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12 years a slave

13 Jan

Some art, some experiences change your words into silences. But, then, you have to speak, or die internally. Silence would be the loss of the moment, the experience. Seeing ’12 years a slave’ was and is such an experience for me. I felt a great, great loss. I speak not to lose more.
Now, to speak.
I had read the text, the book, in the past. Along with Julius Lester’s ‘To Be a Slave,’ the reading was life changing. Questions spring to mind:
How can people treat others as personal possessions?
Why not die in face of such suffering?
Why not drown Patsy as she asks?
How have I hurt, looked at others, as a possession?
Have I ever been an abuser of another? Of the other?

To a large degree I feel the film and word text is about another’s desire to transform not themselves, but others. It is about power and its abuses; it is about, loss, identity, a moment. It is about lost memories. Toni Morrison, in her epigram to the her novel ‘Beloved’ writes, “Sixty Million and more,” dedicated to the Africans and their descendants who died as a result of the Atlantic slave trade. Loss.
People, memories, gone. How? Through deaths and naming.
New names were beaten into the slaves, new idenitites were formed. The old self passes away, forgotten, transformed. A beautiful linen shirt, transfomed to a tattered, whipped cloth. What a wife gave and made… taken away. Away. Then, stolen, destroyed. No longer even a memory. Loss.
At the film’s opening moments, a female slave whose eyes rest on Solomon, rolls over to him; joins him. He gives willingly to her, but then, then she turns over. Away from Solomon. We thankfully do not see her face as she sobs. We only see her back; her tears, her identity gone, stolen.
At first I could not understand why she was crying, this unnnamed woman who desired Solomon. As the film moved forward, I knew why. I sadly knew why. She was crying at the lost of memory: the sexual act called up to her, her past love making with a lost one, a lost memory. Her tattered shirt.
This moment hints at, foreshadows, the film’s end when Solomon returns home to find his wife married to another. He can only ask for ‘forgiveness’ at that moment. Forgiveness, for his small part in the loss; forgiveness at losing his children, his wife, his life.
For Solomon, he failed them. They speak: there is no need for forgiveness.
But there is. That is why Solomon cries as he asks; his tears forming a stream with the unnamed woman who joins with him during the night in a public slave sleeping cabin. Their act together will yield only a memory of tears. This one moment is joined by the many other moments that were and are forgotten. Moments of sex, without love, moments of people being transformed into things. Beings without real names. Sex without a touch. Shirts torn and tattered and trashed.
12 years, eternities lost. Forgotten. Torn and tattered. Lost.60 million gone.

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light in August

21 Aug

light in August

ideas, light in August
Light more light, who said that,
What is it about light in August? Isn’t there great light in August already? Why is Faulkner praying in his title for August light?
Well, by blog this week is ‘light in August’

Time for a light, fluffy entry. Summer light. Let’s start with a tease and a promise,
essential writing: Fairy tales coming true, they are happening to you… (essential writing is ‘coming’ to you very soon in this blog…By its end)

August for me is a time to do lightness. I, this ‘doing’ may entail many things, or nothing. But it always includes reflecting, lightly, about myself. So here are my reflective do (they all are really one big thought, thoughts linking together) of August 2013, in no certain order
What are my reflective dos?
Ideas, adventures, people and images that have ‘grabbed ‘me
do
Tweets: Charlie: everyday I ask Priscilla to marry me’ my friend Martin sharing his response in the presence of his wife Deborah: ‘every other day I ask my wife to divorce me’ the responses and questions are the same: both Martin and I are telling our ‘espouses’ how much we love them, in our own ways
Photos: me kissing priscilla
Images: Keats writing ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ in the Heath @ Hampstead
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: INTERVIEWER
How do things start? One of the recurring images in The Autumn of the Patriarch is the cows in the palace. Was this one of the original images?
GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
I’ve got a photography book that I’m going to show you. I’ve said on various occasions that in the genesis of all my books there’s always an image. The first image I had of The Autumn of the Patriarch was a very old man in a very luxurious palace into which cows come and eat the curtains. But that image didn’t concretize until I saw the photograph. In Rome I went into a bookshop where I started looking at photography books, which I like to collect. I saw this photograph, and it was just perfect. I just saw that was how it was going to be. Since I’m not a big intellectual, I can find my antecedents in everyday things, in life, and not in the great masterpieces.

Food & Service: the idea of Crepes,
Fresh Sushi; Minca’s Ramen; & Gauchos in Hampstead’s staff

Words: David Mitchell on ‘medieval topos’ : ‘As the Eyjafjallajokull Volcano was spewing plumes of ash into European airspace in April, shuttering airports and stranding millions, the British novelist David Mitchell, a tall, gracious, high-spirited man of 41, was marching me across a long, flat tidal beach near his home in Ireland’s West Cork. Along the way, he told me a story about the perils of humility. “I had a short and rather valuable lesson,” Mitchell said after a morning on the beach, “one of these warnings that the universe gives you on a platter sometimes. I’d done an event in New Zealand at a very large auditorium, hundreds of people, and I was kind of pleased with it; it had gone well. A woman came up to me afterwards, a medievalist at the university there, and she said, ‘Have you heard of the humility topos?’ I said no. She explained that, in the medieval era, humility was seen as a great virtue. The humility topos was used for these abbots — you can think of a good one in Eco’s ‘Name of the Rose’ — who were actually monsters of arrogance, but were always banging on about how humble they were — ‘Just like our lord Jesus Christ. We serve him in humility’ — when they were the least humble people you can find in history. Some even became pope. And the woman looked at me and said, ‘Watch out for the humility topos.’ And then sort of disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Children’s book: ‘Fables’ by Arnold Lobel-story ‘the Lobster and the Crab’

