Fragile Industries

Good Charlotte

"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.  These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is — I repeat it — a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.

"The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth — to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose — to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it — to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him."

-- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Preface, 2nd edition (21 December 1847).

Recently finished my second reading of Jane Eyre.  It is not the book I read as a teenager, looking for a slurpy Gothic.  I didn't realize its seminal place in fiction, seeing only the hackneyed trope of governess-falls-in-love-with-master-with-dark-secrets.  I didn't appreciate the rich splendor of the language, seeing only a lot of very small print taking a lot of space to do what could have been done with fewer and shorter words.  I didn't, most importantly, admire or even perceive the bravery of the author and her heroine and the choices they both made, as I was seeing with a 1970's teenager's eyes with no idea of the suffocatingly stilted life of a middle-class, isolated Englishwoman in the mid-19th Century.  I thought Jane "sappy" and wished Rochester were better looking.  I wanted them to stop the endless verbal fencing and tear off a piece.  I had probably just finished reading Valley of the Dolls.

This time, of course it was completely different.  The most heart-stopping passage for me is not in the text, but the Preface, quoted above.  Bronte was responding to her contemporary critics who found the work "coarse," especially if, as was rumored, the pseudononymous author "Currer Bell" was a woman.  If I thought that Bush, the folks at Fixed Noise, and all the fundamentalist Right could understand the big words, I'd send it out as a big spam mailing, because it says so perfectly what needs to be said, and said often.

Right on, sistah.

Sniveling About Snivelers

Those who do not complain are never pitied.
-- Jane Austen

Life seems to have thrown a lot of situations at me recently where I find myself in the company of complainers.  Not critics, criticism addresses external rottenness, and constructive criticism contains its own solution.  Complaining, on the other hand, is the "it's all about me" version of what's crummy, the detailing of personal woes.

Complaining has many dimensions, often positive.  There is the amusing complaint -- P.J. O'Roarke, for example, has written entire books collecting rants and snivels (e.g. Holidays In Hell) that leave me writhing with hilarity. There are times when it is only human and forgivable to air grievances (loss of loved ones, intractable pain), and the venting helps the venter, and can form a link with the listener that helps lead out of the intolerable situation.  Misery does indeed love company, and sometimes having a friend in the same rotten place lifts you both up.  Most admirable is the shout of outrage that is downright necessary as a first step to rectifying the situation.  Thank God for cranky people who are all about righting wrongs.  That is complaint with a backbone, complaint as action, and action is the key word. 

Then there are those who find whining to be a viable lifestyle, the passive snivelers.  I react about as well to their company as a hypochondriac enjoys being trapped in an elevator with a group of end-stage Ebola patients.  The experience is almost physically painful to me.

Mind you, I am by nature a sympathetic person, believe it or not.  The milk of human kindness flows by the quart in my every vein. Honestly, the reason is selfish.  I love looking for a way to alleviate the situation.  I'm an annoying Pollyanna, the Martha Stewart of the Solution. I have about 10 or 15 minutes' worth of "Awww, I'm so sorry" in me, and then I reflexively start volunteering positivism.

Unfortunately, The Passive Sniveler resents any suggestion of a way out, a silver lining, because a) it requires action and b) would rob him or her of the opportunity for future complaining.  After opening window after window for these people to clear the stench of negativity, and then seeing each window slammed shut with replies that all begin with the word "but" ("...but you don't understaaaaaaaaaaaand", "but that won't wooooooooooork", "but it's so haaaaaaaaaaard...") as the conversation circles relentlessly back to the negative, I experience empathy burnout in a big way.  What I really experience, deep down in my loving, sympathetic Christian heart, is the urge to slap them silly.  Why people would work so doggone hard to stay in that mode baffles me.

In the past few months, I had a minor insight that helps me avoid inflicting assault and insult on the devotedly downtrodden.  These are people that, as a masochist has learned to process pain as pleasure, have learned to experience pity as love.  The sorrier a spectacle they present, and the greater the sympathy they attract, the more secure and worthy they feel.  It is utterly counterintuitive to me, but I can, at an intellectual level at least, now understand the pathology.  That insight helps engender pity for the twisted thinking underlying the verbalized complaint, a pity that has some purpose.  It's the only way to avoid being sucked hollow by the bottomless neediness of the terminally pitiful.

Imagine WANTING to be the poster child for pity.  I'd rather be dipped in leeches.

