STORYTIME -- an occasional column about books, movies and stories

~~~ ClOSE TO THE BONE ~~~

movie review of Lars von Trier's Antichrist
released 2008

by Linda Ellen Lemaster

Dateline - Last Chance Ridge, March 18, 2010

I must have always assumed there's a celestial level of movie-making; a standard of true art that transends everything we've already seen and imagined and are paying for. Something that nobody can fit onto the five-star rating system When I saw Antichrist, I felt the excitement of witnessing -- and partaking of, and surviving -- art. I left the moviehouse changed.

Banned in our town soon after it opened, this movie struck me as expanding the boundaries of beautifully created movie-making. It appealed to my gothic, surreal, magical, photo-realistic, and dark blue tastes as well. It kept me on the edge of my seat and left me wanting to see it again. I'm grateful for this movie, and recharged about what's possible in moviemaking.

I can only rave about it: the photography was rivetting, as was the luscious revelatory waves of intensity packed throughout Antichrist. The music, and the slo-mo opening scene deserve note.

It's the untold Epic of 20th Century Obsession, one could say. A picture about the holy fruit from a Tree of isolating pair-bondage. What our society puts out as modern-day marriage. "Divide and Conquer" reduced to the level of genetic angst. Or maybe that's harsh? A picture about a couple clawing their way through each other's souls in their self-contained, respective and shared, realities on behalf of professionalism and a fouled understanding of development and succession. A couple hobbled, as we all are, by the perversions of gender and sexuality brought to us by ages of both organized violence and puritanical zealots.

If you could cut and run with your Beloved, in the wake of a shared tragedy, no ties, not even a phone, would you nestle yourselves in the bosom of The Great Mother? And could the earth and the green umbrella sooth nerves; and would your shared soul reknit, restore itself in the quiet? Or would you get too grossed out by the ticks and sticks and contrary-seeming zephyrs? Would the night-owl's coo-wooo cover you like the moon, or would he seem to portend? I've been to both places. Could you even do it soberly?

Maybe the title set me up for surprise? Antichrist -- I musta had a preconception or two? Since Willem Dafoe was in it, I knew I'd like it, so I skipped over my normal cursory preview.

Both actress Charlotte Gainsbourg and DaFoe were beyond excellent portraying lives becoming gritty -- to say the least -- and they kept it up, continually intensifying the depth of their acting and art to the incredible depth required by director Lars von Trier

Starring: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

to tell this important story. About the upwardly mobile professional class He and She coming unglued. And perhaps about the everywoman, the everyman and about the ghastly transpositions we may endure when we are not entirely honest within the bounds of Mother Nature?

What Burton and Taylor gave us with words and wit in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" may have blossomed forward here, with Gainsbourg and DaFoe giving us heart-rending, psyche-wrenching performances of two characters stripped to reptilian essence in a movie that flutters meaningfully between black-n-white and subtle coloring.

Loaded with metaphor and both classical and americana symbolism, but that's another whole study.

There were a lot of times in my life I wouldn't have had the fortitude and openness to see this movie. I was too "sensitive" to harsh images (violence, blood, breaking glass); movies then could restimulate unresolved ancient crashes and unhealed grief. And maybe I'd have even felt it was misogynist in my knee-jerk days? But seeing it now, I know it belongs far beyond such categorical classifications. I recommend you check out trailers and reviews before you, like me, just jump into Antichrist.

Then get a good seat and hold on.

Collage Honoring Gloria's Special Gifts

I have been reading about neurolinguistics and biology.

Got inspired.

CHANGE IS FREE ~ Sometimes in the middle of chaos and tissue snowballs ever-falling-down in times of illness, art gets born. THIS one right after first soggy winter storm '09. Inspired by the stirring and comingling of storage locker changes, mine and a friend's, simultaneously. Linda's Hearth exclusive, not-for-sale poster.

by Linda for Laughing Arts Pharm

Keith Olberman, Murder of Democracy

Ring Out The Old, Ring In The New... A New Decade Begins . . .

Two Thousand and Ten Years!

Top of my small holiday tree, the Angel of Light seems to be winking at pictures of my Granddaughter Jianna Rose when she was a new toddler, on the wall. Am getting acclimated to having a smaller, Granny-size holiday tree. Not willing to give it up just because there are no longer little children around here and money's gotten tighter for everyone. No good reason to compromise, that I can figure? My youngest son, now way grown, and I, will be taking it down very soon.

The glass birds w/peacock feathers, from Marini's Downtown, are new this year. The gold and copper colored decorated eggs are new last year. The colorful paper chain is at least seven years old, made when there WERE children running around "here." That somehow survived all my stresses, illnesses, and moving; packing an unpacking times. I love peacocks (despite their howl), and I love the Art Deco French associations that come with images of peacocks and their hens.

