Future Residents of Darkest Hell

Dear Future Resident of Darkest Hell,


We noticed you recently decided to ignore every obvious truth of the Bible and turn your back on God. We're disappointed in you, of course, but we'd be lying if we said we didn't see it coming. It was, after all, established before the foundation of the world. God is receiving glory for your failure even as we type, so we're getting over it pretty quickly. We realize this might be hard for you to hear, but we'd like to remind it you it's your own fault for not having faith. As a consolation, we'd like to offer you this 10% off coupon for Christian McJerk's new book 24 Ways I Already Know You're Wrong and 13 More I Plan to Infer as We Go.


You're welcome.


Deep blessings,
The Real Christians.

- David from The Screaming Kettle, guest post at Alise...Write

Until now I haven't gathered the energy to comment on the controversy surrounding Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. What do I know about these knotty theological arguments, anyway? I haven’t read the book, either, which hasn't stopped anyone else. I imagine I’ll read it at some point, when it gets to my library. I won’t run out and buy it because I never run out and buy anything and because I read Velvet Elvis, which reminded me of Chinese food - enormously tasty going down but my stomach was empty an hour later. But I just like the fact that Rob Bell exists and makes lovely videos and is so earnest and passionate and wears such interesting spectacles. Also, I have an unexamined and immediate preference for the people evangelicals call heretics. When I think of protestant evangelicals I tend to imagine Roundheads charging into cathedrals to break the stained glass. Cromwell and Calvin make my skin crawl.

Back to Bell, who is accused of believing that everyone goes to heaven, leaving hell a vast and empty place, with nary a soul to roast. I don’t know if that is actually the case. Maybe he doesn’t say that at all. But it’s beyond me why evangelicals have such an affection for hell. They seem to think that Christendom falls apart if people aren’t properly terrified. Why it bothers Calvinists I do not know, given that whether or not you want to be saved is all up to God - you don’t really have any say in the matter and in fact can’t resist if God entices you into his lair. But you still have to have hell, which to my mind introduces a profound level of existential despair, as those who have not been ineluctably seduced get to contemplate their future in Satan’s hot tub.  Some people argue that people can’t choose heaven or hell because free will is an illusion. Others say that you can’t have heaven without hell because there IS free will. And some people seem to think that you can choose but one of the options isn’t the traditional hell but something more like an eternal waiting room with bad coffee, no donuts and the TV permanently tuned to FOX news.

(Now, if you may be wondering what “free will” is and isn’t. Do we really have any freedom or are we enmeshed in so much culturally and biologically determined stuff that freedom is an illusion?  There is a theory called “post-structuralism” that examines the fine points in excruciating detail. It made my head hurt but I'm sure some might enjoy it.)

Now, here's a few words from someone who has actually read the book. You can read Adam Ellis's whole post over at Jesus Needs New PR. It's full of awesome and this part made me laugh:

To begin, let’s look at two things that shouldn’t be surprises, but (based on the more angry reviews I’ve read) apparently are:

• Rob Bell is not a Calvinist (“New”, “Neo”, or otherwise). He doesn’t write like one. He doesn’t adhere to exclusively Calvinist doctrine. He doesn’t see the terms “non-Calvinist” and “Christian” as mutually exclusive.
• Rob Bell writes almost exactly like he talks. And that means there will be…

…words
and half-sentences…

….laid-out unconventionally….

…throughout

…the

book…

(Note: I suspect that the popular phrase "full of awesome" is already limp and tired, but I like it so much.)

Where was I going with this? I think I got sidetracked by free will and my deep-seated antipathy to Calvinism. Speaking of which: John Piper. He’s notorious for his brush-off tweet "Farewell Rob Bell." Whatever that means. Perhaps he didn't mean it to sound like the ultimate in condescension and smug self-righteousness that it appears on first, second, third and I imagine 20th glance.  I can’t claim to know a lot about Piper. I read one book, assigned at my workplace, about The Passion of Christ, which was meant to tie in to the movie. Boring book. Really really boring. Boooooring. Same old same old. You can count on a Calvinist to say that they’re digging deep into the scripture and discovering treasure when they’re really just dusting off the same old dented relic. I swear they’ve been chewing the same piece of food for years and they still haven’t digested it.

I’m glad Rob Bell got up the noses of the righteous. It doesn’t matter to me if it was a calculated marketing move, or if he’s presenting a not very original idea. I gather Origen got there first, but who the hell (ha ha) has heard of Origen? Here are the evangelicals pretty much claiming that you have to believe in hell or you aren’t Christian. Calvinists particularly like to hedge salvation with caveats, until you end up with a long list of stuff you have to believe if you are a "true" Christian.

I'm really on a tear about Calvinists, aren't I? It's just that I am familiar with the truth of that very funny letter at the top of the page; it could have been mailed to me. I feel bristly. Must be heresy taking root.

Road Trip

The following was created using Storify. If you have problems reading it here, you should be able to go to http://storify.com/2tired2move/charleston and see it there.

Dr. Who Does Shakespeare

Note: the following is really just an excuse to show lots of photos of David Tennant.

ooo, shiney.

Perhaps it’s kind of geeky, but I’ve always liked Shakespeare. Well, pretty much always. I think I was unmoved by Romeo and Juliet when I first read it in junior high. I thought kids who killed themselves for love were super annoying. But sometime in high school we got this amazing new thing called cable TV, and it had this great arts channel (soon replaced by MTV) that broadcast a film version of a stage production of Hamlet, with Hamlet played by Ian McKellen. Oh. My. God. I watched it every time I could catch it (these being the years before home recording). Because of that single production, I never really experienced difficulty with the language. It wasn’t that I understood all the idioms and odd expressions of that time and place, but I got it, I was inside it.

Recently DramaQueen was studying A Midsummer Night’s Dream in school, and I began to feel that strange motherly compulsion to inject as much culture as possible into my offspring with the lest outlay of cash. Yea TV. So I went searching for free, streaming Shakespeare.

Dr. Who and Captain Picard share a moment.

Words.

It takes a bigger man than you to play on my pipe.

Imagine my delight when I ran across an RSC production of Hamlet on PBS. Hot. Dog. You can’t get anymore Shakespearey than the RSC. Then, much to my amazement, I found that Hamlet was played by the 12th incarnation of Dr. Who, and Claudius by Captain Picard. It was a pop-culture/high-culture bonanza! And no one was wearing a doublet. All the sets and costumes were contemporary, the surfaces sleek and reflective, surveillance cameras everywhere (it is a play with a lot of spying and snooping). And, my word, David Tennant owned Hamlet. I can’t say enough about his performance, and the other actors were exceptionally good as well. Every time a famous soliloquy approached, I wondered how he could possibly breathe new life into such familiar words, and each time I was mightily impressed.


 For example, here is the first soliloquey:


And the Am I a Coward bit:



And here is one of my favorite humorous moments with silly old Polonius:



Thing is, I now have this urge to watch Dr. Who.

Brideshead Regurgitated

Hell to the No.

When the Brideshead Revisited movie came out, I told myself that I would never watch it. From what I could tell of how the writers had reshaped the script, it seemed like a horror. The BBC miniseries was one of the glorious discoveries of my youth, and I’ve read the book countless times, so I was going to be tough to win over.

Sometimes snap judgements are right on target. Man, did they ever botch it. It was impossible for me to see the movie with fresh eyes, because in every shot I glimpsed the ghost of the original BBC miniseries, and the ghost had a lot more flesh on it. To succeed the film should have made me forget the first series with a fresh vision.

