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January 31, 2007

Difficult, Important Questions

OK, the thing is, realistically, barring illness or accident, I have 30 years of fairly sensible, satisfactory consciousness left to me. If I'm lucky, I have 40 years. And if I'm really lucky, like my awesome redheaded great-aunt Stella, I have 50 years of consciousness left to me. Fifty years in which I can (like Aunt Stella did, even when she was 90 years old) drive myself to my hair appointments or the grocery store. Fifty years before I start weeping and begging god to let me die because the pain from the horrible terminal illness I've got is worse than the thought of eternal unconsciousness or even never-ending suffering in hell. (Stella, the star, the beautiful, upright, generous devout Mormon I will admire till I die myself, succumbed to a ghastly, grisly struggle with esophageal cancer the day after Easter 1994, at which point she was 93, almost as old as the twentieth century, having greeted the world a few months after it did. Before she died, she was weeping in agony of spirit and body, wondering, "Why won't God let me die? Am I not good enough for him to let me into heaven?")

So, what the fuck am I doing with the consciousness I've got left? Whether it's 30 years or 50 years, what am I doing with it? How am I going to spend it? I like you all quite a lot, really I do; but I just got a new Frank Sinatra cd (it's playing as I type) and what is a better use of my time, really: writing blog entries about eight people will read, or listening to Frank, thoroughly, carefully, devotedly?

This is the thing. I'm smarter than a hell of a lot of people I've met in my life, but I'm not going to solve any of the major mysteries of the universe. Still there are times when I want to ask myself basic questions like, "Why is there something rather than nothing? And why, for god's sake, does the something that exists rather than not existing, include me? Why am I here?" There have of course been times when I've said to myself, "THAT is not a useful question. That is not, to use the language of the Buddha, a skillful question. Go formulate a skillful question and come back to me when you've got one that won't embarrass me."

A long time ago, when I was less crushed by the weight of my own ambition and the price I'd paid for it, a student wrote on an end-of-semester course evaluations one of my favorite things ANYONE has ever said about me:

I don't know what to say. The woman is an enigma. She asks difficult, important questions.

Yes: Used to be, the questions I asked were difficult AND important. Now it seems they're only difficult.... not particularly skillful, just difficult. Oh, and embarrassing to boot. Way embarrassing, at least to a sober person. But that's the thing about alcohol: your embarrassment threshold falls right through the floor, so far it's not even in the basement but another 40 million yards below it. That's right: a friend stopped by around 6:30 p.m. and we enjoyed queso and tequila. And the effects of the tequila have hung around much longer than the cheese.

So right now, at an hour just shy of midnight, when I'm thinking about all kinds of things, including the death and demise of people I loved and admired, I'm not embarrassed to ask the unskillful, difficult question important to no one but me: WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING WITH MY CONSCIOUSNESS AND IS THERE ANYTHING I SHOULD I BE DOING WITH IT INSTEAD.

Last week I went to see a psychic in the hopes that she could give me a decent answer to this question, or maybe help me reframe it. She could not. She could purport to tell me, for instance, that my paternal grandmother, who has been dead since 1936, watches over me. But she could not avoid boring the neon green snot out of me nor convincing me that however able she might be to hear the whisperings of spirits and angels, she can't tell when a living person sitting four feet away from her is bored as all get-out and doesn't want to hear another fucking word about her favorite tv show. And really, when it was all said and done, she should have paid me forty-five dollars for sitting still and listening to her politely for an hour instead of the other way around.

Because honestly, I could have told her myself that I'll be moving in the next two to three years, that I'm destined for better things than what I'm dealing with right now, and that at some point I'll get so fed up I make some changes, quickly, quickly, without the slightest provocation or warning.

So whatever.

My cat is on my lap, calm and purring and marvelous, and my stereo has stopped playing not only Frank, but anything at all, for reasons I can't discern without disturbing my cat: a problem that creates a further problem. I really don't want my cat to get out of my lap, but I want to know what's going on with my stereo downstairs.

Life is fucking like that.

OK. I haven't solved a fucking thing but I'm feeling annoyed, trouble AND self-indulgent, so can I just say that I love all of you who have been my faithful friends for any length of time (as in, even a few cyber weeks), and that I still HATE Scott B, the mean-spirited self-loathing miserable FUCK with an unflattering nose-job (courtesy of his equally self-loathing father, the very expensive NY plastic surgeon who hated his son's semitic profile and thus performed free cosmetic surgery) who broke my heart in ways no one else has ever broken it, a decade ago on Super Bowl Sunday 1/26/97 when, let's see, Green Bay beat New England?

So if you're not Scott, thanks for reading this. And if you are Scott, hey mother-fucker! You still suck! What have you done with your life since not finishing your PhD?

p.s. Happy Birthday, Spike, since I know that's happening today.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (5)

January 30, 2007

The Rejected Semi-Finalist

I haven't posted a poem in, let's see, nine months, so I guess it's about time. Besides, there's stuff going on in my life poetry-wise: Chanson posted this cartoon from Matt Groening about questions poets don't like to be asked; last week I was notified that my collection of poetry is one of 26 semi-finalists (out of over 1000 books submitted) in a very prestigious first-book contest (the prize being $5,000 and publication, so of course I'm planning to win it); and I got this funky rejection letter yesterday that reads

Dear Holly,

We were fascinated by these poems, and drawn to them, particularly to _______, but the decision finally went again using anything from this batch. Do send us more by and by.

Of course I'd rather read that "we love all these poems and will print every last one of them," but being told my work is fascinating is better than other responses I've gotten, such as "interesting subject matter but language is too ornate" (from a journal with a very ornate title) or "too self-satisfied for our taste" (from the most self-satisfied journal I've ever seen).

Anyway. Here's a very old poem--15 years old, actually, published 12 years ago. The title means "an ode in which you discount or rescind something you'd said in an earlier ode," and in this case refers to sentiments I'd expressed in love poems, but somehow outgrown.

Palinode

All of a sudden that tall green thing outside my mother's house
turns into a sunflower lurching in the mildest breeze.
Here's what I say: a great sense of humor is even more useful
than a great set of breasts. I think of men I've kissed

but shouldn't have and what sets the friends apart from the fiends
is why I felt I had to do it. This is what I learned:
the negative pole of an energy source is called a cathode
and some things have to revolve around it. I let one guy

pummel my heart into a bloody brisket while he traced kisses
down my neck and used my hips for a bannister. A great sense
of drama is even more useful than a great sense of humor and I
must have cried at all the right times. But the best

thing of all is a great sense of relief: "Bye bye!" we said,
and waved and smiled, and all of a sudden there's no oscillation
in that smile, no lurching around like a sunflower.
His big luminary moon has dwindled and waned and slunk off

beyond some horizon I can't even see, and however I might
have wished for something to rise in its place, I can't help
thinking that I've lived with worse things than solitude
and flowers that turn their graceless yellow faces to the light.

Posted by Holly at 10:52 AM | Comments (2)

January 29, 2007

It's a Date

You know how people make yummy treats and share them at Christmas time? This recipe for date caramels was the best such treat I've encountered in a long, long time. I made a batch a few weeks ago and ate the whole thing myself--it stores well enough that you can do that, just eat all the candy yourself over a week or two.

In large saucepan, mix together

3/4 cups butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups sugar
1 cup chopped dates

Bring to boil over medium heat. Reduce heat and cook ten minutes at low boil, stirring constantly to avoid scorching. Remove from heat and stir in

1 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup coconut
1 tsp vanilla

Pour into buttered 9x9 glass baking dish. Sprinkle more coconut on top.

Posted by Holly at 9:48 AM | Comments (6)

January 24, 2007

What to Do with a Bored Cat

The other day a visitor said to me, as my cat sauntered by, "At least cats don't get bored, do they."

This person has a dog, not a cat. Obviously. Because anyone with a cat knows they do indeed get really bored--and a bored cat is a nasty, nasty creature to be around.

My cat is pretty damn bored right now. She's not an outdoor cat, though I'm lucky enough to have a screened porch she likes to hang out on--in the summer. I can't coax her outside at all right now, and she seems to blame me for the fact that it's snowing outside.

