The Spiral Staircase

MONSTERS OF THE WEEK -- Scylla and Charybdis

Scylla and Charybdis are a famous pair of sea monsters from ancient Greece.  They live on opposite sides of the narrow Strait of Messina, between Italy and Sicily.  They contacted me early this morning to offer their birthday wishes for Daniel Deming, who turns 33 today.

According to Ovid (tr. Gregory):

Even brave sailors fear rock-caved Charybdis
Who drinks the waves, vomits them out again,
And Scylla with her barking dogs around her
Churning the waves that circle Sicily.

Sailors who needed to pass through the strait were screwed: go too close to Scylla and she would eat their crew, steer toward Charybdis and a powerful whirlpool would destroy the ship. The two have come to signify, according to Brewer's Phrase and Fable, "being caught between two dangers or fatal works."  

(It's hard based on my shoddy Internet research to figure out if "between a rock and a hard place" and "between the devil and the deep blue sea" are directly descended from the myth of Scylla and Charybdis.  Brewer's says of the latter, "The allusion seems to be to the herd of swine and the devils called Legion."  Whatever that means.)

As usual, both monsters are pretty sympathetic if you get to know them.  Scylla started her life as a lovely sea nymph.  The sea god Glaucus fell in love with her and accosted her as she strolled naked along the beach (more Ovid tr. Gregory):

When Glaucus saw the girl, he turned to fire,
And said things - anything - to hold her there
Yet she escaped; she climbed a sheet of rock;
It was a mountain that looked out to sea
And cast its shadow over trembling waters,
Nor did she stop till she stood high enough
To stand at proper distance from the man.
She gazed at him and saw a blue-green creature,
Longhaired, and where his manly thighs should be
She saw a scaled and twisted fishy member
Was he a god?  Or some acquatic devil?
He looked at her and leaned upon a rock.
"Dear girl," he said, "I'm neither fish nor fowl;
But something better..."

But Glaucus's wooing does not impress Scylla, who coldly runs away.  Glaucus swims off for the island of Aeaea, home of the powerful sorceress Circe.  Aeaea is thought to correspond to Mount Circo on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy.  It looks like a nice place to visit, as long as you don't fall into Circe's hands and get turned into a pig.

Glaucus begs the powerful sorceress to give him herbs to charm Scylla and make her love him,

But Circe said (and no one more than she
Was ready to make love at any hour-
Whether she had an innate liking for it,
Or whether Venus, angry at Circe's father
Because he had betrayed her love for Mars,
Gave Circe more than ladylike desires,
We cannot say-Except that she replied),
"Go find a girl or woman who's inclined
To be warm-hearted as yourself and eager--
And more than that, you need a full-grown goddess,
Even myself, a daughter of the sun,
Who has all charms to please you, songs and herbs
And much besides. I'll take you as you are.
As for that girl, treat her as she treats you;
Take me to bed, and in one loving gesture
You'll give two women all that they deserve.

When Glaucus refuses Circe, avowing eternal love for Scylla, the goddess is furious.  But, as she loves Glaucus too much to strike out against him, she concocts a poison for Scylla instead, which she sneaks into the pool Scylla uses for her afternoon baths: 

When Scylla came, she splashed waist-deep in coolness,
Then to her horror found her legs were gone,
And where her thighs should be, she saw a girdle
Of barking dogs' heads round her naked belly.
At first she tried to shake them off, to loose them,
Tear them away, but found
They grew out of the tender flesh below
Her breasts, as though wild Cerberus had twined
Himself a dozen times around her waist.
And there she sat, half naked girl, half monster
With mad dogs barking round her lower regions.

Greek, c. 340 BCE (via VROMA)

Charybdis's origin is harder to pin down.  Some sources say she was a fierce daughter of Poseidon who acted as her father's lieutenant in his battle for supremacy against his brother Zeus, flooding hundreds of coastal towns to reclaim them for the sea.  When Zeus won the struggle, he changed her into a ravenous monster, all mouth, who swallows water eternally, then belches it out.  An alternate version has Charybdis stealing the cattle of Geryon from Hercules, and being thrown into the sea by Zeus as punishment.  Some other sources (such as Ovid) simply describe Charybdis as a maelstrom.

