Pantastic!

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Lately on Mad Men, the most fabulous show of them all, there has been a running commentary on how the sexes perceive each other. Even though Don Draper is in love, one can’t help feeling like heartbreak is just biding its time.Two weeks ago, Joan Holloway said, “Men don’t take the time to end things. They ignore you until you insist on a declaration of hate.” http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/betty-francis?before=1335377688

Damn, Joan! Say it out loud, why don’t you?

Then this last week, that douchebag Peter Campbell gets spurned (he’s a tool and deserves it, but still), and crestfallen, he ponders, “Why do they [women] get to decide what’s going to happen?”

He looks so forlorn that what’s-his-name, the head of tv advertising, says, as if acknowledging some undeniable truth like gravity or peristalsis, “They just do.”   http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/betty-francis?before=1335377688

The thing that I like so much about these little exchanges is the acceptance of uncomfortable truths and the complicity that comes with the acceptance. Engaging in these painful, one-sided relationships provokes misery and suffering, and yet we all still engage – hell, we jump on the chance to ride the wave, even as we watch it crash to the shore. It’s a form of doublethink, the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of fact and fantasy. We push back the truths  for the hope that the outcome will be different from that which we know is inevitable.

Awesome! Thank you, tv, for making impending spinsterhood and celibacy not only seem like a choice, but the smarter option!

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.

I am going to write a series of vignettes called “Along the Way”, about stuff that happens along the way to somewhere else. Maybe if I start it here on the blog, I will actually finish it, though I think this may be just another act of willful deception. I’m a much bigger starter than I am a finisher. A mile wide and an inch deep, I am.

Anyhoo, it all starts out with a high school teacher’s literary nod to the classic stories of the Greek hero, which, as you probably remember, are very formulaic. Look it up if you have forgotten. I don’t get paid enough to not be able to teach you in the same manner I am unable to teach my own students.*

Thinking about the hero’s journey reminded me of Guillermo Del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth, which was very cool for many reasons, including that the classic hero was a pre-adolescent girl who was given to hallucinatory fantasies.

Thinking about that made me think about Pan. He was the half-man, half-goat Greco-Roman god of the wilderness, of all that was savage and beyond man’s control. His man half enabled him to be a wise prophet, but his goat half made him a wildly lecherous prankster. Here’s Pan actually doing it barnyard style with his better half.

My kind of dude, but I digress.

Not much is known about Pan, but one theory of his birth is this:

When the famous Greek war hero, Odysseus, returned from ten years of the Trojan War and ten years of sailing around the Mediterranean, he had to deal with a bunch of dudes who had moved in on his still decidedly hot wife, Penelope. After all, it had been 20 years. Odysseus was not completely cool to her, as he was distrustful and hurt by her supposed lack of loyalty. Penelope, though, was a model of fidelity. After all that time, she still loved Odysseus and held out the hope that he would return to her, so she devised all these clever plans to stave off her suitors, who wanted her land and kingdom, Ithaca, as much as they wanted her.

Odysseus still didn’t trust her. Perhaps this is because while he was gone, he lived for several years on the island of this goddess, Circe, who fell madly in love with him, and who later, after he ditched her to go make sure his wife hadn’t cheated on him, gave birth to his son.

Needless to say, lady poets are not big fans of Odysseus. While he was out frolicking with sorceresses (who, coincidentally, also liked to do the wild thing like the wild things, according to lore), Penelope was long-suffering and ever-hopeful for a reunion with her true love, who it is said she married at age 15. Here is what Dorothy Parker had to say:

Penelope

In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.

Dorothy Parker

But again, I digress.

One of the theories of Pan the goat boy’s birth was that Penelope was eventually seduced by the strongest of the suitors, Antinious, and that she later bore “hornstrong, hairy Pan.”

Hornstrong. Heh, heh!

Another theory is that Penelope got it on with ALL the suitors, and the result was the randy goatgod.

I don’t know what I want to believe more; that Penelope was virtuous and pure while Odysseus was a superheroic hypocrite, or that she was fierce and free and practiced a twenty-years-is-twenty-damned-years: bygones, bastard, bygones! kind of ethos.

Get you some, Penny! Life is short, so live it, girl!

But again, I digress. None of this is what I wanted to talk about at all.

However, this all makes sense, and does have a rambling kind of logic. Men will be men, women will be women, goats will be goats. We are all proverbial scorpians and frogs, stranded at the edge of the lake of life, hoping that a ride from a stranger will turn out to be an adventure, instead of a tragedy. We hope we can find someone to love, who will love us back, and who won’t damage us too badly. We hope we can come to agreements and compromise that take our natures into account and still allow us to love completely and satisfyingly. Even though a television series set in a cynical time doesn’t dwell on it, I do believe that adventure and enlightenment is as likely to be around the next corner as dismay and disappointment. I think we can all get along. I think that the lion can lie down with the lamb, or to be a tad more topical, the goat with the gorilla.

In fact it all reminds me of a joke, but I only remember the punchline. That happens to me a lot. It’s a real funny one, though. The punchline is, ” A good goat’ll do that for ya!”

It’s hilarious if you hear the whole thing.

Sadly, now I don’t feel like writing my “Along the Way” series. Bygones, bastard, bygones. Maybe next time.

*Speaking of not being able to teach your students, check out the film Monseiur Lazhar. So good!

A HUGE congratulations shout out to KB, for becoming the deputy, which is much better than the sheriff! After all, in the words of Bob Marley and Eric Clapton, “I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.” It is safer and every bit as cool. I am so proud! Bravo!!!!

RIP, Post Script

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Dear All, 

Thank you so much for your kindness and concern. For awhile, there was much sadness, and I know that for those who were closer to Vic and Megan than I was, it is nowhere near diminished. Still there will be beauty, there will be peace; I only hope they can see goodness and hope soon.

A special thanks to Robert, whose heartfelt condolences reached me from across the sea, and to Trixie, who came from down the street. I’m glad we’re friends.

My sister said that she was happy she got to know Megan, if only through her death. She said she felt lucky because Megan had a wonderful life, with joy and adventure and courage. That’s a nice tribute to Megan. Even though our paths intersected only very briefly, I’m glad they did. My course is positively altered by her, which is kind of the goal in this game – to try to bring good things to others. Thanks to my sister for making me feel better, though I resisted it.

Babe is about to graduate, and I’m taking him and whoever he wants to Vic’s dad’s restaurant. We’ll raise a glass to friends who couldn’t be there to celebrate with us, and Babe laughed like a crazy man when I told him his glass would have to be filled with Coke. By the way, he told me Vic was going to an acting class, and that he loved it. I’m glad about that.

The other day, after working in the garden, I took Atticus for a walk. I passed the neon orange markings on the street, the arrows, numbers, boxes and circles that the police spray painted there after Megan’s accident. Up ahead, I noticed the cars slowing down and one car screeched suddenly to a stop.

I didn’t really want to look, but I kept walking. I felt like I had started on a course towards seeing, witnessing what was going on, and I kind of had a duty to keep going. When I looked into the car windows, the people were straining to see what lay ahead.

I guess that’s what we do; we always look ahead, even though we know that we can’t see very far, even though we know the scene might have changed by the time we get there, even though we know that what we see might cause us great pain or sorrow. No matter how many times we wish we could erase our eyes, void our memories or purge our emotions, we keep going forward.

Why?

Stupidity, maybe. Habit. Eternal Recurrence. The need to know. But I think it’s hope, even if it eye-of-the-needle hope. We look ahead because maybe, just possibly, what is in front of us might be something we are so glad we didn’t miss. Maybe the best is yet to come. Maybe up ahead is better than where we are now. Or maybe, what lies in front will remind us of how wonderful it all has been.

In rush hour, on a busy urban street, traffic on both sides backed up because a duck and seven little ducklings were crossing the street. I don’t know where they came from or where they were going, but they just kept waddling across, not looking left or right, just taking their time, while all these high-strung, car-pooling, work-weary people were kept waiting.

In car after car, the people were smiling, and pointing, and some were even laughing.

RIP

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Every day, thousands of people die. Of course, this is how it should be; death is a part of life. We don’t think much about the magnitude of death unless we are directly touched by it, which is also good and right; one can’t successfully live while dwelling on the possibility, inevitability and consequences of death. Still, when we do come face to face with the eggshell fragility of life, and the shock of reality and sudden force that is death, it seems that when the world doesn’t shift, or stop, or at least pause to mark the end of life, it is  cruel and unjust.

Of the thousands who died this week, here are two.

Victor wanted to be an actor. He had big eyes, like Sal Mineo, only Victor wouldn’t have heard of Sal Mineo. He wanted to be an actor, but he never took a class, or went on an audition; I don’t know if he was ever in a school play. Still, after high school, he did what most actor do – he worked as a waiter. His dad owns the restaurant, which is named after Victor’s sister. The last time I was there, Victor waited on us, and bought appetizers for the whole table. He was a nice guy, that Victor.

