Sex After Sixty

The writer as creator: Wallace Stevens, part five

2012-01-27T06:50:00.000Z

Four weeks ago, I began an in-depth study of Wallace Stevens’ work that I deeply admire and my contention, despite the great love I have for his work, that he did not confront, perhaps not until close to his death, the primary issues of faith: a subject he deals with again and again through his view of the imagination as all, his view that whatever is spiritual comes out of the mind. To

The writer as creator: Wallace Stevens, part four

2012-01-23T16:57:00.000Z

Three weeks ago, I began an in-depth study of Wallace Stevens’ work that I deeply admire and my contention, despite the great love I have for his work, that he did not confront, perhaps not until close to his death, the primary issues of faith: a subject he deals with again and again through his view of the imagination as all, his view that whatever is spiritual comes out of the mind. To

The writer as creator: Wallace Stevens, part three

2012-01-11T21:30:00.000Z

Two weeks ago, I began an in-depth study of Wallace Stevens’ work that I deeply admire and my contention, despite the great love I have for his work, that he did not confront, perhaps not until close to his death, the primary issues of faith: a subject he deals with again and again through his view of the imagination as all, his view that whatever is spiritual comes out of the mind. To review

The writer as creator: Wallace Stevens, part two

2011-12-22T19:22:00.000Z

Wallace Stevens Last week I began an in depth study of Wallace Stevens’ work that I deeply admire and my contention, despite the great love I have for his work, that he did not confront, perhaps not until close to his death, the primary issues of faith: a subject he deals with again and again through his view of the imagination as all, his view that whatever is spiritual comes out of the

The writer as creator: Wallace Stevens, part one

2011-12-15T16:59:00.000Z

The photo shoot was magical. We loved Lauren Epstein (Real Simple editor), Casey Tierney (Real Simple editor), Glenn Glasser (photographer), Melissa Silver (make-up: boy, does she know what to do with a face that’s seen some time), Ben Thigpen (hair; such care such tenderness with all this white hair), Maria Stefania (wardrobe though I ended up wearing all my own

Manhattan Photo Shoot: More on New Orleans and more Qs ?????

2011-04-04T16:53:00.000Z

It’s a week before the shoot in Manhattan and the q’s continue while D. and I are desperately seeking a big easy. Buffa's where the locals play and eat Sunday brunch Stephanie Booth, the author of the Real Simple article continues to press: stuff that’s not in the memoir (Re)Making Love, but stuff that hangs at sea without that story. Here’s another glimpse: Stephanie’s

Photo shoot in Manhattan????--but first New Orleans

2011-03-22T16:55:00.003Z

While the Real Simple article and its editors were deciding whether to send the mag. to bed with me and the infamous D. in it, we took a trip to New Orleans. If you can believe it Real Simple was worried that I was some big-time writer with a new memoir (Re)Making Love—but they couldn’t find the book—as my publisher has his own ways of testing the e-book market—another story for another day. So

Literary Magazines (or Ezines): Why Bother?

2011-01-27T21:56:00.001Z

You wanna get published, right? You’ve got the short story done. You’re working on the novel. You don’t have an agent, a big publishing house. Yeah, we all want that. You may say, “Literary Magazines: Why bother?” I say the “little” guys take more risks than the slicks or higher circulation journals. Traditionalists say, get in print first—and maybe you should. Yes, the literary world is changing

New Post coming on the Real Simple interview process and New Orleans

2011-01-25T19:09:00.004Z

Note to my readers: I'll be back soon with a brand new post on the Real Simple article, entitled "Toward a More Perfect Union," the interview process--and the miracle of New Orleans: How these connect is quite a story. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the Real Simple article--and if you want the WHOLE story get the memoir that saved my life here. As I forge ahead like a little boat on the sea of

Interview by Louise Wise

2011-01-07T18:55:00.001Z

My heartfelt thanks to Louise Wise for the interview that you can read in full here: Here's a glimpse: (Re) Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story By Mary L. Tabor Fresh, quirky and delightful, (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story, is brutally honest while giving hope that passion doesn’t need to end after a certain age. Tabor takes the reader from Washington, DC to Missouri to Australia