Olaus Magnus, 1555 (via the wonderful Northern Lights)

Several heroes face off against this famous double-bind, and deal with the choice in characteristic ways.  Wily and morally flexible Odysseus follows Circe's advice and steers well clear of the whirlpool, since Circe tells him it is better that he lose a few men to Scylla than his whole ship to Charybdis.  Six of his friends are dragged off screaming by Scylla's many heads, and Odysseus mourns: "The most pitiful thing was this that mine eyes have seen of all my travail in searching out the paths of the sea." 

Aeneas, my least favorite epic hero, sidesteps the question altogether and sails off around Sicily, where Hera hits him with some heavy weather. 

The dreamy Jason navigates the monsters in the coolest way of all, with an escort of sea nymphs who frolic around his ship like dolphins and steer it through the dangerous waters.  The whole Argonautica is online as is the entire Harryhausen monster-licious movie! 

It's interesting that both Scylla and Charybdis were women, and that they were both punished for inappropriate appetites, Scylla having too little and Charybdis too much.  In the olden days, nymphs were caught between a rock and a hard place.

More Messages from the Beyond

I'm happy to be back home again after a grueling season of weddings and funeral-related activity.  My stepmom and I wished happy birthday to my father's spirit last week in Houston, staying in the glamorous guest suite of the retirement home where my plucky 89-year-old Granny lives.  Featured activities were Rummikub, crossword puzzles, and surreptitious drinking.

On a lighter note, mazeltov to the new Mr. and Mrs. Degrassi, whose marriage I officiated this Saturday on the dock of the Riverview, a Long Island seafood restaurant.  A surpassingly beautiful event!  I have always loved my beautiful cousin Melissa, who is sweet, loyal and mysterious as the honeybee from which she takes her name.  The night Rich proposed to Melissa, he was stung by a bee and his hand swelled to twice its size. 

I have been honored to participate in many seminal events in Melissa's life, including being the patient for her dental boards, a harrowing experience in which I had to appear in public wearing a dental dam and drool-soaked bib.  In exchange, she gets me things like Sonicare brushes and low-cost bleach for my yellow teeth.

It rained all day, then cleared up miraculously for the ceremony.  Here's some cute cousins posing on the dock:

The miraculous weather was one of the startling parallels to my brother's ceremony last week, which concluded with a rainbow that, in Aunt Donna's opinion, represented my father's blessing. 

I'd never officiated a wedding ceremony before, and I bought this excellent book to help structure the ceremony.   I was ordained by the Universal Life Church.  My address was centered on the guiding image of the ocean, which was fitting for the Long Island love story.  The bride was into God being mentioned and the groom was not, so I tried to chart a middle course. 

"Just as many streams flow into the ocean but cannot make the vast ocean overflow, so flow the streams of the sense world into the sea of peace that is the sage."
-Bhagavad Gita

In an attempt to be a sea of peace, I eschewed the pre-ceremony champagne and deputized my cousin Tyler to act as a stage manager for the processional.  When the two ring bearers toddled down the aisle in formalwear, looking unbearably cute, I knew it was all going to be okay.  I managed not to drop the rings, cry, cut myself on the mazeltov glass or otherwise have a major meltdown, only freezing once, when I had to list all the dead Italian grandparents.  This was challenging, but with a bit of prompting from the mother of the groom I pulled it off.

The invocation of the dead relatives was a heavy moment.  I could feel the audience sitting up straighter in their seats.

I've never really seen a ghost, unless you count that one time I did whippets, had a near-death experience, and saw someone who might have been Jesus.  Portents have always surrounded Rich and Melissa, however, who live in the haunted town of Amityville.  The day after the wedding, while she was resting in bed, Grandpa Harold and Uncle David appeared before the bride.  

Both men checked out early, Grandpa at 59 from lung cancer, his autistic son David from suicide in his thirties. 

According to Melissa, Grandpa wants us to know that he is happy and that he approves of her marriage.  In this, he resembles my brother's dead cat Xena, who also sent her blessing through the psychic airwaves.  Grandpa said that he was impressed by me and that he had always expected great things.  This was a nice vote of confidence.  David said he likes it when Melissa goes to visit Grandma and sleeps in his old bedroom.  Neither ghost suggested any lottery numbers.

The Wedding Brunch

Mazeltov to the new Mr. and Mrs. Deming!  My brother Daniel married Nicole Toohey this Saturday, and a good time was had by all.

For my wedding toast, I retained the services of pet psychic Catherine Fergusen, Ph.D., who, for a mere $25, will answer a single question.   I asked her what the dearly departed Xena Deming had to say on the subject of my brother's wedding.  Xena was a gorgeous, fat, cranky cat whom my brother rescued from a sad life in a neighbor's basement.

According to the pet psychic, Xena approves of my brother's match.  She even requested her photo placed in my brother's suit pocket so she could participate in the wedding!  Thank God.  It would have been a drag if Xena requested that I sabotage the proceedings or leave a dead bird on my brother's doorstep.

The menu at the brunch I threw for the happy couple:

Figs Stuffed with Gorgonzola Dolce and Roasted Walnuts

Warm Artichoke Dip (yummy recipe off the back of Knorr Vegetable Soup)

Mom's Yogurt (amazing to watch her make this)

Homemade Granola (recipe here)

Crenshaw melon, Fresh Pineapple, and Grapes

Mixed German sausages (from the fabulous Rieker's Prime Meats) Braised with Peppers and Onions

Motul-Style Eggs (Rick Bayless recipe)

**
Chocolate Rolls and Almond Log (my croissant dough was an utter failure, but they still tasted OK)

Grandma Bernice's Pecan Rolls

**

Lemonade-Iced Tea

Coffee

and...

XENA'S BLESSING

a simple, sweet punch, to serve a crowd

Mix in a bottle and refrigerate:

1 part creme de cassis
2 parts Cognac

Also refrigerate:

several 1L bottles of ginger ale
several bottles dry sparkling wine (champagne, cava, or prosecco)
big can of pineapple juice

For serving:

bitters to taste (Underberg if you can get it or Angostura) 

When guests arrive, put a huge block of ice (cut the bottom off a half gallon milk carton, fill it with water, and freeze overnight) or a dozen or so cubes into a punchbowl.  Pour about a pint of the cassis-brandy mix over the ice.  Add a healthy splash of pineapple juice (3/4 cup or so), and then pour in a bottle of prosecco and a bottle of ginger ale.  If there is room, add more prosecco.  Add several dashes of bitters to suit your taste.  L'chaim!

The Acquital

At the end of a grueling three days of civic duty, juror number ten retires to her lair with a frosty cocktail, content in the knowledge that justice has been served.

 Oh, you didn’t know I was juror number ten?

That’s because I took a Big Solemn Oath not to blab about the trial while it was going on – not even to the three of you who read my blog.  The judge didn’t say anything about blogging after the fact, though, and so I submit the tale of my heroic, harrowing, and often quite boring experience as Juror Number Ten.

It all began with a questionnaire delivered to my home via the US Postal Service, which ominously requested that I go online and fill out a form.  Disregarding my husband’s advice to throw out said questionnaire, I complied and was summoned to jury duty several months later.

It was difficult to get up and make it to the court at the ungodly hour required (9 AM) since I generally try to avoid going outside during daylight.  But justice is a stern master. I fortified myself with a mocha and put on somber colors, because I hoped that would make me seem like a harsh and angry person unfit for jury service.

In the courthouse, I sat in a vast, clean antechamber with hundreds of other people and waited to have my number called.  As a Jew, I think it is difficult to be in these kinds of situations without thinking: We are waiting to be taken to our death, but maybe that’s just my natural sense of adventure.

A portly man welcomed us from a podium at the front, and played us a video about the history of jurisprudence narrated by Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer.

We did some fun tearing apart of perforated forms and then after a while some of us got called up to a courtroom on the fifteenth floor. I could not suppress a slight frisson as I took my seat in the wooden jury box for the voir dire, which is the questioning to see if you would be a good juror.  

Even though I didn’t want to have to sit on a jury, I started getting confused and hoping they would pick me after all.  The judge asked us a few standard questions such as whether we had any family members in law enforcement and if we’d been on a jury before.  When she asked if any of us had been the victim of a violent crime, I raised my hand and said I’d been mugged. 

I was sort of hoping she would ask me to recount the exciting story of my mugging – which was technically a draw, since he got my purse but I got his mountain bike – but all she asked was whether a weapon was involved, and I said no, and I ended up getting my feelings a tiny bit hurt, because I think that makes my mugging sound less exciting than other, more weapon-intensive assaults, when in fact it was a really rousing mugging with a nice ebb and flow.

The judge was fabulous throughout.  She was a youngish blond woman who radiated the subdued amusement of a karate master forced to watch the sparring of novices.  She was highly intelligent, as were the lawyers and the bailiff.  That was a nice feeling, knowing that these matters are – at least some of the time – in the hands of people of high intelligence. 

