I came home from class all jazzed because the lecture was about the ancient library of Alexandria. Did you know that people used to read aloud whenever they read a book, and that reading a book silently represented a huge shift in the history of reading? I didn’t, until tonight. Saint Augustine, in his confessions, writes about seeing an important bishop read quietly to himself, and how shocking that was.
Today I came across a line of poetry in one of James Wright’s poems, “At the Executed Murderer’s Grave,” which explains exactly how I feel about having grown up in central New Jersey: “…dying’s the best/of all the arts men learn in a dead place.”
I’m reading Franz Wright’s book _Walking to Martha’s Vineyard_, and so am thinking a lot about James Wright’s poetry and how it differs from his son’s. I wonder if Franz Wright’s book would have won a Pulitzer Prize if it didn’t reference his father so much in it. Reading it feels so much like missing James Wright, his particular energy in the world, that I can completely see why people love this book so much. I will say this: He manages to work in a reference to a topless rodeo. Now that’s my kind of poet, one who can mix the highbrow and the lowbrow!
I recently purchased a bright red lipstick. I do this occasionally, and I usually end up giving them to my sister (who has a perfectly plump bow mouth) because eventually I run up against the unavoidable fact that when I wear red lipstick I look like I have a fresh wound on my face. I ambush myself in the mirror, Perseus trying to outwit some awful cunning Medusa. But in the right light, I think this lipstick makes me look like Madonna or Gwen Stefani. My husband thinks it makes me look like Ronald McDonald.
Once about ten years ago, I remarked to a friend that I was out of glitter eyeshadow and had to get some more. She said, “You sound like you ran out of milk. Is glitter a staple? Why on Earth does a grown woman need glitter?” I was flabbergasted that she could ask such a question. It seemed so obvious to me.
I keep thinking I will outgrow my need for glamour, but it appears that I never will. And it worries me. Secretly I believe that this is why I don’t have a more important job, because I can’t stop going to work wearing tote bags emblazoned with the logo “Debbie Does Dallas,” instead of the ritzy Balenciaga bags I should be wearing. But the plain fact is that I just get bored of dressing myself in the morning and being in the world if I don’t switch it up a little bit. It’s why one of my favorite books is _Morgan’s Passing_, in which the main character approaches getting dressed in the morning as a form of costuming.
(Rod and I saw a great exhibit at Moma called “Designers Take on the Concept of Risk,” in which homeless shelter, emergency radios, and body armor were shown alongside fancy tableware and all manner of fashionable garments, the idea being that persona, identity, clothing, are ways in which we manage our anxiety about the danger in the world. Suddenly the “I need a garish lipstick” impulse made much more sense. But I digress)
For a while I make a concerted effort to tone it down. I’ve lost count of the pairs of khakis that I’ve bought in a fit like this, and then thrown out a few months later when I realize that in fact my body rejects khaki. The need for glamour comes back worse than before, like a virus, and I spend hundreds of dollars on sequins and metallic shoes and purple frosted eye shadow. Then I worry aloud that I will age like Fran Fine’s relatives on “The Nanny.” Lately I have been thinking that this has something to do with my heritage. (Also with my profession and my religion: The root of “glamour” is “grammar,” and in its original sense glamour has everything to do with the spellcraft of wordplay.)
It’s an Italian thing, and has to do with two dueling designers, Armani (representing the North), and Versace (representing the South). My family are southern Italian, all. But my mother’s family strives for an Armani sensibility: beige, understated, clean lines. My father’s family, the Sicilians and the Neapolitans, are much more Versace: Splashy floral prints, bright lipstick, asymmetrical lines.
Lately I have been channeling my great aunt Clara, who used to wear beetle green eyeshadow, thick black eyeliner, and a black beehive hairdo piled high on her head–well into her seventies. She was the first diva I knew, and I believed she was the personification of glamour. My grandmother (father’s mother, natch) always wore her makeup in the style of Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Again, I thought she looked gorgeous in her fuschia lipstick and rose-spattered polyester tunic.
