burdened eyes & light soaked joy... now that's what I call living! (a free💫posting)
a memoir to make you laugh on a long drive, getting-it-less in your writing, and a festive beverage to bring the light!
hey-ho,
I read an interview with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright discussing their new movie, HERE, the story of a home and a long marriage. Rather than hire young actors to play Hanks and Wright in youth, the filmmaker used A.I. to de-age them all the way back to 17, and then to pre-age them well into their 70’s and beyond. It feels to me like a party trick.
In the interview, Hanks says that at the end of every shooting day he would look at the playbacks to see: “Do we have enough energy? Are our eyes actually, you know, focused the way they can be when you’re young — or burdened when you’re old?”
The question mesmerized me and made me sad. Because, it’s so, isn’t it? Experiences—also known as living—do burden us. Saggy skin, gray hair/no hair, are certainly tells, but it’s our eyes that reveal we’ve made it through. How strange that Hanks and Wright had to attempt to align their eyes with their computer-generated bodies. How does one do that?
Wright said, “…we had to be very discerning of ourselves. Like, OK, maybe I need to think of something that is more innocent, that will take away the years of life that are in here…. But A.I. gave us the innocence in the eyes and the youthful skin.”
Give innocence… take away years of life….
I’m surprised, but I don’t want to grab at that ring.
I’ve lived through some really crappy stuff (falling from a two-story window, a near drowning, teenage shoplifting phase, stirrup pants, bad break-ups, miscarriages… other unmentionables) I bet you have too, (please, nod vigorously so I don’t feel alone) but do I want to erase the experiences that gave me my burdened eyes? Because that’s the thing, right? Hard experiences definitely realign our naïve expectations about how life will work out, but hard experiences are the exact things that make life work out! If we let them, hard experiences tenderize us, make us vulnerable and available.
Then one of those serendipitous overlaps in my reading occurred. John Green, in THE ANTHROPOCENE REVIEWED, wrote, “To me the most beautiful thing is vulnerability.” Cue the choir. Being vulnerable means we’re open for business. (Remember when Barbara Kingsolver said, “Hope is our job.”) Being vulnerable means we recognize the burdened eyes of our neighbors and meet them on equal footing. Being vulnerable means we know we have more to learn, more to feel. Green also says:
“You can’t see the future coming—not the terrors, for sure, but you also can’t see the wonders that are coming, the moments of light-soaked joy that await each of us.”
So I say fuck you A.I. with your dumb, unpeopled eyes.
(Ahem, a confession: Wright also said that A.I. “got rid of the saggy neck,” and, well… I could go for that!)
And here’s another reading overlap! Billy Collins has something to say about joy in his new collection, WATER, WATER, which is a delight and you should probably buy for at least 3 people on your list:
Sending you love and good wishes, a suitcase and a pair of sunglasses.
Every week I strive to be a bright light in your inbox. So thank you paid subscribers! If you too would like support my newsletter by becoming a paid subscriber or gifting a subscription to a friend who loves books, convivial conversations, writing, and recipes, I’ve got you! I’m offering 15% off for the holidays. It means a bunch to me! xoNatalie💙
read:
Are you driving anywhere for the holidays? If so, I whole-heartedly recommend this memoir, THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB, by Griffin Dunne. It’s full of gossip and name dropping and funny sentences. It’s also full of love of family, tragedy, kindness and so many missteps. On a long drive from California back to Oregon, through snow and windy hazards, Griffin Dunne, narrating his own book, kept me smiling and alert and laughing. The book is a long strand of beautiful, witty anecdotes, but not without depth.
“My fragile identity at that time was tied to a father who couldn’t throw to third and gave me two French poodles named after famous homosexuals,” Griffin writes. “What I secretly longed for was to have a father like my hotheaded uncle. It took me many years to understand what it meant to be a man, and by then I realized I’d been raised by one all along.”
What a way to pass the miles and the time behind the wheel.
Our zoom r.w.e. book group will discuss BARBARIAN DAYS, by William Finnegan, on 12 January, 2025 at 9:30a PT.
The book group is a perk for paid subscribers and let me tell you we are a lively bunch!
Go ahead, upgrade to paid and claim your spot. I hope to get to know you better!
Check my read.write.eat. Bookshop Store, where you will find many of the books I've recommended in the newsletter. Buying books from my shop is a way you can be a friend to the newsletter.
write :
I recently shared an Alice McDermott interview from the Paris Review with my novel workshop. I love Alice McDermott’s writing so very much. I was lucky to be in a summer workshop with her and she was every bit as wonderful in person as she is on the page! I highly recommend reading the interview (PDF for paid subscribers at the close of this newsletter, do check it out!). And here’s a taste that really landed with me.
