If a tree falls in the forest...

It's safe to say that there are a lot of people in the world, but only relatively few celebrities, stars, experts, people of rank, royalty, status, or outstanding ability in their chosen field.

Many of us harbor a wish to be special, important (even those of us who already are so to a wider audience than our immediate families). However, underneath this is something even more fundamental than the wish to be important, and that is the need to matter.

We all want to matter, to believe that if we disappeared, we'd be missed. I believe that we each need at least one true witness to our existence; to our human condition. A true witness is one who sees, accepts and honestly reflects what we present to them.. Put like this, so few of our interactions with others actually qualify. On the other hand, sometimes we get the gift of a true witness when we least expect it. And sometimes, it's possible to give this gift to ourselves.

When we suffer from a lack of recognition, when we feel small, the tendency is to find something to bolster ourselves with - to puff ourselves up, but invariably these things just exacerbate the feeling of inadequacy. However, if we can allow this feeling without wallowing or adding to it, a part of ourselves naturally rises up as a witness to the experience. If we can be OK with being small, if the idea of being small is not met with aversion but rather, gratitude - that experience can be expansive.


Photo: Jason de Graaf

The Possible

                         

I often marvel at the present moment, representing (as it does) both the culmination and the continuation of all known history: a cord tease-able into millions of threads of perspective - as many as there are people to experience them... and maybe then some. 

As terrible as it can seem sometimes, the present moment is ripe with rightness. Of all possible universes - this one, this planet, this year, this day, this moment and finally me... this iteration of me plucked out of the sea of my past possibilities. 

That starts to sound and feel like 'destiny' - but you can only call it destiny after its done. In the meantime, there's the present moment, and there's possibility.

                             

Saman tree, Trinidad

Second Fall

"Let there be", and

there it was - man
drew a breath,

woman drew a rib, for

"it was not good
for him to be alone",

or without a receptacle
for his guilt
which required a flood
(and later, blood)
to wash away;
or a loaded boat
so many
by so many cubits
to buoy the remnant
two by two
to the top of a mount -

a dove-borne Covenant,
the drowned earth below 
rainbowed.

    - Lorraine Robain

Getting There

Anger can be an interesting emotion - if you have the ability to pull back from it. I don't always - but recently I had the singular pleasure of feeling anger turn from hot to cold. There was an actual physical sensation of coolness inside my body, a feeling of spaciousness and  unflinching power that was strange and heady. This 'anger' felt good. Why? Because it wasn't at all volatile - because I wasn't struggling to control it, and there was no impulse to say or do anything. In fact I felt that if I were to see the object of my 'hot' anger at that moment, I could easily ignore it.

In this state of 'not caring' I felt an exhilarating freedom. So what if things fell apart? Let them. In fact, let's see just how busted things can get. This was new territory, or felt like it. This was a cool green field where I threw down my backpack, and took a load off. It felt so good, I started to wonder whether I was in fact, still angry.

I began to suspect that there might be several cool green fields out there, or maybe there was just one cool green field with everything else splayed out around it: anger and fear, even pleasure and giddy happiness. As far out as one can go, there is the possibility ( maybe even the necessity) of return. I used to think it was defeat - that the paths I took seemed to lead back to where I started, but it might be "the wisdom of no escape". Maybe everything is right here.

  

"The Wisdom of No Escape" - gratefully borrowed from the title of the book by Pema Chodron.

Photo:mihtiander

Why write?

I have not posted on this blog for several months now. I have not kept my daily journal either. When life gets really intense, I've found that writing about it can prolong the experience and slow the process of moving on. And when life gets really great, writing about it feels confining. So, writing about pain intensifies pain and writing about happiness fails to recapture the essence of the joy with the net result that it dulls happiness. So why write at all?

I started this blog primarily as an extension of my personal journal. It was a way to force myself to look outward more, to ruminate less, and to practice coming to a point (arriving somewhere) through my thought process. Now, that purpose seems somewhat incomplete, because I've found that many lines of thought are simply not worth following all the way through. I have had many moments of anguish and as many moments of pure joy, and for the most part have been content to let them pass into memory (or into the black hole of forgetting, for that matter).

I used to be terrified of 'forgetting' in all its iterations: inattentiveness, absent mindedness, zoning out, disorientation, dementia and Alzheimer's (both of which have shown up in some older members of my family) I am still terrified of forgetting - but I'm resisting it less.

What has intensified in my life is looking. I am in a constant state of awe about the process of living and the experience of inhabiting life - painful as that can be at times.
My own inadequacies have been my first points of focus - until I was one day able to turn that sock inside out with the realization that its life! It is experience, its the stuff I  have to work with. Anger has been playing a prominent role in my life within recent months. I have partnered with the important people in my life and have given them permission to call me on it. The anger has a valid source, the reaction is human and understandable, but once you look at it, anger as a go-to emotion becomes indefensible.

And, I am looking at the world. I can't get into it. It will make no sense to read about it - but if you are reading I hope you take the time to look at your world. And today, this is why I wrote.

Lettuce Pray

This year I went seed crazy. There isn't as much satisfaction in buying plants when you can embark on the adventure of raising seedlings. This year's big experiment was lettuce. I planted a few seeds in my basement ( in April) and was surprised at how quickly they germinated. The 'few' seeds made a fluffy row of seedlings in the center of my planter box - I marveled that every single one seemed to have germinated, and watched with unbridled joy as they grew to the point that they needed thinning out. This was when reality set in...followed by a growing sense of alarm. One container became two, then four and still I couldn't accommodate them. Four became eight (I don't think I lost a single seedling) and I began to have visions of offloading an armful of lettuce onto my neighbors.

Then there was a heat wave. That, combined with the fact that I'm a lettuce virgin and didn't know that lettuce doesn't like too much light - resulted in the phenomenon known as bolting. My lettuce started to look like little trees -oops. I tasted a leaf - bitter as gall... and tough as leather. Regretfully ( though not too regretfully, because I needed the space) I culled all the bolted plants and pulled all eight containers to the shady side of the house (duh!), re-spaced the plants, and flooded them with water.

 

In addition to lettuce, I've got tomatoes in the tulip bed ( tulip bulbs are resting in a sack of sawdust in the basement and will be replanted in September), and more tomatoes in two jumbo planters which will be home to the daffodils in September ( they are also sleeping in sawdust in the basement). The cucumbers are currently smaller than my pinkie but at night they gorge on water, slowly stretching and filling like green sausage-shaped balloons. At a party, a hired clown can manage to twist these balloons into as diverse shapes as puppies, snakes, giraffes; flowers, hearts and halos. Let's see if we can get a salad going before the summer is out.

Photos: mine

A Blessing, A Graduation and Independence

I've found it hard to slow down - the first half of this year was a blur of deadlines, doctor visits, exams and decisions. I thought that rest would come in early June with the New York State 8th grade Science exam, but that didn't happen. In June, my son graduated from middle school and we're now staring down Homer's Iliad - his high school summer reading assignment: graduation, big time. 

I've realized that I don't have an inexhaustible supply of energy, and like most things associated with the aging process, that takes some accepting.I think I'm angry about the whole thing, but I'm trying to be less so - I just don't have the energy. Serenity now. 

Last week, City Island's fleet of boats was blessed and turned onto the high seas. It was an intimate little ceremony attended by maybe thirty people including my family of four. We were treated to a parade of watercraft of all sizes: yachts to jet skis to canoes. Each was blessed by the three ministers, saluted by the white-clad honor guard, then waved along by our small crowd of onlookers.

Then there was the Fourth of July - a lazy day on which I painted my new birdhouse - a duplex! It was just the kind of low-stakes activity I needed. I painted the whole thing white, then used painter's tape to prepare it for the green trim. It took time... hours in fact. Nothing great was accomplished in the world of wood and paint - but there was rest, and that was a blessing.
Here's another snapshot of the renku which Daniela and I worked on last year. 
 

#11 L (6.15.11)

Morning, morning –

it always comes

is always coming.

#12 D (6.27.11)

Cap, gown, diploma—

My son! A fine young man!

Just born yesterday…

#12 L (7.22.11)

Summer haze:
new graduates toss and scatter

old ones stoop and gather.

Photos: Mine

Dance

I never win anything. Maybe that's why an email announcing me as the winner of 2 tickets to a performance at the Joyce Theater went unnoticed until last week when I was cleaning out my email box. The email had been sitting there for (wait for it)... seven months!

