The ravell'd sleeve of care

I can get addicted to almost anything. Mad Men. Caramel corn. Three Stooges videos. All kinds of good stuff. The knitting addiction started early, and has flowed in and out of my life like the tides.

I probably started around age 8 or 10, when "someone" taught me: either my mother, or Mrs. McAigie (don't know how to spell it), a dour old Scottish lady who sometimes looked after us and checked for sore throats using the ornate, grape-carved handle of a sterling silver fork. I remember her saying, "Always knit into the back of the stitch," which I know now is completely wrong.

In spite of all that, I learned. The first big spate of knitting came when my kids were born. I didn't care much about the quality, and they didn't either, but I did turn out some nice stuff: a Scandinavian cardigan in coral, mint and turquoise for my daughter; a pullover knitted side to side for my son. They weren't embarrassed to wear these in public. Oh, maybe they peeled them off when they got to school.

It's a little different story now. Certain family members, who shall remain nameless, don't like my knitting any more and have pronounced it "gross", so I try to avoid making those little sweaters. I've made "blankies" for each kid, probably eight of them by now because they keep wearing them out. I swear, a kid should not have a blankie at age seven.

But what do I have to say about it?

Every once in a while I try to knit something for myself. I remember early attempts, and even see some of them in old photos, and they're not bad, or at least wearable. In the interim, something happened. I just can't do it any more, and I can't quit either. I either give the thing away because it's too big or too small, unravel it and recycle the yarn, or if it's really hideous, toss it in the trash, wasting expensive materials.

So. Having run out of projects, and by now totally, deeply addicted to the hypnotic rhythms of the activity, I decided to take on a cableknit sweater, probably the hardest thing of all because you have to pay so much attention to what you're doing. So if I have my Mad Men DVDs on, I can't fully take in Jon Hamm's breathtaking gorgeousness when in bed with some skank that could be me.

I was totally seduced by the picture, of course. I'll never look like that, for God's sake. And as usual, the color I chose, a sort of caramelly light tan called Heather, now looks green. Store lighting is totally misleading.

Cableknit has such cabalistic instructons as C4F (slip next 2 stitches onto cable needle and leave at front of work. K2, then K2 from cable needle), T3B, T3F, C6F, etc. etc. Sounds like half a postal code to me.

I have to follow a little chart, pictured above. You probably can't understand it, and neither can I. It's hard to stay in step with this thing. It's like an elaborate dance (and I can't dance). Miss a beat, and the whole thing falls apart.

Kind of like life.

Is this why I'm so hopeless at making things for myself? When (I think) I've done an OK job making stuff for other people, even designing patterns for 8 different blankies? I keep trying, too, which I know I shouldn't. Some fatalistic part of me says, hey, face facts. It'll never happen because you're outside the club, always have been, and always will be.

A horrible thought came into my head not long ago, a real soul-killer. I had this realization that sooner or later, probably sooner, the grandkids will see through me (and thus, inevitably, stop loving me). But that wasn't the horrible thought.

The horrible thought was, "By the time they see through me, I'll be dead anyway."

These are the dark things that stir at the bottom of my brain.

I'm reading Furious Love, all about the tempestuous relationship between La Liz and Le Dick (aptly named). Richard Burton apparently harbored a deep self-loathing that drove him to alcohol (his true love). At the end of his life, after a fragile period of sobriety, he went on a bender, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and died at 58.

Almost my age.

I'm not going to drink! I'm not. I don't even know where all this is coming from. I'm having a better week, I really am. I'm not so hopeless about the work.

But I'm gaining back the lovely weight I lost, and finding I can't get into all those lovely new clothes that I spent all that money on. I wonder why I have it in for myself like this. (Maybe that explains why I love the Hopkins poem about Margaret, To a Young Child: "And yet you will weep, and know why.")

So I knit. I try to knit up the ravell'd sleeve of care (speaking of Shakespearean actors. Did you know: my maiden name is Burton?). I try to make something out of nothing. Isn't that what writing is all about? What gives us the right? Who do we think we are?

