nova
5 Things About Hair, Books, Beer, Cities, and Love
I have been tagged to confess 5 things you didn’t know about me until now, so here you are… my 5 things, and I’ve gone ahead and added themes:
(p.s. I sort of fell away from focusing on fashion.)
(p.p.s. There is a certain someone who already knows everything.)
1. HAIR
I cannot do my own hair. I don’t know how to properly use a blow-dryer—or especially any kind of straightening apparatus—and even if I did know how to use one of those things I wouldn’t have the patience to stand at a mirror in the early morning to make my hair look nice. Also, in the past, the use of hair appliances in our apartment has blown a fuse. I like to use that as an excuse for not owning a blow-dryer, but really it’s my own ineptitude, or carelessness. The most beautiful hair I have ever seen on a human being was on a friend from the UK—stick straight and deep-sea blue—it was beyond gorgeous. I also like the bob on the girl in Ghost Dog. Both styles would have needed hair products and appliances. Therefore, I can only appreciate from afar. I started getting my first white hairs when I was 18; by 22 it was noticeable; now if I stopped dyeing my hair I wonder if I’d look like I was struck by lightning.
2. BOOKS
Following a course called “Humanities” in high school, in which I spoke up to the teacher, staying after class to ask him why there were no women or people of color on the curriculum and he told me it was because they didn’t merit being on the curriculum, I decided to actively read in my free time ONLY books by writers who were not white men—to, you could say, start my own “curriculum.” This self-imposed restriction lasted through college. Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita were, I seem to recall, the first books that made me consciously decide to break this rule. (Lolita was assigned my first semester in grad school, when I was 22. The Virgin Suicides was one I read an excerpt from first before realizing it was written by a man.) There should be no rules when it comes to reading. I’m embarrassed to think I lived for so many years with such a reactionary one.
3. BEER
You may want to take a seat before I tell you this. I do not like beer. I don’t like the way it tastes, the way it smells on people’s skin, the way it makes me feel. I can’t tell the difference between pilsners and ales (is that the same thing?) and stouts, although I do think Guinness tastes like soy sauce, and that is not a compliment. I think my dislike of beer may have started at a very young age, when I came to understand, at some of my parents’ parties, that smoking pot and tripping out on the neighbor’s lawn was cool and drinking Pabst and getting into bar fights was lame, but I don’t know—maybe I just don’t like the way it tastes. (Side note: I also do not like soda. Perhaps this has more to do with fizz?)
4. CITIES
You know I love cities—I talk about that enough. And you might think that New York is my dream city. It was most certainly the one that caught my fantasies when a kid, the first sight of the skyline from the highways of New Jersey the only thing to make my heart beat, and what propelled me to move there at age 22 and not, as of yet, leave. But if I could move to any city in the world and start a new life there, it would not be a city in California, even though I have said many a time that we want to move to Los Angeles. I would move to Paris. I’m not playing. I’ve visited there only twice, and my French would need a lot of work, but there is something about the city of Paris that makes me feel so intensely creative. I know I could write there. In fact, I think I would write there in a way I never have before. So, I have recently decided that before I die I want to spend at least a year or two living there. I am actually thinking of starting French language class to prepare myself for the impending move. And this decision has nothing to do with Amélie or Jean Rhys. (Oh, maybe a little.)
5. LOVE
I am madly in love. That’s probably no surprise. But I should say that it’s not just love, it’s this weird breathless feeling I get when I look at him. I find him so cute. It’s unbearable. I don’t know if it’s normal to still catch my breath after seeing him when we’ve been apart for a day, but it happens. His eyes make me melt. It’s like I’ve had a crush on the same person for thirteen years. I worry so much about losing him that I check on him early in the morning just to make sure he’s still breathing. If I call up to him in the loft bed and he doesn’t answer I have to climb up and poke him. I am also old-fashioned when it comes to true love. I believe there is only one person in the world for me. I believe this “one-person” theory so wholeheartedly that I was very confused, and almost crushed, when my grandmother recently remarried after my grandfather’s death. I couldn’t understand it. Did that mean my grandfather wasn’t her “one”? Can you have two “ones” in life, and if so wouldn’t I have to start calling it something else? I am working through this. Everyone loves differently—one person, five people, no people, who am I to be concerned? My own love is enveloping, and intensely focused, like a total eclipse. That doesn’t mean everyone else loves the same way. I mean, seriously, some people could get suffocated.
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Now, I won’t call out 5 people to continue on with these 5 things, but if anyone reading has anything to confess about Hair, Books, Beer, Cities, and/or Love, I’m listening…
Filed under: confessions, distractions, fantasies, love, memories, new york city, writing
My paternal Grandfather remarried not too long after his wife of I-Don’t-Know-How-Many years was killed in a car accident. Some people were obviously upset with his decision. Had he so quickly moved on? But I think what it came down to was simply not wanting to be alone so late in life, especially after having had someone for so long. And since my grandfather was a deeply religious man, I’m sure that, for him, it had to be marriage.
Oh, and I totally hate beer. I think it tastes like piss. I’ve never had piss, but it seemed a natural comparison. Then, I read a story by Robert Fulgham that talked about people who drink their own urine for health purposes (!) and they, and some urologists confirm, that it does indeed taste like piss.
1. Hair: I don’t do anything with it - no styling products, hair dryer or straighteners. I rely on hair clips when I have those ‘can’t be bothered with brushing days’, which - as you can imagine - are quite frequent.
2. Books: self professed reading slut. Honey, if it’s printed I’ll read it: cereal boxes, instruction manuals, tool catologs, cookbooks and all variety of novels good, banal and rancid. Sometimes after some particularaly syrupy writing, I’ll feel disgusted, as if I’d had too much cheap chocolate. Then I make hollow promises.
3. Beer: loathe it. Can’t stand the smell or taste. I’m a cocktail person. I like to experiment. I don’t have ‘a’ specific drink. I keep people entertained as they live vicariously through my choices -although a friend once told me I should try to be more sophisticated and have a signature drink.
4. Cities: lately, I’ve been enamored of the idea of villages and small towns. I think I’m less able to tolerate crowds and noise the older I get.
5. Love: without it, what would we write about? I have to say that your number 5 made me sigh Nova. It was really touching and I think he is a very lucky guy (as I’m sure you are a lucky lady).
This meme rules. I am halfway with you on the hair thing. Not only am I incapable of doing (mostly) anything with mine, I also seem to be lacking that part of my brain that really wants to do anything with it. Ah well.
Re: 2, you might be embarrassed but I think it’s pretty cool that you did that!! I’ll agree that there should be no rules when it comes to reading but the whole protesting your humanities teacher through through books is neat. And you never know how many books you might not have gotten around to without that rule!
Adam: No wonder I don’t like beer! As for grandparents remarrying, it is a learning experience for me. My nana was featured on TV with her new beau and they are really quite cute together, no one can deny it. I just miss my grandfather sometimes. I think he and I had a lot in common but never had the chance to connect in that way, so he never knew.
Niki: I love that: “self professed reading slut.” I’ve been caught reading cereal boxes (and shampoo bottles and soy sauce packets) too!
Courtney: Thanks. I was painfully shy in high school so I rebelled in very personal ways. My reading tastes still follow my youthful “rules” so I guess they still have an impact on me. Another rebellion was a refusal to dissect the fetal pig in bio class and turning in color-pencil drawings instead. I seem to recall that I got an A