“Kill Bill” — a metaphor for amerika
(1st draft)
she
“Kill Bill”
1
Monthly Archives: May 2004
Sunrise, Sunset
My mother sits at the large cabinet-model organ in her living room that’s flooded with sunlight. She fingers out “Sunrise, sunset.” No chords. Just the melody. She’s reading from a music sheet. My cat dozes in the rocking chair to which she always gravitates when my mother sits down to play.
I go for a walk in the park. Families are everywhere — biking, roller blading, sunning, frisbee-ing, picnicking. A chorus of multi-generational voices floats from a pavilion singing “Happy Birthday to Grandma.”
There are not only families; there are friends hanging out together. A teenage couple nuzzling on a park bench. A middle aged couple holding hands, strolling through the dappled shade. A pair of women, seriously power walking and talking. I’m alone. Walking alone.
While I’m not unhappy about the way my life has gone, I’m wishing I could go around one more time. I want to be part of an intact family — a clan that would be singing someday to me. It’s not going to happen.
Instead, I water my little grave-sized garden, start thinking about what to make my mom for dinner, remember the story my daughter just told me about my toddler grandson (186 miles away) seeing a woman who looked something like me from far away and hopefully asking “Grammy?”
It’s going to be warmer tomorrow. I think I’ll risk the ignominy of baring my cottage-cheese-knees and flappy upper arms and put on shorts and a sleeveless shirt and take on the park again. Maybe I’ll get up early, before all those other people come out to play and do my walk before my mom even gets up (which is usually around 11 a.m.) Then I’ll do a little more work on my free-lance writing project and maybe make a pizza for supper.
Now I’ll watch the end of the rented “Big Fish” while I’m making dinner. (Steak, I’ve decided because it’s my mother’s favorite.) Yesterday I watched “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Kill Bill.” I have diverse taste in movies. I especially liked “Kill Bill,” — the good guys and the bad guys are gals and the good gal dresses in yellow and knows how to take a beating. My kinda movie.
A day in the life.
priming the pump
I’ve taken on a free-lance grant-writing project. Why not. I can always use a few extra bucks. And I’m one of those weird writers who actually likes grant writing. The poetry of grant writing. Now there’s a book I should write.
I’m getting myself revved up to write by cleaning my apartment. I need to feel order around me before I plunge myself into the chaos of creation. When I had a full-time job, I would clean off my desk and computer station — file everything sharpen pencils, remove all traces of dust. Now I wash floors, throw out paper, still do a little dusting. Metaphorically dusting off my brain. It’s been a while since I’ve concocted a grant proposal. I used to be really good at the kind of persuasive writing that makes people believe that what the project is planning to do really will change the world. Well, maybe not the whole world; at least a little but important piece of it.
I did a little preliminary ruminating earlier today. I think I’ve got an approach. As they say, “ya gotta have a gimmick.” It’s all matter of marketing.
I’m a terrible salesperson when I have to sell actual objects, things, consumables. But I’m pretty good at selling ideas, especially if I believe in them. I might have made a great evangelist — that is if there were anything I believed in enough to want to preach about it.
I finished listening to The Footprints of God. The ending is pretty much what I expected but with a twist that I didn’t expect. I liked it.
I’m ready to roll out the words. Tomorrow. After I wash my hair. Maybe run out and get some fresh corn. Orange juice for my mother.
My mother says “oranjuice” when she means “oranges.” One of my most embarassing moments happened in my oral interpretation of poetry class in college as I began to read Wallace Steven’s Sunday Morning and said “Complacencies of the peignoir and late/ coffee and oranjuice in a sunny chair…..” It’s still one of my favorite poems, but I still cringe every time I think of it. Everyone in the class started laughing, and I really had no idea what was so funny. My mother’s mispronunciation had become mine and I never even realized it.
That’s not the only time in my life when I’ve come out looking stupid. It’s a good thing I’m not a perfectionist. Good thing I’ve got a resilient ego. I think I’m better at losing than I am at winning. I’ve had more practice at it.
