Archive | Age Matters

Caturday Night: Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Grace and I are rewatching the brilliant Can You Ever Forgive Me? on this Caturday night and once again are appalled it didn’t score a best picture or best director Oscar nom. Its nostalgia for 90s NYC–which was all about nostalgia for midcentury Manhattan and paying the cultural piper– is pitch-perfect, as is Melissa McCarthy as Israel, reminding us what a terrific actress she can be when her husband doesn’t have his meat hooks in her projects. Continue Reading →

April Fools in the Neighborhood

Exhibit A (knickers twisted)

I was rushing down Graham Ave today, doing my shop at the pork store, mozzarella store, pasta store. (It’s the kind of weather that calls for a meat ragu.) Bogged down with parcels, dressed in sweaty, schlubby workout gear, shuddering in the shitty cold wind, I rounded the corner to my house. And came face to face with one of the neighborhood old-timers who’s never acknowledged my existence in the 20 years I’ve lived here–not being Italian in East Williamsburg means I’ll always be dismissed as a Janey-Come-Lately. This time, though he stopped short. “You’re still pretty, honey,” he said. His consoling tone–that still–is cracking me up even now. Cuz, you know, he really was trying to be nice. P.S. The ragu turned out molto buono.

The Spark of Darkness

Dad and I at Ellis Island Museum, c. 1994

My father and I never talk. This is not an exaggeration. I have not heard his speaking voice in almost a decade. Why this is so is not the stuff of blogs– it’s the stuff of the book–but suffice it to say I always feel my father in the very early morning. He is the only person I know who rises as early as I do though we’ve never discussed that pleasure and perhaps never will. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy