The invitation said ‘black dress for Ladies’. ‘You’re not allowed to be whiter than him,’ my husband, Jason, instructs. ‘He has to be the whitest. And you cannot wear a hat because that is his thing.’
We are discussing the pope, who has woken one morning, at the age of 86, with a sudden craving to meet artists. An event has been proposed: a celebration in the Sistine Chapel on 23 June with the pope and two hundred honoured guests, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the contemporary and modern art collection at the Vatican Museums. I am somehow one of these two hundred; either that, or it is a trap. ‘I think if you’re invited to meet the pope, you go,’ Jason tells me. ‘It will make a perfect ending.’ For what?
Repeatedly retrieving a single object, especially for another species, isn’t a regular occurrence in the wild. Domestic dogs (retrievers, especially) fetch because we bred them to do so; people expect the behavior in puppies, tossing balls with abandon and showering their pets with rewards. With cats, though, “that’s not a trait we’ve actively selected for,” says Wailani Sung, a veterinary behaviorist at the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Which makes fetching a bit of a paradox—a behavior with deep wild roots that has been coaxed out by a playful relationship with us.
I don’t remember learning to read. There is a story in my family: I am still a small child, my mother carries me in her arms as she stands in line at the bank, the bank teller sees my long golden hair and says, “What a pretty little girl.” I say “I am a boy, Janice,” and Janice screams and faints.
This was in the seventies in Kentucky, the years of The Exorcist and The Omen, the era of demonic children on-screen. Janice, primed by horror movies to see the supernatural in everything, was unable to imagine a less exciting explanation. It was impossible that a child so small could have read her name tag.
I’ve been trying to write this essay for a very long time. Months, I think. Or maybe even longer, before I ever mentioned it to anyone, before I let anyone know that I was even capable of multiple sentences again. When all I could muster writing was a single sentence on a note card. My brain works differently now than it used to, and differently than I feel that it ought to. I told my speech therapist that I was frustrated that I haven’t been able to write fiction since experiencing a traumatic brain injury — which means that I am still, after nearly two years, unable to do my job.
He nodded with practiced care. “That must feel frustrating,” he said. “But maybe it’s important to focus on what you can do.”
We dream of immortality because we are creatures made of loss — the death of the individual is what ensured the survival of the species along the evolutionary vector of adaptation — and made for loss: All of our creativity, all of our compulsive productivity, all of our poems and our space telescopes, are but a coping mechanism for our mortality, for the elemental knowledge that we will lose everything and everyone we cherish as we inevitably return our borrowed stardust to the universe.
And yet the measure of life, the meaning of it, may be precisely what we make of our losses — how we turn the dust of disappointment and dissolution into clay for creation and self-creation, how we make of loss a reason to love more fully and live more deeply.
But the stance also communicates something less savory to the viewer. Mark Bowden, expert in human behavior and body language, explains the pose lends an aura of arrogance (which might be right on the money for some chefs, but they should probably do their best to hide it). It also sends a signal to kitchen staff.
“I am a Texan,” said Wunzel Lewis, 71, a regular at Luby’s, which serves Thanksgiving fare year-round as part of its sprawling menu. “We like to eat anything any time of the year.” And here, she said, “the turkey breast is always moist.”
Walking into a Luby’s feels a bit like rewinding several decades, to when liver and onions was a menu staple and faux leather booths were standard restaurant décor. For the devoted following of this Texas chain, that’s exactly its appeal.
In this murky world of cowardly self-interest, we crave someone courageous and honest. We need Benjamin Shreve, the young narrator of Elizabeth Crook’s stirring new western, “The Madstone.” He is not too good to be true, just good enough for us to want him to be true. As one devoted character says, he is a man with “a powerful conscience but maybe a stronger heart.” Earlier this month, Crook received the Texas Writer Award at the Texas Book Festival in Austin, and I can see why. With “The Madstone,” she has written the perfect adventure to curl up with on some desolate winter night.