Archive for February 15, 2007

Expectations

February 15, 2007 / / 2 comments

I hate my birthday.

I hate my birthday because I want it to be magnificent and glorious and “My Day” and all that. And if it isn’t, it’s disappointing. I want to be surprised, but if I don’t tell anyone, then my chances for magnficence and lots of birthday wishes are decreased. And if I do tell people then I don’t get my surprise. (Once, my then-husband surprised me by telling me he couldn’t be bothered with my birthday this year so don’t expect anything, which hurt so much that when the surprise came, it turned out not to be worth it.)

So until yesterday, I never hated Valentine’s Day. But yesterday, I had a very pleasant day. No relationship. No cards. No flowers. No glorious romance. No disappointments. No keeping my fingers crossed hoping the man in my life won’t fuck up. No agreeing not to do V-Day and then being the idiot standing there opening a present without one to give in exchange. No agreeing to do V-Day and then being shattered when I get nothing nothing nothing. Again.

Yesterday I felt free. I didn’t even notice it was V-Day until I logged onto some blogs. And then I thought, “I feel better this way. I like me better this way.”

There’s a scene in Robin and Marian. Robin has been at the Crusades for thirty years, during which time, Marian became a nun, and eventually an abbess. And she says to him, she was at peace for all those years, and one day with him and she is happy to throw away her peace because she loves him so.

Damn, I love that movie.

But I also know that’s true for me. I know I’d throw away this peaceful feeling for expectation and hope and disappointment and aggravation, all of which are part and parcel of being in a relationship. But I also know I really do like the peace.

Hints are up

February 14, 2007 / / Comments Off on Hints are up

Sorry it took so long. Snow day an’ all.

I am Spartacus

February 14, 2007 / / One comment

I am Spartacus

Per Driftglass. We are all Spartacus.

Snow day!

February 14, 2007 / / 10 comments

Not only is school closed for Arthur, but work is closed for me. Whee!

So I told Arthur we should do a Calvin Snow Dance, sort of a thank you to the Snow Gods for the day off, and Arthur insists there is no such thing as a Calvin Snow Dance. I’ve been Googling for a while now, “calvin and hobbes snow,” “calvin snow dance” “dance for snow” and more. Not finding any cartoons. So consider this a bleg. If you’ve got a link to a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon showing the snow dance, or the sacrifice to the snow gods, or any of that, please step forward.

Tuesday Trivia 2/13

February 13, 2007 / / 25 comments

1. “They say you’re the bad guy.” “Oh, is that what they say?”
Solved by Brandi (comment #8) and Christopher (comment #9).

2. She gives them a choice of powdered eggs or fresh ones. Powdered will last longer, but they crave fresh.
A unique film memoir, with two completely separate film crews.

3. The revolutionary rapes a prostitute, but she gets her revenge, and a reward to boot.
This is one of nine collaborations between the director and his gorgeous star, all during the 1930s.

4. A sing-along at Graceland doesn’t go well.
Solved by Ken (comment #1).

5. Kissing a beautiful girl, he sees the assassin reflected in her eyes.
Solved by Ben (comment #13).

6. She arranges a book-signing event at the store where she works, and ends up seduced by the author.
Solved by Roberta (comment #3).

7. His day is divided into “units,” like a television schedule.
Solved by witless chum (comment #15).

Whee! Happy!

February 13, 2007 / / 6 comments

Arthur’s report card kicked ass.

Monday Movie Review: Babel

February 12, 2007 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Babel

Babel (2006) 10/10
The accidental shooting of an American tourist (Cate Blanchett) touches the lives of a poor Moroccan family, a Mexican nanny (Adriana Barraza), and a deaf Japanese schoolgirl (Rinko Kikuchi). Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.

You will probably think I’m making this up, but I swear I read two or three different capsule descriptions of this movie and still had no idea what I was going to see. The biggest hint is that this is a Iñárritu movie; he’s the guy who directed Amores Perros, which was also about a group of unconnected stories tied together by a single accident. Here, I think that the director has truly honed his skills. The stories flow back and forth from country to country without confusion, and the sense that they are tied together by an undercurrent of meaning is strong. The characters in Babel all long to reach through each moment of failed communication and somehow touch what they really want.

Nowhere is this more poignant than with Cheiko (Kikuchi), isolated by her deafness, she is far more isolated by grief at the death of her mother. More than anything, she wants to be an ordinary girl, but it’s hard to flirt with boys when you can’t hear them. She wants to be no different than her friends, but her grief isolates her. Her constant grasping for sexual contact is touching and sad. Kikuchi is brilliant in the role, although I think it’s a real shame that they hired a hearing actress to play a deaf character.

The part you’ve seen on TV or in previews involves Richard (Brad Pitt) and the shooting of his wife Susan (Blanchett). The incident, and his desperate struggle to get help for her, is magnificently filmed; claustrophobic, terrifying, infuriating. Perfect, too, is the intimacy between them; they have come to Morrocco for time to heal their marriage, yet still have enough physical ease for him to help her onto a makeshift bedpan with no pretense at shyness.

