We finished watching Torchwood: Children of Earth last night, and I cried my eyes out. I'm mourning the death of fictional characters, folks. A bit of text, some light and dark on a screen, and blammo, I'm a blubbering mess.
In fact, I couldn't sleep last night because I was so upset.
About the death of people who don't exist.
I haven't cried like that since Beth died in Little Women.
Sheesh.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Scorched Earth
I’ve just started watching Torchwood: Children of Earth.
And I’m having bad dreams.
I thought of Torchwood as a great lark of a show – a little edgy but leavened with frolic and ridiculous aliens and silly props and sets. It was getting darker by the end of season 2, but it was a sort of noble, heroic finale. COE is a different beast.
With regard to narrative, special effects, cinematography and acting, COE is light years beyond the first two seasons. It’s also far more grim and disturbing. Although I admire the advance in overall quality, I miss the playfulness and snarkiness of the previous episodes. They always seemed to say, even when touching on serious topics, “We’re having a jolly good romp here. Don’t worry, it’s just a game.” The atmosphere of COE is sinister and oppressive, and there’s no “we always pull through” optimism or swashbuckling “we’re here to save the day” action. I think that’s because this alien 456 isn’t nearly as scary as the government. The government in COE is ugly, self-serving, and vicious, happy to cover up past problems with assassinations, run by leaders who evade responsibility and blame by hiding behind civil servant scapegoats. All too real, in other words. I was more confident in Captain Jack Harkness when he was fighting creatures from outer space.
And the hub, that little sanctuary, the crazy repository of gadgets and artifacts, the center of Torchwood action, has been blown to smithereens, along with, I assume, all the aliens, former employees, and Jack’s homicidal brother who were cryogenically frozen in the morgue. I suppose the pterodactyl died, too. That’s like ripping the heart out of the show. That’s like a big flashing sign announcing “Fun’s over, folks!”
Now at the end of Day 3 we find out that back in the 60s Jack sent off a group of children as a gift to alien 456 – to heaven knows what fate, but it can’t be good, given the thrashing, acid-vomiting, lives-in-a-poisonous-fog nature of 456. No doubt there was some sort of hard choice involved but, well, that just sucks. Of course we sacrifice children every day to war, poverty, illness, exploitation and abuse, which I suppose is part of the message, that we don’t face up to that savage truth about ourselves. The last thing I expected Torchwood to deliver was a nasty, unanswerable moral conundrum of epic scale.
I will see Days 4 and 5 in the next few days. I know Ianto dies and am not looking forward to it, and I know generally what happens in the rest of the series. Ianto’s death sent fans into a tizzy, I gather, and some are worried the show is about to be “de-gayed” for BBC 1. No idea about that (though I’m cynical enough to think that is exactly what they intend to do), but I’m not particularly convinced by creator Russell Davies’ argument that Ianto’s death was inevitable, that it would have somehow been unrealistic for them all to survive. I mean, hello, fantasy sci fi here. Did you really need to sell the show’s soul to the existentialist devil? A season 4 is planned, but I’m having trouble imagining it. You can’t go back to playing scary tigers after this.
On the upside, we got to see John Barrowman naked.
And I’m having bad dreams.
I thought of Torchwood as a great lark of a show – a little edgy but leavened with frolic and ridiculous aliens and silly props and sets. It was getting darker by the end of season 2, but it was a sort of noble, heroic finale. COE is a different beast.
With regard to narrative, special effects, cinematography and acting, COE is light years beyond the first two seasons. It’s also far more grim and disturbing. Although I admire the advance in overall quality, I miss the playfulness and snarkiness of the previous episodes. They always seemed to say, even when touching on serious topics, “We’re having a jolly good romp here. Don’t worry, it’s just a game.” The atmosphere of COE is sinister and oppressive, and there’s no “we always pull through” optimism or swashbuckling “we’re here to save the day” action. I think that’s because this alien 456 isn’t nearly as scary as the government. The government in COE is ugly, self-serving, and vicious, happy to cover up past problems with assassinations, run by leaders who evade responsibility and blame by hiding behind civil servant scapegoats. All too real, in other words. I was more confident in Captain Jack Harkness when he was fighting creatures from outer space.
And the hub, that little sanctuary, the crazy repository of gadgets and artifacts, the center of Torchwood action, has been blown to smithereens, along with, I assume, all the aliens, former employees, and Jack’s homicidal brother who were cryogenically frozen in the morgue. I suppose the pterodactyl died, too. That’s like ripping the heart out of the show. That’s like a big flashing sign announcing “Fun’s over, folks!”
Now at the end of Day 3 we find out that back in the 60s Jack sent off a group of children as a gift to alien 456 – to heaven knows what fate, but it can’t be good, given the thrashing, acid-vomiting, lives-in-a-poisonous-fog nature of 456. No doubt there was some sort of hard choice involved but, well, that just sucks. Of course we sacrifice children every day to war, poverty, illness, exploitation and abuse, which I suppose is part of the message, that we don’t face up to that savage truth about ourselves. The last thing I expected Torchwood to deliver was a nasty, unanswerable moral conundrum of epic scale.
I will see Days 4 and 5 in the next few days. I know Ianto dies and am not looking forward to it, and I know generally what happens in the rest of the series. Ianto’s death sent fans into a tizzy, I gather, and some are worried the show is about to be “de-gayed” for BBC 1. No idea about that (though I’m cynical enough to think that is exactly what they intend to do), but I’m not particularly convinced by creator Russell Davies’ argument that Ianto’s death was inevitable, that it would have somehow been unrealistic for them all to survive. I mean, hello, fantasy sci fi here. Did you really need to sell the show’s soul to the existentialist devil? A season 4 is planned, but I’m having trouble imagining it. You can’t go back to playing scary tigers after this.
On the upside, we got to see John Barrowman naked.
Friday, August 14, 2009
I Have Discovered a New Word. Let Us Celebrate.
“Heteroflexible.” How did I not know this word existed? From what I can tell it has been around for a number of years. I am appalled at my ignorance. It’s such a useful word. “Heteroflexible” is perfect for describing half the student population back in my college days. I had been making do with “experimental,” which you have to admit pales in comparison as a descriptor. (I wonder if the word “homoflexible” exists, for those you are usually gay but sometimes fall for a person of the opposite gender. Yes! I just looked it up and it does exist! The English language wins again.)
Heteroflexible is so much better than other recent neologisms such as, say, “metrosexual.” I am not entirely convinced this word is necessary. It seems to refer to a 21st century version of Beau Brummel. I admit that calling someone a “dandy” sounds quaint and completely out of touch with the world of contemporary male fashion. I suppose we need a way to say “he’s straight even though he wears Prada and gets a weekly manicure.” Another trendy and rather silly new word is “bromance,” which means a close relationship between two men that isn’t sexual, something we women call “friendship.”
And then there’s this word “omnisexual” that I keep running across. This seems to have replaced “bisexual,” perhaps because it sounds more inclusive. You know, in case you have sexual feelings for your iPod, your cell phone, your dog, your avatar, your breakfast cereal, and so forth. I cannot hear it without thinking of “omnivore,” thereby connecting sex with both dinosaurs and a wide-ranging gustatory palate.
Heteroflexible is so much better than other recent neologisms such as, say, “metrosexual.” I am not entirely convinced this word is necessary. It seems to refer to a 21st century version of Beau Brummel. I admit that calling someone a “dandy” sounds quaint and completely out of touch with the world of contemporary male fashion. I suppose we need a way to say “he’s straight even though he wears Prada and gets a weekly manicure.” Another trendy and rather silly new word is “bromance,” which means a close relationship between two men that isn’t sexual, something we women call “friendship.”
And then there’s this word “omnisexual” that I keep running across. This seems to have replaced “bisexual,” perhaps because it sounds more inclusive. You know, in case you have sexual feelings for your iPod, your cell phone, your dog, your avatar, your breakfast cereal, and so forth. I cannot hear it without thinking of “omnivore,” thereby connecting sex with both dinosaurs and a wide-ranging gustatory palate.
Friday, August 07, 2009
Brujeria
In the waiting area an old woman places a different offering of food in front of each candle. These are the kind of candles I see in the market – candles in glass holders decorated with an image of a saint. I don’t know what gods these saints represent. I am vaguely curious, but I don’t want to ask the old woman. She is dressed all in black, like so many of the old women here, and her face is hard. No, I do not want to talk to her, but I wonder, how long is the food left before it is replaced? I imagine vermin, maggots, but there are none here. Everything is orderly and clean.
There are a few other people sitting in the worn sofas and chairs. One, a thin blond woman, hugs herself as if she is cold. We look out of place here, where everyone is Hispanic. She speaks with a German accent, which surprises me. I think, how did a German girl end up here? He is very helpful, she says. She looks desperate. Do I look desperate? Am I desperate?
The palero is a young man dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. He is a little heavy, with a pudgy face and wavy hair, jovial but not particularly charismatic. He reaches into a small cloth bag and tosses what look like shells on the table. You have a lot of anger, he says, from when you were a child. Someone has hexed you, someone from a long time ago. My mother will prepare a mixture with herbs. You must pour it over you when you bathe, to protect you. Hexed, I say. It may not have been intentional, he says, but the results are the same. Not intentional. Perhaps I hex people many times a day, I think.
What do you want me to do, he asks? I hand him a photo. I want her gone, I say. I hand him a second photo. I want him back.
He says, I have a servant, a spirit from among the dead who does my bidding. If you want this, my servant can break the bonds between these two.
I have the skull that belonged to this spirit in life, and he must stay there until I call. I ask a question. He hesitates. From a cemetery, he answers. You do not need to know the details. There is a ritual. The skull is placed in a cauldron and I call upon the spirit to act. This is not a ritual you are allowed to watch.
By my car in the dirt lot, I look around. I do not know this part of town at all. The desert sky is wide and emptied of color, but the air is still hot. I feel confused, then panicked. I can’t find the paper with my scribbled directions. I can’t remember the street names, the turns I need to make.
I am lost. I am so lost.
There are a few other people sitting in the worn sofas and chairs. One, a thin blond woman, hugs herself as if she is cold. We look out of place here, where everyone is Hispanic. She speaks with a German accent, which surprises me. I think, how did a German girl end up here? He is very helpful, she says. She looks desperate. Do I look desperate? Am I desperate?
The palero is a young man dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. He is a little heavy, with a pudgy face and wavy hair, jovial but not particularly charismatic. He reaches into a small cloth bag and tosses what look like shells on the table. You have a lot of anger, he says, from when you were a child. Someone has hexed you, someone from a long time ago. My mother will prepare a mixture with herbs. You must pour it over you when you bathe, to protect you. Hexed, I say. It may not have been intentional, he says, but the results are the same. Not intentional. Perhaps I hex people many times a day, I think.
What do you want me to do, he asks? I hand him a photo. I want her gone, I say. I hand him a second photo. I want him back.
He says, I have a servant, a spirit from among the dead who does my bidding. If you want this, my servant can break the bonds between these two.
I have the skull that belonged to this spirit in life, and he must stay there until I call. I ask a question. He hesitates. From a cemetery, he answers. You do not need to know the details. There is a ritual. The skull is placed in a cauldron and I call upon the spirit to act. This is not a ritual you are allowed to watch.
By my car in the dirt lot, I look around. I do not know this part of town at all. The desert sky is wide and emptied of color, but the air is still hot. I feel confused, then panicked. I can’t find the paper with my scribbled directions. I can’t remember the street names, the turns I need to make.
I am lost. I am so lost.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Jesus Is John Donne's Boyfriend
My mind has hopped on its little hamster wheel again. I’ve posted this before, sometime last fall. No one commented on it then, which either means it blows or no one came to visit that day. So I’m going to repeat it, with some alterations and additions. Actually, quite a bit of addition. And dammit I expect someone to say SOMETHING.
Jesus Is My Boyfriend, Jacobean Style
I love this poem. I love it so much I wish I could step back through history, find John Donne, and give him a jolly good time.
I love his playful intellect, that double-edged sword. “Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend.” But it doesn’t of course; it keeps us captive. I relate so well to his frustration. You find out you're reason's love slave and there's damn all you can do about it except hope the Hero takes you by force.
How often do you hear someone talk about the peace that surpasses understanding? When we have serious problems, everyone prays for that. But exactly how do you find that peace—or put it another way—how do you let God establish that peace in you? I’m here God, ready to feel that peace. Bring it on, Jesus. Is that it? Sort of. Maybe. Wait, I don’t feel peaceful—all hell’s breaking loose. Am I missing something? I said I was happy to accept peace. More than ready. Sigh.
What does that peace look like? Serene? Calm? Stoic? Eye of the hurricane? How do you feel peace when your mind is always churning, synthesizing, analyzing. I take comfort that Jesus himself doesn’t seem all that calm to me. You don’t knock over tables and sweat blood because you have a serene nature, although he’s so often depicted as spouting wisdom with this sappy beneficent look on his face.
How are we supposed to feel God’s presence? Is it warm and fuzzy? Is it in the grass, the trees, our children, other people, the rocks, my computer, everything—or is that too pantheistic? And what about the shadow we see out of the corner of our eye—gone so fast maybe it wasn’t there at all. Frustratingly unknowable. Tantalizingly unknowable. We are always pushing out and reaching beyond and our hands close on air. We can’t stop thinking. We toss and turn, feel hemmed in and stifled, but don’t know how get out. And, if we can’t do it because it’s supposed to be all God’s work, well, we can turn that against ourselves, too. Gee, is that God now? Is He doing something? Am I feeling free? Wait, am I imagining all this? What if I’m imagining all this?
I love those last two lines “I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free/Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.” I wonder if Donne felt a bit daring writing that? Maybe it was a commonplace expression of religious piety at the time. Hah. Any commentary will be quick to point you to the bridegroom imagery in the Bible, which I think is a bit weird in itself. Oh, yeah, that’s right – it’s about “spiritual” union. When confronted with wedding bed imagery, Biblical literalists suddenly discover metaphor. Because, of course, God doesn’t have a body, except in Jesus. And don’t even THINK about going there. Jesus doesn’t have a penis, at least not one that’s supposed to be called into service at any time.
And yet, there are those naughty, naughty mystics with their suggestive imagery. Oh, how the mainline protestants distrust the mystics, who make union with God sound like a really great shag.
I think of the statue of St. Theresa in ecstasy, and St. John of the Cross’s delirious poetry:
Sweet! The love of God is like having your throat slit…after you fool around a bit in a turret!
Or Rumi:
Well okey dokey, then! Knowing God as erotic seduction. There’s an explanation of miracles I can live with. Yep, I’m ready to give that a go.
