Like a restless wind inside a letter box

I'm supposed to be working on a power point presentation but all I really want to do is think about Across the Universe.

I didn't know much about this movie going into it except that it stars Evan Rachel Wood (brilliant on Once and Again; recently frightening me in her bloody rain sex videos with Marilyn Manson) and was directed by Julie Taymor (whose movies I've never seen but whose creation of The Lion King on Broadway earned her my eternal respect and admiration). I knew there was some kind of snafu behind the scenes between Taymor and the studio on who should have final cut and that the studio did not care for Taymor's version, which is the one that was ultimately released. That's all I really knew.

I know enough about Taymor's artistic sensibilities and had seen enough trailer footage to know that this movie would be pretty out there at times. And it totally is. There are parts that felt clunky and out of place (Detroit) and parts that were so bizarre that I almost started laughing, but that doesn't change the fact that I was filled with a kind of euphoric joy every time the actors opened their mouths and started singing. I've never owned a Beatles album unless you count the soundtrack to I Am Sam, which is covers, so it really doesn't count. I know the number of Beatles songs that the average person knows, I guess. There were lots of songs in this movie that I'd never heard before and lots of Beatles references I only understood when B. explained them to me later. So I can't really speak as a Beatles expert. But I loved the music in this movie, every last note of it. I think Evan Rachel Wood has a good voice even though sometimes she sounds like she has a cold; I think she is a better actor than singer. But the rest of the main characters? Particularly the guys who played Jude and Max? I loved their voices a lot. Especially that of Jim Sturgess, who plays Jude. It's extremely reminiscent of Ewan McGregor's, which is one hundred percent alright with me. It struck me in the opening scene, the similarity of their voices, maybe because the opening scene reminded me a lot of "Nature Boy" in the beginning of Moulin Rouge. (You can see what I'm talking about here.) In fact, there were lots of things in this movie that reminded me of other movies. The entire "I've Just Seen a Face" number in the bowling alley, I'd like to think, was an homage to "Score Tonight" in Grease 2. (Okay, it probably was no such thing, but it still made me happy to think so.) This kid was so fantastic I still kind of can't believe it. They were all really, really good.

There are parts of this movie that are eyeroll-worthy and parts that just don't work. I could have done without the Eddie Izzard and Bono scenes, my affection for them notwithstanding. What made it work for me, ultimately, is mainly the dreaminess, charm, and totally game performances of the leads. No matter how crazy and bizarro the scene, they totally threw themselves into it and went for it. As a viewer, I appreciate that. It was too long and was really heavy-handed at times, but some of the artistic weirdness was totally cool and sort of brilliant, and some parts were just heartbreakingly effective. The "Hey Jude" scene, for example, really got to me. As did "All You Need Is Love."

Maybe what it boils down to is that I am rendered incapable of making any kind of critical analysis of a movie in which the characters burst into song. No matter how much I might not have liked some parts, the parts I liked, I loved, and they, along with the excellent soundtrack, are what I'll remember about this movie.

Catching up

I have not thought of a damn thing worth writing down lately.

So I guess I will just write a random entry.

I'm not watching any new shows. I'm not watching any new shows. I'm not watching any new shows. Except for Dirty Sexy Money. I wasn't planning to watch it, but I accidentally was too lazy after Private Practice (which I am definitely not watching because it's not good) to get up off the couch, so I watched it, and maybe it's because I had zero expectations, but I thought it was hilarious and enjoyable so I think I'm going to keep watching it. I don't think I can take on any more, though. I think I might actually drop Grey's Anatomy because what happened? Has it always been this bad? It hasn't, right? It used to be pretty good? But now it's pretty terrible. Every medical case has to somehow bang us in the head as really being about the doctors and it's just highly stupid. I think George/Izzy killed this show for me forever. I watched the season premiere of Friday Night Lights online last week and it was both so wonderful and so terrible that I haven't been able to process it. I love it with all of my heart and I am so excited to see it again, but those of you who saw it know what I'm talking about. My little brother and I have discussed it at length and have come to a place of zen about. No matter what happens this year, last year we had one perfect season. Perfect, perfect, rapturously perfect. I have definitely not lost hope for the show, but I am worried about it. I still love Ugly Betty very much. The Office was really good but also really weird. I guess the dark parts were a little too dark for me. And somehow Angela has become my favorite character. I'm not sure when that happened, but it's true.

