I was all set to outline My Recent Social Whirl, dinners and gifts and generosity (and also some weariness at quite so many dinners out on consecutive nights), but today I came across a slew of posts on my Facebook page about the death of Christopher Hitchens. He died yesterday of esophageal cancer at 62. For months, he's been writing about his decline in Vanity Fair, clear-eyed and brutally honest.
Hitchens's brother Peter wrote a heart-breaking tribute to his brother ("In Memoriam, My Courageous Brother Christopher, 1949-2011" at www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2075133). I read it and felt such a resonance with the recent death of my friend Rob. Both of them, too soon. So sad, so unfair. My God, is this what lies ahead for one after another of us? I could feel myself sliding into a global funk, beyond sadness into what Jerry calls "doooom."
When they were small, my adoptive nieces next door could instantly transport me out of these funks. One day when Leah was eight, she and I counted all the lavender plants in about a six-block radius, which takes a lot of careful looking. I couldn't believe how quickly I shed my worries. And it wasn't about distraction or denial: her world was very real. Is very real. Today I'm trying to figure out the equivalent of counting lavender bushes. Just thinking about it makes me feel on more solid ground. Doooom is quicksand.
2 comments:
The cure:
Work outside for at least 4 hours per day. Get good and dirty.
Macaroni and cheese.
More fried potatoes.
Red wine, cheap.
Kill your television.
Ditch the death books.
Read everything here:
1. "Angle of Repose," by Wallace Stegner
2. "The Grapes of Wrath," by John Steinbeck
3. "Sometimes a Great Notion," by Ken Kesey
4. "The Call of the Wild," by Jack London
5. "The Big Sleep," by Raymond Chandler
6. "Animal Dreams," by Barbara Kingsolver
7. "Death Comes for the Archbishop," by Willa Cather
8. "The Day of the Locust," by Nathanael West
9. "Blood Meridian," by Cormac McCarthy
10. "The Maltese Falcon," by Dashiell Hammett
11. "The Ox-Bow Incident," by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
12. "English Creek," by Ivan Doig
13. "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," by Tom Robbins
14. "Snow Falling on Cedars," by David Guterson
15. "On the Road," by Jack Kerouac
16. "The Joy Luck Club," by Amy Tan
17. "Lonesome Dove," by Larry McMurtry
18. "McTeague," by Frank Norris
19. "My Name Is Aram," by William Saroyan
20. "A River Runs Through It," by Norman Maclean
21. "The Left Hand of Darkness," by Ursula K. Le Guin
22. "Coyote Waits," by Tony Hillerman
23. "Play It as It Lays," by Joan Didion
24. "The Monkey Wrench Gang," by Edward Abbey
25. "Vineland," by Thomas Pynchon
26. "Earth Abides," by George K. Stewart
27. "Crooked Little Heart," by Anne Lamott
28. "The Underground Man," by Ross Macdonald
29. "Where I'm Calling From," by Raymond Carver
30. "The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts," by Maxine Hong Kingston
31. "L.A. Confidential," by James Ellroy
32. "The House of the Spirits," by Isabel Allende
33. "Women in Their Beds," by Gina Berriault
34. "Rumors of Peace," by Ella Lefland
35. "The River Why," by David James Duncan
36. "Riders of the Purple Sage," by Zane Grey
37. "Shane," by Jack Schaefer
38. "Stones for Ibarra," by Harriet Doerr
39. "The Big Sky," by A.B. Guthrie
40. "Trout Fishing in America," by Richard Brautigan
41. "The House Made of Dawn," by N. Scott Momaday
42. "The Milagro Beanfield War," by John Nichols
43. "The Last Tycoon," by F. Scott Fitzgerald
44. "Oil!," by Upton Sinclair
45. "Mariette in Ecstasy," by Ron Hansen
46. "The Virginian," by Owen Wister
47. "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water," by Michael Dorris
48. "Ceremony," by Leslie Marmon Silko
49. "Hawaii," by James Michener
50. "The Postman Always Rings Twice," by James M. Cain
I have read some but not all of these, resembles list I saw from Stephen King. Can't drink red wine but can white (& AM). Death books occasionally helpful but don't need because grim reaper crops up anyway. Haven't had mac and cheese for a least 10 years. Good suggestions!
Post a Comment