I just went through a ton of old drafts and couldn’t figure out how to finish any of them. But I write every day, so here I am. I love early Saturday mornings, before anyone else in the house is up. I stay in my pajamas and I put a clay mask on my face and I drink coffee and read and watch Netflix and write (usually all three at once).
We turned the heat on for the first time just last week and now it’s arid like a desert in here. There’s not so much as a droplet of moisture in the air. My fingertips are cracked and bleeding and the contact lenses feel like they’re going to crack and scratch my eyes and my hair is crackling with static electricity. Forget that first paragraph. Winter is just as bad as I always think it will be. And you can’t sleep through it.
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I did some completely unnecessary shopping last weekend. I have a lot of clothes that I don’t wear. So many in fact that while I was shopping, I noticed a sweater that I liked very much and when I picked it up to look at the price, I realized that I already own the very same sweater. Embarrassing. I didn’t buy the sweater. But I bought two blouses (which I actually do need) and a jacket (which I definitely do not need). I don’t know why I bought that jacket.
OK, I actually do know why I bought it. I watched a few minutes of a TV police drama in which a female detective was wearing a utility jacket, and I wanted to look like that. I wanted to BE like that--no-nonsense tough and fearless and always ready for anything, with a utility jacket hanging on a hook right by the door near my keys and my handbag. The character was played by Toni Collette, so I suppose I just wanted to look like Toni Collette. Anyway, now I have her jacket, or something like it. I’ll have to get rid of another jacket or I’ll just have far too many.
I also have far too many drafts in my Google Docs drafts folder; and they’re just like my clothes. Instead of using what I have, I keep writing more. Fortunately, they don’t cost any money and they don’t take up any space.
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Now it’s Monday, Veteran’s Day; and although I am not a veteran, I do love a paid day off. I’m up early because I’m always up early, and because the public schools here do not have the day off so I had to drive my 9th grader to school. And now I have a lovely day ahead of me. It’s not cold today, though it will be by Wednesday, so I can wear my utility jacket today.
I finished reading Heartburn. It was a very quick read. And not Nora’s best. Like lots of other Nora Ephron, it’s filled with references to upper-class cultural and political preoccupations. Reading it reminds me of when I was 12 years old, paging through The New Yorker or Philadelphia Magazine, knowing that there was a very sophisticated world outside of my working-class neighborhood. I didn’t understand that world, and I wasn't even sure that I’d be happy there. And now I know that I wouldn’t have been. It’s nice to understand all of the references; even nicer not to know that they have nothing to do with me and to not care about that at all.
It’s not the scene-setting and name-dropping and class-consciousness that make Heartburn a not-so-great book, but I can't put my finger on exactly what's not right about it. Well, except for the casual, thoughtless racism, which is not altogether attributable to the era. I mean, I was alive in 1980 and I’m fairly certain that even then, it wasn’t OK to describe a mixed-race person as “high yellow.” For God’s sake, Nora.
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Heartburn is set mostly in Washington; and any time a book is set in a place I’m very familiar with, I like to imagine the characters in the locations. In one scene, the main character reminisces about a romantic moment with her then-fiance in “the Pension Building,” which I had never heard of. As it turns out, the Pension Building is now the National Building Museum; and having been there, I knew exactly why she chose it as the most romantic location in Washington. It’s such a good building that it’s literally an example for all other buildings.
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| National Building Museum, December 26 2017. See what I mean? |
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It’s Wednesday now, and after a few days of gradually improving (meaning increasing) temperatures, we’re back to crazy cold, only mid-way through November.
I was chopping bok choy a little while ago As I chopped, I imagined myself as Rachel, the protagonist of Heartburn. Rachel would have thought a lot about the social and cultural implications of her bok choy. She’d have wondered if cooking bok choy made her avant-garde, just fashionable enough, or passe. She’d have thought about whether or not bok choy was still relevant, or if it had maybe been supplanted by daikon or taro. She’d have successfully duplicated some delicious bok choy recipe, musing to herself that she’d had to hunt for the bok choy, but that soon it would be readily available and then soon after that, there’d be a glut of the stuff and everyone would be sick of it. Bok choy is the new pesto, she’d have thought.
And so that’s what else bothered me about Heartburn. If it’s that easy for me to imagine a Hemingway-contest style parody of a character's interior life, then it’s probably not a very good book. But the rice noodle lo mein that I made with the bok choy was a very good dinner. Bok choy is delicious.
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I’m waiting for a batch of soup to finish cooking. Thanks to the Instant Pot, I can cook and write at the same time, simultaneous-like.
It was cold again yesterday, clear and sunny and dry winter cold. My coat and scarf looked pretty hanging on my cubicle wall; so pretty that I almost took a picture of them. The coat is a simple dark red insulated duffle coat, and the scarf is wool, a multi-colored Fair Isle pattern with red that matches the coat. Together, they make winter almost OK.
This is why I keep buying clothes, I guess. I’m always looking for just one more thing that makes me feel like my coat and scarf make me feel. I’m always looking for another turtle’s shell. Maybe I want to wear something that will make someone else want to dress like me, or even be like me.
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Or maybe I’m looking for something else altogether, something better than reading and writing and eating and even perfect jackets. Maybe Nora Ephron characters aren’t the only self-involved over-thinkers in this blog post. I think I’ll have a glass of wine. If you read this all the way through, then you probably need one too.
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