The Sheila Variations

Diary whatever

Okay - so this is a long entry. It is also a repeat. It is also not from high school. And today is not Friday.

But here's the deal. I was going through my archives today, deleting stuff, getting rid of spam - basically cleaning up the joint - and I found myself reading this entry (which I originally posted as a two-parter - due to its LENGTH) and literally SHAKING with laughter. I was wiping tears off of my face.

I don't know why it's so funny - it's just a silly Saturday night in Chicago - but for some reason, the way I wrote it continuously strikes me as a freakin' RIOT. It hurts - the laughter.

So I figured I'd post it again. Because it makes me happy. It also makes me glad I kept a journal. Because for the most part I am NOT glad that I keep a journal. Ghosts, you know. But with entries like this? That can come up out of the past and not just make me nostalgic or wistful - but make me HOWL?

This is from my time in Chicago. I had just returned from doing a show in Ithaca. During my time in Ithaca, I dated Michael (where we had the best day ever, and I stole the cup. I've written about him before). Then when we came back to Chicago, we tried to keep it going(or - it was probably just me - I think I tried to keep it going) - but as this entry shows - it was rather difficult. He was 20. I was 27 or something like that. Huge difference. But seriously - the way I wrote about it - I just find it so damn funny, even though I was upset at the time. Or was I? Actually, I don't think I was upset. Everything seems to take on this sort of comedic tone in the entry.

I also loved reading this this morning because Michael is coming to stay with me next week while he's in New York - it's been a couple of years since I saw him - so I was just GUFFAWING reading some of this stuff, in memory of his ridiculous and kind of crabby sense of humor. The LM Montgomery moment I am STILL laughing about. Seriously. I can't stop laughing. It's probably a "you had to be there" thing, but - man. I had forgotten about it - and just the way he said "Who is LM Montgomery" - with no preamble - he had just silently noticed that I had 200 of her books - and so he injected that into the conversation, in this overly calm but pissed way. Again - can't explain it - but I HOWLED this morning when I read it. I had no idea back then that he and I would remain friends. It kinda didn't seem to be going in that direction, did it - even though we obviously liked each other.

So here goes. A long long entry, which I've posted before, which does not take place in high school, which I am posting on a Thursday.

Ann Marie: Look out!! Gourd comin' at ya!

Also - very bizarre: Alex is one of my best friends now. This is the first time she appears in my journal - but just as someone I've heard of, through her reputation, and because Mitchell knew her. And now? We're thick as thieves. Weird - to see that I had NO IDEA that she and I would become such good friends.

She remembers the "crazy girl who sent the cumquat backstage", by the way. "Who is that insane person who just sent you a cumquat?" Uhm, that would be me. Your future friend. Nice to meet ya.

November

Yesterday was a weird epic day. A day that has brought perspective. Oxygen.

Last week, I would call Michael every half-hour, and he was never there. [HA!!!!! I mean, already it's comedic. I'm showing my own youth here as well.] Even at 12:30 at night. So I was basically like the Bride of Frankenstein. I was all about getting in touch with him. I had no perspective.

The next phase would have involved haikus - except he has no answering machine to leave them on. Shucks.

[Ed: Explanation here.]

I woke up early on Saturday. It was a miserable day. Pouring rain. Very windy. Leftovers of landlord's Halloween party still all over the front porch. Gourds and pumpkins and huge sheathes of corn husks. Melancholy. Autumn. Cozy. I made a pot of coffee, I was in longjohns, slippers, flannel shirt. I burned incense, turned on my Xmas lights - had cereal, strawberries. Sat on my bed with purring Samuel, reading Obabakoak, drinking coffee. [You were reading WHAT? Please don't throw around a word like Obabakoak casually.] Total solitude. Morning. Blustery storm outside. Warmth and comfort inside.

Michael called at 10:30 or so. [Ed: I had forgotten this, but he and I had had a date to go see "Mexican death masks" at a museum. It became a short-hand. "So after the death-masks..." "Okay, so we do death masks, then we grab some lunch..."] He had just woken up. He and his roommate needed to go meet with their landlord at a place on Belmont and Lincoln - near me - so I told him to call me when they were done and come over. I gave him directions.

I highly doubted he would make it to my place without a hitch.

A couple hours go by. He calls again. Clearly from a pay phone. He told me they were done at the landlords and would head over. They were only a 5 minute drive away.

Half an hour goes by. Mitchell comes home. Every car that goes by, I'm peering out my window, like a stupid high schooler waiting for her stupid prom date. Is that him yet? Is that him yet? I kept talking to him, via the drenched grey landscape. "Dude, it should not take this long."

The phone rings. I knew it would be him.

"Hello?" I said.

He clearly was no longer at a pay phone, and now he was speaking in a subversive undertone, as though he were a spy in enemy territory.

"I'm almost there," he said, and I BURST into laughter.

What was he doing - stopping on every corner to call? Okay, I'm 4 blocks away. Hi, it's me again. Now I'm 3 blocks away. I'm almost there. The call is now coming from inside the house.

It cracked me up.

I said, "WHAT is going on? Where are you?"

Then - still in the subversive spy voice, "I'll explain later."

So he was in some intriguing situation. I said, "Okay." We hung up.

15 minutes later, the phone rings. I didn't even say "Hello" this time. I just laughed directly into the receiver.

I had already given up my dream o' death masks. I just wanted him to ARRIVE.

So he had to whisper to me why he wasn't able to get there yet. He was stranded. I told him to ditch Dan and get the hell over to my apartment. NOW.

He said, "Well, just read - relax - I'll get there eventually."

Read? Does the Bride of Frankenstein read??

Half an hour later, he shows up at the door. He had brought me a roast beef sandwich from Arby's. It charmed me. It was an obvious bribe, a "Don't be mad" bribe, but it charmed me nonetheless. We sat. We talked. He makes me laugh.

He said, "I have got to get my haircut. I look like Albert Brooks."

He told me his whole long involved story of the morning. It was kind of boring. [hahahahahahahahahahaha] I showed him around my apartment. He inspected everything. Like a spy. We went in my room. He perused every item. He saw something I have on my wall, and stopped. He didn't say anything, just stopped and stared at it. 20 minutes later he said to me, "I don't think I've ever met another girl who is a John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands fan."

This amazed me. "Really??"

We lay on our backs on my bed, talking. Then he said, after a pause, "You're gonna be mad."

I knew immediately. Our death-masks trips was off. Our night at the movies was off. Our whole date was off. Turns out, he was going to see another play that night and he didn't invite me. This turned into an enormous argument.

Which then turned into a wrestling match. Literally. We were rolling around on my floor, wrestling - for REAL - I kept trying to pin him. He kept trying tp pin me. We knocked over a lamp. We had a blast. We took out all our aggressions. Mitchell must have been like, "Jesus, people, I'm trying to have a quiet morning..." Crashes - screams - emanating from my bedroom.

Finally, I got off him and said, "You're avoiding assimilating me into your life. And that's fine. Really it is. I just don't want you to PRETEND that you are not doing that. I want you to realize what you are doing."

He looked at me with this dawning realization on his face and said the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life. "Have I hurt your feelings over this past week?" It suddenly dawned on him. Then he said to himself, in dismay, "I'm hurting your feelings."

It takes men a while to realize I actually have feelings. I'm used to it, so I try to be patient with them.

I said, "Yeah. You were avoiding me all week. And PRETENDING like you weren't. Don't do that. Just be straight."

Michael said, "I need time to assimilate you." There was a long long pause and then he said, "You're not buying that one, aren't you?"

I told him I thought something else was going on. I was eager to invite him to do stuff. Impulsively. Not like some big thing. But in an impulsive friendly way. I hate having everything be a big deal - I'm an essentially casual girl. It's how I run my life.

"Hi - we're going to a movie at the Esquire - the 1 pm show - meet us there-"

"We're meeting up tonight at blah blah blah - want to join?"

Stuff like that. I want to include him in those little outings. He doesn't want to include me in his. But he's pretending like it's just LIFE that is intervening - like the whole rigmarole of him even arriving at my apartment - how it took him 3 hours to go a distance of 4 blocks. Something in him is resisting this relationship - and that's OKAY - I just need him to ADMIT it.

Before I kill him.

So anyway, we ended up having a good talk about it, after beating the crap out of each other on my bedroom floor.

He told me he has the tendency to ignore people he really cares about.

My response? "Wow, lucky me."

He doted on me in Ithaca. He would say, "Don't mind me. I'm just doting." "If my doting becomes annoying, just slap me." "Can I dote on you for, like, 2 seconds, and then I'll leave you alone?"

The doting ended when we crossed the Chicago county-line.

He was sorry, he felt bad, he doesn't want to hurt me, he apologized - etc. I was uninterested in all of that. I said, "Just don't ignore me. If you don't want to see me, tell me you don't want to see me. But don't ignore my phone calls. Don't do that to me."

"I won't."

It's weird. Nothing was a big deal in Ithaca, and everything is a big deal here. I don't like big deals. I want to show up on his doorstep with coffee, and not have it be a big deal. I want to have brief over-it phone conversations - "Okay, meet you there - bye" - not all this cloak and dagger stuff.

Also, when I said to him, "Well, I'm disappointed that you're canceling our date today" he FREAKED OUT. "I can't stand it! I can't stand it! Disappointment is WAY worse than anger!!"

This is what happens when you date a boy of 20 years of age.

I said, "Well - Jesus, I'm just telling you I'm disappointed. It's not some huge tragedy. I'm just disappointed. You want me to pretend I'm not? We had a date today. You're blowing me off."

He scowled.

Oh, such a funny thing happened too. We were hanging out in my room, talking, whatever - I still laugh when I think of this.

"I have a question for you," Michael said, in an ominously calm voice.

I waited.

He spoke. "Who is L.M. Montgomery?"

[Ed: That is so freakin' funny. I have about 50 L.M. Montgomery books, all lined up on my bookshelves. It was so funny the way he said it. No preamble. Also, like: it almost made him ANGRY.]

He asked me a lot of questions about "the Baby Boomer" [This was his scornful name for the guy I had been in love with before I met him.]. I dodged answering. But he kept pesetering. "What would you do if he called you up today and said, 'I'm wrong. I love you. Marry me.' What would you do?"

"He will never do that," I responded flatly. "It's over. He's gonna marry that girl." [He did.]

"I know! Just pretend. What if he did?"

He got all ominous and threatening about him. "Does he call you? Do you ever see him? Do you call him?"

I said, "No. No. No. No to all of that." He didn't believe me. But I was telling the truth.

Anyway, finally, he left. It was about 5 pm. I was pissed. I had made no plans for that night, because we had had a date, and now I was stuck. It was getting dark, rainy.

I walked him out to the porch, and as he walked down my street, I stood on my porch, calling after him, mocking, "WHOO-HOO! It's Saturday night!! It's Sheila's Saturday night - with roast beef sandwiches from Arby's! whoo-hoo! Look out! I don't know WHAT'S gonna happen!" I preyed on his guilt.

[8/31/2006 Note: I am noticing times overlapping here - layers of time - Less than a year later, he would show up at midnight to say goodbye to me on that very porch. I know this is a link-heavy post but whatever, here's another one. On that rainy day when Michael and I did NOT go to see the death masks - I had no idea that by that same time next year I would be fully ensconced in New York City, having completely uprooted my life in Chicago in August. No idea that that was even a possibility. And I had no idea that Michael would NOT come to my going-away dinner, OR to my going-away party - but that he WOULD show up, by himself, at midnight, the night before I left for a private good-bye. That was the kind of friendship we had. End 8/31/2006 Note]

But I can never hold a grudge with him. This is what separates me from the Bride of Frankenstein.

Anyway, I came back into my apartment, stood alone in my apartment for about 10 seconds, I felt kind of rattly, echoey - with this infinitesimal night stretching out ahead of me - so I picked up the phone and called Ann Marie.

Part I of my day ended. Part II beginning.

Ann, as it turns out, was sitting in her house having a parallel experience. Ann and I always end up having parallel experiences, even when our extenuating circumstances are very different. She is so great - she is immediately present. She jump-starts. I do that too. We never need catch-up time with one another.