The window to claim it had expired - but having nothing further to lose, I replied to the email explaining that I was a bit tardy getting to my emails and by some chance would I still be able to claim those tickets? They were very kind, and so this past weekend we attended a free performance at the Joyce.
Here's a performance by one of my favorite companies, Pilobolus.

Video credit:

Pilobolus and Trish Sie (co-creator of last year’s Grammy-nominated Pilobolus/OK Go video and live dance, All is Not Lost) join forces again to create Sie’s brilliant new OK Go video Skyscrapers as a work for live stage

Sci-Fi Beauties

Cindi Mayweather meets Black Box

Last week's issue of The New Yorker carried a riveting piece of writing by Jennifer Egan titled "Black Box". The style of writing was enthralling - 47 short 'chapters' written in the second person from the perspective of a beautiful, electronically- enhanced citizen-agent who has been sent to retreive some sensitive information from her target or 'Designated Mate'. It's written in a series of deadpan declarative sentences which at first glance seems to depersonalize the main character who is never allowed to speak at all, and only thinks 'thoughts' in line with the good of the State. The speaker's voice relates her most personal experiences as if they came from a well-thumbed handbook, yet this device ends up creating an almost stifling intimacy. It's worth a complete read.

While reading this story, I couldn't help but flash on Janelle Monae, a young recording and performing artist who made her breakout appearance at the 2011 Grammy Awards. Janelle is one of those ultra-original human beings who inspires fascination...mine at least. She dresses only in black and white, and mostly in tuxedo-inspired outfits. She writes her own music and is an accomplished dancer as well - not to mention, a very beautiful young woman. She also has a real-life and artistic alter-ego: a robot named Cindi Mayweather, which is why she came to mind.

 In Black Box, the other women are just mindless 'beauties', whereas the protaganist is an operative who uses her beauty as a weapon, and suffers for it. It's interesting that Janelle Monae identifies as a robot. She states that Cindi is an ArchAndriod with a mission to liberate others from conformity and sameness, but I wonder if that device was also meant to mitigate her own physical beauty, or perhaps be a commentary on it?

I don't know a woman who doesn't want to be beautiful - even if it's a diminishing possibililty for her,
the quality of the wanting will simply be wistful instead of wilful.

Can we separate beauty from the somewhat rote responses that it elicits?
Can we as women resist the urge to work what it evokes? Should we?
And can we resist the outrage which arises when it ceases to work?

Can we be beautiful beyond description and beyond the need to have it said just how we meet that definition?
In other words, beautiful without qualification?
In other words, beautiful where everyone and everything qualifies?

 From 'Black Box', by Jennifer Egan:

Your physical person is our Black Box;
without it, we have no record of what has
happened on your mission.

It is imperative that you remove yourself
from enemy possession.

When you find yourself cornered and
outnumbered, you may unleash, as a last
resort, your Primal Roar.

The Primal Roar is the human equivalent of
an explosion, a sound that combines
screaming, shrieking, and howling.

The Roar must be accompanied by facial
contortions and frenetic body movement,
suggesting a feral, unhinged state.

The Primal Roar must transform you from a
beauty into a monster.

The goal is to horrify your opponent, the
way trusted figures, turned evil, are
horrifying in movies and in nightmares.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/06/jennifer-egan-black-box.html#ixzz1xhkHoiQh

You're free, but in your mind
your freedom's in a bind.
                       - Janelle Monae ( Many Moons)

Mary Mary...and other miracles

How does the garden grow?

Spring started in February this year. Maybe even in January... or maybe Fall never ended.
I've been chomping at the bit to start planting. No sooner did my daffodils and tulips come up than I started fingering my moon-flower seeds like prayer beads. When, when when?

Well, those moonflower seedlings have germinated and are past the cotyledon stage, having put out their first true leaves. Clematis is already budding. The first daylily seed has sprouted and I'm waiting for the columbines to get with the program. This year I have three varieties of columbine - or three colors at any rate: purple, blue and white. I love a blue garden, though they say that a true blue is rare in Nature, I love her many approximations!

There is no joy like seeing new life come out of nowhere. Foxgloves and coneflowers - coming back! I see that I lost a few, but these are the breaks. Creeping Jenny - back. Peonies - back, plus the new ones I planted last year are already up. Even though I know a plant is perennial and is supposed to come back - it always seems like a miracle when it does.  In the tropics, the plants just go on and on. This leaving and coming back is something I still have to get used to... but maybe it's better that I don't.

