Mary Novaria

Some days my mind launches its own brainstorming session, making free associations which usually lead to crazy connections and long-buried memories.  Yesterday I ruminated on brass knuckles.   I had to slap myself and scream "Snap out of it!" like Cher and Nic Cage in Moonstruck , when brass knuckles led to brass monkey’s balls, which then led to witch’s tits.  C’mon, it’s cold here... and it’s Halloween.  Weird, right? The brass knuckles thought bubble stemmed from a desire to describe a particular agony. If I used idioms like “a ton of bricks” or “hit by a bus,” you’d know what I meant, but I like to avoid cliches when possible.  Brass knuckles are a tool made of heavy metal with rounded rings. As described by firms that sell them on the web, brass knuckles “add power to your punch,” “make your fist rock solid,” and are “easy to conceal.” These fist-loading weapons are also known by euphemisms like “English punches” (jolly good!), “paperweights” (nic...

Published 6/1/2020 Working puzzles used to be something reserved for family beach vacations. On multigenerational trips to South Carolina or Oregon, there has always been a table in a corner with a puzzle in progress. Like two of my sisters in law, I can barely tear myself away while others, like my husband, can’t be bothered.  I’m on my third quarantine picture puzzle, which should be a cinch since it’s only 500 pieces. The nostalgia of a vacation pastime has given way to a daily obsession with both the jigsaw and word variety during coronavirus quarantine. The popular Wordscapes has joined the Scrabble app and Words with Friends on my iPhone, and I also work a daily crossword puzzle. Continue reading here.

As if gray, post-holiday, winter days aren’t dreary enough, the sad news came of author Elizabeth Wurtzel’s death from breast cancer . She was only 52. Her seminal work, Prozac Nation , had a profound impact on me when I first read it as the mother of two young children back in the mid 1990s. I can still see myself turning the pages, propped up on my bed in the new Kansas house. My eldest was probably in First Grade and my youngest napping. It was before we’d decorated the bedroom or renovated the master bath. The walls were still that grayish  builder’s white and the comforter on the bed, from early in our marriage, was worn and faded, which was how I felt sometimes, too. My memories of reading Prozac Nation are linked to place and time like no other book I can recall. Sure, I might remember reading this book on an airplane, or that one at the beach, but I am so rooted to that snapshot of my thirtysomething self with my nose in Wurtzel’s book. Not...

“My friends all tell me I should write a book,” she said, “because I’ve had so many experiences. But I’m really not interested in doing that.” “What I've found,” I told the person I’d just met, “is you kind of have to feel compelled to write. If you’re a writer, you can’t not write.”  Please pardon the double negative. “I don’t understand why people put their personal lives out there. Why do you feel like you want to do that?” “Because I want people to know they’re not alone,” I said. “So if they’re going through something, they’ll know they’re not the only one. “Hmmm. Really? I don’t read things like that.” Sigh. Thankfully, not everyone feels that way, as judged by the likes of popular self-disclosers like David Sedaris, Joan Didion, Augusten Burroughs, Mary Karr, Anne Lamott, Cheryl Strayed, Dani Shapiro and, very recently, Tara Westover, whose memoir Educated was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, to name a few. These au...

My latest on Huffington Post! My Friend Thinks I Don't Work Because I'm a Writer | Mary Novaria And, a really cool thing happened... Author Anne Rice, shared my piece on her Facebook page. Wish I could have "liked" it more than once. And then this happened. Ciao!