Novel Eye

Nalini now Nalini on the last day of our freshman year, loading her VW Rabbit. She actually doesn't seem to have changed that much. For that matter, I don't think I have physically (and this is supported by others).

I had a small shock this week. I was thumbing through The Phoenix, a weekly free mag. for the young and hip that my husband had brought home and they had a column on new books and there was my college roommate's name. Which is doubly funny because I had just been speaking about her. We got along OK --not great. It even had her picture which I hadn't even realized when I first looked at the article (when I get to a scanner on Monday I'll scan it with a picture of her from college--she hasn't changed much). The book is called What You Call Winter , and it's a collection of short stories about a Catholic town in India. Her name is Nalini Jones (which made us the room of unpronounceable first names and really simple last names). Nalini means Night Blooming Lilly. Beyond the surprise I wasn't actually as upset as I feared I might be. For one thing, I knew that she'd had short stories published and that she had gotten a book publisher. She did all the...

I sort of wrote this in my head as I was going but have added and amended since I've been back so the tenses may not all agree. I enjoyed the conference. I really did. (DS (a boss) and I discussed on my return how we both find value if we learn or reinforce something even if the whole thing is not life changing.) What I discovered though, was that based on first impressions I would have been friends with maybe two of the other assistants there, could have worked with about half of the people there and really, really would have trouble being in the same office with the rest of the them (18 total). In the reception and the dinner the most literary of the discussions led to Idol, House and Blades of Glory. Whipping out Moby Dick at lunch led to some strange stares and one person exclaiming that she had never been able to get into reading books (as opposed to cereal boxes perhaps?). [Side note: I remember years ago riding back from California after visiting my father and reading Balza...

I've been thinking about this one for awhile in the discussions I've been having about where my life went wrong and the college I could have gone to--the paths not taken. I had the chance to go to a college in southern CA about 35 miles from LA. I went instead to Amherst College, Amherst, MA. If I had had the chance to visit Amherst I wouldn't have come, but I was dazzled at a distance by its history and its status. I had worked hard in high school to get into the best college and Amherst was considered the best. If one believes in alternate universes, then somewhere there is a Novel who went to Scripps (unless she died in the earthquake or the riots or of the smog that rolled in every afternoon). Now the most instantaneous and obvious difference in my life if I had gone to a different college would have been the fact that I would not have met my husband. The romantic answer is that I was fated to go to Amherst TO meet him and that it's wonderful, but I actually think ...

Yesterday I finally called a local school that has a certificate program in Industrial Design. This is my non-fundamental problem. I want to be an Industrial Designer or, at any rate I want to design stuff and have factories make it and be paid for it by working for a company that already has marketing and sales departments (as opposed to designing stuff, taking out a massive loan to have a factory manufacture it, or make it myself, and then ALSO have to go out and drum up orders for said stuff). I want to be Philippe Starck . I want to design useful, pretty things. I have lots of ideas for both useful/pretty things and useless/clever things. What I don't have is a degree in Industrial Design. So I called this school. I've had the catalog telling me about the program since LAST SUMMER. Making the call made me physically sick to my stomach. I did it at work and I thought I was going to have to go into an empty office and lay down. I reached a machine, of course. Today a guy call...

I went to see a play this afternoon written by an alum of my college, and I went with an alum of my college, not to have a sort of school spirit thing. I didn't know it was by an alum until last week and I really wasn't interested in going until my friend and I were making plans for the weekend. The playwright and I were actually there at the same time--he was a few years ahead of me. I didn't recognize his name but I recognized him when I saw him. His name is John Cariani and his "day" job is playing Beck, the forensics technician on Law and Order. I kept seeing him in L&O and thinking I knew him, but couldn't think why. God forgive me, I really wanted to not like his play. I wanted it to be pretentious and overblown the way many student plays were when I was at college even though that was nearly 15 years ago. I have nothing against him personally, I just was too human and bitter. Almost, Maine is a sweet and tender set of 9 short plays set in northern ...