A Year Without a Desk

It was exactly a year ago today that I graduated from college. So naturally, I'm engaged in a bit of self-reflection about what it means to have spent a year in "the real world." Or, more particularly, a year in the real world without really writing anything. (And before you say "Marissa, you've published over a hundred blog posts during that time!"--well, yes, I know. And I wonder if my blog is distracting me from what I should be doing, which is playwriting. It is a year since I've really written anything in the medium that I consider my primary medium, and that's a problem.) I can count up what I have accomplished--successfully moving to California, finding two apartments on Craigslist, being one of the few people in this entire country to get hired during October 2008--but I still feel uneasy.

I skipped first grade, as some of you know, so I was young for a college graduate, and am still pretty young now. My mother, with her trademark common sense, has therefore often said to me, "Just think, Marissa, you were supposed to graduate with the class of '09, instead of '08. So it's like you've got a whole extra year in your life that your classmates don't have. A year you can waste, no consequences--and you'll still be ahead of the game."

I told this to some friends of mine a few weeks ago (it was part of a long conversation about how to get me writing plays again) and they said "A year to waste? Don't you know that everyone in the world has about ten wasted years after college?" And I kind of see their point. But at the same time, I don't want to fall into the stereotype of the aimless college grad who takes years to figure out what they want to do in life, spends years puttering around. I am not a patient person, frankly. I'm too impatient with myself to do that.

But instead of thinking of this past year as my Wasted Year, which is too depressing, I am going to christen it with a different name: The Year Without a Desk.

If you'd asked me, before this year, what piece of furniture was most essential to make me a happy girl (excluding the obvious thing that all human beings need--a bed), I'd probably have said "Bookshelves." If I had one physical possession of which I was overweeningly proud, it was my book collection at home in Oregon. And I felt positively insulted by the fact that Vassar dorm rooms didn't come equipped with any kind of bookcase. How did they expect us to learn?

But, you know, I am a big reader, but I am not only a reader. I am someone who engages with what I read, who thinks about and responds to it, who writes. I get a kick out of displaying my book collection on a nice shelf, but frankly, probably nobody else cares about that. But I do think that other people care about my writing. And so, more than a bookshelf, I need a place in my life where I can feel like a writer. I need a desk.

And now--exactly a year after my college graduation, and just over nine months since moving to San Francisco--I finally have one.

For the foreseeable future, marissabidilla will be coming to you live from this desk right here. And yes, this is probably the least messy it will ever be.

March Updates

**Salman Rushdie has written the piece on Slumdog Millionaire that I longed to read as soon as I saw the movie. He attacks it both from a narrative/literary standpoint and from an Indian/postcolonial standpoint, but always with a good dose of sardonic Rushdie wit:

"It used to be the case that western movies about India were about blonde women arriving there to find, almost at once, a maharajah to fall in love with, the supply of such maharajahs being apparently endless and specially provided for English or American blondes; or they were about European women accusing non-maharajah Indians of rape, perhaps because they were so indignant at having being approached by a non-maharajah; or they were about dashing white men galloping about the colonies firing pistols and unsheathing sabres, to varying effect. Now that sort of exoticism has lost its appeal; people want, instead, enough grit and violence to convince themselves that what they are seeing is authentic; but it's still tourism. If the earlier films were raj tourism, maharajah-tourism, then we, today, have slum tourism instead."

The piece discusses a whole lot more than Slumdog Millionaire--its general subject is the art of film (and other) adaptation. A lot to digest, and highly recommended. (Incidentally, this article is just one more proof that The Guardian has the best Books section in the English-speaking world, bar none.)

**Maybe I'm a bit too hard on Slumdog Millionaire, though. My main objection to it is its theme of "destiny"--I believe that characters' free will is the essence of drama, and resorting to destiny as deux ex machina is just lazy and lowbrow. Yet at the same time, I have a pervasive habit of seeking external signs and hints from destiny in my own life. Can something cosmic happen to give me a clue that I'm in the right place at the right time? Is there some deeper meaning behind coincidental encounters? Is this all, somehow, being orchestrated?

