Savannah Lee

Yeahhhh, yesterday. Between the unexpected sleeping late, the unexpected trip to Denny's, the unexpected tour of my area's antique stores and galleries, and so forth, I kinda didn't blog. Or even manage to announce that I wasn't going to blog. Sorry.

The reason I'm so totally excited is because I read this essay by Cynthia Ozick. It actually, imho, starts off kind of shaky, but then breaks into flight like an escaped falcon. Which is to say that the best part of it is its self-remembering, oh yes, this is what it feels like, this is what I am. This is what I can do.

Along about paragraph six is when the wings really start to stretch on the air. To act like they're going somewhere instead of back to the jesses. "You have never met [a writer]," Ozick declares with the chilling truth of a Stephen King. "[If you have], then you can be sure it is all a mistake."

And why have we never met a writer?

Well, it involves telling a campfire tale, but what it boils down to is: writers only exist in the dark. Where they can be "at home among the ghosts."

So those people who walk around "industriously chatting on the terrace," well, they ARE real, in the sense that you can touch them (Ozick calls them a "palpable effigy"), but nonetheless they are not...well, they're beside the point, is what Ozick is saying. They're completely beside the point.

There's something deeply and wonderfully Buddhist about that.

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In and around these beautiful words, I'm afraid you are going to encounter the particularly maddening sort of reverse narcissism which leads Ozick to boast about her low sales and her "invisibility." Just ignore that. Ignore the stuff that's about fame, an even worse subject for humans to write about than death. Tear those bones out of the metaphor; ghosts don't need 'em anyhow. Leave only the milk-light in the darkness, the kindly glow by which the writer works.

The moon by which the falcon makes its escape.

...with the otherwise delightful review of 'The Anglo Files' to which I linked you yesterday.

Author Sarah Lyall discusses British sexuality--a chapter which, in my opinion, could have been written just by pasting in a bunch of pictures of Daniel Craig, David Tennant, Christopher Eccleston, Sting, George Michael, John Simm, Hugh Laurie, Alan Rickman, Keith Richards and Craig Charles. And a defibrillator. We'd definitely be needing one of those. What is it with these criminally hot British men? Do you see the sheer diversity of human affect represented by that list? You got rough necks, soft lips, hard eyes, mocking calm, antic promise, dark wit, trembling soul, skull-sight, puppy-dog, oncoming-storm, and so much else all up in there, not only among them but within them, each of them, behind whatever quality they foreground in the world. I mean, there's so much to...so much to...

Where was I?

Oh yes. The book. Right. She covers such topics as the apparently pervasive male-male sexual harassment, the spanking thing, and so on. What caught my eye, though, is that she sums it all up as follows:

"Is it any wonder that Englishmen--particularly British men of a certain class--are so mixed up about sex?"

Um...as opposed to who? Is Lyall trying to imply that Americans, by contrast, are somehow not mixed up about sex? (ED.: I should probably, you know, read the book and find out. Which I think will be a ton of fun! Off to the library...And now, back to my rant.) We are a country that cannot even bring ourselves to tell our teenagers what's what. We just scream at them to wait, then send them home to watch TV, aka The Human Sexuality Exploitation Machine. We silently order them to behave irrationally, then blame them when they do.

And that's just us. We haven't even gotten started on all the other nearly 200 countries out there on this little green football. EVERYPLACE is mixed up about sex. And everything else. Humans are the stupidest species on earth. Our brilliance has arisen out of our stupidity, our inability to operate ourselves properly in any sphere whatsoever. Our brilliance is our compensation. And it isn't half good enough. We're still stoop-shouldered, weak in the core, locked in old patterns, pointlessly argumentative, riddled with disease, governed by fascists, victimized by our childhoods (most insidiously in the ways we can't even perceive), personally unfulfilled, and fundamentally confused. We're not even smart enough to stop inflicting war and crime on ourselves. How do we manage this much wrongness? It should be physically impossible.

Yet here we are, writing books comparing Britain and America.

So there was this guy at my college. Walking home late one night, I saw him spying on a floormate of mine, standing on a railing outside and peering in her window. Now maybe he was just checking to see if she was home, but...still. There are, you know, easier and less invasive ways to do that.

I never told my floormate what I'd seen, but she got the picture in other ways and sort of gently floated and wriggled away from him like a guppy.

A few years later, I saw that he'd married a different classmate--a foreign-exchange student.

I learned a major lesson.

