There's no accounting for tastes, especially if they belong to Iggy Pop. So let's at least BEGIN with the sublime: Dante Alighieri,the stupendous Italian poet who wrote all of his life about a girl he met exactly twice.
DANTE (13th century creator of the DIVINE COMEDY) first set eyes on his Beatrice when they were children at a May Day party, both bedecked in flowers. He thought about her every single day after that, until he saw her for another brief moment when they were teenagers. The gorgeous maiden, wrapped in a golden haze of honey-colored hair, was with friends, and greeted him by name. This flooded him with a joy so ecstatic, so paralyzing, that he thought he might die. In response he acted like an idiot, and scurried away from her immediately so that he could obsess about her quietly, in private. He never saw her again, but wrote about her until the day he died. This is completely typical of the way writers behave.
BOB DYLAN, musician, ran into his early love SUZE ROTOLO when he was still a scruffy, crazy-haired, penniless kid scrambling for gigs at coffee houses in Greenwich Village. He was 21, she was 17. "I couldn't take my eyes off her," he wrote forty five years later in his autobiography. "She was the most erotic thing I'd ever seen. The air was filled with banana leaves. She had a smile that could light up a street full of people. She was extremely lively, had a kind of voluptuousness." And Rotolo was not only a hottie, she was cultured. Dylan absorbed knowledge about books and classical music and political causes from her like a starving wild child meeting civilization for the first time. In the end he married someone else, and so did she. But they never forgot each other.
We can't avoid Iggy Pop (musician) forever, so let's just get this over with.
IGGY POP: (Talking about anything female wearing low-cut jeans) "They are trying to show they're ready to breed, that they're alive in that sector. If somebody has a nice butt I am always interested to take a look at it--that's the monkey in me. I'm there, you know what I mean?"
(Sigh.) I'm afraid we do, Mister Iggy.
Next we have a startling quote from JAVIER BARDEM. As an actor he's definitely on the Sublime side (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, BIUTIFUL), and as a person he's a raving heterosexual. His wife is Penelope Cruz, now glowingly pregnant. But he's also a very cool, very fearless European, and had this to say about Brad Pitt: "I had a great opportunity to meet Brad Pitt a couple of times, what a beauty! He is beautiful and his physicality is so amazing to see. But the beauty comes from different places, the way he talks, the way he's interested in what you're saying. And that body of his is like--WOW! It's amazing, no? He really made me feel very, like...I could fall in love with him! Like a teenager girl getting crazy and going--" At this point in the interview Javier screamed loudly.
I can't imagine a straight American actor being brave enough to do that, can you?
Next we have a comment from TERRENCE HOWARD, actor (HUSTLE AND FLOW, THE BRAVE ONE)that strikes me as a little, I don't know, weird. But maybe it's just me.
The ELLE interviewer asked, "What one item could you find in a woman's house that would prove you weren't compatible?"
TERRENCE HOWARD: "Toilet paper--and no baby wipes--in her bathroom."
Interviewer: "Wait. I don't understand."
TERRENCE HOWARD: "If they're using dry paper, they aren't washing all of themselves. It's just unclean. I explain this, and if she doesn't make the adjustment to baby wipes, I'll know she's not dainty. We have no future. "
Hmmm. Let's cleanse the palate with a refreshingly brainy quote from a great religious writer.
C.S. LEWIS (THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE) was a brilliant English scholar who married his Joyce late in life. She was a feisty, Brooklyn-bred Communist writer, and none of his University friends could stand her. But when he lost her--far too soon, to cancer--he never recovered. "She had a mind as supple and muscular as a panther," he said. He missed everything about her, but above all he missed his companion of the mind.
KEITH RICHARDS (guitarist, pharmaceutical marvel and indestructable old guy) has never known despair for long. He was quite the love man in his younger days, but after marrying Patti Hansen settled into monogamy with a sort of exhausted relief. And this is what he wrote in his notebook a few days after he met her:
"Incredibly I've found a woman. A miracle! I've had (sex) at the snap of a finger, but now I've met a WOMAN! Unbelievably she is the most beautiful (physically) speciman in the WORLD. But that ain't it! It certainly helps but it's her mind, her joy of life and (wonders) she thinks this battered junkie is the guy she loves. I'm over the moon... She loves soul music and reggae, in fact everything. I make her tapes of music which is almost as good as being with her. I send them like love letters. I'm kicking forty and besotted."
