Reasons Why I Love Marvel Films

(an open letter of appreciation to everyone involved with the MCU that will never get read but that I want to write anyway)

I've been on a major Marvel movie kick lately, and I've been thinking about why they are so enjoyable.  Here's what I've come up with so far.

1)  A legitimate effort at fun has been made - Every day, it seems like the news is full of new horrors. People are killing each other for no legitimate reason.  Things are disappearing or being used up. Both America and the world seem to be increasingly divided.  People are just plain hateful to each other based on differences which make no difference.  Our political landscape is filled with a wide array of non-choices we'll have to pick from in a few month.

One of the greatest uses of entertainment is being able to escape all that, even for 120 minutes, and Marvel films do that so well.  The interplay between the characters is always a delight.  The snark between Hawkeye and Quicksilver in Age of Ultron. Tony Stark bating...pick a character.  Anyone.  Everyone, really.  Ant Man in Iron Man's wiring or in Sam's Falcon suit. Ant Man getting punched in the face by Hope.  Happy getting taken down by the Widow.  Spiderman and Bucky.  (Spiderman and everybody.) The entire Bucky/Sam dynamic.  One of my favorite scenes of all time was in Civil War when all those huge, ridiculously powerful guys are crammed into that old Volkswagen and Bucky asks Falcon to move his seat but Sam refuses.  It was short, little compared to the huge drama going on, but it was perfect.  My immediate thought was, "Actual Crap Guys Do."  I still snicker thinking about it.

And don't even get me started on Deadpool.  That entire film is just a gift.

2)  A legitimate effort at more than just escapism has also been made - Because they're not just fluff.  Even when we laugh at the one-liners, we can come away from the films thinking seriously about important concepts.  Loyalty (and who deserves it), purpose, self-definition, coping with situations that we can't control, the need for second chances, who gets to write history and tell stories, the effects of conflict and violence on the macro and micro level, it's all in there.  If you don't believe me, go to Tumblr for about five minutes and look at the way that talking about Marvel films is allowing people to talk about the very same real-world issues they help people escape for a minute, too.

It's a little like Shakespeare to me.  (I'm going somewhere with this.  I promise.  Don't throw things or pass out.)  He used these fabulous characters and riveting stories to present important ideas.  Mercutio is fabulous, so sparkly he almost steals the entire play from that other moody teen, but what we need to learn from him is that his excess destroys him and that friends can get caught up in our drama whether we intend them to or not.  Hamlet, with all his intelligence and sublime skill with language, teaches us it is possible to wait too long and that everybody suffers from it.  Macbeth shows us what happens when ambition subsumes loyalty and character.  And on and on.  This is a whole separate blog post from me, so I'll stop here.  What I'm saying is that the MCU films do a lot of this same kind of thing.  There's something deeper at the core of them that makes them more than blockbuster entertainment.

3) Even though it can't be easy to be an actor for these films, they always look like they like each other and like what they do - I know that being a part of something like the MCU has got to be a big choice for an actor for a lot of reasons.  I assume they are physically rigorous films, especially since many of the actors seem to be doing as many of their own stunts as they can.  They also seem to require long commitments to the franchise.  I don't know if that's a bad thing or not, but I'm assuming it limits what actors are allowed to do otherwise even though most of the MCU films do well at the box office.

I also figure that being a part of something like MCU denies those actors a great deal of the pleasure of being an anonymous person.  I'm just a lowly school teacher, nothing so public and glorified as a film actor, but I actually love to go hang out with my friends who live in other cities just for the sheer pleasure of not having to worry about who I'm going to see that might know me. I'll never forget the time I got one of my ear piercings redone and came to school the next day to be told, "We saw you getting your ears done."  I hadn't seen them, and the entire thing was paranoia-inducing.  Where were they?  Why did they care?  Was I floating around out there in a Snapchat getting my ears repierced?  Jesus....  If it's like that for me as a public school teacher, can you even imagine what it is like to be one of the actors in these films?  Is there anywhere they can enjoy being just them and not Cap or Nat, Bucky or Tony Stark?  I hope so.  Everybody deserves a place to be simply themselves.

The biggest thing I guess I'm talking about is the apparently endless parade of interviews and convention panels.  Because I have a board on Pinterest called Geekery that I add stuff to from Doctor Who, Star Wars, MCU films, etc., I see a bajillion interview pins (again, probably mostly assembled from things from Tumblr, that frothing bastion of fandom, God bless it).  It has to get old.  I wonder how many thousand times they get asked the same questions.  Some of the things I see they've been asked are things I wouldn't be able to respond to well, but they always seem to stay classy (reasons they're actors and I'm not, probably).

In spite of all these things that would be drawbacks to me, they also always look like they like each other and are having a lot of fun. They support each other, defend each other from the really brainless, tactless, and crass questions.  I really hope that's true.  I hope that they look forward to making these movies and mess around on set and during those ridiculous interviews and are basically just happy.  Maybe they don't all hang out at one of the hundred-and-eighty-seven-guys-named-Chris's houses on the weekend, but while they're there, it seems like they're having a blast. It increases the enjoyment of the films to me to think that it's in some way an effort of friends.

4) The female characters kick ass - The women are as interesting and strong as the men and nobody acts like that's anything other than the way it should be.  I have loved Wonder Woman since I was a little girl small enough to fit into Underoos, and I have always, always wanted to see a film in which she was not a cameo or just done wrong.  Marvel doesn't seem to have that issue. They aren't afraid of women who can hold their own. I can't wait to see Hope Pym as the Wasp.  When the Scarlet Witch blasted Vision through the floor in Civil War, I (silently) cheered.  Kick that ass, girl.  I'm still catching up on the Daredevil series, but Electra is so very well done, deadly and complicated.  And yes.  Like the rest of America, I do want an entire Black Widow movie.  She deserves it. (And throw some Red Room Bucky up in that, too.)

5) They are not afraid of brokenness - All of the MCU heroes have big, huge faultlines running right up the middle of them.  Serious things have happened to them, things they couldn't control.  They've made choices the best they could or had all their choices taken from them.  Accidents have happened.  They lost things.  They lost people they loved.  They've lost part or all of themselves.

Bucky is the poster boy for this and one of my very favorite characters in the entire MCU. Each time we see him in the films, he is picking the pieces of his life up and sorting through them. Even though he has been as destroyed as a person can be, with the help of his friends, he is trying to put those pieces back in place. Sebastian Stan does an amazing job showing this process.  Bucky can't be easy to play.

This is what real life does.  All that ugliness I mentioned at the top that surrounds us every day is doing this stuff to us, and we have to pick ourselves up and deal with whatever remains.  I think the MCU heroes do an excellent job of giving hope that it is possible to stand up and keep trying.  Sure, we're never going to be kidnapped by HYDRA, twisted by the Red Room, recreated by the mind stone, but we are going to get knocked down, hurt in hearts, minds, and bodies, and there's a lot to be said for seeing survival of the worst in fiction.  It's important to have stories that show us people can overcome.

6) The villains are complicated - As a million little Loki fangirls will attest, even Marvel's bad guys aren't simple.  Maybe it's the richness of the decades of source material and all the incarnations they've gone through as different writers shaped the characters, but instead of just big powerful evil, there's always a reason. There's always a backstory.  They aren't Iagos; they're Claudiuses. (And I promise, that's my last Shakey reference.) The Marvel villains are the flip side of the hero's brokenness.  They show us what happens when you choose NOT to get up.  When you choose to hold on the the darkness instead of finding some way to purge it or leave it behind.  They are as important in that dynamic as the heroes are.

My favorite of them is almost inevitably Wilson Fisk.  D'Onofrio always amazes me with the depth he brings to anything he plays, and his portrayal of the many, many layers behind Kingpin is one of the main reasons I like Daredevil so much.  The character is absolutely terrifying, utterly ruthless, but as the details of his becoming are revealed, it becomes possible to have compassion for him.  Then he decapitates somebody with a car door, and you are not quite sure how to feel.  That's the way a good villain is supposed to function.

7)  The characters grow and change - Captain America has undergone this beautiful and complex transformation, but all of them evolve.  The Tony Stark we saw in Civil War wasn't the same guy from Iron Man.  All the characters in Daredevil are shifting, and it's impressive to watch.  Even fairly newly-introduced characters like the Scarlet Witch and the Black Panther have changed dramatically from who they were when we first met them.  Others are poised on the edges of that kind of change, especially Bucky, and I hope we get to see it happen. Real life leaves marks.  When characters don't change due to what they encounter, they're allegories, and while allegories are interesting, I don't think we learn as much about survival from them as we do from more dynamic characters.

And I could probably go on, but I'll stop here.  It may seem kind of an odd thing for me to write about, but it's what was on my mind today.  Gotta go watch a movie.

Another Galaxy

I have been waiting for years, literally years, to upgrade my phone.  I got a Galaxy S4 and made the great leap from iPhone to Android, and I loved it.  Loved, loved, loved it.  I could customize it the way I wanted.  It was friendly with my PC.  It was sleek and lovely, and it made me as happy as any electronic device is going to be able to do.

But time went by....

It started being a little insufficient to the demands I was making on it about a year ago, but Samsung was going through its "no SD card" phase.  Since that was the primary feature I had changed operating systems for, I decided to wait it out and see what was coming with the S7.

Rumors abounded.  I saw some really crazy ones, too.  Finally, as we got closer to the release, it looked like the card slot was back and the battery life was a priority.  Despite the fact that my own phone needed charging at least twice a day and I had stripped the apps on it down to the minimum so it had enough memory to function, I kept the hope for better things.

Friday was AT&T's release day, and despite the rain, I took myself to my local shop and had them hook me up with the new model.  Life, at least as far as it can be controlled by a cellphone, was instantly better.  Apps that haven't worked right in awhile because they needed the Marshmallow update my S4 was no longer eligible to receive  were smooth and quick again.  There is no annoying warning constantly forecasting the End of All Things because memory is running out.  I could take pictures of all my dogs every second of my life and not fill up the storage.

To my astonishment, my Asus ZenWatch2 started making noises after it got the update it needed to match the phone.  It is constantly doing things I didn't know it was capable of now.  It is almost like it became a totally different device, too, just from being connected to a different phone.  Good.  All things are good.

I also noticed that it synched faster and sounded better with my car stereo system.  I don't know if that's a product of stronger bluetooth or what, but apparently, it also sounds much better for people who call me, too.

In fact, the only things I don't quite like are incredibly minimal.  I miss a certain sound I used to have for text notifications.  I also wish I could make the screens scroll endlessly like they did on my S4.  Both of these things are almost certainly correctable with a download or a setting I haven't been able to locate yet.  They're both so minimal, too, that they are practically non-existent.

It's nice to have confidence in my device again.  Even though I had the irrational moment of sadness when I turned off the S4 for the last time (a part of me always feels like I should have some kind of formal funeral for things like that when their useful life is done), reliability is a comfort.  The S7, then, isn't a revolutionary change.  It's a stronger, faster, more stable, and better version of everything I loved from my S4.  Good job, Samsung.  Very good job.

Spectre

I saw Spectre last night, and I'm still processing it. Here are my thoughts after only one viewing.

 (spoilers follow, so consider yourself warned)

Bond movies have been a favorite of mine since childhood.  I remember watching marathons of them on early satellite TV with my cousins.  Even the campiest ones, Moonraker and Diamonds are Forever, are highly entertaining in their own way.

Somewhere along the way, though, the people in charge decided to sacrifice the humanity of the character for eye-catching spectacle.  The person of Bond was obscured by sharp suits, fast cars, faster women with lurid names, and semi-witty banter filled with double entendre.  During the films just prior to the Sony reboot, only Timothy Dalton had a few moments where the man who was pulling the trigger was allowed to show at all.  Of course, even those glimmers were then hastily covered up by Wayne Newton and ninjas....

I love the Daniel Craig Bond films.  Especially after I went on a kick and read several of the original Ian Fleming novels last year, I think Craig's Bond is closer to the original feeling of the works than almost any of the others since the first two Connery films.  In Casino Royale, we see the beginning of the transformation that is going to create him, and it is brutal in every possible way.  The scene where Bond has to kill a man to earn his 00 status is harsh, and I think it was the right way to start the series because we see the price of it graphically. Sure, he looks damn fine in a suit and is still suave with the ladies, but for the first time in any of the movies, we see the private moments and understand what is being laid down and given up for him to become 007.

The other films in the series have been a slow build, bringing in characters we know in a way that contextualizes them to a degree missing in the older films.  M (both of them) have flaws and personal agendas, backgrounds that reappear.  Moneypenny is fiesty, and we can finally understand why she feels the way she does about Bond; she's taken out of the 1950s adoring secretary mold.  The new Q is more than a deus-ex-machina, and his personal skills are on display more than an endless supply of improbable gadgets.  Even the villains have been getting more personal and complicated.  Thus, after the end of Skyfall, all of the players are on stage and we were finally ready for Spectre.

I have heard a lot of criticism for Spectre, and I guess I understand some of it after Skyfall, which as far as I am concerned stands as one of the top Bond films ever made, but I think people are missing the point.  Bond evolved during the run of the reboot films.  He suffered and matured.  Increasingly, even though he continued to be flawless in the performance of his duties, he was growing hollow inside.  That's where we meet him in Spectre, the cynical mask over something almost completely dead inside him, the man who is ready to take out one last enemy and die in the process.

Enter Blofeld, one of the archetypal Bond superfiends.  It isn't easy to do him well because he is utterly evil, mostly insane, filled with hatred, and backed by an army loyal to the point of fanaticism.  There's a reason why he's the model for Doctor Evil from Austin Powers.  With a poor portrayal, he's camp, and there are certainly examples of that in the earlier films.

Christopher Walk does one of the best supervillains I've ever seen.  He really sells the broken mind of Blofeld, the fact that everything he is doing seems utterly reasonable and important to him.  There is no camp in this Blofeld.  The scene in which Bond is put into the chair toward the end to be tortured is spare, and unlike so many of the Bond villain traps, it is not overly elaborate or too far beyond the range of what is possible in the real world.  The fact that Bond has past experience with him, that Blofeld has been destroying things in Bond's world for almost all his life, was a perfect touch to me.  It was something Bond knew subconsciously and was chasing, but the perfect symmetry of it, and the childish hate of Blofeld for the "cuckoo" who he perceives as having taken his father's affection made sense.

And I wish we had seen more of the backstory.  I keep feeling like lots of this movie wound up on a cutting room floor somewhere since it clocks in at 2.5 hrs anyway.  I wonder if they will release an extended version of some kind.  I kind of hope they do.  Parts of the film felt like we were only seeing moments that had to be kept.  Lots of the stuff with Blofeld felt that way.

Then there is Madeleine.  She's a little bit young, to be sure, but she's a good match.  I like that she outright rejects Bond at first, reminding him that there are some women who won't just leap into his bed because he's tasty.  I like that she shows him up with the gun on the train, forcing him to revisit his assumptions about what she is capable of.  I like that she is willing to walk away from him because she just can't watch him continue to do something that is destroying him.  She makes him think about what it is he's doing in a way he hadn't allowed himself to do since Casino Royale.  She's a little like what Vesper might have been for him if she hadn't been on Spectre's leash, only even more because of what she saw and experienced with her own father.

To me, then, in Spectre, all the pieces snapped into place.  When the film began, we saw the Bond car as a single piece of chassis up on blocks, destroyed almost beyond the point of reclamation.  It's a not-too-subtle metaphor for Bond himself.  Q has it in restoration, though, and when we end, through all the revelations and the confrontation with Blofeld and he relationship he builds with Madeleine, both Bond and the Aston-Martin have been made whole.

I am sure there will be more Bond films.  It's too profitable a franchise for the modern studios not to try to milk, but I would really be okay if there weren't any more for a long time, or if, Doctor-Who-like, the "Bond" who was in those films was not supposed to be the same man anymore.  I think Craig's Bond has earned his happiness the hard way, and I'd like to think that he gets to enjoy it indefinitely.

Stella Arrives

Tuesday, I got up early, loaded Chewie and Yelldo into the back seat, and headed two hours north to see a rescue pit bull.  She was beautiful and bouncy, but Chewie wanted nothing to do with her.  He was so deeply avoiding her that he turned his body in whichever direction she was not, like some kind of odd large white furry reverse weathervane.