This grandma is my only surviving grandparent, and she is currently in a nursing home, languishing with dementia. My parents tell me that she is, in a sense, having the time of her life: She is the hit of the place, very popular. It is difficult for everyone else when she doesn’t remember them, but she still has a lively self concept and makes a lot of new friends.
The last time I went to see her, she looked like something painted by Modigliani: so thin, so wan, with none of that brave bright mouth and electric eyeshadow. I had never in all my born days seen my grandmother’s face so naked. And her eyes barely open for my visit (she naps a lot).
Lately I have become possessed with the idea of getting a Medusa tattoo on my back, for reasons too complicated to go into here. And it just occurred to me tonight: Whose fashion house is symbolized by the Medusa head? Versace’s.
Someone called me “Madam” today as I was walking down fifth avenue feeling beautiful and cool because I was on my way to buy expensive makeup. “Madam, I have a question for you.” He said. “Um, not calling me ‘Madam’ you don’t,” I said.
Madam! As in Waylon Jennings and Madam his granny puppet? I got over being called “ma’am” a few years ago, but “Madam” is a staggering new dimension. Incidentally, my nickname is “Lena” which, in the old Roman dialect of Italian, means “Madam.” As in bordello.
Here’s the question: What is the proper way to accost someone on the street? This twenty-five-year-old whippersnapper who managed to send my burgeoning self esteem temporarily into the toilet was probably trying to hawk expensive shampoo and salon treatments (because the “question” they usually ask is “where do you get your hair done? have i got a salon for you!”)
I think it’s the sexism more than anything else in these personal titles that gets to me. A sixteen-year-old boy is called “Sir,” the same as his father and his grandfather is. But for women, there are these hierarchies of personal titles, all of which include some degree of dismissiveness. It’s a lose-lose situation. If you’re “Miss” you’re an unwashed ninny, a “practically brainless baba,” (to use Nabokov’s phrase). If you’re “Ms.” then you’re a castrating feminist (do you notice, there aren’t any other kind in the media? Just ball-choppers, every last one.) If you’re “Ma’am,” then you’re past your prime.
Friends who grew up in the South have told me that everyone is called “Ma’am” there, and that it carries neither an age connotation nor any degree of condescension. I wouldn’t know. All I know is that right in front of Saks Fifth Avenue I sucked in my breath as though someone had spit in my mouth. There I was flapping my lips like a mudskipper out of water, thrashing its gills.
I’m thirty-six years old and happily married—a woman veritably ripe to bursting, certainly no blushing maiden. Do I really expect to be called “Miss”? Of course not. Then I *know* someone’s trying to sell me something, if he’s addressing me as “Miss.”
I prefer to abandon the titles altogether. When I got married, I kept my maiden name (Alagna). I suggested to Rod that both he and I should choose a name together, but he refused. He didn’t want to change his name. My parents know this. Yet whenever they send me correspondence, what do you think they put on the envelope? You guessed it: Mrs. Magdalena Schmidt. I think once they even put “Mrs. Roderic Schmidt.” Hcccchhh. There are so many other battles that I simply must let this one go. But I say “Hccchhh” again!
If anything could have taken the sting out of the madam, it was eating the “Elvis” confection from the Chocolate Bar nyc (www.chocolatebarnyc.com). It is dark chocolate wrapped around peanut butter, marshmallow, and banana cream. And it was waiting for me when I got home because Rod had gone on a chocolate errand. That’s what I’m talking about.
As I sat eating my lovely chocolate goodie, I recalled a conversation I had with my sister today about one of her friends, who is anorexic. We all know someone, and probably quite a few people, with eating disorders. A lot of us used to have one. I used to have one. Now I don’t. That means whenever I hear about a live, vital woman who is abusing herself in this way, I feel like crying. It also means that I will never cease making art and poetry about the beauty of women’s bodies in all their forms. That every day I will tell another woman she looks gorgeous and should by all means eat that slice of chocolate cake.
