‘East of Eden’ and Lived in Books

Summer just passed, I set myself the challenge of (re)reading all of John Steinbeck. An ambitious and pleasurable exercise, I’m still going with my great Summer of Steinbeck, even though, as I wrote last week, it’s now the depths of winter.

I haven’t been entirely dedicated to this challenge, and, like the contradictory gen-y-er I am, I’ve been reading other authors in and around Steinbeck. Having said that, reading Steinbeck, like all life enhancing things, is worth taking time over.

This is particularly true of my favourite novel of his, ‘East of Eden’, which I finished re-reading last week. ‘East’ encapsulates every reason why you should read Steinbeck at some point in your life. And, if you have read him before, ‘East’ is a persuasive argument for regular revisits.

Recommending ‘East’ is tricky, as I can’t quite put my finger on what it’s about. Read it and you’ll understand what I mean - a plot summary is impossible. What I can say with hand-on-heart confidence, though, is it's the kind of book that makes you feel big and small, all at the same time. If the idea of literature that can do that appeals, then ‘East’ is the novel for you.

I first read ‘East’ when I was sixteen, and, if I’m honest, a lot of it went over my head. I recall liking particular characters (Lee, Samuel Hamilton, Adam Trask) but not understanding them, and, consequentially, feeling a bit disconnected from the novel. Almost ten years later, I now have enough of that horrible phrase – ‘life experience’ - to properly understand those characters I liked as a sixteen year old, and to begin to understand some of Steinbeck’s more unlikable characters, of which ‘East’ has plenty.

It’s tempting, here, to spoil the ending for you, but I won’t, because ‘East’ is the kind of novel that you need read, right the way through, before the last page makes any sense. As someone who likes to read the last pages of novels before the end of the first chapter, a book with a last page like ‘East’'s presents a prospect both tantalising and maddening. When you get to that last page, though, you’ll see why I was so tempted here to share it with you. It is wonderful.

One further word of advice: if you do read ‘East’, buy yourself a copy, rather than borrow one from a friend or from the library. The reason being? This is the sort of book with so much of life in it that it needs – rather, deserves – to be dog-eared, coffee-spilt, bath-dropped, handbag-mangled, and lived-in.

Or, perhaps I’m trying to find some esoteric excuse for the fact that I dropped this book in the bath at least three times while reading it. Whatever your interpretation, my copy of ‘East’ is properly lived in, something for which I am glad.

Hotties, Heat Lamps, Hoodies and Warm Hearts: How to Survive a Canberra Winter

It’s the middle of winter in Canberra, and it’s Darwinism, pure and simple.

Only the fittest will survive.

Here’s the top ten secrets of the Capital's winter-fit. Now, go and make it work. We've still got two months left.

10) A proper coat. Proper, here, meaning thick wool tweed or worsted, lined, finishing - at least - at your thighs, but preferably longer, with roomy pockets. A lesser garment than the above will be insufficient. If you are new in town, this is the first order of business after ANZAC day (which Canberra natives know to be winter’s unofficial beginning).

A handy hint: the best coats I have found have been vintage, my guess is because air conditioning was less functional back in the day. My particular favourite winter coat was a $45 steal at Narabundah Vinnies. It is my very greatest bargain shopping purchase of all time.

9) Heat lamps and/or heating in your bathroom. Why? Let’s imagine you’re in a particularly awesome hot shower. It’s steamy, you’re washing your hair. You’ve even shaved your legs.

Nice.

Imagine, now, turning the taps off. You’re naked, you’re dripping wet. You step into a frigid bathroom. The air temp hovers just above ten degrees.

Not nice AT ALL.

I have lived in old, cold, Canberra houses/apartments where this sitch was a reality for June, July and August (PhD scholarship ghetto years, yo). It’s a suboptimal way to start the day, but you can avoid it by judicial deployment of energy-guzzling appliances.

8) American Apparel tights. Enough said.

7) A million and a half recipes for soup, or a mother/partner/housemate/really really good friend who will make soup for you. Unless you have a Spartan constitution, you will get sick at some point before a Canberra winter is through, particularly if you’re doing the hot shower-cold bathroom hop (see point nine). When you get sick, you need soup – chicken soup, lentil soup, pumpkin soup, pho, broth, laksa – to get you back to full health. That, and a whole lot of boxed sets of DVD’s.

Gavin and Stacey marathon, anyone?

6) Hoodies, preferably from your alma marta. Australian Bureau of Statistics data released this week indicates Canberra’s population is the most highly educated in Australia. It’s a safe town in which to get your nerd pride on.

If you’re a very clever cookie and have studied at more than one institution, pick your hoodies according to international rankings. Canberra is the only place in Australia with a population who knows and cares about such matters - choose your hoodies accordingly.

5) Hotties (Hot water bottles). If you are no longer deriving perverse pleasure from doing the whole Orwelian down-and-out-in-a-freezing-cold-climate thing, the simplest solution to your problems is to get into bed with multiple hotties.

You can pick them up for $3 at Big W. Too easy.

4) Proper Gloves. Proper, here, meaning fine calfskin leather, lined with cashmere, in a colour that says ‘Hi, my name is Fabulous’ (my gloves are violet, AKA Fabulous). As with coats (point ten), a lesser garment than the above will be insufficient. Good gloves will cost you (unless you or someone you know is travelling to Florence – in which case they will still cost you, but slightly less). It is worth the financial pain, though, because chilblains and knuckles-so-dry-from-the-cold-they-crack-and-bleed-as-you-type are best avoided.

You need the best gloves you can get your hands on. Or in. Just get some gloves.

