Obsessions #16

Small Things in Winter

Because I mostly sleep alone (besides animals and the occasional daughter who passes out in my bed after I give her my famous “spa treatment” which involves some Vered Botanical toner and mist (she is a friend and recently won an Oprah award for her amazing products. They both work and are so natural you could spritz any of them on your salad if you were so inclined), some heavy lotion for her poor hands (she is a VERY good hand washer), castor oil on her belly and bottoms of feet, and a heating pad if she will tolerate it. All this plus this particular playlist:

Knocks her right out. (Yes lo these many years ago I once called myself “barefoot golightly”. It’s fine. I’m too old now to be ashamed of anything.

When I don’t have a daughter sleeping in my bed I generally have next to me an “emotional support tray.”

And here it is full. John Derian for Target sourced from ebay. You can find similar here.:

The point of the tray is that you have all your things beside you in bed when your bedside table is already full (as mine always is) with water glasses, piles of books, nail buffing etc, detritus generally and particularly. You can set your cup of coffee on the tray. Especially good if it has sweary or sayings on it such as this one:

(Yes, I love a cigarillo. These were a gift from a friend)

Sourced from Bella Freud whose clothing I can’t afford and podcast I adore but what is an expensive mug really cost per use when you use it every single day and wash it out by hand like the precious object it is? I’m especially partial (and own and love to serve coffee to my daughter in) to this cheeky one. It’s on sale and therefore really free.

I’m really working hard to imbibe less of the old online purchasing and play to try a sober January in that department. Like every one else I know I have too much stuff. When my mother died I had to make room in their 1200 square foot house for my family to come for the memorial and this involved shoving clothing into THIRTY CONTRACTOR BAGS and tossing them into bins and dumpsters and the back of my car until the garbage truck arrived like a Christmas miracle and swept it all away. None of it was salvageable. All was from Walmart and the like. I don’t have quite that much stuff. I like to buy nice things sometimes and occasionally not so nice quality things that fill some bottomless hole in my soul.

One bit of the ephemeral I’ve recently enjoyed is this recording of a Winter’s Tale. Perhaps you are like me, and feel a little undereducated. I did the genius (or probably rather literally stupid) move of doing nothing else in high school and college but read the books I liked and write my little stories and poems, see bands, and flirt outrageously. I read Mary Gaitskill and Joyce Carol Oates and Ann Beattie and Joy Williams and Bret Easton Ellis and Alice Walker and Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller and Kerouac and Jim Harrison and Tony Morrison but I snoozed through almost everything else. (I have since caught up on Tolstoy, Chekhov, Proust, Virginia Woolf, etc etc but I have work to do still!) One class that did blow me away was Shakespeare. He really is that good. That he could get through my numb skull says a lot. That was, however, many many MANY years ago and I could definitely use a refresher. I bought A Winter’s Tale but couldn’t make heads OR tails of it and so someone mentioned listening. This production is a wonder:

The acting is suburb and little musical interludes are a delight. The thing about Shakespeare is that you KNOW every word and when you listen to it and in context and with some wonderful acting behind it, the entire play becomes not just comprehensible but a delight of language. Also, let’s face it, an audio production of a Shakespeare play is a wonderful way to deepen one’s literacy in the space of about 2.5 hours.