When asked about sentence making, McDermott responded:
As a writer, I also see sentence-making as the ultimate test of authorial ego. As soon as a sentence calls attention to itself, demonstrates how clever the author is, how astute, how talented, I know something’s gone wrong. The writer is no longer at the service of her words, the words are serving the writer. Each sentence needs to be entirely necessary to the work as a whole, and yet each sentence needs to be full of humility. A sentence that seeks to dazzle is merely annoying. A sentence that dazzles even as it deflects our amazement, graciously leading us to the next, is a sentence worth keeping.
I think a lot about sentences that peacock their way across the page, and sentences that do the job clearly and beautifully without flourish, like swimming across a lake and seeing the bottom.
I also have this saved quote about sentences from Jhumpa Lahiri. The interviewer asked after her sentences, saying a critic called them ‘unshowy.’ Here is her response:
I like it to be plain. It appeals to me more. There's form and there's function and I have never been a fan of just form. My husband and I always have this argument because we go shopping for furniture and he always looks at chairs that are spectacular and beautiful and unusual, and I never want to get a chair if it isn't comfortable. I don't want to sit around and have my language just be beautiful. If you read Nabokov, who I love, the language is beautiful but it also makes the story and is an integral part of the story. Even now in my own work, I just want to get it less—get it plainer. When I rework things I try to get it as simple as I can.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a beautiful turn of phrase or a surprising metaphor. But when the sentences start crying out, “Look at me!” I balk. “Look at me!” is a wonderful cry from a child learning to dive into the deep end, or ride a bike, or belt out a song… but flashy sentences, not so much.
Consider these sentences from a favorite short story of mine, “Some Other, Better Otto,” by Deborah Eisenberg. (Oh and do hit the link! It’s a fabulous collection, TWILIGHT OF THE SUPERHEROES) It’s from a scene in which two characters find themselves falling in love.
It was as if snow had begun to fall in the apartment—a gentle, chiming, twinkling snow. And sitting there, looking at one another silently, it became apparent that what each was facing was his future.
💛🙌🏻🥹
Speaking of sentences, maybe we should read, THE SENTENCE, by Louise Erdrich…which asks, what do we owe to the living, to the dead, to the reader, and to the book? Set in a haunted bookstore it might be a wonderful diversion in the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
💫💫💫If you enjoy r.w.e. will you kindly pause to hit the ❤️ at the top left or bottom of this post? It sure does help in the substack scheme of things and gives me a lift! xoNatalie 💫💫💫
eat:
🎄🥂🥳
How about a Festive Holiday Punch?
6 to 8 lemons
½c brown sugar
1t flaky sea salt
4 whole cloves
4 whole allspice berries
1 whole star anise
2 cinnamon sticks
1t whole black peppercorns
2t loose-leaf oolong, black or green tea leaves
¼c fresh orange juice
Make the punch base:
Using a peeler, peel 4 of the lemons and place the peels in a medium bowl. Reserve the peeled lemons. Add the sugar and salt to the peels and use a muddler or the end of a rolling pin to work them into the peels until the peels start to turn slightly translucent, about 2 minutes.
Heat a med skillet over medium-high. When the pan is hot, add the cloves, allspice berries, star anise, cinnamon sticks and peppercorns. Heat, shaking the pan often, until the spices are fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Watch carefully so the spices do not burn. Add the spices directly to the lemon peel mixture, along with the tea leaves, and muddle for another minute, crushing the spices and tea leaves into the peel mixture, then set aside at room temperature for 8 hours and up to 24.
The next day, add ¼ cup hot water to the citrus mixture, stir gently to dissolve the sugar and set aside to steep for 2 minutes. Meanwhile, juice the reserved lemons. (You need ¾ cup lemon juice and so may need to juice more lemons.) Add the lemon and orange juices to the spice-sugar mixture, then strain the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer, pressing on the solids. (You should have a scant 1¼ cups.) Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator until you’re ready to make your drinks. (The base can be stored, in the refrigerator, for up to 1 month.)
For a Spirited Punch:
Ice
Spiced Punch Base (above 👆)
Fancy bitters (I like citrus)
Sparkling wine
Sparkling water
Garnish of citrus wheels and/or cinnamon sticks
Bourbon of choice
A’Siciliana Blood Orange Soda, or something similar
Maybe set your guests free to make their own single cocktail concoctions! Simply print out these basic guidelines and let them mix it up! Obviously your mocktail drinkers can skip the alcohol, use the Italian soda and have a festive drink in hand.
Fill a lowball glass with ice, and add 1 ounce Spiced Punch Base, 1 ounce Bourbon and 3 to 4 dashes bitters. Stir gently to combine. Top with 1 ounce soda water and 2 ounces sparkling wine. Finish with a citrus wheel or cinnamon stick, or both.
Cheers!
This device does not reflect your inner beauty!
See you on New Year’s Day with some interesting lists and ideas and projects to begin again w/o pressure!
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Tell your people you love them, and take good care of your skin.
xN
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