Compromise is an inherent part of any relationship. We can’t be all things to all people. Neither can we be everything to that one special person, however much we might try. Which is not to say that Rod is not the business, because he is. He’s my favorite person in the entire world, ever.
Nonetheless, there are some things for which I simply must go outside of my marriage. One of these is the shared consumption of marshmallow fluff. Fluff, like champagne, is most effectively consumed in the company of similar-minded bon vivants. That’s why I brought a jar in to work today. Along with a jar of peanut butter and a sleeve of Saltines.
That’s right, people. It’s Fluffernutter Friday. This is my take on Casual Friday, which in an era of continuous Business Casual doesn’t have much meaning. I’ve often expressed the wish that we could have Formalwear Friday. I think it would be uproarious to have people get some use out of those ugly bridesmaid dresses that are cowering in the back of the closet like wallflowers at a hoedown. Bridesmaid dresses–talk about the compromises we make for the ones we love!
This got me to thinking about the compromises both Rod and I have made in order to continue enjoying one another’s company. We’ve given an inch here or there, seemingly effortlessly.Well, Rod at least does it QUIETLY. I don’t do anything either easily or sans soliloquy.
Some of the compromises Rod has made are:
Watching Jane Austen adaptions and/or musicals involving Cyd Charisse/Gene Kelly
Eating tofu (especially my exceedingly naaas-tey renditions thereof)
Mustering a semblance of enthusiasm for chocolate
Refraining from consuming the musical oeuvre of Jethro Tull, the Smiths/Morrissey, or Throbbing Gristle when I am in the apartment
Wading through a pile of my dirty clothes to get to the computer
Forgoing the dubious luxuries of bar soap in favor of the liquid variety
Choking down some of his sandwiches on whole grain bread rather than inserting everything he eats between the pillowy goodness of Portuguese rolls (likewise developing a taste for leafy greens rather than considering sausage a palate cleanser)
Running interference for me with my mother; that is, taking the conversational brunt of her verbal hurricane
Attempting to teach me various convoluted games(even though he knows full well that such efforts often end with me beating him about the face and head while verbally abusing him with the vilest names I can invent), including but not limited to: Magic, the Gathering, Vampire, the Eternal Struggle, Lunch Money, Give Me the Brain!, Elephant Hunt, strip poker, Zombies, Boggle, Jenga, and StarWars Battlefront.
Patiently bolstering my flagging self esteem and witnessing my constant neurotic nattering with the detachment shown by little shorn monks sitting under bo trees
Some of the compromises I have made are:
Dragging my aging and increasingly unfabulous ass out to dance clubs ON A WORK NIGHT so Rod can get some groove on
Harboring friends of his who instigate Rod’s already urgent propensity to fry up stinky meat in the apartment with all the windows closed and with blatant disregard for the Glade scented candle prominently displayed on the chest in the living room
Attending ALL THREE of the Lord of the Rings movies, and refraining from barfing while in attendance thereat
Relinquishing my cherished dream of having a guest room in our second bedroom, and simply shutting the door in there so I won’t have to acknowledge on a daily basis Rod’s Playroom, which looks as though Pugsley Addams lives in it
Crossing the state line into New Jersey more than once a year
Staying awake during any Kurosawa movie
Not bursting into tears when I’m met with a blank stare when I suggest brunch, because brunch as a concept simply doesn’t register (maybe I should say “second breakfast” or “elevenses,” for clearly he’s versed in the Hobbit speak)
Staying my hand from administering a sound whooping when he has (very occasionally) shrunk or otherwise damaged garments for which I shelled out more than twenty dollars
Laughing at World War I jokes that I just don’t get and never will
Kissing him anyway when he’s sipping the beyond-disgusting Hungarian liqueur Unicum, which even dyed-in-the-wool Hungarians insist is used only medicinally, to break a fever, and which Rod savors as a post-prandial
Glorious weather today, which makes me feel positively girlish. The shirt I’m wearing is turquoise, which I think of as a goddess color because (supposedly) it is the color that possesses the highest feminine vibration. The airy, expansive feeling is magnified by my silver shoes, tuberose perfume, and juicy watermelon lipstick.