She was totally confused at why I was calling her when I was supposed to be "doing death masks" with Michael.

"What happened?" she demanded.

And then, of course, we talked it out feverishly. Analyzed, discussed, theorized, hypothesized - picked that shit APART!! I wasn't in a rage or anything. The whole thing actually seems kind of comedic - but still, I am a bit disturbed. So we had a good old talk about it. And she told me about her circumstances as well. Antivenom. Etc. Very long story.

I said, "Let's do something! Want to do something?"

In a millisecond she was along for the ride.

We have been wanting for a while to go dancing at Whiskey River, a country-western bar, so we decided to do that and I suggested going to see the late-night show of Hamlet at Improv Olympic. Mitchell saw it when it first opened and said it was one of the funniest things he had ever seen in his life.

A bit of background. It's Hamlet, the musical.

Jeff Richmond, the pianist for all those improv shows, wrote it - it's a campy musical - like No No Nanette, or something - goofy and campy. Gertrude has a vamp number like "My Heart Belongs to Daddy', only it's entitled, "Mama is a Boy's Best Friend". It's a runaway hit, and doing really well. It's in the late night spot at the new Improv Olympic on Belmont. Alexandra Billings is playing Gertrude, and Mitchell says she is positively amazing. [So bizarre - I hadn't even met her at this point!!! It would be years and years before I met her. Before we did THIS together.] Alexandra makes entrances, as Gertrude, as though she is Bea Arthur or Helen Hayes or some Grande Dame of the American Theatre - and she completely pulls it off. She's getting extraordinary reviews.

While I was in Ithaca, I talked on the phone with Mitchell once and he told me that he had run into M. at Higgins one night.

[8/31/06 Note: At this point - I guess M. had started to date somebody else, pretty seriously, so obviously I wasn't seeing him anymore. By the way - the entire Triumvirate is in this post. Every single one of them. They always seem to go together even though they do not know each other and never did. They don't even know that they have me in common. So M. found a girlfriend and that was that in terms of us. I was fine with that. I obviously had found a boyfriend - even though he was 20 and it took him 3 hours to go 2 blocks - but I had also fell in love with someone before that - even though he was a Baby Boomer and I just don't want to talk about it anymore. In a short enough time, both M. and I were single again, and we kinda called each other like: "Hi. I'm single now. Are you? Yes? Me too. Okay. Good. Meet ya at Southport Lanes in half an hour. Let's go bowling and make out." End 8/31/06 Note]

M. One of the people in my life who is filled with dark magic. As a matter of fact, there is nobody else that has the same brand of dark magic for me as M. I do not know why this is true, because the man is utterly insane, but it most definitely is true.

So anyway, Mitchell told me about their exchange. Of course M. was, as Mitchell put it, "painfully awkward". Of course he was. I would be surprised if he were anything but - but also, there's that sweetness he has -

Other people see only his painful awkwardness. Many of them interpret it as contempt, or scorn. Like, he couldn't be bothered. Or he doesn't want to talk to them. These people could not be more wrong. They miss the sweetness underneath.

I honestly do not know if anyone else sees him quite the way I do.

Very strange. When people hear I was involved with him, they give me this look, this shocked look, like, "Really???" This baffles me, because - all I can see is his sweetness. I know he's weird and socially awkward and grumpy and crabby and bizarre - but what a joy he is, too!

Mitchell told me about his exchange with M. - (and now watch how I relate it as though I were there).

After the usual niceties were exchanged (and niceties with M. are always very painful, because he just seems to ENDURE them), Mitchell told M. that I was out of town doing a show. M. was awkwardly interested.

Anyway, as Mitchell relayed all of this to me, he said, "You know he's playing Claudius."

And no - I did not know that M. was now playing Claudius in Hamlet, the Musical. M.? singing and dancing? In a musical??? I could not stand the thought of it. it was positively too wonderful and too funny to contemplate.

"We have to see it," I said.

"I have to see M. do it," Mitchell said. "The other guy who played Claudis was this short fat troll-like guy - which was funny enough - having a troll be married to Alexandra Billings - but M. is so big and virile and handsome - it'll be interesting to see his take on it. also - to watch the dynamic between M. and Alexandra. I literally cannot imagine what that will be like."

Basically, I just want to see M. do a box step. I fear that I might laugh so hard I will split into a million pieces. Or that my heart will shatter onto the floor at the mere sight of M., the painfully awkward grumpy weirdo, doing a BOX STEP. It just makes me happy to think of it.

So Mitchell apparently said to M., "Hey, I hear you're in Hamlet! That is so great! I didn't know you could sing!"

This is my favorite part. In response to that, M. got kind of defensive and said, "I sing! ... I sing - like Sheila sings."

He gave Mitchell a frame of reference. Using my name. Which I think is just so comedic.

It was M.'s way of saying, "I'm not just Sheila's goof-ball friend - I have a good voice - like Sheila's..."

It was like when M. was trying to convince Mitchell that he was a valid member of his high school dance troupe.

[8/31/06 Note: I cannot tell you how hard I laugh now when I read that. I remember that night. It was a tequila-soaked night. Mitchell refused to believe that M., big strapping jock boy, had been in a dance troupe in high school. Refused. "M., you were not in a dance troupe. Come on!" So M. did a chassé, RIGHT AT Mitchell - very aggressively - like: "SEE? SEE ME CHASSÉ? Now you believe me?" We were in a crowded bar, too - Mitchell and I perched on bar stools, with M. suddenly doing this bad jazz combination right at us - See? I am crying with laughter right now. Later, Mitchell said to me, "I literally didn't know what to do. The man chasséd right in my face." End 8/31/06 Note]

So there are my background stories, and so Ann and I decided to go see Hamlet. It was an 11 pm show. I called for reservations. I was so DRIVEN to make something out of this evening which started out as a huge BUST.

And I had this very funny personal interlude with whoever was taking reservations. It was a guy = I didn't ask his name- I called, and told the voice I would like to reserve tickets.

He said, "Okay, hold on one sec. I've got the TV on too loud."

Er ... was the box office in someone's house?

Anyway, it could have ended there, but he sounded friendly, so I said, "What're you watching?"

And what followed was this hilarious conversation - and for some reason - it just gave me so much joy. We should have exchanged phone numbers. He just cracked me UP.

I said, "What're you watching?"

"That movie with Madonna and Harvey Keitel?"

"Oh, I heard that was very bad. How is it?"

"Yeah ... I know it got bad reviews - but it's really not that bad. A lot of it is very interesting, actually. Harvey Keitel plays a director, and it's cool to watch him, see what he might be like as a director - and through a lot of it, you can't tell what is real and what isn't."

"Oh, that's cool."

"Yeah, it is," he said.

"I love Harvey Keitel. Have you seen Pulp Fiction?" [Ed: Wow - time travel moment!!.]

This guy on the other end was so forthcoming and so friendly - we talked openly about the ups and downs of Harvey Keitel's career.

Total strangers.

It was so funny, too, because Mitchell was sitting right there, and as far as he was concerned, I had just been calling the box office, and then I end up blithering with some person as though I have known him all my life. Mitchell was giving me such a funny look, like 'Who the hell are you talking to, Sheila?'

My new best friend and I got back to the Madonna/Harvey Keitel movie - and he actually said, "No, it's not bad at all. I really think you'd like it."

That was the funniest moment of this conversation. Like - he knows my taste in movies now.

He said, "I think the people who had problems with it were ..." and he hesitated. I could feel him trying to find the right words through the phone line.

I filled in the blank, taking a wild guess. "Shrill feminists?"

Apparently, that was the PERFECT term - I had put it for him perfectly! Also, he probably wanted to say something along the lines of "shrill feminists", but wouldn't ... because he was talking to a woman, a female ... He wouldn't just assume that I've got my own brand of political incorrectedness going on for myself. He was being polite, careful. Men and women can be too careful with one another, until we realize that we speak the same language. But there are all kinds of land mines that could explode, if you don't look out. And in that moment when he hesitated, he was looking out.

See how I analyze a phone conversation with a stranger?? But I know I'm right. That was EXACTLY what he went through in that pause.

But once I gave him the "all clear" sign, by saying "shrill feminists", he said, almost relieved, "Yes! Exactly. Exactly. Shrill feminists would definitely not dig this movie."

I don't know why this encounter gave me so much joy, but it did.

Finally I ordered my tickets. Then we hung up with cheery good-byes, happy our paths had crossed.

I don't know. If I had been in any danger of being in the doldrums before, because of the death-mask debacle, after talking to that box office guy I was out of danger. I love fortuitous out-of-the-blue moments like that, where you can randomly connect with another human being. They are gifts the day gives you.

I wish I could send him a card.

Ann and I went to Whiskey River and had a TOTAL BLAST.

Oh wait, I'm forgetting one absolutely insane thing. Before Ann arrived, I suddenly got the idea that I wanted to send M. a little good-luck gourd backstage. Some people send flowers. In this case, I preferred to send a gourd. As I mentioned before, our steps are covered in darling gourds, some all mottled and warty, some dark-green with orange bumps, some were smooth and orange, like little grenades.

I am insane.

So I went out and picked out a small orange grenade, I dried it all off - there was still a blustery rain storm going on - and wrote on it: "To M. - have a great show - From Sheila." I was pretty much laughing the entire time.

I put the gourd in a paper bag.

When Ann and I got out of the car to go into Whiskey River, I felt a tiny (insane) twinge of separation anxiety re: my sad little gourd in its bag, and what is so FUNNY and so WONDERFUL is that Ann could feel this without me even having to say anything (and how crazy am I to feel anxious about being away from a gourd) - but she looked at me for a second, felt my anxiety, and then said the craziest thing of the night, "Do you want me to crack the window?"

I know for certain that I will forget that she said that, and some day - years from now - I will re-read that, and burst into laughter.

We spent about 3 hours at Whiskey River. We sat at the bar, eating free food, wolfing down chicken wings - we were all about food - and consumption - guess we were hungry - that fucking roast beef sandwich hadn't filled me up - Once she and I started eating, all conversation stopped. It was pathetic. We both noticed it, and then of course had to exaggerate it for comic effect and do various goofy improvs. Like one of us would start to talk to the other, and the other would raise her hand imperiously and say something like, "Please. Not now." "Don't talk to me while I'm eating."

And then we danced. It was totally crowded, and we had a ball. It was so much fun, and just what I needed.

Who needs death masks.

We then left, and shrieked up towards Belmont. Parked. Walked. The place was already nearly full. I got all goofy and nervous about seeing M. Had a couple vertigoes. I gave my gourd in a bag to the girl in the box office.

"Please give this to M.," I said. What if she peeked inside??

"He's not here yet."

Then - I got completely paranoid. I imagined that she was looking at me in some kind of sinister perusal. I even leapt to the frightening possibility that this was his new girlfriend, helping out at the box office. I'm not chasing M. right now - of course I'm not -I love that he has a girlfriend, and I'm happy for him - but - she would probably be pissed if she knew his ex was sending him random gourds. [Ed: Uhm - yeah. I would be pissed if some ex-girlfriend was randomly sending my boyfriend gourds.]

I should be committed. I told Ann that I was afraid that the girl at the box office was maybe his girlfriend. She said, "I think you're insane."

[Ed: Laughing!!]

Then I admitted to her that EVEN STILL - even after all that has gone down - I have now known this man for 2 years - even still, I had this fear that he would get the gourd, look at my name, and it would take him a second to figure out who I was.

Ann said, "Oh, now that is really crazy."

No. You know what is really crazy? Sending a guy a GOURD in the first place.

At a couple of points, before the show began, Ann and I would suddenly burst into laughter at M. getting the gourd. Opening the paper bag in front of the rest of the cast.

"You gave him a gourd!!" Ann was hysterical.

And let me just say some things about the show: it was absolutely fantastic. An absolute blast. The script is unabashedly GOOFY, and it is exactly my sense of humor. Tom Lehrer-ish.

