Sorry Elena Ferrante
The computer version of the tub book
I promised to post three weeks in a row about the three essays in Elena Ferrante’s In the Margins. I was all set to go this week with the first essay but I cut it from the doc I was working in and rather than immediately pasting it here, I cut something else too, and the first cut of 5000 carefully composed words floated up to join the Chinese balloons. I don’t have the time to recreate it today, but…I am not going to be upset about that. I have started meditating and on weekends for a long time and as reported it is reconfiguring my emotional responses. I’ll go forward with the feeling of how wonderful it was to write it for this so far free space with an aim in mind to share its thinking with readers. I will do it again for next week. Honestly, it would help if I could type but the process is laborious and I am on a schedule. I apologize.
I will say a word about the 50th anniversary of the Beatles being on Ed Sullivan. I posted a photo of the event on my Insta stories and spontaneously described it as being the most important moment of my life. A friend with a highly developed b.s. detector questioned this. “Really?” she DMed me. I stand by my claim. They came on my grandparents’ black and white TV in the den on February 9, 1964, two weeks after my father died. That’s a story for another day, but I’m adding the context to indicate the turmoil I was in, which made me extra receptive. I was unanchored to say the least. I didn’t expect the Beatles to change that, but they did. Not only did George Harrison take on an imaginative role as my older protective brother, I also spent hundreds of hours listening to the records and absorbing lessons that would later inform my writing; theme, dynamics, harmony, pacing, chorus, voice, and so on. Maybe I should write a book titled Everything I Know About Writing I Learned From The Beatles. Does that scream bestseller or what? I wrote lots of what I now understand was fan fiction about me and George being on tour and what a pain Paul was. I thought about them for a long time, and am still stirred when I listen to the Sirius XM Beatles channel. I keep meaning to write an essay about George, but that’s TK.
Finally, in case this news hasn’t reached you, or you don’t read anything but books, which can’t be true because you’re reading this, it’s Super Bowl Sunday—that’s a football term. I have had football explained to me dozens of times and my brain is simply missing the neural pathway that can take that information to my knowledge center. But I am going to watch because—the Eagles. If you come from Philly you’re always from Philly and you’re always team Eagles. That’s the law. Also, although I won’t be watching with my son, I will be in parallel play with what he’s doing in those hours, and that always makes me happy. I hope he gets to run into Broad Street again and celebrate with the hundreds of beer soaked crazed Eagles fans who will pour into the streets upon the occasion of a win as he did the last time they won a few years ago. Also I hear there are brothers playing on opposite teams, like in the civil War. Drama! I don’t know who the other team is, sorry not sorry.
I do know—the great RIHANNA is the halftime entertainment. I am on her team.
Ah yes. The Beatles and football, two subjects I was lucky enough to discuss with my father before his death: John was going to be his son-in-law and television announcers suck so listen to the radio whilst spectating.
Maybe you should think of today's activities as a Rihanna concert, the first in seven years?
I think that book sounds like a definite bestseller (at least in a fictional probably dystopian world where if I like it, it’s a bestseller!). Really, you must find a way to write a fictional character on tour with them. I’d like to read that this afternoon please.