His friends called him “Vic”. Whenever Babe spoke of “my idiot friends”, I knew he was talking about Vic and BJ. I asked him what they did when they were together. “Nothing. Go to the mall. Look at the girls. Talk about people we know. Go to McDonald’s. You know, we just hang out, like guys do. Play some ball. We don’t do anything, really, but I guess they’re the guys I feel closest to. Even when we’re bored, it’s still pretty fun.”

The last night of Victor’s life was a Monday, a school night. It was a warm night for so early in the spring, and the air was heavy, like the evening was wrapped in a sweater, and the boys were playing basket ball. They played by themselves for awhile, more talking smack than actual game, and then some white guys pulled up in a gray BMW, and they jumped in, and a sweaty, grunting kind of game picked up, where one hard foul pissed off the white guys and tempers flared, but not for long. They took off in their bad-ass car, and the boys all laughed, until the Beemer came back, screeched to a stop, and shot out the backboard,  shattering it . The boys ducked down and covered their heads as shards of plastic rained down like trailers from a firecracker. The white dudes peeled off, and BJ found the bullet and said it was from a pellet gun, and everyone laughed again, and kept playing until someone said they had to fly. Victor told his cousin Carlos he could wait in Victor’s car until his ride, his ex-girl or baby mama or whatever, came to get him. BJ left and Babe had to walk home, so he took off walking, and Vic and Carlos got in the car and waited under the incandescent halo of the streetlight, on a good night in a hot town that was cooling down in the dark.

When Carlos’s ride showed up, the girl had brought her new boyfriend along. Carlos and the new guy had words. The boyfriend pulled out a gun and shot into the car. Victor’s cousin was hit; he’s still in the hospital. He’s 20 years old. The guy who shot him is 21. Victor tried to drive away, but only made it about a block. He was 19.

BJ and Babe are both getting tattoos. BJ’s is big, taking up a lot of his arm. It’s a picture of Victor, maybe the one that was on the pamphlet thing they handed out at the funeral. Victor is smiling. Underneath it says “RIP”, “Vic” and “April 2, 2012.” It’s nice, but it doesn’t look that much like Victor. When BJ flexes his muscle, Victor’s smile twists into a smirk, and the eyes look flat – the tattoo Victor has no soul.

I told Babe he should get a basketball with Victor’s name on it. I don’t think he will, though.

 

This is what I knew about the other person that died this week when I first met her:

She had hair the color of melted red Crayolas and cotton candy . She wore a black sundress and black sandals, but what I noticed first was her navy blue and neon pink panties. She had two big yellow rose tattoos on her lower back. Her skin was very white, especially against the black of the asphalt.

By the time a got there – it was only a few seconds after I heard the sound and looked up from digging in the garden- there were already a few people there. Everybody was quiet, except for the guy on the phone. “Yeah, 9-1-1? There’s been an accident…”

Someone asked if she was breathing. A man put his sunglasses by her mouth and they fogged up. “Ma’am? Can you hear me?”

I told them we should get the scooter off of her. It was black and shiny and leaking something. It was crumpled and broken and looked like a vicious toy.The little knot of people who were there tightened. We decided it was best not to move her.

Cars kept going by, but very slowly, the drivers’ necks twisted completely to the left to see what the hold up was, why the sudden slowdown, probably a dog or a cat in the road, and then, when they saw, their faces would drain white and their mouths made an O before they clapped their palms over their lips and shook their heads back and forth. I decided to direct traffic, make the long line of rush hour snake down my street instead of going past her, clear a path for the ambulance. I stood there in the street until a cop car told me to move so he could park his car where I had been.

I went back to her. It looked like she was trying to get up. Once, twice, she moved her head, like she just wanted to peel herself up of the road, untwist her legs, and just go, get the hell out of here, shake it off, and leave it behind. I told her to relax, not to move, stay calm, that she was doing great. I don’t think she heard me – I’m not even sure if I said it out loud-  but she stopped struggling. And then she stopped breathing.

That’s all I knew then. I have since learned a lot about her. Her name was Megan. She was a hairdresser at a place called Halo, and she had been dancing in burlesque shows for about a year. She loved Patsy Cline, and was test driving the scooter when she lost control and turned into traffic, moving fast, and hit a tractor trailer driven by a nice man named Mark who had decided to knock off work early and enjoy the beautiful afternoon.

