A while ago I noticed "1984" on Sundance. I had never seen it so skipped to it, realizing for the first time that John Hurt plays Winston Smith. In the moments I watched, I decided he's wonderful in the role (however unfilmable the book is) and to record the next showing of it.
I had the Eurythmics soundtrack and loved particularly the song "Julia." I watched part of the movie last night and I am really glad the music is as toned down as it is. I watched a cinematization of The Chocolate War once and in addition to how changes in the denouement completely altered the theme, the Yaz soundtrack totally detracted from the movie's--integrity? timeli- and timelessness? The book is dated but not impossibly so; Yaz makes the movie scream mid-'80s.
Last night and today I reread bits of Nineteen Eighty-Four. How Orwell combines the satire and dystopia with a compelling plot continues to impress me. Minor nitpicking: Winston wouldn't know who St. Sebastian is when he plots what he would do to Julia should she ever fall into his clutches.
Katherine Mansfield, "The Daughters of the Late Colonel"
Willa Cather, "Paul's Case: A Study in Temperament"
Virginia Woolf, "Solid Objects"
Elizabeth Bowen, "Her Table Spread"
The Secret Self: A Century of Short Stories by Women, edited by Hermione Lee, is a good collection as far as I can tell, of first-rate female authors. I liked the first two stories I read, not so much the second two; I skipped the Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton (for now, I hope).
What intrigues me is how this book got into my house. I have no memory of having bought it, and for me that's unusual. I could unless forcibly stopped tell you when and how I came by my books. UConn Co-op, Coventry Books, UConn Pound Sale, Tattered Cover, on vacation, naughtily at a big box, Capitol Hill Books, remotely, yep. And this is a British book, Brit edited, published, and printed. But it looks quite new, as if it didn't come from a used bookstore.
Anyway. It was a good choice to put in the bookcase, because as I sat this morning rereading Nineteen Eighty-Four, I noticed it and picked it up instead.
I had my hair cut again last night. I wanted to see what it looked like a little shorter. I don't like it as much and would like it to my collarbones again. At least. I do miss a braid.
In the right pic, I'm on the phone with my sister, who is chez our father and notstepmother. Our notstepmother finally got another dog, more than two years after Sam died. Unlike regular-sized, black, setter and lab Sam, Ben is a Yorkshire terrier. Before my own visit in December, I tried to imagine my father with a Yorkie. Having actually experienced my father with a Yorkie (a Yorkie, what's more, with a ribbon in his topknot) has not improved my ability to imagine it. CLH told me today that though she has little time for him and he seems afraid of her, Ben can't resist her anyway. "Sounds like our father's kind of dog," I said: "'Oh yes, frighten and ignore me so I can try harder.'" Why can't we laugh like that about our relationships with our mother?
If my next haircut is in two months, I will be almost 35 and might want something a little more, I told the cutter. "Maybe some color," she suggested.
Er. Hair color is not only makeup but long-term makeup. It doesn't respond well to chlorine, which is what I have to swim in here. Chlorine is one bad chemical and hairdye is another. Not a good train of thought. However, when my hair looks particularly mousey I can see the appeal. She did a splendid job restoring Haitch's natural color on her very first visit, so I trust her skill as a colorist, but still.
When I first got it cut, at least two people asked if I had had it colored as well and one didn't believe my denial. Longer, in a braid, the undersides of the strands were exposed to sun. Shorter, loose, the unexposed sides show; they haven't been sun- and exposure-bleached. Or at least that's what makes sense to me. Maybe enough dye to make up for the highlights the sun hasn't had the chance to burnish yet. Hmm.
The photographs show my hair curlier than it was when I left the salon; they are post-snow today. Actually intra-snow. More than a foot fell overnight, a wonderful, atypically wet, dense snow. All the schools and many businesses including mine had snow days. I remembered to call the office before I even got dressed for the bus, and Dot Org was closed, closed, closed! I yipped and yahooed and yeehawed, because unlike schooldays, snow days from work don't have to made up from February or April or summer vacation. Also I pranced.
I took butter and molasses from the fridge to warm up. I did laundry. I tidied my study and vacuumed downstairs and put away the tottering stacks of CDs I've been ripping. I chose more books for the bookcase--Italo Calvino is someone RDC and I have in common so is a good choice.
Also I shoveled our sidewalk--city ordinance requires shoveling within 12 hours of significant snowfall--and the neighbor's and the other neighbors' and of course Babushka's. Either she heard me or was coming out to feed the birds anyway but she sounded almost scared as she called, "But who are you?" I shucked my hood, "I'm lisa from up the street, with the bird and the cherry tree and the cucumbers?" I didn't know how many more identifying details she might have needed, but she did seem to recognize me as soon as my hood came down. I haven't seen her since fall and she looked very old this morning. Perhaps she only lacked her teeth.
We snowshoed in City Park in the afternoon. First we banged on the overburdened trees with the snow shovel and a broom until they unbowed themselves. During this RDC wondered how many more layers we'd want for our walk. He went inside for gaiters and came out with snowshoes. They were a good idea. People were sledding on the puny little hill behind the museum--what does happen to people who grow up without sledding, without snowfolk, without fireflies, without frogs?--and about a dozen dogs were having the time of their lives off leash as their humans played in the playground, quite illegally. When we got back I shoveled us and Babushka again, another foot having fallen during the day. A neighbor's golden retriever bounded about, out of her mind with glee, while her basset hound stumped about much less pleased with life in snow well over his head.
Before and after the snowshoeing, I made cookies. Last summer a Charenton friend made ginger cookies of a quite whizbangy level of gingerness, but they lacked the essential ingredient of the best desserts, chocolate. These have a wonderful ginger bite but plenty of chocolate too. A Martha Stewart recipe, it assumed parchment on cookie sheets instead of Pam, and a high-end blender instead of a strong right arm with a wooden spoon, and "chocolate chopped into 1/4" pieces" instead of what that obviously means, chocolate chips. I did nothing to adjust for altitude, added less clove, and zounds, what a good cookie.
My notstepmother wants some; my father wants more of the peanut butter cookies I made him for Christmas. My sister just wanted to tell them about my adventures in being unable to make snowrocks.
Meanwhile, the snow is forecast to continue through tomorrow. It's over two feet in the backyard now but could always--please!--get deeper. A second snowday would rock my world. I'll find out in 11 hours.
I have no idea how I learned about this book. It is a series of vignettes, memories of maybe the author's or author's mother's time as a refugee, and the stories themselves are charming but don't add to a cohesive whole. I thought of both Journey to America, whose family is in much more danger in their emigration, and From Anna, in which Anna grows as a character against the backdrop of emigration. In Rabbit, mentions of atrocities and tragedies appear without context and the purported theme, that the family can manage as long as they're all together, isn't strongly developed.
Or maybe I was just horrified that when they left Germany, hoping and intending to return within a year, the protagonist took her new stuffed animal instead of her constant, lifelong companion of Pink Rabbit. The theft is, of course, that the Nazis confiscated their possessions in storage immediately. She's a child, and she thought both that they would return quickly and that their belongings would be safe. But she left Pink Rabbit behind. I know this is unreasonable of me: I still feel guilty for taking Melvin the raccoon with me to Florida when I was 10 instead of Booboo.