Raising Arizona chase scene

This is one of my all-time favorite scenes in any movie. I laugh non-stop throughout. I don't know why it gets to me. I think it's a combination of Cage's cartoon character expressions and the silly stuff that happens. Every time he slings his head with those pantyhose flying around, I can't stop snickering. By the time the teenage clerk comes out with that 44, I'm hysterical. The Cohen brothers have a flawless sense of characterization and the ridiculous that I appreciate.

Pandora

 written today

Pandora

~ for L.

They formed you with divine hands

gave you that deceitful-lovely box

gently patted you on the shoulder

and set you on the wide way –

There was no way to foresee

it was all going to go

so horribly wrong

Nothing to tell you

the same hands

that gently smoothed the last errant curls

loaded these hellish horrors

inside such delicate elegance

and smiled as you left

the home of the gods

After the maelstrom

after the swirling darkness is over

after the thousand tears and stings

Get up.

No matter what else

the capricious fates may have intended

your name still means

All Gifts

All Good Things

Lift up that head

even though it hurts

even though your wounds

are fresh and raw

Dare to go back to that betrayer-box

look inside

Even in this darkened world

that tiny fragment cannot be extinguished

There at the bottom it sings

unconquerable

waiting for you

Reach down your hand

wrap those tired cold fingers

around that healing star

and claim Hope

as your own.

All Things Come Full Circle

For the first time since I left here more than ten years ago, I packed my bags, ate lunch with my family, told them bye, and drove north into the fading sunlight of an autumn afternoon to Starkville and Mississippi State University.  It was more than a little surreal.  As things will do, some things have changed.  Roads have broadened, rerouted, become four-laned instead of the winding, narrow, two-lane log-truck traps I remembered so well.  Most things, though, remain constants.  Noxapater is still a tiny speed-trap dot forcing everybody to slow down to 25 mph briefly.

As I drove, it was a little odd knowing that at the end of this trip, there was no dorm, no tidy Cotton District apartment waiting.  The shadow of the past, of that life where I used to belong here, was silently insisting that there was homework to do, that there were groceries to be bought, when I arrived.  Instead, there's a hotel room with two double queen beds, a fairly posh little living room area, and a two-day, grown-up job writing curriculum.

Tomorrow I'm planning to go walk around campus and see what's changed there.  I'm sure these moments of deja vu will continue, but I want to take my camera and get some shots of what of MSU that I knew remains.  Already all the dorms I lived in except for the apartments are gone.  Probably that's as it should be, too, but it will interesting to see what is still here and what has gone the way of my homework and midnight trips to Wal-Mart.

Blues Brothers

I watched The Blues Brothers in a 30th Anniversary celebration last night at our local theater.  Even though I must have seen that movie countless times on DVD and TV, I never get tired of it.  It's a perfect combination of slapstick, wit, and music.  I don't know what part of it appeals to me most.

Like everybody does who likes it, I have favorite lines.  The classic "We're on a mission from God" shows up with me and my friends, and I also love "Our Blessed Lady of Acceleration, don't fail us now!"  One day, if I ever get better with my figural ceramics, I have a piece in my head that is going to be a statue of Our Blessed Lady of Acceleration.  It's going to be a multi-media piece.  There are others, too, some of them spectacularly impolite. It's hilarious.

Belushi and Aykroyd are a perfect match.   The wild mania of Belushi and the straight man of Aykroyd team so neither overwhelms the other.  Both were also wise enough to let the true stars of the show, the musicians, shine, too, because The Blues Brothers is as much a movie about the roots of American music as it is anything else.

I've always thought of it as a love letter to the evolution of America's music.  It starts with gospel, touches country, Motown, pure blues, Chicago blues, and ends with rock.  Other styles are present, too, but those great touchstones of American music are present there.  Knowing that Aykroyd especially is such an aficionado of music, particularly blues, makes me think this film must have been special.  I think I've read somewhere that when The Blues Brothers was made, most of the artists who were in it were actually in sort of a decline in their musical careers at the time, and the movie revived interest in them.  It's hard to believe that anybody could ever forget John Lee Hooker, Aretha, or Ray Charles, but if that is true, then it's just another thing about this movie that I love.

Funny, musical, and loaded with everybody in the world from Carrie Fisher and Frank Oz to Stephen Spielberg and Pee Wee Herman, The Blues Brothers is always going to be one of my favorites.  I'm thinking of watching it again tonight, in fact, just to see some of my favorite scenes again since I was so very tired at the end of a long school day yesterday.  After all, here at home, I can sing along with my favorite musical numbers and clap when the Illinois Nazis get theirs at the end....

Not Paying Enough Attention

I found out recently that a friend of mine is in trouble.  It was one of those face/palm moments.  Once I knew it, I could see the warning signs in the past few months flashing out at me like they were limned in neon, and I wanted to pound my head on the nearest hard, flat surface for being an oblivious idiot.  How is it that this friend was going through this thing, and I didn't know it?