I recognize the Catch-22 inherent in raising the topic of my annoyance with whiners.  I could easily join the sorry ranks.  Fortunately, most of these situations have an escape hatch: change the channel, hang up the phone, make polite excuses and vacate the premises.  With ingenuity, I'm getting better at avoiding or curtailing these toxic encounters.

When it's unavoidable, I cover my ears and shout "Lalalalalalala", at least mentally.  I settle a consoling expression on my mug while nodding rhythmically, and fix my mind on a pleasant memory (Dmitri Hvorostovsky holding my hand, gazing into my eyes while lying, "Of course I remember you!" is a favorite) or a diverting fantasy.  Hopefully, one that does not include giving the complainer Something To Really Complain About.

I mention this because I have been avoiding an Old Dear Friend of eons past because she has, seemingly permanently, settled into this pattern.  I nearly ended our friendship years ago when, during her 10-year self imposed sentence of marriage to an asshole of unbelievable proportions, she would regularly bait me by dangling tales of hair-raising emotional cruelty and abuse at the hands of her reprehensible mate.  She then waited for my explosion of outrage and "I hope you gave him what-for," or some other suggestion that she demonstrate the possession of a spine, and then she retreated hastily with all my pity tucked away safely while pushing away any thought of change or relief with both hands. 

Now, this is not a woman without resources.  This is a brilliant and sensitive woman with great responsibility and prestige in her career, who juggles millions of dollars in the corporate world without breaking a sweat, who is, herself, in the profession of Working Things Out.  I am not a fair-weather friend -- I actually, with full calculation, introduced her to her current replacement husband who worships the ground she walks on. They appear to have a blissful union.  Yet life remains a vale of tears in every other respect, and at this point her woes are our only topic of discussion.  Another attribute of these people is their complete disinterest in anyone else's experience, good or bad.  These aren't the folks to call when one finds oneself in foul weather -- they not only don't offer an umbrella, they snatch yours.  I finally returned a call today as a test, radiated nothing but sunshine, never was heard a discouraging word from my lips. If anything, things are worse with her.  I'm done. I've stuck with her for nearly 30 years, over obstacles both geographic and emotional, and I feel physically depleted after our conversations.   The door is not shut, it is never shut to those I love, but I will no longer volunteer for this toxicity.  If and when, like the groundhog, I poke my nose out and see no shadow, we can rejoice and reestablish something that looks more like friendship and less of a pity party.

Having a solution, a backbone, sometimes means that I have to take my own advice.

Life, And Other Petty Afflictions

Life goes on.  There's a reason for truisms: they're true.

Thanks

My gratitude goes out to all who commented or contacted me about Rupert's illness and death.  You know what that kind of support means if you've ever had a loss or heartbreak.  If you haven't, you weren't paying attention.

I'm out of serious grieving now.  It seems that the most painful and enduring catastrophes (no pun intended) in life are those where one harbors secret self-blame.  Divorce, addiction, mental illness, death of someone estranged or neglected -- that pain lingers because one wishes that one could have acted differently.  Someone fairly smart once said something like (if anyone knows the source and actual quote, please let me know, Google and Wikiquote have been of no help): "The first step in healing is sincerely letting go of the wish that the past were different."  There is nothing I would change for Rupert's life, except the ending of it, and immortality is the most futile wish of all.  So I have the ache of missing him, but no grief.  Here's a picture sent by Kerry of his sweet face:

Another apropos quote I can attribute:

"What's gone and what's past help should be past grief." William Shakespeare, "The Winter's Tale", Act 3 scene ii.

Courtesy Wikiquote.

Current Cat Conditions

The household cat dynamics are shifting in Rupert's absence.  Max, my mom's highly neurotic burly boy, has decided he is not completely terrified of the new cats in his house.  In fact, he has started flirting with Peabody with a typically oddball tactic by watching him constantly from a distance then running past him while doing something strange (either biting Pea's neck or a characteristic head-roll the meaning of which I cannot decipher), then hiding, only to repeat the process a few minutes later.  Max is extremely wary of everything and everyone, darts around sneakily, hides his bulk behind objects far too small to conceal him, and has no idea of affection and trust, but seems to want to give it.  He's endearing in a damaged, dysfunctional way.  Peabody must be, in feline terms, The Sexiest Cat Alive to other boy cats.  First Rupert, now Max.  Pea ignores Max utterly, to the point of smug insult.  It's going to be interesting.

We've All Worked At This Office:

Courtesy of Best of Craigslist

And Now, A Bitter Political Rant

Our Nation's Biggest Asshole President has made a recess appointment (i.e., one which does not need Congressional approval and thus no check or balance) to head the federal government's family planning office. The astonishing choice of Eric Keroack to oversee $283 million in annual Department of Health and Human Service grants is a slap in the face to the electorate.  The recent overwhelming rejection of all of Bush's extremism, stubborn ignorance, and move towards a fascist theocracy has not led him to governing "in a more bipartisan fashion," as he promised after the electoral drubbing.  Instead, he has started naming kooky ideologues to key posts, a classic "nyah, nyah, nyah, I'm still President and you're not," which is to be expected from an immature, politically tone-deaf zealot.

Keroack's responsibility as head of family planning, officially, is to supervise the disbursement of funds for providing access to family planning education and contraceptives "to all who want and need them."  His resume gives a clear idea of how effective he will be in this post:

• As medical director of A Woman's Concern, a small chain of nonprofit pregnancy counseling clinics that offer no information on birth control, Keroack has agitated against abortion and even contraception -- including for married women.
• The organization continues to push the discredited nonsense that abortion increases a woman's chances of breast cancer and is more dangerous during the first eight weeks of pregnancy (when in fact, the risk of complication is actually at its lowest).
• Birth control, according to Keroack's tortured logic, is somehow "demeaning to women."
• Keroack has argued that women who have sex with multiple partners alter their brain chemistry in the process, making it harder for them to form close relationships.

This is an extremist so out of line with scientific and objective reasoning that it is difficult to describe his views without laughing, if he wasn't so scary in this key job.

And this from an administration still wasting $158 million a year on abstinence-only education programs that the GAO concluded this month have not been shown to have any effect and at times put forth misleading information about condoms and AIDS.  The electorate has spoken decisively on these issues. On November 7, efforts to limit women's reproductive rights by initiative, legislation and court decision were soundly defeated by the voters in California, Oregon and even true-red South Dakota and Kansas.

Keroack does not need Senate confirmation, so there is little Congress can do about a president who continues to select anti-scientific ideology over basic competence, other than to echo Joseph Welch's anguished cry to Senator McCarthy during the anti-communist pogroms of the '50's:  "Sir, have you no sense of decency?"

Speak out, be heard, stand up and be counted.  Bush is giving us a frat-boy mooning, and the sight of his stringy butt is not pleasant.  This link takes you to an easy way to protest (and hopefully reverse) this asinine and dangerous appointment.

Here It Is, Your Moment of Zen

http://www.spilsbury.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CatalogSearchResultView?ref=cpc_inktomi&storeId=10001&catalogId=30001&langId=-1&pageSize=9&beginIndex=0&sType=SimpleSearch&resultType=2&searchTerm=22050&x=8&y=15

Ouch.

I'm typing this with a large bandage on the end of the middle finger of my left hand.  Pausing, preparing to wince, before every "e", "d", and "c".  And, wouldn't you know, "e" is the most common letter of the English language.  To boot, I have to hold this finger aloft from time to time to slow the throbbing, and it's That Finger.  The Finger, the big Fuck You Finger, though that's unintentional.  Thank god I live without company likely to be offended.  Pea doesn't mind, nor should he.  It's all his fault.

The specialist vet recommended a quarter-tablet of Pepcid AC daily for dear Peabody.  I picked up the cheaper, identical store brand, and another pill cutter.  I've owned at least a dozen over the years, but whenever my meds are adjusted a smidgen, requiring slow ramping-up of the dose in increments, I can never find last year's model and buy a new pill cutter.  For those unaware of the design, they are a hinged device, rather like a small stapler, with an embedded razor blade on one side and a resting spot, a little cradle, for the pill on the other.  Put in the pill, press down the top, and presto, two halves.  Except the faux Pepcid crumbled sadly into about six irregular pieces and a lot of dust.  Undaunted, I poured the mess into a small bowl, crushed it completely into powder, and mixed about a quarter into Pea's magic goo.  He gobbled it down, occasionally moving his head side to side as he rasped his tongue around his mouth, probably wondering why his magic goo tasted "off."

After administering the rest of his nostrums, I cleared the remnants off the counter with a sponge.  Ever efficient, I picked up the pill cutter in my left hand as I watched my right tidy up.  D'oh!

There was blood everywhere, even though I dropped the pill cutter and grabbed my finger in a stranglehold immediately.  A few days ago, for a routine med test, it took me five minutes to work up my nerve to prick the same finger with a lancet for a single drop of blood.  It took another five minutes of prodding to produce that drop.  I could have waited 48 hours and had the drop instantly with a few fluid ounces to spare, if the counter and the floor could be considered a sterile collection surface.  (It can't.  I'm a lousy housekeeper.) 