All the stuff I hear about on blogs and message boards now talks about how nearly impossible it is to get anywhere, to get published, even if you've already been published many times. Some wise souls give up. I don't.

Good? Bad? Indifferent?

I may not be cut out for success, no matter how hard I try. And I've been told, repeatedly, that I have the goods, I have the talent. Some folks just aren't cut out.

Or perhaps they are.

**********************************************

POST-SCRIPT. Since the above post, I discovered some things that bugged me in the 9 or 10" I'd already completed on the sweater. I hummed and hawed about it, thought about backtracking and undoing the worst of it, decided I needed a new color and went to take the yarn back, changed my mind, came home and thought about it, then, ruthlessly, ripped the whole thing out and started all over again.

This may well be a metaphor for my life.

Separated at birth?

J'ever notice you never see Jon Hamm and Gregory Peck in the same place at the same time?

Nattering Nabobs

Life is hard enough. Isn't it? But when something you really liked, even loved, suddenly turns bad. . .

This happens with marriages, and jobs, and friendships, and even (incontinent, age-ing, vet-requiring, slobbering, stinky old) dogs.

But when it's something inconsequential, yet still significant, it really gets you. It's a small pleasure withdrawn, perhaps forever.

I've bought the same coffee for at least ten years. A nice, middle-of-the-road roast and grind, nothing fancy, but at its best, oh boy is it good, and dependable. It has that richness and complexity of flavor that any decent coffee should have. It's the same with the decaff. You zip open the can and hear that little rush of air, and the aroma jumps out at you. You shovel the grinds into the basket, pour in the water, and wait.

Just a small thing, of course. Until it turns bad.

It's been several cans now. Hell, maybe six! My coffee has turned bad. Turned watery and bland, with a bitter, even sour undertaste and a nasty whiff of tar.

It's the same brand. Same brand I've used for years, for so many years now it's like a goddamn marriage. Of course I won't name it here, but it starts with an N, and ends with a B, and has an ABO in the middle.

What has happened to my Nabob coffee? I'm buying exactly the same kind, same roast, same grind. Brewing it exactly the same way. Storing it in a cool, dry, dark place.

It's just crap, all of a sudden, and I can't fix it.

The only difference I can see is all the very loud and public ballyhoo about "sustainability", printed on the can and all over the web site. I'm not sure what this means because it goes on for about 500 pages, and we're supposed to read it and go, "Oh, I guess it's worth drinking a sour, lifeless cup of coffee, so long as we have SUSTAINABILITY."

I had to complain. Not because I hate the product, but because I love it! Because I want it back with every fibre of my being. But, of course, there was nowhere to complain, just literally hundreds of FAQs like, "Can I make coffee cake out of my coffee?" and "Can I store turkey giblets in the can?" I had to scrabble around web sites all morning to find a "legal stuff" page with a mailing address that turned out to be wrong, in that the postal code said MJB (ironically, the name of a kind of coffee!) instead of M3B. Had I sent them my (snailmailed) complaint with the wrong postal code on it, it never would've reached them.

The page also assured us we could always "just send them an e-mail". Oh, sure: mjb@badjava.ca?

Hmmmmmmmmm.

So what is going on here? Where is quality control? I think we're just supposed to go on drinking it, and pretending there's no difference, or that it's us, somehow, that we're doing it wrong, or that our tastebuds have collapsed with age.

I've sent customer complaint letters before, and I usually get a form letter back (if anything), and coupons for more of the same product I hate. More, more, more bad coffee! It's almost like the hundreds of writing rejections I've received, though they don't send you coupons. (And no, I don't paper walls with them. I throw them away.)

If they had a taste panel, well? If they had any quality control at all, WELL?? I wonder now, since I wrote to the "legal stuff" address, if they will sue me just for wanting a good cup of coffee.

Or for wanting it back. For wanting that dependable jolt, that aromatic reverse sigh, that roasty-toasty, almost wheaten taste, not just in the morning when I really need it, but any time in the day when I want a lift.