Daisy Hickman on The Way We Live

2011-01-01T18:46:00.013Z

Daisy Hickman, poet, blogger, wise soul writes here as my guest. She writes on “living.” The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre asserts in After Virtue, his examination of the history of philosophy and the importance of the Aristotelian virtues, that “...a human life is understood as a progress through harms and dangers, moral and physical, which someone may encounter and overcome in better and

Why I came to writing so late ...

2010-12-18T16:29:00.006Z

With thanks to Daisy Hickman (Twitter friend and soul par excellence) I published my first book at age 60. You might argue that I was a has-been before I began. I argue, “It ain’t over 'till it’s over.” Inside that bravado lies a question I was unable to address until my world cratered. I stood at a distance from this question, I, who began writing with my life’s breath in 1987 when my first

On the lyric and the short story

2010-12-02T16:12:00.014Z

"Make room for the roots!" --Stanley Kunitz Hoping here for guest bloggers soon: Rob Pluta, Daisy Hickman and Susan Tiner. In the meantime, I thought it was time for me to ponder the writing process with you and with the hope that you will comment. For today: Leavings, poems and the short story as lyric. I believe that the poem and the short story share the quality of concentrated language

Frank Orlando on Sex After Sixty, Sicily, The Mafia, Food and Self-Discovery

2010-11-07T15:07:00.013Z

Frank Orlando guest blogs today. How might this have happened you? might ask. Okay so maybe you wouldn’t ask that. Frank found me when I was Internet dating, he “friended” me on Facebook and has been a loyal follower of this blog and then he joined the Facebook page for (Re)Making Love: a sex after sixtystory where supporters hit the “like” button to help get my memoir off the ground. Please do

Cathryn Wellner on the risks the storyteller takes

2010-10-09T17:43:00.006Z

Cathyrn Wellner graces these pages today with her guest essay. Here’s some background: Cathryn is part of an international network of storytellers. These courageous folk operate in the oral tradition of Homer. For a decade, between careers as a school librarian and later as a community development consultant, Cathryn performed as a storyteller, spoke at conferences, and offered workshops in

Joe Sample, Elizabeth Spires and autumn’s heaven

2010-09-26T18:23:00.004Z

Where is the spirit, the sense of being in the presence of the creator, whatever that might mean? I found myself asking while at a jazz concert at Blue’s Alley on Friday, September 24, 2010. Joe Sample, jazz pianist and composer was playing and chatting with the small but packed crowd at this club in Georgetown here in D.C. If you don’t know who Joe Sample is, and I didn’t until that evening, I

The grace and beauty that is JAKI SCARCELLO

2010-09-09T17:14:00.005Z

With great honor, I introduce you today to Jaki Scarcello. This extraordinary and beautiful woman has written the book Fifty & Fabulous! The Best Years of a Woman's Life. Jaki tells us how to age, how to live deeply and fully, how to find grace with age. Early in the book Jaki quotes Joan Erickson, the wife of psychologist Eric Erickson. On her 94th birthday Joan said,Our bodies wear out, our

The generosity of Twitter

2010-08-25T22:09:00.014Z

Today is August 25, my parents’ anniversary and the day I began writing my memoir here on this blog and now entitled (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story. I began this way two years ago: I need to live alone I love romantic comedies: weep over them, quote their dialogue without attribution in conversation as when I am with a man who says he wants to be friends with me, “You actually believe

What's your secret weapon?

