Planting Seeds

While in Charleston, we went to the farmer's market in Marion Square. I'm a fan of anything pickled (stick it in a brine and I'm good to go) and I found a woman urging me on with free samples of pickled okra, cucumbers, and carrots. Try this, she'd say and stick her metal tongs into a giant plastic bucket with something new. I settled on purchasing this tub of pickled beets.

I asked the woman about her pickling method and she dipped her tongs to give me another sample, shook her head and said in her thick southern accent, Would you believe it? I got my recipe from a butcher. A New York Jew.

She went on to tell me that the good Lord had told her to plant her seeds here, rather than here, (she pointed from the ground to her stomach) because she had already raised her little brother when her mother died in childbirth and I thought it interesting that she offered up that information. That she had shared what might have been a painful history in such a nonchalent way, dunking her tongs, yet again, in the bucket to share another delicious treat with me.

Tyler and I sat on the grass in Marion square, with purple fingers and tongues. Of course, it struck me that we sat in Charleston, two yuppies from Brooklyn, eating pickled beets from a woman who spent her life working hard and planting seeds, who, somewhere down the line, had a story that fell a little off course, a story I wonder about. A pickling recipe from a New York Jew.

Photo Credit: Tyler

Crazy

Tyler and I live on the 3rd floor of a brownstone-like building in Brooklyn. For reasons we do not understand, the temperature in the apartment reaches an unbearable 95 degrees in the summer. Recently, we purchased an air conditioning unit and now we can sit comfortably in our home and, well, breathe...and think straight.

But the air conditioning unit has become a saga in our lives that will not end. There were arrangements to get the unit (we do not have a car), arrangements to install the unit (did you know that the Home Depot in New York City does not cut wood?) and, most recently, arrangements to keep the unit (the landlord is not happy that it drips on to their patio-- so now we have tubes and glues and goops and screws scattered around the apartment as we attempt to direct the flow of water elsewhere.)

In the grand scheme of things, this is not a big deal, but we find that it is a topic of conversation we can not avoid, whether it is about the unbearable heat before the air conditioner was installed or the shenanigans we are going through to have it in our home. We talk about it with one another endlessly. We subject friends and family and strangers to the saga at dinner parties. We even (ahem) blog about it for the entire public to view.

In other words, the air conditioning unit is an obsession.

In a recent discussion with people who live outside of New York City about (what else?) the air conditioner, it was determined that this is officially crazy. Price shopping for units, renting zip-cars, having consultations with the landlord about the unit not falling out of the window on to unsuspecting citizens' heads, carrying 8 foot wooden beams throughout the city to find someone who cuts wood, redirecting the flow of water so the landlord does not feel torrential rains while bbq-ing, that, all of this, is sheer madness.

Because, the conversation continued, this doesn't happen outside of the city. This doesn't happen in cozy suburbs where central air conditioning is the norm, where there are Lowes and Home Depots on every corner, and people have cars to get to where they go. This doesn't happen in new developments with brand new four bedroom, three bathroom homes that boast luxuries like washers and dryers and dishwashers.

Of course, this has occurred to me before. When I visit people's homes and they have things like porches and patios and gardens, and grass, imagine that! Grass that is so expansive, so wild, you have to do things like mow it. Of course, this has occurred to me, that in places other than a city, or even in the city (I've put in air conditioning units with no trouble in the past) installing an air conditioner is not an epic home project, if you even have to install one at all.

And so, during the course of our conversation, it became clear to me that this air conditioning unit, and our obsession with it, is a symbol of city life; cerebral and maddening, the stuff that Seinfeld episodes and Woody Allen films are made of.

That it is a microcosm for spending $1,000,000 for a tiny one bedroom apartment in Manhattan, squeezing yourself into an insufficent picnic spot in an overwhelming crowded Central Park, getting dinner reservations months in advance in order to sit outside on a filthy sidewalk at a new restaurant, sitting in hours worth of traffic to get to a just-as-crowded beach on Long Island on a holiday weekend, carrying 15 bags of groceries from the dirty Gristedes or Met or Key Foods up to your fifth floor walk up, which does not have a washer, dryer, dishwasher, porch, patio, lawn, garden, or, sometimes, even, a closet in which to put your clothes.