Get with it, guys. Sustainability should apply to taste, too.

(And there's nothing living inside my coffee maker. I do clean it, stinky vinegar fumes and all.)

Gush-a-thon

Hey, y'all. I don't know quite whas'sup with Oprah these days, but it seems her "farewell season" has to trumpet "a Very Special Oprah" every damn day now.

Having survived the Kitty Kelley debacle (the most unflattering star bio I have ever read), she's all geared up to put on Memorable Shows about Memorable

Things.

No issues, however. Not even Favorite Things, that gluttinous orgy of empty materialism. Most of them have to do with movie reunions. Oprah is big on reunions, not having been to her high school one (can you imagine the mob scene? The devastation to the buffet table?).

I recently sat through a Sound of Music reunion with the entire cast (actually it was nine people, and I really think the credits rolled for longer than that). An aged but wicked Christopher Plummer talked about his drinking binges during the shoot, and revealed that his nickname for the saccharine picture was "The Sound of

Mucus".

Oprah asked the eldest von Trapp daughter (I think it was the one who dated the Nazi: can't resist a man in a uniform!) what she had learned on the shoot. "Chris taught me a lot," she said sweetly. "What did he teach you?" (A life lesson that changed the course of her existence?)

"He taught me how to drink."

So much for "doe, a deer, a female deer," and all that rot. (Maybe it should have been "dough"). But hark! What see-est I now-est? She's doing it again, the reunion thing, only this time with the movie she refers to wistfully as the high point of her life, The Color Purple. Even back then, in '84 I think, when she was relatively unknown and had never acted before, she somehow butted everyone else out of the

way.

So now we have a Reunion of the Entire Cast, consisting mainly of a wisecracking Whoopi Goldberg (laying to rest rumors of a monumental feud sparked by Oprah cutting Whoopi out of a prestigious Legends Weekend to honor "accomplished" African American Women. I guess multiple Oscar nominations and 25-year careers aren't enough.)

Anyway, we got to see Whoopi's deluxe toilet, which was a blast and a half. She has a nice house, huge rooms. OK. We know Oprah is big on luxe housing. Then she trotted out Danny Glover, Rae Dawn Chong (what the - ?), and a few others we forgot about, the dame who played Shug Avery and all. Stephen Spielberg sent his video greetings, and Quincy Jones, looking half-stoned and sounding like Harry Belafonte on a bad day, was wheeled out to represent Living

Legends.

So what exactly was wrong with this show, aside from the kind of terminal gushing we used to see on SCTV's Sammy Maudlin Show? Why were there only a couple of references to Oprah Winfrey Presents The Color Purple, THE MUSICAL? I don't know much about it. No one does, because I don't think it did very well. Too grapey, or something.

But that's not what fried me.

What fried me is, this all started somewhere. The movie, I mean, and all the surrounding gush, and even the vulgar Broadway musical with Oprah's name

above the title (even though she wasn't in it anywhere).

Somebody, like, at some point, kind of, uh, er. WROTE THIS

THING.

I'll give them this: there was one, very brief mention of Alice Walker, with a shot of her that was on for maybe two seconds. Then they quickly moved on.

Let me tell you how wrong that

was.

If it weren't for Alice Walker's quirky little gem, NONE OF THESE PEOPLE WOULD BE UP THERE ON THAT STAGE.

None of these people would have had the career break of a lifetime by being cast in a Spielberg film that garnered 11 Oscar nominations (but no wins: another shutout, it seems. Oprah defends it by saying "it was ahead of its time". Does the name

Beloved mean anything to you?), had it not been for the diminutive,

brilliant woman

who penned the original novel in a sort of hypnotic trance.

I don't think Alice Walker got rich.

She went on writing, which is what real writers do, though no doubt The Color Purple is still her best-known work. Given its obscurity when the movie was made, it's doubtful she was paid a fraction of what the actors made (even the lesser-known ones).