Much Better

For those who don’t know the story, it goes like this: Charles Ryder, a disillusioned WWII Army captain, finds himself stationed at Brideshead estate, forcing him to think back on his youth at Oxford, where he met and befriended the beautiful and doomed Lord Sebastian Flyte and became embroiled in a family drama spanning decades. An aspiring artist, Charles finds inspiration in Sebastian’s family home, the very place were Sebastian feels most unhappy. What begins as a jubilant friendship quickly disintegrates as Sebastian spirals into alcoholic depression. Charles sets out on his own, much later meeting up with Sebastian’s sister, Julia. Both married, they begin a passionate love affair. Running throughout the story is the theme of religious faith, primarily Catholicism, which Charles at first rejects but later (it is implied) embraces.

What someone unfamiliar with the book could take from the new movie, I have no idea. The two halves were folded back in on themselves and stitched together to save time. In the novel and miniseries, Charles and Julia do not at first cross paths very often and they don’t pay much attention to each other. This movie turns the relationship into a love triangle, which transforms the friendship between Charles and Sebastian into a sordid little cliche. Other elements that are important in the novel and series are given a perfunctory mention and then the plot chugs along. Urgh. Consider:

Why does Sebastian drink?
Brideshead BBC: Sebastian drinks because he’s an alcoholic with suffocating, manipulative mother who keeps him on a short leash and stokes him regularly with religious guilt.
Brideshead movie: Sebastian drinks because his boyfriend wants to sleep with his sister.

Who is Aloysius?
Brideshead BBC: Aloysius is Sebastian’s teddy bear, both an affectation that endears him to his Oxford classmates and a symbol of his dangerous desire to cling to childhood. Aloysius is the name of a Catholic saint who watches over youth.
Brideshead the movie: Huh? Oh, he’s that teddy bear you see mabye twice. His name is Aloysius?

Who is Anthony Blanche?
Brideshead BBC: Anthony is the flamboyant Tiresias figure in the novel, appearing periodically to deliver enigmatic warnings to Charles about the Flyte family. Turns out he is right about most things.
Brideshead movie: Where is the old bugger? He’s around here somewhere. Ooops, missed him.

Jeremy Irons, the original Charles Ryder

I could go on. The movie is a long exercise in missing the point. The movie doesn’t shy away from faith, but it doesn’t do the theme any favors, either. There are rosaries and religious pictures, and sometimes the gang chat vaguely about being heathens or atheists. It has all the heft of a bag of feathers. The role of art as a secular religion is nowhere to be found. Charles just starts sketching a bit, but that’s sort of lost in the headlong rush to tie up the loose ends that barely had time to flap about in the breeze in the first place. You arrive at the big deathbed conversion scene wondering what all the kerfuffle is about.

Has Charles been changed by any of this? Who knows - but he doesn’t snuff out the eternal flame in the chapel. Whoa.

Matthew Goode as Charles Ryder

When it comes to casting, you can’t could beat the original, though there are some notable actors in the new version, including Emma Thompson and Albus Dumbledore - I mean, Michael Gambon.

Matthew Goode makes a decent Charles Ryder. He even has some of Jeremy Irons’ mellifluous tones, but since this version has almost no voice-over narration, you don’t get to enjoy that.

Ben Whishaw as Sebastian Flyte. 

Anthony Andrews as Sebastian Flyte

Ben Whishaw vs. Anthony Andrews. Oh, there’s no question here that Andrews wins. Whitshaw looks like he has consumption, and though that might be realistic for advanced alcoholism, Sebastian is supposed to be beautiful.

The start of it all.

So, how did I come to watch this mess that I knew from the start would be a disaster and that I never ever intended to watch? Well, it’s because SOMEONE has a crush on Matthew Goode. And it isn’t me.

Dopey Dopamine

I’ve been patiently waiting for my mood to shift a bit, and a horrid sort of aimlessness has settled over me. Options appear to my eyes with the same dull hues, nothing bright and obvious and appealing. I read to keep my mind occupied rather than circling like a vulture.