Now he is kicking seventy and still besotted with Patti, as she is with him; and that's the happiest possible way to end this post.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
ME!ME!ME!ME!ME!ME!ME!ME!ME! Part 2
A few months back I crept out, a shy blossom, to timidly and blushingly post my first ME!ME!ME! entry (September 11, 2010). This is a special entry that all bloggers must do at least once, in which they gas on about themselves endlessly...and ONLY about themselves. Somehow or other, God knows how, this turned out to be huge fun for me. Almost as if I was a big flaming ham and not a wee modest posy at all, although that is impossible, of course. In fact I got used to that ME!ME!ME! stuff real fast. So here is the second installment, again in a Question and Answer format.
Q.: So, have you learned to love cilantro? You were sort of struggling there for awhile...
A.: I just hate that nasty ditch weed. You might as well take a stinking moldy corpse-white plant growing above a grave, and roll it around in your soup. The flavor is not just bad, it's EVIL.
A.: What do you feel about cosmetics? A lot of women are going totally bare-faced these days...
Q.: I adore lipstick, and wear it all the time. The colors are so pretty. And a little eye-pencil can be fun. I live in the type of Green and rabidly PC city where a lot of the women feel really smug at going bare-face. They're like, 'Look at me, I don't give a crap, and that's great!' I always want to say to them, 'Where's the virtue in looking like a bleached steer's skull all day? For God's sake prop up the ancient bones with a dot of blush!'
Q.: So you think we're too casual, careless?
A.: I think we're thinking like Popeye: 'I yam what I yam.' But why? At home we put on clothes so dumpy we'd hesitate to donate them to a Salvation Army bin, and we wear them in front of the people we love best in the world. We should do better. My ideal is the French writer Colette. Even when she was 80 years old, she wouldn't let her husband see her in the morning until her hennaed curls were all fluffed up, and she had her eyes lined with kohl and a silk ascot on and the perfume he liked the best. We should take more trouble for each other. We'd be happier.
Q.: I remember you said you talk to yourself. Are you still babbling away?
A.: Yup. More than ever, since the election. Overnight, our nice Blue state became as Red as a maniac's eye.
Q.: I'm sorry I have to ask this, but are you making any headway regarding the Forgiveness thingy? As in forgiving your enemies?
A.: Not really. (Sigh.) I'm afraid the truth is that I don't want to forgive assholes. I want them to suffer.
Q.: Jesus is going to be so mad at you!
A.: You think Jesus likes assholes? He is way too smart for that.
Q.: I've heard you love Japanese movies. Why?
A.: They speak in a clear voice to our minds as well as our hearts. But be warned, a Kyoto ending can rip you up. I just saw a movie whose cheesy American title is THE SAMURAI I LOVED (Japanese title, Autumn Rain of the Cicadas.) The hero and heroine are childhood sweethearts who love each other their whole lives. Because of family tragedies they can never marry. They make heartbreaking sacrifices for each other. They can never embrace until the end...briefly...when they have to part forever. One kiss. Then he's in a canoe and she's in a palanquin, going in opposite directions. He's in agony because he knows he'll never see her again, but he holds himself together--because he doesn't want to hurt her with his pain. Then his canoe floats around a bend in the river. In the next shot of the canoe, we can't see him. Now, did he fall to the bottom of the canoe as though he'd been shot in the heart? Or in his anguish did he jump in the water and commit suicide? What a noble puzzle! And that's the end. Isn't it beautiful?
Q.: Well, it's, umm...I mean, it, ummm...well, it's definitely no barrel of monkeys. One freaking kiss, you said? For their whole lives? I have to ask: What did they get out of their love?
A.: Knowledge that the other person was alive in the world. That someone existed who loved them completely. And a profound, nourishing respect for the other person's---I guess I'd have to say, honor.
Q.: Well, that ain't no Hollywood ending, all right. Let's get back to food. What is one of your happiest mealtime memories?
A.: Wintertimes when I was a child. You have to understand that our state is a real mean sumbitch polar bear in the winter, you don't live here unless you MEAN it. I'd run into the house after school, late on a blue-black icy Friday afternoon, and that polar bear would be roaring after me. Then I'd be in the kitchen, and it would be warm, with a golden light, and would have this ragingly delicious smell of well-browned pork roast. On top of the refrigerator would be sweet rolls and coffee cake rising. My sisters and brothers and I had the whole fine weekend opening up broad and shining before us as we sat down to the table. And our mother and father would be there. So I know about heaven, or as close to it as makes no difference.
Q.: And there was no cilantro?
A.: No cilantro, at all.
Q.: So, have you learned to love cilantro? You were sort of struggling there for awhile...
A.: I just hate that nasty ditch weed. You might as well take a stinking moldy corpse-white plant growing above a grave, and roll it around in your soup. The flavor is not just bad, it's EVIL.
A.: What do you feel about cosmetics? A lot of women are going totally bare-faced these days...
Q.: I adore lipstick, and wear it all the time. The colors are so pretty. And a little eye-pencil can be fun. I live in the type of Green and rabidly PC city where a lot of the women feel really smug at going bare-face. They're like, 'Look at me, I don't give a crap, and that's great!' I always want to say to them, 'Where's the virtue in looking like a bleached steer's skull all day? For God's sake prop up the ancient bones with a dot of blush!'
Q.: So you think we're too casual, careless?
A.: I think we're thinking like Popeye: 'I yam what I yam.' But why? At home we put on clothes so dumpy we'd hesitate to donate them to a Salvation Army bin, and we wear them in front of the people we love best in the world. We should do better. My ideal is the French writer Colette. Even when she was 80 years old, she wouldn't let her husband see her in the morning until her hennaed curls were all fluffed up, and she had her eyes lined with kohl and a silk ascot on and the perfume he liked the best. We should take more trouble for each other. We'd be happier.
Q.: I remember you said you talk to yourself. Are you still babbling away?
A.: Yup. More than ever, since the election. Overnight, our nice Blue state became as Red as a maniac's eye.
Q.: I'm sorry I have to ask this, but are you making any headway regarding the Forgiveness thingy? As in forgiving your enemies?
A.: Not really. (Sigh.) I'm afraid the truth is that I don't want to forgive assholes. I want them to suffer.
Q.: Jesus is going to be so mad at you!
A.: You think Jesus likes assholes? He is way too smart for that.
Q.: I've heard you love Japanese movies. Why?
A.: They speak in a clear voice to our minds as well as our hearts. But be warned, a Kyoto ending can rip you up. I just saw a movie whose cheesy American title is THE SAMURAI I LOVED (Japanese title, Autumn Rain of the Cicadas.) The hero and heroine are childhood sweethearts who love each other their whole lives. Because of family tragedies they can never marry. They make heartbreaking sacrifices for each other. They can never embrace until the end...briefly...when they have to part forever. One kiss. Then he's in a canoe and she's in a palanquin, going in opposite directions. He's in agony because he knows he'll never see her again, but he holds himself together--because he doesn't want to hurt her with his pain. Then his canoe floats around a bend in the river. In the next shot of the canoe, we can't see him. Now, did he fall to the bottom of the canoe as though he'd been shot in the heart? Or in his anguish did he jump in the water and commit suicide? What a noble puzzle! And that's the end. Isn't it beautiful?
Q.: Well, it's, umm...I mean, it, ummm...well, it's definitely no barrel of monkeys. One freaking kiss, you said? For their whole lives? I have to ask: What did they get out of their love?
A.: Knowledge that the other person was alive in the world. That someone existed who loved them completely. And a profound, nourishing respect for the other person's---I guess I'd have to say, honor.
Q.: Well, that ain't no Hollywood ending, all right. Let's get back to food. What is one of your happiest mealtime memories?
