The Jane Austen Pick-Me-Up

Why we watch and read Jane Austen things – comfort? Is the romance like a placebo for post-orgasm chemicals or milk chocolate?

The promise of worlds where even the bitchiest people are civil, and all people have purpose. It is not simply that Romance wins in the end, but also that all the characters know where they are in the world, and how to achieve their goals.

True, marriage is often the key to everyone's purpose. In deed, it seems the only purpose anyone ever has, unless it's to spite some one. But those are normally gentle spoofs on the culture. And, the new adaptation Lost in Austen explains it best as a desire for not the marriages, but the style of polite, vibrant life.

Point is, they lose their purpose every once in awhile, regardless of whether it's marriage or not. They turn down marriage proposals, they lose estates to prettier prospects. If Carrie Bradshaw loses a marriage, she drinks a bunch, hangs out in Cancun, and hires an assistant. If Elizabeth Bennett loses a marriage she sits and listens to her screaming relatives for months and months. She loses hope. Her purpose is taken, and it, unfortunately, is not one that can be existentially rectified.

It is not the situations, necessarily, but the emotion characters go through. When Carrie has to pull herself up and go DO something in her darkest hour, Elizabeth honestly cannot. The comfort of powerlessness, of being a victim, is the comfort of fatalism. If that emotional stage is not on the recovery checklist, it should be.

Which is to say, read Pride and Prejudice the fairy tale, then watch Sex and the City. If you're anything like me, your summer will look suddenly much brighter, and that move back to America, joblessness, friendlessness, zero health care, driving, lack of recognition/prestige, family, and the inability to tune one's guitar properly due to pressure changes.

Don't worry, though. My sister says pianos take a year or more to adjust to climate change and hold their tune—guitars surely will after six months.

Buck's gas passing notwithstanding.

Doggy Vocab

Moldova tended to kick their dogs a lot, and frequently let them die out of neglect, but they were always a necessary player in the home farm balance. Even Renata, who really didn't want a dog, was obligated to keep one alive in her yard.

Americans, we all know, are quite different. Not only do dogs make up a natural part of suburban life, but parts of those lives start revolving around The Dog.

Walks, food, vet visits, family vacations, babysitters, chasing when they run away, worrying they've been in a car accident – dogs quickly turn into an adolescent child. At least they don't have the opposable thumbs to open our liquor cabinets.

Which is not to assume our dogs in suburbia are dumb. Even if we haven't seen Lassie, we know our dogs should save us from falling into wells. We buy / rescue the best of the best of the best, because who wants less than that if they can help it?

Buck, my family Jack Russel Terrier, is one such example. Crazy smart, highly alert to danger. Eager to please at all moments. Would raid the doggy liquor cabinet of Pupperoni if only he could manipulate the handle on the door.

He's not trained for life saving, or cadaver sniffing, or even for pulling rabbits and foxes out of holes, but for cuddling and tearing apart stuffed animals.

Buck is so smart in fact that he has a vocabulary in English:

Bone

Ball

Rope

Squirrel

Rabbit

Alien

These are the things that we throw for him and he enacts kills for us.

He also know domestic chore words:

Kennel

Up

Down

Upstairs

Downstairs

In

Out

Stay

And practical things:

Sit

Leash

But, really, what is at all cool about Buck is that he speaks in full sentences. We don't just bark these words at him. That would be normal human-dog interaction: dictated by our wants and his vocabulary. No, Buck is the ultimate suburban house pet.

Where is your bone?

This food is not for you.

Drop that dead alien.

Buck, you stay here.

It's pretty superior. I'm pretty sure my dad, trainer and alpha male, treats Buck like he did my sister and I when we were 4. Although, he just took pictures of us, while he made Buck a facebook page and updates it for him.

Where does suburbia go from there?

OCD

Medical terms like “OCD,” “ADD,” and “manic-depressive,” may be overused, I certainly overuse them.

I like things organized. I like neat and aesthetically pleasing environments in which I put minimal effort existing. Like coffee cupboards. Who the hell would keep coffee cups, coffee beans, and coffee accoutrement (filters, french press, grinder) in different cupboards? No one who likes to drink coffee in the morning, that's for sure.

To optimize the grouping, employ easy grabability! Don't all the cups in front of the big can of coffee! That's not easy!

Put fancy little cups on the next shelf up – you don't use em!

Ok, most people don't think this hard about this, because it's simple and straightforward, right? Yea. Either that or they are lazy. This is a shameful form of Laze. I love being lazy. If you let me, I'd sit and drink tea / coffee all day and read books, maybe watch a movie for change of pace. If you wish to be truly lazy, a little forward thinking goes a long way. Like, keeping the things you use all the time in reach, and the tiny little VanGogh design demi tasses on the higher shelf, but not as high as the beer steins—we're a wine drinking family and all the wine glasses are right next to the wine rack. Duh.

