Category: arts and letters

Poem of the Day (7/29/21)

From brother Dennis:

WHITE ELEPHANT

When I saw it in the front yard,
I wondered who was responsible.
The neighbor who complains,
When I park in front of his house?
My brother, to whom I’ve owned money,
For many years?
Unknown persons who want to cause trouble,
Just because they can?

Should I give it something to eat?
Should I give it some water?
Before I could decide,
It had eaten half the leaves off
The privet hedge and jacaranda tree,
And trampled the bromeliads
And left a hairy deposit of dung,
In the middle of the sidewalk.

I wondered if it was really white,
Or if someone had painted it.
(people do that, you know)
It seemed neither friendly nor unfriendly,
But I wasn’t ready to get too close.
Discretion, as Falstaff wisely knew,
Is the better part of valor.

I called Animal Control, and described the situation;
The person told me that they deal with animals,
Dogs and cats and such, not personal problems.
I called the city Zoo and the person asked me
If I had been drinking, or taking drugs.
Was that any of their business?
As a last resort, I called the Police,
And the person told me that it didn’t sound
Like a crime had been committed.
They advised me to call Animal Control.

I called Animal Control, and described the situation;
The person told me that they deal with animals,
Dogs and cats and such, not personal problems.
I called the city Zoo and the person asked me
If I had been drinking, or taking drugs.
Was that any of their business?
As a last resort, I called the Police,
And the person told me that it didn’t sound
Like a crime had been committed.
They advised me to call Animal Control.

By that time it had eaten the succulents and cactus.
And was poking around for more–
What would be next?
I got a head of cabbage from the refrigerator,
And tossed it out into the yard–a distraction!
I sneaked around it to open the gate,
Then sneaked back and sat at the window watching,
Waiting for it to leave. Finally it did.
Where did it go? I don’t know.

It’s somebody else’s problem now.

– Dennis Hathaway

UPDATE 7/30/21: I got in touch with Dennis and demanded photographic evidence.  He sent this along:

 

Poem of the Day (by Dennis)

MISSING PERSON

I went looking for myself
In all the usual places,
The bedroom, the kitchen,
The garage, the front porch,
That corner of the living room,
With the ragged chair and tarnished lamp,
Where I read a book or just sit,
And think about things that
May or may not matter.
Who can tell?

I called my name but got no answer,
I looked for clues–a dropped sock,
A toothpaste tube uncapped,
A coffee spill on the counter,
A magazine open to an article
About blind people who believe
They can see. You might say they’re crazy
But it makes perfect sense to me.
What is any belief, but atoms
Racing willy-nilly through the
Snarls of the mind?

I dialed a number for the police department.
But there was an invisible crowd in front of me,
Willing to wait hours to complain
Of noisy neighbors, of stolen bicycles,
Of dogs and cats acting suspiciously.
I decided to hang up and call 911.
Wasn’t my missing state an emergency?
I imagined the conversation.
Was this missing person kidnapped?
Do you have reason to believe this person is
In imminent danger? The tone unkind,
Even hostile, making me feel bad
For the rest of the day, perhaps longer.

I decided to go in person.
There was a counter and a woman
In uniform who looked bored or indifferent
Or both. I told her I wanted to report a missing person,
And she gave me that look that police give you,
Making you want to blurt out a confession,
Whether you’ve done anything or not.
She took her time finding a form
And a pen. She arranged them in front of her.
Your name? she asked.

Why did she need to know that?
But I was trained to obey authority,
And I told her, along with my address and telephone number,
Facts that could used against me,
Although I didn’t know exactly how.

The name of the missing person? she asked.
I told her, and she started to write then stopped.
That’s the same name, she said.
I agreed. She said, you and this missing person
Have the same name?
Yes, I said, I’m the missing person.
I could tell from her expression
That she was trying very hard
To mentally process the situation
That had developed, no doubt unexpectedly,
Relieving her boredom, transcending the typical
Idiocy and depravity.

I waited for her to tell me to go away,
Or threaten to arrest me on some charge,
Related to wasting a law enforcement officer’s time.
But she didn’t. She studied her form, then asked,
How long have you been missing?

         — Dennis Hathaway 6/17/2021

A Poem for the 2021 Inauguration

The family poet, Dennis, tells us that despite not being invited to the Biden Inauguration he had nevertheless prepared a poem with such an eventuality in mind:

For the Presidential Inauguration, January 20, 2021
 
We’ll never see the comb-over flutter in the breeze
That stirs the perfect grass of the White House lawn.
We’ll never be told that our president was chosen by God
And therefore can’t be wrong about anything,
Because God is never wrong, although he (or she)
Can be capricious, and angry, and indifferent
To the cruelties that wrack those created in his (or her)  image,
And snuff out the lives of those that were not.
We’ll never be told that up is down, that night is day,
That our eyes deceive us and minds cannot be trusted
To the dials and levers of logic, we’ll never be told
That our duty is to believe, just believe.
The days will grow longer and knights will ride
Through our dreams, slaying the demons of fear
Set loose by the deranged and misbegotten.
The stars will arrange themselves into an omen of peace.
And the earth will move more quickly through its orbit,
Freed of the weight of tyrants who trust nobody, least of all themselves.
The endangered eagle will return to its perch. 
Torn flags will make themselves whole and gently ripple.
Lady Liberty will open her eyes and smile.  
We will breathe.

le guin/carré

Caught myself reading again, in the middle of a pandemic.

Decided to revisit some writers I had not experienced for a long time.   Re-read some stuff that left an impression way back when, to see if it still sticks or even reveals something new.

