My first thought after making it through the exhibition, was that Francis Bacon could have used some anti-depressants. Is that terrible of me to admit? I am slightly ashamed of my knee-jerk-arm-chair diagnosis after one quick afternoon through a dead-man’s retrospective. (And I never even saw the movie…) But I did wonder of how the work might have changed with a Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibotor prescription. I’d like to imagine myself in possession of some amount of negative capability. I tend to think I have the capacity to appreciate an artist’s engagement with dark, heavy, even grotesque themes that can easily knock the bliss off the face someone gathered from visiting an impressionists’ sun filled boat party, replete with little dogs and cognac. And getting the “ahhh” - knocked out of us ought to happen from time to time, because if someone doesn’t represent that pontiff shuttered and screaming in the middle of last century, how will we ever know how to console one another, or at least bear witness, when life reminds us that it’s not merely a box of chocolates (thank-you-very-much-Mr.-Gump) but can sometimes be, instead, the rotting entrails of your best friend or personal savior?
Honestly, I have no business judging any person whose life was lived in those temporal and physical coordinates, when it was certainly not easy to be who he was. Aside from anti-depressants he probably could have also benefited from less war, a loving family, and the genuine celebration of diversity.
The foundation center sends out quotes with each of its e-blasts, and I was annoyed at this one by Horace– "Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant...." But it speaks to the fact that we might not have gotten the benefit of Bacon’s perspective and ugly, stark, imagery had he been sufficiently sated designing carpets and textiles.
While I was not necessarily up for a journey through his images that sunny day I visited the Met, I appreciated the glimpse into his interior world. I believe all art is an expression that makes the invisible of an interior mind visible. Everyone’s mind is a distillation of all they’ve ever witnessed and since no two people have trod exclusively in the same physical and temporal places,–each portal into their interior worlds is a stimulating revelation. I want to say it’s magical because I like the idea of magic – but I don’t know if that is the right word. The dictionary states that magic “is the art of producing a desired effect or result through the use of incantation or various other techniques that presumably assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature.”
There’s a part of me that’s gullible enough to believe that art-making “assures human control and agency over the forces of nature.” Design at least, does. Someone on the radio said today that a concert can change lives – and if that is true, so of course, can an exhibition.
Dreary though it was, I experienced one of the most gorgeous moments of my life in the Bacon exhibition. I was standing in the corner near his final tryptich and a portrait of John Edwards. http://www.metmuseum.org/special/francis_bacon/view_1.asp?item=15
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/francis_bacon/view_1.asp?item=18
There was an elderly woman with dark short brown hair, crisply put together, wearing a flesh-toned pink blouse with matching skirt, and a cream colored sweater vest. She stood just between both images and the color of her clothing perfectly matched his rendition of the figures’ skin and the tryptich’s nude trio. She and the John Edwards image had their backs to one another. The woman and painting almost resembled some bizarre corporeal 3-D yin yang; or a surrealist version of a royal faced playing card. Her died hair matched the dark background, and her size and heft perfectly balanced the four painted bodies. If this unintended moment wasn’t some kind of magic homage to the symmetry of visual expression for the purpose of delighting random strangers –I don’t know why I should keep looking. This moment, crystallized for me, the reality that no matter what our point of view, we can’t help but insert ourselves into an artist’s work – it’s inevitable that the viewer becomes a part of the viewed. I was amazed to watch first-hand as the viewer and the subjects became their own tableau. There was something about that intersection that was more thrilling to me than the exhibition itself, and something I think is worth celebrating.
Which takes me to a little theatre troupe hailing from Portland Oregon, known as hand2mouth, who know all about this kind of celebration. Their recent SF debuts, Endine, Repeat After Me, and Project X were part of a theatre festival curated in tandem with the Network of Ensemble Theatre’s conference this summer. What a hoot! Repeat After Me, knocked my socks off. http://www.hand2mouththeatre.org/archive_ram.html
Imagine the Mickey-Mouse Club on acid hosting a burlesque strip tease and slumber party on a starry July 4th. The work was laugh out loud funny, politically striking, and emotionally broad. The piece was brutally cognizant of the relationship of performer to audience structurally and thematically. But unlike my moment with the Bacon exhibition, H2M was purposefully inclusive of its audience as it worked to explore the nature of identity and patriotism through country-western kareoki, variety show. It was also cool how their on stage costume changes—flea market finds, random wigs, flag-motiffed bikinis and briefs - were carefully mixed with intentional constructions—these functioned more like sculptural identity props than the clothing of a particular character.
This gaggle of white kids from the pacific northwest poked fun at our stereotypes without losing the compassion and humanity implicit in the white-working class American experience. They could do this because of the performers’ vulnerabilities, by calling each other out by name – by calling to the audience for their perspectives—and by calling our nation out, for it’s disgraces. Not getting to see performance as much as I’d like, I didn’t know there was a such a satisfying point on the continuum of musical theatre and straight performance art. H2M operates just in that sweet spot for this viewer. Well done. I LOVE YOU ALL.
My own rural American roots is not something I lose touch with very often. In the City – I miss the wide open spaces, the quiet, and after time away from SF – I long for the excitement and stimulation of the urban world. On a recent trip to NYC I had another magical moment. I did not want to go to the art galleries with my friend. I was much more interested in hanging at the bar overlooking the water to sit still for a change. But then I thought, ‘something magical might happen.’ As it turned out, the gallery she wanted to visit was closed, so we found ourselves instead in at the Danese Gallery’s Forces of Nature exhibition. Magic much?
http://www.danesegallery.com/Main/Introduction.html
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, beautiful work, whatever. I’d just been overwhelmed not a few days earlier at the Met – and then some time at MAD, and more again at Cooper-Hewitt. I had gallery fatigue, tired-eyes, and my feet hurt. Very clever , Yuken Teruya,– trees cut out of paper bags EXQUISITE– yes, yes MORE of this. Transform culture – you artists GO, GO! RAH RAW! (Can I get a drink now?)
And then I saw it: a 40x50 inch photographic print of the landscape I grew up in. There was dried up Lake Kaweah, with the water was so low if looked like a valley; the end of the sunset catching the tops of the mountains; and the grass as it turns from spring green to summer gold in the foreground of the shot. And off in the distance, the dam that I also wondered – why and how it was made... There in a gallery in Chelsea was one of my earliest visual references, from a small place, few have heard of, (population 3,000 maybe?) over 3,000 miles away. I learned to swim in the river that fed that lake. I water-skied there. And if you looked up the valley from the place where Jesse Chehak must have stood to take the photograph – you could probably see the low mountains that overlooked the hill where our house was. This was the first piece of property my dad bought – fresh out of the navy with no job and no clue what was next for his young family.
It was a vista like this that I imagined when taught to sing “purple mountains, majesty”…and as grown woman, I understand somewhat – the politics of the valley – the history of it’s settlement. Chehak’s image is a romantic and epic portrait – but in context I understand there is a gross and greed-full element implicit in that landscape. One that Bacon might have understood immediately – but that as a child – I could only sense intuitively. Still, seeing that image so far removed from that temporal, psychic, and physical space- sent chills through me, and hurt a little bit – because in a fit of childhood nostalgia – I longed to be physically in that landscape. But as I’ve hoped to express in this essay – when we look at art - we always are.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
THREE MOVIES: Why I HATE Slum Dog Millionaire & Hustle and Flow, but LOVE Little Miss Sunshine.
Last month I was happily ensconced in the winter wonderland that is Caldera Center for the Arts, a summer camp nestled in the Cascades that in the winter and spring, houses adult artists for month long residencies. The artists can work in relative solitude and isolation to either focus on their craft, finish a project, or just rejuvenate, away from their day-to-day lives. It’s heaven. And a complete gift to be here.
Our first week here, the other 3 residents and I were giddy to watch a film in the main lodge projected on a big screen. It was like having our own private screening room – complete with roaring fire place. About midway through Slum Dog Millionaire– I found that my stomach was getting tight, and I found myself floating on a wave of disgust. It was a strong body-based reaction – to the point where I asked Noelle – “How much longer will this movie take?” My reaction was surprising to me – and I think it was surprising to the other residents and I almost felt ashamed to be so opinionated about a movie so many found endearing and inspiring. It kept coming up over the course of the month and I kept trying to figure out what I found so “offensive.”
I don’t think I found SDM “offensive.” I think what happened was that I was reacting viscerally to underlying precepts in the film that I feel are toxic to society – toxic to culture – and toxic to genuine understandings of class, race, gender, poverty, inter-personal relationships, among other things. Kind of a big reaction – and I wanted to be sure that there wasn’t some underlying prejudice in me that colored my view of the film. But after careful consideration – I don’t think so.
I believe that when people applaud and AWARD the on-the-surface romanticism in the movie – they are unconsciously applauding the underlying precepts without holding those precepts up to any rigorous analysis. Audiences are being consoled – and in being consoled there is no progress or movement away from the causes of conflict and injustice in the world. Instead, we stay mired/ entrenched in the unconscious insecurities that keep us isolated as individuals; isolated in socio-economic clans; and unable and unwilling to innovate ourselves out of our collective destructive patterns that slowly erode our chances for peace, and environmental survival on this planet.
Gosh – that’s a tall complaint for a director of a film to answer to. But I know in my body that my feelings are important. It’s really very simple: issues of race, class, and gender impact economies – economies impact environmental degradation. Environmental degradation or recovery will determine whether or not we survive as species on planet Earth. So what does this have to do with entertainment? We live in serious times. We cannot afford to be consoled or distracted by frivolous art. (Or as Marcuse would call it “ Mass Art”.)
Global celebration of a film that reinforces erroneous assumptions about global realities don’t serve us AT ALL. In fact, I believe with my whole body that these kinds of films HURT us. Look closely at just a few of the precepts the movie unconsciously posits:
• a happy ending is when ONE boy rises above poverty and corruption because he was “good” and DESTINED, given his life’s journey, to win millions of dollars
o Are some people really pre-destined to socio-economic heaven – while others stay in hell?
• If ONE boy can be clever and good enough to rise above his circumstances – the rest of the people in that caste have an example to emulate/ celebrate
o implicit in this assumption is that nothing can be or need be done to truly address the issues of inequality in the first place
• “true” love survives years of hardship and separation. People do not and need not evolve past their childhood notions of affection and love
o implicit in this assumption is that when us real life people fall out of love or evolve into new kinds of loves/ families we are somehow failing the notion of “true” love. It is also implicit in this assumption that the object/ woman of some man’s affection must return those feelings or they are failing true love as well.
• even if a girl is prostituted and abused, when her “true” love comes to save her – all will be well
• Given the right character, a girl who is prostituted and physically abused FOR YEARS could still grow up to be a drop-dead gorgeous woman capable of returning the kind of love she had been denied throughout the entirety of her DEVELOPMENTAL years.
• A boy can only get the girl if he has or makes a lot of money
• industrious children in poverty can get by with an exciting life duping stupid first world tourists
o Any chance these scenes serve to assuage first world guilt for benefiting from historical colonialism?
These bullet points are just a brief study of my thoughts – and are no way complete and ripe arguments – but I throw them out to encourage a deeper look at what the movie is implicitly saying to its audience, unconsciously or not. And when we applaud the romantic cover-story – “boy suffers, boy overcomes, boy gets girl”— that we are all inclined to applaud, we never-the-less are subconsciously applauding the implicit assumptions/ messages about race, class, gender, economy that the film contextualizes its narrative within. I think that’s why I felt my reaction so physically– and had to examine those feelings closely to understand why.
