Slight Improvement
If I don’t feel much better today than I did yesterday, that may be because I tackled too many jobs. I made a simple dinner for the two of us last night – spaghetti in Buitoni arrabiata sauce – and breakfast this morning. No big deal, ordinarily. But I’m coming to the tentative conclusion – nothing’s firm until the surgeon goes over my X-rays (the taking of which was a surprising ordeal) – that I ought to do as little as I can. At the same time, I’ve ordered from all the local eateries two times over. A diet of diner food is demoralizing.
As for reading, I’m maxing out. I may have to take a day off from the printed word, and just watch movies. Yesterday, I finished Thomas Mallon’s Fellow Travelers. I was sobbing. Today, I read half of Katheryn Davis’s The Thin Place, a good book but not one that speaks to me as powerfully as the Mallon or as the even more astonishing Sacred Games, by Vikram Chandra. That nine-hundred-page masterpiece kept me busy for over three breathtaken days. I’ve also started in on Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes, in which the CIA is held up as a misconceived and incompetent organization run/ruined by Ivy League cowboys. It is a long way from the quiet piety of The Good Shepherd.
Speaking of movies, I’ve watched a few. Under the Tuscan Sun, the other night with Kathleen – a great fave of mine, and she had seen it only once. The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci’s steamy movie about Soixante-Huit. Then, yesterday, Top Hat. It struck me as the most elegant American picture ever made, and to underscore its remarkable achievement, I watched its immediate predecessor, The Gay Divorcée, this evening. Everything vulgar and heavy about the earlier, much longer movie gets cleaned up in Top Hat, which, among other things, tamps down to the minimum the Busby Berkeley excesses of “The Continental.” Silly Alice Brady (whom I usually adore) is replaced by the delightfully mordant Helen Broderick. And, let’s face it, the clothes are much, much crisper. Top Hat gets everything right.
It did occur to me, though, that a song in praise of puttin’ on white ties and tails couldn’t possibly be sung by someone who had to do it with any regularity. That’s not because tails are uncomfortable, but because white-tie events have a waxworks aspect that is anything but invigorating.
I’d feel a lot better if I could raise my head a centimeter or two, but that’s a matter of morale, not pain. The pain is greatly reduced, and would be lesser still if I would just stay out of the kitchen.
Kathleen goes to Washington tomorrow for a conference, and she won’t be able to accompany me to the surgeon. But I’ll arrange for his secretary and Kathleen’s priceless Mona to set up an appointment, so that he can explain to her what he has told to me. I’ve reached the age where you don’t see a new doctor alone. You’re too anxious (at best) to pay attention to all the details.
Have the best Monday possible!