To keep her from going out of her mind with boredom and driving me out of my mind in the process, I play this game with her, where I throw cat toys up or down the stairs, and she chases them. Here she is waiting for me to throw a cat toy for her to chase.

But sometimes she gets tired of running up and down the stairs, and decides she just wants to let me throw them to her so she can bat them away, in which case she adopts this pose:

And sometimes I'll throw them too far, so she'll have to reach behind her, like this:

And sometimes, she'll catch the toy and attack it fiercely, in which case she looks like this!

Posted by Holly at 7:52 PM | Comments (6)

January 22, 2007

Made in Sheffield

Having discussed British television in my last two entries, I figured I might as well continue the trend by telling you about something else I watched recently thanks to Netflix: a documentary called Made in Sheffield about the music that developed there in the 70s and early 80s.

As I mentioned last week, one of the things I did while visiting my family was watch youtube videos with my siblings. I insisted that both my brother and sister show their children the video to the 1984 version of Do They Know It's Christmas? and tell them about its historical and musical significance, because as I mentioned in my Christmas meme, it's one of my very favorite Christmas songs.... Anyway, my brother and I wanted to figure out who one particular singer was, and in order to do that, we had to do some internet research.

Turns out the guy in question was Paul Weller of The Jam and Style Council.... I own CDs by each band but I didn't recognize him because he looks nothing like that now, hasn't looked like that for a very long time. Anyway, in the process of finding that out, I came across a reference to said documentary.

Now, Sheffield is a place I've actually been. I doubt it's much of a tourist destination but I spent a week visiting friends there in 1984. So before I read about this documentary, I knew that Sheffield had been a steel manufacturing town, and that it supposedly produced good flatware. I knew it was the home of Def Leppard, which I tried not to hold against the place, as well as the home of Heaven 17, a band I quite enjoy.

What I didn't know until I started reading about this documentary was that two of the members of Heaven 17 (Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh) were also founding members of the Human League. This horrified me because I HATE and have always HATED the Human League, ever since the first miserable moment when I heard that dreadful single "Don't You Want Me Baby." (No. I don't. Go away.) Nor did I know that another band I really love, ABC, was from Sheffield also.

So my personal connection to the place, my interest in discovering how founding members of a band I loathed could go on to found a band I loved, and my interest in learning more about the history of ABC, meant that I had to watch the thing.

Now, as I have mentioned, I don't love punk. I don't hate it--I can be perfectly happy when a song by the Clash or the Ramones comes on the radio, but I've never felt the need to buy their albums. I can admire things about the punk aesthetic, its democratic and anti-establishment spirit, but as far as deriving pleasure from sounds and rhythms, in general I still prefer the complexity they were reacting against--Pink Floyd and Alan Parsons Project and so forth.

This documentary gave me a new perspective on the whole issue. To paraphrase one music critic interviewed in the film, a lot of people of the time were inspired by the Clash and the Sex Pistols--to go out and buy guitars, learn three chords and imitate what was already being done. But in Sheffield, they were inspired to apply the attitude of punk to the electronic music by the likes of Kraftwerk and make stuff that was "weird."

Chris Watson, of Caberet Voltaire, talks about early performances by "The Cabs" (as all the hip people in the film called the band): he and his friends would record these strange sounds, then drive around town in a van listening to the recordings they made. Eventually they decided to share it with the people of Sheffield, so they opened the doors of the van, turned the volume up, and drove around very slowly. For them, it wasn't just about music, but about an approach to all the arts--visual, auditory and written.

I was surprised to learn that at one point (long before anyone in the US had ever heard of them), the Human League was actually a very interesting band. Phil Oakey, the iconically coiffed singer for the Human League, discussed the fact that he and his band mates "thought we were the punkiest band in Sheffield. You know we were laughing at the bands that learned to play guitars ‘cause they bothered to learn their three chords. We used one finger" to play a keyboard. He also talked about how he and the record company decided to expel the two guys who founded the band and replace them with two women chosen for their looks and their dance moves--the women had never even sung when they were asked to go on tour with the Human League--so that he could create "the next Abba." (Which is how it turned into the band I so despise.)