Angel of Light's apparent holding a mirror ball was, happenstance and 'trick of eye'. I like it thus, as tho' protecting our planet and all the Divine light it has gathered.

I generally do NOT support the harvesting and killing of trees for Christmas, and so have had a potted, knotted, crooked little stem of a tree for years, a gift from Uncle Joe. He brought it from this ridge to my little pidgeon coop in the city, heartening a bleak holy season years ago. But THIS year it had grown way too heavy to be moving into and out of the home. Or even onto the porch.

It will have to be returned to it's forest, or at least transplanted into the earth, very soon. The little holiday tree pictured here was among a knot of babies, under an evergreen at the edge of Redwood Forest, 2nd growth. We were able to "take" it in the spirit of cultivation, rather than consumerism. Luckily! So I don't feel bad about it's cutting.

A little tree is, I find in 2009, easier to include in the home environment and to incorporate in the live-cherishing affirmations of our Hearth. And it's easier to enjoy, very directly. takes nothing from the awe and the remembering, the Yule Log's spark, keeping and bringing light (and heat) through winter. It's easy with electricity virtually a given, to forget natural cycles.

While my daughter was still in college, she and I talked about Solstice. Anthropology, culture, what did it mean, before? We agreed -- she provided references and citations to other times and cultures about this -- that MEANING during the winter holy days includes a sense of community sharing. Of visiting the isolated, feeding someone hungry, warming anyone cold we see; of singing to the grumpy and despairing, in short -- keeping down the S.A.D. and helping each other through everything necessary until the warmth of sunshine returned more fully.

Modern and compartmentalized life gets us "off the hook" to a very large sense; we no longer feel mutually responsible for the welbeing of our immediate physical communities. In this sense, maybe we're all Scrooges? Perhaps a gesture, even a small one, even just a symbolic one beyond the star or angel on our Holy Day , is called for?

By sharing our family's Christmas Tree this way, I am also confessing my love of christ, Jesus, because that's part of the meaning for me in this ritual. I know it isn't everyone's meaning, that's OK with me -- still it is a beautiful and cultural and widespread activity. Thinking about the tree as living, and symbolic of enduring life, helped me get over the pathos of not BUYING a Christmas Tree from curbside or superstore lots. It is a decision I HAD to face, after that mom-daughter dialogue.

We can all do a little something to represent keeping of life, rather than going alaong with unnecessary materializing, marketing, even mauling of trees as tho' life were a disposable commodity. For me, this is very important. I used to believe I'd have to give up having a Christmas Tree, once I began understanding, knowing, trees in general as living beings whom we NEED to support the lives of, wisely, for our own sakes. I was wrong, mistaken in my "finite" thinking. It is so wonderous, special. For me eventually "the scales fell away" from my vision and I am still graced with this holy tradition, and it has a greater depth of meaning than was ever known to me before. It is a process, out of time and off the calendar, of listening to silence.

I am also declaring my faith and hope and joy about our -- everyone's -- futures, using the special tree in our home as emblematic. Faith in our planet's future, and in our ability to become wiser about God's intentions for us as this place's stewards. With each memento or ornament or object or ribbon, go my prayers for our future wisdom, for our decisions and actions, and for our children's legacy -- life itself. The "decorating" carries spoken wishes as each ornament and each trim makes it way into our little tree.

Thus, tree becoming temporarily my rosary. It is a rocky road at times, but just as I sometimes seek the North Star, so I will keep up these winter traditions of carrying the light and warmth "over the hump" of a long, cold, mid-winter night every year.

~

Above,

Closeup of Angel of Light at Linda's Hearth, Christmas 2009

also called Gloria, Messenger Angel -- of the joyful chorus in Heaven one Bethlehem night

Below,

I finally can get our Turkey for Thanksgiving

cooked predictably right!

It took decades as a mom to get this down.

Kudos to all the grandmothers' patience with me.

~Count your blessings~
G'bye 2009
Welcome Twenty-Ten

http://hearthbylinda.blogspot.com/

http://lindashearth.tk/

~

Homeless Women in Santa Cruz a poem tribute

Click this picture bigger to see a very interesting cloud formation.
Pacific Sunset, Feb. 2007
photo by Linda Lemaster
©The Home Office

FOR PATCHES Who Died Too Young


I drift through this town around twilight
on my broomstick
made from pain

Folks whisper to their kids, "We remember her,"
then      tell me      they've forgot my name

Clean water, second-hand bagels
and smelly, putrid plumbing
-- on a good day --
leaves me feeling blessed

On cold days my fingers
and my knees
      light up like Rudolph's nose
Other times I'm transparent 'cept my smile
If I have one left

Will it help me pass this gauntlet one more time on my
walk from bus to blanket stash?
