, mainly oil paintings and sketches of Springer Spaniels, Irish Setters, Foxhounds, and Dalmatians. Some of the images were full portraits of the dogs, others of the dogs' heads, and still others of the dogs hunting in the field. In Bonham's front window was an enormous painting of hunting dogs in a pack in the field large enough to grace a castle's hall --or a Fortune 100 company's boardroom. There was champagne and orange juice and pastries for the humans, biscuits and water for the dogs. You left with an enormous "goody bag" of treats, dog accessories, the catalogue of the exhibit and the latest Bonham's Magazine.
"Barkfest" started at 10:30 a.m. and we stayed about an hour. Beau and I walked home after, traversing the park in about an hour. Shortly after we got home, Beau settled himself comfortably in his bed and fell asleep for the afternoon. I am thinking of registering him for agility training --I'd like to see him this tired every day.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Trench Foot, Doctor Zhivago and Ingmar Bergman's Fanny And Alexander
February 5, 2014
I think this is the eighth snowstorm to hit New York City, and we are only halfway through winter. As I wrestle with the boots I wear over two pairs of socks, I think about "trench foot", the mysterious condition that has cost so many soldiers parts of their feet in innumerable wars through history. Including World War I, the beginning of which, one hundred years ago, we mark this year. In cases of trench foot, dampness and unsanitary conditions are the main culprits, although not necessarily cold: trench foot can be found in temperatures as high as sixty degrees Farenheit (about sixteen degrees Celsius). Untreated, the skin and flesh start to decompose, leading to eventual loss of the toes and other parts of the feet. Not a pretty sight.
The sort of winter we're having harks back to the winters of my youth, when the New York tabloids would use their front pages for photos of pedestrians struggling with snow on their way to and from work, scaling curbs piled with several feet of it, wading through gutters groaning with water. Today there was a power outage at Columbus Circle that threw thousands off schedule: temperatures are expected to drop a bit over the next few days, making for lots of "black ice" and risky walking or driving; and there is a sixty percent chance of snow on Sunday. All across the Northeast, states and municipalities are running out of salt, an unheard of event.
New Yorkers are complaining a lot these days; everyone is exhausted from fighting the weather gods, although most of us have it pretty easy. In fact, I think we ought to take this long winter as an opportunity to ruminate on what life is like in the really cold parts of the state, like Buffalo, Rochester and Utica. Life is very different in these places: L.L. Bean, the outfitter from Maine, surely does a good business among the citizens of these cities. Practical considerations take first place, fashion second, when staying warm and dry are imperative. New York, with it's latitude near the same as Madrid's, can usually afford to elevate style over substance, thanks to its generally milder winters. That's a fact I appreciate more this winter.
What are the most famous movies to romanticize winter? To me they are Doctor Zhivago and Fanny and Alexander. When David Lean's Doctor Zhivago premiered in 1965, it inspired women's fashion designers to embrace the styles of the Russias: Cossack-type fur hats in fox, solid color blouses with balloon sleeves in heavy silks, Eurasian vests heavily embroidered and trimmed in braiding of gold; "maxi" skirts sweeping past the knees, worn with boots that climbed above the calves. Every young woman wanted to look like either Geraldine Chaplin --who played Zhivago's wife, Tanya-- or Julie Christie, who played his muse, Lara. The trend endured: Yves Saint Laurent did a particularly beautiful collection inspired by Russian themes in 1976, eleven years later; and in the same year, Jacqueline Onassis' first book as an editor at Random House, "In The Russian Style" also appeared.
What I think of first, though, when I think of Doctor Zhivago, is not the early scenes, in which these opulent styles figure, but the winter scenes in Varykino in the Ural Mountains, where Zhivago and Lara, hiding from the war raging around them, take refuge. Their lives are ones of meager subsistence in an ice-bound summer house. (Although it is at Varykino that Tonya, their soon-to-be orphaned love child, is conceived). Doctor Zhivago is a picture of profound love against the odds, based on Boris Pasternak's autobiographical novel of the same title. Half the beauty of Doctor Zhivago, the film, is its scenes of the Russian winter: snow crystals on the windows at Varykino magnified by Lean's lens, horse-drawn sleigh rides through fields of immaculate snow, everyone in bourgeois Moscow dressed in luxurious furs.
Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, originally a television series in Sweden cut down to the size of a feature-length movie, is another film about winter's joys. Much of the film takes place in the home of the Ekdahl family in Uppsala, modeled on Bergman's own. The scenes at the studio of the toy-maker who is a family friend, Isak Jacobi (played by Erland Josephson) are fantastic and wonderful, but it is the light-filled interior scenes at the Ekdahl's --amid the fine furniture, the crystal and the silver- that celebrate the sensual properties of everyday objects, the winter light glinting off them and making them resplendent.
Except that during winter in Uppsala (as in Sweden in general), there are only a few hours of sun every day during winter, when Apollo is at his weakest. Fanny and Alexander is really a film about how we romanticize our childhoods, even the bad parts. It is a beautiful film, but you can't take it as a travelogue of Uppsala in winter.
