Trouble in the morning

Perhaps that wasn't the best title for a post... But it's the morning, and I've been having trouble in the morning.

By temperament I'm a morning person. I wake up early, usually before my alarm goes off, and quickly, the old cogs and wheels humming away in no time. I'm a tea person in the morning, but if I miss the morning cup of the steaming, I can usually start my day just fine.

Until recently, when everything has changed.

The alarm rings. And I find myself immediately renegotiating with this beast of a thing. Five minutes of the news before I get up. Just five. Ten minutes later, I stir again since the news is still going and decide I need five more... And on it goes. Usually for about 25 minutes. I know that's not a lot (right?) but it's a new problem for me and I have been wondering why.

The easiest explanation is working later into the night than usual, so more tired in the morning.

But I also worry that perhaps part of the answer is not wanting to face the day ahead. Don't want to make it seem personally grim, because it's not. But there doesn't seem to be too much good news around. When I'm at the airport, I see people huddled around the television as though they are watching an update from the war front, but instead they are getting a market update. And the presidential debates. Don't get me started.

I've recently taken to not listening to the news in the evening. I just listen to Ella or Ethiopique (thanks Mia!) or (though exercise extreme caution) Mahler.

Wouldn't it be so appealing just to postpone all the dirty business just a little? Come to think of it, I suppose that's what I'm doing with this post.

BB

Will he, or won't he? Will he or won't he? Willheorwonthe?

I'm sure we've all spent some of our days repeating this question, over and over, over and over: sometimes a prayer (as between the pause your thoughts silently cry out "He will!"); sometimes a dirge ("He won't, he won't..."); sometimes a palliative ("I know he won't, so it's ok, so I won't feel too bad when he doesn't"); and sometimes a mantra, a sequence of words whose power derives not so much as from their meaning as their inherent power and repetition.

You know where I was last Friday. Now take a guess where I am today. Now take a guess what I'm doing. And repeat after me: he will, he will, he will; he had better, HE HAD BETTER, AHHHHHHHH!

BB

P.S. -- See comments.

Recipe for happiness

Now follow this exactly, or it won't work:

(1) Wake up.
(2) Eat no solids -- liquids allowed -- coffee, tea, water, milk, whatever you need.
(3) Eat no lunch.
(4) Get in a taxi (water taxi for you Venetians) and direct it to the airport (with the words, "Driver, aiport please" if possible).
(5) When you're asked which airline you're flying, respond. "Oh, I don't know, xx sounds nice", where for "xx" you fill in some spot you really want to go to.
(6) Reach airport, get ticket, get through security.
(7) Shop -- I know the selection isn't great, but be more process oriented.
(8) Drink (note, it's pretty much on an empty stomach) -- two glasses of champagne or if good champagne isn't available (i.e., French) then go for a solid shot of your favourite spirit.
(9) Post blog entry about your feelings of elation while waiting for your flight.

BB

Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus

Even with the help of Wikipedia this all the cleverness I can manage for the morning...

So I'm back in New York and in Boston. How can one return to two places? Many people ask me this, and a few understand, but nonetheless it is difficult to explain. It's not like you mirror your life, with two of everything. Because each side of the mirror is different. For a long while the Boston side had a work life and spartan living, and New York had my apartment and life. I've recently moved the flat to Boston, so what's left here in New York? A camp-like sublet, while I'm waiting on a more stable place in New York. And of course life!

New York in summer is a bit like a hyperactive child on Ritalin -- it is quieter than usual, though only a loving parent would notice. But it's true. You can actually get into a restaurant of your choice on 5 minutes' notice, and at a decent time (8,9,10 are prime time depending on your age and nationality) rather than phoning 10 days ahead to be told gleefully that "we can offer you 5.30 or 11.30". It's true none of the usual celebrities are hanging out, and the famous chefs are probably away too. But that's fine with me -- I don't care for the former and I'm sure the latter are pretty handy with a whisk as well.

Of course, some things you do have two of -- toothbrush, for example. But for everything else you end up either wishing you had the things from one city in the other, or worse forgetting where everything is, or even worse losing things in the back and forth.

