The paradox of falling love

“You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.” 

 -- from Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors

Endings

It's strange how endings work, especially when what's preceded them hasn't.

When I read E.M. Forster's Maurice as a young man, I wanted to like it, of course. But it didn't move me, at least not until the final pages when the petals of an evening primrose came to symbolize something that had quietly, permanently slipped away. There was something in this passage that penetrated as the rest of the novel had not:

'Next Wednesday, say at 7.45. Dinner jacket's enough, as you know'.

They were [Clive's] last words, because Maurice had disappeared thereabouts, leaving no trace of his presence except a little pile of the petals of the evening primrose, which mourned from the ground like an expiring fire. To the end of his life, Clive was not sure of the exact moment of departure, and with the approach of old age he grew uncertain whether the moment had yet occurred. The Blue Room would glimmer, ferns undulate. Out of some eternal Cambridge, his friend began beckoning to him, clothed in the sun, and shaking out the scents and sounds of the May term.

But at the time, he was merely offended at a discourtesy, and compared it with similar lapses in the past. He did not realise that this was the end, without twilight or compromise, that he should never come across Maurice's track again, nor speak to those who had seen him.

When I finished the book, I read that page again and again. And now, more than two decades later, I searched the internet for those words and found them on another blog... they'd been someone else's favorite part of the book as well.

I HAD REMEMBERED MAURICE because I'd just watched Louis Malle's Damage, and once again the ending connected in a way that the rest of the movie did not. Somehow the incomparable voice of Jeremy Irons speaking these words made the whole two hours well spent:

It's takes a remarkably short time to withdraw from the world. I traveled, until I arrived at a life of my own.

What really makes us is beyond grasping. It's way beyond knowing. We give into love because it gives us some sense of what is unknowable. Nothing else matters... not at the end.

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ACT-UP, 25 years later...

I just read Frank Bruni's thoughts on How to Survive a Plague, a new documentary about ACT-UP and the early years of the AIDS crisis in the gay community. That period coincided with the years when I was coming out; I remember participating in ACT-UP protests in D.C. during the March on Washington in 1993 and in NYC during Stonewall 25.

Can't wait to see the film!

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Queen redux

Fun. has been compared to Queen. (Speaking of, where is that Freddie Mercury movie???)

Here is Fun.'s "We Are Young."

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When you were young

Just watched Flashbacks of a Fool... good flick. Between the plot and this Roxy Music track, I had some of flashbacks of my own. Oh, the paths we take...

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Mesmorizing...

Wow, just watched Ryan Gosling in Drive. Great flick!

And I love this song from the soundtrack: "A Real Hero" by College, featuring Electric Youth.

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Thirty years ago...

Tomorrow will mark the 30th anniversary of the first report in the medical literature of the disease that was to become known as AIDS. From the CDC's MMWR Weekly:

In the period October 1980-May 1981, 5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California. Two of the patients died. All 5 patients had laboratory-confirmed previous or current cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and candidal mucosal infection. Case reports of these patients follow.

I was fifteen at the time, still struggling in a small Midwestern town with my conflicted sexuality. It would be four more years before Rock Hudson died of AIDS and brought the disease home to me personally, leading me to slam shut a door I was just on the verge of opening. I remember riding around in my car one warm summer night, taping myself on my cassette recorder: Why did this have to happen now? Just when I was thinking that I could finally express who I am? Will I have to hide forever?

Thirty years. In those three decades I've come out. Demonstrated with ACT-UP and Queer Nation. Had countless friends test positive and several diagnosed with AIDS (though miraculously, only a couple have died). I've walked to raise money. Danced to raise money. Rode to raise money. I've studied the disease in classes. Been tested for it dozens of times. I've seen infection with HIV transition from being a death sentence to something much more manageable... and watched attitudes shift as well. Throughout these years the virus and the disease have been constants in my life as a gay man. Something to be afraid of. Something to fight. Something to assimilate as a fact of life. But it's never over, and each year brings a change in how this disease affects my community and how it affects me.

