Why Paris When We Can Always Go to Madagascar!

Watched The Curse of the Jade Scorpion tonight. Hadn't seen it in several years and it made me grin. I know there are a lot of complaints regarding this film- one being that Woody Allen was too old to cast himself as male lead- but I enjoy the repartee and whole humorous homage to the detective/ Damon Runyon genre. Only Woody Allen would have been able to deliver some of the lines in this film or infuse so much hilarity into certain scenes.

Some favorite dialogue:

"It's a match made in Heaven...by a retarded angel."

"She thinks she’s smarter because she went to Vassar and I went to driving school."

C.W. (Woody Allen) encounters the detectives who are building a case against him standing outside his door: "Did you guys get lost? The mousetraps with the little cheese are in the basement."

C.W. to policeman: You got any witnesses??
Policeman: "Yeah, me!"
C.W.: "And you're gonna take your word over mine?"

Fun stuff to watch curled up on the couch on a chilly night...

Moving

Yesterday I took Snicky to watch Ponyo, a movie by one of my favorite animators, Miyazaki. He was also behind Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle, movies I absolutely love for their storytelling and gorgeous and surreal imagery.

It was so wonderful to share the experience with Snicky and watch her eyes widen with wonder, or have her hide her face against my chest whenever she got a bit scared for the characters. At the end of the movie she turned to me and asked, "Is it all done??" And proceeded to dance to the music rolling during the credits.

What I like about this movie- actually, all of Miyazaki's movies- is the element of mystery. Unlike movies that feel the need to explain every bit of mystery and whimsy introduced, Miyazaki's movies assume that this is how it is, there are magical and mysterious things going on, and we either know what they're about or don't. There is enough for the viewer to build a theory, but he does not step into the story and explain why Ponyo's father is a former human-become-sea-wizard who has children with the Goddess of the Sea, whom the sailors call "The Goddess of Mercy," or what he is doing, and what his elixirs are all about. It is not frustrating in the least and Miyazaki knows that sometimes the story we conjure in our heads is the only wondrous one we really need...

Poetry Friday

In memoriam.

Shifting the Sun
by Diana Der-Hovanessian

When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians

When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When you father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.

Have a peaceful Friday, everyone.

Who?

So I've been thinking a lot about this blog and the fact that I haven't updated it as I once used to. The main reason is that other social networking applications, like Facebook, offer a kind of "captive" audience and usually very fast feedback. Also, it's feedback over something simpler- like one image or a one-liner. And that is definitely easier for me these days.

I love Poetry Fridays, but the truth is that I didn't have the time to always put in the amount of thoughtfulness into it. It will remain, but perhaps less consistently as intended.

I do miss blogging, I do miss sharing the contents of what Zen refers to as "monkey brain"(mine gets to be Curious George).

So things I'd like to expound on- for real this time:

1) Switching from PC to an iMac (Hallellujah!)
2) True Blood and the yumminess of Stephen Moyer.
3) Political comments filled with personal bias.
4) Books? Yes.
5) Movies I've been watching with my friend Sovay.
6) Stephen Moyer and his yummitude in True Blood.

There! Be glad I am back.

Poetry...Saturday

Away with pretense. I haven't updated the blog in ages. I am not quitting the blog, although perhaps the majority of my readers has. I'm here right now, whenever the time stamp for this entry is/was.

And here is the poem I chose, by a former US Poet Laureate. Enjoy...and hello?


POEM
Passing Through
—on my seventy-ninth birthday

by Stanley Kunitz

Nobody in the widow’s household
ever celebrated anniversaries.
In the secrecy of my room
I would not admit I cared
that my friends were given parties.
Before I left town for school
my birthday went up in smoke
in a fire at City Hall that gutted
the Department of Vital Statistics.
If it weren’t for a census report
of a five-year-old White Male
sharing my mother’s address
at the Green Street tenement in Worcester
I’d have no documentary proof
that I exist. You are the first,
my dear, to bully me
into these festive occasions.

Sometimes, you say, I wear
an abstracted look that drives you
up the wall, as though it signified
distress or disaffection.
Don’t take it so to heart.
Maybe I enjoy not-being as much
as being who I am. Maybe
it’s time for me to practice
growing old. The way I look
at it, I’m passing through a phase:
gradually I’m changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours;
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.

Have a peaceful weekend, everyone!

