Apologies for blogging so much about actors and actresses, dear blog readers. But the Golden Globes are taking place this coming weekend.
Moreover, she’s been reading Joe Morgenstern’s “The Year’s Top Performers” article, in the Wall Street Journal of 3 January 2014.
Morgenstern writes: “My favorite performance this year concentrated a universe of bewilderment and self-delusion in the person of a once-vibrant woman and, not incidentally, constituted a master class in how great acting is done.”
More from Morgenstern: “Surely the most spectacular reinvention — self-reinvention — by an actor last year was accomplished by Matthew McConaughey. Over the course of almost two decades he’d done extremely well with playing handsome young men with sharp edges to their psyches, men who often found reason to remove their shirts. Then came his electrifying 2012 appearance as a malign club owner in Magic Mike.”
Self would not really go so far as to call McConaughey’s acting in Magic Mike “electrifying,” but she will say this: One Sunday in June 2012, she descended from her room on an upper floor of Hawthornden, saw the Sunday Guardian on the hall table (people were always trying to be the first to get to it), went to the Sunday magazine and saw on the cover: shirtless Matthew McConaughey, in a cowboy hat, one arm extended to the ceiling. HOOOLY MOLY!!!! Self could not wait to get back to the States so she could see Magic Mike!
Another thing about the Morgenstern article? He has nice things to say about Rescue Dawn. Self just added the film to her Netflix queue.
And BTW, last night’s premiere episode of Justified Season 5 was excellent. Had self drooling all over again. No one can rock blue jeans like Timothy Olyphant. Plus there was a moving tribute to Elmore Leonard from the cast (All hail, Tim O, rocking the thread bracelets and long hair) and producer. It was very moving.
Self is musing about how lucky she was to visit Scotland in June 2012. She had received a fellowship to the Writers’ Retreat at Hawthornden, about 45 minutes by public bus from Edinburgh. She loved every inch of Edinburgh. Every inch. (She also loved Hawthornden).
She wrote like the Dickens. She asked the program manager how many years she’d have to wait before re-applying. He said, five years. Five years !!!! NOOOOO !!!
Self’s first time to brave the city was in the company of another writer, the poet Joan McGavin. Joan had grown up in Scotland but now teaches in a university in England. She was one of five other writers doing their residencies in Hawthornden that June. One day, Joan invited self to accompany her to the University of Edinburgh, there was something she needed to check out of the library there. So self, who never turns down an invitation to go anywhere, happily went along.
Right outside the library was this piece of art work (pictured above). And only a short walk away was a plaque on the wall of a narrow house, saying that this was the house where Roget, creator of Roget’s Thesaurus, lived while a medical student at the University of Edinburgh. Right away, self felt a shiver. That shiver she only feels when she is approaching something really stupendous (Around the corner, some workmen were having heated discussion, liberally laced with “F—!”)
On that same walk with Joan, self walked past The Elephant House, the place where J. K. Rowling hung out while writing the first Harry Potter book. In the comfort room of the Elephant House, there’s graffiti about Hermione. Never mind what they say. Use your imagination! If self were Hermione, she’d be conflicted.
Anyhoo, self is thinking about Scotland again because in the 9 November issue of The Economist (Self still woefully behind in her reading, boo) there is a long article about whether or not Scotland should declare its independence from the United Kingdom. Having spent all of one month in Scotland, self thinks she understands the impulse. In the small library in Bonnyrigg, the closest town to Hawthornden, there was a section called The Scottish Bookshelf. And there she saw the books of Ian Rankin, J. K. Rowling, Irvine Welsh, even J. M. Barrie.
The one author self thought should have been there but wasn’t was Morag Joss, the mystery writer. When self mentioned to Joan that Ms. Joss was one of her favorite mystery writers, Joan said, very casually, “She teaches at my college.”
HEART PALPITATIONS!
Self has three favorite mystery writers, and they are: 1) Morag Joss 2) Ruth Rendell 3) Karin Fossum. Fossum is Norwegian, Rendell is English, and Joss is Scottish.
Self remembers so clearly a sentence from Joss’s book, Half-Broken Things: “People are so hard to kill.” (Yes, especially if one is an amateur, like the two people in the story. In an extended scene, two people try SO HARD to kill a third, but even though the target is very old, the whole exercise becomes convoluted and appalling)
An Economist article called “A Unionist Pin-up” dissects the legacy of William Wallace, he who defeated the English at the Battle of Bannockburn and who, many centuries later, had the good fortune to be portrayed by Mel Gibson (in “Braveheart”), back when Gibson was not yet crazy.
