the Jung Dafoe in Missippi burniing, which I hadn't ever watched before but had the opportunity for a clear view of it, Frances is always very good in the actress department, her face bumps up like it hurts and such..Hackman being hackman, these guys perfecting their craft as if they could sail it like a boat, you watch them turning into character, or being the storybook role, the crone, the little dumpling girl, someone I'd write for them...tear it all up because I'm so chilly I can't sit here..have to be in the sunlight..
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
ok, what killed kenny
I've been writing this morning. Haven't done so in a good while, as if the communicates that simmer in the back of my head remind me once in a while, it's ok to speak words, to write them...that I can set down the parts I like best, to read over, more than once, little reminders
maybe that's it, why I would have to give a sort of eulogy here today because we lost one of the nice guys, friendly sort that was what do they say, yanked?
well, it's that he died, the modem...the parts of all the machinery everywhere, the twenty nine weedwackers hanging on the stair rail. And he's gone.
He would be seen any day, well saw less of him in recent years I suppose, but he was around to do stuff, get things done. And now he ain't because he fell dead of a massive stroke outside a house I thought should be the study room for students that need more learning than school provides. The ones who want to be dummies because they're lazy, uninformed, backwards, plain ol insolent (at the beginning most of them always are). That gets a little scary so we don't know that this death was a good thing.
But there you are. And are you afraid? Are you going to that great unknown without a big sendoff.
Or are we going to mourn you like the sorry bastard you think you are. Well, we think you are. Cause we heard that you were doing things to yourself you shouldn't have. A good rumor, if it's not true, because it certainly seemed to have some creedence.
And then there's our animal population, which really hangs around a lot on this 'edge of the forest primeval'...I'm kinda bummed because we all like to say what a good fellow the chap was...Kenny Wasankari. Well, this is the end of the road for you old fellow...you dedicated servant of the human race...wish you well and all that...stroke huh? dang
maybe that's it, why I would have to give a sort of eulogy here today because we lost one of the nice guys, friendly sort that was what do they say, yanked?
well, it's that he died, the modem...the parts of all the machinery everywhere, the twenty nine weedwackers hanging on the stair rail. And he's gone.
He would be seen any day, well saw less of him in recent years I suppose, but he was around to do stuff, get things done. And now he ain't because he fell dead of a massive stroke outside a house I thought should be the study room for students that need more learning than school provides. The ones who want to be dummies because they're lazy, uninformed, backwards, plain ol insolent (at the beginning most of them always are). That gets a little scary so we don't know that this death was a good thing.
But there you are. And are you afraid? Are you going to that great unknown without a big sendoff.
Or are we going to mourn you like the sorry bastard you think you are. Well, we think you are. Cause we heard that you were doing things to yourself you shouldn't have. A good rumor, if it's not true, because it certainly seemed to have some creedence.
And then there's our animal population, which really hangs around a lot on this 'edge of the forest primeval'...I'm kinda bummed because we all like to say what a good fellow the chap was...Kenny Wasankari. Well, this is the end of the road for you old fellow...you dedicated servant of the human race...wish you well and all that...stroke huh? dang
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
counseling by Willison cottage, PA
you know, when my dad died, it never made me cry. Pa, never called him that either. PA is an abbreviation for our closest available major chain grocery, Forks, the city of Twilight, only has the IGA sort of chain, which doesn't count, I think, because it's IGA and not a SAFEWAY or something of that volume. But any, PA is also short for 'professional association' which I think of Willison's Cottage being, since that's the kind of counseling offered by my little sign on the chainlink out front of the house. And do you know, that darn new roof has leaked again in all the rain we've just had...the nerve of it...I been tarring and the cat's been dropping little chickadee feathers on the backdeck...thank heavens they don't come together to railroad a body out of town, b ut you know, the kind of conversation I had with my son this morning, it could come to pass...I know you're guilty of this because this is how I remember it being
I went through all those guilt trippy novels back in the day, come to think of it, every book I ever read by Sholsenitzyn was like that...a few by Nabakov...can't blame roach guy Kafka for describing the descent into insecthood but when your nimbly able browbeater son decides the warpath is the way to fly...you just don't step out of the way, you look for clues, like the fact his father was adopted, hehe...the errant gene idea.
Well his father is long gone down the street playing with farm animals on Facebook, I think, or dating the really goofy girl that my brother says took on the entire Tacoma Dome in a game of RISK.
Not to be a slanderous fool here but I was totting up my own game record and thinking that Id done my own share of ice scraping...or whathaveyou if you want to know the truth about it. Can't say that I get into really being honest about how much do I love my children, because it's a multifaceted concept, parenthood, has its pros and has its cons. Like the neighborgirl who works at the county park begging for them to put in the bridge to the beach where they take it out every winter which I wish they wouldn't do but put it back and leave it that way because for too long every year we don't have anything. I don't even want to know that she has to beg and politic her way into getting the bridge back down to the beach where it should be.