**Speaking of adaptation, a month or so ago I planned to do a big ambitious blog post that involved comparing Fitzgerald's Benjamin Button short story, the recent film based on it, and the novel The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which also uses the conceit of a man who ages backwards. But I haven't been able to work up the enthusiasm to go see the movie, and I wasn't all that jazzed about Max Tivoli when I read it, so it's probably not going to happen. I think perhaps I am just wishing I were back at college--I mean, why else would I get an urge to write a big compare-and-contrast essay?

**I also have, from long ago, the beginnings of a blog post about works of art that use reverse-chronology in general... not just the obvious ones like Memento and Betrayal either...but now we are talking about a huge can of worms.

**It's not the Baptistry Doors, but I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out...

I found colored paper at a crafts store pre-cut to the 12" by 12" size I needed, and the photographs come from a book of platinum prints titled Dana Buckley: Fifty. (I don't know if you can see them that well, but they are all black-and-white images of flowers.) I got the book on sale at Stacey's and, though I am usually against mutilating books, decided that it was worth it in this instance.

**Because I'm the kind of girl who gets upset over the closing of bookstores that I've never even been to, you can imagine how torn up I am that Stacey's Books is going out of business. It became my go-to bookstore when I started working in the financial district...and now it's shutting down after more than eighty years?! I have gotten some very good deals as they clear out their stock, which makes me feel like a war profiteer, but really, what else do you expect me to do?

Another Sign that I Am Becoming an Art-History Geek

OK, so after my bewilderment at the fact that nobody manufactures a calendar illustrated with the paintings from Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (what? it's obvious!), here's another sign that I'm turning into an art-history geek.

My bedroom has a pair of French doors that lead into the neighboring room. To ensure our mutual privacy and block out noise, my roommate has covered her side of the doors with foam insulation and black fabric. This means that currently, one wall of my room consists largely of a grid of white-painted wood frames and square glass panes with black fabric showing through behind them. It's not terribly attractive, and I want to fix it up by pasting a photo or print to cover each of the glass panels.

Thing is, I'm having trouble deciding what kind of artwork to use. It needs to be a harmonious collection of images, all of them 12" by 12" squares.

So, when I realized that each of my French doors has 10 panes--two across and five down--my next thought was Ghiberti's Baptistry! The Gates of Paradise!

Don't worry, my decorating tastes do not run nearly so much to the gilded and ormolu; I think it would be the height of pretension to have the "Gates of Paradise" on display in my bedroom. But I couldn't resist making an art-history-geek joke about it, all the same. And I'm still looking for an actual set of images to paste in my French-door panels; my current idea is black-and-white photographs, but I haven't gotten any further than that...

Photo: Me, in front of the Baptistry doors in Florence, two years ago. Actually these are not the real doors that Ghiberti crafted: his handiwork is in a museum for safekeeping, and these are replicas manufactured in Japan. It took the Japanese (aided by computers and all the latest technology) four weeks to make these replicas. It took Ghiberti 27 years to make the originals. Kind of dispiriting, in a way. There's also at least one other set of replica Baptistry doors in the world that I know of, and it's installed quite close to home: at Grace Cathedral, Nob Hill, San Francisco.

IKEA for theater geeks

Ever see a production of Ibsen's classic Hedda Gabler and wish that Hedda and Eilert Løvborg, the ill-fated erstwhile lovers, didn't have to die at the end? Well, never fear: now they can be together--and in your bed--with the new "Hedda Löv" collection from IKEA.

Featuring an attractive botanical pattern inspired by the vine leaves that Hedda once pictured in Løvborg's hair, the Hedda Löv duvet will surely provoke everyone who walks into your bedroom to remark "Fancy, that Hedda!"

100% cotton and conveniently machine washable.*

*Bloodstains from shooting yourself with your father's old pistol probably will not wash out, however.