I was really hoping that the thyroid pills I’ve been prescribed would kick ennui’s butt. I'm always hoping there will be an a-ha moment that puts everything right

My therapist says I should cut myself some slack. Motivation is a gnawing problem for people with ADD. I’m low energy and that’s just a fact of my nature. I should rejoice that I’m functional. I have my kids and husband and they’re important to me. I think of my mom: her kids and family were important to her, too, but she still went around saying, “I just don’t know what to do with my life.” She was saying that in her 70s. Drove me mad. I used to think, Hell, by this time you’ve done what you were going to do with your life – suck it up. But it’s an awful feeling, that sense of directionless motion. You don’t feel like you’re the master of your own ship, or whatever that stupid expression is. I end up reacting to events, dithering over decisions. I feel foggy and uncertain. I’ve known from a young age that structure is essential if I’m to get anything done at all, and that I am incapable of creating that structure myself. I’ve needed schools and jobs to divide up my day, deadlines to force me to focus. The moment I try to set up any sort of routine for myself, I’m doomed. Set goals? Who’s going to hold me to it, after all? Myself? Hah. And routines are not foolproof. There are days when, for example, after years and years of putting out medicine for Firecracker to take, every morning at the same time, I forget it entirely. And you know what? The next day I’ll be more likely to forget it again. It’s as if the habit were unraveling. I finally set up automatic reminders to pop up on my phone. That’s not foolproof, either, because those sorts of things tend to become just so much white noise. The only thing I can be certain I won’t forget is to brush my teeth. I have immediate sensory feedback if that isn’t done.

Did you know that there’s a connection between dopamine and motivation? Low dopamine, low motivation. I take medications in an attempt to counter what I can only think is a full-out dopamine drought. Sometimes it works sort of okay, at least for a while. But then I just have to leave the boring behind and do something I like. Tedium is my enemy. And unfortunately this often happens in the middle of a work day. It’s almost guaranteed to happen when it’s time to deal with household chores. This is not just the afternoon slump. A few wisps of mist float through, and then the full-on fog of dreamy inattention. There are no rewards great enough to tempt me, so I rely on fear. I need a job, and I need to keep Dear Husband’s ire at bay. Some people think that the contentment and peacefulness of a clean house or a job well done would be reward enough, but no way. I have no work ethic. Never cared about working my way to the top of the dung heap. Left to myself I’d never do anything. I guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t born into wealth.

It sure makes me feel out of sync with cultural expectations. All these books on Get It Done, how to be an entrepreneur, how to get ahead, little tricks and bits and bobs on productivity. Seth Godin. Just visiting his website makes me tired. Do I care if I’m the linchpin? Hell no. (By the way, why are there all these blogs and books about leadership? What about books on being an astute and useful follower, assistant, or whatever?) Ambition, goals, productivity – I can understand these intellectually, but my physical self has no understanding at all. They are a foreign substance I keep trying to ingest and integrate and my system keeps pushing them out as foreign bodies.

You know, I was just on Seth Godin’s blog, and he mentioned the characteristics of losers. And I thought, No one wants to be a loser, but someone always is.

Which brings me to the last episode of Glee, with the fabulous song Loser Like Me, which expresses a sense of optimism I don’t feel.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Life is, to some extent, an extended dialogue with your future self about how exactly you are going to let yourself down over the coming years.

“The base model TM-31 runs on state-of-the-art chronodiegetical technology: a six-cylinder grammar drive built n a quad-core physics engine, which features an applied temporalinguistics architecture allowing for free-form navigation within a rendered environment, such as, for instance, a story space and, in particular, a science fictional universe.

Or, as Mom used to say: it’s a box.”

I picked out this book because of the title. How could I resist? I happened across reviews of it here and there, nice buzzy happy reviews. It seemed to be much in demand. I was on a waiting list at the library so long that I almost forgot about it. In fact, when I finally got notice that it was available, I was really into reading a clockwork man.

From the start Charles Yu’s writing filled me with delight. Charles (who is also the narrator), is a time machine repairman. The book is written as a manual, interlaced with the narrator’s personal story. Yu creates elaborate technological and pseudotechnological constructs, real physics mixed with fantasy. And lest that sound drearily dull, the story is well padded with humor, from the holographic dog rescued from a space western to Phil, the dispatcher, a Windows program who thinks he is a real person with a wife and children. I think of Douglass Adams meets Italo Calvino, with a bit of Ecco thrown in.

You probably can guess from the title as well as that excerpt from the opening pages, that this is metafiction. Metaphysical metafiction. It’s so self-referential I’m surprised it’s still book-shaped. If you reduced the story to plot, it is about the narrator’s search for his missing father, a brilliant but defeated scientist. Together they had worked on a prototype time machine, one that never quite came together. Every memory is laced with regret and loss. In the course of his search, the narrator ends up stuck in a time loop after shooting his future self, who hands him a book, telling him that the answer is in it, in the book we are reading and which the present/future narrator is writing.

The theme of the story is memory, our very own personal time travel machine. We travel forward and backward at the same time. Also, the book is itself a time travel device, a little box transporting both reader and author from present to past to future. But more importantly, the story focuses on the potential danger of memory, how it can become a trap, an endless, obsessive loop.

Geeky

Fallen but not far enough

Angels are the new vampires, you know, or maybe it’s zombies that are the new vampires. I’m waiting for the first angel/zombie amalgam to appear on bookstore shelves any day. If it hasn’t already. I can’t keep up.

I love reading YA novels. There’s something so fresh and hopeful about them.

Course sometimes they completely screw it up.

I recently got hold of the novel Fallen, by Lauren Kate. Thought I would check out this new angel obsession. Ye Gods. I know matters are falling apart when I start skidding down the slope, hopping over huge chunks of text, annoyed as all get out but unable to stop because, dammit, surely there’s a payoff here somewhere.

I liked the set up. Luce is a suspected arsonist (or something - her first kiss apparently incinerated her boyfriend) who lands in a reform boarding school in Savannah. I like that touch - Savannah. Luce mentions the humidity now and then to remind you where you are. In case you forget, there being no other indication of locale. So Luce, who also sees menacing dark shadows everywhere, is lonely and lost for all of two minutes at the new school when she spies the incredibly gorgeous and strangely familiar Daniel. Immediately she is captivated, drawn to him. He flips her off. It’s so adorable. Then there’s Cam, the sweetly attentive, equally gorgeous boy she’s drawn to but not quite so much. You know something’s wrong with him because he takes Luce on a picnic and a snake shows up. Later he gives her a pendant with a snake on it and takes her to a bar called Styx. Luce is completely dense when it comes to symbolism.

Besides being dumb as a sack of rocks, Luce is beyond annoying. She’s just so mysteriously drawn to Daniel. So so so so drawn. She can’t stop thinking about it, staring at him, having strange dreams about him. Her brain is always churning with Daniel. And what’s Daniel got to show for himself? Well, we know he’s an angel. Luce is too dumb to figure that out for ¾ of the book. Still, let’s see, when he’s not pushing her away with strange, cryptic warnings and comments, he’s kinda polite and friendly. This goes on for freakin ever. And not much else. Shadows come and go. You never really find out why the hell Luce can see them, or why she incinerated her boyfriend, but oh well, it’s probably in the sequel. Various stuff happens la la la, her parents visit, la la, a friend helps her research Daniel, la la la, the library catches on fire (I was hopeful there for a moment, but nah) and there are lots more scary swirly inky shadows everywhere! Daniel kisses her and is really taken aback that she doesn't explode, because he was totally expecting her to, quite literally, blow up. That's what an awesome kisser he is. And, oh, Daniel’s a fallen angel and Cam is too, and well, so are a number of students (what the hell is this school’s admission policy, anyway?), and there’s a big battle with locusts and fireflies or something but we don’t know why exactly, except they seem to be fighting over Luce but they can’t tell her why because it might explode her wittle brain. But as long as Luce can rest in Daniel’s arms, lost in his violet eyes, with his beautiful wings wrapped around her, what’s a little chaos, death and destruction?

And no, there’s no payoff.

