Posts
A few weeks ago MP and I were in New York City, and we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with some friends. You could actually spend an entire week there and still not see everything (we tried it), so if you only have two hours, you need to be very, very targeted in what you want to see. We went to the Arms and Armor section,whereupon our little group went its separate ways. I think that's because when a group of more than 3 people tries to stay together, it starts to feel like a field trip, and once you've graduated from middle school, that's just weird.
I went to the Japanese section. Seeing the daishō (both large and small swords, the the katana and the wakizashi, respectively) is interesting, but I like to look at the tsuba and menuki (the sword guards, which are removable, and the small decorative objects generally woven into the silk binding on the hilt). Generally speaking a separate set of craftsmen created these items, as opposed to the craftsmen who created the actual blades, and I could go on at great length about the artistry, etc. involved in all these pieces, but that's not what this post is about. But if you're interested, absolutely go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
These items are separate from the main collection for two reasons: because they're Asian (as opposed to European) and because, being Asian, they often have textile elements (the silk wrappings) which need to be under special low lighting conditions. Wandering the Asian collection is very private and quiet and... well, gloomy.
I was absolutely absorbed by a priceless set of swords, complete with a helmet, bearing a rabbit motif, when a voice next to me asked, "Have you ever thought about how many people they've killed?"
I turned to regard the questioner. No American man can tie his tie that perfectly unless he's military, and the dark blue (green? It's dark in that display) sweater and slacks with the stripe confirmed that.
My first thought was, "Dude, they've got bunnies all over them." But the Japanese don't see design elements in quite the same way, and after all, a razor-sharp blade with cherry-blossoms on it is still razor sharp.
My next thought was just exactly how to interpret the question. Because the truth is, I have thought about it. You can't look at those beautifully crafted blades gleaming in the dim light and not think about it. It's an object of art which has the sole purpose of dealing out death. Does such an object become imbued with some part of the lives it has taken, or the personality of all who have wielded it? What is it like to hold such a blade in your hand? Does it whisper words, a history, that only another swordsman could understand?
This man was military. But for time and culture, the swords behind the glass might have been his. He had trained for combat; had he trained for the sword? I don't see how you can serve in the Armed Forces and not think about mortality. Was he back from somewhere? Going somewhere?
More importantly, when a man and a woman are strangers alone in a darkened room and he asks her such a question, is it a vaguely creepy moment or the worst pickup line ever?
Saying something pithy about weapons as beautiful objects, I sidestepped the question and I sidestepped him. I didn't sense any particular harm to him, but I didn't want to find out. As a rule I don't strike up conversations, and especially not when the opening line is so fraught with creepy ambiguities. I give him credit, though, for saying what was on his mind. Some day I'd like to be able to ask random strangers for the answers to all those things I've always wanted to know — but that wasn't one of them.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Mao Zedong is a Bust?
I'm having one of those weeks filled with physical problems, family crisis and deadlines. With all that, you'd think I could come up with something really juicy to write about, but it just isn't there.To cap it all off, I'm wondering if you're, you know... Out there? Is anyone reading this or does my search engine yoga need work? Leave a comment and just say hi.
However, I can't leave you with nothing to look at, so here -- this is something I picked up with my camera in Chinatown. I really liked it. It's fuzzy. But it begs the philosophical question: If somebody makes a red flocked bust of you, does that mean they like you, or they don't like you?
Monday, January 19, 2009
Being Sick
MP is sick this week. He was sick last week, too. Actually, he’s been sick ever since we went to NYC – too much drinking and shouting and dry air in airplanes. Then he had to go to Minnesota, which finished him off.
He has a cough. Sort of.
“What kind of cough do you have?” I ask.
“I dunno. I only cough in the morning.”
“Is it productive?”
“No.”
“Do you want anything for it? An expectorant or something?”
“I guess. I don’t want anything liquid. That stuff tastes like crap.”
And armed only with this cryptic knowledge (morning cough) and specific instructions (nothing that tastes like crap), I go out to find him some medicine. I make a mental note to ask the pharmacist for some laudanum. That way we’ll both be happy.
Different people are sick differently, and you have to understand and respect that in a relationship or some bad moments will ensue. For example, when MP first feels sick, he takes two Advil and passes out on the couch for four hours. This cures him of most everything – which is how I know that he’s really sick this time and needs drugs. But I didn’t understand this when we first met. At the first sign of him feeling a bit phlegmmy, I treated him like I wanted to be treated.
