The other night, I stayed up too late reading Jonathan Franzen’s The Discomfort Zone, a book I both devoured and savored. His writing is that delicious. I wanted to stuff myself silly as well as nibble each nuance, taking pleasure in each small flavor and the way they ingeniously worked together to create something much, much more substantial.
When I finally closed the book, it was after 2 AM, and I spent the rest of the mostly sleepless night mired in something close to despair. Much as Franzen’s writing inspires me, it also stirs up a whiney anguish and hopelessness: The guy can write circles around me, what’s the use? Why do I bother writing at all when there are voices that are infinitely more articulate and infuriatingly more precise than my own?
His writing is inspiring, but ironically what it often inspires is a kind of resignation. I love Jonathan Franzen. But at 3… 4… and then 5 AM… I loathed him, too.
In the light of day, when I’m rested and reasonable and caffeinated, such loathing and diffidence seems absurd. I know it. But it’s the same ugly insecurity that caused me, in fifth grade, to throw a spelling bee in the first round because I was certain I couldn’t possibly be the best speller in the room—and then watched from the audience while words I could easily spell felled contestant after contestant. [Read more →]
When you’re from New England, the whole concept of taking a “Road Trip” means driving an hour to the beach. So when my friend Beccy suggested we take a road trip to Niagara Falls during our kids’ spring break, I mentally padded the usual duration with an extra hour or two and impetuously answered Yes.
As I’ve established, I’m notoriously terrible with directions. I should have paused before answering. I should have considered that Beccy is from the Midwest, where folks will drive for two hours on a Sunday morning just to worship at church. She comes from a place where people traverse vast distances over flat earth to get almost anywhere. Or, nowhere: When my friend Jen was growing up in Nebraska, her parents routinely piled six kids into their Country Squire just to head out for a drive.
So this is how I found myself, last week, journeying the 8 hours west from Massachusetts to Canada, with Beccy, her two daughters and one of my own. [Read more →]
My friend Maryse called me the other day with a question, she said, about her daughter Laurie-Maude, who is in the same grade as my daughter Caroline. It was Korea Day at school, she said, and Laurie-Maude wanted to dress as an Otter. “How do Otter’s dress?” Maryse wanted to know.
At least, that’s what I thought she said. Maryse is French Canadian, from Montreal, and it’s sometimes hard to understand certain words she says, particularly over the telephone. Nevertheless, that’s what I encoded: “Laurie-Maude wants to dress as an Otter for Korea Day.”
And as one part of my brain was struggling to decipher what else she might have meant, another part set to work trying to recall an otter: What does an otter look like? Is that the one with a flat tail? Or tiny front paws? Like a meerkat? Like a beaver? [Read more →]
00:00:01 My daughter Caroline. “I like the weather” (paraphrased) is kid-code for “Check it! I love being out of school!!”
00:00:18 Real drama unfolds as Sharon H. reveals that her work-BFF is actually… well… it’s not me. And it’s not Val, either, even though they live together. (Val: You might want to sleep with one eye open.) Behind her, Corey nods his head. Is he agreeable, or is it just easy to dance to?
00:00:40 I intimate what my real passion is. Is it blogging? Maybe. Or possibly it’s all that wine I’ve obviously had. My real passion becomes trying to stay upright. Meanwhile, Val is ready for her close-up, but soon gives up and joins Sharon E.’s mission to stay out of the frame entirely.
00:01:03 Penny is captured on camera saying with a smug dismissiveness: “You can’t blog? Well, can you type? [Then] You can blog.” Eavesdropping across the room, I instantly have a coronary, and am carried out by paramedics. Meanwhile, behind her, Jim plays “the itsy-bitsy spider climbs up the waterspout.”
Shot on location at Opal Restaurant, Santa Barbara Productor: Kinsey Director: Kinsey Lighting: Kinsey Art director: Kinsey Camera: Kinsey Key Grip: Kinsey
When I was a kid, in the 70s, I used to swipe my older brother’s Mad magazines. A lot of the humor was over my head, but that only added to the allure: This was a peep show into an unknown world, and I was lusting to grow up.
One Mad feature I did get, however, was the regular series by Sergio Aragones: “The Shadow Knows.” It was a simple cartoon of all sorts of folks in all kinds of daily situations, but their shadows behind them projected (literally) their true thoughts or motivations. Like this:
I am a total sucker for community theater, especially musical theater. What I love isn’t so much the corny show tunes or the predictable story lines, but the players’ infectious energy for taking risks. I was reminded of this a few weekends ago when I went to see a local production of Godspell.
Because I have an artsy teenager who does tech crew, I’ve sat through lots of high school musicals over the past few years. I always come away shining with true admiration for the kids on stage. As we all know, adolescence is really tough. There’s probably no time in your life when you are more prone to self-doubt and insecurity, and there’s no time (at least for boys) when your voice performs less than predictably. It’s easier to blend in with the crowd than to call attention to yourself. It’s easier to not set yourself apart.
Godspell featured kids and adults, but most of the lead roles were played by grownups. Some of them I knew casually from town: Our kids once went to preschool together, or were on the same soccer team, or whatever. Suddenly, up on stage, I thought I recognized a woman I was surprised to see there. She was swaying her hips and belting out “Save the People” with surprising gusto, and I realized with a small shock that I knew her, too. [Read more →]
The other night, I stayed up too late reading Jonathan Franzen’s The Discomfort Zone, a book I both devoured and savored. His writing is that delicious. I wanted to stuff myself silly as well as nibble each nuance, taking pleasure in each small flavor and the way they ingeniously worked together to create something much, much more substantial.
As I’ve 