Oh, rest in peace, Paul Newman. If he has even passed on in his legacy a smidgen of the talent, class, philanthropy and individuality that he embodied in his life, then he left the world much improved for his having been here.

I am in the process of putting together, free-form, a chocolate applesauce cake with prune-wine sauce. The cake part is done. It rests on a wire rack atop the cursed glass-top stove (which I just cleaned — nothing more pleasurable than cleaning a kitchen down to its rarely-seen crevices and then messing it all up again baking a cake), rather flattened a result of its gluten-free constitution, but still having the appearance of being wholesomely cocoa and dark-chocolate bearing.

What does it want for frosting, I wondered, eyeing its smooth exterior and then surveying my ingredients. Hmm, I haven’t got much, but I do have prunes (which, incidentally, come in packaging claiming, impossibly, that its contents are “better than fresh fruit!” How, I wonder? Doesn’t that seem rather arbitrary?). I searched for “chocolate prune sauce” on Google and came up with nothing (apparently it hasn’t been invented yet and I do not desire to be the pioneer in these regards), but did find this. I plan to soak the cake in the prune-wine sauce instead of serving it over mascarpone (which I imagine would be lovely, but being very familiar with the danger of such, am not in the habit of keeping mascarpone on hand).

This will either result in a heady, fruity, dark chocolately, mysterious masterpiece, or it will be gross. This is generally the way it goes, given my penchant for freeform baking. But, as JC would say, “you must have the courage of your conviction!”

Today, I have the day off and am an absolute bum. I have been single for nearly a year now (which, mind you, is a conscious decision on my part) (sort of) and, I fear, have completely embraced it, perhaps in a bad way. I am currently wearing flip-flops, cargo pants (and I hate, hate, hate cargo pants. I honestly don’t even know why I own cargo pants, but somehow I do, and am wearing them) a black and white striped boatneck top that I also wore yesterday, and the most beaten-up and sad-looking old-lady cashmere cardigan I have. Which is also my favorite. It’s like a robe that I can wear outside the house. Except, maybe I shouldn’t. Oh, I also have on purple glasses. Yes, purple. I mean, the lenses are clear but the frames are purple. I don’t know what possessed me. I apologize for going on about these things, but I’m almost proud in a way of the absolute degeneration of my general upkeep. I never thought it possible that I could elapse into spinsterhood in such a way, but it appears that it has actually occurred.

Some day I suppose I’ll wake up and feel like I’m ready to join the “Sex & the City” brigade, strap on the high heels and embrace the cocktail culture (though I never could drink anything ending in “-tini” that doesn’t start with “mart-”, I’m afraid) . But for now, this is it.

franny

I was just thinking about Franny this morning as I woke in the sunshiny house, the mornings quiet now without Grandma, save for the humming of the air conditioner. I was thinking about Franny as I made coffee and poured cereal and grappled with the Times crossword, frustrated because it’s Monday for chrissakes and all I could get was the “actress Farrow” type clues and so I gave that up and decided to write about Franny instead.

[By the way -- if you've never read Franny and Zooey, you may as well stop reading this. In fact, you may as well stop reading this, get yourself out to the nearest bookstore, buy the book, and read it post haste. Or, use the handy link I've provided!]

Franny is my personal heroine (one of them, at least) because she is a woman in search of enlightenment. It’s not a common theme. Women are supposed to either a)not be concerned with enlightenment or God or b)possess some sort of motherly female “earth mama” knowledge of such or c)just be naturally unquestioningly pious.

Religious quests are generally reserved for men.

Well, J.D. Salinger obviously observed differently. Franny’s no zealot, no Joan of Arc. She’s just a regular girl, a young woman grappling with the usual concerns — dating, school, family dynamics — while she seeks the meaning of God on the side.

I couldn’t say what made me think of that this morning.

I am so ready to move on with my life, but I have the feeling that my life here is not ready for me to move on with it, and so I have, for once, curbed my penchant for taking flight to more exotic locales and instead am in the process of formulating some sort of six-month plan (gasp! a plan?). I was supposed to start work in Austin on this very day, but was waylayed by Grandma’s stroke and death, and to be honest I don’t know if I’ll ever make it down there. I don’t know if I’m the same person anymore as the girl who wanted to move to Texas. And, while that may sound a bit capricious — oh, it is. I’m nothing if not capricious. But I reserve the right to be that way, barring ill effects on anyone else in my life. And that’s the glory of being single. Besides my family, there is no one else in my life whom my picking up and going somewhere other than Texas would affect, nor anyone whom my not moving to Texas would affect. It’s a marvelous thing to me to be able to make my own decisions.