120 square foot master bedroom

This morning I woke up in my 120 square foot master bedroom on my non-pillow topped Serta under my 250 thread count sheets with a ‘low fill power ‘ comforter.  I’ve watched enough HGTV to know that even first time homeowners barely out of their teens who have been living in her parents’ basement to save for a down payment demand a grand Master Bedroom with an en suite bathroom. My bathroom is not en suite (there’s barely a room and definitely not a suite).  My bathroom, at best, could be described as a Jack and Jill.  That means it’s meant to serve two bedrooms inhabited by  a boy and a girl whose parents named them Jack and Jill when those names were still usable. Even though there is no “master” in my house, I’m thinking I’ve settled and why didn’t I notice this before?

I made a list of the places I’ve lived and searched for the wrong turn I might have taken.
1. Three boarding schools.
2. Three  studio apartments in New York City steps from glam Fifth Avenue.  
3. Newly married I was “at home” at the north end of Park Avenue.  
4. As a new mother I nursed my newborn in the chauffeur’s cottage in shadowy, secretive estate-choked Mill Neck, L.I. 
5. As a middle-aged mother I yelled at my children in Lattingtown Harbor, L.I. within the old gated estate of J. P. Morgan’s lawyer, Mr. Guthrie.  
6. Presently, I live in the village of East Hampton, N.Y. one and a half miles from the Atlantic Ocean and sleep in the smallest bedroom I’ve ever had.

The most interesting house I lived in was at 3102 Cleveland Avenue, Washington, D.C. and had previously belonged to Truman’s V.P. Alben Barkley.  The Barkleys left a lot of government memorabilia in the basement that could probably make me a millionaire today but I think my Uncle Charlie threw it away.  Barkley died while giving a speech at Washington & Lee Univ. “I would rather be a servant in the house of the Lord than sit on the seats of the mighty,” he said and then collapsed.  I’m like Alben.  I have the residential mind-set of a peasant. I don’t want to sit in the seats of the mighty either.  Tracing the past shows me that I am most likely to choose a humble repair-needy dwelling in a great zip code.  

Recently I did some house refurbishing.  I painted the living room a medium gray and it looks sophisticated in a “An unexpected color can transform a summer cottage” way. I painted the outside soffits and fascias and trim and got new storm windows and new leaders and gutters.  It all looks as good as it will ever look unless I tear the house down and start anew.   Since I cut down the overbearing tree in the backyard, the sunlight streams in throughout the day but especially around three o’clock.  It is a cheerful, welcoming light that leaves nothing in shadow.   With the tree gone I will be able to have a vegetable garden for the first time in my life.  I could sleep in any room in the house.  I could make the living room my bedroom if I wanted.  I could sleep in a bedroom that occupies the entire gabled attic floor.  With the tree gone and my house all spiffed up and much of my stuff given away or thrown away, let’s see how I do in 2013.  I will probably own this house for the rest of my life.  It’s a good house with big fat water filled radiators that give off a mellow heat.  I can dry my clothes on them and sit on them when I come in from the cold.   I can walk to everything in the village and the railroad is a block away.  There’s a studio cottage in back that I occasionally rent out for the night or sleep in when my kids come to visit.  There’s a garage filled with all the stuff I took out of the basement.  (For some reason, the empty basement gives me confidence.)  This spring I will plant my  vegetable garden. I'll start turning over the soil as soon as the ground is soft.  Whatever psychological map led me to this house, it feels okay.

Just leave it to the subconscious

In my recent divesting mania I came upon an old tattered unknown book that has been waiting for discovery in an attic nook for twenty years:  The Magic of Believing by Claude Bristol.  I turned to a page with the corner turned down and decided to share what it said.

 I offer this excerpt because it made sense to me. I believe that the worn and dog-eared playbook we stuck in our subconscious has been the blueprint for our lives but the good news is, we can still edit, add to it and hit publish at any time. 

“Desire is the generating power of all human action and without it no one can get very far.  The keener, the more urgent the desire, the sooner the consummation.  So you must start out with desire, keeping in mind with the magic of believing you can obtain what you picture in your mind’s eye.