Which came first, the electric mood or the dayglo wardrobe? You’d need a magnifying glass to see the Goth girl in me this afternoon, although even recovering Goths can spot each other, just as Wiccans can sense others in the Craft.
We’re having company this weekend, which makes me want to cook exquisite delicacies for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Unfortunately these are fussy people who don’t care about what they eat, so every time they visit I panic about what to provide for them.
I show my affection by creating meals that are art installations on plates. However, if people are simply going to be nervous about whatever weirdo thing I’m going to serve, and would truly rather have cold cuts on white bread, don’t the laws of hospitality behoove me to lay in the most boring, bland food I can think of?
I’ll have to approach this like an episode of the Iron Chef. Here are the parameters:
One doesn’t eat anything that includes onions or garlic or spice of any kind.
The other likes spicy food.
One is allergic to shrimp.
One would prefer not to have beef or pork at every meal.
Three of them eat only two meals per day. One of us (guess who?) eats six meals a day.
Here’s what I would like to cook and serve versus what will probably end up on my table:
Saturday morning they will arrive at around ten thirty, presumably after having had breakfast. If I had to travel two hours someplace, I would want some kind of snack once I got to my destination, even if I’d already eaten breakfast.
What I’d like to serve: Fig muffins with orange cream cheese. Earl grey tea.
What I’ll have on hand, which they’ll probably refuse anyway: Krispy Kreme donuts.
Saturday for lunch we will be having a picnic.
What I’d like to cook: curried chicken salad with currants and apples on whole wheat bread. OR whole wheat pasta and broccoli rabe frittata. With some kind of chilled soup (carrot ginger? gazpacho?) in a travel thermos.
What we’ll eat instead: turkey and cheese on Portuguese rolls, with yellow mustard. Potato chips.
When we arrive home after our day’s outing, it will be time for either tea or cocktails.
What I’d like to serve for High Tea: watercress and arugula sandwiches on pumpernickel bread, stilton fritters with cranberry chutney, matcha green tea and rooibus tea.
What we’ll be enjoying for cocktail hour: martinis, white wine, or Manhattans. Peanuts and popcorn.
Saturday night we’ll be eating at a German restaurant. Since the one dish I really crave in German cuisine is pretty much pasta (spaetzle), that’s what I’ll be having. Spaetzle with cheese, and whatever the vegetable soup of the day is. Maybe a pretzel with mustard to start. Certainly some Weiss beer.
Sunday morning, what I would like to serve for breakfast: spinach quiche, bloody marys. OR smoked salmon and cream cheese omelets with capers and lemon.
We’ll be lucky if they allow us to go out and get bagels with cream cheese and lox instead of just eating toast or Entenmann’s donuts from the bodega downstairs.
Sunday lunch everyone’s taking care of for themselves, supposedly. What I will have in the freezer just in case: a variety of frozen dumplings which can be popped in the steamer. What I will have in the refrigerator just in case: cheddar cheese and guacamole for a luscious grilled cheese sammie.
Sunday dinner, historically, is the highlight of family bonding for the week. It is the one meal that I’m stressing about, because:
What I would like to serve: potato gatto with peas and soppressata, green salad. OR spaghetti and meatballs (however, this option is out because I refuse to make meatballs without any onions or garlic)
Potato gatto is like a casserole of mashed potatoes mixed with eggs, parmesan cheese, mozzarella cheese, parsley, garlic, onion, salami, and peas. Topped with garlic breadcrumbs and baked until cheese bubbles.
They have actually eaten this dish before at my house. The reason I’m not making it is because it’s a lot of fucking work to do for people who are just going to choke it down to be polite and not because they are finding it a delightful journey of the senses.
What I’ll probably serve: Seafood ravioli in a light marinara. Mesclun green salad. Lemony green beans.
