Scribblings with Green Chalk

 
 
… I would be able to finish this sentence in French. As things are, I can still read certain things and ask about the restroom. If I were her, I would be quite shameless in decorating my apartment with Elliott Erwitt’s portraits of myself. I wonder if de Beauvoir had a secret room where she retired to absorb them in narcissistic abandon.

As an existentialist, she might have discarded the temptation that I would probably act upon: to haunt him sometimes as a punishment for publishing all those photo albums about dogs after my demise.

My presentation on America Day by Day already done and delivered, I will reread The Second Sex and leave Mr. Erwitt in peace. Note to self: keep growing the hair, get an interesting necklace and shawl, and practice elegantly nonchalant occupation of uncomfortable chairs.

… on R. Kelly’s epic Trapped in the Closet (the epic dimension surely demands italics!) — the bitchy ladies at Go Fug Yourself have made me cry from laughing hard. There is little I can add to their in-depth interpretation of the work’s profound message (so it’s depth squared!):

God, is there nothing this man won’t do for us? He trapped himself in a closet to teach us all about relationships, and how complicated they are, and how if you come home and a phone rings in the vicinity of your closet, you should immediately check in the bathroom, the shower, under the bed, and in the dresser drawer before actually checking said closet, and how firing off a bullet in the air can really shut a bitch up, and how a woman shouldn’t ride her husband too aggressively in the sack because it puts him in severe danger of getting a groin cramp, and how no matter how much needless exposition exists in your life, you will NEVER know who the hell Roxanne is, so just give up already.

Little I can add and yet…: What kind of devil tempted me to watch ALL the parts?

When will multitasking finally be considered a medical condition? It is not a skill, it’s a way to shred your focus to tiny pieces. I’m reading two books, browsing through several websites, posting this, beginning an essay for class, and glancing at magazines scattered on the floor by my desk.

My profoundest thoughts at the moment are:

Where can I get a feminine fedora (US Glamour, Feb. 2008, p. 176)? My grandfather died after teaching me how to tie a tie, leaving my grandmother to burn all his hats in grief. I’d love to have a get up that would allow me to pay homage to Marlene Dietrich and my classy grandfather.

Don’t take symmetry of feeling for granted. For an instructive example go to the February US issue of Marie Claire, p. 72. Several couples were caught at Sundance and bullied into answering the challenge: “What I love about you.” One of the couples will surely be off movie events for a while. The editors must have hated these two for some reason, because here’s what appeared in print:

She: “He’s really tuned in to other people.”
He: “I’m gonna say her ass!”

I’m sorry, I can’t help imagining their faces when they opened the magazine. No. Stop. Go pray for focus.

My tastebuds are incapacitated. An eating disorder in my teens and later ulceritis have turned my relationship with food into something of a marriage of convenience. I tend to compliment dishes with “interesting,” as if suddenly drained of adjectives. I am grateful for good food, but I lack culinary imagination. I have fleeting food obsessions but no true love ensues.

I wish I could write seductively about peanut butter. Nothing makes you appreciate good peanut butter more than bad peanut butter. I felt like Rapunzel’s mother, asking a friend to get me real, serious organic peanut butter from the US army grocery store uncanny shopping land. I could not deny my intense real-peanut-butter hunger, even though I could not write an ode to peanut butter nor a lament for the bad peanut butter I had in the past months. As a birthday gift, my friend gave me two big jars of crunchy and creamy. I’d never have guessed it would turn out to be such a marvelous gift. I went for a birthday week with peanut butter toast, peanut butter toast with my mother’s jam, and, of course, apples with peanut butter, and peanut butter without company.

Magically, the sun’s declared a temporary cessation of hostilities. In hope of catching some natural vitamin D, I took a long walk yesterday with a curious pause (thanks to my friend and the passport I forgot to leave at home) in uncanny shopping land where I binged on American women’s magazines, coffee, and a brownie. Caught the last sun rays on the way home and had apples with peanut butter before sleep. The life.

I saw a cat outside my window this morning. One of the few benefits of a basement apartment is the view of birds on the lawn, clueless rodents, and, yes, an occasional cat. More often, however, you get to see the irresolute legs of someone heading to the supermarket or rubber boots of kids running towards the nearby playground.

Meanwhile, I feel like never leaving the house, only lounging in my pj’s and watching Katharine Hepburn movies.

Thank you, Mr. Frost.

Cardrona Bra Fence

 

And thank you, Tigtog, for linking to the Wiki entry on Hoyden. I also loved Tigtog’s picture of the shoe fence in Tasmania.
It would be wonderful to see both, but with the New Zealand fence I just feel I’d have something to add…

Since the new Victorians are coming (read here and here), pushing proudly their baby carriages or perambulators (depending on the preferred variety of English), it seems practical to catch up with the style. If you can’t beat a trend and are loath to join it, why not twist it a bit? When you’re too poor to own a house with a garden just outside London, where you’re three kids could play before their piano class, you can at least have a nineteenth-century rat on your head.

The image is from here. For more Victorian hair go here.