But what I feel most strongly is indeed that time flees. The promised summer came and went (note the past tense, sadly). And yes, work was done, meals cooked and enjoyed, friends well met, concerts attended, all washed down with whine.

Perhaps a little more grit, earth, sand, friction, texture would slow things down, and if they went slower then I could savor every moment a little more (extensively, if not intensively, because if nothing else, life is intense).

Perhaps a little more idling would allow dust to gather, seeds to sprout, and the joys of life to settle around me, like a flock of birds coming to rest, rather than me like a hound in pursuit.

Tempus fugit. (And indeed why not that other over-used but profound phrase?) Carpe diem.*

BB

P.S. I usually blog about my musical follies, but here's my soundtrack for the morning and a solid start if you're feeling autumnal in late summer.

** Horace, Odes, 1.11

Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi	Leuconoe, don't ask — it's a sin to know —
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios	what end the gods will give me or you. Don't play with Babylonian
temptaris numeros. ut melius, quidquid erit, pati.	fortune-telling either. It is better to endure whatever will be.
seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,	Whether Jupiter has allotted to you many more winters or this final one
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare	which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the rocks placed opposite
Tyrrhenum: sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi	— be smart, drink your wine. Scale back your long hopes
spem longam reseces. dum loquimur, fugerit invida	to a short period. While we speak, envious time will have {already} fled
aetas: carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.	Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.

(Thank you Wikiedia for this bit of cleverness. Absurdly I "read" the Odes when I was 17. Sometimes it might be better to leave some pleasures to later in life when one can appreciate them.)

Back to the word

Things have been so hectic that I have had little chance to put together any visual distractions for my posts. Goodness, minus the keyboard and computer this is what it must have been like in the 19th C -- only words!

Several of you have kindly asked where I'm holed up in New York. If I could, I would post a picture of the cute sublet I've managed to snag in the Columbia University area (on the west side of Manhattan near 116th Street), but that would require transporting my camera and the cable I use to transfer pictures off the camera from Boston to New York. Two city living has its charms -- by the time I'm getting bored in Boston, it's pretty much time to head off to New York.

Eventually I have a master plan in which I will have two of everything: two computers, two toothbrushes, two wardrobes, and all I will have to do is to transport myself between A and B. But as I'm already discovering there's a danger here -- pretty soon there will also be two of me and one won't be talking too much to the other!

xoxo

BB

Missing (not only) my computer

As I sit down at my computer, I feel immediately at home in this sublet I've taken in New York. It's both surprising and rather obvious. Pictures, music, e-mails, even work -- they're all here.

And I realize why I 've felt stretched so thin lately. The first week away from the computer was great, but by week two, though I was checking e-mails, there was just the comfort of doing all of that in my home computing environment that I missed.

So good to be home at last, at least in computerland.

But still missing everything else...

xoxo

BB

Proof of life

Greetings friends,

Just wanted to drop a little line to confirm that I still exist. Soon there will be pictures, perhaps the odd poem or two, and more than a few complaints.

But right now it's back to the fray...

xoxo

BB

As I'm sure you already knew...

I find these among the more annoying words out there, because they usually precede some remarkable fact that you had absolutely no possible way of knowing. So...

As I'm sure you already knew, I'm moving. In fact, I've moved.

* * *

Well, it's not a huge shock, I hope, because I've been dropping hints, and I've let a few of you know in person. But it has happened. I'm no longer in London. It's something of an identity crisis for the blog, because it started as a New Yorker moves to London adventure. But we've migrated away from that for a while now, so I think we can survive, can't we?

* * *

I wanted to make a better announcement, with some very clever insights about London versus New York, tie it all up with a bow, but in some ways I'm pleased I did not or could not. I would rather like this blog to meander along in whatever direction it will go.

* * *

And to the new (temporary?) name: bbNY. Several interpretations here: Bombay Beauty (back in) New York. Partly true. But I will also have another foot in Boston. And so my own thinking was: bombay boston new york or bbNY.

You've come with me this far. I hope you'll take the next steps with me as well.

xoxo

BB

A year!