And in Donne’s poem: “ravish” – which can mean “overcome by emotion” or… “rape.” Donne is asking God to rape him. How often do you ask God to rape you? Of course, if you ask, it isn’t really rape, is it? More like a “give it to me rough, sailor” kind of plea.
I often hear complaints about (or contempt for) Jesus Is My Boyfriend songs or Jesus Is My Boyfriend sentiments, mentality, and so forth. It's too me-focused, or bad theology, or too romantic, or too eroticized. It is pretty sappy and sounds like some sad consolation prize. You've signed that abstinence-only pledge, but you can still date Jesus. He's safe. I think the real problem is this: God isn’t the gentle purity-ring wearing boyfriend who’s going to nervously hold your hand and shyly ask permission for a kiss. You’d better be prepared for something a little more forceful.
Jesus Is My Boyfriend, Jacobean Style
I love this poem. I love it so much I wish I could step back through history, find John Donne, and give him a jolly good time.
Batter My Heart, Three-Person'd God
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
I love his playful intellect, that double-edged sword. “Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend.” But it doesn’t of course; it keeps us captive. I relate so well to his frustration. You find out you're reason's love slave and there's damn all you can do about it except hope the Hero takes you by force.
How often do you hear someone talk about the peace that surpasses understanding? When we have serious problems, everyone prays for that. But exactly how do you find that peace—or put it another way—how do you let God establish that peace in you? I’m here God, ready to feel that peace. Bring it on, Jesus. Is that it? Sort of. Maybe. Wait, I don’t feel peaceful—all hell’s breaking loose. Am I missing something? I said I was happy to accept peace. More than ready. Sigh.
What does that peace look like? Serene? Calm? Stoic? Eye of the hurricane? How do you feel peace when your mind is always churning, synthesizing, analyzing. I take comfort that Jesus himself doesn’t seem all that calm to me. You don’t knock over tables and sweat blood because you have a serene nature, although he’s so often depicted as spouting wisdom with this sappy beneficent look on his face.
How are we supposed to feel God’s presence? Is it warm and fuzzy? Is it in the grass, the trees, our children, other people, the rocks, my computer, everything—or is that too pantheistic? And what about the shadow we see out of the corner of our eye—gone so fast maybe it wasn’t there at all. Frustratingly unknowable. Tantalizingly unknowable. We are always pushing out and reaching beyond and our hands close on air. We can’t stop thinking. We toss and turn, feel hemmed in and stifled, but don’t know how get out. And, if we can’t do it because it’s supposed to be all God’s work, well, we can turn that against ourselves, too. Gee, is that God now? Is He doing something? Am I feeling free? Wait, am I imagining all this? What if I’m imagining all this?
I love those last two lines “I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free/Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.” I wonder if Donne felt a bit daring writing that? Maybe it was a commonplace expression of religious piety at the time. Hah. Any commentary will be quick to point you to the bridegroom imagery in the Bible, which I think is a bit weird in itself. Oh, yeah, that’s right – it’s about “spiritual” union. When confronted with wedding bed imagery, Biblical literalists suddenly discover metaphor. Because, of course, God doesn’t have a body, except in Jesus. And don’t even THINK about going there. Jesus doesn’t have a penis, at least not one that’s supposed to be called into service at any time.
And yet, there are those naughty, naughty mystics with their suggestive imagery. Oh, how the mainline protestants distrust the mystics, who make union with God sound like a really great shag.
I think of the statue of St. Theresa in ecstasy, and St. John of the Cross’s delirious poetry:
Upon my flowered breast,
For him alone kept fair,
There he slept
There I caressed,
There the cedars gave us air.
I drank the turret's cool air
Spreading playfully his hair.
And his hand, so serene,
Cut my throat.
Sweet! The love of God is like having your throat slit…after you fool around a bit in a turret!
Or Rumi:
If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God’s fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.
When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this.
If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don’t try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Well okey dokey, then! Knowing God as erotic seduction. There’s an explanation of miracles I can live with. Yep, I’m ready to give that a go.
And in Donne’s poem: “ravish” – which can mean “overcome by emotion” or… “rape.” Donne is asking God to rape him. How often do you ask God to rape you? Of course, if you ask, it isn’t really rape, is it? More like a “give it to me rough, sailor” kind of plea.
I often hear complaints about (or contempt for) Jesus Is My Boyfriend songs or Jesus Is My Boyfriend sentiments, mentality, and so forth. It's too me-focused, or bad theology, or too romantic, or too eroticized. It is pretty sappy and sounds like some sad consolation prize. You've signed that abstinence-only pledge, but you can still date Jesus. He's safe. I think the real problem is this: God isn’t the gentle purity-ring wearing boyfriend who’s going to nervously hold your hand and shyly ask permission for a kiss. You’d better be prepared for something a little more forceful.
Monday, August 03, 2009
Time Keeps Slipping
Just warning you – don’t expect anything profound, deep, or spiritual. So if you’re looking for that, move along. I’m not up to it.
Instead I’m going to write about sex.
Not really. I just couldn’t resist saying that.
But it might crop up later, if you stick around.
The thing is, I have finished season 1 of Torchwood. Give me a sec - don’t stop reading now. You don’t have to be a Torchwood fan. You just have to be willing to let me rattle on for a while. It’s very edifying, and good for my soul. My brain is humming and sparking like it used to do in my college class on postmodern literature, thinking on themes and subtext. In other words, I’m itching to take something from pop culture and give it the sheen of respectability, thus justifying my absurd infatuation with my shiny new TV show.
Dear Husband is not particularly enamored of Torchwood. He has started calling it "Torturewood." He thinks it’s a bit silly and cheesy. From what I can tell, the British have an affection for spectacularly cheesy special effects. I’m willing to go with that. Dear Husband probably would, too, if more people were naked and there was more sex. I can’t really argue against the value of more naked people, particularly a naked John Barrowman, and who's going to balk at more sex? If you are, then you might as well close this right now and go read something serious.
But let it be said that my liking for this series has nothing whatsoever to do with Captain Jack’s unholy good looks or even that adorable gap between Gwen’s two front teeth that I can’t help staring at. But I digress.
I admit season 1 was a bit uneven, and I think we do CGI much better than the Brits. Also, I think they must shoot on videotape, because their shows look more like our soap operas than our TV shows. Some people prefer videotape, but I think our TV shows look more polished and cinematic and those qualities definitely works better for paranormal subject matter, in my opinion. Oh but who cares. So what if a man with a ridiculously fake fish head is driving a car around Cardiff? Everyone seems to be having a jolly good time even if they don’t remove their clothes often enough.
So far I thought the strongest shows involved time travel. It’s hard not to feel for the displaced and confused, such as the characters who flew in from the 1950s and got stuck in the 21st century, where they have to cope with the loss of their families and with the culture shock of their new era. One man, after finding his son in a nursing home and suffering from dementia, gives up. How would you feel if the only part of your child’s life you got to see was the bitter end? He can’t find a way to adapt, and Jack, after an attempt to keep him from suicide, finally sits with him as he dies. I was about ready to weep, except that Jack looks tasty and noble when he’s helping people die.
But even better was the episode in which Captain Jack Harkness (with his colleague Tosh) slips through a time rift into WWII Cardiff and meets the real Captain Jack Harkness, whose identity Jack had assumed.
This episode is just beautiful. For one thing, they got all the period details perfect. The music, the costumes, the set – they’re gorgeous. And the 1940s segments have this delightful warm glow to them.
Jack knows the Captain will die the next day in the line of duty. There’s nothing Jack can do about that, and the more he learns about the Captain, who is an honorable, kind, and courageous leader - and remarkably handsome to boot - the more that hurts. There’s quite a lot going on in this episode. When Tosh asks him how he came to take the Captain’s name, Jack refers to himself as a conman. He won’t say what his actual name is, and he has to make up a fake one on the spot. The Captain is the sort of heroic leader Jack would like to be but isn’t quite. Jack’s life is hidden, a mystery, and now we find that even his name is a lie. He can be loyal, kind and brave but also ruthless and sometimes cruel, willing to kill without hesitation or, it seems, guilt. The episode moves between the 1940s and modern day Cardiff where the rest of the Torchwood team are searching through the now derelict dancehall. Events and time overlap. We see the hall full of happy soldiers and their girls, and then the hall as an abandoned and empty wreck, a reminder of mortality and the cruelty of time.
Now for the sex part. I WAS getting to that. Well, it's not exactly about sex, but if you've got this far you might as well continue.
This episode is known for the kiss between Jack and the Captain, which I have to say was beautifully done and possibly one of the sweetest screen kisses I have ever seen.
(Dear Husband, on the other hand, choked out an irritated “OH GOD” before looking unhappily into the distance. Is this still the typical straight guy reaction? Do straight women get all weird when women kiss? I certainly don’t. Then again I can hit most of the notes on the Kinsey scale so what do I know? Women still seem less squirmy though. Nothing seems to freak out straight men more than male gay intimacy, and then they feel they need to go do something manly, like dismantle a car.)
The final scenes in the dance hall are achingly sad, full of yearning and loss. I was delighted that the Captain asked Jack to dance. So what if no one in their right mind would have done that in a crowded 1940s dance hall full of soldiers? - it serves very well as a symbol of emotional courage and honesty. It costs Jack nothing to love whomever he wishes, but for the Captain, the cost would be very high indeed. He chooses to be honest, while Jack is veiled in layers of deceit. The Captain has broken through Jack’s carefully constructed persona. Jack cares that this man, whose name he took without much thought, will die. When they embrace the dance music fades and is replaced by a more haunting theme. This isn’t simply attraction, or rather the attraction isn’t merely sexual, but a recognition of the other’s truest self and an attempt to hold to that in the face of inevitable loss. I think that final kiss transcended any sort of hip nod to gayness, or the sad knowledge of impending death, and became something transformative or maybe restorative.
I mean, besides being totally hot.
The clip from the BBC is excellent but includes a portion of the scene prior to the one at the dance hall. The dance hall scene starts around 1:04:
Instead I’m going to write about sex.
Not really. I just couldn’t resist saying that.
But it might crop up later, if you stick around.
The thing is, I have finished season 1 of Torchwood. Give me a sec - don’t stop reading now. You don’t have to be a Torchwood fan. You just have to be willing to let me rattle on for a while. It’s very edifying, and good for my soul. My brain is humming and sparking like it used to do in my college class on postmodern literature, thinking on themes and subtext. In other words, I’m itching to take something from pop culture and give it the sheen of respectability, thus justifying my absurd infatuation with my shiny new TV show.
Dear Husband is not particularly enamored of Torchwood. He has started calling it "Torturewood." He thinks it’s a bit silly and cheesy. From what I can tell, the British have an affection for spectacularly cheesy special effects. I’m willing to go with that. Dear Husband probably would, too, if more people were naked and there was more sex. I can’t really argue against the value of more naked people, particularly a naked John Barrowman, and who's going to balk at more sex? If you are, then you might as well close this right now and go read something serious.
But let it be said that my liking for this series has nothing whatsoever to do with Captain Jack’s unholy good looks or even that adorable gap between Gwen’s two front teeth that I can’t help staring at. But I digress.
I admit season 1 was a bit uneven, and I think we do CGI much better than the Brits. Also, I think they must shoot on videotape, because their shows look more like our soap operas than our TV shows. Some people prefer videotape, but I think our TV shows look more polished and cinematic and those qualities definitely works better for paranormal subject matter, in my opinion. Oh but who cares. So what if a man with a ridiculously fake fish head is driving a car around Cardiff? Everyone seems to be having a jolly good time even if they don’t remove their clothes often enough.
So far I thought the strongest shows involved time travel. It’s hard not to feel for the displaced and confused, such as the characters who flew in from the 1950s and got stuck in the 21st century, where they have to cope with the loss of their families and with the culture shock of their new era. One man, after finding his son in a nursing home and suffering from dementia, gives up. How would you feel if the only part of your child’s life you got to see was the bitter end? He can’t find a way to adapt, and Jack, after an attempt to keep him from suicide, finally sits with him as he dies. I was about ready to weep, except that Jack looks tasty and noble when he’s helping people die.
But even better was the episode in which Captain Jack Harkness (with his colleague Tosh) slips through a time rift into WWII Cardiff and meets the real Captain Jack Harkness, whose identity Jack had assumed.
This episode is just beautiful. For one thing, they got all the period details perfect. The music, the costumes, the set – they’re gorgeous. And the 1940s segments have this delightful warm glow to them.
Jack knows the Captain will die the next day in the line of duty. There’s nothing Jack can do about that, and the more he learns about the Captain, who is an honorable, kind, and courageous leader - and remarkably handsome to boot - the more that hurts. There’s quite a lot going on in this episode. When Tosh asks him how he came to take the Captain’s name, Jack refers to himself as a conman. He won’t say what his actual name is, and he has to make up a fake one on the spot. The Captain is the sort of heroic leader Jack would like to be but isn’t quite. Jack’s life is hidden, a mystery, and now we find that even his name is a lie. He can be loyal, kind and brave but also ruthless and sometimes cruel, willing to kill without hesitation or, it seems, guilt. The episode moves between the 1940s and modern day Cardiff where the rest of the Torchwood team are searching through the now derelict dancehall. Events and time overlap. We see the hall full of happy soldiers and their girls, and then the hall as an abandoned and empty wreck, a reminder of mortality and the cruelty of time.
Now for the sex part. I WAS getting to that. Well, it's not exactly about sex, but if you've got this far you might as well continue.
This episode is known for the kiss between Jack and the Captain, which I have to say was beautifully done and possibly one of the sweetest screen kisses I have ever seen.
(Dear Husband, on the other hand, choked out an irritated “OH GOD” before looking unhappily into the distance. Is this still the typical straight guy reaction? Do straight women get all weird when women kiss? I certainly don’t. Then again I can hit most of the notes on the Kinsey scale so what do I know? Women still seem less squirmy though. Nothing seems to freak out straight men more than male gay intimacy, and then they feel they need to go do something manly, like dismantle a car.)
The final scenes in the dance hall are achingly sad, full of yearning and loss. I was delighted that the Captain asked Jack to dance. So what if no one in their right mind would have done that in a crowded 1940s dance hall full of soldiers? - it serves very well as a symbol of emotional courage and honesty. It costs Jack nothing to love whomever he wishes, but for the Captain, the cost would be very high indeed. He chooses to be honest, while Jack is veiled in layers of deceit. The Captain has broken through Jack’s carefully constructed persona. Jack cares that this man, whose name he took without much thought, will die. When they embrace the dance music fades and is replaced by a more haunting theme. This isn’t simply attraction, or rather the attraction isn’t merely sexual, but a recognition of the other’s truest self and an attempt to hold to that in the face of inevitable loss. I think that final kiss transcended any sort of hip nod to gayness, or the sad knowledge of impending death, and became something transformative or maybe restorative.
I mean, besides being totally hot.
The clip from the BBC is excellent but includes a portion of the scene prior to the one at the dance hall. The dance hall scene starts around 1:04:Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Entropy
Today all my failures crowd my spirit, flapping their wings and cawing. And that’s about the most poetic thing you’ll get out of me today.
School will be starting soon. Every year this new beginning has given me false hope. But after 9 years, I know that any intention I have to be more involved or to be better organized will fall victim to entropy. Now I feel disheartened before the school year has even begun.
When I was a child, the start of the school year was an enormous relief. After the amorphous and dull summer my days would fall into an orderly routine, one I would be forced to follow. At the time I didn’t know I had ADD. After all I was very smart and could whiz through most subjects. But empty time was dreadful. I had no idea what to do with myself, how to make time behave the way it did at school. At home I was terrible at managing my time for homework, studying and projects. Waiting to the last minute seemed to work rather well as a motivator. It was almost exhilarating.
Now I have no one but myself to organize my time and I hate it. First, I don’t believe myself. I can set a goal or deadline, but it’s just me. I have no authority with myself. Second, very little compels me. My interests evaporate the moment I look at them directly.
And work is worse each day. I’m sharp, a quick study, so at any job I soon get a lot of leeway to work on my own. This is a disaster. Also, once I’ve mastered a task, I’m completely bored by it. I’ve tried so many systems and none work for very long. My attention wanders. I forget things. I feel lost. I create lists I don’t follow, send myself email reminders that get buried. I take medication, but that only helps with concentration; it hasn’t transformed me into someone with intrinsic motivation or the ability to create routines and stay with them. And concentration - well if my attention snags on something shiny, it will stubbornly remain there however irrelevant it is.
My mother was also unable to order and direct. Drove me mad as a child. I so wanted her to establish rules, structure, and routines and force me to abide. But no. She alternated between impossible projects and lethargy. Now I have children and I can’t manage it either. I feel like a terrible role model.
I know the girls suffer from a lack of structure at home. Most days they are following someone else’s routine. I didn’t have that as a child, so I hope it helps, and when I pick them up there isn’t much time between then and bed, although those routines are frequently derailed, too. Weekends defeat me. Completely. So much empty time.
I read this today: “If you have to get motivated to take action then you are not motivated by the outcome. Need 2 Reevaluate purpose.” I think it’s from some GTD coach, a system that annoys the crap out of me. Most of the time outcomes are so far out they look like a mirage. Of course I’m not motivated by the outcome. No one BELIEVES in the outcome.
Okay, I’m bored with this.
School will be starting soon. Every year this new beginning has given me false hope. But after 9 years, I know that any intention I have to be more involved or to be better organized will fall victim to entropy. Now I feel disheartened before the school year has even begun.
When I was a child, the start of the school year was an enormous relief. After the amorphous and dull summer my days would fall into an orderly routine, one I would be forced to follow. At the time I didn’t know I had ADD. After all I was very smart and could whiz through most subjects. But empty time was dreadful. I had no idea what to do with myself, how to make time behave the way it did at school. At home I was terrible at managing my time for homework, studying and projects. Waiting to the last minute seemed to work rather well as a motivator. It was almost exhilarating.
Now I have no one but myself to organize my time and I hate it. First, I don’t believe myself. I can set a goal or deadline, but it’s just me. I have no authority with myself. Second, very little compels me. My interests evaporate the moment I look at them directly.
And work is worse each day. I’m sharp, a quick study, so at any job I soon get a lot of leeway to work on my own. This is a disaster. Also, once I’ve mastered a task, I’m completely bored by it. I’ve tried so many systems and none work for very long. My attention wanders. I forget things. I feel lost. I create lists I don’t follow, send myself email reminders that get buried. I take medication, but that only helps with concentration; it hasn’t transformed me into someone with intrinsic motivation or the ability to create routines and stay with them. And concentration - well if my attention snags on something shiny, it will stubbornly remain there however irrelevant it is.
My mother was also unable to order and direct. Drove me mad as a child. I so wanted her to establish rules, structure, and routines and force me to abide. But no. She alternated between impossible projects and lethargy. Now I have children and I can’t manage it either. I feel like a terrible role model.
I know the girls suffer from a lack of structure at home. Most days they are following someone else’s routine. I didn’t have that as a child, so I hope it helps, and when I pick them up there isn’t much time between then and bed, although those routines are frequently derailed, too. Weekends defeat me. Completely. So much empty time.
I read this today: “If you have to get motivated to take action then you are not motivated by the outcome. Need 2 Reevaluate purpose.” I think it’s from some GTD coach, a system that annoys the crap out of me. Most of the time outcomes are so far out they look like a mirage. Of course I’m not motivated by the outcome. No one BELIEVES in the outcome.
Okay, I’m bored with this.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Hooked
"I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread." G. K. Chesterton
The quote above is one Evelyn Waugh used in his novel Brideshead Revisited. How ironic that my favorite book in the whole world is about grace and conversion. I, who am constantly negative and struggling and generally sarcastic about religion, love this book beyond reason. I’ve always felt that I’m on that unseen hook and line. God hasn’t bothered to reel me in, but I can’t get away, either. I’m just swimming about, irritated. In fact, I’m in such constant irritation that by now I should be spitting out pearls.
My mind balks. Make a statement about faith and my skepticism kicks in. If it’s the children who enter the Kingdom, well, I’m the brat who has temper tantrums, contradicts everything and always complains she’s bored.
I would like to experience the presence of God. Oh, and to know that’s what I’m doing, so that I can say, “Hey, that’s God. Cool!” I would rather the presence weren’t coolly eternal. I expect warmth and affection from my husband and friends, so I don’t see why God shouldn’t deliver something similar. Someone will say it isn’t about feelings and emotion, but I am a friggin human after all, and I experience the world through my senses, my mind, and my emotions. So unless I’m going to experience God on some ethereal plane, I would prefer something tangible, or a sweeping ecstasy perhaps. Hell, even the mysterious joy in the Lord that people refer to would work. A little change in brain chemistry. A vision maybe. My husband got a vision. Why not me? How are they parceled out?
The truth is, I’m a snob. I’m an aesthetic snob and an intellectual snob. Not in everything, but definitely in religion. I’m not going to lift my hands during crappy worship music and get all weepy and emotionally choked up. I can’t insert Jesus and Praise God into every conversation. Or even every 14th conversation. I can’t talk about “a personal relationship with Jesus” without flinching and wanting to suggest that we reframe the discussion into language that doesn’t sound like it belongs at a tent revival. Same for “born again,” a perfectly nice term that I have to scrub with bleach before I can handle. Give my life over to Jesus? What the f@#k does that mean? Should I wrap it up with a bow and leave it on His doorstep? I can’t read the Bible as if it were literal or settle for that much-used cop-out: “God speaks to us through His Word.” Meaning, shut up already and get your lazy ass to read this big boring tome. Then All Will Be Answered. I’m sorry. A book by Charles Dickens really is more interesting. Bite me.
So I’m bitchy sometimes, not exactly alight with Christian love. It’s not pretty. I’m well aware that pride is one of my flaws. But the thing is, I feel like a complete sham, completely false, when I try to fit into contemporary evangelical culture. I’ve tried, and I know that I am lying or at best telling half truths.
Which brings me to the few times I have experienced something beyond the ordinary, a sense of being lifted out of time and feeling a connection with the stream of human history and endeavor and its creative source. I’ve felt it when looking at certain paintings. When reading fiction and poetry. When listening to music. Sometimes when sitting in a cathedral, in a patch of quiet that smells of frankincense. Sometimes when driving and the light hits the trees in a certain way and the world seems like a pathway and yet at the same time the destination.
I have never felt it during a contemporary worship service. Or during a bible study group. Or during most of the praying I’ve done in devotions, or when anyone has prayed over me. Not even a little bit.
What I’ve felt in those true moments isn’t particularly Jesus-y or Christian-y. It feels more like being unfolded. That’s the term that came to me – not sure what it means. I suppose: that my soul which is forced to remain in my finite body, a rather cramped cage, gets to stretch its legs for a moment and suck in some fresh air. Then it gets shoved back in the cage.
Despite the lack of overt worship and Christian trappings in my daily life, I’m pretty invested in Christianity. I want it to be true. Maybe not literally true – do I really care if Mary was a virgin? – but True to the substance and nature of the Divine. That Christ reconciles a screwed-up world to the Father. That he died and rose. That He is creating a new kingdom and a new earth with us. That we aren’t at the mercy of the most hellish aspects of ourselves individually or corporately. That there is a life beyond this one. But don’t get me started on heaven, because I think singing praises to God all day long sounds dead boring (Waugh said, “The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.”)
What the hell God was thinking in giving me this mental apparatus that constantly second guesses and deconstructs I do not know. I will never have a simple, trusting faith. I’m resigned to that. Still, I’m a fish, a hungry fish, so I took the bait. Now I’m just waiting for the twitch on the thread.
“Pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.” Evelyn Waugh
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Tension
I’m sitting in red clay on the bank of a dried up stream, swatting at mosquitoes and I’m about as uncomfortable as I can be. The near paralysis is so deceptive. I’m a tightly coiled spring that will never release. That tense. A storm system with lightening and hot heavy air. I’m all waiting and no rain. My mind is crawling through a broken window, it’s squeezing through a buttonhole, threading through a needle. It will not be soothed. It knows there’s a leash around its neck, if it could only bite through. Tectonic plates are shifting and I’m running to catch the cups as they fall. And why? Why not take the broken shards and cut a way out, be born of blood and pain?
Friday, July 17, 2009
Torched
I love Torchwood. I have all the annoying enthusiasm of someone who has just discovered a show/music/event/issue that everyone else has known about for years. I’m just jumping with eagerness to bore someone to tears, so thanks for stopping by. Sit down for a bit. Want some coffee?
As I was saying, so many people were tweeting about Torchwood and referring to it in blogs that I felt like I was missing out on the biggest event in popular culture. I mean, if it’s a trending topic on twitter, surely I need to investigate. Now that I’ve seen a few episodes, I feel so much more au currant.
Now, what do I like about Torchwood? Well, I was really impressed by the snappy writing and stellar acting.
Ha ha ha. Yeah, right.
First, the cast all look as if they could be served up with whipped cream, strawberries and a glass of chardonnay. I mean, just look at them:
Aren’t they as tender and delightful as a spring morning? Don't you just want to take them home and have a rumpus? No? Well, whatever. Are you sure you're breathing?
But really, I only had to hear one word: “gay.” That pretty much sealed it for me, 'cause if there’s a gay angle, I am so there. Just call me a voyeuristic deviant. In fact, if you do I’ll say “thanks” because I’ve really been neglecting that side of my personality.
Anyway, I don’t just casually think, “Hey, I’ll check out that show when it comes on next.” No, I’m an obsessive researcher. I scour the Internet for interviews, bios of the actors, episode guides, clips. I’ve now watched wobbly film snippets of the actors speaking at conventions, fan-made videos of favorite scenes overlaid with popular music, and interviews from British talk shows.
So of course I found out that Torchwood pretty much goes to town - girls with aliens, boys with aliens, girls with girls, boys with boys. Or, as one article put it, the sexuality of the characters is “fluid.” And I think we can all agree that fluid sexuality makes for some really good TV. Or maybe you think it's morally corrupt entertainment that plays to our basest instincts. We should check you for a pulse.
One thing I discovered in my research is that the actors are completely adorable off screen. They remind me of the theater kids from high school and college – loud, extroverted, mischievous, always performing, frequently outrageous, and so full of boisterous energy that your life begins to look colorless in comparison. And you wonder if perhaps you missed a turn somewhere, because everyone seems to be having heaps of fun, and wouldn't it be lovely to have an invite?
And you would not believe how these fictional gay romances obsess fans. Well, maybe you do. Here I am, obviously. But the fangirls pursue the topic with a tenacity that boggles the mind. I guess since men have been fantasizing about girl on girl action (not neglected on Torchwood, either) for years, the ladies have jumped at the chance to even the score. Surely those who play straight lovers on TV are not constantly plied with requests that they kiss off screen the way John Barrowman and Gareth David Lloyd are. Not that they aren’t happy to oblige. Not that they seem to mind delivering as much raucus innuendo as any squealing fangirl could possible desire. They aren’t very shy. They flirt and joke and insinuate and generally egg each other on. It’s grand to watch.
My explanation for this somewhat odd, delirious attention is that the media prohibition against depicting gayness fell like the Berlin Wall and now everyone is giddily walking streets that were formerly off limits.
I know I’ve mentioned this before (but don't think that will stop me from saying it again - you might as well have another cup of coffee), but it still floors me that shows like this exist. In my childhood – 30 plus years ago – two men kissing on screen was more unlikely than the end of the Cold War. And then, suddenly, it seemed that film after film was romping around in forbidden territory– Brideshead Revisited, Another Country, Parting Glances, Maurice, My Beautiful Laundrette. At my college students flipped their orientations like coins, and pretty much without embarrassment, brandishing pink triangles and rainbow banners. I have witnessed, in my lifetime, an amazing transformation. Would any actor from my childhood have been as unabashedly open about his sexuality as John Barrowman? Would a straight actor like Gareth David Lloyd have been so blithely unconcerned about his reputation or so completely comfortable with his role? I know it’s an incomplete transformation. People are still victimized because of sexual orientation. There’s still enormous resistance (which I cannot and never will understand) to gay marriage. Some are utterly disgusted (which I also cannot fathom). Others think it's unbiblical (oh give me a break and stop picking out the same damn verses from Leviticus and Paul's letters). But, I can’t help but survey the scene and say, “Wow.”
I’m making it sound as if Torchwood is devoted solely to the sexual shenanigans of its characters, which it isn’t. It’s just the part that most interests me! I never claimed to be deep, or particularly refined. I mean, look again at that photo. Strawberries and whipped cream, and maybe not chardonnay but champagne. So, the storylines may be a bit lame at times, and the special effects not always effective. John Barrowman may let his theatrical background leak through a bit too much and hog the attention. But, you know what, I’m happy to be walking around Berlin.
As I was saying, so many people were tweeting about Torchwood and referring to it in blogs that I felt like I was missing out on the biggest event in popular culture. I mean, if it’s a trending topic on twitter, surely I need to investigate. Now that I’ve seen a few episodes, I feel so much more au currant.
Now, what do I like about Torchwood? Well, I was really impressed by the snappy writing and stellar acting.
