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

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

It’s called suicidal illness. So if you’re special, gifted in some way, exceptionally smart, brilliant at falling in love, not falling in love, not the marrying type, divorced or flying solo or having affairs or being promiscuous, then maybe this advice is for you. . You can take it or leave it. Be good and eat all the vegetables on your plate because in the end women are designed for revolution more than men. You will be rewarded with a fresh glass of pineapple juice or orange squash. Take it. Soon you will know as if they are putting lasagna meat on your bones that for a long time you have felt as if you were having an infidelity, like vitamins, the aftertaste in the mouth of the clinic and still you do not get fat. You will order yogurt and ice cream. You’ll tell the nurse oh today she fancy a salad, tomato sandwich, wilted lettuce and nothing else and she’ll just stare at you with her death ray look of hers until you want to punch her in the face. You’ll pick your skin even though you’re skinny, on ‘death row’ but what they don’t get or 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 with a daughter and a son that you are a superstar why do they need to tell you of all the people in the world who love you? and instead of your mom holding your hand or stroking your face like you’re a kid again you’re thinking I need a Band-Aid and your mom will tell you to stop sulking. ‘Karen, you would look so pretty if you only ate. I have some recipes I made a list. I brought a tapestry with me. And I’ll think to myself Do you love me, do you see me? I need to get 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 anyone 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 do 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 coldly intervenes and says that this family doesn’t talk about her feelings.

The whole world loves you. You have fans in Japan and maybe even in Jericho. Maybe they move to the beat of your hip in Tel Aviv. You want to say these things to him, but then again, you think he might prescribe something for you. Sleeping pills. No, not such a good idea. She feels tired. Do you think about death, about dying? The girl (the psychiatrist) asked. Karen wanted to ask if chocolate is a food group, a protein, where does it fit in the food chain hierarchy? Why do people go around saying, ‘Death by 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 barrettes 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 that I have this complex. Life is complicated enough as it is, I know, so why am I not fascinated and fascinated at the same time with sadness and other people’s lives, their cruelty, their survival, my guilt trip, my survival kit ? I don’t understand that doctor, and the doctor she wanted to impress would tell her that all anorexics suffer from some sort of perfectionist streak and that all she had to do was love the people who loved her and they would love her back. . ‘

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 does. In fact, I know she doesn’t. Anorexia taught me a lot about death. You won’t survive if you don’t eat. Doesn’t a boiled potato with its brains pounded like confetti taste like exotic fruit after months without eating it? And turkey tastes like chicken anyway at thanksgiving. You are special Karen. We have always known. I mean, she’s always had this extraordinary voice and she and her brother have always been very close. This is her father. He’s smiling warmly at her, but she’s just an image, a figment of her imagination, and instead of feeling closer to him, she feels like she’s killing her. She can feel that spark, but her claws are out of it, she feels that 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 strangers. We love each other. We don’t belittle each other, we don’t laugh at our shortcomings, at our expense. We are who we are.

And here I will say like 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 lively. Was that more or less what her mom seemed to be saying, or what do you want me to get for the next time we’re in town? I think her mom wanted her to tell her bring me a deep dish pizza, hotdogs, Chinese noodles, cheese, something to embroider while she watched reruns in the little TV room, but all Karen wanted her mom to say was, ‘ Love you’. As if they were making vows to spend the rest of their lives together with only eyes for each other. For Karen, eating became almost momentous. She struggled with the food on her plate with her fork until she thought maybe she needed medication instead of the tender loving care of a mother who folded the kimono she had bought for her in Tokyo mostly Karen, who thought it would be a good idea. . loving gesture to a loving mother that she put it in a cupboard in the box she had come in and she forgot about it.

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

“I’m fine, Ricardo. I’m ready to work. I want another number one record as badly as you would believe it. The music scene changes all the time. We have to keep up with the trends, with what’s current. We’re still the champions.” of the world. Let’s open a bottle of champagne and celebrate my coming home. ‘She told her brother. Everyone said she was fine. Karen Carpenter, sweet girl, superstar who pretended everything was fine. Everybody put up a brave front .’Yes, yes, everything will be fine.’ His father said as they sat down to eat like pilgrims around the thanksgiving table, ‘The Carpenters all together again.One 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 needs to 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 A FOOD A FOOD GROUP, NOR IS EATING PLAIN YOGURT. You’re going to die if you don’t eat this turkey breast. Have some sauce too. You think that being thin and becoming skinny-thin are the same thing, but it’s not. You were beautiful then, but now you have become a monster, but her brother knew that if he had told her this, it would have driven their mother crazy and her sister would have cried, cried for a man who would have held the door open. . for her after driving her home from a night of bowling. But she never did. When you consume yourself, it’s intimidating at first for the atoms and particles you’re made of. You think you can go back to the way you were. And you often think how am I going to fix this now? Skinny is the new fantastic look. I felt as if for the first time in my life I was being proudly admired, intensely adored, if he wobbled or stuttered I wobbled and stuttered grandly. He didn’t need prayer. He needed to be adored. There was the old Karen, the singer with a stunning voice, the drummer, part of an award-winning trio, the first carpenter signed to a record label, the romantic singing poet, and the new Karen who was skinny. skinny version of herself.

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

But of all of them, William Shakespeare surpasses them. He is my cocaine, my jam, my cheese on toast, french toast, tuna sandwich and poppadum. I think he was the most vigilant when it came to dying young for love, for human violence. On the surface he was conservative (when it came to porn, adultery, family, children). He did not see his children grow up and play with kittens, caress the puppies’ ears. I think he was living alone when he wrote. He was a fantastic everything and a true nobody at the same time. Pulling out all those sonnets, play after play, poetry. He never ceased to amaze. But I wonder about the scar tissue on him. His wounds captivate me. I find them sexy as words like mitochondria. Hemlock. Poison. Gourmet cook. Lobster. Gift. Christmas gifts under the tree. Explorer. Talented-with-tools. Brilliant with instruments. The-mark-of-a-man. An overwhelmingly caring woman. Opinion. Probability. rope. Catholic. Winterson was also a carpenter and made drawers (with secret compartments) out of words. All of them have made charming woodpeckers. Children also have abilities, scenarios, and spotlights.

Bulbs and holy ground, plant them in fertile soil where the bulb will grow and the filament will so gratefully flash and a halo will appear.