I’m starting to understand that watching a film isn’t only an intellectual exercise. It impacts our physical/ emotional sensory body. We get adrenaline rushes, dopamine hits, etc. etc. When we applaud a film its messages/ ideas/ images are imprinted in our nervous system. There’s a lot of writing going on right now about the brain, body, and perception – that I’m really curious about – that probably has some insights to this argument. For now, I’m just grateful that films don’t yet have “smell tracks.”
I don’t think Slum Dog is life-affirming, consciousness-raising, or provocative in any way, shape, or form. I think it callously uses romanticized exotic images of race, poverty, and violence to manipulate its audience into being grateful when the protagonist is finally given a reward – a reward BEYOND what most of us enjoy. Implicit in the ending is the suggestion that we should all AS INDIVIDUALS primarily desire that level of reward rather than COLLECTIVELY desire an end to systemic poverty, misogyny, and racism. The movie can’t deal maturely or effectively with the serious issues it highlights to its audience— so it tosses us a bone instead – the vicarious and dubious joy of winning millions of dollars/ rupes. It’s a cheap trick.
Seriously, given our economic woes is this REALLY what we all want: excessive wealth? How has that drive served us collectively? And come on – can we all be millionaires? Kinda doesn’t work like that.
I don’t expect a film to provide the solution to the world’s problems. I also don’t expect a film to mirror my politics. But I do expect an artist to serve a subject with integrity. That didn’t happen in Slum Dog Millionaire and it made me physically ill to watch it, and very angry. I hate that movie in my toes.
For films that had the opposite effect on this very sensitive viewer see:
• Born into Brothels, a documentary film about a photographer who goes to India to teach children photography
• Children of Heaven, An Iranian film about a young brother and sister who after an unfortunate series of events, must share the same pair of tennis shoes
• Monsoon Wedding
• Water
A whole essay could be written about the exportation of the American Dream eg. “Who wants to be a millionaire” to “under developed / third world” societies – I’m sure there are many dissertations that explore this plot point in the most recent chapters of colonialism, the evolution of a global economy, and the global media’s role in that process….
Back at home, filmmakers and TV producers in the U.S. are still lucratively mining our deep primal need for riches and fame. About two years ago at the suggestion of two people who I love, and whose opinions I respected, I rented Hustle and Flow. My feelings were very similar to my recent experience with Slum Dog Millionaire. I found H&F to be predictable as an artwork, and the kind of marketing vehicle one would expect MTV to crank out in order to promote their business interests. (For the purposes of my essay I’m assuming MTV’s business interests are to sell advertising space and catch the eyeballs of those who idolize celebrity and images of tits and ass.) I also found Hustle and Flow to be morally bankrupt.
The merits of the movie as I saw them:
• there was some beautiful acting
• the film was nicely shot/ stylized.
• the music was groovy, if one could ignore the lyrics
Why it sucked:
The plot was typical: man from nothing aspires to something. Quintessential promotion of the American Dream/ Myth. YAWN. What was that true-story horse racing movie that came out a few years ago Sea Biscuit? – MUCH more exciting.
In H& F I’m expected to cheer for the protagonist, Djay, even though he’s a pimp. Newsflash people: pimps are assholes, and this character was an asshole. I don’t think it was so great that his “voice was heard.” His voice spoke of nothing that would elevate his community or add an iota of truth and inspiration to a social dialog. (Although the writers tried to imbue him with a notion of philosophy, I didn't fall for it.)
Not all cultural products have to have a moral, or contribute something new and inspiring to a social conversation, but its one of the ways art moves me. I just don’t gravitate to music or film that uncritically presents violence against women, sexism, and that expects me to care about how hard life is for a pimp.
Newsflash: Pimps are lying, violent men who manipulate and exploit disempowered women until they have no use for them. If you doubt this for a second watch the documentary American Pimp, or research the testimony of women who are working to legalize prostitution. The movement to legalize prostitution seeks to prevent this exploitation by these assholes and help prostitutes get health care, get PAID for their labor as sex workers, and enjoy some say over their own working conditions. Pimps don’t EVER pay prostitutes. They give them drugs, clothes, food, and a place to live. Most prostitutes are “in love” with these men, even though they use and physically abuse them. These men are useless, and if evil exists, they are evil in the most banal of ways. (Not to go all holy-roller on you.)
So, let’s imagine that the filmmakers wanted to challenge us with this anti-hero and show us the dark humanity of his experience. I would argue that instead of accomplishing this they romanticized him in order to make $ and that anyone who opted to cheer for him has been bamboozled. While the film described the pimp lifestyle to a certain extent – and gave us glimpses into his violence, addiction, and his manipulative prowess, (forcing you to be uncomfortable) – the viewer was still expected to cheer for him, and the hos who loved him. (All the while the viewer is instructed to boo the hos who didn’t.)
Also – I just generally hate it when a movie tells me how I should feel. Don’t you?
Wasn’t it sweet that pregnant ho stood by her man and bought him a lava lamp, and some chain? A) She’d never have her own money to do that with. And B) NO. ITS NOT SWEET THAT SHE STOOD BY HER MAN. He’s an asshole who’d been exploiting her. I would have cheered if she'd left him, and had him arrested.
The filmmakers show us Djay’s true colors when he evicts Lexus. (Let’s pause for a second on the choice to name a woman character after a car.) He sends her and her baby out into the cold because she expressed her anger and challenged his power. Nice guy. But she got what was coming to her because she was a bitch and a bad mother. I especially appreciated the scene where she hears his music in her exile and shows remorse for doubting him. “Had I only neglected my own feelings I’d get to be that close to greatness” is the implicit message in that scene. I wholeheartedly reject that message.
Then there is the good white wife, who while cooks and cleans for her husband, is prohibiting him from reaching his full potential, by her insistence on suburban values. And plus that - she talks too much. I’m so glad she came around to “being a bottom” and made sandwiches to support the collaboration, and got over her prejudice against pimps and hos. NOT.
Finally, Djay rises to power after beating the crap out of the man currently in power because Skinny Black bruises his ego by putting Djay's tape in the toilet. While in jail his smartest ho launches a PR campaign on his behalf because he inspired Nola’s leadership. HOW GULLIBLE DO YOU THINK I AM, Mr. Director? Okay, fine I guess this is the true American dream:
For men: Rise to power by exploiting the less powerful and beating the opposition.
For women: Get excited and feel privileged if you can contribute to and/ or hover next to this greatness.
Moral of the story: Djay got what he wanted and he didn’t have to evolve at all. And audience members got to vicariously cheer him on without questioning anything too closely.
According to the film, the audience should hate Skinny Black for his success and being a sell out! But why? It’s clear Skinny knew that Djay was trying to use and manipulate him for his own advancement. So why should the audience feel that he is under an obligation to hear the tape? Throwing it into toilet is a little extreme, (and stupid) but does that merit a beating? Not at all. Yet, while I was watching – I felt for our protagonist – and that made me feel icky. Watching a movie that seduces me into compromising my own moral integrity is really what bugs me the most after watching this CRAP. Don’t forget to buy the soundtrack.
Little Miss Sunshine –bizarre as it sounds –has a lot in common with Hustle and Flow. But to this viewer, LMS is a far superior piece of work. It deals with the same issues: What constitutes success? What is the American Dream? It taps into the American fear of “the loser.” And it takes on sexism and women’s body issues is a very subtle and entertaining way. The film uses a child who is innocent of these mores and illuminates how bizarre they are. (Its OK to eat ice cream, even beauty queens do it.) At the end of the movie no one is famous, but all the characters have evolved in a believable way.
What I like about Little Miss Sunshine is that it makes fun of sexism, without being pedantic. Grandpa’s lust for sex is human, funny, and appropriate. His porn is a source of humor. It makes the father character uncomfortable, but gets him out of a ticket. American values are poked fun of when the not-sexy girl performs a mock striptease – in front of an outraged audience who are promoting their own style of sexism vis a vis the child beauty contest. While we are all horrified and embarrassed on some level, Abby's striptease reminds us all how NOT sexy we feel a lot of the time. During her performance we can love Abby, and laugh at ourselves. Abby’s inability to be the child beauty queen makes us hurt - but her irreverence and innocence - reinforces us AGAINST the inclination to aspire to such shallow representations of beauty and success. Instead, the film reinforces the healing power of a flawed, and imperfect family. That’s kinda like life, no? Doesn’t that feel true?
In Hustle and Flow, audiences can look down on the sex workers, objectify the sex workers, but we never have to identify with them. (If we do identify with them, as Lacan might argue, we can’t be a complicated holistic person, we have to be the one-dimensional character – in this case - either a bitch or a disempowered cheerleader.)
Another striking similarity of these films in terms of theme, was the conflict between the wives in both movies. In both cases, they are challenged to “stand by their men” – in LMS - her man really needs to get a job after his book deal goes south. In HnF – the white husband has a decent job and can support their lifestyle but he can make it BIG by taking a chance on this pimp. Will she support him? Can she think that BIG? The movie clearly defines what a “bad wife” is – and she comes around to being a “good wife.”
The wife/ mother in LMS – starts out supportive and then gets realistic. She also spends time in the movie protecting her children from the father’s fanatical lust for success. In LMS the wife is a true partner. She supports her husband, and calls him on his bullshit. In HnF, the women rarely challenge Djay in any significant way, and are gushingly grateful to sing back up, do PR, or suck cock for his livelihood. Really? Really? Some director, producer, and a host of other cogs in the wheel thought that was OKAY with audiences? That reality makes me very, very sad.
Little Miss Sunshine encourages us to question what success means to us as individuals and collectively. Hustle and Flow tells us that there are celebrities and there are losers. Its slogan should be “Buy into the myth of the American Dream!” - emphasis on the "buy" ing.
On a personal note –the “American dream” is not something I dismiss out of hand. My family lineage includes people who dealt with racism and poverty. And incidentally my immigrant great grandfather and his brother, basically orphaned and still children, hustled their way across the States riding in the box car of a train. After hard work, and the benefits of certain historical circumstances, they were able to provide a better life for their subsequent families, (children who did indeed become millionaires.) I am well aware that I am a direct beneficiary of the “American Dream”. That said, I don’t believe we live in a historical moment where rugged individualism is going to solve our global problems, and I think we are challenged to revise what the “American dream” means to our global community. Our filmmakers have an opportunity to contribute to that vision. I would like to see them take leadership, and it disappoints me when they don’t.
So in my not so humble opinion, Hustle and Flow and Slum Dog Millionaire gets two thumbs, eight fingers, 2 big toes, and 8 little toes DOWN. And Little Miss Sunshine ROCKS!
Our first week here, the other 3 residents and I were giddy to watch a film in the main lodge projected on a big screen. It was like having our own private screening room – complete with roaring fire place. About midway through Slum Dog Millionaire– I found that my stomach was getting tight, and I found myself floating on a wave of disgust. It was a strong body-based reaction – to the point where I asked Noelle – “How much longer will this movie take?” My reaction was surprising to me – and I think it was surprising to the other residents and I almost felt ashamed to be so opinionated about a movie so many found endearing and inspiring. It kept coming up over the course of the month and I kept trying to figure out what I found so “offensive.”