The lights go down after one scene. Lights come up. Hamlet comes onstage. Alone. The lights are dim. He comes down center stage. You know he is about to start the "To be or not to be" speech. He stands there for a second, looking out into the darkness contemplatively. He puts his arm up in a parody of Shakespearean acting, and begins, loudly: "To be - or not - to be -"

And then the doorbell rings, interrupting him.

And he keeps trying to get back to his soliloquy, and he keeps getting interrupted. It is goofy, and very funny.

Watching M. as Claudius, my boy filled with dark magic. I just have to say that it made me ridiculously happy to watch him dance around, singing and acting. I was goofily happy. He wore a colored cape. Which - I can't even describe how funny that is. He wore a crown. And he would do this completely obvious evil behavior, like winking at Gertrude over Hamlet's head, openly scheming, openly rolling his eyes.

He reminded me of Alan Rickman in Robin Hood. An over-the-top villain. Sneaking around like Bela Lugosi. The mere sight of his face makes me laugh. He also now has a sleazy little mustache and beard.

And yes, as he assured Mitchell, he "sings ... like Sheila sings ..." Hearing him harmonize, with that goofy campy music, was sheer liquid delight.

The audience laughed from pretty much start to finish. Our stomachs hurt.

Alexandra Billings BLEW OUR MINDS. She is a force of nature.

We waited after the show to say Hello.

I mean, I couldn't just leave after sending him a gourd like that.

We stood at the top of the aisle, where he wouldn't miss us. he came out from backstage, long-haired, jeans, cigarette dangling. He came towards us, but he was looking past us. Maybe he was looking for us. If he got the gourd, he knew we were out there.

[Ed: See, it's casually crazy sentences like that which absolutely crack me up. "If he got the gourd, he knew we were out there." What??]

I stuck my hand out in his line of vision to get his attention. He stopped - saw me. And any stupid STUPID fears I might have had completely dissolved with the expression on his face when he saw me.

Sheer joy.

I said, "Hi!" And then - the joy was on hold -for just one second - he said, with a strange stopped feeling, "Hi - hold on one second - Stay put. Don't move. I want you to meet my girlfriend. Last time you came to an improv show, she bitched me out for not introducing you."

She did?

Then he disappeared. I could hear him calling into the theatre, "Angie! Angie!" anyway, I had enough time to have a brief private pow-wow with Ann.

It went like this, rapid-fire dialogue, under the breath:

"Oh my God. He's getting Angie."

"Oh, God."

"How do I look? Be honest. Do I look okay?"

"Yes."

I was nervous to meet the girlfriend, and yet my heart felt like it had little wings beating. Little joyous wings. I can't really explain it. Somehow = M. and I - two dysfunctional strange people - got through to each other. I don't know how we did it, but we did. I also don't know why I keep doubting it. but I do.

So there he was - summoning Angie to come meet me. I heard him say to her, "Sheila's here - come meet Sheila."

I felt a wee bit ridiculous. Does she know about the gourd?

[Ed: Again, funny funny. I write that as though that is a normal thing to say.]

And here's the kicker: I am NOT in love with him. He may have the world's dark magic, but I am not in love with him. These feelings have nothing to do with love or anything like that. They just are. It's a one-of-a-kind relationships, that could never ever be duplicated. It's about fondness. Pure and simple. Mutual fondness. Punctuated by painful awkwardness. Unembattled affection, friendly, occasionally weird - no big deal.

So suddenly, there was Angie. And M. fled. I think it was all too much for him, and he needed to regroup. He is the most awkward man alive. And this? Having Angie meet me? The only other important woman in his life? I think M. would have spontaneously combusted, and she and I would have spent all our time trying to take care of him. It was good that he fled.

He dumped Angie into our laps, and then dashed away, with nary a word.

We all introduced ourselves, shook hands, nice nice nice, smile smile smile. Angie didn't seem- well, she was not a bitch, she was not mean - but I didn't feel kindred-spirit potential in her.

However, I cut her all the slack in the world, knowing what it feels like to be a threatened girlfriend. She wasn't prepared for my being there. So what was going through her mind? Like - does she think I'm stalking him, or trying to make trouble? If I were her, I would think that.

So I cut her a tremendous amount of slack.

She is very petite, tiny bones. Very pretty, wears a lot of makeup. Her eyelashes were so long and so black that they cast a shadow across her cheekbones, in a very pretty way. Her face is perfect porcelain. Her hair is auburn ringlets.

I was doing my best to just be as polite and as un-threatening as it is possible to be. It took a lot of concentration.

I don't think it would be possible for her to like me. I didn't want her to like me, and if I were in her shoes, I wouldn't have liked me. But I did want her to know I posed no threat, and I respect their relationship. (Gourds notwithstanding.)

M. had told me, last time I ran into him, that she had finally said to him, "Look ... if you need to still be friends with that girl ... I'm okay with that. Just don't hide it from me." That was what his whole: "Sheila's here!" moment was about. So I can tell that she is actually kind of a cool chick. She knows that she can't expect a man to be a blank slate.

But she had to assert her territory, and I completely let her. I let her run the show.

We did not have a conversation. She talked at us. Which was fine. Completely understandable. She yanked the conversation into her control by commenting on our names. "Oh my God - Such Irish Catholic names! It makes me afraid! Like I shouldn't cuss in front of you guys or something!"

Ann and I laughed - but it was forced - I felt forced, anyway. But it was okay. I understand territories. I understood her need to stake her claim. M. is her territory now. She needed to subtly let me know that.

We laughed obligingly and I said, "Dont' sweat it. We're fallen cherubs." Which perhaps was not the most appropriate thing to say, seeing as I was trying to be un-threatening and normal. [After sending someone a gourd?]

But it was okay, because she didn't really hear me.

"Is this your first time seeing the show?" she asked.

"Yes..." we both said, and she then told this very long story about M.'s opening night, and his problems with his costume and Ann and I listened and laughed where we should laugh and neither of us said a word. I may sound like I'm being a bitch here but I'm not. I do not begrudge her this at all. I probably would have acted the same way.

During her entire story, what I was REALLY hearing was her silent subtext, which was: "He's mine. He's mine now. He's mine now." Of course. I would have done the same thing. She kept using the words "my boyfriend". She never ever said his name. It was "my boyfriend, my boyfriend, my boyfriend..." Again, a territorial thing.

She was very dramatic. Smoking a cigarette, very glamorous, the shadows of her eyelashes, the pale pale skin.

At the end of her story, M. came back and joined us (having regrouped his awkward emotions in the bathroom. I relate.)

I felt that my job in this entire awkward exchange was to cut EVERYBODY slack. Let them be weird, awkward, hostile, strange - while I remained cool and gracious and friendly. I think, all in all, it worked.

He was sweet with her. Very protective. Obviously proud of her. It was heartwarming to see. Love sits well on him. It really does.

I did tell him I hated his mustache though and told him he looked like a sleaze-ball.

[Ed: Guys - I seriously cannot breathe right now. I am dying of laughter. I saw no contradiction, apparently, by saying that I was cutting everyone slack -and then turning around and telling him TO HIS FACE that he looked like a sleazeball. I can't breathe. I.]

Ann and I raved to him about the show. We told him our stomachs hurt from laughing. At one point, Angie walked away to talk to someone. And suddenly - spontaneously - wonderfully - M. put his arms around me and gave me this huge and (of course, what else) very awkward hug. We could never be anything but awkward in this situation, but it is the friendliest most okay awkwardness on the planet. We revel in the awkwardness.

I wasn't expecting him to hug me like that. We were never big huggers anyway. So I kind of awkwardly hugged him back, and I just could feel this gladness emanating off of him. Glad-ness to see me, and so happy to introduce me to his new girl. Closure. Or something.

Who would have ever thought ...

He asked me questions about Ithaca and the show I did.

At one point I said, "M.. You wearing a crown. I mean, come on. It's so funny."

I said to Mitchell later, "It is so weird. Because - essentially - the role he has played in my life has been quite peripheral."

Mitchell said, "Yeah. But also, at the same time, somehow profound."

Perfectly put. M. has been peripheral and yet somehow profound.

I said to him, "Oh hey, my CD should be coming out next month!" (Oh, it's my CD now?)

[Ed: The CD to which I refer was a duet I did with Pat McCurdy on this album. M. and I had been together when Pat wrote the song for me, and asked me to do it - so there was some background there.]

M. knew exactly what I was talking about - he lit up with interest.

"You're on it?"

"So I hear. So check your local Tower Records in December."

M. beamed at me with pride.

He then said, "Well. I should probably get going."

I reached out and touched his arm. "Great show, M.. It is so good to see you."

He said, at the same time, "Thanks for coming, Sheila. You too."

I said, "Please tell Angie we said good-bye, won't you?"

"I will, I will."

We were both strangely moved. I can't explain it. We were strangely moved.

We backed away, saying, "Bye!"

We are both the better for having had that exchange. For whatever reason. The whole thing. Meeting Angie. Maybe she can relax about me now. I hope so. I wish him the best. In all things.

But still. Sending him a gourd.

I certainly rescued my night from the death mask spiral. It was epic. I'm very happy. In a very goofy way.

Music Meme

Ken tagged me with this meme about a decade ago - and I'm just getting to it now. Busy busy Sheila. Busy busy bee.

Four songs that you could listen to over and over:
Fields of Joy - Lenny Kravitz
Oh Darling - The Beatles
Til We Reach that Day - Ragtime soundtrack
Luck in my Eyes - kd lang

Four songs that drive you up the friggin' wall:

We didn't start the fire - Billy Joel (love the Joel, hate that song)

We Are the World - No. You are NOT the world. You are Americans. There's a difference.

That big song by Enya kind of drives me crazy. My massage therapist sometimes plays it during a session and I make him change it because it kinda makes me mad.

Oh - and Drips - by Eminem. Track 9 on The Eminem Show. Were it not for Track 9, that would be a perfect album. I know there are those who disagree with me, and who love Drips - but I'm standing strong on this one.

Four songs that you're embarrassed (or should be) to admit you like:

Well, I'm all about the guilty pleasures in life so I have little to no embarrassment about any of my tastes - and don't think I SHOULD be embarrassed by any of them - but let's pretend:

You Drive Me Crazy - Britney Spears - great pop song. But again, I'm not embarrassed to like it, because I think it's a great pop song/.

Any and all KC and the Sunshine Band songs

I adore Ashlee Simpson's "La La" even though it is ridiculous and I can't stand her and everything she represents, with her new nose, and her creepy dad. Still "La La" is a great song.

I love Madonna. Now there's something that is not popular to admit today. But I don't give a crap. Love her music. All of it.

Four best driving songs:
Monkey Wrench - Foo Fighters
Kashmir - Led Zeppelin
Enter Sandman - Metallica
Lithium - Nirvana

I obviously like it loud and almost brain-dissolvingly harsh when I drive. None of this melancholy reflective James Taylor stuff. I love James Taylor - but NOT for driving. He's more of a - as i take a long walk on a cloudy day - he'll be on the iPod. But driving? By myself? No.

Four songs that make you cry:
Errol Flynn - Amanda McBroom
The Man that Got Away - Judy Garland
Watershed - Indigo Girls
Washing of the Water - Peter Gabriel

Four best risqué songs:
Risque to me means suggestive - rather than explicit. So:

Happiness is a warm gun - the Beatles
Galway Bay - the Clancy Brothers (hahahaha but it's true - best song.)
Freudian Love Song - Pat McCurdy (lyrics here)
Oh Jean - The Proclaimers

Four best kid songs:
John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith (his name is my name too!!)

Actually - Holiday, by Green Day - and I say that because Cashel loves it and we sing it together rousingly

99 bottles of beer on the wall

Little red caboose (chug chug chug)

If you want to list your own answers in the comments - go right ahead!!!

The Books: "Rainbow Valley" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery.

Published in 1919 - this is the second book about Anne's 6 children ... and the spectre of World War I slowly approaches. Lucy Maud is writing it during the war - and although the book takes place prior to World War I, the shadow hangs over it. It is as though she realizes (as the whole world realizes) that the old world has died away. Welcome to the 20th century. Modern warfare. A carnage unlike anything humanity had ever experienced. Technology. All that. Rainbow Valley is her last "Anne" book to take place PRIOR to all of that, to the horrible awakening. And Lucy Maud manages to convey the consciousness of that old world, and its fragility, and the fact that it doesn't have long to live, in her prose. She has a way of letting us know what is coming. Listen to the second to the last paragraph:

He stood up on a hillock, tall and splendid, with his open brow and his fearless eyes. There were thousands like him all over the land of the maple.

