"the ghost of me was still there"

The Interestings, more than any book I've read in the last year, really stuck with me. I bring it up often, with anyone who will listen. I talk about how deftly Wolitzer tackles coming to terms with growing older, realizing the self you are is not necessarily the self you imagined yourself being in your teens and twenties, and facing an unexceptional life at middle age that does not necessarily mean uninteresting. This November I will turn 35, an age I never imagined myself being, and don't really feel. I don't feel uninteresting and I know that the life I lead is, in so many ways, unexceptional. But the truth is, I find happiness in things I doubt my 25-year-old self would, and in shrugging off the desire and impulse to live that exceptional life, I am a happier person for it.

Over lunch today, I read the Tracey Emin interview "The Ghost of Me Was Still There" in The New York Times Magazine, and again started thinking about The Interestings, growing older, living with the detritus and substance of our youth, and looking back at our younger selves with distance and a bit of wonder. This part of the interview fascinated me:

Charles Saatchi owns your famous piece “My Bed,” an unmade bed with the detritus of a bad few months of depression in 1998. How does the bed get installed when it travels?
I install it. Everything is in sealed containers, and it’s all labeled, like a crime scene. I did it in Frankfurt last year. I hadn’t seen it since 2008. I was thinking, with the cigarettes, that’s so weird because I don’t smoke anymore. I haven’t had sex for years, and there’s this condom. God, there’s a tampon, and I haven’t had a period for years. There’s my ex-boyfriend’s marijuana, I would never be with anyone who smokes marijuana now; there’s a whiskey bottle, and I don’t drink spirits. I get inside and pull the covers over me and then fold them back to look natural. I can actually smell the past. When I touched the condoms, I thought, Oh, I really loved that person who wore that condom. It’s a strange feeling, a good feeling. This ghost of me was still there.

[image: "My Bed," Tracey Emin, Saatchi Gallery]

cavern collection

Moonlight Tunic

Sky Tank

Tusk Dress

Rain Leggings

how our garden grows

Our vegetable garden is growing, growing, growing. This past weekend I added a few cucumber and zucchini plants to the plot. So far the kale, chard, lettuce, and herbs (basil, parsley, oregano, mint) have given us the most to work with. But heads of cauliflower are emerging amidst big green leaves, a few barely red strawberries are making an appearance, and our tomato plants are taller than Stella now and green little tomatoes can be found in the mass of leaves. Most afternoons we head outside and to water, harvest greens for salad and whatever else I'm making for dinner (and raw kale is a nice addition to our morning breakfast smoothies), and pick a few peas to munch on while enjoying the sunshine... 

more book talk

And now for more book talk... We made a trip to the bookstore on Saturday to stock up on new books. I'm on a book bender at the moment. After finishing The Interestings last week, and the new Andrew Sean Greer (due out in June) and Kate Atkinson the week before, I needed another good read. I found it in Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins, a book I picked up countless times in the store but always put down because the description on the back made the book unappealing to me. I'm glad I finally gave in, as it's a charming, entertaining book. It's a perfect summer read if you're looking for a book to take on vacation. Sutton is up next!

the interestings

Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings [hat tip to Melissa for the recommendation] gets my vote for one of the best books of the year. Kate Atkinson's Life After Life is on my best books of 2013 list too. Yes, it's only May. I haven't been able to delve into anything as appealing since finishing The Interestings last week. 

Any suggestions?

birth story: ina may gaskin and the farm midwives

Last night I finished watching Birth Story, the documentary about midwife Ina May Gaskin (I mentioned her in my post on labor) and The Farm Midwifery Center in Tennessee. I enjoyed the fascinating look back at how The Farm came into being, how Ina May found her calling as a midwife, and all of the footage (old and new) of women giving birth naturally and without medical intervention. I went to bed feeling inspired (yes, I can do this again) and empowered (my body has the amazing capacity to stretch and expand, to open, and to heal), which is exactly what I was hoping for...

steven soderbergh on the state of cinema

From Steven Soderbergh's State of Cinema keynote at the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival:

But before we talk about movies we should talk about art in general, if that's possible. Given all the incredible suffering in the world I wonder, what is art for, really? If the collected works of Shakespeare can't prevent genocide then really, what is it for? Shouldn't we be spending the time and resources alleviating suffering and helping other people instead of going to the movies and plays and art installations? When we did Ocean's Thirteen the casino set used $60,000 of electricity every week. How do you justify that? Do you justify that by saying, the people who could've had that electricity are going to watch the movie for two hours and be entertained - except they probably can't, because they don't have any electricity, because we used it. Then I think, what about all the resources spent on all the pieces of entertainment? What about the carbon footprint of getting me here? Then I think, why are you even thinking that way and worrying about how many miles per gallon my car gets, when we have NASCAR, and monster truck pulls on TV? So what I finally decided was, art is simply inevitable. It was on the wall of a cave in France 30,000 years ago, and it's because we are a species that's driven by narrative. Art is storytelling, and we need to tell stories to pass along ideas and information, and to try and make sense out of all this chaos. And sometimes when you get a really good artist and a compelling story, you can almost achieve that thing that's impossible which is entering the consciousness of another human being - literally seeing the world the way they see it. Then, if you have a really good piece of art and a really good artist, you are altered in some way, and so the experience is transformative and in the minute you're experiencing that piece of art, you're not alone. You're connected to the arts. So I feel like that can't be too bad.

[via Kottke]

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babymoon in brooklyn

We're only two months away from our little family of three becoming a family of four. So we decided to go to Brooklyn for a mini babymoon. We left Stells in California with my awesome parents (where she had the time of her life eating ice cream, riding on the carousel and stream train at Tilden Park, going to story-time, taking the Ferry into San Francisco for lunch at Slanted Door, etc) so that we could enjoy each other, see our friends, stay out late, and just be us for the weekend. We visited with my sister and many friends. We ate and drank our way around Brooklyn (Talde, Seersucker, Lavender Lake, Cafe Pedlar, Reynards, Moim, Blue Bottle), we browsed through the stacks at McNally Jackson, walked around Smorgasburg, took the ferry from Williamsburg to DUMBO, played a few rounds of ping pong and pool at Brownstones Billiards, and relished just being with each other and the friends and family we don't get to see enough. Needless to say, my feet and back were pretty tired at the end of every day from hauling my very pregnant belly around, and we came home so excited to hug and kiss and cuddle our girl.