So we loaded back up, drove back home, and I was very sad.

The lady at the rescue suggested that we needed a very young puppy to help Chewie feel less threatened, so after I took a long nap, I got up and started the search again online.  I sent several requests to rescues and shelters all over three states.  I asked for help on FaceBook.  I opened the PetFinder app on my phone.  Then I settled in to wait.

One of the FaceBook contacts responded to say that she had a pit who was about to have a litter of puppies.  If I were willing to wait 8 wks, I could be on the list for one of them.  It seemed like the best bet at the time, so I made my peace with it and went on about my life.

Then I got a message from the Madison ARK.  I had put in an application for Stella, a 5-month-old female, but I wasn't very hopeful after the debacle with the other young female in the north.  Stella had actually been on my radar for a long time; I remembered her adorable ears and her unusual light eyes from the search I had done before Dad's heart surgery this summer.  I talked to the people at the ARK, and I told them about my situation.  We agreed that I would bring Chewie out and see how he responded.  So yesterday morning, I loaded him into the car again and we set off.

Chewie behaved much better.  He walked along up and down the street in front of the rescue, and although he didn't seem to be very interested in being bounced on or playing, he did condescend to sniff her bottom and allow her to do the same, something he flatly refused to do in the meeting with the other dog.  I was hopeful. 

We took them in, and they continued to interact, and although Chewie would not engage her, he wasn't being the anti-dog weathervane, either.  The people at the rescue decided that he would probably just need time to adjust, and they asked if I would want to bring Stella home for a trial run.

I agreed.

We all came home, me driving, Chewie sitting in the middle seat and staring balefully out the window, and Stella confined in her travel crate in the back.  I pulled through Chick-Fil-A because Chewie always gets nuggets when he has to go do something, and after getting our order, we hit the interstate for home.

Upon arrival, I was fearful of how she'd react to all the other creatures and vice versa, so we shut her in her new big crate.  She was *most* unhappy.  She wanted to smell, to run, to play.  She saw her first cats as Dillon and Pearl came to stand in the doorway of the dog room, and she was fascinated.  Chewie and Yelldo came in to inspect the new addition, and Stella wagged and yipped.  

After an hour or so, I decided to see what was going to happen.  I put her on a leash and brought her out.  She bounced right across to Pearl who was watching from beneath the dining table and got her nose roundly slapped.  In true pit bull fashion, she blinked, sat back in confusion, and decided she loved Pearl too much not to try it again.   Poor Pearl....

Pearl has broken in too many dogs to be worried about something not very much larger than herself, so she held her ground, fluffed her regal mane, and growled like something from the pits of hell.  She looked like a pocket-sized grey lion.  Stella got weirded out and came and sat next to me.  Pearl simply looked down her nose at the dog and sashayed off toward the living room. Mission accomplished.  

We're twenty-four hours into the experiment, and Stella has been off-leash since about 4 pm yesterday.  She's been round and round the yard, sniffing like Roux used to, the noise I always called "truffle pig."  She's eaten half a large bowl of dog food by taking two pieces out at a time and running into the living room with it.  She's consumed two small exerhides in an epic battle of gnawing that took about 30 minutes each to destroy something Chewie crunches like a potato chip.  She's charged to the end of her leash after some unknown woodland beast in the dark of night.  I think she's having a good time....

She's currently unconscious on the floor next to my chair on a blue blanket having worn herself completely out most recently by going around and around my yard, barking her high-pitched little squeaky toy bark at my crows, trying to engage Chewie or Yelldo in play, sitting in my lap and giving me kisses, chasing the four hundred toys she has dragged out from the basket on the hearth, and generally being the precious little diva she is.  

In time, I really believe Chewie will warm up to her, especially when he realizes that he will still get the same attention as before. He is already consenting to be sniffed more often and following us around the yard. I look forward to seeing them run and play.

I have plans for her, too.  I want to see if I can train her for agility.  She can leap about two feet straight in the air just when something startles her, so I think she will be good at it and it will be a good release for her.  I will have to train myself to work with her, but that will be good for me as well.  

I love her.  She's not what I had thought would come to me, but she's perfect.  I realized two things about that.  One, her name is Stella.  She came to me with that name.  That was the name I had sort of picked for a daughter if I ever had one.  It's a family name on my mother's side.  I have always loved it because it sounds a little old fashioned and also because it means "star," which she totally is.  Additionally, and this didn't come to me until last night, if she's 5 months old, that means she came into this world about the time my Roux left it, almost as if Roux sent her to me.  While I know that 's not the way the world works, I can't say that coincidence didn't touch me.  

We have a long way to go.  There is bonding that needs to occur between her and me, between her and my other animals, between her and my parents.  I really believe all that will come in time.  She is going to be the most loved little baby pittie anyone ever saw.  By Christmas, her level of spoiled-rottenness should have reached really absurd heights.  

Fordite

"Fordite, also known as Motor Agate, is a unique automotive enamel material with an interesting history. The original layered automotive paint slag 'rough' was made incidentally, years ago, by the now extinct practice of hand spray-painting multiples of production cars in big automotive factories. 

The oversprayed paint in the painting bays gradually built up on the tracks and skids that the car frames were painted on. Over time, many colorful layers built up there. These layers were hardened repeatedly in the ovens that the car bodies went into to cure the paint. Some of these deeper layers were even baked 100 times. 

Eventually, the paint build-up would become obstructing, or too thick and heavy, and had to be removed. As the story goes, some crafty workers with an eye for beauty realized that this unique byproduct was worth salvaging. It was super-cured, patterned like psychedelic agate, and could be cut and polished with relative ease!"  - taken from fordite.com 
__________________________________

I'm obsessed with this stuff.  In addition to mad housecleaning, I am also using the internet as a tool for avoidance of reality, and as I stumbled through the rabbit hole of Etsy, I came across Fordite.

As the history blurb above details, this is a reclaimed thing, something that occurred as an accident, a nuisance byproduct for the auto industry.  How beautiful this nuisance is, though.

I wonder who the first person to notice the internal loveliness under the unsightly exterior was, who the first person to scratch the surface and find more than was expected.

Fordite, or Detroit Agate, isn't produced anymore.  Technology changed the manufacturing process, and this side-effect doesn't happen now.  What I'm sure the industry looked at as a waste now fetches as much money as some "real" gemstones, especially if it can be proven to have come from a particular auto maker, model, or factory, for example the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, KY.  I even saw one piece marked as "mustangite."  Guess what it was supposed to have come from?

I have found a piece on Etsy that I really love....well, probably more like five pieces, but still...and when my money from the AP reading comes, I am going to splurge on a piece.  Aside from the incredible visual appeal of it, I like the symbolic reminder that it's what's under the surface that matters, that the world rarely takes the time to look for less-than-screaming-in-its-face-obvious value and is prone to discard things of beauty and rarity.  It's a lesson worth remembering about a tendency worth avoiding.

I don't think that's too much philosophy to hang from a silver chain, right?  If it's too much for you, I guess you can just enjoy all the pretty colors.  To each, her own.

Graceland

 After years of being curious, I finally got to go to Graceland last Wednesday.  My best friend and I got up, ate a hotel buffet breakfast, and braved cross-town traffic to arrive in an nearly-empty parking lot.

We paid our fee, passed through a queue and an unexpected photo stop, were handed the headphone set/audio guide that has become de rigeur at tourist attractions, and loaded onto a small shuttle bus which rolled across Elvis Presley Boulevard, through open gates, and up a small hill.
And there it was.

I am not sure what I was expecting.  This wasn't it.

Maybe I just expected the sort of excess that one sees in the homes of Hollywood elite today, flash, excess, too much of everything to be a truly livable space.  Instead, what was there was a home.  Large, spacious, elegant, but still a home.

Our little headphoned herd passed through the large front door and on either side of us were the home's public spaces.  There was a formal parlor, furnished in white, gold, and blue, on the right, and to the left, there was a formal dining room, the height of elegance for the time period in which it had been decorated.