2010-08-12T15:26:00.010Z

When you think no one is there, someone answers and how! That someone turns out to be the incredible Jane Friedman. Don’t know her? Let me introduce her to you and tell you what she did for me! If you are a blogger, writer and care about the creative process, you’ll want to follow her on Twitter. Jane is currently the strategic director of Writer’s Digest, where in 2001 she took over as their

I must have done something good

2010-08-02T15:01:00.006Z

Do you recall that line from the song in The Sound of Music? That’s how I feel because The Foodinista found me! Her website gives me fantastic recipes, the chicest of the chic ideas for home and fashion—even if I can’t afford that gorgeous vintage watch or fit into those skinny jeans. She cooks, she nests, she loves and she READS! Who knew?Who knew also that she turns out to be a well-known

How the book came to be

2010-07-17T15:33:00.030Z

My publisher has written a beautiful description of how the book came to be. Go here to read it. I sometimes wonder why I write, but I write. In the solitude of the metaphorical attic—yes, there was once a real attic—the writing is a solitary act and the joys come in the room of my own where I work—small but precious like flakes of snow on a midnight walk. When someone who believes in the book

Here’s to the game of poetry and life!

2010-06-28T14:50:00.071Z

I have learned that, sure, life throws unhittable curve balls—and that if you keep goin' to bat, sure, you’ll strike out. But if you watch and listen, your body and mind and soul will learn. I have learned that it's never to late to find love—or oneself.And so we partied not just for this book—though it was a book party!—but for the writing and the hope it offers all of us who sit alone in our

What's it all about, Alfie?

2010-06-19T17:30:00.016Z

Yes, you are invited to the book party: see below. But maybe you'd like to know what this book is about?Here you go, the publisher's book description:Fresh, quirky and delightful, (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story, is brutally honest while giving hope that passion doesn’t need to end after a certain age. Tabor takes the reader from Washington, DC to Missouri to Australia and eventually to

The Book Is Out!

2010-06-16T16:15:00.008Z

Heavens to Betsy, the book is out and ready for purchase. Go here (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Story to get the paperback, the eBook for iPad, Sony Reader, or if you don't have either of these and want to read the book on your computer: the pdf. Publisher is working on the Kindle version. That will be up on Amazon and in the publisher's link for the book soon: probably by Sunday or Monday.And if

The Book Party

2010-06-11T17:34:00.015Z

You are invited to the book party for (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story : Walk-ins welcome: tell your friends: this is a drop-in party: feel free to come for drinks and a great bite or two or more of food-- it's a party!When: June 25, 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.mWhere: McCormick & Schmick's, 901 F Street, NW, Gallery Place and Metro Center Metro stops, Valet ParkingWhat: beer, wine and food (seafood

When wishing still did some good

2010-05-25T16:48:00.004Z

I guess this falls in the category of “seeing is believing.” The first pre-publication review of (RE)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story is here: Flash Fiction. An interview with me about the process of writing, family reaction and other personal stuff is here, too, Flash Fiction.Click on the links to read the review and the interview but also know that this is a great site: lots of stuff about

Poet Ravi Shankar and the world in his words

2010-05-20T19:11:00.009Z

In Ravi Shankar’s new slim book of poems Seamless Matter: Thirty Stills, published by OHM Editions and available through Rain Taxi, he begins with an epigraph from Wallace Stevens’ poem “Description Without Place”:Description is not revelation. It is notThe thing described, nor false facsimile.It is an artificial thing that exists,In its own seeming , plainly visible.Shankar illuminates the

The Book Cover!

2010-05-16T14:42:00.004Z

Here is the book cover, designed by Kittenchops.com. Book is coming soon: I've proofed the galleys, am ever so close. Take a look:

Best Way to Choose

2010-05-09T17:59:00.005Z

As those of you who follow me here know, I have a book coming out entitled (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story. New Cover soon by the fabulous Zaara who is now doing heart-opening work for a children's hospital! You will see the new cover here and at my publisher's site: 3ones, Inc.. I am a writer interested in the bemusing eBook marketplace and will talk more about that soon on a blog that

Robert Hass: Meaning and Form

2010-04-29T16:51:00.015Z

Dear Readers,While I continue working on permissions for the memoir (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story, and with a few exceptions that I will highlight here or on Kelly Abbott's blog, the process has been torturous and in some cases horribly expensive. It has been a frightening alert about quoting that I will talk more about soon. But in contrast to those difficulties, there have also been