No, "trench foot", not Zhivago or Fanny, is a better reminder of winter's realities in the city.
--But what movie-loving New Yorker could live daily with the realization that, in the cold cities of the world, a good part of winter consists of inconveniences, alternating with fleeting glimpses of natural beauty immediately after a snowfall? In New York, we have to dream a better winter than that we know, as we trudge over the dirty snow and the slush, as we feel our feet dampen and our fingers go numb.
--After all, it's winter in New York City, not Stalingrad.
I think this is the eighth snowstorm to hit New York City, and we are only halfway through winter. As I wrestle with the boots I wear over two pairs of socks, I think about "trench foot", the mysterious condition that has cost so many soldiers parts of their feet in innumerable wars through history. Including World War I, the beginning of which, one hundred years ago, we mark this year. In cases of trench foot, dampness and unsanitary conditions are the main culprits, although not necessarily cold: trench foot can be found in temperatures as high as sixty degrees Farenheit (about sixteen degrees Celsius). Untreated, the skin and flesh start to decompose, leading to eventual loss of the toes and other parts of the feet. Not a pretty sight.
The sort of winter we're having harks back to the winters of my youth, when the New York tabloids would use their front pages for photos of pedestrians struggling with snow on their way to and from work, scaling curbs piled with several feet of it, wading through gutters groaning with water. Today there was a power outage at Columbus Circle that threw thousands off schedule: temperatures are expected to drop a bit over the next few days, making for lots of "black ice" and risky walking or driving; and there is a sixty percent chance of snow on Sunday. All across the Northeast, states and municipalities are running out of salt, an unheard of event.
New Yorkers are complaining a lot these days; everyone is exhausted from fighting the weather gods, although most of us have it pretty easy. In fact, I think we ought to take this long winter as an opportunity to ruminate on what life is like in the really cold parts of the state, like Buffalo, Rochester and Utica. Life is very different in these places: L.L. Bean, the outfitter from Maine, surely does a good business among the citizens of these cities. Practical considerations take first place, fashion second, when staying warm and dry are imperative. New York, with it's latitude near the same as Madrid's, can usually afford to elevate style over substance, thanks to its generally milder winters. That's a fact I appreciate more this winter.
What are the most famous movies to romanticize winter? To me they are Doctor Zhivago and Fanny and Alexander. When David Lean's Doctor Zhivago premiered in 1965, it inspired women's fashion designers to embrace the styles of the Russias: Cossack-type fur hats in fox, solid color blouses with balloon sleeves in heavy silks, Eurasian vests heavily embroidered and trimmed in braiding of gold; "maxi" skirts sweeping past the knees, worn with boots that climbed above the calves. Every young woman wanted to look like either Geraldine Chaplin --who played Zhivago's wife, Tanya-- or Julie Christie, who played his muse, Lara. The trend endured: Yves Saint Laurent did a particularly beautiful collection inspired by Russian themes in 1976, eleven years later; and in the same year, Jacqueline Onassis' first book as an editor at Random House, "In The Russian Style" also appeared.
What I think of first, though, when I think of Doctor Zhivago, is not the early scenes, in which these opulent styles figure, but the winter scenes in Varykino in the Ural Mountains, where Zhivago and Lara, hiding from the war raging around them, take refuge. Their lives are ones of meager subsistence in an ice-bound summer house. (Although it is at Varykino that Tonya, their soon-to-be orphaned love child, is conceived). Doctor Zhivago is a picture of profound love against the odds, based on Boris Pasternak's autobiographical novel of the same title. Half the beauty of Doctor Zhivago, the film, is its scenes of the Russian winter: snow crystals on the windows at Varykino magnified by Lean's lens, horse-drawn sleigh rides through fields of immaculate snow, everyone in bourgeois Moscow dressed in luxurious furs.
Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, originally a television series in Sweden cut down to the size of a feature-length movie, is another film about winter's joys. Much of the film takes place in the home of the Ekdahl family in Uppsala, modeled on Bergman's own. The scenes at the studio of the toy-maker who is a family friend, Isak Jacobi (played by Erland Josephson) are fantastic and wonderful, but it is the light-filled interior scenes at the Ekdahl's --amid the fine furniture, the crystal and the silver- that celebrate the sensual properties of everyday objects, the winter light glinting off them and making them resplendent.
Except that during winter in Uppsala (as in Sweden in general), there are only a few hours of sun every day during winter, when Apollo is at his weakest. Fanny and Alexander is really a film about how we romanticize our childhoods, even the bad parts. It is a beautiful film, but you can't take it as a travelogue of Uppsala in winter.
No, "trench foot", not Zhivago or Fanny, is a better reminder of winter's realities in the city.
--But what movie-loving New Yorker could live daily with the realization that, in the cold cities of the world, a good part of winter consists of inconveniences, alternating with fleeting glimpses of natural beauty immediately after a snowfall? In New York, we have to dream a better winter than that we know, as we trudge over the dirty snow and the slush, as we feel our feet dampen and our fingers go numb.