I don't want to know that she has any influence over it. I just want to be able to walk to the beach whatever time of year it may be and cross that bridge like I always could before, when the kids were little, before it washed out. I don't like that it washed out either. I don't think that we should have lost our park, our picnick areas and tables and little houses in the brush of the woods...the woods nearly washed away by the tides because the county has better things to do (according to the park employee). I don't know what better t hings the county has to do than attend to the beautiful beach we have here. I guess they know what they're doin'...
I was on about my son ranting at me about his horrible childhood. ...talk about an inexperienced young mom...somehow I feel exploited by our conversation, since I nearly died giving birth to him (I was hospitalized with a seizure from vomiting due to morning sickness). In my experience, I have never held that over his head, that I was so ill. What I did tell him was that I waited a long time before I had any other children, I got so sick with him. I did love being a pregnant mom, that fat belly with the little life growing inside it, the big clothes, the deep hunger and deep satisfaction of a good meal consumed. They cut me open like a pot roast to make passage for him, he was slapped up on my stomach red and blue and shivering. They took him away and I didn't see him again till the evening. I had a caudal bloc, numb from the waist down. Grandfather came to visit and was most cheerful about it all, wearing a purple shirt and looking debonair, because he was a lawyer and an Army Colonel. Husband was always uncomfortable around me and the baby only made it more so. It didn't last, the marriage, because it was a contrived version of something never given the freedom to grow on it's own. If anything, my son's father is more incoherent than I am, but then, we know who the bad buys are, the ones that get angry...ever so often this son's father calls and wants money he says I owe him...as far as I know he's been paid and paid and paid, but he keeps realizing that he could get more if he says he didn't get any..it's interesting that the main reason for wanting to blackmail one's wife is that one has certain issues one must face, the major of which is that one's father was a prosecuting attorney at Nuremberg...something else we don't talk about, my son and I...you can't walk around with that much guilt about the rest of the human race and not have some negative biofeedback. Grampa liked to tell how the remaining Krauts tried to blow up his jeep on the way to work one morning. He also tells of the German family member he went to visit while stationed at Geoppingen, a person who had been in the SS. That family member left the room when Gramp walked in it but his daughter came to visit when I was expecting our son. I wore this terribly short black and white flowered pique mini that I had made myself and we went sightseeing. She worked for unilever and her name was Ermgaard Thieme. I should look her up and see if she remains. She could speak Arabic and six other languages. She was a white blonde and she was nice. My son doesn't know the half of it all...and neither do I but I don't think I know how to be mean to him even if he's trying to make me bite back, I just don't know how.
Adele at the Library asked about Willison Cottage as did Paul the bus driver. Special Ed teacher asked how much I said twenty an hour and it's not the licensed PA variety talk your ear off, it's that other, basepolitically motivated rap about who to blame, like Hitler did to the German people, got them all tranquilized and neutralized so he could initiate genocide...this time around it's to help identify body parts their function, if they function, regardless of age, who knows what spaceship they're dumping us all off of...we are the garbage of the universe in that we beat our spouses, our children, our fellow man...right?
well, my son's not to blame for his father doing that to me but I do consider that I might be more sympathetic to his issues about his childhood if I hadn't been battered by his father. After we divorced, as a result of that incident, he didn't really live with me again until he was 15 and it was court ordered. At that time, I didn't have my own place and was living with my parents, but it worked out and soon enough we got our own apartment, wherein he would have the groceries eaten up by the first week of the month, be out partying and getting up late for school, sleeping with his girlfriend in his bedroom (like that's ok now, but I never felt too good about it). She later was killed in a car crash, and that's what he's all upset about now, that his significant other passed away from cancer last night. Yeah, he was a handful but I didn't go to his college graduation because he was causing problems his senior year and then he was gone, because I asked him to go, I screamed at him to go and he physically threatened me. It was sturm and drang for sure but it's like that one move of Crowe's that I like to watch, the one where he almost marries the Latino chick and they fight all the time...really 80's material with the hair and clothes, my son was a product of the 80's and we just kind of hashed out everything that we could hash out. He kind of went from place, got an inheritance from his Grandfather and his Aunt that amounted to two hundred thousand, which he doesn't have a penny of now because he ...well...I can't say what he did with the money because I don't know. I know he didn't buy me a new car or pay the mortgage... There's lots of things I could throw back to him when he says I was unfair in some way or another about what he did or didn't do, but when it comes down to it, he's not very generous with his time or anything else, rather if he's hurting, I'm a target. Kind of like a mean drunk needs a target. One way or the other he's going to do what he is going to do...I think in families you kind of forgive one another's behavior but between him and my brother's wife running my daughter's wedding last year, I dunno, is forgiveness the blue that means a broken heart? I meant to type glue that mends a broken heart , I guess so, so never felt their behavior was anything to be too upset about it was their behavior that wasn't appropriate, right? Anyways, doggiewogs wants to get on down the road and so do I...haven't had visitor number one here today and I've been on the pc all afternoon...whew...poor number one son, feels bad...don't blame him for feeling that way, guess I should go visit real quick but I don't know how I can do that, and he's coming home the end of the month...what an excuse to go to hawaii, hehe...how to permanently estrange your 40-year old child with countless words of wisdom (they won't listen to)...and that countless words of wisdom phrase I think comes from a song, maybe a Simon and Garfunkel, which when I presented the music to my mother she said, "what's that supposed to be about?"
