What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I just returned from nine days in Nicaragua, where I learned many things. Here are a few:

1. It is possible, in the 21st century, to live somewhere that looks like this, the Granada home of San Francisco friends of surpassing good taste and generosity:


(I do recognize that it is not possible to live like this without the centuries-long labors of those who cannot. In the Americas, Nicaragua is second only to Haiti in its poverty.)

2. A person of Jewish descent can wake up every morning in a mosquito-netted four-poster bed to cathedral bells and singing and not find it objectionable in the least. A view from one of my wooden-shuttered windows:

3. There is a reason that riding a horse through a jungle and cantering along an otherwise inaccessible beach is the stuff of fantasy. My steed was white, and named Pablo Picasso, and I sang "Caballito Blanco" to him, which I learned as a child in Chile. My fellow riders, near the surfing village of San Juan del Sur:


4. Flirting is even more fun in another language. My Spanish held up well enough for me to crack jokes, decline invitations, and read mash notes from the smitten. As many Nicaraguan men are quite short, I also had the new-to-me experience of being piloted around a dance floor to the strains of the Nicaraguan classic "Pobre de Maria" by a smiling fellow whose eyes were at the level of my nipples. This made conversation both impossible and unnecessary.

5. Still lifes are everywhere. Cezanne would have adored the possibilities created by 50 cents worth of gardenias, a lime, a checked cloth and a snappy straw hat:

Everything That Rises Must Converge

I just noticed that I have not posted in two weeks. My apologies to those of you who read this regularly; it has been quite a tumultuous time, with many ups and a few downs and a lot of living to do before, during and after same.

Last Sunday was an 'up' day. I started it with a trip to the new High Line, which is landscaped with an unerring regard for both the "natural" and the manmade (a couple of photos below). The essay about this effort by the Times' architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff (a name seemingly out of Tolstoy) is worth reading, as is the profile of its landscape architect James Corner (if his name had been Street, would he have had a different career?). It is so meticulously kept that at 10 a.m. a smiling staffer was sweeping gravel off the railroad ties in a most Zenlike way.

The High Line provides a whole new perspective on everything visible from it: the meatpacking district, the gleaming buildings of Jersey City, the piers, the top third of the Empire State Building. And it brings a tamed beauty to a decaying mess and many ways to find a vantage point on same, which is all any of us can ever hope to do, and want. Next time I go, I plan to a) meditate and b) bring bubbles, both drinkable and blowable, for an even more uplifting experience.

Which is what I had that night when I took myself to see Up. It is a magnificent piece of filmmaking that, while sometimes sentimental, is hardly ever mawkish. Contained within it is a touching love story, a thrilling adventure, some important life lessons (including the one meant for me about perseverance) and some very funny bits about dogs. It's especially good in 3D, and I kept the glasses so I could keep seeing the world in 3D, instead of flat, as it so often can be.

And the downs? The mothers of two of my closest girlfriends seem to be losing their battles with illness. And while that makes me especially appreciate my own parents (it's Father's Day today and I'm visiting my dad, who's across the table from me as I write), I feel sorrowful for my friends and for their moms, feisty women whose company I've enjoyed.

I'm also at what appears to be the end of a romantic journey that has had many twists and turns, complete with the very recent and somewhat dramatic reacquisition of many of my personal effects. So I'm now at the beginning of a new phase in my life, which is simultaneously terrifying and exciting, like realizing your house is flying thanks to a large and unwieldy cluster of balloons and having no idea where, or how, it will land - or if you even want it to.

Rust on the tracks, planted.

Looking west from the High Line at (I think) 16th Street.

(Post title from the story by Flannery O'Connor.)

They Say The Neon Lights Are Bright On Broadway

I love theater, but I generally skip the Tony Awards. This year, though, was a great year for Broadway, and I had to watch despite not having seen nearly enough of the nominated productions to have an opinion. Now I do, and here they are, in no particular order. Overall, the show did its job, which was to make me want to buy tickets.

• Musicals I won't be seeing: Shrek (weak songs) and Rock of Ages (I'd change stations if most of the songs in it were on the radio; also, I passed the theater one night just before showtime and it was one of the least attractive groups of people I've ever seen).
• Next to Normal seems admirable, but I don't think I'll be seeing it.
• I co-choreographed a production of Hair in high school, but Karole Armitage did a far better job. I inexplicably missed the show in Central Park, and I have to see it now. Though I do wonder if the Radio City and CBS audiences, which I'm sure skewed older, saw themselves in the hirsute creatures capering around the aisles.
  
