tamarjacobson

Nora Ephron dances around the D word at the conclusion of her book: I Feel Bad About my Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.

She says:

Meanwhile, your friends die, and you’re left not just bereft, not just grieving, not just guilty, but utterly helpless. There is nothing you can do. Everybody dies.

She asks:

Do you splurge or do you hoard? Do you live every day as if it’s your last, or do you save your money on the chance you’ll live twenty more years? Is life too short, or is it going to be too long? Do you work as hard as you can, or do you slow down to smell the roses? And where do the carbohydrates fit into all this? Are we really going to have to spend our last years avoiding bread. especially now that bread in America is so unbelievably delicious? And what about chocolate?

I went to see Notes on a Scandal yesterday afternoon. I had completed some work, puffed and panted on the treadmill and as I was coming out of a gloriously hot shower I noticed it was just enough time to make the 1:30 showing of Notes. As I drove off I felt prickling of guilt stirring in my brain. I started laughing and turned up Eric Clapton as loud as can be, driving the guilt away, and rushed into the movie theater just as the film was beginning.

When it was over, I stumbled out. Overwhelmed by the extraordinary acting of everyone in it, naturally, but the tale had struck a nerve, touched me deeply at some part of me I could not put my finger on. It was disturbing. It was a kind of identification with Judi Dench’s character. She did not shock or repel me. Instead, I felt her loneliness deep inside me, especially about attraction, desire, sexuality. I wondered if that was the story of both of them actually.

Or, perhaps, of so many of us.

Loneliness about sexuality, desire, attraction.

But let’s not be morbid, as Ephron says, dancing around the D word.