« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »
Wed | June 28, 2006
Overheard in New York
liens | Posted by Lily at 01:29 PM
Tue | June 27, 2006
The Etymology of Lacuna
Last night I went to a reading at the Half-King-- featuring Sebastian Junger, co-owner of the restaurant, journalist, and author of A Death in Belmont. During the Q&A a woman asked if he had a lacuna in his memory (Junger had talked about how it is possible for a murderer to not remember or misremember details of the crime, and how he himself misremembered something under a high-stress situation in Afghanistan). Junger said, "What? A lacuna?"
Some people looked knowingly, others had a haughty what-kind-of-word-is-that look on their faces. Heather asked me what a lacuna was. "A space, or a gap." Over dinner she asked me what I majored in and I said "biology," adding that that was how I knew the word lacuna. "I don't remember exactly, but it has to do with cells," I said. And I didn't remember, but I knew more than what I said. I knew it came from histology. I didn't say "histology" because that would lead to "what's histology?"
Histology, which I got a C in, for reasons unknown to me. I guess the official answer is that I'm stupid. And I didn't go to the professor's barbecue. I got two C's in college. Histology and Philosophy of Logic. I got a lot of B's, which sucked because all I did was study. Senior year I got sick of it and took everything pass/fail. The more I think of it the more I didn't like college. I try not to think of it.
Lacuna comes from histology, or it's a word I knew from histology. I can still picture that curved arrangement of cells, like stones around a tunnel. Also I thought it was the name of the company in Eternal Sunshine. And sure enough it was.
What is the word for "the history of how you know a word"? There should be a word for that.
nonsense | Posted by Lily at 03:40 PM
Mon | June 26, 2006
It's Only an Indie Film
Well, I did my part, by participating in the NYAFF (The New York Asian Film Festival). I went to see It's Only Talk on Saturday.
Being at the film festival is an experience in itself. A twenty-something white guy (Azn fan) stands at the front of the theater and shouts a bizarrely detailed introduction. "You're going to see a commercial, and then some previews," he says. He half-apologizes for the festival having corporate sponsorship. I sit there thinking he doesn't need to say all this. No one will be surprised to see commercials and previews. But then again I can see how some of the audience might balk at McDonalds advertising at an indie film screening.
He announces that they are selling t-shirts and there is going to be a raffle. Then he raffles a t-shirt and a set of 3 DVDs that have nothing to do with each other.
I feel the need to repeat all these things because they are declared as if they have importance. It reflects the tendency of many indie films to spend time on normally negligible details.
It's Only Talk, for example, begins with a 32 year old Japanese woman (25 in white years) going around Tokyo taking pictures. You get to see Tokyo, but after awhile you're like okay I get it, you don't have to keep doing this. Not only are there too many shots belaboring the same idea, the shots linger on for a good twelve seconds at places where Hollywood would cut after two.
I don't have anything against meditative, observant films. But once mired in this mood, it's difficult to lift out of it for the "fun" moments. There's a tire park that's supposed to be a great place but it's mostly anticlimactic. And other things... like pet fish. I suppose one might say it's intentional or appropriate for everything to come through muted. But I'm not sure about that. I think an excellent film would be able to transition more clearly between moods.
It's Only Talk is about Yuko, a manic-depressive girl who moves to Kamada (a region of Tokyo), falls apart a little, and has her male cousin take care of her. Contrary to the title, it doesn't explore issues of talking and not talking. It's more about loneliness, depression, medication, and needing people to rely on. It's about a girl who joins 9.11 and earthquake groups to have people to be sad with. She lies to get more sympathy from people. What she really needs is not to find ways to get more out of people, but to find ways to accept that they won't provide everything she needs. But this is all a bit outside the plot of the movie. You don't see her at these groups; it's only mentioned.
She hangs out with a guy from school who doesn't quite know what to make of her. My favorite plotline is between her and that guy, which mostly happens at the beginning of the film. Their 'hookup' scene is so funny and true, for a situation between a girl like that and a guy like that. And so under-represented in films.
She finds temporary relief in a pervert forum. Or is it a manic-depressive forum? I think it's one of each. The irony (or perhaps unrealistic outcome) is that all of these people, even the mobster, are mild-mannered blokes. It ends on a depressive note, as the one potentially sustainable solution she develops during the course of the film collapses.
Oh yeah and especially at the end, too much exposition through dialogue. Overall, good for an indie film.
Livres, films, TV | Posted by Lily at 11:52 AM
Fri | June 23, 2006
Happy Birthday Invisible Cube!