I don’t think I found SDM “offensive.” I think what happened was that I was reacting viscerally to underlying precepts in the film that I feel are toxic to society – toxic to culture – and toxic to genuine understandings of class, race, gender, poverty, inter-personal relationships, among other things. Kind of a big reaction – and I wanted to be sure that there wasn’t some underlying prejudice in me that colored my view of the film. But after careful consideration – I don’t think so.
I believe that when people applaud and AWARD the on-the-surface romanticism in the movie – they are unconsciously applauding the underlying precepts without holding those precepts up to any rigorous analysis. Audiences are being consoled – and in being consoled there is no progress or movement away from the causes of conflict and injustice in the world. Instead, we stay mired/ entrenched in the unconscious insecurities that keep us isolated as individuals; isolated in socio-economic clans; and unable and unwilling to innovate ourselves out of our collective destructive patterns that slowly erode our chances for peace, and environmental survival on this planet.
Gosh – that’s a tall complaint for a director of a film to answer to. But I know in my body that my feelings are important. It’s really very simple: issues of race, class, and gender impact economies – economies impact environmental degradation. Environmental degradation or recovery will determine whether or not we survive as species on planet Earth. So what does this have to do with entertainment? We live in serious times. We cannot afford to be consoled or distracted by frivolous art. (Or as Marcuse would call it “ Mass Art”.)
Global celebration of a film that reinforces erroneous assumptions about global realities don’t serve us AT ALL. In fact, I believe with my whole body that these kinds of films HURT us. Look closely at just a few of the precepts the movie unconsciously posits:
• a happy ending is when ONE boy rises above poverty and corruption because he was “good” and DESTINED, given his life’s journey, to win millions of dollars
o Are some people really pre-destined to socio-economic heaven – while others stay in hell?
• If ONE boy can be clever and good enough to rise above his circumstances – the rest of the people in that caste have an example to emulate/ celebrate
o implicit in this assumption is that nothing can be or need be done to truly address the issues of inequality in the first place
• “true” love survives years of hardship and separation. People do not and need not evolve past their childhood notions of affection and love
o implicit in this assumption is that when us real life people fall out of love or evolve into new kinds of loves/ families we are somehow failing the notion of “true” love. It is also implicit in this assumption that the object/ woman of some man’s affection must return those feelings or they are failing true love as well.
• even if a girl is prostituted and abused, when her “true” love comes to save her – all will be well
• Given the right character, a girl who is prostituted and physically abused FOR YEARS could still grow up to be a drop-dead gorgeous woman capable of returning the kind of love she had been denied throughout the entirety of her DEVELOPMENTAL years.
• A boy can only get the girl if he has or makes a lot of money
• industrious children in poverty can get by with an exciting life duping stupid first world tourists
o Any chance these scenes serve to assuage first world guilt for benefiting from historical colonialism?
These bullet points are just a brief study of my thoughts – and are no way complete and ripe arguments – but I throw them out to encourage a deeper look at what the movie is implicitly saying to its audience, unconsciously or not. And when we applaud the romantic cover-story – “boy suffers, boy overcomes, boy gets girl”— that we are all inclined to applaud, we never-the-less are subconsciously applauding the implicit assumptions/ messages about race, class, gender, economy that the film contextualizes its narrative within. I think that’s why I felt my reaction so physically– and had to examine those feelings closely to understand why.
I’m starting to understand that watching a film isn’t only an intellectual exercise. It impacts our physical/ emotional sensory body. We get adrenaline rushes, dopamine hits, etc. etc. When we applaud a film its messages/ ideas/ images are imprinted in our nervous system. There’s a lot of writing going on right now about the brain, body, and perception – that I’m really curious about – that probably has some insights to this argument. For now, I’m just grateful that films don’t yet have “smell tracks.”
I don’t think Slum Dog is life-affirming, consciousness-raising, or provocative in any way, shape, or form. I think it callously uses romanticized exotic images of race, poverty, and violence to manipulate its audience into being grateful when the protagonist is finally given a reward – a reward BEYOND what most of us enjoy. Implicit in the ending is the suggestion that we should all AS INDIVIDUALS primarily desire that level of reward rather than COLLECTIVELY desire an end to systemic poverty, misogyny, and racism. The movie can’t deal maturely or effectively with the serious issues it highlights to its audience— so it tosses us a bone instead – the vicarious and dubious joy of winning millions of dollars/ rupes. It’s a cheap trick.
Seriously, given our economic woes is this REALLY what we all want: excessive wealth? How has that drive served us collectively? And come on – can we all be millionaires? Kinda doesn’t work like that.
I don’t expect a film to provide the solution to the world’s problems. I also don’t expect a film to mirror my politics. But I do expect an artist to serve a subject with integrity. That didn’t happen in Slum Dog Millionaire and it made me physically ill to watch it, and very angry. I hate that movie in my toes.
For films that had the opposite effect on this very sensitive viewer see:
• Born into Brothels, a documentary film about a photographer who goes to India to teach children photography
• Children of Heaven, An Iranian film about a young brother and sister who after an unfortunate series of events, must share the same pair of tennis shoes
• Monsoon Wedding
• Water
A whole essay could be written about the exportation of the American Dream eg. “Who wants to be a millionaire” to “under developed / third world” societies – I’m sure there are many dissertations that explore this plot point in the most recent chapters of colonialism, the evolution of a global economy, and the global media’s role in that process….
Back at home, filmmakers and TV producers in the U.S. are still lucratively mining our deep primal need for riches and fame. About two years ago at the suggestion of two people who I love, and whose opinions I respected, I rented Hustle and Flow. My feelings were very similar to my recent experience with Slum Dog Millionaire. I found H&F to be predictable as an artwork, and the kind of marketing vehicle one would expect MTV to crank out in order to promote their business interests. (For the purposes of my essay I’m assuming MTV’s business interests are to sell advertising space and catch the eyeballs of those who idolize celebrity and images of tits and ass.) I also found Hustle and Flow to be morally bankrupt.
The merits of the movie as I saw them:
• there was some beautiful acting
• the film was nicely shot/ stylized.
• the music was groovy, if one could ignore the lyrics
Why it sucked:
The plot was typical: man from nothing aspires to something. Quintessential promotion of the American Dream/ Myth. YAWN. What was that true-story horse racing movie that came out a few years ago Sea Biscuit? – MUCH more exciting.
In H& F I’m expected to cheer for the protagonist, Djay, even though he’s a pimp. Newsflash people: pimps are assholes, and this character was an asshole. I don’t think it was so great that his “voice was heard.” His voice spoke of nothing that would elevate his community or add an iota of truth and inspiration to a social dialog. (Although the writers tried to imbue him with a notion of philosophy, I didn't fall for it.)
Not all cultural products have to have a moral, or contribute something new and inspiring to a social conversation, but its one of the ways art moves me. I just don’t gravitate to music or film that uncritically presents violence against women, sexism, and that expects me to care about how hard life is for a pimp.
Newsflash: Pimps are lying, violent men who manipulate and exploit disempowered women until they have no use for them. If you doubt this for a second watch the documentary American Pimp, or research the testimony of women who are working to legalize prostitution. The movement to legalize prostitution seeks to prevent this exploitation by these assholes and help prostitutes get health care, get PAID for their labor as sex workers, and enjoy some say over their own working conditions. Pimps don’t EVER pay prostitutes. They give them drugs, clothes, food, and a place to live. Most prostitutes are “in love” with these men, even though they use and physically abuse them. These men are useless, and if evil exists, they are evil in the most banal of ways. (Not to go all holy-roller on you.)
So, let’s imagine that the filmmakers wanted to challenge us with this anti-hero and show us the dark humanity of his experience. I would argue that instead of accomplishing this they romanticized him in order to make $ and that anyone who opted to cheer for him has been bamboozled. While the film described the pimp lifestyle to a certain extent – and gave us glimpses into his violence, addiction, and his manipulative prowess, (forcing you to be uncomfortable) – the viewer was still expected to cheer for him, and the hos who loved him. (All the while the viewer is instructed to boo the hos who didn’t.)
Also – I just generally hate it when a movie tells me how I should feel. Don’t you?
Wasn’t it sweet that pregnant ho stood by her man and bought him a lava lamp, and some chain? A) She’d never have her own money to do that with. And B) NO. ITS NOT SWEET THAT SHE STOOD BY HER MAN. He’s an asshole who’d been exploiting her. I would have cheered if she'd left him, and had him arrested.
The filmmakers show us Djay’s true colors when he evicts Lexus. (Let’s pause for a second on the choice to name a woman character after a car.) He sends her and her baby out into the cold because she expressed her anger and challenged his power. Nice guy. But she got what was coming to her because she was a bitch and a bad mother. I especially appreciated the scene where she hears his music in her exile and shows remorse for doubting him. “Had I only neglected my own feelings I’d get to be that close to greatness” is the implicit message in that scene. I wholeheartedly reject that message.
Then there is the good white wife, who while cooks and cleans for her husband, is prohibiting him from reaching his full potential, by her insistence on suburban values. And plus that - she talks too much. I’m so glad she came around to “being a bottom” and made sandwiches to support the collaboration, and got over her prejudice against pimps and hos. NOT.
Finally, Djay rises to power after beating the crap out of the man currently in power because Skinny Black bruises his ego by putting Djay's tape in the toilet. While in jail his smartest ho launches a PR campaign on his behalf because he inspired Nola’s leadership. HOW GULLIBLE DO YOU THINK I AM, Mr. Director? Okay, fine I guess this is the true American dream:
For men: Rise to power by exploiting the less powerful and beating the opposition.
For women: Get excited and feel privileged if you can contribute to and/ or hover next to this greatness.
Moral of the story: Djay got what he wanted and he didn’t have to evolve at all. And audience members got to vicariously cheer him on without questioning anything too closely.
According to the film, the audience should hate Skinny Black for his success and being a sell out! But why? It’s clear Skinny knew that Djay was trying to use and manipulate him for his own advancement. So why should the audience feel that he is under an obligation to hear the tape? Throwing it into toilet is a little extreme, (and stupid) but does that merit a beating? Not at all. Yet, while I was watching – I felt for our protagonist – and that made me feel icky. Watching a movie that seduces me into compromising my own moral integrity is really what bugs me the most after watching this CRAP. Don’t forget to buy the soundtrack.
Little Miss Sunshine –bizarre as it sounds –has a lot in common with Hustle and Flow. But to this viewer, LMS is a far superior piece of work. It deals with the same issues: What constitutes success? What is the American Dream? It taps into the American fear of “the loser.” And it takes on sexism and women’s body issues is a very subtle and entertaining way. The film uses a child who is innocent of these mores and illuminates how bizarre they are. (Its OK to eat ice cream, even beauty queens do it.) At the end of the movie no one is famous, but all the characters have evolved in a believable way.
What I like about Little Miss Sunshine is that it makes fun of sexism, without being pedantic. Grandpa’s lust for sex is human, funny, and appropriate. His porn is a source of humor. It makes the father character uncomfortable, but gets him out of a ticket. American values are poked fun of when the not-sexy girl performs a mock striptease – in front of an outraged audience who are promoting their own style of sexism vis a vis the child beauty contest. While we are all horrified and embarrassed on some level, Abby's striptease reminds us all how NOT sexy we feel a lot of the time. During her performance we can love Abby, and laugh at ourselves. Abby’s inability to be the child beauty queen makes us hurt - but her irreverence and innocence - reinforces us AGAINST the inclination to aspire to such shallow representations of beauty and success. Instead, the film reinforces the healing power of a flawed, and imperfect family. That’s kinda like life, no? Doesn’t that feel true?