They’re opening a museum to Wallace this year, “in time for the 700th anniversary of the battle.” It will be in Stirling (Alas, self never got to see Stirling Castle, Wallace’s seat). The 1320 Declaration of Arbroath states: “As long as only one hundred of us remain alive we will never on any conditions be brought under English rule.”
Stirring words! According to The Economist, “polls consistently show that about 30 – 40% of Scots will vote to leave” when the vote takes place, September 2014.
The five other writers and self who spent June 2012 in Hawthornden forged lasting bonds. We sometimes refer to ourselves as the Quidditch Team. When self goes to Tyrone Guthrie, in a couple of months, she fervently hopes the Team can reunite in London.
Oh, self also should mention that one of the Quidditch Team used to date Michael Palin, of Monty Python.
The first sentence of the prompt on the WordPress Daily Post says it all:
HELLO 2014.
It means discovery and inspiration, whether that means a fresh take on dressing (White on white looks so good in the summer!), or a monument in the town of Vicenza, to a man who set out with Magellan on “the first voyage around the world,” and memories of New Year’s Day (2012).
White on white is fabulous. Self snapped this picture in Stafford Park, during the Wednesday evening summer concert series. She can’t wait to try this look soon as the weather warms.Statue of Antonio de Pigafetta, chronicler of Magellan’s voyage around the world. Pigafetta was only one of 33 survivors who made the voyage home. Magellan died in the Philippines. The statue is in Vicenza, Pigafetta’s hometown.Dutch Goose, Menlo Park: Watching last year’s Rose Bowl. Stanford won, ending many years of drought. That was a lot of fun.
Self thinks literary magazine editors must be more than a little like Don Quijote.
The ones who keep it going for 5, 10 years? Self is filled with the utmost admiration for them.
That said, self this evening read the current issue of 5_trope.
It’s amazing. Self recognizes a few names — Doren, of course, who edited it and solicited her piece, and also L. D. Janakos, Sharon Doubiago, Martin Espada, John Solt, Cecilia Woloch, Kathleen de Azevedo. Kim Silveira Wolterbeek, Gary Young. She’s made a vow to read every piece.
Here’s the beginning of a poem by Sharon Doubiago:
My Mother’s Mirror
1.
My mother loved mirrors. My mother
wasn’t vain. Mirrors mirror light
and open up walled rooms
to all of Nature outside
her claustrophobia, opened up
her mother’s tomb
but probably too my mother watched herself
the orphan from all angles so as to know herself
in the eyes of others. To adjust herself to the world
in the eyes of all Nature, her mother
out there
So powerful, wouldn’t you agree, dear blog readers?
Angela Narciso Torres’s first poetry collection, Blood Orange, was last year’s winner of the Willow Books Literature Prize! Understandably, she has been extremely busy! Aside from doing readings from her collection, Blood Orange, she has shepherded a son to Stanford, while still serving as senior poetry editor for RHINO magazine. Self admires her so much!
Here’s a poem from Blood Orange:
Ironing Woman
Afternoons I’d lie on her woven mat
of lemongrass and burnt leaves,
listening to tales of spurned love
on her bright-yellow transistor radio.
From her I learned what the old wives knew —
never to wash after ironing. Propelling
the gleaming prow along the ripples
of my father’s shirt, she’d tell how the iron
gnarled her wrists, once smooth as bamboo.
How the steaming metal twisted
her veins, brought on “the shakes.”
When I saw the serpentine rivers
on her arms, I knew this was true. Slowly
she’d raise both hands to show how
they trembled like maidenhair ferns
before a storm. Turning to her work,
her eyes reclaimed their stare
as though tracing a gull’s shadow
over the surging sea.
p. 266 of How I Found Livingstone in Central Africa.
Self has posted about Henry M. Stanley’s single-mindedness and steadfastness (which account, in no small part, for why he succeeded in his quest to find Livingstone).
Sprinkled here and there in the narrative are Stanley’s observations about his fellow man (especially the types he encounters in Africa) that clearly reflect some, shall we say, limitations on his thinking about race. But not for a second does self entertain the notion of putting the book down. Looking inside the head of a British explorer of the nineteenth century, self finds it a fascinating place, with very few unlit nooks and crannies. So it is great for her, a writer, because now she knows.