There's the whole thing in the book about responding to the 'call of the Piper'. In the innocent world of the book, it just means - approaching adulthood, facing the unknown - who is ready to heed the call of the Piper? But Lucy Maud manages to suggest a more ominous meaning. The call of the Piper is actually (although no one knows it yet) war.

Nobody knows that war is coming, that it will wrench their worlds apart, that all the boys who we now know as cute little guys with fishing poles will be going off to Europe to the trenches. That the womenfolk (who are all now still little girls with pinafores) will have thier hearts dragged along behind them, living the war in every agonizing breath. None of that is here yet - but you can feel it. In the way Lucy Maud writes. Somehow, it's melancholy. Even though the whole book is a funny heartwarming book about a rowdy group of kids playing in their favorite spot, Rainbow Valley ... the overall impression left from the book is almost one of a keening sadness. Did anyone else pick up on this? It's not sentimental, or overt ... Lucy Maud is just writing about a world that no longer exists and she is grieving it. Grieving for what this young generation will have to go through. Grieving for the lost innocence of her country. I really feel that in Rainbow Valley.

So we have Anne and Gilbert's kids - 6 of them. They're lovely kids, individuals, each distinct and separate from the other. The Blythes live next door to the old dusty manse where the widowed minister lives with HIS brood of kids. The minister (Rev. Meredith) is a lovely man, a wonderful minister, and he LOVES his children - but he kind of sucks as a father. He lets them run wild. He has no idea what they are doing, where they are going. The kids dress themselves (sometimes to disastrous results) - they sit and sing in the graveyard (causing huge scandals in the town) - they run WILD. They are a huge scandal. They are very mch loved by everyone, because they are kind-hearted sweet smart kids - but they are just insanely mischievous. They are always daring each other to do stuff, to disastrous results. Oh - and they are totally aware that their father is basically in a prolonged state of mourning for their mother - and so they are very very sensitive about anything that will hurt him. So if they get in trouble, because someone in the town "told" on them, and their father tells them how disappointed he is in them ... then they realize that they must "do penance" and punish themselves for hurting their father yet again. These "penances" usually cause even more trouble than the original mischief.

But you just love these kids. Especially Faith Meredith. Fatih Meredith, the oldest girl in that family, a golden-haired red-cheeked MANIAC, is one of Lucy Maud's great child creations. I was disappointed to see her fade into the distance in the next book (she goes to Europe with the Red Cross, I believe). I think Faith could have had her own book as an adult - it would have been really interesting to see who she would have become. She's gorgeous, she's wild, she has a fiery temper, she has a good sense of right and wrong - but she's just WILD. There's one episode where she rides a pig through the middle of the town on a dare - and i swear, every time I read that episode tears of laughter fall down my face. I don't know why it strikes me so funny - maybe because of Lucy Maud's description of the terrified pig ... of the scandalized townspeople watching Faith gallop by ON A PIG ... It's just hilarious to me.

There are side plots. Mary Vance - the white-haired orphan girl who Miss Cornelia eventually adopts after she is basically camping out at the manse for weeks, after running away. Now SHE is a trouble-maker. Big-time. Also - eventually - Rev. Meredith starts to court someone again (in his own dreamy abstracted way) and the Meredith kids are terrified (even though they love Rosemary) because Mary Vance told them that all stepmothers are evil, even if they started OUT nice.

The excerpt I chose is a small one. It always makes me laugh. It is ridiculous - but it's an example, i think, of why Mark Twain loved her writing. She gets into childhood like almost no other author (except for maybe Twain himself., And Dickens. But let's just say: very few authors really GET IT.) She does. This episode is SO FUNNY to read, but so tragic to the little 6 year old girl involved.

Excerpt from Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery.

Rilla Blythe walked proudly, and perhaps a little primly, through the main 'street' of the Glen and up the manse hill, carefully carrying a small basketful of early strawberries, which Susan had coaxed into lusciousness in one of the sunny nooks of Ingleside. Susan had charged Rilla to give the basket to nobody except Aunt Martha or Mr. Meredith, and Rilla, very proud of being entrusted with such an errand, was resolved to carry out her instructions to the letter.

Susan had dressed her daintily in a white, starched and embroidered dress, with sash of blue and beaded slippers. Her long ruddy curls were sleek and round, and Susan had let her put on her best hat, out of compliment to the manse. It was a somewhat elaborate affair, wherein Susan's taste had more to say than Anne's, and Rilla's small soul gloried in its splendours of silk and lace and flowers. She was very conscious of her hat, and I am afraid she strutted up the manse hill. The strut, or the hat, or both, got on the nerves of Mary Vance, who was swinging on the lawn gate. Mary's temper was somewhat ruffled just then, into the bargain. Aunt Martha had refused to let her peel the potatoes and had ordered her out of the kitchen.

"Yah! You'll bring the potatoes to the table with strips of skin hanging to them and half boiled as usual! My, but it'll be nice to go to your funeral," shrieked Mary. She went out of the kitchen, giving the door such a bang that even Aunt Martha heard it, and Mr. Meredith in his study felt the vibration and thought absently that there must have been a slight earthquake shock. Then he went on with his sermon.

Mary slipped from the gate and confronted the spick-and-span damsel of Ingleside.

"What you got there?" she demanded, trying to take the basket.

Rilla resisted. "It'th for Mithter Meredith," she lisped.

"Give it to me. I'll give it to him," said Mary.

"No. Thuthan thaid I wathn't to give it to anybody but Mithter Mer'dith or Aunt Martha," insisted Rilla.

Mary eyed her sourly.

"You think you're something, don't you, all dressed up like a doll! Look at me. My dress is all rags and I don't care! I'd rather be ragged than a doll baby. Go home and tell them to put you in a glass case. Look at me -- look at me -- look at me!"

Mary executed a wild dance around the dismayed and bewildered Rilla, flirting her ragged skirt and vociferating "Look at me -- look at me" until poor Rilla was dizzy. But as the latter tried to edge away towards the gate Mary pounced on her again.

"You give me that basket," she ordered with a grimace. Mary was past mistress in the art of "making faces". She could give her countenance a most grotesque and unearthly appearacne out of which her strange, brilliant, white eyes gleamed with weird effect.

"I won't," gasped Rilla, frightened but staunch. "You let me go, Mary Vanth."

Mary let go for a minute and looked around her. Just inside the gate was a small "flake", on which half a dozen large codfish were drying. One of Mr. Meredith's parishioners had presented him with them one day, perhaps in lieu of the subscription he was supposed to pay to the stipend and never did. Mr. Meredith had thanked him and then forgotten all about the fish, which would have promptly spoiled had not the indefatigable Mary prepared them for drying and rigged up the "flake" herself on which to dry them.

Mary had a diabolocial inspiration. She flew to the "flake" and seized the largest fish there - a huge, flat thing, nearly as big as herself. With a whoop she swooped down on the terrified Rilla, brandishing her weird missile. Rilla's courage gave way. To be lambasted with a dried codfish was such an unheard-of thing that Rilla could not face it. With a shriek she dropped her basket and fled. The beautiful berries, which Susan had so tenderly selected for the minister, rolled in a rosy torrent over the dusty road and were trodden on by the flying feet of pursuer and pursued. The basket and contents were no longer in Mary's mind. She thought only of the delight of giving Rilla Blythe the scare of her life. She would teach her to come giving herself airs because of her fine clothes.

Rilla flew down the hill and along the street. Terror lent wings to her feet, and she just managed to keep ahead of Mary, who was somewhat hampered by her own laughter, but who had breath enough to give occasional blood-curdling whoops as she ran, flourishing her codfish in the air. Through the Glen street they swept, while everybody ran to the windows and gates to see them. Mary felt she was making a tremendous sensation and enjoyed it. Rilla, blind with terror and spent of breath, felt that she could run no longer. In another instant that terrible girl would be on her with the codfish. At this point the poor mite stumbled and fell into the mud-puddle at the end of the street just as Miss Cornelia came out of Carter Flagg's store.

Miss Cornelia took the whole situation in at a glance. So did Mary. The latter stopped short in her mid career and before Miss Cornelia could speak she had whirled around and was running up as fast as she had run down. Miss Cornelia's lips tightened ominously, but she knew it was no use to think of chasing her. So she picked up poor, sobbing, dishevelled Rilla instead and took her home. Rilla was heart-broken. Her dress and slippers and hat were ruined and her six year old pride had received terrible bruises.

The Books: "Anne of Ingleside" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.

Sixth in the Anne series - but I think this was one of the last books she wrote. I'll have to check. [Checked: It was the second to last. Her last book was "Jane of Lantern Hill" (excerpt here)] Anne of Ingleside was published in 1939 - which always amazes me. What a horrible year that was. A horrible year for the world. There are a couple of foreshadowing moments in this book - because, after all, she has already written Rilla of Ingleside (excerpt here) - so she knows what happens. There's a moment when Anne sees a shadow of a cross over her son Walter's bed - and "later she would look back on that ...." etc.

Anne of Ingleside is the story of Anne and Gilbert raising their brood of children. Each child has his or her own big episode in the book - and the narrative is told from that child's point of view. So we're inside Jem's head, or Walter's head, or whatever. We see Anne and Gilbert, characters we now love and feel we know, through their kids eyes - as parents. They're called "Mother" and "Dad". I admit that when I was a teenager, reading the books for the first time, I got kind of frustrated. Because ... where is Anne??? What's going on with HER? But as an adult, it seems right. Anne is in the book, as herself, with her point of view, in the beginning, and intermittently throughout - and then there's a huge brou-haha that takes up the end of the book - where Anne feels that Gilbert is neglecting her, and then she becomes convinced that Gilbert still pines for his college girlfriend Christine. This is really the only hint we ever get that Anne and Gilbert ever have marital strife. Or - not even strife - how 'bout an ARGUMENT? How 'bout a little reality? Lucy Maud's marriage was so bad and so ... shameful to her (mental illness being so stigmatized) that she never really wrote about marriage - I think it was too hot to go near. Leslie Moore is tragic and interesting (excerpt from Anne's House of Dreams here) - and then she gets married and we never hear of her again. Lucy Maud's books END with marriages. I'm not saying there's anything bad with that - it just becomes noticeable as a theme. Anne and Gilbert are the only married couple that we really follow through their marriage, we see from the inside out, and Lucy Maud turns her focus onto the kids, rather than onto the grown-ups. In a way, this was VERY smart of her - because it kept the interest going for new generations. Anyway, just an observation.

Some of my favorite episodes in this book:

-- the nightmare of Aunt Mary Maria - who comes to stay and then just won't go home. What a drip. I was frustrated with Gilbert for not standing up to her.

-- the tragic chapter where Nan becomes convinced (because a little evil child TOLD her) that she was adopted - that she is actually the daughter of a horrible old fishwife down on the shore

-- when Walter walks all the way home because he's convinced that something bad is happening at home ... Turns out Anne is just having another baby - named Marilla - who eventually will star in her own book Rilla of Ingleside.

-- Anne's disastrous match-making attempt - very very funny

And frankly, I'm gonna be honest here: I just flipped through this book this morning and remembered a lot of it - but it's not lodged in my memory the way the events of some of the other books are. But the excerpt I chose? It's in my head forever. I probably think about this episode, oh, once a month? Seriously. It comes floating through my mind, and I sit, and ponder it for a second, before moving on. I remember the details - the descriptions - but mostly I remember the EVENT. Lucy Maud gets DARK here, and maybe that's why I remember it so clearly. Not sure.

Anyway - Walter (Anne's son) asks her, after overhearing someone mention it: "What happened at Peter Kirk's funeral?"

Anne refuses to tell him. It is not a story for children. But then, in a moment of reflection, she sits and remembers it, thinks back on it.

In my opinion, this is Lucy Maud at her best. All the names, the gossip, the stories, the glimpses into other people's hearts ...