THE TENTH ANNUAL AIDS/LIFECYCLE begins tomorrow: a couple thousand riders and many hundreds of volunteers making the 545 mile journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I rode that route in 2007, and last year I volunteered for the medical team. I so wish I were going to be there this year!

To all my friends who will be: "Know that you are heroes for countless people. Ride safe and don't forget to use the hand sanitizer. :-) But most of all, when the going gets tough, remember that I love you. I'm so very proud of all that you're doing."

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And as a reminder of the long road from where this all began to the future we still hope for, here's the "I just wanna be there" scene from 1989's Longtime Companion.

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I just wanna be there.

Song for the day

Cher's "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" from Burlesque.

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Cher has been re-inventing herself my whole life... and she still has the power to inspire me.

The New York Times had a good interview with her around the time Burlesque came out.

TGIF

It was an up and down week, but all in all, I have to say it wasn't too shabby. I feel a little shift, and for the first time in a long time, I'm present to the idea that all is well...

I watched one of my favorite movies last night--Living Out Loud--and that didn't hurt. I realized yet another way that I identify with Holly Hunter's character, Judith. (This video has nothing to do with it :-)

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Poem for the day

I watched The Shipping News tonight, and the ending brought to mind this poem, "The Untold Want":

The untold want by life and land ne'er granted,
Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find.

-- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Max Fischer lives

Wow, I just watched Rushmore. Not sure how I missed it all these years, but I was totally charmed.

Poem for the day: Be Drunken

One of my Western Culture professors had us watch Long Day's Journey Into Night in class one day. I watched it again the other night; this poem (spoken by a dreamy Dean Stockwell) has always stuck with me:

Be Drunken, Always. That is the point; nothing else matters. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weigh you down and crush you to the earth, be drunken continually.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. But be drunken.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, or on the green grass in a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and find the drunkenness half or entirely gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that flies, of all that speaks, ask what hour it is; and wind, wave, star, bird, or clock will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Be Drunken, if you would not be the martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please."

-- Charles Baudelaire

Cello for the day

"The Eternal Vow" by Tan Dun, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

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Oscars: Best Picture nominees

This year I've managed to see all of the movies that the Academy has nominated for Best Picture. I won't venture a prediction, but here are my thoughts on all ten of them, in the order I saw them (as best as I can remember).

The Kids Are All Right *****

This was the only one of the bunch to which I gave five stars (with a couple of exceptions, I rated all of the movies on my Netflix account within 24 hours of seeing the movie, and I used those ratings in this post). Still, it's not my top pick...

While watching it, the Julianne Morore-Mark Ruffalo story line made me angry, angry enough to want to get up and walk out. But even in the moment I sensed that that emotional involvement was a good thing.

I thought Annette Benning was perfect in her role, as good as she's ever been, and I'd be happy to see her win Best Actress.

Overall, I loved it.

Inception **

I walked out wondering, "Why do they think they have to try so hard?" I wasn't impressed, and it seemed like yet another movie that attempts to achieve something by going way over the top. Style over substance. Yes, very intricate. But I just didn't care about the Leonardo DiCaprio character or his relationship with his wife, so who cares? Yawn.

The Social Network ***

I wasn't a fan of Mark Zuckerberg when I walked in, and I cared even less for him when I walked out. But the movie was great; I loved the pace, the relentless progress forward. Web-time, indeed. And I agreed with an article I read about the movie when it came out (sorry, can't find the link): the movie serves as a generational litmus test. To some people, the Zuckerberg character in the movie is a clod and a jerk, entirely annoying. To younger folk, he has more of a "heroic" quality because of his accomplishments. Unfortunately, this apparently makes me "old" despite working in Silicon Valley all those years...

With regard to the real Facebook, which like Apple has become less and less appealing with time, my attitude shifted a bit after listening to a CNN interview with Google marketing exec Wael Ghonim who volunteered that "this [Egyptian] revolution started on Facebook."