A.: Wintertimes when I was a child. You have to understand that our state is a real mean sumbitch polar bear in the winter, you don't live here unless you MEAN it. I'd run into the house after school, late on a blue-black icy Friday afternoon, and that polar bear would be roaring after me. Then I'd be in the kitchen, and it would be warm, with a golden light, and would have this ragingly delicious smell of well-browned pork roast. On top of the refrigerator would be sweet rolls and coffee cake rising. My sisters and brothers and I had the whole fine weekend opening up broad and shining before us as we sat down to the table. And our mother and father would be there. So I know about heaven, or as close to it as makes no difference.
Q.: And there was no cilantro?
A.: No cilantro, at all.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Honey-Dripping Christmas Cake and the Hungry Crow in the Snow
Then there was the Christmas a friend sent me plum cake lovingly prepared from King George III's favorite recipe. Yes, we're talking about Crazy George here. So I was doubtful, because you have to wonder what a king who's barking mad likes to put in his food. But it turned out he was sane about cake.
I made a buttery, whiskey-drenched hard sauce and enjoyed a dense slice of the cake. It practically exploded with fat, honey-dripping fruit. The last forkful was in my mouth when I happened to look out the window.
It was that moment of a winter twilight when the snow, late hour and dark sky combine to produce an unearthly, plum-blue shimmer. A lone crow was standing on our icy, bare-bones December lawn. It isn't in a crow to be pitiful, but this crow looked as though, under his brave show of black feathers, his ribs were clapping empty.
On impulse I smeared a big slice of the cake with hard sauce, ran out to the back yard to leave it, and ran back in. When I looked out the window, the crow was swaggering over to the cake, but not fast. A crow is always cool. He takes care of business one step at a time. Right now it was whiskey-scented manna from heaven. Well, he seemed to think, why not?
It was now very dark, and my last view was of the crow's silhouette. His wings flared above the cake, every feather tense with satisfaction. He lifted his head, eye sparkling straight into mine through the dark-silver night air. In his scimitar beak was a giant crystallized cherry.
I made a buttery, whiskey-drenched hard sauce and enjoyed a dense slice of the cake. It practically exploded with fat, honey-dripping fruit. The last forkful was in my mouth when I happened to look out the window.
It was that moment of a winter twilight when the snow, late hour and dark sky combine to produce an unearthly, plum-blue shimmer. A lone crow was standing on our icy, bare-bones December lawn. It isn't in a crow to be pitiful, but this crow looked as though, under his brave show of black feathers, his ribs were clapping empty.
On impulse I smeared a big slice of the cake with hard sauce, ran out to the back yard to leave it, and ran back in. When I looked out the window, the crow was swaggering over to the cake, but not fast. A crow is always cool. He takes care of business one step at a time. Right now it was whiskey-scented manna from heaven. Well, he seemed to think, why not?
It was now very dark, and my last view was of the crow's silhouette. His wings flared above the cake, every feather tense with satisfaction. He lifted his head, eye sparkling straight into mine through the dark-silver night air. In his scimitar beak was a giant crystallized cherry.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Perfect BLT's On A Day Of Storm, With Tigers
There are long grey veils of rain sweeping through the late autumn day, but a friend and I have planned to go to the zoo, and we're going, by God. Ellen insists on bringing the same sandwiches she's always brought to Vernon Park, from childhood onward.
She makes your basic BLT's in my kitchen, adding red onion, twice the usual bacon, plenty of mayo, and luscious late tomatoes. This is all wedged between thickly cut slabs of toasted homemade bread. The bread is of the "noble brick" variety, which is important. Then Ellen puts her big strong palm on the assembled sandwiches and leans all of her majestic weight on them. The flattened product is then wrapped in waxed paper and allowed to grow stone cold as we drive to Vernon Park.
We watch bears cavort with delight in their daily shower, and it seems perfectly O.K. that we're standing in a heavy cold mist ourselves. We can live just fine in the day drizzling its grey pearls, we just have to put our hoods up. We watch tigers stalk and ripple with their lordly stripes. They chew their way through buckets of bloody treats. If we were more delicate people we'd be disgusted, but instead it makes us crave meat. So we open the waxed paper and eat our BLT's.
I hadn't expected much from these lumpy little doorstops, but I'm astonished at how good they are. The BLT is now a glorious mash with the silky tomato, salty bacon shards and onion bits all smashed together between the indestructable bookends of really good bread, still with the glint of grain. We and the tigers finish our perfect lunches. They lick their paws and we lick our fingers. As we walk away we go through all our various vowels of happy satiation:
"Ahhh...eeee.....I.....ohhhh.....UUUMMMMMMM!!!"
