In case you were worried, yes, everyone in Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" will be speaking their lines in the epic-whispers-betokening-doom which are now standard in all fantasy or fantasy-style movies. I can't be sure, but I'm going to bet there will be a choir intoning in Latin at some point during a fight scene, followed quickly by a pregnant held note and slow-motion shots of a character charging the vast and yowling enemy hordes, wielding a sword, yelling and discovering his inner Viking.
I like the looks of Bilbo. Very fussy yet intrepid and he has a nice nose, too. However, Thorin (in the book: head dwarf, snobby leader-type, brimming over with history and capitalized place names) will be portrayed by a dark young sexy god who sings lilting Celtic-style verse in a fair baritone while turning the full force of his gypsy eyes on the camera. Fili and Kili -- also good-looking. Unsure how to feel about this. Galadriel, for reasons unknown, will make an appearance and tenderly brush hair away from (Sir) Ian McKellan's face. Gross, but bravery points for her. Good elf men must have been hard to come by in that particular Age.
I wish Peter Jackson was more entertaining, but he's not. He just runs around with pins deflating well-rounded characters and turning good stories into the equivalent of a 70's car chase with lots of lingering backward glances and shots of New Zealand. I can't forget what he did to Sam Gamgee, turning him into the token "fat kid" character and the plucky comedy relief... like Porky Pig in the "Drip Along Daffy" cartoon. Which you should watch:
But anyway. The preview, with its wide screen mountain vista shots, also reminded me of how much I want to go back to the North Cascades. I told M. I want to die and be buried there. He said that's probably because I haven't traveled much. The words of someone who has never been to the North Cascades, I say. I'm already planning next year's trip.
The mountains, Gandalf!
Friday, December 30, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
nothing really exciting happens in God's country
I'm committed to making tomorrow a good day by using bicycle power. My schedule: 5-9 a.m., baking. Doubles at the restaurant: 11 a.m. - 8 or 9 p.m. Triple shifts, yay! So, I'm going to break out the rain gear and bicycle to the coffee shop in the morning. Instant good day.
---
Been re-writing my resume and re-realizing my inability to keep dates fixed in my head. What year did I graduate from college? When did I even start college? Surely I was at that job for 5 years... only 2? Huh. There are some interesting jobs out there: a 14 week stint in Alaska for the AP wire, anyone? My next job goal is to work in the mountains, or near the mountains.
---
Bruno woke me up around 5 this morning, yowling his head off. But apparently he was lonely and just wanted to cuddle and fall asleep in bed with me so I ended up sleeping until 7:45 after all.
---
My first work shift starts in an hour and, since I'm working a double, I'll be there all day. I started adjusting my attitude yesterday so that I could be okay with this today. I like my jobs. They're not hard. I'm just bored, I think, and I resent that I have to tie any emotion to the jobs. There's no reason for drama or, really, even stress: we're serving food. It's one same darn thing after another. Everyone calm down. Most of this is inside me, however... hence attitude adjustment. Whatever. I did yoga this morning (hamstrings are sooooo tight. Flexibility is not like riding a bike, it seems).
---
The worst question to ask me when it's after 8 p.m. and I've already broken down the kitchen line for closing and you're the last table in the restaurant and you've finished eating and your bill is on the table is: "How late do you stay open?" Because I know the sentence hovering in the background is: "We were thinking of sitting here, sipping wine for the next 5 hours and we hope none of you were thinking of actually getting off work and going home to sleep." By the way. I guess I forget sometimes that I only exist for the customer's convenience. Whoops. (Was that bitter? It sounded a little bitter. People are just so odd.)
---
Been re-writing my resume and re-realizing my inability to keep dates fixed in my head. What year did I graduate from college? When did I even start college? Surely I was at that job for 5 years... only 2? Huh. There are some interesting jobs out there: a 14 week stint in Alaska for the AP wire, anyone? My next job goal is to work in the mountains, or near the mountains.
---
Bruno woke me up around 5 this morning, yowling his head off. But apparently he was lonely and just wanted to cuddle and fall asleep in bed with me so I ended up sleeping until 7:45 after all.
---
My first work shift starts in an hour and, since I'm working a double, I'll be there all day. I started adjusting my attitude yesterday so that I could be okay with this today. I like my jobs. They're not hard. I'm just bored, I think, and I resent that I have to tie any emotion to the jobs. There's no reason for drama or, really, even stress: we're serving food. It's one same darn thing after another. Everyone calm down. Most of this is inside me, however... hence attitude adjustment. Whatever. I did yoga this morning (hamstrings are sooooo tight. Flexibility is not like riding a bike, it seems).
---
The worst question to ask me when it's after 8 p.m. and I've already broken down the kitchen line for closing and you're the last table in the restaurant and you've finished eating and your bill is on the table is: "How late do you stay open?" Because I know the sentence hovering in the background is: "We were thinking of sitting here, sipping wine for the next 5 hours and we hope none of you were thinking of actually getting off work and going home to sleep." By the way. I guess I forget sometimes that I only exist for the customer's convenience. Whoops. (Was that bitter? It sounded a little bitter. People are just so odd.)
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
247: the obsessively looking back syndrome
One of my favorite cartoon strips is a Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown is watching a square-dancing competition on TV and his little sister asks him why he's watching it and he says the people look happy. He likes watching people be happy, he says. I love that strip but I never want to embody it. It's Charlie Brown speaking so you know he's only saying it because he isn't happy and he also feels he never will be happy. His reasoning is that if he can't be happy, at least he can watch other people be happy. That's terribly defeatist.
So. Some things I want to keep in my mind for next year:
1. The motives and thoughts I ascribe to people are simply that: motives and thoughts I'm putting in their mouths and which they have not spoken or even thought. So I should stop getting angry and frustrated at made up people and instead investigate my own motives. Why do I think a person is responding a certain way? What am I doing that I feel guilty about? (because I kind of think that's the root, right there. I'm doing something I know I shouldn't or in a way I shouldn't but I don't want to stop. I want what I'm doing to be justified and right)
2. I'm happiest when I'm making, whether that's sewing, drawing, writing, or playing music and writing songs. This year, I didn't do enough making... although, I guess, I was writing every day at the newspaper.
3. I will not stay in the service industry for more than a year. That means by Sept.2012, I'd better have a new job lined up. M. says I won't be satisfied ultimately with anything less, and he's right. My patience for waiting tables and making coffee is limited. Unless I have to (for money), I won't be able to keep it up. Not if there's a writing/creative job out there I can weasel my way into. It helps that old sources are constantly harassing me at the restaurant and coffee shop, asking me when I'm going to go back to reporting.
4. Stop sabotaging myself. I'm going on a snowboarding/hiking trip to Montana in January or February and I'm a little bit terrified even though I know it's going to be a blast. A part of me would rather stay safe and comfortable and bored and in a flimsy false version of happiness (which comes, really, from fear to do what is hard). The other part is screaming to explore this vast country and see people and let things happen and move to another state and work hard at challenging jobs and have my confines (mental and physical) blown apart. It makes me think again of a W.H. Auden poem:
"We would rather be ruined than changed
we would rather die in our dread
than climb the cross of the moment
and let our illusions die."
Also, I've come up a with a purpose for this blog: short assignments. I love where I live and I don't write about it, not enough, not truly. So, short assignments: tasks of describing, of recording. Starting next week.
