restingmotion

Bad Boys, Comics, Good Suits, Triumph and Happy Endings: Some Escapist Reading

I've been indulging in a bit of light reading of late.  It started while the flooring was being installed, I needed a rather mindless escape from the hammering and sawing and general disruption, when I read James Patterson's The Postcard Killers.  I know a lot of people who love Patterson but truthfully I have never really become a fan.  The plots are predictable and I feel no connection with his characters.  In fact, to my mind, the best Patterson books are the ones that move quickly from the get-go and keep moving without any attempt at character development.   As this perfectly describes The Postcard Killers, I was perfectly happy reading it.  It caught my interest and there was enough going on that I didn't  really waste any time fretting over the plot or the lack of characterization;  I just wanted to know what happens next.  In short it was perfect escapist reading and just the thing for those times when you just want to pass the time and escape from reality and thought for a while.

 

Maggie Kozel's eloquent memoir, The Color of Atmosphere, was a much better book although it too was a very quick read. Dr. Kozel's accounting of how she found her calling in medicine, and her journey through medical school, residency, and into practice as a pediatrician, first in the military and later in private practice is poignant and at times heart-rending.  It is also a not too subtle indictment of many of the problems with the health care system in this country.  In my case Dr. Kozel was "preaching to the choir" because I already agreed with her on most issues.  But her story touched my heart and forced me to think more clearly.   The book is not fiction and yet it reads like a good story with the requisite happy ending, while still managing to make you think along the way.  It deserves to be widely read.

 

Then, still feeling rather mentally unsettled, I opted for more mindless fiction. I honestly cannot say that Stuart Woods is a better writer than James Patterson, but I enjoy his books more.  Or perhaps I just enjoy the Stone Barrington novels.  They are easy enjoyable reads and Lucid Intervals was no exception.  The books are not complex or heavy on plot.  There tend to be a lot of dangling ends in the story, but they move quickly and are not particularly violent.  I will also admit that I just like the character of Stone Barrington, not because I would necessarily like him in real life, but because he appreciates a good suit and understands the details of of fit and tailoring and I have a bit of a weakness for a man who likes a good suit and a good bourbon.  Even though I certainly understand the appeal of a man who can be both a little polished and rough around the edges, and I am certainly no prude, the women in the novel continue to be mostly vehicles for sex, with very little development rather than their availability to jump into bed and although the sex scenes in this book are not graphic they seem to be increasingly a substitute for plot.  Unfortunately the main character, like the book, has slipped into a kind of mid-life hollowness where he is still coasting by on looks and his delusions and pretensions, unaware that the promise of his youth has slipped away and failed to gain substance.  I have a couple more of these books.  They will be perfectly good for riding on the exercise bike, which I desperately need to resume, and where I prefer mindless entertainment that merely keeps me pedaling and turning the pages.

 

Lastly I read Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which was in a class far above those previous reads.  Of course Chabon writes beautiful sentences.  Even better he writes beautiful sentences that do not detract from the joy and magic of his stories.  The book perfectly encapsulates its own little world and the reader feels and experiences all of it, words, thoughts, smells, desires.  It is really perfect, and perfectly engaging. Joe and Sam are marvelously drawn, complex characters and Chabon manages to write a book about the holocaust, loss, survival, and love without becoming at all trite or sentimental. In fact this novel, set in the world of pulp fiction and comic book heroes, has all the characteristics of the pulps:  incredible luck and happenstance, adventure, magic, nick-of-time rescues and characters saved from the brink of disaster.  And yet the book moves beyond these conventions, making use of them to tackle serious subjects and complex human issues.  It is literature thinly veiled as escapism, admitting that escapism is often exactly what we need to get through the tragedy of life.

 

Of course all these books end well.  People move on with their lives, they find happiness or at least the road to happiness.  This is exactly what escapism is all about, the happy endings, the magical unreality and simplicity, the hope that everything will be alright in the end if we just do the right thing.  This is  what comic books provided, as did movies in the golden age of Hollywood.  