Ha ha ha. Yeah, right.
First, the cast all look as if they could be served up with whipped cream, strawberries and a glass of chardonnay. I mean, just look at them:
Aren’t they as tender and delightful as a spring morning? Don't you just want to take them home and have a rumpus? No? Well, whatever. Are you sure you're breathing?
But really, I only had to hear one word: “gay.” That pretty much sealed it for me, 'cause if there’s a gay angle, I am so there. Just call me a voyeuristic deviant. In fact, if you do I’ll say “thanks” because I’ve really been neglecting that side of my personality.
Anyway, I don’t just casually think, “Hey, I’ll check out that show when it comes on next.” No, I’m an obsessive researcher. I scour the Internet for interviews, bios of the actors, episode guides, clips. I’ve now watched wobbly film snippets of the actors speaking at conventions, fan-made videos of favorite scenes overlaid with popular music, and interviews from British talk shows.
So of course I found out that Torchwood pretty much goes to town - girls with aliens, boys with aliens, girls with girls, boys with boys. Or, as one article put it, the sexuality of the characters is “fluid.” And I think we can all agree that fluid sexuality makes for some really good TV. Or maybe you think it's morally corrupt entertainment that plays to our basest instincts. We should check you for a pulse.
One thing I discovered in my research is that the actors are completely adorable off screen. They remind me of the theater kids from high school and college – loud, extroverted, mischievous, always performing, frequently outrageous, and so full of boisterous energy that your life begins to look colorless in comparison. And you wonder if perhaps you missed a turn somewhere, because everyone seems to be having heaps of fun, and wouldn't it be lovely to have an invite?
And you would not believe how these fictional gay romances obsess fans. Well, maybe you do. Here I am, obviously. But the fangirls pursue the topic with a tenacity that boggles the mind. I guess since men have been fantasizing about girl on girl action (not neglected on Torchwood, either) for years, the ladies have jumped at the chance to even the score. Surely those who play straight lovers on TV are not constantly plied with requests that they kiss off screen the way John Barrowman and Gareth David Lloyd are. Not that they aren’t happy to oblige. Not that they seem to mind delivering as much raucus innuendo as any squealing fangirl could possible desire. They aren’t very shy. They flirt and joke and insinuate and generally egg each other on. It’s grand to watch.
My explanation for this somewhat odd, delirious attention is that the media prohibition against depicting gayness fell like the Berlin Wall and now everyone is giddily walking streets that were formerly off limits.
I know I’ve mentioned this before (but don't think that will stop me from saying it again - you might as well have another cup of coffee), but it still floors me that shows like this exist. In my childhood – 30 plus years ago – two men kissing on screen was more unlikely than the end of the Cold War. And then, suddenly, it seemed that film after film was romping around in forbidden territory– Brideshead Revisited, Another Country, Parting Glances, Maurice, My Beautiful Laundrette. At my college students flipped their orientations like coins, and pretty much without embarrassment, brandishing pink triangles and rainbow banners. I have witnessed, in my lifetime, an amazing transformation. Would any actor from my childhood have been as unabashedly open about his sexuality as John Barrowman? Would a straight actor like Gareth David Lloyd have been so blithely unconcerned about his reputation or so completely comfortable with his role? I know it’s an incomplete transformation. People are still victimized because of sexual orientation. There’s still enormous resistance (which I cannot and never will understand) to gay marriage. Some are utterly disgusted (which I also cannot fathom). Others think it's unbiblical (oh give me a break and stop picking out the same damn verses from Leviticus and Paul's letters). But, I can’t help but survey the scene and say, “Wow.”
I’m making it sound as if Torchwood is devoted solely to the sexual shenanigans of its characters, which it isn’t. It’s just the part that most interests me! I never claimed to be deep, or particularly refined. I mean, look again at that photo. Strawberries and whipped cream, and maybe not chardonnay but champagne. So, the storylines may be a bit lame at times, and the special effects not always effective. John Barrowman may let his theatrical background leak through a bit too much and hog the attention. But, you know what, I’m happy to be walking around Berlin.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Have We Eyes to See?
I’m working on a couple of things that may or may not go somewhere. Meanwhile, I find that this song captures my mood. That’s the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra playing with the band – gorgeous:
As I drive through the green corridors and see the clouds building castles above, the life behind me drifts, the patterns shifting and reforming, and for a moment it is a clear river rushing by, complete in its never-ending movement. And my soul feels the shock of cold water, fear, loss and love, and death very close. My mother, returned to the earth in the town where she grew up. New York City, mutilated. My friend, who went to the edge and jumped – where are your words, dear girl, the ones you could not stay to write? My daughters, weaving through the future, one harboring a defect that may someday steal her breath. My husband, my balance, my equilibrium, the one who pulls me from the cold water and holds me.
This, this is my sole encounter with the divine – a ragged, painful, transcendent moment in which I see how beauty is paid for.
I walk upon high / and I step to the edge / to see my world below
As I drive through the green corridors and see the clouds building castles above, the life behind me drifts, the patterns shifting and reforming, and for a moment it is a clear river rushing by, complete in its never-ending movement. And my soul feels the shock of cold water, fear, loss and love, and death very close. My mother, returned to the earth in the town where she grew up. New York City, mutilated. My friend, who went to the edge and jumped – where are your words, dear girl, the ones you could not stay to write? My daughters, weaving through the future, one harboring a defect that may someday steal her breath. My husband, my balance, my equilibrium, the one who pulls me from the cold water and holds me.
This, this is my sole encounter with the divine – a ragged, painful, transcendent moment in which I see how beauty is paid for.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Into the Wild
This song has been much on my mind lately. For one thing, it seems very appropriate to atmospheric conditions where I live. But it's also haunting. I thought so even before I found out that it was on the soundtrack to Into the Wild.
I haven't seen this movie yet, or read the book by Jon Krakauer, but the movie is in my NetFlix queue.
If you don't know the movie, it's about Chris McCandless, a young man who turns his back on this family and comfortable life and goes wandering off across country and eventually into the Alaskan wilderness, where the adventure goes awry and he ends up dying alone in an old bus.
Chris McCandless was at Emory when I was there. He graduated in 1990, I in 1988. I don't think I ever met him. I seriously doubt that he would have been in any crowd I hung around. I had (and have) very little patience with people who are wilderness junkies, endangering their lives climbing up mountains and going off on survivalist jaunts. I admire people who risk their lives for a cause - religious freedom, helping the oppressed. Adventurers - not so much. I read Krakauer's book about climbing Mt. Everest, and I thought everyone in it was nuts to risk death climbing a mountain for no reason other than because it ss there and has become some sort of icon for - what? Hell, I don't know why people want to climb above a height where they can breathe, particularly if we already know what is there. I suppose it is part of questioning your place in this world, wondering, isn't there something more, isn't there something beyond buy, selling and settling?
But this guy wandered off into the wilderness with no map and no compass and died because he didn't know there was a way to escape a mere 4 miles away, which he would have known if he had made any preparations whatsoever. I don't understand why anyone would romanticize that. But I want to see the movie because his was an unusual life, a misguided life, hubris followed by tragedy.
I haven't seen this movie yet, or read the book by Jon Krakauer, but the movie is in my NetFlix queue.
If you don't know the movie, it's about Chris McCandless, a young man who turns his back on this family and comfortable life and goes wandering off across country and eventually into the Alaskan wilderness, where the adventure goes awry and he ends up dying alone in an old bus.
Chris McCandless was at Emory when I was there. He graduated in 1990, I in 1988. I don't think I ever met him. I seriously doubt that he would have been in any crowd I hung around. I had (and have) very little patience with people who are wilderness junkies, endangering their lives climbing up mountains and going off on survivalist jaunts. I admire people who risk their lives for a cause - religious freedom, helping the oppressed. Adventurers - not so much. I read Krakauer's book about climbing Mt. Everest, and I thought everyone in it was nuts to risk death climbing a mountain for no reason other than because it ss there and has become some sort of icon for - what? Hell, I don't know why people want to climb above a height where they can breathe, particularly if we already know what is there. I suppose it is part of questioning your place in this world, wondering, isn't there something more, isn't there something beyond buy, selling and settling?
But this guy wandered off into the wilderness with no map and no compass and died because he didn't know there was a way to escape a mere 4 miles away, which he would have known if he had made any preparations whatsoever. I don't understand why anyone would romanticize that. But I want to see the movie because his was an unusual life, a misguided life, hubris followed by tragedy.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Why Count When You Can Dream?
Make every moment count. How I hate that exhortation. Like watching sand in an hour glass fall grain by grain. Each grain falls and then it’s too late, the next is upon it. Another dead moment, uncounted. How many moments in a day? Each one is a thumbtack pinning me to immobility.
What does it mean? Should I give my undivided attention to each activity? I’m no Brother Lawrence. I don’t want my thoughts imprisoned in a broom. My attention wants to soar and meander and thread its way in and out of today. If it isn’t attention, then what is it? I am writing this rather than doing something else, something I should be doing. But this thought I am riding may never come again. And yet my attention is unfocused, my eyes do not settle. They are wandering a landscape that doesn’t exist. How futile. How lax. How very un-American.
What should I be doing? Work – well, yes, the spoiler of all joy, what we do to make a living, eight hours of bondage to the One Thing. Reading scripture? Praying? Improving my mind? Plotting out each hour of my day, subdividing it into little parcels of land to be tilled? Living out the dreary Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? Because every moment is so bloody important I have to grab it, shake it, subdue it, suck the marrow out of it, discard it and move to the next. Well, I don’t want to be highly effective, like a disinfectant, like a marketing campaign.
Ambition was never my strong suit. I have never been able to settle on goals. The fear of amounting to nothing is always at war with the desire to embrace nothing, to be invisible and unconscious. The experts say if you fail to plan you plan to fail, so perhaps I will have a magnificent failure. Or not so magnificent, a small inconsequential failure. By everything holy in the world I have failed in every way. By commerce, by artistry, by faith, by consistency, by fame, by fortune, by function. I have never broken a moment and forced it to do my bidding. They are roaming free in the meadow, munching grass.
My thoughts set sail in a gentle breeze. They are lying on deck, purring in the sun. Let the day flow like a river, and perhaps I will have the courage to jump in.
What does it mean? Should I give my undivided attention to each activity? I’m no Brother Lawrence. I don’t want my thoughts imprisoned in a broom. My attention wants to soar and meander and thread its way in and out of today. If it isn’t attention, then what is it? I am writing this rather than doing something else, something I should be doing. But this thought I am riding may never come again. And yet my attention is unfocused, my eyes do not settle. They are wandering a landscape that doesn’t exist. How futile. How lax. How very un-American.
What should I be doing? Work – well, yes, the spoiler of all joy, what we do to make a living, eight hours of bondage to the One Thing. Reading scripture? Praying? Improving my mind? Plotting out each hour of my day, subdividing it into little parcels of land to be tilled? Living out the dreary Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? Because every moment is so bloody important I have to grab it, shake it, subdue it, suck the marrow out of it, discard it and move to the next. Well, I don’t want to be highly effective, like a disinfectant, like a marketing campaign.
Ambition was never my strong suit. I have never been able to settle on goals. The fear of amounting to nothing is always at war with the desire to embrace nothing, to be invisible and unconscious. The experts say if you fail to plan you plan to fail, so perhaps I will have a magnificent failure. Or not so magnificent, a small inconsequential failure. By everything holy in the world I have failed in every way. By commerce, by artistry, by faith, by consistency, by fame, by fortune, by function. I have never broken a moment and forced it to do my bidding. They are roaming free in the meadow, munching grass.
My thoughts set sail in a gentle breeze. They are lying on deck, purring in the sun. Let the day flow like a river, and perhaps I will have the courage to jump in.
Monday, July 06, 2009
La Jolla on Someone Else's Budget
There's nothing like a week at a beach resort to make me wish I had rethought that English major. Not really. I'm happy with my life (don't faint) and am not usually envious of the wealthy. But sometimes I get to experience a life not my own, thanks to those who chose a practical route to financial success while I was writing poetry. We went to La Jolla courtesy of Dear Husband's parents, and stayed in a very pleasant resort right on the beach.
What's not to like about doing not much of anything on a beach? I mean, besides the rather odd fishy smell, the dead stingrays that wash ashore and the giant mounds of sinister looking seaweed? I had the best time at a beach without actually going into the water. DramaQueen and Firecracker got to run around with their cousins, and I didn't have to worry that they would be kidnapped. I thought that only happened in movies or the 1950s. They had a chance to see their uncles and be fussed over. Firecracker was particularly excited to see her Pop-pop, and she followed him around when she wasn't following around her uncles Hip-hop 1 and Hip-hop 2, or the boy cousins. Hip-hop 1 has his own business in concert promotion, and he made DramaQueen's day by promising to get her Fergie's autograph. He made Firecracker's day be giving her a piggy back ride along the shore. You can see their different priorities.
I got a massage. DramQueen went out in a kayak and saw leopard sharks. Firecracker dug many holes in the sand and lapped up everyone's affection and attention. We had s'mores on the beach, and a bbq. We paid a small fortune to wait in lines at LegoLand. We met Dear Husband's Brother B's new girlfriend, who is beautiful and disgustingly athletic and has two lovely children who never whine or misbehave that I can tell, and who were both terribly sweet to the girls (here's hoping B and Beautiful Girlfriend get married). I restrained myself from asking FIL if by some chance he does the books for Misha Collins (I have to maintain some sort of dignity). On the fourth we went up to a family's room and watched fireworks over the beach. I had a lovely chat with Cousin Oncologist about the book he and his wife are writing. I had two very excellent mojitos and some unusually lucious strawberries.
Now we're back, and reality is a knockin' on the door.
What's not to like about doing not much of anything on a beach? I mean, besides the rather odd fishy smell, the dead stingrays that wash ashore and the giant mounds of sinister looking seaweed? I had the best time at a beach without actually going into the water. DramaQueen and Firecracker got to run around with their cousins, and I didn't have to worry that they would be kidnapped. I thought that only happened in movies or the 1950s. They had a chance to see their uncles and be fussed over. Firecracker was particularly excited to see her Pop-pop, and she followed him around when she wasn't following around her uncles Hip-hop 1 and Hip-hop 2, or the boy cousins. Hip-hop 1 has his own business in concert promotion, and he made DramaQueen's day by promising to get her Fergie's autograph. He made Firecracker's day be giving her a piggy back ride along the shore. You can see their different priorities.