In celebration of this blog's birthday, here is a picture of a cake. I also gave the site a makeover a week ago-- the cool squares background, the rounded edges, and several other little improvements. It took all day.
I got reimbursed for my travel expenses associated with the interview and review (see June 21). Finally there is enough money in my paypal to buy a pony. Technically I have already spent this money, on train tickets, but whatever. I placed a bid on a My Little Pony at Ebay.
Now that I am looking at this picture, I think it's not even a picture of a cake. I think it's a picture of a wax candle shaped like a cake.
nonsense | Posted by Lily at 12:17 AM
Thu | June 22, 2006
On Blogging
Tomorrow is my blog's birthday. Invisible Cube will be one year old.
I'd say the average lifespan of a blog is about a year. That's how old my Xanga was when I killed it. I killed it because I was tired of it, and because I knew that if I wanted those posts there was no easy way to save them. I killed it because I wanted to create a better blog (this one).
Now a year into this blog, remembering what happened to my last one at around this time, I am naturally a bit solicitous for its future. I say "kill" like I had agency in the death of my former blog, but really it just kind of died on me.
It had a lot to do with the reasons I just mentioned above- of which reasons number two and three have been addressed by my Xanga's reincarnation as Invisible Cube. But there is still the fatigue factor. A blog should be energizing, not exhausting. It should be fun, and not a chore or an obligation. I feel myself getting bored, wondering where this is going, if anywhere, and if it means anything or has any value. I haven't sorted it out yet. But I do know some things about my blog, and by extension, blogs in general.
Myths About Blogs
First, three myths about blogs. In January this year, I went to a reading for the book Best American Journalism of 2005 and this guy James Wolcott read his award-winning article about blogging. Nothing he said about blogs was true of my blog. They were all very familiar ideas, too- journalism, after all, mostly rehashes the same ideas in circulation. But I had never realized how wrong they all were.
One false belief is that blogs should be about something. My blog is about ______. If you can't fill in that blank there's something wrong, your blog is unfocused and illegitimate. "Theme" blogs exist, but there's a whole genre of blogs, typified by Xanga and Live Journal, which has nothing to do with theme, whose very structure is anti-theme. I think these "stuff I wrote" blogs are actually more common than theme blogs, and they're certainly a lot easier to sustain.
The blogger homepage used to say that you should pick a topic for your blog. Now it says, "Your blog is whatever you want it to be." So I guess they wised up. I think the idea that a blog has a topic or a theme was dominant a year ago. I definitely remember feeling obligated, when I started this blog, to have a theme. With some effort I overrode the idea and excused myself from it.
Another erroneous concept is that a blog should link to other blogs. This undoubtedly descends from the "The Link is King" school of thought-- that websites with more links to them are more important, that things on the internet sustain themselves by linking to other things. Also connected to this idea is the third myth, the belief that a blog needs comments. I distinctly remember Wolcott saying that links and comments were the lifeblood of a blog.
The lifeblood of a blog is the author writing posts and putting them up. Simple as that. You provide your own material-- it doesn't come from linking to others' materials, or from other people writing comments. In fact wanting links and comments is a fast way to insure your blog's demise, because it skews your focus and energy. You start to write things just to elicit reactions, and you lose track of what you need to write, what you need to think about. You worry too much about what others will think-- whether they will find it interesting, whether they will have anything to say in response.
This leads to my rules of blogging, which are mostly about not worrying about what other people will think.
Rules of Blogging
- Don't apologize for the blog. Resist the impulse to say Here is my blog, but you know I have been in a bad mood recently so it might seem bleh, or any number of excuses and disclaimers.
- Write about whatever you want. If you want to write about cake, write about cake. Don't try to be intellectual, or cover "important" topics. Also, just as sticking to a very narrow topic defined by a theme is problematic, trying to cover a variety of topics or to create a balanced representation of yourself and your interests will only make things difficult. Your blog is not you, it's just your blog.
My site motto is a quotation attributed to Katharine Hepburn: "If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased."
- Don't look back (and don't delete posts). This is because if you look back, you will find something you don't like, and start to edit, rewrite, and delete... and there will be no end to it. Soon you will have deleted everything.
The blog reflects where you were at the time, and you need to accept that. In fact, if looking back at your blog doesn't make you cringe then you should be concerned because it means you're not getting any better. You should totally look back and say I can't believe I wrote that. Tomorrow I will look at this and say Why did I write this? What was I thinking? But I won't change a thing.