In Hustle and Flow, audiences can look down on the sex workers, objectify the sex workers, but we never have to identify with them. (If we do identify with them, as Lacan might argue, we can’t be a complicated holistic person, we have to be the one-dimensional character – in this case - either a bitch or a disempowered cheerleader.)
Another striking similarity of these films in terms of theme, was the conflict between the wives in both movies. In both cases, they are challenged to “stand by their men” – in LMS - her man really needs to get a job after his book deal goes south. In HnF – the white husband has a decent job and can support their lifestyle but he can make it BIG by taking a chance on this pimp. Will she support him? Can she think that BIG? The movie clearly defines what a “bad wife” is – and she comes around to being a “good wife.”
The wife/ mother in LMS – starts out supportive and then gets realistic. She also spends time in the movie protecting her children from the father’s fanatical lust for success. In LMS the wife is a true partner. She supports her husband, and calls him on his bullshit. In HnF, the women rarely challenge Djay in any significant way, and are gushingly grateful to sing back up, do PR, or suck cock for his livelihood. Really? Really? Some director, producer, and a host of other cogs in the wheel thought that was OKAY with audiences? That reality makes me very, very sad.
Little Miss Sunshine encourages us to question what success means to us as individuals and collectively. Hustle and Flow tells us that there are celebrities and there are losers. Its slogan should be “Buy into the myth of the American Dream!” - emphasis on the "buy" ing.
On a personal note –the “American dream” is not something I dismiss out of hand. My family lineage includes people who dealt with racism and poverty. And incidentally my immigrant great grandfather and his brother, basically orphaned and still children, hustled their way across the States riding in the box car of a train. After hard work, and the benefits of certain historical circumstances, they were able to provide a better life for their subsequent families, (children who did indeed become millionaires.) I am well aware that I am a direct beneficiary of the “American Dream”. That said, I don’t believe we live in a historical moment where rugged individualism is going to solve our global problems, and I think we are challenged to revise what the “American dream” means to our global community. Our filmmakers have an opportunity to contribute to that vision. I would like to see them take leadership, and it disappoints me when they don’t.
So in my not so humble opinion, Hustle and Flow and Slum Dog Millionaire gets two thumbs, eight fingers, 2 big toes, and 8 little toes DOWN. And Little Miss Sunshine ROCKS!
Friday, March 13, 2009
Three Things: A Fetus, a Bomb, and an Exhibit on Witches from notes taken in Spring of 2003
All this fuss about a bit of flesh the size of a button.
In the School of Medicine in Mexico City, biological samples illustrate the stages of a human fetus’ development. They are displayed in hermetically sealed Plexiglas cases. The once living tissue is preserved – for posterity— in solution. As time accrues within the development cycle, the pale mass of flesh of each specimen begins to take definition. Hovering eternally, they float in solution, like ghostly fish. The final stage—the almost born infant—squeezes his eyes shut. On his head lay limp strands of dark brown hair.
In the next room, a woman’s pelvis (and only a woman’s pelvis) stands hovering over an infant’s skull (and only the infant’s skull). The plates of its cranium are open and pliable. If it weren’t for the eye sockets and nasal cavity, one could imagine she’d dropped a stone.
Today I learn that back in the United States, the MOAB or “Mother of all bombs” was tested and detonated off the coast of Florida.
I’m a little nauseous, and a little tired. By this time, I’ve seen all the outdated medical machinery that I ever imagine existed. The portraits of the hospital directors long dead, look down on me. I’m fascinated and repulsed by all this fuss about a piece of flesh the size of a button. I don’t believe abortion is wrong. Period. Not at all. And especially now that I see the fetus at the end of the first trimester. Let it go, if its not right for any reason. It’s OK. As the planet groans under the weight of our exploding population, as our climate evolves in direction response to our environmental brutalities – preventing a woman from aborting a fetus should NOT be a part of a global- political agenda. It’s a waste of time. NOT a priority.
But I came to see the witches’ show. An exhibition on display culled from within the school’s permanent collection is called “Insolitos Objectos y Fantasticas Criaturas de la Brujera” The title of the exhibition translates, “The unusual objects and fantastic creatures of the witches.”
Outside it is hot but just inside the courtyard of this colonial structure it is cool and pleasant. The thick stone insulates against the heat. There has been an effort to restore the decorative frescoes in some of the rooms. There is a garden off the atrium where the Dominicans must have grown medicinal herbs. It sits beside a trickle of water, that I think must be a spring. I can see the moss covered wall or well, stone, grey, that could predate the school itself. I remember that the City center is built on Aztec ruins that had running water, and were much cleaner than the palaces and churches their conquerors erected.
I buy my ticket and pass through a dark curtain. A long wide hallway is lined on either side with the display cases and cabinets. There doesn’t seem to be rhyme or reason to the types of objects on display. There are taxidermy specimens of what I’m not quite sure, tomes that must be hundreds of years old, bottles of herbs, and reproductions of illustrations depicting Pan in lascivious acts with the half- clad women brewing goats’ heads in big black cauldrons. From this evidence I also gather that the devil has an enormous cock.
I don’t see any dates on the placards and I can’t understand Spanish enough to decipher the purpose of some article or the type of creature archived for so long under the Dominicans’ care. Reptilian tails merge with birds’ wings, beneath a shrunken or modeled human head. Frog’s legs are attached to a cow’s (or some other large animal’s) dried vulva- come-mouth- which squats beneath bulbous glass eyes. A large bird’s beak has been replaced by some creature’s penis. This one stands on cloven hooves.
In these rooms I see the corpse of a mermaid, and a decapitated blackened head of a lady vampire. There is an infant dead hundreds of years that has been embroidered with swans’ wings to match his white robes. There are all kinds of taxidermy monsters with peni and vulvas for noses and mouths. There are examples of human vaginas, embedded with teeth: “Vagina dentanta.”
The inquisitors tools stand beside illumined placards that my “poquito espanol” can barely fathom.
In one case, I see a small wooden bench darkened with age, and covered with a fluffy new sheepskin seat cushion. Protruding from the white fleece is a wooden phallus, sticking up maybe a foot. Trying to discover its workings I notice the crank mechanism beside it whose pole descends beneath the bench connecting to another arm of the contraption. This piece joins the phallus piece a good two feet beneath the seat. It dawns on me that lawful, pious hands would have turned the crank to impale the wretch who sat atop it. The raw wool cushion must have soaked up her blood.
Godly people made these monsters, stitched with half truths that once wriggled in terror to escape the coarse hands that molded their new forms. Who were these vicious midwives that brought to life such lies? What weird malicious craftsmanship is here displayed that must have justified the atrocities against the women and men whose only crimes could have been scarce, save maybe a knowledge of herbs, an outspoken remark, and zero contempt for their own genitalia?
I believe that they are the grandfathers of our own propagandists who work daily to personify Evil...to justify the burning, the incineration of untold masses with the “MOTHER OF ALL BOMBS’ AS IF, such a thing would be born between a woman’s legs.
I remember learning that the inquisitors divided the plunder of a witch’s estate not unlike how before the bombs even drop the US government has divided the rights to develop a- -yet-to-be-ransacked country. Then we use these indulgences to bribe less powerful nations to join the fray... what God do you serve, Mr. Bush?
How am I to explain my country of which I am so ashamed? How do I say proudly without apology, that our despot sits poised to spew fire on a country of children, and that ironically his supporters believe in the sanctity of life to such an extent, that they’d persecute women who would abort a fetus in the first trimester. How do I defend this country, all the while I fear for my own civil rights, my choice to do as I please with my own reproductive organs, my own buttons of flesh? Then, it feels frivolous to think of the fish in Florida, but I can’t help it. They didn’t deserve that either.
In the School of Medicine in Mexico City, biological samples illustrate the stages of a human fetus’ development. They are displayed in hermetically sealed Plexiglas cases. The once living tissue is preserved – for posterity— in solution. As time accrues within the development cycle, the pale mass of flesh of each specimen begins to take definition. Hovering eternally, they float in solution, like ghostly fish. The final stage—the almost born infant—squeezes his eyes shut. On his head lay limp strands of dark brown hair.
In the next room, a woman’s pelvis (and only a woman’s pelvis) stands hovering over an infant’s skull (and only the infant’s skull). The plates of its cranium are open and pliable. If it weren’t for the eye sockets and nasal cavity, one could imagine she’d dropped a stone.
Today I learn that back in the United States, the MOAB or “Mother of all bombs” was tested and detonated off the coast of Florida.
I’m a little nauseous, and a little tired. By this time, I’ve seen all the outdated medical machinery that I ever imagine existed. The portraits of the hospital directors long dead, look down on me. I’m fascinated and repulsed by all this fuss about a piece of flesh the size of a button. I don’t believe abortion is wrong. Period. Not at all. And especially now that I see the fetus at the end of the first trimester. Let it go, if its not right for any reason. It’s OK. As the planet groans under the weight of our exploding population, as our climate evolves in direction response to our environmental brutalities – preventing a woman from aborting a fetus should NOT be a part of a global- political agenda. It’s a waste of time. NOT a priority.
But I came to see the witches’ show. An exhibition on display culled from within the school’s permanent collection is called “Insolitos Objectos y Fantasticas Criaturas de la Brujera” The title of the exhibition translates, “The unusual objects and fantastic creatures of the witches.”
Outside it is hot but just inside the courtyard of this colonial structure it is cool and pleasant. The thick stone insulates against the heat. There has been an effort to restore the decorative frescoes in some of the rooms. There is a garden off the atrium where the Dominicans must have grown medicinal herbs. It sits beside a trickle of water, that I think must be a spring. I can see the moss covered wall or well, stone, grey, that could predate the school itself. I remember that the City center is built on Aztec ruins that had running water, and were much cleaner than the palaces and churches their conquerors erected.
I buy my ticket and pass through a dark curtain. A long wide hallway is lined on either side with the display cases and cabinets. There doesn’t seem to be rhyme or reason to the types of objects on display. There are taxidermy specimens of what I’m not quite sure, tomes that must be hundreds of years old, bottles of herbs, and reproductions of illustrations depicting Pan in lascivious acts with the half- clad women brewing goats’ heads in big black cauldrons. From this evidence I also gather that the devil has an enormous cock.
I don’t see any dates on the placards and I can’t understand Spanish enough to decipher the purpose of some article or the type of creature archived for so long under the Dominicans’ care. Reptilian tails merge with birds’ wings, beneath a shrunken or modeled human head. Frog’s legs are attached to a cow’s (or some other large animal’s) dried vulva- come-mouth- which squats beneath bulbous glass eyes. A large bird’s beak has been replaced by some creature’s penis. This one stands on cloven hooves.
In these rooms I see the corpse of a mermaid, and a decapitated blackened head of a lady vampire. There is an infant dead hundreds of years that has been embroidered with swans’ wings to match his white robes. There are all kinds of taxidermy monsters with peni and vulvas for noses and mouths. There are examples of human vaginas, embedded with teeth: “Vagina dentanta.”
The inquisitors tools stand beside illumined placards that my “poquito espanol” can barely fathom.
In one case, I see a small wooden bench darkened with age, and covered with a fluffy new sheepskin seat cushion. Protruding from the white fleece is a wooden phallus, sticking up maybe a foot. Trying to discover its workings I notice the crank mechanism beside it whose pole descends beneath the bench connecting to another arm of the contraption. This piece joins the phallus piece a good two feet beneath the seat. It dawns on me that lawful, pious hands would have turned the crank to impale the wretch who sat atop it. The raw wool cushion must have soaked up her blood.
