Because I managed to completely forget the alphabet, and also because I was excited about my post for H, the fact that both F and G come first somehow slipped my mind. Um, oops. But F is an easy one: it's for family and food, two things that are inseparably linked in my mind and also major elements of my experience of joy. Instead of gushing a bunch about my folks, though, what I'd like to do is make a quick list of the things my family gave me that I am really grateful for. See, even if you really can't stand your family, chances are that somewhere along the line you did receive some form of gift from them. Whether it's your tenacity, your sense of humor, your love of Star Trek, your beautiful eyes, your favorite book, your amazing singing voice, or your unique ability to drink everyone else at the bar under the table, I would be shocked if your parents - biological or no - didn't pass on to you something that makes up a part of your identity you are proud of or a pastime that gives you great pleasure.
Because I could talk about this for days, I am going to judiciously pick only two: a feeling that's important to me, and a thing I love doing.
I don't know exactly how this was transmitted, but I clearly feel that my mother is the one from whom I got a delicate, dreamy, childhood feeling I guess I'd call sentimentality for lack of a better word, but it's not really what I mean at all: a feeling lifted from the pages of the Narnia books, AA Milne, the Borrowers books, The Wind in the Willows, and Beatrix Potter, very much a part of a vanished, imaginary Britain of foxgloves in gardens and animals that speak. (My mother is British; I was born in England.) It's a feeling that has to do with the pleasure of the idea of a sandy nest, a miniature newspaper, a thistledown bed, mince pies, gooseberry patches, and rain-faded gardens, a particular kind of watercolored sweetness. Before you scoff at this twee universe where nothing bad could ever happen, let me point out that this is not a feeling of a longed-for reality but a sensation of a world to escape to, a secret garden, a refuge, a place of high tea and quiet safety. Although it comes from a Christian tradition and has its nicey-nice elements (the moralizing aspects of Beatrix Potter, for example, which my mother writes about beautifully) it's really not about anything but an imagined landscape that goes gently on the heart. It is populated pretty much exclusively with animals and children, things happen in a lovely kind of miniature, and it is full of snug cottages and warm burrows - this is a world that behaves very much like Gaston Bachelard's idea of the childhood house, a house, he posits, that each of us remembers whether or not it actually existed. It is an internal refuge, the home of a nostalgia for something we actually didn't have. Why is it so lovely and compelling to so many of us? (I know I'm not the only one who has this feeling, or a version of it.) Perhaps because it's simple, and the idea of Pooh meandering the meadows or mice in fancy waistcoats living out their lives in pale greens and earthy browns gives us a glimpse of a very ordinary, solid kind of peace. It's not a place we try to go - it's a place to visit, to dally, a kind of respite for the mind.
As far as things I love, well, my dad's given me plenty, but my total exultant delirium about the awesomeness that is food is the one that comes most immediately to mind. This is because food accompanied all the most fun things we ever did: from packing charcoal and fresh steaks up to the backpack-only campgrounds in Point Reyes to morning buns and Peet's coffee to sustain us on our wandering through the backwoods of Berkeley to Friday night dinners, a special evening of feasting in our house every week, my parents discovered early on that I could be satisfied for hours (maybe days) by a good snack, and my father proceeded to act accordingly. He taught me to cook, and we had dinner as a family almost every night the whole time I was growing up - a time for raucous conversation, serious discussion, and the noshing of unobtrusively healthy and delicious food that ranged from Moroccan couscous to homemade sushi.
the last piece of brie. I am actually not kidding about this.
But there's also a gift that both my parents gave me, which might be most important of all: the two of them have very unconventional lives, not to prove a point, but just because it didn't occur to them that they needed to do things like other people. It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized that other people's parents worked 9-5 jobs and didn't spend hours talking to their kids about baby owls or chaos theory. I don't remember being told at any point that I could do anything I set my mind to, or to dream big, or anything like that; it was simply a given that I'd be supported in pursuing whatever weird and wonderful endeavors I thought sounded nifty, and if I needed help all I had to do was ask. Well, friends, here I am, taking the long road to building a mildly impossible museum. And they think that's just peachy, and for that I will be eternally grateful.
Your family sounds fabulous. I'm a firm believer in eating together and cooking food at home. That was easy when I lived in a small town in Colorado, but since we've moved to Texas, it was initially tempting to eat out. Now we're back to home cooking. I'm trying to increase my food repertoire so I don't bore everyone to tears.
My trick? Cookbooks with pictures. Really mouthwatering pictures. You don't even need to cook the recipes they depict -- it'll just inspire you to make delicious things.
2. How it affects you as the audience regardless of quality or anything else. Do you -like- it? Even if it is a piece of trash or junk, how do you respond to it?
3. What did the author mean by it? Trying to view the work through the creator's eyes. What was his/her goal? Was that goal achieved?
I am able to more fully appreciate anything I read/watch when I look at it like this.
The alphabet can be so difficult! Great post, though. Good luck with the challenge!
Ha, it's true. I'm sure I'm not alone in still needing to sing myself the alphabet song when I get mixed up...right, guys? guys??