A day in my life: opening a winter edition of “The Paris Review” and a half-gallon of milk with a steak knife.
I seem to be routinely looking for “hacks” to do ordinary things I used to do easily. Exhibit A: like opening a magazine that comes in the mail: the winter edition of The Paris Review. Nope. That wrapping resisted my charms. I couldn’t get it off so I had to resort to an old steak knife. And even with it finally pierced and with a flap graspable, I had to push and pull and slice a few more pieces to get it entirely off. Fingers unsliced, I am happy to report.
On the same day, even a carton of milk was resisting turning. I tried the trick for glass jars: immersing plastic caps in hot water. Nope. So, I took the steak knife and inserted the tip ever so gently under the cap. That worked without disabling the cardboard spout. A miracle. Yea, team. But, into my aging arthritic hands came Rose Wylie, an 83-year-old British artist, whose painting of two cherries was chosen to be the cover of this issue of The Paris Review. The rest of her work does not look like this piece but extraordinary in other ways…more like a Basquiat mix of text and drawings. But, by the time I wrestled the cellophane off the damn thing, I felt a series of fruit fabrics coming on and more forgiveness for my fabric palace of a condo with scraps and paintbrushes and sewing machines and plastic buckets of tools and “stuff” on every surface. Google also had photos of her studio which made me feel like Marie Kondo, the decluttering wizard.
So, I can’t ask more from a magazine: As 2021 draws to an end, I feel inspired to create fabrics of fruits and slightly more orderly than I thought PLUS there’s a non-fiction piece by Emmanuel Carrère in The Paris Review, too.
PS. I am taking a holiday break from bloggin’ and social media posts in order to count my blessings and will return in January 2022. O, Jesus. 2022. Does Amazon deliver Oxygen cannisters?