I got a massage. DramQueen went out in a kayak and saw leopard sharks. Firecracker dug many holes in the sand and lapped up everyone's affection and attention. We had s'mores on the beach, and a bbq. We paid a small fortune to wait in lines at LegoLand. We met Dear Husband's Brother B's new girlfriend, who is beautiful and disgustingly athletic and has two lovely children who never whine or misbehave that I can tell, and who were both terribly sweet to the girls (here's hoping B and Beautiful Girlfriend get married). I restrained myself from asking FIL if by some chance he does the books for Misha Collins (I have to maintain some sort of dignity). On the fourth we went up to a family's room and watched fireworks over the beach. I had a lovely chat with Cousin Oncologist about the book he and his wife are writing. I had two very excellent mojitos and some unusually lucious strawberries.
Now we're back, and reality is a knockin' on the door.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Auld Lang Syne
(Uh, if the real "Cas" is reading this, it is a complete revision of events to suit my caustic personality.)
Why am I here? This was not my idea. I know it sounds great – New Year’s Eve in Edinburgh – an iconic experience. I mean, didn’t the Scots invent this? Auld Lang Syne and such? I don’t even know where we are, the house of someone in the enormous network of people Cas knows. I’m gonna be trapped here, I can tell. Cas doesn’t mind, of course. She’s in her element. She loves everyone and she’s never met a drink she didn’t like. I hate trying to mingle. I hate searching desperately for something to talk about. I can’t remember faces. Hi, I’m going to forget your name almost immediately. I’m going to stand here and look pathetic and miserable while Cas spreads her charm about. Pretend I don’t even exist.
There are bottles of booze everywhere. Of course. It’s Scotland. Everyone drinks all the time. The Highlands are afloat. I feel a little light-headed. What am I drinking, anyway? I really don’t feel good. In fact, I feel...terrible cramping pain. Great. I’m in a stranger’s house in a foreign country on New Year’s Eve and now this. I dig ibuprofen out of my purse, which I’m not letting go of, in case someone steals it. That’s the sort of thing Cas never worries about. She’d just laugh it off, always a good sport, always up for a laugh. You’d think she wasn’t afraid of anything. Where is she, anyway? This always annoys me, how I’m left to follow in her wake. She’s already flirting with some guy, completely at ease. Why does she always do that? Why does she always, always lead them on? Can’t she tell what she’s doing? Then we’re stuck with yet another misguided idiot. She never wants to hurt anyone’s feelings. She wants everyone to like her.
Someone is playing The Thompson Twins way too loud. Oh, isn’t that just too appropriate – lies lies lies. I can barely hear what anyone says, which makes me feel like an idiot. This guy she’s talking to, his name is Eoin, and he’s an arrogant, smarmy prick. But Cas will talk with anyone, give anyone the benefit of a doubt. It’s a nightmare, the people we end up hanging out with, like that biker who drank until he pissed himself. Or that idiotic nurse who thought you could catch AIDs from a bowling ball. Cas never calls anyone on their shit. She never judges. Which means she knows a lot of assholes.
Damn. Maybe ibuprofen and alcohol wasn’t a good idea. I’m sitting on the floor trying to make conversation with a thin wisp of a man from Yugoslavia or some such place. While we talk he slowly lists to the side until he’s lying on the floor, which ends the conversation, such as it was, given that I didn’t understand anything he said.
But hey, I made an effort.
I do not feel well. My stomach is on fire. I need to lie down somewhere. Cas, I need a little help here, if you can tear yourself away. If you can be bothered. The coat room? Fine, if that’s all that’s available. Whatever. I don’t care. Go have fun. Go collect people.
There’s a bed. It’s quiet. It’s dark. I’m alone. Mostly. Okay, no problem, throw your coat on me. I’m furniture. I don’t care. I’m drifting, drifting ever so softly into sleep, my stomach slowly unclenching. And then I hear scuffling. And whispers. And more scuffling..
Oh no, you have got to be kidding. Eoin has dragged some girl up here to make out, and he bloody well knows I’m here, the bastard, because he’s smirking at me, waiting to see how I’ll react. He thinks this is just hilarious.
Well fuck you, Eoin. Fuck you Cas, for dragging me here and leaving me to fend for myself. What kind of friend are you? We’re supposed to be friends, right? That’s how you introduce me. This is my friend… Do you have any idea how angry that makes me? Of course not. You’re a master of deflection. It’s even rubbing off on me.
What did I think I would gain by storming out of the house? There’s nowhere to storm too. It’s just darkness and Scotland out here. Oh, gee, you showed up. Well, yeah, I’m pissed off because I don’t feel well and there’s some sleazy guy screwing his girlfriend in the only place I can rest. And I’m just tired. I’m tired. I’m tired of biting my tongue ten times a day, watching every move I make. Be careful with your parents. Be careful with your friends. How long are you going to go on like this? What do you think they’re going to do? Why do you fucking care? Why do I have to care?
Okay, I’m calming down. We’ll go back inside. I’m just your crazy American friend having a temper tantrum on the front lawn. Everyone looks too delirious to notice anyway. No one’s thrown up, I see. One guy seems to be hanging himself. That can’t be right. The Yugoslavian is still lying on the floor. The loathsome Eoin has disappeared somewhere. Cas suggests I lock myself in. No one needs their coats anyway. Everyone’s too drunk to leave.
Sometimes I’m glad to be rid of her. Right now, at least.
A bell. A bell is ringing somewhere, somewhere outside of sleep, and something is rattling. Then a sudden roar of people singing, blowing horns and shouting, and the door flies open and Eoin throws himself on top of me and locks me in a drunken kiss. Then he passes out, for which I’m grateful, and I have to crawl out from under him.
This pretty much sucks. Cas, where are you? What have you been doing? Why does everyone else get your attention?
Oh, there you are. Here’s a toast to the New Year, with cheap champagne and no resolutions.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Meander
(flawnt suggested I write something about obsession, so I gave it a try)
Things are a little out of hand. Information fills room after room after room. I have no bloody idea where I am. I have your photo, but the navigational coordinates are difficult to interpret. Where the hell are you, anyway? I don’t like mazes – too much like that Greek myth. Gee, you have remarkable eyes. I’m always struck by them. I’ve been known to hold my breath – it seems wrong to exhale. And you smile as if the world makes you happy. I’ve always liked that about you, how approachable you are, how unassuming. It’s adorable. Everyone says so. You don’t answer emails, though, and that’s a bit disappointing, a tiny imperfection. Did you know that every Persian carpet includes a flaw so as not to offend God? Did you know that you can track an IP address from an email? Of course, what do you do with an IP address? You have to be the CIA to take it farther. Do you think that artists have a divine calling? Do you think you have a divine calling? What would you call it, then? I think you are too modest, but it’s a charming quality. No wonder you’re so popular. Did you know that your entire life opens and unfolds like a map on the World Wide Web? Information fills room after room after room. Did I say that before? Your hair looks much better short, by the way. Long doesn’t suit you. You should always keep that in mind. I’ve been meaning to ask – how do you decide where to break a line of poetry? By syntax? Logic? Breath? Rhythm? Or is it purely by the way the text looks on the page? That always puzzles me, where to break. The lines just want to keep going and going and turn the corner and keep going... Sometimes the words get loose altogether and it’s a nightmare trying to impose order. It’s brutal, what that does to me. I’m not like everyone else, you see. I’m complicated. Whimsy has its place, but can’t you ever be serious? You really should be serious. This is a serious matter.
I know where you live.
Things are a little out of hand. Information fills room after room after room. I have no bloody idea where I am. I have your photo, but the navigational coordinates are difficult to interpret. Where the hell are you, anyway? I don’t like mazes – too much like that Greek myth. Gee, you have remarkable eyes. I’m always struck by them. I’ve been known to hold my breath – it seems wrong to exhale. And you smile as if the world makes you happy. I’ve always liked that about you, how approachable you are, how unassuming. It’s adorable. Everyone says so. You don’t answer emails, though, and that’s a bit disappointing, a tiny imperfection. Did you know that every Persian carpet includes a flaw so as not to offend God? Did you know that you can track an IP address from an email? Of course, what do you do with an IP address? You have to be the CIA to take it farther. Do you think that artists have a divine calling? Do you think you have a divine calling? What would you call it, then? I think you are too modest, but it’s a charming quality. No wonder you’re so popular. Did you know that your entire life opens and unfolds like a map on the World Wide Web? Information fills room after room after room. Did I say that before? Your hair looks much better short, by the way. Long doesn’t suit you. You should always keep that in mind. I’ve been meaning to ask – how do you decide where to break a line of poetry? By syntax? Logic? Breath? Rhythm? Or is it purely by the way the text looks on the page? That always puzzles me, where to break. The lines just want to keep going and going and turn the corner and keep going... Sometimes the words get loose altogether and it’s a nightmare trying to impose order. It’s brutal, what that does to me. I’m not like everyone else, you see. I’m complicated. Whimsy has its place, but can’t you ever be serious? You really should be serious. This is a serious matter.
I know where you live.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Circling the Block
(way back in the day when I actually wrote, I took a class in poetic forms. this was one of my exercises, an attempt at a rondel)
Circling the Block
All the doors are closed
and I cannot bring myself to knock.
I’ve spent years circling the same block,
but what can I propose
to you? My lot is self-imposed
restraint. How can you unlock
the doors you’ve closed
when I cannot bring myself to knock.
Waiting in the street’s frozen
smile, my inane greetings mock
my loneliness. My life is blocked
with a need to always seem composed.
All the doors are closed
and I cannot bring myself to knock.
Circling the Block
All the doors are closed
and I cannot bring myself to knock.
I’ve spent years circling the same block,
but what can I propose
to you? My lot is self-imposed
restraint. How can you unlock
the doors you’ve closed
when I cannot bring myself to knock.
Waiting in the street’s frozen
smile, my inane greetings mock
my loneliness. My life is blocked
with a need to always seem composed.
All the doors are closed
and I cannot bring myself to knock.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Video killed the radio star but it's a slow, slow death
I’ve come to realize lately that my musical landscape has become increasingly flat and barren. At some point I just gave up trying to be alternative. Little Miss DramaQueen has to have music on in the car, so I listen to a lot of radio, and boy is it ever dreary. And repetitious. I think there are perhaps 12 songs in rotation at the moment. But, amidst the merely banal are the songs that really annoy the crap out of me, songs that haunt the radio stations and my brain for months and years on end.
This is just my opinion, of couse. I don't even pretend to be objective or to have some actual knowledge of musical worth. But, in my universe, these are the current songs that have all the appeal of banging my head with a heavy rock:
1. Love Story by Taylor Swift. Romeo and Juliet? Are you kidding? Oh, and throw in a brief mention of the Scarlet Letter. Stupid lyrics, stupid sentiment, really annoying, sugar-sweet vocals (and more highly processed than Kraft singles). Squeak squeak squeak.
2. Poker Face by Lady GaGa. How long before this song dies a welcome and overdue death? When Just Dance came out I thought it was catchy and fun - something I would hear in gay clubs across the nation. Now I feel like I’ve been played.
3. Your Body is a Wonderland by John Mayer. Gawd, don’t even get me started. "Bubblegum tongue”? Is that supposed to be cute? whimsical? It sure isn’t sexy. I’ll take Nine Inch Nails' Closer any time over this oh-so-sensitive celebration of the feminine. That NIN video is the uncensored one, btw. I know Closer is old enough to be a classic by now and was pretty much played to death, but it may still be unfamiliar to some of you. Somehow I missed seeing this rather remarkable video (part of the MOMA permanent collection, no less). But a warning for anyone who doesn't know the song, if the eff word plus the phrase "like an animal" upsets you, please move along to the next exhibit. I'll wait for the rest of you to take a peek. What, back so soon? Yes, it is a bit disturbing; I never thought of animal carcasses in that context, either. Or eels.
4. Come on Get Higher by Matt Nathenson. Suffers from the same “I’m a sensitive guy” syndrome as Your Body is a Wonderland. Take, for example, the lyrics "faith and desire and the swing of your hips." Isn't that just sooooo sweet and non-agressive? Awww.
5. Birthday Sex by Jerimih. There is nothing so icky as slow hip-hop/R&B. It’s like being felt up by a stranger on the subway. You feel like you need to bathe. I could also include some songs by the completely weird Lil Wayne. Listening to him is like being slobbered over by a hiccupping lech.
6. 1234 by the Plain White Ts. Irritatingly catchy. Really catchy, and for that reason really irritating. Just so damn cute. I’ll listen to the original Beatles, thank you very much.
7. Give You Hell by All American Rejects. Frat boys of the world unite in an anthem to your idiotic delusions of self-importance. Believe me, that girl wakes up every morning grateful that she isn’t stuck with you. She’s moved on, sweetie. So should you.
8. My Life Would Suck Without You by Kelly Clarkson. When she starts belting out that chorus, I want to shred paper with my teeth.
***************************************************************************************
But just to show you that I’m not a bitter old curmudgeon too stuck up to like popular music, I will admit rather sheepishly that my current favorite song is Halo by Beyonce. Love. This. Song. I know, I can't seem to give up my angel obsession. You'll just have to suffer through it or not look. I offer you links to two Halo videos, the official Beyonce one, and this amusing homoerotic version. At least it's amusing to me. Even if it is something of an insider's joke, you can still enjoy looking at the pretty boys - you don't have anything against pretty boys, I hope. HoYay!
Now, which link did you click?
I can tell if you're lying.
This is just my opinion, of couse. I don't even pretend to be objective or to have some actual knowledge of musical worth. But, in my universe, these are the current songs that have all the appeal of banging my head with a heavy rock:
1. Love Story by Taylor Swift. Romeo and Juliet? Are you kidding? Oh, and throw in a brief mention of the Scarlet Letter. Stupid lyrics, stupid sentiment, really annoying, sugar-sweet vocals (and more highly processed than Kraft singles). Squeak squeak squeak.
2. Poker Face by Lady GaGa. How long before this song dies a welcome and overdue death? When Just Dance came out I thought it was catchy and fun - something I would hear in gay clubs across the nation. Now I feel like I’ve been played.
3. Your Body is a Wonderland by John Mayer. Gawd, don’t even get me started. "Bubblegum tongue”? Is that supposed to be cute? whimsical? It sure isn’t sexy. I’ll take Nine Inch Nails' Closer any time over this oh-so-sensitive celebration of the feminine. That NIN video is the uncensored one, btw. I know Closer is old enough to be a classic by now and was pretty much played to death, but it may still be unfamiliar to some of you. Somehow I missed seeing this rather remarkable video (part of the MOMA permanent collection, no less). But a warning for anyone who doesn't know the song, if the eff word plus the phrase "like an animal" upsets you, please move along to the next exhibit. I'll wait for the rest of you to take a peek. What, back so soon? Yes, it is a bit disturbing; I never thought of animal carcasses in that context, either. Or eels.
