Mrs. Dalloway's Coffee Break

I think there are three basic things wrong with Muschietti’s It. WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS!! But I’m telling you, this does not amount to a large number of stuff. I went to see it with Swinton, another die-hard fan of the old TV movie like myself, and between the two of us, one really could not find a more eager yet skeptical audience, one that was on the one hand ready to love It to death, on the other rip it to shreds, if the adaptation sucked ass. First of all, people, it’s okay. They did not fuck it up. Thank the lord. Andy Muschietti, the incredible cast, especially the more-than-sum-of-its-parts ensemble of the young actors, and everyone involved in the film have nothing to be ashamed of. However, there is always something to critique, and here are our pizza-eating, white-wine-sipping conclusions: One. The music. The creepy children’s choir has been done to death, and it was both unnecessary and boring. When they are using children’s singing in such instant suck-ass...

Aren’t the rooms roomier, the air inside airier, the sleep more continuous, than before her month of exile? The post-modern weather conditions of the North, the abstract, absolute rains in the South, the white heat of the days, the winds and thunder of the evenings, flashing, making pictures of the rose-patterned gossamer curtains on the wall there, not minding that the sidewalks need sweeping or the man who runs the kiosk at the corner won’t be at his post until hours later. She is making all kinds of lists, now, what she needs, what to shop at the market, what books to read. She goes through her cupboards and drawers, pulling out old sweaters she hasn’t worn in a year, forgotten teapots just sitting there, unused, opens the heavy curtain that hides her rack of clothes, takes out a brown vest, discards it in the flea market pile with some of the others, a shirt, a skirt, corduroy pants. She dusts, vacuums, does batch after batch of laundry. Her whites need now more than e...

Behold, darlings; dear old, wrinkly threads of The Abyss! Hello, glistening leather cases and immaculately polished shoes as well as worn out trainers, Rachel's apartment pants, wool socks, underpants and tee-shirts! Your mistress has returned from The Towns, and look at all the treasures she brings along in her many bags! Here come the new girls on the block: One. Yes, you can buy a Cerruti 1881 dress for ten euros. She is waiting patiently, downstairs, where one finds the ones that were left over from the hot picks, and no more telling me you’ve had it and it’s all over and it’s too hot to shop anyway. Because it isn’t. At first you think it is horrible, too large for one, and shaped like a potato sack. But there is the smooth seduction of the fabric, the powdery color so very flatter ing next to Scandinavic pale skin, the luxurious strass knot between the breasts. Adding, of course, the fact that this is Cerruti 1881, and for that price, you’ll never forgive yourself if y...

I have been reading A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros this past week, and there was a chapter where he wrote about walking being the final means for the modern man to seek the unseekable, to try and find his inner peace, lose himself into the free movement of the feet, and perhaps get in touch with the lost truths about nature, time, and himself. With what has been going on in the world in the past few days, everyone has had to make another new deal with themselves over what these heinous acts of violence will mean to us. In Finland, the person who ran amok in Turku, stabbing people, was reported to having targeted women, and the injured men were the ones who were trying to help them or prevent the violence. It was also reported that the people on the street started chasing after the suspect, who, obviously, tried to escape on foot after the stabbings. Spain. Finland. Siberia. Violence that breeds more violence. I keep walking now because I can't stop. I...

Sun I put on my fancy black skirt, the ankle-length billowing thing with golden stripes all over my large chessboard pattern ear studs and a simple white collared shirt I didn’t iron because I hate ironing and I don’t mind some wrinkles but it’s not that bad. At the café the sun yellows the whole space pouring through the windows the morning sun, final days of summer in Finland the marble tabletop cluttered with debris from our grand breakfast consisting of fresh pineapple chunks pumpkin seeds and strawberry jam cucumbers sliced thick and oval as if they were going someplace in a hurry watermelon and honeydew and different cheeses and of course cake and bread baked with raisins but you don’t like raisins in a bread I take some, though, to celebrate. We are drinking our third cup of coffee I think about the small humorous note on display at my workplace with Darth Vader and the words “Come to the Dark Side, We Have Coffee” I have my j...

Dear Diary . Just kidding. Let’s rephrase: dear friend. The time is quickly approaching, that magical time of the year, when I dive into that fabled rabbit hole and hopefully come back out, yet once more, a changed woman. This will be my fourth trip to Paris in as many years. Only now, the biggest difference to all those previous wonderful excursions into the heartland of my damn writer’s soul, if you’ll excuse the cliché, or, Clichy, as we say in French haha, is that this time the fact that I won’t be able to bring along my huge ancient dinosaur of a laptop is possibly going to create a huge problem. Taking into consideration, that this piece of writing will mark my seventy-second entry on the site in a little over eight months, I really should have no problem at all leaving my computer behind for two weeks and just enjoy the time, the atmosphere, the excruciating heat, the greengrocers’ stands, and walking those gorgeous old streets with my man. The only thing is, I haven’t ...

It is all over the news this summer, that the southern parts of the country are experiencing the rainiest and coldest summer in twenty years. Therefore Mrs. Dalloway cannot help herself, but takes an extra helping of raspberries on top of her usual soygurt breakfast, musing absent-mindedly, that she is feeling a sense of almost overpowering extravagance, of unnecessary inappropriateness, about her meal. She sips her mineral water, waiting for the fresh coffee to drip, and touches the left side of her head, where the grays have appeared, just above the left temple. That is where she is hurting now, almost constantly, since her episode five days ago. In her dream, she is at a house by the woods, her house, apparently, and as she is approaching the sauna building and the work shed, walking a narrow pathway between the strangely silent and ominously dark firs and pine trees, she is overcome by a certainty that she is not alone, and she starts running the path, a first careful but ...