Charlie Bucket Soup, Muppet Lady Chic
The day began charmlessly–cold and windy, with vast, horizontal sheets of hail and rain defying even the most substantial of umbrellas. It never found its footing after that, even though I’d donned the cutest bad-weather uniform I could find. (Blue rubber moccasins and a blue fur hat; Muppet chic at your service.) The whole time we taped our show I could barely feel my feet, and my clothing remained uncomfortably damp. Finally, I cried Uncle and retreated home to make a Charlie Bucket soup: a meek concoction of whatever was in my larder since I wasn’t about to go into that not-so-good night, gentle or otherwise. Cabbage, leeks, fennel, chicken stock, parsley, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, sriracha. It was around the ginger that I realized this soup wasn’t going to be so meek after all. By the time I finished two bowls of it, poured over some rice noodles I’d found in the back of a cupboard, I felt like a person again–albeit a person in a flannel nightgown and fuzzy slippers, flanked by a permakitten mawing a dish of the same soup right there on the kitchen table. Afterward, I settled into an armchair with a novel, an afghan, and Betty Carter crooning to Ray Charles through the speakers, and I read by the light of a pink seashell lamp that any boyfriend I’ve ever had would loathe. It was all pretty great, actually. This has been my Cat Lady year, and I’m starting to think everyone should have a few of them. They’re so darn peaceful.
December Runneth Over
I always forget this time of year is so inhospitable–in its quality and duration of light, in the dread it evokes that is only occasionally contained, in the anxieties masquerading as shared joy. Now that climate change is writ large, we contend with cold rain rather than pretty snow, to boot. Not to mention those tides of change finally, finally rising in Ameriker. Sexton said, “I know that I have died before–once in November.” Amend that to December, please, and pass me an umbrella. Rebirth is very messy.
The Alchemy of ‘Still Alice’
Without Julianne Moore, “Still Alice” might not be much of a film. This is not to say the adaptation of Lisa Genova’s 2007 novel about a fifty-year-old woman stricken with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease is otherwise mediocre, although it is so unobtrusively constructed that its virtues may be overlooked. But because it focuses on the perspective of a person with Alzheimer’s rather than on the perspective of her caregivers, a uniquely gifted actor is required in the titular role. Who but Moore, with her radiant fusion of fortitude and empathy, could soldier us through a narrative whose unhappy ending is as inevitable as that of the Titanic?
Initially, Alice Howland seems like she has it all. A celebrated Columbia University linguistics professor, she is happily married to fellow academic John (an unusually muted Alec Baldwin), and the couple enjoy their three grown children as well as their well-appointed Long Island beach house and NYC brownstone. If she is a tad thorny when things don’t go her way – her youngest daughter, Lydia (Kristen Stewart), an aspiring actor, bears the brunt of her mother’s tenacity – it’s nothing extraordinary in a modern Type A woman. But when Alice can no longer write off her memory loss and growing confusion as mere middle-aged malaise (read: menopause side effects), her worst fears are outstripped: She is diagnosed with a rare strain of Alzheimer’s that is inherited and can be transmitted. “I wish I had cancer,” she weeps, and although some might take umbrage with her disease comparison-shopping, we understand what she means. Especially in her line of work, she does not know who she will be without her formidable brain. Continue Reading →