Megan was described as generous and loving and full of joie de vivre. She helped people. She cared. You can read about her from people who knew her. She was 23. http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2012/apr/11/megan-margolies-burlesque-halo-died-moped-deep-ell/?refscroll=512

I was glad to find out things about her. It is still hard to talk about, what happened that day, but now I have a name and a face.That makes me feel better. I didn’t know her, but  I will remember her for a long, long time.

When people die, unless they are famous, they just fade away. They become an old rainsoaked photo from the 80’s that you find in an alley, or clothes that you buy at an estate sale, or a book that you open and, unexpectedly, a dry cleaning receipt flutters out, or a note, or a grocery list. You don’t really think of them, unless they were yours, and somehow that doesn’t seem right. They lived a life. They were loved. Their absence is felt like a gash, then a scab, then a scar on flesh that will, of course, itself one day disappear. That someone who once was vibrant, a warm buzz of energy, that someone who was once so important and crucial and an integral part of a world, an ecosystem big or small could just one day just cease to exist, and then, perhaps just as suddenly, one day vanish from human consciousness, be forgotten forever, is incredulous. How can everything just end?

Of course, it’s good that we forget. A life spent consumed by death is one that is wasted. If we remember anything, it should be to live while we are alive, every day, to laugh and cry and do a little dance and eat a good meal and to love fiercely or tranquilly, and to pay attention and listen closely and be good whenever you can.

 

My Idiot Friends

 

For Victor and Babe

 

Boys play ball

Court lit up like Christmas

Under a thumbnail moon

Even though they are cool

I see them sweat

Muscles straining against skin

Tongue jammed into teeth

Jordan’s slapping a beat

Palms slapping high five

Balls ricochet like bullets

Shooting some hoops

Shooting the shit

Out late on a school night

 

Balancing the ball on the tip of his finger

Gene Kelly of the blacktop

Knees pointed like stars

Ball twirling like a globe

As the world turns

He shoots the moon

Shots in the night

Hold your breath

Whole world in your hands

Long shot in the dark

It only takes one

A crapshoot – the infinite edge separating here from there

But tonight

In this universe of a moment

Clear shot

 

Nothing but net

 

 

 

Perfect Harmony

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For those of you who care and haven’t realized it, today, April 6, 2012, is a spiritual trifecta: it’s Good Friday (bad for Jesus, but I believe I have covered this ground before), Passover (did you know Moses was a major stutterer, much like the kid from Black Swan Green? The two are probably unrelated, but then again, is anything really unrelated? Think about it and get back to me!) and a full moon! The moon, of course, trumps Judeo-Christian mythology as far as universality goes, on account of it’s been around forever and is symbolic and significant in perhaps all religions and communities, including witches, werewolves, Micheal Jackson dance moves, cheese, tides, marshmallow fluff snacks, childish butt pranks, conspiracy theories*, and shows about robots, spacedogs, aliens and romantic love in Paris. The moon is most often associated with the feminine, the yin, but the man in the moon is probably packing some pretty serious intergalactic yang. Anyway, tonight is the perfect night to celebrate the the big three synchronicity, were pagans and priests, robots and rabbis, vampires and vestal virgins, the Pope and Sarah Palin (she can see the moon from her house in Alaska), the wicked, the Wiccan and the wise, and Team Edward, Team Jacob and Team Jewish can all come together and hold hands around the Universe, like a giant cosmic Coke commercial that celebrates what frequently brings us together (carbonated beverages and buying stuff) instead of what commonly divides us (religion. And robots.)

Happy whatever you celebrate or reject, and Happy Friday – everybody loves the weekend!

This Easter egg mosaic is by Oksana Mas, a Ukranian artist, from her collection of twelve different pieces, Post vs. Proto-Renaissance. It features 3,640,000 hand-painted eggs. The eggs were painted by “inmates to intellectuals” in 42 different countries. No chickens or bunnies were harmed in the making of these mosaics. Cool, huh?

Austin artist Chepo Pena (would that I could figure out how to type the ~ in the right place!) does Loteria cards based on Star Wars. I think these are a groovy depiction of culture, religion (Star Wars is at least a cult, right?), the moon (La Luna) and ideas of fate, faith and custom. Aren’t those the ideas inherent in spirituality? Look at his super cool stuff here: http://www.chepo.net/

http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/oksana-mas-breathtaking-wooden-egg-mosaics-for-the-venice-biennale.html

* There is a documentary coming out called Room 237 that looks into theories of what Stanley Kubrick was REALLY trying to get across when he made The Shining. One of them is that Kubrick helped NASA fake the Apollo moon landings, and then revealed his involvement in the movie. Classic!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/movies/room-237-documentary-with-theories-about-the-shining.html?_r=1&ref=sundancefilmfestivalparkcityutah

One last thing: Two people actually sent me emails about my last post! I love that! Here is what one wise soul had to say about poetry getting lost in translation:
It may be that experiences that you can never quite describe or fully capture in the telling are the poetry of life.
Or that is what poetry aspires to–capturing the most unique of moments, but they are lost to all but those who experienced them.

My friend are real smart!

Still here? How about sending you off with this? It’s the song I sing!

[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2msbfN81Gm0[/tube]

 

Lost In Translation

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Robert Frost said, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” I quite like this quote, as well as the movie that references it, but I can’t figure out if it means that one can never really capture the poetry of a situation, because it always gets lost, or if poetry emerges when something is lost – meaning, perhaps? Clarity? Comfort? Order? – in translation; in other words, when expectation or analytical significance is lost, poetry is gained.

Oh Frost! So simple, yet so complex!

I have recently finished one book, and reread another, both of which stunned me with their poetry and creativity. The new book is Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell, who is the author of Cloud Atlas. Here is a picture of swans.

The black swan in the picture is really just a duck, but you probably knew that. 

Black Swan Green is the story of a year in the life of a boy, Jason Taylor. It is a coming-of-age story, or, as they say in Germany, a bildungsroman. (Yeah, that’s right! I know that word! I said it, and I know what it means! Of course,  I don’t know why anyone who is writing in English would ever use it instead of “coming-of-age-novel”, which is a perfectly good and completely comprehensible term, but I like to be pretentious, and then show that I know that I am pretentious, thereby establishing myself as down-to-earth and adorably self mocking.)

I love the story of the novel, and the way the characters are built. It is funny, poignant, profound, surprising, captivating and universal, though it is set in a very specific place and time. But that’s not what really got me about this book; what makes this book so amazing is the language it is written in, the poetry of it. Mitchell is brilliant (or ‘brill’, as Jason Taylor would say). He is so original, so creative, and so true to his own stylistic devices and perspective that the two books I have read by him are different than anything else I have ever read.

I underlined half the book. Here’s how Jason describes skating by himself in the early morning: Round and around in swoopy anticlockwise loops I looped, a stone on the end of a string. Overhanging trees tried to touch my head with their fingers. Rooks craw…craw…crawed, like old people who’ve forgotten why they’d come upstairs.

Here’s another brief passage: The world won’t leave things be. It’s always injecting endings into beginnings. Leaves tweezer themselves from these weeping willows. Leaves fall into the lake and dissolve into slime. Where’s the sense in that?…The world never stops making what the world never stops making.

That’s nothing. Here are some more random lines:

A cow of an awkward pause mooed.

A shame bomb blew my head off.

[I] held her opal brooch over one eye. I looked through it at the sun for secret colors nobody’s ever named.

New leaves oozed from twigs in the hedges.

Maybe I heard a poem, seeping from [the garden]. So I stood and listened, just for a moment, like a hungry robin listening for worms.

“Probably” is a word with an emergency ejector seat.

Sunlight on waves is drowsy tinsel.

These jewels that glint under the bright light of scrutiny don’t do justice to the music of the book, the song of the words, and the melody of the story. This is a case of not being able to catch the poetry of getting lost in the pages. I can’t give you the poetry, because I lose it in the telling. You’ll just have to read it yourself.

The other book is Dancer, by Colum Mcann. I adore this book. It is absolutely one of my favorites of EVER. It is so unbelievably well-written, so innovative, so glorious. It’s about Rudolf Nureyev, and it combines all kinds of different forms of expression; lists and letters, shifts in subject, time and perspective, history and story, fact and fiction, prose, and poetry and some of the richest, most evocative imagery and diction I have ever had the pleasure of discovering. One chapter, which runs for 32 pages and spans less than 24 hours and is made up of one, single, unbelievable sentence (Suck it, Proust!), makes me almost laugh out loud with the insane, ecstatic purity of it, with its rhythm and swagger, its highs, lows, slow builds and crescendos, with it’s sheer genius – I am left breathless at the end of the chapter, panting. And then I turn back and read it again.

I would give you a taste of this chapter, as it illustrates perfectly the second possibility of my Lost In Translation question – that maybe what it means is less important than how it feels, and how it feels is the poetry of it all – but I have learned my lesson in trying to translate. You’ll just have to read it for yourself.

Plus, like I said, it’s long. I don’t have time to read and think and write for you, now do I?! I got a life to lead, Cha Cha! Now get outta here and leave me alone!

Special thanks to Jonny-Boy, my fahrvergnugan wunderkind, who knows how to use a smartphone like a raketenwissenchaftler and widens my weltenschauung everytime I see him!

Look at these gorgeous black swan dancer (ah, serendipitous synchronicity!!!) posters by La Boca Design http://www.laboca.co.uk/

 and to see more waycool posters, check this site out: http://flyergoodness.blogspot.com

Artsy Fartsy

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Happy Month Anniversary(give or take) of my last post! I know you have been counting the moments; your little hearts are probably so much fonder of me now! I hope you weren’t worried about me…I’m fine, and really, I think I am more adorable than ever!

It’s been a big month for art, I tell you what! I went to this really cool exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art on American art of the 1920’s. http://www.dm-art.org/View/CurrentExhibitions/dma_384640 I think this time period, as far as the visual arts are concerned, is underrated, and I just loved the show, which is finishing its national tour in Cleveland in July (Dig that 4-1-1, chmchm!) It had mostly paintings and photography, with that fantastic, highly-stylized, light-and-shadow, geometric look and feel of the era. Here are some photographs from one of the artists I discovered there, Margrethe  Mather:

This one is by Edward Weston:

 Weston is amazing. Google him!

The paintings were really great also; I saw famous folks, like Hopper* and Thomas Hart Benton, and I saw the third Georgia O’Keefe painting I’ve ever really liked, “East River From The Shelton (East River No.I).” She’s a great artist and all, but I get tired of looking at all those vagina flowers in Southwestern colors. Give me a sun anus any day!

I saw this painting by Paul Cadmus:  I had just heard of him the week before, when I saw these works in Bentonville, Arkansas, at Crystal Bridges Museum.    I was struck by how different his paintings were from each other, and yes, the more mama looked, the more mama liked! Check out these websites: http://www.tendreams.org/cadmus.htm http://www.tendreams.org/cadmus.htm. Cadmus is Bad-ass-mus!

Crystal Bridges, despite it’s silly hoot-in-a-holler name, was awesome. The brainchild of Lady Walmart, Alice Walton, it’s an all American art collection also, but from different eras, and contains art of all kinds of mixed media. It’s well worth the trek to Bentonville, which seems like a nice little town, especially if you like Walmart. It’s not too far from   or   or the nuclear power plant Kind of ironic, huh? Humans leave trails of beauty and creation as well as chaos and destruction. Speaking of irony, look at the sign on the right of the truck and then the sign on the left: And also, what’s up with this?  Kum on!

Well, I gotta go. Adventure calls! Happy almost Spring everyone!

* Hopper paints on blue velvet. Get it? Believe it or not, I just made that up!

Plato’s Symposium and The Angry Inch

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Don’t watch this clip yet. It’s not time! I’ll tell you when!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRol4ByOh6g&feature=related

This love story comes to you from Steven Trask and the movie version of Hedwig and The Angry Inch.

But first, let’s have a little history, what say you? What? I can’t hear you! I’ll assume you are saying, “Teach on, teacher! I live to learn and to learn about living from you is like someone going through a bag of Skittles and pulling out all the gross green and yellow ones, and leaving me with a mouth full of red and purple yum!” That is what you’re saying, right?

It all started with the Greek poet Aristophenes, who puts forth a theory of love later recounted by Plato*, as told at a big philosopher drunk fest called the Symposium in around 380 B.C.  At the party, each guest must put forth a speech in praise of love. That’s how philosophers party. They find it highly a-muse-ing.

The philosophers were all highly esteemed and each had some specialty; one was a medical expert, one well-versed in legal issues, one a hairdresser. OK, there probably wasn’t a hairdresser, because back then they all had slanted bowl haircuts and pointy beards, but I like to make sure you’re paying attention.

 This Italian fresco from 475 B.C. is of a symposium scene. At this particular symposium, I’m thinking they probably did a whole heck of a lot more than just talk about love (“Ah, Praxenius, I believe I got some of my chocolate on your right nipple! And would that be your peanut butter on my wee willie winkelus?”) But I digress.