We haven't been watching any movies lately. I don't really know what we've been doing. Homework. Lots and lots of homework. B. is up to his ears in it, and I'm having a lot more trouble juggling my classes and my actual job/career than I thought I would. I feel sort of multiple personality disordered about the whole thing. I feel a little out of touch and out of sorts. I haven't been able to start any new books since The Road, so I re-read Look Through My Window and A Wind in the Door. God, how I love Look Through My Window. I have read it a million times, and I never get tired of it, and I always fall in love with it again every time. It is a joy.

I am looking forward to getting away to New Orleans two weekends in a row. One for a wedding, one just to get away and spend the nice in a beautiful old hotel, away from it all.

I tried to watch The War, but I gave up after the first night. I might pick it up again. It was very upsetting (duh). One thing I'm glad I caught was a local feature on WASP, Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII. I'd never even heard of this amazing group of women before. I loved reading about this one in particular.

I don't really know what else to say. I really love this song. I now love the Buble. I can't believe it has come to this. I resented him for a long time because I felt like he was trying to outdo Harry Connick, Jr., who, before people started seeing him in things like Will & Grace and Hope Floats, was a totally kick-ass composer, arranger, vocalist, musician, etc. He still is, obviously, but I think a lot of people started to forget that. And in crept the Buble, acting, I thought, like he was doing some revolutionary thing that had never been done before. It made me bitter and annoyed. But I am over it, and I now love him. And this song and Save the Last Dance for me are the reason why. I can resist him no longer. I don't know what it is with me and the crooners, but I could also listen to this song every day forevermore.

I'm really enjoying disc 6 of the new Brothers and Sisters DVD set from season one. It is chock full of special features. I ended up loving this show a lot last season. It was a happy surprise.

I had a long talk with my sister today from Bolivia. It was just what I needed! And this weekend we're going to see Across the Universe which looks alternately great and awful even though Evan Rachel Wood disturbs and frightens me these days and I prefer to remember her as Jessie Sammler. Mostly I want to see it because Julie Taymor is a genius and this kid can really effing sing and so can this one.

The beginning of fall is such a beautiful thing, and I don't want to miss it by getting lost in a foggy head. I do have a lot of work to do this weekend, but I would like to take at least one walk, take at least one photograph, take at least one breath.

A few links

A few links.

amuse buche ... a new blog I am enjoying, via Herpreet. Check it out.

Eyes of the Storm ... a look back at Katrina two years later by the photographers who were there. Powerful stuff.

Chiara's animal photos ... especially the sea turtles. They just make me happy.

Friday Night Lights receives some much-deserved recognition.

The best part of the Emmy Awards.

Emmy fashions at Go Fug Yourself.

Cute video for "Nobody Knows Me at All" by The Weepies and cute video for "The World Spins Madly On." And good Lord, here's a Harry/Hermione video set to "The World Spins Madly On."

I keep waiting to get sick of The Weepies. It hasn't happened yet. I love them so much, and I wish I could see them play live. Maybe someday. Here they are with "All that I Want." And here's "Painting by Chagall."

Trailer for Puccini for Beginners, which we watched this weekend. Not fantastic, not terrible. As B. said, it had enough charming moments to make it worth watching.

And finally ... Congratulations to Mo & Ian! My friend: beautiful bride.

Noted and cherished

I haven't been able to sit down and write about Madeleine L'Engle's death because every time I think about it I start crying. I tried to tell my mom about it on the phone the other night and I could barely get the words out. It is bizarre. But I really can't think of another artist who has touched me more deeply or for longer. I read my favorite books of hers over and over, and they are always both familiar and new. I just re-read Many Waters recently, and I've been itching to re-read A Ring of Endless Light, but the pages are literally falling out and it's not an easy thing to do, practically speaking.