After the judge was done, the lawyers each got to question us.

Having just written two sleazy romance novels starring a hot Korean coed, I found it hard not to have inappropriate thoughts about the prosecutor.  She had bedroom eyes and looked statuesque and pouty in her tailored skirt suits.  Her mellifluous voice oozed concern for the safety of Brooklyn’s streets.  Yum, thought Juror Number Ten.  Even though I have no need for such things, I considered buying a skirt suit.

The defense attorney, at first flush, seemed sort of oily and disingenuous.  Yet, as the trial progressed, I grew to like him more and more.  He was slim and silver-haired and wore a nice suit, but there was something a little askew about him, an earring and multiple bracelets including one of those lamentable cancer bracelets and several leather and bead thingies that looked like something you get on vacation in Mexico.  He was a lefty.

Interestingly, he used the voir dire to establish rapport with the jury, whereas the prosecutor had merely used it to gain information.  He stood closer to us, memorized our names instantly, and asked us trivial questions that we couldn’t help but agree to.  I have learned that this is a trait of successful persuasion: Get your target to agree to something first.  It doesn’t matter what.  Do it enough, and they will get used to saying yes to you. Already from this interaction I started to get the sense that the defense was going to win.

The trial was to determine if the defendant, a young black man, had fired a gun into the air outside a club in Bed-Stuy a few years ago.  The defendant himself never took the stand or spoke.  He just sat there looking nervous and unhappy and very, very young.

There was no physical evidence to directly link him to the gun, however, and the two police eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen him shoot into the air and then stash the gun under a car tire both broke down under the defense’s cross examination to reveal multiple inconsistencies in their stories.  This, combined with memo books that were clearly cooked and a phone log that didn’t corroborate their story, made it an open and shut case. 

As a sort of color commentator, a detective from ballistics came in to talk to us about guns.  She was a dark-skinned woman with a beautiful French name that made me want a glass of wine, and she was badass in a subdued way as she opened up the chamber of the revolver and showed us how it worked.  Everyone showed the gun a lot of respect and at no time did anyone point it at me, not even in play.

The two ordinary cops and the ballistics detective were all significantly overweight, unlike the lawyers, judge, defendant, and most of the jury, who were all in good fighting condition.

The defense attorney, whom I now thoroughly admired, sidled up close enough to us that we could speculate about which Caribbean island he had gotten each of his shell bracelets on, and gave us his closing statement, returning to the crude yet effective guiding metaphor about car sales he had introduced at the voir dire and appealing to our sympathy by saying “This is the worst nightmare of any young African-American man.” 

The prosecutor did not even attempt to make any symbolic or emotional appeals during her summation.  She must have known she couldn’t win, which was why there was sometimes the tiniest touch of resignation in her beautiful eyes.  This only made her more piquant.  And although I slightly resented her redundant, twelve-page closing statement – which read like a college essay with a length requirement – I tried to focus on what was essential: the probable color and cut of her underwear. 

When the twelve of us retired to deliberate, we went around the table and all said “not guilty” right away.  However, we decided to wait to register our verdict until we had eaten our free lunch.  It was Italian, and we once again reached an immediate consensus: it was crap.

We went back in and it's really cool, by the way, how whenever you go in the room they announce "jury entering."  That was good for my self-esteem and I wish that in my normal life whenever I entered a room someone would announce "Sarah entering."  Maybe they could also play the trumpet. 

Our fore-woman rose and said “not guilty,” and it was so nice to see the look of relief on the young defendant’s face.  The guy who makes you swear your oaths – I forget what he’s called – had this incredibly resonant voice, like an old-time radio announcer, and he asked each of us in turn if we agreed with the verdict, and we each said yes, and it had some of the sweetness and ritual of saying yes in the marriage ceremony.  And then everyone in the courtroom seemed like one happy family, except perhaps for the prosecutor – who I thought about trying to cheer up with a back rub but didn’t – and also except for the stenographer, a balding, pale, stooped man straight out of Bartelby the Scrivener whose spectacular toxicity was a nice source of comic relief throughout the trial.

I said goodbye to my fellow jurors – a social worker, a nurse, a substitute teacher, a proofreader, a ballet dancer, a wine shop owner – a rainbow of fruit flavors from all over Brooklyn.  As I headed out into the afternoon, I felt a brief flicker of pride to be an American.  Fortunately this passed quickly, replaced by a more profound and enduring sensation: thirst.

