coals to newcastle
Wednesday 23 May 2007 | I like a cookie
Fresh rose-red raspberries veiled in cream at two in the morning, hand-plucked by unhappy Oaxacans in a sunny land not far south of here—what could be more decadent? Sleeping; sleeping could be more decadent. But sleeping is not to be. Listen, fair reader, and ye shall hear the tragickal tale of a wee accidental overdose, and why I am perched here at the G5 eating berries, with Pyewacket glaring at me in groggy irritation.
Day before yesterday (though at 2 a.m. these distinctions do begin to blur) the Unnarrator conceived an idée brilliante, one of her many: to place all meds for the week in one of those plastic pill-dispenser gizmos, the ones that read Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Wednesday. And yesterday she hopped brightly out of bed at eight-thirty and in one efficient swoop downed all her vitaminas for the day. But (and I’m sure you’re already ahead of me here) instead of the flat white round Claritin she assumed she was swallowing, she partook of the convex white round Lunesta of identical diameter. Whoopsie! Within a quarter-hour she felt mysteriously logy and loony, no pun intended. Well, she thought practically, I just need to eat something. Apparently what she chose to eat was cold jasmine rice with more of the same cream? Because when I started coming out of my fucking coma last night and went to warm up the rice and leftover coconut curry, el arroz was gone, the whipping cream carton was open and I had the dimmest memory of consuming these and other bizarre comestibles. The NYT was right! The terrible dangers of sleep-eating! At least I didn’t order lunar calendars over the Internet from Australia. At least I don’t think I did. Fortunately (!) my DSL was down.
This was all very amusing, except that I got nothing done all day (and the Gorgon has graciously thrown a time-sensitive web project my way), assaulted off and on by violent indigestion (which at least clears up the question of whether Abilify was causing that particular side effect). When the Brujo came over after his evening AA meeting, he informed me, “You’re as white as a ghost.” I lay very still with my eyes closed, slavering and shivering, trying to concentrate on his voice, trying to think about little birdies in a bright blue sky, little bunnies in a field of green grass, anything but my rebellious innards. And thus I did not dare take the evening Lunesta; and thus in the darkness I Google photographs of raspberries.
And the moral of the story is that from now on all the sleepers stay in their respective labeled bottles until bedtime. Le fin.
Speaking of which: I like movies! I like them!
A year ago, just before Memorial Day weekend, I lost my job. It was my fault; I’d misunderstood (subconsciously deliberate?) the deadline, spent all day in the theater watching first X-Men III and then Deepa Mehta’s Water, emerged at 2:30 ready to crank out two reviews only to find out they’d already been bought from another newspaper and the pages had gone to press. I was all indignant, though to no end—other than that of my brief and troubled 13-month career as underpaid, surly, snobby, small-town film reviewer.
Well, at least I never have to sit through another summer blockbuster, I told myself. I can watch Fellini! I can watch Godard! I can go to matinees and watch art-house flicks without having to take notes in the dark! And then as if surfeited (like the quail which cometh out of the Israelites’ nostrils), I proceeded to watch exactly nothing for an entire year. I think the Brujo rented Monty Python and the Holy Grail one night. Oh, and I subjected him to Roman Holiday. Mandarin and I suffered through the second season of The L-Word (whose relational subtext, she insisted to our hilarity, consisted entirely of the sentiment “I’m having a feeling, and it’s all your fault!“); and we saw the Chinese hermit movie; and that was it.
But the Gorgon, with characteristically sly generosity, donated some tattered movie vouchers he was given for Christmas, and also burned me a DVD of his favorite film. And thus it comes to pass that I have seen two movies. Two! And I liked them! The big-deal East German flick The Lives of Others, and Hal Hartley’s Henry Fool. And I still have three vouchers left, so I may add The Namesake and Hartley sequel Fay Grim to my brain as well. In my disgustation (as Weil would have said), I’ve missed so many movies I actually wanted to see this year, not least among them Pan’s Labyrinth; but I seem to have rediscovered my affection for the moving image, finally, and I’m grateful. My eyes and ears seem so fresh (as Margaret Cho’s mother says of the funeral parlor’s handiwork). And even more strangely? I kind of wish I could review what I’m seeing. I could, I suppose, for my dozen dear faithless readers; but you could also just read Metacritic entries instead, and find better-written and more amusing précis from Ella Taylor and/or Scott Foundas. Besides, the pay’s even worse here than from the Alt Weekly. (Kidding!) Perhaps words on films at some later point, once full recovery from X-Men III (and accidental Lunesta overdose?) has been attained.
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