Lapis Lazuli Dream and Yeats

About a year ago, I had a dream about a stolen lapis lazuli necklace in my pocket. Soon after that dream, I stumbled across Yeats' poem, "Lapis Lazuli". Reading it again led to some online research of analyses of this poem, and I found Dr. Linda Sue Grimes' interesting summary.

Through this lens, I am now finding some fundamental issues with the poem. If indeed we look upon tragedy detached, how do we experience joy or know it? Is joy, then, not experiencing it? Not very Buddhist, at least in relation to the idea of moving toward suffering, if that is what we do to attain enlightenment. We must know pain and move through it. It's the foundation of life, yes?

"Last Year at Marienbad"

1961
Alain Resnais

Played at The Music Box.

I have to remark that Italian Neorealism, from which Resnais and other French New Wave directors derive some cinematic style, was immediately apparent to me via the elaborate setting of the French hotel/chateau. Another character in of itself, the chateau was unfurled in all of of its stoic excess; each sequence positioning it as if it were another longing lover in this pseudo-surreal triangle of desire and deception. Enhanced by the director's dedication to capturing the lonely and sterile splendour of the chateau, one is reminded of Fellini's hotel/sanatorium in 8-1/2.

Sequence by sequence, the "stilling" of stifled aristocratic love and trite conversations framed by careful attention to architectural detail, hypnotic narrative/repetition, and frozen socialites made this film interesting at best to watch.

The lovers in the film flit between the majestic scenery of opulent gardens and classical sculpture, diving dream-like in and out of the same conversation: "Were we really together last year, at this hotel, same time? Were we lovers then? Would I wait for you? Would you run away with me? Don't you remember me? Please, leave me alone."

French film foreplay, and some visuals that occasionally stunned for art's sake, yet we leave the film house unsatisfied, most likely like our lovers.


Up: Lurch-esque husband and his card tricks; waiter who expertly/gingerly picks up a broken cocktail glass off of the immaculate floor in art-house fashion.

Down: The hideous bush-league "Hawkman" dressing gown our heroine wears for a night of sweet love down by the fire.

"Lilya 4-Ever"

Directed by Swede Lukas Moodysson, Lilya 4-Ever is a wrenching story of a girl who is sold into sex slavery.

In a post-Soviet Estonian slum, sixteen year old Lilya (Oksana Akinshina) is elated when she finds out her mother's new online boyfriend is taking both of them to the States. The day before the trip, Lilya finds out from her mother that she is not invited after all, and that she will be left alone with her battle-axe aunt Anna. Though her mother promises she will send for her, we know this is just the beginning for Lilya bleak existence. "Aunt Anna" steals her mother's flat away from Lilya and forced her to stay in disgusting closet where an old man had just died a week before. With no money, no food, and dwindling hope that her mother will ever send for her, she fends off apartment quad boys sniffing glue in her apartment and making advances, a battle-ax landlady who steals her mail and shuts off her electricity, and a mischievious little boy Volodya (Artyom Bogucharsky). Her friend persuades her to go to the city to prostitute herself, but Lilya does not participate. After she and Volodya become fast friends looking out for one another and helping each other within the apartment quad, Anna shuts Lilya out for good, her friends turn on her, and she is desperate, hungry, and cold. She is then forced to prostitute herself to survive. She is raped in her own apartment. She meets a young man, Andrei (Pavel Ponomaryov), who makes promises to about a better life in Sweden, but when she arrives, she is sold into sex slavery and kills herself.


Do something: http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/hot-topics/trafficking/trafficking---grants--resources.html

Trying to Find Helga Stromberg's Poetry

Helga Strömberg's Life (North Park University summary):

Helga Stromberg (nee Henning) was born March 14, 1886 in Gothenberg, Sweden. After graduating from secondary school in 1904, Helga attended a teachers college in Stockholm for a year. She then attended a nurses training school in Hamburg, Germany and in 1913 joined a Swedish Red Cross ambulance team serving in Serbia, where she was decorated. In 1914 she married a student of astronomy, Gustav B. Stromberg (MSS 22) in Paris, France.

In 1916 Gustav received a stipend from the Mt. Wilson observatory, and the two moved to Pasadena, California where they lived the rest of their lives. Helga started writing poetry in Pasadena under the nom de plum of Sister (or Syster) Benediction. She was published quite frequently in the Swedish-American press and the Pasadena Star. She also had six poem collection published, three in English and three in Swedish. She became an honorary member of the Eugene Field Society in 1940.

Helga's husband Gustav died in 1962, and Helga continued to live in the same house, 1383 North Marengo, until her death on July 7, 1971 at the age of 85.

Eddie Rabbitt's Cranium (I Love A Rainy Night II)

A collaboration by Larry Sawyer, Sara Farr, Lina ramona Vitkauskas, and Shawn Baker.


There isn't any kitchen in your dream
about the rusting eagle. Our mushroom Instamatic
moment browns the aperture. The mall trumpet
screeches into the plot with dialogue like:
"Por favor, my city slipped on a decent boa
of invisible psalms." Giant fantastic radio water,
unfortunate clocks, today's sloppy meat sprockets,
I say to you: NOUVEAU RICHE SUCKS.
Lightening tunnels to latex nuns and pumps.
Listen closely to the troupe playing
"Verily, Verily Asparagus." Uniform lips unclassed
by winnowing studies, lips reflecting fish inside
us all. Flagrant pooches drop like molten cereals;
and for only .99 cents, you are the happiest cactus
in the pool. Justify your jack-off petals with falling
sticks, your battery acid in rapture, your bottles pointed
toward your head with swarthy foam. All of a sudden,
I have to go to the bathroom because my hand is too cold.
Chicken.