Gentle reader,

It passed quietly, without a cake or champagne, but it's been a year and counting now for this little blog. I feel that I should provide some grand overview, some vision of life, and actually I have some long overdue, big (big!) announcements. I'll postpone the last, and don't really have the others, but then I'll mark a year this way.

These are the films I watched at home this year, an unedited list. You'll notice the list starts in August, that's when I started my Love Film subscription (like Netflix for you Americans). Yes, I'm willing to confess that I rented The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Yes, I'm a little embarrassed. Does this list prove that I've wasted my evenings when I could have been doing something more productive, e.g., saving the world, stopping global warming? Yes, perhaps. But the list embodies growth and expansion for me: growth of my aesthetic horizons, each film is like a tree ring, in itself meaningless but important to mark the passage of time.

I hope we, you and I, blogger and reader, have more journeys and growth together over the next year.

xoxo

BB

A year in film
The Decalogue, Volume 1, June 12 2008.
All that Jazz, 11th June 2008
The Seventh Seal 29th May 2008
The Wind That Shakes The Barley 29th May 2008
Ivan's Childhood 21st May 2008
Dirty Pretty Things 3rd May 2008
Last Year At Marienbad 30th Apr 2008
Autumn Sonata 18th Apr 2008
Little Dieter Needs to Fly 15th Apr 2008
Ikiru 26th Mar 2008
The Silence 12th Mar 2008
Wild Strawberries 27th Feb 2008
That Obscure Object of Desire 2nd Feb 2008
Secret Ceremony 2.5 19th Jan 2008
Yojimbo 17th Jan 2008
Dirk Bogarde - Accident 15th Jan 2008
Dirk Bogarde - The Sleeping Tiger 1st Apr 2008
Dirk Bogarde - The Servant 14th Feb 2008
Fanny And Alexander 10th Dec 2007
The Final Days Documentary - Marilyn Monroe 21st Nov 2007
Days Of Heaven 17th Nov 2007
Scenes From A Marriage 16th Nov 2007
Easy Rider 7th Nov 2007
Sanjuro 6th Nov 2007
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang 26th Oct 2007
L'Eclisse 23rd Oct 2007
Raging Bull 23rd Oct 2007
Persona 17th Oct 2007
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets 16th Oct 2007
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban 21st Sept 2007
Jules Et Jim 20th Sept 2007
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire 18th Sept 2007
Some Like It Hot 12th Sept 2007
Seven Samurai 10th Sept 2007
Blow Up 28th Aug 2007
Children Of Men 21st Aug 2007
La Dolce Vita 21st Aug 2007
40 Year-Old Virgin 16th Aug 2007

The Bird

I can all ready hear the groans. Why and from whom? Because for the last several months I have been complaining to anyone who would listen that I am being persecuted by a bird. I thought initially it was several birds, Hitchcock style, but have now concluded it is one solitary irresponsible bird. This early bird, for that's what he is, starts to sing between 4.15 and 4.45 every morning, though usually much closer to the latter time. After doing his think for a few minutes he goes back to sleep, leaving me wide awake and unable to sleep. The first few times it was charming and I didn't mention it to anyone. The I did a small blog entry. But after six weeks of missing the tail end of my sleep I couldn't take it anymore. I began wearing earplugs to sleep. By and large this works, but sometimes this bird wakes me up through the earplugs.

You see? You don't believe me do you? I've tried to record it, but you've got to imagine it 10 times louder - or more precisely piercing.


Aren't birds adorable little fluffy creatures? By and large they do appear to be. But recall that the genetically closest living descents of dinosaurs have been show to be birds.

Blogus in extremis

I have been reading a lengthy cover article in the New York Times Magazine by Emily Gould, who at one time wrote for the gossipy-snarky New York media blog called Gawker. It's worth a look for any of us who write blogs, not because I agree with most of her thoughts or share her experiences or because we'll end up where she did (don't worry, not jail!), but because of how the early steps of this de/ascent to purgatory were so normal and gradual, the kind of thing each of us has probably experienced a little bit as well.





A few choice extracts:

Back in 2006, I had just been promoted to associate editor at the publishing house where I’d been working since I graduated from college, and ... almost every day I updated my year-old blog, Emily Magazine, to let a few hundred people know what I was reading and watching and thinking about.

