What Possessed Me

Soundtrack of my childhood

I was six when Thriller came out and remember sneaking out of bed to watch the video on MTV with my brothers. It scared the bejesus out of me, but it was...thrilling. I wanted a red leather zipper jacket and sparkly socks so badly.

MJ, I prefer to remember you like this, before shit got really weird and sordid and sad. There was so much greatness in you. I hope that you've been released from whatever tortured and frightened you.

P.S. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawsett and Michael Jackson in one week? What next - a plague of locusts?

Liminal states

I wrote a little piece over at Melissa's house today about that awkward, tender time when we are not quite adults and not quite children. I spent my teenage years in a state of intense and extended longing - I wanted desperately for something wonderful and magical to happen.

I look back at that time in my life with a combination of nostalgia and relief. There is no doubt in my mind that being an adult is far more exciting and empowering than being a child. (No one, for instance, will ever force me to read Dickens again. This fact alone makes me wonder why people romanticize childhood.) While I would never, ever want to be seventeen again, these days I find myself in a same kind of liminal state - right on the cusp of something new and different. Instead of gnawing my fingers to the bone, worrying over the uncertainty of what is to come, I want to take a page from my girlhood self  - to recapture the feeling of wistfulness and the sense of possibility that comes from finding oneself at the threshold of a new adventure.

Image: Rosie Hardy.

Crave

When I was ten, my yia-yia died, leaving my mother a little pocket money which she used to take us all to France for a month. We rented a spooky house in Aix-en-Provence (and I by "spooky" I mean "mysterious and terrifying sounds at night just steps away from our bedrooms"), ate lots of raspberry tart and stinky cheese, and toured around in a little Peugeot.

I wore a straw boater with a wide, red and white striped band and a white cotton sundress. My brother wore striped athletic socks and an expression of supreme boredom. We listened to Dire Straits non-stop. It's funny the odd little things you remember from childhood. Like the beautiful Calissons du Roy René, made with the same recipe since 1454.

I found these lemon, orange, prune, fig, and violet-flavored almond cookies at Dean & Deluca this weekend while looking for an overpriced chocolate bunny. They brought me back to that summer in Aix.

So lovely to look at and so delicious. I think they'd make an elegant hostess present. Let's give the macarons a rest, yes?