Julie and Julia

I've read a few reviews and articles about Julie and Julia, not many, but I'm struck by how impressed viewers are that a movie is taking as its subject women's creative drive and search for meaningful work.

It seems to me something subtle is going on in the dialog between the two halves of the movie, something that helps explain for me why I love the Meryl—Stanley portions so much more. Yes, these two stories 'converse' across decades about their heroines' need to find proper modes of self-expression. But the two women are driven differently—Julia longs to identify and celebrate her gifts, Julie craves recognition for talents lying fallow.

Here's where Meryl Streep's unearthly performance sets the heart of the movie on fire. Every moment she appears on screen is capable of inducing tears and laughter, regardless of what she is doing. Her passion is so present it feels like she's made herself a conduit for a natural force. Everyone should be so lucky as to have the epiphany the Julia Childs character undergoes—that what she loves—both the cooking of the food and the eating of it—can be her full-time pursuit. It's this amazing good fortune, and the fact that she shares it with such a deserving partner, that makes her story speak so strongly to women, but it's Streep's ability to tap into all that it means for women that any of us can achieve such a fusion that lifts the film to the heights it hits.

Julie doesn't fare quite so happily. She wants to succeed in a way not entirely unlike her snobbish friends (one of whom, it is pointed out, has started a blog, giving her the idea). Cooking her way through Child causes her stress (contrast her frustration and fear in the kitchen to Julia's lusty lobster bashing and onion chopping), brings about tension between her and her husband. While she may have stuck it out through the cookbook, it's clear that having a growing readership is a great inducement—the pleasure comes as much from the feedback as from the cooking and writing. Think of all those years before Julia's book even comes out, when cooking is its own reward, and compare to how many posts it took Julie to acquire a fan base and the encouragement to continue.

The Julia half of the movie tutors the Julie half, and the lesson is 'follow your bliss.' Julia and Paul steal time for one another (their lunchtime rendezvous), pay attention to one another (the quotation from Paul's letter about Julia's erotic grace in the kitchen), communicate without words (she gestures toward the buttered fish and shakes her head, he answers "I know, I know"). Their love has a couple of seasons on Julie and Eric's, and as it should, it shows. The younger couple are still finding their way with one another; Julie has yet to trust in Eric's unequivocal support.

The movie portrays successful marriages, but without forgetting that a young marriage between young people falters, alters, and grows. And its portrait of self-realizing women is nuanced enough to ask what motivates, what creates happiness, what exactly is, after all, success?

Vacation, Vacation, Vacation

vacation Look up vacation at Dictionary.com
c.1386, "freedom or release" (from some activity or occupation), from O.Fr. vacation, from L. vacationem (nom. vacatio) "leisure, a being free from duty," from vacare "be empty, free, or at leisure" (see vain). Meaning "formal suspension of activity" (in ref. to schools, courts, etc.) is recorded from c.1456. As the U.S. equivalent of what in Britain is called a "holiday," it is attested from 1878.

That's from www.etymonline.com, which I love.

I don't think I've ever experienced vacation in its etymological sense quite as acutely as I did last week, after a year-and-a-half of worrying since my husband's last layoff. We have done admirably well at making ends meet by cobbling together freelance gigs and cutting back on expenses, but the intense work on the house and the uncertainty about what next have been constant companions.

My husband's mother, in an act of lavish generosity, gathered as much of her family as she could in a spacious rental house on Nantucket last week, and our biggest concern was what would we make for dinner on the night we had volunteered for mess duty. We only thought about the house once, when a friend called to see if her about-to-move brother could have a look at it, and only meant a call to the realtor.

Wavy beach or sand bar? Tandem bike or single? Burrito or taco? Contemporary novel or classic short stories? What joyful, strain-free choices.

I've vacationed before, but perhaps never from this much responsibility. Maybe our appreciation of release increases with the number and weight of the bonds vacation is releasing us from.

I'm grateful, and trying to figure out how to hang on to the feeling.

Loan Modification Diary #3

Let me start off this entry by saying that if you have anything to do with selling mortgages, go away. I will reject any comment offered to this blog by salespeople.

Back in May we applied for the federal stimulus program, Making Homes Affordable. Even thought we knew we would be putting our house on the market anyway, we applied, figuring it's best to pursue any and all options.

Flash forward to August, three months later, and it turns out we are approved for a "three-month trial loan modification" (don't ask why it's a trial, I don't get it myself). Once again, they ask if our home is on the market. We call the bank. I'm too discreet to tell you which one, but it's a major major loan institution with the initials WF, whose name was popularized by a well-known song in a famous Broadway musical.

After some hemming and hawing and transfer to a higher authority, it seems we could get away with a three-month trial, do the paperwork, then put our house back on the market. Basically our financial position would be exactly the same, since our tenant, who just moved because our house is on the market, was paying us exactly the amount in rent that the loan mod would have reduced our mortgage by. Ain't that poetic?

We decided we don't have time to futz around with a trial period, we intend to sell our house, so we are staying on the market and giving up the loan modification.

It makes no sense to me, this rule that you can't put your house on the market. Everyone knows the market is very very slow. It's in everyone's interest that mortgage payments get made, that people not wind up in short sale or foreclosure, so why the rule that they can't go on the market?