I went through all those guilt trippy novels back in the day, come to think of it, every book I ever read by Sholsenitzyn was like that...a few by Nabakov...can't blame roach guy Kafka for describing the descent into insecthood but when your nimbly able browbeater son decides the warpath is the way to fly...you just don't step out of the way, you look for clues, like the fact his father was adopted, hehe...the errant gene idea.
Well his father is long gone down the street playing with farm animals on Facebook, I think, or dating the really goofy girl that my brother says took on the entire Tacoma Dome in a game of RISK.
Not to be a slanderous fool here but I was totting up my own game record and thinking that Id done my own share of ice scraping...or whathaveyou if you want to know the truth about it. Can't say that I get into really being honest about how much do I love my children, because it's a multifaceted concept, parenthood, has its pros and has its cons. Like the neighborgirl who works at the county park begging for them to put in the bridge to the beach where they take it out every winter which I wish they wouldn't do but put it back and leave it that way because for too long every year we don't have anything. I don't even want to know that she has to beg and politic her way into getting the bridge back down to the beach where it should be.
I don't want to know that she has any influence over it. I just want to be able to walk to the beach whatever time of year it may be and cross that bridge like I always could before, when the kids were little, before it washed out. I don't like that it washed out either. I don't think that we should have lost our park, our picnick areas and tables and little houses in the brush of the woods...the woods nearly washed away by the tides because the county has better things to do (according to the park employee). I don't know what better t hings the county has to do than attend to the beautiful beach we have here. I guess they know what they're doin'...
I was on about my son ranting at me about his horrible childhood. ...talk about an inexperienced young mom...somehow I feel exploited by our conversation, since I nearly died giving birth to him (I was hospitalized with a seizure from vomiting due to morning sickness). In my experience, I have never held that over his head, that I was so ill. What I did tell him was that I waited a long time before I had any other children, I got so sick with him. I did love being a pregnant mom, that fat belly with the little life growing inside it, the big clothes, the deep hunger and deep satisfaction of a good meal consumed. They cut me open like a pot roast to make passage for him, he was slapped up on my stomach red and blue and shivering. They took him away and I didn't see him again till the evening. I had a caudal bloc, numb from the waist down. Grandfather came to visit and was most cheerful about it all, wearing a purple shirt and looking debonair, because he was a lawyer and an Army Colonel. Husband was always uncomfortable around me and the baby only made it more so. It didn't last, the marriage, because it was a contrived version of something never given the freedom to grow on it's own. If anything, my son's father is more incoherent than I am, but then, we know who the bad buys are, the ones that get angry...ever so often this son's father calls and wants money he says I owe him...as far as I know he's been paid and paid and paid, but he keeps realizing that he could get more if he says he didn't get any..it's interesting that the main reason for wanting to blackmail one's wife is that one has certain issues one must face, the major of which is that one's father was a prosecuting attorney at Nuremberg...something else we don't talk about, my son and I...you can't walk around with that much guilt about the rest of the human race and not have some negative biofeedback. Grampa liked to tell how the remaining Krauts tried to blow up his jeep on the way to work one morning. He also tells of the German family member he went to visit while stationed at Geoppingen, a person who had been in the SS. That family member left the room when Gramp walked in it but his daughter came to visit when I was expecting our son. I wore this terribly short black and white flowered pique mini that I had made myself and we went sightseeing. She worked for unilever and her name was Ermgaard Thieme. I should look her up and see if she remains. She could speak Arabic and six other languages. She was a white blonde and she was nice. My son doesn't know the half of it all...and neither do I but I don't think I know how to be mean to him even if he's trying to make me bite back, I just don't know how.