This poem is incredible. The notion of suffering takes an unexpected turn, something Buddhist, when linked to desire.

sorrows
by Lucille Clifton

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking

their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching

as i whispered into my own
cupped hands enough not me again

but who can distinguish
one human voice

amid such choruses
of desire.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Media Snark

This had me giggling:



Is it just me, or is that little donut tidbit strategically placed? Mwahaha!

Irony

Ok. So I saw the link on Yahoo's news page. It's regarding a Canadian teen who won the World Beatbox Championship online. Very fun stuff given that she is good...but what amused me was this banner at the bottom of the list of winners on the contest's official website:

Can someone tell me why an ad for Ann Coulter is featured on a Beatbox Competition website?? Or was this some mistake, as in what they really meant to say is that their website's "Ann Coulter Free?"

As John Lennon would say, "Strange days indeed..."

Poetry

Late, but still heartfelt.

This poem reminds me of the awe of being before something meaningful, in her case, of something that anchors a story, a legend of some kind. I remember that while I was in Florence, I went to the Museo di Storia della Scienza, a repository for various tools and equipment used by sailors and budding astronomers, alchemists, physicians, etc. The ancient astrolabes impressed me tremendously and evidenced a desire and tenacity I occasionally wonder if we've lost. I remember the captain of a cruise ship once telling me that part of their test as sailors was knowing how to navigate without all the modern-day technology. What really moved me and helped me relate to this poem, was coming across one of Galileo's telescopes. Here I was before an instrument used by someone whose ability to interpret what he saw in the sky made history. How many hours did he spend gazing at the stars? What went through his mind? What joys, what disappointments? I remember bending and contorting around so I could have the privilege of staring out the same eyepiece as Galileo, even though the telescope was cocked upwards and secured behind a glass display. Some people recall meeting a famous actor, a singer, perhaps a politician.
I looked through Galileo's telescope.

Diving into the Wreck
by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Have a good week, everyone.

Ergo...

Last night while the household peacefully slept, Minxie, the fastidious groomer, coughed up a hairball. While making breakfast, I was interrupted by Snicky who was tugging my arm and asking machine gun style, "What is THAT?" Minxie has the occasional hairball and ALWAYS coughs it up on one of the rugs. Always. We have hardwood floors, but she will seek out the rug to do her dastardly deed.

"That's a hairball," I explained.
"Do we need to take Minxie to the cat doctor?"
"Noooo...Sometimes cats get too much fur in their bellies and they cough it up."
I did not add, "On my freaking rugs."
"Oooh."

And that was that.

As we were getting ready to hop into the car, I started coughing a bit because my throat was so dry. Snicky looked up at me warily and asked:

"Mom, do you have a hairball?"

Poetry Friday


Orfeo
by Jack Spicer

Sharp as an arrow Orpheus
Points his music downward.
Hell is there
At the bottom of the seacliff.
Heal
Nothing by this music.
Eurydice
Is a frigate bird or a rock or some seaweed.
Hail nothing
The infernal
Is a slippering wetness out at the horizon.
Hell is this:
The lack of anything but the eternal to look at
The expansiveness of salt
The lack of any bed but one’s
Music to sleep in.

Have a peaceful Friday, everyone.

Glory Days

When I was a kid in Brazil (*cues epic-sounding music*) anytime an international pop or rock star came into town, we had already been informed of it, ad nauseam, weeks and weeks before thanks to endless radio and TV promos. That's because big names usually were still few and far-between. There was no way you could not know that Tina Turner and even more alternative folks like Siouxie and the Banshees were coming to town.

When I moved to Paris, I remember going to the area where they sold concert tickets at Virgin Megastore and slapping my forehead in disbelief when I saw all the big names that had been scheduled to play there- slapping my forehead because there were so many and there were no endless TV and radio promos making a big deal about it.

Same thing happened to me in Boston. I always felt I was the last one to know when a big name sauntered into town, which meant I never managed to get tickets (yes, U2, I'm talking to you!). Never a big concert-goer, I did manage to catch a few random concerts- usually with my good college friend Maarten, aka "Mr. Dutch Treat," who always knew what the haps in town were and ended up dragging me to the Steve Miller Band and Lenny Kravitz. Yes, kinda mellow, but the boy was from Amsterdam, so give me a break.

I decided that needs to change. There is great pleasure and joy in watching someone whose music you enjoy perform live. That's why last night I found myself with a bunch of fans at the Bruce Springsteen concert in Boston.

It was awesome. Patty wasn't there, though. But Stevie and his do-rag made up for it.
Here's the set list and a summary of the show from Backstreets.com :

April 21 / Boston, MA / TD Banknorth Garden
Notes: From the West coast last week now back to the East, Bruce and the E Street Band are bad, they're nationwide. And that was the clear highlight for this first night in Boston, a cover of ZZ Top's "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide"—which Bruce seemed to think was an E Street Band premiere: "They don't know this one." Somewhat legendarily among aficianados, though, this one celebrated/poked fun at newfound superstar status in Philly on the Born in the U.S.A. tour, on 9/15/84. But okay, just once, 25 years ago... we'll let it slide. And his memory wasn't all hazy: "I think I used to play this in the bars." A well-made sign for the song included lyrics and chord changes, but it was still a challenge to rise to. Bruce: "Can they do it? Fuck yeah, they're the E Street Band!" And they did, it kicked ass, with a postscript: "Don't try to stump the E Street Band!"

Otherwise, a setlist very similar to night one in L.A. Also played by request were the directionally contradictory "I'm Goin' Down" and "Growin' Up." The sign for the latter included an addendum: "...and a story to tell." But no such luck. It was the guitar that talked tonight, Bruce playing searing leads on "Adam Raised a Cain," "Seeds," and "The Ghost of Tom Joad"—Nils smoked on that one, too. And speaking of smoke: the Superbowl LCD screens were gone, with some new smoke-machine action providing a different effect in their place.

Patti was again absent, not "home with the kids" as with last week's L.A. shows, but this time because of an accident: she "took a spill" while horse riding on Saturday, Bruce told the crowd. "She wasn't riding with Madonna—it wasn't a Madonna-like spill," he joked, but the spill itself sounds like no fun at all. Springsteen described multiple contusions and bruised ribs, "and whiplash, from me driving her to the hospital." He said she'd be back after a few shows, and in the meantime, "she asked me to play this for you," going into "Kingdom of Days."

Jay Weinberg was behind the kit for the final four songs of the main set, "Radio Nowhere" through "Born to Run." And more offspring were in the house as "Hard Times" was sent out "to my handsome son Evan and my lovely daughter Jessie." Patti, hope you're feeling better soon.

Setlist:
Badlands
Adam Raised a Cain
Outlaw Pete
Out in the Street
Working on a Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
The Ghost of Tom Joad
I'm Goin' Down
Raise Your Hand
I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide
I'm Goin' Down
Growin' Up
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
The Promised Land
The Wrestler
Kingdom of Days
Radio Nowhere (w/ Jay Weinberg)
Lonesome Day (w/ Jay Weinberg)
The Rising (w/ Jay Weinberg)
Born to Run (w/ Jay Weinberg)
* * *
Hard Times
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
Land of Hope and Dreams
American Land
Rosalita

And here's some of my very own footage, courtesy of my iPhone. I'd like to say that the "Zippo" application on it was very handy during ballads, even as McGyva and Doctor F. rolled eyes at my geekitude...

Although we arrived fairly on time, people were only starting to trickle in. I blame Nathan's Famous for that as it seemed everyone was going for hot dogs.


BRUUUUUUUCE!

Next on the agenda: getting tickets to U2 in September...

Feeding the Habit

Because I have been going into the office more these days, I am required to stay on top of things on the weekdays I am not there. And because I am not perpetually tied to a computer when I am not at work, I may need to access e-mail/phone/the internetzzzz whilst on the go.

So, courtesy of work, I am now the grinning user of an iPhone.
Let me just say this: It's. So. FUN!

The applications rock the Casbah and now my obnoxiousness is more ubiquitous than EVER! I can update my Facebook and Twitter on the go (I think I have two followers- one doing it probably just out of politeness. Why wouldn't you want to know I am having a bologna sandwich??)! And in case some kind soul felt the need to remind me that this a work phone, I'd like you all to know that my boss was the one telling me to jot down the name of all the cool applications I just HAD to have, such as this essential one...

This is technological crack for the gadget grrl...

Poetry Friday


I Am Not Yours
by Sara Teasdale

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love—put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

Have a peaceful Friday, everyone.