Read Mark Bittman's take on the Mediterranean Diet for (1) how the press spins health research and (2) some excellent points, most emphatically, "eating well is not deprivational, but delicious." It's all about eating real food, and making it good.
***
I watched "Midnight in Paris" over the weekend. I wasn't sold at first, but it really grew on me. I used to walk around Paris wondering what it was like--what a given bistro was like--in Simone de Beauvoir's day. Had I watched the film a year ago, it would have thrown me into a fit of jealous nostalgia, but having just been to Paris, I was able to just enjoy the street scenes.
Speaking of fits, I woke up in a fit in the middle of the night. I'd dreamt that I was breaking colored glass. I had, indeed, broken a colored wine glass earlier in the week by trying to shove it in an already full dishwasher (I was pushing it against a soft surface, but things do break when you push them too hard). It was a nice wine glass--heavy, sturdy, attractive--but its demise was not the end of the world. Hardly the stuff that would make it into a dream.
But dream of broken glass I did, and when I woke up, I knew immediately, in an odd moment of just-woke-up clarity, that it wasn't entirely about the wine glass. Where had I read something about colorful broken glass? It was in reference to a Nabokov story ("Pnin") but where did I read about it? Was it the New Yorker? It had to be! But I couldn't recall the specific article: who in the New Yorker was writing about "Pnin"? I couldn't go back to sleep; it was going to drive me crazy. I was unwilling to look it up right then and there, in the middle of the night, but I couldn't stop thinking about it.
The publication mattered less than what the article was about: who was writing about "Pnin"? I remembered--this is why I noted it--it was in the context of writing, storytelling. And I remember finding the article's treatment of it unsatisfactory: what exactly did the writer get out of the scene with the broken glass? There was a reference later in the story that offered some clarification: sometimes you have to accept the breaking of lesser glass to keep the glass you value most intact. But was that her overall point? I couldn't tell. It was still unsatisfying. The tie-in with writing, that is; the excerpt itself was strikingly evocative.
I observed my sleepy mind trying to recall the situational and tactile experience of reading the article: where was I, and what was the physical medium? I could have sworn it was a magazine, i.e., not my phone or iPad. And it certainly was not Elle or Marie Claire (look, I had expiring frequent flier miles) or The Smithsonian or The Dramatist. The latter would be a likely candidate, but I hadn't read one in over a year; the just pile up. So it had to be the New Yorker, but I'm usually good at remembering what I read in the New Yorker and I had no idea what big story to associate with this small story. And where was I when I read it? What's interesting to me is that my mind even went there: I can often remember--I often do remember, without trying--where I was when I read a specific thing. But I couldn't remember. I went back to sleep, hoping my subconscious mind would keep working on it.
I woke up in the morning still thinking about it. I googled "Pnin" and" broken glass" and "New Yorker" on my iPad, which was at my bedside. Nothing.
I came downstairs, opened the last New Yorker I'd finished, and flipped through. And there it was, dog-eared (I'd figured, in the middle of the night, that if it was indeed the New Yorker and not a book, I would have dog-eared it... and then in a year when I recycled old New Yorkers, it would have been all for naught). There it was, in that profile on Annie Baker that I'd brought to your attention just over a week ago.
It's still unsatisfying. And yet! How it managed, perhaps with the push from the broken wine glass, to borrow itself into my subconscious.
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