So let’s get down to the mechanics.  Secure three or four index cards.  In a private room, sit down and ask yourself what you desire above everything else.  When the answer comes and you are certain that it is your uppermost desire, then at the top of one card write a word picture of it.  One or two words may be sufficient - a job, a better job, more money, a home of your own (or something small).  Then on each card duplicate the word picture on the original card.  Place the cards in your wallet, beside your bed, on the bathroom mirror, on your desk.  The idea is to enable you to mentally picture at all hours of the day.  Just before sleep and upon arising are important moments of thoughts.  The more you can visualize the desire, the speedier the materialization. 

You need not concern yourself with how the results are to come.  Just leave it to the subconscious mind which has its own ways of making contacts and opening doors and avenues that you may never have thought of.  You will receive assistance from the most unexpected sources.  You will find that ideas useful in the accomplishment of your program will come at the most unexpected times.  You may be suddenly struck with an idea of seeing a person you have never seen before.  You may get the idea of writing a letter or making a telephone call.  Whatever the idea is, follow it.”

Note:  If you decide to give it a try, do not, I repeat do not, talk about it. Also, don’t make a big deal out of the process or the outcome. Many of you might quibble with the word ‘magic.’  On the first page, the author (who was a financial editor at a big Los Angeles newspaper, says this:  “I realized that I had run across something workable but didn’t consider it then, neither do I now, as mystical except in the sense that it is unknown to the majority of people.”

Scary fairytales also known as love stories.

Internet presence is unpredictable.  Lately, Viking/ Penguin has been sending me some of their books to review.  I have no idea how this came my way but I feel all professorial/uppity about it.   This month, they sent me Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie, Jr. and a book of short stories by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.

When I looked at the first page of Currie’s book I was standing in the doorway between the sunroom and the kitchen munching a piece of bacon. (Yes, I bought bacon, I cooked bacon, I ate bacon.)  Janet Maslin (N.Y.Times) had said of Mr. Currie “pays no heed to ordinary narrative convention” and I thought, Oh, good, something innovative with no traceable narrative thread; just what I need to take my mind off my weight.

The other review book they sent was from Russia's acclaimed contemporary  fiction writer Ludmilla Petrushevskaya  (referred to henceforth as LP) whose previous collection of short stories was titled:  There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby.”  I had the follow up:  There Once Lived A Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband And He Hanged Himself. I knew this was the book I wanted to review.  First of all - get this - the subtitle is “Love Stories.”

 If nothing else, these titles parsed out in fairytale language send the message that we’re going to find out some truth about human nature and there’s going to be no fairytale about it.  That’s the purpose of good fiction and LP doesn’t disappoint.  It’s the opposite of the horrid sentimentality that imprisons some popular American fiction (except for Jennifer Egan and a few others).  Petrushevskaya is telegraphing, we’re dark, so what?  Get over it but let’s look at it.  Let’s look at it in an allegorical way so you won’t be freaked out.

The stories are short.  They are about society’s losers who are trying to get a foothold in love.  They are narrated simply without much dialogue and without any emotional prompting by the author.   Here’s what happened, I don’t care how you feel about it.  They are set in Russia where privacy and a place to live are everyday difficulties.  Lovers are homely or they have diabetes and they live with their mothers.  Existences are mostly meager. If one is foolishly daydreaming of the return of a one-night stand it is less hurtful than the eventual breakdown of a real romance. 

American Beauty comes to mind.  And a fabulous film The Details that is so dark, so true, so beguiling that we breathe a sigh of relief that our black marks are small.

The Goddess Parka, one of the more optimistic stories ends in a hook-up that barely happens and only through very fragile connections  - but isn’t that always the way? LC uses supernatural intervention with as much ease as she uses the macabre because she’s a humanist at heart although the nightmarish aspect of some of the stories makes us blink, look away and ponder a minute.  

Despite its Russian origins and the literary tradition that produced Dostoyevsky, the stories are easy to read and leave us with a lot to mull over.

