A quick entry, and I’m in the middle of A quick entry, as I’m in the middle of room-cleaning/ article-writing/ wedding-preparation:
I’m a few years behind on this (The Village Voice picked it up years ago), but Circus Amok , a NYC based circus whose performances focus on social justice issues,with shows like”Sub-Prime Sublime” and “Quality of Life.”
I’m trying to get an interview with bearded lady Jennifer Miller to talk about this year’s performance, but even a cursory analysis of the circus piques my interest — itinerant artists taking on broader social issues? Sign me up, or, alternatively, come hang out in my backyard.
Since high school, when my enthusiasm for Emily Dickinson, George O’Keefe, and Eastern philosophy merged in a watercolor of a pink flower bearing the calligraphy, “I dwell in possibility,” I have marked my bedroom as an Emily-inspired zone. She’s an icon, so my fascination is no distinction, and I’m sure many an introverted English major broached the shut-in/ “Wild Nights” dynamic in a therapy session. Still, I was pleased with Holland Cotter’s unabashed hero worship, and NYT take, on Dickinson’s dwelling place.
I was two paragraphs into this Boston Globe review when I realized that I would read Mark Amis’s The Pregnant Widow. The review makes it sound not-entirely-dazzling, but I am a sucker for coming-of-age novels, self-conscious writing, and Italy, and this is a story about a literature major who spends a summer in an Italian castle and tries to manipulate the present in order to maximize the nostalgic potential of his relationship with a beautiful Scheherazade. This is an impulse-read, and, like my cash register purchase of the mint-flavored Three Musketeers, I expect novel enjoyment, but no enduring satisfaction.