She makes your basic BLT's in my kitchen, adding red onion, twice the usual bacon, plenty of mayo, and luscious late tomatoes. This is all wedged between thickly cut slabs of toasted homemade bread. The bread is of the "noble brick" variety, which is important. Then Ellen puts her big strong palm on the assembled sandwiches and leans all of her majestic weight on them. The flattened product is then wrapped in waxed paper and allowed to grow stone cold as we drive to Vernon Park.
We watch bears cavort with delight in their daily shower, and it seems perfectly O.K. that we're standing in a heavy cold mist ourselves. We can live just fine in the day drizzling its grey pearls, we just have to put our hoods up. We watch tigers stalk and ripple with their lordly stripes. They chew their way through buckets of bloody treats. If we were more delicate people we'd be disgusted, but instead it makes us crave meat. So we open the waxed paper and eat our BLT's.
I hadn't expected much from these lumpy little doorstops, but I'm astonished at how good they are. The BLT is now a glorious mash with the silky tomato, salty bacon shards and onion bits all smashed together between the indestructable bookends of really good bread, still with the glint of grain. We and the tigers finish our perfect lunches. They lick their paws and we lick our fingers. As we walk away we go through all our various vowels of happy satiation:
"Ahhh...eeee.....I.....ohhhh.....UUUMMMMMMM!!!"
Monday, October 11, 2010
The Most Exquisite Lament for Lost Love in Cinema: Maggie Cheung in ASHES OF TIME REDUX
ASHES OF TIME REDUX (2008, director Wong Kar-wai) is set in ancient times in China. The narrator and main character is Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung), described as "a fallen swordsman driven by greed and heartless to both friend and foe." A mysterious personal disaster has forced him away from normal humans, as though he had some rabies of the soul. He's festering with hate in a hut in a remote desert. There he operates his peculiar business: he's a middleman who hires famous assassins to commit murders. He does this on the dime of rich people with grudges.
Very early in the film Ouyang Feng explains his business to us in terms so stark and icy we're chilled to the bone. He's a handsome young man, and yet it's as though a monster or a skull were speaking to us, so little human feeling does he show. But we sense he was not always this way. And we become obsessed by solving the puzzle: what loss distorted his mind and scorched his heart to this shard?
There are slight hints in the next hour, flashbacks which show Ouyang Feng struggling with a beautiful girl in red, dimly seen swordfights, suggestions of disgrace, flight and exile. But there is not a full explanation until the end of the movie. Then we meet Ouyang Feng's sister-in-law (Maggie Cheung). We are not given this woman's name; but to Ouyang Feng she will always be the only She. He hasn't seen her for ten years. Because of pride and custom, he will never see her again. She will never see him again. And we find out that the terrifying wonder is, their feelings have never changed. Nobody else exists for them or ever will.
The woman (Maggie Cheung) has a remarkable monologue that explains everything we need to know. We can see from her exquisite clothes and refined surroundings that she has a comfortably wealthy marriage and what anyone would call a happy life. Moreover she's very beautiful, with translucent skin and almond eyes. She's wearing red robes, which to Asian eyes denote good fortune. She has a son, which again to Asians would be the height of happiness. And then she speaks, slowly, without gesture, in a quiet voice.She is speaking to a friend of Ouyang Feng's. And what she tells is like a tragic poem:
"We were young. Ouyang Feng never told me how much he wanted me.
It's what I needed to hear.
He was too proud to say it.
He took it for granted I would marry him.
He never imagined that out of spite I would marry his brother.
On my wedding night he wanted me to run away with him,
but I refused.
Why did he want me only when he couldn't have me?
......
Nothing really matters anymore.
I used to think words were so important,
that once spoken they'd last a lifetime.
But looking back, they make no difference.
What is important changes.
I was so sure I won, that the triumph was mine,
until one day I looked in the mirror.
During the best years of my life
the person I love was not by my side.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could go back
into the past...?"
Then she says to Ouyang Feng's friend, very quietly,
"Why didn't you ever tell him
where I was?"
The man replies, "I promised you that I wouldn't."
She says, with a smile more tragic than tears,
"You were too honest."
Then this radiant, still-young creature withdraws into the shadows,
with slow broken movements, like a wounded animal.
And she bows her proud head, and weeps.
Heart-breaking. Terrible. But--wonderful.
Very early in the film Ouyang Feng explains his business to us in terms so stark and icy we're chilled to the bone. He's a handsome young man, and yet it's as though a monster or a skull were speaking to us, so little human feeling does he show. But we sense he was not always this way. And we become obsessed by solving the puzzle: what loss distorted his mind and scorched his heart to this shard?
There are slight hints in the next hour, flashbacks which show Ouyang Feng struggling with a beautiful girl in red, dimly seen swordfights, suggestions of disgrace, flight and exile. But there is not a full explanation until the end of the movie. Then we meet Ouyang Feng's sister-in-law (Maggie Cheung). We are not given this woman's name; but to Ouyang Feng she will always be the only She. He hasn't seen her for ten years. Because of pride and custom, he will never see her again. She will never see him again. And we find out that the terrifying wonder is, their feelings have never changed. Nobody else exists for them or ever will.
The woman (Maggie Cheung) has a remarkable monologue that explains everything we need to know. We can see from her exquisite clothes and refined surroundings that she has a comfortably wealthy marriage and what anyone would call a happy life. Moreover she's very beautiful, with translucent skin and almond eyes. She's wearing red robes, which to Asian eyes denote good fortune. She has a son, which again to Asians would be the height of happiness. And then she speaks, slowly, without gesture, in a quiet voice.She is speaking to a friend of Ouyang Feng's. And what she tells is like a tragic poem:
"We were young. Ouyang Feng never told me how much he wanted me.
It's what I needed to hear.
He was too proud to say it.
He took it for granted I would marry him.
He never imagined that out of spite I would marry his brother.
On my wedding night he wanted me to run away with him,
but I refused.
Why did he want me only when he couldn't have me?
......
Nothing really matters anymore.
I used to think words were so important,
that once spoken they'd last a lifetime.
But looking back, they make no difference.
What is important changes.
I was so sure I won, that the triumph was mine,
until one day I looked in the mirror.
During the best years of my life
the person I love was not by my side.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could go back
into the past...?"
Then she says to Ouyang Feng's friend, very quietly,
"Why didn't you ever tell him
where I was?"
The man replies, "I promised you that I wouldn't."
She says, with a smile more tragic than tears,
"You were too honest."
Then this radiant, still-young creature withdraws into the shadows,
with slow broken movements, like a wounded animal.
And she bows her proud head, and weeps.
Heart-breaking. Terrible. But--wonderful.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
RED JACKET: A Poem for my Mother
Kathryn Savides, September 23 1915 - January 26, 2004.
I also posted this poem last year on my mother's birthday. Happy Birthday, dear Mom!
She was borne away by an engine ornate, fiery and black
on a rescue mission: to oversee an uncle's burial.
Uncle Bill had been the ravenous King Kong
in our family fairy tale, bolting rows of sweet corn
and inhaling ingots of butter at Reunions,
beer bubbling out of his ears, plums up his nose,
his roaring beefy tongue popping with hotdogs
and Scottish curses, a new wife
sitting on his hand every few years.
Suddenly he'd exploded, his pigskin heart
split at every seam
and our mother's calmness was frantically summoned
by the hysterical fourth wife.
Mom rode to the rescue on a dragon-black train,
bolt upright and pushing it all the way. Once there
she ordered the special, jumbo casket,
she blessed the giant's exploded corpuscles
with a gentle veil of white flowers,
dignified his furry pagan paunch in a kingly suit of black.
She directed when cables would lower his bulk,
heavy as a crusader in full mail, to the inner earth
where seethed gobs of minerals, and his ancestors' lacy bones.
Old wives' and young wives' cupid's-bow kisses
colored his big ornery face ravishing shades of rose.
At the funeral lunch, the peach-fed oils of Mother's baked ham
soothed mourners' torn nerve endings.
The precise rectangles of her bar cookies
made them feel they could go on.
At home we shivered in coldest eclipse,
for she was the queen of our tribe of dwarves.
At five years old I fought my baby instinct
to stroke her red jacket in the closet where it glowed.
Finally one midnight the dragon brought her back,
and we breathed warm air again.
I'd heard corpses were green, and rotton-bellied with fear
still had to ask.
Yes, she said; Uncle Bill had been a little green,
but was now shining in heaven,
silvery with Grandma and Father Abraham.
She believed it, too.
When she looked up, all of her beloved dead
were sparkling in the constellations.
My hard little coconut head
processed her words. I looked suspiciously
at those stars, privately had my doubts.
But then I looked into her gentle face and decided,
then and lifelong,
never to tell.
I also posted this poem last year on my mother's birthday. Happy Birthday, dear Mom!
She was borne away by an engine ornate, fiery and black
on a rescue mission: to oversee an uncle's burial.
Uncle Bill had been the ravenous King Kong
in our family fairy tale, bolting rows of sweet corn
and inhaling ingots of butter at Reunions,
beer bubbling out of his ears, plums up his nose,
his roaring beefy tongue popping with hotdogs
and Scottish curses, a new wife
sitting on his hand every few years.
Suddenly he'd exploded, his pigskin heart
split at every seam
and our mother's calmness was frantically summoned
by the hysterical fourth wife.
Mom rode to the rescue on a dragon-black train,
bolt upright and pushing it all the way. Once there
she ordered the special, jumbo casket,
she blessed the giant's exploded corpuscles
with a gentle veil of white flowers,
dignified his furry pagan paunch in a kingly suit of black.
She directed when cables would lower his bulk,
heavy as a crusader in full mail, to the inner earth
where seethed gobs of minerals, and his ancestors' lacy bones.
Old wives' and young wives' cupid's-bow kisses
colored his big ornery face ravishing shades of rose.
At the funeral lunch, the peach-fed oils of Mother's baked ham
soothed mourners' torn nerve endings.
The precise rectangles of her bar cookies
made them feel they could go on.
At home we shivered in coldest eclipse,
for she was the queen of our tribe of dwarves.
At five years old I fought my baby instinct
to stroke her red jacket in the closet where it glowed.
Finally one midnight the dragon brought her back,
and we breathed warm air again.
I'd heard corpses were green, and rotton-bellied with fear
still had to ask.
Yes, she said; Uncle Bill had been a little green,
but was now shining in heaven,
silvery with Grandma and Father Abraham.
She believed it, too.
When she looked up, all of her beloved dead
were sparkling in the constellations.
My hard little coconut head
processed her words. I looked suspiciously
at those stars, privately had my doubts.
But then I looked into her gentle face and decided,
then and lifelong,
never to tell.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME!
Some readers have told me that I can't really call this a blog, until I cough up at least one post in which I gas on about myself endlessly. So here's my stab at it. The usual format is for a phantom "interviewer" to ask a lot of tasteless questions, to which I respond with oily self-congratulation; but just to keep things stirred up I'll be honest here and there.
Q.: What's your favorite scent in nature?
MB: Black locust blossom.
Q.: Do you talk to yourself?
MB: Yes, lots. Sometimes I crack myself up, or argue myself to a standstill. Why not have a great conversation, just because another person happens not to be there at the moment?!
Q.: What are your feelings about cilantro?
MB: I hate it. It's the loco-weed of our decade.
Q.: Do you sweat a lot?
MB: No. There's a saying: "Horses sweat. Men perspire. Ladies glow."
Q.: What movie scene made you laugh so much you fell off your chair?
MB: Sam Kinison as the psycho history teacher raving away at his terrified students in BACK TO SCHOOL. His eyes pop right out of his head and his spittle flies off the screen and onto the audience! I've heard Kinison was a child evangelist in the old days, mesmerizing whole audiences as he ranted at them about hellfire; so no wonder he's so good at this!
Q.: Most sustained comic performance in a movie?
MB: HAS to be Bill Murray as the creepy groundskeeper Carl Spackler in CADDYSHACK. Every crazy squint, every mutter, even his droopy camouflage pants are just brilliant.