THE ACQUITAL

This delicious summer cocktail has a beautiful rosy pink color to celebrate innocence and new beginnings.

The soju, a smooth Korean vodka distilled from rice, barley or other grains, commemorates the prosecution.  The pluot is an odd fruit, a plum-apricot hybrid, yet its taste wins in the end; it represents the defense.  The large brown sugar cube is for the adorable bailiff, and the champagne is for the judge: a touch of class.  The lime and sloe gin are there to help accentuate the pluot flavor; the latter is a liqueur flavored with blackthorn berries, and the only good brand is Plymouth’s.

1 ounce soju
1/2 ounce sloe gin
2/3 ounces fresh lime juice
1/2 a pluot, cut in wedges
1 extra-large brown sugar cube (a la Perruche or Roland brand or sub 1/2 ounce simple syrup)
generous splash chilled NV champagne

 Muddle the pluot very well with the sugar cube in the bottom of a shaker.  Fill shaker with ice and add all other ingredients except champagne.  Shake vigorously until outside of shaker is frosted and beaded with sweat.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass or coupe (if you want a drink free from fruit filaments, fine strain).  Top with a generous splash (approx. two ounces) of real, ice-cold champagne.  Drink several and then plot your next crime.

MONSTER OF THE WEEK -- Pinhead

Today our featured monster is Pinhead from Hellraiser, a series of movies Clive Barker wrote and directed based on his spooky little novella The Hellbound Heart.

Pinhead is a member of a race of otherworldy beings called Cenobites.  These beings are summoned by humans who have solved a puzzle cube formed of interlocking geometric shapes.   The cube, generally purchased at an obscure Moroccan bazaar, makes sounds like a music box as it unfolds, opening a gateway into the Cenobites' dimension.  If you ever come into possession of such a cube, DO NOT OPEN IT. 

The Cenobites are seekers of peak experience, and the kind of people who summon them are jaded hedonists who are tired with all the sensations this world has to offer.  Cenobites aren't evil per se (Pinhead says they are "angels to some and demons to others") but are amoral, concerned only about their sadomasochistic experiments.  In their quest for greater and greater intensity of experience, they pretty much torture to death anyone who is dumb enough to summon them by opening the puzzle box (see above re. not opening box). 

The structure of the Hellraiser story is instructive for a writer, because it has two separate antagonists, depraved Uncle Jack, who once summoned the Cenobites and is now trying to free himself from them and the Cenobites themselves, whom the ingenue Kristy mistakenly summons while trying to free herself from Uncle Jack.  Two antagonists are better than one, and it makes for a gripping plot.

I was inspired to check out Pinhead and his friends after seeing the incredible Francis Bacon retrospective at the Met.  Bacon's figures of popes and businessmen imprisoned by thin, glimmering lines and eaten up from within by their own power and appetite evoked Barker's world quite strongly. 

Here's Pope Innocent X:

We are born with a scream; we come into life with a scream, and maybe love is a mosquito net between the fear of living and the fear of death.

- F. Bacon

Bacon was gay, as is Clive Barker, a fact that seems important to both men's aesthetics somehow.  One of the prime sources of horror in Barker's world (and I'm thinking also of the stories in Books of Blood) is women's sexual power, an insight I doubt any straight male writer would have, at least not in the same way.  The NYT critic touches on the importance of Bacon's sexuality to his work in her review. 

Bacon seems like he would have been a cool dude to hang out with.  He was a drinking buddy of Tom Baker of Dr. Who fame. 

Champagne for my real friends; Real pain for my sham friends.

- F. Bacon (attributed)

He lived a bon vivant lifestyle, surrounded by a close circle of friends and lovers.  His longtime companion George Dyer was a petty thief -- the two met when Bacon caught Dyer robbing his apartment.  The most moving piece in the exhibition to me was a triptych depicting the hotel where Dyer killed himself (incredibly, on the night before Bacon's first major solo retrospective). 

Dyer was deep in the throes of alcoholism and drug addiction by then, but he still had the organization to plan and execute his suicide on the eve of the biggest day of his lover's career.  Contemplate how deeply passive aggressive that is -- a dance of control and pain worthy of Pinhead and his friends.  Sometimes we don't have to open a puzzle box to summon monsters.

Rest in peace, Merce Cunningham

A giant has passed.