I was also intrigued to learn that the vocalist for ABC, Martin Fry, didn't start out as a musician--he published a fanzine and was asked by Stephen Singleton and Mark White to join Vice Versa in order to play some electronic something or other he had no experience with. But then one day Stephen and Mark heard Martin sing, realized he had a better voice than Mark, their current vocalist, and reshaped the band and its material to suit Martin. The result was ABC's first album, The Lexicon of Love, the very first album in my alphabetized CD collection and one of my top favorite albums of all time.

I dig electronic music--I have for a very long time--but I admit that one thing I always liked best about ABC and Heaven 17 was their use of instruments I really like: brass and saxophone and so forth. So it was fascinating to learn about their roots in this scene where a group of people who considered themselves "sonic terrorists" and who thought they "were killing off rock and roll" were exploring how to "make music without musical instruments."

The documentary itself is only 52 minutes long, but there are extra interviews that I of course watched. I recommend it all. If you've seen it, or if you watch it any time soon, I'd like to know what you think.

Posted by Holly at 5:47 PM | Comments (3)

January 21, 2007

To the Manor Born

As I discussed ever so long ago, I love Netflix, and I love it more as time goes by. Not only is it really convenient and easy, but whatever software they use for making recommendations is actually pretty good. Not only does it recommend popular, current stuff I might not have gotten around to adding to my queue without a little prodding, but it also manages to recommend older, more obscure stuff I might never have heard of any other way.

One such example is a television series I recently finished watching, To the Manor Born. It was recommended to me because I had just finished watching a bunch of British period pieces--the various renditions of the life of Elizabeth Tudor, the really fabulous adaptation of Bleak House. I read the blurb of TtMB: recent widow Audrey fforbes-Hamilton (played by Penelope Keith, and no, that is not a typo in fforbes) is forced to sell Grantleigh Manor, the estate where her family has lived for 400 years, when she discovers that her husband's death has left her bankrupt. The estate is purchased by one Mr. Richard De Vere (played by Peter Bowles), a dashing self-made millionaire (he runs a grocery store empire), social climber, and (gasp!) foreigner: although he can pass as English, the truth of the matter is that his parents were refugees who left Czechoslovakia at the beginning of World War II. Although she has to leave the manor, Audrey cannot leave her old way of life, despite the presence of a new landlord.

And I thought it sounded interesting enough and I ordered it.

But then it arrived and I saw on the dvd jacket that the series was made in 1979, and that put a different spin on things. I generally hate American tv from that time: Dallas, Love Boat, Laverne and Shirley--I can't watch that crap, and I didn't watch it when it was current--I hardly watched any prime-time television when I was in high school. And while the little British television I'd seen from that time occasionally seemed better written, the production values were often pretty dreadful.

I nearly returned the disk without watching it, but then I decided, what the hell, I might as well check it out. And I was surprised by two things: one, how much I actually enjoyed it, and two, that anyone could actually hold some of the attitudes Audrey regularly expressed. It was that whole sense of entitlement and privilege--the way she talked to her neighbors and servants! The references to the British class system and the "right" sort of people! It all seemed so outdated and antique. Of course I've read plenty of novels dealing with those very issues--but I can't think of a one of them set before the beginning of the Great War. And yet, I'm sure those attitudes still exist.... The whole thing was quite educational.

Despite the educational content, I wouldn't have kept watching if I hadn't been interested in all the characters, hadn't wanted to see what would happen next. But as I said, I actually enjoyed it--quite a lot, to be honest. I finished the last episode over the weekend. The entire series, which spanned three years, involves a mere 20 30-minute episodes. (And they really are 30 minutes long, not 22.) The fact that a season consists of only six or seven episodes might be one reason the writing was pretty good: they had time to get things right. And it also might be a reason why they didn't invest in better sets or more costumes--why lay out all that money when you won't be using something that many times?

So this is a really careful recommendation: if you like period pieces (it really does feel like one), if you're interested in the British class system, and if you like tv that is "unusual" by the standards of American network fare, watch this. It doesn't suck.

