QueryLily"...I would never have thought of askingHow you'd got that peculiar name..." |
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QueryLily"...I would never have thought of askingHow you'd got that peculiar name..." |
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Tomorrow is World AIDS Day.
A time to pause, reflect , renew, link, think, remember, recommit, get angry, mourn, create, heal, help, aid, assist, contribute, volunteer, give, comfort, inform, organise...
[30 November 2003] link?
We did a movie marathon yesterday, largely thanks to dvd's rented from Movie Image and the fact of the grandkids visiting their mum.
First up was "La Bûche", one of those dysfunctional families at holiday time themed movies, but placed in Paris and with a wonderful cast. Then, we visited with Carole Lombard and Fredric March in "Nothing Sacred". After that, we had a little change of pace with John Carpenter's low-budget, but hugely enjoyable, "They Live". Then it was off to a good ole time with the Australian crime caper romp, "The Hard Word". Now that was unseemingly enjoyable, especially due to watching Guy Pearce and Rachel Griffiths go at it. We topped the evening off with Godard's "Bande à part", with the indelibly entrancing Anna Karina <sigh>. By then it was only me and the cat, the other human in the house having retreated to bed.
[28 November 2003] link?
One of my quirky little memories of the late 1960's: going to Piedmont Park in Atlanta, listening to the Allman Brothers jam, or the Hand Band-whatever happened to them?-dropping acid or just getting high from cannabis fumes or from soaking up the vibe. Later on, concert over, you walk around the neighbourhood, pass perfect strangers on the street, you nod in passing, that recognition, pre-verbal, of a shared groove, a shared vibe.
It was kind of like that, 25 years ago today. But no music. No grooved vibe. Someone had walked into our office on Milvia in Berkeley bearing the news. What had happened? George Moscone and Harvey Milk shot dead. It was unbelievable. A co-worker and I walked up to downtown Berkeley, ran into people we knew and people we didn't, that same nod of recognition, but no vibe but the death vibe and on our collective faces, looks of stone cold shock.
Looking backwards, it amazes me that these events followed only by a week, the terrible events in Jonestown. I always think of them as occurring in separate time periods, almost separate eras, instead of the continous stream of tragedy that they actually were.
[27 November 2003] link?
Reminder to self: Write that essay on gender and appropriation.
[26 November 2003] link?
I have lived by a man's code designed to fit a man's world, yet at the same time I never forget that a woman's first job is to choose the right shade of lipstick.
-Carole Lombard
Welllll...I feel just the same way sometimes, although I wouldn't dare generalise the sentiment out to every woman, just to my particular approximation of one. In any case, what prompted the quote from the Divine Carole was the news in yesterday's L.A. Times that their County Museum of Art is beginning a retrospective of some of Lombard's best films, including "Nothing Sacred", "Twentieth Century", "My Man Godfrey" and "To Be or Not to Be".
Okay...I am officially jealous. P'haps, we'll be lucky and the Castro or the Pacific Film Archive will provide us with a Bay Area venue for this well deserved retrospective. To my way of viewing things, Lombard always exemplified what was meant by the term "screen goddess". She was funny, tough and blonde. I guess there was at least one other major star from that period-Jean Harlow-that fits the bill, but for me, Carole Lombard was the one.
[26 November 2003] link?
Overheard tonight whilst walking across the Berkeley campus:
I was thinking in my head, don't make me do any impressions.
Almost over: Shambhala Books in Berkeley. Drew had said they were going out of business. Seems they are. Went there tonight, the shelves are almost bare, a thanks and fare-thee-well sign in the window. Alas, the wicked economics of small bookstores at play. I didn't shop there often enough, and now, I won't have the chance.
Over there: Drew is in Florida visiting his mum and sisters and other family. He's no doubt wearing t-shirts out-of-doors while we must bundle up against the cold. Happy Thanksgivings you all.
[23 November 2003] link?
Now that I've finished the Marianne Faithfull book-a rewarding read it was-I am settling down to "Recovering Sanity", a revised edition of Edward Podvoll's "The Seduction of Madness".