Godly people made these monsters, stitched with half truths that once wriggled in terror to escape the coarse hands that molded their new forms. Who were these vicious midwives that brought to life such lies? What weird malicious craftsmanship is here displayed that must have justified the atrocities against the women and men whose only crimes could have been scarce, save maybe a knowledge of herbs, an outspoken remark, and zero contempt for their own genitalia?
I believe that they are the grandfathers of our own propagandists who work daily to personify Evil...to justify the burning, the incineration of untold masses with the “MOTHER OF ALL BOMBS’ AS IF, such a thing would be born between a woman’s legs.
I remember learning that the inquisitors divided the plunder of a witch’s estate not unlike how before the bombs even drop the US government has divided the rights to develop a- -yet-to-be-ransacked country. Then we use these indulgences to bribe less powerful nations to join the fray... what God do you serve, Mr. Bush?
How am I to explain my country of which I am so ashamed? How do I say proudly without apology, that our despot sits poised to spew fire on a country of children, and that ironically his supporters believe in the sanctity of life to such an extent, that they’d persecute women who would abort a fetus in the first trimester. How do I defend this country, all the while I fear for my own civil rights, my choice to do as I please with my own reproductive organs, my own buttons of flesh? Then, it feels frivolous to think of the fish in Florida, but I can’t help it. They didn’t deserve that either.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Three Things: One Mouse, Another Mouse, and a Third Mouse
3/5/09 – 2am
There was more than one mouse. Tonight I came back to my cabin to find that the trap had taken its second victim. This one was smaller than the first. I think these guys might have been wet, because their feces were smeared on the cabinet bottom beneath the sink next to the trash can. It’s so gross. Despite the threat of my new trap’s fierce bite – a THIRD one was rustling in the trash can. I quickly closed the door. What do they eat when the cabins are empty? What do they eat in the wild and why don’t they do that right now? Like some aggravated cartoon character I quickly opened the cabinet door –placed a large salad bowl on top of the can – put three plates on top of the bowl, took the whole oversized mouse cage outside in the snow storm, and put two more logs on top of that. I expect by tomorrow mouse number three will be dead.
It is quite horrifying, really. I think these are the first mammals I’ve ever killed myself. I’ve eaten plenty, of course. Not mice! But the typical white and dark meats appropriate to our culture. I wonder exactly how many pigs and cows I’ve eaten by age 36? I’ve had rabbit before too. (Not more than once.) Also, some deer meat, buffalo, maybe kangaroo – but only at that weird meat bbq that my friends used to have. (There I ate alligator and beetles.) Weird.
I find it disturbing to observe that “the mouse annoyed me, so I killed it.” Now of course, the critters do carry diseases. And they are eating my food, well – I have the food safely tucked away, really they are only eating my trash—but STILL. I don’t want them crawling over the kitchen and shitting where I prepare my food. Or horror upon horrors, crawling over my face when I sleep. I’m not down with that.
It’s awful to see their feet stick out from the trap – the straight hairless tails– the trap’s plastic jaws clenched at the top of their spines - their dull grey eyes all buggy and bulging. How limp they drop into the creek where the current takes them away. It’s really quite awful to think that these little creatures were once scurrying about – enjoying a bit of olive, of avocado, inside a warm cabin in the otherwise desolate forests of eastern Oregon, and then I come along, and kill them. Who am I to do that? And when does it stop? Am I treading some fine line? Is this a gateway killing?
A part of me wishes we all grew up slaughtering our own food – that way this wouldn’t be quite so jarring. And I don’t mean, I want to go out and take up hunting. More like – if you want chicken – you ring its neck and pluck it yourself. Then this mouse-moment wouldn’t be much of a moment – just a par for the course – “I just say NO to the plague thankyouverymuch” – done with it. I wonder if Mr. Three is experiencing hypothermia yet? The trap is much kinder. I’d give it a benevolent quick death if I only knew how to do that without letting it go. Some would say I should capture then release it somewhere. Except that I’ve heard 2 or 3 miles is nothing to a mouse – and I don’t have a car here.
This is really stressing me out. I’m lying awake noting every creak and grown of the cabin – is that one? Is it scuttling? Is it close? When I stop obsessing on that I try to figure out the significance of the mouse motif in my spiritual-emotional world, and surprisingly – I’ve ACTUALLY come up with something. This is probably more a testament to the human species’ innate ability to create connections regardless of whether they exist or not, based on some neurological principal I have no intention of researching right now. But anyway, moving backward, these three mice are coming at a time when all these annoying thoughts are eking into my otherwise happy mind – residual anger left over from a bad relationship with a - I’m not even going to call him a boyfriend, shall we say psychic vampire? I am nigh on seven months out of it and am over the biggest shockers – but boy, am I still mad. And so the mice show up. Stick with me…
I’m also about twelve weeks out of a job that was a serious struggle from the get-go. I did good there, and I made some great friends – learned a LOT – and can sincerely say that the experience was very valuable. But it was a BEAST of a job that I kept trying to make work for me. The org had weak leadership; was completely disorganized (in the two years I was there I think they restructured the org chart like 3 times). There were mandatory week-long staff retreats - UGH – which featured naked co-workers, interpretative performances of our issue areas complete with cardboard Caribou antlers, and sharing circles. This job included some BIZZARE-even-on-office-sitcoms-would-this neuroticness -not-make-any-sense behavior; and basically it stressed me out like no other job has ever stressed me out. That said – I was also undergoing aforementioned relationship stress – and the two together proved a toxic combo that PLEASE GOD help me, I hope to never to create in my life again. So – what does this have to do with the mice? Well, to add insult to injury, the office was infested with the fu#@$ers, and mice feces on my desktop and key board welcomed me home from the holiday break. Once working late, in the office alone, the brazen bastard literally crawled over my feet. It made me livid.
The mice became a symbol of all the little annoying sh$#t I could not manage at that place, that never-the-less impacted my performance / success there. And the word in the office was that we needed to use HUMANE traps, out of respect for the vegans we worked with. I was GLEEFUL when HR not only contracted the exterminator on the sly, but when he actually took a few out. The schadenfreude was a bit more than one should feel, I think– the emotional reaction was not in proportion to the actual event.
Anyway – the third and final mouse encounter happened ten years ago, and that was also a major moment in my life. In my twenties – a man I’d fallen head over heels for turned out to NOT be the artist-in-residence at a cancer retreat center like he said he was, and subsequently proceeded to empty my bank account on a drug-induced bender that was allegedly to end in suicide. This catapulted me into a crisis of sorts (go figure) and I left both my job and apartment to stay with my family for a few months.
Once back in the saddle, still dealing with the residual anger and trauma to a certain extent, I went to get my boxes out of storage where a FAMILY of mice had nested and given birth in a box of my clothes. They’d chewed through some highly coveted art books, shoes etc. I literally had to shake out the little pink goblin-like-alien-babies from a lovely silk skirt. I sobbed hysterically. The mother-fuc#$#r in jail upon hearing this story (I’d visit him from time to time to glare, let him have it, and cry) told me not to blame the mice – they were only doing what came naturally. Apparently that was some analogy for him as well.
I’ve had nice boyfriends in case you were wondering –and GREAT jobs. But there are no mice even remotely connected to them. So, really mice have only appeared in my life –totem animals that they might be – in the relatively angriest of times. So how do I make my peace with the vermin? What do the mice have to teach me? Are they some indication that I’m gnawing on the debris of my life in a way that I shouldn’t? Are they teaching me how to dump someone in a body of water and not worry so much about it? I sure don’t know yet– but for now, I know what I’ve got for them – another glob of peanut butter and a snapped neck. Die, motherf*&$!!rs Die! Die!
There was more than one mouse. Tonight I came back to my cabin to find that the trap had taken its second victim. This one was smaller than the first. I think these guys might have been wet, because their feces were smeared on the cabinet bottom beneath the sink next to the trash can. It’s so gross. Despite the threat of my new trap’s fierce bite – a THIRD one was rustling in the trash can. I quickly closed the door. What do they eat when the cabins are empty? What do they eat in the wild and why don’t they do that right now? Like some aggravated cartoon character I quickly opened the cabinet door –placed a large salad bowl on top of the can – put three plates on top of the bowl, took the whole oversized mouse cage outside in the snow storm, and put two more logs on top of that. I expect by tomorrow mouse number three will be dead.
It is quite horrifying, really. I think these are the first mammals I’ve ever killed myself. I’ve eaten plenty, of course. Not mice! But the typical white and dark meats appropriate to our culture. I wonder exactly how many pigs and cows I’ve eaten by age 36? I’ve had rabbit before too. (Not more than once.) Also, some deer meat, buffalo, maybe kangaroo – but only at that weird meat bbq that my friends used to have. (There I ate alligator and beetles.) Weird.
I find it disturbing to observe that “the mouse annoyed me, so I killed it.” Now of course, the critters do carry diseases. And they are eating my food, well – I have the food safely tucked away, really they are only eating my trash—but STILL. I don’t want them crawling over the kitchen and shitting where I prepare my food. Or horror upon horrors, crawling over my face when I sleep. I’m not down with that.
It’s awful to see their feet stick out from the trap – the straight hairless tails– the trap’s plastic jaws clenched at the top of their spines - their dull grey eyes all buggy and bulging. How limp they drop into the creek where the current takes them away. It’s really quite awful to think that these little creatures were once scurrying about – enjoying a bit of olive, of avocado, inside a warm cabin in the otherwise desolate forests of eastern Oregon, and then I come along, and kill them. Who am I to do that? And when does it stop? Am I treading some fine line? Is this a gateway killing?
A part of me wishes we all grew up slaughtering our own food – that way this wouldn’t be quite so jarring. And I don’t mean, I want to go out and take up hunting. More like – if you want chicken – you ring its neck and pluck it yourself. Then this mouse-moment wouldn’t be much of a moment – just a par for the course – “I just say NO to the plague thankyouverymuch” – done with it. I wonder if Mr. Three is experiencing hypothermia yet? The trap is much kinder. I’d give it a benevolent quick death if I only knew how to do that without letting it go. Some would say I should capture then release it somewhere. Except that I’ve heard 2 or 3 miles is nothing to a mouse – and I don’t have a car here.
This is really stressing me out. I’m lying awake noting every creak and grown of the cabin – is that one? Is it scuttling? Is it close? When I stop obsessing on that I try to figure out the significance of the mouse motif in my spiritual-emotional world, and surprisingly – I’ve ACTUALLY come up with something. This is probably more a testament to the human species’ innate ability to create connections regardless of whether they exist or not, based on some neurological principal I have no intention of researching right now. But anyway, moving backward, these three mice are coming at a time when all these annoying thoughts are eking into my otherwise happy mind – residual anger left over from a bad relationship with a - I’m not even going to call him a boyfriend, shall we say psychic vampire? I am nigh on seven months out of it and am over the biggest shockers – but boy, am I still mad. And so the mice show up. Stick with me…
I’m also about twelve weeks out of a job that was a serious struggle from the get-go. I did good there, and I made some great friends – learned a LOT – and can sincerely say that the experience was very valuable. But it was a BEAST of a job that I kept trying to make work for me. The org had weak leadership; was completely disorganized (in the two years I was there I think they restructured the org chart like 3 times). There were mandatory week-long staff retreats - UGH – which featured naked co-workers, interpretative performances of our issue areas complete with cardboard Caribou antlers, and sharing circles. This job included some BIZZARE-even-on-office-sitcoms-would-this neuroticness -not-make-any-sense behavior; and basically it stressed me out like no other job has ever stressed me out. That said – I was also undergoing aforementioned relationship stress – and the two together proved a toxic combo that PLEASE GOD help me, I hope to never to create in my life again. So – what does this have to do with the mice? Well, to add insult to injury, the office was infested with the fu#@$ers, and mice feces on my desktop and key board welcomed me home from the holiday break. Once working late, in the office alone, the brazen bastard literally crawled over my feet. It made me livid.
