MAY THE FOURS BE WITH YOU: (…Sorry.) Amy Welborn tagged me for a meme I’d been avoiding precisely because I had no interesting answers. So instead, I will craft a hand-woven, unique meme just for my fabulous readers. Because it’s all about me, me, meme.

Four movies I could watch over and over:
The Last Unicorn. Love is regret. Sublimity, resignation, and the one character every child should know: Molly Grue.

Grosse Pointe Blank. “You’re a handsome devil. What’s your name?”

Sweet Smell of Success. You can’t pawn your soul.

The Lion in Winter. Not sure why this one can be watched over and over–it’s ultimately nihilist, despite an attempt at existentialism (“If the fall is all there is, it matters”), and nihilist artworks are very hard to revisit. Perhaps TLIW works because of the iconic opening music and the naturalist, bleachy-colored cinematography. I could watch this right now, whereas I’d shy away from Vertigo, The Philadelphia Story, or even Sabrina (the Hepburn/Bogart one)–those movies demand too much of me.

Four places I’ve lived (the only four–in order of preference, least to most):
Santa Monica, California. I was not skilled at being a child, and the brief fifth-grade California interlude brought that incapacity to the forefront. Elizabeth Marquardt’s book on children of divorce at times implied that children from intact families tended to be self-centered, unable to recognize others’ needs and griefs; Santa Monica might be where I most exemplified that privileged narcissism.

Madison, Wisconsin. I barely remember it. I do remember one small incident from Communist Jewish summer camp–one of several memories in which I pushed boundaries, and then, when it turned out that I had broken the rules, became angry and ashamed, and attempted to deny that I had ever intended harm. Like I said, I was not skilled at childhood.

New Haven, Connecticut. This is the place where I made my best mistakes. Empty niches under gray Gothic skies; subaqueous nights and lasting friendships. Last weekend I walked through Branford courtyard again, and again I remembered what it’s like to live amid beauty, all the time.

Washington, DC. I’m an Antaeus, I need my home. This is where I learned the beauty of the seasons–moving through the alleys of Shepherd Park, tasting cherries in the spring, honeysuckle in the summer, apples and pears in the fall, and crisp cold ice-leaves plucked off the holly bushes in the winter.

Four TV shows I watch:
Star Trek: The Original Series. Heh. To the extent that I have a “type,” in guys, it’s totally Captain Kirk. Sad but true.

Absolutely Fabulous. I can’t express how much I love this show and these women. Patsy Is My Queen. “Shall I hit him for you, Eddie?”

The Apprentice. Yeah, I know. But–it kind of is about leadership! And Trump is so hilarious–like a big stuffed cobra that a kid’s been chewing on for a few years. Hee hee. And I was so rooting for Alla, last season….

House. I have a lot of problems with House. But it has Hugh Laurie, Robert Sean Leonard (ooh… you’re all grown up now!), and Lisa Edelstein; and it has these exchanges:

House’s explanation of why he finds it more comforting not to believe in an afterlife: “I would hate to think that all of this was just a test.”

———

Wilson (defensively, caught in mid-pre-demi-affair): I love my wife.

House: You loved all your wives. […]

Wilson: I love my wife.

House: You certainly love saying it.

Wilson: At least I try.

House: Well, as long as you’re trying to be good, you can do whatever you want.

Wilson: And as long as you’re not trying, you can say whatever you want.

House: So between us we can do anything. We can rule the world!

Four comfort foods:
Macaroni and cheese (from scratch, yo), with roasted tomatoes on top. Recipe:
Boil water and cook two cups macaroni.
1 inch butter, melted; 1 heaping tbsp flour. Mix together completely. Mix well with two cups milk. Heat in microwave for 8 mins. Mix in two cups shredded cheddar cheese. Mix in macaroni. Chop tomato and top macaroni and cheese with tomato slices.
Bake for 30 mins. at 350 degrees.

Toast and cocoa.

Sammiches. Recipe here.

Baker’s soup. I can’t make it. You can only get it at the place where Louis dwells. I don’t know what it is, but I know that I can’t live without it.

Four things I think I’m slowly figuring out:
what personalism is

how to plot

that, as they say on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “a vague disclaimer is nobody’s friend”

how to cook scrambled eggs

Four books I read because of something I saw on the Internet:
The Mask of Command
Achilles in Vietnam
Letters from a War Zone
The Mystery of Capital

Four things I wish I could have in my home: a cat, a couch, a working freezer, and order from confusion sprung

Four scraps from the fiction-notes:
1. the big revelation(s): more reaction shots!!!! How do these revelations affect the characters?

2. The old Anglican wedding service refers to marriage as “an honorable estate instituted by God in the time of man’s innocence,”

3. S. on her hometown: “Yeah, it’s the sort of place where the police blotter comes out once a month in the paper, and it’s got items like, ‘Threatening phone calls turn out to be somebody’s cousin trying to play a practical joke,’ or ‘Snowmobile carjacked, comma, returned.’ It’s like haiku.”

4. I’m a key that doesn’t open anything anymore.

Four scraps from the furry book (my commonplace book, which is covered with fake fur):

1. how to cook salmon steaks: (brush with white-wine vinegar, top with sliced garlic and cook) 10 mins. each side at 450 degrees. (Top with fresh cilantro!)

2. I can be a luminary of humility, and so on. –Fyodor Dostoyevsky

3. For who among mortals, dreading nothing, is just? –Aeschylus, Eumenides

4. Transubstantiation [is equivalent but not equal to] art (deceptive accident hides truthful substance), as vs. Plato’s condemnation of the physical & the fictive? (Geo. Steiner)

Four books I’ve recommended in the past week:
ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON (download it for free!)
THE LONG LONELINESS
DECLARE
THE GREAT BRAIN (are there British children’s books with the same entrepreneurial fire you find in the Great Brain books, the Henry Reed books, The Toothpaste Millionaire, even the Babysitters’ Club books? SERD and I couldn’t think of any, with the exception of Diana Wynne Jones’s excellent Witch’s Business/Own Back Ltd.)

Four books I’ve had recommended to me in ditto:
THE KITE RUNNER
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
THE SABBATH (Abraham Heschel)
MOBY-DICK

Four pop lyrics, because… why not:
Countries fall into the sea/It doesn’t matter much to me/As long as you’re safe, Kimberly

And it’s so sad to see/the world agree/that they’d rather see their faces filled with flies/all when I want to see white roses in their eyes

The pleasure, the privilege is mine…

Frank Ryan brought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
And you decked some f—ing blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we’ll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil’s in the chair…

Tag (for my meme, or Amy’s): Rat-O, when she resurfaces; Cacciaguida; ePiscoSours (yes, I am being pushy); Mark Shea.