Quietly hiding out until spring

February is really a draggy month, trailing the ragged bits of winter behind it while the stores begin to put up their spring and summer displays. Valentine's Day must have been invented to infuse some warmth and color into the dun February skies.

Well, that's my mood, anyway. Bored. Restless. Bored.

So, I read a book. In this instance, The City and the City by China Mieville. I admit that I first picked it up based solely on the author's exotic name. I mean, who names their son China? It turns out he looks very cutting edge - bald, intense stare, lots of earrings, reminding me, in fact, of the anesthesiologist I had when delivering DramaQueen. He had earrings up and down both ears. Some people might have felt alarm, but I immediately relaxed, knowing I was in good hands. He was, indeed, an expert at placing an epidural, as I discovered years later delivering Firecracker, when no one could quite get it right and it had to be placed several times. But back to China. The City and The City is one of those books that gets praised as being wildly imaginative. I'm beginning to think that Wildly Imaginative is its on genre. The two cities in the title are kind of like West Berlin and East Berlin if they were layered on top of each other - this street is East Berlin, that one is West, and this one is sort of interlaced, and all the inhabitants of East Berlin had trained themselves to "unsee" the inhabitants of West Berlin, and vice-versa. To not "unsee" is a criminal offense called "breaching." I continue to be amazed at how cleverly the author has constructed this very strange world. In one of the cities a young woman is murdered, and the investigation begins to wander into the dens and lairs of various political cells that want to unify the two countries, or that violently oppose all cooperation, or that believe there is a third country hiding in the cracks. Dark forces at play. Conspiracies. I very much enjoyed it.

And I watched a movie - Dorian Gray, with the amazing Colin Firth as Dorian's manipulative mentor and the fetching Ben Barnes (incredibly beautiful, jaw-dropping, eye-popping drop-dead, transcendentally gorgeous) as Dorian. There's nothing like a good old selling-my-soul-to-the-devil story. I read The Picture of Dorian Gray when I was in high school. I remember feeling slightly disappointed. I had rather hoped, from Wilde's notoriety, that the book would be rather more saucy than it was. The debauchery was vague, to my mind, as I had not yet been instructed in reading a subtext. I wasn't sure exactly what he was up to, besides being a bit of a slut. The movie is much more forthcoming. He knocks up a girl then heartlessly dumps her, visits brothels, makes conquests of all the women in society, drinks a lot, smokes opium, travels the world engaging in some truly alarming and violent sexual escapades, seduces a friend then murders him and dumps him in the river. Dorian remains beautiful while his portrait bears the scars of his corruption and depravity. At first he thinks this is a pretty sweet deal. The painting's transformation is quite amazing,  with maggots crawling out of it, and some sort of effluvia, and I swear mushrooms or something growing on the back. And it groans. Dorian keeps it locked up in his attic, visiting it now and then to view the progress of his degradation. I'm not sure where he thought all this was heading, but that's human nature, always thinking your bad behavior is safely tucked away in a creaky, drafty old room, securely locked. And for most of the film he's okay with watching his soul rot away. The end seems to hint at the possibility of redemption, but if I remember correctly there is none in the book.




That's what I've been up to. It's all very dull.

Unease

wind shakes the bony trees
rattles my heart
blue sky powdered white
ethereal fabric of day
one hand casts a net of light
another drags a veil of shade

Cubicle

These papers smell of futility,
layer upon layer of sediment.
My back feels watched, vulnerable.
Walls enclose but don't protect..
The doom-riddled sky
has shut its door,
as I shut my eyes.

Morning Ablution

shower spray
hope fresh,
clean as soap
before thoughts
crash over me
pulling me
out to sea

Grace

The cat dips one paw into the cup of water and licks it daintily, thoroughly. When she has her fill, she sashays along the table edge, reaches front paws onto the the chair arm, then stretches, haunches lifted, before landing softly on the cushion.

