Just one.
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Archive for Deborah Lipp
ConVocation Wrap-up
So, I attended ConVocation on the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan last week. And seriously, the stuff they say about February and Detroit? Turns out to be true.
But this was an exceptionally, even shockingly, well-organized event. How they managed to have a hotel accomodate three rituals and a masquerade dance party simultaneously on a Saturday night is beyond me.
I mean, these people are so organized that the event info for ‘007 is already replaced on the website with planning info for ’08. I’ve been to festivals that still have their 2005 pages up!
The guests of honor were impressive, including Chris Penczak, Gus DiZerega, and T. Thorn Coyle. Lots of good teaching and ritual happened. And by the way, majorly comfy hotel room. Yummy mattress. Many fluffy pillows. La.
My classes went extremely well, and I sold a lot of books. Not as many as I would have had I brought more…I really wasn’t anticipating the enthusiasm. These are focused, interested people. I taught four classes (which is a lot): The Way of Four, Who Are the Gardnerians and Why Are They Naked?, Demeter, Persephone, and Hades, and The Nature of Deity.
I have to say I got pretty homesick, which is unusual for me. But that’s not the fault of the event. I got home tired but successful and more or less collapsed. Ate Chinese takeout Monday night and plain pasta last night, just no kitchen energy. But I feel better today.
Thank you, loyal blog readers, for putting up with my low output. I’m going to have more to say about this event soon.
Tuesday Trivia 2/27
There’s an Oscar-related theme here. See if you can guess it. (Theme solved by George, comment #7.)
1. An upside-down kiss in the rain.
Solved by Daven (comment #1).
2. A fully-clothed embrace in the shower.
HINT: The two people in this scene were both presenters at this year’s Oscars, but not together.
Solved by Roberta (comment #17) and George (comment #18).
3. Dropping a dead cockroach in the middle of a perfectly-made bed.
Solved by Daven (comment #1).
4. After a traumatic event, cutting off a bunch of her own hair in the mirror.
Solved by Roberta (comment #8).
5. On the phone, she explains the circumstances of her husband’s death as being accidental, but the person on the other end doesn’t believe her.
Solved by Evn (comment #15).
6. On a dream vacation, she assists the famous chef in creating a New Year’s Eve dinner.
Solved by TehipiteTom (comment #3).
7. He explains the “Royale with Cheese.”
Solved by TehipiteTom (comment #2).
Post-Oscar thoughts
Here are my random impressions. Keep in mind that I flew in from Detroit last night, just minutes ahead of being stranded by ice storms, and watched the awards about a half-hour behind (bless you, TiVo), then went to bed. I haven’t written any Monday Movie Review this week, and I haven’t written up the event report for the event I just returned from. I also haven’t unpacked or done laundry. I mean, I am just not prepared to face a new week.
Anyway, yay The Departed and yay Marty. Best Picture and Best Director, yay yay yay. Rah cheer for Daniel Craig and Eva Green each giving an award, and how much do I love Al Gore? That much.
Scary dress category: Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, Ann Hathaway (ick!). Most improved attire: Helen Mirren and Gwyneth Paltrow, both bouncing back from past disasters to prove that nipples are wonderful at any age.
Big surprises: Melissa Ethridge, looking great, rocking her song, and winning. Alan Arkin winning, and Ellen DeGeneres boring my face off. She had nothing.
I liked the weird dancer people.
Arthur was pissed that the Happy Feet guy didn’t thank Savion Glover.
So: Discuss.
Endometriosis as Metaphor
Endometriosis is a disease in which part of the endometrium—the lining of the uterus that thickens throughout the month and is shed during menstruation—detaches from the uterus and instead attaches to other parts of the body. Usually it stays in the region of the pelvis, but it can attach to the spine, to nerves, and to organs, causing terrible pain.
In the past year or two, I have had increasing symptoms of perimenopause. To the point where I know longer refer to menstruation as my “period.” It is now my “random.” And one thing I’ve noticed is that my lifelong menstrual and pre-menstrual symptoms are also random, and don’t necessarily coincide with my randoms. They’ve detached themselves from my randoms and attached themselves to other parts of the month. And I thought that endometriosis was the perfect metaphor for what I was going through, an endometriosis of my hormonal changes.
Then I remembered my first marriage. When I was a teenager, I dated a raging alcoholic. After he stopped drinking, I married him. I thought the lack of alcohol would make things better, but in a way, it made things worse. His drunken behaviors still occured, but now, instead of being predictably attached to drinking, they floated randomly throughout life and fired off unpredictably. I realized that these symptoms, too, were like endometriosis; a sort of endometrial alcoholism.
And I thought, Why has no one ever used endometriosis as a metaphor before? It’s not rare (5.5 million sufferers!) or hard to understand. There are all sorts of things that cause problems by detaching themselves from their predicted and ordinary locations.
Which is when I realized the answer: Misogyny. Endometriosis is too gross to use as a metaphor. Cancer isn’t too gross. Cancer is used as a metaphor all the time. Cancer is deadly and foul-smelling and painful and nasty, but not too gross to say that every mold, spore, weed, bad idea, and ugly clothing trend “spreads like a cancer.”
Here are other things that aren’t too vulgar or too unpleasant to use as metaphors: Bowel movements, erections, vomit, impotence, peeing in your pants, fever, being kicked in the balls.
But here are things you never hear used as metaphors: Menstruation, menopause, hot flashes, lactation, vaginal discharge.
You see, not only can’t you say “vagina,” but you can’t be made to think about the icky female things that come out of vaginas (or breasts), even metaphorically. You know how everything you ever wanted to know, you learned in kindergarten? It’s true: Girls have cooties.
