Happy Eve Babitz Day! As a Gen Xer forced to spend hundreds of dollars I didn’t have in the 90s to track down Eve Babitz’s out-of-print books, there’s a part of me that’s irritated the millennial girls think they’ve discovered the brilliant writer, groupie-adventuress, and auto-muse. Just a tiny part, though, because everyone should have an Eve who gives Lilith a run for her money. Every female-identified person in particular should have a star-fucking, bridge-burning, convention-flouting, binary-busting, sexy and smart, lush and arch, totally mean and totally kind, self-identified-spinster role model like Evie. So I’m glad she is finally back in print and translated into billions of tongues. (She always was good with tongues.) Continue Reading →
Archive | Cat Lady Matters
Cat Lady Speaks: A Word on Neighbors
I’m sitting down for a morning writing session but am going to get this out so I can actually focus on my book. Consider it a mini-edict on behalf of those of us who don’t treat Brooklyn living as a two-year post-college course. A celebration of NYC’s twin gifts of loneliness and privacy.
Which is to say that somehow along the line I became that woman. Continue Reading →
Kitchen Witch (Stay-at-Home Automom)
I could pretend what’s pictured here is a kitchen sink salad but it’s more of a garbage pail salad. Meaning I have all kinds of motley ingredients in my fridge and I work at home and hate to throw out food. So this contains chopped blue cheese and pickles and capacollo and kale and asparagus and even a bit of chive and parsley and o shit mint. it’s fine—actually it’s pretty good, salty and fresh and filling and a little oooomami—but i’d never inflict it on anyone else.
Instead I made it after rising at 5 am to revise yesterday’s book pages and then write the film lecture I’m delivering later today out on Long Island. Before editing said lecture, I worked out in the gym recently installed in our basement while doing laundry in our building’s new washer and dryer. (Anything to seduce Williamsburg tenants during 15 months of a modified L Train.) I felt so glamorous doing all this in my own building, on my own time. Herein lies the strange beauty of living and working alone–a spiky, highly singular economy within which I feel most myself. I’m even more grateful for it lately because your support showed me how not-alone I really am. (PS I’m back in book, finally.)