Mrs. Dalloway's Coffee Break

Like when the coffee is just too freaking hot to drink. Like when they tell you you are a bad person enough times for you to start believing them. When all you have is small potatoes and you decide to buy the sweater anyway. When you wake up every night to what can only be described as an existential stomach pain. When you just can’t seem to find it in you to start doing the spring cleaning. When you cancel everything to stay in and stare at the wall. When you linger in bed, eyes closed, wanting the day to just go away. When you pick up the book you were dying to read and feel nothing. When you stop trying to tell people, and merely answer “Fine, I’m fine.” When you start using the same phrase with your husband. When you feel life is being measured with a tea spoon instead of buckets. When you look outside and don’t want to go there anymore. When you feel you can never ever get rid of all the dust in your house. When they won’t answ...

On Valentine’s Day, I went to see Guillermo del Toro’s thirteen-time Oscar nominee with my valentine. Because I adore El laberinto del fauno, Pan’s Labyrinth, and am a famously huge Jaws fan, not to mention a fan of both Richard Jenkins and Sally Hawkins and romantic fairytales in general, I figured this film will be a shoo-in. As it unfortunately so often goes in these situations, I am afraid to say that the news is not good. WARNING MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!! There is absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with The Shape of Water. Not one beat is missing from its deep green and blue tones and the David and Goliath reference and the soft and hard juxtapositions. One might say it is a disgustingly perfect film. A well-oiled piece of emotionless work; an odorless, humorless, and, most of all, soulless, film. A useless machine, to quote Grace and Frankie. About a week ago, I read on IMDb’s news section, how Jean-Pierre Jeunet had publicly complained about Mr. del Toro’s use of the ta...

Her house breaths with her, as she curls up in her bed, curls up with a book. Curls up, back against life. She smells the faint smell of blood about her. On the wall there, amid the pastel dotted wallpaper that feels silky and still brand new to the touch, father has hung a wicker shelf unit, not very big, not very sturdy, you certainly cannot store books there, but little things, beautiful things, like a diary, and the old Raggedy Ann and My Melody figurines, and pencils in a pretty little mug with a picture of a penguin on it. She is sitting there, on her peach colored bed covers, a poster of Monet’s water lilies above bed, The Water Lilies, oh, oh , the sun hat, a mock safari hat, on her chair over there, the lace gloves peeking a little underneath it, the lace gloves mother let her buy at a flea market even when there is really no point to lace gloves when you are thirteen, living in the country, none, apart from them being pretty and indulgent and romantic and making you...

I was talking to him on the phone the other day. He had been to the movies with a friend, to see Wonder Wheel, actually, and when I complimented him on the sheer nerve subjecting himself to be seen entering and exiting that film at this moment in time, myself having sorely missed it while at work, he told me that yep, he was having a delayed hostile response from his friends right now, because he considered the film one of the better ones of the notorious filmmaker, and trying to give people recommendations when they asked what to see was proving extremely volatile. “Well, you have no worries here. You know I love his work to bits. Remember when I forced your hand into handing over your DVD copy of Annie Hall, when we were breaking up, because it was the dawn of the DVD age, and all I had was the wretched video cassette, one of father’s rescues from those rummage sales he used to love?” “Yes.” Followed by Desert Silence, another term I coined in my diaries when being with the Yawn...

Today when I left for work the ground was covered in snow. All around there were giant heaps of it taller than a man so blindingly white, brand-new snow, that it stung my eyes. An absolute whiteness like the cover of The White Album before it yellowed over time and the corners got all soft and mushy time having softened the corners into a pulp. The bus was very late today because of the extensive political protest and the snow, peopled to the rim. Hats, red and brown and grey and black because the weather is cold but still some dare-devils go hatless. A man wearing a white and grey camouflage coat tells me at the stop that he needs to buy some towels asap and is this the bus to get some towels. Yes, I reply, this bus goes downtown so you can get anything you want, including the towels. Outside the petshop on top of the hill a police car. A woman basically ploughing her way through the snow with a stroller and a bigger child walking right next to her an...