Books that changed my life

2010-04-22T17:46:00.002Z

I am reading galleys now for the book: new title! (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story that will be published by 3ones, Inc., as soon as the permissions process is over. I suggest you read David Shields on this torturous process. I will write an essay soon about it all. But in the meantime, Shields has written a controversial, well-reviewed and challenging book that takes on much more than

Time limits

2010-04-11T15:16:00.024Z

I am reprinting here the memoir piece I call “Absent.” It appears in an earlier post, the beginning nugget of my next book. Here I’d like to share with you the ways this piece came to be.I was working with the artist M.M. Panas, whose work I love. I’ve wanted to partner with her for a couple years and finally persuaded her to work with me. This means she shows me a piece and I ponder it while I

Update on the book and the publisher!

2010-04-10T14:24:00.000Z

I am breathless at the moment as Kelly Abbott of 3ones, Inc. is now in the iPad bookstore and has sent me early galleys of what the book Sex After Sixty (New title for the paperback and e-book to be announced here soon!) will look like when bought from Steve Jobs' new and glorious gizmo. Kelly has already done an amazing job: the art work by Kittenchops looks gorgeous and the book turns its pages

On books, love and life

2010-03-21T18:20:00.007Z

While writing and updating the list, Books that changed my life (see the post below), I wrote. Here is a new piece that will be part of a new book. Whether I will blog this book in the raw as I did with Sex After Sixty, remains a question, for this brief slice of memoir, though it adds to the underbelly of the book that is coming out in April, moves me elsewhere:AbsentThe camera was invented in

How writing brought me through

2010-03-20T15:34:00.000Z

Wanna know? Again, I lift the curtain on the writing process: go here and read www.Sharewik.com

Update on Blog-to-Be-Book

2010-02-23T21:29:00.005Z

Dear Readers,I have completed the final edit of Sex After Sixty and sent the manuscript to Kelly Abbott of 3ones, Inc. on Valentine’s Day—Yes, I am an incurable romantic. I want to let you, my readers, who have been a sea of belief for me, know what I have done to my memoir.I re-read and edited from the beginning, what has been a journey of discovery, to ensure that the memoir reads as one

Update and News! Sex After Sixty will be a book!

2010-02-03T15:41:00.011Z

Dear Readers,I have news and you to thank for it! Sex After Sixty has been discovered by the e-book publisher 3ones. Kelly Abbott, 3ones CEO, says (honestly, I hope I’m not dreaming and as all of you know, I am prone to dreaming while awake.): “Mary has written a memoir of the highest quality. Her experiences and the way she brings them to us remind us why we bother to read in the first place:

Lost and found

2010-02-02T22:04:00.041Z

I scroll through the Rom-Coms on my shelf—I originally mistyped self—The unconscious mind has a mind of its own. In this memoir that I wrote “live,” meaning while I was living it, I’ve mulled over, written about, dreamed of: When Harry Met Sally, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Hitch, Something’s Gotta Give, Baby Boom, Holiday, A Man and a Woman, P.S. I love You, Juno, The Thomas Crown Affair—TCA as

Breakfront

2010-01-28T22:11:00.019Z

Here’s a recent conversation with D.: I recalled the line from the Richard Gere and Dianne Lane movie Nights in Rodanthe that I must admit is a truly awful flick with actors I adore. Spoiler here, so skip the next paragraph if you haven’t seen it. Oh, come on, read it anyway.Maybe my problem is simply that Nights in Rodanthe is not a Rom-Com. As I’ve said, in the true Rom-Com two cynics meet,

You cannot get out of the game

2010-01-24T21:36:00.009Z

While I was dating, while the process of discovery unfolded, before Paris, D. sent me an article about the winemaker we’d met on a vacation to Napa: Soter’s winery is Etude: a word that evokes memory and music and a type of composition that was sometimes written as an exercise: to learn from. That’s what we’ve been doing, creating an etude.Over a glass of wine in Paris at Café Sevigny, after I’d