The easiest way to not destroy your own blog is to not read it. Post and don't look back.
- When in doubt, don't tell people about your blog. I am not sure why this is true but I know it is based on experience. I regret telling too many people about it at the outset. I sent out a mass email and I put it in my email signature. I'm sure I told people about it randomly. It grates on me.
You need just enough of an audience, just some, and not too much. Audience is an individual thing, and you need to think about whom you'd be comfortable having as your audience. I can tell you that the answer isn't "everyone, everyone I know."
- If you told too many people, know that no one is reading your blog anyway. Except for your closest friends and the stray secret admirer, everyone forgets about your blog within three months of finding out about it.
I have a vested interest in reading others' blogs, since I have one myself, and even I don't read them, not even the blogs of cute guys. I am assuming that everyone behaves like myself, which could be incorrect. But I don't think so.
Écriture | Posted by Lily at 08:58 PM
Wed | June 21, 2006
something I wrote will be on the web somewhere besides here
At the end of April, I went to a panel about literary agents. For once I was not in a bitter, alienated mood. It might have helped that the agents were nice and I was having a little vacay in the West Village. I talked to a few people. One of them was an arty Asian girl with glasses.
I invited her and the other three people I talked to, to my writing group. None of them joined. I returned to bitterness. Several weeks later, the arty girl emailed me about her new magazine. She invited me to a wine-tasting/ meeting, and I was going to be in town anyway so I went. I was hungry and ate like half the grapes and a third of the crackers. No one else was really eating. No one else was playing with this cute little dog either. Who were these people?
I felt bad about eating too many crackers so I took an assignment that same week. That was just last week. I interviewed this guy, whose movie premieres next Wednesday. I also wrote a short review.
The interview and review are supposed to go up on Thursday. I have my fingers crossed. I'm holding my breath. I'm succumbing to all sorts of cliches. I think when it happens I will be a little bit happier than I was before.
Écriture | Posted by Lily at 01:56 AM
Tue | June 20, 2006
John Lloyd Young
On the back page of the Playbill from Macbeth, I saw an ad for Jersey Boys. At the top of the ad, praise for John Lloyd Young. I recognized the name-- he starred in Sweeney Todd, which Alenka and I attended as ushers. This was back in '98. He was great even then. He just had amazing energy. I don't usually remember names of people unless I talk to them. The fact that I remember his name shows what an impact he had. I almost met him-- I went up to the stage after the show, but then turned around because I didn't really have anything to say. That was the excuse, rather. I turned around because he was so great and I didn't feel like I brought anything to the table, any reason for him to talk to me.
And now he's this famous person. He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, and The Jersey Boys won Best Musical. I'm happy for him, even though it makes me feel worse about myself. He deserves all these accolades. I could extrapolate from that Sweeney Todd performance that he is a great person. On top of it all he's supremely cute. Oh and he's been in New Jersey in recent years. He did a play at Paper Mill Playhouse, which is just two towns over from where I live.
Livres, films, TV | Posted by Lily at 02:27 AM
Mon | June 19, 2006
Moises Kaufman's Macbeth
Last Saturday night, I went to see Macbeth at Shakespeare in the Park. The theater was like a small stadium-- the audience sat on raised seats around the stage. A tall, focused spotlight beamed from high behind the audience down to the actors. It also illuminated the spit coming out of their mouths and the mosquitos hovering about their heads.
I thought the best actor was Teagle F. Bougere, who played Banquo, and not Liev Schreiber, the featured star. Bougere's voice resonated so much better with the dramatic material. Black people have voice. Not all, of course, but many.
A few weeks ago I was on the train and these schoolgirls were laughing and chittering and singing. This sounds pleasant but it's actually quite annoying. Embedded in that laughter is white privilege and complacency, preppy girls coasting along in their lives, their worst problems nothing compared to the organic afflictions of multi-culturals. Anyway so these girls were chittering and then a sudden booming voice-- "Can you have respect for the people on the train?"
It came out of nowhere but it was the woman across the aisle in the window seat. The whole car went silent. Rock scissors paper-- black woman's thunder beats white girls' chittering.
Back to Macbeth-- Jennifer Ehle, who played Lady Macbeth, sucked. She seemed weak and she's supposed to be strong, at least at the beginning. After all she is the one who eggs Macbeth on to murder Duncan. In addition to completely missing the spirit of Lady Macbeth, Ehle also didn't inflect the speech in a way that enhanced the meaning.
Anyway I am glad I went, and that it was Macbeth. Shakespeare in the Park is one of those New York things that everyone is supposed to do, and now I've done it. I can check it off the list, the list I don't have because it would only make me unhappy about all the things I haven't done. I didn't wait on line at the Public Theater at 8 am, but that's a separate experience.
Livres, films, TV | Posted by Lily at 01:33 AM
Sun | June 18, 2006
cool cakes
 |
These cakes are cool. I have been reading about them. Mostly looking at the pictures. I am not the kind of person who plans and dreams about her wedding, but I do like to look at cakes. Cakes in general, wedding cakes included. I often stop at bakery windows. Come to think of it, there's a cake place in the village I should check out the next time I'm in the area. It's on Bleecker by Grove. There's also Magnolia up the street but that place is way more expensive than it is cool.
The flowers are made of sugar. They're edible but they're also often saved as mementos. Pansies are rare on cakes because they wilt. Not the ones on the cake- those are made of sugar- but the ones in the bouquet. People choose flowers for their cake to match the flowers at the wedding. I think that's pretty misguided, I mean some flowers look better on a cake. Red roses on a cake looks weird.
These designer cakes cost from six hundred to a thousand dollars. There are some celebrity chefs like this guy Ron Ben-Israel who makes the cakes at weddingcakes.com. Or he doesn't make them, he has his own little factory of diligent, underpaid laborers. It's on 42 Greene Street in Soho. They call it a bakery.
I don't think I'd get a designer cake that was featured in a magazine. It's just too expensive. I think one reason people spend so much on weddings is that they have no experience buying any of the things that go with the wedding, like fancy cakes. They don't have time to shop around and get to know the options and so they pay a lot for stuff that they might be able to get elsewhere for less.
Maybe it is a good idea to start researching so that I'll have less to do later. I could just wear a fancy dress instead of a wedding dress for my wedding. That would save like a thousand dollars right there. I could start to think about what we would eat and everything. I don't throw parties so I have no idea. If I had a wedding I don't think it would be very big. I think I would only invite my family and a few friends.
It's so sad that I will probably never see cakes like these. Maybe I should try to get myself invited to the wedding of a rich and spendthrift person. I wonder if I could do the cake-tasting thing just for fun. I would pretend I was getting married and then go to all these cake places and taste their cakes. And then just tell them, "sorry I'm going with some place else."
Man, if I could eat these cakes. Like Alice in Wonderland. For years I have wanted to eat those cakes. I think it has to do with how pretty they look, so smooth and well constructed, colorful.
nonsense | Posted by Lily at 12:55 PM
Tue | June 06, 2006
Steak and Eggs over Easy
One night Josh made dinner-- steak and eggs over easy with rice and black beans. While he cooked, I sat in his bed and tried to write a story about someone whose friend is about to commit suicide but she doesn't know it. His roommate Cory came over and sat in the rocking armchair, which he called the lazy boy. We chatted for a bit, but I wanted to write. I kept my eyes mostly on the laptop screen. At a lull in the conversation I put the blanket over my head and made a tent with my head holding up the blanket. At first I kept one end open but when Cory didn't keep talking, I put the blanket completely over me and the laptop.
Just after I started getting into it, Josh came and lifted a flap of the blanket. "Hey," he said. The steak smelled delicious. He put the plate on the desk by his bed.
I kept typing though, until Josh said, "are you going to eat?" I got up, took the plate to the kitchen table, and started eating. Cory was well into his meal and Josh was still cooking his own. It was impossible for us all to sit at the table because there were only two seats.
"Mmm, this is good," I said after awhile.
"I can cook all sorts of foods," Josh said. He and Cory argued over whether steak and eggs over easy is an ethnic food. Josh said that the way he cooked it, with rice and black beans, made it Mexican style. I had nothing to say in either direction because I had never had steak and eggs over easy before. They argued strangely-- they used harsh words, but said them calmly.
"You're completely wrong."
"What do you know about it."
"I know a lot more than you do."
"You're an idiot."
Cory finished eating and got up, and Josh sat down. Cory hung out while Josh and I ate.
"I was ignoring Cory earlier," I said to Josh, in case Cory was offended that I hadn't really talked to him earlier. "I wanted to work on my story. I didn't want to talk to anyone."
"It's okay," Cory said.
The truth was that I hadn't even wanted to come over. I had come on the condition that I was going to work on my story, and Josh had promised not to distract me. I guessed that he hadn't told Cory, and so I tried to explain it then.
