Weekend Vignettes

Friday night, I went to see a play in a mansion.  I wore my Paris coat.  We drank bubbly wine (the first glass of which I dumped down the front of my Paris coat) and ate crepes and then the actors came out and stood in the front of the room and got their Misanthrope on. All of this for $10! I mean, the room was overheated to the point of suffocation, so after one glass of wine I had to go stand in the service corridor, where the actors were also staging.  But that’s OK; I am really a service-corridor kind of person. The whole thing made me happy to live in a city. (See the theater company here.)

Saturday afternoon, I watched 127 Hours–or rather, about 15 minutes of it. It’s the one about that guy who was trapped in a canyon and cut his own arm off to escape. (Alternate title: Coyote Ugly: Survival Edition.) I saw the actual person, Aron Ralston, tell his story on Dateline years ago and it traumatized me deeply. One particular comment he made, about the sensation of cutting through one’s own nerve, makes me writhe with horror even now. Someone at work pushed to hire Ralston as our keynote speaker once, and I was vehemently opposed; it’s an amazing story, just not one I can actually listen to, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

And yet, I’d heard the movie was good, and so I tried. Sometimes I want to watch a movie just because it has gorgeous scenery, and I don’t really care about the plot (The River Wild, anything about surfing.) But 127 Hours made me SO INCREDIBLY ANXIOUS that I could only watch until he got stuck, and then I fast-forwarded through closed eyes until he was free and met people who could help him–and I still couldn’t watch without crying and closing one eye.  In sum, don’t watch this movie.

Saturday evening, my sister and I went to DC’s Grey Market, an unregulated food market that pops up around town, where start-up food businesses try to generate some buzz about themselves.  It was fun, and packed. I bought lots of stuff–fleur de sel toffee, an amazing baguette, pulled pork, fresh chicharrones, a beautiful loaf of oatmeal bread, and a teeny little s’mores tart with from scratch everything–graham crackers for the crust, marshmallow fluff, etc. Once again, the room was so hot I nearly died, but it was still fun and I look forward to the next one.

Then, I accidentally went to DSW and shopped like I just won the lottery, which is not the case. (I bought these.  They feel like sneakers.) (And a pair of bronze wedges.) (Fine, and these legwarmers, even though I think they are stupid, conceptually.)

Sunday morning, I watched a documentary about Ralph Nader and recorded Meet the Press, something I have just recently started doing again. In the past, I have treated presidential elections the way sports fanatics treat having their team in the playoffs (except with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.)  I get very invested.  Which means I get very reactive. My mom’s family, the family I grew up with, is very conservative and for a number of years my uncles and stepfather found it fun to wind me up by saying really inflammatory things and then watching steam shoot out my ears. I am still completely unreasonable on the subject of politics, but I have learned to smile and say, I’m not going to talk about politics with you, no matter what they say. And also to avoid going home in election years. It does help that most of the family doesn’t speak to each other now; far fewer chances for disagreement when no one will stand in the same room together.

Anyway, the Nader documentary reminded me painfully of the 2000 and 2004 election cycles, and also of my 2012 pledge. I will not be reactive. I will not automatically disagree with people from the opposing political party. (Not that I see many of them in my daily life. Which helps.) I will not become emotionally invested in this campaign, at least not until about six months out. I will not cry tears of sadness on election night ever again. (I’ll still vote and volunteer and donate–I’ll just do it coldly.)