.SOMETIMES RAW.

“How old are you again?” my son asked me the other night. “Mommy, are you old?” I am 41, so maybe a little bit?

Sometimes I see an old photo of myself or glance in the mirror and realize I didn’t change that much over the years. Tiny wrinkles (from laughing so much) that appear out of nowhere but no grey hair. My elbow is sometimes doing something weird. Not really sure what is going on there. But overall, if this means getting older, it is all good. It is natural. On another note, I don’t understand Snapchat. Technically or philosophically. College students look like babies to me. Like, tiny infants who should be rocked to sleep in a bassinet.

What I like about ageing:

I feel comfortable in my body. I don’t mind that my arms are a little soft. My body can take my kid on bike rides and kiss and tap tap tap on the computer. I love laugh lines; they exist because of all the times you’ve laughed at funny things. And frown lines are good for freaking children out just enough at bedtime.

I still feel really young. Maybe everyone does? “I’ve never got used to the Queen being grown up,” writes Margaret Atwood in Cat’s Eye. “Whenever I see her cut-off head on the money, I think of her as fourteen years old… The Queen has had grandchildren since, discarded thousands of hats, grown a bosom and (heresy to think it) the beginning of a double chin. None of this fools me. She’s in there somewhere, that other one.”

You learn things over the years. That hard work pays off. That I look good in bangs. How to listen. Which gelato flavour to order (i.e., the poppy seed flavour sounds like the worst but is actually the best).

I have mantras. I used to lie awake beating myself up at night about how I might have done some random thing (socially, work-related, parenting, etc.) better or differently. I wouldn’t be able to get over it. Now I think, “I’m learning,” and it feels productive and calming, and nine times out of ten, I’m able to put it (and myself) to bed.

I understand how much older ladies can sit by the window and remember the past. You’re all your ages within one body. It feels good.

Life goes in chapters. Sometimes you feel stuck or lost or heartbroken, but things always change. I’ve been a bookish little girl; a karate-loving teenager; a college student in love; a miserable statistics student; an anxious twentysomething searching for a path; a happy friend; a blissed-out newlywed; an exhausted new mother; an early forty-something woman writing this post. Hard times can feel endless, but they always always end. Who knows what lies ahead?

Based on current celebrity beauty standards:

The goals are clear: you need to look like you’re in your twenties until you’re thirty-five, then look thirty-five until you’re dead. Also, regardless of age or retirement eligibility, all women should have supple, lineless skin with no evidence of sunspots, muscle movement, or laughter. The only indication that you’ve been on Earth long enough to outlive a household pet should be the look in your eyes, which peer wearily out of your flawless, youthful face like a haunted doll.

To get specific about various body parts: boobs, obviously, should be perpetually high and firm, lips full and plump (with the help of Botox!), and your hair long and flowing with the aid of extensions, even as you enter an assisted living facility, where it will invariably get tangled with your breathing equipment and other life-prolonging devices, which would be annoying if you were not so successful clutching to the hallmarks of youth with steadfast determination.

But be careful how you cling. Hands and necks are a dead giveaway that you might have vivid memories of the New Kids on the Block, or worse, Studio 54, so you need to do whatever you can to take care of that whole situation. Hand transplant, neck power blasting, the surgical attachment of permanent, elbow-length gloves – don’t be afraid to get drastic. Just go to your local med spa or plastic surgeon, and say, “Help, the passage of time is evident on my body!”

It is also important to e mindful of changing beauty trends, so you don’t inadvertently age yourself by trying to look young in the old way. For example, right now, filler-plumped, sexy balloon faces are out; skeletal, ageless vampire faces are in. So while just a few years ago, you may have paid some doctor to inject a bunch of goop into your cheeks until you looked like a beautiful, hairless chipmunk, you now need to have that goop sucked out of your cheeks ASAP, so you can look like, well, I guess, whatever the reverse of a chipmunk is. A gazelle? An anteater?

Anyway, it is important to note that even if you follow this advice and update your body as often as you update your phone’s operating system, the thing about ageing as a woman -just like all things related to being a woman – is that there are many, many ways to do it wrong. In fact, you have probably aged incorrectly already. Did you not get preventative Botox in elementary school? Did you get so much Botox you were once mistaken for dead or so much Botox in your lips that someone might have mistaken them for suction cups? Are you not uncanny enough, to the point of normally walking around, for everyone to see, looking like a human woman who has maybe birthed children, frowned at some point, or been in the sun at least once? Did you furrow your brow while reading any of these questions? Uh-oh, another burgeoning flaw to fix.

If this all seems exhausting and impossible, rest assured: it is. You are not imagining it. But take solace in the fact that, one day, things will be easier. Eventually, society will progress and finally ditch unrealistic expectations for women’s looks, or, alternatively, some tech-bro startup will figure out the science required to turn women into walking, occasionally talking, 3-D photo filters. I hope being a filter isn’t too expensive. But then again, I know I won’t spend money on neck and anti-wrinkle face transplants.

What about you? How old are you? Do you feel that age? Funnily enough, I’m actually looking forward to turning 42.

One of the questions I am asked most is, how do I read as much as I do? Sometimes it’s mere curiosity, sometimes the query is tinged with frustration. You have a child, a house, and a huge garden, ffs.

I get it. It is irritating to see someone do so much of something that you feel you have no time for. I feel similarly riveted and envious when I see people on Insta having the time to do their hair so nicely every day or the time to go to pilates so often. So I am going to try and answer this question as fully and honestly as I can while musing on this idea of time and why reading is somehow seen as a more productive use of it than other hobbies.

Historically, I have shied away from answering this question, because to answer it would be to acknowledge that yes, I do read a lot. And that to do so might imply that I think I am smart, or diligent, or – perish the thought – well read. I actually don’t think I am particularly well-read, btw. I read a lot, but have enormous gaps in my literary education. But pretending I don’t read a lot is like pretending I go spinning every day. It is an intractable truth.

I have read voraciously – at times, obsessively – since I was tiny. I took a book into every classroom, and I read in queues and during meals and on the toilet and on the bus/train home from a night out. As a child, my mother would take me to the library and we would get out the maximum 14 books. I could easily read for 8 hours a day, aged 9. I fucking loved it. I still fucking love it. I am easily over-stimulated, I have a racing brain, and reading takes me out of myself. It is my self-care, my meditation, my way to find an equilibrium in order to face the world. The novelist Emma Straub puts it perfectly:

My love for books arrived pre-memory. There is no before. Books were always my stalwart companions, my escape hatches, my private joys.

Reading a lot I can do. Reading is perhaps the only thing I know I can do. It is no more a skill – something I burnish and work at or feel proud of – than it is part of me. As the writer reader Zadie Smith observed in 2011 of her bibliomania:

For me, being a reader, in summer or at any other time, isn’t a “lifestyle choice.” Rather, I made the choice—if that’s what it was—so long ago, it has taken on an inescapable character in my mind. I think that if I were a very good swimmer, I would be proud to be so, but being proud of being a reader, in my case, is like being proud you have feet.

So yes, bestow up me no praise for simply doing a lot of something I like doing and I wish it would be even a part of my work. I get most of my writings for this blog or my books done after work. My work is a great playground to collect stories by simply watching people and listening to stories. I will take written or mental notes and work on the fineprint at home. As for where I find the time to read – in lieu of giving you an hourly breakdown of my week I will offer you these transparencies (not!!! tips).

• I do not have a regular exercise routine. And when I exercise, I usually listen to books on my phone. I love audiobooks while jogging.
• Cold outside: I read. Warm outside: I read. Snowstorm outside: Cozied up inside with hot chocolate and I read. You get the picture.
• I do not keep many (social media) apps on my phone, not because I am holier than thou, but because it makes me a jittery mess and I hate the time it eats. That saves me, say, 30 mins a day? I know someone who spends HOURS on Twitter. (That’s a very conservative estimate, I’d hazard.)
• I do not really cook, except for maybe once or twice a week. I heat. Cheese sandwiches in the sandwich maker, quiche, pasta, soup. I do not labour over my food for more than 20 mins and in the division of our household labour, my son helps me cook. (while I read to him, ha!)
• I read anytime I travel anywhere. Train, car, bus, plane – I make a point of getting out a book.
• I watch Netflix only a few nights a week (this is an insomnia thing as much as a reading thing) and I rarely go out. At least 3 nights a week I either read or write when my kid is in bed. Usually for 2/3 hours a night – which, as I am a fast reader, can be the bulk of a 300-page book. 
• There was a very stressful time in my life a couple of years ago and insomnia has caused me tremendous amounts of stress and exhaustion and resulted in a veritable shit ton of reading. In a bad bout, I may have slept for only one or two hours a night, which can easily make for a book a night. Not very healthy, I know but these times are over.

This is how I rack up the hours. It is not the right way to live a life, it’s just the way I live mine. So why does reading come with the moral signifiers that other hobbies do not – the signifiers that make so many people feel bad when they are not doing it? It is partly due to articles like this, with their somewhat flattening headlines on how reading makes you a better person. 

To be clear, I do think reading brings enormous benefits. It is a wonderful way to learn about the world and develop compassion, as well as language. I hope my child loves reading (I think he does) – but not because I think it will make him a worthier person than if he doesn’t.

When I hear people with young kids tell me they haven’t read a book for two years and they desperately want to, but how can they?? I hear someone who doesn’t need to read to get to sleep (lucky fuckers). I hear someone, perhaps, who likes scrolling through their phone, or watching Netflix every evening, or listening to a podcast series long into the night, or cooking something slow and delicious with a glass of wine in their hand while jazz plays softly in the background. (I want to be that person) I hear someone, in other words, who has found other ways to feed themselves.

I think, when it comes to our disposable hours, we make time for the things we want to do. I read because it is what I want to do, frequently to the exclusion of other things. I may think that I want to get into a solid pilates routine, or cook a meal out of a cookbook, or go to more gallery openings and museums, but in reality, I only want to want to. I will find ways, as I always do, to not do the other stuff, so that I can find time to read. So if you want to want read, don’t force it. As long as you are finding ways to nourish yourself, cut yourself some slack. Screw the books! Do what makes you happy.