I can make excuses.  I can tell you that life for me lately has been a delicate highwire act composed of equal parts of hysteria and furious motion.  I could mention that I have, in many ways, created a shell of blindness to enshroud myself so I don't see some of the things that are upsetting me most in my day-to-day world. 

Really, though, I can't feel that there is any excuse.  I don't know that there is a single thing I could have done for my friend or even can do now, but I should at least have seen. The not-seeing, the closing my eyes, is unforgivable.  I've got my eyes squeezed so tightly shut in self-defense that I'm missing important things.  It's got to change.

Fortune

I always keep the fortunes from the fortune cookies when I go out to a restaurant that has them.  I keep them in a pretty little paper box in a desk in my bedroom.  I realized today when I was taking a handful of them out of my wallet to drop in just how many of them have accumulated.  They differ in color, size, font.  Some have silly little expressions on them.  One or two have a little smiley face along with their dollop of wisdom.  Most give you lucky numbers and teach you a word of Chinese.  Today's offered that nangua means "pumpkin."

I'm not exactly sure when I started tucking these little slips of paper into my purse instead of leaving them along with the debris of the meal on the table, just another thing to be cleared away after I leave.  There is something charming about them that made me want to take them along.  Maybe it that they generally offer something positive (although I have had one or two weird ones that are ambiguous).  Maybe it's the whimsy of the thing, the kitsch of them.  I am, after all, a sucker for kitsch.

I think more than either of those things, though, it's the fact that these become artifacts of moments for me.  I always go to Chinese restaurants with my family or my friends, so we're opening the cookies together, laughing over the advice inside, trying to pronounce the words, trying to figure out if the "magic cookies" have truly figured us out or not.  They are mementos of happy times, and although as I look at this little box now, I cannot remember when exactly I split open that tan confection that told me "If the world seems cold, kindle a fire to warm it," or "You'll have all sorts of chances to make a happy encounter," I know it must have been preceded by pleasant conversation and togetherness.

Someday, I will think of some kind of craft project or something to use these in an interesting way.  Until then, I will just keep adding them to their little box periodically and stirring them with my finger and remembering.  It's just another eccentricity, I suppose.  However, if it hurts no one and makes me happy, where is the harm?

Johannes Cabal

"...but the day was otherwise as good as any day without a large-calibre handgun can reasonably be..."  ~ Johannes Cabal the Detective by Jonathan L. Howard

Yesterday, I finished the second Johannes Cabal book, Johannes Cabal the Detective.  I am in love with this series and its hero.  The writing seems to be getting better with each installment, and it is witty and fun.  It takes place in an alternate-history sort of world, what is currently being classified as "steampunk," a title I'm not all that fond of, but it's done so well that it's not intrusive with its combination of gadgets and magic as that genre can sometimes be.

Johannes himself is a modern-day Faustus, one of my all-time favorite archetypes in literature, and his story is slowly being unfolded for the reader in each volume.  He is a profoundly motivated person who is seeking to do what he thinks is the highest good but who finds himself doing truly heinous things in the process.  While that sounds very angsty, and at times it can get there, it is all done with flair and a great deal of humor that keeps it from being oppressive.

I also spot elements of influence from great sources I love.  I see Frankenstein there so clearly, the great Gothics written large.  In fact, since I have just been teaching Gothic literature and am just about to teach Frankenstein again this year, maybe I was more aware of that genre than I usually would be, but I saw so many parallels between Johannes and his motivations and Victor. 

Johannes also reminds me just the tiniest bit of another magic user I'm fond of, Harry Dresden, except Cabal has none of Dresden's qualms about the use of deadly force. He is in every way just as deadly.  I love the scenes of conflict between him and the Devil in the first book.  Even funnier are his methods of dealing with those who tick him off.  Let's just say you don't want to wind up on his list....

I can't wait for the next one.  It's so nice to have a new author to enjoy.  I don't know when the next one will come out since I think Johannes Cabal the Detective just came out this year, but one hopes Mr. Howard is a quick writer....  I don't think Cabal will stand for anything less, somehow.

What Were You Thinking?

Much in the news recently was Terry Jones whose church was going to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 with a mass burning of the Koran.  When I first heard of this, I was, as I seem so often to be when I hear of horrifying things, in my car on my way to work. 

My first thought was disbelief.  How can anybody believe this kind of behavior solves anything anymore?  How can anybody believe that this sort of thing is what God wants his people to be doing?  I read up on the situation a little, and Jones claims it's all an attempt to get the NY imam in charge of opening an Islamic center near Ground Zero to talk to him.  

I wonder if it ever occurred to him that this behavior might be counterproductive.  The Koran is venerated in Islam, and the proper treatment of it is tantamount.  Why would any Muslim even want to come to talk to someone who would threaten to debase it?  It would be like someone crawling up on the altar of Jones's church and using the bathroom there.

God never called for Christians to go ye therefore and be offensive to everybody around them.  He never told his people to walk out into the peoples of the world and slap them in the face rudely, act superior, and deliberately do things that were acts of aggression and provocation.  He told us to be mirrors of himself, and since God is Love, I think actions like Jones which are all about threat and hatred are missing the mark.  Wars start because of actions like his. Lives are lost because of actions like this.  Hate grows because of actions like this.  People go further away from God because of actions like this. 

