Lily Brett's Blog, page 37

I can’t stop buying notebooks. I buy notebooks everywhere I go....

I can’t stop buying notebooks. I buy notebooks everywhere I go. I can’t resist them. I buy notebooks in strange places. In a supermarket in Seattle when I was shopping with my younger daughter, who now lives there. We were looking for a particular variety of apple, a Jazz apple, when I spotted the stationery section. The need to have the Jazz apples evaporated and I made a dash for the stationery section and left the supermarket with 6 new notebooks and Gala– not my favorite - apples. I bought 6 notebooks despite the fact that I travelled to Seattle with only carry-on luggage which was already crammed.

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Published on November 05, 2012 12:19

I think that most people packing to go overseas or go anywhere,...

I think that most people packing to go overseas or go anywhere, feel some degree of excitement. In abstract, I feel excited about travel. However, packing always makes me feel anxious. It obliterates any excitement that might have been trying to surface. When I pack, I want to take everything with me, including my bed and possibly my bathroom. On the day of departure I develop an enormous attachment to my home, to my study and even to my electric toothbrush. I don’t want to leave any of them. I develop an even more ferocious attachment to New York City. Suddenly, every street looks perfect. The tourists who crowd the streets of SoHo, where I live, no longer seem irritating or intrusive. Suddenly they feel like old friends. Friends I don’t want to leave. The carbon monoxide I breathe in when Broome Street is packed with traffic bound for the Holland Tunnel, feels bracing and
beneficial. Eventually I do calm down. Usually when I am on the plane and there is nothing I can do but look forward to where I am going. Before I left for my LOLA BENSKY tour of Australia, I packed up my desk, I straightened up my pens, pencils, pencil sharpeners post-it notes and paperclips and put them neatly against the wall. I did this in much the same way my younger daughter used to line up her soft toys, her dolls and bears and dogs and an elephant, on her bed every morning before she went to Kindergarten. She used to give them one last look-over before she left. I think I do the same. I look at the notebooks and pencils and pencil sharpeners and then I walk out the door.

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Published on November 03, 2012 15:18

One of the side effects of Sandy is that it is, in some ways,...

One of the side effects of Sandy is that it is, in some ways, remarkably reminiscent of Sep 11th in that the city feels damaged and hurt and that makes me and a lot of other New Yorkers feel more than a bit heartbroken. Downtown is so eerily quiet. Everything is shut down.

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Published on October 31, 2012 17:21

My first reading in Melbourne was at Readings Bookshop in Acland...

My first reading in Melbourne was at Readings Bookshop in Acland Street, St Kilda. I arrived already feeling very emotional. Acland Street was at the heart of all of the 40 years of my life in Australia. Particularly Scheherezade, the Jewis…
h restaurant/cafe where you could eat cholent, chicken schnitzel, borscht and the best apple cake in the universe- my younger daughter, the family foodie, has been, unsuccessfully, trying for years to get the recipe for that Scheherzade apple cake.
I sat down at the table I would shortly be reading at and looked up. There in the front row were Avram and Masha Zeleznikov, Scheherezade’s former owners. I was quite overwhelmed. I hadn’t seen them for so long. Masha came rushing up to me to say hello. “I can’t believe it, you look just like your mother,” she said to me. I almost lost it. My throat choked up, something you want to avoid just before a reading. Avram Zeleznikov joined us. “You were at the cafe nearly every day” he said. “You wrote some of your poems in the cafe”. He was right. I had three young children and was always scribbling notes for something whenever I could. “Remember that big argument you had with your father, one day?” Avram Zeleznikov said.”It was about your mother’s English.” By now, the people in the first few rows of the audience at the Readings reading were looking more than interested. “I remember” I said. By the time my father and I had finished that particularly heated discussion the usually noisy Scheherezade had become very quiet. Several of the regulars could be heard saying “Look at how she speaks to her father” to which my father, who was still agitated, replied. “She is a very good daughter. She is a better daughter than many other people’s daughters I know.” While I was still digesting and relishing the memory of my father’s outrage that anyone other than he himself should feel free enough to criticize me, Gideon, the owner of the Monarch Cake Shop in Acland Street, which since 1934 has been at the epicentre of Jewish life in Melbourne, came up and presented me with a box of assorted Monarch cakes. These were the cakes of my childhood and the cakes of my dreams. Monarch, which my father and half the Jews in Melbourne pronounced, Monarch, pronouncing the ch as in the word arch, was my haven. It was where I fled whenever the latest diet I was on became too much or, possibly, too little, for me.
That night after the reading and the book signing, I opened the Monarch box in my hotel room and ate the best piece of cheesecake I’ve had in years. It was so delicious. I didn’t even feel any guilt. Besides which, I’d already splurged and had a slice of a shockingly high lemon meringue pie, in Sydney.

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Published on October 22, 2012 12:08

In Australia, my homeland, where I burst into tears passing the...

In Australia, my homeland, where I burst into tears passing the Melbourne hospital, St Vincents, where my younger daughter was born, I’ve had so many emotional moments and an unusual assortment of diverting if not outright amusing microphone moments.

The first occurred in Sydney at the Hill of Content bookshop reading at the 3 Weeds Hotel, in Rozelle. Everything was going very well, the bookstore owners were so warm and generous as was our host at the pub. Then the matter of a microphone stand came up. You cannot hold a microphone while turning the pages of the book you’re reading from. There was a rush to put together a microphone stand. Finally, we got one that worked. The microphone was placed inside a beer schooner glass and the glass was perched on top of four copies of LOLA BENSKY. The schooner with the microphone in it was on my right which made reading the left hand side of the pages of LOLA BENSKY a little difficult and made me look cross-eyed. The audience was great though and we could all see the relevance of being in Australia and reading from a schooner glass.

The second event with a microphone mishap was at the Waverley Library in Bondi Junction and was hosted by the Shalom Institute and the Lindfield book shop. It was a largely Jewish event and we encountered another microphone stand issue, or more accurately, another lack of a microphone stand issue. I thought we might be in trouble. Someone had a bright idea and found a vase, and put a glass inside the neck of the vase and the microphone, with its rather large head inside the glass. That large microphone head was a little distracting although I wasn’t sure why, until the following day when I saw photos of the event. I began reading. The microphone was not working. No-one could hear anything I knew we really were in trouble. We Jews, on the whole, can’t fix anything. We look bewildered when something isn’t working and always look around to see if there is man who can fix things nearby. “There won’t be anyone here who can fix it” I said to the audience, who laughed and so clearly understood. “We’ve found someone”, a woman in the audience called out, “And she isn’t Jewish”. The woman was right. The microphone was fixed. It was a great event. The next day I looked at a photograph of the makeshift microphone stand and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

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Published on October 19, 2012 10:42