Some of my blog’s readers were my friends in real life, and even the ones who weren’t acted like friends when they posted comments or sent me e-mail. They criticized me sometimes, but kindly, the way you chide someone you know well. Some of them had blogs, too, and I read those and left my own comments. As... one-dimensional as my relationships with these people were, they were important to me. They made me feel like a part of some kind of community, and that made the giant city I lived in seem smaller and more manageable.

... But is that really what’s making people blog? After all, online, you’re not even competing for 10 grand and a Kia. I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept — a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you.

After the first night [after my breakup] ... I woke up as the sun rose and sat down at my desk to write a post that was nominally about a recent New York Times article about the shelf-life of romantic love. My boyfriend and I had just broken up, I revealed, and so I had been wondering whether love really exists. I wrote that I had concluded that it does. We can’t expect other people to make us happy, I informed my readers with total sincerity and earnestness, and we should live in the moment and stop obsessing about the future...I shudder involuntarily when I read this post now. It’s like stumbling across a diary I kept as a teenager. It’s probably one of the worst things that I’ve ever written. The commenters loved it.

Gawker had recently added a counter beside each post that displayed how many views it received. Now it was easy to see exactly how many people cared about my feelings. The site’s owner didn’t like my “I believe in love” post, he told me, but he said he was O.K. with it because, as everyone could see, more than 10,000 people disagreed with him. Readers e-mailed me their own breakup horror stories and posted hundreds of comments, advising me about flavors of ice cream to eat, and I reveled in the attention. I had managed to turn my job into a group therapy session. “Emily, I don’t really know you any more than I know the people I see every morning walking the dogs,” one of them wrote. “It’s more of an imagined familiarity born out of reading your words for a year. But that took guts, all the way around. And I’m in your corner, inasmuch as a somewhat anonymous, faceless, nameless commenter can be.”

All of this does make me think how grateful I am for the few but loyal readers of this blog. Group hug!

Love you all,

xoxo

BB

Portrait of a lady

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it … you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you—
Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!”

T.S. Eliot, Portrait of a Lady, inspired by this wonderful portrait -- and in this case I do urge you to take this quotation out of the context of the original poem!

BB

Thighs and calves

Apologies for this rather anatomical title, but I've been thinking about thighs and calves. No not in general, but with this theory in mind -- in walking cities, people have good calves, and in bicycling cities people have good thighs. Note to self: must both bicycle and walk!!! BB

Trouble sleeping

I've been having trouble sleeping lately, which is just the nearest excuse at hand for my lack of posts over the last week. Normally I'm a good sleeper: 6 hours needed and usually achieved with 6-7 hours in bed. Solidly through the night, into a light sleep early in the morning so I wake up without an alarm most of the time. Isn't life wonderful?

I've already mentioned the birds. Well that singing bird is back, big time. He (she?) is Sinatra (Celine Deon) in Vegas. Really, such sweet song, but at 4.45 am every morning? The other day 4.30!

But what happens these days is that I wake up and look at the clock with those is-it-morning-yet eyes and find it is only 2.00 am! But it seems very bright outside. And when that bird sings, it again seems pretty sunny outside. Does the sun not set in London? Am I being transported to the Arctic Circle while I sleep? Woody Allen couldn't film any late night strolls through London, as he has in New York, at least in this season.

Of course the irony is that in New York, even if it's dark, there are so many things to do at all times of the night. You can sleep, but you don't have to. Here instead, it seems I can't sleep, but wish I could because there's nothing to do after 11 pm. OK, I could go clubbing - but when it's so bright out?

One of these nights I'm just going to get up at 2, dress, and head out for a stroll, and see what it's like. Await future posts.

ZZzzzzzzz

BB



Manhattan, 59th Street Bridge, 6 am. In Allen's forthcoming Central London this scene will be filmed at 2 am.

Autumn Sonata, or Kodak carousel slide projector (discontinued October 2004), or Do you remember?