• A friend worked with Liza Minnelli for years, so for me seeing her brings to mind many stories, some of them not at all flattering. But I have to say that she looked fine and was occasionally in reasonably good voice for most of her number; the Judy resemblance gets stronger all the time.
• More children of the famous: Kate Burton and Lucie Arnaz presented together. Though I'm trying, and failing, to imagine Richard Burton and Lucille Ball on the same stage.
• Musicals I want to see: West Side Story, Guys & Dolls and, of course, Billy Elliot.
• Carrie Fisher is very funny. But I know they make lovely gowns in plus sizes - couldn't she find one? And isn't she exceptionally "plus" right now?
• Thank you, Bebe Neuwirth's hairdresser, for making it safe to be frizzy-haired. It is, apparently, a trend.
• I do want to see The Norman Conquests, ideally all in one day.
• Neil Patrick Harris is charming. And the wrapup song was hilarious.
• Marcia Gay Harden is a longtime favorite, though I did prefer the Ava Gardner-inspired look below from the 2001 Oscars to tonight's green number:
  
  
• Oh, Lauren Graham. You're another one of my favorite celebrity lookalikes. But this dress? Great color, and looks good in a still shot. But in motion? Not so much. And overall, it looks like the dress is wearing you.
  

• Dear Susan Sarandon: Sorry I wasn't all that enthusiastic about your performance in Exit The King (though I'm thrilled Geoffrey Rush won) or your Golden Globes pantsuit. But I do covet the dress you were wearing tonight. And if you're what 62 looks like, I think I'll be able to handle that.

The Silent Chirp

Early this rainy morning, my dog, off-leash in Central Park, was sniffing around in some ground cover under a stand of trees populated by many chirping birds. Suddenly, she got very excited, seemed to pounce on something, and started whipping her head from side to side. I was standing about 15 feet away, and after a few minutes she proudly brought her find to me: a baby bird, stiff-legged, slightly gnawed and, though I am no expert on these things, seemingly very recently dead.

Cassie is a bird dog by breed, but she is not an adept hunter, so my guess is that her prize had fallen out of its nest, became unable to fly, and struggled on the ground for a while until she came along to finish the job.

I have been wanting to post about Dr. George Tiller, gunned down at his church in Wichita, Kansas because he performed late-term abortions. I have written before about my own sad experience with this procedure, and I can only say this again: any woman who is more than 20 weeks pregnant does not really want to lose her baby. She is most likely there because, like me, she knows that if born her child is unlikely to survive, or will live a brief and miserable life, or because her own life is in danger.

Late-term abortions account for less than one percent of all pregnancy terminations. They are unpleasant, and traumatic, and not taken lightly by the women undergoing them, or the health-care workers who provide them despite the risk to their own lives.

Dr. Tiller was one of only a very few physicians in the country who performed this unfortunate service. It is rarely used, but I for one believe it should still be available. As awful as it was, it prevented a funeral for me - though, alas, not for Dr. Stiller.

And I'd like to think that the mother of this morning's dead nestling tweeted in grief when it was gone, even if, seeing it was too damaged to live, she pushed it out of the nest herself.

Hoop Dreams

I was not an athletic or especially graceful child - the many dance classes I started then and have continued since were intended as a corrective - and I was always chosen last for kickball and other recess games. To my great shame, I was never able to do two specific things, besides that awful shimmying-up-a-rope test: cartwheels and hula-hooping.

Those who read this blog closely will recall that I previously said I wasn't interested in the latter activity; please forgive the fib, but the specific inability has haunted me. Periodically, in the decades since the first hoop I encountered clattered to the ground, I would encounter one, give it a try, and realize I still had no skills.

Well, thanks to the entertaining, pink-haired Miss Saturn, who offers a hula-hoop workshop via my new friends at the School of Burlesque, I have now fulfilled my childhood dream. I can spin a hoop for quite a long time, in opposite directions (I can even spin two at a time!), and I actually know a few tricks. I was so thrilled that I bought a large hoop, bedecked with sparkly tape, and brought it home on a crowded subway - entertaining in itself. Then I realized that I have nowhere to store it out of view (the colors don't match my black-and-white-and-red-all-over decor, though this blog does) and no single space large enough to practice in, but I always have the basement, or the park.