Photo: CHARLES E ROTKIN/CORBIS

Mahabharata du jour

From my fabulous Yahoo Mahabharata group comes this quote.  (Yama is the god of death.)

k.m.ganguly - shanti-parva- 322 -

Neither mother, nor son, nor relatives, nor dear friends even when
solicited with honours, accompany the man that dies. To the regions
of Yama one has to go oneself, unaccompanied by any one. Only those
deeds, good and bad, that one did before death accompany the man
that goes to the other world.

Daniel Pinkwater on Walter Cronkite

Like most Pinkwater protagonists, the eleven-year-old hero of the surreal and wonderful Lizard Music is a bit of a misfit.  Here is his description of his favorite television star:

Then I got ready to watch the Walter Cronkite show.  Walter Cronkite is my favorite television star.  That’s another reason I haven’t got many friends at school.  Most of the kids like these rock groups like “The Vermin” and “The Scum” and some of these dumb singers who smile all the time and have aluminum foil glued to their jeans.  The kids who like those guys think I’m some kind of freak because I’m a Walter Cronkite fan. 

Anyway, Walter Cronkite isn’t on very much in the summer because that’s when he takes his vacation and Roger Mudd fills in for him.  I watch the show anyway, because if something really big were to happen, Walter would come straight from his vacation to take over.  Another thing I like about when Roger Mudd does the show is the possibility that Walter will die (not that I wish him any harm) on his vacation, and a news flash will come in while Roger Mudd is on the air.  Or he wouldn’t have to die – he could be trapped underwater in a Volkswagen bus with only enough air for two hours, and Roger Mudd could describe the rescue attempts.  Then the Navy divers would get Walter out, and he would say, “That’s the way it is,” and sort of salute into the camera, and the news program would fade out into the coffee ads.  Or it might be good if he did die after all, just after the Navy divers got him out of the sunken bus.  Then he could say, “That’s the way it is,” as his last words.  There are a lot of possibilities to the Walter Cronkite show.  I used to try to get some of the other kids interested in it, and maybe even set up a Walter Cronkite fan club, but they didn’t even take it seriously, and I got a reputation as a crazy.

My Daily Schedule

11 AM: Wake up to the sound of mysterious scrabbling from squirrel that has taken residency in my air conditioner.  (At first I waged a war with said squirrel, but have come to accept it as a symbiotic partner of my air conditioner, eating harmful parasites off the filter.)

11:01 AM: Make and drink large quantity of coffee

11:30: Begin writing daily 2000 word minimum of crappy romance novel

Noon: Carve up and eat honeydew melon, mango, or similar.

12:30: Watch episode of Iron Chef Japan on youtube.  Contemplate whether Iron Chef Chen Kenichi and Saxophonist Bill McHenry were separated at birth.

1 PM: Back to crappy romance novel.  Surf internet to try to recapture feeling of being young, hip heroine a la Sex and the City.  Get distracted and spend an hour reading Wikipedia entries on Norse gods, chess openings, or similar irrelevant topic

2 PM: Try to figure out origin of weird smell in apartment.

2:30: More coffee, melon

2:45: Go to the park to jump rope before it gets too late and park is overrun by cute children asking if they can "see" my jumprope

3 PM: Do yoga, shower.

4 PM: Squeeze out a few last paragraphs of novel

5 PM: Make a martini.  Unveil "theme ingredient" for dinner (e.g.,  canned corn).  Cook and eat dinner.  Declare myself winner of Battle Canned Corn. 

8 PM: Text Ethan.

9 PM: Blog/ waste time/ watch more Iron Chef

2 AM: Drift off to sleep to the soothing sounds of squirrel in AC.

Feasting and Fasting

I'm on the fifth day of the Master Cleanse, where you eat no food but only drink cayenne pepper-maple syrup-lemon juice and do an onerous salt water flush daily.  Crazy perhaps, but it helps undo the damage from all those martinis and Black Iron Horseradish Cheddar Burgers. 

Ethan and I have done this the past few years and I've noticed I get less colds and flus, and that for a while afterward I feel very clean and light.  But I've always stopped at five days before.  This time I plan to do the recommended minimum of ten if I can stand it.  Wish me luck.

I have been having psychotic dreams about food.  Last night I dreamed Ethan was spoonfeeding me curried chicken salad.  I woke up with a sore jaw from grinding my teeth.

This is a fabulous post about lunch at Per Se, one of the most expensive restaurants in New York.