“Do you need a blankie?” I softly asked.
“No, thank you, I’m fine.”
“You look cold.”
“I’m fine.”
“Would you like some chamomile tea?”
“Yuck.”
“Have you gargled with salt water?”
“No. My throat isn’t sore. It’s my nose.”
“How about a decongestant? Maybe an antihistamine? Here, have a Kleenex.”
“I’m fine, Sweetie.”
“I can get some Puffs. Do you like Puffs?”
“I’m fine, Sweetie.”
“Your nose looks really sore. Rub this on it.”
“Go away, Sweetie.”
And all my ministrations rejected, I slunk away to play computer solitaire. When MP is sick, he wants to die alone on his couch with dignity. He does not want to be coddled and irritated.
Of course, when I got sick early on in our relationship, things didn’t go any better. MP treated me like he wanted to be treated:
“I feel terrible MP… (sniff) My throat hurts. My nose is sore from blowing it. I want to die… (sniff, sniff)”
“That’s too bad, Sweetie. Go lie down.”
“Thanks… (sniff) I think I will.”
And then he left me in the bedroom. Alone. In the dark with my Puffs. Four hours later I stagger out, purblind, and he’s on the couch playing videogames.
“Whoa. You look terrible. What’s wrong, Sweetie?”
“You left me in there!”
“I thought you needed rest.”
“I didn’t need four hours of it! You didn’t come check on me to see if I needed anything!”
“I thought you were sleeping?”
“I could have died in there! Don’t you love me?” (It’s very difficult to love a pale and whining woman who has Carmex slathered all over her upper-lip in what I call “cow-nose,” but somehow MP managed.) When I am sick, I want to die with my loved ones bending over me offering fragrant teas and soft tissues. I do not want to be left alone on the ice floe like a wounded dog.
Now when MP passes out on the couch, I poke him at about 6 PM and ask if I’m responsible for my own dinner. When I am too quiet for too long, MP creeps around looking for me, and if he finds me staring at him with one bleary eye, he asks if he can do anything. And thus we learned: Do unto others what they want done to themselves.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Identity
Café Tor almost never got started because of the well-intentioned advice of a friend and my own neurotic tendencies.
Over coffee one afternoon, my friend went on at great length about how I should totally have a blog, and how I could write about our group of college chums and our various made-up adventures and how she would totally read it and tell all her friends about it so they would read it, too.
I sat and thought, “I’ll be damned if I sit here and let you tell me what I should write. Get your own blog. You have no idea who I am.”
Clearly this response was out of line. She was, after all, only being nice and saying that in the past she enjoyed reading email I sent. Thank heavens I kept my big mouth shut. Yet I could not deny that her suggestion made me angry. Where was my stridency coming from?
I decided to think about that with a year of blogging, a meditation in motion, but I would do it quietly, unglamorously, under an unassuming assumed name. No instant readership in the form of family and friends, just a quiet corner to… well, breathe, imagine myself with my favorite libation, and hopefully, write some bits that would make people see things a little differently, perhaps even laugh. If I wanted to write about my friends and family, I would. My choice for anonymity gave them their privacy, too.
My inspiration was “Ms. Schnozz” and her blog, Schnozzfest. Another friend sent a link to her blog with the note, “This reminds me of your writing.” The only reason I didn’t create a script to block this friend’s email from EVER SHOWING UP IN MY INBOX AGAIN (God Bless all my friends who withstand my knee-jerk tendencies to be a… um, “jerk”) was because Schnozzfest cracked me up. Schnozz challenged herself to become a more adventurous person by joining the roller derby, and I loved reading about her experiences. Her triumphs, her frustrations, her dissention into total roller derby geekdom – this girl had some serious moxie and a really great turn of phrase. She could poke fun at others without being snarky and never ever hesitated to poke fun at herself. She blogged about Mr. S., her bunnies, the things that she liked and the things that annoyed her. I write in my underwear as a salute to her and all she believed in. (If you’d read the blog, that wouldn’t sound so odd. Honest.)
Then her voice changed. She wasn’t… having fun? Her scope narrowed. And then she just said, “That’s it; I’m not doing this anymore.”
