I heart you Kitchn
Dear Kitchn,
This is a love letter. Thank you for constantly publishing inspiring content ever single day. You have changed my life.
love,
a fan. me.
primroses
For some unknown reason I used to despise primroses*. Then we had a few unforgiving winters and the sight of them became a note of hope. They are in full bloom already, and apparently a handy snack for the army of slugs that found them way before I did.
*it is true, after the blooms are gone, they become a very unbecoming plant. The trade off for what they give me right now though is appreciated.
small winter surprises
Such surprises lurk at ankle height in the winter. The purple hellebores came back!
I was so sad last winter when they didn’t appear and I was certain they had left us for good.
Now both plants are blooming, the one above in full beauty.
They are subtle and often hide their heads face-down, which adds to the loveliness when you start searching around.
The promise of witch-hazel again
With the upcoming Garden Show and the mild weather, I have been thinking much about what is out in my own yard. At this point the plot should be coming in to some point of maturity, but it still feels like a beginner’s garden.
I like this five stages of the gardener as posted on GardenRant. For certain I am still in the collect all the epimedium’s I can muster phase.
There seem to be five or more stages of plant geekdom. They vary from gardener to gardener, but here were mine, as a partial to full shade gardener:
Stage one: All I wanted was huge swathes of constantly blooming flowers. Most of them were pink. Or blue. Or one of the latest, greatest, new introductions.
Stage two: Those flowers, most of which required the exact opposite conditions of what exists on my property, died. I wised up, just a bit, and looked for plants that would survive in my conditions, but still with flowers the primary focus.
Stage three: I began to focus on groundcovers and bulbs, which seemed to provide as close to a win/win as I would get. I entered bulb geekdom, learning about the species and the ephemerals.
Stage four: Finally I begin to collect more interesting shade perennials that flower in spring. I had ignored these in the past because spring here barely exists—we move right into summer. Nonetheless, I got into hellebores, big-time.
Stage five: I have now “collected” as many interesting plants as I can, and can barely shoehorn in one more hellebore or epimedium—not even a tiny erythronium tuber. I am seriously considering pulling out a couple beds and doing the whole thing over again, resisting the urge to collect, using more of the same plants, and thinking more astutely about design issues.
It is starting to broadcast some light during the more civilized hours, which brought me to the realization my witch-hazel is already in bloom. Being gone on the weekend, and only poking my head outside before and after work in the dark allowed me to miss this. So my first, most beloved plant that I secured for this house is sited in the worst place, completely out of site and out of smell range.
So yes, garden plans should hatch. I have come to the realization there might be only one thing that makes me happy this year: galvanized metal.
and I’d like to point out.
The pie won.
Dandelions in January?
jest vs. pie
jest vs. pie, originally uploaded by carolyn’s.
This week, not so quite on top of it. Barely made the reading requirement, and didn’t make a pie.
Last week I was on fire. Reading, baking, reading, baking. This week we are squeaking in here, I knew the time continuum would be shut down (at least I’m still at it). I found some great books at the library on pie making and it remains a conceptual pursuit. And in IJ, I spent a large chunk of the week reading and starting up again the Joelle van Dyne section. It wasn’t because I wasn’t enjoying it, but I realized that there is all kinds of information squeezed in here. It is alarming how much of the book I don’t remember, which is kind of nice as it’s like starting all over. I also read more Orin-Hal exchanges, and this is something the exact same as last time- Orin’s are my favorite passages.
I have been taking my time too with Wallace’s descriptive writing. There is something to these weekly reading benchmarks, where you can actually pause and digest what you have read. Otherwise I do believe I originally read the book in a panic, possibly passing over huge tip offs to plot. I was utterly afraid I would not get through the book. Now I am savoring each morsel. I am marveling at the small observations:
(the wallpaper is a maddening uncountable pattern of roses twined in garlands on sticks)
The back of the toilet is lightly sheened with condensation of unknown origin. These are facts.
