Cold and numb fingers. They are my shining stars of all time. He not only saw them as singers, superstars, but as children protected by their loving, financially secure and sane parents. The brother and sister who played to the melody, Karen’s cry for help who sang love songs to death and made a stimulating and beautiful noise inside my head. I can’t smile just by watching myself under pressure. Even Cinderella contemplated suicide once.

I thought what they were doing was art. Genius. I just wanted Karen to eat. Now that everyone knows what anorexia nervosa is and how tragic this eating disorder is, self-loathing is tragic, self-pity is tragic, and how it wears out the body, especially the reproductive system. And in the last days of her life I wonder if she would dare to make breakfast and eat it, or was it just downing a handful of laxatives and diuretics that helped her get through the day, a coriander leaf. Where the hell was his four leaf clover? Anorexics, I no longer adore them like I do writers now. I adore poets more. I miss her. I miss Karen Carpenter and the dresses she used to wear when she used to act. I wonder what his voice would sound like now, his albums, what he would look like if he performed or toured Japan. If only I had that truck and those kids. Why the heck would no one want to wear a kimono around the house? Anorexia changes. Something else has taken your place, has triumphed.

It’s called a suicidal illness. So if you’re special, gifted in some way, exceptionally smart, brilliant at falling in love, not falling in love, not marrying, divorced, or flying solo or having affairs or being promiscuous, then maybe this tip is for you. . You can take it or leave it. Behave and eat all your veggies on the plate because in the end women are designed for revolution more than men. You will be rewarded with a cold glass of pineapple juice or orange squash. Swallow it Soon it will taste like you are having lasagna meat on your bones that for a long time you have felt like you are having an infidelity, like vitamins, the aftertaste in your mouth from the clinic and still you are not going to get fat. You will order yogurt and ice cream. You will tell the nurse that today you fancy a salad, a tomato sandwich, wilted lettuce and nothing else and she will look at you with her death ray look until you want to punch her in the face. You will pinch your skin even though you are very thin, on “death row”, but what they do not understand or do not understand is that Mom never said she loved you.

You just weren’t loved enough, good enough and your parents will tell this handsome psychiatrist who is married and has a daughter and son that you are a superstar, why do they have to tell you of all the people in the world that they love you? and instead of your mother holding your hand or caressing your face as if you were a child again you are thinking that I need a Band-Aid and your mother will tell you to stop sulking. Karen, you would look so pretty if you just ate. I have some recipes. I made a list. I brought a tapestry with me. And I’ll think to myself if you love me, do you see me? I need to go back to the studio. I need to make another hit record. Maybe you were disobedient and had to be punished for something you did as a child that you can’t even remember. He did not obey someone or follow the rules. You can’t even remember the last time you had a pizza crust. And the cute psychiatrist will ask you why you do this to yourself. Are you sick (is this slang for crazy)? He assures you that he is here to help you, but you can’t help but look into his dreamy eyes and believe him. Maybe therapy. But your mother intervenes coldly and says that this family does not talk about their feelings.

The whole world loves you. You have fans in Japan and maybe even Jericho. Maybe they move to the beat of your hip in Tel Aviv. You want to say these things to him, but again, you think he might prescribe something for you. Sleeping pills. No, it’s not such a good idea. She feels tired. Do you think about death, about dying? Asked the cutie (the psychiatrist). Is chocolate a food group, a protein? Where does it fit in the hierarchy of the food chain? Is what Karen wanted to ask. Why do people go around saying, ‘Death for chocolate’ all the time? or things like ‘Can we be friends?’ ‘Why do I feel so private if I’m supposed to be the American girl who wears jeans? The brunette with pins in her hair. Am I too rich, too disconnected from reality like all the greats, the great artists? What I really feel is that I am a failure, that I am doomed. It seems I have this complex. Life is complicated enough as I know it, so why am I not fascinated and fascinated at the same time with the sadness and the lives of other people, their cruelty, their survival, my guilt, my survival kit? I don’t understand that doctor, and the doctor I wanted to impress told him that all anorexics have a kind of perfectionist streak and that all she had to do was love the people who loved her and that they would love her too. ‘

You see doctor. I want my mother to recognize me for who I am and not for the person, the pose, the pout, the singer who sings love songs, but I don’t think she will. In fact, I know it doesn’t. Anorexia taught me a lot about death. You will not survive if you do not eat. Doesn’t a boiled potato taste like confetti to an exotic fruit after not having eaten it in months? And turkey tastes like chicken on Thanksgiving anyway. You are special Karen. We always knew. I mean she has always had this extraordinary voice and she and her brother have always been so close. ‘ This is his father. He smiles warmly at her, but it’s just an image, a figment of his imagination and instead of her sitting closer to him, he feels like he’s killing her. She may feel that spark, but her claws are out, she feels like she can no longer function or be productive. She is sick, sick. She has an affliction of some kind that we are able to deal with ourselves and not involve outsiders. We love each other. We don’t belittle ourselves, we don’t laugh at our shortcomings, on our own. We are who we are.