Signs of The Times

Speaking up, writing it down.

April 25th, 2012

I was quite surprised earlier this week on my morning bus ride to work. As I took my usual glance at the 'I Am Troy Davis' sign off the Bruckner Expressway -I noticed the scaffolding of a new sign etched over it. I bolted upright in my seat, yanked out my camera and shot it - only later realising that I'd caught the artist standing in front of the defaced 'R'. 

I zoomed in the camera image trying to figure out what the new sign would say, but could only make out the skeleton of the word 'free'. I didn't have too long to wait - by this morning it was done. 'Free Mumia 2012'.

April 27th, 2012

Closer to home, my neighbors are protesting the work on Pelham Parkway South service-road.The addition of a sidewalk (in itself a good thing) has resulted in a narrowed roadway which the homeowners have deemed dangerous. They responded with crude signs spray-painted on sheets and strung like bunting on their front porches. The sidewalk is now up, the signs are down; an adjustment to a new normal is underway.



In a closely related situation,The Pelham Parkway Preservation Alliance has been up in arms over the proposed removal of 80 century-old trees, one supposedly dating back to the Civil War. The tree removal will make way for more the above-mentioned road work. Protesting since 2010, the PPPA was actually able to get a restraining order against the city (a stay of execution for the trees), save 30 trees outright (cap the removal at 50), as well as get a say-so on which individual trees would be removed.

They have also secured the city's agreement to the replacement planting of 246 large saplings.

PPPA protesters

I don't know much about Troy Davis or Mumia except that their plights have fired someones outrage and prompted them to take action. I make no attempt to equate these protests about people with the ones about trees and sidewalks except to acknowledge that they both arise from the violation of something important to the people concerned. What moves the heart moves the hand. 

Pelham Parkway - city road with a 'country' feel. These trees may soon be gone.

Spring Things

    1. A good book

    2. A good look

3. Hard work

 4. Handiwork

 5. Touchstones

  6. Cobblestones

From top:

1. Stendhal's Cures for Love

2. Inner tube tire sculpture - 59th and Fifth, NYC

3. Laying down the sod, Bryant Park

4. The new lawn! - Bryant Park

5. I've taken this photo 'Bryant Park Daffodils' every spring since 2005. Here's 2012's.

6. Fifth Avenue and 70th street on a perfect spring day...

Silent Protest

The Bruckner Expressway is an unglamorous stretch of road which I travel twice a day to enter and leave Manhattan. Bruckner sunsets can be pretty if you are looking out toward Randall's Island, and there is something to be said for the orange reflection of the setting sun on South Bronx windowpanes - but not too much. There is however, one point of interest: a homemade 'billboard', painted in yellow with a black background - which changes from time to time to reflect the artist's outrage over one issue or another.
Currently it reads 'I am Troy Davis'. The door which opens onto the roof straddles the 'R' and the 'O'. 

The previous message was painted around August 2010 in response to the increased racial profiling of Hispanics in Arizona and the proposal that all Americans ( read Hispanic Americans) carry proof of citizenship on their person at all times.The painted message in response to that debacle read 'No human is illegal', which is now a movement unto itself. 

Even though the specific case of Troy Davis has faded into the background, something about the billboard still feels immediate and pertinent. Maybe its the words 'I am' facing off against the impersonal whir of traffic and the stark city lanscape which makes me want to pay attention, or at least acknowledge the sign even though I've seen it many times. We all have to declare ourselves in the midst of a din, and must do so even if there's no one listening.

Haiku Moments - I

Last year, my friend Daniela and I participated in a "renku" - a string of haiku composed by each of us alternately in a sort of response to the one which went before. We used Twitter as the interface and ended all of our tweets with the hash tag #renku in an attempt to 'file' them in sequence.

We were writing from two very different geographical locations: she, from somewhere just south of the Canadian border, and I, from New York City. Our interfaces with nature and season were likewise considerably different. 

The Haiku form leans heavily on specificity of place, season, and simple observations as an expression of the 'haiku moment' - some sublime experience which the poet then attempts to encapsulate within three lines and seventeen syllables.

We had decided to go eighteen rounds, which we did over the course of nine months. Because each haiku in the chain feeds off the previous one, presenting them in pairs is not necessarily the most meaningful way to share them, so here are the first three:


 #1 D (3.30.2011)

Light snow falls

on the coffin along with dirt—

on the sod, a robin hops…

#1 L (3.31.2011)

Fallen branches  

some with buds  

snap underfoot.