Hang in there: Interruptus (sort of) UPDATE

2010-01-10T17:51:00.009Z

Dear Readers,I think I have the story in the right order now. I am reading to nit-pick edit/cut more if needed (I did a lot of this over the weekend while I re-ordered). Golly, worked non-stop this weekend on #1 below, barely slept because I see now how the pieces fit. So here are the tasks I have set for myself: 1. Rewrite this blog as a narrative that makes chronological sense. The story I

The last place you look

2010-01-02T16:39:00.014Z

Music from a window in Paris, a pianist’s ringing tones, notes cascading on the air like cartoon quarter notes slide down a music staff from the open window: I have walked from 7 Rue des Francs-Bourgeois along Pavée Payenne, stopped for a cappuccino at my favorite Café Sévigné at corner of Rue du Parc Royal—not on the street of its name—and thought once again that nothing is what it seems. I did

Repair

2009-12-24T14:42:00.053Z

Paris repairs. Consider The Hôtel de Ville, city hall, in the 4th arrondissement, a giant sand castle fantasy that dates from 1357 and is still the working center of the city. At night it sparkles like a dream come true.Take the Metro to the station of that name or simply walk Rue de Rivoli. Start in Marais and follow that road all the way to the Louvre or further if you are going to eat at Le

What happens in Paris

2009-12-21T14:44:00.011Z

I'm tempted to say, What happens in Paris stays in Paris. . . But I will tell all. Read here for the joys of Paris, the light-hearted city full of lights. The bateau at night is incredible just as it is in Charade—well, okay not that incredible. After all I am not Audrey Hepburn but Cary: Peter/Brian/Adam has appeared. More to come on who is who. Pick up the bateaux at Pont De L'Alma at 5 pm in

Bridges

2009-12-17T11:27:00.012Z

The days are short in Paris: sunrise today at 8:38, sunset at 4:53: Check your city and compare at http://www.sunrisesunset.comYesterday after the long walk west on Rue des Francs-Bourgeois that turns into Rue Rambuteau to the closed Pompidou, I return to stand by the Seine at Quai Henry IV near my apartment as the sun takes its slide down. Take a look here: http://www.abcgallery.com/R/rousseau

Doors

2009-12-16T11:19:00.010Z

Limits of Control, Jim Jarmusch’s film about art and life and what we can and cannot control, perhaps about how we know what we think we know is running at the theater next to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the glass towers of books that go on and on and on—that Sebold writes about in Austerlitz—and that you cannot enter unless you know the code: how I think about the doors, the maze one

French subtitles

2009-12-15T11:06:00.007Z

Have you ever seen an American movie with French subtitles? Jim Jarmusch has a new film Limits of Control that I'm going to see today. Check out the preview: http://www.mk2.com/filmscinema-5257-thelimitsofcontrol.html Click on the camera.Will seeing a movie in the language I speak with subtitles in the language of the country where I am be like discovering the unconscious? I am full of questions

My apartment!

2009-12-14T11:23:00.010Z

Can't believe it: 125 square feet, small French appliances with minds of their own, window on the courtyard: all at 7 Rue des Francs Bourgeois. Peace and quiet surrounded by the hubbub of Paris, beautiful stores with treasures I ogle. Want to write in my little attic room but Paris, irresistible.