--After all, it's winter in New York City, not Stalingrad.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Gertrude and Alice Reconsidered
January 4, 2014
After yesterday's sad news regarding Philip Seymour Hoffmann, delving into the past via Gertrude and Alice, Janet Malcolm's 2007 consideration of the elusive Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas, was a welcome distraction. This "odd couple" --Stein the self-proclaimed literary genius, Toklas her handmaiden, were two Jewish women who lived out the German occupation of France there. "How?" is the question Malcolm raises.
For some of the baby boomer generation, Alice's name conjures up dim memories of Peter Sellers' 1968 movie, "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas", a box office bomb (17% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer poll) about what was then called "the counterculture". Indeed, Alice and Gertrude were icons of the counterculture, Gertrude a writer who reads like an an acrostic, Alice author of a fantastical cookbook with a recipe that calls for using a hypodermic syringe to inject orange juice into a marinating leg of lamb.
A lot of English literature students in the 60s and 70s carried around with them The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Stein's only bestseller, written in standard English and not an autobiography at all, but Stein's projection of her life with Alice. The book was successful enough for Stein to be invited to lecture about it in America, which she did, Toklas taking care of all the practical arrangements, as she always did.
When the Second World War broke out, Stein and Toklas refused to emigrate to neutral Switzerland and instead, moved to Culoz, a small village in the Ain département near its border with French Savoy and the Swiss border. There, Stein and Toklas sat out the war.
I wonder whether Stein's countercultural followers would have been quite as enthusiastic about her and her work had they known Stein was a conservative Republican and detested Franklin Delano Roosevelt; or that the reason she and Alice were unmolested in France was because of their friendship with a man with the last name of Faÿ, a collaborator and anti-Semite directly responsible for the deaths of numerous Freemasons, whom he was charged with identifying and persecuting. As a devoted admirer of Stein, Faÿ lobbied Petain to protect the stocky genius and her devoted lover. At the war's end, after Faÿ was imprisoned for war crimes, Stein and Toklas advocated for his release and even contributed funds that enabled him to make his escape from the prison into Switzerland. His closeness to Vichy never troubled them --neither woman ever identified herself --in conversation or writing-- as Jewish. They preferred, it seems, to think of themselves, individually, and as a couple, as somehow separate and apart from the class of people being exterminated in the camps.
I see Stein not as an avatar of literary modernism, but a pompous blowhard, an egomaniac whose money allowed her to indulge her fantasies of literary brilliance. This is a minority view in English Departments in the United States, although Stein is not taken up with the passion her most ardent admirers in the academy --three Stein scholars who meet with Malcolm in the course of her preparation of Gertrude and Alice-- think she deserves. They largely blame this on Leon Katz, a professor of dramaturgy at Yale who wrote a dissertation about Stein, but never published the book he planned to write based on his in-depth interviews with Toklas after Stein's death immediately after the war. (Toklas outlived Stein for two decades.)
Nonetheless, Katz' doctoral dissertation about what he learned from Toklas about life with Stein, throws a different light on the relationship Toklas spent her life after Stein's death mythologizing . But if you're interested, it is unnecessary to find Katz' thesis to distill the tidbits Katz unearthed: With Al Carmines, Katz wrote an opera about the two women, The Making Of Americans, that steals its title from Stein and doesn't stint the details.
Yet disclosure of the physical aspects of the conjugal life of the two women isn't half as amusing as the revelation that Toklas wasn't the pushover she played in public. In private, the two women engaged in sado-masochistic games; in front of their intimates, they fought like cats and dogs. So much for the connubial bliss of the literary trailblazer and her amanuensis.
Funnier though, is the revelation that Alice forced Gertrude to break off her friendship with Ernest Hemingway because --as Donald Sutherland, an intimate, wrote-- Alice was jealous of Hemingway's lust for the corpulent Gertrude:
I had heard that Hemingway had not infrequently said in conversation and once at least in a letter --that he had always wanted to lay her--
--A desire to which Sutherland, too, admits.
Who knew?
At her death, Stein left Toklas only a life estate in her most valuable property, the modernist art by Cezanne, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse and others. (The contents of their house in Paris, excepting the art, were looted by the Nazis.) The residuary estate was to go to the children of her brother Michael, to whom she was not close. (She became estranged from her brother Leo, to whom she had been closest --and with whom she began collecting-- when he failed to recognize her genius; and he, on his part, failed to develop his own.)
As a result of Stein's desire to see her property stay in the Stein family, Toklas spent her life after Stein's death in penury. And when she sold a few works on paper to pay bills, Michael's second wife, Roubina, contrived a suit to have the paintings taken away from Toklas before the old woman could despoil the estate. Arthritic and bedridden, accustomed to the best, Toklas was evicted from the home she had shared with Stein on rue de Christine and moved to a less dignified apartment on rue de la Convention. It was only thanks to Janet Flanner, Virgil Thomson and Doda Conrad --who raised funds for her care from friends of the couple and administered them for Toklas--that she avoided complete destitution.
