Weekly Wisdom from Mr. Trollope

I have lived with my characters, and thence has come whatever success I have attained.

Re-Visioning Jane

In re-reading Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of someone newly interested in its dramatic adaptations, I'm surprised that my initial reading of it as a college student didn't provoke the same sight I have now, since I certainly have been always attracted to BBC miniseries and the like--but it didn't.  I see in it now what has compelled people to so consistently re-tell this story--and what interests me most is how, for me, at least, the re-telling comes at the expense of the female narrative.  The perspective is skewed to begin with, removing the text from the page and onto a stage or a screen, but then again--skewed so as to adjust our vantage point: yes, we still see the story through a woman's eyes, but not as much her mind.  And it is through her eyes we stare endlessly at boots and britches, softly curled hair, and pained glances.  Oh, and we like to stare, but it's not the reason we want to adapt the novel, the reason the Elizabeth in all of us sits alone with our mind's eye and looks to her, not him, to think about love.  We read the novel by tracing our heroines' steps, and watch the movies by focusing on their paramours.  Part of what I like about the adaptation I'm currently involved with is that it employs the author herself as a device to share the story; a woman will steer this ship, even if we're constantly seeking land in a pair of manly arms.  Our orchestra, too, is all female; they are the very music of this story.

Weekly Wisdom from Mr. Trollope

''In politics one should always look forward,'' he said, as he held up to the light the glass of old port which he was about to sip; ''in real life it is better to look back, if one has anything to look back at.''

Dancers

The idea of milk or snow

if it could be warm and brought inside

to rest on the hinges of children's books.

His face,clean like pantomime,

painted extraordinary, but delicate:

white, shadow, and red

lips, but eyes, those eyes,

different as they approached, 

worn slightly, and too beautiful.

It's painful, this resting image--too beautiful--

only seen in myself by other eyes, I imagine.

Glorious rest, a sleeping memory and reflection, 

folded lines, soft, thick, and cool,

like touching the thought of milk or snow if it could be warm.

Beauty recognized in youth, I couldn't have drawn it better

though it has drawn me.  Left me to look upon what stirs admiration, 

what conquers hearts in sleeping states, as only I have done.

There is no doing in this, more painful still;

it exists like the hinges of a children's book

written on me, me, and you, you too.  Staring

into the face of my sleeping story, stolen and owned,

I closed my eyes.  How do you follow what is followed,

acquire what is had? How to parry, how to catch that

which I myself with escape with. 

Weekly Wisdom from Mr. Trollope

There are both men and women to whom even the delays and disappointments of love are charming, even when they exist to the detriment of hope.

Consumed

     It's no secret, and possibly a source of pride, that I like food--a lot.  In New York, at home, I cook and bake, enjoying especially the preparation of my meals. Taking the time to choose a recipe, shopping for the ingredients, spending an afternoon cutting and chopping, measuring; the ritual and the food make up a large part of my life in Brooklyn.  I certainly spend more time with food in my apartment than I do sleeping or watching Bravo (the sleeping part bad, Bravo, a little less bad), or talking on the phone.
Arriving in Denver just before Rosh Hashanah, I found myself grieving for my grandfather with a longing for the food of that holiday--the brisket, tzimmes, kugel, honey cake.  There's nothing new about the idea that food plays a great role in our concept of family and history, but I never felt it like I did this September.  I made those foods all for the first time, and ate and cried, each bite a reminder of Herbert and the family gathering we both were absent from.  Aunt Judy would pack up leftovers that would go straight into his overflowing refrigerator and freezer, staying, possibly, too long. I froze my leftovers too, like a memory.
     I missed a lot while in the West--grandparents, holidays, cats, friends, home, my kitchen.  I often will cook quite frequently for the people I work with, contributing to a sense of home by making things to share with thoughtfulness.  An offering of a part of my self that's important to me, a welcoming. But I only made one more meal worth sharing in Denver ( curried butternut squash soup with creme fraiche and pumpkin seeds) but my heart just wasn't in it. So I started to eat out. All the time. There's a truly excellent dining scene here and I was hungry-- but for something more than food. Comfort, passion, adventure.  It may be that the drama of human feeding in Dracula made me ravenous; its characters hunger for food but also for life, sex, pain, faith, bodies, souls. And, well, I'm a suggestible person.  I sought it out on the streets of Denver when I couldn't create it in my own (transitory) home.  Feasts aren't always celebratory-- they can be mournful too. Endless courses of everything we want, everything we have, all we despise, all we lack, everything that is, and all we imagine could be.  And I had a brief taste too for that fulfillment that food replaces, something I think I like the taste of better than anything in the world, only it's not always as readily available as that other sustenance pouring out of sidewalks and shopping complexes.  Or from Fresh Direct, where food is delivered like a gift to your home, cheese and fruit all bearing a sticker with your name on it.  There will be such a gift awaiting my arrival in New York, the food of home at home, nourishment removed slightly from drama, my appetite changing and ever adapting.  