Posted by Holly at 8:54 AM | Comments (5)

January 20, 2007

The BBC Loves the C-Word Too

Anyone who's read this blog for any length of time knows that I'm a fan of the c-word as an actual term for female genitalia. Now I learn that the BBC is planning a documentary on why the word has become more popular, entitled, appropriatel enough, "I Love the C-Word." Plenty of people are outraged, but I'm quite pleased--unless, of course, the focus is all on why the word is such an effective insult. I just hope they have some sort of on-line broadcast so I can actually watch the program, since I don't live in England.

Posted by Holly at 10:27 AM | Comments (5)

January 18, 2007

Nurse, I Spy Gypsies--Run!

One of the things I did while visiting my family is trade favorite youtube videos with my siblings. My brother introduced me to this video from Weird Al. Entitled "Bob," it consists entirely of palindromes, and it freakin' cracks me up everytime I watch it.

Posted by Holly at 2:18 PM | Comments (4)

January 16, 2007

My Space and Everyone Else's

Yeah, I'm back--back in Pennsylvania, back in the blogosphere. I've been away for a long time but I had stuff to do--some of it important, some of it pleasant, some of it not.

As a way of easing myself back in, here's something I first drafted months ago in a conversation with a friend about public/private space.

I guess my relation to place is probably different from many people's, because I grew up someplace rural, and aside from those eight years in Iowa, I have spent most of my time in the west, where space is just dealt with differently, in part because it looks and feels different: the dry air means the sky is wider and feels further away, even when buildings press close.

I need wide open vistas, I need them, in ways other people need a lot of social interaction. I can feel a touch claustrophobic in places that might make others feel they're lost in some endless barren terrain. I'm not saying I can't function in some urban setting, but my skin starts to crawl and my head feels crowded if I don't get a dose of a horizon bereft of buildings from time to time (John Ruskin wrote, "It does not need much to humiliate a mountain; a hut will sometimes do it" though I think the very expensive homes in Sedona do a decent job of humiliating that landscape too) and I prefer to commune with said horizon on my own. Nothing ruins a nice view like someone else's head. I am not so rugged and woodsy that I have to go hiking in someplace remote and inaccessible--I like well established trails just fine--but the idea of barbequing in a crowded picnic area or swimming on a crowded beach holds little appeal for me.

As for city scapes and building areas in them, well, a mall is a different kind of public space than a street with shops. Universities are a kind of public space, and parks are another kind. Hmm--do specific shops count as public spaces? Of course they do.... but they're regulated and patrolled in ways streets and malls and campuses aren't.

I really hate crowds. I prefer public spaces when most of the public has decided to be elsewhere. When I lived in the dorm (a semi-private space, I guess), I LOVED the fact that we got really cheap tickets to football games because absolutely everyone on my wing would go to the games, leaving me blissfully alone with the laundry facilities and the really long, deep, perfectly sloped bathtub nobody but me and my sister would use anyway, because everyone else took showers. I remember spending a lot of time in London in small parks along the river that were too far away from anything significant for most people to mess with them. But that was precisely why I liked them. And I sought such places out because they were special places, in and of themselves. I would go there to be THERE, and away from other people.

As for my private space, I focus on routine and comfort and security, and I don't think about it once it's how I like it, though I know that when I clean my house thoroughly, I always feel happier and like my house better. Actually sometimes I don't always think about it when it's not quite how I like it. I noticed again while I was staying in various houses that weren't mine, and then returned to my own, that people are able to get used to things in their own homes that bother them a lot when they encounter something similar in other people's homes: paint peeling in a corner of the kitchen ceiling due to water damage from the bathroom above it; a broken front door knob that can only be opened with just the right touch, so that whenever someone who isn't used to the door knob wants to go outside, they have to ask to be let out. (I found it dreadfully inconvenient but supposedly it's really good for keeping adventurous three-year-olds out of the street.)

I think I have the sense that I am interacting with space most immediately and unmediated-ly when I'm in a certain kind of public space, because I've gone there because I want to be IN that space. I want to be in the park; I want to sit on a bench and watch the river or the sky or something. Whereas when I'm home I'm mostly thinking of it as an extension of me, instead of a space I inhabit.

Posted by Holly at 6:05 PM | Comments (7)