We fought often about whether I would come over. Ideally he would have liked me to come over every other day, or every couple of days. I would have liked to come over once a week, occasionally twice, and to stay in touch through phone calls. At that point we had been going out for only a few weeks. He didn't like to talk on the phone and didn't think anything of suddenly hanging out with someone all the time just after meeting them a couple of weeks ago.
I didn't want to drop everything because I was going out with him. I had Kaplan and Josh and writing, but a lot of the time these things seemed to take away from each other, to be mutually exclusive-- to come in the wrong order. It should have been writing and Josh and Kaplan, but it was always the other way around.
For weeks after it's over I wonder if things could have been different. I replay and rewrite the scenes in my head and think how that might have changed things.
I am under the tent and he brings me the plate. "Thank you," I say, and go to the table.
"This is good," I say, after just one bite. I get up, go to him and kiss him on the neck. Back at the table, Cory and I eat for awhile, and make small talk. At a pause in the conversation, I say to no one in particular, but ostensibly to Cory, "Josh is so wonderful."
Josh hears and Cory is surprised. "He's so cute. He cooks, and cuddles," and I turn towards Josh, since I'm mostly talking for him, "cooks and cuddles and makes love."
Cory finishes eating and leaves the table, and Josh sits down in his place. From Cory's point of view there is a conflict of interest between himself and me- I crowd him out. I should have talked to him just a little more when he came over and tried to hang out. Later I will rewind the scene even further back and think of what I could have done at that point. But now at the table Josh sits down and after dinner I help with the dishes. Before all of this, I should have offered to help him cook. He wouldn't accept it because it's his special meal, but the point is I offer.
I think of this revision to the scene. I am under the tent. "Do you want help?" I ask, walking over to the kitchen. "No," he says, "do your thing." "Okay," I say. I arrange the blanket over my head and work on my story until he brings me the plate and I rehearse the part of the scene that starts there again. I replay it all together in my head, thinking of all the things I could have done differently.
memoir | Posted by Lily at 10:21 PM
Sat | June 03, 2006
Puffs
On 8th Street in the village there's a cream puff cafe called Choux. Like Puff & Pao and Beard Papa's, it has a crisp white interior and a line of ceiling lights that lend a clean iMac feeling to it. Actually I think this look has existed in Japan for some time, and has only been recently introduced in the U.S. It therefore appears to follow the iMac.
Choux is narrow-- it has just enough room for four small wooden tables to line one wall. Opposite the tables is a counter behind which four twentysomethings operate.
I walk in because it's empty and I prefer my cafes zero to 20 percent full. I order the first thing that I see in the glass case and sit down. After all, I'm only incidentally buying a cream puff and coffee so that I can legitimately stay there for what becomes two hours.
The puff comes on a plastic silver platter with a plastic fork. I consume it in a minute.
My coffee is black and as I approach the counter the woman literally runs towards me. "Yes?" she says.
"Do you have milk and --"
"Over there!" she gestures at the setup by the door. She's got a round cute face.
While I add 'sugar in the raw' to my paper cup, I meditate on the thought that there is too much urgency, eagerness, and need for approval emanating from behind that counter. They haven't caught on that the best attitude is one of mellow near-indifference.
All the workers wear yellow bandanas in their hair and white chef jackets. One of them stands at the next table stapling coupons to palmcards. She's wearing an animal print dress underneath her jacket. Soon she's outside under the awning, her skirt billowing in the post-drizzle breeze.
In just a few minutes she comes in, stamping her feet, and says, "these people don't understand! The coupon's good for one month!"
She walks out and then walks in a minute later. She is now pacing in and out the door. "People don't want to save money!"
When I got my green tea cream puff and coffee, I saw the same coupon on the counter -- it was for fifty cents. What was she saying out there, I wondered-- "Save fifty cents!"?
This place'll tank if there's too much of that girl, I think. She's got nice legs, but she's cranky and insecure, and it comes through in the way she tries to hand out those cards. She leans against the door every time someone doesn't take a card. Which is pretty much every time. She also bounces her knees like a child who has to go to the bathroom. She's apparently under the impression that people walking by can understand what she's saying. The truth is that you can't understand most of what a person is saying while you're passing on the street. You get three words at most. From the wordiness of what she says when she peeps in, I realize that she might be saying some long phrase like "cream puffs, and there's also a coupon for fifty cents off your order and it's good for an entire month!"