 #2 D (4.4.2011)

A red sunrise—

Coffee sweet with birdsong—

And snow, again…

Photo credit :Ruled by Neptune

Bonding over Banzuke

Finding common ground on the TV

What is it about aggression, confrontation and acting up (not to mention, acting out) that men find them entertaining 'reality' television? I don't know. My taste in TV runs from the mystery of The Antiques Roadshow to the adventure of Rick Steve's Europe to the nail-biting suspense of House Hunters International. When I want to relax, I watch P.Allen Smith's Garden Home or New Scandinavian Cooking.

 In stark contrast, the men in my life (when there is no English League Soccer or NBA game on) flip from channel to channel searching for the most mindless, regressive sort of programming they can find. While I'm over in the corner campaigning for "How it's Made" or "Mythbusters", they're discussing the relative merits of  'Hardcore Pawn', 'Lizard Lick Towing', and' 'Storage Hunters'. They try to tell me these are different shows, but there are a few things one can count on: finger pointing, quickly escalating confrontations, bleeped expletives, forcible removals, and the like. 

Then there's the 'World's Dumbest...' franchise. Finish that any way you like: bank robbers, convenience store heists, high speed chases, carjackings, drivers, stunts - there is no end to the folly. This gem is hosted by a revolving roster of has-beens and small timers - several of them with rap-sheets. There's Tonya 'Whack-a-Knee' Harding, Danny 'Been-There-Done-That' Bonaduce, Gary 'Cold-Busted' Busey, not to mention Daniel 'I'm-No-Alec' Baldwin.

I was just about to give up on finding common ground when we stumbled upon 'Unbeatable Banzuke' and 'Ninja Warrior' - Japanese extreme-sport game shows complete with hyper-enthusiastic Japanese commentary. There's no trash talking or posturing - there's no time. Completing these obstacle courses takes every ounce of the competitors' energy and focus. The action is exciting, awe-inspiring and just plain fun to watch- pure performance without the side-show. In last night's episode of Ninja Warrior, American parkour enthusiast and freerunner Levi Meeuwenberg was the only one to make it to the third stage of the course. Speed, strategy and suspense meet grace and beauty - we all get something to cheer about.

Photo credit:Derek Hyamson

http://twistedsifter.com/2011/03/25-incredible-parkour-photographs/

Super Tuesday Tea Leaves

The race for the Republican nomination is in full swing with four runners left...er right. In their attempts to handicap the race and parse the rationale for voter choice, the pollsters and the media are making extensive use of entrance and exit polls. These are so effective that they dovetail quite well with the actual outcomes.

Last week we were watching the race for Michigan when a sampling of the exit-poll questions came across the screen. The one that got my attention was 'Are you a born again Christian?'
I never thought I'd see the day when that question would be relevant in any setting outside of a tent revival, but here we are.

How good a predictor of a person's choices are any of their personal attributes, opinions, predelictions, habits or traits? We don't know, but the answer must be 'very good' given the time, money and energy being invested in gathering data from every corner of our mundane little lives.
No detail is so small or obscure that something cannot be inferred or gleaned from it. This is the company the devil keeps, after all.

So in addition to one's 'born-again' status, the pollsters may soon want to know the answers to the following questions:

1. How do you feel about sweater-vests?
2. What's your blood type? Blood color?
3. How much would you wager on a casual bet?
4. Which do you prefer, silver or gold?
5.Would that preference apply to jewellery or currency - or both?
6. How much is your Tiffany's credit line?
7. Do you have a Cadillac and a horse at each residence?
8. Serial monogamy, polygamy or 'till death'? 
9. Widowhood aside, how many marriages would you say were too many?
10. If offered the option, would you live on another planet?

This data can be crunched, twisted, spun and massaged into a rock solid prediction, or at least something to feed the news cycle until the heir becomes (a bit more) apparent.

And the Winner is...

The Oscars are being awarded tomorrow and I'm almost through with my marathon of movie watching.
In the last week I've seen My Week with Marilyn (delightful), A Dangerous Method ( gripping), Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (brave), The Rum Diary (enjoyable for nostalgic reasons), and  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (anticlimactic). I've now seen all nine best picture nominees, and most of the movies with best actor/actress nominations.

