Showing posts with label The Debt to Pleasure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Debt to Pleasure. Show all posts

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Signs, Proof, and the Buddha Makes Lemonade


This is proof.


That this happened this weekend.

And this.

But I have no proof of what I saw this evening when I went for a walk around the block. Looking in my patio window, I saw my mother reaching behind my cookbooks where I stash my unfinished bottle of wine. Her martini glass had been drained just minutes before, and I mistakenly thought that her body had forgotten the sea of alcohol that it had been afloat in for so long. Of late she's been congenial about her two-ounce martini. She might have seen me. But maybe not. The bottle of wine was tightly sealed with one of those vacuum corks, and when I returned (just minutes later,) it was still sealed. "That sure was a short walk," she said. "It was," I said.

And this novel I'm reading, "The Debt to Pleasure," by John Lanchester---SPOILER ALERT---overwhelmed me with its darkness this afternoon. I have no proof, but there are signs that our narrator is a psychopath who has murdered his parents and caused the death of  perhaps two household employees. The book is a feast of language and wit and actual recipes. Not to mention a banquet of arcana that regularly sends me on a Google tangent. BUT. Either I've figured out on page 111 where this story is going or my prediction of where it all will end is a sign of my own darkness. 

And I'm not sure what's going on here in my iPhoto as it interfaces with Blogger, but for the second time in recent months, a photo that I have not selected--a photo from months ago--has appeared in this post. It's a photo from Dan's memorial. I'm going to call it a sign.