Think not just twice, but three, four and five times before you marry someone from another country. There is an extremely large chance that they're at least slightly creepy. And unless it's at Charles Manson levels, you're not gonna be able to tell.

Why, you may ask, is that relevant to this fascinating review of a book comparing British and American culture? Well, because I watch "Doctor Who," of course.

(Folks, I'm a card-carrying Green Personality Color/Quick-Start-Insistent [that'd be the bottom section, "Improvise," on the green cylinder] crunchy flaky artist hippie type. Do not try this sort of reasoning at home. Or, like, work or school.)

But seriously, it really does make sense. See, I think I understand that show. When, in "The Parting of the Ways," the Dalek taunts the Doctor with the question of whether he wants to be a coward or a destroyer of worlds, and he defiantly says "Coward. Any day" and refuses to carry through his genocide of the Daleks, I thought that was about the Doctor. But no! It's actually British culture carrying on an argument with itself! Because look here:

"The world wars, she continues, created generations of men with a horror of cowardice [emphasis mine] and the strong connection between emotional repression and manliness."

Who knew!? That single moment represents Britain trying to pry itself away from values that don't really serve it anymore, trying to wake up from a trauma-induced nightmare, trying to say that "cowardice"--pathologically defined as a refusal to kill--is better than the alternative. (In "Family of Blood," too, one boarding-school student calls another, more intelligent one "a miserable coward." "Oh yes, every time," he responds, slipping away to save the day behind the scenes.)

The real significance of those moments was totally lost on me until, completely by accident, I stumbled on that article.

Similarly, the real significance of the moods and sayings and affect of even very "close" sets of foreigners (Austrians and Germans, British and Americans, Belgians and French, Uruguayans and Argentines, Russians and Ukrainians) is almost certainly lost as well. Context is so subtle. So deceptive. There's just enough overlap to get us all in trouble. Make us marry a creep.

Or maybe save us. Who knows.

We never called it "jumping rope." Instead, very sensibly, we called it "jump-roping."

By "we" I mean the kids at my tiny middle school.

And I do mean tiny. Weensy. There was only one classroom per grade. It was so small that even someone as dedicated as myself was not able to fully maintain recluse status. In fact I think those years were the most social interaction I've ever had, before or since. Not that that's saying much. Mostly I kept to myself, because that was what I w.a.n.t.e.d. and that degree of determination can't be entirely thwarted. But there were a couple of occasions where I found myself doing stuff with other humans. Like jump-roping.

Every time I sit down at the keyboard, I see the dirty rope smacking the asphalt. Even if only in the background, it's there. It's there as I open up all the documents I'm working on, poise my fingers above the keys, and start reading my way back into them. It's all about knowing when to jump. You have to wait...wait...wait...there!

And if you misjudge your moment, everything gets tangled up.

Should I say how green the trees are outside my window.

Should I say how sweet the air feels today, for some reason.

Should I say I've been drinking way too much diet caffeine-free Coke.

Should I say that I recently found a tiny button that popped off an old top of mine from anthropologie that I bought back when they were even more boho than they are now. There's no way I should have found this thing, but there it was.

Should I say that my husband and daughter both got the exact same fortunes in their fortune cookies two days ago.

Or that I've gone back to using Ivory soap...I need breaks from time to time because it can be a bit drying, especially in the winter. But nothing else feels or smells so much like clean to me.

Yardley's English Lavender is my other favorite. English Lavender and Ivory. (One time, however, finding myself Noxzema-less in an isolated farmhouse close to midnight, I did make the dire mistake of washing my face with English Lavender. This might work for some people, but not for me. You have never seen so many cystic zits come up so fast, so dark, or so angry. If I'd been anywhere near the vicinity of caring about how I looked, I would have impaled myself on the sink fixtures then and there.)

Maybe I should say more about that farmhouse. It belonged to two dear friends of our family, before they built a bigger one a few miles down the road. This is the place that I especially remember, though, and love. A patchwork little place. Part of the mountain it lived in. Sheltered by such dense tree growth that it was cold in midsummer.

That same night in the bathroom, a tiny mouse peeked out at me from under the vanity. It didn't seem terribly concerned by me, or the light in the room. It nosed around a bit before deciding that it wouldn't come in after all. It slipped back out the way it had come, a glorified crack that seemed much too small for the plump creature it had been.

Should I say that I don't know why I've remembered that, all these years.

...that I just don't know how I get anything done. Some days, I don't.

