Bittersweet

I did not mean to sound mopey or weepy yesterday, a Blue Monday in the blog, in a post celebrating The Weepies and their beautiful bubble! (I enjoyed counting the chapbooks in my box in the closet, and many thanks to Maureen E. Doallas for buying 4 of them, which will change my 2015 totals to report to the tax man in 2016!) I think, according to Facebook, that it is Deb Talan's birthday--singer/songwriter in The Weepies. Many happy returns!

I know I am one of the lucky ones in life. I have my health, a loving family, and work I love (even if it is ludicrously un-lucrative!) Today is Fat Tuesday in the blog, and I am celebrating leftover chocolate and the fact that my husband does not have strep throat and thus will not spread it to his volleyball team! In the waiting room, I was re-reading stories by Lorrie Moore, in Bark, a pre-birthday gift from my mom. She knows I read the hardback from the library closer to when it came out and also that I love Lorrie Moore and will want the paperback edition on hand for relentless re-reading of favorite stories and passages.

Here's one, from the story "Wings," which is a sort of re-imagining of Wings of the Dove, by Henry James (just as The Innocents, by Francesca Segal, is a contemporary re-telling of The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, and now I want to re-see the film versions of both The Wings of the Dove and The Age of Innocence, and this parenthetical moment is an example of what I mean by "Fat Tuesday" in the blog; it's not always about food). Anyhoo:

"Bitterness came when one had done the long good thing and then gone unrewarded. Dench would never operate that way. She,* on the other hand, had been born with a sort of pre-bitterness, casting about for the good and unacknowledged deed that would explain her feelings---and not coming up with it. So instead a sourness could beset her, which she had to appease and shrink with ice cream and biographies of Billie Holiday."

*"She" is a singer/songwriter in this story, making this also a Random Coinciday in the blog. And this is bittersweet, its innocent white flower, its two-toned fruit above, with many thanks, as always, to Wikipedia. But see the food? And the perfect definition of "bitterness," the ice cream needed as a sweetness to counter it? And Billie Holiday?! Oh, how I love Lorrie Moore.