I don't remember when I first started reading her. I know my friend read her first. I remember trying to read A Wrinkle in Time in grade school because a boy in my class was reading it and I did not have the faintest clue what was going on and I put it down. It was so far over my head at that point. This was maybe like third or fourth grade if my memory of what classroom I remember reading him in serves me. Anyway, I can only guess that I first read it in 7th or 8th grade? Friends who were there, do you have any memory of this? I know I was deeply entrenched in the Murry books in early high school. And then came A Ring of Endless Light, which I could not possibly love more and which fully made me believe that if I called to the dolphins in the Gulf when we were on summer vacation, and even as a grown-up staring at any big blue sea, they would come. I chose A Swiftly Tilting Planet in an adolescent literature class as the book to present that I thought everyone should read. For my master's project, I gave my subject the pseudonym Meg. I called her school Murry Middle School. I gave the girl A Ring of Endless Light when it was all over because she helped me so much with my paper, and I wanted to help her in return by giving her Vicky Austin.

I don't even really know what to say. These books have moved me, shaped me, in many ways raised me. The characters are almost like real people to me. And Glimpses of Grace has provided solace to me more times than I can even count. I consider her one of the great writers and great women of our time. I am so deeply sad that she will never write anything again. But I am so immensely grateful that through her writing she will live on. Kids will be picking up A Wrinkle in Time forever. It will probably end up on the banned books list over and over again. I think it's so ridiculous for that book to be challenged by religious groups when Madeleine L'Engle, much like Anne Lamott in my mind, is one of the most inspiring Christians ever to walk on the earth. It is such a blatant case of people jumping to ban something because it has witches in it without possibly having read it. Ridiculous. I can't even get started on this topic because it makes me so damn mad. Madeleine L'Engle was so tough, though. She was so funny and sarcastic and brilliant and strong. I read once that an astronaut carried A Wrinkle in Time into space during a mission because it was reading the book as a child that sparked her interest in astrophysics before women were allowed to enter the space program. Is that not the most awesome thing you have ever heard? (In trying to look up the astronaut's name, I just came across this. I can't wait to listen to it.)

I love A Wrinkle in Time mostly because of the way Meg loves Charles Wallace, the treasure of her heart, so fiercely that she loves him back into being himself. I love A Wind in the Door mostly because of what Proginoskes does in the end and also because reading it made me think for the first time about how everyone and everything are connected and because thinking about them being inside the farandolae inside the mitochondria was largely why I ended up really enjoying high school biology. I love A Swiftly Tilting Planet - maybe my favorite of the three - because of the awesome mythology of Charles Wallace moving through history within other people. I love the names in that book, I love the rune, I love the story of Calvin's mom, I love the unicorn, I love the changing of the might-have-beens, I love the whole damn thing. I memorized the rune as a kid and it's still stuck in my brain the way things you memorize as a kid are. I love Many Waters because Sandy and Dennys were finally given something to do other than grow vegetables. I love A Ring of Endless Light so much that I can't even put it into words. I love Vicky's relationship with her grandfather. I love Adam Eddington. I love Basil and Norberta and Njord. And I've read so many of her other novels but I love those the best. Some of my favorite copies of her books that I've collected include A Wrinkle in Time in both hardcover and paperback with this cover and an ancient copy of And Both Were Young. I have whole shelves of her books, fiction and nonfiction, and I love them.

I loved her. She opened whole worlds and universes for me. She made my imagination come alive. I am having trouble articulating what her books mean to me, what she has always meant to me. So I will let Vicky Austin say it for me.

The earth will never be the same again.
Rock, water, tree, iron share this grief
As distant stars participate in pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
Is Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried,
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies then would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
That every life is noted and cherished,
And nothing loved is ever lost or perished.

A reason to cry

Rest in Peace, Madeleine L'Engle.

One of my favorite interviews with her is here, in which she said of the film adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time: "I expected it to be bad, and it is."

I need to process this; more later.