Black Swan ****

I haven't been much of a Natalie Portman fan (Padmé Amidala, ugh), but she was totally convincing in Black Swan. Like most of my favorites on this list, this was a difficult movie to watch (crazy how self-mutilation as minor as ripping off a tiny patch of skin can twist me up in contortions in my theater seat). The movie had a lot of cohesive layers; overall, it just worked for me. Creepy, unflinching, and ultimately... completely, poetically satisfying. It breathed new life into Swan Lake the way Rent did for La Bohème.

This was the first of the movies I saw and said afterwards, "This gets my vote."

Toy Story 3 ***

I cried. And yes, it speaks to the challenges of aging. But as someone who is aging, it didn't move me all that much. I sort of had a, "Well, yes, it's more Toy Story" reaction.

The King's Speech ****

I cried. Awesome performances from Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, and Helena Bonham Carter. Really moving. But I wouldn't name it Best Picture, though it's the odds-on favorite.

Winter's Bone ***

As a native of a small midwestern town, there was a wee bit too much familiarity in this one. It left me glad that I hadn't lived through anything quite as desperate as the story portrayed in the movie. Well done. But again, just didn't feel like a Best Picture to me.

True Grit ****

After seeing this, I changed my Best Picture vote from Black Swan. Hailee Steinfeld was brilliant and left me wanting more... as in, "Please don't flame out like so many actors who start young!"

Everything that happened after the rattlesnake bite was "heavy"... not emotionally so but a demontration of gravity. In other words, it left me with the sense that there was just no other course that Mattie Ross' life could have taken (I didn't know the story from the book or earlier movie.)

And yes, I cried.

127 Hours ****

I changed my vote for a second time after seeing James Franco's awesome performance in that chasm. I knew the story well from listening to a long interview with the real life Aron Ralston, and I'm an EMT who was trained to deal with the gory... both of which probably made it more difficult to sit still in my chair than it otherwise might have been. Talk about feeling dread and anxiety.

This gets my vote for Best Picture because it's a movie that takes you somewhere where you've never been... and will probably never go. I couldn't help but imagine myself in his situation...

The Fighter ****

I can't resist Mark Wahlberg in anything, which goes without saying. :-) But his whole Ward family in the movie... Jesuchristo, scary! Christian Bale was utterly spot on... his winning the Best Supporting Actor is my only non-negotiable in the acting categories, lol.

No tears but I couldn't help but cheer at the end.

ALL IN ALL, it was a great year of movies. I'd recommend all of the above except Inception. Enjoy. :-)

For Sally

I haven't been blogging much these past few months. A couple of weeks ago a friend at work said something about it to me and shared that her friend Sally had also asked about it. I said that I thought it had something to do with my giving up on people (the masses in general, not anyone who reads this, of course :-). When she shared that with Sally, Sally sent back the message that I should write about that.

I actually have a folder full of links to articles and stories that I've thought I'd like to write about. And while it would be nice to say that the reason I'm not writing is that I'm too busy, the reality is that I just haven't had much of an inclination to do so. There's some truth in that offhand remark I made when asked why I wasn't blogging. That feeling of resignation is also behind my loss of interest in politics. It's really all so disgusting, the tenor of things... the utter inanity of political debate in our country these days. We're faced with difficult, complex challenges and what do we hear about? Whether this candidate is a witch, which party is ahead in fundraising, and... I'm drawing a blank. Jesuchristo, I can't even remember what was said in the days running up to the election less than a month ago. It was all so pointless and yet so many people in America just seemed to accept and echo it as if it was what really mattered.

In August I read Nixonland, Rick Perlstein's 900 page book about Nixon's political career, the era he lived in, and the environment he left us with. Somehow the book both reassured me and depressed me at the same time. On the one hand, knowing that politics in America today wasn't that different from what it was back then made me feel better. It meant that I wasn't living in the "worst of times" or in the "last days." If it's been like this for awhile, then maybe it can't be that bad? Maybe we'll still muddle through as we always have?