All if this is, decidedly, crazy.

After several glasses of wine, I found myself having to defend my decision to live in this city, sputtering ridiculous things like but where else can you get authentic chinese noodles three blocks from your apartment? Because, I could not, for the life of me, explain why I was fighting for the right to pay thousands of dollars to live in a sweltering, miniscule apartment where it takes the better part of a month to install an air conditioner.

All I know, is that I do not think any of this is crazy. I can not adequately explain why because it will sound ridiculous. Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge on a sunny day, she says and rolls her eyes. Walking over the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and looking down at all the traffic, she tries, but, no, that is not it. The little red-headed girls, twins, who ride identical scooters across President Street the same time, every day, as I walk to the subway. Closer, she thinks.

Crazy? Maybe. And, yet, no. What do you think?

Words on a Page

It's been a while since I've updated you all on my writing projects and it's come to my attention that some of you may care, which will never cease to amaze me (thank you).

Spared sits and awaits a rewrite. After years of working on it, I realize the story is still not where it needs to be. A painful discovery but a discovery just the same. So it sits and waits. It is not quiet about it. In fact, it's somewhat impatient and rowdy and a bit of a nuisance. But I do feel the physical manuscript is in the proper place right now (Sitting. Waiting.)

I am nearing the end of the first draft of Rabbit Island, which has been an eventful ride. There have been some painful moments-- I got lost for something like...oh....50 pages and had to trash them all-- but, in the end, I thought it was a good experience. I had no idea things would end up where they are and I look forward to editing it.

And, below, Rabbit Island's first time out in public (ignore the bad hair and the poor outfit choice and the stammering. It has spent the last 6 months alone with me...which isn't good for anyone.)

Reagan stopped walking and the smell of hotdogs, the rising smoke, hung in the stale, hot air. "Don't worry. You're going to figure out the way you want to love someone," she told Adelaine. "And when you do, you're going to hatch grand schemes."

Adelaine laughed. "Let's start with you and Eric Brown and see what happens."

"What? It's a done deal."

Adelaine looked up at the entrance. Two tall tree trunks, whose branches stemmed into a giant arch. The trees were white, like everything at Dreamland, as if the entire place had been trapped inside a winter storm. The leaves sparkled, silver and glass, and the tangled branches twisted together to give the impression of a woman's face outlined with wild, flowing hair.

And when she walked inside, it felt as if she had been swallowed whole.

I hope you'll tell me what you're working on (writing or otherwise) and let me know how you are spending your days.

Falling Slowly

Lately, it seems I do not get any blog traffic on Fridays, so I've used the time to rattle on about my strange obsessions, like Linda Eder and Company.

I'll add this song, Falling Slowly, to the list. It is a few years old and I'm sure you've heard it. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2007. It's from the film, Once and is written by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard and I woke up with it in my head, even though I haven't heard it in a while. (It should be noted, there is a version in which Linda Eder sings it, but I won't subject you all to any more Linda Eder. It's getting out of hand. Unless you want me to, in which case...well, call me, we'll chat...)

A Golden Age

I recently saw Woody Allen's latest film, Midnight in Paris. The film is about a successful Hollywood screenwriter (played by Owen Wilson) who visits Paris with his fiance and her family.

As he wanders the streets of Paris and attempts to finish the novel he's been writing for years, he becomes completely taken with the city and swept up in all the romantic notions of Paris in the 1920's when artists and writers like Hemmingway and Fitzgerald made their own pilgramage to the City of Light.


The plot takes a surprising turn early in the film and I'd rather not give anything away because it's better not knowing but I do recommend it to all writers (and non-writers for that matter). It is smart and funny and I found myself laughing out loud far more than I thought I would.

And it helps that the way it captures Paris, the way Allen frames each shot, how it is meticulous and deliberate, yet, odd and haphazard all at the same time, is absolutely beautiful.

