imaginarycircus

I had to take half an ambien to get to sleep at 3am last night. I tried to get to sleep on my own for an hour and had no luck. And since I needed to get up before noon I knocked myself out. And of course I had trouble dragging myself out of bed this morning at 11:45am. I feel like some weirdo vegetarian vampire who rose before noon.

Also we are out of catfood. David has been at work every weekend for a month. We are out of human food, and now out of cat food. Luckily we have frozen shrimp. And shrimp are Bertie's favorite thing in the world. He finished the rest of his catfood today and has also had several chopped up poached shrimps and also just now some seared tuna left over from my dinner. I hope he doesn't turn his nose up at his dry food once I get some more tomorrow.

It was one of those perfect September days today that fool me into thinking it is still summer: almost 80 degrees, slightly humid, leaves still green, flowers still blooming. I had a quiet train ride into Manhattan while reading more of the MS about a trip to Africa to see where the author's sister lived and died in Namibia. I grabbed an excellent coffee from the MUD truck at Astor Place. As I was walking down Lafayette to the new lit agency I saw a woman on a bicycle run a man over. He was totally OK. It was sort of comical from my point of view, but then I didn't get knocked over by a cyclist.

I read through a whole pile of manuscripts and sent out rejection emails. I really feel mean and bitchy after rejecting twenty people with emails like this:

Dear Author,

Thank you for sending an excerpt from the English translation of your book. The subject is interesting and important, and I do agree that your mother's stories provide an intriguing perspective on events of the last century. I found the prose somewhat anemic and the lack of energy made the difficult subject matter oppressive. I know you cannot write cheerfully about death and hardship, and that is not what I am trying to get across. There are memoirs and biographies that treat difficult times with the right tone, but also with a certain energy that draws the reader in and keeps her reading through the darkest hours. I'm sorry but this book is not a good match for my list.

Best Wishes on your search for representation...

Oy gevalt. (Or as I said once much to David's amusement Oi gestalt. Yeah, I don't speak German or Yiddish. Thank God I didn't say that in front of his grandmother!)

I was supposed to met a friend for dinner or a drink and she called and sounded really depressed and said she didn't feel up for it. I convinced her to at least get a drink with me and offered to come up to her office near Grammercy, which worked out perfectly.

We walked by the park and smiled at all the dogs and she told me about her crappy week and her difficult new bosses. I did my best to convince her that they are crazy and she is capable and awesome. I hope she doesn''t work there long. It is a very established literary agency and the office is in the basement of their home on Grammercy Park. My friend's office is in the basement and they sort treat her like a serf in the dungeon.

We landed at Les Halles, yes -- Anthony Bourdain's place, of course he probably wasn't there. I had a glass of wine and we split this incredible melted brie with honey and cracked pepper on toasted baguette with a small salad. So delicious I almost exploded all over the large framed vintage ads for Camembert and Vin Rouge. I had a fabulous seared tuna with olives and capers with grilled vegetables. Julie had seared scallops that looked fabulous. For dessert we had coffee which they poured flaming Grande Manier into at the table. It was goofy but so fun. I love flaming desserts and drinks.

We wandered over to Madison Sq. Park and watched the dogs walk by and just chatted about marriage, and personal grooming, and always about words and books and writing.

I hopped on the subway back and started reading the free copy of "My Life in France" by Julia Child and her niece Alex Prud'homme. So far it is every bit as delightful as I had heard and hoped. I don't know if I can express my fascination for Julie Child in less than a 10,000 word essay -- but I will try.

My mother's parents were Irish and Scottish. The liked food that was boiled or roasted. They did have some worldliness, and they lived at the Algonquin Hotel in the mid 1940s. They mostly knew a good martini when they had one. My mother and my aunt grew increasingly passionate about food once they were adults. They read the NY Times columns, especially the Craig Claiborne articles with fervor. If my mother hadn't had to put up with my incredibly fussy and bland palette she probably would have cooked her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking a lot faster than just the dinners she made for special occasions. Occasions when I could be fobbed off with pizza or macaroni and cheese (not from a box!) and sent to bed or very rarely allowed to watch TV, she would cook lobsters, coquilles St. Jaques, poach whole salmon, make her own Hollandaise sauce, etc. I was more impressed when she made homemade doughnuts.

I do have rather vivid memories of watching Julia Child on PBS with my mother. I wasn't allowed to watch much TV as a kid, and none during the week. I remember watching Masterpiece Theatre and Julia Child The French Chef and endless boring boradcasts of the MacNeil Lehrer New Hour. (Oh, and occasionally Mutual of Omaha presents Wild Kingdom.) I remember watching Julia Child and being riveted, even though I didn't want to eat 90% of what she was cooking. My mother and I would watch her throw an omelet on the floor and laugh, we would laugh too. Even though I didn't want to eat anything interesting, I knew there was interesting food out there. I knew there were interesting passionate people who cared about food in a way that I didn't. Well, used to not care-- because I certainly care now.

I've said this a dozen times here on LJ and outloud. I'm so sorry my mother died before I started to love food. Part of me wonders if I would have changed if she had lived, maybe I would still be eating the same sad, limited diet if she were alive? I doubt it, but who knows.

I don't kid myself that we would be cooking together, because we probably wouldn't. My mother was a bit of a control freak in the kitchen and I have sadly inherited this craziness to some degree. I think I have loosened up and relaxed a bit while trying to teach David to sous chef. But I think my mother and I would certainly have eaten more together and she would have been so pleased to learn that I know love many of the things she did.

God, I doubt anyone is still reading this long wandering mess. But all I really wanted to say is this book is fabulous and gave me that utterly buoyant lightness in my chest that certain very engaging books are capable of producing. In the introduction Child writes:

"When I reread them now, the events those letters describe come rushing back to me with great immediacy. Paul noticing the brilliant sparkle of autumn light on the dark Seine, his daily battles with Washington bureaucrats, the smell of Montmartre at dusk, or the night we spied wild-haired Collete eating at that wonderful Old World restaurant Le Grande Vefour. In my letters I enthuse over my first toothsome French duck roasted before an open fire, or the gossip I'd heard from the vegetable lady in the Rue de Bourgogne marketplace, or the latest mischief of our cat, Minette, or the failures and triumphs of our cookbook work."

I've been to Paris before and it was beautiful, but I don't think I appreciated it then the way I would now -- except for the pain au chocolat. And since I can't afford a trip there this year, this book is an excellent substitute.