But at the same time I found myself blanketed with something like despair. Because if this really is how it is--if those in power really have no interest in improving our lot and instead it's all just about the fight for dominance and power and money--then, well, that's pretty bleak. There is this froth on top of Washington which is what you first see: the conversation is about climate change or healthcare or whatever. But underneath is something bitter, and like the proverbial iceberg, most of what's actually there is hidden. I send in my contribution for $25 while untold millions are flowing in from corporations. The money arrived in suitcases in Nixon's day... now the Supreme Court has put its stamp of approval on the whole endeavour. Give any amount and do so anonymously. How can that be healthy for democracy?

Democracy, heavy sigh. I'm tired of hearing about how people have the right to carry a gun into a bar. I'm tired of hearing that the Founding Fathers were somehow so akin to Robert (the Rules of Order guy) that they'd be in favor of tying the hands of government with respect to adapting to the times. I'm sickened by state politicians suing over healthcare reform while their constituents go without coverage. I don't want to tune into Sarah Palin's Alaska or hear that there must be a secret plot because Bristol is still on Dancing with the Stars. I look from screen to screen at the gym and marvel at an industry that gives us endless episodes of overweight people eating fried food at different restaurants and stupid people pretending to act naturally while they're on camera 24x7. The debate over deficit reduction? Good luck! Both sides are hostages to their "beliefs," and the public has no hunger for spending cuts. And I'm simply worn out when I think about the environmental changes today's kids will see because we were too slow to wake up and act. A scientific consensus about global warming? Who cares. We know more than ever about the changes that are likely to come and we're burning more coal than ever, even exporting it to China now. Money triumphs principles, apparently always.

Okay, I guess that's enough of that rant.

I had a dream the other night. I saw a group of gay men off in the distance. There was this strange sense that I ought to go join them. But I didn't; I realized that, like with my writing, I really didn't have much of an inclination to go there, to "be in the group," to belong. Wherever I'm going, right now I'm turned inward. I don't know how to solve the world's problems; I'm focused on my own. There are still those people who I reach out to and want to be there for, but overall I feel chastened. Disappointed in myself and for the mistakes I've made over the past couple of decades. Pessimistic about the ability of people anywhere to make a difference.

And yet, the other night, I finally watched Gandhi. I was in high school when it came out and not very sociopolitically aware. It held zero interest for me at the time (I was rooting for Tootsie on Oscar night). But there in his story, at least, seems to be some evidence that even in the midst of millions of people, individuals can make a difference. Though as I write this, I think it likely that the biggest impact I saw depicted in the movie was not the British Empire leaving India but the reaction of the Hindi man being told by Gandhi that he could find his way out of hell by adopting a Muslim orphan to make amends for the one he'd murdered.

To change something you have to be able to touch it, in one way or another. I'll think about that for awhile.

The party of big corporations vs. the party of business as usual

Frank Rich:

No matter how much Obama talks about his “tough” new financial regulatory reforms or offers rote condemnations of Wall Street greed, few believe there’s been real change. That’s not just because so many have lost their jobs, their savings and their homes. It’s also because so many know that the loftiest perpetrators of this national devastation got get-out-of-jail-free cards, that too-big-to-fail banks have grown bigger and that the rich are still the only Americans getting richer.

I hadn't heard of it before reading Rich's column, but now I have to see the new documentary, Inside Job, about the financial meltdown:

Asked in “Inside Job” why there’s been no systematic investigation of the 2008 crash, Roubini answers: “Because then you’d find the culprits.” With the aid of the “Manhattan Madam” (and current stunt New York gubernatorial candidate) Kristin Davis, the film also asks why federal prosecutors who were “perfectly happy to use Eliot Spitzer’s personal vices to force him to resign in 2008” have not used rampant sex-and-drug trade on Wall Street as a tool for flipping witnesses to pursue the culprits behind the financial crimes that devastated the nation.