Excerpt from Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.

It had been in November ... the first November they had spent at Ingleside ... following a week of Indian summer days. The Kirks lived at Mowbray Narrows but came to the Glen church and Gilbert was their doctor; so he and Anne both went to the funeral.

It had been, she remembered, a mild, calm, pearl-grey day. All around them had been the lonely brown-and-purple landscape of November, with patches of sunlight here and there on upland and slope where the sun shone through a rift in the clouds. "Kirkwynd" was so near the shore that a breath of salt win blew through the grim firs behind it. It was a big, prosperous-looking house but Anne always thought that the gable of the L looked exactly like a long, narrow, spiteful face.

Anne paused to speak to a little knot of women on the stiff flowerless lawn. They were all good hard-working souls to whom a funeral was a not unpleasant excitement.

"I forgot to bring a handkerchief," Mrs. Bryan Blake was saying plaintively. "Whatever will I do when I cry?"

'Why will you have to cry?" bluntly asked her sister-in-law Camilla Blake. Camilla had no use for women who cried too easily. "Peter Kirk is no relation to you and you never liked him."

"I think it is proper to cry at a funeral," said Mrs. Blake stiffly. "It shows feeling when a neighbour has been summoned to his long home."

"If nobody cries at Peter's funeral except those who liked him there won't be many wet eyes," said Mrs. Curtis Rodd drily. "That is the truth and why mince it? He was a pious old humbug and I know it if nobody else does. Who is that coming at the little gate? Don't ... don't tell me it's Clara Wilson."

"It is," whispered Mrs. Bryan incredulously.

"Well, you know after Peter's first wife died she told him she would never enter his house again until she came to his funeral and she's kept her word," said Camilla Blake. "She's a sister of Peter's first wife ..." In an explanatory aside to Anne, who looked curiously at Clara Wilson as she swept past them, unseeing, her smouldering topaz eyes staring straight ahead. She was a thin slip of a woman with a dark-browed, tragic face and black hair under one of the absurd bonnets elderly women still wore ... a thing of feathers and "bugles" with a skimpy nose veil. She looked at and spoke to no one, as her long black taffeta skirt swished over the grass and up the verandah steps.

"There's Jed Clinton at the door, putting on his funeral face," said Camilla sarcastically. "He's evidently thinking it is time we went in. It's always been his boast that at his funerals everything goes according to schedule. He's never forgiven Winnie Clow for fainting before the sermon. It wouldn't have been so bad afterwards. Well, nobody is likely to faint at this funeral. Olivia isn't the fainting kind."

"Jed Clinton ... the Lowbridge undertaker," said Mrs. Reese. "Why didn't they have the Glen man?"

"Who? Carter Flagg? Why, woman dear, Peter and him have been at daggers drawn all their lives. Carter wanted Amy Wilson, you know."

"A good many wanted her," said Camilla. "She was a very pretty girl, with her coppery red hair and inky black eyes. Though people thought Clara the handsomer of the two then. It's odd she never married. There's the minister at last ... and the Rev. Mr. Owen of Lowbridge with him. Of course he is Olivia's cousin. All right except that he puts too many 'Oh's' in his prayers. We'd better go in or Jed will have a conniption."

Anne paused to look at Peter Kirk on her way to a chair. She had never liked him. "He has a cruel face," she thought, the first time she had ever seen him. Handsome, yes ... but with cold steely eyes even then becoming pouchy, and the thin pinched merciless mouth of a miser. He was known to be selfish and arrogant in his dealings with his fellow-men in spite of his profession of piety and his unctuous prayers. "Always feels his importance," she had heard someone say once. Yet, on the whole, he had been respected and looked up to,.

He was as arrogant in his death as in his life and there was something about the too-long fingers clasped over his still breast that made Anne shudder. She thought of a woman's heart being held in them and glanced at Olivia Kirk, sitting opposite to her in her mourning. Olivia was a tall, fair, handsome woman with large blue eyes ... "no ugly woman for me," Peter Kirk had said once ... and her face was composed and expressionless. There was no apparent trace of tears ... but then, Olivia had been a Random and the Randoms were not emotional. At least she sat decorously and the most heartbroken in the world could not have worn heavier weeds.

The air was cloyed with the perfume of the flowers that banked the coffin ... for Peter Kirk, who had never known flowers existed. His lodge had sent a wreath, the church had sent one, the Conservative Assocation had sent one, the school trustees had sent one, the Cheese Board had sent one. His oine, long-alienated son had sent nothing, but the Kirk clan at large had sent a huge anchor of white roses with "Harbour At Last" in red rosebuds across it, and there was one from Olivia herself .. .a pillow of calla-lilies. Camilla Blake's face twitched as she loked at it and Anne remembered that she had once heard Camilla say that she had been at Kirkwynd soon after Peter's second marriage when Peter had fired out of the window a potted calla-lily which the bride had brought with her. He wasn't, so he said, going to have his house cluttered up with weeds.

Olivia had apparently taken it very coolly and there had been no more calla-lilies at Kirkwynd. Could it be possible that Olivia ... but Anne looked at Mrs. Kirk's placid face and dismissed the suspicion. After all, it was generally the florist who suggested the flowers.

The choir sang "Death like a narrow sea divides that heavenly land from ours" and Anne caught Camilla's eye and knew they were both wondering just how Peter Kirk would fit into that heavenly land. Anne could almost hear Camilla saying, "Fancy Peter Kirk with a harp and halo if you dare."

The Rev. and Mrs. Owen read a chapter and prayed, with many "Oh's" and many entreaties that sorrowing hearts might be comforted. The Glen minister gave an address which many privately considered entirely too fulsome, even allowing for the fact that you had to say something good of the dead. To hear Peter Kirk called an affectionate father and a tender husband, a kind neighbour and an earnest Christian was, they felt, a misuse of language. Camilla took refuge behind her handkerchief, not to shed tears, and Stephen Macdonald cleared his throat once or twice. Mrs. Bryan must have borrowed a handkerchief from someone, for she was weeping into it, but Olivia's down-dropped blue eyes remained tearless.

Jed Clinton drew a breath of relief. All had gone beautifully. Another hymn ... the customary parade for a last look at "the remains" ... and another successful funeral would be added to his long list.

There was a slight disturbance in a corner of the large room and Clara Wilson made her way through the maze of chairs to the table beside the casket. She turned there and faced the assembly. Her absurd bonnet had slipped a trifle to one side and a loose end of heavy black hair had escaped from its coil and hung down on her shoulder. But nobody thought Clara Wilson looked absurd. Her long sallow face was flushed, her haunted tragic eyes were flaming. She was a woman possessed. Bitterness, like some gnawing incurable disease, seemed to pervade her being.

"You have listend to a pack of lies ... you people who have come here 'to pay your respects' ... or glut your curiosity, whicher it was. Now I shall tell you the truth about Peter Kirk. I am no hypocrite ... I never feared him living and I do not fear him now that he is dead. Nobody has ever dared to tell the truth about him to his face but it is going to be told now ... here at his funeral where he has been called a good husband and a kind neighbour. A good husband! He married my sister Amy ... my beautiful sister, Amy. You all know how sweet and lovely she was. He made her life a misery to her. He tortured and humiliated her ... he liked to do it. Oh, he went to church regularly ... and made long prayers ... and paid his debts. But he was a tyrant and a bully ... his very dog ran when he heard him coming.

"I told Amy she would repent marrying him. I helped her make her wedding dress ... I'd rather have made her shroud. She was wild about him then, poor thing, but she hadn't been his wife a week before she knew what he was. His mother had been a slave and he expected his wife to be one. 'There will be no arguments in my household,' he told her. She hadn't the spirit to argue ... her heart was broken. Oh, I know what she went through, my poor pretty darling. He crossed her in everything. She couldn't have a flower-garden ... she couldn't even have a kitten ... I gave her one and he drowned it. She had to account to him for every cent she spent. Did ever any of you see her in a decent stitch of clothes? He would fault her for wearing her best hat if it looked like rain. Rain couldn't hurt any hat she had, poor soul. Her that loved pretty clothes! He was always sneering at her people. He never laughed in his life ... did any of you ever hear him really laugh? He smiled ... oh yes, he always smiled, calmly and sweetly when he was doing the most maddening things. He smiled when he told her after her little baby was born dead that she might as well have died, too, if she couldn't have anything but dead brats. She died after ten years of it ... and I was glad she had escaped him. I told him then I'd never enter his house again till I came to his funeral. Some of you heard me. I've kept my word and now I've come and told the truth about him. It is the truth ... you know it" ... she pointed fiercely at Stephen Macdonald ... "you know it" ... the long finger darted at Camilla Blake ... "you know it" ... Olivia Kirk did not move a muscle ... "you know it" ... the poor minister himself felt as if that finger stabbed completely through him. "I cried at Peter Kirk's wedding but I told him I'd laugh at his funeral. And I am going to do it."

She swished furiously about and bent over the casket. Wrongs that had festered for years had been avenged. She had wreaked her hatred at last. Her whole body vibrated with triumph and satisfaction as she looked down at the cold quiet face of a dead man. Everybody listened for the burst of vindictive laughter. It did not come. Clara Wilson's angry face suddenly changed ... twisted ... crumpled up like a child's. Clara was ... crying.

She turned, with the tears streaming down her ravaged cheeks, to leave the room. But Olivia Kirk rose before her and laid a hand on her arm. For a moment the two women looked at each other. The room was engulfed in a silence that seemed like a personal presence.

"Thank you, Clara Wilson," said Olivia Kirk. Her face was as inscrutable as ever but there was an undertone in her calm, even voice that made Anne shudder. She felt as if a pit had suddenly opened before her eyes. Clara Wilson might hate Peter Kirk, alive and dead, but Anne felt that her hatred was a pale thing compared to Olivia Kirk's.

Happy place!!

Look at the gleam on that hair.

Thinking about Dickens

I'm in the process right now of reading George Orwell's mammoth (and unbelievably good) essay on Charles Dickens. It is dense, explicit, exciting - and it's making me want to pick up all of those books again. I re-read Great Expectations a couple years ago - but the other ones it's been a long long time. Orwell's observations (especially as an Englishman) are invaluable. It's serendiptous - because I opened up one of my favorite sites today - to find this as the first item on display. I used to have an illustrated Oliver Twist - with similar type drawings, but I have no idea where that book went.

I like Orwell's observation about Dickens and children. Orwell was notoriously horribly treated (his essay Such, such were the joys is pretty much an indictment of the entire education system in England - ack - it's painful to read) - but here he is on one of Dickens' undeniable gifts - the ability to write from the perspective of a little kid:

No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens. In spite of all the knowledge that has accumulated since, in spite of the fact that children are now comparatively sanely treated, no novelist has shown the same power of entering into the child's point of view. I must have been about nine years old when I first read David Copperfield. The mental atmosphere of the opening chapters was so immediately intelligible to me that I vaguely imagined they had been written by a child. And yet when one re-reads the book as an adult and sees the Murdstones, for instance, dwindle from gigantic figures of doom into semi-comic monsters, these passages lose nothing. Dickens has been able to stand both inside and outside the child's mind, in such a way that the same scene can be wild burlesque or sinister reality, according to the age at which one reads it.

More great stuff, too, when Orwell basically takes down the Socialist writers who want to "claim" Dickens as one of "them". Orwell basically says, "Uhm, no he's not."

The essay is included in this book - I had already read all of his political writings, but his book reviews, author reviews, and personal essays are new to me. Amazing stuff.

Now I need to re-read some Dickens. Big time.

Limerick Dictionary

This is my new favorite thing - The OEDILF - the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form - a dictionary (in the works) where all definitions are reader-submitted limericks.

For example, here is the definition to "Cadbury Egg" (first of all: HA!):

Though Jewish, I envy your Easter;
On Cadbury Eggs I'm a feaster.
They're chocolate and smooth,
And my mood they will soothe.
(But they'll add too much weight to my keister!)

Here is the definition to the word "agog":

As instructed, a yoga tutee
Inverted herself in a "vee,"
Then considered, agog,
What a down-facing dog
Might do to a down-facing tree.

