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AND JUST LIKE THAT… IT’S FALL
I missed the summer. I always do. I don’t plan for that to happen, but I have books and plays to write, and I always seem to need to finish them in summer. Now it’s mid-August, and leaves fall and curl on the running track. I’ve failed my one seasonal commitment — take my daughter to the beach — and now the next generation is falling into her parent’s pathology, because she’s suddenly as scheduled as I am. Maybe next year. Maybe I’ve said that before.
On days like this, my mother would take us shopping for school clothes. Even now, a million decades later, I look at my sweaters, hoping I need one more navy wool crewneck. Andy Warhol bought Brooks button-down oxford shirts by the dozen. I wish I had. Brooks shirts are now so substandard that I bring ratty shirts to the dry cleaner to turn the collars. And I have plenty of khakis. My early fall rituals? They too went out with the tide.
Recently, I think about fall in another way. Brandi Carlile described what Joni Mitchell, sidelined by illness for six years, was about to do at Newport as a “trust fall.” I’ve also just had one. The other day, I finished the final rewrite of my Dalai Lama novel before it goes off to an agent. I wanted to send it to one reader for a final inspection, and, I hope, blessing. She’s not “in publishing.” But she was foundational to my writing it, she has always told me the truth, and if I wanted one more opinion, it was hers. I hit SEND.
“Sometimes not getting what you wish for can be an incredible stroke of luck.” The Dalai Lama said that. He knew: A trust fall can be better than a beach.
THE OBVIOUS WEEKEND SONG: “THE BOYS OF SUMMER”
Nobody on the road
Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air
The summer’s out of reach
Empty lake, empty streets
The sun goes down alone
“The Boys of Summer” was a monster hit for The Eagles in 1984. This summer it was recorded by First Aid Kit, a Swedish folk duo consisting of the sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg. This is a live performance, and the audience is noisy at the beginning, then they’re knocked out. Click to watch.
THAT SCENE YOU LOVED (AND STILL REMEMBER, ALL THESE YEARS LATER), YOU DON’T SEE IT THAT WAY NOW, DO YOU?
In “Five Easy Pieces,” released in 1970, Jack Nicholson sabotages every shot at a reasonable life. In his bitterness and rage, he humiliates his working-class girlfriend. Then there’s the scene in a diner. He’d like his eggs a certain way. The waitress points to a note on the menu: NO SUBSTITUTIONS. Watch his response. Bob Rafelson, the director of “Five Easy Pieces,” died recently. Lucian Truscott IV, half a century after he saw the film, considered the scene for what it is:
“It’s embarrassing today to look back at Rafelson’s diner scene and realize that what we saw as rebellion was just a tantrum thrown by a privileged rich guy. Taken at the time as evidence that the straight world, represented expertly by Lorna Thayer as the waitress, didn’t ‘get us,’ we bathed in the lazy luxury of contempt for her reflexive rule-making and demand for obedience. But what comes through in retrospect is the waitress’s nobility in the face of Nicholson’s patented arrogance.”
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BECAUSE SHE UNDERSTOOD ARABIC
An anecdote — and a moral — from Naomi Shihab Nye
Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” One pauses these days. But Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing.
“Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”
I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.
“Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?”
The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day.
I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”
We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad, and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out, of course, they had ten shared friends. Then I thought, just for the heck of it. why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies — little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts — from her bag, and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo — we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.
And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend — by now we were holding hands — had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones, and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate — once the crying of confusion stopped — seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.
This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.
SEPTEMBER 16: WHO’S IN?
Old-timers will recall Head Butler Field Trips. Memory fails: Where did we go? Would this film interest New York Butler readers? Not many, I’m sure. But a hard-core five or six of you? Here’s the trailer. Write me at HeadButlerNYC@AOL.com if this could lure you out on a Friday night in September.
WEEKEND POEM: PHILIP LARKIN
“The Mower”
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
WEEKEND MOVIE: A CLASSIC LOVE STORY
“L’Atalante” is on almost every critic’s list of the “best 100 movies of all time.” And not near the bottom — I’ve never seen it ranked lower than #15. After Renoir’s “Rules of the Game,” it’s the highest ranked French film. But although it was brilliantly restored in 1990, few Americans know about this 1934 movie. You’ll swoon. My review here. To rent the stream from Amazon, click here.
WEEKEND RECIPE: BECAUSE PEARS ARE FEELING IGNORED
from At Home with May and Axel Vervoordt: Recipes for Every Season
PEARS WITH CITRUS FRUITS AND CINNAMON
serves 4
Preparation Time 30 minutes
4 small pears
1 orange
1 lemon
2 cups water
1 cinnamon stick
1 TBS chopped fresh ginger root
1 pinch of saffron powder
½ cup agave syrup
Peel the pears and cut them in half lengthwise. Cut the orange and lemon into ¼ inch strips, retaining the skin.
To make the syrup, boil 2 cups water. Add the cinnamon stick, ginger, saffron, lemon and orange strips, and let infuse for 10 minutes. Poach the pears in this liquid, heated to 175-195 degrees, for 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and leave the pears to cool in the pan.
Remove the pears from the pan. Strain the juice. Pour the juice over the pears and serve.
These pears are good complements with a chocolate dessert, or with muesli for breakfast.
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This post was previously published on headbutler.com.
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com