Toklas died on March 6, 1987, aged 89, never aware that the careful façade of "life with a genius" she had built up had been betrayed by Leon Katz, who had tricked her into making confidences by pretending to already know their substance and lending a ready ear to Toklas' elaborations. As a result, we now know that, in her twenties, Stein had been infatuated with a May Bookstaver, whose rejection inspired Stein's autobiographical novel Q.E.D. --as well as a pathological jealousy on Toklas' part: At Toklas' insistence, Stein was forced to burn all Bookstavers' letters to her, as well as to extirpate the word "may", or "May", from Stanzas on Meditation, a book-length poem. "[M]ay" or "May" was replaced with less felicitous words each of the over 400 times it appeared in the original manuscript before Toklas was satisfied.
Until Katz made his disclosures, most assumed that Stein "wore the pants", as they used to say. Who knew? Then again, who would have thought that ungainly, corpulent Stein was "sexy", as Malcolm says. Or that the two women were self-denying Jews who took help from a collaborator and anti-Semite, Faÿ? And finally, that Toklas converted to Roman Catholicism after Stein's death, devoting herself to her new faith with such fervor that Donald Sutherland, for one, thought that if Stein hadn't limited Toklas to a life estate after Stein's death, the artworks would have gone to the Vatican?
In her last years, Toklas believed, as Catholics do, that she would be reunited with Stein. One can only wonder what Stein would have made of that. The many contradictions in Stein and Toklas' lives, their desires for literary glory, their attempts to tailor their joint reputation to suit their private vanities, probably consign them to a lesser place in the countercultural pantheon than they enjoyed in its heyday.
Literary fashions change: when I was in college, all my professors of English were disciples of the new criticism, a way of looking at literature --and poetry, in particular, that depended on close textual analysis alone. The waves that followed --postmodernism and anti-foundationalism--reject the idea of a "canon" of literature and emphasize the context in which the writer writes: his race, his religion, the country he grew up in, his sexual orientation, being inseparable from the work. Were Stein to be required reading in English departments, it's hard to know whether her technical innovations in written English would favorably overwhelm considerations of her moral obtuseness in the face of Nazism.
For someone who desired so ardently to be acknowledged for her brilliance in shattering the formal structures of the novel, the result is paradoxical. Because she did not have a novelists imagination, she broke down the language of the novel's discourse and used language in a new way. However, by doing so, she undermined the very tradition that might have fed the glory she sought --and left her private life --which by any measure, undermines her reputation --alone.
After yesterday's sad news regarding Philip Seymour Hoffmann, delving into the past via Gertrude and Alice, Janet Malcolm's 2007 consideration of the elusive Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas, was a welcome distraction. This "odd couple" --Stein the self-proclaimed literary genius, Toklas her handmaiden, were two Jewish women who lived out the German occupation of France there. "How?" is the question Malcolm raises.
For some of the baby boomer generation, Alice's name conjures up dim memories of Peter Sellers' 1968 movie, "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas", a box office bomb (17% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer poll) about what was then called "the counterculture". Indeed, Alice and Gertrude were icons of the counterculture, Gertrude a writer who reads like an an acrostic, Alice author of a fantastical cookbook with a recipe that calls for using a hypodermic syringe to inject orange juice into a marinating leg of lamb.
A lot of English literature students in the 60s and 70s carried around with them The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Stein's only bestseller, written in standard English and not an autobiography at all, but Stein's projection of her life with Alice. The book was successful enough for Stein to be invited to lecture about it in America, which she did, Toklas taking care of all the practical arrangements, as she always did.
When the Second World War broke out, Stein and Toklas refused to emigrate to neutral Switzerland and instead, moved to Culoz, a small village in the Ain département near its border with French Savoy and the Swiss border. There, Stein and Toklas sat out the war.
I wonder whether Stein's countercultural followers would have been quite as enthusiastic about her and her work had they known Stein was a conservative Republican and detested Franklin Delano Roosevelt; or that the reason she and Alice were unmolested in France was because of their friendship with a man with the last name of Faÿ, a collaborator and anti-Semite directly responsible for the deaths of numerous Freemasons, whom he was charged with identifying and persecuting. As a devoted admirer of Stein, Faÿ lobbied Petain to protect the stocky genius and her devoted lover. At the war's end, after Faÿ was imprisoned for war crimes, Stein and Toklas advocated for his release and even contributed funds that enabled him to make his escape from the prison into Switzerland. His closeness to Vichy never troubled them --neither woman ever identified herself --in conversation or writing-- as Jewish. They preferred, it seems, to think of themselves, individually, and as a couple, as somehow separate and apart from the class of people being exterminated in the camps.
I see Stein not as an avatar of literary modernism, but a pompous blowhard, an egomaniac whose money allowed her to indulge her fantasies of literary brilliance. This is a minority view in English Departments in the United States, although Stein is not taken up with the passion her most ardent admirers in the academy --three Stein scholars who meet with Malcolm in the course of her preparation of Gertrude and Alice-- think she deserves. They largely blame this on Leon Katz, a professor of dramaturgy at Yale who wrote a dissertation about Stein, but never published the book he planned to write based on his in-depth interviews with Toklas after Stein's death immediately after the war. (Toklas outlived Stein for two decades.)