Okay, I can't stop.

The definition for "aviatrix" is brilliant, I think:

A stunt aviatrix (girl flier)
Came down in a swamp deep and dire.
She was lunch for a croc,
But the studio's doc
Called it "death from consumption" (the liar).

It's hard to believe you could have a limerick for the word "avascularity" but here it is:

You suffer from avascularity?
No offense, but I doubt your sincerity.
With no vessels for blood
Your whole body's a dud,
And you won't pass your genes to posterity.

Go browse here.

(got it from Norm!)

The Books: "Anne's House of Dreams" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery.

What a wonderful book this is. I love every book in the series - and in each one I have my favorite episodes - but for some reason, this one really GETS me. I think it has something to do with the saga of the heartbroken Leslie Moore, and how much that character gets under my skin.

It is easy, at times (and I think Lucy Maud was cognizant of this) to feel like Anne strolls under a lucky star or something. Her unhappiness occurred as a young girl ... and after that, the power of her personality has just swayed everyone she has met. Even her heartache has a sort of ... charmed quality to it. She never gets REALLY dark. (That's one of the reasons why I love the Emily books too (one excerpt here) - even more than the Anne books. They are much closer to Lucy Maud's actual autobiography - and what can I say, I like DARK. I like to at least know that even if a character DOESN'T succumb to the darkness, they COULD. It seems like Anne's philosophy of life is such that it could never really bring her to her knees. This is not a criticism. There are people like that in real life as well.) Cranks become good friends, foes become admirers, etc. Leslie Moore is the first friend to really challenge this. Anne's charm will not work on Leslie. Why? Because Leslie's life has been TOO hard, and there are some tragedies that CANNOT be smiled their way out of, or charmed out of existence. I am making Anne sound shallow here and that is totally not the case - but there are some people who seem to have things work out for them (thru karma or good luck or whatever) - and others carry the weight of the world. Now Anne, in her sensitivity, does not understand why Leslie would automatically dislike her - like: what did she do??? She has never before been disliked for being FORTUNATE. After all, she was an orphan! She was impoverished! She had a hardscrabble life until Matthew and Marilla came along - but even then: she was always the oddball in Avonlea. Her clothes weren't right. She didn't have parents. Nobody in their right mind would be JEALOUS of Anne because of her good fortune! Maybe they would be jealous of her because of how she writes, or because of how she uses her imagination, but because of her good fortune? No. Not until Leslie Moore. Leslie's soul has been warped by her own life tragedy - and no matter what Anne does, it wouldn't matter. Anne has something Leslie knows she will never have: a husband, companionship, happiness ... and this loneliness has corrupted Leslie. She stares at Anne with dull smouldering resentment - Anne cannot fight this. She doesn't know how to "win Leslie Over" because ... there is nothing she can do. What can she do - be less happy with Gilbert in order for Leslie to be happy? This, in my mind, is such an insightful observation about the married and unmarried of this world. There can be smugness about married people - that is completely unconscious - and there can be a prickly bitterness about single people - that is completely unconscious. It's hard to bridge that gap.

Anne suffers a tragedy during House of Dreams - her first real tragedy as an adult. A loss that makes her question her belief in God, that makes her almost go crazy. We love Anne even more for faltering in the face of such strife. Don't we? I know I did. A "plucky heroine" who shows no sign of doubt or uncertainty would become an insufferable prig after a while. Being optimistic is all well and good ... but what about people who truly suffer loss? How on earth could "put on a happy face" help them? Leslie and Anne eventually do become "friends" - but it's almost like they are two wild animals, circling around each other warily. Anne senses that her very existence is an insult to Leslie. If she's happy about making baby booties, Leslie's heart breaks. This is not because Leslie is a selfish bitch. It is because loneliness messes people UP and that fact needs to be acknowledged. Not to wallow in victimhood or whatever - but to just acknowledge the reality that loneliness can twist what was once straight. It is NOT easy to bear (for some). It is not easy for Leslie to bear. Loneliness can make you GLORY in other people's hardships, and you can RESENT other people's ease. It's evil - you feel like you are evil. Lucy Maud, with her life of ... unrelenting loneliness (famous to the masses, but oh, what a home life) ... understood this so so well. She doesn't write about it a lot - but glimpses of it are there in the Leslie Moore character in House of Dreams. What is it like to feel that you are barred forever from ease? Peace? Happiness? Contentment? What is it like when the things that other people take so for granted (having a nice chat at the end of the day with their husband, sharing a meal, knowing that someone else is in the house with you) ... are SO foreign to you? Lucy Maud was behind that glass wall. She had nothing that other people had. Her marriage was not a real marriage. It was a nightmare. She ENDURED it. He was a petulant child. He was no mate. But she looked around and saw ... people coupling up ... sharing life's struggles ... TOGETHER ... That was not for her.

I have gone on and on ... but as you can see, this is what this particular book means to me.

In a way, it is her first ADULT book. Leslie Moore is a character who made an indelible mark on my mind ... and I love love love Anne's journey in relation to her.

Anne confides to Captain Jim (another great character) how she feels that Leslie will never open up to her, be her friend. Captain Jim says to her that Leslie's life has been so unrelentingly tragic that it must be hard for Leslie to deal with anyone who seems so happy. Anne thinks about this, remembers her own awful childhood, and says, "I wasnt happy before I came to Green Gables." Captain Jim says, "Yes, but that was just the normal unhappiness of a child who is not looked after. You haven't had any tragedy. And that's why there's a barrier there."

Anne, with her optimistic belief in the good of people, in the good that a bit of laughter can do on a dark day ... she is troubled by this. And yet she doesn't give up on Leslie. She doesn't PUSH herself on Leslie ... she just tries to be there for her ... and when Leslie suddenly rebuffs her, or suddenly the claws come out - she tries not to take it personally.

For me - this book is all about Leslie. The scene where she breaks down - and lets Anne in - (the chapter called "barriers swept away") still brings me to tears today even though I have read it a gazillion times.

But there's so much else in here to love. Uhm - Miss Cornelia? The man-hater? With the bright green house and the fierce political opinions? I love her. Dammit. I love her. And how she up and marries at the end of the book?? hahahaha Anne and Gilbert are literally stunned into silence when she breaks the news. Gilbert's like: "But ... don't you hate men?"

And Captain Jim - the crusty old sea captain with all the old stories - who takes a liking to Anne and Gilbert (who wouldn't??). He runs the lighthouse - and they spend many a night up there with him, listening to him tell tales.

And then of course - Anne and Gilbert are in their honeymoon phase. So everything is beautiful. I think Lucy Maud outdoes herself with some of her descriptive passages in this book. The chapter where she and Gilbert drive into Four Winds for the first time - and they catch a glimpse of Leslie - and the sun is setting - and Anne sees her home for the first time ... that whole chapter is some of the best writing Lucy Maud has ever done, I think.

But naturally, I have to choose an excerpt about Leslie. Anne has only seen Leslie once - and did not know who she was. Anne was just struck by her intense beauty, and also by the fact that this girl obviously dislikes her on sight, glaring at her as she and Gilbert drive by in the buggy. Anne is baffled by this, but more than that - she is hurt. What has she done? What has she ever done to this woman?

Here's the excerpt where ... well, Anne and Leslie meet on the shore. Notice here how - for example - when Anne thinks she is bonding with Leslie about the "house of dreams" -she goes on about being happy with her prince in a small house - totally assuming that she and Leslie are on the same page - when she has really misread the situation horribly (we the reader don't know Leslie's full story until the next chapter). Lucy Maud makes a point here about the casual cruelty (unconscious!!) of happy people. The casual assumptions they make. Because THEY are happy ... they think everyone should be happy. But also, they assume that everyone will speak the same language. This is not about smug self-righteous people. This is something that is very human. Anne, at this point, does not know Leslie's tragedy - so she does not know that her every word is a knife in Leslie's heart. And, of course, none of that is her fault. It's not HER fault that she's happy and that Leslie is not ... but in order to truly become Leslie's friend - a serious shifting has to occur, on both sides. And again: the fact that Anne, in the beginning, mis-reads Leslie because of her own happiness makes Anne even more lovable. Because it's such a human thing to do.

Excerpt from Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery.

She loved the gentle, misty harbour shore and the silvery, wind-haunted sand shore, but best of all she loved the rock shore, with its cliffs and caves and piles of surf-worn boulders, and its coves where the pebbles glittered under the pools; and it was to this shore she hied herself tonight.

There had been an autumn storm of wind and rain, lasting for three days. Thunderous had been the crash of billows on the rocks, wild the white spray and spume that blew over the bar, troubled and misty and tempest-torn the erstwhile blue peace of Four Winds Harbour. Now it was over, and the shore lay clean-washed after the storm; not a wind stirred, but there was still a fine surf on, dashing on sand and rock in a splendid white turmoil -- the only restless thing in the great, pervading stillness and peace.

"Oh, this is a moment worth living through weeks of storm and stress for," Anne exclaimed, delightedly sending her far gaze across the tossing waters from the top of the cliff where she stood. Presently she scrambled down the steep path to the little cove below, where she seemed shut in with rocks and sea and sky.

"I'm going to dance and sing," she said. "There's no one here to see me -- the sea-gulls won't carry tales of the matter. I may be as crazy as I like."

She caught up her skirt and pirouetted along the hard strip of sand just out of reach of the waves that almost lapped her feet with their spent foam. Whirling round and round, laughing like a child, she reached the little headland that ran out to the east of the cove; then she stopped suddenly, blushing crimson; she was not alone; there had been a witness to her dance and laughter.

The girl of the golden hair and sea-blue eyes was sitting on a boulder of the headland, half-hidden by a jutting rock. She was looking straight at Anne with a strange expression - part wonder, part sympathy, part -- could it be? -- envy. She was bare-headed, and her splendid hair, more than ever like Browning's "gorgeous snake," was bound about her head with a crimson ribbon. She wore a dress of some dark material, very plainly made; but swathed about her waist, outlining its fine curves, was a vivid girdle of red silk. Her hands, clasped over her knee, were brown and somewhat work-hardened; but the skin of her throat and cheeks was as white as cream. A flying gleam of sunset broke through a low-lying western cloud and fell across her hair. For a moment she seemed the spirit of the sea personified -- all its mystery, all its passion, all its elusive charm.

"You -- you must think me crazy," stammered Anne, trying to recover her self-possession. To be seen by this stately girl in such an abandon of childishness --she, Mrs. Dr. Blythe, with all the dignity of the matron to keep up -- it was too bad!

"No," said the girl, "I don't."

She said nothing more; her voice was expressionless; her manner slightly repellant; but there was something in her eyes -- eager yet shy, defiant yet pleading -- which turned Anne from her purpose of walking away. Instead, she sat down on the boulder beside the girl.

"Let's introduce ourselves," she said, with the smile that had never yet failed to win confidence and friendliness. "I am Mrs. Blythe - and I live in that little white house on the harbour shore."

"Yes, I know," said the girl. "I am Leslie Moore -- Mrs. Dick Moore," she added stiffly.

Anne was silent for a moment from sheer astonishment. It had not occurred to her that this girl was married - there seemed nothing of the wife about her. And that she should be the neighbour whom Anne had pictured as a commonplace Four Winds housewife! Anne could not quickly adjust her mental focus to this astonishing change.

"Then -- then you live in that gray house up the brook," she stammered.

"Yes. I should have gone over to call on you long ago," said the other. She did not offer any explanation or excuse for not having one.

"I wish you would come," said Anne, recovering herself somewhat. "We're such near neighbours we ought to be friends. That is the sole fault of Four Winds - there aren't quite enoguh neighbours. Otherwise it is perfection."

"You like it?"

"Like it! I love it! It is the most beautiful place I ever saw."

"I've never seen many places," said Leslie Moore slowly, "but I've always thought it was very lovely here. I -- I love it, too."

She spoke as she looked, shyly, yet eagerly. Anne had an odd impression that this strange girl -- the word "girl" would persist - could say a good deal if she chose.

"I often come to the shore," she added.

"So do I," said Anne. "It's a wonder we haven't met here before."