The kicker here is that these people LOoooovvvvveeee dessert. And baking is the one thing that I pretty much suck at, except for muffins or quickbreads, which really aren’t fit for dessert. Are they? I mean, my favorite dessert is a combination of fresh fruit and cheese, like pears with goat cheese or gorgonzola and walnuts.
So what the hell am I going to serve for dessert? Usually I go with chocolate fondue when I want to make a splash, but this would not be well received.
What I’ll probably serve: caramel custard.
Discipline sucks as a motivator. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought lately, because this is the time of year when everyone’s invoking discipline to keep them away from nachos grande, or gritting their teeth and clenching themselves at the writing desk to churn out creative writing, or pounding away on the treadmill.
The result? I’m surrounded by joyless, driven people, who echo perfectly my own obsessions with self-improvement, with Getting Somewhere, with Being Someone.
Luckily, I also have plenty of friends who take fun seriously. And one of the reasons I am so enamored of Rod, goddess bless him, is that he doesn’t care a particle about worldly success. I told his parents once, when they were worrying about whether he’d take an advanced degree and get a “better” job, that Rod doesn’t have to work toward anything because he is already Someone. He is too busy cherishing life, observing it, nurturing it, establishing meaningful connections with loved ones, to be sullied by a Career. Careers are for the small souled, the ones who can’t face life without a narcotic of some kind, work being the most socially acceptable drug. Capricorns, I’m looking at you.
I decided this year to be more like Edina Monsoon. My resolution? Have more fun. Namely, I am recognizing the bare minimum of obligation, duty, and discipline. You know why? Because my whole fucking childhood was about performing at the peak of my abilities so that my parents could feel good about themselves. Consequently, I have been a decrepit old woman for about thirty years. I spent my twenties mourning that. Today, with a gimlet eye toward the dreaded 40, I’ve decided to experience my giddy youth now. The right way. Which means I’m going to be to myself the parents of my dreams. Which means happiness and pleasure figure largely in any cost-benefit analysis.
People have often wondered aloud how I can produce so much writing. They wish they had my “discipline.” They don’t believe me when I say that I write entirely from joy. Otherwise, why do it? I already have one job that I must do, to pay my bills. Believe me, I don’t write for months at a time. But when I feel like it, I write every day for four months.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Hermann Hesse’s _Magister Ludi_, in which a chess master at the top of his game just walks away from it all. It’s been a while since I read it, but it seems to me that the novel is mostly about remaining connected to your life, and fostering connection rather than achievement. Definitely due for a reread.
I’ve included a poem by C. P. Cavafy here because I think Cavafy is glorifying the Grand Refusal in just the way that Hesse’s character does.
Che Fece . . . Il Gran Rifiuto
A day comes to some people when
they must pronounce the great Yes or the great No.
It is instantly clear who has the Yes within,
ready; and by uttering it, he crosses over to
his honor and conviction. The one who
refuses has no remorse. If asked again,
he’d say no again. And yet that No —
the right No — weighs him down to his life’s end.
[1901]
Translated with Willis Barnstone
Note:
Written 1899, published 1901.
The title is from Dante’s Inferno, Canto 3.60: “After I had recognized some of them, / I saw and knew the shame of him who / through cowardice, made the great refusal” The poem refers to Celestine who became pope in 1294 and abdicated five months later, saying the great “No.” Dante sees this as an act of cowardice, Cavafy as one of honor.
Casting a circle with other people is something I used to do on a much more regular basis. In my early twenties I had a handpicked coven, and we celebrated together for the esbats and the eight Sabbaths in the wheel of the year. When I first got to New York City, I did attend and evaluate several prominent area covens. I found them either too hokey, which means they were tied to retail establishments and so were mainly concerned with pushing product, or else so esoteric that it was difficult to discover how I could adopt the policies of the clan into my own practice.
I have been a solitary practitioner of Wicca for nigh on twenty years, punctuated by brief periods of two or three years in which I did have a regular coven. I miss the community of organized religion. I do not miss the dogma and the politics. I find it beyond impossible to share my sacred space with nitpickers and hierophants and debutantes, sycophants and naysayers and prophets coming unhinged at the joining places.