I wish I had saved that last post, because she talked about some of the very same things I’m dealing with now: privacy, to use or not use your real identity, and the expectation of others. When she stopped using an assumed name and everyone in the audience knew who she was, she had to ask herself, “Is it really appropriate for me to write X, knowing my parents / boss / former best friend from high school / coworkers are reading this?” The need to edit herself lead to flattening her writing into a mono-dimensional, one size fits all online persona. But she understood that’s not how we live our real lives; we have one face we show our family, one for our friends, another for our co-workers… It’s not that we’re lying, we’re just painfully aware that what’s appropriate for one group may not be appropriate for another. Ms. Schnozz decided she wasn’t going to edit herself anymore, and between that and time constraints, she bowed out of blogging.
This made me sad, but I understood. Family and friends assume that they know you – but they what they really know is only the voice they hear in their relationship with you – the one that they’re comfortable with. They’ve never seen that creative voice before. How could they? You’re only just trying to figure it out yourself. Believe me, your deeply Catholic mother may say she would be thrilled to read your first book, but she most emphatically does not want to read that passionate love scene you wrote. She still has your first communion pictures up on the wall and she is very happy with that image, thank you. She does not want to know where you got the idea for the bullwhip / bundt cake / salad shooter scenario. Trust me on this.
I haven’t had much luck trying to discuss my writing with others (salad shooter ideas aside). People who have never looked at the publishing industry are quick to tell me what I should do to get published – find an agent, forget about agents and go straight to a publisher, go to a writer’s conference, join a writer’s group, write for a newspaper, write for a magazine, write children’s books, illustrate children’s books or my personal favorite from my father, “write like Erma Bombeck” – rather than listen to the fact that I’m desperately afraid I’m not as talented as I hope I am. Explaining that I have a file folder full of 30 + rejections from agents who have never read my manuscript, just a cover letter, or that I have no interest whatsoever in illustration makes me feel slightly pathetic. I don’t need to learn how to deal with the publishing industry; I need to learn how to deal with creative fear and frustration. (The once piece of practical advice I think I do need to consider is to accept that the first manuscript isn’t going anywhere right now and move on to the next thing, but strangely enough, no one has suggested that yet.)
Gently refusing their suggestions with a “thanks, but no thanks” makes people wonder why I’m so “touchy.” After all, they’re only “showing interest in my hobby” or “trying to be helpful.” Then their feelings get hurt, which is the last thing I wanted, so I spend the rest of the time trying to make them feel better when I’m the one who’s so frustrated I could bite straight through my damn manuscript.
My decision to blog under a pseudonym and not reveal my online activities to anyone I know in the Real World, as paranoidly private as it sounds, is absolutely the best decision I could have made. Artists need to protect themselves. They need room to experiment with ideas, deciding for themselves what works and what doesn’t work. Nothing kills creativity faster than the expectations of those closest to you and your own fear of somehow “disappointing” them. Depending on your personality type, you may be able to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune without ever noticing, or you may find yourself neurotically reading hidden meanings into every comment your friends and family make. Without apology or explanation I honestly say that I am the latter. But once you acknowledge your neurotic tendencies, you can deal with them in a sane fashion.
I can have the freedom to explore ideas and voices, privately, on my own terms, or I can seek the admiration of people I know, but be ultimately aware of and shackled by their opinions. I choose privacy. Privacy does not mean lack of responsibility – I guard the integrity of this name as much as I guard my own – but it does mean that everyone I know can sleep a little easier at night, secure in the knowledge that nothing I blog about will be traced back to them.
Not immediately, anyway…
Over coffee one afternoon, my friend went on at great length about how I should totally have a blog, and how I could write about our group of college chums and our various made-up adventures and how she would totally read it and tell all her friends about it so they would read it, too.
I sat and thought, “I’ll be damned if I sit here and let you tell me what I should write. Get your own blog. You have no idea who I am.”
Clearly this response was out of line. She was, after all, only being nice and saying that in the past she enjoyed reading email I sent. Thank heavens I kept my big mouth shut. Yet I could not deny that her suggestion made me angry. Where was my stridency coming from?
I decided to think about that with a year of blogging, a meditation in motion, but I would do it quietly, unglamorously, under an unassuming assumed name. No instant readership in the form of family and friends, just a quiet corner to… well, breathe, imagine myself with my favorite libation, and hopefully, write some bits that would make people see things a little differently, perhaps even laugh. If I wanted to write about my friends and family, I would. My choice for anonymity gave them their privacy, too.