"Lay down your head to be born"

We wrote these on Chinese New Year. I used fortune cookie slips from our meal to title each poem.

A collaboration with Gene Tanta, Mirela Ciupag, Larry Sawyer, and Lina ramona Vitkauskas.


That special someone loves to see the light in in your eyes.

Trees idealize this volatile bliss; in
the stink of farm and old peaches,
it is time to collect all the stray dogs,
these misconceptions a broth of your inner
countries. It's time to stop your damn pseudo--
and clean the sacrilege from the table...


He who has not tasted the bitter does not understand the sweet.

Lay down your head to be born, licked,
and dive in the water. Bleed the thimble,
take a gulp of jilted lovers, please speak
into destruction as clarity. Burn the women
first, then raze the local gentry, then pulverize
fuzz, howl, and whistle. The brine, my love, is an old hat.
My bulbous heart fired like pottery, wet like
a Mongolian horse, like a dripping film.



Keep your eyes open, and take advantage of the unexpected.

Here is a small horn.
When will we become ourselves?
The broccoli ground, a curse upon your rubber.
Sex is an addendum, your gesticulations
swirl to the bottom of my glass; it
is a revolt, cleaning the index finger.


Act with kindness. People return with good will to the place that has done them well.

The lettuce changes me.
I cringe in my blind cage.
What time does the dragon depart?
Limestone slams against conglomerate
like a banging door. What is wrong
about how rain comes? Stiff hands
like long watercress, mice in a tight pocket,
firecrackers. The sea is gauche,
the porch thinks you weigh too much,
yes, they were checked those pockets,
those poet pockets.

The Falling Baker

This neat blast from the past was brought to you by my impeccable memory of my 1970's/1980's childhood.

Mark It Eight

The Typewriter Guy Rocks

Refreshing Beverage OR Property-Destroying Neighborhood Hooligan?

The neighborhood business man reading the paper is visibly shaken by Kool-Aid Man.

Protect Toothopolis

The Italians Have Done It Again

KROKUS

I totally thought of the band KROKUS today and it reminded me of the resident stoner in my junior high, Chuck Stolfy. I am pretty sure he had this poster in his locker. I certainly remember the vast array of Eddie t-shirts he had. He kept the rotation fresh and his jet-black mane feathered and Pert silky.

A Failure Pile in A Sadness Bowl

This is old school Patton Oswalt--evidence he is, indeed, funny.

Which One of You Wrote With the Carazy Lipstick?

How can you not love this?

Catherine Wagner @ Danny's Tonight

I dig her work immensely, specifically Macular Hole, however, I am reading this evening at North Park University for Professor Odelius' class so I will miss her reading at Danny's.

One great line re: the female body:

"this my swan is it / eyes at one end cunt at the other / a swaying hurting wonder between.”

A Riff Off Preface

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus has always been a fascinating figure from the annals of documentary-style photography. FUR, starring Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. examines her life through a fictional lens, utilizing factual components of Arbus’s life and spinning a fantasy tale of a freakish neighbor turned love interest—perhaps a cinematic representation of what may have been the pictures Arbus took with her soul rather than her camera. Secretary director Steven Shainberg directs Kidman's portrayal of Arbus, the well-to-do Manhattan wife who becomes one of the twentieth century's most revered photographers, as a beautiful, sad soul oppressed by only her limitless heart and curiosity of vision. Shainberg used Patricia Bosworth's book 'Diane Arbus: A Biography' as a source, and Shainberg and writer Erin Cressida Wilson, reunited after their highly successful 2003 Secretary, to take this leap into Arbus’ “inner life”. Arbus begins her journey on a bus to a nudist camp to become a sometime resident photographer. We then see her three months prior, in1958, hosting a party in New York City.

James Mottram, Channel 4:

“Her husband Allan is a photographer, who has recently been shooting ad campaigns for the latest furs at an exclusive Fifth Avenue department store owned by Diane's father. A devoted wife and mother-of-two, Diane is also her husband's assistant—but it soon becomes clear that she has long since repressed any dreams of her own artistic expression. What—or rather who—brings Diane out of her domesticated shell is the subject of Fur. It is her mysterious (fictional) new neighbour, Lionel Sweeney (Downey Jr.) who helps launch Diane into a wider world. Afflicted with a rare condition that causes hair to sprout all over his face and body—as a teenager shaving proved pointless because "it grew back so quickly, it was hardly worth the effort"—it's no surprise that Lionel used to eke out a living as a circus freak. Now making money by spinning wigs from his excess hair, Lionel hangs out with other 'outsiders'—from dwarves to a dominatrix—who accept him for who he is. But once he reveals the full extent of his condition to Diane, she does not back away; rather she finds genuine friendship with Lionel, at the expense of her life with Allan (who even grows a beard at one point in a desperate hope of winning her round) and her children.”

Diane begins to venture into Lionel’s world promising to eventually take his portrait, though we never see him in his furry glory as one of Arbus’ subjects until the bitter end.

This is a haunting, dreamlike film that Kidman drives with subtle strength and watery expression. Arbus’ resolve to capture these mystical creatures of life comes through clearly, even through an aperture rarely used.

"Solid Gold"

I watched this show religiously. Come on! Marilyn McCoo and Madam with the Solid Gold Dancers? What more could you want as a young girl (or guy for that matter)? I wanted to BE the head Solid Gold Dancer.

I Miss John Candy

I'm the wart...