Here Stanley reveals his love of the hunt (Warning: possibly stomach-churning. Do not read unless you are ready to be appalled):
I might have succeeded in getting dozens of animals had I any of those accurate, heavy rifles manufactured by Lancaster, Reilly, or Bissett, where every shot tells. But my weapons, save my light smoothbore, were unfit for African game. My weapons were more for men. With the Winchester rifle, and the Starr’s carbine, I was able to hit anything within two hundred yards, but the animals, though wounded, invariably managed to escape the knife, until I was disgusted with the pea-bullets. What is wanted for this country is a heavy bore — No. 10 or 12 is the real bone-crusher — that will drop every animal shot, in its tracks, by which all fatigue and disappointment are avoided.
Self has moved about 20 pages forward since Friday.
Hurrah!
What self finds so amazing is that Henry M. Stanley, who chronicles his search for the British explorer David Livingstone, never once doubts the worth of his mission. Never.
(Whereas, in the film self just saw today, Inside Llewyn Davis, Davis keeps searching for external affirmations of the validity of his passion, and sadly it is never forthcoming)
On p. 254, Stanley reflects that he is happy and content just knowing that somewhere in Africa, Dr. Livingstone is breathing the same air. (Self knows — this is really borderline wacko. It sounds almost as if Henry M. Stanley, who was 53, is suffering from a form of schoolgirl infatuation)
He then asks:
Why is man so feeble, and weak, that he must tramp hundreds of miles to satisfy the doubts his impatient and uncurbed mind feels?
Self has decided to post an excerpt from Don Alfredo & Jose Rizal, published in Sou’wester, 2007.
Much thanks to Valerie Vogrin for publishing the story. It’s still one of self’s favorites, one of those stories that come in a rush, one of those stories that need to stay inside for a long time while you search for either the courage or the recklessness to set the words down:
When I started to do research for the story, there were things I discovered about my great-grandfather that bothered me. For instance, I discovered that he had more than one wife, the youngest a girl of 14. And he was uncommonly cruel. He tried his best to hide the fact that there was a strain of indio blood in his family, and he would beat his darker-colored servants mercilessly. He died mysteriously, perhaps a victim of poisoning.
You see, my cousin said, we are related to the National Hero of the Philippines, Jose Rizal. The one who was shot by a firing squad, at Luneta Park, in 1896.
As Jose Rizal stood before the Spanish firing squad, accused of being a renegade and an underground solidarity worker, George Dewey was entering Manila Bay.
Self was bummed she missed this one when it was showing in theaters. Thank God for Netflix. She watched Before Midnight today, and was so mesmerized she couldn’t even get up to get a drink of water. It was like watching an action film where you know if you look away for even just a few seconds, you’re going to miss some kinetic bit that might knock your socks off. When was the last time you felt this way about a movie that was ALL TALK? What an achievement. Congratulations to Hawke, Delpy and director Richard Linklater. All the reviews keep describing Before Midnight as the final installment of a trilogy. Noooo! Self wants to check in again, 10 years from now, when Hawke and Delpy are in their 50s. Let’s keep this thing going for a couple more decades? Surely that’s not too much to ask?
Self is ALMOST at the halfway point of How I Found Livingstone in Central Africa. Oh happy happy joy joy. (She actually read to a little farther, late last night, but decided to double back and re-read a few pages). If she continues at this rate, she can anticipate finishing in about two weeks (Naturally, she’s already at the maximum number of renewals for this library book. The sooner she finishes, the sooner she can stop those late fees of 25 cents per day)
It is September 14, 18xx (Don’t make self go backwards to search for the exact year! It’s about the 1800s, that’s all self can tell you)
The Arab boy Selim is delirious from constant fever. Shaw is sick again. These two occupy most of my time. I am turned into a regular nurse, for I have no one to assist me in attending upon them. If I try to instruct Abdul Kader in the art of being useful, his head is so befogged with the villainous fumes of Unyamwezi tobacco that he wanders bewildered about, breaking dishes and upsetting cooked dainties, until I get so exasperated that my peace of mind is broken completely for a full hour. If I ask Ferajji, my now formally constituted cook, to assist, his thick wooden head fails to receive an idea, and I am thus obliged to play the part of chef de cuisine.
Bear in mind, dear blog readers, that when Henry M. Stanley was given the task of finding Livingstone, he was already 53 years old. And the last 200 pages have found him contracting malaria not once, but twice. Yet he never, ever entertained the idea of abandoning his mission.
Am pretty sure, also, that he did not speak any African languages and was entirely dependent on the good faith of his servants. A majority of whom ended up abandoning him. But — Onward!
Kanlaon 