My inspiration was “Ms. Schnozz” and her blog, Schnozzfest. Another friend sent a link to her blog with the note, “This reminds me of your writing.” The only reason I didn’t create a script to block this friend’s email from EVER SHOWING UP IN MY INBOX AGAIN (God Bless all my friends who withstand my knee-jerk tendencies to be a… um, “jerk”) was because Schnozzfest cracked me up. Schnozz challenged herself to become a more adventurous person by joining the roller derby, and I loved reading about her experiences. Her triumphs, her frustrations, her dissention into total roller derby geekdom – this girl had some serious moxie and a really great turn of phrase. She could poke fun at others without being snarky and never ever hesitated to poke fun at herself. She blogged about Mr. S., her bunnies, the things that she liked and the things that annoyed her. I write in my underwear as a salute to her and all she believed in. (If you’d read the blog, that wouldn’t sound so odd. Honest.)
Then her voice changed. She wasn’t… having fun? Her scope narrowed. And then she just said, “That’s it; I’m not doing this anymore.”
I wish I had saved that last post, because she talked about some of the very same things I’m dealing with now: privacy, to use or not use your real identity, and the expectation of others. When she stopped using an assumed name and everyone in the audience knew who she was, she had to ask herself, “Is it really appropriate for me to write X, knowing my parents / boss / former best friend from high school / coworkers are reading this?” The need to edit herself lead to flattening her writing into a mono-dimensional, one size fits all online persona. But she understood that’s not how we live our real lives; we have one face we show our family, one for our friends, another for our co-workers… It’s not that we’re lying, we’re just painfully aware that what’s appropriate for one group may not be appropriate for another. Ms. Schnozz decided she wasn’t going to edit herself anymore, and between that and time constraints, she bowed out of blogging.
This made me sad, but I understood. Family and friends assume that they know you – but they what they really know is only the voice they hear in their relationship with you – the one that they’re comfortable with. They’ve never seen that creative voice before. How could they? You’re only just trying to figure it out yourself. Believe me, your deeply Catholic mother may say she would be thrilled to read your first book, but she most emphatically does not want to read that passionate love scene you wrote. She still has your first communion pictures up on the wall and she is very happy with that image, thank you. She does not want to know where you got the idea for the bullwhip / bundt cake / salad shooter scenario. Trust me on this.
I haven’t had much luck trying to discuss my writing with others (salad shooter ideas aside). People who have never looked at the publishing industry are quick to tell me what I should do to get published – find an agent, forget about agents and go straight to a publisher, go to a writer’s conference, join a writer’s group, write for a newspaper, write for a magazine, write children’s books, illustrate children’s books or my personal favorite from my father, “write like Erma Bombeck” – rather than listen to the fact that I’m desperately afraid I’m not as talented as I hope I am. Explaining that I have a file folder full of 30 + rejections from agents who have never read my manuscript, just a cover letter, or that I have no interest whatsoever in illustration makes me feel slightly pathetic. I don’t need to learn how to deal with the publishing industry; I need to learn how to deal with creative fear and frustration. (The once piece of practical advice I think I do need to consider is to accept that the first manuscript isn’t going anywhere right now and move on to the next thing, but strangely enough, no one has suggested that yet.)
Gently refusing their suggestions with a “thanks, but no thanks” makes people wonder why I’m so “touchy.” After all, they’re only “showing interest in my hobby” or “trying to be helpful.” Then their feelings get hurt, which is the last thing I wanted, so I spend the rest of the time trying to make them feel better when I’m the one who’s so frustrated I could bite straight through my damn manuscript.
My decision to blog under a pseudonym and not reveal my online activities to anyone I know in the Real World, as paranoidly private as it sounds, is absolutely the best decision I could have made. Artists need to protect themselves. They need room to experiment with ideas, deciding for themselves what works and what doesn’t work. Nothing kills creativity faster than the expectations of those closest to you and your own fear of somehow “disappointing” them. Depending on your personality type, you may be able to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune without ever noticing, or you may find yourself neurotically reading hidden meanings into every comment your friends and family make. Without apology or explanation I honestly say that I am the latter. But once you acknowledge your neurotic tendencies, you can deal with them in a sane fashion.
I can have the freedom to explore ideas and voices, privately, on my own terms, or I can seek the admiration of people I know, but be ultimately aware of and shackled by their opinions. I choose privacy. Privacy does not mean lack of responsibility – I guard the integrity of this name as much as I guard my own – but it does mean that everyone I know can sleep a little easier at night, secure in the knowledge that nothing I blog about will be traced back to them.
Not immediately, anyway…
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Dreaming
The peach tree has been stripped by winter down to its essence. It is plain now how it grew last season and where the oriental fruit moths stunted its tips. Those two branches weighed down by fruit are curved now only by memory. Do peach trees dream of Julys? No, only I do that.