Q.: What do you eat to get your strength back when you're feeling blue?
MB: Hot ham and fried egg, heavily peppered, on a toasted onion bagel. With strong mustard, a slice of red onion. And a big old Cuba Libre goes with this just fine. Dark rum, of course.
Q.: What personality types do you despise the most?
MB: Bullies and liars.
Q.: Who is your favorite spiritual leader? Buddha, Yahweh, Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed? Or lots of different gods like in Wagner operas?
MB: Yahweh is such a huge honking name and presence that I'm almost afraid not to choose him. In my mind's eye, to this day, I see his beard of thunder and his gaze of forked lightning just as I did as a child--and I see them with considerable respect. But for me, Jesus Christ of the Gospels is the most ethically sublime. If he actually said and did even a tenth of the things that were attributed to him, he had the most beautiful mind and heart.
Q.: Do you believe in forgiving...or not?
MB: I'm torn. There's a very moving scene in the Japanese movie BRIGHT FUTURE, where a kid has hurt and insulted someone who's been kind to him, a father figure. The kid realizes his mistake and begs for forgiveness. The man just says to him, very simply, "I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive everybody everything."
I know that that's the higher course.
But then there's a tiny little devil in people (including me) that just sort of pops up and enjoys the Spanish saying, "Forgiveness is the first sign of senility." As though holding tight to a good grudge is good for your health, adds salt and red pepper to life. So it's a toss-up.
Well, that's enough gassing on for now. Have a wonderful weekend, folks, and I will now sign off from my REAL BLOG!!!
Q.: What's your favorite scent in nature?
MB: Black locust blossom.
Q.: Do you talk to yourself?
MB: Yes, lots. Sometimes I crack myself up, or argue myself to a standstill. Why not have a great conversation, just because another person happens not to be there at the moment?!
Q.: What are your feelings about cilantro?
MB: I hate it. It's the loco-weed of our decade.
Q.: Do you sweat a lot?
MB: No. There's a saying: "Horses sweat. Men perspire. Ladies glow."
Q.: What movie scene made you laugh so much you fell off your chair?
MB: Sam Kinison as the psycho history teacher raving away at his terrified students in BACK TO SCHOOL. His eyes pop right out of his head and his spittle flies off the screen and onto the audience! I've heard Kinison was a child evangelist in the old days, mesmerizing whole audiences as he ranted at them about hellfire; so no wonder he's so good at this!
Q.: Most sustained comic performance in a movie?
MB: HAS to be Bill Murray as the creepy groundskeeper Carl Spackler in CADDYSHACK. Every crazy squint, every mutter, even his droopy camouflage pants are just brilliant.
Q.: What do you eat to get your strength back when you're feeling blue?
MB: Hot ham and fried egg, heavily peppered, on a toasted onion bagel. With strong mustard, a slice of red onion. And a big old Cuba Libre goes with this just fine. Dark rum, of course.
Q.: What personality types do you despise the most?
MB: Bullies and liars.
Q.: Who is your favorite spiritual leader? Buddha, Yahweh, Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed? Or lots of different gods like in Wagner operas?
MB: Yahweh is such a huge honking name and presence that I'm almost afraid not to choose him. In my mind's eye, to this day, I see his beard of thunder and his gaze of forked lightning just as I did as a child--and I see them with considerable respect. But for me, Jesus Christ of the Gospels is the most ethically sublime. If he actually said and did even a tenth of the things that were attributed to him, he had the most beautiful mind and heart.
Q.: Do you believe in forgiving...or not?
MB: I'm torn. There's a very moving scene in the Japanese movie BRIGHT FUTURE, where a kid has hurt and insulted someone who's been kind to him, a father figure. The kid realizes his mistake and begs for forgiveness. The man just says to him, very simply, "I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive everybody everything."
I know that that's the higher course.
But then there's a tiny little devil in people (including me) that just sort of pops up and enjoys the Spanish saying, "Forgiveness is the first sign of senility." As though holding tight to a good grudge is good for your health, adds salt and red pepper to life. So it's a toss-up.
Well, that's enough gassing on for now. Have a wonderful weekend, folks, and I will now sign off from my REAL BLOG!!!
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