Nonetheless, Katz' doctoral dissertation about what he learned from Toklas about life with Stein, throws a different light on the relationship Toklas spent her life after Stein's death mythologizing . But if you're interested, it is unnecessary to find Katz' thesis to distill the tidbits Katz unearthed: With Al Carmines, Katz wrote an opera about the two women, The Making Of Americans, that steals its title from Stein and doesn't stint the details.
Yet disclosure of the physical aspects of the conjugal life of the two women isn't half as amusing as the revelation that Toklas wasn't the pushover she played in public. In private, the two women engaged in sado-masochistic games; in front of their intimates, they fought like cats and dogs. So much for the connubial bliss of the literary trailblazer and her amanuensis.
Funnier though, is the revelation that Alice forced Gertrude to break off her friendship with Ernest Hemingway because --as Donald Sutherland, an intimate, wrote-- Alice was jealous of Hemingway's lust for the corpulent Gertrude:
I had heard that Hemingway had not infrequently said in conversation and once at least in a letter --that he had always wanted to lay her--
--A desire to which Sutherland, too, admits.
Who knew?
At her death, Stein left Toklas only a life estate in her most valuable property, the modernist art by Cezanne, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse and others. (The contents of their house in Paris, excepting the art, were looted by the Nazis.) The residuary estate was to go to the children of her brother Michael, to whom she was not close. (She became estranged from her brother Leo, to whom she had been closest --and with whom she began collecting-- when he failed to recognize her genius; and he, on his part, failed to develop his own.)
As a result of Stein's desire to see her property stay in the Stein family, Toklas spent her life after Stein's death in penury. And when she sold a few works on paper to pay bills, Michael's second wife, Roubina, contrived a suit to have the paintings taken away from Toklas before the old woman could despoil the estate. Arthritic and bedridden, accustomed to the best, Toklas was evicted from the home she had shared with Stein on rue de Christine and moved to a less dignified apartment on rue de la Convention. It was only thanks to Janet Flanner, Virgil Thomson and Doda Conrad --who raised funds for her care from friends of the couple and administered them for Toklas--that she avoided complete destitution.
Toklas died on March 6, 1987, aged 89, never aware that the careful façade of "life with a genius" she had built up had been betrayed by Leon Katz, who had tricked her into making confidences by pretending to already know their substance and lending a ready ear to Toklas' elaborations. As a result, we now know that, in her twenties, Stein had been infatuated with a May Bookstaver, whose rejection inspired Stein's autobiographical novel Q.E.D. --as well as a pathological jealousy on Toklas' part: At Toklas' insistence, Stein was forced to burn all Bookstavers' letters to her, as well as to extirpate the word "may", or "May", from Stanzas on Meditation, a book-length poem. "[M]ay" or "May" was replaced with less felicitous words each of the over 400 times it appeared in the original manuscript before Toklas was satisfied.
Until Katz made his disclosures, most assumed that Stein "wore the pants", as they used to say. Who knew? Then again, who would have thought that ungainly, corpulent Stein was "sexy", as Malcolm says. Or that the two women were self-denying Jews who took help from a collaborator and anti-Semite, Faÿ? And finally, that Toklas converted to Roman Catholicism after Stein's death, devoting herself to her new faith with such fervor that Donald Sutherland, for one, thought that if Stein hadn't limited Toklas to a life estate after Stein's death, the artworks would have gone to the Vatican?
In her last years, Toklas believed, as Catholics do, that she would be reunited with Stein. One can only wonder what Stein would have made of that. The many contradictions in Stein and Toklas' lives, their desires for literary glory, their attempts to tailor their joint reputation to suit their private vanities, probably consign them to a lesser place in the countercultural pantheon than they enjoyed in its heyday.
Literary fashions change: when I was in college, all my professors of English were disciples of the new criticism, a way of looking at literature --and poetry, in particular, that depended on close textual analysis alone. The waves that followed --postmodernism and anti-foundationalism--reject the idea of a "canon" of literature and emphasize the context in which the writer writes: his race, his religion, the country he grew up in, his sexual orientation, being inseparable from the work. Were Stein to be required reading in English departments, it's hard to know whether her technical innovations in written English would favorably overwhelm considerations of her moral obtuseness in the face of Nazism.
For someone who desired so ardently to be acknowledged for her brilliance in shattering the formal structures of the novel, the result is paradoxical. Because she did not have a novelists imagination, she broke down the language of the novel's discourse and used language in a new way. However, by doing so, she undermined the very tradition that might have fed the glory she sought --and left her private life --which by any measure, undermines her reputation --alone.
Philip Seymour Hoffmann, R.I.P.
January 4, 2014
I had just entered the subway and was on the platform, walking past the newsdealers as the train came in, when I caught the headline: Philip Seymour Hoffman OD. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" was my first response. Impelled to know more, I caught snatches of news as I travelled: that he had been found dead in his Bethune Street apartment, a needle still stuck in his arm, that he left behind three children, a boy ten years old and two younger sisters, that he had separated from their mother, a costume designer, three months ago.
As the day progressed, the picture filled itself in: he had been a heavy drug and alcohol user in his youth, but had stayed away from drugs for twenty years, then returned to them --with a vengeance: in his apartment there were seventy packages of Ace of Spades and Ace of Hearts brands of heroin, which may or may not be laced with Fentanyl, a man-made opiate many times stronger than that from Afghani poppies. There was also a large quantity of the painkiller Oxycontin.
The police are making inquiries as to who might have sold Hoffmann the drugs that led to his death. The inquiries ride the back of press attention, which will be persistent until the Medical Examiner's report is released, probably two to three months from now. A great talent wasted, three children fatherless, a grieving widow --in fact, if not in law-- are Hoffman's immediate legacy.
In a 2008 interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air he spoke of what it was like to be around alcohol after rehab, in an eerily predictive way:
People who don't have a problem with alcohol don't have a problem with alcohol. You know, they have their couple of glasses of wine and they go on their way. You know what I mean? And that's just the way it is. I am just not one of those people. So, it's-- you know, a couple of glasses of wine is not interesting to me at all. You know what I mean?…It's not a great pleasure for me to have a couple of glasses of wine. That just --that's kind of annoying…Do you know what I mean? LIke, why aren't you having the whole bottle?…That's much more pleasurable. So, to somebody who doesn't understand that, they just don't understand it.
Philip Seymour Hoffman's candid and articulate summation of what it is to be an addict applied, in his case, to any mind-altering drug he could come by, alcohol, pain-killers, heroin among them. In his Bethune Street neighborhood, it was well-known that in his last months he was an addict in the throes of his addiction. The intensity of it is what shocks: by the time he installed himself in the apartment --which was not far from the apartment he and his partner bought for themselves and their children-- he was a redliner, both snorting and injecting heroin. He was found in his underwear in his bathroom, a lonely man who had lost control of himself and left his family behind to "chase the dragon".
Because he was a notable, the police will, perhaps find the dealer who sold him the "bricks" of heroin. "Bricks" are a package of ten glassine envelopes --users tend to buy them individually, as money is, for them, usually a problem. In Hoffman's case, that was no bar to his enjoyment of his drugs of choice.
Which makes me wonder whether what his death may best stand for is the wisdom of not legalizing the use of more drugs. "Take the profit out of it and the cartels will be bankrupt", goes one argument. "Manage addicts' habits without forcing them to resort to crime to support it." If there's one lesson to be learned from Hoffmann's death spiral, it's that most addicts are like Hoffmann: there's no pleasure in moderation. Opportunities to consume to excess are prized: considerations of family, friends, talent, financial and personal ruin do not countervail the desire to indulge.
You might think me harsh, but I am not unfamiliar with the desire to overindulge --in alcohol, at least. I'm just fortunate enough to have a metabolism that is almost allergic to it, so overindulgence comes at a high price the next day. However, I cannot say that the Dionysian pleasures --alcohol, drugs, food-- have no attraction for me. We all want to forget ourselves from time to time, or to experience euphoria, to be transported to a place where our mind leaves us alone --at least for a while.
The trajectory of the second half of Hoffman's career will never be known to us, thanks to his unstoppable addiction and the person who enabled it. He was one of the greatest and most prolific actors of his generation, which sets him apart from the common run of man. However, a certain number of those "common men" will share with Hoffmann the same intractable attraction to illegal drugs. Before we think about legalizing more drugs, we might consider whether in doing so we are not enabling a new class of users who would not have indulged freely but for the new availability.
May he rest in peace.
I had just entered the subway and was on the platform, walking past the newsdealers as the train came in, when I caught the headline: Philip Seymour Hoffman OD. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" was my first response. Impelled to know more, I caught snatches of news as I travelled: that he had been found dead in his Bethune Street apartment, a needle still stuck in his arm, that he left behind three children, a boy ten years old and two younger sisters, that he had separated from their mother, a costume designer, three months ago.
As the day progressed, the picture filled itself in: he had been a heavy drug and alcohol user in his youth, but had stayed away from drugs for twenty years, then returned to them --with a vengeance: in his apartment there were seventy packages of Ace of Spades and Ace of Hearts brands of heroin, which may or may not be laced with Fentanyl, a man-made opiate many times stronger than that from Afghani poppies. There was also a large quantity of the painkiller Oxycontin.
The police are making inquiries as to who might have sold Hoffmann the drugs that led to his death. The inquiries ride the back of press attention, which will be persistent until the Medical Examiner's report is released, probably two to three months from now. A great talent wasted, three children fatherless, a grieving widow --in fact, if not in law-- are Hoffman's immediate legacy.