In Cold Blood

All at once the scales were removed from my eyes (as the Bible says) and I can see.  I can see that I have too much stuff.  I’ve been reading about these micro apts. Mayor Bloomberg is having built in NYC that are 300 sq. feet (more about those in another blog). I’m going to pretend that’s all the space I have and “get rid of.” My first divestiture attempt is the overflowing stacks of books I’ve collected over the years. I called a neighborhood vintage bookseller and she agreed to come and look at what I had.  That call was the only thing I did that day that’s how exhausting it was to think of peeling myself away from my belongings.

I dragged out about one hundred books and laid them on every surface of the living room.  I began to get nervous.  What if, like Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest the woman looked at my books and uttered the collector’s equivalent of that bitchy line “What a dump!”

I decided to prepare myself the way mothers prepare their children for a flu shot. 

The doctor’s going to take a needle and prick your arm. 

No, no.  It’s going to hurt.  

It will only hurt for a second and then you’ll get a treat. 

I said: 

Consuelo, what are you hoping to get out of this?

A good home for the books and maybe a few bucks.

Suppose she comes in and says, I’m looking for serious first editions or rare books.  Your books are pedestrian.

She won’t say that.

She might just walk out and that would be the same thing.

Yes, that could happen. 

How will that make you feel?

Ashamed and delusional.

Why don’t you think about it now so you can be prepared.

I thought about it for a minute or two.

Ok. I’m prepared.

The woman came. She filled three quarters of a box with books leaving 95% of the inventory.  She spoke three succinct sentences at the appropriate moments:  Hello.  I won’t need another box.  How about forty dollars? I had the nerve to ask , “Can you make it fifty?”  She nodded and gave me cash.   When I pointed out several books I thought might sell well, she said: “Condition issue.” Hemingway would have loved this woman’s dialogue.  She took two copies of In Cold Blood.  Joan Didion’s Play it as it Lays.  Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie. The Letters of Virginia Woolf (I will miss those high-strung crazies in the Bloomsbury crowd), Catcher In The Rye, a dvd of Duke Ellington and a couple of children’s books.  I gave her an Annie Dillard galley for free. 

When she left I was exhausted.  I thought it was from nervousness or dragging out all those books but it was something else.  She had broken the spell of “holding on.” I could hardly wait to pack up the rest of the books and everything else I didn’t need and take it to a good home and away from mine.

State of the Union according to Google

The president will soon deliver his State of the Union address so I decided to check the State of the Union according to Google.

Google knows how the citizens are doing.  It has saved all our questions, all our searches, all our subjects and sub categories, We only have to prompt it with a word or two and it shows us where we have been, where we are and where we need to go.

My job is:

boring

killing me

sucks

makes me depressed

My wife:

doesn’t want kids

doesn’t trust me

doesn’t love me anymore

doesn’t listen to me

doesn’t respect me

doesn’t support me

doesn’t like me anymore

doesn’t like my family

My husband:

is gay

got a family

cheated on me

Betty

is mean

hit me

hates his job

I lie:

about everything

too much

all the time

to myself

My house is:

on fire

making me sick

in foreclosure

I’m happiest when:

I’m alone

           

Happiness is:

camping

a choice

like a butterfly

My health is:

declining

deteriorating

better in November

not good

going down fast

getting worse

Government is:

corrupt

killing us

watching us

lying to us

I worry about:

everything

everything all the time

money all the time

my boyfriend

my boyfriend dying

           

I hate:

my job

my life

myself

everything about you

How do I:

put this gently

get pinkeye

God bless you all and God bless America

            

Tahini is found next to the Nutella, ironically

By some miracle and a sequence of fragile but connected happenstances I got my broken washing machine to work again.  During the broken period, I was immobilized, like Lot’s wife. I didn’t want a new machine.  I was sure that the only thing standing between happiness and desolation was doing a “system restore” (a time travel maneuver where you take a faulty computer back to a date when it did what you wanted and trick it into being fine again. You say:  hey look it’s May 3rd, 2012 you’re a rock star) and get back to that Wednesday when the Maytag chugged through it’s frill/free cycles like a young pup.

