Category: Uncategorized

My recent thoughts about the decline of Gilmore Girls aside (and anyone who knows me knows how much I heart that show), I read this article and my heart broke just a little bit. I can’t even imagine what the show is going to be like with someone other that ASP at the head or where it’ll go in its final seasons. Gasp! What will the Faux-vo do without its Tuesday night schedule imprinted on its little grey brain?

Ever since I bought some Jo Malone perfume, I’ve been caught smelling myself more than once. Yes, this is just as embarrassing as it sounds. But it’s so funny, because I’m allergic and the majority of perfumes give me a headache, wearing one that doesn’t is a totally novel experience.

Sooo, it means more often than not, I’ve got my nose hunkered down to my chest sniffing myself. Because it smells so good and I can’t believe that it’s me that smells that way. It’s a total boost, one that I needed desperately as I’m having a kind of bad disease week.

As much as I enjoy being a band widow, there are parts of being left alone so much that are kind of hard. For example, when my RRHB got back from tour and saw me for the first time, he said he “recoiled in horror.” Honestly, those were the words he used. He backtracked and said it was because he hadn’t seen how puffy I was from the new dose of prednisone, but still: Recoiled. In. Horror.

Doesn’t do a lot for a tenuous ego that’s strapped to the edges of sanity for the most part these days. So anything that I can do to feel kind of even remotely attractive, be it perfume, or a new haircut, or new shoes, I’m kind of indulging myself. Well, I’ll admit it, I’m over-indulging, but as of May 9th (when I see the super-fancy disease doctor again), I’m back on new drugs for the disease, which will, in turn, make me feel like complete crap all over again, I’m taking the good where I can grab it.

Now, if I can only stop smelling myself in public…

Zadie Smith’s third novel On Beauty, thankfully better than her second (Autograph Man, which I really didn’t like) and a more mature book than her first, marks a change in the progress of her art, I think. It’s a serious book (not without comic touches and her own deft style) that could be studied and analyzed and debated and on and on. In short, it’s serious literature. And there’s no doubting that Zadie Smith is seriously talented.

Was Carlene Kipps one of these women who promises friendship but never truly delivers it? A friendship flirt?

This idea of a ‘friendship flirt’ works kind of as a metaphor for me in terms of my reading of the entire novel. At all times, I had the idea that I was reading something great, something magnificent, something prize-worthy and canon-inducting, but I also thought there was something off, something not quite right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I’ve never read Howard’s End, which the book writes back to (as I understand it), but I’d like to now, just to compare the two novels. The Howard in Smith’s book is a stumbling, bumbling white art professor whose infidelity ruins his thirty year marriage to his black wife Kiki. Their three kids, two in university, and one still in high school, are almost typical middle class suburban US kids, each with their own agenda (Jerome’s a Christian, Zora a super-student and Levi a wanna-be ‘gangsta’ with a heart of almost gold). The main conflict in the book, between Howard and a rival thinker named Monty Kipps, conflates when the latter arrives at Wellington, the school near Boston where the former has taught for ten years.

And I can’t put my finger on it, but as much as I loved this novel there was something in the book that just didn’t feel authentic despite the fact that it brought me to tears toward the end, especially when Howard’s marriage inevitably breaks down. It could be the dialogue, the American-ness of it all, it could be the fact that Smith sometimes uses words and phrases that could be simpler, it could be entire characters introduced for pages upon pages and then never brought up again, it could be a number of things where on the whole, I questioned On Beauty. But that didn’t take away from a pretty great reading experience and as I’m not writing a paper or defending a thesis, just keeping a silly little reading blog, I guess that’s all right in the end.

I went to the hospital today for my visual field test. Easiest. Test. Ever. You sit on a chair, rest your chin and then stare into a little plastic box with your eyes covered and then push a button when you see flashing lights. I, of course, saw flashing lights everywhere, so I’m sure I failed, but whatever, I didn’t get pricked, prodded, x-rayed, MRI-ed, shot full of dye, or any other number of annoying things that usually happen when I’m at the hospital. Oh! And I was early, so I was in and out of there in 10 freaking minutes.

How sweet is that?

It’s maple syrup I tell you, maple bloody syrup!

Will they remove the mute button too? And I know the age of the Faux-Vo is coming where they won’t let you fast-forward through commercials, but couldn’t they just give me a couple of years of uninterrupted bliss? Buggers.

From Margaret Atwood in this podcast interview on Bookbuffet.com. When the interviewer asks about Ms. Atwood’s intentions when writing a book, she answers honesty, that it is to “strive to write a good book, if that’s not the goal [and I’m paraphrasing here], then you’re not really a writer.”

I love the simplicity in that statement. It encapsulates both the ideal of writing and the essence of the goal, but at the same time it doesn’t belie how difficult the task most certainly is for novelists.