So – I think about these things. All the time. All the time I am surrounded by things that could lead me to be optimally lazy. When I have a spare half hour (working nights, I have many during the day) I wring out the trash (what are these dusty toothpicks doing?) and separate the least used things (fine jade china tea cup with matching china strainer and lid) from the most used things (big chipped mug from New Orleans).

Pretty normal.

It's when I get too into that I start throwing around medical terms.

I found those toothpicks and needed to know from whence they came.

The party cupboard.

Full of shot glasses, boston shakers, napkins of all sorts of design, swizel sticks, more shot glasses, and a menagerie of beer cozies, to-go coffee mugs, christmas things, those copper circle you put on wine glasses to mark them as YOURS, little plastic animals, and glow-in-the-dark ice cubes... Oh god. It was a mess, like the last party's aftermath was shoved in there in the same array someone's mind was in. I hope Whoever got some green tea and Back to the Future.

Now... Well, it would take 1500 words to describe the fun time I had sluicing through all that and more, and the ripple effects finding 10 to-go lids had on the coffee cupboard, and the odd martini glass in plastic had on the wine glass collection, and the hour it took to wipe everything down, and how I really could not finish until all three places were clear of debris and pretty.

OCD?

What does that mean, anyway?

The Great Quest for Employment

ahem.

There is a problem with society.

There are few jobs.

What should we do?

Distinguish ourselves, and take no prisoners?

Ok. How?

I think it is interesting that protests are cropping up against the private sector, and not the government. It's a new twist. What I'm unsure of, however, is what people want to gain from their protests. They see a problem, and instead of making a solution, they gum up the streets with awareness of problems.

If there is one thing that killed my optimism in Moldova, it is the constant attrition of solution based thinking. Pointing out solutions, having them knocked down; leading people through questioning to their own solutions, then having them not picked up bangs ding after ding into my American steel deflector shield of progress.

Coming home and hearing people my own age (none of my friends thank Thor—they keep calm and carry on. I applaud my people-judgement skills) whine, actually whine, about all the woes beset them – it drives me a bit distracted. They even whine on national television.

If the effort put into making oneself an “individual” were put into making oneself employed, new solutions might be found.

Just saying. I didn't want to go back into the service industry, but it keeps my learning curve up, and keeps some cash in my pocket. How much do bongos go for these days? Kids on Wallstreet know.

Gospodina Americanka

Other than immersion in up-to-date media (which wasn't even that lacking in high-speed Moldova) I have proven myself to be a highly qualified personal assistant to my family.

I wake up with the twins, help make lunches and give fashion advice, condemn mini skirts and spagetti straps. They leave and I make a bunch of coffee, watch Joe and Mika interrupt each other, wait for dad to wake up. We chat, he leaves. I gather the laundry and start it. Make everyone's beds. Pick up shoes and straighten photo frames. I make some food and think – wouldn't it be nice to have a spot of pink wine?

Then I slap my own face for realizing I am a spinster AND a housewife at the same time.

I read Atlas Shrugged, newspaper and apply to jobs. I set up dates for myself to ambush the offices I just applied to. I pick out clothes that make me look sharper than I am (always Greta and Elise's clothes in some combination).

Before coming back to the house to feed and walk the dog, I stop for an espresso and read some poetry – this stems the tide of brainlessness and I imagine I am in London or on a balcony in Florence. I channel Elizabeth Barrett Browning who was fortunate enough to be rich, happily married and full of TB, thus proscribed a life of leisure in, yes, Florence.

Victorians had all the luck.

When I get home I literally put on a striped apron with salmon halterneck and waist line, and make dinner. The family usually gets home in stages and dinner is rarely hot for all four of them. Twins dissappear to find grants and scholarships to extremely good universities, and my parents and I watch rigorous amounts of sci-fi and drink the hoped for wine. Dad and I talk some more and we all go to sleep around midnight.

As cycles go, it's not bad. I'd make a first rate gospodina.

No further thoughts...

Media in Murka

Being out of Fringe, the Xfiles substitute that stimulates your brain just enough to catch out the scientific fallacies, I have reverted in time and brilliance to Sex and the City. This new show makes me want to smoke cigarettes, wear weird clothes, and hurt people.

I'm reading Atlas Shrugged. Dad bought a copy for every family member. It's a weird combination of showing what Ayn Rand preaches and what she preaches against. It makes me want to build railroads, own fancy clothes, and hurt people.

Thankfully, my old cd collection did not get lost or destroyed while I was in Europe so I don't have to listen to contemporary pop and the djs who choose its order. If I did, I have learned it makes me want to dance in smoky bars with strangers, wear boots, and hurt people.

The news channels bark at me, except the hateful, yet calm people of Morning Joe on MSNBC. The serenely and with great deliberation promote Starbucks coffee and bash every politician and politico under the sun. They even make fun of phony feminists who whine. The show endorses my addiction to coffee, makes me want to wear my one Jackie O dresses, and hurt people.

If you see a pattern forming, you are smarter than the American media octopus.

Thus far media in America has not been kind to my psyche.

I will get right on writing up the last two months spit spot in order to force something in the world media-related makes misanthropically happy and informative sense out of all the crap.