The next half hour I alternated between howling with pain and hysterical giggling as I tried to tend the wound.  Fingers have plentiful nerve endings, I remembered.  They are how blind people read books.  This was a very loud story.  The cut was deep and crossed the entire working end of the rude digit.  I probably needed a stitch, but I could hardly drive, as all but two fingers and one thumb were occupied with bleeding and clamping the cut closed.  Nor am I a hand model.  Nor do I currently have health insurance.  So I marched into the bathroom towards my Red Cross First Aid Kit.  I attempted to unwrap Band-Aids from their hermetically sealed wrappers, to unscrew the top from the antibiotic ointment, apply same to a cotton ball, and start a roll of first-aid tape.  With nothing but the thumb, a pinkie, and my ring finger.  Hence the giggling.

By the time I was through, the finger resembled a ball peen hammer, a bloody one.  Cotton, Band-Aids and about a yard of badly mangled tape in a near tourniquet created a bulb that kept my index and ring fingers splayed from the injury.  But it was holding, no gory spurts or rivulets were issuing from the dressing, so I counted it a success.  The bathroom counter, sink, medicine chest and all my first aid supplies looked like CSI exhibits.  I wanted to call that cutie William Petersen and ask him to drop by with some Luminol, I suspected foul play.  (I have a thing for slightly paunchy grey-haired bearded men.)

There's a point to this story.  I'm not just whining.

So this morning I hauled myself and my finger to the Red Cross for a four-hour class in disaster response.  I signed up for it a week ago, with no suspicion that I'd be my first victim, or "client," in Red-Cross-Speak.  If I want to go out to disasters, I have a shitload of courses with sexy names like "Introduction to Mass Care,"  "Form 904 and You," and "Evacuation and Transport."  They trusted me during Katrina, when they were throwing any warm body into the disaster relief effort after a one-day course that did nothing to advance my knowledge of humanitarianism, but did teach me some dandy acronyms and that a piece of blank paper was called "Form One."  But for lesser cataclysms, I must remember not to leave any food to sit for more than four hours that has been heated or chilled.  Good advice.  I'm going to embroider it on a sampler.

This morning's course was the worst class I've ever attended in my entire life.  That includes pre-school, law school and a bunch of "personal enrichment" courses from the Learning Annex. 

An ancient man with enormous teeth and a hearing aid rose gingerly to address his eager newbie students.  Except that there were only two or three of us out of the class of 27 that were eager or newbies.  Seems the ARC has revised its entire curriculum, and everybody who's been king or queen of their little charitable fiefdom within the greater goodness of the Red Cross has to retake what they already knew.  And they knew it, to a dead certainty, better than anyone in the room.  It was grim.  Most institutionalized education takes a predictable course: a teacher (knowledgeable), student or students (less knowledgeable), and probably some written materials that correlate in some way with the content.  We had none of that.  We had a geezer with a Power Point presentation that baffled him, students who he couldn't hear and who couldn't care less about what he said, secure in their own wisdom, and a mess of paperwork that bore no relation to either the Power Point or the geezer's gummy, spit-covered lecture.  I simmered in frustration for four hours as the class spiraled away from him.  After an hour, however, I was completely on his side as he was interrupted, corrected, and ignored entirely during the squabbles between students about proper procedures.  I was roundly condemned by a grizzled nurse for suggesting that a referral to the counseling unit (baldly called "Mental Health" in Red-Crossian) might be in order for our hypothetical client, who was described in the handout as upset, nervous, and confused after the destruction of her home and her infant's brush with death.  "We must be careful with the donated dollar," she barked, the first of a dozen times I heard the phrase today. 

Eventually, Marcia, the head of chapter disaster services who knew better than anyone, took the helm.  The geezer sat down and slowly closed his eyes.  I thought we'd done him in.  She wrapped up the class by holding up each piece of paper we'd been given and reading its title to us.  "This is Form 67-OV, the Disbursement Order.  We call it a DO.  It's going to be replaced in 2007 with Form 11110, the CSS, but I don't have time to tell you about that."  Then they showed us what a cot looked like.  It was just like the cot I slept on in Alabama.  Imagine that.

Gah.  And I have hours of this, days of this ahead of me.  I must really, really love disasters.  But there's a point to this story.  I'm not just whining.