4. Come on Get Higher by Matt Nathenson. Suffers from the same “I’m a sensitive guy” syndrome as Your Body is a Wonderland. Take, for example, the lyrics "faith and desire and the swing of your hips." Isn't that just sooooo sweet and non-agressive? Awww.
5. Birthday Sex by Jerimih. There is nothing so icky as slow hip-hop/R&B. It’s like being felt up by a stranger on the subway. You feel like you need to bathe. I could also include some songs by the completely weird Lil Wayne. Listening to him is like being slobbered over by a hiccupping lech.
6. 1234 by the Plain White Ts. Irritatingly catchy. Really catchy, and for that reason really irritating. Just so damn cute. I’ll listen to the original Beatles, thank you very much.
7. Give You Hell by All American Rejects. Frat boys of the world unite in an anthem to your idiotic delusions of self-importance. Believe me, that girl wakes up every morning grateful that she isn’t stuck with you. She’s moved on, sweetie. So should you.
8. My Life Would Suck Without You by Kelly Clarkson. When she starts belting out that chorus, I want to shred paper with my teeth.
***************************************************************************************
But just to show you that I’m not a bitter old curmudgeon too stuck up to like popular music, I will admit rather sheepishly that my current favorite song is Halo by Beyonce. Love. This. Song. I know, I can't seem to give up my angel obsession. You'll just have to suffer through it or not look. I offer you links to two Halo videos, the official Beyonce one, and this amusing homoerotic version. At least it's amusing to me. Even if it is something of an insider's joke, you can still enjoy looking at the pretty boys - you don't have anything against pretty boys, I hope. HoYay!
Now, which link did you click?
I can tell if you're lying.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Death in the Air
Many of you have probably heard or read about the pilot who died in-flight. The story is here. The plane landed safely, and doctors think he died of a heart attack.
As I was reading I came across a sentence that broke me. The journalist included a statement from his wife, who was of course distraught: “The family lived in Texas, Ms. Lenell said. She said that her husband had called her from Brussels just the day before and told her that he was bringing her home some chocolate.” I found myself weeping. When death comes, those simple little gestures become so poignant. They are arrested mid-air, still filled with the expectation that life will be here tomorrow.
As I was reading I came across a sentence that broke me. The journalist included a statement from his wife, who was of course distraught: “The family lived in Texas, Ms. Lenell said. She said that her husband had called her from Brussels just the day before and told her that he was bringing her home some chocolate.” I found myself weeping. When death comes, those simple little gestures become so poignant. They are arrested mid-air, still filled with the expectation that life will be here tomorrow.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Creative Midwifery
I mentioned a post or so back that I dreamed I was pregnant. By coincidence, a friend of mine also dreamed he was pregnant, and that I was his midwife. A kind of bitchy midwife, actually, who kept suggesting he get rid of “it” or at least not get his hopes up too much. I looked like I did in college, meaning dyed black hair, pierced nose, salvation army clothes – exactly what you look for in a midwife.
It’s not often you get to play someone else’s Superego, for I’m sure that’s what I was – the great squelcher. I’ve got enough Superego for two, so it’s no surprise the overflow migrated into my friends psyche. My friend has an overabundance of id (S., you know it’s true), so I may have a salutary effect.
Dear S is very creative, and like many creative people, he is in Hollywood getting paid very little. He was approached to write a screen play that was, let us say, very different from any he has ever attempted. As if, for example, instead of Gods and Monsters you got to write American Pie. I would like to see it produced no matter what, but he has many screen plays that should have gone before, ones that would be a true expression of his vision. Perhaps that is why I am the voice telling him to abort, even at the last minute. For whatever reason, I am the person his mind chose to be the scold.
And, really, I suppose that I am a bit like that. I have been dismayed at some of the decisions he has made, and I often wish I could eradicate some of his more dissipated habits. They make for entertaining stories, but I don’t think he needs to be quite so Arthur Rimbaud-ish about it.
S and I were friends in college. We worked together on the literary magazine. We spent a lot of time talking about books and a lot of time in nightclubs in less than our right minds. He wrote plays and poetry. I thought he was the most talented person I knew, always self-confident and very ambitious, with dozens of friends and a boatload of charm.
S. and I both adore the book Brideshead Revisited. He even has a cat named Aloysius. Sometimes I feel that I am Charles Ryder to his Sebastian Flyte. I’m the disillusioned, misguided and rather dull artist who never lives up to his talent, and he is the charming, dazzling, self-destructive libertine. I doubt he would ever end up in a monastery, though, and really, there is a core of pure steel in him. Somehow he breezes through incidents that would have killed me and then serves them up with wit and style.
So, S., I’m not quite sure what you’ve given birth to, or if it will live and thrive. Just keep writing. And a little less Jaegermeister, please. It’s bad for the baby.
It’s not often you get to play someone else’s Superego, for I’m sure that’s what I was – the great squelcher. I’ve got enough Superego for two, so it’s no surprise the overflow migrated into my friends psyche. My friend has an overabundance of id (S., you know it’s true), so I may have a salutary effect.
Dear S is very creative, and like many creative people, he is in Hollywood getting paid very little. He was approached to write a screen play that was, let us say, very different from any he has ever attempted. As if, for example, instead of Gods and Monsters you got to write American Pie. I would like to see it produced no matter what, but he has many screen plays that should have gone before, ones that would be a true expression of his vision. Perhaps that is why I am the voice telling him to abort, even at the last minute. For whatever reason, I am the person his mind chose to be the scold.
And, really, I suppose that I am a bit like that. I have been dismayed at some of the decisions he has made, and I often wish I could eradicate some of his more dissipated habits. They make for entertaining stories, but I don’t think he needs to be quite so Arthur Rimbaud-ish about it.
S and I were friends in college. We worked together on the literary magazine. We spent a lot of time talking about books and a lot of time in nightclubs in less than our right minds. He wrote plays and poetry. I thought he was the most talented person I knew, always self-confident and very ambitious, with dozens of friends and a boatload of charm.
S. and I both adore the book Brideshead Revisited. He even has a cat named Aloysius. Sometimes I feel that I am Charles Ryder to his Sebastian Flyte. I’m the disillusioned, misguided and rather dull artist who never lives up to his talent, and he is the charming, dazzling, self-destructive libertine. I doubt he would ever end up in a monastery, though, and really, there is a core of pure steel in him. Somehow he breezes through incidents that would have killed me and then serves them up with wit and style.
So, S., I’m not quite sure what you’ve given birth to, or if it will live and thrive. Just keep writing. And a little less Jaegermeister, please. It’s bad for the baby.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Sacrifice
The heavens wheel around the point of a knife,
a silver star ordering my life
and re-ordering my past.
I think it may always have been there.
He’s in one of his moods again,
old eyes cataracted with visions,
head tilted to listen.
I listen too,
listen close but hear nothing,
not even my own breathing,
not even my own heart.
He hears. He sways above me
and the world disappears.
He has the eyes of a fly,
in them I’m multiplied,
a brood of children who won’t cry NOT FAIR
when they’re roasted up like a holiday dinner.
Somehow I think this is my fault,
that my hands are bound
while his hands are free, holding the knife.
a silver star ordering my life
and re-ordering my past.
I think it may always have been there.
He’s in one of his moods again,
old eyes cataracted with visions,
head tilted to listen.
I listen too,
listen close but hear nothing,
not even my own breathing,
not even my own heart.
He hears. He sways above me
and the world disappears.
He has the eyes of a fly,
in them I’m multiplied,
a brood of children who won’t cry NOT FAIR
when they’re roasted up like a holiday dinner.
Somehow I think this is my fault,
that my hands are bound
while his hands are free, holding the knife.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Real Life Isn't Working for Me
I am so bored. My soul is rattling the cage doors. It wouldn’t know what to do if I freed it. I don’t think it remembers how to fly. I’m caught between wanting to stay in bed forever and wanting to run away. The iggly bits of daily routine seem irritating beyond belief. I am not pleasant.
Last night I dreamed I was pregnant. How clichéd is that? It’s like having your subconscious hand you self-extracting Jungian software. I hope I don’t have to wait nine months to find out what I’m incubating.
Last night I dreamed I was pregnant. How clichéd is that? It’s like having your subconscious hand you self-extracting Jungian software. I hope I don’t have to wait nine months to find out what I’m incubating.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Lighthearted, sort of
Well, I may not have written a lot of jubilant poetry, but I did find one dating from a brief span of time when I was young, naive and deliriously happy somewhere in England.
Landscape
We climbed the spiraling
stairs to the castle tower.
There was a landscape I could not see;
it slid past my eyes like a scarf.
I would not look up
because it was like walking into the sky,
as if I had no body.
I would not look down
because it was like wanting to jump.
She has fallen
into a rumpled sleep
on the cathedral grounds.
The heat is stunning;
blue bottles and bumble bees
stumble above her head.
She is wearing a dress
that dips in the back.
The sun stings there, along her shoulders
and behind her knees.
The cathedral bells are ringing
as if they had always been ringing.
Landscape
We climbed the spiraling
stairs to the castle tower.
There was a landscape I could not see;
it slid past my eyes like a scarf.
I would not look up
because it was like walking into the sky,
as if I had no body.
I would not look down
because it was like wanting to jump.
She told me
when she was a little girl
in search of forbidden sweets
she climbed the pantry shelves like a ladder
and tipped a jar of honey over her head.
She has fallen
into a rumpled sleep
on the cathedral grounds.
The heat is stunning;
blue bottles and bumble bees
stumble above her head.
She is wearing a dress
that dips in the back.
The sun stings there, along her shoulders
and behind her knees.
The cathedral bells are ringing
as if they had always been ringing.
Hiding
Under the bed I could see
into the boxsprings.
It spooked me, so I usually lay face down.
Frail slats of wood over ghost fabric,
the insides so painfully exposed,
tensed metal coils suspended over me.
I waited there for my father to come home,
to settle his rump in the living room sofa,
open his paper, turn on the TV.
Then he was as good as not there.
It was his arrival that startled me.
When the tires hit the gravel
I bolted like a criminal, a thief,
gathering myself up: toys, books,
whatever might recall me, buoy him too long
before he sank in his chair,
the jovial questions trailing his mouth
while he was already unfolding his paper,
reading the headlines,
almost not there, but holding.
into the boxsprings.
It spooked me, so I usually lay face down.
Frail slats of wood over ghost fabric,
the insides so painfully exposed,
tensed metal coils suspended over me.
I waited there for my father to come home,
to settle his rump in the living room sofa,
open his paper, turn on the TV.
Then he was as good as not there.
It was his arrival that startled me.
When the tires hit the gravel
I bolted like a criminal, a thief,
gathering myself up: toys, books,
whatever might recall me, buoy him too long
before he sank in his chair,
the jovial questions trailing his mouth
while he was already unfolding his paper,
reading the headlines,
almost not there, but holding.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Fever
….Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.
~ Sylvia Plath, from "Black Rook in Rainy Weather"
I really do get sick of my childhood. It’s a parasite I can’t seem to get rid of. It always comes back to bite me. It’s like malaria. Now and then it acts up and I run a fever. And then I begin speaking all my disordered thoughts. I need a cool cloth and quinine.
By now, I can list all the things that went wrong. I can grasp it intellectually. I suppose that is where poetry came in. I could grasp it with my heart. I could hold it and shape it; I could burn and not be destroyed.
It is difficult to accept how ugly love can get, if it can be called love, but god knows I would rather it were some kind of love than no love at all. As long as they loved me and wouldn’t leave me, I could endure. Not that I had much choice.
I was a pawn in a war my parents fought, and I had to exchange my allegiance for protection or be left to fend for myself. And it all took place on an invisible battlefield. In the visible world I was taken care of. I wasn’t neglected. I wasn’t beaten. I received affection. I was praised and fussed over.
But in this other world I was an object, a prize, a substitute companion, and for my mother, an extension of herself. There was no privacy. If I kept a diary, my mother would read it. She was always trying to get inside my mind. My body wasn’t particularly private, either. If there was a way to invade, she would find it. She usually slept with me. Not as in incest, but she slept with me because she didn’t want to sleep with my father, and because I was terrified of the dark. I had frightening images of hands appearing from under my bed. You know that scene of Freddie Kruger impaling that sleeping fellow through the mattress. That seemed to have leapt straight out of my own mind. It’s a telling image, I suppose. Hands. disembodied, waiting to grab me
Since I was on “her side” my father pretty much abandoned interest, except when he wanted affection, which I was not very enthusiastic about. I tried to avoid any physical contact with him. That seemed essential. I sometimes actually hid in the closet or under the bed. Not when I was very small – I still liked him then -- but when I was older.
So I didn’t trust them an inch, and yet I was completely dependent on them. I wanted to be loved, yet I wanted them at arm’s length. I hated them enough to sometimes worry that I might go into some sort of trance and murder them, then come round and realize that I had no one to take care of me. I was both hypervigilant and forgetful. I can’t be hypnotized, ever. I wont’ go under. But I could also induce forgetfulness. In the middle of whatever horrible crap was going on, I would tell myself that I would forget it, just forget it, it wasn’t really happening, and someday I would look back and it would be a blank. I think I lost my entire junior year of high school that way.
And, oh, the self-loathing. I was sure there was something crucial wrong with me, a fatal flaw that wasn’t fatal enough. I was guilty of something, and if I could figure out what and be punished for it, things might be better. There had to be something I could confess, some humiliation I could endure, some sort of self-immolation I could attempt to undue the crime. I was guilty of simply existing. I wasn’t supposed to exist. Of course I developed my own means of self-punishment, and God knows I sometimes still wish relief were as simple as a slash across my arm. Sometimes the thought of it is as alluring as a kiss.
It’s a miracle I’ve been able to have any normal relationships at all. It is amazing that I ever let a man touch me, when I thought of it as an invasion, violent in and of itself. Actually, it seems to have taken two marriages to come to terms with that. And I had children, which I once thought would be akin to incubating an alien life form so that it could rip you apart.
But, I suppose it isn’t odd that my view of God is lacking in the areas of mercy, love, protection, and, well, fill in the blank. It’s hard to believe in God’s love if you think you are a mistake, and how could I not be a mistake?. And how could God let me be born into this household and leave me at the mercy of two crazy people, to be violated in a variety of ways? Yes, yes, I know – God loves us and has a purpose for us. I give an intellectual assent to all the positive traits of God, but I don’t trust him an inch.
Friday, June 05, 2009
The Whistle
Dad and I walked the paths outside the forest.
Vegetation grew shoulder high,
knots of grass and blackberry.