The Obama administration seems not to have a prosecutorial gene. It’s shy about calling a fraud a fraud when it occurs in high finance. This caution was exemplified most recently by the secretary of housing and urban development, Shaun Donovan, whose response to the public outcry over the banks’ foreclosure shenanigans was to take to The Huffington Post last weekend. “The notion that many of the very same institutions that helped cause this housing crisis may well be making it worse is not only frustrating — it’s shameful,” he wrote.

Well, yes! Obama couldn’t have said it more eloquently himself. But with all due respect to Secretary Donovan’s blogging finesse, he wasn’t promising action. He was just stroking the liberal base while the administration once again punted. In our new banking scandal, as in those before it, attorneys general in the states, where many pension funds were decimated by Wall Street Ponzi schemes, are pursuing the crimes Washington has not. The largest bill of reparations paid out by Bank of America for Countrywide’s deceptive mortgage practices — $8.4 billion — was to settle a suit by 11 state attorneys general on the warpath.

Since Obama has neither aggressively pursued the crash’s con men nor compellingly explained how they gamed the system, he sometimes looks as if he’s fronting for the industry even if he’s not. Voters are not only failing to give the White House credit for its economic successes but finding it guilty of transgressions it didn’t commit. The opposition is more than happy to pump up that confusion. When Mitch McConnell appeared on ABC’s “This Week” last month, he typically railed against the “extreme” government of “the last year and a half,” citing its takeover of banks as his first example. That this was utter fiction — the takeover took place two years ago, before Obama was president, with McConnell voting for it — went unchallenged by his questioner, Christiane Amanpour, and probably by many viewers inured to this big lie.

Oligarchy.

Vespertine

Determined to not be late for an outdoor, dusk screening of E.T. at the Edgefield Lodge, I checked online to see what time sunset was. And as it so often happens on the web, one things leads to another, and before I knew it, I was having one of those I did not know that moments.

I had always thought dusk was more or less synonymous with sunset, just as dawn meant sunrise, but apparently not.

Dawn is when light first appears in the morning sky. Sunrise is when the sun breaks the horizon, and sunset, well... duh. Dusk is when the last light leaves the sky. This diagram explains it all:

The best part of my "discovery" was the word vespertine, a biology term that describes something of or related to the evening.

One of the most interesting movie reviews I've ever read

A. O. Scott's review for Greenberg pretty much stands on its own. :-)

Timshel

Until the first DVD arrived earlier this week, I'd forgotten how much I liked Lee Holdridge's theme from the 1980 miniseries version of one of my favorite books, East of Eden.

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Ah... Jane Seymour! Such a perfect Cathy.

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The miniseries is a far truer to John Steinbeck's East of Eden than the James Dean version. But you really have to read the book which expands on the theme of Cain and Abel.

My favorite part is the passage that delves into Genesis 4:1-7. Does God order man to conquer sin? Or declare that man will? Or is there another possibility?

In East of Eden, the case is made that most versions of the Bible have mistranslated a key Hebrew word, and that the correct translation gives man free will: It's "the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man."

In other words, it's up to man to choose to conquer sin; there's no command, no pre-ordainment.

Read the whole passage here.

Coming to a political campaign near you...

More corporate money.

The Supreme Court ruled today that corporations (and unions) can spend unlimited amounts of money in federal elections:

Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy.

The 5-to-4 decision was a doctrinal earthquake but also a political and practical one. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision, which also applies to labor unions and other organizations, to reshape the way elections are conducted....

Justice John Paul Stevens read a long dissent from the bench. He said the majority had committed a grave error in treating corporate speech the same as that of human beings. His decision was joined by the other three members of the court’s liberal wing.

Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, an author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, called the ruling “a terrible mistake.”

“Ignoring important principles of judicial restraint and respect for precedent, the Court has given corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns,” said Mr. Feingold, a Democrat.

In my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes the Supreme Court ever made was that corporations should be treated as "persons." Meanwhile, gays and lesbians are deprived of the right to marry because there relationships somehow aren't good enough.

Check out these older posts on a related Stephen Colbert piece and a documentary, The Corporation.