As I left, a man with thinning hair in a plaid polo shirt noticed my finger.  He's in charge of future class sign-ups, so I was trying to get an idea of the dates of my courses.  He seemed befuddled that I'd actually want to know what days to be there, and waved his hand vaguely.  "It's on the 15th or 16th, something like that.  Looks like you cut yourself."  His eyes had remained focused squarely on my boobs during the entire transaction, so he must have terrific peripheral vision.  I told the Reader's Digest version of my injury.  "Yeah.  Deep.  Razor.  Dumb." He then gave me the only useful knowledge I obtained all morning.  "Pick up some of those little butterfly bandages.  They're as good as stitches and they don't hurt as much."  He called them seri-strips. 

He was at least half right.  I bought the bandages and took them, myself and my finger over to Mom's, remembering the mess of the night before and that she had ten operational fingers.  The bandages, tape and cotton had fused to the cut, even after soaking my hand in water.  After that was yanked off, the antiseptic stung like lemon juice, and the little strips needed a lot of pressure to stick, each squeeze making my ears ring.  I remembered bragging once to Mom, a notorious physical sissy, that "pain is just weakness leaving your body."  She practically slugged me at the time, so I was stoic in her presence and smiled all the way to my car.  Once behind the tinted glass, I rested my sweaty head against the wheel.  The horn beeped, and Mom came to the window.  I waved, my finger prominent, and drove home.

There was a point to this story.  It had something to do with the nostalgia of watching my mother put a Band-Aid on my finger, and childhood memories, and courage, and helping people or animals in pain, and the higher calling of humanitarian efforts.  In all the whining, it got lost.

Fuck it. There were too many "e's" in this story.

Peabody seems to have forgotten he's sick.  He's purring in my lap, oblivious to my noble sacrifice.  I show him my finger, in the classic salute.  He licks the Band-Aids.   Perhaps that really is the best medicine.

If I Don't Hate HTML, What Does Bug The Hell Out Of Me?

So I've decided to take HTML off my shit list.

I'm sure you all want to know what and who is on it.  (Because you realize that it is, actually, ALL ABOUT ME.)

Besides the obvious targets like war, famine (not plagues, I'm kinky for infectious diseases), intolerance, hangovers, housework, The Current Administration And All Its Simpering Lackeys, there are some odd things that make my teeth itch.  This list is not inclusive and may be amended at any time.  Here is one category:

Editorial tics:  People who can't punctuate properly.  Especially those who misuse apostrophes and quotation marks.  Plurals do not need an apostrophe.  Possessives and contractions do.  Get it straight.  I have special contempt for people who never learned the rules on "it's/its."  I know the rules.  I occasionally violate them through inattention, but I really try on this one, because misuse is such an indicator of literacy and education.  Nothing is sadder than good writing ruined through plural apostrophes and the dreaded inappropriate "it's."  Better never an apostrophe than too many.  Here's The Rule, and it couldn't be simpler  -- "Its", no apostrophe, for possessive: "The cat washed its private parts in front of the party guests."  This is the only exception to the rule for possessives.  "It's", with apostrophe, for a contraction of "it" and "is."  "It's elementary, my dear Watson, that Professor Milquetoast poisoned the Countess."  There are no exceptions to the rule for contractions.  A double demonstration:  "It's not how well the bear writes, but that it knows its punctuation rules."  There.  You now have no excuse.

Excessive exclamation marks!  Like this!  There's a reason that old-time reporters called them "screamers"!  It's (note apostrophe) exhausting to read!  Imagine them as hot peppers and your writing as food!  Season appropriately or you burn your reader!

I don't always spell check on the blog, but a dozen years of writing for the Court have made it nearly automatic.  And that's another thing.  If you don't know the rules, or can't spell, I have two words for you: "Spell Check."  It has grammar rules too, though they are less reliable.  You don't have to memorize Strunk & White (see above, and did you know that baseball and New Yorker writer Roger Angell is the son of  Stuart Little author, New Yorker writer and writing style maven E.B. White?  I'm reading a history of the New Yorker. And that actor Wallace Shawn is the son of longtime New Yorker editor William Shawn?  I figured out that for myself).

Less irksome, but still something I usually avoid, are emoticons.  Either the little animated computer faces or those made from a font:  :-) or ;-) and the like. Why not let your words display your feelings, or go draw a picture.  I have used them, I admit, depending on the audience, but I always feel like I'm slumming.

I don't mind excessive use of parentheses, because I do it all the time.  (Like this.)  Or random capitalization of Nouns.  There must be some German blood in me.