Books with German and Cyrillic titles lie open in spine-cracking attitudes on the colorless rug.
and the relentless humor even in a passage leading up to somber details:
‘And then it turned out he’d put ipecac in the brandy. It was the most horrible thing you’ve ever seen. Everyone, all over, spouting like whales. I’d heard the term projectile vomiting but I never thought that I— you could aim. the pressure was such that you could aim.’
Tennis on the periphery…week 2
Ironically or not, as I am getting knee deep into tennis here in IJ, it came to my attention that Serena had beaten Venus yesterday, to win her third Wimbledon championship. Why this caught my eye among other things is these two sisters are mentioned early on in the book. Well, at least Venus is.
I find it amazing to think they’ve been renown in their field for so long that not only are they house hold names, but even at a moment barely out of their teenagerhoods, they were pop culture icons enough for a novel.
Because I’m appreciating the fruits of others efforts this time around, a fast troll of the Infinite Jest Online Index gives us this quick reference:
Williams, Venus
17; famous tennis pro? Power-game tradition; 1012; (b. 17June80. As I’m keying this in–on 6/24/02– Venus has won four grand slams and her sister Serena has won two. They are currently ranked 1 and 2 in the world respectively.) [Note the question mark, which should date the initial version of this index rather nicely. Also note that Venus won her first professional tennis match in October of 1994 but did not win her first major until July of 2000. And finally, note that Wallace wrote Infinite Jest from 1993 – 1996. Hell of a guess, eh?) – IJ OL editor
17 is page 17:
And Venus Williams owns a ranch outside Green Valley; she may well attend the 18’s Boys’ and Girls’ final.
And no, I was not watching the Wimbledon finals yesterday/today, having my nose deep into the book and otherwise spending the long weekend spacing out. It has become great escapism, and I have actually made it past the 200 page mark (this that we will not be able to keep up post holiday). I keep seeing people on the IS forums apologizing for cheating by sneaking into supplementary information. I am reading this book with all the background information I could get my hands on or have soaked up in the past decade, and it has only added to making the book more enjoyable. There is actually no such thing as spoilers with everything so self referential and folding in on its self.
What I think I love best about the book is the writing pranks, how ever informative they are in the long run. Somebody on IS forums (my new life??) started a footnote 304 support club, which made me crack up (and only due to a sympathetic realization that I surely did not read it in full the first time around). Wallace couches some tedious but essential information in the format of a plagiarized term paper, with commentary back at the writer that can only be a small stab at real life editors or critics:
Struck, canted slightly in his desk-chair from the overdevelopment of his body’s right side, is also trying to carve up each of this diarrheatic G.T. Day, M.S. guy’s clauses into less-long self-contained sentences that sound more earnest and pubescent, like somebody earnestly struggling toward truth instead of flecking your forhead with spittle as he ranted grandiosely— pg. 1056
Of course the main reward of the writing is it’s poignancy, which is starkly apparent as the storyline makes in roads to life at a half-way house. What I did not know the last time was that Wallace himself had been through all of this- the AA meetings, the half and the quarter houses and all the characters that come attached to this life, which I am sure he witnessed.
P.S. On the news tonight is the related story that Roger Federer also has won Wimbledon. I wouldn’t even know what that means if it wasn’t for the continuum of tennis articles that came out of our enthusiastic writer’s oeuvre.
Roger Federer as Religious Experience (NYT 2006)
“The specific thesis here is that if you’ve never seen the young man play live, and then do, in person, on the sacred grass of Wimbledon, through the literally withering heat and then wind and rain of the ’06 fortnight, then you are apt to have what one of the tournament’s press bus drivers describes as a “bloody near-religious experience.”
and this NPR interview where he claims,”I am not a tennis authority”. ‘Federer Moment‘
week 1 – 7%
Contrary to what Dave Eggers says in his albeit otherwise insightful (and thoughtful) forward to the 10-Year-Anniversary issue of Infinite Jest,
“It demands your full attention (edit-true). It can’t be read at a crowded cafe” (edit- untrue).