Sitting in the dark, the sequence of images flicker and flit across the screen, some holding there a beat too long, others never enough. Dusty darkness, dusty past, never past enough, never near enough, gone, extinguished, when lights come up and the lamp is off.

Winter nights, the fan rumbles on, cooling the machine, after the images are gone, but the air it blows on me is hot, hot in the cool, lonely air, wishing for more, more time to stay awake before it's time for bed, more joys, more sadness worth living.

bb

Jet lag and 3 firsts

I don't usually complain about jet lag, because I don't really suffer from it. I was on flugelbinding trip to the Americas (just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in -- is that quote from The Godfather or Seinfeld?) and got back Saturday morning. I had a busy-ish day cleansing the accumulated pockets of excess papers around the house (my father would be proud!)

In the evening my friend Clementine introduced me to her new bicycle and tried to persuade me to take her old one. I declined (I prefer to walk -- better exercise for point A to point B travel and I'm nervous about bicycling on the streets of London), but I did agree to take it for a spin to join C at a tapas place in Clerkenwell. I was following C through the streets of London as she zigged, zagged, went around a bus, cut through one-way streets, and occasionally through pedestrian sections. I was concerned, alarmed, panicked, thrilled, drained, and pleased to be alive.

This morning I couldn't get up. Must have been the jet lag -- really. I am morning person, without any trouble getting up in the morning. I recall at about 8.30 my apartment was so bright. Then I dozed a bit, and then a bit more. It was not the delicious extra 30 minutes you sometimes steal if you wake up earlier than needed or after your partner has vacated the bed. It was an exhausted, heavy-head sleep. It was like trying to escape quicksand. Finally I did. At 9.30. My father would not be proud.

I went to the market, but more on this later.

After some restorative coffees I went to join my friend Ginny in Islington. I decided to walk. It's a nice walk, but at some point I found myself next to Pentonville Prison. There is a prison in central London? you ask. Yes there is, I reply.

We had a nice cuppa, and now I'm home about to engage in my three firsts for today: the first time I've seen and cooked rhubarb, the first time I've cooked artichoke (the Jerusalem variety), and the first time I've cooked swede (no, not a Swede...)

xoxo

BB

New words, same guilt. Or The new carbs

Just read this phrase in the newspaper, "carbon indulgence".

referring to someone who was trying to design an environmentally
friendly home but allowed himself the indulgence
of importing the wind turbines from Finland
- saving electricity but using so much to transport them
to Chicago - are you following this?

What is next? Carbon guilt? Carbon envy?

I had just caught up with the idea of "carb indulgence" and "carb guilt", where carb refers to carbohydrates. When did the staples of my childhood, pasta and bread, become a guilty indulgence, to be savored like cake? I don't know, but it happened.

Of course I grew up on chapatis and vegetables ,
so for example the idea of eating chapatis
with chapatis does seem rather odd.
Italian readers' opinions?
Would you call pasta and bread a staple,
or was this part of the Internationalization/ vulgarization
of Italian food where the concept of pasta as the primo
was lost and it became the main?

Perhaps it is our age. We are well intentioned, well informed, but utterly incapable of doing anything other than feeling guilty about our incapacity.

OK, I'm talking about myself.

BB

An early spring

I was in detox mode. No not from that, nor that, but the other stuff, you know? The only thing I could bring myself to do was walk. I walked to Hampstead Heath, and then walked on the the heath (coming from a place that doesn't have too many heaths, this is still pretty exciting -- these English place names, heaths and moors, and whatnot).

I thought this would be a PH style this-weekend-I post, but I realized I didn't quite have the style or substance for it: This weekend I watched all of 24 (season 3). This weekend I drank a good bottle of wine (oops, there's one wagon I fell off). This weekend I cooked soup (sweet potato and cauliflower, from a book by Peter Gorden) and polished it off whilst polishing off the aforementioned 24 (season 3). I slept early, but slept badly, having caught a cold (was it wandering the heath? or was it from a girl at Godiva who cheerful announced the she had a cold while offering me a chocolate to taste -- I took it anyway).

But there was that walk on the health. My eyes felt heavy, the air pleasant, but laced with just enough cool to keep you balanced between alert and drowsy.

It was sort of like this:




BB