I like the way it dealt with time. The main character is caught up in the past while trying to figure out his present and change his immediate future. And we meet many characters with their own ideas about their own golden ages, whether it is now, or the 1920's in Paris, or the age of enlightenment, etc.

I left the film wondering about my own golden age. Thanks to books and films, I've wanted to experience so many periods of history. I love the energy and charge of the late 1960's in America. And Willa Cather always left me fascinated with frontier life, which sounds difficult and harrowing, and, lets be honest, I wouldn't last a day but, still, I have romanticized the idea of living off of the earth... Dancing and drinking with the Fitzgeralds in Europe or the Gold Coast also sounds like a rip roarin' good time.

Have you seen the film? Even if you haven't, what is your golden age?

The Angel Oak

I took off for a long weekend to Charleston, South Carolina. For a long time, I had this idea that I was going to move there, without ever having been there. I had (and still have) a lot of romantic notions about the South, thanks to Pat Conroy and Margaret Mitchell. I thought (and still think) that everyone must sip their iced tea while sitting out on a veranda all breathless and sighing, I'll think about that tomorrow.

We wandered around the city of Charleston by foot and saw the gardens, the river, the grandiose homes. To my delight, I did see women with enormous sun bonnets and men in Seersucker suits. I lamented over the heat (96 every day) and sat on park benches fanning myself with my hand thinking where oh where is my lemonade? Someone pass the smelling salts before I faint!

At the very last minute of our day, we took a detour to find this live oak on John's Island. I've seen various reports of it's age (anywhere from 400 to 1500 years old) but I could not believe it's size, the way it sprang from the earth with it's mutant branches as if it could swallow up the sky. No matter how many times I have watched Scarlett O'Hara turn drapes into dresses, nothing could have prepared me for the Angel Oak. It was such an extraordinary sight.

'Phone Rings, Door Chimes, In Comes Company'

I was finally able to see the Lincoln Center production of Stephen Sondheim's Company, not live as I had hoped, but on the big screen. My love for Sondheim runs deep-- I may have mentioned the many acts of crazy I've gone through to see his work. I claim that Company is my favorite musical of all time but I had, uh, never actually seen it (oh the irony).

I've listened to the original cast recording on repeat and watched a wonderful documentary which records the recording of the cast recording, which is 'so totally meta' (long side note: an old film professor's favorite term, but picture it being said in a thick German accent while watching something like Melvin Van Peeble's 'Sweet Sweetback's Baaadasssss Song'-- no really, it's a movie...it exists...now picture me counting three A's and five S's to get the title right in this blog post...)

The documentary (which I recommend) features a young Stephen Sondheim smoking cigarettes in the booth at the studio, advising the actors in between coughs and takes. And all of this, made me feel as if I had seen the musical when I really hadn't.

What I love about Company is the way it captures relationships, the confusion and complexity, through incredible music and lyrics. It's not about the set or the stage. It is about Bobby, the only single man in a group of married friends, and his desperation to find a wife...without actually having to fall in love.

We meet those 'good and crazy people, his married friends' as they navigate confused feelings about their own relationships. How they lose themselves and find themselves through one another. How, when we fall in love, 'everything's different' but 'nothing's changed' or 'only maybe slightly rearranged'. There is fear of being loved too much or not enough. And the idea that sometimes we get on our hands and knees to beg for someone to stay and, when they do, all we want is for them to leave (the same in reverse). These kinds of dynamics are so compelling, so real, I love to see it captured on stage and in song.

It goes without saying that I recommend the musical highly. The cast is what I can only call an 'uber cast' with the likes of Neil Patrick Harris, Stephen Colbert, Patti Lupone, Martha Plimpton...the list goes on. Even if you don't like musicals, there are long scenes of excellent dialogue, more so than in most musicals, I would say. But it is, in my opinion, the lyrics to the songs that make this musical so brilliant.

You do not have to pay hundreds of dollars or go to a major city to see it because it is playing at movie theaters across the country for a very limited time. So, go! Quickly! Run don't walk! And tell me what you think if you do...

Photo credit: zimbio.com