I wake up every morning and peer out at it, searching for… what? The way I write you’d think I was living on a 100 acre farm. I’m not. I live in suburbia, bathed in the glow of strip-mall fluorescence. The peach tree is a stick among Bradford pears, holly and water maples – all the cheapest trees planted at volume discount. A garden, however, can happen anywhere, even in January, because beyond these poetically peachy ponderings there are some important things to consider.
January is when all the gardening catalogs come out. Glossy photos of succulent tomatoes, impossibly hued peppers, warped pumpkins cultivated two centuries ago – you know, Seed Porn.
I am here with stacks of magazines, graph paper and ruler in hand, trying to chart out how much I can stuff into 300 square feet of growing space. Packing algorithms are my forte. I figure if I utilize the surface areas of the fences I can train pole beans, zucchini and cucumbers up instead of out, and thereby get in a row of beets or salad greens or something. I’m just worried about the shade factor of the 6 foot fence. Will it be too shady for the beans? On the other hand, they may not mind some shade in the sweltering afternoons. And the kale – where am I going to put the kale in July? The garlic will be out by then, so maybe I can put it around the border… but then where do I put the garlic come November when the kale is still in there? One thing I know for sure – THERE WILL BE ONLY ONE SUNGOLD TOMATO PLANT.
But these are concerns for the beginning of March, when I turn the kitchen floor into a nursery. Believe it or not, the peach tree is the more pressing. Based on last year’s records pruning and an application of dormant oil should happen during the first or second week of February (“green tip stage,” although I may have to prune sooner than that. I need to look it up.) I’ll bring the pruned branches inside and force them for some winter color.
Golly I wish I had a camellia. A nice double pink one that would bloom in February or March. Maybe if I ripped out the holly bushes next to the front porch…
Life is too short for discount shrubbery.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Well Hello There!
I like the pine tree background. It's very Minty Fresh, you know?
Sorry I have not posted in... well, a long time. Things got interesting in the fall -- I did an original post for Matinee at the Bijou (Brother Can you Spare a Dime? Going to the Movies During the Great Depression) and then I launched into learning / re-learning l33t web skillz with some software that would explode after 30 days. Next thing I knew, it was now.
And you may be thinking, "Those two facts are related how?"
We at Café Tor don't particularly like to mention The World Out There because the whole point of Café Tor is to leave The World Out There, you know, Out There. I mention it now only as point of reference, to wit: as I wrote about the experiences of my family during the Depression I noted that the economic clime was quite similar to what we are experiencing now, and I wondered just how far history would repeat itself. Then the stock market tanked in November, and I thought, "Oh isn't this interesting?" Now I'm trying to get a new job in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and I can't help but think, "Oh isn't this interesting?"
Actually, I could think a lot of other things at this point, and I have, but they don't really do much good, do they? During the Great Depression very little popular culture and entertainment dwelt on hardship. Roosevelt's campaign song was "Happy Days are Here Again," Little Orphan Annie was a smash hit on the radio, and Ginger Rogers sang "We're in the Money!" in pig-latin (I just had to work that in because that scene cracks me up). Trust me, I am no Pollyanna, but I do understand Depressions, both personal and economic. Dwelling doesn't help.
So put on your glad rags and join us at Café Tor! I promise to try to be a little more balanced in the new year and update more regularly. Who knows? I might even develop Peach Cam for all you fruit tree lovers out there. Hey, don't laugh -- January is when all the gardening catalogs come out.
Be assured that despite the economy, we will not raise our prices at Café Tor! Coffee is only a dime here. Do join us.
Sorry I have not posted in... well, a long time. Things got interesting in the fall -- I did an original post for Matinee at the Bijou (Brother Can you Spare a Dime? Going to the Movies During the Great Depression) and then I launched into learning / re-learning l33t web skillz with some software that would explode after 30 days. Next thing I knew, it was now.
And you may be thinking, "Those two facts are related how?"
We at Café Tor don't particularly like to mention The World Out There because the whole point of Café Tor is to leave The World Out There, you know, Out There. I mention it now only as point of reference, to wit: as I wrote about the experiences of my family during the Depression I noted that the economic clime was quite similar to what we are experiencing now, and I wondered just how far history would repeat itself. Then the stock market tanked in November, and I thought, "Oh isn't this interesting?" Now I'm trying to get a new job in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and I can't help but think, "Oh isn't this interesting?"