For my sister’s friend, with her veil of hair and her heartbroken eyes, even though she’ll never see this, here are some of the reasons I will never weigh 95 pounds again: Green tea smoothies, dark chocolate, grilled fontina cheese and prosciutto sandwiches, sour cream and onion potato chips, balsamic and brown sugar roasted sweet potato fries, puttanesca sauce with cavatelli and extra anchovies, fresh mozzarella and pesto, sesame noodles, avocado, ranch dressing, spicy tuna rolls.
For this young woman, who is alive and alight, whose body serves her perfectly every day though she deprives it, feels caged in her own hollowing ribs, for her, I thank my body as it moves me from room to room, upright, graceful, my eyes taking in the skyscrapers swathed in fog as I look out the window, the tantalizing smell of spicy perfume at my wrists, the caress of my light cotton clothes.
I hope one day someone will say all this to her in a way she’ll understand. That she’ll get it in her guts and in every inch of singing skin: The body is not a dumb animal, sickening and hollering toward death. For me, it is the only ready joy at my command; my heart, my house, my engine, my sword. It’s the car Thelma and Louise drove over that cliff and baby, I’m driving.
On the advice of my horoscope, I called my parents yesterday. The horoscope said (I’m paraphrasing): Call your family and tell them you still love them even though you’re blowing them off to be a workaholic. I suppose that could be the Capricorn horoscope every day. Sometimes the horoscope is: Stop working or you’re going to die sooner than you otherwise would.
Here’s my wish: I long for the day when I will call my parents and *not* get a report on the state of my mother’s bowels. I’ve lost count of the times we’ve had this conversation: “How are you, Mom?” “I have explosive diarrhea and a broken toilet.” “Oh. I’m *so sorry* that I asked. That’s a little too much information.” “Yeah, so anyway, the plunger is broken but I see what the blockage is, and I have rubber gloves so I’ll be alright…” “Um, is Dad around?”
Rod and I have been living together for eight years, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the times that either one of us has peed while leaving the bathroom door open–usually we have to be drunk to the point of near paralysis for that to happen. Some people think that means we’re impossibly buttoned up, but here’s the thing: I don’t want to know anyone that well. I just don’t. I don’t see why intimacy necessitates knowing the blow-by-blow details of someone’s digestion. I say, preserve the mystery!
Because I spent my formative years in the company of someone who soliloquizes the ins and outs of her digestive processes. She’s like the frickin Lady MacBeth of the bathroom. Long after I’ve begged her to change the subject, my mom usually goes on to theorize exactly *what* is influencing her innards: Is it the new fish oil supplement she’s taking for her cholesterol? Is it the pint of ice cream she ate, even though she’s lactose intolerant and took her pill before she binged on the frozen dairy treat? You can see exactly from the juxtaposition of these two sentence what frustrates me about her, can’t you? Why bother going to the health food store and getting a fish oil supplement to help your high cholesterol if you are then going to eat a pint of full-fat ice cream? Oh, the humanity.
Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year. Hooray, year of the dog! I will seize any excuse to eat Chinese food. Long, uncut noodles should be consumed for longevity. Dumplings bring wealth, as does fried tofu. Can I get a hell yeah? Rod and I were going to go to Chinatown and see the fireworks, but we got up too late. I made corn muffins with scallion, corn kernels, and jalapeno pepper in them for breakfast, so we’re just lazing around before we do our errands for the day. In honor of the Lunar New Year, we will probably just walk to the market while throwing some bang-snaps on the ground in front of us.
Last night we saw “Breakfast on Pluto,” with which I was totally underwhelmed. The only scene I liked was the reverse-confessional scene in the booth of the peep show. I like the tension of opposites. That is, I like it when pretty Cillian Murphy is covered with blood and chased by zombies. Or getting his creep on by terrorizing Gotham as the Scarecrow. In fact that airplane-psycho movie he was in (Flight Plan?) looks so scary that I won’t see it, because I already have to take sedatives in order to get on an airplane without indulging in fits of uncontrolled weeping. Cillian Murphy looks like a supermodel even when he’s wearing regular man-clothes: There isn’t much difference between him and Giselle, is there? I much prefer seeing someone like Wesley Snipes in drag. Now that is a real acting challenge.