When I got the machine to work, I said, Well, there’s a miracle.  You can get anything you want just by intense stubborn wanting.  But the minute you get what you want something else shows up that you have to have.  This is a big glitch in our makeup because even though I’m hardly the typical human I know I’m not alone in this.  My big mistake is thinking that this sequence is ever going to give way to a reliable untroubled sameness. It’s not.  This morning I solved about four problems that have been stalking me for two days.  I better enjoy my good fifteen minutes.

I wish this “glitch” example wasn’t about my Maytag because appliances today are not made to wash clothes or the dishes.  They are made to break your will to live and also to break on Friday night.  The technology needed to make a machine break on cue should be used to make a trouble free machine but nooooo.  I read in Steve Jobs biography that he could not find a washing machine that satisfied him either.  Or a sofa (another design unit usurped by inmates.)  Jobs spent a long time thinking about what a sofa is supposed to do and couldn’t come up with a good answer.  If by some horrible accident my long-standing sofa was gone I couldn’t buy another. Jobs finally bought a European washer/dryer and skipped the sofa.

Since the KITCHEN now hogs all of the important space and has all the drama and has been shoved down our throats as the most important room in the house and food is now the only topic of conversation (except for placenta cord banking) you could make do with two folding chairs in the living room as Jobs did. Nobody goes into the living room anyway.

I think a fitting end to this whine fest is a good recipe for Baba Ghanoush

Buy a firm smooth, blemish free eggplant.

Bake at 350 to until very soft when you stick a fork in it. (about 40 mins.)

Place on a plate, cut the top so the edge of the skin is visible and peel.  Skin should come off very easily.  If some of the inside comes off with the skin, scrape it off with a knife and keep it.

Take the eggplant innards and put in blender with juice of one lemon or lime and a little salt.

(Doesn't have to be pureed but it tastes better when blended rather than just mashed with a fork although I used to just mash it.)

Place in a medium sized bowl.   

Add Tahini (sesame seed paste) that comes in a jar and can now be found in the supermarket next to the Nutella ironically.  (make sure the ingredients are ONLY sesame seeds or else you will go down a bad road.)

Tahini tends to settle on the bottom and the oily part remains on top.  You have to stir and blend really well.

Add three or four heaping tablespoons of Tahini to the eggplant and mix together.  You might need a bit more lemon or lime if it’s too stiff.

You can add garlic if you like but it’s excellent with just lemon juice and salt.

You can dribble a bit of olive oil on top and some chopped parsley.

.

Before I forget PUT A COUPLE OF FORK HOLES IN THE EGGPLANT OR IT WILL EXPLODE AND STICK TO YOUR OVEN WALLS.  AN EGGPLANT I'VE DISCOVERED CAN BE A LITTLE BOMB.   ALSO PLACE IT ON SOME FOIL BECAUSE IT WILL OOZE OUT LIKE SWEET POTATOES AND MESS UP YOUR OVEN.

Ah, Hemingway.

We don’t hear enough about Ernest Hemingway.  If it were up to me, I would talk about Hemingway every day and I would use him as an example of many things having nothing to do with writing.  If you read A Moveable Feast, my favorite book, and the best literary gossip extravaganza, you could indict him every other page for personality disorders but none of that matters BECAUSE it was Hemingway who gave us the thrill and freedom of The Simple Declarative Unadorned Sentence that unlocked the prison doors for writers who had the sense to steal his style.  If you think it’s easy to write this way, it’s not.  We’re verbose, lazy talkers with the notion that clauses, interjections, adjectives and adverbs are necessary to make us sound intelligent.  Pity. 

I came across this paragraph on Hemingway’s writing regime that illuminates his process. Hemingway stood when he wrote.  The typewriter and the reading board were chest-high opposite him.  He always stopped writing when he knew exactly what was going to happen next.  (I probably didn't need 'exactly' in that last sentence.)

“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.”