All of this to say: some friends of mine were there for me this weekend when I needed to cast a spell. And I’d forgotten how great that feels, when every single cell in my body is concentrated and stoked and deployed toward a particular outcome. The pageantry of spellcraft. The colors and the smells, the flicking candles, the mingled energies in the room rolling and darting and gathering in waves.
My sister’s in a spot of bother. As a big sister, I get crazy when the little ones are in trouble. Instead of bemoaning my relative uselessness in any given situation, what do I do? I employ magic.
My mother has a story about how her nonna used to help her with math homework: Mom would sit down and proceed to do said homework, and her nonna would sit right next to her, praying the rosary, asking the blessed virgin to intercede and harness the knowledge of mathematics directly to mom’s fertile eight-year-old brain.
In just this way, I cast a spell when one of my peeps is in trouble. I call my psychic friends network and get them to pray on it, whatever denomination they belong to. I choose Tarot cards to represent the people involved, and the desired energetic outcome.
I insist on humor and lightheartedness in the spells I cast. If I wanted sobriety, I’d still be a Catholic. I like it when people make noise, laugh inappropriately, during circles. I am pleased to say that in this weekend’s spell we utilized the refrain from an old Rob Base rap: “Joy & Pain, Sunshine & Rain.”
Immediately I became calmer when the spell was finished. That is the upside of my firm belief that I have the power to influence the world in which I live. The downside: feeling overly responsible for everything and everyone.
Cosmetic tidbit that I remembered because of the scented candles I used in spellcasting: Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has an essential oil called Urd (named for one of the Fates) that includes the smell of nag champa incense. It is one of the single best ways I know to get your Goth on.
Señor Swankys was a grave disappointment. I’ve always wanted to eat in there because the name is so amusing. I’m not sure what I expected, since the place is manifestly a college bar/restaurant. By the time our meal was done I was urging Rod to dine and dash. He is too good a person for that, though.
Did you ever have one of those evenings of misadventures, when you feel as though events are conspiring against you? I did, tonight. We managed to turn it around, but it was brutal there for a while. I’m having some family trouble, and I needed to be cheered up. But often when my mood is off kilter, the very course of action I take to elevate my mood somehow derails.
Usually it comes down to poor planning. I’m too uptight to enjoy a spontaneous outing, because usually what that means is that I spend fifty dollars on a meal that tastes like it came out of a can. That is especially heartbreaking here in New York City, where there are so many choices and so many great restaurants for every one that sucks. Also, since I don’t smoke anymore, dining has taken on a religious importance.
You never can tell, though. I read menupages.com obsessively, so that I am almost never blindsided by a poor restaurant choice. But last time I took one of the suggestions on menupages for a sushi restaurant in the theater district, we ended up in a place that made us want to burn it down because the servers were avowedly hostile.
Dinner was the backup plan, anyway. Initially we wanted to see the documentary about the Kabul Beauty School in Afghanistan at the Angelika. Specifically we wanted to see the seven o’clock show because the director was doing Q & A afterward. We didn’t buy tickets in advance but we got there an hour early for Christ’s sake. No dice, sold out.
So we walked over to Toys in Babeland and went shopping for some goodies to help us welcome Spring approriately and joyously. Because it was a Saturday night, it was chock full of chuckleheads bellowing about their sex lives.
Rod can’t make a decision to save his life. This is problematic for me when I am feeling out of whack and need him to be more focused. I simply don’t understand a person who finds himself in Soho and who isn’t suddenly overcome with the desire to walk to Chinatown for dumplings and green tea. And it’s no fun at all for me to suggest the idea and then hear, “Okay, if you really want to.” What I want to hear is, “Dumplings! Chinatown! Hell yeah muthafucka! I can’t live one more second without going to Chinatown.”
Well, Rod does not share my mania for Asian food, which I could eat every day. He suggested some Irish restaurant on Lafayette, which to decode the Rodspeak means, “What I’d really like to do is drink beer.” Also,what it comes down to is that he just doesn’t care about food in the same way that I do. His method of choosing a restaurant is to meander over to the West side, because we live on the West side, and see what strikes our fancy.