Weekly Wisdom from Mr. Trollope

The world is harder to women than to men; a woman loses much by the chance of adverse circumstances, a man only loses by his own misconduct.

"Then Have Much Breakfast," (or: Bram Stoker's Hungry)

I've been feeding on Vampire literature these days, sucking up as much information as I can before heading off to a city one mile closer to the sun than the rest of the country--rough terrain for the undead.  I was made particularly happy as I began to read Stoker's novel, to discover that his characters like to eat just as much as I do; they eat constantly, with relish, and with great detail.  When Jonathan Harker's diary entries begin, he remarks several times that he must get the recipes for the strange and delicious meals he encounters on his way to Transylvania, in order that Mina may recreate them for him when they are married.  Diaries and recipes--records used to clarify history, formulas for memory--begin a novel wherein the marking of time is essential for the survival of its characters, as is the food humans and vampires alike seek--different in type but no different in necessity.  I, too, consume both time and food, steadily tracking the days in meals, and learning about a not so distant past, where The New Woman and the Victorian ideal would meet in the character of Mina.  I'm a little like a Vampire, drinking in the life of another woman, creating her as my own, undead in her own way, an embodiment of life.

There is such passion in consumption--eating, drinking, methodically recording life's daily events, collecting memories and recipes.  And all these passions result in creation--of a meal, a new being, a novel, a character.

I'm cooking now, in more ways than one, and I cannot wait to set the table . . .

Grandparents

Weekly Wisdom from Mr. Trollope

Her face was her fortune, and her fortune she knew was deteriorating from day to day

love letters

The CD I was listening to as I drove away from the lovely little cottage that was my home for the past two weeks on Cape Cod was comprised entirely of love songs, and the note inside the CD said that the songs were chosen to represent the power that love holds over us and the way in which we experience the passing of time when we're in love.  My heart's been swimming a bit the past few days, a whirlpool of adored fragments; the wood in the Cape Playhouse, the yellowing posters on its walls, documented by a man who cares that it be remembered who worked there, and that he stood on the same stage as they; Julie Harris, 85 years old, standing in the green room to shake our hands after being in our audience; the ocean, and a shell handed to me by a new friend; the joy of making people laugh, and of agreeing to fall in love night after night after night.  On the beach, a place where I spent a lot of time with my Grandfather, and back in my home, where the books he gave me sit on shelves, I think about him who died just three weeks ago, who never said the words "I love you" to me, but who was certainly a man who loved--women, books, paper, saving a dime, his grandkids.  I loved him like I love stories, memories, theatres--things, places where you can, as the great Paul Simon says, "make every lover the love of your life."  Where a scrap of paper is romantic, and the hidden story behind a tube of lipstick, or a pen stain inside the pocket of a shirt, sends your imagination spinning.  There's a lot I don't know about my Grandfather, so I write my ideas of him in my mind, a love letter to family, to ancestry, history and future.  In The 39 Steps, Richard Hannay is consistently told he has no heart, that he has no one to love, that he has no one to come home to.  And yet, he finds little whispers of love all around him; he wants and is wanted but he just can't stop running long enough to claim it.  Until he does.  And I do all the time.

Weekly Wisdom from Mr. Trollope

I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover's mind if she knew the whole of it.