You know who you are.  Not you, Max, your spelling and writing is actually fun to read.  Some of your email is almost poetic. 

Now that I've gone on about this, I'm sure to draw snarky comments with every typo. 

Priorities

Every now and then I do something right.

If I've learned anything since the time I spent in the funny farm, it is that I have to keep my priorities straight.  A whole lot of other stuff crept into my consciousness, but having my priorities in order is, well, a priority.  I have realized that Priority #1 is my sobriety.  Losing one's sobriety is like losing one's virginity: when it's gone, it's gone.  And it's so easy to lose.  When I first got sober, I kept that as the first order of business for four years, and life, while complex, stayed simple in that regard.  Then I got serious with my Most Recent Ex-Husband, and felt so insecure about keeping him in my life that I made him my priority.  I stopped going to meetings and did not participate in my own recovery.  I had found a new and better drug: The high of True Love.  Fortunately, I had learned enough in AA for another three years to pass before I took my first dose of alcohol.  Actually, it wasn't a drink.  It was a jello shot.  Hey, if I have to chew it, it can't be a drink, right?  Funny how one can rationalize things.  The circumstances were designed for my most vulnerable points.  It was a social event where I knew only a few people, and My Most Recent Ex-Husband knew everyone.  He took off for some reason midway through the party for a prolonged period, and I was hideously insecure.  Like a stray cat, insecurity does not go away if you feed it, those uncomfortable belittling feelings grow to be unbearable.  I had been feeding that evil feline for years by doing everything in my power to please someone else, and starving my own sense of self-worth and independence.  So of course I tossed back that jello shot, and three or four more (it wiggles!) for good measure to kill that beast and build my ego with a transitory illusion.  Within six months, I was drinking on the sly regularly, and kept it up for a long time. 

They say in AA that the first sobriety is a gift.  If you slip and want your sobriety back, you have to work for it.  It's true.  I have worked like hell to get it and keep it.  I go to meetings, work the steps, pick up the phone, and love the program.  And I have a shaky, but growing, sense of self worth, and an absolute conviction that sobriety is my priority before anything.  Before looking good, before needing a boost in confidence, before career, before love, before sex.   Everything else is in the hands of my higher power and if I do the footwork, I will attain everything I am meant to. 

My priorities were tested last night.  And my decision was knee-jerk, automatic, and surprising.  I got out of a bad situation as quickly as I recognized it.  I was halfway home before I realized what I had just proved to myself:  I can do this.  As imperfectly as I work the program, it does work.  Another AA truism is that there will come times when all that stands between you and the next drink is your spiritual condition.  When facing the jello shot, I had eroded my connection to my inner power to the point where it collapsed without a whimper.  Last night, the power did my work for me.  There was no question in my mind.  This result, on reflection, gives me even more strength.  The really good part is that I have no anger, a little disappointment in how the situation came up, but no anger.  Anger comes from a place of victimhood, of hurt, of weakness. 

Sometimes I surprise myself, and I am grateful.  I'm learning this stuff from good people.  I am willing to learn, even if I'm a total idiot and the lessons come hard, and I am grateful for the rewards.

THINGS THAT SURVIVE DIVORCE (TTSD) #2: Casablanca

I don't claim to have a favorite movie, but if you put a gun to my head, I'd have to say Casablanca, even though "favorite" isn't quite right.  Yeah, this is everyone's favorite movie.  And I'm just another Woody Allen wanna-be.  Well, to a certain extent.  Still, before Soon-Yi's stepfather, er, husband, er (his daughter! his sister!) ...Allen had written Play It Again Sam, I had a complicated relationship with this movie.  First of all, I said "movie," not film.  It certainly is both -- and that's what makes it great.  But I didn't know that when I first saw Casablanca on the late show at about eight or nine years old.  (Yes, I am that old, we didn't even have videos then, gather near my rocking chair so granny can box your impertinent ears.)  My mom had hinted that it was a good movie, and special to her. My parents were both actors, though my mother had not acted in some time.   She also said, intriguingly, "Your daddy looks a little like Humphrey Bogart."  It was the first Bogart movie I remember seeing.  I realized immediately that my father looked so exactly like Bogart, that I had goose pimples.  More correctly, he looked like what a younger Bogart had looked like in, say, 1935, and transported forward to the mid-sixties.  The time-travel factor just intensified the ambient weirdness. 