And here I will say as Hemingway, Salinger, David Foster Wallace, Rilke, Jeanette Winterson and Shakespeare. It’s impossible to be perfect all the time, is something Mother Carpenter would probably say. We are not like other families. We are not dysfunctional. What does that word mean? I remember her as more animated. Was it more or less what her mother seemed to be saying or what do you want me to bring the next time we come to town? I think her mother wanted her to say: bring me a deep dough pizza, hot dogs, Chinese noodles, cheese, something to embroider while watching reruns in the little TV room, but all Karen wanted her mother to say was: ‘I love you’. As if they were vowing to spend the rest of their lives together with only eyes for each other. For Karen, eating became akin to shaking the earth. He struggled with the food on the plate with his fork until he thought that maybe he needed medication instead of the tender and loving care of a suffocator who folded the kimono that Karen had bought for him in Tokyo mainly, who thought it would be a good idea. Loving gesture towards a loving mother who put it in a closet in the box it had come in and forgot about it.

Eating became increasingly difficult for Karen and she was never as passionate about it as it had been when she was a ‘chubby teenager’ as a music magazine had put it years and years ago.

I’m fine, Richard. I’m ready to work. I want another number one record so badly you wouldn’t believe it. The music scene changes all the time. We have to keep up with trends, with what’s current. We are still the world champions. Let’s open a bottle of champagne and celebrate my return home. He told his brother. They all pretended it was okay. Karen Carpenter, sweet girl, superstar who was pretending everything was fine. Everyone put up a brave front. ‘Yes, yes, everything is going to be fine.’ Said his father as they sat down to eat like pilgrims around the Thanksgiving table. The carpenters, all together again. A big happy family. ‘

Well, Karen, I’m going to be a beast now. I’m going to be honest with you because I feel like someone who loves you and is close to you must be. You look like a mess. Why don’t you take care of yourself, take care of yourself first? This is not a good look for the Carpenters, for the team. How can you feel so detached? I want you back.

The real you. The way you dress now doesn’t impress me. SALAD IS NOT FOOD, A GROUP OF FOODS OR EAT YOGURT ALONE. You’re going to die if you don’t eat this turkey breast. Have some sauce too. You think that being slim and losing weight is the same, but it is not. You were beautiful then, but now you’ve become a monster, but his brother knew that if he had told him this, he would have driven his mother crazy and his sister would have cried, cried for a man who would have kept the door open. for her after bringing her home after a night of bowling. But it never did. When you consume yourself it is intimidating at first for the atoms and the particles of which you are composed. You think you can go back to being the way you were. And do you often think how am I going to fix this now? Skinny is the spectacular new look. I felt as if for the first time in my life I was fiercely admired, intensely adored, if I staggered or stuttered I staggered and stuttered grandly. He didn’t need prayer. He needed to be adored. There was old Karen, the singer with a dazzling voice, the drummer, part of an award-winning trio, the first Carpenter to be signed to a record label, the romantic singing poet, and the new Karen who was skinny. slim version of herself.

So the big ones. For the first time. A Hemingway tapestry. Where-each-thread-seems-harmonic. I want to put my hands in his pockets and wonder what I’ll find there. In the inner lining of the fabric of your garments. Will I find there the disease of alcoholism or scrawled notes (fragments) of his phenomenal writing? Then there is Salinger. What abduction? Miserable ecstasy that tears me at the seams. The man, his mind, his imagination, his characters dialogue (he wanted more of his genius, of Holden). I want to surf in it, swim with the fish, and show them my shark teeth and how I can put it to good use. He had too much imagination in him. I think love was stalking or was much more in love than in love. David Foster Wallace masked forever in a hellish cloth experiment. I will miss it. Karen Green will miss him infinitely more. His-life-was-short-but-beautiful and he was good at drawing-oblivion-from-oblivion. Rilke hated Hemingway’s Paris party in every way.

But of all of them William Shakespeare defeats them. He’s my cocaine, my jam, my cheese toast, French toast, tuna sandwich, and poppadum. I think he was the most attentive when it came to dying young for love, for human violence. On the surface, he was conservative (when it came to pornography, adultery, family, children). He did not see his children grow up and play with kittens, pet the puppies’ ears. I think he lived alone when he wrote. He was a tremendous, everything and a true nobody at the same time. Putting all those sonnets, play after play, poetry. It never ceased to amaze us. But I wonder about his scar tissue. His wounds captivate me. I find them sexy as words like mitochondria. Hemlock. Poison. Gourmet chef. Lobster. Gift. Christmas presents under the tree. Explorer. Talented-with-tools. Brilliant with instruments. The-mark-of-a-man. An overwhelming and loving woman. Opinion. Probability. Rope. Catholic. Winterson was also a carpenter making drawers (with secret compartments) out of words. They have all been lovely carpenters. Children also have skills, settings, and spotlights.

Bulbs and holy ground, plant them in fertile soil where the bulb will grow and the filament with such gratitude will flash the light and a halo will appear.