"it will be all right"

Scribble Scribble:  Notes on the Media
and
Crazy Salad
are two collections of essays written by Nora Ephron that are too expensive to buy because they're out of print. 

($450 for a 34-year-old paperback. 
I --
I'll get right on that.)

Scribble was pub. 1978,
Salad, 1975,
and another Ephron essay collection that costs much less than $450, Wallflower At The Orgy, was pub. 1970.

Will read Wall.
Could check with local library to borrow the others, but --
the library never has the books I'm looking for,
just as the video store
never
has the movies I want.

I make this observation not in a spirit of complaint, but only of FLE --
Fatigued Life Experience.

I think --
the reason the library doesn't have the books I want and the video store doesn't have the movies I want is because my taste is mainstream,
while -- our local library and video store cater to a tiny minority of the public who have atypical, unconventional interests.
Yes.
Yes -- that's what it is.

----------------------
When I read that Nora Ephron had died, I had these impulses --
read the articles and tributes!
read all her books of essays!
re-watch Julie And Julia and When Harry Met Sally!
Write a blog post about N. Ephron!

Last weekend, thought -- what shall I write?
And then it seemed hard -- you have to summarize a person's life in one set of paragraphs, on one day, because -- they died?
"...ok that makes no sense," I thought.  I'm not an Obituary-Writer.  No one's appointed me to do this.
And there's no "this" -- I don't have to do -- or write -- anything!
And yet a person feels moved to -- to -- something.

When a famous person whom you don't know personally dies from a disease -- it really isn't, realistically, "heartbreaking" -- you didn't know them.  And it's not a fatal accident or a murder.  And the person -- while they may not have been all that old, still was sort of old, & had done a lot of stuff.  It isn't like when someone really young -- younger than 40 or 50, I guess -- dies & there's a feeling of Oh! What a shame!  That's not fair!  Because it seems the life has not been lived, yet.  As you would hope that it could be lived, for the person if you knew them, and as we all hope for ourselves and those we know and love.  Death from a disease, anytime after 55 I guess, is part of the Process of Nature.

I guess maybe the impressions I had in my mind when I read of Ephron's passing came from --
really liking two of her films, J & Julia, & Harry-Sally,
and also having a far-off ancient memory of those book titles -- Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble -- I never read them, wasn't into "essays" at that age, but those book-covers were familiar no doubt from when I would prowl the aisles of bookstores during high school and college years.

And suddenly I -- WANTED to READ THEM - !

And thought maybe I would write about the two movies that are two of my favorites but then realized -- whether people live or die, I will have many occasions to talk about Julie and Julia and When Harry Met Sally -- works of art stand on their own and are part of our life and existence whether their creators are still "among us" or not.  (The commentary and special features on both of those DVDs are fun and engaging and enlightening, too....)

And the main point that keeps returning in thoughts and spiking my attention is the fact that Nora Ephron had been diagnosed with the leukemia 6 years ago, according to reports.  And she kept knowledge of the condition to herself and intimates, she did not make it public, & she continued to work and offer pleasant entertainment and thoughts to the world.

There's a nobility in that, I think -- similar to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who continued her work in publishing almost right up to the day of her death.  Several writers recount getting faxes from her, suggesting improvements to their manuscript, and then finding out only a short time later -- weeks, or days, can't remember -- hearing that she'd been hospitalized and then went home to die.

Thwack. 

Near the time of her death Mrs. Onassis told someone at her office at Doubleday, that she was doing well, and,

"It will be all right."

And that was not true.
But what a good thing to say.

It seems like Jacqueline Onassis and Nora Ephron were both people who wanted to work to offer something positive for other people to enjoy, and they just kept working at doing that until it was time to check out.  (Or rather, to be involuntarily "checked out.")

Make a big public fuss about medical conditions and discomforts?
Make a big public fuss and exaggerate for effect?
Make a big public fuss and use the enforced sympathy-and-attention of other people as a tool to try to control them, and manipulate them?
N-ah -- these people were too busy doing something constructive.

When thinking of the "timeline" for Nora Ephron -- diagnosed 6 years ago, and her excellent film Julie-Julia came out three years ago -- there she was, making it happen -- writing and directing -- in her commentary, she says something along the lines of,

"I was astounded at the enormous task Julie Powell set for herself (cooking through the Julia Child cookbook in a year) because, (Ephron says), these French dishes are, almost none of them, easy to make -- some of them take three hours....and I thought I had cooked most of the recipes in Julia's book, but then was amazed to see how many recipes there were that I hadn't cooked, and wouldn't have been caught dead cooking, like aspic, and kidneys. ..."

She is so funny in that commentary, because while she's an accomplished cook (or "foodie" as they say) herself, she speaks reverentially of cooking, and of food, but then under-cuts it with honest observations that there are fancy, complicated, three-hour French recipes that just aren't really (freakin') worth it!

Hers was -- is -- a voice of Reason.

motto:  "Wage Reason"

-30-