Next up, I think I'll try to learn to cartwheel (it looks like, if I go here, I could learn the rope-shimmy as a bonus). It's not as if I lack self-confidence, but perhaps knowing that I won't embarrass myself will make my fearful inner child shut up. (She was pretty vocal in Monday's post, but the meeting I was dreading turned out just fine.)

After that, maybe I'll learn persistence, and not just the persistence of memory. Where do you think they teach that? The School of Hard Knocks has not been all that helpful.

I saw Miss Saturn's act Saturday night at the Slipper Room, and she was spectacular. See for yourself.

The Member of the Wedding

"A second marriage," said Samuel Johnson, "is the triumph of hope over experience." This is a quotation I should have considered before my second wedding, which took place in a drive-up chapel in Reno, after a few margaritas and a stop at an ATM. (Fashion note: The bride wore a white Anne Fontaine swimsuit coverup and matching Keds.) Despite my request for a non-religious ceremony, the officiant decided no marital union, even one between a bitterly lapsed Episcopalian and a carol-despising Jew, was complete without a mention of Jesus.

The witness was my sister, then a mature-looking 11, so with an illegal signature and a violation of the Second Commandment, it's possible the whole thing was void from the start (an argument I considered, then rejected, during the discussions of the generous spousal support I wound up paying). It was, however, madcap in a way that seemed right for us. After all, we did get engaged in a Brazilian jewelry store.

On the way back to the home of the friends we were visiting, we waved to Reno's residents, pageant-queen style, from our borrowed convertible. But when we leapt into one of the guest room's twin beds to consummate, it turned out it was sheetless. That's when I started to cry.

Perhaps it was the margaritas wearing off. Or maybe I remembered that my new husband's second vow of everlasting love (this was his third) had been pledged at the San Francisco Opera House, in between Acts Two and Three of La Bohème, with all attendees dressed in black tie and red shoes.

Those are the sort of details I would have preferred to be recounting, just as I can remember all the details of my very modest but lovely first wedding in an apple orchard, except why I decided to marry the groom in the first place. But somehow the Napa wedding that #2 and I were going to have on our first anniversary never happened, nor did it on our fifth; and by our tenth, the support payments were over.

I was reminded of this not long ago when he sent me an elaborate script for a wedding ceremony at which he'll be officiating in a few weeks, for the grown son of friends. It seemed ironic to me, and I don't mean "rain on your wedding day" ironic. And not just because I once bought him a 1768 edition of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary.

I did not grow up playing "wedding." I grew up playing "princess," far more satisfying in that there only has to be one of you and you can totally rule, yet you still get to dress up in something poufy. And I have always thought that obsessiveness about weddings happens most often to those who have not thrown many large-scale parties, as I have both personally and professionally. (I've also written for numerous bridal publications and their corporate overlords.) Weddings can be wonderful celebrations, including the four in my immediate family that I've been to, but in my case the resulting marriages haven't worked out that well. It's about who you're marrying, not how.

However, I am a product of my culture, and though I have successfully avoided seeing Bride Wars and the Sex and The City movie, I do have strong opinions about diamonds and dresses, and I think it's unfortunate that I see either as some kind of validation.

It will soon be 15 years since that night in Reno, and only two likely candidates for the party of the second part (not including foolish crushes) have showed up. Both are fiercely opposed to marriage, after dire experiences with their first wives 30 years ago. One recently attended his college friend's third wedding, which will probably confirm his opinion. I will be meeting the other's new flame tomorrow. I am very happy for him, but I have to confess that if she turns out to be The One, I'll wish them well, but... well, I'll listen to this.

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Wondering where the post title came from? Go here. Tired of me explaining my allusions? (My illusions - see above - are inexplicable.) Tell me off in the comments.

And They All Lived Happily Ever After

I am not generally privy to academic brouhahas, unless you count all the times I heard my English-professor dad complain about the chairman of his department when I was a child. Thus, I was unaware of the raging debate among scholars of folklore recounted in The Chronicle of Higher Education and picked up by the Times' Idea of the Day blog today.

The argument is between those who assert that fairy tales grew out of oral traditions and those who say they were actually written "in urban settings where such stories would appeal to people in rags exposed to riches around them." The discussion features a 16th-century Italian writer named Straparola (which would be an excellent burlesque name).

I side with those who believe in writers. Sure, Adam Lambert and other Cinderellas are already out there, but their stories, though oral tradition may well play a part (rimshot!), are entirely manufactured for the pleasure of an audience more likely than at any time in the last 75 years to be in rags.