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Archive for the 'Garrison' CategoryGetting the hang of itThanksgiving — one of those damned colonial mysteriesNovember 1st, 2010 BY CATE GARRISON No matter how long you live there, a foreign country remains mysterious. Even when the language purports to be the same as your mother tongue, some little turn of phrase or cultural reference, or just the accenting of an unexpected syllable, can send you rushing to the reference library in your effort to acculturate.
Posted by: The Editors Chaper Eighteen: JJ helps with the fire drillMay 1st, 2007 BY CATE GARRISON Despite the drama occasioned by our dog JJ’s consumption of our Mercedes’ innards, it wasn’t long before most of my nearest and dearest settled back into their old ways. That is to say, my husband began to spend most of his time away from home again, apparently at work. My sons continued their lives of school, friends, homework, and video games, and, increasingly, inhaled the contents of the fridge, which due to JJ’s unwillingness to remain alone were increasingly difficult to replace. Handy Jack, therefore, continued to provide his regular services of odd-job man, dog sitter and walker, and general family companion. True, after falling into his arms over the car-eating fiasco (an experience that had provoked the odd dormant emotion), I had wondered about sacking him. But he was literally our meal ticket. Though my husband’s salary provided the funds, Handy Jack’s presence enabled me to go out and buy groceries. All in all, he was too useful, too affable, too necessary to us all for me to make the break.
Posted by: The Editors Guilty pleasuresHow literature can wreck a prefectly good marriageApril 1st, 2007
I am racked with guilt about my husband. When I hear him come home from grocery shopping or walking the dog, I start like a child caught red-handed in mischief, jump up from the computer where I’ve been writing, and run, with a shit-eating grin on my face, to help him unpack the heavy, brown paper bags he’s hauled from the car, or to unclip the pooch from his leash. When I hear the sound of the vacuum cleaner starting up and realize, once again, that my more conscientious spouse is embarking on the much-neglected housework, I dash to pick up a feather duster, or a toilet brush, and pretend I was always intending to play my wifely part. My conscience is pricked not so much by the thought that as a woman these chores should fall to me (though despite decades of feminist striving I frequently still do) but by the deep-down, incontrovertible knowledge that, baby, I done him wrong.
Posted by: The Editors Partners in crimeMarch 1st, 2007 BY CATE GARRISON CHAPTER 17 OF THE JJ CHRONICLES Geographically orphaned by my rattish parents’ abrupt departure from the sinking ship of my marital home, a disaster occasioned by our dog JJ’s consumption of my car’s internal organs, I had no one to consult about my next move, and, namely, the relation of the above events to my increasingly absent American husband. Clearly a phone call had to be made to his office, where he seemed to live. Once my children, my dog, and I had returned home from depositing the Aged Ps at the airport, delaying tactics were in short supply, though I still hadn’t finished mentally writing the script of my story. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t intend to tell the truth (though whether the whole truth and nothing but was a matter of some internal debate). My hesitation was more to do with who to blame. The dog for actually eating the car? My mother for insisting on leaving him inside it while she slaked her hunger? Myself for acquiescing despite my better judgment? And then there was the matter of repair costs. “Could be a fair amount,” might sound more acceptable than “over three thousand dollars,” for example, though I was doubtful he’d consider any amount as “fair.” To protect youth and innocence from anything that might sound like equivocation, I sent my two live-in lads off to their bedrooms. I’m not sure why I pointed the dog in the direction of his bat cave. I suppose youth, rather than innocence, was still on his side.
Posted by: The Editors A quick buzz... and perhaps just a touch more occasionallyNovember 1st, 2006 BY CATE GARRISON My grandfather used to smoke one cigarette a year to round off his Christmas dinner. The whole event smacked of ritual, with a proper blend of anticipation, anxiety, and awe. From the moment the last bite of pudding had been put away, we waited tensely for my grandmother to fetch, with an air of long-suffering disapproval, a box of Lucifers from her kitchen. Who provided the lonely fag I cannot say, though in those days they could be purchased singly. My grandfather would strike the match with expert flair on the bottom of his shoe and light up. He smoked elegantly, without any of the coughing or puking one might associate with such an infrequent indulgence. At about the third puff, he would start to blow smoke rings of great concentricity and thick, blue intensity, through the middle of which we children would try to poke our fingers.
Posted by: The Editors I love LarryMarch 1st, 2006 BY CATE GARRISON One of the best things about moving back to the city from the High Desert is the happy rediscovery of old friends… and even more, the reconnection with old chums from television. Perhaps for the same political reasons as those which drove our rustic video store to deem Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 unsuitable viewing material and refuse to stock or order it, or our one and only fitness center to show only Fox News on the supra-treadmill monitors, our country cable company would not stoop to offering us, inter alia, the Comedy Channel (no South Park, no Daily Show) or BBC America (no Mile High, no Bad Girls, no Coupling, no Monty Python or Black Adder reruns). It’s a nice little irony therefore that, while in order to avoid such soul-destroying homespun activities as card games, knitting, and singing around the piano, our evenings over the mountain were of necessity devoted to the Goggle Box, however limited, we are now tempted to stay home more than ever, despite being surrounded by restaurants, bars, cinemas, and pleasure domes of every kind, stately or otherwise.
Posted by: The Editors It’s just ChristmasDecember 1st, 2004 BY CATE GARRISON I don’t know why I love Christmas. The excitement I feel on December 24 has nothing to do with anticipated presents. I cherish no childhood memories of tearing into gorgeously wrapped parcels to discover every item on my Santa Claus list. As a rule, the offerings the Obese Old Deer-whipper left me when I was a kid filled me with nothing but disappointment. There was the year, for example, that my mother told me He would bring a box of multi-colored nail polishes, complete with files and little scissors, if only I’d stop biting my finger nails. I did. He didn’t.
Posted by: The Editors Magnificent perfectionThe best movie of all timeSeptember 1st, 2003 BY CATE GARRISON
Me, I’m the proverbial exception, especially when it comes to my favorite film. I know why I like it, of course, but a list of splendid qualities hardly makes for interesting reading. What, after all, can be said about perfection? The best example of the best genre, the best casting, the best dialogue, the best music, a classic story line, a seminal role in cinematic history, along with all the usual best director, producer, leading and supporting actor categories — these are but a few of the attributes of my personal Oscar winner.
Posted by: The Editors Wondrous landFinding Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell everywhereJune 1st, 2003 BY CATE GARRISON I was born a million miles away in a little village on the side of a hill… (“When you say ‘hill,’” the Queen interrupted, “I could show you hills, in comparison with which you’d call that a valley.”)
Posted by: The Editors Author profileDecember 1st, 2002 Cate Garrison began her working life as a translator and interpreter in Brussels, Belgium, followed by fifteen years as a college professor of French, education, and English as a Foreign Language in the north of England, where she also pursued her avocation as an actor. After immigrating to the U.S. in 1987, she worked for several years as theater critic for Willamette Week in Portland, Ore.; she still enjoys rereading the accumulated hate mail. Thanks to her hard-working husband, who recently, briefly retired, she has been able to indulge herself mostly in “writing for pleasure;” a recent financial disaster (read all about it at lifeafterrhodes.blogspot.com) has meant that, not only has her spouse returned to work, but Cate herself has levered herself up from her derrière and begun to try to trade words for money. She has recently completed not one but two novels that were languishing in the attic and is currently biting her nails in hopes that some agent out there will love them. She appears in two columns in Black Lamb: Small Corner and The JJ Chronicles.
Posted by: The Editors
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