The Occasional Critic: Ridicule

I received feedback about Liza, the Occasional Critic, that asked for more of her musings on movies, and so I will hand today's posting over to her. I didn't realize she had seen so many foreign films with subtitles. She usually seems too practical and busy for those, but she assures me that the best ones are worth the additional reading required for the experience.

On the 1996 film Ridicule:

Judith Godreche as Mathilde, a young woman more interested in Science than Marriage

While the cover art of the movie features a half-clothed beauty turning to us with a come-hither gaze, she is not the principal actor. Instead, this film follows the fortunes of a young estate owner, whose land has fallen into marshy pestilence. His servants are falling ill and dying, as is happening to other landowners in the area. As a single man, he is entreated upon and sent to the King's palace of Versailles to plead for a grant to have the area drained and restored to prosperity. The families have taken up a collection to add to his own money to finance his sojourn. His is a heavy burden, to keep his ancestral home and its people from being swallowed up by the bog.

What does any of this mundanity have to do with this vixen staring at us so invitingly? Perhaps she is a symbol of the distractions our uncertain but determined hero encounters, once he begins the ordeal of trying to secure an audience with the King. At this time in the court's history, having a biting and satirical wit was all the rage, as opposed to other times, when piety and waxing religious sentiments were fashionable. He is from neither extreme, being somewhat provincial, and so he needs to be brought up to social speed if he is to save his land. The court at Versailles is, of course, the complete opposite of this nobleman's estate. Everyone and their surroundings are bright, refined, progressive and lightning quick. Fortunately for him, it turns out that he does indeed have the rapier wit or l'esprit that men of this era were expected to display, to prove not only their intelligence but also their rightful earthly place. An aristocrat by divine right shouldn't need to try very hard to be dazzling. Apparently, the dazzle comes pre-ordained from the heavenly realm, even if it illuminates in a diabolical manner.

As a caution, this is a French movie, so there are a few scenes that may rumple our sense of propriety and perhaps cause some mild squeamishness. The first scene depicts an act of revenge upon an elderly man. A spurned courtier urinates on him as he recites an ancient grievance against his pride. The scene isn't necessary to watch in order to understand the story, but it does set the tone for how terribly seriously wit and style were taken in this time. The players of it have no sense of humor, because careers, stations and livelihoods depended upon refining the sport of Ridicule. As one columnist put it, about the times we ourselves now live in: "The World Turns on a Snark."

Continued in Part 2

An Accidental Elegy

A year has gone by since the death of my uncle, and my trek across country to honor him. The beginning of the trip was detailed in my story "Shining Light, Casting Shade" and was part of what inspired me to start blogging. It has taken a while for me to reflect on everything that trip meant to me, and I have nearly composed my thoughts on it, which touch on the always perplexing topics of "Who am I? What is my purpose?" 

I believe that those questions remain perplexing, even as we get closer to their answers, because life changes us. It is dynamic and requires constant course correction. Weathering changes may get easier, and a sense of self may grow, but for all that, I'm not sure that loss ever becomes less painful. No abstractions or words can ever fill in for a person.

Photo by David Kozlowski 2010 via Flickr

My uncle was one of those people who knew himself and his place in life so well, and was also well-known for how he had spent his time on earth. This made it easy to feel his legacy of authenticity as a priceless gift as I said goodbye. I have more thoughts on this that aren't yet settled, but decided to go ahead and share the poem that I read aloud as part of the eulogy, to mark the anniversary.

I wrote this poem several years ago, just to preserve a rich memory for myself, and had no inkling that it would become public in any way. But it showed up for others when it was timely and took its place with its own purpose.

The Benediction

Uncle Red rests one hand 

on the top of the wheel

of his metallic golden pick-up.

He listens to me chirp and chat

or stays silent when I am.

We gaze upon mellowed fields

ready for harvest.

We pass another farmer

behind another windshield.

Red smiles and steers as

he lifts one large arthritic finger,

the rest relaxed in a curve

and bestows a benediction

on his fellows

                                        -- Lizbeth Leigh 2011

© copyright 2015 Gilded Lily Press

Exceptional Excerpts: Louise Erdrich for Valentine's Day

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

                                                                                           -- from The Painted Drum, 2005

Image of the cosmos from From The Quantum Universe: Everything that Can Happen Does Happen
by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw

"Consider the world around you. You are holding a book made of paper, the crushed pulp of a tree...Trees are machines able to take a supply of atoms and molecules, break them down and rearrange them into cooperating colonies composed of many trillions of individual parts... This assembly of particles is able to capture the light that has travelled the 93 million miles from our star, a nuclear furnace the volume of a million earths, and transfer that energy into the heart of cells…"

                                                                                                    -- Astrophysicist Brian Cox

Ol' Man River, Water of a Thousand Faces

Illustration by Erika Yamashiro 2012  

It's a gloomy Tuesday. Here in the Pacific Northwest, fog has settled, along with impossibly bright beads of rain on the leafless fingertips of Japanese maples. I have been having a hard time keeping warm today, getting chills. There is plenty of coffee or hot tea to be had, and the smell of cedar and pine to reinvigorate resolutions.