"Probably you come earlier in the evening than I do. It is generally late - almost dark - when I come. And I love to come just after a storm - like this. I don't like the sea so well when it's calm and quiet. I like the struggle - and the crash - and the noise."

"I love it in all its moods," declared Anne. "The sea at Four Winds is to me what Lover's Lane was at home. Tonight it seemed so free - so untamed - something broke loose in me, too, out of sympathy. That was why I danced along the shore in that wild way. If Miss Cornelia Bryant had seen me she would have foreboded a gloomy prospect for poor young Dr. Blythe."

"You know Miss Cornelia?" said Leslie, laughing. She had an exquisite laugh; it bubbled up suddenly and unexpectedly with something of the delicious quality of a baby's. Anne laughed, too.

"Oh, yes. She has been down to my house of dreams several times."

"Your house of dreams?"

"Oh, that's a dear, foolish little name Gilbert and I have for our home. We just call it that between ourselves. It slipped out before I thought."

"So Miss Russell's little white house is your house of dreams," said Leslie wonderingly. "I had a house of dreams once -- but it was a palace," she added, with a laugh, the sweetness of which was marred by a little note of derision.

"Oh, I once dreamed of a palace, too," said Anne. "I suppose all girls do. And then we settle down contentedly in eight-room houses that seem to fulfil all the desires of our hearts - because our prince is there. You should have had your palace really, though -- you are so beautiful. You must let me say it - it has to be said - I'm nearly bursting with admiration. You are the loveliest thing I ever saw, Mrs. Moore."

"If we are to be friends you must call me Leslie," said the other with an odd passion.

"Of course I will. And my friends call me Anne."

"I suppose I am beautiful," Leslie went on, looking stormily out to sea. "I hate my beauty. I wish I had always been as brown and plain as the brownest and plainest girl at the fishing village over there. Well, what do you think of Miss Cornelia?"

The abrupt chagne of subject shut the door on any further confidences.

"Miss Cornelia is a darling, isn't she?" said Anne. "Gilbert and I were invited to her house to a state tea last week. You've heard of groaning tables."

"I seem to recall seeing the expression in the newspaper reports of weddings," said Leslie, smiling.

"Well, Miss Cornelia's groaned - at least, it creaked - positively. You couldn't have believed she would have cooked so much for two ordinary people. She had every kind of pie you could name, I think - except lemon pie. She said she had taken the prize for lemon pie at the Charlottestown Exhibition ten years ago and had never made any since for fear of losing her reputation for them."

"Were you able to eat enough pie to please her?"

"I wasn't. Gilbert won her heart be eating - I won't tell you how much. She said she never knew a man who didn't like pie better than his Bible. Do you know, I love Miss Cornelia."

"So do I," said Leslie. "She is the best friend I have in the world."

Anne wondered secretly why, if this were so, Miss Cornelia had never metnioned Mrs. Dick Moore to her. Miss Cornelia had certainly talked freely about every other individual in or near Four Winds.

"Isn't that beautiful?" said Leslie, after a brief silence, pointing to the exquisite effect of a shaft of light falling through a cleft in the rock behind them, across a dark green pool at its base. "If I had come here - and seen nothing but jsut that - I would go home satisfied."

"The effects of light and shadow all along these shores are wonderful," agreed Anne. "My little sewing room looks out on the harbour, and I sit at the window and feast my eyes. The colours and shadows are never the same two minutes together."

"And you are never lonely?" asked Leslie abruptly. "Never - when you are alone?"

"No. I don't think I've ever been really lonely in my life," answered Anne. "Even when I'm alone I have real good company - dreams and imaginations and pretendings. I like to be alone now and then, just to think over things and taste them. But I love friendship - and nice, jolly little times with people. Oh, won't you come to see me - often? Please do. I believe," Anne added, laughing, "that you'd like me if you knew me."

"I wonder if you would like me," said Leslie seriously. She was not fishing for a compliment. She looked out across the waves that were beginning to be garlanded with blossoms of moonlit foam, and her eyes filled with shadows.

"I'm sure I would," said Anne. "And please don't think I'm utterly irresponsible because you saw me dancing on the shore at sunset. No doubt I shall be dignified after a time. You see, I haven't been married very long. I feel like a girl, and sometimes like a child yet."

"I have been married twelve years," said Leslie.

Here was another unbelievable thing.

"Why, you can't be as old as I am!" exclaimed Anne. "You must have been a child when you were married."

"I was sixteen," said Leslie, rising, and picking up the cap and jacket lying beside her. "I am twenty-eight now. Well, I must go back."

"So must I. Gilbert will probably be home. But I'm so glad we both came to the shore tonight and met each other."

Leslie said nothing, and Anne was a little chilled. She had offered friendship frankly but it had not been accepted very graciously, if it had not been absoutely repelled. In silence they climbed the cliffs and walked across a pasture-field of which the feathery, bleached, wild grasses were like a carpet of cramy velvet in the moonlight. When they reached the shore lane Leslie turned.

"I go this way, Mrs. Blythe. You will come over and see me some time, won't you?"

Anne felt as if the invitation had been thrown at her. She got the impression that Leslie Moore gave it reluctantly.

"I will come if you really want me to," she said a little coldly.

"Oh, I do - I do," exclaimed Leslie, with an eagerness which seemed to burst forth and beat down some restraint that had been imposed on it.

"Then I'll come. Good-night -- Leslie."

"Good-night, Mrs. Blythe."

Possessed

Great essay by AS Byatt about her thought process while creating and writing Possession, one of my favorite novels.

This part amazed me:

There was a huge problem. I knew that modern forms were parodic- not only Eco, but the intelligent criticism of Malcolm Bradbury had been pointing that out - parodic, not in a sneering or mocking way, but as "rewriting" or "representing" the past. The structural necessity of my new form was that the poems of my two poets, the most important thing about them in my own view, should be in this no-longer ghostly text. And I am not a poet, and novelists who write poems usually come to grief. Robertson Davies, the Canadian novelist, had written a novel with a parodic libretto in fact made up of the poems of Thomas Lovell Beddoes. I said to the poet D.J.Enright at a party, that I was contemplating using the early poems of Pound that look as though they could be by Browning. "Nonsense," he said. "Write your own."

So I tried. My mind has been full since childhood of the rhythms of Tennyson and Browning, Rossetti and Keats. I read and reread Emily Dickinson, whose harsher and more sceptical voice I found more exciting than Christina Rossetti's meek resignation. I wanted a fierce female voice. And I found I was possessed - it was actually quite frightening - the nineteenth-century poems that were not nineteenth-century poems wrote themselves, hardly blotted, fitting into the metaphorical structure of my novel, but not mine, as my prose is mine.

It amazes me because frankly, that is how it feels when I read the book. The poems are certainly not to the level of Dickinson or anything like that- but they are good enough. Good enough to convey that they could possibly be "real". That is what is needed to give the book its authenticity, its whiff of reality. You have to feel like you are reading someone else's work, looking through someone else's old letters ... the author herself must disappear in this type of novel. And yet ... she doesn't. That's part of Byatt's trickery. That's part of the point she is making, about writers, about the writing of biographies, about literary research ... What IS invisible? What IS literary possession? What is left unsaid? We only have the treasure trove of the author's actual WORDs ... but what did he or she leave unsaid? You can see how literary theorists can become "possessed" by this kind of thinking (Byatt mentions the driving urge to dig up George Eliot's grave to get the letters that were buried with her). There is a sense that all CAN be known. Which is obviously untrue - because how can we ever know everything about a life? Isn't so much of life in what is between the lines?? To learn that Byatt was not a poet is quite extraordinary - but again, I am not surprised. I have read this book over and over, and I never skip the long long poems (some of them are 10, 12 pages long), although you would think I might. Because what you're seeing there on the page IS an act of possession - and it really shows. Two different poets, speaking with two different voices, written in the styles of the 19th century. It is an extraordinary feat.

I also love all the bits about colors - how as the book developed in her mind the colors for it changed:

There is a Gothic plot, I thought, of violence and skulduggery. The Gestalt got more lurid, purple, black, vermilion, with flying white forms.

Etc. There's more. You can feel all of this in the finished work, too.

The green and gold of Maud ... how she shimmers with the golden hair and all that ... the deep dark dirt of the ending scene ...

But to read about how carefully she constructed all of that is really inspirational.

I still have time

Check this out!!! I missed The General which is a bummer - but I still have a lot of things to choose from. Best part? They have a live piano player there to accompany the movies.

"Why does Howie Mandell scare me?"

Alex's hysterical Emmy round-up.

The Books: "Anne of Windy Poplars" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction shelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery.

Chronologically (in Anne's life) this book comes after Anne of the Island (excerpt here) - but in Lucy Maud's chronology, she wrote Anne's House of Dreams (excerpt here) next. Later, she went back and filled in the Windy Poplars blank. This also happened with Anne of Ingleside (excerpt here) - I think that was the last "Anne" novel she wrote - but it is not the last in the series, Rilla of Ingleside is. (excerpt here). World War I came along and swept away all of her distractions, all of her former concerns - Lucy Maud had to write about WWI, so she skipped ahead to Anne's children so that she could incorporate the war into a book.

Anne of Windy Poplars is the story of the 3 years Anne spends teaching in Summerside, PEI. She is now engaged to Gilbert Blythe - but they can't get married right away because he is going to medical school. She finds a room in a house in Summerside (and, of course, because she is Anne Shirley, the room has "scope for imagination") - and begins her adventures teaching there. The majority of this book is letters to Gilbert. And I've got to say this: Poor Gilbert. He's in medical school, probably buried in books, and he literally is receiving 30 page letters almost every other day from his chatty fiance - who blithers on about the smell of the violets, and the bitchy Pringle family, and the red cheeks of Rebecca Dew, and .... I mean, I'm just trying to see it from his perspective. Did he ever roll his eyes when he saw a BIG FAT letter in his mailbox? Did he ever feel like: "I cannot keep up with this ..." These have to be the most detailed letters in the history of letter writing. When did Anne have time to write them?? Because presumably she was also corresponding with Marilla, with Diana, and etc. etc. Also, the first time I read this book I was 15 or something like that - and I was SO frustrated that the lovey-dovey parts of the letters were NOT shared! Lucy Maud was very coy in that respect and I HATED that. Let me hear how Anne tells Gilbert she loves him! Also: Anne: why the hell does it matter what type of pen you have? Don't be such a tease. I guess (ahem) I'm still annoyed at that!! hahahahaha

So Anne lives in Summerside for 3 years. In that time she is responsible for, 5 matchmaking successes? I lost count. The best part of the book, I think, is her blossoming friendship with Katherine Brooke, another teacher at the school. Katherine is a tough nut to crack. She is bitter, snarky, and at times truly MEAN to Anne. She makes personal digs at her, as though she harbors some personal resentment. Anne doesn't get it. But Anne, being Anne, senses that ... there is "something" there ... that they could be friends if only Katherine would let go of whatever it is she's holding onto. Anne invites her home to Green Gables for the Christmas holiday. And lo and behold, the ice melts. Katherine is a really good character - very well-written.

Other episodes in the book that come to mind:

-- Anne is nearly run out of town by the Pringle family, who can't stand her - until she inadvertently shuts them up with an old journal she finds in an attic of their sea captain ancestor. In the journal, he descirbes a shipwreck he experienced - where he and his shipmates ate one of their friends who had died. The Pringles are so horrified that Anne has this blackmail chip held over their heads - that they call off the dogs, and never give her any problems again.

-- the whole Little Fellow thing ("I know his dog's name was Carlo") - and the mean father - and the photograph that changes everything

-- Rebecca Dew. Great characte.r Actually - both of the Aunts are great characters, too. You think they're gonna be picky and spinsterish - but in reality they are kind of dreamy, filled with fantasies - which they hide from one another, but feel perfectly fine whispering to Anne.

-- the triumph of Sophy Sinclair! I always loved that.