The mice became a symbol of all the little annoying sh$#t I could not manage at that place, that never-the-less impacted my performance / success there. And the word in the office was that we needed to use HUMANE traps, out of respect for the vegans we worked with. I was GLEEFUL when HR not only contracted the exterminator on the sly, but when he actually took a few out. The schadenfreude was a bit more than one should feel, I think– the emotional reaction was not in proportion to the actual event.
Anyway – the third and final mouse encounter happened ten years ago, and that was also a major moment in my life. In my twenties – a man I’d fallen head over heels for turned out to NOT be the artist-in-residence at a cancer retreat center like he said he was, and subsequently proceeded to empty my bank account on a drug-induced bender that was allegedly to end in suicide. This catapulted me into a crisis of sorts (go figure) and I left both my job and apartment to stay with my family for a few months.
Once back in the saddle, still dealing with the residual anger and trauma to a certain extent, I went to get my boxes out of storage where a FAMILY of mice had nested and given birth in a box of my clothes. They’d chewed through some highly coveted art books, shoes etc. I literally had to shake out the little pink goblin-like-alien-babies from a lovely silk skirt. I sobbed hysterically. The mother-fuc#$#r in jail upon hearing this story (I’d visit him from time to time to glare, let him have it, and cry) told me not to blame the mice – they were only doing what came naturally. Apparently that was some analogy for him as well.
I’ve had nice boyfriends in case you were wondering –and GREAT jobs. But there are no mice even remotely connected to them. So, really mice have only appeared in my life –totem animals that they might be – in the relatively angriest of times. So how do I make my peace with the vermin? What do the mice have to teach me? Are they some indication that I’m gnawing on the debris of my life in a way that I shouldn’t? Are they teaching me how to dump someone in a body of water and not worry so much about it? I sure don’t know yet– but for now, I know what I’ve got for them – another glob of peanut butter and a snapped neck. Die, motherf*&$!!rs Die! Die!
Friday, January 16, 2009
Three Things: A Sharks’ Game, Indian Springs in Calistoga, and the Poetry of Jean Valentine
“That's my goal: to take out everything that doesn't feel alive.” These are Jean Valentine’s words on editing her poetry. I’d rather keep reading her book, River at Wolf, than get up to pee. Her crystalline lines, offer murky dream fragments barely remembered but that return –intermittent radio signals— when you fall asleep again. Likewise it reminds me of a that quick shudder in the middle of the night, the knowledge that something important is all wrong, still beautiful, and within my power to change. The alive is dynamic, and her poetry, these condensed-less-than-a-page bits and pieces of living dynamite, cut into the mind with recognition, and then sometimes mend it.
“And the under voice said, Stars you are mine,
you have always been mine; I remember the minute on the birth table
when you were born, I riding with my feet up in the wide silver-blue stirrups,
I came and came and came, little baby and woman, where were you taking me?
Everyone else may leave you, I will never leave you, fugitive.”
http://www.alicejamesbooks.org/river_wolf.html.
How to take out everything that doesn’t feel alive? Is that only possible on the page…? Sarah, Leslie and I went to Indian Springs in Calistoga. www.indianspringscalistoga.com/ Like postulants (Sarah’s word) we walked in our white terry cloth robes to the Olympic-sized mineral pool. It was an alive night, moon-basked, cool and clear. We floated on foam mats, on large “noodles” talking and laughing, holding the corners of the mats so we wouldn’t drift away from each other. We must have made a funny triangle from the moon’s perspective.
Tourists have been ‘taking the waters’ here since the 1860’s and the Wapoo tribes, for generations before that. All that wasn’t alive melted away in the steam – and after some time there – we were too soothed to let anything unnecessary erode that calm. I could only feel love and gratitude. War, debt, loss, anger would reside in other moments.
Humans love rituals – collecting words to recite, soaking in so-called sacred waters, and the national anthem before a hockey game. Despite myself, I got chills when I heard the song before my first-ever hockey game. Not because the National Anthem means anything specific to me– but because its formal repetition binds a community: melts the furtive, restless, and chaotic individual selves into a crowd poised to enjoy something beautiful together. How appropriate to then to share the drama of a match. A ceremony with its own rules, rites, and liturgy. Its exciting to feel 17,453 people all clap in unison, to make the cave-man-like - shark jaw motion, – to yell “Charge!”
It might be a stretch, but I find hockey of all other sports to be well- edited. There’s no endless stop and start – it MOVES. It’s all you can do to keep watch on the puck. It almost hurts the eyes. And I don’t think it’s right but I LIKE the fights. I’m human and as one, I get mad. While I’d hopefully never act out violently – I do imagine it – and I did get some satisfaction when I saw the guys let it out on the ice. It’s safe. Contained. The penalties are clear, and at least in the game I saw, no one is seriously injured. Its just steam eking out of the earth, but cooled so we can take it, or the violence constrained in a poem that calls out human nature and underlines both its light and dark aspects. I’m grateful for all these expressions of the alive.
“And the under voice said, Stars you are mine,
you have always been mine; I remember the minute on the birth table
when you were born, I riding with my feet up in the wide silver-blue stirrups,
I came and came and came, little baby and woman, where were you taking me?
Everyone else may leave you, I will never leave you, fugitive.”
http://www.alicejamesbooks.org/river_wolf.html.
How to take out everything that doesn’t feel alive? Is that only possible on the page…? Sarah, Leslie and I went to Indian Springs in Calistoga. www.indianspringscalistoga.com/ Like postulants (Sarah’s word) we walked in our white terry cloth robes to the Olympic-sized mineral pool. It was an alive night, moon-basked, cool and clear. We floated on foam mats, on large “noodles” talking and laughing, holding the corners of the mats so we wouldn’t drift away from each other. We must have made a funny triangle from the moon’s perspective.
Tourists have been ‘taking the waters’ here since the 1860’s and the Wapoo tribes, for generations before that. All that wasn’t alive melted away in the steam – and after some time there – we were too soothed to let anything unnecessary erode that calm. I could only feel love and gratitude. War, debt, loss, anger would reside in other moments.
Humans love rituals – collecting words to recite, soaking in so-called sacred waters, and the national anthem before a hockey game. Despite myself, I got chills when I heard the song before my first-ever hockey game. Not because the National Anthem means anything specific to me– but because its formal repetition binds a community: melts the furtive, restless, and chaotic individual selves into a crowd poised to enjoy something beautiful together. How appropriate to then to share the drama of a match. A ceremony with its own rules, rites, and liturgy. Its exciting to feel 17,453 people all clap in unison, to make the cave-man-like - shark jaw motion, – to yell “Charge!”
It might be a stretch, but I find hockey of all other sports to be well- edited. There’s no endless stop and start – it MOVES. It’s all you can do to keep watch on the puck. It almost hurts the eyes. And I don’t think it’s right but I LIKE the fights. I’m human and as one, I get mad. While I’d hopefully never act out violently – I do imagine it – and I did get some satisfaction when I saw the guys let it out on the ice. It’s safe. Contained. The penalties are clear, and at least in the game I saw, no one is seriously injured. Its just steam eking out of the earth, but cooled so we can take it, or the violence constrained in a poem that calls out human nature and underlines both its light and dark aspects. I’m grateful for all these expressions of the alive.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Three Things: The Constellation Orion, Mietz Cellars & “Everything You Know About Love and Sex Is Wrong” by Pepper Schwartz
In San Francisco, its unusual to get the chance to star gaze. There is the light pollution, and then the oh-so-romantic, aka frickin’-cold fog that hides the sky. Over the holiday break while visiting my folks in Cambria, CA, after family had all wandered off to bed, I spent some time with my old pal Orion. It’s the only constellation I can, without any hesitation, make out. I remember vividly my first visit to the planetarium. There, an illustration of the classical figure was superimposed on the domed ceiling’s facsimile of stars. He was easy to spot after that – I’d just look for the three points of his belt, then the triangle of his shoulders and head, and out he’d pop as if he’d stepped forward from a mythological line up.
From my parent’s hot tub, the surf below sounds vast enough, as the breakers succumb to the shore. But above me, when not obscured by fog, the immensity of –GULP— the heavens, offers an infinite quiet with no rival. What I mean is, this large silence of the night sky, silences me. I’m rendered humble, small, thankfully insignificant, but paradoxically part of the beauty that is everything. And also puzzling, I am both simultaneously responsible and of no consequence. I’m light. It’s great.
Or at least, that’s what I make of it all in hindsight, in/secure in the world of deadlines, bills, and social concerns. Of course, this isn’t all thought-out from the hot tub. When gazing at Orion and all that surrounds him – I just am – and nothing matters more than anything else– because everything just is. So quiet. So clear.
Then there is the vastness of the micro, or in the case of last weekend – the microbe. Something very critical to the making of wine. (Also, known to produce states of calm.) A small group of us spent a boisterous and cheerful day and a half sampling wines in Sonoma county. All told, I believe we hit a dozen different establishments. The names I remember: Prescott, Mill Creek, Vinasa, J; then there was the place with the persimmon tree, the place with the flocking on the still-up x-mas trees, the place with the wine bottles in miniature coffins, and the place named after the rock-paper-scissors game with the horde of plastic snowmen out the back door, all smiling manically post-holiday… I have a sneaking suspicion that after about 3 wineries one can’t really taste anything, least of all be expected to remember the names of each place. What was with those snowmen?
As wine tasters go, I don’t think I’m very good. I can pull off a colorful description of the subtleties present in a sip or a swill, but truth be told I’m not endlessly fascinated by it the way I might be a vista, or a collection of art work, or a garden. This doesn’t stop me from drinking wine, tho’. It could be, I just need more study.
Its also true, I have a snobbish aversion to anything “touristy.” Or as my grandmother would have phrased it - tacky. “Had, I known getting old was going to be this tacky, I might not have done it.” she said not long before she passed away. There is something about the golf shirts, the glazed knick-knacks, the what-wine-goes-with-what-cheese books (as if figuring it out for one’s self wasn’t FAR more fun) that just turns me off. Yes it is a celebrated ritual that I enjoy –and yes the wines can be extraordinary – but it shouldn’t feel like one is at Disneyland, or some pseudo-up-scale-ultra-chic version of said amusement park.
What a treat then, when my cousins Nancy & Keith Meitz took the time to give our posse a tour of their winery. http://www.mietzcellars.com/index.html. Located on Limerick Lane in the Russian River Valley just south of Healdsburg, CA, is the unassuming ivy- covered structure built by the Sandini family back in the days of Prohibition. The story goes that when Keith, a fire-fighter-artist left Oakland in the 70’s with a notion he could make wine, his elder Italian neighbors placed bets on how long he would last as a farmer. After observing his back-breaking labor for some months, they began to give him tips here and there, so he wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Because of the Mietz’s good nature and perseverance, the patriarch of the Sandinis eventually helped them into the winery’s current home. And lotsa bottles later, not to mention some awards (!), there they are today.