In a 2008 interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air he spoke of what it was like to be around alcohol after rehab, in an eerily predictive way:
People who don't have a problem with alcohol don't have a problem with alcohol. You know, they have their couple of glasses of wine and they go on their way. You know what I mean? And that's just the way it is. I am just not one of those people. So, it's-- you know, a couple of glasses of wine is not interesting to me at all. You know what I mean?…It's not a great pleasure for me to have a couple of glasses of wine. That just --that's kind of annoying…Do you know what I mean? LIke, why aren't you having the whole bottle?…That's much more pleasurable. So, to somebody who doesn't understand that, they just don't understand it.
Philip Seymour Hoffman's candid and articulate summation of what it is to be an addict applied, in his case, to any mind-altering drug he could come by, alcohol, pain-killers, heroin among them. In his Bethune Street neighborhood, it was well-known that in his last months he was an addict in the throes of his addiction. The intensity of it is what shocks: by the time he installed himself in the apartment --which was not far from the apartment he and his partner bought for themselves and their children-- he was a redliner, both snorting and injecting heroin. He was found in his underwear in his bathroom, a lonely man who had lost control of himself and left his family behind to "chase the dragon".
Because he was a notable, the police will, perhaps find the dealer who sold him the "bricks" of heroin. "Bricks" are a package of ten glassine envelopes --users tend to buy them individually, as money is, for them, usually a problem. In Hoffman's case, that was no bar to his enjoyment of his drugs of choice.
Which makes me wonder whether what his death may best stand for is the wisdom of not legalizing the use of more drugs. "Take the profit out of it and the cartels will be bankrupt", goes one argument. "Manage addicts' habits without forcing them to resort to crime to support it." If there's one lesson to be learned from Hoffmann's death spiral, it's that most addicts are like Hoffmann: there's no pleasure in moderation. Opportunities to consume to excess are prized: considerations of family, friends, talent, financial and personal ruin do not countervail the desire to indulge.
You might think me harsh, but I am not unfamiliar with the desire to overindulge --in alcohol, at least. I'm just fortunate enough to have a metabolism that is almost allergic to it, so overindulgence comes at a high price the next day. However, I cannot say that the Dionysian pleasures --alcohol, drugs, food-- have no attraction for me. We all want to forget ourselves from time to time, or to experience euphoria, to be transported to a place where our mind leaves us alone --at least for a while.
The trajectory of the second half of Hoffman's career will never be known to us, thanks to his unstoppable addiction and the person who enabled it. He was one of the greatest and most prolific actors of his generation, which sets him apart from the common run of man. However, a certain number of those "common men" will share with Hoffmann the same intractable attraction to illegal drugs. Before we think about legalizing more drugs, we might consider whether in doing so we are not enabling a new class of users who would not have indulged freely but for the new availability.
May he rest in peace.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Dog Blessings
February 3, 2014
Beau must be one of few dogs in the building in which I reside who likes to go out in the snow. As this is, by my count, the seventh snowfall since winter began and we are only about halfway through the season, this is a good thing. Beau has an appetite for the snow, is the best way I can describe it: he charges off into the white powder, bounding through it, seeking the deepest accumulations without so much as a nod to the cold. While my fingertips are near frostbite, Beau happily takes in the white all around.
I'm becoming an increasingly skeptical consumer of veterinary services. Today I heard a story about a vet who told the owner of a Schnauzer with a slight rash on its belly that what the dog had was "Schnauzer Crud". Looking the term up online, I see that what it is is "pimples" caused by blocked sebaceous glands, not too different from "acne" as it's called in humans.
The teller of the anecdote is the mother-in-law of a veterinarian who scoffed when she heard the term. The condition isn't likely to cause discomfort to the dog if he doesn't scratch it, and would only be a problem if the dog were being shown. It is, however, something to make a dog owner anxious, which a veterinarian can offer to test for and treat: ka-ching!
So I'm going to go to PETCO and start setting up the vaccinations for Beau there, which will cost less than $100, versus the almost $1,000 I've spent so far. I'm told it is more difficult to be accepted to veterinary school than a medical school for homo sapiens. Perhaps that's a sign of it's lucrativeness as a profession, I'm beginning to wonder: there's no Affordable Care Act for pets.
Yesterday in one of Riverside Park's dog runs, I met a woman who told me she only takes her dog to a veterinarian every three years for a rabies shot. She scoffed at the idea of vaccinating for bordetella, or "kennel cough":
"What is 'kennel cough?" she asked rhetorically. "It's a cold with a cough! It sounds ugly, but it won't kill the dog. So unless my dog were going to a kennel, I wouldn't pay for vaccinating him against it."
Another dog owner told me she vaccinates against a bacteria found in rat droppings, because there are so many in New York. She has the shot given at PETCO, though.
I'm becoming a big fan of the chain, which is sort of the Macy's of pet stores: the service is good, they will always accept a return with a receipt and compared to the prices at neighborhood pet boutiques in Manhattan, they are a bargain. While I agree with the argument for supporting your local, independent bookstore, I don't feel the same way about pet boutiques with their rhinestone collars, animal print pet beds and chi-chi dog accessories. --Or vets.
