Shaved Meats, Piled High: COVID-19 Edition
March 29
How are you doing?
I don't ask that question idly or glibly. I think everyone needs to sort this question out for themselves, without judgment.
How are you doing? What are you doing to cope? I can read, but I can't watch new television shows, only things I have seen before, with the exception of The Plot Against America, which we are watching as a family, a first for a Blown Deadlines production. I find that planning my weekly menus is essential. Tonight, Sunday, we had Alison Roman's lamb ragu with Ina Garten's roasted cherry tomatoes and a green salad. Monday is pork tenderloin, Tuesday is Michael Ruhlman's egg fu yung, then Alison Roman's chicken confit and Eating Well's picadillo. On Friday, we will do take-out, on Saturday, we can feast on leftovers. My daughter has asked if she can help plan next week's menu and I can't wait. It's a genre of sorts, no, the menu plan? Per Chekhov, if you have pork tenderloin in the first act, you better use the leftover pork by week's end. (That's where the egg fu yung comes in.)
I can work, in very small, focused bursts, but my book happens to require small, focused bursts right now. I take walks with my friend, a frontline health care worker, and we bring our phones, walking at least six feet apart and chatting through the phones. Today I found myself telling her how much I love my work, how lucky I am to have a job in which I have the enormous privilege of leaning into my made-up story and trying to make it work.
I also have been doing something quite silly. On Sunday, March 23, Rachel Syme, who writes for the New Yorker s among other places, asked people to take at least five minutes to put on something fabulous from the back of their closets and share a photo with the Internet. I did it and I couldn't believe how great it felt. In the Before Times, I not so secretly wanted to live in pajamas; when I met with a stylist last fall I described my aesthetic as "pajamas, but nice." I like soft, slouchy clothes. But I have always liked beautiful ones as well, especially shoes and boots. So I kept trying to dress nicely, every day. And I kept photographing myself. Some of the outfits were clearly over the top, but more often than not, I wore what I modeled for much of the day.
I have always yearned to be stylish, but I'm much too lazy to achieve any consistency. I also don't follow fashion, don't read any of the big magazines, or pay attention to trends. In fact, I am deeply skeptical of the capitalistic underpinnings of an industry that depends on making us buy new things on a regular basis, which has real consequences for our planet. But I do watch Project Runway and, in the second week of home-schooling my daughter, I found myself developing a mini-curriculum on fashion, showing her the film What a Way To Go, using that as a springboard to discuss Edith Head, which led to The Incredibles and Head's cameo on Columbo. We designed our own evening gowns as part of art class, continued with a Saturday triple-feature of movies that have notable fashions: The Devil Wears Prada, Desperately Seeking Susan, Crocodile Dundee. (Theme within a theme: The second two were also a tribute to the actor Mark Blum, who died from COVID-19 last week.)
On my street in New Orleans, there was a particular house I loved. At a neighborhood party, I met the woman who then lived there. The person who introduced us said, in passing: "Remember that time we had a power outage in the summer and it was so hot and I stopped by your house and you were sitting in the dark in an evening gown, reading a book by candlelight?" "I just wanted to feel pretty." I was knocked out with admiration for that kind of glamour, by the idea that feeling pretty could provide a balm.
So I am trying to feel pretty every day, even as I wrestle with whether it is frivolous and offensive, a new spin on Marie Antoinette playing milkmaid, a story that turns out to be apocryphal. But even if it were true, I think what I'm doing is quite different. I am trying to celebrate what I have. And, by the way -- the biggest name brands in my closet tend to be acquired from consignment shops and sites. When this devil wears Prada, it's used.
In the wonderful movie In Her Shoes, the Cameron Diaz character tells the Toni Collette that it's a crime to keep beautiful shoes locked up, that they have to go out into the world. When this is over, I plan to take my beautiful shoes and clothes into the world, to find a chance to wear them whenever possible.
The Mystery Box will return. Lots of things will return. But so many lives will have been lost, there's no getting around that. My Pollyanna-ish hope is that we come through this understanding that we are one globe and that we will continue to face challenges that have no interest in our arbitrary borders.
Reading: The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel; Weather, Jenny Offill, From Scratch, Michael Ruhlman. (Yes, it's a cookbook, but it's also a manifesto about how we cook and eat.) Lots and lots of galleys.
Rereading: The Lenora Mattingly Weber "Beany Malone" series.
Me, Me, Me: Oh, lord, hasn't there been enough of me in here?