However, I was in the mood for blues or jazz, and listened to "Ol' Man River", which is about the opposite sort of never-ending day from this one-- sunstruck and hot, swelling with sweat and whiskey and resignation. It's The Sun Also Rises of the South.

Oh, Ray Charles. That carefully controlled voice had me in chills of the inspired kind, as if it had rolled right down every vein of hardship and out to the sea. Sublime.

or go to link on youtube

Janus the Know-It-All

The beginning of the new calendar year is a time when we are encouraged to look back, and to look forward and assess. Most of us are familiar with the image of the Greek god Janus, after which the month is named, who can see both timelines.

Detail of from the ceiling in Waltham Abbey by Steve Day via Flickr 2007

When I see this image, I can't help but think that this two-way sight is limited and should be a symbol for strict behaviorists, who look only to the past in order to see the future. The by-word of this stance would seem to be "but".

"But" is based on past outcomes to predict future outcomes. "But" thinks it knows what has happened and what is going to happen. "But" says, "this has always happened, so that can never happen." Or, conversely, "that has never happened before, so this will always be the same." If the devil is in the details, then the word "but" is what he likes to kick around the most.

"But" is a condition placed upon ideas. Any idea that comes up is smacked down with "yes, but…", and the possibilities of the present are foreclosed. "But" doesn't allow for reframing or creativity. It is a turning point along a road that urges us to turn back before it's too late. It can also be an ending point of an idea, truncated by the fearful head of an angry bull with the stubborn backside of an ass. "But" can be a deception at the least, and at the worst it can kill devotion.

Devotion is the "and" of a beginning, middle and end. "And" can handle more than two. Devotion agrees with the hopes and the disappointments, the accomplishments and the forgotten moments. It lets them all in, and then lets them all go. It keeps this and it lays down that. It doesn't say, I feel, but… I think, but… I want, but… I do, but… It reminds us that our thoughts, feelings and intentions are true and are necessary for full consideration. "And" adds the possibility of "how"? At least it asks, "how could it be?" and lets the question breathe before it is strangled. "And" makes allowances, even if choices and actions are reduced to a few or even one. The selections and eliminations, actions or non-actions can contain all that is true within "and", rather than rejected without room by "but's" peremptory exit sign. While "and" may not bring the same certainty as "but", it does bring a degree of peace.

Statue in marble of Shiva on tirtanaga.com

If I may borrow another image of a god, here is the Hindu god, Shiva, who appears to be in a neverending stance of balancing all of the arms of "and", whether or not they are acted upon. He seems to be part of the spirit of Emily Dickinson, one of the most un-godlike creatures to find the courage to say, now famously, "I dwell in possibility."

Poem LXVII

A DEED knocks first at thought,

And then it knocks at will.

That is the manufacturing spot,

And will at home and well.

It then goes out an act,

Or is entombed so still

That only to the ear of God

Its doom is audible.

Playbill of videotaped production starring Julie Harris in 1976, following 116 performances at the Longacre Theater, New York. Harris won the 1977 Tony Award for Drama. I can only imagine Emily's shock and discomfiture that anyone would have noticed the small details of her very secluded life, turning it into such acclaim.

Christmas Poem: Eco-Scrooge

While awaiting the end of the world in 2012, I wrote this poem after watching Michael Caine in The Muppet Christmas Carol. Our family puts on our own Christmas Eve program in between the supper and the opening of the presents. Afterward, we have that post-celebration "what chaos have we wrought?" feeling, and so I sometimes feel the need to remind ourselves that it really is okay to go a bit overboard when celebration is called for. So this poem was my contribution for that year, after realizing with a laugh that Scrooge was the the first modern prototype of a puritanical environmentalist.

In honor of my brother-in-law, who loves George C. Scott's performance in his favorite version, filmed in Shropshire England, produced by Entertainment Partners Ltd., first airing on CBS in 1984

We used to tease my father-in-law that he would like everyone to start out the new year with fresh packs of underwear and several bottles of vitamins, and that would be a fine Christmas, indeed. But he is quite generous and kind, and not the inspiration for this Scrooge. My reaction, rather, is to a lifetime of reading magazine articles full of tips for better living through simplicity. I'm all for that, but not for every day. I firmly believe that it's healthy to go a bit crazy now and then, so this was written in that spirt.