Actually, I could think a lot of other things at this point, and I have, but they don't really do much good, do they? During the Great Depression very little popular culture and entertainment dwelt on hardship. Roosevelt's campaign song was "Happy Days are Here Again," Little Orphan Annie was a smash hit on the radio, and Ginger Rogers sang "We're in the Money!" in pig-latin (I just had to work that in because that scene cracks me up). Trust me, I am no Pollyanna, but I do understand Depressions, both personal and economic. Dwelling doesn't help.
So put on your glad rags and join us at Café Tor! I promise to try to be a little more balanced in the new year and update more regularly. Who knows? I might even develop Peach Cam for all you fruit tree lovers out there. Hey, don't laugh -- January is when all the gardening catalogs come out.
Be assured that despite the economy, we will not raise our prices at Café Tor! Coffee is only a dime here. Do join us.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)
When my father talks about the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), he calls it “Moon River,” after the theme song by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. Mancini’s score cinched the film for him – “I knew as soon as the titles came up and that song started playing it was a good movie.”
It was one of the movies I particularly remember he let me stay up late to watch, although “let” is not the right word. It was more like, “Sit down, Mar, you’ll like this.” Like a tour guide he made little comments along the way: “I love the way [Audrey Hepburn] wears her hair, almost like a crown.” Watching Cat survey the people at Holly Golightly’s cocktail party he remarked, “Cat’s not really a cat; he’s a person.” Up until seeing that movie my only experience of George Peppard was from The A Team, and I never would have recognized him so young (and with red hair) if my father had not pointed him out. There was no part of the film that my father did not enjoy without a chortle or admire -- until the scene when Holly suggests to Paul that they steal something from the five and dime store. “This is the only part of this movie of which I do not approve,” he said emphatically.
When I watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s now, it surprises me that my father liked the film so much at eighteen (Consider that this is a man who taught his kids to swim by throwing them into the deep end of the pool because that’s how John Wayne did it in Hondo (1953)). Breakfast at Tiffany’s seems like a chick flick, a pre-Sex and the City paean to the single girl in New York City, complete with Givenchy dresses, cocktails and marrying the richest man. When I asked my father recently what he liked so much about the film he told me, “I enjoyed every minute of that movie. I loved the music. I liked the actors, Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard with hair. I liked Patricia Neal in her role, too. The only thing I didn’t like about that movie was that when it was over, I was still failing all my classes.”
Failing? I vaguely remember him telling me once that he almost failed out of college after his first semester. When I think of the film in this light, it makes sense: my father liked the movie because here at last was someone who put a name to that vague feeling of fear and malaise he had. He identified with Holly and what she called the “Mean Reds.” Yet when I asked about this, I did not get the answer I expected.
“Huh? Mean Reds? No… I didn’t go to the movies to think about them, Mar. I went to be entertained.”
My family is used to me asking seemingly random questions. As a writer and a naturally curious person, it’s what I do. Most of the time they answer without much fuss, but I recognize that sometimes I stray into memories undisturbed for a long time. While my father answered my question, that was as far as it would go. I could tell he didn’t want to talk more about it.
My father went to school on an academic scholarship. He definitely wasn’t stupid. Failing classes? How? What happened? I ask other questions, different questions. I piece together things I remember hearing, different conversations from long ago. Here is what I know:
By the time my father went to college he was very definite about what kind of movies he liked, and his tastes have not varied since: “I am not impressed by any overriding theory or philosophy in a movie, which is why more than anything I hate a movie with a message.” He did not care for The Apartment (1960) (“Everybody was a rat.”) or Spartacus (1960) (“The guy died.”) He loved Lawrence of Arabia (1962) (“The scenes in the desert were amazing. At the intermission, everybody wanted a Coke.”) for the music as much as the story. He saw films from the 1930s and 40s on television, watching late night movies at 11 P.M. and weekend movies at 1 P.M. However, he still went out to theaters to see the latest films. He lived at home and walked to classes, but he also had a car – a green and white Olds Rocket ’88 that went 100 mph, and he drove it along the same back roads he worked construction on in the summer to get to the theaters in Rittman or Orrville. He often drove without point or purpose and went to the theater of whatever town he drove into. This was how he saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s, stumbling into the Orr Theater.