I spent the day at noisy Third Place Books, settled in the equivalent of one of those movies that puts you outside of your own life, and fever pitched through the rest of the week’s reading assignment. Then reread some parts and discovered the IJ poker hand, which I was too short attention-spanned to figure out before….in the footnotes, if you thoroughly read the plot lines to James Incandenza’s filmography, you are not only highly entertained, but privy to a little skeleton of the entire, or most of the major plot lines of the book. Hilarious. My favorite movie title is: Good-Looking Men in Small Clever Rooms That Utilize Every Centimeter of Available Space With Mind-Boggling Efficiency. Please tell me that was a short story that became more than the footnote.
At any rate, the second read of this book has so far been incredibly enjoyable. I have my paperback copy that out side of all hesitations I am writing in (something unfortunately the book compels you to do), which is helping me remember the characters better. I have thoroughly taken Marcus Sakey’s advice and have stopped trying to find hidden meaning and answers in the conglomeration of the plot lines (although the compulsion lies in wait). It is rewarding to know something you felt so strongly about a decade ago still resonates so strongly. The farther in you forge into this thing you more you are rewarded, and all the hyperbole is warranted. You can say that with hesitation.
A note. I read the intro chapter on James Incandenza (pg. 63) in it’s entirety and then went of to get ready for work…and realized that indeed the this character is the first in the book to enter the discussion of suicide. It made me gasp a small “oh” while I was in the shower. Subsequently I had an incredibly hard time getting through the Kate Gompert entry (pg. 68), a very obsessive account of depression, suicide and the request for shock treatment. It’s impossible to not think you have stumbled into autobiography.
It is in hindsight this second reading is taking place, and there are things that are disturbing and sad that of course I did not catch before. I can’t remember how much of his work I had consumed during my last reading (most likely only his Harper’s essays). Thematically I see little bits that are intertwined in his other stories. I warned Ben I have entered into an obsessive read again, who replied it is one of the few books he would very much like to reread sometime.
A few things, I feel weird making other people read this, thus have pulled the dual posting mechanism from FB and can’t imagine anyone else I know would find these ramblings interesting. A million (probably an underestimate) people have pontificated endlessly on this book, and I know I am adding not much to the conversation. That being said, I have a strange compulsion to write about it*, so here we are, how ever self-consciously grad-schoolish it seems to be.
PS The thing that made me giggle the most from the filmography footnote: C.N. Reilly.
Charles Nelson Reilly…..there is so much absurdity intact, I wonder how much will be lost on the 25 year old readers.
*from the late 90’s is a gray notebook stuffed into a box somewhere on a high shelf, that contains a lot of notes I scribbled while reading this book this first go around. I will never find it, it might as well not exist at all. I do remember concocting a flimsy thesis about Orin being central to the answer to the book. There is, as we now know, no answer- just the need to read, and re-read the book again looking for little tidbits, scraps of things that might breadcrumb you to a conclusion. It is entirely more enjoyable to read it now with out that constant fear you are missing something central.
dfw wd
Infinite Summer is perhaps an all out DFW fanatics wet dream, and I have decided to participate (thank you Yvette for the tip off). I haven’t read the book since the summer of ‘99, so perhaps we shall see how a decade in between resonates between us and 1079 pages. Also, we shall see how this goes, as the only way I could get through it last time was to binge read it in a week while unemployed…almost making a job of it. Otherwise, my scant attention span could not keep the characters straight. Yet, you might be surprised how often in the past 10 years references from it creep into your consciousness. The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment will not leave me alone.
I pulled out the old precious 1st edition hard copy, gingerly, until the soon to be bashed paperback edition arrives via snail.
I want to see if the part that is titled WINTER, B.S., 1963, SEPULVEDA CA is still my favorite chapter. Page 491. I think about re-reading it all the time, and now I can find out why.
I hope this is not too self indulgent.
And yes I have been meaning to return here, as I see it has been an entire dry season of spring since we have.
PS Donna said over her dead body would she ever be talked into reading this, especially all the horrific tennis parts, which she could barely get through the tennis parts in Anne Lamott, let alone this. Bizarre as the last time I was reading IJ I was simultaneously reading Crooked Little Heart, which at some point I felt compelled to sink great time slots of thought thinking how strange that was, and how both DFW and Anne Lamott were teenage tennis stars. But we will save that for later. And no, I do not play tennis or like sports.
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