Susan was shot accidentally by a shepherd’s son who was target shooting, but soon the fear of terrorism has made the shooting an international incident, and the family is terrified. While police in Morrocco stand firm to the point of beating an elderly couple who may be connected to the rifle, they are exactly paralleled by immigration police on the Mexican-Canadian border. What is true about both sets of police is that doing their job prevents them from seeing the “Other” as human.

In Japan, a third police officer is forced to see the girl he questions as human in a poignant and lovely scene.

If all this sounds confusing, it isn’t. You always know where you are and who you’re dealing with. You always experience a powerful and authentic sense of place, something very important to me when I watch movies.

I was very pleased that, despite the drama, fear, and violence, Babel wasn’t overblown. I feared I’d see a death or tragedy or horrible coincidence in every scene, but, while terrible things happened, I never felt like I was being bludgeoned. Perhaps just because it felt real in some crucial way.

Pretty things

February 11, 2007 / / One comment

I went to the Wicked Faire yesterday.

Look what I got!

Sunday Meditation: Breathing through Pain

February 11, 2007 / / One comment

Roberta blogged recently about living with pain, so I thought this would be a good time to talk about how meditative techniques can be used to manage pain.

First, start with breathing.

No matter what you’re feeling, whether intense and agonizing, or dull and throbbing, as soon as you can, focus on your breath. If you are overwhelmed, it will be hard, and probably impossible at first, but as soon as you can, find your breath, and turn your thoughts to breath.

If I am helping someone who is in pain, I force eye contact and we breathe together. If you look inward when in pain, you’ll tend to look at the pain. So if there isn’t a partner to help you with eye contact, find an outside focal point; a window, an object, anything. And look at it, hold it in your field of vision, and breathe.

Breathe.

Once you’re breathing, do a muscle sweep. You will probably find that you are clenching a lot of secondary muscles—muscles no where near the hurt part. Your jaw is tight, your hands are balled into fists, your feet are curled up. You are in the posture of resistance.

What happens, though, is that tight muscles hold more pain than loose muscles, so loosening these muscles will help. Plus, your muscles work in groups, and as you relax your hands and feet, the muscles near the pain will also start to loosen. Even though you haven’t been thinking about that painful area.

Breathe.

Unclench your feet. Open your hands. Let your fingers be soft. Relax your jaw and let your mouth fall open a little.

Once you feel as relaxed as you can, start breathing that relaxation into the pain. The breath runs over the pain like the soothing and gentle stroke of a hand. Stay with this image. If the pain starts to increase, look away from the pain and go back to your focal object and your secondary muscles. If you’re not able to breath into the pain at all, that’s okay, just do the breathing, the muscles, and the focal object.

Practice this technique when you’re not in pain so it’s available to you when you need it.

Thoughts following hot sake

February 10, 2007 / / 3 comments

I should like to ruminate, however disjointedly, on the notion of the first date.

What do you look for? Who is the person across the table? What’s the goal, here?

I kind of thoroughly reject the notion that the goal is to find the other person sexy. “Sexy” tends to derive from our subconscious stuff, our dysfunctions and sick expectations and bizarro wishes. All the “bad boy” stuff that doesn’t serve you in the real world and is best left in fantasy.

Yet while rejecting it, we hope for it. Because, y’know, why can’t I meet a nice guy I like who is also sexy to me? Fundamentally, the artificial confines of “date” world make that less likely. But then, if your ignition isn’t lit, you go home with the wondering. The ‘he’s a nice guy will he ever be more?’ thing. Because there are a finite number of dates you’ll go on with such a guy.

There was a guy I dated about 2 years ago. Exactly three dates. And I thought, if I knew this guy for like a year, if we hung out in the same social circle and sort of saw each other and were proximal to each other, I bet we’d hook up. Because we really do like each other and we really do connect to each other. But not in the boy-girl way. No spark. No sexy. And no time in which for it to develop. Again, “dating.” So artificial. Three is really as many as you can do. Especially because he wasn’t exactly local. So sometimes I think we kill the possibility of relationship by dating. But what else are you gonna do?

So you eat a nice meal and have a nice drink and you talk. And what I mostly notice is the persistance of me. How I can’t stop being me in all the ways I annoy me. How I am charming and funny and over-monopolize the conversation. How I distrust a man being charmed by me because I know I’m too good at that. And how I wish I had the trick of silence because I want to listen more and I don’t.

And here he is. Nice man. Not sexy to me tonight. Doesn’t mean he won’t be in the future. Doesn’t mean he will be either. And there is nothing to do about that except ride it out.

We are bad at creating relationship in this culture. We suck at it. I have Hindu friends with traditional arranged marriages. And I think, who are we to look down on that in our patronizing Western way when we don’t have a better answer? Our answer is to be lonely and to struggle and to hope. And to eat nice dinners and talk and wonder what it all means.

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