Daily Archives: October 2, 2007

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He had me at book scalpel

Check out these “book autopsies.” So cool.

This sounds like something I would do for a joke

Eat my pork? Eat my fork!

Help, I’m getting old

Yesterday I was included in a country club lunch with my Virginia grandparents, their visiting niece (a poet), and her husband (a photographer). When the lively company wasn’t telling sacrilegious jokes, the niece stated her belief that everyone had an internal age, a subconscious clock inside her body that was frozen somewhere in time. She asked me how old I was. “Thirteen,” I replied automatically. It was a question I had thought about before, because my mom once told me that she always thought of herself as 26, even though she’s now in her 50s. In my mind’s eye, she will forever remain a youthful 32. But I am mostly 13, and I know that when I’m sad or lonely or confused, it’s easier to regress to that internal age. That teenage girl crops up and tends to make decisions that she shouldn’t in my adult life.

I was thinking about all this yesterday, and I realized that not only do I hold this secret belief that I am 13 and not 27, I also hold the juvenile beliefs that I should be able to eat as much candy as I want, that my parents should take care of me when I’m sick or unhappy, that I’m never going to die, and that I should have gotten a puppy for my birthday. There’s a whole constellation of youthful misapprehensions that go along with me not growing up in my mind. And suddenly I aged 14 years all at once. I felt like Robin Williams in that movie where he graduates from high school as an old man. I felt like I immediately needed to marry and have kids and get a real career and stop borrowing money from my mother. I felt like I had fallen out of my time warp and I needed to make up for all the years of delusion.

It’s all very confusing, I think, because I’m talking now about myself and about being scared to grow up and about being scared not to grow up, and I’m only 27 and I know that’s just a start – a jumping off point – but I also felt that way about 13, and I also thought that it would never be 2008, and now it almost is.  I feel like everything would be better if I had an engagement ring and a puppy, but I also know that tomorrow I might freak out because I have to walk that damn dog every day and I’d much rather stay up late eating candy and reading books with no one pestering me about the pee stains on the couch. Anyway.

We asked my grandfather how old he was internally and he said he didn’t know. I proposed 105.

First stop, MTV Video Music Awards; second stop, Vatican City

Alicia Keys went on a spiritual quest to Egypt and she had this to say:

I needed to get out of town and clear my head, I went to Egypt. It was such a miraculous experience for me. I crawled to the top of the pyramid and I just sang at the top of my lungs right there. People walking in acted like I was crazy; I didn’t care. 

American celebrities are such a spiritually enlightened bunch. “I went to St. Peter’s,” says Pop Starlet #9, “and I really felt God’s presence there, touching me personally. I felt blessed and I didn’t care who knew it. I took off all my clothes and started humping the Pieta.”