We saw "Amélie" and had a grand time of it. Just the thing to top off a fine day. Heroic introverts. Great escapes.
Micheal Sowa's paintings are featured in the film. They're so wonderfully whimsical. You can check some of them out here (I especially like his landscapes, but check out the second one down in the list): click here
This exhibition has been around for a while, but I heard about it on the BBC again and so I couldn't resist mentioning it. Unsettling and fascinating - being called "sensational". It's not for the faint of heart, seeing bodies split open and displayed.
I find that there are overly dramatic flourishes (the guy isn't claiming to be a great artist) in some of these setups. Seeing the human body in this way sure brings up some basic emotions. We're so freakin' weird.
Click here
It's this image with the horse and rider (you can barely make it out) that fascinates me: click here
I'm prone to dyslexic outbursts from time to time... At the least appropriate times, politically correctly speaking, I can out with doozys. I call it a social tourette's dyslexic spasm. Once I congratulated a Jewish friend by loudly proclaiming, "Molotov!" Had I been anywhere else in my life, no one would have noticed; they would have taken me for an anarchist and not thought much more about it (anarchists were a dime a dozen where I grew up - none of 'em knew what the word meant, but they wrote it all over the place and wore it on their sweatshirts). But no, I was in a room full of Jews who looked at me for a second, then burst out laughing. My friend shook her head - also laughing - and asked, "Did you mean 'Mazel tov'?"
I was midst tirade over some annoying aspect of our corporate culture this evening - I was griping up a storm, all hot under the collar - givin' 'em hell on behalf of the "people" (whoever they are). So there I was, good and wound up in my righteous indignation, decrying the plight of the common stock investor and ranting about floating the market on the backs of the 401 k plans and such (like I know what the hell I'm talking about - pfft! - never stopped me before). I ranted, "Like what? We were supposed to stay in there while the whole thing went to pot and 'they' were selling off their shares of Enron faster than George Bush can say "privatize social security"? What are we? The stock market's version of cattle fodder?"
I had Ume getting good and stirred up until that bit - the bit about the cattle fodder. Right then and there I lost her in a fit of giggles. I kinda lost myself too - 'cause I had to act out exactly what happens to cattle fodder. Mad cows, rushing peasants on the field of battle - it's not pretty. I'd meant "cannon fodder", of course. But I'd lost the moment, the momentum - the indignation had turned to giggles. And sometimes, that's a good thing.
You can tell when your partner wants something. After a while you develop a sixth sense for it... Or maybe it's all of the endearments that begin to flow forth from her enchanted lips...
"Oh my precious delerium, my endearingly baffled one..."
I'm onto it.
I have a nemesis. She is my alter ego - Flan. Flan is everything that I am not. She is bubbly, she is sweet, she is dynamic and positive, she's doing well in the market, she's blonde.
Despite the fact that the world thinks she's goodness personified, she is also out to get me. This isn't just my paranoia speaking, she's made attempts on my life. True, she says they're in self-defense (I've been trying to kill her off for years) - but that's hardly an excuse.
The artist Marcel DuChamp (1887-1968) had an alter ego - Rrose Sélavy. She was less aggressive than Flan, more sophisticated and mysterious (the grass is always greener, even in the alter ego business). Duchamp was such a clever guy. I did poorly on a couple of papers in college thanks to him. I had a wretched time getting my mind around his unique brand of smartypantsdom.
I remember when I finally got my head around the idea of conceptual art (heh). I had to come to terms with Duchamp's first conceptual work, a urinal. I felt too full of myself for having grasped something so foreign to my personal take on all things artistical. It was a nifty moment of mind expansion. I don't claim to understand what all goes on artwise or otherwise as a good deal of my time is preoccupied in defending myself from a viciously perky alter ego attempting to knock me off every other ten minutes - but I'm glad I got a handle on Marcel and his brand of mischief - he's swell.
A nice collection of thoughts on M. Duchamp: click here
This site is in French, but you can see a picture of Rrose: click here
Justice.
There we were, strolling through your basic asphalt covered parking lot in a nearby town. We'd just exited a store and were heading in the general direction of our car. We were preoccupied, distracted even, by the latest life itch to cross our spectrum (debating the merits of dental tape over dental floss most likely). I looked up to see that we were kinda in the middle of a lane where a young man in his car was gesticulating at us - making it known that we'd slowed his progress to wherever it was that he was headed. He sneered - while never once making eye contact. I could understand annoyance, he's a young American male, an important person in his speedy little car - but my understanding ends at sneering.