I’m trying to read On Beauty and not getting very far because it’s a kind of concentrate-hard book and I’m so tired and sleepy and drowsy that it’s impossible to follow the words on the page.

But how pathetic is it to want to go to bed, to sleep, at 7:34 PM?

I’m too tired even to watch TV.

Damn disease!

I’m not ashamed to admit how much I miss having new episodes of Sex and the City to look forward to. For a while there, Bravo was airing marathon sessions of six or so episodes in a row, and I Faux-Voed them all, because they made perfect tv watching when the WG-fatigue hits in the early evenings.

And one of the most surprisingly wonderful things about the disease, is that I have energy in the mornings. Not while my blood was missing mind you, but now that it’s been found, I actually wake up chemically rested (I’m taking sleeping pills because the prednisone keeps you awake) with energy at a decent hour.

This morning, I woke up at 7:30 AM and cleaned the house, well half of the house, the other half will have to get done throughout the week. Then, I went to brunch with Sam, and yesterday, I had lunch with another girlfriend. And it’s that sitting around, eating, with a good friend that makes me so happy that I have energy. Anyway, having brunch two days in a row made me think of Sex and the City and how much I miss the show, and all kinds of other good stuff.

Yesterday, being Earth Day, I sat down and wrote out some revolutions that I was going to try to stick to. And it shocked me, as I walked around shopping on Saturday afternoon, when I told people that I didn’t want a plastic bag for my $11.00 t-shirt because it was Earth Day, that no one a) really cared or b) even noticed.

Here’s a sample of the conversation I had buying said $11.00 t-shirt:

Ragdoll: “I don’t need a bag, just a bit of tissue paper.”

Idiotic Store Clerk: “That’s good!” [Insert horsey giggle here] “We don’t have very many!”

Ragdoll: “It’s Earth Day, so I’m trying not to collect any plastic bags.”

IDC: “It’s your birthday! That’s nice.”

Ragdoll: “No, it’s Earth Day.”

IDC: “Congratulations! This t-shirt’s a real bargain…”

Honestly. That was my conversation.

Next up I went to the super-expensive department store and bought some super-expensive, yet all natural perfume (thanks for the tip Indigo), which won’t make me sicker and will still leave me feeling pretty. Again, I had a funny conversation about Earth Day as the lovely and charming clerk deposited my gorgeous bottle in a lovely box with tissue paper and ribbon. I didn’t take a bag though, which was something anyway.

My revolutions mainly consist of little things I can do, turning the heat down or off, using the halogen light bulbs, cutting down on what I consume and how I consume it, taking public transit when I’m not working out of the city (which I do all the time) and walking more.

The idea of Earth Day, however, didn’t stop me from shopping, which I am slowly becoming more and more afraid I might be addicted to. Sigh. Not the idea mind you, the actual shopping. It’ll be good when my RRHB stops touring because once he’s home I know I won’t have two days on my own to wander around downtown after brunch looking longingly at shoes I’m trying to rationalize spending $400.00 on.

Normally, I choose books to read based on a number of things: I read a good review; it’s an author I like; there’s a movie coming out; it’s a classic; someone’s recommended the book or I’ve heard a lot of buzz about it. In the very, very rare instance I’ll read a book based on the cover, which is why I read Sarah Armstrong’s first novel, Salt Rain. With such a gorgeous green cover, it felt extremely relevant to be reading the novel on Earth Day of all days.

Armstrong’s from Australia, and like Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly, her novel also transported me to a world quite unfamiliar to my own. Set in the valley of the Australian backcountry, where they have a rainy season and farmers are used to extreme flooding, Salt Rain tells the story of Allie, a 14-year-old girl whose mother has just gone missing in the Sydney Harbour.

Allie’s aunt, Julia, Mae (her mother’s) younger sister, takes her back to the farm where they were both raised. The complex family relationship countered with the volatile nature of the environment (the floods) balances a dense and sombre novel. While the crux of the Salt Rain revolves around Allie finding out about the truth of her birth, the prose, thick like the rain forest, with level after level of metaphor, works remarkably well with the simplistic storyline.

As much as the book is Allie’s story, her quest to find her father and to know the truth about her mother, it’s also about Julia. The two women find their way around each other, navigating the steps of their new relationship, as hard as that is when its defined by bloodlines and death. As Allie sits in opposition to her aunt most of the time, Julia faces her own demons in her family history. She’s letting the farm go back to nature, planting trees instead of harvesting them, and feels the wrath of her grandmother and uncle. How the two women come to an understand that eventually leads to a quiet revolution in both of their lives is both touching and necessary.

And for a novel I picked up on a whim, I was so pleasantly surprised by Salt Rain that it kind of took me aback. It’s nice to see something so beautiful from an aesthetic point of view, actually be that way too between the covers.