Christmas with the D-Girls

This holiday, my first with Della because of the pandemic, called for something special. Christmas Eve dessert macarons from Laduree on Madison Avenue fit the bill.  Della had first dibs.

Dagny honed her ladylike technique on Oreos. Will she ever go back?  You bet she will!

Santa dropped by early to bring some Aladdin-Sane branded catnip for Mister P.  Kitty crack!

Della sounded the alarm first thing Christmas morning.  Looks like she may become a parking magnate.

Audi B helped out.

Santa brought Dagny a dollhouse.

Magda didn't waste any  time appropriating Joe's new El Paso Chihuahuas hat.

Moofy turned his back!

Kid and pet wrangling for portraits ain't easy!

Don't let Della's pink frock fool you.

She's definitely a road 'n track kinda gal.

Should We Stay or Should We Go (4*)

Chris, knowing I have established on expiration date, cautiously recommended that I read Lionel Shriver's latest.  Why not, I thought?  It couldn't be any more frightening than The Mandibles.

Shriver sets up the situation as you might expect:  a happily married couple who recently have experienced an awful parental death pledge to commit suicide by the time both have turned 80.    To say that complications ensue is an understatement because Shriver explores numerous ends to their lives as a result of individual and family decisions, and both social and scientific factors, including a hilarious take on cryogenics.  She doesn't really load the deck either, mostly letting readers draw their own conclusions about what happens to Kay and Cyril who also happen to be on either side of the Brexit morass, which turns out to be a surprisingly apt metaphor given how Brits generally debate it as a matter of life and death.

Still, I wondered what effect the novel would have on my own thinking, mostly because I lack either a spouse or children.  Shriver writes particularly well about the joys of married life and how hard they might be to leave behind.

Their sleep was best in winter and constituted the most winning aspect of the season (in comparison, sod Christmas) when they lowered the thermostat to 12°C and doubled the duvets, the air sharp and fresh in their lungs, their bodies in due course so indolently warm that it felt almost criminal.  An instep cooled outside the duvet would slip bracingly against his calf; a hand warmed under the pillow would cup the side of his neck, making him feel not only safe and beloved, but more profoundly and perfectly present in the single beating moments of his life than he ever felt during the day.  For any given night’s repose comprised a sequence of accelerating ecstasies: from a glissando of descent, to the thick brown mud bath of deep slumber, to an early stirring and serene resurfacing, the return to consciousness as clean, smooth, and uplifting as those super-fast glass lifts in the atriums of modern high-rises, in which you can watch the greenery in the lobby foreshorten  as you ascend, ears popping, to the 89th floor.  The one element of his retirement that he cherished above all was the opportunity for lie-ins, whose sacrifice during his working years he regarded as his most personally costly tithes to the National Health Service. Accordingly, it was mornings riding languid swells in and out of sleep, like rocking lazily in a boat at sea, that he experienced his greatest doubts about their treaty.  The prospect of never again resting in his wife’s arms in bed was enough to make him weep, as resting in her arms nearly made him weep as well, from pleasure.

*  *  *  *  *

In their brief window of privacy, Cyril kissed his wife deeply, the way they used to kiss for hours when they were courting, and they withdrew from one another’s lips at last with the same reluctance they both remembered from those days as well, when they had to get back to their medical studies. That kiss sent a tingling shimmer through the entirety of their lives together, as if their marriage were a crash cymbal whose rim he’d just hit deftly with a felt mallet.

*  *  *  *  *

But then, in the last chapter, Shriver does tip her hand when Kay who initially goes along with Cyril's plan without as much certainty, becomes its most articulate advocate. 

“Apparently my blood pressure is all over the map, which makes it much harder to treat.  Obviously, that increases the risk of stroke, which—I need hardly tell a GP—can effectively end one’s life without warning over the course of a few minutes, and some of the worst outcomes are those in which one survives.  I also have a persistent pain in my right shoulder, which I haven’t mentioned either.  It sends pain down the arm and sometimes feels numb; the problem is clearly neurological and could be a symptom of something worse.  Aside from joint replacement, there’s no cure for arthritis and mine is getting worse.  I could probably manage no longer being able to walk but I don’t want to manage not walking. 

