Personal Yummy #101
An exquisite Florida Thursday in early June, sunny and peaceful and breezy, the wind chimes jingling and emitting their Zen-like vibes, the palm trees rustling, the lake water glistening.
Later, the intense and bewildering shades in the sky—yellows, pinks, and oranges—amid the setting sun, observable through the accordion glass wall separating the spacious living room from the cozy lanai.
And the next day, mystifyingly beautiful too.
Continue reading “Vagaries in Venice”Personal Yummy #100
I order a glass of red from Montenegro, a red I have never tried before, and, surprisingly, he does the same.
He’s more adventurous than I thought.
Continue reading “The Appearance Narratives: No More New Clothes”Personal Yummy #99
Approximately 10 months following my departure from my full-time job at the Wall Street firm where I worked for more than 11 years, my mom and I drive back to New York City on a chilly Tuesday in April of 2018. I had gone home to Pennsylvania for the Easter holiday. Our friend Bella, who enjoys New York City, and traveling in general, makes the trip with us.
The drive is nice. As I said, it is cold out, but fortunately not rainy, and the sun graciously appears every now and then, illuminating the stretching fields and farmland as we head east on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Continue reading “She Works Hard for the Money”Personal Yummy #98
In walks a thin, middle-aged, gray-haired man with glasses and the current issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He smiles at us pleasantly, sits down in the back booth, props a menu up in his hands, and starts studying it.
In no time at all, here comes Cathy—suddenly. She hurriedly approaches the man, grabs his folded paper, reaches past him and across the table (in a shockingly easy manner, in fact, even though she is almost nine months pregnant), and, with as much force as I’ve seen from just about anyone, obliterates a fly on the wall, and with much success.
You would think that the squished fly would adhere to the wall, but it doesn’t. Rather, it falls to the table, right beside the man’s hands.
I’ve never seen such a look of repulsion and disgust on someone’s face, but there it is.
“Are you crazy?!” he yells, utterly taken aback. “How could you do something like that?”
He stares at her for a moment more, but then he yanks his Post-Gazette from her hand, finds his way out of the booth, stands up, and storms out the door.
Today is Cathy’s last day at The Grill—at least for now.
She shrugs her shoulders.
******
The above excerpt is from my coming-of-age novel—The Grill on Murray Avenue: A Story of Innocence—about the inhabitants of an unassuming bar-and-grill in Squirrel Hill, a vibrant neighborhood in the east end of Pittsburgh. The story is told by Jenna, a young waitress who dreams of becoming a professional dancer.
Personal Yummy #97
One day a man and a boy went out to the fair to sell their donkey.
As they went along, they went past four groups of people.
Continue reading “An Eight-Year-Old’s Take (aka Book Report) on a Classic Fable: Wise Advice for Today“Personal Yummy #96
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Continue reading “Rectify and Refine“Personal Yummy #95
What would it be like to be a bird-of-paradise in sunny Venice, Florida?
Like any other beauty, I assume.
Unique. Gorgeous. Unusual.
Admired and envied.
The focus of many.
As Rose (Barbra Streisand) asks her mother, Hannah (Lauren Bacall), in The Mirror Has Two Faces—one of my most favorite movies—“How did it feel? Being beautiful?”
The bird-of-paradise is adorned in bright orange and blue, with sturdy, abundant green leaves and stalks.
It is exotic, tropical, regal…
Complex.
And it makes you feel that way when you regard it, especially if you’ve rarely encountered it before.
But—no matter what you think of it … or others think of it—it is beautiful because it knows it’s so.
That’s right.
Just like the rest of us.
Personal Yummy #94
We decide to do the “photo shoot” one Saturday afternoon that I have off, around four o’clock.
We pick this time because it is usually a slower time of the day: The main dinner crowd doesn’t start arriving until around five or five thirty. Obviously, we don’t want to disturb anyone’s drink or meal; plus, we want to avoid as much embarrassment and staring as possible.
At least I know I do.
Continue reading “An Attempt at Headshots, Restaurant-Style”Personal Yummy #93
It’s a Sunday night, around 11:30, and I’m on the 4 train, on my way home from Brooklyn, where I had a nice dinner and lots of wine at my friend Sally’s St. James Place brownstone apartment.
I am sitting and relaxing, thinking about all of the interesting topics that we discussed, when a middle-aged man gets on the train at Union Square and approaches me.
“Miss,” he says, bending forward in my direction and looking at me intently, “may I sit down beside you?”
Continue reading “Subway Stories: The Twilight-Zone Journey”Personal Yummy #92
If you are a lover of Nathaniel Hawthorne (and even if you are not), perhaps you will enjoy my college-age perspectives on “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” a complex and symbolic story.
Continue reading “Conceptions of Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter”: Part 2 of the Introduction”
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