I found this year's crop of movies overall to be slightly less stellar than last year's, but still there were movies I enjoyed so much that I'll see them again. I've already watched The Descendants twice, ditto for The Artist and Midnight in Paris. Add to this list of favorites - My Week with Marilyn.

So here are my choices, not the ones I think will win - just the ones I like the best.

Actor in a leading role - George Clooney (The Descendants)
Actor in a supporting role - Max Von Sydow ( Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
Actress in a leading role -Michelle Williams ( My Week with Marilyn)
Actress in a supporting role -Berenice Bejo (The Artist)
Best Picture -Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I had been resisting Extremely Loud from the start. I was afraid to watch the 9/11 movie - after all we New Yorkers saw the original uncut version over and over on the news for days and weeks after the event. Many of us lived it in 3D: I personally know of one firefighter who had an extremely loud and incredibly close call in one of the towers, and I know of several Wall Streeters who had to run for their lives. My mother had to walk home from Manhattan to the Bronx on that day, as did thousands of others when transportation was shut down, however I (with a combination of very good luck and a little common sense) was able to avoid being close to the action on that day. I was late for work and was standing on an elevated train track when the first tower was hit. I saw the smoke, and took the next train heading back home.

I finally watched that movie today - the story of a boy dealing with the loss of his father, aided by a whole city of villagers. He finds so much through his loss, which is a great lesson for anyone with the guts to try and learn it (which is why my one word for this movie was 'brave').
The movies are a great way to escape - but they rise to what I think is their highest calling when they  actually help us to face something,

Life, Life... Life

Last weekend I watched the movie 'The Tree of Life' and found myself unmoved.
Well, that's not strictly true. I found the concrete story engaging, but the attempts to reach for a  'bigger theme' irritating.
The movie seemed to be an attempt to place the short span of human life into the larger context of the universe - but images of outer space, cells dividing and even dinosaurs interspersed with scenes of swirling colors, light, sky and forests seemed to me like overkill.

An afterlife was imagined on film which made all wrongs right and took away the pain inflicted and suffered in earthly life, but I found it unsatisfying, unable as it was in its ephemeral lightness to counter the grittiness of the flesh and bone existence depicted.

After all this is the only side we know about, however incompletely, right?

This weekend, I saw the movie 'A Better Life'. This was a small movie which didn't try to draw any bigger circles than those implied by the situation depicted. It was the story of a Mexican-American boy on the edge of young adulthood, living with a father who was himself outside the fringes of social legitimacy. In the time they have together before he is deported, the father manages to teach his son lessons in ambition, perseverance, mercy, decency, faith, sacrifice and hard work. After the father is deported, his son has to decide whether to join mainstream society or fall into lockstep with the gang members who have begun to press in on him.We are never quite sure that he will, but he chooses the better life.

Coincidentally this past week, for the second time in his life, my son asked me "Have you ever thought what is the meaning of existence?" 

When he'd asked it the first time maybe a year ago my heart leaped, but this time it sank.
Suddenly I didn't want him grappling with this question for which I didn't have an answer, let alone the answer.
His father's theory is (and I quote): "You're born, you live, you die and there is not much meaning to it". His grandmother's theory is (verbatim): "It's a struggle to be born, a struggle to live, a struggle to die - and we'll know the meaning of it 'by and by'."

So what's the meaning of life? You're born, stuff happens to you, you feel stuff, you think stuff, you do stuff. Sometimes you stop and wonder about all the stuff, looking for patterns so that you can figure out what kind of stuff might happen next. And sometimes - in frustration, in boredom, in despair, in wonder or awe, in the craziest (or maybe the sanest) moment of your life you put all the stuff aside and turn toward yourself. And it's then that you ask, what is the meaning of existence?

My son wanted to know - did I ever wonder, did I ever ask.
Slowly I replied, "Yes, I have."



Photo: Corrie White - Liquid drop art: Mushroom and Jellyfish

Letting It Be

Do you wish you could leave the past behind? Really leave it behind. Just walk forward without dragging it along like a piece of toilet paper stuck to your shoe?

I do.

Of course, despite all the talk these days about leaving 'smaller footprints', it's quite impossible not to leave some evidence of where you've been, but how about not bringing so much of that dust into the next room with you; or into the next moment?