Will my bedroll still be there?

Dignified eyes staring      down     then away
right through me


Curious children hail me with their
                                innocence and warmth
'til Mommy's Auntie's Granny's haughty frozen glares
arrest their smiles      their fingers      and
eventually
the children's hearts, too, freeze.


The buckaroo boys, all jazz and hip
and shadowboxing on the street

they see me      yes      then say, "Hey Lady,
got a light?" or  "Got a toke?"
But hurry off
like natural dudes when I reply,
"Got four bits
'cause I wanna phone my kids?"

Alone
wondering
just me and the pavement
Was that really      me
begging
just now?
Or was it just a joke I played on me?

Whatever  . . .  it was something just last year
I said I'd never ever want to do.


Guess I'm just a-chillin' now, and dreaming by myself
Trying to remember dreams

Got time for dreaming NOW

No more wishing babies would sleep in
on just ONE Saturday sunrise for a change
No more wishing for "white noise" when alarm clocks
    ring at seven
No more staying up late just to fold the laundry or
finish work or bills while wishing rather for
   t i m e
for sleep and dreaming
No more daydreams on the bus to class inspired by
my night before's school homework

No more hot flashes in my own clean sheets
No more counting coupons on those rare night
                                                           I can't sleep
No more waking up because the neighbor's cat's in heat
 or the raccoon's dumping trashcans all along the street
No more peeking at my miracle children      growing
 ever taller      as I watch       them       lay asleep

No more satisfying tangles on "my" floor
with blankets, pillows, secrets, poems, empty
wine glasses, and You
No more       quiet      glowing      happily      alone
Looking at the stars and thinking, "Where's we
 buy that wine?"
    and "What's it mean?"
         and feeling how
You always made it feel like we were both
brandnew

Once I was made of those fresh cotton sheets and
          smells of you
Was that the real me -- always wishing
                   to recover       just a little
shred of dreamtime
the JOY of life, just sleeping IN someday?


I've gained and lost vast heavens and hells
both mine and some I'd borrowed
yet finding now my dreams come back like
homing pigeons and uncompleted Yesterdays
still seeking their Tomorrows


California Dreamin'
and hoofing all the way
to the Mission's Styrofoam Soup


Got time to dream in the daytime now
and time to dream all night
Yet now no place to lay my head
no respite from hard streets and their
cruel, unblinking lights*

© Linda Ellen Lemaster

This poem was first published in Street Spirit,
Publication of American Friends Service Committee
January 2007


some back-story and my opinion

The poem above, best read aloud, came to me when I learned a new friend had died of pneumonia after having to live on the streets. And then being pushed and busted around for trying to earn her way by washing car windshields, a fast-moving, often quite cold job. Her pulverized looking hands. She was always friendly while trying to earn a little cash -- never pushy and entirely polite.

I never even learned her "real" name; Patches is her street moniker, a safety nickname. I was immediately struck by how much we once had in common: an ordinary American mom's life. Yet me -- with an old Volvo for wheels and even a rented home -- it felt like we were worlds apart as we met; and me having to say "no" to her squeegie despite a dirty windshield. I was "too broke" yet we became friends that day anyhow!

I have numerous long-term homeless and once-homeless friends, in part because I treat them like human beings and they appreciate that. I learned this from Mitch Snyder long ago. Our first meeting -- Patches and mine -- was at Front Street and Soquel Avenue, downtown. It seemed then a minor instance for us.

Simultaneously, in my city, housed people were making it illegal for homeless people to wash car windows for shoppers, in one parking lot and then the next. I saw this shifting 'social engineering' take place over a matter of months, as both civic garages and "private property" lots outside pharmacies, bookstores and the supermarket pushed her out of her meager yet honorable existence.

I can imagine, but not prove, the pneumonia that killed Patches by age 50 was abetted by the raining and cold "bad days" during which she nonetheless continued working -- to earn her own way instead of begging or dumpster diving or getting institutionalized due to hard luck.

Patches was literally pushed out of surviving because somebodies didn't want to have to say "no" when she offered her service, or else because someone gets jealous as she made friends, and earned maybe an average of $3.50 an hour on a "good day." I feel those petty sorts of "reasons" moved that city to yet another layer of privatization and discrimination against indigent and homeless folks.

It's no longer 'legal' to offer to wash automobile windshield for parked shoppers who wish it. So then life goes on round about, as if nobody's the worse for it. Nobody has to see that they're literally causing suffering because "it's the law". When we sleep peacefully at night, it's at the expense of those who can't.

Maybe there were other extenuating factors adding to Patches early death? I don't know. I know only what I saw happening.

