Tell me that didn’t just thrill you.
Archive for Deborah Lipp
Sacred Marks
I gots me a new tattoo.
Shortly after arriving at Free Spirit, I noticed a big pair of white geese hanging around just outside my cabin. Since the goose is my totem, this seemed like a good sign. (Ya think?)
Sacred Marks Sanctuary had set aside Friday for my clan. By which I mean, these two amazing guys tattooed a total of thirteen members of my extended family between 1 p.m. and 3 a.m. (With a dinner break.) All in ritual space. I went last.
Eighteen months ago, the clan had a ritual tattooing day planned for Imbolc (a day for sacred art, among other things). I had selected the eyes of Kali for the back of my neck. To prepare myself, I’d fasted and chanted and made ghee to offer to the fire. Seriously, lotta work there. And at the last minute, the tattoo artist got violently ill and couldn’t make it. Which made my brain hurt.
So the thing I’d written for part of the offering has been sitting on my altar all this time, and now, at last, I was getting my tattoo. » Read more..
Magical Perfume
My article on Magical Perfume appears in the current issue of newWitch Magazine.
So buy three copies and write to the editors and tell them why.
Or not.
Monday Movie Review: The Station Agent
The Station Agent (2003) 10/10
Fin (Peter Dinklage) is a train enthusiast and a dwarf. When his friend and employer (at a model train store) dies, he leaves Fin a piece of land in a small town that has a train depot on it. There, Fin’s solitude is disturbed by other lonely locals and he begins, initially against his will, to form relationships.
See, I’ve given it ten points, and I’ve described it, and now I just don’t know what to say. The Station Agent is such a lovely, gentle movie, that talking about it seems, to quote Patricia Clarkson’s character Olivia, “loud.”
I’ve written about The Station Agent before. Months after seeing it, it remains present for me, something that doesn’t always happen; I’m not always a good judge of how I will feel about a movie months or years in the future, but The Station Agent has established itself as a favorite. Having been away from television and theaters for a week, I thought I’d pull up an older review. While I was away, I spent time with two dear friends, sisters, who are dwarfs, so I was reminded of this movie.
Peter Dinklage is one of my favorite character actors. His expressiveness, his voice, his beautiful eyes, allow you to move past looking at his dwarfism, to looking at him. That his dwarfism is part of the story is unavoidable, but as Fin learns, dwarfism is just one of many things that can leave you lonely and a little lost. Grief is another, and Olivia is grieving. Just not fitting in is another, and Joe (Bobby Cannavale), the coffee-and-snack truck guy who parks opposite Fin’s station, is a Hispanic New Yorker with no ability to connect to his rural New Jersey customers. In Fin (who is from Hoboken), he senses an urban kindred, and pushes friendship on his reluctant neighbor.
As Fin, Joe, and Olivia form a trio full of silences and hesitations, they also begin to look out for one another in unexpected ways. As well, Fin’s train enthusiasm becomes the most interesting oddity about him, and people begin (in baby steps) to view him more as the ‘train guy’ than the ‘little guy.’
Early in the movie, we meet Fin’s “train chaser” friends, and I was struck by what big geeks they were. I was reminded of Ghost World, and its LP-collector geeks. One could go off on a tangent about geeks and geekiness. Trekkies and Trekkers take a lot of heat, but the truth is, any interest looks bizarre to the people who don’t have it, and oddity isn’t the worst thing. Maybe boredom is a much worse thing—the boredom experienced by people who don’t have intense interests. The Station Agent is very much about oddity; experienced from the inside and stared at from the outside. But mostly it’s about the necessity of friendship and connection.
I’m home
Back from Free Spirit without having properly blogged Brazil, I’m waaaaay behind. Plus I betcha anything politics happened when I was away. I promise I’ll start catching up. Tomorrow.
Publication Delay
The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book will be released September 30, not June 30.
I just found out about this. Literally, about 12 minutes ago.
The good news is that the book is huge, and lavishly illustrated, and meticulously typeset and has (as my publisher said) more charts than a Ross Perot presentation. The delay puts it closer to the movie release, which is almost certainly for the best (and which was the reason for the change).
Still, for those of us (me) who have been waiting breathlessly for the book, it’s a little disappointing. But mark your calendars, boys and girls, September is just around the corner.
Festival season
Summer is the time of year when Pagan authors travel.
Tomorrow, congested head and all, I am off to Free Spirit Gathering. I’m there through Sunday, and Tom will once again be your guest-blogger.
In July, it’s Starwood for another full week.
They can’t believe how much vacation time I take here at the office.
Monday Movie Review: All the President’s Men
All the President’s Men (1976) 10/10
Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) investigate the Watergate break-in and discover connections to the White House.
We live in a moment when we must be reminded of the importance of speaking truth to power. Further, we live in a time when the media (including Bob Woodward) behaves like the lap dog of the White House. In such a time, All the President’s Men is a powerful wake-up call.
But hey, it’s also a kickass good movie. » Read more..
Sick sick sick
The idea was to come back home and dazzle you with tales of Sao Paulo. Instead, I’m hacking up a lung.
So, while I’m spending a lot of time sitting up at the computer (when I can sit up) gathering my thoughts in a coherent manner such that they form sentences and then paragraphs may well be beyond me.
So sorry.
Poverty and street cleaning
The poverty of Sao Paulo is astonishing. I saw so many empty, burned out buildings. Like Newark in the 1970s. Whole blocks of squatters making do in decimated structures.
And there is a bizarre sort of acceptance of it. The beggars are polite, even diffident, and people either give them money or say no, and the whole thing borders on civility.
We did some late night sightseeing, visiting famous parks and monuments and such. The homeless were very visible, but we weren’t approached. I also noticed the street cleaners. In New York, we have the street cleaning trucks that move through the city around dawn. But in Sao Paulo, there were also men walking through the streets with hoses, washing down statues, pavement, stairs. At the Municipal Theater, there were homeless people wrapped in blankets, asleep on the benches at the front of the theater. The street cleaners hosed the pavement anyway, coming within a few feet of the sleepers; close enough that some of the spray surely reached them.
I don’t know what struck me more; the cruelty of spraying them, or the nonchalance of accepting their presence.