 

But movies have become darker and happy endings, when they occur are hard won.  Sex and Violence more pervasive in escapist fiction, although the good guys still tend to come out ahead.  Perhaps the resurgence of animated films is the modern answer to the pulps.  But that is another post.

The Essence of Style

In this weekend's WSJ magazine, there is a article about Bernard-Henri Lévy.  The following quote has stuck in my mind, wending its way through my mental circuitry, creating a bit of an inner stir:

Fashion is a language, and what is interesting about fashion today is that there is no longer fashion. That is, there is an appropriation of fashion by people in the street. There was a time when you saw a woman who was a high-fashion model, who was a caricature, a cartoon of real life. But now people are more free with their fashion. The most interesting people make their own fashion out of what designers offer them. Women on the street have become hackers of the fashion world. They break the code; they undo and redo. It is the democratization of fashion today that interests me.

Fashion communicates a relationship to the world, to one's body. What is the reply to the old philosophical inquiry between soul and body: Are they at war? Are they in harmony? Are they friends or enemies? There are moments in life, in the day, where the two are at war, moments where they are in harmony, days when you feel at war with your body, and days your body is your friend. Fashion says that. Style says that.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704364004576132202535791500.html#ixzz1FAVcPI8k

 

Levy really manages to capture the essence of much of what I have been thinking about fashion and style of late, and condense it far more eloquently than I could.   

First Look at Milan Fall 2011

Gucci

Color is the first thing that caught my eye when I started at the photos from the fall fashion shows in Milan was the color.  More specifically, the exuberance of color and the layering of colors and textures at Gucci and Alberta Ferretti.

 

The clothes are lovely at both houses.  Gucci showed fabulous tailoring and clothes that are eminently wearable and do not of course have to be layered in a carnival of color, but it is the color itself and the sophistication of the way the colors are combined that has really stuck in my mind.  They are not colors for the shy, but they are not at all carnivalesque either.  The combinations are brash and sophisticated and luxurious, exactly what I, at least, want in fall and winter wear.

 

Of course it is possible that I am drawn to these colors precisely because it is still February and I am surrounded by the absence of color as winter continues to drag on.   Color itself speaks of luxury beyond the luxuriousness of the fabrics: silks, wools, and leathers. The ability to wear color is itself a luxury.  At least that is how I see it now:  In our industrial gray world, color stands out

 

As you can see,Alberta Ferretti's colors are also gorgeous, perhaps a few are a little more subtle than at Gucci, but no less gorgeous.  Perhaps the cuts are not as classically tailored, not as timeless, but no less wearable.  On the other hand, I am increasingly convinced that nothing is timeless in life, and for those of us who love color, but also worry about looking like an escapee from the circus tent, this may be our season, a season of sophisticated color choices ripe for the picking.

 

 

Color me Gluten-Free

When I first found out I had celiac I never really planned on keeping an entirely gluten-free kitchen.  G still ate bread and bagels and I managed to maintain some kind of separation of foods, at least for a while.  As dementia slowly took up residence in our lives however, confusion and contamination became constant issues.   So even though I hate fanaticism as much as I hate wasted food, I ended up with a gluten free kitchen.  I had my doubts at times, especially when family was visiting, but gradually I insisted on strict rules.

 

Until I didn't.  It didn't work with having other people in the house helping George.  It was difficult to deny someone the ability to eat their own food, and an environment of suspicion is never good in a kitchen or a house.  

 

I was in fact ready intellectually and emotionally before I managed to have a full structure set up for different foods.  I realized that part of my own insistence that wheat and its ilk not enter the house was a desperate fight for control over something.  I couldn't control dementia.  I couldn't control most of what was happening in my life.  I could control what food went into my kitchen.

 

Until I couldn't.  Surprisingly, I found I didn't mind. 

 

Some simple changes were made.  Some were easy things like squeeze bottles for mustard and mayonnaise.  I deliberately chose different toasters, in different colors to help distinguish them, but just in case someone forgot, I also labeled everything.  

 

Although I like clean lines, I dislike being sick even more.  Blue painter's tape is a godsend.  Everything can be labeled.