Adele at the Library asked about Willison Cottage as did Paul the bus driver. Special Ed teacher asked how much I said twenty an hour and it's not the licensed PA variety talk your ear off, it's that other, basepolitically motivated rap about who to blame, like Hitler did to the German people, got them all tranquilized and neutralized so he could initiate genocide...this time around it's to help identify body parts their function, if they function, regardless of age, who knows what spaceship they're dumping us all off of...we are the garbage of the universe in that we beat our spouses, our children, our fellow man...right?
well, my son's not to blame for his father doing that to me but I do consider that I might be more sympathetic to his issues about his childhood if I hadn't been battered by his father. After we divorced, as a result of that incident, he didn't really live with me again until he was 15 and it was court ordered. At that time, I didn't have my own place and was living with my parents, but it worked out and soon enough we got our own apartment, wherein he would have the groceries eaten up by the first week of the month, be out partying and getting up late for school, sleeping with his girlfriend in his bedroom (like that's ok now, but I never felt too good about it). She later was killed in a car crash, and that's what he's all upset about now, that his significant other passed away from cancer last night. Yeah, he was a handful but I didn't go to his college graduation because he was causing problems his senior year and then he was gone, because I asked him to go, I screamed at him to go and he physically threatened me. It was sturm and drang for sure but it's like that one move of Crowe's that I like to watch, the one where he almost marries the Latino chick and they fight all the time...really 80's material with the hair and clothes, my son was a product of the 80's and we just kind of hashed out everything that we could hash out. He kind of went from place, got an inheritance from his Grandfather and his Aunt that amounted to two hundred thousand, which he doesn't have a penny of now because he ...well...I can't say what he did with the money because I don't know. I know he didn't buy me a new car or pay the mortgage... There's lots of things I could throw back to him when he says I was unfair in some way or another about what he did or didn't do, but when it comes down to it, he's not very generous with his time or anything else, rather if he's hurting, I'm a target. Kind of like a mean drunk needs a target. One way or the other he's going to do what he is going to do...I think in families you kind of forgive one another's behavior but between him and my brother's wife running my daughter's wedding last year, I dunno, is forgiveness the blue that means a broken heart? I meant to type glue that mends a broken heart , I guess so, so never felt their behavior was anything to be too upset about it was their behavior that wasn't appropriate, right? Anyways, doggiewogs wants to get on down the road and so do I...haven't had visitor number one here today and I've been on the pc all afternoon...whew...poor number one son, feels bad...don't blame him for feeling that way, guess I should go visit real quick but I don't know how I can do that, and he's coming home the end of the month...what an excuse to go to hawaii, hehe...how to permanently estrange your 40-year old child with countless words of wisdom (they won't listen to)...and that countless words of wisdom phrase I think comes from a song, maybe a Simon and Garfunkel, which when I presented the music to my mother she said, "what's that supposed to be about?"
Saturday, March 26, 2011
ahoy, Saturday morning...
well, I guess since it's 12:33 p.m. it's no longer Saturday morning, but there you have it..a day in the life...making sense of the little things, like the laundry, which never ends, is 'donated' upon (here wash me up an extry 25 loads wouldja) and ends up becoming a process in the routine maintenance of the little shop vac that I use to siphon off the excess dirt, rocks, lint, thread, paper, sand, wood chip that come through the filtration system of the dryer. It feels very good to clean up the laundry, get it in a system of order but then you get to the place where you're putting it away (how did you ever get by without what you've just washed, you wonder?) You find that you've got a wretched excess (don't you?) my God, where are you going to put it...??
It isn't like I take that long to get around to washing up the laundry because I don't procrastinate about it. I just don't like putting it all away. Things get dirty when you've started a house renovation process, you're raising a 17-year old foster kid with a penchant for motor oil and things connected to that, and you're redoing your rental house due to the fact the last tenants were monsters...
It's kind of like the shelf life of a double A battery: just whewn you think you're going to see your little clock run again, you don't have one, the ones you do have are spent, there is no place close where you can get one..eh.. Some one had some good advice about not sweating the small stuff. Putting a battery in a clock is like that. I'll do it when I get around to it. At the moment I'm wondernig how to get the sludge out of the sink drain in the kitchen, rehang the garage door that was shoved up crooked, wash up the donation loads of laundry for the club that's having the mega garage sale, and check in the mirror once in a while to see if the lightener I put on my graying roots is doing anything interesting.