Jones backed off.  He got his fifteen minutes of media attention, which, probably, was all he was ever after to begin with.  I just can't help but feel, however, that harm was done just by the suggestion.  As a nation, as a world, as a humanity, we're now just a little further apart that we were before.  I'm sure it grieves the heart of God.

No! Child Left Behind

As I drove home today, I was turning over a puzzle that I can't solve:  how to help some of my lowest-performing students reach the levels demanded of them by standardized testing mandated by state and federal law.  These students work, for the most part, very diligently, but due to circumstances beyond their control, they may never make it to what the state and the fed in their almighty wisdom have said is necessary to get that most basic of tools needed to have any sort of success in life, a high school diploma. 

I'm tired and I'm confused.  What chance have these kids got?  I stood beside one as she took her test today, and she was working so hard, so very, very hard, giving me everything she had.  I don't know that it's going to be enough.  What am I going to do?  How am I going to bridge that gap?  I can adapt, accommodate, adjust, and basically rewrite everything I do; I can bend myself into a teacher pretzel, but I don't have magic.  I'm so afraid that I'm not going to be anything like enough when it all is said and done.  I'm afraid that I'm going to fail them.

It's a terrible feeling.  My day is split between student who will go on to be the proverbial doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs, who will blaze brilliant swaths through their chosen fields and trades, and then these little lost ones who are slowly slipping through the cracks of society.  Why can't there be a place for all of them to be okay?

Misplaced Saint

I forgot my St. Cecelia necklace this morning.  I ran out in my usual tizzy, and somehow, something happened to disrupt my routine of putting on accessories, and it didn't get slipped around my neck.  I didn't realize it until I reached up to fiddle with it as I habitually do.  I sort of felt around on my neck for it, and I immediately realized it was not where it was supposed to be.  It's amazing how much something like that, the absence of one tiny thing you're used to having on, can be a major difference in a day.

All day long, I felt as though something was off, and I must have reached for the chain and charm a hundred times.  I use the necklace as a worry stone, something to occupy my fingers with when I'm thinking or working.  As I've also blogged elsewhere, I also love the general symbolism of it.  I felt a little bereft without it.  Tomorrow, I'll be more careful.  I have enough other things keeping me off-balance without running out without my saints.

Prairie Arts

My best friend and I went to West Point Saturday for the annual Prairie Arts Festival.  We went two years ago, and intended to go last year, but a variety of things prevented us.  Prairie Arts sort of takes over West Point and fills that small town to the brim with artists, crafts people, and musicians every year for Labor Day weekend.  There are some truly remarkable things there.  In addition to the sales, they also have a competition, so the people who come bring their very best crafts to enter.  I saw some pottery and some glass that was exceptional.

Both my friend and I wanted to see specific artists that we'd seen before, and we hoped they'd be there.  We got up early and drove up.  The weather was gorgeous. The last time we went, it was horribly hot, but Saturday was cool with a breeze.

The artists I really wanted to see were a couple from Alabama.  They do face jugs and other pottery pieces.  I had gotten a fantastic piece from them two years ago when I was there, and I had been thinking about their face jugs for quite some time.  Fortunately, they were back, and I got a two-sided face jug.  He has wonderful personality.  The expressions on both sides are incredibly detailed.

I want to use it as a model to try to see if I can figure out how to make face jugs of my own.  I like the combination of vessel and sculpture in them.  They remind me of the ogre tiles of Japan a little with their grimacing faces and individuality.  They're ugly and fun.  I don't know if I can get to a point of competency with my pottery where I can make them, but I'm sure as heck going to try.

The whole day was great.  Being with my friend for a whole day was sort of an escape from our normal routines for both of us.  The only part we didn't get to do that we'd planned was a trip through MSU.  We tried, but State had a home game, and we got caught up in the massive herd of people trying to get into the stadium.  We just flowed through the campus with the river of other vehicles until I could find an out door that wasn't blocked, and then we got the heck out.  Maybe we can go back up there on a day when there is no home game.

I'd like to go back to West Point, too, on a day when there is nothing else going on.  It looked like a good town to take some photos in.  There were some lovely old signs that had been well-kept and so forth.  West Point has some nice junktique shops, too, so a day trip up there for MSU and photography might be in order soon.  After all, I can end it with a meal at Little Dooey's, and that's no small enticement.

I hope going to this festival is really going to turn into an annual thing.   It's so nice to spend time with my friend.

The Hand of Fate

It's amazing to me how just when the last point of unbearable horribleness is reached that something comes to give some relief.  The Hand of Fate swept in today and shoved me into a place where there was some surcease from the sorrow and panic that was destroying me.  I don't know if it's going to last, but at least for the moment, I feel better.  I feel like there are people around me who care.  I didn't know there were so many people who did.  It is the best sort of surprise, really.  And even if the floor falls out from under me again, I will have that to hold onto if it does.  I'm tired, I'm exhausted, and I'm going to bed now.  Tomorrow will be, hopefully, the start of a brand-new day.