We looked into a couple of bedrooms tucked down a small hall, and then we went around a corner to the kitchen.  It was here that the contrast of the two parts of the house really struck me.  The kitchen was described as the heart of Elvis's home, and I could tell the difference automatically.  It looked like a place real people could cook and eat and sneak down to raid the fridge in the middle of the night.   In fact, there was a stairwell that would allow just that. It looked like real people had at one time had real lives there, not just a set for photo ops or a display of conspicuous consumption.  

The downstairs rooms and even the famous Jungle Room felt the same way.  The private spaces of Graceland were comfortable and functional, full of expensive things, perhaps, but not a museum, not a slick spread in a magazine.  People used and enjoyed those rooms.

I liked it quite a lot.

The divisions he'd created, the idea of a public formal space in which he could meet those who perhaps were not close to him, is a very Southern thing.  The formal front parlor has been around for a long time.  I found it interesting that he had continued that tradition in his home.  He had enough money to have created anything he wanted, but what he created was a home.

Of course, the house itself is only a small part of the tour.  The outbuildings that have been converted or added are storehouses of memorabilia, costumes, personal items, and above all, gold and platinum records.  Trophies of all kinds were everywhere.

We finished up in the memory garden where the graves are.  People were snapping image after image of the graves, and to me, it felt a little odd.  To me, the graves were a private place, and the neverending parade of tourists, myself included, seemed a little inappropriate.  I admit that I've toured cathedrals of Europe, and I certainly took pictures of Dante's monument in Santa Croce and Shakespeare's in Holy Trinity, but this hit me differently.  I felt like I'd crawled over a fence and invaded someone's privacy.

We loaded back up, were carted across the road, and got off in the miniature theme park where we'd started.  We dutifully toured the automobile collection, browsed in shops, had our photo made with Elvis through the magic of Photoshop, got pressed pennies, bought the obligatory t-shirts.

We took a break and ate a hamburger and a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich with some of the best fries I've ever had in one of the two restaurants on the Graceland property, and the 50s diner decor included the obligatory beautiful Wurlitzer filled with Elvis's music.  We listened, ate, and took a minute to refuel. The whole time, though I couldn't stop thinking about what Elvis himself might have thought about this whole thing.  He had tried to make a home, a refuge for himself and those he loved.  He hadn't built a palace to excess, although he certainly had the financial means to do so.  This means that he treasured that space and what it represented.

So would he have been okay with what it has become?  Would he have seen it as just another part of the business, or would it have bothered him that we were traipsing through his kitchen, snapping photos of his formal parlor?

The question continued to resonate with me all the way back out to the now-filled parking lot and all the way down I-55 to my own refuge.  It lingers still.

A Total Futbol Neophyte Looks at Messi

Today, it seems like every friend I have who has kids spends half their year ferrying the kids to soccer and the other half to a sport played with a stick (softball, t-ball, baseball). When I was a child, we didn't have soccer as the ubiquitous kid sport. It didn't start to become popular in our area until I was well into high school.  I think my high school got a team together when I was a sophomore or a junior.

Prior to this World Cup, I have not paid much attention to the sport.  I don't know why, really.  I have worked with international students for years, was in-country in Japan the year before they hosted and observed the building of the stadium in Brasilia two years ago from the heights of the TV Tower.  I have friends who are rabidly interested and have talked about it all the time.  I guess I just don't pay much attention to many sporting events.

This year, though, I had intentions to watch.  Admittedly, one of the main draws for me was seeing Brazil again even from a televised distance, seeing how all the preparations had come together, seeing if the general unrest that those preparations had stirred up had settled any. The World Cup began while I was in Louisville, and I turned on the TV in the Galt House one afternoon as one of the first matches was starting.  I was tired from a long day of hacking my way through the underbrush of essays, and I said, "Okay.  This is the year.  I'm going to do this this time around."  And so I watched.

Coming to a thing about which you know nothing is always both a humbling experience and a great source of the joy of discovery. I spent a lot of time looking stuff up online and trying to learn terms, rules, positions.  Thank God for Google, eHow, the FIFA site, and the millions of other sites made for newbies like me. The longer I watched, the more I began to comprehend basic things that my students probably absorbed with their baby food.  I discovered I liked the sport quite a bit.

The second game I watched in this World Cup had Argentina playing.  I honestly don't remember who their opponent was.  It was the first match in the opening round.  Right before it started, ESPN did one of their dramatic little mini-highlights of Lionel Messi.  I watched it with a little bit of interest and settled in for the match.

And from that point forward, pretty much all I saw was #10.  He's sort of amazing.

(Which I know is not new news.  Bear with me.  And while I know he is considered to be one of the best players in the world right now by people who actually know what they're talking about, I'm still going to tell you why.  This is my space.  I can do what I like.)

Ronaldo was made much of early on.  He had a different haircut for each match, including at one point a zigzag with a gold stripe painted in it. (Where and WHY did he find the time to go get a new 'do?) Apparently, according to the ESPN announcers, he was met at his hotel by a topless model.  While these things in and of themselves are not crimes, in the games I saw with him, he always seemed very conscious of his own glamour.  While I don't doubt he's good, I find that whole over-the-top attitude and lifestyle very boring.

Then there's Messi.  His is another one of the big glittery names at this World Cup.  The announcers chant his name like it's a litany required for salvation. Games he's not even playing in make mention of him. The corporate sponsors splash him on screen for almost every product.  He's drinking Pepsi, gulping Gatorade, operating at "god level" for Adidas.

Normally, these are things that would make me put him in the same big-business-sports-star box with Ronaldo.  I just couldn't do that to Messi, though.  The longer I watched him, the more I realized that his hair is the last of his concerns. I love to watch him play for several reasons.

One, he does things that are very hard but makes them look graceful and easy.  He doesn't showboat as I've seen some of the other young ones try to do.  To watch him move the ball is a kind of magic. (And no, not the "bippity-boppity-boo" kind, but thank you, Gatorade.  I have that flippin' song stuck in my head for DAYS every time I see that commercial...) Every time the ball comes near him, things get interesting.  He can take it away from others.  He can move it himself.  Apparently Maradona has said that it's like "the ball stays glued to his foot," and that seems about right to me.  It's beautiful to watch.

Two, he is not selfish.  While right now, the big media phrase is "Messi Dependence" for Argentina, this isn't because he isn't passing and giving his teammates a chance.  I love him for that.  In the last few matches I've seen with some of the other one-name demi-deities, too many of them wanted to hog the ball at times when a wise pass would have meant a goal.  Although Messi has done the majority of the scoring for his team in this World Cup, it isn't because he believes he's the only man on the field.

Three, I respect him because he always looks just a bit uneasy when the cameras are following him around during the pre-game stuff.  He doesn't simper or smirk or smolder into the lens. I perceive his expression as being one of resignation.  He can't do anything about it, but man, he wishes they would get that thing out of his face so he could concentrate on the important matters ahead.

Four, I love to see the rapport he has with other players.  My favorite example of this came when Argentina played Nigeria, and Messi and Enyeama were clearly giving each other friendly crap after Enyeama saved one of Messi's goal efforts.  The next time, Messi got it past the incredibly-good Nigerian goalkeeper, and still there was no pouting. It was an example of what sport SHOULD be to me.  It wasn't personal. They were sportsmen who could each appreciate the skill the other had. They might have been opponents, but that didn't mean they were enemies. I've seen him do that several times, sometimes with people he plays with in his regular league, sometimes not. For him, there is still joy in the game.  There are some others on the pitch who could take a lesson from that attitude.

Five, I saw pictures of him with his son.  Oh my God.  How totally precious.  Somebody retweeted his birthday post last week, and it was him with his little boy in his arms.  He had an expression of total happiness on his face. He has his son's handprints and name tattooed on his calf.  How can you not love someone who loves his little boy that much?  ESPN showed his wife carrying the little boy into the stadium before one of the matches, and he has a very small Argentina jersey with number 10 and the word "Papi" on the back.  Pardon me for having a girl moment, but, "AWWWWWWWWWWW."

Six, he does good things off the field.  He served as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF.  He makes sure children who need medicine (as he did when he was a child) have access.  He gave money to restore the oncology wing of a hospital and train their doctors abroad.   His foundation additionally works to promote and ensure educational opportunities are there for those in need.  He gives back.