This morning I took a belly dance class. It was awesome. Every time I take a belly dance class, I vow to do it twice a week. Then I let other activities intervene, such as sitting for a few hours in the library reading poetry, which is also something I did today.
Every year around Christmas when Rod asks me what I want as a gift, I say, “A sensory deprivation tank.” I’m not joking, either. We just can’t fit one in our apartment. But I found out recently that it is possible to purchase gift certificates for sensory deprivation tank visits, right here in New York City! All of this just to say: The public library was too rowdy for me today, with people bringing fifteen of their wretched children in to use the computers. What ever happened to the concept of the inside voice? I have been a shusher all my life; it’s not something that I’ve acquired as a result of my time in library school.
The belly dance class was at my gym, which means that it is more about aerobic activity than about actual dance skill. That’s fine; there are plenty of studios where I can get dance instruction. I just enjoy being in a room full of women. It turns me on to be around a bunch of hot, happy, jiggling women. Belly dance is genius. I’m getting older, and the belly that wasn’t there five years ago is simply growing rounder and more prominent each year. So I will learn to dance with it.
It’s all about context: Me shimmying my rear so that the buttocks flap in an alarmingly exaggerated manner could have just been horrifying (especially because I wasn’t wearing underwear). But in a belly dance class, such a movement is called *dancing*!
At the end of the class everyone made a circle and then took turns dancing a solo in the middle of the circle while everyone else clapped and cheered. It being my first time, I was a little shy about it, but one of the regulars, an older and totally delicious woman, lured me into the center of the dance floor and kissed me on the cheek when I was done. Now that is empowerment.
Lots of women I know don’t like other women. They don’t like to be in a room full of women. You know what I like about it? I feel reasonably sure that I know everyone’s motivations, that I can understand them. Women tell me all the time that they don’t like that sense of evaluation, the New York once-over that they get being in all-female company. To me, that kind of thing is easy to dismiss. I just smile widely at a woman who’s sizing me up, and it disarms her, and then we can move on.
Yesterday as I was walking from work to a class at Pratt, I heard a father say to his son, “That’s astonishing!” The little boy looked to be about four years old, and he promptly responded, “What’s that mean?” Blinking and squinting a little as two fire trucks screamed past.
I sped up so that I wouldn’t hear the father’s answer, because I knew he wouldn’t say what I wanted him to say. “Astonishing” is one of my favorite words. I envied that little boy for encountering it for the first time. And if I had a son (praise all the gods there are that I do not), I would tell him “astonishing” is the sound of breaking glass, the way that shattered glass would look splayed on the lip of a lit fireplace in a house deep in the woods where a bear is tearing someone’s throat out.
It’s a Hansel and Gretel word, full of danger and possibility, the way all those vowels react to each other and that “O” coming down round as a hammer head. That “O” which makes you embody the shock.
I started this blog because I don’t keep a journal anymore, and I want to remember moments like that one.
When I got home I showed Rod my list of words that I didn’t understand in Paul Muldoon’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning book of poetry _Moy Sand and Gravel_. He was amused and promptly looked up about half the words. The other half he knew, having had a better education than the one I had. This is why we are married: We spent a half hour looking up words like “hinny” and “glabrous.”
I was glad that I had some sensual moments in the day to balance out all this cerebral activity. One was my delicious lunch salad, the way the fresh spinach shone so boldly green against the red radicchio, the way the flavor of the balsamic grilled chicken (which Rod grilled; so impressive!) tickled the red grapes I threw in there just for fun.
The other was drinking a pot of steaming rooibus tea out of my new tangerine-colored Fiesta teapot. The orange of the pot perfectly complements my cobalt-blue mugs.