The film opens with an orchestral arrangement of Mancini’s song. Audrey Hepburn gets out of a cab on a deserted New York street. She pulls a Danish and a cup of coffee out of a bag and walks north on 5th Avenue, studying the jewelry in the windows at Tiffany’s. Fade to a row of unremarkable-looking brownstone apartments. Holly tries to sneak past a man in a car, but he sees her and follows her, shouting about how giving her fifty-dollars for the powder room gives him certain “rights.” Mr. Yunioshi (an almost pathetic role played by Mickey Rooney) objects to the noise, and the angry man leaves. Cut: Paul Varjak gets out of a cab in front of Holly’s apartment and looks around. Cut: the doorbell rings and Cat jumps onto the sleeping Holly. Holly opens the door to find an apologetic Paul – he just moved in, he doesn’t have keys, blah blah – but Holly can’t hear him through her earplugs. Paul asks to use the phone and Holly invites him in.
And there it is. The scene which occurs fifteen minutes into the film, an almost tossed-off exchange:
Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?
Paul Varjak: The mean reds, you mean like the blues?
Holly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long – you're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
Paul: Sure.
Holly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name! (Courtesy IMDB)
Holly’s struggle to “find Tiffany’s” is what drives her. It’s what makes the romance between Holly and Paul sweet and funny and a little bit sad. It’s the whole point of the movie. And my father says he never thought about it?
Random bits of advice and observations from my father fill in more details. He always stressed academic achievement, but he also told us there comes a point when you can study too much. Cramming the night before an exam isn’t going to help and you might be better off playing shooting baskets until one in the morning. He also prescribed contemplative solitude. Years later when I was deep in my own funk, he drove me along the same back roads he drove to various small-town movie houses. We eventually ended up out to the OARDC Experimental station. “I used to come up here at night and watch the lights twinkling,” he told me. Another favorite spot was a large rock on campus. When I went to the same college, I saw the rock of which he spoke.
“That rock isn’t private. It’s right next to the main path.”
“You’d be surprised how private it is at two in the morning.”
If all this does not sound like a man who wrestled with the Mean Reds, then I don’t know what the Mean Reds are.
I cannot believe that he missed the idea of the Mean Reds entirely. At some internal level, he must have felt that here at last was someone who knew what it meant to be scared without knowing why. Perhaps he didn’t recognize it because Holly’s society-girl aspirations were so different from his own. I do not know how he came so close to failing that semester, nor do I know how he pulled his GPA up. Perhaps he views that almost-failure as a weakness he can’t admit to, and recognizing Holly’s Mean Reds means recognizing his own failings from that time. Or perhaps I, being of a more imaginary temperament, insist on seeing a pattern where there is none. Line the facts up however you like; the stories that we tell ourselves about our past selves mean everything.
I see now that, in a sense, he gave that movie to me. He gave it to me in the same way he tried to teach me how to use a volt-ohm meter, change the oil filter on my car, and make bread – because having the same temperament as he does, it was information I might someday need to know. Whatever the reasons he liked it, whatever he did or did not see in the film, he recognized that Breakfast at Tiffany's was a wonderful movie that could banish, if only for a time, those feelings of being afraid and not knowing what you’re afraid of. In a darkened theater, my father found Tiffany’s.
"Breakfast at Tiffany's" Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, 1961, Paramount, **I.V. - Image courtesy MPTV.net
When I watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s now, it surprises me that my father liked the film so much at eighteen (Consider that this is a man who taught his kids to swim by throwing them into the deep end of the pool because that’s how John Wayne did it in Hondo (1953)). Breakfast at Tiffany’s seems like a chick flick, a pre-Sex and the City paean to the single girl in New York City, complete with Givenchy dresses, cocktails and marrying the richest man. When I asked my father recently what he liked so much about the film he told me, “I enjoyed every minute of that movie. I loved the music. I liked the actors, Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard with hair. I liked Patricia Neal in her role, too. The only thing I didn’t like about that movie was that when it was over, I was still failing all my classes.”
Failing? I vaguely remember him telling me once that he almost failed out of college after his first semester. When I think of the film in this light, it makes sense: my father liked the movie because here at last was someone who put a name to that vague feeling of fear and malaise he had. He identified with Holly and what she called the “Mean Reds.” Yet when I asked about this, I did not get the answer I expected.
“Huh? Mean Reds? No… I didn’t go to the movies to think about them, Mar. I went to be entertained.”
My family is used to me asking seemingly random questions. As a writer and a naturally curious person, it’s what I do. Most of the time they answer without much fuss, but I recognize that sometimes I stray into memories undisturbed for a long time. While my father answered my question, that was as far as it would go. I could tell he didn’t want to talk more about it.