 

After the plastic utensils were used in hot pans with pasta and gluten-containing sauces, I set up separate sets, again labeling everything with blue tape.  I suppose the blue tape distracts somewhat from the lovely sleek stainless containers (these are wine coolers, which were half the price of the lovely stainless canisters I originally coveted) but they are safer too.  No one has to wrack their brain trying to remember where something goes or what they can use.  

 

After pasta was drained in my fine mesh strainers I have new colanders and cutting boards as well, the gluten-free ones all clearly labeled "Mardel Only Do Not Use" -- clear and to the point. Most other things are glass or ceramic or metal and can be easily washed.  With hard materials there is no risk of stray gluten being burnt into the plastic or caught in little tiny holes or cuts that can't be easily cleaned.  

 

So far it has been a success, one week free and clear and I'm hoping for more.

My Eye and I

I went to the opthamologist today.  As expected my eyes were dilated and not surprisingly, even with two sets of dark glasses, by the time I spent 45 minutes driving home in the bright sunlight I had a headache and had to retire to a darkened room.

 

This week is going so well.  Yesterday I was depressed because I finally have the floors I've always wanted, and although that prospect should and does make me happy, it also made me sad because I felt there was nothing nearly as exciting to look forward to in the immediate future.

 

Not that I'm really complaining, I think I just needed a bit of self-indulgent wallowing.  Increasingly I think we all need these moments or days when we embrace the pain and despair that is also part of human existence.  Wallowing allows us to take a peek inside ourselves to see what really matters.  Or perhaps we just need to allow ourselves a day of rest.  Too much business is probably bad for the self in its purest sense.

 

Anyway, as I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling, both cats at my side,  I started wondering about  my eyes.  There is nothing going on.  My eyes are good, I just need new glasses, which I already knew.  I can't read a knitting chart which is why I am basically knitting stockinette right now.  In fact I have trouble reading at all, which doesn't seem to make me want to read any less, it just means that I get a lot of headaches from the effort of trying to read things I can't see.  

 

But that isn't really what I was thinking about.   I was thinking about eye-dominance and vision.  Eventually this made me get off the bed and squint at the bright light of my computer screen.  I wanted to know why I am strongly left eye dominant if my right eye is my stronger, less myopic, eye.

 

I did learn a few things:

Eye dominance and handedness are unrelated.

More people are right-eye dominant than are left-eye dominant.

Of those people whose nearsightedness is not evenly distributed between their eyes (anisometropia), the more myopic eye is usually the dominant eye.  (Raise hand here).

 

I learned lots of other cool things like how the fact that my eyes are so anisometropic might be a contributing factor in why I also have no depth perception.  And that although people have said I have "lazy eye", I do not in fact have amblyopia, but I do have a strong tendency for that right eye to wander a bit, especially when I am tired.

 

But I didn't find out why.  Is there some advantage to more focused on that which is close at hand rather than that which is further away?  Well, is there and survival advantage as opposed to say the advantage it confers for sewing, knitting, and reading which are probably not highly necessary skills in terms of basic survival?  And is there a connection between the focus of the eye on the world immediately around the person and the internal focus on the I?  Would I be more outwardly focused if my dominant eye were more outwardly focused? It seems there is more to ponder

 

A Carnival Beneath My Feet

The floors are finished and they are everything I had hoped they would be.  Perhaps everything I feared too, as I worried that they may be too bright, and there are moments, usually brief, when they shock my eye.  But overall, I am happier than I anticipated being, and I am thrilled with they way the colors in the floor marry all the disparate elements in the three rooms creating a much more harmonious whole, a much brighter, more harmonious whole.

 

Now just to get the furniture back, the bookcases rebuilt and all the little details settled.

 

Sunday in the City

Sunday I took the train down to NYC to meet K-Line.  We were supposed to meet at CraftBar at 12:15 but I was early.  So I wandered.  I didn't have to wander far.  Two blocks up Broadway I stumbled into WolfHome in their new store.   I walked out with several samples, including one which is destined to be my new duvet cover.  