Paris Interruptus

2009-12-11T13:57:00.003Z

Dear Readers,I am off to the city of lights. Perhaps reread "Light" while I am away... I'm going to do that. I will post notes to keep you informed about sights and moments, then write a new entry on my return. My thanks to all my readers and especially to my commenters. I am in your debt: readership has grown. On the deeply personal side, I say, Let the Rom-Com roll. --Mary

Transom

2009-12-06T20:13:00.007Z

I am about to travel to Paris. And before I embark, I contemplate the journey at stake.In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, published in 1899, Chopin’s main character says, “I would give up the unessential; I would give my money. I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself, I can’t make it any clearer; it’s only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing

Run and see

2009-11-19T22:41:00.005Z

I am stuck on romantic comedies: good ones, middling ones, the watch-me-over-and-over again ones: Runaway Bride is like a children’s book for me. Remember when you were a kid and your mother or father read you a story before you went to bed and you said, “Read it again”? It’s that way for me with Runaway Bride.It was that way for me with The Runaway Bunny, the Margaret Wise Brown classic—but not

Bedtrick

2009-10-27T15:51:00.018Z

Last week I reminded D. about Canada and he answered, Clive Owen. One of Owen’s movies we both love is entitled Duplicity. No one is who they seem to be.When we were together we often spoke in code to one another. For days on end we couldn’t remember the name of the actress in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, a movie we both love because no one is who they seem. We’d come up with Lee Remick when

Hat trick

2009-10-08T22:39:00.005Z

After seeing the movie Paris with D. last Saturday, we go to sit on his balcony and drink good red wine that I cannot name though I would like to say it was French, suspect it was Spanish—we are a little drunk. His apartment is near the Verizon Center and the Capitals are playing. We are so close that we can hear the blare of horns. When he checks the scores, we learn that the Caps are beating

Forget Paris

2009-09-29T13:46:00.019Z

I am reading in The Washington Post a movie review of Paris. Ann Hornaday says, “Cédric Klapisch’s intoxicating portrait of a city that, despite (or more likely, because of) being in a state of constant flux, retains timeless energy and allure.”I have not seen the movie that is playing at E Street but I plan to go instead of going to Paris. It is hard to go to the city of love without love. I had

Light

2009-09-25T05:10:00.002Z

When a photographer uses a filter, a transparent or translucent disc, on his lens, he alters the light. If a flock of geese appeared on a clear day—cumulus clouds, horizontal white streaks on blue—and the photographer placed a lens on his camera’s eye, for a black and white photo—as if that term, black-and-white, accurately defines a photo without color—the lens turns the clouds gray as on a dark

One game at a time

2009-09-19T20:36:00.005Z

D. makes me think about baseball. In particular about Albert Pujols.“Pujols … really does take 'em one game at a time, one at-bat at a time, one pitch at a time… . Questions are beside the point. Talk is beside the point. The point for Albert Pujols is to hit the ball hard. Everything else is just noise.“This doesn’t make him especially fun to approach after a game, even a two-home run game. But

The wave

2009-09-06T19:27:00.011Z

In August the Obamas went for a week’s vacation in Martha’s Vineyard: Ten-year-old Malia’s head already sprouted almost above her father’s shoulder—she is tall and willowy, feminine like her mother, lithe like her father. Gorgeous Michelle followed behind the two with her arm around Sasha: all the “girls” wore shades as Barack waved from the tarmack at the camera.He did not wave as he boarded the

Let the chase begin

2009-08-05T23:06:00.016Z

“So Who Owns Chrysler Now?” Time Magazine in January asked. Fiat owns Chrysler—or at least 35 percent of it when that article was published— with an option to raise its share to 55 percent. Detroit rethinks. The merger of Chrysler and Fiat occurs in June, the bridal month. Mary rethinks: An Italian owns the Plymouth?In the Grimm Brothers’ story, “The Wedding and the Fox,” the brothers include two

Let Sotomayor be the judge

2009-07-22T21:10:00.013Z

When Judge Sotomayor was about to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, I was more interested in her love life. She lives alone now. The New York Times tells me that some time ago, after her divorce (she married young), she “had fallen in love with the dapper and gray-bearded Peter White, a building contractor and that by 1998, they were engaged and living together, though they put off a wedding

The elephant

2009-07-12T21:55:00.000Z

It’s as if I have a large table with all the pieces for the jigsaw puzzle. It’s a question now of seeing how they all fit. And what about the elephant? He’s there, too.