This from his preface:
A huge gulf separates conventional psychological treatment and the forms of therapy that emerge from the discipline of meditation. That gulf could be called the problem of ego. The singular effect of meditation is the gradual softening and dissolving of one's self-absorption and egoistic impulses, a gradual relaxation and opening. But conventional psychology insists that one strengthen the notion of ego-identity through various strategies of self-assertion, self-empowerment, distinctiveness from others, and personal security....
No one person is more responsible for proclaiming this ego view of sanity than the great psychoanalyst and humanitarian Erik Erikson. When I told him of my meditation practice and that I had recently taken Buddhist "refuge"-a commitment to living the Buddhist spiritual journey-he said, "What you are doing is in complete contradiction to my life's work." Only much later could I fully appreciate his insight and understand our meeting as a metaphor for the collision of two psychologies....
Podvoll founded the Contemplative Psychotherapy Department at Naropa University and founded the Windhorse Project.
[23 November 2003] link?
From an important, recent email via Warren Ellis's Bad Signal:
Comic Relief Appreciation Week
Comic Relief needs your help. I hope at this time that you are able to further support a treasured community resource; the independent bookstore. Please when picking up your comics or GNs today, consider an additional purchase.
An extra Graphic Novel a week is all we ask.
I believe Comic Relief offers the largest and most diverse selection of comics and graphic novels in the US. Not only do we carry comics and GNs, but our selection of self-published zines, Manga, Anime DVDs, Fringe Culture books, and Art books show our desire to promote the graphic medium in all its forms. Unfortunately, carrying such a massive inventory has a large cost associated with it. My optimism and zeal to offer such a selection has caused a bit of a cash crunch.
What we would like is for you to buy an extra comic or GN today that you were going to buy tomorrow. Pick up those Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, or Solstice gifts today; avoid the rush! Also, as a thank you, every $100 purchase will be accompanied by your choice of a free tee-shirt, 30% off any statue or toy set, or 20% off DVDs! No, we are not going away, but we could use your help now. We have taken steps to correct our inventory excesses, and we still have the books you want when you want them. Remember, we always special order as needed.
I and the staff at Comic Relief would like to thank you again for your continued support.
My Sincerest regards,
Rory D. Root
Proprietor
Just to note: It's important to help friends. Comic Relief has been a long-time friend, both to comic artists and to those who appreciate comic art. Please help them out today! That's right. Don't procrastinate. Go buy stuff today! And tell your friends!
Oh yes:
COMIC RELIEF: THE Comic Bookstore
2138 University Ave. @Shattuck Ave.
Berkeley, Ca. 94704-1026
510-843-5002
[22 November 2003] link?
What does Marianne Faithfull say, near the end of "Faithfull"?
There's a permanent illusion that love will heal all wounds, but it just isn't so. Love is transcendent, but it can't mend everything.
[22 November 2003] link?
Forty years ago tomorrow, and it almost seems like yesterday. I was in the seventh grade and we were just finishing up with our last period P.E. class when someone came running down the steps to the athletic field, telling us that JFK had been shot.
We crowded into Mrs. Johnson's math class and caught a little bit of the broadcast of the awful news from Dallas. They excused us a little early from school. On the walk home I stopped at the town library, presided over by Mrs. Wingo. I was looking through the shelves, not wanting to go home right away, when someone walked in off the street and told us that the President was dead. I think I even remember the title of the book I was thumbing through. It was a book with two front covers. One side asked, "Is There Intelligent Life on Mars?". The reverse asked, "Is There Intelligent Life on Earth?". We still are lacking the answers to those questions.
The rest of the weekend was a blur of images from the television, my mother's tears while watching the footage streaming to us from Dallas and Washington. I am sure thoughts of her own impending death from ovarian cancer, just a year away, filtered her view of the tragedy unfolding on our television set.
[21 November 2003] link?
I took the grand-d to her Kaiser appointment late yesterday. She was adamant about not getting an injection, but wound up getting her tetanus booster anyway. Doctor's orders. Although she was not a happy camper, she complied.
Well before age fourteen, I was an experienced shot taker, due to the treatments for my asthmatic condition that I received until age twelve. Several times a week my mom would take me to the medical building where my doctor had his practice. It was off Peachtree Steet, on the block across Peachtree from the Fox Theatre. I had a wonderful old doctor but dreaded his injections, preferring instead the gentler touch of his nurse. Afterwards, I would usually be treated to ice cream at the pharmacy on the corner. Down the street there was a local cafeteria, where one day, I saw a sign, actually a number of signs, of the early 1960's, a picket line of civil rights workers, demanding a place at the table for Atlanta's African-American citizens.
Oh, but I digress. I am really thinking alot about needles today. It's all my reading of the MF book, recounting her heroin using days. I'm almost done with the book, just a few pages to go.
[20 November 2003] link?
I failed to make it back to hear Sunday's installment of Lama Zopa Rinpoche's wise teachings. No doubt, they are wise. And no doubt that I didn't go. I gave my afternoon over to the grand-daughter and we ventured under the Bay, and back again, for a minor shopping adventure. She was pleased and so was I. P'haps it is one of those mindsets that comes with being in one's early fifties and having a grand-daughter in her fourteenth year. You gotta treasure every moment. Something tells me that the Lama would concur.
Reading "Faithfull", with MF's generous descriptions of her multi-drug-taking days, has made me reflect a bit on my own checkered youth. Not that I was much of a heavy user, except for a short stretch when it seemed as if I spent every weekend under the influence of LSD or mescaline. I was never much of a pot smoker. Apart from having an asthmatic condition that made choking back smoke down right uncomfortable, the effects of cannabis intoxication on my still adolescent brain tended to exacerbate my social awkwardness and paranoia, giving me a sense that all eyes were upon me as I entered a room or stumbled to my feet. Of course, maybe I was just too young to know how stoned I was.
Nowadays I content myself with the usual numbing suspects. Alcohol and listening to the news.
[17 November 2003] link?
My musical attention has been shifting in recent days, from the sweet twang of Emmylou Harris, towards the Rolling Stones of "Aftermath" and "Let It Bleed". Doubtless, this is the suggestive influence of literature at work, that is, due to the effect of my current immersion in the Marianne Faithfull autobiography.
In the battle of the bands, I was always much more a Beatles' fan, than a fan of the Stones. In that light, its an amazement to me how much the songs of the Stones are a part of the aural background tapesty that I carry 'round in my head - a heavy weight, that.
Of course, as a developing adolescent of ambiguously defined sexuality, I remember getting much more a charge from watching the Stones on the teletube, especially from Mick and the cool blondeness of Brian Jones. I had an altogether different reaction to female singers, though its only been in recent years that I have been able to articulate it. With my favourites, like Marianne Faithfull, with her long blonde locks, or Dusty Springfield, with her black eye liner, it was the attraction of appropriation. I wanted to have that angelically cool look, or that bouff'd hair with lots of eye liner. Definitely not "I wanna hold your hand" territory. Who knew? I certainly didn't then, not really...except in the privacy of my room or alone in the bathroom, pouting into mirrors, flirting with shadows.
[16 November 2003] link?
What does Lama Zopa Rinpoche say?
As Guru Shakyamuni Buddha said, "As long as you follow desire you will never be satisfied." It's like sitting in a fire. As long as you sit in a fire you will never experience the pleasure of not being burnt. If you long to be comfortable and cool, you have to get out. In just the same way, as that is logical, so is it logical that as long as you follow attachment you will not find inner peace, true satisfaction, real rest. There's no vacation for your heart. That's the old self at work. When the Rolling Stones sang, "Well, I tried and I tried, I tried and I tried-I can't get no, satisfaction," they were actually giving a lam-rim teaching; a lam-rim teaching with guitar accompaniment. They were teaching meditation.
[15 November 2003] link?
I didn't get enough work done this past weekend, and that is also liable to be the story for this one just beginning.