Catnap

the cat lay
in a blissful stupor
when my 8 year old
hugged it around the middle
hauling it onto her lap
pressing her face into
its neck fur
soft and pliable, the cat
resigned itself to affection
for a time

Sleep

thoughts float
sluggishly
in the still air
fatigue circles
then curls
and settles
drowsy, heavy weight
of slow breath

Snow

snow carries
so much hush
a gentle
maternal touch
as if earth said
quiet, please
I can't hear
myself think.

Wind

Wind pushes the traffic lights
up and down
like kids on swings.
How will we know when to stop?

Reflection

The building opposite
so flat, dull, dun colored
made for utility not beauty,
except its many windows
are pools of still water
suspended like banners
giving back the sky
and her clouds
and the bare branches reaching

Life in a Northern Town

I recently became obsessed enthralled with the BBC production North & South. I read the book before watching it, and I think they did a splendid job bringing it to the screen. The book, interesting as it is, could get a bit, well, Victorian at times. You know, when the author starts going on about religious feeling or the fine points of the heroine's emotional state, or someone is dying from a mysterious disease and you never know what, but they are long-suffering and so on. Actually, Gaskell isn't treacly the way Dickens can be, but sometimes you wish there were a little less circumlocution. Screenwriters have to cut to the chase and keep the plot moving.

The plot, in a nutshell, is that Margaret Hale and her family move from southern to northern England and experience culture shock. The North is dark, dirty, industrial, ruled by factory owners who seem more interested in profit than their workers. Workers are growing agitated. Margaret's father is tutoring one of the mill owners, Mr. Thornton. At first Margaret and Mr. Thornton are at odds with each other, but of course that changes. And it being a Victorian novel written by a woman, events unfold in a way that lands the heroine with all the money and power, able to act as an independent agent, while the hero has lost everything. Ah, romance. I love the Victorian era. The Industrial Revolution changes the landscape entirely - from the actual physical topography to the social, economic, and class structure. It's the boom before the bust, though of course it was always a bust for the children working in factories and those dying from breathing in cotton dust.

Besides finding the leads very pretty to look at (and oh my are they), I think the cinematography is general is beautiful, and the soundtrack is gorgeous. I love the way the main melody changes over the course of the series. Also, they did something to the heroine's makeup that is completely un-Victorian, but it makes her glow.

There's a scene at the end of the first episode that made a particular impression on me. Margaret is expressing her despair at living in this harsh Northern mill town, "I believe I've seen hell. It's white. It's snow white." Then we are inside a Victorian cotton mill, cotton fluff floating through the air like snow. And the music, oh it's just perfect.



Isn't that beautiful?

reverb10: Action

Prompt: Action. When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen. What's your next step? (Author: Scott Belsky)

Just for that I plan to go back to bed.

You know, I looked up this Scott Belsky, and low and behold he’s one of these corporate consultants who have some system for encouraging “creative professionals.” It’s all very Fast Company. I’m sure he has an impressive portfolio. I’m sure he has found ways to strengthen ties with clients and spur creative collaboration at all the fast companies he’s dealt with. No doubt there are seminars, workbooks, audio books, think tanks and for all I know desk calendars. He’s really leveraged his talent. He’s made an investment. The lingo of corporate America hearing the ka-ching of profits to be made from its creative geniuses is so icky I want to take a bath.

Prompts like this make it seem that everyone is training to climb Mt. Everest, or dreaming about someday opening that bed and breakfast, or coming up with that new prototype. I don’t know – what do you all dream about? I don’t have a Big Dream. I don’t even have little dreams. I have doctor’s appointments I need to make to take care of my health. I have everyday things that must get done to keep matters moving forward. I have work. I have family life. I have leisure time in which I like to read or write or watch TV. My time is given over to these basic, daily things. I don’t want to publish a book. I don’t want to make my blog lucrative. I don’t want to have a Martha Stewart house. I have no plans to run a marathon. I don’t even want to take up a new hobby.

That is what I need to do: stop scrabbling because the world tells me to scrabble, to achieve, to do, to make something of myself. I just want to wait and see. To let myself be empty sometimes.