Then Ingrid Bergman appeared.  My goose bumps got goose bumps.  She had my mother's round-cheeked beauty, her broad brow, her luminous skin.  Watching these clones of my now-divorced parents catch sight of one another for the first time "since Paris"  oh, boy.  It was strange and too intimate and I couldn't tear my eyes away.  The political stuff floated right over my head then, despite frequent historical asides from my mother, who remembered the war as the defining moment of her generation.  No, the romance had me from hello -- and I cried so hard at the end I had hiccups. 

At a rough estimate, I've seen Casablanca all the way through at least a dozen or so times on TV, video, small art houses (The Rialto!  The Nuart!) and grand movie palaces (The Castro!), and nothing can ruin it.  I'm like one of those annoying Rocky Horror types that talks back to the screen, and recites whole speeches.  Every time I notice something new. {Footnote, if I knew how to make one in this posting format:  One of the most recent times, I discovered, thanks to my neighborhood juggler friends, a juggler on screen for about 4 seconds in the opening market scene.  (There's your free trivia for a bar bet, readers.  The burning controversy is settled at last.  There IS a juggler in Casablanca.) } We've all seen the key scenes and lines in excerpts so often that they have become a part of the national culture and consciousness -- every man wants to tip up Ingrid Bergman's chin, gaze into her limpid, tear-filled eyes, and growl "Here's looking at you, schweethart."  Every woman wants to bravely bear Ingrid's heartbreak as she goes on to be "the thing that keeps him going" to the man who single-handedly was going to save the world from the Dark Side.  Or something.  We all want to share Rick and Renault's crisp, cynical banter.  The movie is such a treasure trove of Favorite Movie Lines that I herewith **take note, there will be a quiz ** declare that it is Off-Limits to entries in that category, and henceforth registered in the Favorite Movie Lines Hall Of Fame.

My parents got older (while I have stayed magically youthful, and don't ask about that funny painting in the attic).  My father gradually and gladly became synonymous with Bogart to smaller and smaller circles before he died.  He married another Bergmanesqe beauty (and if you read this, Gail, hugs and kisses to you!).  By the time Daddy was 40, the resemblance was striking.  He had always done marvelous impressions of anyone, getting the voice, the squint, the monocle just right.  After a certain age, Daddy just looked like Bogart doing everyone he knew at Warner's and half of MGM to boot.  He got a lot of work from the mid-70's to the mid-80's playing Bogart in dinner theater Play It Again Sam productions in all the tired venues between Lubbock and Atlanta.  Long before Lost In Translation, Daddy was Big In Japan, recording saki commercials in a trenchcoat against a foggy backdrop of miniature prop planes.  Scenes in Ricks for beer commercials.  These happy, if parasitic, opportunities dried up slowly after Daddy passed 55 (the age at which Bogart died) and eventually started looking like Bogie's grandpa.  But he was registered with a look-alike agency and would appear at the opening of an envelope, his silver hair dyed a ghastly shoe-polish black.  He and the other look-alikes also worked as extras on occasion, which may confuse future film historians. 

My wedding in 1995 was decidedly retro, and held in a supper club not unlike Rick's Cafe.  Daddy, naturally, wore his white dinner jacket and wandered around with a cigarette and scotch.  I forgot a lot of people would be meeting him for the first time.  He got a LOT of second takes from the groom's tables.  Finally, only his best friend's grandchildren called him Bogey in the years before he passed away at 74.  When I cleaned out the house, I found an original Warner Bros. script for Casablanca.  It's post-production, but probably from the 50's anyway.  A friend (he had many) probably scammed it for him.  It's a genius script, possibly the best ever.  Certainly some of the best dialogue and an inspired cast to bring it alive.  It's lost it's initial Freudian voyerism and now I live for the Bogart-Rains dialogue.  Still, it will always feel just a bit too close to a home movie -- and where was Sam when I was growing up, anyway?  Don't we all want someone to follow us around and play the soundtrack of our lives?

The year after Daddy died, we had our annual Oscar Party with a Casablanca theme.  About 40 or 50 people.  Tons of lovely authentic Moroccan food, silk tenting the ceilings, brass hooka-ish elements here and there.  We had a couple of Captain Renaults, the aforementioned juggler, a couple of miscellaneous burnooses (burnoosi?), two tuxedoes, and a lethal punch named after the Blue Parrot Bar (Sydney Greenstreet's) containing Blue Curacaou, champagne, and about six other things.  Several people loitered near the bowl, fingering straws and looking furtive.  It was the best of the dozen or so of the Oscar Parties I gave in SF; I don't think I'll do any more.  They have passed on to other hands, and it's only fun as long as you have enough geographical distance from Hollywood to prompt a cheerful irreverence.   