Neeeway. Today is going to consist of resting up (last night was terrible. I was at work for only two hours and I couldn't even stretch out full length on the bed until after an extremely hot shower, a back massage that was more a spine-cracking ordeal than a massage because my muscles were so tense, and at least a quart of tea and I don't know how much ibuprofen... after which, I slept like a large, ugly baby). Also, taking stuff to Goodwill and playing with Bruno (who is fantastic and still a fartsy brat)
So. Some things I want to keep in my mind for next year:
1. The motives and thoughts I ascribe to people are simply that: motives and thoughts I'm putting in their mouths and which they have not spoken or even thought. So I should stop getting angry and frustrated at made up people and instead investigate my own motives. Why do I think a person is responding a certain way? What am I doing that I feel guilty about? (because I kind of think that's the root, right there. I'm doing something I know I shouldn't or in a way I shouldn't but I don't want to stop. I want what I'm doing to be justified and right)
2. I'm happiest when I'm making, whether that's sewing, drawing, writing, or playing music and writing songs. This year, I didn't do enough making... although, I guess, I was writing every day at the newspaper.
3. I will not stay in the service industry for more than a year. That means by Sept.2012, I'd better have a new job lined up. M. says I won't be satisfied ultimately with anything less, and he's right. My patience for waiting tables and making coffee is limited. Unless I have to (for money), I won't be able to keep it up. Not if there's a writing/creative job out there I can weasel my way into. It helps that old sources are constantly harassing me at the restaurant and coffee shop, asking me when I'm going to go back to reporting.
4. Stop sabotaging myself. I'm going on a snowboarding/hiking trip to Montana in January or February and I'm a little bit terrified even though I know it's going to be a blast. A part of me would rather stay safe and comfortable and bored and in a flimsy false version of happiness (which comes, really, from fear to do what is hard). The other part is screaming to explore this vast country and see people and let things happen and move to another state and work hard at challenging jobs and have my confines (mental and physical) blown apart. It makes me think again of a W.H. Auden poem:
"We would rather be ruined than changed
we would rather die in our dread
than climb the cross of the moment
and let our illusions die."
Also, I've come up a with a purpose for this blog: short assignments. I love where I live and I don't write about it, not enough, not truly. So, short assignments: tasks of describing, of recording. Starting next week.
Neeeway. Today is going to consist of resting up (last night was terrible. I was at work for only two hours and I couldn't even stretch out full length on the bed until after an extremely hot shower, a back massage that was more a spine-cracking ordeal than a massage because my muscles were so tense, and at least a quart of tea and I don't know how much ibuprofen... after which, I slept like a large, ugly baby). Also, taking stuff to Goodwill and playing with Bruno (who is fantastic and still a fartsy brat)
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Christmas notes
Christmas, for whatever reason, is the seat of most of my childhood trauma. I still can't sleep without my feet covered because of an animated film called "The Nutcracker Prince" in which an evil rat queen scurries under cover of darkness, creeping into beds and biting people's toes to call curses down upon their lives.
That was a fun December night in our family. The movie ended and L. and I were so terrified we ended up sleeping on the couch with my exhausted father. Over the years we built up a whole mythical persona for the evil rat queen. We could make deals with her. We could make sacrifices to appease her. But there was always her son to worry about. He was less predictable: the rat prince who, in the film, is later stabbed by the Nutcracker's rapier and drags himself through a dollhouse palace, bleeding from his side and screaming vengeance in a raspy death rattle. Yes, this was a children's movie.
The other thing I'm still working through is the whole concept of Santa Claus. I was a very superstitious child. I knew (intellectually) that certain beings and creatures didn't exist. But at my base, in all belief, I couldn't be so sure. Thus, my scrubbing through our lawn to find four leaf clovers, my obsession with mythologies, my casual gifts of food to the Elder Gods (just in case), and my inability to banish Santa Claus from Christmas traditions.
Wilson children never believed in Santa Claus. We were taught from very young that he was a consumerist pagan myth loosely based on St. Nicholas, a real man who had lived in Turkey or some other place that sounded equally made-up. I remember my mom clucking disapproval at a Santa-heavy Christmas display in a craft store. Christmas wasn't about Santa and it wasn't about presents. It was about Jesus and shepherds and virgins (whatever those were. The answer that satisfied for a couple years was "a woman who wasn't married yet." This would later become very complicated.)
But the vigorous and repeated denial of Santa Claus didn't convince me he was fiction. Instead it told me he was not only 1) real, living, and breathing but also 2) the embodiment of evil. L. and I feared him. He came into our house? Whether we wanted him there or not? Didn't he understand that this was a Christian family and we were only about saviors, wise men and hark the heralds? Santa Claus became a natural force to us, as unfathomable as a hurricane, not to be contained or controlled. A fearsome being.
The years passed. We learned how to spell. We realized "Santa" was an anagram for "Satan." That was the year we decided to turn all the heaters up to HIGH on Christmas Eve. We knew that, traditionally, Santa came through chimneys. We had no chimneys, but we weren't taking any chances.
Still, deep in my heart, I wanted Santa Claus to be real and good. I couldn't bring myself to like the obese Coca-Cola Santa who looked like a whiskey alcoholic on a bender. But I loved old folk art-style pictures portraying him as a tall, lean striding man with a long beard and reindeer-skin boots, a hunting horn at his hip: the Santa Claus based on Odin. This was a Santa Claus I could get behind.
Mostly, I don't get Santa Claus and I don't understand telling your children he is real. I have no background with this and it sounds weird and, besides, children believe things or don't believe them and there's little you can do as a parent to control that. I think I would have given up on Santa early on if I'd been told he was real. As it is, I'm still a little obsessed. The question marks around the nature of Santa (good or evil?) haunt me yet.
---
I plan to get caught up on all my advent readings today and tomorrow. I've been slacking. As usual. Jesus just takes such a long time to show up, though. Have you thought about it? A really long time. It's interesting.
Still have some Christmas gifts to buy. I busted out most of my shopping yesterday and there are only a few things to make. It will happen. It will be fine. Christmas isn't until Sunday.
Monday, December 5, 2011
a monday
I have only a few goals today since I'm not feeling motivated. I've discovered that if I'm not feeling motivated, I should set my expectations bar less on HIGH and more on MEDIUM LOW otherwise I'll just perpetuate a cycle of sadness. I have a problem with sadness and I want to avoid a flare-up. So. Goals for today:
- photograph Bruno. We are now in Week 2 Experimental Phase and things are looking only 50-50 for Bruno. He's awesome. He's rad. He's adorable. But I'm not convinced I should own an animal yet.
- adjust my attitude toward work. I hate working. Well, that's not true. I like to work, but I like to be working on my work which means writing and drawing and playing music. But no one wants to pay me for these things so instead I do other things (like work at a coffee shop and at a restaurant) and call these things "my work" even though I know I'm lying to myself.
- be outside for a while
- buy sponges so I can wash my dirty dishes
- shower
- read through T.'s novel again and give useful feedback
- drink coffee & possibly eat yogurt
- find out if M. has my phone because otherwise I don't know where it is.
- find my last paycheck (but I think I accidentally threw it away. Winning, always winning)
- visit Tom at the Antique Store and do some Christmas shopping there. Last time I went in I found a scorpion encased in an amber pendant and a plastic Bambi figurine.
- photograph Bruno. We are now in Week 2 Experimental Phase and things are looking only 50-50 for Bruno. He's awesome. He's rad. He's adorable. But I'm not convinced I should own an animal yet.
- adjust my attitude toward work. I hate working. Well, that's not true. I like to work, but I like to be working on my work which means writing and drawing and playing music. But no one wants to pay me for these things so instead I do other things (like work at a coffee shop and at a restaurant) and call these things "my work" even though I know I'm lying to myself.
- be outside for a while
- buy sponges so I can wash my dirty dishes
- shower
- read through T.'s novel again and give useful feedback
- drink coffee & possibly eat yogurt
- find out if M. has my phone because otherwise I don't know where it is.
- find my last paycheck (but I think I accidentally threw it away. Winning, always winning)
- visit Tom at the Antique Store and do some Christmas shopping there. Last time I went in I found a scorpion encased in an amber pendant and a plastic Bambi figurine.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
motherhood
People who treat their pets like children used to frighten me. Not because I don't like them or animals but because I worry about their capacity to love people, specifically people who are me. This is a weird worry because I don't really know these people and will probably never be at their house for Christmas. I guess it's a survival instinct. If we were all living in caves, I wouldn't trust these people to help me hunt caribou. They might come out and rattle a spear with me, but they'd be hunting for someone other than the tribe, specifically, they'd not be hunting for the parts of the tribe that are my hungry belly.
Or... this is what I used to think. Until Bruno.
Bruno is not my child and I will never think of him like that, but I kind of get the pet-as-child scenario. You give the pet all this love and care and they treat you like a possession and demand more food. Children do that. Then they leave you or disappoint you or get hit by cars. I'm serious. This is heart-wrenching, gut-slugging stuff and it's rotten especially when the child and/or pet doesn't even let you get a full night's sleep.
Enter Bruno. I will probably keep him. The church has breathed an expensive "OK." But, my goodness, if he doesn't let me sleep all through the night soon, he's getting the boot into a cold, dark, lonely world. If I let him in the bedroom, he prowls around, sucks on the blankets and tries to sleep on my throat(hard to breathe). If I lock him out, he's fine for about 10 minutes and then he starts yowling. And doesn't stop. I was raised with the principle that you let petulant, screaming babies scream when they're going down for a nap and you don't give into the tyrannical whims of dogs and cats because they've got to learn they're not the center of the universe. It's just difficult dealing with a creature that doesn't care and doesn't feel shame.
Dogs, for the most part, will to please. You direct the weather in their lives and they are simply wind vanes. If you are displeased, they cower. They tiptoe around. They hang their heads. Cats, I'm learning, are different. They don't care. They're God and you're just a can-opener. When Bruno curls on my lap and extends one front paw out to rest on my chest, I don't take it as a gesture of love. Rather, he's like a rich man running his fingers down the hood of his Porsche. He looks at me with those lidded blue eyes and says, "You're mine." As long as I keep running smoothly, he'll keep me. To him, my existence says more about his existence.
I'm not sure how to feel about it. I don't think I like it.
So the experiment continues.
Or... this is what I used to think. Until Bruno.
Bruno is not my child and I will never think of him like that, but I kind of get the pet-as-child scenario. You give the pet all this love and care and they treat you like a possession and demand more food. Children do that. Then they leave you or disappoint you or get hit by cars. I'm serious. This is heart-wrenching, gut-slugging stuff and it's rotten especially when the child and/or pet doesn't even let you get a full night's sleep.
Enter Bruno. I will probably keep him. The church has breathed an expensive "OK." But, my goodness, if he doesn't let me sleep all through the night soon, he's getting the boot into a cold, dark, lonely world. If I let him in the bedroom, he prowls around, sucks on the blankets and tries to sleep on my throat(hard to breathe). If I lock him out, he's fine for about 10 minutes and then he starts yowling. And doesn't stop. I was raised with the principle that you let petulant, screaming babies scream when they're going down for a nap and you don't give into the tyrannical whims of dogs and cats because they've got to learn they're not the center of the universe. It's just difficult dealing with a creature that doesn't care and doesn't feel shame.
Dogs, for the most part, will to please. You direct the weather in their lives and they are simply wind vanes. If you are displeased, they cower. They tiptoe around. They hang their heads. Cats, I'm learning, are different. They don't care. They're God and you're just a can-opener. When Bruno curls on my lap and extends one front paw out to rest on my chest, I don't take it as a gesture of love. Rather, he's like a rich man running his fingers down the hood of his Porsche. He looks at me with those lidded blue eyes and says, "You're mine." As long as I keep running smoothly, he'll keep me. To him, my existence says more about his existence.
I'm not sure how to feel about it. I don't think I like it.
So the experiment continues.
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