— Picking up my “Chronological Shakespeare” reading project, which I’ve done once before, years ago. It’s so fun, time-consuming but well worth it. Currently reading Merry Wives of Windsor which feels completely ridiculous as well as an enormous sigh of relief after all the clashing wars and hatreds of the “Rose Rage” history plays that led up to it. Merry Wives moves us into some extremely heavy-hitting major plays that follow (at least according to the chronology speculated and assumed). Lots of fun.
— Drove up into Westchester yesterday to see my sister and her husband’s brand new apartment (the move was yesterday). I picked up Ben in the city, at the old apartment, and he had bins of cleaning supplies with him, having cleaned up the joint after everything was moved out, and then he and I drove up into Westchester through a snowy wooded landscape. My mother had driven down as well. So it was a nice family convergence, and a good chance to hang out with my sister, and with my wonderful niece, whom I babysit a couple times a month. Everything still piled up in boxes, the beauty of snowy Westchester all around us, the comfort of family. I had to head back to my place after a couple of hours, but it was a treat, a mini-Thanksgiving, hanging out with family.
— I am sure you all have heard that the biggest blizzard EVER IN THE HISTORY OF WEATHER is descending upon us on the East Coast later today. As a life-long New Englander, I take weather hyperbole with a pound of salt, but after the last couple of years, with the one-two wallop of Irene and Sandy and the recent winter when I basically stopped shoveling my car out because why freakin’ BOTHER … I have made preparations for being snowed in. There was one year when we got so much snow – it was before 2003, maybe it was 2000? – when I remember standing in a completely shutdown snowed-in Times Square, with people literally cross-country skiing down Broadway. So we’ll see if this storm can compete with that. I have a couple more errands to run and then I’ll be all set. Just in case.
— Some exciting things are happening with my script but it’s not time to talk about it yet. Wouldn’t want to jinx it! But looks like I’ll be going out to LA in February. Things have been so busy on my end that I have barely had time to process what’s going on, let alone enjoy it. The other day I hung up the phone after a quick check-in conversation about my script, and I immediately started buzzing off through my apartment to continue on with my next chore, whatever it was, and I suddenly said to myself, “Sheila. How about you take 5 seconds – just 5 seconds – to ENJOY that this is happening. Hm? Whaddya say.”
— Just in time for the blizzard, my Robert Mitchum box set arrived. There is some crossover, I already own Night of the Hunter and River of No Return but it’s good to finally own the Gearhead-Heaven film Thunder Road, which we discussed here recently! I watched it the other night. Those CARS. I drool, I tell ya. Other films in the set: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, The Enemy Below, The Hunters, The Longest Day, Man In The Middle, What A Way To Go, The Way West. So I’m all set if snow-drifts shut us all in for a couple of days.
— Not a lot of time for pleasure-reading these days, but I do read every night for about half an hour before I go to sleep. I’ve been re-reading James Cain, and just finished Double Indemnity. The flat-affect of that narrator … I mean, it puts a shiver down your spine. I’ll re-read Mildred Pierce next. The main novel that I’ve been reading for about a month now is Stendhal’s The Red and the Black which I have never read. It’s absolutely phenomenal. Laugh-out-loud funny at times, which I was not expecting, and completely merciless. I’m about halfway through, and Julien Sorel is now ensconced in Paris in the house of the Marquis and he is quietly wreaking havoc, on purpose. He is a man who did not go to war. He feels like less of a man because of that and so in order to feel “great” he makes up all of these scenarios where he can be great and brave. Mainly by climbing up ladders into girl’s bedrooms. I love that each chapter starts with some pithy perfect epigram, and that a lot of them Stendhal MADE UP. Hilarious! He’s attributing a quote to so-and-so only so-and-so never said it. I know that Julien is headed for a huge fall, but don’t tell me what happens!
Brilliant news re the script. How exciting, and fingers crossed that there’s much more good news to come in February. The hints dropped on Twitter have been tantalising.
Ha!! I am not trying to be coy – I am just so afraid of jinxing it or talking too much before it’s all a “go.” Once it’s a clear “go,” you won’t be able to shut me up about it!!
It’s good to have a lot of irons in the fire. Every day a new adventure.
I hope the blizzard is mostly hyperbole, but I’m glad you’re prepared. It’s funny, but most bad weather seems to miss my city *knock on wood*. I’m in north/central Ontario, just north of the snowbelt. We’re surrounded by smaller lakes that freeze over and aren’t generally hit with the lake-effect snow that hammers southern Ontario. It’s cold and we get a lot of snow…but not the scary blizzards you all get.
Stay warm!
May – The weather people love to shout DOOM from the television, and so often we end up with a foot of snow when everyone was screaming that we all would be buried up to our necks. It’s exhausting. When I lived in Chicago there were some very brutal winters – obviously – but there’s something about the East Coast blizzards that ratchet everything up a notch. I’m not sure why. Chicago gets colder, obviously, but we have had a couple of winters of such constant snow that it almost becomes absurd. When you see people cross-country skiing down a busy street in the middle of New York, you know everything has STOPPED in its tracks.
So far no snow yet – just a kind of white dead sky, which looks pretty ominous.
Sheila — // I am just so afraid of jinxing it or talking too much before it’s all a “go.”//
I’m not a superstitious person at all, but also have a fear of jinxing things by talking about them before they are confirmed! So I shall steadfastly ignore this topic. ;-)
Ha! Thank you.
I’m not really superstitious either – but I watch people talk about things before anything has happened and I think – Oh my God, how can you BEAR doing that??
Stuck indoors with a blizzard outside and a new box set of Robert Mitchum? PARADISE! Bring it on!
Right? I think I need to pop in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison to soak up all that tropical weather and sexual tension.
Maybe I should pretend it’s 2003 and live-blog my reactions.
//Maybe I should pretend it’s 2003 and live-blog my reactions.//
Ha, yes please!
After the conversation elsewhere about man legs I googled Robert Mitchum + dances, which brought me to the Dancing Masters, in which an uncredited RM unfortunately does not dance, but Laurel and Hardy apparently do.
Our one and only ‘big’ storm so far this year was so hyped that the South Lake Tahoe School District cancelled school in advance of the storm’s so-called arrival on Thursday. When it turned out to be a wimpy nothing at lake level, the School District, ashamed of itself and rightfully so, sent out an e-mail of apology on Friday.
Oh boy.
A friend of mine’s SAT (I think – or maybe PSAT, can’t remember) was actually rescheduled due to the hypothetical storm bearing down on us.
It does feel pretty pre-storm out there right now, though. It’s quiet.
Too quiet.
Has it started snowing yet? If it’s the storm that passed over us two weeks ago, it might well be a big one. It snowed here for 3 days, though we don’t get the heavy stuff like the East Coast usually. And now this week, we’re into record highs, and it’s all melting away–still, a bit of a mess.
Take care, bundle up or hunker down, I guess–enjoy Mr. Mitchum!
Barb – 3 days!! Holy mackerel!
It has started snowing. Nothing too drastic yet, but it’s definitely more than just a couple of fluttering flakes.
We’ve really only had one snowfall so far this season – nothing major – so we’re certainly due.
The school across from me let out early, I’m cooking some soup, and ready for some Robert Mitchum on a desert island!
Sheila!
You said you might be busy in February, how wonderful it’s about this! But I don’t want to talk about it much either till it’s all done, but hoping you can enjoy this well-deserved excitement a little!
“So far no snow yet-just a kind of white dead sky, which looks pretty ominous”
I always noticed in Tennessee Williams plays so many times he says the sky is dead white and I’ve wondered what it meant, ominous!
Regina – Thank you!!
I was always struck by Tennessee Williams’ white-sky imagery, too ! A nothing-ness, a blank-ness, an unresponsive-ness. Creepy.
Of course now it’s morning and we barely got any snow at all. It’s windy as hell, but there’s barely any snow at all. Certainly no New Yorkers will be cross-country skiing down Broadway.
//Picking up my “Chronological Shakespeare” reading project//
I’m currently reading Ted Hughes’ Shakespeare And The Goddess of Complete Being. Fascinating. I don’t know if you’ve read it. At one point, to demonstrate how he will use his thesis on Shakespeare, he discusses how the myths of Phaeton and Icarus operated on Sylvia Plath as she was writing “Ariel” – unconsciously, he believed – and then operating on her consciously (since he had access to her drafts) as she wrote what he considered the lament for Phaeton, “Sheep in Fog.” In Hughes’ thesis, Shakespeare was animated or empowered by his idiosyncratic version of the Venus and Adonis myth. It’s not “Shakespeare was really all about X” – it’s more that this particular myth was a source of inspiration, tension, worldview.
Stay warm, and enjoy Mr. Mitchum.
I haven’t read Hughes’ book but I am extremely familiar with his writing on Plath and her drafts. (There’s a whole book written on Plath’s different drafts for the Ariel collection – called Re-visiting Ariel. Perhaps just for a fannish obsessive like myself – but really interesting and also completely de-bunks the myth that these poems flew out of Sylvia Plath whole. She WORKED these things.)
And yes, The Tempest was very important to Plath – as I suppose it is to most artists – the Ariel/Caliban conundrum … but I would be interested to hear Hughes talk about it!!