I can't remember the last tme I wore makeup. I looked at my face in the mirror on one of those rare sunny days we get sometimes that are like a beautiful slice of nirvana for a few hours. I saw the crumbly remains of my jawline folding into little white cushions of slackkening skin, very white, freckled as it is. (and herein I took a several hour break to have breakfast, take a bath, do some laundry..and ponder what I had seen, hehe)... I guess I seriously doubt that makeup will hide any of the changing planes of my face, but a little blush, lipstick, eye shadow, they make you feel nice, I think...so does a nice hot bath, in which I luxuriate..
meanwhile, have to get on my way so enough of this, major news on the homefront in the daughter department but that's for another time
It isn't like I take that long to get around to washing up the laundry because I don't procrastinate about it. I just don't like putting it all away. Things get dirty when you've started a house renovation process, you're raising a 17-year old foster kid with a penchant for motor oil and things connected to that, and you're redoing your rental house due to the fact the last tenants were monsters...
It's kind of like the shelf life of a double A battery: just whewn you think you're going to see your little clock run again, you don't have one, the ones you do have are spent, there is no place close where you can get one..eh.. Some one had some good advice about not sweating the small stuff. Putting a battery in a clock is like that. I'll do it when I get around to it. At the moment I'm wondernig how to get the sludge out of the sink drain in the kitchen, rehang the garage door that was shoved up crooked, wash up the donation loads of laundry for the club that's having the mega garage sale, and check in the mirror once in a while to see if the lightener I put on my graying roots is doing anything interesting.
I can't remember the last tme I wore makeup. I looked at my face in the mirror on one of those rare sunny days we get sometimes that are like a beautiful slice of nirvana for a few hours. I saw the crumbly remains of my jawline folding into little white cushions of slackkening skin, very white, freckled as it is. (and herein I took a several hour break to have breakfast, take a bath, do some laundry..and ponder what I had seen, hehe)... I guess I seriously doubt that makeup will hide any of the changing planes of my face, but a little blush, lipstick, eye shadow, they make you feel nice, I think...so does a nice hot bath, in which I luxuriate..
meanwhile, have to get on my way so enough of this, major news on the homefront in the daughter department but that's for another time
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
art day
yesterday was art day. I brought several green apples, dried cherries, a grapefruit from the treet in Angel's yard, and for art, I made a fruit salad. June, Barbara, Gail, Flora, myself were there. It was a cool day. Oh, Kathleen was there as well. We had a potluck lunch. My fruit salad was pretty good. There was elk meatballs, a chili cornbread casserole, a cake, cookie bread...potato chips, cheese and crackers. Reiko was there too ..
I was thinking about the art process during the day. After the session I went home and put a tarp o nthe roof. This morning I put another one. It's been raining and blowing something awful. We celebrated Fat Tuesday last night with champagne. I helped Diana in the afternoon with her organizational process at her house. We moved the woodpile, swept up in the garage, got the room ready there for storing her building materials for the three bedrooms she's redoing in the house. I guess I'll go help her when she needs it. It was a good workout.
The girls gave me some really nice dry wood and last night before going to sleep the fire was so warm and delightful. It was most pleasant.
I have to go help Barb now. It's letting up a bit outside and the sun came out for a few seconds. Whoowee...the sun...what is that thing anyway? hehe
I was thinking about the art process during the day. After the session I went home and put a tarp o nthe roof. This morning I put another one. It's been raining and blowing something awful. We celebrated Fat Tuesday last night with champagne. I helped Diana in the afternoon with her organizational process at her house. We moved the woodpile, swept up in the garage, got the room ready there for storing her building materials for the three bedrooms she's redoing in the house. I guess I'll go help her when she needs it. It was a good workout.
The girls gave me some really nice dry wood and last night before going to sleep the fire was so warm and delightful. It was most pleasant.
I have to go help Barb now. It's letting up a bit outside and the sun came out for a few seconds. Whoowee...the sun...what is that thing anyway? hehe
Thursday, February 10, 2011
1984
I watched a film version of this story. I don't remember any of the background of it other than it was about a totalitarian society. We had to read the book for English class. It seemed at the time I read it far less entertaining than Animal House, another requisite. It might have been Freshman English in College where I had to read these books, I don't remember. I know I had read them both. I don't recall seeing a film version of Animal House but I have now seen 1984 in film with Richard Burton as the ultimate inquisitor. The main character is played by an actor named John Hurt but it's not the Hurt of later on with the blonde hair, it's a British chap with a pinched face and thin body. He suffers a great deal on the path to enlightenment. His crime is that he has a love affair. He also smokes like a chimney and coughs a lot. His country is at war, continents against continents. You don't get to see the other continents but you begin to assume they must all be like the main character's home base: everyone in uniform, everyone tuned into all the state broadcasts, a few bombs going off, pretty much like World War II only it takes place in 1984.