Final Oscar Update
Since this is the last Monday before the Oscars, and since I have travel scheduled and won’t have much time for movie viewing in the coming week, here are what I assume will be my final standings (movies I’ve seen in green). I am very bad at predicting who will win. My picks are merely who I want to win.
Here are the nominees in the five major categories:
Monday Movie Review: Best Picture Roundup
In honor of next Sunday’s Oscar broadcast, here are my mini-reviews for the Best Picture nominees.
Babel (original review) 10/10
Objectively, this is probably the best of the five films, although not my favorite. It is a technical masterpiece, bringing together the disparate threads in a way that is intelligent and respectful of the audience (some of these post-Pulp Fiction interconnected story movies are just obnoxious, like they’re messing with your head for fun). The local and particular feeling created for four different countries is quite impressive. The final shot is one of my favorite film shots of the year.
The Departed (original review) 10/10
The most emotionally intense of the nominees, and my personal favorite to win. I originally rated this 9/10, because it does go on a bit too long and the ending is a bit out of control. But it’s the one that stays with me and the one I care most about. That counts a lot. And it’s fucking brilliant.
Little Miss Sunshine (original review) 10/10
If I rated movies with more objectivity and less emotion, this would get a nine. But I don’t and it doesn’t. Definitely the most flawed of the nominees, it’s also the only comedy, and silly plot holes get more elbow room in silly movies. I persist in loving Paul Dano beyond all words (teehe).
The Queen 10/10
As with The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine, I’m kinda wavering between a 9 and a 10. It’s a somewhat cool and distant movie, but that’s on purpose, because we’re talking royal family here, a somewhat cool and distant group of people. An emotional maelstrom would have been wrong. The delicacy of Mirren‘s performance, and the outrageousness of James Cromwell‘s, are the standouts for me.
Letters from Iwo Jima 10/10
Another technically perfect movie, what strikes me most about Letters from Iwo Jima is that every time you think it’s making a statement, it backs away and seems to make a different one. The Japanese are sympathetic. The Japanese are sadistic. War is dishonorable. War is honorable. Americans commit atrocities. Americans are extraordinarily compassionate. The only real statement, in the end, is that these were humans in this big battle, and the size of it, the history of it, the patriotism of it, mattered less in the end than the human individuals who cared about wives and children and going home.
Sunday Meditation: Getting Organized
Today I am preparing for a trip, finishing a writing project, getting caught up on other writing projects, and oh, yeah, organizing tax information. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. So today is a good day to look at how not to get overwhelmed.
First, before meditating, if you have a to do list, write it down. What this does is get the things to do out of your head and onto paper. You can forget about them now, because they’re written down. No need to focus or to remember, just do whatever task you’re doing at the moment, and rely on the written list to tell you what’s next. I find the list is crucial for keeping me out of my head and preventing panic.
Set up your first task. Suppose you’re me and you have to write something. Sit at your desk with your word processor ready to go. Or suppose you have a big meal to prepare. Get your hands washed, your apron on, and sit in the kitchen. Now, ground and center.
Allow calm to run through your body. Allow yourself to feel soothed. Energy moves through you, from your center, radiating to your extremities. With each breath, soothing energy moves from your center to your hands, feet, and head. You feel relaxed and alert.
Say to yourself “I am doing this.” (Fill in the task. “I am writing.” “I am cooking.”)
Take a deep breath, and as you exhale, release anything that isn’t your task.
Breathe in, and repeat your “I am doing this” affirmation.
Breath out, and release everything else.
Now do the task.
When you’re ready, go to your list for your next task and repeat the process.
Don’t Go Down to the Pier
In 1983 I had a boyfriend named John Franza. He had this tape* that a friend of his had made. Never met the friend, can’t remember her name. She was a singer-songwriter, and it was a demo tape, with maybe five songs on it. John, Roberta and I would listen to that tape over and over. We loved it.
For two days I’ve had one of the songs, Don’t Go Down to the Pier Tonight, stuck in my head.
Don’t go down to the pier tonight
There’s a boat sailing out on a mirror of moonlight
I gotta do what’s right
I”m going back to the boys tonight.
I can’t believe I remember that. Unbelievably catchy hook, killer delivery with a powerhouse voice packed with emotion. Her co-writer was a gay guy she’d had a relationship with, and this song was their story (he went “back to the boys”).
There was another song called “Which Window,” which was an unrequited love song. The lonely guy follows his love to her apartment building and sits outside, wondering which window is hers. Which window, which window is hers? is a very difficult line to sing over and over, but she did it.
I have no idea who that woman was, whatever happened to her, if she ever had any success as a musician. But I’ve got to acknowledge the power of songwriting that remains memorable after twenty-four years.
*Cassette tape. We used them for music back then.
A brief glimpse of my life
This is one of those “sorry blogging has been lame” posts.
I am working to finish editing The Study of Witchcraft. Essentially, I am double-checking every book in the bibliography to see if it’s still in print. This is…slow. And already overdue.
I am also furiously trying to finish my first pass at the Teen book before the summer, since summer is when Arthur will be able to do most of his writing.
I am trying to prepare for ConVocation. One of the workshops I’ve been asked to do is one I haven’t done in several years, so I should compile more elaborate notes than I actually have. Also I would like to look better than I do for an event, and I notice big hunky chunks of gray roots coming in, but the place where I get my hair done probably doesn’t have time for me until Tuesday and I leave Wednesday so that’s cutting it close.
I’m really busy at the day job. I brought work home.
Arthur is a pain in the ass. Wants to be driven all kinds of places, wants money every time I exhale, eats so much that I pretty much can’t leave the supermarket, and expects laundry and cooked meals to appear whenever I wiggle my nose.
So. Busy.
And I really want to get back to doing thoughtful, eloquent, ravelicious blogging. Someday soon.