I believe Patches' struggling so valiantly to survive, and her dying while street-homeless, reflects on some deficiency amongst all of us who are housed. Some critical degree of humanity is lacking for us? Or else maybe it's simply class-based bigotry? Whatever the reason, we're making it even harder -- intentionally -- for people to stay alive when they're down. Our shared 'bad attitude' leads to pain, great harm and needless loss of life. In some hard-to-define way, I believe, these mean and obsolete social values lessen any meaning in our own lives, too.

Let's give up a mite of our collective "comfort zone" in order to soften the hell of people daily at risk. Is this unreasonable? Can we not restore the MARGINS of society, as educator and anti-homelessness advocate Peter Marin writes about, so those who can't deal with the whole tapestry of tasks and responsibilities needed to mainstream all at once do not have to get destroyed, including killed, by these social mores and cultural memes and our community-wide lack of compassion?

I hope to write more in the future about these social patterns and policies and about what else we can do to change our mean behaviors.

Linda's Hearth postscript
*for metaphor-unfamiliar readers, This poem was inspired (maybe even largely 'channeled' - poetry can be like that) by Patches' death, which shocked me, about four months after I'd met her. However it is not "about" her in particular. It is about women who are abandoned by society, perhaps? It is about being homeless in the town where I raised my children, for sure. I hope it is about the correlation between "not seeing" and social violence?

Peter Camejo's Legacy

Peter Camejo, pictured here with Donna Warren, who also furthered California's Green Party by campaigning for a state office. I met these two remarkable people in Santa Cruz CA, at Louden Nelson Center.


by Linda Lemaster
September 15, 2009

Last Chance Road, CA -- I'm surprised to realize it's been a year already since Peter Camejo passed on. I was fortunate to attend his Memorial in Berkeley, after getting to know him through collaborations within California's Green Party. He was -- and is -- a tremendous inspiration and influence, not just on my 'political' persona and social self: his example and his counsel informs my whole being.



Peter was born in Venezuela. He was a renown leader and excellent organizer for Socialists in his 20's, including the Berkeley free speech student struggles, and came to the Green Party where his integrity and influence helped grow that Party. I understand Camajo was a founding member of California's Greens?

I am one of the many California Greens who got to know the man through our shared work and visions of a vital, real, democratic people. By this I mean, effectively, "One {wo}man, one vote." And taking responsibility for one's own adequate education. Later, he ran for Vice President with Ralph Nader. I saw such a noble potential in that ticket.

Despite the jaded indifference of commercial (aka "mass") media, which seemed to me to exclude all political partisans except registered Democrats and registered Republicans from getting any glimpse of honest press, Nader-Camejo garnered many first-time voters and provoked discourse about electoral anomalies across the nation.

Camejo helped me better understand the political wrangling I found all around me when I was lost. He was humble, genuine, enthusiastic, and an excellent communicator, with such a significant impact as leader and as political servant. He is the first (and so far only) political candidate who assured me he never ran an electoral campaign "in the red," and his book on progressive financing, The SRI Advantage: Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially gives us all a blueprint about executing such an 'impossible' campaign ourselves.

Peter Camejo shared his experience widely and inspired us. I can never forget what he has given us, including his modeling for greater equity and inclusion, an agenda for demanding corporate accountability, an adamant plea for diversity as the way to greater social and community building, and his insistence that democracy is a real and achievable goal for people everywhere.

Peter Camejo, I miss you. I offer my deepest compassion and sympathy to Peter's family and friends.

Thank You, Volunteers

Video embedded from:
news.santacruz.com
Interview by Jessica Lussenhop

AFTERGLO'

I survived the fire, mandatory evacuation, and all the adventures to follow; when I finally felt safe to go home, eight days' later, the newspapers said Lockheed Ridge fire was 84% contained. A few more days, '100% contained' was announced. Nonetheless, spot fires continue and every time in the past week I've left this ridge over the Pacific, I see red and white helicopters scooping up buckets of water from Scotts Creek and turning toward a spire of smoke. Today (Sept 2) returning home, I saw three airplanes and/or choppers and a fire tank engine, alongside Highway One, coastside, and more fast-moving flames getting doused, more smoke spreading So'Westerly down the surf.

I'm overwhelmed with so much gratitude to all the Firemen and all those helping experts who support them. Grateful to our community for opening it's arms in times of crisis and shock. And I'm especially gratefully thankful to Red Cross and to those, starting with Vintage Church, who contribute and share with us through the Red Cross when we're otherwise so vulnerable and at-risk. And finally, very deep thanks to my two caregivers whose jobs were turned inside out for a while so I could stay safe and protect my health.

'Pologies to the two orphaned kitties I'd promised to tend thru' August.

It worked! This overwhelming danger to our families and homes and native habitat is effectively over despite those flare-ups, and our prayers turn to our Southern California fellows and their families