That it takes place in 1984 is the postfuturistic element of the film version. 1984 has come and gone. 1984 was the year I came back out West after living for about fifteen years on the East Coast, mainly in Washington DC but for a few years on the Eastern Shore in Maryland. I was a part of the counter culture while I lived in DC, at the last. On the day Ronald Reagan took office, I was leafleting on Pennsylvania Avenue. I ran into a good friend of mine, Eileen, who was wearing furs and had been socializing with Senator Warner and his wife, Elizabeth Taylor. She wasn't with them, of course, she was with Harry, her longtime beau. Eileen had lost her husband in the South China Sea during the onset of the VietNam War. His plane was shot down. I stuffed a leaflet into her hands and went down the block. She was eagerly awaiting Reagan's motorcade.
At no time during that time leading up to 1984, did it ever feel to me that we were on the downward path portrayed in the story. We hadn't gotten there because there I was prodding the story line with the kind of rogue mirth that anarchists are good at. We had elected a competent now government official to lead us and so he did. He wasn't on the radio too awfully much, certainly not broadcasting from loudspeakers at every lightpole. He didn't have Richard Burton characters washing our braincells with torture for us. He had a few little debacles to deal with, one of which was Desert Storm that gave more than a few people that fought there a kind of curious heat rash sort of condition that was assumed to have been caused by biowarfare agents, though one hasn't heard too much about it since that time. I got to wear whatever clothes I chose to wear and there was the element of mirth again in the little demonstrations we conducted in places like Farragut Square. You would have certainly been hauled off had you done that in the story.
I wouldn't say I'm championing our freedom here, certainly. I would say I pushed the envelope all the way across the desk by the time 1984 rolled around in real time. I had been there and done that in terms of being who I wanted to be in those years. Well, I still am but there's the other part of it: if we didn't have stories like 1984 to predict for us where our predilections for power might get us, we might actually get there, as they unfortunately found out probably in Stalin's time, and Hitler's. But we haven't had that gory mess around for while and the strange thing is we don't hear about it until it's a nasty pimple on the butt of the planet.
I would say that the United Nations is always on the spot when a situation becomes tenuous. The problem with that is those troups that go in for the United Nation on peacekeeping missions don't have enough manpower or anything else to really stop what goes on. The United Nation is hamstrung by its Joint Security Council because it's always a matter of warring with itself. So there again, 1984 isn't quite here but if we don't keep that delicate balance Madison was so fond of, we might surely experience it firsthand and wouldn't that be lovely.
1984 more than anything depicts the societal death of love. You might think it persists, but the story line goes along with the romance of its main character and the little nymphette he befriends who tells him she's done 'it' hundreds of time with hundreds of men, although that behavior is definitely frowned upon by the bureacracy they are saddled with. A little thing like promiscuity isn't so much overlooked as it is begnine
(bee nine) I don't have my thesaurus along at the moment...it's one of the main symptoms of the rot of the society itself. We'll just give our bodies for the pleasure of it, which might be argued happens today although the AIDS scare put the fear of God in a few of us profligates, I should think. Burton then tortures the main character after giving him a tract on the aesthetics of the proletariate to think for themselves, which he finds quite sufficient to persecute the already suffering man with some quite graphic torture sequences, always to bring the person back to the cognizance that the state is all. Indeed, in that society, it is all...the sum of life we would know it, were that our 1984. The petty little behaviors of the couple, renting a secret room, sharing coffee and sugar as all things are rationed out, taking naps together, seem almost mundanely routine until the brain police burst through the door and both are hauled off to the interrogation rooms.
We probably didn't know people did such things to one another until it became patently obvious they did so during World War II. Then there were stories about what happened in Korea, and Viet Nam, and all the places in between where people are caught in the middle of a quasi-jurisdictional dispute, like which tribe is the better tribe to be from. Not that history is not replete with versions of torture, the Spanish Inquistion comes to mind, a little game we played in parochial school, Romans and Christians, being another. Rather, it was more vivid, more widespread, more insidious in World War II and the immediate time after it, that made us aware that there were dark forces in the world that we must be ever on guard against.
So I thought it was my duty to be a counter culture person, work in a cooperative art gallery, do art programs in the schools, protest whatever sword rattling our government was promoting, host events that culminated with myself and several other people doing a mime in front of the White House with red rubber noses on. The Cuban ambassador happened to be driving by that day. He actually got out of his limo and took the time to shake our hands. I wouldn't say it was the highlight of my experiences back East, but I would say that due to those little catalysts of time and energy, we wouldn't be likely to experience 1984 as the book and film portray it. We've got a little more mirth and ambiguity than to be pigeonholed in our bureaucratic cubicles, wherein we bow down and murmur yes God when the superior's superior happens to breeze through. We allow just enough irreverance to make life tolerable. We don't get around to wearing uniforms so much as we consign our clothes when we realize the quality and effort that are in them, and the fact they can be worn another season or four, by someone who didn't have the pleasure of shopping for them retail like we did. We're becoming pretty good recyclers, and hopefully, through that and our alternative energy efforts and our healthfood diets, and our spiritual pathways, we'll keep on growing our versions of Victory Gardens and walking when it's only a few blocks. We're not totally motorized yet and probably we won't get there where machines do everything for us. We haven't lost our heart, I just wish we were a little more romantic, that's all...1984 portrays the death of love, I don't think it's at all dead but we're probably just a little more promiscuous than we should be and a little less tolerance of difference than might oughtn't be good for us. We could use a rough polish for sure, but we love stuff, even if it's something like American Idol, where we pick a winner and follow him to the last round. We have simple passions: ice cream, nice cars, our families...but we need to remember the lesson about love: that's when you know the society has died...when they outlaw it...