Except for grant proposals. I’ve won lots of them, millions of bucks worth. But not for me. After all, I’m only the writer.
Tomorrow I start, again.
For the record.
If Bush were honest, this is how he would present his record of “accomplishments.”
Ah, yes
I have a non-blogger friend of more than 20 years who forwards me pieces on politics and poetry. I got this one from her today, and I just love it!
What We Want
What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names –
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don’t remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.
— Linda Pastan
thanks, but no thanks
In a comment to my previous post, Adrian Spidle (founder of the Church of the Modern Era [more on that later]) invites me to enter into political discussions over on his weblog, the Public Inquiry Project.
Well, Adrian, thanks for the invitation, but no thanks. And here’s why:
While others categorize me as a “leftist,” I catorgize myself as an independent who supports human and civil rights, democratic process, the American Bill of Rights, the Golden Rule, and the rights of individuals and cultures to pursue their own destinies. I also believe that we all have the right to defend ourselves from oppression by individuals or by governments; that, while the ideals of our American democracy are good and moral and should be embraced, the current American administration has led us a long way from those ideals; and that, until we in America get our own house in order, we have no right to try to persuade others that our capitalistic or our democratic ways are the best ways.
I will support any political candidate who also supports those same things — not only in words, but — so much more importantly — in action. And I will oppose any candidate that obviously doesn’t.
Bush’s actions prove him to be the antithesis of everything in which I believe. The fact that he is a Republican is irrelevant. I look at who he is, with whom he surrounds himself, and what he’s done to our American ideals — and I come to the conclusion that I don’t want him to continue being my president.
Now, I have to admit that Adrian’s site boasts some interesting facts. At least I’m willing to assume, for the moment, that they really are facts. The stuff here, for example.
Having worked at the New York State Senate (for the Deputy Majority Leader at the time) as a writer for several years, I saw how laws get passed, witnessed the “horse-trading” and compromising. It works that way on tv’s West Wing, and it works that way in reality. So, legislative facts often become so despite the true desires of the good guys. In the political world, you hardly ever really win. The most you can do is to keep playing the game and keep hoping some good will come of it. (At least that’s what you do if you’re one of the good guys; if you’re one of the others, you try to get as much for yourself and your cronies as you can while you can.) I wish someone would come up with a way to separate politics from government.
So, Adrian, thanks but no thanks. I try not to argue politics and/or religion and/or art. I know what I believe and why I believe it.
Having said that, I have to say that I’m intrigued by Adrian’s statement on his Church of the Modern Era site:
The Theology of the Modern Era
Do you think that modern science has explained enough of the workings of us and our universe so that you see no need for a Creator? Do you find it difficult to believe that the state-of-the-art in theology and morality was established two or three thousand years ago? Does the idea of a personal God who creates miracles seem silly? Do these beliefs leave a void in your life?
If you honestly answered yes to the above questions then this church is for you. Welcome to the theology of the modern era that will show you how humans will create God with the technology of the future. And, it will also show you how God will use that technology to provide perfect justice and everlasting life to us, our ancestors and descendents. Get ready to travel beyond that nar-row sliver of space-time that your intuition can easily grasp.
The Empirical Path to Transcendent Truth
I find the above interesting in light of a mystery novel to which I’m currently listening: The Footprints of God. I’m only half way through, but as the story unfolds, it looks as though technology is, indeed, creating “god,” or at least a reasonable fascimile thereof.
And now I’m off to listen to the next chapter.
not much light left
people do terrible things to each other, but it’s worse in places where everything is kept in the dark.
As made available at Truthout, Bill Moyers quoted the above from Tom Stoppard’s play “Night and Day” in his speech to the Newspaper Guild/Communication Workers of America dinner on May 19, 2004. Read Moyer’s eloquent attack on the powers that have plunged the press — and our associated freedoms — into darkness.
