Magazines as objects of lust and windows to the soul

In some sort of perverse reverse synchronicity, my two favorite magazines arrived in my mailbox the week I was supposed to be abstaining from reading - an endevour which, by the way, did not go particularly well because, to be honest, I did not put a lot of energy into resisting my need to read. Since Small Boy was born, my reading has been pared down to the bones anyway: the newspaper and blogs in the morning and about half an hour in bed before falling asleep. During the long hours in between there simply isn't time. On weekends I indulge more. But when my magazines arrive, all I can think about all day is when I'm finallly going to be able to read them, like anxiously waiting to meet a secret lover.

I miss magazines. I miss the look of them, the way they line up like debutants competing to be chosen. I miss the way they feel, the color photography, the whispering voices between turned pages. I miss the continuity of flipping through a magazine the way a good layout editor intended it to be seen. First this, then that. I miss the variety of voices that change from page to page. Oh yes, of all the things that I miss living in Switzerland perhaps I miss magazines the most. Of course I miss the biggies, the grande dames, but what I really miss is going into Border's or Barnes and Noble and browsing through rack after rack of varied and obsure magazines. I miss picking up a random copy of this, an impulse copy of that. I miss stumbling across some little gem. I love being able to flip through a magazine and decide if I'll buy it. I never subscribed to it, but I picked up this once or twice a year, when the longing got too great, and this. Just looking at that cover breaks my heart with homesick desire. I miss this, and this, and this. I could break this family's budget in the magazine section of a big US chain book store.

I pay shocking surcharges for international delivery of two magazines I've decided I can't live without. The Sun, and The New York Review of Books. (And yes, yes I am an East Coast living, white wine swilling, latte drinking, sushi eating liberal elite, thanks for asking.) They are completely contradictory - the NYRB appeals to the over-educated ABD in me still trying to impress somebody with how erudite I am; the Sun appeals to the writer in me, the me that is trying to shed my grad-school skin and speak my own truth. One day, I imgaine, I will let one of these subscriptions lapse, and in that action I will know which side of me has won the war for my future.

Can I tell you a secret?

I'm rooting for The Sun.