Seven, finally, (and to your eternal relief, no doubt)  to me, he's just beautiful.  Sure, I suppose he's not classically handsome in the way that Ronaldo considers himself to be.  When he smiles, though, or when he looks up and grins after a score, how could anyone possibly prefer that overly-groomed Portuguese?

I am looking forward to tomorrow's matches. If Argentina get past Sweden and should the USA manage to get by Belgium (about which I refuse to make predictions in either case), it's theoretically possible my national team might be facing my favorite player.  I'm not going to think about it much, though.  Instead, I'm just going to enjoy another day of Messi.

Watching Team USA

It's game day with Germany, and like what I hope is most of the US, I am watching my country's representatives fighting Germany.  Nobody expects us to win.  I personally sort of believe in the concept of any given team on any given day, but then again, I have been accused of being a hopeless optimist.

We're into minute 15, and I have a separate timer sitting beside me counting down the time left on a batch of rice pudding that I mixed up during the pregame show.  I also cleaned my whole kitchen at that time.  It seemed the thing to do.

I was in the middle of washing up last night's pots and pans when it came time for the national anthems.  I stopped, cut off the water, and walked into the living room to hear it.  There is something about hearing a stadium full of people singing "The Star Spangled Banner" that gives me both goosebumps and tears.  At the very end, that last phrase, "home of the free, and the land of the brave," seemed to sum up what we are all about here in Brazil.

We are not a soccer superpower.  We aren't jaded when we show up here.  Other countries have accused us of being fake underdogs.   They say we have money, power, economic status.  How can we possibly be an underdog anymore?  Announcer and journalist eyes roll.  Snide memes proliferate.

I think America is always going to be the underdog, though.  Despite our status, whatever it may be in this current world, I'm not sure we are ever going to get over being the new guy at the party, the nouveau riche guy who came from humble origins and sometimes can't quite figure out how he got there in the first place.  He's not quite sure of the etiquette.  Maybe he doesn't feel comfortable in the clothes.  However, he's here now, and he's going to do the best with it he can.

I'm not sure why the rest of the world seems to resent us so much for this.  We have traditionally demonstrated the trait of working hard to achieve a goal, even when it didn't seem possible.  I think America has always been at her best when things come down to the rock-and-hard-place moments.  It brings something out in us that we don't always see at other times.  There is a relief in being able to roll up the sleeves, lay hands on the obstacle, and work to remove it.

And shouldn't everybody feel that way?  What does a team or even a private individual show up for if the plan isn't to give everything, to do the best you can?

Undoubtedly, I'm just a product of my national point-of-view. Maybe it sounds naive or idealistic, and I'm sure it is in some ways.  However, that's very American, too.

I don't know if we will win this, get the draw, or go through.  I hope whatever the outcome may be that we will be able to leave with a feeling of satisfaction at our effort.

The Android Life

A little over a month ago, I decided it was time to upgrade my iPhone.  I had been debating whether or not I might want to change from iOS to Android for a long time, doing research and asking people who had the other platform for insights.  It was the day before my birthday when I finally found the time to walk into my local phone store, and as the tech-laden greeter came up to put my name on the waiting list for service, I still didn't know which phone I would walk out with.

One of the good things about the phone store always being so busy is that it gave me more than enough time to walk around and look at all the different models.  I started with the iPhones.  They were comfortable and familiar.  It looked great, and I knew immediately that it would be pleasant to use.

Then I strolled over to the Androids.

I've been using one of the Galaxy tablets from school to set up activities and hunt for apps my students might be able to use on the big class set, so for the first time, the Android devices felt familiar.  I started looking at the specs on memory and other aspects, and I realized that I could put in large memory card and have three times more space than the iPhone I'd been looking at, and the phone, the SD card, and the Otterbox all together would still be less expensive.

That sort of decided me.  Yes, my iPhones have always been tremendously good to me.  They've done hardcore duty all over the globe without batting even the tiniest eyelash.  Standing in that store, though, I couldn't justify spending more money for what was going to be less phone that I really needed. 

As I picked up the devices, the Android also felt good in my hand.  True, it was much larger than the iPhone resting in my jacket.  I had worries that it would be cumbersome to keep up with, too big to slip into a pants pocket.  The more I held it, though, the more I liked the way it filled my palm, the way the screen size increased because of it.

When my name was finally called and the sales associate finally came to ask me what I wanted, I knew I wanted one of the Samsung Galaxy models.  After a brief conversation with him, I settled on the GS4.  He took it over to the service desk, did that magic that they do, and thirty minutes later, I was headed out into the darkness of a February night with it clipped to my beltloops in a Defender holster.

It seems like a small thing, the addition of a new device to my life, but it has actually had a number of really rather profound changes on me.  The first came when I noticed the preloaded Samsung S-Health step counter widget.  I dragged it onto one of my screens out of curiosity, and slowly, I became more and more interested in watching the numbers go up.  I found myself taking extra trips down to the office and the mail room just to get a little more exercise.  This led to my buying a Fitbit Flex, and now I'm tracking movement and calories, and I've lost six pounds.  

I've also sort of rediscovered what a smartphone is all about.  I had gotten into a tremendous rut, it seems, with my apps and my habits.  I didn't get all the same apps I used to have when I was reloading this new phone, and some of the ones I kept work for me now in a totally different way.  Since Android is intimately welded to Google and since I am such a tremendous user of Google stuff, things I do all the time have become much easier.  

When I walked out of the store that night before my birthday, I admit I still had doubts.  It's hard to believe that now.  I know some people have horrible experiences with Android devices and flee back to iPhone as soon as they are able, but I have to say, I don't think that will be me.  This change has been totally for the better.

Little Broken Hearts

Every once in awhile, I stumble across an album that I can't stop listening to.  I loop it instead of listening and putting it into a rotation.  Generally speaking, I like variety instead of repetition.  Little Broken Hearts by Norah Jones is currently sort of obsessing me.

Oh, it's not new.  It's been out awhile.  I've had it on my list of things to get.  I finally did the other night, and it's one of those things I'm kicking myself for not getting earlier.

This album is rare in that I think I like every single song on it.  Some cut me more personally than others.  Since it's an album of broken relationships as indicated by the title, not all of these places Jones goes are happy ones.  They're rendered lovely, though, by her voice and artistry.  Sometimes there is beauty even in the shadows of the dark places we go, I guess.

As usual, I also find myself drawn to the lovely little tune with the crazy little lyrics.  I was halfway through "Miriam" the first time before I realized what she was saying.  I restarted it, pulled up the lyrics online, and I immediately fell in love with it.  I think I'm going to make a playlist of nothing but all these happy little psycho songs I have accumulated over the years.  I will do this without looking too closely at what that probably says about me....

Most of all, though, I will continue to enjoy the voice of Norah Jones.  She has such an unusual and rich sound.  Come Away with Me has been something I have enjoyed forever.  Little Broken Hearts, however, adds some edge to both her lyrics and her sound.  It's different, but unlike some of the reviewers I read, I don't think that's bad.  Clearly, as time goes on, we aren't the same people anymore.  Our life experiences change us, or they should, anyway, if we're living any sort of life at all.  Why do we always seem to expect every album from a performer to sound the same as if they aren't changing, too?  That's absurd.  We should enjoy the evolution instead of demanding what only really amounts to stagnation.

Not Kyoto

- Written while listening to the soundtrack Suleyman the Magnificent, which you can find here.

For years, when the deepest longing to be somewhere else has struck me, Kyoto or Nara has always been the destination.  The little place in my heart that stores up treasures would tune its shamisen and play me memories of Todaiji, of the Philosopher's Path.

Tonight, I'm longing for the other end of the Silk Road, and it's not the crowded, graceful, grey-tiled roofs and reserved buddha-gazes of those ancient places that I want.  Another imperial city calls to me instead.

Ah, God, to be in Istanbul with the light fading from the sky, to see the Bosphorus changing from blue-green to watered silver silk under the light of a waxing moon.  To be able to look up and see the minarets piercing the growing night like needles occupied with stitching the heavens to the earth.  To be able to hear the muezzins of Sultanahmet and Ayasofya calling the azan, that incredible moment when the accidental harmonies inevitably occur, stopping the breath and the heart with only sound.

To stumble over rough cobblestones in cool air to a place where a meal as simple or as complicated as the palate can stand is waiting.  To be with friends who complement, contrast, embrace without questions, even if you've only known them for days that have somehow become lifetimes.

To feel History (very much with a capital H) surround you like an embroidered garment of many silken layers that flutter in the wind, showing now this embellishment, now this flaw in the pattern.  To be surrounded constantly by faded empires, to see the still-glorious monuments of world-rulers now returned to dust.

I yearn for Byzantium, for Constantinople, for Istanbul. Tonight I will sleep and walk there again, feel the cold marble of Ayasofya trail beneath my dreaming fingers, watch the crowds surge like the steady tides.  No distance can keep all of it from me.  One tiny corner I have managed to carry away for myself for the times - like now - when I have the most need.

Variation on a Theme

In the past two days, I have found myself enthusing over Chris Thile's new Bach album (more about that later) and the YouTube video series Thug Notes.  My first reaction to these in juxtaposition was that they were very different things.  After a little thought, though, I'm not so sure.

What I appreciate about both of them is that they're taking things I traditionally enjoy (Bach, literature) and putting a distinctive personal touch on them (mandolin, thugness).  You have to be very clever and very good at what you do to pull reinterpretation of a masterwork off correctly.  You can take do pale imitations all day long, but to make a genuine new version of something already great means you have to understand the work in question thoroughly.

I think of it like Picasso's art.  Everyone associates him with Cubism and abstraction.  How many people remember that before he found his own new style that he made sure he was a master of traditional techniques?  He admonished people to "[l]earn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist."  It's not that he couldn't paint in the more traditional way; it's that he had mastered and surpassed it.

Even though it may seem odd to put a YouTube series in the same category with Thile and maybe both of them with Picasso to some people, I can't help but see their relationship to one another.  True interpretation leads to a new invention all of its own.

The Great Game

It's been a long time since I was in a country where I could use my haggling skills.  I know some people hate it, but I sort of love it.  It's a game.  How low can I get you to go?  The price you receive depends directly on the skills you bring.  It's like competitive shopping.

I always come armed to the teeth.  One thing about growing up in the Deep South, I know how to manipulate the male ego.  It's not something I do often.  I find it almost distatefully easy when it doesn't matter to me.  It's not something we're taught.  It's something we sort of absorb, I suppose.

Like all fine arts, there is a procedure for it.  I find something I want and ask its price.  Then I get all sweet and Southern.  I smile a lot. My accent becomes a little more pronounced.  I start my end of the game at half of whatever the asked me for in the first place.  Every Southern man knows that underneath that little butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth smile is a straight razor.  These guys know it, too, I'm sure.  Maybe all men recognize that steel under the sweet.  God help them if they don't.  After all, it's all a part of the game.  Whether they see it or not, I must say that the straight razor never seems to bother them....

I got a marriage proposal today.  I wanted a scarf, and I could have come away with a husband.  This is another part of the game.  "You're so beautiful.  You're so fascinating.  Won't you give me a little more money if I tell you this?"  Perhaps this is their version of the straight-razor.

Again, Southern woman training comes in handy for that.  We grow up surrounded by gallant men who are so full of crap that hip boots are commonly required.  I know how to smile and say, "Aw.  Thank you, honey," and walk off to the next challenge.

And really, everybody is happy at the end of it.   Somehow the items I get this way mean more to me.  I have a ring I got in Costa Rica that was my best ever haggle. I paid less than half of his asking price. Every time I put it on, I think about it and smile to myself.  That was a good day.

Today was, too. Today I was sweetheart, darling, and I think even precious one time.  That's fine.  I got good prices on everything I purchased, and I felt like I won a State Championship.  They got what was undoubtedly a good profit on me, since that is the way of these things, and they also got to feel all manly and stuff.  Win-win.  Totally win-win.  I wish we did this back home.  I would probably shop more if we did.

Travel Companion

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where –" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
~ Alice and the Cheshire Cat, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
____________

For a long time, I have wanted to have something to take pictures with on my travels.  I suspect this started when I saw Amalie.  I (and the rest of the entire universe) loved it when she sent her father's gnome travelling.

As a part of the Teachers for Global Classrooms program, I met people who had been doing this for years.  One of them has a sock monkey who actually has his own Facebook page.  Another has a laminated cut out of her high school's mascot.  I started thinking about it again when I saw theirs, but I couldn't find anything that was small enough not to be a nuisance.  I know enough about myself as a traveler to know that if it's a hassle, I'm not going to fool with it.  I considered several items - a small beanie of our school mascot, an exceedingly tiny and grumpy sock monkey, a small blue owl someone gave me - but none of them seemed right.

A couple of weeks ago, a teacher buddy of mine started putting up pictures of a tiny finger puppet of Vincent Van Gogh she'd gotten at a museum.  I had a forehead-smacking moment when I saw it.  I actually have the William Shakespeare from that same series.  I bought it at the Frazier Museum in Louisville the first year I read for the AP test.  It's been guarding my Diet Mt. Dew in my classroom since that summer.

However, I didn't want to travel with Will.  I have so many things that are Shakespeare.  I love him.  I just didn't want to travel with him.  I looked over the line of the puppets from the Unemployed Philosopher's Guild for another option. They're all so cute and funny that the kid in me wanted all of them.  The adult in charge of the checkbook managed to limit that other aspect to purchasing two:  the Cheshire Cat and Emily Dickinson.

I got Chessy today.  I am pretty positive that he will be the one I travel with.  The quote at the top is most of the reason why, but there are other quotes that fit every long journey I've ever been on.  The one that springs to mind is the famous:

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "otherwise you wouldn't have come here."

As anybody who has ever traveled knows, there comes a point (maybe the exact moment you break out the suitcases) that this quote becomes painfully true....

I also like Chessy because he's a cat. That fits in with many things, the real-life furry beasts sleeping on my furniture that I miss when I'm travelling, the mankei neko I collected in Japan, the mascot of my school.  Cats are also good travel buddies because they remind you to be curious, to dress simply but with elegance, to enjoy any and all luxuries that come your way, and to sniff at unfamiliar things (possibly also while smacking them lightly with your paw) before accepting them.

It's a silly little thing, but I am looking forward to taking Chessie with me to Turkey.  If I can get a picture of him inside the Hagia Sofia, then that's going to be a very good thing.

First Blackberrying of the Year

After walking the dogs this afternoon, I walked over to the blackberry bramble at the edge of my pasture and looked over the current crop.  I picked a few, just a small handful, and came back inside.  Chewie, being Chewie, watched me pick the berries and eat them, and he started nibbling them off the bushes.  I laughed at him, and he stopped long enough to give me a giant toothy grin before returning to his efforts.  He's a strange dog, but he's all mine.

After dinner, I kept thinking about the blackberries. I decided that I would go up to our country place tomorrow and see if the brambles there were bearing yet.  Then I looked up some recipes on Pinterest.  This led to combing through my Granny's recipe box looking for her cobbler recipe.  I realized that I had to have more and that I didn't want to wait.

The beauty of summer is that the days linger gloriously.  Even though it was fairly late, the tops of the trees were still golden. Grabbing a leash and Chewie, I headed out to our place in the country and the tons and tons of blackberries that grow there. Chewie loves it there.  I had the windows down, and as soon as we came around the last curve before the gate to the property, he sniffed the air and started woofing softly.  We made our way down to the brambles, and I picked until it got too dark to ensure I wasn't about to step in the middle of a snake. Chewie and I found our way back to the car in the last blue-purple light of sunset and the dim glow of a fingernail moon.

Blackberries are tricky and imperious little devils.  They are not a "something for nothing" fruit.  There is nothing docile or generous about them.  They're primadonnas.    If you go to pick what they have produced, they are going to take from you as well.  Usually I get hung on one of the vines and cut my arm or hand open. I have always thought of it as the "blood sacrifice" required to complete the picking. Today, as I carefully reached around the thorns and plucked the ripe berries, I felt the waving tendrils of green grab at my shorts, tenaciously hook my tshirt, and finally one reached out and snagged a handful of my hair. It was surprisingly strong, and it required a little careful finesse to free myself.  If you flail once a bramble captures you, it's kind of like that plant Devil's Snare from Harry Potter - more and more of them grab hold making the situation worse. Once I managed to extricate myself, I apparently had paid my tithe.  Nothing else attacked me.

Chewie watched the whole thing from a safe distance.  He ran careful circles around the reach of the brambles, caused a large wild turkey to explode upwards into the treetops with a sound like a localized hurricane, rolled rapturously in the tall grass, and wore his nose off chasing scents.  Eventually, he flopped down and watched me, moving only when I went to another section of the bramble.  I offered him a berry I'd picked, but he apparently had his fill earlier.  He sniffed it, mouthed it, and spit it out before looking up at me with a hopeful wagging tail.  Apparently, he's decided he'd rather have his bacon treats instead.

In a fairly short time, I managed to fill a quarter of the gallon-sized ziplock bag I'd taken with me.  I brought the berries home, washed them, and put them in the refrigerator.  I don't know what I'll do with them.  I might indulge in one of the recipes I found.  I might make a mini-cobbler.  Probably, though, I'll just nibble them whole and savor that special taste of summer and home and deep woods pasture land.  That is probably special enough a recipe all on its own.

Bonfire

You got a lot of lovers with star-crossed wrists

They keep a candle burning on the corner you kissed.

One day I might die, until then there's too much to do

But I'll keep a bonfire for you.

I've seen the pretty boys that you're keeping around

I know how it goes, I've got a girl in town.

And she likes me enough to do what I like to do.

But, I'll keep a bonfire for you.

Let the other lovers talk about who carries the torch

Let them talk about the beauty that they carry it for

Let the other lovers talk about who got what

And who got burned and who got cut

I'll be in the orchard when you get tired

Day after day of the shouts from the choir

Eating the apples and eating the peaches, too

And waiting by my bonfire for you.

In the dark anybody will do for love

But you're the only one I want when the sun comes up

No burning ball of fire set in the sky will do

Next to my bonfire for you.

Let the other lovers talk about who carries the torch

Let them talk about the beauty that they carry it for

Let the other lovers talk about who got what

And who got burned and who got cut

I need a little motion, need a little relief

I get a little lonely at the end of the week

And I want it so bad and if you want it so bad, too

I'll be over here with my bonfire for you.

You got a lot of lovers with star-crossed wrists

They keep a candle burning on the corner you kissed.

One day I might die, until then there's too much to do

But I'll keep a bonfire for you.

~ "Bonfire" - Josh Ritter

________

I love just about everything I've heard by Ritter, but there are certain songs of his that always feel like they were more or less stolen right out of my own thoughts.  (Of course, if this is the case, he's dressing them up in prettier clothing than they had when they were with me.  Heh.)

This song, "Bonfire," is one of those I identify with closely.  Switch some genders here and there, and it's just about the situation I find myself in.  I like the fact that he's not pining and following. Others might thrive on the drama of "star-crossed wrists," but I, like the speaker in the song, am just much more comfortable taking care of life, hanging out in the orchard.

 There is tremendous personal truth for me in the line "One day I might die, until then there's too much to do."  I'm busy.  I have a ridiculous schedule and probably will for the rest of my life.  It's not conducive to marriage or happy homelife.  I've known that for a long time.  Who would put up with me leaving early in the morning and not coming home until after 6:00 most nights?  Who would willingly suffer the slings and arrows of being married to a teacher?  I'm not sure that I really expect anybody to.

That doesn't really prevent me from keeping that bonfire going.  Just because I don't think it will work out doesn't seem to be a deterrent to feeling.  I understand that "bonfire" level of desire all too well.  Candles are all well and good; they give some light and a certain aura of romance, I suppose. However, a candle's lifespan is limited before the match ever touches the wick.  I think a lot of relationships have that same quality. When you think about love, which would you really rather have - the temporary glamor, beauty of limited use and duration, or the permanent that provides on so many different levels?  

Bonfires may require work to make and work to keep them going but they give more heat, more light, more protection from all those things that hunt in the night. They are actually functional rather than decorative.  The metaphor is perfect, then.  Who wants a purely decorative love?  Is it really love at all? The speaker says no.  He has a girl whom he likes and who likes him well enough to "do what [he] likes to do," but this is presented as a necessity, a place-holder.  It's not the real deal, and he's not pretending that it is. He knows good and well he's only got a candle at the present.

This is the place the speaker and I diverge.  I'm not interested in candles.  I don't have the time for them.  I'm only interested in bonfires, I guess.  In fact, that metaphor can go right next to the Sonnet 116 ones as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway....  As you can tell, I've English Teachered this song more than once in my head.  This is probably a lot more thought than it was ever intended to evoke.  (Sorry for beating your song to death, Josh Ritter.)  This is almost certainly more thought than you really wanted to read.  For some reason, though, this was the thing I needed to say just now, so, as always, caveat emptor.  And now, I have some papers to grade and a bonfire to tend.

Sing to the Moon - Laura Mvula

I stumbled over Laura Mvula last week when her album was on NPR's First Listen.  I have more or less become obsessed with it since then.  The whole album is in every way fantastic.  Right now, though, this is my favorite song.  The words are beautiful as are the images.  It touched me very personally, so I wanted to share it here.
____


(Verse)
Hey there you, shattered in a thousand pieces
Weeping in the darkest nights.
Hey there you, try to stand up on your own two feet
And stumble into the sky.

(Pre-Chorus)
When the lights go out and you’re on your own
How you’re gonna make it through till the morning sun?

(Chorus)
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, lead you to the other side.
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, heaven’s gonna turn the time.

(Verse)
Hey there you, looking for a brighter season
Need to lay your burden down.
Hey there you, drowning in a hopeless feeling,
Buried under deeper ground.

(Pre-Chorus)
When the lights go out it’s a waiting game.
Never gonna see a day when your world will change.

(Chorus)
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, lead you to the other side.
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, heaven’s gonna turn the time.

Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, lead you to the other side.
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, heaven’s gonna turn the time.

New Boots

When I was little, I had a pair of bright yellow wellies.  They had Big Bird on them and a fastener that always reminded me of the oval-shaped looping sticks on the lollipops I received at the end of each doctor's visit.  I guess in those days, that was an easy connection for me to make since I was forever sick, forever going to doctor, forever getting shots or having blood drawn, and forever having it pseudo-comforted by green hard candy on a cardboard stick.

Those boots always made me happy.  I remember playing in puddles with them and being oddly fascinated that my feet did not get wet even if I stood in ankle-deep puddles.  When I outgrew them, no other rainboots emerged to take their place.  I always missed them, though.

I've looked at rainboots off and one for a long time.  I stand morning and afternoon duty outside at least one week a month, sometimes two.  Our weather here in Mississippi is...well...ridiculous.  We frequently have monsoonish rains that make the entire universe slush.  Even my other "waterproof" shoes can't always do the job, and very few things make me feel as icky and miserable as soaked socks.

I finally found a pair I liked, and they were my "monthly splurge."  I have no idea why wellies are so freaking expensive, but they are.  They had to qualify as an indulgence in my current budget.  They came today, and they are so infinitely worth it.

Since wellies are fashionable right now for some odd reason, there were bunches of patterns to choose from.  They had stripes, brights, even animal prints.  None of those things really called out to me, though.  Instead, I picked a pair in a color called matte red.  That means that unlike so many of the pairs of boots running around right now, there is no insane (and easily scuffable) gloss shine to mine.  They are a cheerful red, one of my favorite pick-me-up colors.  It's the same red that the rubber balls I used to have as a child were.  I've started calling them my red-rubber-ball wellies, and that association makes them even nicer.

It happened to be raining today when the package arrived (hm. imagine that.  rain in Mississippi....), so I put on some socks, slipped on the wellies, leashed Roux, and went outside to walk dogs and test boots.  They're fabulous.  I wasn't expecting much by way of comfort, but I think I could wear them indefinitely.  Best of all, as Roux sniffed and strolled, I splashed through puddles, hesitantly at first and then with increasing confidence and into increasing depth.  No cold trickle of water seeped in.  I felt like I did when I was small, marveling at the everyday magic of being sealed safely inside my bright boots.

Swackett glumly predicts rain for tomorrow.  If its predictions pan out, I'll wear the red-rubber-ball-boots to school and be able to ford the rivers in the parking lot with no more worry than if it were a bright, dry day.  It's a little thing that makes life better.  Money well-spent, indeed.

Three Italian Guys

(thus begin the blogs from Italy)

On my recent trip to Italy, I learned more about famous Italian philosophers, artists, and saints.  Here's a look at three and why I think they're fabulous.

Dante

Dante isn't new to me.  Likely, he's not new to you, either.  Even if all you know is the image of a guy touring hell, Dante is one of those all-pervasive writers.  Last time we were in Florence, I saw the reconstruction of his house.  We visited the tiny square where it stands this time, as well.  Images of him are all over Florence, and a statue of him stands tall outside the church of Santa Croce where his tomb is visited by tourists from all over the world.

He's the favorite son of Florence.  Everybody seems to overlook the uncomfortable fact that once upon a time, Florence kicked him right out.

Dante has my heart for two reasons.  First, the Divine Comedy is the first work to be written in the language of the common man.  Dante chose "vulgar Italian" instead of Latin for his work because he believed in the beauty and value of his own language.  This makes him brother to Chaucer, an educated man who elevated and celebrated his own dialect.  

The second reason I love him is because he got the best of all possible revenges.  He sent everyone who ticked him off or exiled him straight to hell, and they've been there ever since.  He filled his Inferno with creative punishments for those who he found offensive.  I can just imagine his satisfaction as he penned their torments.  I imagine, or at least I hope, that it was highly therapeutic.  This brings me to my second artist...

Michelangelo

Again, he's not new to anyone, but I think he gets caricatured or reduced.  He's a famous name, one highly likely to be recalled if someone is looking for an artist.  The thing about Michelangelo is that he lived according to the artistic vision in his head and was unwilling to compromise.  He saw the human body as an expression of divine beauty.  He broke the law to do secret dissections to understand the inner workings of muscle, bone, and tendon.  He turned his knowledge into such grace and splendor, and he refused to see anything "dirty" in what he created.  

This trip, I got to go to see the David at the Accademia del Arte.  Everybody has seen images of the David.  It's one of the great cliched pieces of world art, and I wasn't actually expecting that much.  I spent about thirty minutes waiting to get in to the museum passing souvenir carts full of images of the statue, including boxer shorts depicting its groin, postcards of zoom shots of that same region, and various other tacky items.  When we got in, I heard several people comment on just one aspect of the statue:  his exposed genitals.  

I couldn't help but be exasperated by that.  The David is famous for a reason.  It is, quite simply, astonishing.  Forget the cheap imitations.  Forget the touristy trinkets.  Everybody should see it.  While I didn't have the heart-stopping reaction my best friend did when she saw it after so many years of waiting, I did feel a catch in my breath, that little "Oh" reaction.  Even on a cloudy Florentine day, the light spilling across the marble from the simple dome above was the only adornment it could possibly have needed.  We walked forward slowly, sat down to take it all in.  Every curve, every tendon, every delineation of vein or hollow of muscle was beautiful.  The longer one looks at the David, the more spectacular it becomes.  How can anyone be so crass as to reduce it to that one component, to make a dirty joke of something profoundly pure?

Unlike so many others, Michelangelo never perceived the body as a source of wickedness.  If you look at his paintings, he celebrates the wonder that every person should feel when the intricacies of our bodies are considered.  The body for him seems to have been its own form of art with nothing prurient implied in it.  Too bad more people can't take that opinion.  Too bad more people can't see the beauty that he did.

And his contemporaries missed it over and over, really.  I didn't know until this trip that the figures in the Sistine Chapel had been painted as nudes.  All of mankind was naked and perfect before its creator.  He felt that this was perfection.  Of course, people being what they are, he was accused of painting pornography on the walls of the Vatican by one of the cardinals, the official censor.  He denied this and to get revenge for the criticism, he painted the man in hell in the great scene of the last judgment.  Not only did he publicly condemn his critic, Michelangelo also stripped him down and had him tortured for eternity by having a giant serpent wrap around him and devour the very portion of his anatomy that seemed to lead the cardinal's thinking.  Irony is a wonderful thing. 

Of course, his critics got the last word.  About three years after he died (while working on the mosaics of Saint Peter's), the powers that be forced one of his students to come in and add seco drapes to the original frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.  That snake still buries his fangs into the cardinal though.  I guess you can learn from this and from Dante that offending the artist is, to say the least, unwise....

Saint Francis of Assisi

As with the other two, I can't imagine many people haven't at least seen the image of St. Francis.  The gentle brown-robed figure so often depicted with birds or beasts is common even outside the Catholic church.  I have a concrete figure of him standing watch in a bed full of day lilies near my bird feeders.

We actually got to go to Assisi this time, and for the first time, that concrete icon became a real person.  At the great basilica of Saint Francis, we met Brother Michael, a Franciscan priest.  He was one of those rare people who just radiates that type of holy serenity.  There was nothing rigid or formal about him.  He was totally welcoming of us without knowing us at all.  One of the things he said as we stood outside the doors of the lower basilica that I will probably never forget was that the basilica had been built with us in mind.  Not that the people who started it some seven or eight centuries ago knew us personally, but that they knew travelers would come from all over the world to their doors, and they wanted us all, people from every place and in every time, to feel peace and hospitality when we arrived.

The great basilica itself has three levels.  We started in the lower basilica, and I have never seen a place with such beautiful art.  Most of it was done by or is in the school of Giotto, the "father of the Renaissance."  The dark blue ceiling curves protectively overhead, and a sense of absolute serenity enfolded me as we entered.  After looking at the features of the architecture, we were sent downstairs to the crypt. By this point, we had seen lots of "saints-in-a-box," as I have come to think of the displayed remains of the deceased holy.  There was nothing ostentatious about Saint Francis's tomb.  The sarcophagus wasn't showy marble or glass-sided.  It was simple stone surrounded by the limestone foundations of the great church above.  For all its lack of ornamentation, it was the most moving of all of such things I saw.

I think it was because of what we were told about Saint Francis himself.  He had everything, wealth, privilege, the status of the oldest son which meant more property and power would come his way when his merchant father died.  He tried to find meaning in excess, in reveling in the things his money could get him, but he found it hollow.  He tried next to find it in service to his country, joining the military and winding up as a prisoner of war.  When he came home, he turned to God after a spectacular conversion including a vision that ordered him to rebuild the church.  He did this literally and with his own hands, but he came to understand that it wasn't physical labor that he was meant to do.  His father tried to stop him, thought him insane, and after a massive and public confrontation, disowned him.  Francis took this in stride, and went on to give up everything in order to do that which he felt he had been called to do.

I admire Francis because in his own way, he was every bit as misunderstood and rebellious as Michelangelo and Dante.  While to the best of my knowledge, he was much more about the forgiveness than the eternal revenge, the austere life of service he chose was just as much against the grain of his society, the medieval church, as were the lives of the other two.  The church of his day was full of greed, materialism, and politics.  Everything in his past fitted him for pursuit of these things, but he knew just how little actual fulfillment was to be had from them, so he chose another way:  putting the needs of others first.  He had wisdom and dedication, and apparently, he also kept his humor.  Today, he still inspires people to live with such tremendous care for others and kindness.  

Even the symbols associated with Saint Francis are compelling to me.  The Tau cross he chose as his personal emblem sums it up.  According to what I was told, he picked it because it was the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, connecting to the idea of giving up the old and transitioning to the new, ending one life and starting another.  I think no matter what your spiritual beliefs, there comes a time when the idea of leaving something broken behind in search of something else is important.

There are lessons to be taken from all three of these revolutionaries.  I cannot help but feel that even though they were such different people, all of them were great because all of them were somehow able to transcend themselves, escape the narrow focus that enfolds so many of us.  They are an inspiration to pursue the heart's great desire no matter what obstacles arise.  They overcame banishment, censorship, and the disapproval of those closest to them to do the thing they knew they had to do, the thing they were meant to do.  If in any way I can manage to emulate this, while I know any sort of eternal greatness is not portioned for me, perhaps I can avoid mediocrity.