The silent exchange was over in a matter of seconds, but ill will had been generated. If we're not in the mood to laugh such encounters off, I'll gripe for a few minutes and Ume will curse hemorhoids on such unpleasant characters. We were getting wound up to do just that when we saw the guy pull into a handicapped parking space. This was too perfect, not only was he a self-important little pissant in a sporty car, he was a total jerk to boot. He pulled a couple of racks from the back of his car and strutted into the store he'd parked in front of.
Ume and I shook our heads - we don't understand this kind of person. True, as nasty personages go, this scores pretty low on the evil meter - there's worse out there - we know that. But that didn't in any way hamper the gloating smiles that crossed our faces when the parking cop walked over and started making out the ticket for the guy's car! HA! Justice. The parking ticket for occupying a handicapped space when you don't have a handicapped plate is no small fine, it's a whopper.
Never a good idea to interrupt our musings on dental tape. Petty cosmic revenges are sure to follow.
Thanks to the reader who pointed me in the direction of the Orion site. I thought this image summed up the overwhelmed feeling I tend to get - mediawise: click here
archy and mehitabel is an old favorite of mine. Even as a kid I identified with archy. He's a negative little cockroach who, in a former life, had been a "verse libre poet". In his transmigrated state he jumps about on a typewriter sending his less than cheerful point of view to the world. His poetry concerns the common folk of his domain, rats centipedes, spiders, but most of all mehitabel the alley cat. Here's a bit of archy from the compilation of Don Marquis' archy and mehitabel. (There are no capitals because, as a cockroach, archy found it too bothersome to work the shift key)
iii
the song of mehitabel
this is the the song of mehitabel
mehitabel the alley cat
as i wrote you before boss
mehitabel is a believer
in the pythagorean
theory of transmigration
of the soul and she claims
that formerly her spirit
was incarnated in the body
of cleopatra
that was a long time ago
and one must not be
surprised if mehitabel
has forgotten some of her
more regal manners
i have had my ups and downs
but wotthehell wotthehell
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
but wotthehell wotthehell
i wake the world from sleep
as i caper and sing and leap
when i sing my wild free tune
wotthehell wotthehell
under the blear eyed moon
i am pelted with cast off shoon
but wotthehell wotthehell
do you think that i would change
my present freedom to range
for a castle or moated grange
wotthehell wotthehell
cage me and i d go frantic
my life is so romantic
capricious and corybantic
and i m toujours gai toujours gai
i know that i am bound
for a journey down the sound
in the midst of a refuse mound
but wotthehell wotthehell
oh i should worry and fret
death and i will couquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai
i once was an innocent kit
wotthehell wotthehell
with a ribbon my neck to fit
and bells tied onto it
o wotthehell wotthehell
but a maltese cat came by
with a come hither look in his eye
and a song that soared to the sky
and wotthehell wotthehell
and i followed adown the street
the pad of his rythmical feet
o permit me again to repeat
wotthehell wotthehell
my youth i shall never forget
but there s nothing i really regret
wotthehell wotthehell
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai
the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell
and i end with my favorite motto
toujours gai toujours gai
boss sometimes i think
that our friend mehitabel
is a trifle too gay
I've had that underwater feeling for a couple of days. Not an "under the weather" feeling - that's different. This is a feeling that the introverts among you will probably be familiar with - that feeling that you get when you have to talk to someone and it seems that you have to travel to the surface from somewhere deep inside yourself to address them.
You know, that pause that's there when someone talks to you or asks a question - you shake your head or clear your throat and answer them: "Uh... plastic, I guess." Then of course, the bagger at the local supermarket gives you a look like you must be on something less stimulating than the stuff he's on because every time he asks you this question it seems like you actually think about the answer. But you're not thinking - your conscious mind is surfacing from that depth that it plunges to from time to time. It takes a moment. An extra beat - not one that people in this part of the country are used to waiting through for a reply.
Though sometimes jarring, surfacing is key. Even metaphorical underwater states aren't healthy for prolonged amounts of time. For years I had this memory of being trapped beneath the ice of a lake near where I grew up. I couldn't remember how I'd fallen in, but it was a clear memory of looking up at the bright ice and not being able to see the hole I'd fallen through, I had the panic inducing feeling of running out of air. I survived this episode, apparently...
Somewhere in my teens my sister told me about the day she fell through the ice on that lake as a kid. "Wasn't that me?" I asked. She described what happened - I had no doubt that it wasn't me, that I hadn't even been there, but knew that I'd somehow coopted her memory. I've heard since then that this is fairly common between siblings. I have a few of these suspect memories. I wonder how much of my life my siblings are walking around with?
While I'm on the underwater kick, check this site out - groovin' photos:
click here
This image in particular: click here
Remember the photo of Brandy Chastain wearing cleats and hugging a soccer ball in her birthday suit? This is the photographer who took that image.