Looking for the map

2009-07-11T21:04:00.009Z

Jenny Sanford, wife of the governor of South Carolina, was quoted in my favorite rag The New York Times, as she ended one foray with reporters obsessed with her husband’s admitted affair with an Argentine woman, “I wish we had room on the boat for all of you, but we do not.” She is about to go on a trip, in the middle of the sea, to, presumably, get away from the media storm.She appears to know

Pull out the map

2009-06-22T15:10:00.012Z

So after the real estate developer/widower m., after the widower who is still married m.r.s, after the psychiatrist, , I am devastated and freed.Did you know that Greenland was once ruled by Denmark? I read this in this morning’s New York Times as I learn of Greenland’s independence. I wonder what exactly Denmark has been doing with Greenland. I learn there may be oil reserves there and this

Square the circle?

2009-06-15T17:45:00.001Z

Heard on the street: “If you can’t solve the problem, prolonging it will make money.”Read in The New York Times: “In the latest installation of the soap opera gripping Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, 72, on Monday demanded an apology from wife, Veronica Lario, 52, a day after she told Italian newspapers that she wanted a divorce. Mr. Berlusconi said he did not think the couple could

P.S.: I love you?

2009-06-14T20:08:00.002Z

P.S. I Love You is a 2007 film with Gerard Butler and Hillary Swank, two actors I adore in a Rom-Com that is not worth analyzing, that I don’t own, but that gave me pause. Sure Gerard Butler (more recently in The Ugly Truth: great title) stopped my heart but then so did Jeffrey Dean Morgan who closes the deal in the film. P.S. I Love You relies on the death of the character Butler so effectively

Send in the clowns

2009-06-11T16:11:00.001Z

I weep when famous people die: I cried when Audrey Hepburn died and bought stamps and pictures. I cried when Princess Di died and taped and watched the funeral and all the gory tabloid details. I’m a staunch Democrat and I cried when Ronald Reagan died and watched every second of his funeral. I’m Jewish and I wept when John Paul the II died, and followed not only the funeral but watched TV

I’m cooked

2009-06-10T21:08:00.005Z

The chase begins in earnest, on my part anyway, with another widower, an aerospace engineer, who some eight months before lost his wife to lung cancer (quick and pernicious and I don’t think she smoked).I believe in rescue. I mistyped that at first and wrote rescure, saw the word cure inside and wondered how crazy or crazed I am. I know we must rescue ourselves. You don’t have to tell me that.

Double doors

2009-06-03T13:57:00.000Z

The princess had a golden ball in her hand, which was her favourite plaything; and she was always tossing it up into the air, and catching it again as it fell. After a time she threw it up so high that she missed catching it as it fell; and the ball bounded away, and rolled along upon the ground, till at last it fell down into the spring. The princess looked into the spring after her ball, but it

Exit strategy

2009-05-26T15:49:00.001Z

After the emergency egress from the psychiatrist, I wondered, Will I ever write again, love again, have sex again, come to orgasm again, be loved again, be safe again? It was late April. I await the Kentucky Derby and the elusive hope for the Triple Crown. On April 28, 2008, Joe Drape files a story for The New York Times on War Emblem, the 2002 Derby winner: War Emblem is in therapy. He is

Something old for something new

2009-05-23T20:16:00.000Z

When the groom stomps on the glass, some say, he recalls the destruction of the temple or announces the creation of two bodies, one mind. Something blue, something borrowed, something old for something new. The loss of a marriage is the loss of habeas corpus: When the two parties decide to separate, one of them pleads with the other for a writ of habeas corpus. One of them must believe, or both

Cinderella

2009-04-18T23:46:00.001Z

Nietzsche says, Deep yellow and hot red: thus my taste wants it; it mixes blood into all colors. But whosoever whitewashes his house betrays a whitewashed soul to me.Blood runs red in “Cinderella”: “No one shall be my wife but she whose foot this golden slipper fits.” When the shoe will not fit the eldest stepsister, her mother gave her a knife and said, “Cut the toe off; when you are Queen you