Light

(This entry talks a little about The Road. I don’t consider what I say to be mega-spoilery – it’s nothing you wouldn’t gather quickly when starting the book or read in reviews, probably – but if you haven’t read it and are super spoiler-averse, you might want to skip it.)

There’s been a lot of crying these days. It seems to come and go. I cried at the end of The Road and The Lives of Others. I’ve cried during every episode we’ve watched so far of Friday Night Lights on DVD. I cried during multiple viewings of Paul Potts (thanks, Sally, for that wonderful link). I cried last night before going to sleep while trying to explain to B. how I want to try to spread light in the world.

I know that sounds stupid. But I’ve been thinking about The Road. Mostly about how the man and the boy could not ever stop to help anyone else. They couldn’t share food they needed to live. They might be attacked by the person asking for help. They had to be selfish to stay alive. Helping others meant hurting and possibly killing themselves.

I pass people asking for money at a certain stoplight I pass twice a day. They hold tattered cardboard signs that say they’re hungry and that they need money for food. Their clothes are torn and filthy. They are thin, and their skin shows the sign of exposure and sun. And they stand right outside my car window holding the signs while I sit at the red light and I just look away. And I don’t know why I do that. In the past, like years ago, I would sometimes drive straight to McDonald’s and buy a supersized meal deal and bring it to the person. I thought somehow that would help them more than a dollar. But sooner or later I just stopped giving anything at all. Maybe because seeing them day after day after day has desensitized me altogether. I don’t know what the right thing to do is. But yesterday something dawned on me and that is that it certainly does not hurt me to give one of these men or women a dollar. It does not mean I will go without. It would not endanger my own life like it would have the man’s or the boy’s in The Road. And maybe it would really help that person. I wonder if it is really up to me to decide what they need the money for. Do they want it to buy drugs or alcohol or cigarettes? Do they want it to buy lunch? An Icee? Shoes? How the hell am I to know, and who am I to judge them?

I want to be a more giving person.

Since January, I have held in my heart the story of a woman who was killed pre-dawn just outside her own home. I keep returning to the website set up in her honor – to see if her killer has been caught, to look at pictures of her and her husband and their baby and their pot-bellied pig. I never met them or saw them in real life, and I hope it is not intrusive that I have gone to the site and peeked in on the remembrances of her and tributes to her. I am so moved by the outpouring of love that has been shown on that website for her and her family. And the recurring theme, it seems, is that everyone saw her as a burst of light in the world. And I hope it does not seem like I am trivializing a stranger’s life or trying to boil her life down into some kind of simplistic nutshell. But what I take from reading about her and learning about her in whatever limited way something like a website can portray is that she was the sort of person I would like to be. Someone who welcomes people who need welcoming, feeds people who need to be fed, rebuilds communities that needs to be rebuilt, creates what needs to be created, loves life with all of her being.

The other day after work it was thundering and cloudy and suddenly not swelteringly hot, so I plopped down on my back patio after getting home from work and just felt the thunder roll in and called for my dog. Unbeknownst to me, B. was standing in the open doorway behind me taking photos. I have the luxury of sitting in my backyard calling for my dog with my nice boyfriend waiting inside after coming home from my job that pays me enough money to live comfortably. I feel like I should appreciate that more and be more of a force for good and light in the world. I don’t know how. But I know I want to try. In small ways or big ways, doesn’t it just matter that we try?

Ellen Emerson White's site

You EEW fans will be glad to know, if you don't already, that there's lots of activity over at her website. She has a blog, there's a message board, etc. October 30's the publication date of Long May She Reign, which is just around the corner.

Not Laboring on Labor Day

Right now I'm sitting at the coffee shop with Herpreet. She's working on her laptop, and I'm working on mine. I'm not sure what she's listening to. I'm listening to Grease 2. It's not a bad way to spend part of a Labor Day afternoon.

My boyfriend is a deep thinker and has been having especially deep thoughts lately in the wake of his plunge into academia. Last week, I was only sort of awake when he started to intelligently explain Barack Obama's appearance on The Daily Show, and I actually interrupted him to say, "Yeah, that's sort of like Danny Tidwell on So You Think You Can Dance." Showing how nice he is, he nodded as if that were a totally apt and legit comparison.