The bias of a familial relationship with this winery aside, the morning with Nancy & Keith was genuine and lovely. Everyone felt their warmth - even though it was 49 degrees in there! There was no schwag – just barrels both steel and oak, and lots of boxes full wine. We felt lucky to hear their perspectives as they’d watched the region transform over thirty years: the hardware store gave way to boutiques with $500 shoes, not the same place where they’d seen a knife fight in the square so many years before.
More than anything, it was wonderful to visit with friends who had built a life from the land with an unrelenting perseverance to hone their craft. Light hearted and generous, they dispelled any thoughts about it being a romantic or glamorous lifestyle –but clearly they demonstrated that it was a good one. Like anything, it had been hard work, and not without sacrifices. But above all, the wine was outstanding. Taste it! Its available online at the link above.
We could all use a dose of this formula – dogged perseverance and the desire to make something – our lives, our art, our meals, our political systems - authentic and with an eye towards excellence. This sentiment, is reflected in a book I picked up for $1.00, “Everything you know about Love and Sex is Wrong” by Dr. Pepper Schwartz. Who could pass up a title like that?
I LOVE this woman! A sociologist by training, she presents case study after case study debunking popular myths I didn’t necessarily believe in my twenties, but somehow-er-other, got convinced of by my thirties. Chapters include: “Myth: Your lover should be your best friend; Myth: You will know when you have met ‘the one’; Myth: Pick only someone you are madly in love with; Myth: Never have sex on the first date; Myth: When you want to get serious, date only people with marriage potential; Myth: Men are simply not monogamous by nature, Women are;” and my personal favorite – because I’ve often suspected as much: “Myth: Even if sex isn’t fantastic in the beginning, it can be fixed.” Not likely –according to the evidence.
Thank you Dr. Schwartz for offering ‘a fresh look at some of our sacred cows’– and TAKE THAT – you “Rules” women, and the “Men are from Mars”, followers. I’m not saying that everything she theorizes about is the right thing for everyone or even that the Rules/ Mars-Venus stuff is 100% bulls@*t – but I think if we’re to evolve at all, in our relationships, adherence to a fixed perspective of any kind isn’t gonna help. Like the stars and a good glass of wine – everything is dynamic. By watching and noting these curious alchemies, life just gets better.
From my parent’s hot tub, the surf below sounds vast enough, as the breakers succumb to the shore. But above me, when not obscured by fog, the immensity of –GULP— the heavens, offers an infinite quiet with no rival. What I mean is, this large silence of the night sky, silences me. I’m rendered humble, small, thankfully insignificant, but paradoxically part of the beauty that is everything. And also puzzling, I am both simultaneously responsible and of no consequence. I’m light. It’s great.
Or at least, that’s what I make of it all in hindsight, in/secure in the world of deadlines, bills, and social concerns. Of course, this isn’t all thought-out from the hot tub. When gazing at Orion and all that surrounds him – I just am – and nothing matters more than anything else– because everything just is. So quiet. So clear.
Then there is the vastness of the micro, or in the case of last weekend – the microbe. Something very critical to the making of wine. (Also, known to produce states of calm.) A small group of us spent a boisterous and cheerful day and a half sampling wines in Sonoma county. All told, I believe we hit a dozen different establishments. The names I remember: Prescott, Mill Creek, Vinasa, J; then there was the place with the persimmon tree, the place with the flocking on the still-up x-mas trees, the place with the wine bottles in miniature coffins, and the place named after the rock-paper-scissors game with the horde of plastic snowmen out the back door, all smiling manically post-holiday… I have a sneaking suspicion that after about 3 wineries one can’t really taste anything, least of all be expected to remember the names of each place. What was with those snowmen?
As wine tasters go, I don’t think I’m very good. I can pull off a colorful description of the subtleties present in a sip or a swill, but truth be told I’m not endlessly fascinated by it the way I might be a vista, or a collection of art work, or a garden. This doesn’t stop me from drinking wine, tho’. It could be, I just need more study.
Its also true, I have a snobbish aversion to anything “touristy.” Or as my grandmother would have phrased it - tacky. “Had, I known getting old was going to be this tacky, I might not have done it.” she said not long before she passed away. There is something about the golf shirts, the glazed knick-knacks, the what-wine-goes-with-what-cheese books (as if figuring it out for one’s self wasn’t FAR more fun) that just turns me off. Yes it is a celebrated ritual that I enjoy –and yes the wines can be extraordinary – but it shouldn’t feel like one is at Disneyland, or some pseudo-up-scale-ultra-chic version of said amusement park.
What a treat then, when my cousins Nancy & Keith Meitz took the time to give our posse a tour of their winery. http://www.mietzcellars.com/index.html. Located on Limerick Lane in the Russian River Valley just south of Healdsburg, CA, is the unassuming ivy- covered structure built by the Sandini family back in the days of Prohibition. The story goes that when Keith, a fire-fighter-artist left Oakland in the 70’s with a notion he could make wine, his elder Italian neighbors placed bets on how long he would last as a farmer. After observing his back-breaking labor for some months, they began to give him tips here and there, so he wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Because of the Mietz’s good nature and perseverance, the patriarch of the Sandinis eventually helped them into the winery’s current home. And lotsa bottles later, not to mention some awards (!), there they are today.
The bias of a familial relationship with this winery aside, the morning with Nancy & Keith was genuine and lovely. Everyone felt their warmth - even though it was 49 degrees in there! There was no schwag – just barrels both steel and oak, and lots of boxes full wine. We felt lucky to hear their perspectives as they’d watched the region transform over thirty years: the hardware store gave way to boutiques with $500 shoes, not the same place where they’d seen a knife fight in the square so many years before.
More than anything, it was wonderful to visit with friends who had built a life from the land with an unrelenting perseverance to hone their craft. Light hearted and generous, they dispelled any thoughts about it being a romantic or glamorous lifestyle –but clearly they demonstrated that it was a good one. Like anything, it had been hard work, and not without sacrifices. But above all, the wine was outstanding. Taste it! Its available online at the link above.
We could all use a dose of this formula – dogged perseverance and the desire to make something – our lives, our art, our meals, our political systems - authentic and with an eye towards excellence. This sentiment, is reflected in a book I picked up for $1.00, “Everything you know about Love and Sex is Wrong” by Dr. Pepper Schwartz. Who could pass up a title like that?
I LOVE this woman! A sociologist by training, she presents case study after case study debunking popular myths I didn’t necessarily believe in my twenties, but somehow-er-other, got convinced of by my thirties. Chapters include: “Myth: Your lover should be your best friend; Myth: You will know when you have met ‘the one’; Myth: Pick only someone you are madly in love with; Myth: Never have sex on the first date; Myth: When you want to get serious, date only people with marriage potential; Myth: Men are simply not monogamous by nature, Women are;” and my personal favorite – because I’ve often suspected as much: “Myth: Even if sex isn’t fantastic in the beginning, it can be fixed.” Not likely –according to the evidence.
Thank you Dr. Schwartz for offering ‘a fresh look at some of our sacred cows’– and TAKE THAT – you “Rules” women, and the “Men are from Mars”, followers. I’m not saying that everything she theorizes about is the right thing for everyone or even that the Rules/ Mars-Venus stuff is 100% bulls@*t – but I think if we’re to evolve at all, in our relationships, adherence to a fixed perspective of any kind isn’t gonna help. Like the stars and a good glass of wine – everything is dynamic. By watching and noting these curious alchemies, life just gets better.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
THREE THINGS: John Stewart’s Dimples, The Etowah Indian Mounds, & The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho.
I take John Stewart to bed with me most evenings. I only have bunny ears that catch three channels (and I hear that come February even that won’t work) so I watch TV on my laptop –usually in bed. ( www.hulu.com) I learned the whole watch-TV-online-trick just this year, and in that time I’ve developed a serious crush on John Stewart. Stephen Colbert –though I admire his (ahem) “roast” of George Bush at the press dinner way back when, (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BSE_saVX_2A) just doesn’t do it for me the same way John does. Other comedians might tickle my funny bone from time to time, but my heart belongs to John.
I think its all about his dimples. Are they not adorable? http://www.thedailyshow.com/
I am grateful for his satire: his all-in-good-fun-poke-poke-at-the-powers-that-be –and-the deeply-disturbing. His on-air team is delightful; you can tell he has genuine affection for the peeps that make the funny graphics and watch all that news footage. I enjoy his thoughtful guests, and his well-mannered interviews. He strikes me as a true gentleman, a family man that ought to serve as a role model for men/ celebrities everywhere. (If only.) But most of all, he makes the news bearable.
The truth is, this is where I get the bulk of my news. Shame, shame on me. I skim the headlines, and I try to stay appraised of current topics. I rely on a network of friends to learn what’s up, and NGO’s that spam my inbox to stay informed. I’m not uninvolved, I write my district supervisors, congress people, senators etc. but after a long day of supporting my own NGO, squeezing poems, friends, family, and laundry into the rest of the day, -- all I want to do is look at his cute dimples; know that someone, somewhere is calling bullshit where it ought to be called; AND not taking himself too seriously in the process. Thank you for your levity John Stewart – the world needs it.
I have wondered if perhaps John and I are connected on a metaphysical level. Is there some collective consciousness that he and I both share? For example, on Monday night he opened the show with a short quip about how he hoped we’d contemplated the genocide of millions of Native Americans with our turkey dinners– and it so happens –I actually had.
Last Tuesday, my mother, grandfather, and I took a drive to the Etowah Indian Mounds. http://www.gastateparks.org/info/etowah/. I grew up as a Californian who visited rural Georgia for a week or so every summer to see my grandparents. Granny and Big Jack lived on Lake Blackshear (Formerly the Thronateeska river.) They were near the “watermelon capital of the world” of all places. Needless to say, a trip to Georgia was full of comfort foods: buttermilk biscuits, butterbeans, butter, black-eyed peas, pink-eyed purple hulls, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and bacon. There were fish fries where Big Jack served bass, catfish and hushpuppies to dozens of friends. I was allowed as much coca-cola as I could drink, caramel cake, and Klondike bars. What would you do for a….? One year my father actually made my younger brother weigh back into California as soon as he came home from the airport. Poor thing.
There were also adventures at the lake: we took the boat to look for alligators lounging on fallen cypress trees deep into the sloughs on the other side of the river. Spanish moss draped the trees like heavy metal haircuts – a few decades later.
We also went hunting for pottery and arrowheads that washed up on the shore of the soon-to-be developed lakeside properties. My mom still has a stone tool most likely used for skinning hides, and I have a collection of flint arrowheads unearthed in a treasure chest, the elders had buried specifically for me to find.
But our days at the lake ended a few years ago, and now my grandfather lives on my uncle’s property about a three hour drive from the lake. They all thought it best as he grew approached his nineties to be closer to family. Visiting the mounds was a pleasant diversion, and reminiscent of all those long walks on the lakeshore. The mounds were behind an interpretive center, where we watched a short film about the indigenous people before exploring the structures. The mounds looked like the beginnings of what could have evolved into something like the Aztec ruins in Central America. They were about five stories high, I’d guess, and not far from the ditches where they must have excavated the dirt to build them. We climbed the stairs to the top of the mound and gazed at the river. We tried to imagine where they would have cultivated the sunflower seeds; where would children have played? Could you smell pumpkin roasting from up here – maybe wild turkey? The trees along the river were alight in Fall foliage. The wind was brisk.