 

Then it was on to lunch with K-Line who proved to be as lovely, charming, bubbly  and delightful as I imagined.  We dined and chatted, walked and talked, drank excellent Bloody Marys (actually the Leatherface Mary from CraftBar) and genuinely terrible coffee.  We discussed glaring lack of good coffee in NY.  I know there are isolated outposts of fine brew, but generally, it is a city where even four star restaurants seem to serve coffee that borders on mediocre.

 

But back to my day of walking and talking.  We ended up at the Empire Hotel where there was to be a small blogger meet-up and where I was lucky enough to meet Wendy Brandes, she who designed my swear rings and many more elegant pieces of jewelry.  I had a fabulous time talking to Wendy who is just gorgeous, bright, charming, accomplished and very interesting.  In fact I neglected to mingle, hogging Wendy's attentions until I had to run back to Grand Central Terminal before my coach turned back into a pumpkin.

 

 

I got to Grand Central in time to see part of the Moncler Flash Mob before I had to push my way out of the crowd and onto my train. This video captures part of it, it seemed like the perfect way to end a fabulous day. 

My Valentine

My sweetie presented me with this valentine this morning.

He apparently tried to call a florist but couldn't make the phone work.  He wanted to paint something but his easel and paints are put away because the flooring contractors are here this week.  In desperation he drew this last night.

 

I think it is the sweetest valentine I have ever gotten.

 

On other notes, I have a lot I want to share this week, but it is also a really crazy week.  I have a crew of men here installing new floors in my family room, dining room, and kitchen, which is pretty much the central part of my house, the plumbers are supposed to come and repair plumbing problems from last week including replumbing a sink and a water softener, and there was an issue with one of our electrical panels yesterday which resulted in a small explosion, smoke and loss of power to half the house, luckily the half that runs off the emergency generator.  So needless to say this week looks busy and my ability to post may be erratic.

 

 

The Road to Adulthood, An Opera Review

I've been thinking about opera a lot lately.  Well, more exactly, I've been salivating over Materfamilias' wonderful blog posts on behalf of the Vancouver Opera.  Or perhaps I've been wasting my energy on idle wishes such as dreaming of going to New York to see Nixon in China at the Met.  It is an impossibility of course.  My carriage reverts to a pumpkin at 11 PM, which allows me no time for an evening performance and my Saturday is already spoken for. The caregiver situation has not been settled enough that I am comfortable negotiating exceptions nor am I ready to go to the opera and leave my spouse sitting at home. Perhaps there will be another opportunity, but then I missed Nixon twenty-some-odd years ago at BAM as well.  I gave up my forays to BAM upon marriage.  I seem to have survived the loss.

 

Instead I must content myself with recordings and the pleasures of the music alone.  It is not such a dreadful fate but the simple truth is that I much prefer the visual stimulus of seeing an opera as well as hearing it.  The exceptions, the operas I do listen to repeatedly, all seem to be contemporary.  I am not sure if this is because they are sung in English (at least the ones I listen to are in English) and hence easier to follow narrative-wise, or if I personally find modern music easier to follow and understand than more classical forms.  It is a probably a combination of the two. 

 

Currently I have been spending a fair amount of time listening to an opera by Jonathan Dove called Tobias and the Angel.  I don't know anything about the composer.  I came across the opera upon the recommendation of one of those website algorithms that tries to predict things you might like based on past searches.  In this case, I was looking for a recording of Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde,  and when the recommendation appeared on my monitor, I was simply taken by the cover photo and decided to play a few snippets and see what I thought.  

 

Aside from being one act operas based on religious themes, Tobias and Noye have nothing in common although I suspect that the algorithm is not sophisticated enough to make its recommendation on the actual music, but was rather looking at something along the lines of "modern religious opera".  All this reminds me of a period years ago, back in the dark ages before PCs were in common use, when I worked for a computer time sharing company.  Many of our clients were arts organizations, theaters, and regional symphony orchestras, and one of the things we were able to track was not just whether someone purchased tickets for opera or plays or magic shows, but something more along the lines of "attends Adams, Glass, Schoenberg, will attend most opera but avoids Wagner".  We felt this allowed the organization to specifically target groups that might support particular endeavors and would be very helpful in sussing out what kinds of programming might be most successful.  Unfortunately this was the hardest thing to sell and most of our clients were perfectly happy simply classifying their lists along  broad themes, which they were able to easily do even on early PCs.