Because it’s not as if we can’t live with these ailments. The trouble is that we can live with them, as we can also live with all the other ailments that are coming soon to a theatre near you.  We’re already well into the process of whittling away what we’ve always done, who we’ve always been—making sacrifices by degrees, like frogs in a heating pot.  So it’s already out of the question that we’ll live some sort of fantasy old age in which we’re wise, spry lives of the party until we’re a hundred and ten . . .  I want to let all this go when it still hurts to let it go.  When we can still feel a sense of loss.  When what we’re losing is still whole and not corrupted, and diminished, and made dreadfully sad.  When other people will still be sorry to see us go.”

As far as this arthritic is concerned, I couldn't have sad it better.

Happy Holidays from New York City

West 57 Street

More Big Stores

 

Bergdorf Goodman

Bloomingdale's

Soho

Brookfield Place

More Color

Madison Avenue

Soho

Bergdorf Goodman

Bergdorf Goodman

More Critters

Soho

Madison Avenue

More Designers

Midtown

Bleecker Street

More Food & Drink

Nolita

More Hannukah

Bergdorf Goodman

More Mannequins

Deutsche Bank Center, Columbus Circle

Grand Army Plaza

More Outdoors

Santa Con, Midtown

Macy*s

More Santa and Their Reindeer

Scooter Store, Soho

More Signs of the Times

Soho

Meatpacking District

More Snowmen, Toy Soldiers & Princesses

Fifth Avenue

More This 'n That

Soho

Lower Manhattan

Christmas Market, Columbus Circle

Upper West Side

Rockefeller Center

More Trees & Wreaths

Genesis Dealer, Lower Manhattan

Hermes

More WTF?

Joan Didion (1934-2021)

 Another lion (lioness?) gone!  She lived at the intersection of wit, style and intelligence.

I don't know what I think until I write it down.

* * * * *

The truth is, it's easier for me to write than talk... to express the state I'm in at any time.

* * * * *

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.

* * * * *

“...quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again."

* * * * *

“It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.”

* * * * *

"Ask anyone committed to Marxist analysis how many angels dance on the head of a pin, and you will be asked in return to never mind the angels, tell me who controls the production of pins."

* * * * *

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” 

* * * * *

“Writers are always selling somebody out.” 

My Fashion Vocabulary

After the amazing installation of the Dior show at the Brooklyn Museum, I was more than a little let down by "In America:  A Lexicon of Fashion at the Met," although there's much to admire.

  

You see the clothing a lot like you would if you were trying it on in a dressing room at Nordstrom Rack, the only place I like to shop. It's also interesting to see the word the curators use to  identify each of the designers' representative works.  Sometimes, as in the photo below, I like the word more than outfit.

Rodarte/Kate & Laura Mulleavy (Ebullience)

This dress may be as close as I ever have gotten to the world of high fashion.  Fabrice rented the Muller Cottage the summer before we did.  He barely glanced up from the book he was reading by the kidney-shaped pool when the real estate agent showed us the property in September 1988.  "He designed Patty Hearst's wedding gown," she dished, something Google won't confirm.  Who cares?  It gave our favorite house in the Pines an undeniable provenance. Sadly, Fabrice succumbed to AIDS a little more than a decade later at age 47.

Fabrice Simon (Artfulness)

It's no coincidence that I actually own clothing associated with the word "comfort" even if my plaid Pendleton shirts are hand-me-downs.

Andre Walker/Pendleton Woolen Mills (Comfort)

Claire McCardell (Honesty)

LRS/Raul Solis (Unity)

Rudi Gernreich (Optimism)

Isaac Mizrahi (Sweetness)

Stephen Sprouse (Spontaneity)

Charles James (Enchantment)

Stephen  Burrows (Vibrancy)

Anna Sui (Precociousness)