Bird on a wire

2009-04-12T19:58:00.001Z

Before I began this story, I’d slept for three years: When husband D. left me, the writing stopped. But once again I am writing. I have written about the CEO I met on the flight from Oz. He continues to write me. It is a year since that trip and still we correspond. He writes of death, the death of the woman he has loved since losing his wife. But he never says “loved.” He says “my love.” Perhaps

Hypersensitive

2009-03-30T16:53:00.004Z

Stock market crashed. No noise. Economy in dire straits. It is March 30, 2009.Robert Rauschenberg died on May 12, 2008 at the age of eighty-two. That day I walked over to see his work at the Portrait Gallery near my apartment.I saved the obit., got caught in the web of memory. My own straits.My father’s white shirt, the ribbed, sleeveless undershirt beneath that as a small child I carried with me

Frying pans

2009-03-29T20:33:00.002Z

Charade: The Oxford English Dictionary (I own it: all seventeen volumes that include the supplements for my edition) notes that Thackeray (William Makepeace: don’t you love his middle name? A command to be taken to heart) used the word in Vanity Fair in 1848: The performers disappeared to get ready for the second charade-tableau. After Becky Sharp has achieved the coup of marriage in chapter XVI,

Broken glass

2009-03-17T21:12:00.002Z

The New York Times reported on July 16, 2007, on the front page that Japan is attempting to move to jury trials, but the jurors in a mock trial were reluctant to express their opinions. “They never engaged one another in discussion. Their opinions had to be extracted by the judges and were often hedged by the Japanese language’s rich ambiguity.” On the jump, I read: “Under the proposed system,

The bartender

2009-03-15T16:52:00.001Z

Nietzsche says, as he weighs the world in the last dream of the morning, Sex: only for the wilted, a sweet poison; for the lion-willed, however, the great invigoration of the heart and the reverently reserved wine of wines.As I learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance—one cannot fly into flying, I search. And yes, there was a bartender. The bartender doesn’t drink. He knows good wine

Adultery

2009-02-20T21:05:00.003Z

When my daughter turned thirty-five—a beautiful startling woman whose mind is full of wonder—she suggested that I look for a man I might have known when I was single: either before I married her father or between my marriages, before I married D. “You never know,” she said, “who might still be single or divorced or widowed.” That day I counted the months. My daughter was born in February, my

Bliss

2009-02-15T16:41:00.001Z

I find the professor through a three-day foray on PerfectMatch.com. I write him. The correspondence that follows over less than four months from the last week in January to April 2007 fills 227 pages [I am not making this up] of almost totally his words while I am in Missouri and he, in Baltimore. Yes, I meet him. We become lovers ever so briefly. He loves the phrase “aesthetic bliss.” He

Catch a falling star

2009-01-29T17:59:00.003Z

I have a note on the poem “Song,” quoting my professor Andrew Bongiorno (1900-98) at Oberlin where I got my first master’s degree and where I met Tom: “cynical poem although jaunty and vigorous” (or perhaps this is my note as it is not in red pencil, the color I used during class, but I don’t speak this way. Therefore it must be Bongiorno. Bongiorno, I learned long after I worshipped him, began

Deceptive cadence

2009-01-20T15:27:00.000Z

My husband used to play the console piano we owned only for me—never for anyone else. Before he left me, he bought a $17,000 black baby grand and placed this Kawai in the front parlor of our old Victorian brownstone before we sold it. This piano now graces his condo where he lives alone. I had wanted to buy him a new piano for the last decade: a gift for his birthday. With his perfect pitch and

First kiss

2008-12-17T19:24:00.003Z

I must find the way through all the screens on the stage that slide one in front of the other. I want to shout, “Fire.” Like the clown in the theatre who called out to the laughing crowd while the coulisses burned, while the crowd applauded, disbelieving. I slide the scenery panels of my life through the backstage grooves while they burned and no one sees the fire.In Charade, when Reggie/Audrey