My father went to school on an academic scholarship. He definitely wasn’t stupid. Failing classes? How? What happened? I ask other questions, different questions. I piece together things I remember hearing, different conversations from long ago. Here is what I know:
By the time my father went to college he was very definite about what kind of movies he liked, and his tastes have not varied since: “I am not impressed by any overriding theory or philosophy in a movie, which is why more than anything I hate a movie with a message.” He did not care for The Apartment (1960) (“Everybody was a rat.”) or Spartacus (1960) (“The guy died.”) He loved Lawrence of Arabia (1962) (“The scenes in the desert were amazing. At the intermission, everybody wanted a Coke.”) for the music as much as the story. He saw films from the 1930s and 40s on television, watching late night movies at 11 P.M. and weekend movies at 1 P.M. However, he still went out to theaters to see the latest films. He lived at home and walked to classes, but he also had a car – a green and white Olds Rocket ’88 that went 100 mph, and he drove it along the same back roads he worked construction on in the summer to get to the theaters in Rittman or Orrville. He often drove without point or purpose and went to the theater of whatever town he drove into. This was how he saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s, stumbling into the Orr Theater.
The film opens with an orchestral arrangement of Mancini’s song. Audrey Hepburn gets out of a cab on a deserted New York street. She pulls a Danish and a cup of coffee out of a bag and walks north on 5th Avenue, studying the jewelry in the windows at Tiffany’s. Fade to a row of unremarkable-looking brownstone apartments. Holly tries to sneak past a man in a car, but he sees her and follows her, shouting about how giving her fifty-dollars for the powder room gives him certain “rights.” Mr. Yunioshi (an almost pathetic role played by Mickey Rooney) objects to the noise, and the angry man leaves. Cut: Paul Varjak gets out of a cab in front of Holly’s apartment and looks around. Cut: the doorbell rings and Cat jumps onto the sleeping Holly. Holly opens the door to find an apologetic Paul – he just moved in, he doesn’t have keys, blah blah – but Holly can’t hear him through her earplugs. Paul asks to use the phone and Holly invites him in.
And there it is. The scene which occurs fifteen minutes into the film, an almost tossed-off exchange:
Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?
Paul Varjak: The mean reds, you mean like the blues?
Holly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long – you're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
Paul: Sure.
Holly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name! (Courtesy IMDB)
Holly’s struggle to “find Tiffany’s” is what drives her. It’s what makes the romance between Holly and Paul sweet and funny and a little bit sad. It’s the whole point of the movie. And my father says he never thought about it?
Random bits of advice and observations from my father fill in more details. He always stressed academic achievement, but he also told us there comes a point when you can study too much. Cramming the night before an exam isn’t going to help and you might be better off playing shooting baskets until one in the morning. He also prescribed contemplative solitude. Years later when I was deep in my own funk, he drove me along the same back roads he drove to various small-town movie houses. We eventually ended up out to the OARDC Experimental station. “I used to come up here at night and watch the lights twinkling,” he told me. Another favorite spot was a large rock on campus. When I went to the same college, I saw the rock of which he spoke.
“That rock isn’t private. It’s right next to the main path.”
“You’d be surprised how private it is at two in the morning.”
If all this does not sound like a man who wrestled with the Mean Reds, then I don’t know what the Mean Reds are.
I cannot believe that he missed the idea of the Mean Reds entirely. At some internal level, he must have felt that here at last was someone who knew what it meant to be scared without knowing why. Perhaps he didn’t recognize it because Holly’s society-girl aspirations were so different from his own. I do not know how he came so close to failing that semester, nor do I know how he pulled his GPA up. Perhaps he views that almost-failure as a weakness he can’t admit to, and recognizing Holly’s Mean Reds means recognizing his own failings from that time. Or perhaps I, being of a more imaginary temperament, insist on seeing a pattern where there is none. Line the facts up however you like; the stories that we tell ourselves about our past selves mean everything.
I see now that, in a sense, he gave that movie to me. He gave it to me in the same way he tried to teach me how to use a volt-ohm meter, change the oil filter on my car, and make bread – because having the same temperament as he does, it was information I might someday need to know. Whatever the reasons he liked it, whatever he did or did not see in the film, he recognized that Breakfast at Tiffany's was a wonderful movie that could banish, if only for a time, those feelings of being afraid and not knowing what you’re afraid of. In a darkened theater, my father found Tiffany’s.
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