First, Ursula K. Le Guin.  Started off with re-reading The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), then The Dispossessed (1974).  Before I knew it, I was into Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995).  Those led me to The Wild Girls (2011) — containing along with the main short story, some poetry, essays and an interview — and No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters (2017).  The latter, a compilation mostly of pieces from the blog she started in her 80s, was published in the year before her death, and was perhaps my favorite for its humor and insightful reflection.  In any case, these titles exhausted all that was available for download to Kindle from the local library.  And I recommend any of the above (and Ivi also recommends other works, like the Earthsea series and collection she had read years ago herself).  I should mention that liking science-fiction and fantasy are not prerequisites for a Le Guin reader; her insights into social and political behavior and humanity go far beyond what you might expect from those genres (note that her father was an anthropologist).

Second, John le Carré.  The first title I had previously read was The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1963) a year after it was published while I was languishing in a motel on weekends during an out-of-town assignment at Vandenberg Air Force Base.   There were also the film and TV adaptations: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Constant Gardener, The Little Drummer Girl,  A Most Wanted Man, The Tailor of Panama, and The Night Manager all come immediately to mind, most of which I had also read in book form.  I wanted to re-read The Spy … , but in a bit of luck, le Carré’s Agent Running in the Field (2019), his latest, was suddenly available on my Kindle queue, so I am deeply into that one at the moment.  And enjoying it immensely, as it reminds me of le Carré’s as-good-as-ever, maybe-even-better writing style and his rather droll humor.  And — let’s hear it for someone who is rapidly approaching ninety years of age.

Not easy, this reading business.  Especially when daily doom-scrolling through my online newsletters (NYT, New Yorker, Atlantic, Economist, Guardian, et. al.) and twitter blurbs sent my way consume so much time.  (I have nothing on Kim who seems to read at least two or three or four books a week, but wisely avoids much of the online noise.)   But now that I have new, cataract-free eyes, there is no better time to repel the mental effects of our plague.  Try it and see.

Crosscurrent

Ever see this film?

I’ve been watching and watching and rewatching this 2016 Chinese tale, fable perhaps, for several days this week. It’s in 30-day rotation with as many films on mubi.com, where each day one is added and another dropped.

Years ago, I used to stay up late on Saturday nights to watch Chinese movies from an L.A. television station. The themes ranged from silk production and processing to infidelity and family feuds to pre-WWII-war torture and oppression by Japanese invaders. Now, as the U.S. is ceding its global dominance and relevance to China, exposing ourselves to the culture and its trappings and expressions seems more urgent than ever.

Crosscurrent takes us on a month-long journey of a cargo barge up the Yangtze River. The boat’s master seems to have a girl in every port, but in his brief, usually overnight and almost silent, encounters, we see that each young woman looks exactly like the others (or is she the same person with different personalities, popping up at different places and stages?). If that isn’t poetic enough for you, from time to time what appear to be snippets of Chinese poetry are displayed in Mandarin characters (and English subtitles) across the screen. These come from a mysterious book of poems driving the whole story, each of which is named for a place along the river, now submerged by dam-induced flooding. Political at that.

My watch-partner sets a high bar, insisting that anything we see rise to a certain level of writing. But I can often happily ingest anything that provides the right visual intrigue or conceit or interest. And Crosscurrent is visual in spades. Stunning panoramas of the river and rivercraft and the surrounding mountains rise out of the mist. We see harbor scenes flit by through moving windows. The cold and clammy feel of river life is interrupted by bursts of heat; cool and warm light is mixed unexpectedly in scene after scene. Dialogue is sparse, perhaps thankfully. But most of the audio track is mesmerizing, mostly consisting of the sounds of the harbor and the waves and the boats’ mechanical noises; occasionally you realize that music makes a subtle presence in places. Much like the way that I pause to dwell on a singular visual or to make a screen capture to ponder at a future time, I find myself closing my eyes just to take in the aural intensities.

Some of the story elements at first may seem heavy-handed or over-the-top or simplistic or even pretentious, but none of that really matters for me. Admittedly, I was clearly more smitten early on with Crosscurrent than was my watch-partner, but now she also wants to re-watch, particularly for the on-screen lines of poetry. I urge you to give it a whirl, whether in the little time that it will be available at Mubi, or if you can find it anywhere else, perhaps at an arthouse-oriented site.  After my viewing sessions finish, I will probably search online for reviews — my usual practice is to avoid reviews beforehand to keep myself in an open state and to defer any disappointment and dispute. I did come to the film knowing that it was a Berlin film festival contender, and that it used the services of a renowned Taiwanese cinematographer, but I know little else — except that Crosscurrent was for me a mesmerizing visual and aural experience.  And I’m finding something new every time I watch.

———

Aha! Here’s a trailer I found after a few viewing sessions, so I might not need to process and share my screenshots:

With a little more digging, I find that the DVD/Blu-Ray (but apparently not for online viewing) is available at Amazon:

 

The Worldwide Art Parody Phenom

A few weeks ago, we commented on the Getty Museum’s art challenge.  Don’t know who actually started it, but the latest and my current favorite is this Instagram account, originating in the Netherlands.  I can get lost with this thing, and others like it, for hours.  Some of this stuff is just crazy amateur antics, and some has to be art itself.  And just about all of it is hilarious.  Here’s just a couple of random examples:

(based on Magritte’s “The Son of Man”)
(based on Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see more at the Dutch site here.

And I just found a great piece on a Russian version of this kind of undertaking reported in the NYT.

SIDEBAR: Speaking of art, we highly recommend the Amazon Prime documentary on Hank Virgona, “Nothing Changes: Art For Hank’s Sake”.