But "we'll always have Paris . . . " and I raise a silent toast to my father every time I see a Bogart movie, especially Casablanca.

Note: all photos are of my father from TV commercials in the 70's and 80's -- I told you he looked like Bogart!

Nuevo California

Sent to me by Paula C.

Subject: Dear Red States:

We're ticked off at the way you've treated California, and we've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.  In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all of the
Northeast.  We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly:
You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.
We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
We get Elliot Spitzer.  You get Ken Lay.
We get the Statue of Liberty.  You get OpryLand.
We get Intel and Microsoft.  You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard.  You get Ole' Miss.
We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs.  You get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue.  You get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families.  You get a bunch of single moms.
Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once.  If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals.  They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home.  We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMD's turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of
America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners), 90 percent of all cheese, 90  percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, CalTech
and MIT.  With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually
100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent believe that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

By the way, we're taking the good pot, too.  You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Sincerely,
Author Unknown in New California.

THINGS THAT SURVIVE DIVORCE: The Gospel At Colonus (Semi-Obscure Reviews, an even more irregular installment)

My Favorite Musical, both before and after: The Gospel at Colonus.  (1984 Pulitzer Prize, Drama; 1988 Tony Award Nomination, Best Book for Musical).

I thought about this category.  I was raised by a drag queen, after all, and can recite the lyrics to Gypsy  (arguably the best musical, as opposed to my favorite) backwards.  Once, at an audition with a surprise musical component, I sang "If Mama Got Married," both the Louise AND the June parts, with boffo finale, from memory -- so the question about favorite musical carries particular weight for this girl.  I was drawn to a surprise entry.  The old joke for a bad musical used to be "you leave humming the sets."  The reverse, the absolute opposite, has to be, "you leave humming your soul."  This unlikely mix of classical Greek theater and Pentacostal spiritual tradition brings home searing messages about redemption, forgiveness and family, and rocks your world.

I first saw this transformative play in LA fresh from Off-Broadway (it then went on the road, and then to Broadway) in its Los Angeles premiere in the mid-80's.  Original cast, including Morgan Freeman (Obie Award, 1984).  Within 10 minutes, I jumped up on my chair and swayed from side to side, along with my date and, once I cared to check, most of the audience.  I was raised in both of these traditions; the classical theater and gospel informed both sides of my family.  I was breathless by intermission and speechless with joy by final curtain.  I saw it several times more in LA, and then on PBS Great Performances, weeping and dancing like an idiot in my own living room.  A few years later, after Broadway, the road company, but still with Clarence Fountain and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, came to SF, where I had moved.  Of course, I saw it there, dragging more of my quickly convinced friends.

The CD I treasure captures nearly enough of the magic of the performance: the spine-tingling vocals (the amazing Jeveretta Steele in "Lift Him Up"), the collage of spiritual-RB-blues styles (want blues? "Lift Me Up Like A Dove," for one), the beautiful lyrics ("Numberless Are The Worlds Wonders"), the purely sensual musical flesh that informed the frame of the classical Oedipus myth -- enough to make the purchase more than worthwhile. It has been on constant Heavy Rotation in my 100-CD-player mix from the late'80's and has led me to other gospel finds. 

But let me add my voice to those who want the full experience.  PBS, please release the Great Performances production!  For one thing, it preseves an early performance of my beloved Morgan Freeman, before big Hollywood (he was also in the LA production, and unforgettable), and the visuals of the Pentacostal experience, through which the audience's emotional response is echoed, and cued, just as with a Greek chorus but a lot more fun.  To register your agreement, go here.

I'm a fairly old lady, I've seen and enjoyed a lot of musicals, in LA, SF, and a lot on Broadway over the last ten years.  I have NEVER been so affected.

 

A bit of personal history: my maternal grandfather was a minister, but of the white, protestant, Wesleyan variety.  A family friend, African American, first took me to an AME Baptist church with her when I was a rug rat.  I have no memory or the experience, although I remember every other detail of my fabulous weekend with her, during which I was spoiled mightily.  However, every time I hear gospel music, I know I am, as Clapton says, In The Presence Of The Lord.  I cry easily, but gospel makes me cry with joy.  Isn't it marvelous to know you will die and have no fear?  This is the lesson of this play and of all true gospel.  With any luck, that creed could be good enough for a religion all on its own.  There are worse.