3) Excellent company. If you are going to make the effort to leave your heater and get out of your trackpants, the conversation had better fucking sparkle.

Canberran natives know this. It’s why we all become fascinating people in the winter months.

2) Multiple Cardigans. You need at least one for each day that you are at work, because, if you are working indoors, heating levels will vary throughout the day and you may need an extra layer to keep you snug.

Some people bring blankets to work. My advice on this issue is that because its cold doesn’t mean you need your blankie. You're a grown up, put on a cardi.

1) An iPod, full of cold weather songs, because listening to Bright Eyes transforms your twenty minute walk home from a cold and miserable plod to a beautiful, pathos-filled journey of wonder. We natives know that’s what a Canberra winter is really all about – cold hands, cold noses, cold toes…

And warm hearts.

In the interests of transparency…

Sartorial experimentation is a wonderful thing. At best, you discover new and different ways of dressing, and therefore being, that you very much like.

At worst, you look like an idiot. Which, incidentally, also has a transformative effect on your way of being – humility is hard to come by any other way.

Of late, my sartorial experiments have involved a headlong dive into what I like to term High Casual. High Casual involves jeans, looser tee shirts and jumpers, and cardigans, but with understated jewellery, a subtle colour palette, and classically shaped bags and shoes.

High Casual is a little early 80s Slone Ranger - a look for which I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot – and a whole lot of it’s-the-weekend-and-I-refuse-to-think-about-anything-more-serious-than-my-next-e-purchase-of-american-apparel-tights.

In short, it’s a highly enjoyable way of being.

But, I’m one of those restless types, which means I stride, some would say fecklessly, toward further experimental modifications.

My forays into High Casual are no exception to further experimentation. Keeping everything else Slone-y and respectable, I’ve lately taken to flashing a bit of bra, and not via the usual accidental flashpoints of low necklines and flimsy shouldering.

No, my bra flashing has been of the intentional variety. I have been deliberately pairing a coloured bra under a light, semi-transparent tee or jumper. For example: royal blue lace Marks and Spencers bra/white linen blend Country Road tee shirt.

I readily confess mixed feelings about this increasing transparency (see above statement C/F risking idiocy).

On the one hand, I like the fact that there’s subversion here. An otherwise respectable outfit is roughed up a little, and I do love a bit of ruggedness to keep things interesting. There’s also something aesthetically and ideologically pleasing about the practice of exposing layers, an implicit acknowledgement that clothing, and life, is complicated. Less esoterically, peaches are best enjoyed when they are ripe, and I’m only going to be 25 once. These are The Years where, rightly or wrongly, I can Get Away With It.

On the other hand, I wonder if exposed underwear, in any context, is ever OK. How is intentional exposure through a flimsy tee or jumper any less exhibitionistic, obvious and déclassé, than exposure via a plunging neckline, a practice which I outgrew a long time ago? More worryingly, could my sartorial transparency cause offense to the general population?

I’ve spent the best part of this evening turning these questions over in my mind, seeing how they look in different lights. I’m still no closer to a definitive set of findings from my experimental research. But, transparency, and all the issues it brings to light, can wait for some other time. It’s Friday, the weekend is just beginning, and it’s time for all of us to enter a state of being where we think upon nothing more serious than our next e-purchases of American Apparel tights (or events that give you equivalent enjoyment).

Milk, Cookies, and Temporal Fractures

SPOLIER ALERT: in Men In Black 3 (completely awesome, I cried, go watch it), Agent O diagnoses a temporal fracture in the fabric of the universe via Agent J’s chocolate milk craving.

This is a tweak of what we all know elementally – that when adult life seems like a temporal fracture and we want to turn the clock back and be kids again, milk and cookies are exactly what we crave.

Don’t pity me and imagine that I had a culinarily deprived childhood, but milk and cookies together were not something I was fed as an after school snack by my domestic goddess of a mother. Cookies and tea, yes. Apple slices and cheese, yes. Rice pudding with jam, absolutely. But not milk and cookies, cool from the fridge and warm from the oven respectively.

I think it’s a testament to the power of our collective notions of childhood foodstuffs that even I, who cannot recall having milk and cookies as a child, feel the nostalgic pull of this particular combination. It’s in this spirit of embracing the platonic ideal-ness of milk and cookies that I offer you a recipe for the most perfect cookies to go with a glass of milk.

Fittingly for a post about childhood nostalgia - of the real and culturally imagined kind - this recipe is based on a recipe my grandmother passed to my mother, who passed to me. I have modified this recipe over the years to ramp up the chocolate chips and vanilla extract, because when I think about that platonic ideal of milk and cookies, the cookies are nubbly with chocolate bits and smell sweetly of vanilla. Comfort on steroids, after all, is the best thing for temporal fractures.

Choc Chip Cookies

Makes 25

125g melted butter
1 egg
¾ cup sugar
1 ½ cups SR flour
115g (half a packet) dark chocolate baking chips
125g (half a packet) white chocolate melting buttons, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons (yep, go with it) natural vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees and line 2-3 baking trays, depending on size, with baking paper.
2. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl with a wooden spoon. The mixture should be the consistency of the cookie dough culinary amateurs buy at Coles – i.e., it should roll into a ball that holds its shape but is still pliable and moist.
3. Roll into ping-pong size balls and place on baking sheets, leaving enough room to for the cookies to spread.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 10-15 minutes, or until evenly golden.
5. Serve, warm from the oven, with a glass of icy cold milk, and, optimally, a quiet moment getting reacquainted with some childhood classics - Ann of Green Gables, anyone?