Things I Learned This Week
Life, love, Ralph Ellison, Eric Roberts, and the things we cooked
The end of a very long week brought all kinds of revelations about life and death, how whacked Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled is, and the ways in which atmospheric circulation works. I won’t get into everything today, but here’s the cream that floated to the top.
My friend Jenny is the kind of person who, whenever she opens her mouth, something amazing comes out. This week, she informed me that she has a book club that’s not really a book club. Everyone is so busy that nobody has time to read assigned books anymore, so her book club reads essays instead. Genius right? Anyway, in her essay club this week, they read Anne Carson’s The Gender of Sound. “Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder, and death.” It’s a fascinating read that informs how we think about women and sound in society and literature, AKA Kamala’s laugh or the siren's call.
Ralph Ellison was a tortured soul who I wish I had gotten to know sooner. I love reading an author who you’ve been acquainted with for a long time but witness for the first time with new eyes. This is the greatest thing about age. You see everything fuller than you did before.
We watched His Three Daughters this week, and I highly recommend it. Reviewers fawned over the end, but it felt lifted from the end of Big Fish, which has one of the best death scenes ever. We also rewatched Runaway Train after listening to Eric Roberts' interview on WTF. My mother loved that movie and used to scream, “I need shoes, Manny!” whenever she couldn’t find her Birkenstocks. My memories of that movie did not hold up, though. Kurasawa’s screenplay sounds like it was poorly translated from Japanese (was it?), and wow, can Jon Voight overact? However, the train action sequences were stunning, and Eric Roberts young was a powerhouse, man. Wow. Here’s to the ones who dream.
My husband and I usually go out to dinner once or twice a week, but otherwise, we cook at home. We usually go through these waves where he cooks for a while, then I cook for a while. However, he's been picking up the slack big time with my going back to school and homework and all the things. We are still dabbling with being flexitarians, so usually, dinner is shrimp, fish, or some kind of faux meat product. This week, he made a Madhur Jaffrey recipe called Shrimp Pullao from the NYTimes. I can not tell you how great it was. Best thing I have eaten in a while in or out of a restaurant.
My 19-year-old son’s musical evolution always amazes me. During a class on the Vietnam War last year, he started getting deep into Bob Dylan, which pleases my husband to no end. Though my son doesn’t remember it, Dylan was his first concert when he was a toddler. He dug this one up and sent it to us this week, Moonshiner, have a listen. It’s a folk song of unknown origin, and Wiki says that “most evidence points to it being an American lyric that became popular in Ireland when sung to a much different tune.” Salve for the soul.
This week, I had one sister in the hospital, a partner-in-law who stepped up, a son and his darling girlfriend on the run from the hurricane, a father sifting through his own end of life, and another sister who is so full of hope but still can’t get a break, a husband with recent knee surgery who is preparing for hip replacement, and a 14-year-old dog with unhealing eye sore. And still, all these people (and creatures) showed me something important this week. You don’t get much sleep when you worry about the things you love. I’m leaning into the part of life where I start losing things. Life gets richer. Optimism prevails.
Quote of the week:
“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?” ― Ralph Ellison from Invisible Man
Headed to New York for the weekend to give one sister a hug.
‘Til Tuesday kids.
Burgin