That’s how I came to suggest Señor Swankys; we happened to see its lurid yellow sign beckoning from the distance. When we walked in and they were playing reggae music over the babble of some sports game on television, I felt we might be in trouble, but I did not heed my instincts. I could have gone traditional and ordered the Swank-a-rita. But no! I had to get jazzy and order a vile and undrinkable concoction called the Bacardi Limon-a-Rita, which tasted like nothing so much as a deflated Italian lemon ice with pickle juice in it.
That’s what I get for not wanting to go to a truly Swanky place in Soho. I just can’t digest in places overflowing with beautiful people in gorgeous clothes, pecking at shockingly overpriced salads and sipping complicated cocktails. Although I would love to go to the Bed restaurant where you get to eat while reclining on a bed. Rod can’t envision any scenario more horrifying. Which is strange, isn’t it, for someone who idolizes Roman culture? It sounds purely Roman decadence to me, dining in bed.
We should have gone to TaCocina, which is on Ninth Avenue right around the corner from our apartment. Where the margaritas are sublime and the food is fresh and light and flavorful, where the beef and bean burritos do not taste like dog food. Props to the Swank: I did enjoy the George Michael rock block. I could have done without our server giving me an abandonment complex.
But we walked over to the Chocolate Bar for a dessert beverage, and at that establishment there is God, so quickly. Rod got an espresso and I got a caramel hot chocolate so sinfully delicious that I felt I could not finish it in public; I needed a private arena to savor it thoroughly.
It’s a weird thing about Italians (or maybe it’s just my family): When our meal has not been tasty or satisfying, we often need another entire meal to scrub out the taste of the last one. Otherwise we don’t feel full. In fact we feel as though we haven’t eaten at all, no matter how many actual calories we’re consumed.
An experience like this is exactly why I usually cook for myself. Guess what we had for lunch? Grilled stilton and apple sandwiches, tater tots, and salad with romaine, spinach, endive, radicchio, and thousand island dressing. Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Belly dance class was so much fun this morning, and the Silky Underwear dusting powder is ridiculously wonderful. I can’t stop sniffing myself.
Also, the MAC culturebloom lipstick is the perfect daytime spring/summer lipstick, although it is more coral than I usually like. It gives you a juicy watermelon mouth.
Newsflashes on my prevailing (today) obsessions: food, fragrance.
My brilliant chowhound coworkers have been telling me about Fifth Avenue Epicure for ages. I just never made it in there. The thing is, when I’m on Fifth Avenue between 19th and 20th streets, Sephora’s fragrant, gaping maw sucks me in. I never even look on the other side of the street. But today I did, and voila! The perfect lunch spot.
It looks innocuously like any other deli, but the heady aroma emanating from the soup pots told me I was in a magical spot. A stunning array of reasonable salads (unlike those buckets you get–and pay out the wazoo for–at Tossed or Chop’t) such as grilled chicken caesar or cobb, a breathtaking selection of sandwiches. I was so floored by the sammies that I couldn’t even handle the soups, and so can’t report on what was there.
I chose an eggplant/arugula/havarti/roasted red pepper sandwich on 7-grain bread, and it is blowing my frickin mind. I am a complete whore for arugula. One of my favorite omelets is arugula and feta. I also use a combination of arugula and watercress for a twist on the classic high tea finger sandwich: greens piled on pumpernickel lightly smeared with garlic butter.
Galloping away on my fragrance obsession, I purchased Silky Underwear luxury dusting powder from Lush on my lunch hour. It is scented with jasmine and vetiver (my youngest sister mocks me for my floral/musk combinations, but if you’re reading this Patt you can bite me. Love you, mean it…). I adore vetiver, but I have not found a vetiver perfume I like, and the unadulterated oil is too much, and the way Jo Malone uses it in her colognes is the olfactory embodiment of NASTY. I have been searching for a vetiver to love in an everyday way (this scented oil is used to discourage pests like cockroaches, so you know it must smell strong), and now I’ve found it.