(I haven’t been blogging about government lately because so many others are and just thinking about what those guys are doing makes me want to retch.)
Near the end of Moyer’s address, he says:
I believe journalism and democracy are deeply linked in whatever chances we Americans have to redress our grievances, retake our politics, and reclaim our commitment to equality and justice.
And, earlier in his speech he says something that makes what b!X is doing with his Portland Communique even more important than it already is:
The public interest group Alliance for Better Campaigns studied 45 stations in six cities in one week in October. Out of 7,560 hours of programming analyzed, only 13 were devote to local public affairs-less than one-half of one percent of local programming nationwide.
There are very dark times for American freedom, American democracy.
this seedy season
The conifer-filled park next to my building is blooming spring green. Shoots. Nubs. Spikes. Little white protuberances. Everything is seeding. Dandelion fluff abounds. Fluffier little goslings waddle along between their ever-vigilant parents. Seedlings, after all, need to be protected.
So it is with my garden, where the herbs are doing fine but the tomatoes are being attacked by something. Tonight I’ll boil garlic and onions and red pepper and make the spray that’s supposed to repel the evildoers. If nothing else, my garden’s smell will make the mouths of passersby water.
Above my sink, one-out-of three avocado pits is putting down roots. It’s the season for putting down roots. Except for me. And the two other avocado pits.
I think I was born to be a gypsy. Have inflatable bed; will travel. Boston, Longmeadow, York Beach — anywhere but where I have to worry about vacuuming and doing dishes and taking responsibility for someone else.
I have this fantasy that my brother will make an addition to his house, to where my mother and I will move. That will be my home base, but I will also spend time at my daughter’s, at the homes of my women friends, and even with my cousins who are planning to retire to Florida. I will finally be motivated to get rid of the clothes that cram my closets and will pare my life down to what I can pack into my car.
This seedy season calls me to freedom. But I blog instead.
The distortion of dreams
I’ve taken scissors to my hair again. It has something to do with dreams. Not the night kind, but rather the kind that have to do with hopes. I’m always hoping that if I just make a few adjustments here and there, it will all fall into place — my hair, my clothes, my life. I often come close. When is it good enough?
There are some who live in a world of dreams. I think today of Chris Locke (Rage Boy), who blogs of fevered flu-fueled dreams. Who dreams of ways to survive in a world that seems to send suicide bombers into the center of every dream. He just wants to find a way to survive.
That’s what b!X is trying to do with his Portland Communique. Survive. The same end, but different means, different motivation, different dreams.
The little house in the corner of a big corner lot is a dream to which scissors have been taken.
I’m wishing a good hair day for everyone.
the distortion of perspective
They are out looking for a house to buy. I’m driving. We follow the realtor and stop in front of a little house tucked into the corner of a big corner lot. It looks like a doll’s house, dwarfed by the huge old trees that surround it on two sides. “A gnome-home,” my son-in-law comments. Later, we laugh about how they can dress it up each Hallowe’en: one year a baby’s block; the next year one of a set of dice; next, a Rubik’s cube. Later, I discover it’s probably some sort of cross between “biscuit box” and “four square” architecture. It was built in the 1920s, empty for a while, and a builder recently bought it and completely renovated it.
The houses that surround it are twice as imposing, twice as large, and architecturally more complex. The little house looks like a spruced-up orphan, undersized and ignored, waiting — shyly in a corner, alone among all its more obviously desireable peers — to be adopted by just the right people who could appreciate its uniqueness.
Inside, it’s all new and airy — bright even on this cloudy day. Hardwood floors. Two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. They would need to add on another room. The builder/renovator assumed that would be the case and is prepared to work with them. The price is low enough. The yard is big — room for kids to congregate and play, vegetables to grow, flowers to flourish. It will take time and nurturning. They have plenty of that.
The orphaned little house on the corner will soon be a home again.
It’s all in how you look at things.