(oh, and that's something for the readership to ponder...exactly what love is outlawed today? hmmm, I wonder...)
That it takes place in 1984 is the postfuturistic element of the film version. 1984 has come and gone. 1984 was the year I came back out West after living for about fifteen years on the East Coast, mainly in Washington DC but for a few years on the Eastern Shore in Maryland. I was a part of the counter culture while I lived in DC, at the last. On the day Ronald Reagan took office, I was leafleting on Pennsylvania Avenue. I ran into a good friend of mine, Eileen, who was wearing furs and had been socializing with Senator Warner and his wife, Elizabeth Taylor. She wasn't with them, of course, she was with Harry, her longtime beau. Eileen had lost her husband in the South China Sea during the onset of the VietNam War. His plane was shot down. I stuffed a leaflet into her hands and went down the block. She was eagerly awaiting Reagan's motorcade.
At no time during that time leading up to 1984, did it ever feel to me that we were on the downward path portrayed in the story. We hadn't gotten there because there I was prodding the story line with the kind of rogue mirth that anarchists are good at. We had elected a competent now government official to lead us and so he did. He wasn't on the radio too awfully much, certainly not broadcasting from loudspeakers at every lightpole. He didn't have Richard Burton characters washing our braincells with torture for us. He had a few little debacles to deal with, one of which was Desert Storm that gave more than a few people that fought there a kind of curious heat rash sort of condition that was assumed to have been caused by biowarfare agents, though one hasn't heard too much about it since that time. I got to wear whatever clothes I chose to wear and there was the element of mirth again in the little demonstrations we conducted in places like Farragut Square. You would have certainly been hauled off had you done that in the story.
I wouldn't say I'm championing our freedom here, certainly. I would say I pushed the envelope all the way across the desk by the time 1984 rolled around in real time. I had been there and done that in terms of being who I wanted to be in those years. Well, I still am but there's the other part of it: if we didn't have stories like 1984 to predict for us where our predilections for power might get us, we might actually get there, as they unfortunately found out probably in Stalin's time, and Hitler's. But we haven't had that gory mess around for while and the strange thing is we don't hear about it until it's a nasty pimple on the butt of the planet.
I would say that the United Nations is always on the spot when a situation becomes tenuous. The problem with that is those troups that go in for the United Nation on peacekeeping missions don't have enough manpower or anything else to really stop what goes on. The United Nation is hamstrung by its Joint Security Council because it's always a matter of warring with itself. So there again, 1984 isn't quite here but if we don't keep that delicate balance Madison was so fond of, we might surely experience it firsthand and wouldn't that be lovely.
1984 more than anything depicts the societal death of love. You might think it persists, but the story line goes along with the romance of its main character and the little nymphette he befriends who tells him she's done 'it' hundreds of time with hundreds of men, although that behavior is definitely frowned upon by the bureacracy they are saddled with. A little thing like promiscuity isn't so much overlooked as it is begnine
(bee nine) I don't have my thesaurus along at the moment...it's one of the main symptoms of the rot of the society itself. We'll just give our bodies for the pleasure of it, which might be argued happens today although the AIDS scare put the fear of God in a few of us profligates, I should think. Burton then tortures the main character after giving him a tract on the aesthetics of the proletariate to think for themselves, which he finds quite sufficient to persecute the already suffering man with some quite graphic torture sequences, always to bring the person back to the cognizance that the state is all. Indeed, in that society, it is all...the sum of life we would know it, were that our 1984. The petty little behaviors of the couple, renting a secret room, sharing coffee and sugar as all things are rationed out, taking naps together, seem almost mundanely routine until the brain police burst through the door and both are hauled off to the interrogation rooms.