Kitty Kelley's book talks about how Oprah quickly "dropped" Alice Walker once the movie contract had been signed. Kind of the way she "dropped" Whoopi, after Whoopi made a little joke in public about Oprah's absolute power in talk-show land.

Never mind that it was

true.

In spite of a lot of posturing, Oprah is uncomfortable with certain true things, and in spite of all her bafflegabbing, she must hate authors too. Remember poor James Frey being fried, live on the air, and wanting to commit suicide as a result? The drug memoir he wrote, A Million Little Pieces, turned out to have some fictionalized elements. Show me a memoir that

doesn't.

Oprah's naivete in this regard reveals that she isn't the sophisticated reader she pretends to be. She should have known that almost all memoirs are partly fictional. If anything, it's a sign that he actually wrote it

himself.

The next Oprah gush-a-thon will be a unique, one-of-a-kind, unforgettable Barbra Streisand show (hey, it went over well last time, and moved a lot of albums), in which Barbra floats onstage in a diaphanous floor-length Davinchsky gown and the same banged bob she wore in Funny Girl. (For some reason, really big stars get

frozen in time, especially regarding their hair.

You see it whenever they interview 95-year-old starlets from Hollywood's Golden Age, their lacquered 1940s do's sitting atop ancient faces bizarrely rearraged by primitive plastic surgery.)

Barbra still sings, but her voice is now in the lower register, and she no longer belts because she can't. Why she's doing all this after 30 years of being publicity-shy is anybody's guess. (Another album?) But soft! What comes next, I wonder?

Why. . . speaking of bad face lifts. . . it's. . . it's. . .

It's Robert Redford, in a VERY VERY Special Oprah, a reunion of the Cast of The Way We Were!!!

God, haven't some of these people died by now?

Babylon

By the waters of Babylon

by the waters of Babylon

we sat down and wept

and wept

for thee Zion

We sat down and wept we sat down and wept we sat down and wept. . .

A shadow of a miracle of a particle of a shone of a show of a shadow of a song

Reflected backwards from the silver backing of a mirrored dream

we sat down and wept and wept and wept for thee Zion

We sat down and wept

(and wept)

for: thee

*******************Zion*******************

By the waters of Babylon, we sat down. . .

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars

we hung our harps,

for there our captors asked us for songs,

our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

How can we sing the songs of the Lord

while in a foreign land?

If I forget you, Jerusalem,

may my right hand forget its skill.

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth

if I do not remember you,

if I do not consider Jerusalem

my highest joy.

Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did

on the day Jerusalem fell.

"Tear it down," they cried,

"tear it down to its foundations!"

Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,

happy is the one who repays you

according to what you have done to us.

Happy is the one who seizes your infants

and dashes them against the rocks.

Psalm 137

Dear Author, I mean Margaret

Rah, old dolly!

Har.

Marganas Gape, yb Teragram!

Good anagrams almost make sense, and are more than just Scrabble-esque word jumbles. To the purist, they're scramblings of famous people's names which appropriately describe that personage, without any letters left over.

Try it. Quick. Tom Jones!

Uh. . .

Moon Jest! Hm. Does that work? Howbout. . . No jetsom (except it's spelled wrong). Or. . . What's New, Pussycat?

I can't do these very well, so I'm going to cheat and lift some from a web site, never mind which one. I steal all the time.

George Bush: He bugs Gore.
Osama bin Laden: A bad man (no lies).
The terrorist Osama bin Laden: Arab monster is no idle threat.
Elvis Aaron Presley: Seen alive? Sorry, pal!
Clint Eastwood: Old West action.
Madame Curie: Me, radium ace.

The best anagram I ever heard of, apparently thought up on the spot by Dick Cavett when looking at a theatre marquis (sp.? Who knows how to spell such a lame word, anyway?) is for Alec Guiness: Genuine Class.

Well, mine are almost like that. I mean. I have good intentions.