I focus exculsively on reading for awhile, but have already begun an experiment, one that I've conducted several times before, in various situations. It begins with my doing nothing, or as close to nothing as possible, since the presence of a person sitting comfortably inside is something. Then I try to draw people in a little. Every few sentences of reading, I look up and catch glances of people on the street. I also make eye contact with the antsy girl, and try to telepathically adjust her mood until the right note of relaxation is in the air.
My "technique" sounds bogus but the fact is she stops pacing. And in a few minutes people begin to come in. It's Saturday, after all, and the village is full of pedestrians with undefined or infirm purposes, just waiting to be swayed. One of the people is a tall guy in a grey army camouflage t-shirt.
"How old is she?" he asks.
Confusion from the two guys behind the counter.
"Is she 45?" He orders a green tea slushie which involves ice loudly crushed in a blender.
The girl comes in from outside. "I'm really old, I'm 21," I hear her say, inbetween blender noises.
He stands outside with her while the drink is made. She comes in. "There's a guy who's really hot," she says to the plump girl with the round face- who looks at the guy in the army shirt coming in behind her.
"Not him!" she says, "the guy on the cell phone." They skittle outside, and she points down the street. They are framed by the open doorway. I feel like I am watching a movie.
The guy in the grey shirt says something in French to the guy behind the counter, who replies in French. Poor guy. He sits in a chair by the wall.
Suddenly the plump girl and the French dude are shouting at each other. Actually it's just the Korean girl shouting at him, her peevish criticisms snapping like snare drum beats. He looks at me for sympathy and I smile. He has dark hair and dark eyes.
"Sorry," she says, turning to me. But I smile at her too. And then she's yelling him again, and it's English but it's so quick and abbreviated, slurring over certain sounds, that I don't make out what she's talking about. I think it's about something he didn't do, or forgot to do. A few minutes later the guys are putting balls of dough on large baking trays. They sprinkle powered sugar over them and put the three trays in the silver oven behind them.
I think maybe this place will be okay after all.
nonfiction | Posted by Lily at 06:06 PM
Fri | June 02, 2006
uma
Uma Thurman's father is a Tibetan Buddism scholar. During a Tibetan Buddism talk and book promotion at the AAWW, Quang Bao introduced him with the story of a sandwich: one day they were having lunch and Thurman finished his first. Thurman said, "are you going to eat that?" and Quang said no, and Thurman ate the other half of his tuna sandwich.
The intent was humor, and the audience did laugh, mostly because the topic's triviality created a sense of irony- the type that makes you go, "and that's the story?" When Thurman got to the podium, he said it was funny Quang remembered that after all these years.
And why did he remember it? Literary theory (or so I've heard) says that people like to read because they like to put things together, like a connect the dots game. There are two dots here: one day Quang gave Thurman half of his sandwich. Years later when crafting an introduction about Thurman, this is what he remembers about him.
I think that Quang did intend to finish his sandwich, but he nodded along because he is instinctively inclined to be agreeable, which happens to be a very disadvantageous trait to have around here, even around ostensible Buddhists.
Robert Thurman was fat, ugly, gross and slimy. There was a creepy molestor feeling about him. He is a professor of Buddhist Studies at Columbia University.
I was surprised to find out a few months after the talk that that guy was Uma Thurman's father.
Uma starred in Prime, the movie I saw on DVD last week.
Livres, films, TV | Posted by Lily at 04:38 PM
Thu | June 01, 2006
Apricot Jam
He got out of bed. "You want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?" he asked.
"No," I said, but went over to hang out with him in the kitchen.
"I hope you don't mind if I have one." He pulled out a tub of peanut butter on the counter that must have been a half gallon.
"Wow," I said.
"We eat a lot of peanut butter in this house," he said, unscrewing the lid.
Dwarfed by the giant tub of peanut butter, he looked like a child. "And this is the best jam," he said, as he took out a not as large, but still sizable, jar of apricot jam.
"I wipe off the knife before putting it in the jam," he said, narrating his own action. It seemed like an odd thing to say.
He was telling me about himself-- that he doesn't get peanut butter in the jam jar. At the mall earlier that day he said that he used to work at Baby Gap and play with the kids all day. "I love kids," he said, "because I'm like a big kid myself." I didn't say anything in either case, about kids or peanut butter. It didn't occur to me to state my own views.
On a Friday night I miss him and I make a peanut butter and apricot jam sandwich. I wonder if I should have said that I use a different knife for the jam, because wiping it off with a crumpled napkin isn't exactly sanitary. And that I use spoons for jam, and that I like kids too.