How all at once my heart took flight

I write this not sitting in the kitchen sink, but with band-aids on both hands. This is because I greatly overestimated my recovery this afternoon, walked into Arlington Heights to run some errands, and tripped over nothing on the sidewalk; I went down with angular momentum and completely skinned the heel of my right palm, nicked grit into the other, and scoured the corduroy off both knees. A woman in a passing car stopped to ask if I was all right. I must have looked spectacular from the street. (I was of course carrying my leather jacket over one arm, which meant it afforded no protection at all; hence the mysterious scrapes up my arm to the shoulder. I think I rolled.) Yes, I told her; I got up and walked into the bank, handed over my checks and deposit slip, and asked if I could use their bathroom. "Not unless it's an emergency," the teller said. "It's not an emergency, is it?"—"No, I just fell on the sidewalk and I need to wash the grit out of my hands," and I turned up my palms, one of which now looked like do-it-yourself stigmata. She blanched and hastily showed me downstairs to the restroom; then misplaced my checks, so I had to wait around while she located and deposited them. I had forgotten until I got home that two nights ago I fell over in the shower. Whatever I have, it's messed up my inner ear. But at the moment, I am more annoyed about the corduroys, of which these were my best pair, and my sundial ring, which is badly scratched up: it was on the hand I landed on. The only reason I'm not covered in mercurochrome is I think it's illegal. Neosporin, however, right now is my friend.

It seems that what I do when too wiped out to write productively is watch classic movies. Tonight's was Pygmalion—the 1938 version, Shaw's own adaptation, with Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard. And I have to say, I grew up on Rex Harrison. He's definitive. Anyone who essays the role of Professor Henry Higgins from now until the end of time will have his shadow to contend with, and lines of My Fair Lady are regularly quoted in my family's house.* But for an obsessed phonetics geek with no people skills, I'll take Leslie Howard for a thousand, please. If there's a romance here, it's even more one of the intellect. And Wendy Hiller is luminous.

Lastly, hats off to an achievement of awe. Because they all married non-Jews, my mother and her two siblings were long ago disowned by our religious relatives in Florida, declared dead and pointedly said Kaddish for. This is the branch that descends from my great-grandfather's brother Pesachia, who was quite devout where Noah was a crazy freethinker who read Zola and liked Italian opera; I have never heard anything against Pesachia, but his children are idiots. One of them just called up my mother's brother, wondering if he would like to send them money. Because someone's life is on the line? Because of dire financial straits? Nah. They just want a donation to their synagogue in Miami.

Leo Rosten, eat your heart out.

* According to David Ehrenstein, in the essay included with the Criterion DVD: "There’s a saying that goes: a definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to Rossini's 'William Tell Overture' without thinking of The Lone Ranger. Were that notion expanded to include anyone who can experience Shaw's Pygmalion without humming the melodies of 'I Could Have Danced All Night' or 'I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face', millions more would fail the test."