Last weekend was for the most part surrendered over to the grand-daughter. When you have a fourteen year old grand-daughter, you accept the gift of time spent together. Fourteen's hard, at least it was for me, and from what I can glean from the g-d, she is finding it the same. Bummer.
Saturday, we mostly hung out in the office,where truth be known, I did manage to squeak out a few hours of work, whilst she Im'd friends and updated her web presence at winkerdinkergurl. Later on, we made a showing of the newest Matrix which I rather enjoyed, p'haps because my expectations had been lowered by the previous one and, let's not mention, by all the negative reviews. Sure it was a narrative mess, but it had been messy from the start. It was a light show disguised as mellow-drama, and if in the end the drama was drowned out by all the special effects, it was still, tho' barely, a pleasant ride. Now...on to "The Return of the King".
Sunday, there was more time spent with the g-d. After coming into the City early, taking in the 9:30 a.m. "bargain matinee" of "Alien - The Director's Cut" at the Metreon, I met up with her at the Powell Street BART station and took her shopping. She scored some new clothes and fab makeup at Nordstrom's, two new pairs of shoes and a revamp of her cell phone so that now it lights up when in use. We wound up at the end of our spree over at the Virgin MegaMegastore where she got a CD and I got the grandson the DVD of "The Hulk" and got myself the DVD of John Carpenter's eerie little sci-fi film, "They Live". It was a good day, hanging out together...and shopping.
On Tuesday, a holiday for us, I brought the grandson into work where he played games on the computer and I got to put in needed time working on a report. In the middle of the day, we took a movie break, catching Disney's new animated film, "Brother Bear". I have to say, I must say, that I really enjoyed it. It was warm, funny and respectful of its characters and setting. It complemented quite well the book that the g-s is currently reading, "Indian Tales", a book that I was not introduced to until I was well into adulthood.
And now from the Oh! Drat! Department: I've missed two phone calls in the past week from the much esteemed Miss Stacey Jean. I doubt if I will get around to trying to connect with her this weekend, as my weekend to be already seems properly full.
Tomorrow and Sunday, I'm due to go with friend Drew over to the City and hear Lama Zopa Rinpoche discourse on the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation. Saturday night we'll probably take our dinner with an esteemed colleague of mine, and perhaps with her sister as well.
In the midst of all this spiritual activity, I might try my hand at getting a few hours worth of work done, connecting with the grand-mother, and checking in on the grand-children. The grand-daughter has a birthday party to go to this Saturday, and she has already given me marching orders for shopping for another birthday happening next week. Not hers. Like me and the grandmother, she's a Libra.
I'm halfway through the Marianne Faithfull autobio and having a good old time reading it. I had a queerboy's crush on her in my early adolescence, had her first American LP playing into the night, listening to "As Tears Go By" and "Come and Stay With Me". It was a bit jarring for me, much much later in life, to hear her again during her "Broken English" period, although I've come to appreciate her body of work since that time, especially enjoying her Brecht/Weill interpretations.
[14 November 2003] link?
The Buddhist Beer Sangha met last night for a little beer, a little wine, some pizza and some talk. It seems that late in life, relatively late in life, that is, I have come to appreciate the large joys of connecting at the end of the work week. It takes on a ritual like flavour, I think. Our own portal into the weekend.
After our drinks, I wandered over to Comic Relief and picked up the first volume of Grant Morrison's "The Invisibles". Read a little on the train ride home, then switched back to reading "Faithfull", by Marianne Faithfull and David Dalton.
In half an hour, as I write this, the grand-daughter and I will venture out into the rain to meet up with friends to see the last installment of the Matrix trilogy. We'll see how it measures up to, er down to, its reviews, as all the ones I have read having been giving the thumbs down on it.
Oh. And our tickets arrived at home today, for the December 19th Hedwig Xmas Show at the Castro. Yes, the BBS bunch will convene that night at the beautiful Castro Theatre for the gala celebration featuring Mr. Hedwig himself. It's a benefit for Stop AIDS, a good cause, and should be lotsa glamourous fun.
[8 November 2003] link?