Anyway, we’ll never really be sure about what exactly happened at Plato’s Philosophest, on account of the first rule of Plato’s Symposium was what happens at Plato’s, stays at Plato’s, so I guess I’ll have to make some of it up.

Because all these dudes were ancient Greeks, they spoke a lot about ancient Greek mythology and baklava. Actually, they didn’t speak so much about baklava, but did speak  with their mouths full of it, so it’s difficult to decipher just what they are saying in the original Greek text, that of course I am reading in the original Greek, from Wikipedicus Majoris Pectoral. I’ll do the best that I can.

The first guy to talk said that Love, or Eros, was the oldest of all the gods and had no parents. Therefore, one can infer that love appears mature and fully formed, like Aphrodite, the goddess of Beauty, Love, Pleasure and Procreation, who, legend has it, was born from the sea-foam as it rolled onto the beach.

She later dropped the Procreation part of her powers because it was a real cock-block at parties. Who can blame her?

I think that’s a cool metaphor, and one could make a reasonable argument that love can be   a powerful, sudden force, that, once conceived, is not carefree or childish, but carries with it adult responsibilities and rewards.

One could argue this, but the wise men at the party chose to argue over whether or not Achilles and Patroclus were lovers or just really good friends. They were all up in each others bid-ness.

The next guy goes on a rant about love and lust being separate, and how lust is common, but love is heavenly, and is based on honoring a partner’s soul and intelligence.

Then he talks for awhile about the laws regarding purchasing young boys for sexual favors. Mostly, the laws favored the favors.

The next speaker is supposed to be Aristophenes, but he is so wasted that he develops a wicked case of the hiccups. Instead of helping him, the dude who is well versed in medicine and the body speaks. He says that love is in everything in the universe, and that it is something to be protected. He says the force of love effects everything in the human plane of existence, and is in every part of being, including our blood. He says that love in our bodies can cure or poison, and that love is what brings humans closer to the divine.

Meanwhile, Aristophenes is turning blue.

Finally he recovers, and tells the story that years later, Hedwig, a transsexual whose botched surgery makes her somewhat of an hermaphrodite, recounts in the video clip above, but with music and pictures.

NOW! Watch the clip now!

Back at the Symposium, lots more goes down, but I got tired of reading it, so I skipped great hunks of it, until these three guys, one of whom is Socrates, get into a big cat fight about great hunks, most notably Agathon, who was a real Greek stud muffin. Socrates speech is notable, because it is the origin of the concept of Platonic love.

Socrates starts out by going all Socratic method on Agathon, making him look like a fool, but he’s still super hot, so I figure he’ll still make out all right at the end of the night. Of course, when I say “make out”, I really mean “make out.” And also doin’ it. Greek style. Again, I digress.

Socrates goes to this woman, Diotima, to find out the real truth about love. Finally! Diotima says that love is the child of Resource and Poverty, and has attributes of both.

Interesting! Also, confounding. What the hell does that mean?

Here is what I figure: picture, if you will, a pair of pants. In these pants, we have a pocketful of poverty, i.e., all that we lack. We also have a pocketful of resource, which is filled with the tools we use to get what we want or need. Love occurs when these pockets are equally filled or emptied. When we find love, we are able to put on our own pants, one leg at a time; we are able to take care of ourselves. We become balanced. Love enables us to deal with our own conflicted natures. Love keeps us from having our junk exposed and makes us less vulnerable to predators, shrinkage, and life. And love is machine washable. Which is a very good thing. As another great philosopher, Mitch Hedberg, once said, “This shirt is dry clean only…which means it’s dirty.”

Love doesn’t have to be dirty. Unless of course you’re trapped with a bunch of drunken,  horny ancient Greek philosophers at Plato’s pad, and you’re homophobic.Then it’s filthy.

*Maybe this was told by Socrates. I don’t know. If you’re such a stickler for details, why don’t you look this stuff up yourself?

P.S. Thank you to all of you who wrote in about last week’s post, written by a total stranger, who disappeared just as suddenly as he/she hacked my computer, leaving him/her totally untraceable. I appreciate your comments and your readership. As they say in 1984, “some day we will meet in a place where there is no darkness.” Until then, wanna go to happy hour one day?

Hang in there!

Someone Who is Definitely Not Me Wrote This!

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I was listening to the Beeb last night, as you know I am wont to do, when I heard a story about a guy who sold his company, and gave $16 million to his employees. Many of them had been there for a long time, and the man wanted to thank them for their hard work and dedication, and so, even though they didn’t get sacked under the new boss – “sacked”: that’s Britspeak for “fired”, in case you aren’t as internationally hip as I am – they got up to $31,800 deposited into their bank accounts on the sneaky sneak. Sweet.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57369402/aussie-bus-boss-wows-staff-with-$16m-in-bonuses/

In related news, the BSISD has decided that teachers should not get paid for their 30 minute lunch break. The school board voted – also on the sneaky sneak- to add an extra 45 minutes to the work day. The board is still debating on what exactly teachers are supposed to do in that 45 minutes, but so far, the board is not considering allowing teachers to do things like grade papers, call parents, or meet one-on-one with students, to do things like talk about pregnancies, drug addiction, gang violence, domestic abuse, parents, siblings, death, fears, hopes, dreams, the future, the past, etc.; all of those things would take more than 45 minutes, so we still have to do them on our own time, like we have always done. Instead, “The [extra] time will be used for professional development, planning, professional learning communities, and tutoring as determined by the principal and school leadership, according to information from the district.”

At my school that means more charts and graphs, word walls and foldables.

We just had a staff development day. We were asked to analyze standardized test data using a special chart template that required five separate downloads in order to complete. I didn’t understand any of it. We were supposed to analyze why our students missed specific questions on the test, so that we could figure out how we had failed them by not teaching the test that we are not supposed to teach to, but we were never allowed to see the actual questions. One of our instructions said, “If you need more help with these instructions, use the Universal Tool.” I have never heard of the Educational Universal Tool, but since my Personal Universal Tool is out of batteries, I was at a loss.

I went to the folks in the math department, on account of they’re real good with charts and graphs and data of all manner. They were filling in rows and columns and fields and color-coded addenda like nobody’s business.

“Whatthewhothe?” I asked.

“We just type in stuff like ‘see Figure 407(c) iii’,” Math Man 2 replied. (I still don’t know all of their names; mathfolk are in demand throughout the BSISD, so they usually jump off our particular sinking ship pretty quickly.)

“What’s Figure 407(c)iii?” I ask, wondering how come everybody knows stuff with numbers and letters but me.

“It’s part of the Universal Tool.” Math Man 1 has a glint in his eye. He knows something he’s not telling, that’s for sure.

“What is the Universal Tool?” I whisper conspiratorially.

“We never found it,” confesses Math Mama 4. “I think it’s hidden in the square root of pi.”

Really, I don’t get math or mathfolk at all.

We were asked for feedback on how helpful this staff development was for us. I wrote that it was Sisysphean, not because I thought that maybe someone would care about how low morale is and how this sort of ridiculous task just deepens the frustration, but because it made me happy to think that if anybody read our comments, they would have to look mine up in order to understand it. Haha!

Anyway, about the extra time; it’s not the 45 minutes. Like I believe I have made clear, I work MUCH more than 45 minutes a day without pay anyway. It’s the implication that teachers are lazy, and try to shirk their duties. It’s the disrespect and contempt for people who are, in some cultures, revered. It’s the fact that no principals, to my knowledge, stood up and said, “Hey! Our teachers are dedicated professionals who come to work every day and teach with knowledge and passion despite overwhelming challenges and ever-increasing demands! We demand the impossible of them, knowing they will fail, but expecting them to persevere with a smile on their faces and the patience of Job! Give them a break, would ya?”

That never happened. People don’t speak up or out, because everyone is afraid. Right after the board voted, a man emailed the acting superintendent to complain. He was removed from his classroom and put on administrative leave the next day for “allegations of potential misconduct.”

Really. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Or could I?

Nope.

 

Phone Chat

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Me: Is your dog still sick?

Denichiwa: Yep. I have to take her to a specialist for tests, Dr. Nietzsche.

Me: Dr. Nietzsche? That’s the doctor’s name?

Deniichiwa: Si.

Me: I don’t think that’s a good idea. You should ask to see someone else.

Denichiwa: Why? He’s a highly recommended vet!

Me: I don’t think he can be objective. Nietzsche believes dog is dead!

Note: In real life, Denichiwa delivered the punchline, but it’s my blog and I think things are funnier when I say them.

Other note: In French, the word ‘chat’ means cat. If you don’t know that, you won’t think the following has anything to do with this post.   for more, visit

 http://www.chris-alexander.co.uk/1840