Bees and dragonflies flew as though draping
a heavy brocade of honeysuckle.
Dad showed me how to pluck a blossom,
touch its base to my lips and pull the stamen.
I licked a vague sweetness from the flower.
The sun lolled in the sky as though it would never move,
a stubborn sun that seemed to trap the day.
Streamers of coolness reached from the forest
like extended arms.
We did not follow that path
but stopped by a stripling tree,
wild cherry, Dad said, cutting a slim branch
with his pocket-knife and paring the bark.
Near one end he notched the wood
and I could see it was hollow, still green, a little damp.
It smelled like a forest; I could taste it on my tongue.
It released one clear piercing note of alarm.
Vegetation grew shoulder high,
knots of grass and blackberry.
Bees and dragonflies flew as though draping
a heavy brocade of honeysuckle.
Dad showed me how to pluck a blossom,
touch its base to my lips and pull the stamen.
I licked a vague sweetness from the flower.
The sun lolled in the sky as though it would never move,
a stubborn sun that seemed to trap the day.
Streamers of coolness reached from the forest
like extended arms.
We did not follow that path
but stopped by a stripling tree,
wild cherry, Dad said, cutting a slim branch
with his pocket-knife and paring the bark.
Near one end he notched the wood
and I could see it was hollow, still green, a little damp.
It smelled like a forest; I could taste it on my tongue.
It released one clear piercing note of alarm.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
When Poets Dream of Angels
“When the poets dreamed of angels, what did they see?
History lined up in a flash at their back.”
~ David Sylvian
I do not have the kind of bipolar that you see in movies. I don’t run around like a mad person, talking a mile a minute and then become catatonic. I have brief highs and then slide into depression and ennui. The depression is more persistent and severe than the high.
My manic probably looks much like someone else’s normal, at least to the outside observer.
Internally, it’s a firestorm.
I become entirely focused on something, usually to the point of obsession, perhaps for a couple of weeks. Then I falter. The obsession starts to evaporate, and I keep trying to hold onto it, because once it’s gone, the landscape is gray and uninteresting pointless. I drag myself around the drab landscape for a while until something new and shiny attracts my attention. For a while it was learning to knit. Then I dropped that. When we moved it was decorating – I spent a lot of time poring over books and paint colors – and then I lost interest. Recently it was summer camp.
Last weekend I could think of little else but poetry. I ransacked the house until I found my old papers and journals and dragged them out. I reread and shuffled and sorted. I began transcribing my old poems onto my computer. I drove Dear Husband nuts because I barely moved. Poems I didn’t remember writing. The dissertation reviews. Wow, I thought, my 22 year old self is just a fascinating mess. I can’t believe I stopped writing, blah blah blah. I’ll type it all up. I’ll put it all out there. Why not? This is kinda exciting. This is great!
At the same time, I’ve developed a strange and rather embarrassing obsession with Misha Collins and the composite of faith, doubt, rebellion, and wordspinner that he’s come to represent. I know far more about him than I will give a crap about in a month. I follow him on Twitter, which is itself the perfect haven for the frantically distracted and obsessed. There is always something new, always a reason to check. Misha happens to be very clever and amusing, spinning whimsical stories, which you wouldn’t think possible in Twitter. He's charming and at ease (of course, he's an actor) and everyone thinks he's just adorable. He is gifted and I am jealous. He writes poetry, and it's good poetry. Damn. He's bright and cheerful and good natured. He has thousands of followers. He doesn’t interact, but Twitter creates the illusion of giving you access to someone’s thoughts in real time, access to their daily life, or in this case, access to their creative life.
I’ve begun to falter.
The utter ridiculousness of being enthralled by some actor is a daily affront to my common sense. I feel ridiculous. I feel idiotic. I feel every one of my 43 years admonishing me to get a grip and pay attention to real life, my children, my husband, my job. It's not as if I can sit down with Misha Collins and pick his brain about poetry and the creative process. He plays an angel, but he's not carrying a message from God to me.
And the poetry. It seems so long ago and in another country. Far away. An island. I think I wrote to get high. It’s like being high. It must release endorphins. Each poem was an obsession. Nothing else was real until the poem was real. The world didn’t make sense without it. When I wrote the world was a bit sharper and I was a bit more buoyant, a bit more purposeful.
And I lost it.
I mentioned in a previous post that I have some ideas about why I crashed into a major writer’s block. But I’m not really so sure. I can’t untangle all the factors. The collapse of a relationship, the start of a new one, changing my persona for the world of jobs and careers, the desire for normality and stability, a dominant boyfriend/husband, antidepressants.
And, a not uncommon experience for me, feeling like a fraud.
I wrote confessional poetry. Much of it was filled with bitterness about my childhood, which sounds so passé and clichéd. I’m sure it bores the hell out of a lot of people. When you write confessional poetry you can’t really hide behind a persona. You’ve dumped your life out for all to see. Your demons are prancing on the pages. Everyone’s walking around in your psyche.
Near the end of my time in the writing program, I was sitting in workshop one day going through the hell of having one of my poems critiqued, when it dawned on me that my fellow poets and my instructors were talking about my poem as if I had been physically and sexually abused. I was dumbfounded, taken aback. I didn’t say a thing. I wasn’t sure whether to protest or pretend. Good God, I thought, how did I manage to screw this up? I went back through my poems and squirmed with discomfort. So many violent images, so many with sexual undertones. Taken alone, not so much, but together, bewildering. I was baffled and kind of horrified.
I didn’t experience some sort of aha moment, a revelation of a long buried trauma. I was never sexually or physically abused. I have to assume that the combination of verbal assaults, mental illness, extreme repression and shame engendered my sometimes over-the-top images. I felt that I had miscommunicated my entire life, that I should take out an ad or make a speech to set the record straight. It didn’t help that later one of my brothers told me a female cousin had accused my father of inappropriate behavior. I don’t believe that accusation. It doesn’t seem to fit. My father has many infuriating and undesirable traits, but I can’t think that is one of them.
But, you start to think, don’t you, that if it quacks like a duck, and so forth. There’s just that little bit of uncertainty. No, not possible. I would know. I wasn’t that good at disappearing.
Did that stop me in my tracks? Or am I just grasping for an explanation? I stopped trying to think about my past. When I went on antidepressants, I felt great. I felt so great that I eventually dropped both the antidepressants and the psychiatrist. That should have been a warning sign. I now know you don’t give a bipolar person Prozac – it triggers erratic behavior. I married an extremely ambitious man and hid in his shadow for years. I was thoroughly sick of hashing over my poor sad childhood. What did it matter? It didn’t help. It was getting boring. It was self-indulgent. Lots of people had it worse. I filled journals but I couldn’t write poetry. I struggled and flailed, mourned and grieved and finally stopped trying. Divorce, pregnancy, another marriage. I didn’t seem to be angry at my parents anymore. They were so remote, so harmless. I had children. I had things to do.
So here I am. I realize that I am still furious. Or rather I don’t realize it – it just comes out when I write. It’s obvious to everyone else. I mean, I know I have a temper and that I’m irritable, that I’m often moody and depressed, but I guess when I get going I fairly reek of brimstone. I’m still dogged by anger and self-loathing, and it can’t be medicated away. I haven’t a damn idea what to do about it. My therapist says I have to find some way, but she has no idea how, or maybe she just won’t tell me. Maybe she thinks it’s therapeutic for me to find out myself.
Meanwhile the world is starting to get that blunt look. Poetry, a clever actor who also happens to be a poet, hunger for that sort of creativity (Why can’t I be like you? Tell me how to be like you.) – what does it all matter? What do I think will change? My thoughts are shifting and settling like dust after a building collapses.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Exit
She enters in a new disguise.
The air falters
taken by surprise.
I rearrange myself.
The dress I have never seen before
it materialized in a different world.
She creates the illusion
that she has stepped out of hiding
though the black cloth falls like shadows
and black lines bind her eyes.
She moves in his admiration
as though she has rediscovered herself.
The corridor between us drops
like a bowl slipping from clenched fingers.
The air falters
taken by surprise.
I rearrange myself.
The dress I have never seen before
it materialized in a different world.
She creates the illusion
that she has stepped out of hiding
though the black cloth falls like shadows
and black lines bind her eyes.
She moves in his admiration
as though she has rediscovered herself.
The corridor between us drops
like a bowl slipping from clenched fingers.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Cut
She holds the glass under
water to wash away all remains
of human contact. On the rim
where the lips touched, the curve
where the fingers pressed, her disgust
accumulates. She clenches the glass
suddenly no longer a glass
but a cloud of scythes,
one stuck in her hand like a burr.
water to wash away all remains
of human contact. On the rim
where the lips touched, the curve
where the fingers pressed, her disgust
accumulates. She clenches the glass
suddenly no longer a glass
but a cloud of scythes,
one stuck in her hand like a burr.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
A Month in the Country
He uncovered the eyes of God,
peeled back the blankness
to reveal the quick and the dead,
judged, falling.
What do you call Hell? she asked,
that the church bells wake us
to the roses no one ever sees,
the sun dazzling the graves,
the rain miring the battlefield,
the unexpressed want
pressed between pages in a prayer book.
peeled back the blankness
to reveal the quick and the dead,
judged, falling.
What do you call Hell? she asked,
that the church bells wake us
to the roses no one ever sees,
the sun dazzling the graves,
the rain miring the battlefield,
the unexpressed want
pressed between pages in a prayer book.
Dead Poets Society
I used to write poetry. I used to do almost nothing but write poetry. I have an MFA from a bloody expensive, prestigious program. My thesis advisor was Daniel Halpern, editor-in-fucking-chief of Ecco Press. And I did jack with this, except repay the student loans (I'm still repaying the student loans). Once I had the degree, I couldn't write a damn thing. Ever. Again.
I might have a theory or two about why, but the main thing is that I never tried to get what I did write published and then I couldn't write at all. I recently dug up all those poems, and the useless thesis reviews (Thanks, Deborah Diggs, for the kudos. Sorry I just filed it away.) and thought, why not just post some of them here?
So, I will.
I might have a theory or two about why, but the main thing is that I never tried to get what I did write published and then I couldn't write at all. I recently dug up all those poems, and the useless thesis reviews (Thanks, Deborah Diggs, for the kudos. Sorry I just filed it away.) and thought, why not just post some of them here?
So, I will.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Seven
1. It’s easier to write dark than light. It is my gift to bring the dead to life.
2. I will take possession of all I see, love and grief and hope and art.
3. What you have I want. Your peace, sitting quietly with your heart.
4. The Furies, my pets, they howl and tear and spit you out bone by bone.
5. A slow weight, a heavy eye. Time slips through me and is gone.
6. I am so hungry and yet I barely taste. I have cleared the feast and guzzled the wine.
7. Now come here; let me rip the thoughts from your mind.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Black Psalm
When sorrow falls on your plate
with the clatter of dropped coins,
how do you ask a blessing on that meal?
How do you consume it,
how does it nourish and delight?
What do I taste and see –
sand and entrails.
Your will is like fog,
the shroud of accidents.
God, I do not trust you.
You give with one hand
and take with the other
and call it fallen creation.
You ask for blood
and speak love.
Your justice is ugly and unrighteous,
a knife at the neck of a small child
to test our loyalty.
Then you beam like the sun –
See, it’s all okay now –
it’s all mercy now.
See how I love you?
The enemy armies have been laid waste
and left to rot in the fields.
Now you can build your house on rock.
with the clatter of dropped coins,
how do you ask a blessing on that meal?
How do you consume it,
how does it nourish and delight?
What do I taste and see –
sand and entrails.
Your will is like fog,
the shroud of accidents.
God, I do not trust you.
You give with one hand
and take with the other
and call it fallen creation.
You ask for blood
and speak love.
Your justice is ugly and unrighteous,
a knife at the neck of a small child
to test our loyalty.
Then you beam like the sun –
See, it’s all okay now –
it’s all mercy now.
See how I love you?
The enemy armies have been laid waste
and left to rot in the fields.
Now you can build your house on rock.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
HBO recently aired a documentary called Loot. I don’t normally watch documentaries, and if this hadn’t been recommended to me, I probably would never have known it existed. But the subjects of this film are from my dad’s generation, a generation of men who knew war and who knew how to keep secrets. My dad was not in the thick of things in WWII; he was stationed in South America somewhere. Why there, I don’t know. My grasp of history is not good, and I’m not sure what they thought might happen there. Still, for whatever reason, he never talks of his time in the service. Much of his life is hidden, or rewritten to be more presentable. We all do this to some extent, but for men like my dad, there was such a stigma attached to showing weakness, emotion, lack of control or authority. They carry an unacknowledged darkness inside.
Loot follows two WWII vets who are attempting to find treasure they buried at the end of the war, one in Austria and the other in the Philippines. They are assisted by a man named Lance, a used car salesman who seems to have tried his hand at many things, including hunting treasure. I assume he is in this at least partly for a cut in the findings, but he never hectors or shows much frustration at the slow pace of the proceedings.
The first gentleman, Darrel, hid stolen jewels in a house in Austria, in the last days of the war. Lance accompanies Darrel to Austria on what seems like a fruitless search for the house with only the barest guidelines for figuring out the location. To complicate matters, Darrel is nearly blind, so he can’t orient himself with a map, and the Austrians who try to help him are at something of a loss. He seems a sweet man, well loved by a large family, easy to like.
The other man, Andy, is more disconcerting. He acquired and buried a set of samurai swords used in beheading American airmen. He lives in a house crammed full of stuff – Elvis plates, old bottles, stacked plastic cups, pornographic magazines. Nothing is ever thrown out. He says he has a map, but he doesn’t know where it is. He seems to have accumulated all this junk solely for the purpose of obscuring the map’s location. He is ambivalent. He has a safe but can’t remember the combination. When they finally get it open, there are thousands of dollars inside that he seems to have forgotten about entirely, and he seems oddly unconcerned at its rediscovery. The more we learn about his experiences in the Philippines, the more we see of the way he lives, the more uneasy we become.
It’s clear that there’s a lot more than treasure buried, and the hunt becomes secondary to more pressing, less conscious needs. These men are searching for closure, memory, redemption, forgiveness. One finds it; the other, as far as we know, does not.
I wonder what Lance took away from his involvement in the film, or how he feels about spending so much time on a project that for him had very little payoff. He simply keeps going, methodically, until there is nowhere else to go. We learn that his son is coming off drugs, and that both Darrel and Andy themselves lost sons to drug overdoses. In fact, Darrel even spoke with Lance’s son, which Lance mentions may have saved his life. We leave Lance with his son, immersed in a hot spring in an unspecified location, perhaps a baptism of renewal for them both.