It's an Eastern idea that negative emotional memory tends to accumulate in our cells and our organ systems: anger being stored in the liver, sadness in the lungs, stress in the stomach... fear in the kidneys. (Hey, where do the positive emotions go?) And as usual, we westerners seem hell bent on proving that we are the best at stockpiling it.

We drag that dust along for a variety of reasons - lack of awareness, incomplete processing of experiences, fear of change, the need to make others feel guilty, and plain old denial or a refusal to accept things.

Isn't it funny that refusal to accept something should bind us to it? 

Or, that what we become attached to should desert us?

What if things are neither here nor there? What if it's just our wanting them to be here too much that makes them seem far away; or our pushing them away that makes them seem so threateningly close?

No amount of rationalizing will completely quell the urge to seek what we want and resist what we don't want - but when we get stuck, letting things be as they are might be the only reliable way forward.

AP Photo/dapd, Winfried Rothermel

Carnage

Well, this was refreshing - a movie set almost exclusively in one room, with four people who meet to discuss the beating ( one whack with a piece of wood) of one of couple's child at the hands of the other. The movie is set in Brooklyn - in the gentrified Brooklyn Bridge area which is now essentially, (culturally at least) an extension of Manhattan. Civility quick gave way to a veiled blaming as both sides sought to uncover the 'sins of the fathers' which could have caused the event which played out  between their two eleven year olds.

The aggressor's father (Chistoph Waltz) appeared to use his blackberry as an appendage as he did damage control for the pharmaceutical company which he represented; his wife (Kate Winslet) was preoccupied with her appearance, constantly stroking a lock of hair across her forehead, and deftly re-applying lipstick mid-sentence without the aid of a mirror. She, appropriately enough, loses all her composure when she throws up on the coffee table art books belonging to the victim's mother ( Jodie Foster), a highly strung perfectionist, and quite possibly, an alcoholic.  The victim's father (William C. Riley)  seemed like a teddy-bear - apparently affable, but cold-hearted enough to release his daughter's pet hamster into traffic because he was sick of the noise it made at night.

Loyalties slackened as the dynamics of each marriage became evident - the two couples became four individuals, aligning themselves in various ways from moment to moment; wives against husbands, moderates against liberals; alliances made and dissembled in the course of the heated conversation.The  thin veneer of civiility gave way to raw viciousness, exposing each person's insecurities and angst, before snapping tightly back into defense and accusation again.
There was no resolution, they still didn't decide at the end of all of that talk how to deal with the situation of the playground violence, which seemed mercifully expedient by comparison.

Showtime

 


I've continued making my way through the list of movies I want to see before the Oscars are presented on February 26th. I'm well on my way - having seen seven of the nine Best Picture contenders and 14 movies overall. My favorite is The Descendants with The Artist ( which I've seen twice) a close second.

Most inane movie - Melancholia.
Most predictable ( despite all the suspense) - We Need To Talk About Kevin.
Most delightful - Midnight in Paris
Most uplifting - 50/50
Most depressing - Margin Call
Most fun - Bridesmaids
Most gut wrenching - Jane Eyre

My original list of 33 has been reduced to twenty-ish.
On the near horizon:
The Tree of Life
A Better Life
Carnage
and the documentary "Pina"

To the movies!

It's Oscar Season!

It's Oscar Season - one of my favorite times of year. The nominations come out in 3 days, and the Oscars will be presented in 36 days giving me more than enough time to catch the 33 or so movies I want to see by that time.
My initial list was compiled from the Golden Globe nominations - but I expect there may be one or two more that need to be added.

Of the movies I've seen so far, the stunner has been 50/50. Anna Kendrick and Joseph Gordon were great as psychotherapist and cancer patient/ client. Seth Rogen was an annoying foil for the seriousness of the subject matter, but his greater purpose was revealed in a touching, but decidedly un-sappy scene. The music for this movie was beautiful, too.

There are always parallels between the movies for any given year and they are already in evidence: 50/50 and A Dangerous Method ( with psychotherapy references), The Artist and Midnight in Paris share references to the roaring twenties. And, Moneyball and Margin Call ( look, they even rhyme!) are about sports stats analysis, and the beginning of the end on Wall Street. Both involve the use of data to do some type of 'handicapping' : in one case, for a baseball team...and in the other - the crippling of the financial markets.  Yes, many parallels - and I'm sure the more I see, the more I'll see.