Now that I’ve switched to a deodorant and have declared antiperspirants dead to me, a whole community of people who use natural toiletries has come out of the woodwork. Some of them have suggested a scented powder/deod combo. Say the word “scented” to me and I am sold.
Incidentally, Rod embodies the exact combination of hippie and goth that I do. This is one of the reasons we are so well matched. Our look is goth inflected, but our sensibilities are much more DIY and back to the land. I still don’t understand why every woman doesn’t use the Keeper or the Diva Cup instead of cotton tampons. The Keeper changed my life: I’ll say it!
Also today at Lush I got black toothpaste, made with charcoal, which is a natural tooth whitener. You use it once a day because you still need a regulation fluoride toothpaste, since it doesn’t include fluoride. But I have never liked those disgusting tooth whitening gels, in any form. They’re messy and gross and I’m afraid they’ll give me oral cancer. I hope this stuff works. If it does, that will put me one step closer toward aging gracefully.
I feel fortunate and blessed today, and that’s the greatest way to start the weekend. I realized again this morning that it is a privilege to be working among people who can casually toss off references to Anna Karenina. Everyone sitting around me has opinions about literature, stories of the ways in which books have enriched their lives. It’s inspiring and extremely fulfilling. It’s why I could never work in a kitchen–too little intellectual stimulation. I did work for a while as a cook in a Mexican restaurant, and I learned how to make quesadillas with the two-spatula flip technique, but the conversation was just deadly dull.
Yesterday at my job we proved that we can talk litcrit AND cook well. The pot luck was fabulous.
Some of my friends from grad school are starting to debate the merits of getting a PhD, primarily because they are teaching and want to be eligible for a tenure track position. Up until this discussion, I had no idea one could get a “creative” dissertation as opposed to a “critical” dissertation.
One of them mentioned a Wallace Stevens article in which he gives his reasons for working outside of academia. Namely, he felt the pressure to publish would degrade his work. How much do I love him? Without knowing about the existence of that article, I came to much the same conclusion long ago.
Still, considerations like these always prick me right in the ambition bone. I suppose that even if I received the highest honors or the most money ever for my written work, I would still never rest on those laurels. That’s because art is a harsh mistress. Also It’s difficult to base one’s self-concept on any one thing or person. I know plenty of writers who are paid for their writing, or who publish in important places, who still feel as though they haven’t made it.
Today I think I would settle for getting my novel and my book of poems published before I turn 40.
PHENOMENAL WOMAN
by Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them
They think I’m telling lies.
I say
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my steps
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please
And to a man
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees
Then they swarm around me
A hive of honey bees.
I say
It’s the fire in my eyes
And the flash of my teeth
The swing of my waist
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say
It’s in the arch of my back
The sun of my smile
The ride of my breasts
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say
It’s in the click of my heels
The bend of my hair
The palm of my hand
The need for my care.
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.
Hey, what are you all reading? I’m reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s _Never Let Me Go_, Mona Van Duyn’s _Near Changes_, and the letters of James Wright, _A Wild Perfection_.
Also about to embark on an orgy of foodie memoirs: _Alice, Let’s Eat_ and _Feeding a Yen_ by Calvin Trillin, _Much Depends on Dinner_ by Margaret Visser, and the newest Moosewood cookbook, _Moosewood Simple Suppers_.
And just in case you were wondering, on the dumpling front: My fave place to get dumplings in the city is Dumpling House, 118 Eldridge Street between Grand and Broome. It’s mostly a takeout place, but you can get eight dumplings for two bucks, and they are savory and wonderful.
I have been posting a lot to make up for my hiatus over the weekend, but I believe I’m all caught up now, so I’ll calm down.
Recent makeup experiment: I need a daytime red lipstick. As I’ve posted before, the quest for red lipstick is an all-encompassing one. The perfect red lip unguent is like the holy grail of cosmetics. MAC’s Russian Red will do for nighttime, but it is much too overwhelming for the office. No one wants to be hanging around under fluorescent lights looking like Aunt Ida from John Waters’s “Female Trouble.”
I have ordered the culturebloom lipstick from MAC because it was described as a bright red with low-level frost. This should be my Audrey Hepburn lip, if it isn’t too orangey. This particular lipstick is SOLD OUT in NYC and in Chicago, because it’s a limited edition.
Some people concentrate on limited-edition sneakers or tee shirts. So don’t judge me. Frivolous pursuits lighten up my existential gloom enough to allow me to participate meaningfully in society.
Homage to My Hips
these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top
Lucille Clifton
The thing about the calorie/body talk is that it’s BORING. I’m throwing down the gauntlet. Let’s talk about pleasure instead! Let’s rap about power, and ambition, and dreams. Power games, power play, power exchange. Let’s trade recipes, tips about perfume, inside information about the latest, greatest art installation that tickled your optic nerves. How it feels to lounge around in those silk pajamas that you got on sale at Target.
New York has some of the worst, most toxic air in the country, I heard on the news today. Something you might want to know: An apple a day helps repair your broken-down lung tissue. It’s a simple action to help counter the effects of living in all this air pollution.
Rob Brezny horoscope for Capricorns this week:
It’s the Introspection Season, Capricorn. I encourage you to write copiously in a journal. Here are several themes that would be fruitful to explore: (1) Your most amazing qualities and your worst qualities. (2) The hundred things you want to accomplish in the next 30 years. (3) Your bitter complaints, horrendous pain, and lost dreams. (4) Everything you love and everything that’s beautiful and everything that works. In addition to writing your heart out and your ass off, paste in cut-out pictures from magazines, draw pictures, and ask friends to write messages to you.
This is a tall order, and many of the items he suggests we write about are the ones that have kept me from keeping a journal in the first place. It should be fairly clear by this point to you all that I am extremely hard on myself, and I have no interest in exploring the roots of such self criticism. It’s more about stopping the knee-jerk reactions in which I beat joy about the head and face with a lead pipe full of analysis. For example, the simple act of accepting a compliment graciously is something I haven’t often been able to do.
I must say that in the latest issue of Oprah magazine (what? i was on an airplane.) there is a terrific article about silencing the inner critic. I have had occasion to be around a lot of women in the last few weeks, and almost every single one of them feels compelled to confess to me pretty much every bite they’re putting in their mouths. This impulse is an attempt to flush out the inner critic, isn’t it? Invariably I open my (flabby) arms wide and tell them they should accept bliss in the form of salsa and chips.
I believe people unburden themselves to me in this manner because I am manifestly pretty turned on by being in my own skin. At least I hope that’s why. It took me a long time to be able to say that. A lot of energy concentrating on my six senses and not my appearance. (Hint: read Diane Ackerman’s _Natural History of the Senses_ and then try to dis your body. Just doesn’t work.)
Therefore I am qualified (?) to absolve their excesses, perhaps by absorbing them into my own. What they don’t realize is that I’ve spent most of my life being a fat girl waiting to happen. But now that I’ve tipped the scales, as it were, there’s nothing left to fear. When I was fifteen I sincerely believed that I would step in front of a truck without question if I ever weighed more than 110 pounds. But now, I’m a former skinny girl. I’m a thin fat girl. Or a fat thin girl, whichever you prefer. Anyway, I’m living proof that you can be fit and fat. Overweight and fabulous. I’m the patron saint of eating half a bag of Rollos for breakfast without guilt.
And I’ve been thinking about how I got to this scrumptious place. Poetry has helped enormously. Therefore I’m going to see whether I can get a grant to develop a perfomance for high schools, about poetry and body image. I believe that poetry actually changes our chemical makeup by influencing our electrics, our heartbeat, with its own pulse, especially if you read it aloud or hear it read aloud.
Read Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to My Hips,” or Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman,” next time you have to get dressed up and you need a little boost. They work, probably better than those Spanx panties that suck all your fat in. They raise the kundalini from your root chakra and the next thing you know, you are a serpentine goddess, a lithe Shakti on the dance floor, and totally unashamed when faced with the buffet table.