 

But back to the opera.  I find Tobias and the Angel to be a rather enchanting opera.  The characterizations are clear and beautiful performed and the story is beautifully realized by the performance.   Although I tend to recall the actual apocryphal story of Tobias as a rather somber lesson on suffering the importance of patience, the opera is much more fun and joyous with a rather witty libretto and charming score.  In this performance Tobias is a carefree n'er do well mostly concerned with dancing and having a good time and his journey with the angel represents his journey to adulthood and learning to see and listen to the world and to adjust priorities and expectations so that he can eventually find love and be reunited with his family.  Just as in the story, Tobias overcomes the all the normal obstacles to growing up -- wrestling with and defeating a giant fish, saving his wife from her demon lover,  collecting and protecting his families inheritance, and eventually healing his fathers blindness after sparrows have pooped in his eyes.  

 

The music is vibrant and, for the most part, incredibly approachable and evocatively joyous moving from a hint of Bartok in the begging to an infectious mix of bright choral music, Jewish fold melodies, religious themes and a bit of Fiddler on the Roof thrown in for good measure. There are enchanting choruses of singing trees and mountains, the waves of the Tigris river,  and wonderful effects such as the morning wake-up chorus of sparrows, sung by children,  the sonority of the organ-reinforced aria sung by the demon, and Tobias's increasing frustration as he moves from the dismissive "I think I hear nothing" to his increasing frustrations at being unable to grasp the lessons "I hear NOTHING".

 

I find this opera really charming and I am happy to have discovered it.

 

 

 

Two Films

I've been somewhat stressed this week.  No particular reason, just a general uneasiness compounded by feeling mildly under the weather and various small interruption in the routines and plans; it is probably as much me and whatever is going on in my head as it is caused by any external forces or events.  But still it is there.  I go through fits of frenzied activity, hauling things here and there and as a result I feel like big changes are in the wind, until I look at my lists and realize that nothing of any significance has really been accomplished despite all the energy expended.  Then I kind of slump into a period of rest waiting for the next big flurry of activity.

 

In one of these early restful periods I curled up on the sofa with G and watched the oneiric film Inception which was fascinating and intelligent.  I suspect I don't know enough about psychology to really "get" everything I should about this film but it was still a rather compelling psychological romp with a rather unethical leading man who can't keep his own issues, his own shadow projections, out of his work and imposes them on others on or with whom he is supposed to be working.  It wasn't until the very end that I realized that the whole thing might possibly be a dream, a dream of a dream, levels of the psyche and the soul trying to get to the root problem.  Perhaps I am seeing more than was there.  

 

What particularly struck me was the obsessiveness of the score which moved between mild distraction yet with a small undertow of unease to  fear and dread, building tension and creating a sound that would leave this viewer feeling just like she had woken from her own nightmare drenched in sweat.    Particularly memorable was Edith Piaf singing "Je ne regret rien", the pivotal queueing moment, made all the memorable by its repetition and augmentation and the fact that this was a movie revolving around regret.

 

Another movie I could watch again was Inch'Allah Dimanche, and incredibly powerful and raw film about an immigrant woman and her family trying to adjust to a new world with different expectations while still struggling against traditions and loss of the familiar.  Very moving.  Patchy at times.  It did not always flow, well, as if it is told from memory, from having lived it but not yet understood what was happening.  There were times when characters would start to behave one way, and then turn about and behave in the opposite way.  I think this is also reflective of the struggle.  The ending seemed out of context, perhaps too sudden of a change of heart on the part of the husband, although he too had been conflicted throughout the film, acting in violently opposing ways, as if trying to find a path between new old, expectation, responsibility, desire and fear.  The ending sequence has a magical feel too it, and I suppose I feel it is somewhat allegorical and open to interpretation and introspection. A heart-wrenching and thought-provoking film.