Here's an article about the use of beta blockers in sports. Beta blockers help nervous athletes by tamping down the physiological signs of their nerves (the shaking hands, etc). Some people say this is cheating, but author Carl Elliott argues that beta blockers level the playing field. Rather than conferring an extra advantage, they make up for a deficiency, bringing nervous athletes up to the level of calm ones.

This anti-nostalgia article features an astonishing portrait of the author as a young woman in the 1950s. She is walking through what looks like a dystopian fantasy London--empty streets, dense pollution, an unleashed and unattended dog running like a wolf into the silent road. Further down, a picture of indifferently-cared-for children standing in a trash-strewn street help make her point that "if things aren't what they used to be, then thank heavens for that."

And here's Michael Dirda's review of Julian Barnes' new book about death. I don't think this is a good topic for people to write about. I don't think it helps them. Somehow these things always reek of neurosis to me. The problem is, books about death are inevitably books about life--or more precisely, about the frantic fear that we're not getting enough out of it. Enough experience, enough delight--but really, finally, enough status. Very few people who write this kind of thing ever weep over the tragedy that they'll never understand particle physics or Wittgenstein. Barnes, by contrast, wallows in the indifference that "those who have never heard of you--which is, after all, almost everybody" will feel towards his passing. That's meant to seem stoical. In my opinion, it's a narcissistic complaint.

The line between wanting to do something meaningful in the world, to touch whoever you can in whatever way your fate or your gifts allow, versus wanting to be known or regarded in a neurotic/narcissistic way, is bright but unsteady. Contemplating death as such does not help our easily-confused minds and emotions stay on the right side of it.

But the second-to-last paragraph of this review is actually quite beautiful and haunting. It describes people whose last words were of the moment--a famous critic telling his nurse "You have beautiful hands;" A.E. Houseman assessing his last shot as "Beautifully done."

Anna Pavlova is reported to have said "Bring me my swan costume." Some people say that it was, "Play that last measure softly."

A very dear friend of mine died a good fourteen years ago now, but he was just at a party I attended in July. I kept seeing him in the corner of my eye. I would turn towards him, not in shock or disbelief but in the calm knowledge that I was going to find his eyes. Of course, I could never quite reach him; but he was there.

I felt a pleasant lightness around him, an everyday radiance. He's doing well. Happy.

My nine-year-old wanders in while I'm working.

"Oh hi, honey. Hey, I have such a headache. Go get me my ibuprofen."

There is a bewildered pause from my child.

"It's right there behind the water bottle," she says.

I start looking afield on my desk. The first three water bottles I see have absolutely no ibuprofen behind them.

My daughter reaches straight in front of me and turns up with the medicine.

Ah. So it seems she meant THAT water bottle. The one, you know, a foot and a half from my face.

"Well who would have ever thought to look so close by?" I protest.

This sterling example of my own personal logic ("I couldn't find it because it was too close to me"--right up there with "I couldn't find it because it was where it was supposed to be") does not impress her as much as I'd hoped.

Very well then. I shall blame it on my headache. "See what kind of shape I'm in?" I demand, naturally proceeding to spill the whole bottle like Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe on a girl's night out.

"Yeah, no offense, that is kinda sad."

From the small landslide of embarrassment, I take two.

So I was reading this article a while back. The writer expressed horror at some cookbook or other that she'd found, which called for canned this, frozen that, prepared the-other. She seemed to feel this was a deep moral failing.

Similarly, I just got this otherwise wonderful casserole cookbook, "Bake Until Bubbly," out of the library. (Isn't that the best title?) But the book and I got off to a bad start when the author started dissing the traditional American casserole:

"The casserole made of leftover overcooked diced chicken breast with celery, water chestnuts, overcooked broccoli covered with canned cream of mushroom soup, and a quart of Velveeta topped with crushed Fritos has had its plug pulled and is banished forever to the dustbin of culinary history."

Okay, well, I hate water chestnuts, and overcooked broccoli is indeed depressing. But...dude. Do you not get it?

Canned, prepared, processed, and already-cooked food is safe.

It will not potentially sicken your two year old if she gets her hands in it while you're trying to cook.

It will not go bad after its fifth night in the refrigerator while you're having your latest crisis (late night at the office, crying kid, not feeling well, someone's dog died, it's Lizzy's gymnastics night, it's Kelly's swim meet, you have to get that old couch to the dump, you have to drive fifty miles through the snow to pick your second cousin's girlfriend up at the bus station because his car broke down....you know, life as we know it).

