Maxi or Mini for spring???

Naturally, I prefer maximalism to minimalism, but either, as a “position,” is a cliche.

If it’s going to be minimal, let it be dark and wry.

If it’s going to be maximal, let it be fabulously self-conscious.

As I said long ago, I believe in oscillationism.

Not to be confused with isolationism.

Although there’s that, too.

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I haven’t blogged in ten days, it’s still snowing. I won’t have it, I tell you.

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Poor Dante.

Dante had a haematoma — a big swollen blood blister — on his ear. We took him to the vet to get it operated on. When he came home, anaesthetized, his ear full of brittle stitches, he was so out of it he couldn’t close his jaw, or jump on the bed, or, for some reason, put his head down and close his eyes.

I don’t know how people can actually be parents, given how heartbreaking the suffering of a pet is, and human children seem to fall ill even more than feline ones, it seems.

When Gary and I leave the house Dante has to wear an “E-collar” — I had to explain to the receptionist at the vet that “E” stood for “Elizabethan.” He doesn’t look at all courtly in it — more like a depressed mole. He can’t judge depth or distances in it, and he keeps his poor head down most of the time. It seems he’s getting used to it, but it tears me and Gary up.

The vet scolded us about Dante’s weight (almost 23 lbs! two cats in one!) so we have put both beastlets on a serious diet. I am full of the worst kind of remorse for letting him get that way in the first place. I’m glad I’m not a mother with a supersize gelatinous bubblebunch french-fry gobbling American child.

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Keeping some things to myself. I’m busy. I like music. I like music a lot. I have a lot to do. What do you want? It’s Friday. The cats are sleeping.

The Glory of Brooklyn

Brooklyn was in its fullest glory yesterday, a rare shiny day after a bravely slogged-through winter. While Gary finished drawing the invite I ventured out, new IPod (now dubbed “Habibi”) freshly loaded with music from South Asia and the Middle East, to get the bus to Brooklyn Chinatown.

The B16 bus, which stops a block from our apartment, traverses most of 13th Avenue, the main drag of Boro Park. Boro Park is one of Brooklyn’s “throwback neighborhoods ” — there, I feel as if I have been thrown back several decades in history. It is populated mostly by orthodox Jews, and the shops (whose names all seem to be terrible puns) sell judaica, stockings with seams, wigs, and kosher comestibles.

This Sunday was special, because not only was the weather friendly and luminous, but it was Purim as well! Purim is, roughly speaking, the Jewish Hallow’een. Children and adults get dressed up in silly costumes (which to me is especially interesting given that orthodox Jews have to wear what is to me an odd costume every day — in fact I often fantasize about wearing a (male) Labuvitcher ((sp?)) outfit on Hallow’een, complete with beard and circular mink hat).

Some of the costumes I saw from the bus window yesterday:

an adult man dressed in a NY Yankees uniform, with the Yankees logo painted on his bearded face

Hello Kitty

a jester

a smiley face

a tiny little (scary) Bozo-the-clown

a super-fat person

a kid in a red fez

a teenage girl wearing something shocking pink and a shocking pink pillbox hat

lots of kids dressed up as old people

and of course all the characters from the Purim story — lots of little Queen Esthers, King Ahaseuruses (sp?), and nasty nasty Hamans with big moustaches.

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I’m certain that if I were a real Jew Purim would be my favorite holiday.

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The bus took me to Chinatown, where I ate fish and rice and string beans for three dollars, then went on a little shopping spree, all the while listening to Geeta Dutt and Nagat and Egyptian dance remixes.

With a fabulous pair of black Mary Janes with six inch platform heels, an embroidered skirt, some chicken legs, spinach, and long purple eggplants, I returned home in a kind of bliss of overstimuli and multi-culti-inundation.

Brooklyn ZINDABAR!