The PETCO staff is young, and willing to share their knowledge --and their tales of dog ownership. Today the young woman who handled my return of the soft "cone" the veterinarian told me I needed to buy to keep Beau from scratching (but didn't, because the place where the rash was, was far from where Beau could reach) told me her story:
I got a Siberian Husky five years ago, when I was eighteen. I really didn't do my research about the breed and when he first came home, it was crazy. He ate all my furniture and he even chewed a hole in the wall. I said 'Why?' Then I started walking him longer and longer and I could see he was stopping. So he and my other Husky get two long walks a day now."
Meeting Angelo, a middle-aged Greek man walking his 10-month old American Staffordshire puppy, Leo, in Morningside Park, I hear him tell of his efforts to train the dog:
When I told my mother I was getting a dog she said 'What do you want to do that for? You work all the time.' And I do, but I take him to 'Biscuits and Bath' and I work with a trainer and I take him out for a long walk in the morning and in the evening, and it's working. He recognizes his name now and I'm socializing him. I have the 'prongs' [a choke collar] on him --and I feel guilty about it, but the trainer says he needs it, especially now that he's young when he has to be trained.
So I think that dog owners who take owning a dog seriously are all a little crazy, including me. There must be something in a relationship with a dog that we don't find in one with humans. Then again, wasn't it Diogenes who said, The more I know of men, the more I love my dog"?
Beau must be one of few dogs in the building in which I reside who likes to go out in the snow. As this is, by my count, the seventh snowfall since winter began and we are only about halfway through the season, this is a good thing. Beau has an appetite for the snow, is the best way I can describe it: he charges off into the white powder, bounding through it, seeking the deepest accumulations without so much as a nod to the cold. While my fingertips are near frostbite, Beau happily takes in the white all around.
I'm becoming an increasingly skeptical consumer of veterinary services. Today I heard a story about a vet who told the owner of a Schnauzer with a slight rash on its belly that what the dog had was "Schnauzer Crud". Looking the term up online, I see that what it is is "pimples" caused by blocked sebaceous glands, not too different from "acne" as it's called in humans.
The teller of the anecdote is the mother-in-law of a veterinarian who scoffed when she heard the term. The condition isn't likely to cause discomfort to the dog if he doesn't scratch it, and would only be a problem if the dog were being shown. It is, however, something to make a dog owner anxious, which a veterinarian can offer to test for and treat: ka-ching!
So I'm going to go to PETCO and start setting up the vaccinations for Beau there, which will cost less than $100, versus the almost $1,000 I've spent so far. I'm told it is more difficult to be accepted to veterinary school than a medical school for homo sapiens. Perhaps that's a sign of it's lucrativeness as a profession, I'm beginning to wonder: there's no Affordable Care Act for pets.
Yesterday in one of Riverside Park's dog runs, I met a woman who told me she only takes her dog to a veterinarian every three years for a rabies shot. She scoffed at the idea of vaccinating for bordetella, or "kennel cough":
"What is 'kennel cough?" she asked rhetorically. "It's a cold with a cough! It sounds ugly, but it won't kill the dog. So unless my dog were going to a kennel, I wouldn't pay for vaccinating him against it."
Another dog owner told me she vaccinates against a bacteria found in rat droppings, because there are so many in New York. She has the shot given at PETCO, though.
I'm becoming a big fan of the chain, which is sort of the Macy's of pet stores: the service is good, they will always accept a return with a receipt and compared to the prices at neighborhood pet boutiques in Manhattan, they are a bargain. While I agree with the argument for supporting your local, independent bookstore, I don't feel the same way about pet boutiques with their rhinestone collars, animal print pet beds and chi-chi dog accessories. --Or vets.
The PETCO staff is young, and willing to share their knowledge --and their tales of dog ownership. Today the young woman who handled my return of the soft "cone" the veterinarian told me I needed to buy to keep Beau from scratching (but didn't, because the place where the rash was, was far from where Beau could reach) told me her story:
I got a Siberian Husky five years ago, when I was eighteen. I really didn't do my research about the breed and when he first came home, it was crazy. He ate all my furniture and he even chewed a hole in the wall. I said 'Why?' Then I started walking him longer and longer and I could see he was stopping. So he and my other Husky get two long walks a day now."
Meeting Angelo, a middle-aged Greek man walking his 10-month old American Staffordshire puppy, Leo, in Morningside Park, I hear him tell of his efforts to train the dog:
When I told my mother I was getting a dog she said 'What do you want to do that for? You work all the time.' And I do, but I take him to 'Biscuits and Bath' and I work with a trainer and I take him out for a long walk in the morning and in the evening, and it's working. He recognizes his name now and I'm socializing him. I have the 'prongs' [a choke collar] on him --and I feel guilty about it, but the trainer says he needs it, especially now that he's young when he has to be trained.
So I think that dog owners who take owning a dog seriously are all a little crazy, including me. There must be something in a relationship with a dog that we don't find in one with humans. Then again, wasn't it Diogenes who said, The more I know of men, the more I love my dog"?
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