Loot follows two WWII vets who are attempting to find treasure they buried at the end of the war, one in Austria and the other in the Philippines. They are assisted by a man named Lance, a used car salesman who seems to have tried his hand at many things, including hunting treasure. I assume he is in this at least partly for a cut in the findings, but he never hectors or shows much frustration at the slow pace of the proceedings.
The first gentleman, Darrel, hid stolen jewels in a house in Austria, in the last days of the war. Lance accompanies Darrel to Austria on what seems like a fruitless search for the house with only the barest guidelines for figuring out the location. To complicate matters, Darrel is nearly blind, so he can’t orient himself with a map, and the Austrians who try to help him are at something of a loss. He seems a sweet man, well loved by a large family, easy to like.
The other man, Andy, is more disconcerting. He acquired and buried a set of samurai swords used in beheading American airmen. He lives in a house crammed full of stuff – Elvis plates, old bottles, stacked plastic cups, pornographic magazines. Nothing is ever thrown out. He says he has a map, but he doesn’t know where it is. He seems to have accumulated all this junk solely for the purpose of obscuring the map’s location. He is ambivalent. He has a safe but can’t remember the combination. When they finally get it open, there are thousands of dollars inside that he seems to have forgotten about entirely, and he seems oddly unconcerned at its rediscovery. The more we learn about his experiences in the Philippines, the more we see of the way he lives, the more uneasy we become.
It’s clear that there’s a lot more than treasure buried, and the hunt becomes secondary to more pressing, less conscious needs. These men are searching for closure, memory, redemption, forgiveness. One finds it; the other, as far as we know, does not.
I wonder what Lance took away from his involvement in the film, or how he feels about spending so much time on a project that for him had very little payoff. He simply keeps going, methodically, until there is nowhere else to go. We learn that his son is coming off drugs, and that both Darrel and Andy themselves lost sons to drug overdoses. In fact, Darrel even spoke with Lance’s son, which Lance mentions may have saved his life. We leave Lance with his son, immersed in a hot spring in an unspecified location, perhaps a baptism of renewal for them both.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Why the weekend isn't sucking much at all right now
Well, I do have some sort of viral infection. I went to the Little Clinic and Publix. I'm running a fever and have a sore throat. But when I got back home, Dear Husband was waiting dressed in suite and tie, and the girls were dressed up, Firecracker holding flowers and DramaQueen a jeweler's box on a pillow. Pacobel's Canon was playing. Dear Husband read me a sweet poem he wrote for me and presented me with the flowers and the prettiest ring with regular and chocolate diamonds.
So, although physically I feel like a piece of old gum stuck on the underside of a desk, my heart is light and breezy.
So, although physically I feel like a piece of old gum stuck on the underside of a desk, my heart is light and breezy.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Why This Weekend Sucks
I never look forward to Memorial Day weekends. I always feel futile and ill at ease. It may be because my birthday always falls around that weekend. Dear Husband comes from a family that goes all out to celebrate birthdays. I remember one party when I was little, and no doubt presents when I was growing up. But, and it's kind of dreadful to admit because it sounds so emo, but I've never felt it was something to celebrate. I spent the better part of my life thinking that anyone glad to be here had to be nuts, and that my entrance was definitely not something I was happy about. It seemed so much like some sort of glitch, that a divine flunky read the charts wrong and I was really supposed to be back in the undifferentiated whatever that souls come from before they enter bodies.
Even now, when I can usually grab on to some perspective, and am medicated beyond belief, I feel more and more dark-minded as my birthday approaches, and I tense every time someone wishes me a happy birthday, as if I were taking something fraudulently. And I'm angry that I can't shake it, that I can't look on life as an amazing gift instead of my personal version of Kafka's Penal Colony. (Which, BTW, if you haven't read it you should really put in on your list. Criminals have their crimes written on their bodies with needles, and the director of the camp finally puts himself in the machine because the criminals all experience a revelation. And then they die. Yep, I love me some Kafka.)
I'm sitting at my desk at work. The office closed early, but I can't bring myself to leave. When I leave the apparatus of the weekend begins, all the cogs and wheels grind away, and I have to deal with sniping children, laundry, empty time, chaos, cooking, groceries, feeling lost, feeling futile. And I will be one year older, but no wiser.
Even now, when I can usually grab on to some perspective, and am medicated beyond belief, I feel more and more dark-minded as my birthday approaches, and I tense every time someone wishes me a happy birthday, as if I were taking something fraudulently. And I'm angry that I can't shake it, that I can't look on life as an amazing gift instead of my personal version of Kafka's Penal Colony. (Which, BTW, if you haven't read it you should really put in on your list. Criminals have their crimes written on their bodies with needles, and the director of the camp finally puts himself in the machine because the criminals all experience a revelation. And then they die. Yep, I love me some Kafka.)
I'm sitting at my desk at work. The office closed early, but I can't bring myself to leave. When I leave the apparatus of the weekend begins, all the cogs and wheels grind away, and I have to deal with sniping children, laundry, empty time, chaos, cooking, groceries, feeling lost, feeling futile. And I will be one year older, but no wiser.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
God has Left the Building
“And I love the idea that the viewer goes through a similar process; because there's something so sexy about treasure, something so alluring and elusive about this fantasy of finding gold. And to some degree, you have to engage in what part of us lives in this fantasy, and what part of us is willing to see the other thing that's occurring; because we all want the fantasy. But there's always something more.” Quote from Darius Marder, directory of the documentary Loot.
The second sentence of this statement really struck me. This documentary is, I gather, about two men who, following war, buried treasures in different parts of the world, and in their old age they meet up with someone who leads them on a journey to recover it. I haven’t seen it yet, and I’m not sure I will like it, but from what I’ve read, the treasure hunt uncovers all sorts of things besides treasure.
What is a fantasy trying to tell us? The things I find alluring are not just about the object themselves. Obviously. I touched on that in my last post, how my fascination with this angel character reflects my own struggles with faith. Dear Husband might say I am rationalizing the fact that I think the actor is super attractive. But why do we latch onto celebrities in the first place? We all know it is more to do with our own desires than the actual person. The actor is beautiful, beautiful in a heart in the throat sort of way. But I’ve seen him all season without giving him a second thought. It wasn’t until Castiel became important that I found him alluring.
I develop short-run obsessions with characters, and in turn with the actors who play them. I obsess because they embody some issue or quality or need. Lie to Me and House: Dr. Lightman and Dr. House see through lies to the truth. They know when you're bullshitting. How desirable and painful at the same time. I wish someone would cut through my lies, and I tell myself plenty, and I tell others plenty. I would never in a million years have thought Tim Roth was attractive if he didn’t play this particular character. It’s all mirrors and glamour, in the old sense of the word glamour.
I’ve had these passionate interludes with fictional characters (and books themselves, too) for as long as I can remember. I’m sure others do, too. At times the experience of reading a really good book, the kind that stays with you through life, is a lot like infatuation. I have read books that made me breathless and tremble with excitement, oblivious to everyone at first, and then mad to tell everyone all about my beloved.
I think first of Brideshead Revisited, which may be indelibly ingrained in my psyche. I was in love with that book. With Sebastian and Oxford and the almost too rich, elegiac prose. There’s a line in the book about being in love with love, which is pretty much what I experienced. But then there is the theme of God drawing us in with an unseen hook and an unseen thread. There was a miniseries, and the actor who played Sebastian embodied the character so perfectly, that I was smitten with him as well.
Other fictional loves:
Sherlock Holmes: The allure of the unavailable.
Nabokov’s Real Life of Sebastian Knight: How much of the pursuit of someone else is a study of ourselves? What kinds of games can you play with reality and with words?
Raskolnikov: What do you do if you do the unforgivable? What is repentance?
Louis in the Ann Rice books: How do you live if you loath your very essence? What do you pin your hopes on?
Sydney Carton: Redemption.
Sometimes I am the character, sometimes the one who loves the character, and sometimes I just roam around among all the words.
So, recently, I’ve wanted to cut away the lies and pretense and admit that I am not ever going to fit where I seem to find myself. And then there is the questioning, the doubt, the sense that God is remote, the CEO of a corporation that churns along with its own rules that have so little to do with His true nature. Or at least I think or hope that is the case. I have never met Him, and I don’t think Castiel has either. In Supernatural, evil is real and present, but God is a cipher. Lucifer shows up, but God does not. Like Castiel, I’ve decided that I am not a good little soldier. If there is a side, I am definitely on the side of the messed up and burned out, the heretics and blasphemers, and the sovereign God, that construct of Calvinists, is in fact no god at all but a bunch of bureaucrats with their own agendas. As the angel Zacherias says in Supernatural, God has left the building.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Because what's life without an obsession
Since I'm channeling a thirteen-year-old, I thought I would just go ahead and run with it. I think as long as I don't put posters on the wall, Dear Husband will humor me.
Of course it isn't just the actor, but the character he plays, that is so appealing. Castiel is an angel who has begun to have doubts and to question the hierarchy that seems to be running the world.
For those who don't know the show, Supernatural is about two brothers, Dean and Sam, who are demon hunters. It's a good ol' good vs. evil show. Castiel only appeared at the beginning of this season, to rescue Dean from hell (too long to go into). In Supernatural, heaven is a sort of corporation with an absentee CEO, and Castiel has been more than happy to be one of heaven's warriors, trusting that his missions were guided by a loving God. But in fact the orders come from mysterious higher levels, without any seeming reason or logic, and sometimes with a complete disregard for human life. It's pretty much heaven as imagined by Franz Kafka.
But in the course of interacting with Dean, Castiel starts to change, veering between towing the party line to outright disobedience. The good guys, the angels, aren't always good, and the demons aren't always bad, and in the heavenly spheres it's hard to know exactly who is calling the shots and where their loyalties lie.
I love this clip. I think Dean's speech about peace versus pain and life is wonderful. And then Castiel breaks ranks entirely, casting his lot with the humans. Also, I think the line "It's better than being a Stepford bitch in heaven" is an excellent line, and I would like the opportunity to use it in conversation.
Of course it isn't just the actor, but the character he plays, that is so appealing. Castiel is an angel who has begun to have doubts and to question the hierarchy that seems to be running the world.
For those who don't know the show, Supernatural is about two brothers, Dean and Sam, who are demon hunters. It's a good ol' good vs. evil show. Castiel only appeared at the beginning of this season, to rescue Dean from hell (too long to go into). In Supernatural, heaven is a sort of corporation with an absentee CEO, and Castiel has been more than happy to be one of heaven's warriors, trusting that his missions were guided by a loving God. But in fact the orders come from mysterious higher levels, without any seeming reason or logic, and sometimes with a complete disregard for human life. It's pretty much heaven as imagined by Franz Kafka.
But in the course of interacting with Dean, Castiel starts to change, veering between towing the party line to outright disobedience. The good guys, the angels, aren't always good, and the demons aren't always bad, and in the heavenly spheres it's hard to know exactly who is calling the shots and where their loyalties lie.
I love this clip. I think Dean's speech about peace versus pain and life is wonderful. And then Castiel breaks ranks entirely, casting his lot with the humans. Also, I think the line "It's better than being a Stepford bitch in heaven" is an excellent line, and I would like the opportunity to use it in conversation.
Monday, May 18, 2009
You Don't Know What You Missed.
DramaQueen’s spring recital is finally over, and I am so damned happy about it. It was the longest recital in world history, and possibly the history of the galaxy.
The school put a lot of effort into the program, and they have the best of intentions and I’m sure their choices are heartfelt. But. There’s always a “but” for me, born of my natural cynicism and aversion to most contemporary expressions of Christian culture. I have this snotty opinion that however fair the intention, bad art is just bad, and we aren’t doing Christianity any favors by training children to deliver pabulum to the masses.
First, the story was as pious and moralistic as something from an old McGuffey Reader: Girl wants doll in the woodcarver’s shop. Girl’s mother lets her earn the money through extra chores. Girl is very diligent, not neglecting her work for pay. Girl saves money and buys doll. But, lo, she spies a poor beggar woman, and returns the doll so that she can give the money to the beggar. Meanwhile, the one griping, mean-spirited person in the story learns an Important Lesson and vows to change her ways. A group of angels watch and rejoice. Meanwhile the beggar uses the money to score some heroin and shoots up. Well, no, but that probably would have improved the story.
Now, imagine that dragged out over three hours, with dance numbers folded into every possible plot crevice.
Keep in mind that this story was set in a sort of fairy-tale ye olde Alpine village. Now, imagine them folding in a hip-hop number as well as jazz.
And then imagine them all done to contemporary Christian music.
Afterwards, Dear Husband said that we are not sending her to another faith-based arts school - something I never expected to hear from him. He does surprise me sometimes. Recently when we were pondering him homeschooling DramaQueen, he said that he refused to use a religious curriculum. That’s the sort of pronouncement I would happily make, but I’m half heretic and he’s straight-line orthodox. Well, close, anyway. At least compared to me.
DramaQueen will be pleased. She told me that she was very tired of doing plays about God. Bless her.
The school put a lot of effort into the program, and they have the best of intentions and I’m sure their choices are heartfelt. But. There’s always a “but” for me, born of my natural cynicism and aversion to most contemporary expressions of Christian culture. I have this snotty opinion that however fair the intention, bad art is just bad, and we aren’t doing Christianity any favors by training children to deliver pabulum to the masses.
First, the story was as pious and moralistic as something from an old McGuffey Reader: Girl wants doll in the woodcarver’s shop. Girl’s mother lets her earn the money through extra chores. Girl is very diligent, not neglecting her work for pay. Girl saves money and buys doll. But, lo, she spies a poor beggar woman, and returns the doll so that she can give the money to the beggar. Meanwhile, the one griping, mean-spirited person in the story learns an Important Lesson and vows to change her ways. A group of angels watch and rejoice. Meanwhile the beggar uses the money to score some heroin and shoots up. Well, no, but that probably would have improved the story.
Now, imagine that dragged out over three hours, with dance numbers folded into every possible plot crevice.
Keep in mind that this story was set in a sort of fairy-tale ye olde Alpine village. Now, imagine them folding in a hip-hop number as well as jazz.
And then imagine them all done to contemporary Christian music.
Afterwards, Dear Husband said that we are not sending her to another faith-based arts school - something I never expected to hear from him. He does surprise me sometimes. Recently when we were pondering him homeschooling DramaQueen, he said that he refused to use a religious curriculum. That’s the sort of pronouncement I would happily make, but I’m half heretic and he’s straight-line orthodox. Well, close, anyway. At least compared to me.
DramaQueen will be pleased. She told me that she was very tired of doing plays about God. Bless her.
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