Restaurants: the Fatty Crab on the Upper West Side (now closed)
Travels: China (haven’t been yet); Venice; any one place that’s Michael and Sarah tell me to go (but only one!)
Friends: can’t choose anyone, miss them all madly even when they are with me in my heart’s mind
Pets: Our Dalmatian, Pepper & walking with her in a white snow blinding New York blizzard and ‘seeing’ why fire-fighters have Dalmatians as their dogs
Encouragements: Tim and Kathy’s birthday card; Alex’s smile & laugh; writing
Unfinished writing work: my movie screenplay ‘Weight Losers.’ Young hip very overweight guy has a lovely girlfriend who has lost a lot of weight and she wants the same for him. She brings ‘Charles’ (or Rick Bann on????) to an all female Weight Losers meeting and….

So now, your Fairy Tale…and you have a choice. Choose one Fairy tale to live in. Reflect on ‘why’ you choose this tale for yourself now, in this time and place. Write your tale of choice and the ‘why’ or reason for your choice in my comment box. I will respond to all ‘Tales’ by 2 September. (If you just want to reflect and not receive a comment, simply state no comment.)
Prompt: You are a character in a traditional Fairy tale. (For example: Snow White) The story narrative cannot change in its ending (Snow White marries the Prince and leaves the 7 Dwarfs) and you will live in that tale 999 years. State what tale you choose and why you choose that tale and that character. How to begin…How about….. Once upon a time, for 999 years…

meditation 8: acts of the sinful nature, fleshly worship of real Zombies

10 Jul

“Bling Ring & Act of Killing”
Fleshy worship, Zombies

“World War Z”; “The Walking Dead”; George Romero’s black and white “Night of the Living Dead” are not Zombie movies. No way; no how.

Real Zombies walk among us. No grunts, no soft moans. They speak in affected accents. They move quickly when they see flesh they covet. Their only thought is to consume. Real life walking breathing semi-living Zombies are the fruit of one desire: the worship of their own flesh.

Two recent pseudo film documentaries attempt to give “Zombie” portraits, “The Act of Killing” and “The Bling Ring.” Both fail miserably. Why? Both give our Zombies what they so desire: eternal images of their own flesh which they can consume eternally. Both end with a main character watching themselves in media, dressed to the 9s. One character encourages us to go their web site which has “4ever” in the address. The older other film’s main character wakes his grandchildren from their sleep so they can watch his “torture” and “death” on film. In the end both films themselves become “Zombies”: worshippers of their own cinematic flesh. How?
Each film glances uncritically at the images, the surfaces, created and recreated over and over by the Zombies. One has a teen group that steals in the same way with the same method repeatedly; the other has older murderers recreating their crimes over and over for the cameras. What makes both groups Zombies is how they unthinkably worship of their own images. Young and old alike. They can’t stop watching themselves. They are eating their own flesh. (Oppenheimer’s Zombies re-enact their crimes for the cameras; Coppola went Hollywood and used “actors.)
Both character groups “dress up” for their parts. They create images from their views of the world: movie “gangsters” (or “free men” as they are called in “The Act of Killing”) and celebrities, such as Paris Hilton, in “the Bling Ring.”

Both films’ Real Zombies eat with their eyes. First, their sight is taken and absorbed by the world around them. But they want your eyes and souls too. The films fail because they give Zombies what they desire: their own created flesh absorbing mages. The films do not question, or offer a counter point, another voice or image. Only Zombies speak and are seen. The film genre itself is the first victim.

And the filmmakers, Sofia Coppola and Joshua Oppenheimer are the second victims.

Both directors are captivated by a “real story.” Coppola by the “Vanity Fair” story about a teenagers in California who went from house to house stealing whatever was immediately at hand . Oppenheimer’s criminals are murderers. In 1965 Indonesia they murdered thousands of Chinese and communists and trade union workers/organisers. They go from house to house to torture and murder.

Each director places these Zombies and their stories before us. They let them speak and eat for themselves. And for us. There is no critical discussion of their “stories.” Tellingly, in both films, the victims’ voices are never heard or mentioned. The dead, whether physical or spiritual, do not speak. This is both directors’ ultimate failing. But…

Why and how we’re these zombies made?

Paul in Galatians speaks,

“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbour as yourself. “If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
The acts of the flesh are obvious…”

Zombies use their freedom to indulge in the flesh. They worship themselves and images of flesh, the world. Ultimately, they destroy, they eat each other.

Real Zombies are not obvious. But their acts, their worship is: our fleshly world. And they are coming for me and you,

Our only escape? Walk not with the dead, the flesh, but in the Spirit. Walk in love with the living. Listen to their voices; let them speak. Their voice may surprise you.

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