I've found myself more than once recently talking about Wil Wheaton. "Well, Wil Wheaton says..." and he finally asked me, "Who is Wil Wheaton?" And I walked into my bedroom and walked out with the framed showcard I bought off of eBay with a framed picture. It's a piece of one of those big cardboard displays in the movie theater, the image of John Cusack and Wil Wheaton sitting on a bed in one of the flashbacks in Stand By Me. I pointed to him, "That's Wil Wheaton. Now he has a blog." And I really do enjoy it. It's weird sometimes to realize that the little boy who played Gordie LaChance, one of the characters that pretty much consumed my entire psyche throughout the entirety of sixth grade and who grew up to be a writer, is now a grown man and a writer. But he's a good writer and seems like a genuinely nice person, and there's something that feels right to me, in a corny way, about that.

Speaking of blogs, there have been two blogs I've been keeping up with this year that have moved me down to the depths of my being. This one chronicles a family's battle with lymphoma. Even though I don't know these people at all, I followed it so closely, hoping and praying for a good outcome and healing beyond the heartbreak they suffered. To read about them coming back into the light has been nothing short of inspiring. The writing on this site is some of the best I've ever encountered on the web. This one also has incredibly beautiful writing and tells the story of the birth of two babies and the survival of only one. It is hard to know how to describe these blogs because they involve struggles and heartbreaks of a degree I've never experienced and can't even imagine and I don't want to come off like a dork talking about how beautiful they are and how much they've moved me. I just am grateful to have been able to read them, really, and to have witnessed from a million miles away the beauty and the strength they have been able to express. I don't even know.

I watched The Pianist recently for the first time. It certainly was harrowing. Worth watching for this scene alone. {Warning: Huge spoiler in that link.}

Meanwhile, I have finally started The Road. I haven't gotten far, but I know I want to keep going. I just finished Daniel Isn't Talking by Marti Leimbach, which I thought was pretty excellent.

This week I've been spending a lot of time with my sister, which has been great. She came to exercise class with me and marveled at my ability to roll around in other people's sweat. She was proud of me. "It's definitely good germophobic therapy," I said. Class continues to be hard but fun. Sometimes I'm so tired during the cooldown that I almost fall over during the stretches. The other night a panting man saw me about to keel over and then right myself and he nodded in agreement. "Talk about spent," he said. I nodded back. Spent indeed. My sister and I went to Piccadilly for lunch, site of many childhood family meals. I ordered a side of orange macaroni and cheese and a side of orange baby carrots for my lunch and decided to drink some orange Fanta with my meal. The three went well together. It is impossible to quantify how much Piccadilly macaroni and cheese we consumed as kids. Back when they had the really delicious red punch, not the Hi-C fruit punch. Good times.

We had a party with all of her lifelong friends the other night before sending her off to South America, and we ate jambalaya and shrimp and brownies and it felt good to be in my parents' house with all of those old friends and their babies. So many babies! Wow.

Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to New Orleans together for the first time since he's moved here. We ate at our favorite brunch place -- he got debris and poached eggs and I got a bacon, arugula, tomato, and egg sandwich on focaccia. Later, we stopped for gelato (strawberry and chocolate hazelnut). Because it's so long, we've been watching The Lives of Others in installments. I thought the first 15 minutes or so were sort of boring, but now I'm hooked.

What else? I'm liking my classes so far. The material is alternatingly mindnumblingly boring and very interesting. I guess all of grad school might like that, no matter what you're studying.

Jessamyn and Grace have been schooling me a little bit on the ways of the Canon Digital Rebel. I borrowed B.'s and tried to do a little shooting with it. My main goal was to be able to shoot at my sister's party indoors without using the pop-up flash that comes with the camera. It was not a completely successful mission, but I learned a bit about apertures, shutter speed, and ISO and just knowing a little tiny bit makes me want to know a lot more. Mostly I just want to be as good a photographer as those two ladies even though that will likely not happen in this lifetime. Here are a few shots that I like even though they're nothing sensationally arty.