Eco-Scrooge

To find a bold spokesman for the life of slim pickins

Especially at Christmas, flip through Charles Dickens.

Within his bright Carol lives a small Ebenezer

A principled man with his heart in the freezer

All Christmas delights oppose his green morals

Never at ease, he must rest on his laurels.

He says,

"Heaven awaits those content with themselves

who need never dream fancies of Santa nor elves.

This day should be marked like any man's birth

A toast to his health and a modicum of mirth.

I eschew a fat goose, not just for its prices

A Tofurkey suffices-- no life sacrifices.

Sugary plums create tooth fur and rot

The purpose of canes striped to eat, I know not.

The avoidance of glutens, casein and dairy

Keeps the belly concave and the countenance merry.

The utility of gifts become ghosts of the past

Held fast for a time but not built to last.

In favor of gifts bought with gold for a bargain

The Savior would rather a small footprint of carbon.

A blanket or coat tightly wrapped warms the bones

Coal burns not cleanly, nor frackened large stones.

The poor have the edge for they walk and don't ride

Premium oil's not taken out of their hide.

The sweat of our brows is required by earth...

That which we reduce will measure our worth."

We all know how scrupulous Scrooge was converted--

To the plight of his soul he became plainly alerted.

But if you are consumed this whole Christmas season

With right indignation that stems from good reason

By sights that seem wasteful, greedy, displeasin'

Then reread and recycle this poem meant for teasin'.

© copyright 2012 by Gilded Lily Press 

Grammy nominated The Muppet Christmas Carol, 1997

An enlightened Michael Caine as Scrooge

A still from a live production of A Christmas Carol by the wonderful Gaslight Theater of Tucson, which scared the bahoogas out of the kids in attendance in 1997. Curiously, the televised Jacob Marley did not. Treat yourself to local theater, which provides the most immediate and vivid setting for scenes of these intimate and highly unnerving visitations.

As Good As It Gets for the Holidays

Jack Nicholson got it right. He makes a speech in this movie that I had to copy down. His delivery surpasses the written word and I can hear his voice when I remember "the Noodle Salad" speech that he delivers from the back of a sports car. Why post this now, you ask?

I have some family members who are going through something hellacious. And it isn't just a bad time or a downturn. It's like every conceivable avenue of horrible has laid itself before them to walk. I didn't even go into detail, but someone said to me upon hearing this, "We all have hard lives." And I thought, Uh, no. Hard things come and go for everyone, of course. Much of that is their perception and what feels hard to them. But some people just plain have it hard by any standard. There are situations that are like something out of Dickens, except too modern to be comforting by virtue of being quaint. Whole new levels of hell get invented as mankind progresses. There is nothing wrong with perception in certain cases. Some situations can make our eyes boggle. Rough stuff at the holidays? Well, so is evergreen and holly.

With all of the hardship that can coincide with a lengthy holiday season, I admit I find it perplexing that there are seminars advertised to people for how to "survive" the holidays, whether it comes to their careful eating habits, their family relations, their expectations, their spending or their frenzied activity. There are magazine articles, books, television programs, church sermons, lectures and cartoons that try to teach us how to get the most out of the holidays without everything turning ugly and burned out. That's a lot of time spent explaining to us that we don't have time to pay attention to extraneous activities such as attending seminars that sell tickets about how to survive the holidays.

Thanks, Santie, but the dolly is much nicer and less confusing

The concern with materialism surrounding Christmas started in the late 1800s, so this problem isn't going away anytime soon, apparently. There is so much discussion about it and strategizing and conferring that it now seems like death and taxes. The Holiday Problem will always be with us. That's crazy, but that's how it is. Yet, there could be something good in all of that. The conflicting values get people thinking and communicating about how to do it better, and as bizarre as that is, the Problem is a gift that demonstrates what we are blessed with-- the freedom to even think and talk about it at all. That is not true for everyone in every society.

Back to the "Noodle Salad" speech. It's more appropriate for summer-time festivities. But it came to me now, and feels like a humorous shadow side to all of the twinkling lights, without falling into bleakness. I offer it to all of the people who are feeling bad-- and feeling bad about feeling bad--  as permission to not have a jolly attitude on what can be a really spirit-trying day. The Grinch would not be so fun to watch, if he didn't start out grumpy. (Of course, I don't advocate being unpleasant or jaded to such a bright green, or stealing from others out of spite. Not good form, at the least.)

I give you St. Nicholson, the original Bad Santa:

Jack in Coke

"Some of us have great stories, pretty stories, that take place at lakes, with boats, and friends, and noodle salad-- just no one in this car, but a lot of people. That's their story. Good times, noodle salad. What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you're that pissed that so many others had it good. "

-- from As Good As It Gets, written by Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks