As in peaceful.

As in some ducks really are finding rows.

As in I am more and more a self I like.  A self I can look at in a mirror and (despite the bad hair day today) believe is going to be just fine.  ’Well’, even – not just fine.

And these moments tend to pass.  (I’m a moody creature after-all) so it seemed only fair to mark a good moment.  A content moment, given I mark so many sad and whiney ones.

Right now I can breathe.

I can actually breathe.

And I am content.

*** WARNING: This is criticism as well as a review and this film is about a well-documented historical event so some of my commentary may appear to be somewhat SPOILER’ISH ***

This film – about the 1981 IRA Hunger Strike – is impressive.  It is divided into three clear acts, it is very visual and cinematic and yet also seems to do a great many things that conventional narrative filmmaking would say not to do.  Mostly, it does what it does in such a way that it has critics almost exclusively singing its praises.

The first act is nearly without dialogue and depicts the justifiably paranoid life of a particular prison guard and for the IRA prisoners seeking to be called political prisoners instead of terrorists whom he guards: brutal and moving.  Hard to watch given the first part of the prisoner’s protest was “dirty” in that they refused to wash or bathe and smeared excrement all over their prison walls.  The disgust one feels about the treatment of the prisoners, about the squalor and filth, is balanced by the smallest moments of stillness, the tiniest intrusions of nature and by unexpected human compassion.

The next act is one conversation between a particular prisoner and a priest: fast dialogue, emotional with a particular monologue that is destined to make its way into acting classrooms across the English speaking world.

The last act is an intimate, fluid, disturbingly gentle and quiet – barring some very effective, even lyrical, use of sound design – portrayal of the eponymous “Hunger” as it takes the life of IRA volunteer/leader Bobby Sands.  This act is so elegant that an entire scene finds its motivation in one, small tattoo.

The cinematography is steeped in classic rules of composition.  Iconic with exquisite use of light, shadow and it is – to an image (even of excrement in a way that boggles) – beautiful.   In strange ways it made me think about Jean-Luc Goddard, somehow, and also of early Hal Hartley.

The second act “conversation,” is punchy, evocative – even funny – and performed in a near-perfect rhythm and dance by actors Michael Fassbender & Rory Mullen.  It veritably savages the stereotypical tradition of going from a wide establishing angle to medium/close-ups and then into shot/reverse-shot that makes up the vast majority of scenes that depict two people talking in contemporary narrative filmmaking and TV.  The scene is no less than 20 minutes long and shot with, if memory serves, only about five or six cuts with the vast majority of it shown from a static wide angle; cigarette smoke becomes the only truly mobile player.

The film is lingering and sad and by keeping us almost exclusively in the claustrophobic, repressive, violent, covert and dangerous world of the prisoners and their custodians, does serve to tell this piece of history with power, dignity and pathos.  It’s worth seeing and I don’t think I have ruined any of the art or historical poignancy by drawing attention to the structure and storytelling choices of its creators, Enda Walsh and Steve McQueen.

If I have a complaint of any kind, it’s that I don’t usually notice this much about the structure of a film the first time I see it unless it is not truly holding me; unless it is not making me forget that I am watching a movie, not making me forget that I am in my living-room or a cinema.  I was periodically moved by things in the film.  I was suitably outraged by things in the film.  But all feelings were muted, felt neutralized by something almost clinical in the film’s style.  It’s as though some of the filmmaking choices were not made to serve the storytelling but in a reactionary way to flout the conventions of mainstream narrative cinema.

Reactionary choices in narrative film storytelling, in particular, are always alienating to me as a viewer because they are often made to serve an artist’s ideology more than to serve the needs of the story itself.  Unless it is the artist’s own story or it is a story that is, somehow, about filmmaking itself, these sorts of choices usually mean that the artist’s need to comment – through cinematographic and structural choices – about the act of filmmaking winds up in conflict with the story he or she is trying to tell and something, in my opinion, is always lost this way.

I will also admit that after four years in film school and too much general life exposure to artists so bent on ‘being different’ that their so-called differences all end up falling into the same category, I am extra sensitive and have my own ‘re’action to this particular phenomenon.  I might, in short, be seeing it where it is not in any way intended to be.

Alternatively,  given how much of the world took notice as Bobby Sands starved to death the film is, in fact, about the power of media and battles fought in the media which take real human lives.  In this vein, toying with the medium in deliberate ways while making this film might well be a very strong, well-grounded choice.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter one way or another, though.

Perhaps the only thing that matters is that, as I said, Hunger is a lingering and beautiful film and that it’s been three days since I saw it and I am still thinking about it, still writing about it.  I am also, as it happens, seeing moments from it in my mind and – even if it didn’t happen as I was watching the film – momentarily forgetting where I am.

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Poster Image Borrowed from HERE

Will try to post a real post later maybe but this song keeps coming up in random and the first time I ever heard it was while working and listening to music on random and I’ve been playing with the lyrics in my head… Trying to figure out if this one has more meaning to me, to a friend?  Why does it keep coming up?  I mean, I genuinely love the song so it’s fine with me but it is sad and I get sad enough all on my own, thank you very much.

Me no need musical encouragement.

Anyhoo.  Gotta’ eat and dash to work.  Just wanted to share.

Kisses,

The Octopus in Residence

So.  In my fishing around for holiday travel possibilities so as to celebrate my new life on my first Christmas holiday without my son and without my own family,  I have added myself to interesting weekly mailing lists and have asked virtual strangers for their advice about where to go.  I’ve gotten advice too.  Good advice.  Interesting travel stories.  It’s fun.  Even if I don’t wind up going anywhere, I’m learning about how to go somewhere.

I like that sentence so much for its myriad possible meanings I’m going to write it again.

I’m learning about how to go somewhere.

Finally.  And, I dunno’ — “Amen.”

And the most appealing (literal as opposed to metaphoric) destination  so far came to me through an article from New York Magazine sent to me by my wonder-cousin whom I adore

This is it: Balamku Resort

Do click the link to their website to see more images to get a better feel for the all-round great feeling nature of this place.  Behind this beachfront with its perfect “round” rooms (I was once asked to draw my fantasy bedroom in high school.  It was round with window seats under endless windows, a bed in a sunken nook, a fireplace – and these places come damn close in their way…) is a huge swath of rich green forest.   It’s stunning.  Magic.

They are booked through the holidays and they are far enough off the beaten track that  even if they had space available I do not think I would have the courage to travel there by myself on my first trip to Mexico.

But this is now my destination location.  No question.  I am going there.

I’ve rarely actively wanted to go to a specific place like this.  There is a hotel on Gabriola Island in B.C. called Surf Lodge that I love love love and went to by myself once after having gone there with the ex a number of times and I would go there again.  It’s just beautiful and unpretentious and relaxed and a little soft and mossy like most of South-Western B.C..  The owners at that time let you walk their dog for them if he liked you and he liked me.  In the right season there were sea lions and dolphins and sea otters and Kingfishers to watch while you sat on a rustic deck drinking the world’s best Ceasar… And you got to take two ferries to get there from Vancouver.  I love ferries an unreasonable amount.

And, obviously, I’ve always wanted to go to Italy – though that is more of a primal yearning than a specific craving…

But this place just grabbed and hooked me.  It sounds silly, I know, but I feel like I am supposed to go there…  Like not only will I go there but it’s going to be a really important trip…  I know… Go get a crystal ball and put on some big hoop earrings already… And maybe it’s just wishful thinking but I’m sticking to it.  I mean, look at that picture again and then try to deny me the fantasy… I dare you.

Anyway, in a sea of places that are more like this (click the link – seriously – it’s almost hard to believe someone is using the Seven Deadly Sins as a marketing tool, didn’t they see the movie “Seven”????!!!), Balamku has wooed me from a far and will be mine.

One day…

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Balamku Image Borrowed from HERE

1)

In my opinion, Apple and the iphone got their ass handed to them by a very clever ad for the Verizon Droid.  I am not endorsing one product over the other by saying this.  I’m just saying it’s a damn clever ad.  Lean and vicious.  Infinitely more punchy and provocative then the counter-ads “PC” computers have been running against the Apple computer ads.

Important to note that when I saw it on TV there was no “title” to contextualize.  ”iJust”  got it… I do find it very interesting, though, that no matter how good ads that go up against Apple ads can be – they are always “RE”actionary… They can’t just be who they are.  They have to tip their hat to Apple brand-speak and tend to try to use Apple’s own marketing tools against them.  Apple seems to always be the advertising incumbent whether their products are better or not.  Will be interesting to see what the Droid release does to iphone sales and use.

2)

There is a third tiger at the zoo.  The two girls are now in the main enclosure together.  The younger of the two is very very annoying and always steals the older one’s toys.  They are over a year-old now, I think, and big.  Paws like dinner plates.  Claws you can feel through the plexiglass if you let your imagination tend that way.  So damn beautiful, too.  But there was a third tiger pacing the edges of things in the back kennel and I have not found out if she or he is staying or visiting.  I have not even found out whether it is a she or a he.  I just know there were three tigers the other day and that I never have a problem with more tigers.  I’ll keep you posted and next time I’ll bring the camera.

3)

A blogging network called tumblr.com showed up in my blog stats this weekend.  Frankly, it seems cool and while I am happy and comfy here at wordpress for writing and do not mean to be disloyal to what is a very good and user-friendly  service.  I am intrigued – for the purposes of the photoblog I have been neglecting – by the fact that everything is customizable over at tumblr.  In other words, when I post a photograph full of burnt oranges and reds, it won’t be given a background matte that is the same damn colour unless I WANT to camouflage my work that way….  Anyway… When I have more time I might play around over there and thought I might as well share as not.

4)

Not for the first time, I’m sure, but for the first time that really struck me – a show I was watching on TV was being sponsored by a website.  TV only exists because it was a new opportunity to advertise products like this:

TV shows are made or broken by what sponsors are willing to pay for ad slots during broadcast.  TV shows have their own websites, too, with some of the same sponsors they might have for their on-air broadcasts and other sponsors entirely.  And now.  Someone creates a website for an event that has not yet taken place, a website with advertisers of its own, and it is taking airtime during a prime-time TV show.  Advertisers using ad-space on a website that, itself, buys ad-space on TV.  More too, cuz the company that owns the website in question – which is for the Winter Olympics – is the same television company that will be broadcasting the olympics in Canada… The Olympics.  An event that itself has all manner of sponsors both for the show and worn by each an every one of the competitors…  Seriously… My head hurts.

My friend’s son has been playing hard with my son for hours.  They have come downstairs for a break in front of the TV and not long after my friend’s husband comes in from work, her son looks at me and says – rather casually though with an air of seriousness:

“Sooyah, you need a man to marry you so you can have a husband.”

I’m not sure I’ve heard him correctly so I say, “I’m sorry, kiddo, what did you say?  Did you say I need a husband?”

He nods.  He says, “Yeah, get married so you can have a husband.”

I don’t quite know what I said after the three adults stopped laughing about this but it might have been along the lines of, “Interesting idea” or “I’ll work on that.”

And then he nodded again;  a brisk acknowledgment of my seeming acceptance that his plan is both wise and prudent.

He made it sound so easy, didn’t he?  So simple?  I mean, I didn’t get too serious about it in my head.  Mostly I lapsed into my imitation of a nice old Yenta – with accent and all – telling my fine self that I’m still young and that I shouldn’t give up hope…  It was likely only truly funny to me because of the Yenta/Matchmaker in “Crossing Delancey” who sets the heroine up with a pickle salesman but there you go…

I’ve been told.

By a four year-old.

I live next door.

Oh, I thought you were the maid’s daughter… A wolfish smile. A fluttery gesture of well-manicured fingers, a glitter and flicker of diamonds and gold.

Well, that’s a very pretty dress and it’s so sweet of you to help with the cake like that!

Kim was the only one in a party dress. The twenty or so other little girls had come straight from their private school and were running around the garden, the house, like a fluid green and blue plaid uniformed, blonde-haired squealing monster.

Kim’s dress had a cotton ruffle at the hem, blue and white vertical stripes through the skirt, a crisply tied bow at the back, more ruffles on the shoulder, a high white bodice. It was not fashionable, not even for a six year-old, but it was pretty. It wouldn’t have mattered, though. Even if it were the prettiest dress any little girl had ever worn in the history of pretty dresses. It didn’t matter how much she loved it, loved wearing it.

It wasn’t a school uniform.

And she wasn’t the maid’s daughter but she had more in common with the maid then she ever would with the children at this party or with their parents; she had brown hair and so did the maid. That was enough, really. And the maid was really a nanny. And the nanny didn’t have children.

She lived in a small basement room with one, slightly above-ground window. There was a metal bed frame, a high mattress, a pretty quilt, a few pictures, a woven rug on a concrete floor. There were no pictures of family. It was cold and dungeon-like and Kim never understood why anyone would live there, work there. It would take her years to understand, if she even could, what hardship and desperation really are – what seems “better” when what you know is worse.

The nanny had once taken them out for a walk. Reya, Kim and Reya’s little brother Tom.   She’d found a bench to sit on and made herself very, very still. She’d told them to stand back for a while. She’d told them not to move.

Within minutes she was crawling with big grey squirrels. At least five of them. Those squirrels had come out of wooded nook and cranny, across manicured lawn, through neat rows of carefully landscaped flowers and crawled up and around the nanny’s body like magic.

A twist of grey squirrels around a torso.
A twist of uniforms around a garden.

Reya’s friends didn’t know Kim. They didn’t even say “Hello” to outsiders no less play with them and when Reya was with them Kim was invisible to her too.  It was strange to stand out so much that she couldn’t even be seen.

So Kim had gone to the kitchen.  She’d decided to  help with the cake and the nanny saw her coming.  She handed Kim the forks.  She smoothed back Kim’s brown hair.  She smiled and then she handed Kim the napkins too.

Boy says, “I want to hear it again, Mommy.”

This is the sixth time he’s asked to listen to “Lose Yourself” in the car so far today.  We’ve just gotten back in the car, have about half an hour of driving ahead of us. I do play music that is more appropriate to preschoolers most of the time but this was the disc in the car and I didn’t realize it until he asked for music.  I don’t feel good about fishing around for CDs while waiting at lights etc. so I just stuck with it.

Plus, he plays an imaginary piano until the guitars come in and then he moves on to air guitar and then to air drums… He’s really keeping it tight to the build of the real song and I find it impressive and cute as hell…

I say, “Okay.”

The song plays for a little while.  He says, “Mommy.”  I turn it off so I can be sure to hear him.  He’s speaking very quietly, very seriously.

“Yes, Baby?

“He’s a really good singer.”

I can’t help but smile.

“You think so?”

“Yes.”

“I think so too, Baby.  He’s more of a rapper or a hip hop artist but if you want to call him a singer, that’s cool too.”

“He uses a lot of bad words.”

I really can’t help but smile now, knowing that he doesn’t recognize even HALF of the bad words he’s hearing as being bad words…

“Yes, he does.  It’s okay to listen to bad words sometimes.  We just don’t want to say them to our friends or to grown-ups right?”

I’m thinking about being denied custody on the grounds of moral corruption by some uptight jackass who reports me to social services…  Know it’s a bit alarmist but whatever – he’s only four and he’s been listening to Eminem in the car most of the day…

“Right,” he says, “I want to keep listening to it again now.  And after I want to listen to the bumpy one.”

The bumpy one is “Without Me.”  It’s actually a perfect way to describe it.  You need to listen to at least the opening and then keep reading.

Later, we’re home and settling in for a snack and bed.  He’s serpentining with the the cats through the kitchen, into the living room and then back through the kitchen.  I hear him muttering something. I get closer.

In his little bouncy, bumpy voice, I hear:

“Round the outside, Round the outside, Round the outside….”

I cannot help but outright laugh at this point and that’s just the way it is.

Social services be damned.

So, last year, just a few months after my relationship divided itself into two homes, my sister’s did the same.  She’d been with her mate longer than I had been with mine and they too have a child who is two and half years older than the boyo.

This was a hard time for me and for my sister, obviously, but it was a hard time for our whole family as well.  My parents will have been married for 50 years in November and both their daughters were suddenly – in one fell swoop really – “divorced”.  These things are complicated.  On the whole – because we all love each other very very much – we muddle through but there are rough times.

Misunderstandings.  Edginess.

And the scheduling of things has become even more frenzied than it was.  Last year – so that we would not get trapped out of sync in perpetuity – we set things up so that the “grandkids” (i.e. the boyo and his cousin) would be together for the actual day of Christmas every other year.  I went to Vancouver with the kidlet and we dealt with the comings and goings of my sister’s ex and my sister’s new man and had a pretty decent time of it – as stressed as we all were in a way, as new as it all was.

After that week, I gave my son to his dad and I had a week alone.  I was scared of that week.  Fought it for a while.  Didn’t want to be alone for that long without my son or anyone really because of the time of year.  But my lost orca-ring set me straight and I didn’t run from my demons to some place far away or far away and into the arms of someone who wasn’t sure he could catch me – no matter how much I wanted to.  I spent some time with a good friend.

I spent a lot of time alone.

At a certain point I caught myself looking at pictures of my son when he was an infant.  I even looked at pictures of him when he was just a few weeks old and there were still bruises up and down both my arms from the seven blown veins the anesthesiologist gave me trying to get an IV line in…  I had been labouring for nearly 30 hrs by the time he was set to work on me – it was hot – my veins were terribly dilated – it wasn’t really his fault and the fact that everything was dilated made the epidural easy – no problems or complications there and I am quite sure that my son might be dead (he had the cord around his neck) if I had not gotten that epidural and he and I were finally given someone and machines to monitor us both.  I was passing out between contractions right before the epidural kicked in – dreaming of the Little Match Girl and seeing my father clear as day from the perspective of a child in those blackouts… A few bruises on my arms and some post-partum madness was a small price to pay for my son healthy and in my life…

Anyway.  Not easy to look at those pictures.  I hadn’t looked at them in ages.  I hadn’t looked at some of them really ever.  And last December I had spent months more at a remove from things than I ever had before in my life.  Numb.  I looked at picture after picture.  Of my beautiful, beautiful baby…  And I thawed.  And I wept.  And wept and wept.

With love.

So much love.

All the love I’d felt when he was born but was too sad and messed up to give him – all the love that I have ever felt for anyone or anything just pouring out of me onto my computer screen and into my past… I realized that it had all been there even through the crazy.  I HAD given it to him… Lavished it upon him… I was just too broken and numb to FEEL it going out to him…  I healed myself retroactively by looking at those pictures.  Brought that beautiful baby and his sad, sad mother up into the present and healed us both in a way.

So, that week by myself after last Christmas was crucial.  A turning point.  Agony but so important.  I can trace pretty much every single one of the good things in my life right now to that moment of release – that moment of uncaging my love and passion from sadness, depression and 12 years of the oppression of being in the wrong place with the wrong person.

But the thing is – it’s almost been a year and Christmas is coming up fast and this year I do not have my son for Christmas.  I also will probably not be flying to see my family until after Christmas so that the grandkids can be together for a bit.  My sister is near-frantic making plans to work this out with her ex, the new man and his kid… It’s madness.

But me?  I will probably be alone for the actual days of Christmas Eve and Christmas for the first time in my life.  There is tremendous freedom and isolation in this.  I mean I could really, truly be ALONE for that holiday and it’s a strange feeling.  I don’t feel like wanting to get away this year would be running, either.

And I can’t really afford it, but I’ve started looking at vacation packages to sunny places for a few days cuz why not?  Nothing to lose by looking – fantasizing.  Turns out the prices don’t change if you go as a single.  Everything is geared to couples.  Just the way it is.

And the thing is, this year I truly believe I’ve earned it.  I’ve earned some sunshine.  I’ve earned a man who knows he can catch me.  Who reaches out for me before I’ve even leapt.  I deserve that.  I want and crave that.  I deserve that and so much more.

Yeah.  Me.  I deserve that and so much more and I want to give that and so much more.

And I want a beach.  And sunshine.

But if I don’t get it, I’ll be okay.  I have my two kitties.  I have books and journals to read.  I have words I might write.  I’ve never had a hard time filling my time.

I just know it wouldn’t be running FROM something this time.  It wouldn’t be running at all.  It would be a break.  A release.  A real vacation even.

I just know that I want to take new pictures. Of new people.  And new places.

Who knows.  I might need them some day.

The Lousy:

The boyo’s eye is wandering again.  We are going for more measurements in anticipation of more surgery.

Arrived home from Thanksgiving in Vancouver on a later flight that was an hour or more delayed to icy roads and a wise, lovely, generous friend who drove me and the boyo home carefully so that it took us twice as long as usual to get there only to discover that there was a broken water main and no water on in the building.  I had barely any clean clothes, had to teach all day the following day and then go to a meeting and had been planning on showering when I ‘got home’…

I joined a gym and have started to lift weights in a class with other people lifting weights and may actually have begun to like running a little bit.

Right after I changed to my fall duvet and duvet cover, the boy-cat puked all over it.

The kids I teach have no idea who Kermit the Frog is.  I’m not sure my son knows who he is.   This makes a failure as a teacher, as a mother and raises serious doubts about whether or not Western Culture shouldn’t just throw in the towel and dump itself into an ocean.

The Good:

Even if the boyo’s eye is wandering again – his vision is still pretty damn good and seems to be relatively stable and he appears to be working really hard to use both eyes together.

The meeting I had at the end of my tired day in my one clean outfit with my dirty hair full of product to make it passable was with an incredibly receptive, supportive, interesting and interested Professor at a local University who is helping me with my application to the Masters of Education program.

The weather turned warmer so going back to my summer duvet and duvet cover was relatively simple.

I joined a gym and have started to lift weights in a class with other people lifting weights and may actually have begun to like running a little bit.

Oh, and I’ve taken to drinking cold water from an emptied Aboslut Vodka bottle.  This amuses me to no end…  Perhaps I should try bringing it to the gym?