Tag Archives: books

Dear Going on a Trip

17 Nov

Dear Going on a Trip,

How, exactly, do you involve quite so much work? So many lists, and so much Getting Things Done before I go?

Only to be repeated when I come back? There’s the laundry and the picking up my apartment so I don’t cry when I am tired and just off the plane when I return. There’s the cleaning out the refrigerator but also trying to make sure there is some kind of food in the house because when I come back, life does not stop to let me catch up and rest after my vacation. There’s the making dinner plans for tonight and tomorrow. Oh wait, that’s just normal. Um, there’s all the work I have to do before I go, and all the work I have to do while I am there, and all the work I have to plan to do when I get back. There’s not only watering my plant today, but figuring out who is going to water it while I am gone.

There is figuring out what to do with my car while I am gone and how to get to the airport and then how to get back from the airport and get my car. And laundry. Did I mention laundry?

There is also, by the way, figuring out what to pack for cold weather and rain. You do know that packing warm clothes takes up more space then just throwing some sundresses in a bag, right? That taking boots makes things heavier, as does taking a stack of books? Don’t tell me there are books where I am going; I need these books. And yes, I am going to do work while I am on my trip. First of all, I am determined. Second of all, I don’t really have a choice.

Taking 12 days for Thanksgiving in the middle of the semester doesn’t exactly mean those are 12 days off.

LIST. I need to make a list.

Adio, cheerio, bon voyage, make a list, ahh! my brain!

MM

Dear Franny and Zooey

13 Oct

Dear Franny and Zooey,

Where, oh where, are you?

Come home to me. I miss you– your plain white stripey cover, your beautifully absurd high-brow conversations in the bathtub, your chain-smoking pages.

Used bookstores have thousands of used copies of Catcher in the Rye– but you, oh dear Franny, dear Zooey, are such a rare find.

Light an SOS fire (made not of your pages) so I might find you.

Come home, come home, love,

MM

Edited: Ok, people, we can all calm down. Franny and Zooey has been located. Thanks for your quick response to the situation. Franny, Zooey, welcome back. I’m sorry to have put you under a much larger book that I don’t even like very much so you were obscured from my view. Please forgive me. Everyone else, go about your business. Nothing to see here….

Dear Living Alone

6 Sep

Dear Living Alone,

So. We finally meet. You’re not that bad. In fact, I kind of like you.

Except for two days ago, when I dropped a lightbulb and there was no one to say, “Careful! Watch your bare feet. I’ll get the vaccuum!” (I said it to myself) and today, when I couldn’t open my olive oil. This was my punishment for buying Ralph’s brand olive oil: thirteen minutes hacking at a plastic top that kept spinning in place with a steak knife, pulling at the one hacked-off edge with a wrench, wrestling with the whole things with a kitchen towel, going back to the wrench, then the knife, then the towel, and then (obviously!) spilling olive oil all over the counter when the damn thing just popped itself right off! And now it won’t go back on.

Except for those things (and more I’m sure to come) I think you and I will get along quite nicely. I like my little armchair by the window, where I can hear but not see the bus, and I like using the bathroom whenever I want to without realizing that somebody’s already in there and I will have to wait. The ceiling fans keep me nice company, and I never come home to surprise-dirty-dishes. In fact, I never come home to surprise anything. My little studio apartment with the big kitchen and difficult olive oil is always just the way I left it.

I would take a picture and show it, but it’s mine all mine for the moment and I like it like that. Maybe later I will feel like sharing. And there are still some boxes (!) which is just intolerable for a first public viewing. Or maybe I will never share and everyone will just have to imagine the books lining the walls along the floor because I have no bookcases and the cheerful red-and-white-floral lamp that presides over my bed and the sun slanting in across open poetry notes on the kitchen table.

Yes, I think we’ll do just fine, me and living alone. In fact, I think I’ll keep you for the time being. How’s that sound?

Love,

MM

Dear Oprah

30 Oct

Dear Oprah,

The thing is, I’m not sure I like you. The yo-yo diets and some of the things you focus on during your show—remember when you had Brad Pitt as a guest right as Troy was being released? You didn’t ask about the movie, his career, his hobbies, his troubled marriage, his sudden interest in being a Good Samaritan. All you talked about was his butt. You talked about how it looked in the clip you showed, you made him stand up and chanted until he bowed, you said butt so many times he looked embarrassed there was a crowd (you see that? I rhymed, that’s how much this annoys me and it was four years ago).

You’re on the cover of your own magazine every month, looking younger and slimmer and wearing more eye-makeup every single time—but I have to admire your bold use of color and jewelry, and hey, I understand that you are why thousands of middle-aged women all across the country buy it every time they are about to board a plane (as evidenced by my mother).

And I do love a good make-over, and you had perhaps the best transformation and rise to the top since Norma Jean Baker changed her name.

Also in the pro column, you’re a smart, savvy businesswoman and possibly the most influential Black woman in the public eye. You get millions of people to read—thank you and congratulations. But I hated She’s Come Undone, I felt like I was unraveling with the main character, and I haven’t read an Oprah’s Book Club Book since, and I could not stop laughing when Michael Cunningham refused to have your seal on The Hours. You give away cars to your audience fairly regularly as determined by the number of times I’ve heard about it, which I don’t know if I think is a point for Column A or Column B. Though I do have the feeling I would feel more positively about it were I to be in the audience. Then again, if I was there on a day when you gave out CDs or a scented candle, I would be pissed. How much does it suck to be those people?

And, unlike Martha Stewart, who I’m pretty convinced would sway me in person in under a minute, I don’t think that hanging out with you would necessarily help me make up my mind. I think it might be kind of scary, in a I-can’t-tell-what-you’re-thinking sort of sense. Whereas with Martha, I would talk cupcakes and how I keep overcooking fried chicken and admire the creepy way inanimate objects seem to put themselves in place whenever her fingers come towards them. Perhaps I’m not talking to my flowers sternly enough? Should I make an example of a miscarved pumpkin? I’ve got the scooping down, but the curves always get me and the entire concept of bridge work for the small pieces lives someplace I will never visit.

Oprah, congratulations on your success. Please send more information so I can determine how I feel about you. I want you to be as amazing as your magazine says I can be. But I’m just not on the Oprah train yet. This is your opportunity to sell me a ticket.

I look forward to seeing you on 30 Rock. Maybe it’ll tip my canoe.

With mixed feelings,

MM

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