For the past couple of years I've been totally obsessed with Harold Lloyd, the silent screen comedian. You know, the one in the straw boater and hornrims who dangled off the hands of the huge clock above the. . . yeah, him, and by the way, he wasn't gay. (This is the first thing people ask me when I tell them about my book. I have no idea why, maybe all that white makeup, but did people call Chaplin a poof?)

I wrote a novel about Harold called The Glass Character, fell violently in love with him in the process (and I truly believe it's the best thing I've ever done), and now no one in the publishing industry wants to give me the time of day. Jesus, guys! Somebody, read this and cut me a deal before someone else gets it and you'll have to live with the regret for the rest of your life.

So I worked on Harold Lloyd anagrams. With all those backwards-looking Welsh double-ls, it was a problem.

So I came up with:

Rah, old dolly!
Hardy ol' doll
Ah, lord dolly!

Enough dollies. What got me started on this shit? I'm reading a book about the violent decades-long passion between Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, Furious Love (Sam Kashner & NancySchoenberger),which I first heard about on Dick Cavett's NY Times blog. I wondered if I could squeeze out some anagrams here. (Why? Ran out of those little Keurig coffee thingamies and needed something else addictive.)

Richard Burton came out: Brain chord rut. Well, he did waste his genius, didn't he?

But I'm most proud of this one, for Elizabeth:

The royal zeal bit.

I think I'll retire now, while I'm on a llor.

Chew, chew!

Quoted from Candyblog, the delectable link I provided yesterday. One of the best blogs I've seen in any category. Liquorice is not to my tastes: it reminds me of the dreadful liquorice "all-sorts" my Dad kept in the buffet drawer until they turned to dinosaur droppings. But this description of filled liquorice pieces is nothing less than lyrical:

"They were just a little sticky in spots but were fresh and moist. The bag smelled nicely of licorice and toffee with a little hint of smoke, beets and molasses. Each is about 3/4 of an inch long and varied in diameter, though most were about 1/3 of an inch.

The middle pieces, the light beige ones were a coffee flavored center. This was fascinating. I like the combination of licorice and coffee and it’s not an easy pair to find together. The center is a little grainy, like frosting. It’s sweet and has a very mellow coffee and toffee note to it. The licorice flavors and the texture of the licorice chew were at the front with the most dominance. I found myself picking through the package to find these.

The darkest looking centers were chocolate, I think. It was a sort of Tootsie Roll version of chocolate. There were some vague cocoa notes but it was rather empty and couldn’t compete with the licorice and sugar flavors.

The white ones appear to be mint. The mint fondant filling is soft with a bit of a crumble though not completely dry. The minty notes are peppermint and menthol. It’s a strange combination with the licorice, the whole thing has a medicated vibe but it’s also fresh and doesn’t feel heavy like some other licorice can. The mint though was very strong and overshadowed the licorice notes."

Hmmmm. I could almost eat these.

Good n' chewy! Good n' chewy! Good n' chewy! Good n' (blplgfffggtfhhht)

Let's chew dem-dar caramels, shall we? Don Draper it ain't, but this is interesting copy reflecting the spirit of the times (maybe late '50s? I have a dim memory of this one.) Some ad exec somewhere must have thought that aggressive repetition (and inane comments about the wholesomeness of pure sugar) would drive home the urge to stuff your mouth with these things. They were worth exactly one cent, so you got a lot of them with your allowance (though not as many as jaw breakers, three for a cent, or those jaw-breaking coconut balls). Your little brown paper bag would be overflowing. Ah! I want a caramel, right now.

If you want to dive into the world of candy, nostalgic or otherwise, this is one of the best blogs I've ever found. You can get lost in it, and the candies are even rated. Great fun, and gorgeous photography.

http://www.candyblog.net/

Mysterious lady

Somewhere. . . man

Not that I have any particular way with images, except that I love to manipulate them. I found an astonishing picture of John and Paul early on in the Beatles, sitting like mirror images of each other, both playing the same chord and strumming furiously. This picture begged to be played with. Here are a few of the results.