We probably didn't know people did such things to one another until it became patently obvious they did so during World War II. Then there were stories about what happened in Korea, and Viet Nam, and all the places in between where people are caught in the middle of a quasi-jurisdictional dispute, like which tribe is the better tribe to be from. Not that history is not replete with versions of torture, the Spanish Inquistion comes to mind, a little game we played in parochial school, Romans and Christians, being another. Rather, it was more vivid, more widespread, more insidious in World War II and the immediate time after it, that made us aware that there were dark forces in the world that we must be ever on guard against.
So I thought it was my duty to be a counter culture person, work in a cooperative art gallery, do art programs in the schools, protest whatever sword rattling our government was promoting, host events that culminated with myself and several other people doing a mime in front of the White House with red rubber noses on. The Cuban ambassador happened to be driving by that day. He actually got out of his limo and took the time to shake our hands. I wouldn't say it was the highlight of my experiences back East, but I would say that due to those little catalysts of time and energy, we wouldn't be likely to experience 1984 as the book and film portray it. We've got a little more mirth and ambiguity than to be pigeonholed in our bureaucratic cubicles, wherein we bow down and murmur yes God when the superior's superior happens to breeze through. We allow just enough irreverance to make life tolerable. We don't get around to wearing uniforms so much as we consign our clothes when we realize the quality and effort that are in them, and the fact they can be worn another season or four, by someone who didn't have the pleasure of shopping for them retail like we did. We're becoming pretty good recyclers, and hopefully, through that and our alternative energy efforts and our healthfood diets, and our spiritual pathways, we'll keep on growing our versions of Victory Gardens and walking when it's only a few blocks. We're not totally motorized yet and probably we won't get there where machines do everything for us. We haven't lost our heart, I just wish we were a little more romantic, that's all...1984 portrays the death of love, I don't think it's at all dead but we're probably just a little more promiscuous than we should be and a little less tolerance of difference than might oughtn't be good for us. We could use a rough polish for sure, but we love stuff, even if it's something like American Idol, where we pick a winner and follow him to the last round. We have simple passions: ice cream, nice cars, our families...but we need to remember the lesson about love: that's when you know the society has died...when they outlaw it...
(oh, and that's something for the readership to ponder...exactly what love is outlawed today? hmmm, I wonder...)
Friday, August 13, 2010
the bliss of summer
these are the days of warm sun, cool breeze and butterflies flitting across the yard. a total mellowness of purpose..
yesterday I went hiking on the Ozette Lake Cape Alava trail with my daughter and her husband. the trees in the forest were moss-covered, providing a cool canopy. there were tiny chipmunks, grazing deer, many hikers. we didn't go back on the sandypoint trail because the tide was in. many people were carrying camping gear. they plan to camp along the ocean shore. it was foggy. i had a nap while my daughter and her husband explored the shoreline towards where the archeological excavation took place. I woke myself up snoring.
yesterday evening we dined with my mother and brother. I brought a turkey and all the trimmings. mom made strawbery shortcake for dessert. afterward we played rounds of Mexican train dominoes until I was so tired I couldn't add anymore. We came home and all went to sleep today they return to Gig Harbor, flying home to Phoenix/Mesa on Monday. I shall miss them.
Today they are at Cape Flattery having another small hike. The weather is absolutely gorgeous. My foster kid is in the bathtub, just waking up at 1 in the afternoon! I think he needs to clean up his room but maybe after he goes out after breakfast I'll do it, since he merely shuffles things around whereas I would sort them out a bit.
Haven't done much in the studio for some time. Plan to attend to that once I'm over the hump on the builidng, gutters being the last big chore. I think I can do them fairly easily but am daunted by my abilities. We'll see.
yesterday I went hiking on the Ozette Lake Cape Alava trail with my daughter and her husband. the trees in the forest were moss-covered, providing a cool canopy. there were tiny chipmunks, grazing deer, many hikers. we didn't go back on the sandypoint trail because the tide was in. many people were carrying camping gear. they plan to camp along the ocean shore. it was foggy. i had a nap while my daughter and her husband explored the shoreline towards where the archeological excavation took place. I woke myself up snoring.
yesterday evening we dined with my mother and brother. I brought a turkey and all the trimmings. mom made strawbery shortcake for dessert. afterward we played rounds of Mexican train dominoes until I was so tired I couldn't add anymore. We came home and all went to sleep today they return to Gig Harbor, flying home to Phoenix/Mesa on Monday. I shall miss them.
Today they are at Cape Flattery having another small hike. The weather is absolutely gorgeous. My foster kid is in the bathtub, just waking up at 1 in the afternoon! I think he needs to clean up his room but maybe after he goes out after breakfast I'll do it, since he merely shuffles things around whereas I would sort them out a bit.
Haven't done much in the studio for some time. Plan to attend to that once I'm over the hump on the builidng, gutters being the last big chore. I think I can do them fairly easily but am daunted by my abilities. We'll see.
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