It's life-proof.

Yeah, yeah, health, taste, blah blah. I know. I know. But seriously. Today, you can get 99% fat-free canned cream soups to cook with, and frozen vegetables, and low-fat, low-sodium dressings and soy sauces. You do not have to use Velveeta. Or Fritos.

Meanwhile, the circumstances that gave rise to 20th century uber-convenient American home cooking have not gone away. People's schedules are more crowded and chaotic than ever, and, news flash, home cooks are not chefs.

The link is to Laura Shapiro's politely blistering review of Gordon Ramsay's "Fast Food." It says, "Gordon Ramsay says he can make you a more efficient cook. Don't believe him."

The idea behind the Ramsay cookbook is that, because chefs can turn out smokin'-fresh fare in less time than it takes most of us to find the can opener, YOU CAN TOO, if you just follow these tips.

Uh...no, says Shapiro. "Take note: Cookbook writers are different from you and me...They're professionals...The only really useful shortcut in the kitchen is knowing how to cook."

Meaning that the rest of us do not, in fact, have the years of training necessary to be able to turn an onion, five carrots, six garlic cloves, four potatoes, some flour, butter, cream, white wine, breast of chicken, prawns and cheese into a main-dish gratin in thirty minutes. 'Kay? It sounds easy, but guess what! It ain't!

I know that some people are exquisitely sensitive to how fresh their food is, so canned goods just won't work for them. For the rest of us, though...spurning even a low-fat canned cream soup because "it's not fresh" is self-defeating IMHO.

I guess...as with all things, it's important to ask WHY they are the way they are before you start pointing fingers. Especially with something like food.

WARNING: THE LINKED ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF AN EXTREMELY DISTURBING PARASITIC DISEASE. If you're very sensitive and/or have been having a particularly bad week, you probably don't want to know.

And now:

Let's all ask ourselves...what has each of us done with our last twenty years? Because Jimmy Carter, besides working for peace in the Middle East and building houses with Habitat, has spent his last twenty years all but wiping the horrific guinea worm off the face of the earth.

As Johann Hari (one of my favorite journalists ever) puts it:

"When Jimmy Carter first encountered the disease, some 3.5 million people were riddled with guinea worm. Tens of millions of people had endured it, from Europe to Asia; it was regarded as an intractable, eternal problem. The idea of eradicating it was mocked as “utopian”. But today, the number has been slashed by more than 99 percent. Fewer than 10,000 people in a few remaining pockets of Ghana and Sudan still suffer – and soon, there will be none at all."

Yeah. Jimmy Carter made that happen.

And it's not even what he won his Nobel for.

Can you believe that??

SOMEBODY GIVE HIM ANOTHER ONE!! RIGHT NOW!! JESUS CHRIST!!

We need to invent a new category. The Nobel Prize for Ass-Kickingest Human. And he gets to win it every year.

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If you're not at work, and are the kind of person who would appreciate the irony of a bunch of humor writers putting incredibly nasty words in the mouth of the (genuinely) saintly Carter, I invite you to check out this essay from the Onion, purportedly "by" Carter, which pretty much says it all:

"I Got What America Needs Right Here."

Yes he does.

(And see, they don't even know about the guinea worm thing! They don't mention it! Thus, unhappily, proving their own point--Jimmy Carter is possibly even awesomer than Batman, and nobody in America knows or cares--even further! Even his fans don't appreciate him enough!)

I fear that we do not deserve Jimmy Carter.

Ever since I got it for a birthday present one lucky year, I have been metaphorically clutching The Dictionary of Imaginary Places to my heart.

The Dictionary is a marvelous compendium of fictional places on earth.

These places need to be at least somewhat fantastical--no obvious stand-ins for real places. And they need to already 'exist'--no future locations.

Once past those hurdles, though, you're free to explore a gratuitously vast and diverse menagerie of wonders like the Sea of Frozen Words, the City of Dreadful Night, the Other End of Nowhere, Quarll's Island, Pa-Anch, the City of the Blind, Pyrandria, or the aforementioned ambivalent utopia of Satrapia--all entries in the Dictionary.

But my favorite place to visit in this book is actually the second-to-last paragraph of the Author's Note to the revised edition, a tiny kingdom of poetry bounded by and consisting of the following words:

"The imaginary world keeps growing, and countless continents of the mind are born between book covers every year."

Countless continents of the mind.

And all we have to do is close our eyes.