John Ono: One

This is one of those experiences that is impossible to describe. Just a manifestation of my desire to connect with a meaningful God? You decide.

After much anticipation, I finally went and saw Nowhere Boy, the movie (drama, not documentary) about John Lennon's youth and his troubled relationship with his Aunt Mimi (who raised him) and his mother Julia, an unstable but charming woman who gave him up due to complicated circumstances. At the same time, the musical ferment that gave rise to the Beatles begins to bubble and seethe. John starts a crude, amateurish "skiffle" group (Liverpudlian folk/rock), of which he is definitely the leader, though his guitar skills are poor, and his classmates from art school are worse.
Then he meets a baby-faced 15-year-old named - well, do I need to tell you? Paul holds the guitar left-handed, and plays rings around everyone else. Jealous, John at first turns him away, but soon starts to work on his skills with him.

The movie was slow to start, and the actor who played John (not a name I'd heard of) was not very convincing at first, as he seemed sort of passive. But as the story unfolded, you bought him more and more. When he picked up a guitar, a fierceness came over him, and by the end I was thinking, that's John Lennon.

Of course we know what will happen. John's wayward Mum Julia dies at the end, hit by a car, just as she is making peace with the family. Paul has just lost his mother to cancer, so now they are brothers in nearly every sense.

The movie was powerful, and I was quite moved to see Yoko Ono listed as a consultant in the credits, which kept it honest. It was reviewed as a "kitchen-sink drama a la Coronation Street", and it did have elements of that. But Kristin Scott Thomas as Aunt Mimi was spot-on perfect in establishing sympathy for an unsympathetic character. She deserves an Oscar for her courage and skill.

But the weird thing happened at the end. During the credits I started to cry unexpectedly, then I was really sobbing. Fortunately, nearly everyone had left. Then I felt this - I will try to describe it. A "presence" behind a sort of screen or very thin veil. It was slightly to the left, about halfway between me and the front of the theatre, and angled a little bit, slightly diagonal. Something like very thin gauze, or a translucent veil. I heard a voice without words that conveyed something very powerful. In essence it said, how can you not believe in me when I am right in front of you? You have stopped believing in a God, and yes, that God may not be in a church, but he's right here, Margaret, right here (indicating my chest) in your heart.

I was stunned and doubtful and electrified and wondered what it really meant, but I was not going to turn it away. It wasn't the first time I've had experiences that I can only describe as psychic, but I wondered what in the world this "voice" (undoubtedly his) would ever want with a nothing like me. The presence was so large it filled the whole theatre and extended past the walls. I can't really describe what it was like. Any words seem wrong or inadequate. I finally left and went to the ladies' room (fortunately empty) and just sobbed and sobbed, wondering if this was somehow connected to my brother Arthur's death in 1980, only two months before John Lennon was shot and killed.

I never expected this, didn't want or need or call for a lesson in theology or the true nature of God or whether or not we survive our bodies. In fact, I'd just about given it up. I was beginning to think we just die, get put under the ground, and that's it, it's all over. I was starting to really believe there's nothing there, nothing that loves or cares about us as individuals. For a former practicing Christian, this sort of spiritual abyss was agony, but I could not fix or change it. This presence, familiar yet strange, didn't really explain all that, but just manifested and asked me: I am right here, so how can you not believe?

I can try to worry this down to nothing, or intellectualize, or throw it out. I've had a bit of time to process it. I will accept it as valid, whatever it means. I have been told, apparently, that we DO survive our bodies and that that individual energy still exists very powerfully. As with all these things, I was afraid that If I told anyone they'd just scoff and say, why was it someone so famous? What makes you think - ? But why not? I'm receptive, and after that heartbreaking movie I was wide open, all defenses down.

Anyway, so many people want or desire or ask for psychic experiences and think they'd be really wonderful, when in fact they can be a bit of an ordeal, in that you question your sanity or at least ask yourself if it was merely a projection of your own desires or your imagination. So I share it with you, just as it was.