-- the ridiculous (and very VERY funny) episode in the Tomgallon House (for once, Anne has met her match in terms of TALKING - Anne can barely get a word in edgewise)

I decided to choose the following excerpt because it always made me laugh - and it also shows Lucy Maud's wicked and original sense of humor. I love that about her - especially now that I know the circumstances under which she wrote her books, and her general nervous disorder (or whatever she had - she had something, that's for certain).

Anne Shirley very quickly becomes the confidante of the young women in the town. Since she is engaged, she is 'safe' - she won't be their rival. So Trix Taylor comes to ask Anne for help. Her sister Esme is the shyest thing imaginable, afraid of everything ... and a handsome young doctor (Lennox Carter) is courting her ... but the entire Taylor family lives in TOTAL fear of their father's "sulking fits" - If he has a "sulking fit" on, forget it - don't even ask if you can borrow the buggy - just wait out the storm. Cyrus Taylor, the father, sulks - but not just sulks - he glowers - he sits in a towering silence - he TERRIFIES everyone around him. So Lennox Carter is going to come and have dinner at the Taylor household - obviously to ask Cyrus for Esmes hand in marriage - but it just so happens that Cyrus Taylor has suddenly taken on a "sulking fit" - and will not be snapped out of it. Trix is panicked. Esme HAS to marry Lennox ... but if Lennox asks for her hand THAT night, Cyrus will certainly say No. Because of the sulking fit. So she asks Anne if she wouldn't mind coming to dinner and ... working her magic ... smoothing the edges ... maybe drawing Cyrus out of his shell, so that Lennox and Esme can get married, and all will be well. Everything is quite urgent ... Trix basically BEGS. Anne says fine, she'll do what she can.

When she arrives at the Taylor household, she can feel the tension in the air. Everyone is tiptoeing around Cyrus - they have made his favorite meal for supper - they wait on him - and he just sits, in a towering sulky silence.

They sit down to dinner. So here's the excerpt. I love Mrs. Cyrus, just need to say that. I love her.

Excerpt from Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery.

Cyrus would not say grace. Mrs. Cyrus, blushing beet-red, murmured almost inaudibly, "For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful." The meal started badly by nervous Esme dropping her fork on the floor. Everybody except Cyrus jumped, because their nerves were likewise keyed up to the highest pitch. Cyrus glared at Esme out of his bulging blue eyes in a kind of enraged stillness. Then he glared at everybody and froze them into dumbness. He glared at poor Mrs. Cyrus when she took a helping of horseradish sauce, with a glare that reminded her of her weak stomach. She coudn't eat any of it after that ... and she was so fond of it. She didn't believe it would hurt her. But for that matter she couldn't eat anything, nor could Esme. They only pretended. The meal proceeded in a ghastly silence, broken by spasmodic speeches about the weather from Trix or Anne. Trix implored Anne with her eyes to talk, but Anne found herself for once in her life with absolutely nothing to say. She felt desperately that she must talk, but only the most idiotic things came into her head ... things it would be impossible to utter aloud. Was everyone bewitched? It was curious, the effect one sulky, stubborn man had on you. Anne couldn't have believed it possible. And there was no doubt that he was really quite happy in the knowledge that he had made everybody at his table horribly uncomfortable. What on earth was going on in his mind? Would he jump if any one stuck a pin in him? Anne wanted to slap him ... rap his knuckles ... stand him in a corner ... treat him like the spoiled child he really was, in spite of his spiky gray hair and truculent mustache.

Above all she wanted to make him speak. She felt instinctively that nothing in the world would punish him so much as to be tricked into speaking when he was determined not to.

Suppose she got up and deliberately smashed that huge, old-fashioned vase on the table in the corner ... an ornate thing covered with wreaths of roses and leaves which it was ost difficul to dust but which must be kept immaculately clean. Anne knew that the whole family hated it, but Cyrus Taylor would not hear of having it banished to the attic, because it had been his mother's. Anne thought she would do it fearlessly if she really believed that it would make Cyrus explode into vocal anger.

Why didn't Lennox Carter talk? If he would, she, Anne, could talk, too, and perhaps Trix and Pringle would escape from the spell that bound them and some kind of conversation would be possible. But he simply sat there and ate. Perhaps he thought it was really the best thing to do ... perhaps he was afraid of sayiing something that would still further enrage the evidently already enraged parent of his lady.

"Will you please start the pickles, Miss Shirley?" said Mrs. Taylor faintly.

Something wicked stirred in Anne. She started the pickles ... and something else. Without letting herself stop to think she bent forward, her great, gray-green eyes glimmering limpidly, and said gently,

"Perhaps you would be surprised to hear, Dr. Carter, that Mr. Taylor went deaf very suddenly last week?"

Anne sat back, having thrown her bomb. She could not tell precisely what she expected or hoped. If Dr. Carter got the impression that his host was deaf instead of in a towering rage of silence, it might loosen his tongue. She had not told a falsehood ... she had not said Cyrus Taylor was deaf. As for Cyrus Taylor, if she had hoped to make him speak she had failed. He merely glared at her, still in silence.

But Anne's remark had an effect ofn Trix and Pringle that she had never dreamed of. Trix was in a silent rage herself. She had, the moment before Anne had hurled her rhetorical question, seen Esme furtively wipe away a tear that had escaped from one of her despairing blue eyes. Everything was hopeless ... Lennox Carter would never ask Esme to marry him now ... it didn't matter any more what any one said or did. Trix was suddenly possessed with a burning desire to get square with her brutal father. Anne's speech gave her a weird inspiration, and Pringle, a volcano of suppressed impishness, blinked his white eyelashes for a dazed moment and then promptly followed her lead. Never, as long as they might live, would Anne, Esme or Mrs. Cyrus forget the dreadful quarter of an hour that followed.

"Such an affliction for poor papa," said Trix, addressing Dr. Carter across the table. "And him only sixty-eight."

Two little white dents appeared at the corners of Cyrus Taylor's nostrils when he heard his age advanced six years. But he remained silent.

"It's such a treat to have a decent meal," said Pringle, clearly and distinctly. "What would you think, Dr. Carter, of a man who makes his family live on fruit and eggs ... nothing but fruit and eggs ... just for a fad?"

"Does your father ...?" began Dr. Carter bewilderedly.

"What would you think of a husband who bit his wife when she put up curtains he didn't like ... deliberately bit her?" demanded Trix.

"Till the blood came," added Pringle solemnly.

"Do you mean to say your father ...?"

"What would you think of a man who would cut up a silk dress of his wife's just because the way it was made didn't suit him?" said Trix.

"What would you think," said Pringle, "of a man who refuses to let his wife have a dog?"

"When she would so love to have one," sighed Trix.

"What would you think of a man," continued Pringle, who was beginning to enjoy himself hugely, "who would give his wife a pair of goloshes for a Christmas present ... nothing but a pair of goloshes?"

"Goloshes don't exactly warm the heart," admitted Dr. Carter. His eyes met Anne's and he smiled. Anne reflected that she had never seen him smile before. It changed his face wonderfully for the better. What was Trix saying? Who would have thought she could be such a demon?

"Have you ever wondered, Dr. Carter, how awful it must be to live with a man who thinks nothing ... nothing -- of picking up the roast, if it isn't perfectly done, and hurling it at the maid?"

Dr. Carter glanced apprehensively at Cyrus Taylor, as if he feared Cyrus might throw the skeletons of the chickens at somebody. Then he seemed to remember comfortingly that his host was deaf.

"What would you think of a man who believed the earth was flat?" asked Pringle.

Anne thought Cyrus would speak then. A tremor seemed to pass over his rubicund face, but no words came. Still, she was sure his mustaches were a little less defiant.

"What would you think of a man who let his aunt ... his only aunt ... go to the poorhouse?" asked Trix.

"And pastured his cow in the graveyard?" said Pringle. "Summerside hasn't got over that sight yet."

"What would you think of a man who would write down in his diary every day what he had for dinner?" asked Trix.

"The great Pepys did that," said Dr. Carter with another smile. His voice sounded as if he would like to laugh. Perhaps after all he was not pompous, thought Anne ... only young and shy and overserious. But she was feeling positively aghast. She had never meant things to go as far as this. She was finding out that it is much easier to start things than finish them. Trix and Pringle were being diabolically clever. They had not said that their father did a single one of those things. Anne could fancy Pringle saying, his round eyes rounder still with pretended innocence, "I just asked those questions of Dr. Carter for information."

"What would you think," kept on Trix, "of a man who opens and reads his wife's letters?"

"What would you think of a man who would go to a funeral ... his father's funeral ... in overalls?" asked Pringle.

What would they think of next? Mrs. Cyrus was crying openly and Esme was quite calm with despair. Nothing amttered any more. She turned and looked squarely at Dr. Carter, whom she had lost forever. For once in her life she was stung into saying a really clever thing.

"What," she asked queitly, "would you think of a man who spent a whole day hunting for the kittens of a poor cat who had been shot, because he couldn't bear to think of them starving to death?"

A strange silence descended on the room. Trix and Pringle looked suddenly ashamed of themselves. And then Mrs. Cyrus piped up, feeling it her wifely duty to back up Esme's unexpected defense of her father.

"And he can crochet so beautifully ... he made the loveliest centerpiece for the parlor table last winter when he was laid up with lumbago."

Every one has some limit of endurance and Cyrus Taylor had reached his. He gave his chair such a furious backward push that it shot instantly across the polished floor and struck the table on which the vase stood. The table went over and the vase broke in the traditional thousand pieces. Cyrus, his bushy white eyebrows fairly bristling with wrath, stood up and exploded at last.

"I don't crochet, woman! Is one contemptible doily going to blast a man's reputation forever? I was so bad with that blamed lumbago I didn't know what I was doing. And I'm deaf, am I, Miss Shirley? I'm deaf?"

"She didn't say you were, Papa," cried Trix, who was never afraid of her father when his temper was vocal.

"Oh, no, she didn't say it. None of you said anything. You didn't say I was sixty-eight when I'm only sixty-two, did you? You didn't say I wouldn't let your mother have a dog! Good Lord, woman, you can have forty thousand dogs if you want to and you know it! When did I ever deny you anything you wanted ... when?"

"Never, Poppa, never," sobbed Mrs. Cyrus brokenly. "And I never wanted a dog. I never even thought of wanting a dog, Poppa."

"When did I open your letters? When have I ever kept a diary? A diary! When did I ever wear overalls to anybody's funeral? When did I pasture a cow in the graveyard? What aunt of mine is in the poorhouse? Did I ever throw a roast at anybody? Did I ever make you live on fruit and eggs?"

"Never, Poppa, never," wept Mrs. Cyrus. "You've always been a good provider ... the best."

"Didn't you tell me you wanted goloshes last Christmas?"

"Yes, oh yes; of course I did, Poppa. And my feet have been so nice and warm all winter."

"Well, then!" Cyrus threw a triumphant glance around the room. His eyes encountered Anne's. Suddenly the unexpected happened. Cyrus chuckled. His cheeks actually dimpled. Those dimples worked a miracle with his whole expression. He brought his chair back to the table and sat down.

"I've got a very bad habit of sulking, Dr. Carter. Every one has some bad habit ... that's mine. The only one. Come, come, Momma, stop crying. I admit I deserved all I got except that crack of yours about crocheting. Esme, my girl, I won't forget that you were the only one who stood up for me. Tell Maggie to come and clear up that mess ... I know you're all glad the darn thing is smashed ... and bring on the pudding."

Correction

Talking on the phone with Cashel on Friday night. Cashel was pretending to be a martian for the entirety of our conversation.

Cashel (in martian voice): "I wonder what this little hole in the wall is for! I know that you earthlings call it an electrical socket! What would happen if I put my finger in there?"

Cashel then makes a long bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz sound.

Cashel (in martian voice): "The electrical socket is bad."

Auntie Sheila: "Uhm - so am I talking to an electrocuted martian right now?"

Cashel: "No. You're talking to a DEAD electrocuted martian right now."

Cashel then collapsed into hysterical laughter.

We continued on in this manner for about 20 minutes more.

Dead Hand Flapping

I love this story. It made me LAUGH.

I love the cop. I love his beleaguered second visit to the house.

A-boo-hoo - no women!!

Interesting - found this in my referral log - and went to it, curious. Check it out. There's a co