The good dinner first: last night I sauteed some chopped up boneless chicken thighs with garlic, a huge leek (I love leeks), mushrooms, white wine, added some spinach at the end and ate half of it in a bowl. It was quite tasty, but on the way home today I thought "why not some pasta?" So tonight I added the rest of the spinach, some more white wine, heated it all up, tossed it with some linguine, added a good dusting of ground pepper and some grated Parmesan cheese and it was so, so good. I roasted some broccoli chunks with olive oil, salt and red pepper flakes in a hot oven for about 15-20 minutes and that was the accompanying vegetable and I felt healthy and righteous. YUM.
The ennui: my thoughtful and intelligent daughter pointed out to me, after asking her to read an email addressed to my employers, that this time of year makes me dissatisfied with my job, my wages, my fellow workers, everything. She's correct, of course, I always get this almost overwhelming sense of futility this time of year, after the holidays. Some people make New Year resolutions. I just get the New Year depression that makes me want to flee my life. This year is worse for all the obvious reasons but it still makes me want to flee my life, my job, my dog, my house, my country, my kids and mostly, just flee me.
It will pass. It always does. The rain helps. I open my front door and stand there and watch the rain. At work I do the same. I just watch it fall and that momentarily makes me feel better. Some people, at this time of the year, get that Seasonal Affect Disorder. SAD. I get WWH. Pronounced "whew!" Wet Weather Happiness. (Yes, I will come up with a better acronym, but it's all I can give you right now.) So the ennui, the restlessness, the boredom with my job etc will pass. But my delight in the rain will not wane.
Book: my brother Joe and his lovely wife Donna both work at the SF Public Library, Main Branch. Libraries get dozens (or hundreds) of pre-release books, uncorrected proofs, from publishers trying to sell their books. Joe and Donna get many of those books and they give them to ME! In brown paper bags, discreetly. (They cannot be sold, they cannot be given to libraries, they cannot be traded at used bookstores, so there is a protocol about moving them along once they are read.) But I have in my possession amazing books: "Swing Time" by Zadie Smith. "Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead. "Hag-Seed" by Margaret Atwood. "Commonwealth" by Ann Patchett. "Nix" by Nathan Hill. And many more amazing books.
I just finished "The Animators" by Kayla Rae Whitaker, a first novel by this author and it totally won me over. It's about two women who meet in college and carry on for more than ten years, making animated shorts, movies, books, and changing with the time and not changing at all. It's a book about friendship, work, love, the world. The writing is amazing, clear and true: At the top of the hill, my mother watches, legs spread apart, hands on the backs of her hips. Her tennis shoes are puffy and pink. Through her T-shirt, one of those designed for older ladies, with ribbed stripes and a small bow on the collar's center, I see a new roll of fat above where her jeans button. New wings of gray around the crown of her head, streaks of it in her ponytail, her more prominent jowls. ... Here in the sun, I see myself in her face. She sees me and her hand goes to her face.
Or this: I work until the night dies and the morning is born at the waterfront, that familiar itching at the base of my spine ramping, the adrenaline peaking at the unspooling of images. The hunt for that hot and nameless thing is on and I am certain that the old impulses are not dead, that the voodoo does not die.
And yes, some of it is over-written, overly dramatic, but it is eclipsed by the soul the author puts out there. There is life, death, injury, recovery, reconciliation and recrimination in this novel, and so much more. Hurt, betrayal, joy and discovery and much about love and caring and leaving oneself behind in order to let the other get stronger. The two main characters, Sharon and Mel, are intense and hungry for their craft of animation and for themselves. If you find a copy, pick it up. I think the release date is this month. If you want to borrow my copy, just ask. It's a really good book. Well, in my opinion, at least.
Alrighty, on to the next free book. Brown paper bags of books. How can that be anything but good? And at this very moment, at 10:13 pm, I hear the rain hammering on the roof, making me smile for this minute.
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Thanks for the book review!
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