my LOL lunch

 

Behind this necessarily neat food photo is my LOL lunch’s messy back story. It’s one where, to find laughter, I need look no further than my own foibles.

 

First, after two hours doing French homework, I discovered—five minutes before class—that I had done the wrong assignment. So, after muddling through Zoom class, which was fun despite my confusion, I wandered down to my kitchen to cook lunch.

 

Normally, I carefully plan a meal’s protein, carbs, fiber, veggies, fruits. Too scatterbrained for that; today I just wanted to use up the last half-jars of tomato-basil sauce, coconut milk, and canned pumpkin. I had bought fresh ginger last week to make chai tea from scratch but hadn’t gotten around to that yet. So I made easy tomato soup, pumpkin-pecan pancakes, and chai tea. Each tasted great by itself. Together, not so much.

 

Also, in keeping with today’s discombobulation theme, I didn’t adequately blend the dry with the wet so most of the pancakes looked more like snow-dusted topiary squirrels, and I spilled just about everything I touched. Now, after wiping colorful puddles from the counter and tomato soup splatters from the cabinets, I’m ready for a nap. And I feel a bit queasy. LOL

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton ~ my review

After reading Edith Wharton’s novel, The Age of Innocence, I find myself wondering which part of the story might have inspired the book’s title. Was it Newland Archer’s romantic ideas? Was it May Welland’s bright, pure optimism? Was it troubled Countess Ellen Olenska’s hope of escape to New York? Was it how the young man’s emotional affair sneaked up on him? When Newland became torn between May and Ellen, certainly few characters in the Archer and Welland families’ orbits were unaware of the unspoken love triangle. Was the age of innocence the fact that they didn’t speak of it? Was it Newland’s hoping his fiancée May would not have the kind of “innocence that seals the mind against imagination” [page 125] only to learn that his wife May was a strong, shrewd husband-keeping strategist?

 

The introduction to my copy of The Age of Innocence suggests the reader is the innocent being lured by humorous jabs at New York’s wealthy class into the darker drama of duty and disappointment. Or was it the glittering Belle Époque era of New York high society itself? Everything was prescribed by custom and therefore predictable and anodyne. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, people were still innocently unaware of incipient wartime atrocities. I don’t know Wharton’s inspiration for her title, but because The Age of Innocence won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for fiction by an American author writing about American society, I would guess perhaps some of these overarching societal themes.

 

Wharton’s writing contains such clever delights as “… an unalterable and unquestionable law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.” [page 6] I was quite entertained by Wharton’s poking fun at the absurd rigidity of moneyed New Yorkers’ customs.

 

[PARTIAL SPOILER ALERT] Getting to know Ellen, who had lived in Europe, opened Newland’s eyes to his sheeplike following of New York customs and he longed to be free of the constraints of set opera nights and predictable parties and strict rules of attire. As Newland’s options narrowed, I felt sad to see his dream dying. He chose the known over the unknown, the expected over the dream. In so doing, he disappointed himself instead of disappointing his family. Yet—his traditional life was serene and productive. The Age of Innocence ends a quarter-century later, when Newland is middle-aged. I won’t say how he feels at that point.

 

Perhaps the universality of this tale lies in the youthful dreams we entertain as twenty-somethings: I’ll be different from this society! I’ll break free! Then our ideals get absorbed by reality, ending our age of innocence.