A place this empty of its original inhabitants strikes the imagination, but as the descendents of the ones who brought the disease, and the armies that eventually did millions of them in, I found something antiseptic about our day trip. The glass displays of artifacts –and wall text about “how they lived” in the interpretative center are fascinating historically, but emotionally – there lies something ignorant, deeply cold, and savage. Even to use the word “savage” in this context is loaded. Its only been just recently that I’ve done the generational math to figure out which ancestors were around for the Trail of Tears. I asked my grandfather – did he remember if his grandfather knew any “Indians”? To which he replied “You had relatives in Omaha, Georgia who were slaughtered by Cherokee.” Uh – Okay. And that was all we said.
What does this mean to me, two hundred years later on a Thanksgiving excursion? I think it’s a reality one has to steep in to fully understand the implications on the present, both individually and collectively. And of course, we don’t have to look back 200 years to find other examples of aggressive domination and destruction. Is it OK that John made a joke like that on TV - does it let us off hook? Or is bringing up these issues in our culture, part of accepting our past, and increasing our collective sensitivity so that people are becoming hopefully more and more primed to “Just say No” to the war or the sweat shop pajamas from WalMart.
I was and am still steeping…when on the flight home, I inadvertently picked up The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. I was deciding between the Coelho, and Cormac McCarthy –but I felt a little too tender to read about an apocalyptic future. For whatever reason, I had imagined The Alchemist as something fun and colorful ala Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Jorge Amado. Boy, was I bummed.
For those of you who don’t know: “The Alchemist (Portuguese: O Alquimista) is a bestseller novel that is the most famous work of author Paulo Coelho. It is a symbolic story that urges its readers to follow their dreams. Originally published in Greece in 1988, The Alchemist has been translated into 61 languages, a guinness world record for the book translated in most languages. It has sold more than 65 million copies in more than 150 countries, becoming one of the best-selling books in history.” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alchemist_(novel).
Chief in its principals the book espouses the philosophy that when you take steps towards your personal destiny, the universe does all it can to cooperate. It positively encourages taking leaps of faith, but the dark side of this reads that the only reason you don’t get to your goals, is because you have not committed deeply enough to your “personal legend” or are blocked by fear. I don’t disagree whole heartedly with these assertions, but there is something politically idiotic about the assumptions.
For example, would things have worked out differently for the Etowah had they had a copy of The Alchemist? Or my relatives in Omaha, Georgia? Or perhaps, my grandfather would still be at the lake had he exhibited more dedication to his “personal legend”. Truth be told, books like this (Celestine Prophesy, The Secret, et all.) make me so mad I could spit.
Sharper minds than mine, can no doubt quickly deconstruct what is wrong with such a book from any number of philosophical perspectives. Instead I just get flummoxed trying to explain to loved ones who dutifully swallow these adages and clichés and who consequently beat themselves up trying to replicate the success described there. It makes me want to scream: life is so much more complicated, ambiguous, gorgeous, mysterious, enlivening, tragic, passionate, cruel, and dare I say “sacred?” than this. Yes these ramblings have a tinge of truth to them – but I still smell snake oil! Me? No! I’m not bitter. Cynical? Maybe… Oh – no- it is NOT my ego getting in the way of accepting “the truth.” Oh please do not condescend to me. Yes, let’s drop it. FINE.
Pardon me, I was replaying the tape in my head of an argument with an ex-boyfriend who had swallowed hook, line, and sinker that JZ Knight actually had channeled an entity named Ramtha after wearing tin foil in the shape of a cone on her head. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramtha#Ramtha
Its in these moments that I ask myself, “What would Margaret Atwood say?” Or Dorothy Parker? Or Mark Twain? Or Noam Chomsky? Or even John Stewart? THOSE DIMPLES.
John Stewart I LOVE you and I LOVE your dimples. Thank you for following your “Personal Legend” and serving us fresh satire 4 nights a week with a big smile, a few “settle downs” (so sexy! sigh) and for asking the right questions with a sense of humility and light-heartedness.
I think its all about his dimples. Are they not adorable? http://www.thedailyshow.com/
I am grateful for his satire: his all-in-good-fun-poke-poke-at-the-powers-that-be –and-the deeply-disturbing. His on-air team is delightful; you can tell he has genuine affection for the peeps that make the funny graphics and watch all that news footage. I enjoy his thoughtful guests, and his well-mannered interviews. He strikes me as a true gentleman, a family man that ought to serve as a role model for men/ celebrities everywhere. (If only.) But most of all, he makes the news bearable.
The truth is, this is where I get the bulk of my news. Shame, shame on me. I skim the headlines, and I try to stay appraised of current topics. I rely on a network of friends to learn what’s up, and NGO’s that spam my inbox to stay informed. I’m not uninvolved, I write my district supervisors, congress people, senators etc. but after a long day of supporting my own NGO, squeezing poems, friends, family, and laundry into the rest of the day, -- all I want to do is look at his cute dimples; know that someone, somewhere is calling bullshit where it ought to be called; AND not taking himself too seriously in the process. Thank you for your levity John Stewart – the world needs it.
I have wondered if perhaps John and I are connected on a metaphysical level. Is there some collective consciousness that he and I both share? For example, on Monday night he opened the show with a short quip about how he hoped we’d contemplated the genocide of millions of Native Americans with our turkey dinners– and it so happens –I actually had.
Last Tuesday, my mother, grandfather, and I took a drive to the Etowah Indian Mounds. http://www.gastateparks.org/info/etowah/. I grew up as a Californian who visited rural Georgia for a week or so every summer to see my grandparents. Granny and Big Jack lived on Lake Blackshear (Formerly the Thronateeska river.) They were near the “watermelon capital of the world” of all places. Needless to say, a trip to Georgia was full of comfort foods: buttermilk biscuits, butterbeans, butter, black-eyed peas, pink-eyed purple hulls, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and bacon. There were fish fries where Big Jack served bass, catfish and hushpuppies to dozens of friends. I was allowed as much coca-cola as I could drink, caramel cake, and Klondike bars. What would you do for a….? One year my father actually made my younger brother weigh back into California as soon as he came home from the airport. Poor thing.
There were also adventures at the lake: we took the boat to look for alligators lounging on fallen cypress trees deep into the sloughs on the other side of the river. Spanish moss draped the trees like heavy metal haircuts – a few decades later.
We also went hunting for pottery and arrowheads that washed up on the shore of the soon-to-be developed lakeside properties. My mom still has a stone tool most likely used for skinning hides, and I have a collection of flint arrowheads unearthed in a treasure chest, the elders had buried specifically for me to find.
But our days at the lake ended a few years ago, and now my grandfather lives on my uncle’s property about a three hour drive from the lake. They all thought it best as he grew approached his nineties to be closer to family. Visiting the mounds was a pleasant diversion, and reminiscent of all those long walks on the lakeshore. The mounds were behind an interpretive center, where we watched a short film about the indigenous people before exploring the structures. The mounds looked like the beginnings of what could have evolved into something like the Aztec ruins in Central America. They were about five stories high, I’d guess, and not far from the ditches where they must have excavated the dirt to build them. We climbed the stairs to the top of the mound and gazed at the river. We tried to imagine where they would have cultivated the sunflower seeds; where would children have played? Could you smell pumpkin roasting from up here – maybe wild turkey? The trees along the river were alight in Fall foliage. The wind was brisk.
A place this empty of its original inhabitants strikes the imagination, but as the descendents of the ones who brought the disease, and the armies that eventually did millions of them in, I found something antiseptic about our day trip. The glass displays of artifacts –and wall text about “how they lived” in the interpretative center are fascinating historically, but emotionally – there lies something ignorant, deeply cold, and savage. Even to use the word “savage” in this context is loaded. Its only been just recently that I’ve done the generational math to figure out which ancestors were around for the Trail of Tears. I asked my grandfather – did he remember if his grandfather knew any “Indians”? To which he replied “You had relatives in Omaha, Georgia who were slaughtered by Cherokee.” Uh – Okay. And that was all we said.
What does this mean to me, two hundred years later on a Thanksgiving excursion? I think it’s a reality one has to steep in to fully understand the implications on the present, both individually and collectively. And of course, we don’t have to look back 200 years to find other examples of aggressive domination and destruction. Is it OK that John made a joke like that on TV - does it let us off hook? Or is bringing up these issues in our culture, part of accepting our past, and increasing our collective sensitivity so that people are becoming hopefully more and more primed to “Just say No” to the war or the sweat shop pajamas from WalMart.
I was and am still steeping…when on the flight home, I inadvertently picked up The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. I was deciding between the Coelho, and Cormac McCarthy –but I felt a little too tender to read about an apocalyptic future. For whatever reason, I had imagined The Alchemist as something fun and colorful ala Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Jorge Amado. Boy, was I bummed.
For those of you who don’t know: “The Alchemist (Portuguese: O Alquimista) is a bestseller novel that is the most famous work of author Paulo Coelho. It is a symbolic story that urges its readers to follow their dreams. Originally published in Greece in 1988, The Alchemist has been translated into 61 languages, a guinness world record for the book translated in most languages. It has sold more than 65 million copies in more than 150 countries, becoming one of the best-selling books in history.” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alchemist_(novel).
Chief in its principals the book espouses the philosophy that when you take steps towards your personal destiny, the universe does all it can to cooperate. It positively encourages taking leaps of faith, but the dark side of this reads that the only reason you don’t get to your goals, is because you have not committed deeply enough to your “personal legend” or are blocked by fear. I don’t disagree whole heartedly with these assertions, but there is something politically idiotic about the assumptions.
For example, would things have worked out differently for the Etowah had they had a copy of The Alchemist? Or my relatives in Omaha, Georgia? Or perhaps, my grandfather would still be at the lake had he exhibited more dedication to his “personal legend”. Truth be told, books like this (Celestine Prophesy, The Secret, et all.) make me so mad I could spit.
Sharper minds than mine, can no doubt quickly deconstruct what is wrong with such a book from any number of philosophical perspectives. Instead I just get flummoxed trying to explain to loved ones who dutifully swallow these adages and clichés and who consequently beat themselves up trying to replicate the success described there. It makes me want to scream: life is so much more complicated, ambiguous, gorgeous, mysterious, enlivening, tragic, passionate, cruel, and dare I say “sacred?” than this. Yes these ramblings have a tinge of truth to them – but I still smell snake oil! Me? No! I’m not bitter. Cynical? Maybe… Oh – no- it is NOT my ego getting in the way of accepting “the truth.” Oh please do not condescend to me. Yes, let’s drop it. FINE.
Pardon me, I was replaying the tape in my head of an argument with an ex-boyfriend who had swallowed hook, line, and sinker that JZ Knight actually had channeled an entity named Ramtha after wearing tin foil in the shape of a cone on her head. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramtha#Ramtha
Its in these moments that I ask myself, “What would Margaret Atwood say?” Or Dorothy Parker? Or Mark Twain? Or Noam Chomsky? Or even John Stewart? THOSE DIMPLES.
John Stewart I LOVE you and I LOVE your dimples. Thank you for following your “Personal Legend” and serving us fresh satire 4 nights a week with a big smile, a few “settle downs” (so sexy! sigh) and for asking the right questions with a sense of humility and light-heartedness.
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