We all have stuff we want to want to do. Sometimes we just have to go for it. This little something that makes up happy. And maybe when you finally make headway through the book cleaved to the surface of your nightstand, I’ll finally commit to a thrice-weekly pilates routine, and my reading will, with its big girl panties on, take a backseat for a while.

New editions of [Roald Dahl’s] children’s classics, including ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ have been altered to eliminate words deemed inappropriate. A backlash ensued.” — New York Times

– – –

Dear Censoring people,

These days we are deeply concerned in changing things. Names, sauces, food names, street names, song lycics (Udo Jürgens!!), and whatnot. According to some, changing trivial things while the world is slowly coming to an end with so much other bullshit going on is more important. Bullshit like this shifts the focus from wars, climate issues, our kids, our youth who are staring into their phones all day and don’t know what a palindrome is, healthy food and many other stuff people should talk about instead.

So, we are changing words and meanings in books now. So nobody gets offended. Everything is gender-neutral, non-binary, you name it. Are we losing it? When I read the article in The New York Times on censoring and altering the children’s classic “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” among other Roald Dahl books, I got really angry. Now these idiots want to censor books as well? As an author, I say enough is enough. I am easy going but when it comes to censoring books I might turn into the Incredible Hulk. I mean, hey you people who change my beloved books. You’re censors. You’re not editors, and you’re not writers. Your censors. You are exactly what Orwell warned us about. My other question is: Where does this all go? Are we censoring all books now? Entire encyclopaedias?

I am annoyed. Enough is enough!

Without the author’s consent (e.g. Roald Dahl, Udo Jürgens and his songs), you are changing and omitting words that the author wrote. That makes you a censor.

What you’re doing is insane. See? I said it.

The most telling example of your condescension is when you removed the word “cashier” from one of Dahl’s books. Apparently, you think the word “cashier” is offensive. Well, hundreds of thousands of actual people are cashiers, and they don’t agree. They don’t think their mere existence is offensive.

You have no right to diminish their occupation or any other.

You have no right to take words from Dahl or any author.

If you were to get away with what you did – and rest assured, you will not get away with it – then every book in human history could be subject to the same censorship. Every book ever published has something in it that can be perceived as offensive. By some lightweights who then cry themselves to sleep at night over the word “fat”, or over “only men have been mentioned we have to add the female, or all 69 different genders that seem to exist now as well”. By the precedent you set, even the most carefully calibrated book written today, censored by censors like you, will be censored by someone else tomorrow.

The problem with censorship is that it has no end. Think of it: you censored Dahl’s books in the United States. What if the Germans wanted to censor them to suit their needs? And then the Chinese to suit theirs?

Get it? Once one group of censors gets to do their filthy work, then everyone will have their go.

If literature is to survive, we have two choices. Either:

a) No censorship, period, full stop, because it’s horrifying, or

b) Endless, unlimited censorship—a world where every craven group like yours has free reign to mangle every book ever written

No one wants your world. A book is a piece of art. Are you changing paintings next? Maybe someone is offended. Oh, no need for that because paintings are being destroyed by these idiots who glue themselves to them in museums. Do you censor all history books next and add all pronouns available? Don’t forget to include the LGBTQIA2S+ community. The what? LGTBQIA2S+ is an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Two-Spirit, and the countless affirmative ways in which people choose to self-identify. Also, basketballs and raccoons.

Roald Dahl will turn around in his grave. So will George Orwell.

All enlightened readers hate you.

The history of world literature is against you.

You are anti-art.

You are anti-freedom.

Art must be free. Art must be unsafe. Art must be controversial. Art must have dangerous words and ideas in it. Otherwise, it’s not art.

You are afraid of books. Afraid of ideas. You condescend to everyone by thinking you should be the judge of what is said and read.

Here’s how art is supposed to work: Someone writes a book. They write it with passion, with abandon, with honesty and lyricism and even a bit of recklessness. It is of their time, using the words of their time. Allan Ginsberg’s famous poem Howl rings a bell? No? I figured.

Readers respond to this recklessness, this abandon, this rawness, this timeliness. The only books that ever mattered to anyone are raw, are unbridled, are risky, and timely. Then, if a parent or teacher reads the book to a kid, and there’s a part that’s risky or controversial, discussions can be held. If the book is old, then the words and sentiments of that time can be taken into account.

It’s not hard.

That is how we learn.

All art has context.

All art is born of its time. It reflects its time.

People who come to the art later can handle the context, the different words, the different attitudes. People can handle it because we are complex creatures capable of complex thoughts.

Censors think everyone is stupid.

Censors think it is their job to dumb down every piece of art till it says nothing to anyone.

George Orwell was right all along. Go read his book as long as it is not censored and find out that he predicted all this bullshit!

Fuck you, censors!

Me, an avid reader, author, writer, and all the people in the world who love books art.