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Today is the day that my favorite was born. Just two weeks ago she was HERE and we were watching Star Trek: TOS and talking about fandom and drinking way too much Diet Coke (her) and eating way too many Oreos (me). We've been friends for fifteen years, and in that time we've watched a lot of media together. We watched the original run of The X-Files while knitting. She showed me Buffy and then sent me VHS tapes of all the eps as they aired on FX. We watched the first episode of Firefly together and marathoned the whole run of the show after it ended. We watched a bizarre selection of Farscape episodes on SciFi one winter, complete with ads that appeared to feature a carnivorous artichoke, and later we marathoned S3 and part of S4 while I was loopy on cough syrup and wrapped up in the same ridiculous floral comforter on which I sprawled when we watched Buffy for the first time. We've marathoned Wonderfalls and Doctor Who and Charlie Jade and Slings & Arrows. We never watched Due South together, although by the time I watched it I'd heard so much about her theories of the characters that it was like having her there with me. We've shared movies ranging from Moulin Rouge to the Lord of the Rings trilogy to Anaconda (for our sins). I think I may insist on a Leverage marathon the next time she visits. Eight years ago we jumped into fandom together, and we've been splashing around together ever since — sometimes in slightly different parts of the pool, but always within earshot of each other, the better to share exciting discoveries, dorky insights, and general weirdness. Here's to as many more years as we can get away with. And then some. I like you, lady. Happy birthday. Tags: birthdays, favorites!
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Okay. So. When the new Star Trek movie came out I went to see it and thought it was a terrific summer movie (except for some gender issues that made me cranky), and didn't think much more about it than that. Then when ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) renenet was here last week we watched a bunch of Star Trek: TOS, which was mildly amusing; it doesn't hit any of my personal buttons, but it's kind of cool to see one of the ur-texts of fandom and particularly of slash, plus it brought home to me just how inspired the reboot!movie casting of Zachary Quinto was. I've been thinking about the show very little, and about the movie even less; mostly I've been trying to keep my head down and get some work done, because I am behind on everything. I've been spending evenings out in the yard, trying to get the weeds under control and listening to propulsive music in an effort to stay energetic. And — you can probably see where this is going — on Sunday I got blindsided by a vidsong for the movie, possibly with tiny bits from TOS thrown in. ::throws up hands:: I don't even know! I assumed it was a crappy idea and would flare out after 24 hours as my (many) crappy vid ideas usually do, but two days later I've listened to the song approximately 347 times and the lyrics are starting to have interesting possibilities and it is very shiny source and seriously, somebody stop me, I have two unfinished timelines already and something like thirty ideas in queue plus did I mention I'm behind on everything and have no time right now and the movie isn't even out on DVD yet! (Although I gather that hasn't stopped some intrepid vidders. And apparently the movie works really well to Britney Spears, which... breaks my brain a little bit, but hey, whatever! More fannish joy for everyone, I say.) I don't even have a Star Trek icon. I'm not sure I actually want a Star Trek icon. (Well. Maybe a Spock icon. Or two. I mean, come on, SPOCK. I am not immune to the awesome.) ...I am so doomed. Tags: vid: star trek, vidding: process, vidding: wtf
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I currently subscribe to Horticulture magazine, though (as I told renenet when she was here last week) I am probably not going to renew the subscription when it runs out; it's a lovely magazine, but the editors and contributors tend to regard Zone 5 as the northern limit of the gardening world, which makes me roll my eyes a bit from here on the edge of Zone 3. Most of the plants and all but the most general advice just aren't suited to my situation. But the magazine also publishes poems, and this one — narrated to a beginning gardener — was exactly what I needed today. I read it this morning after going out to check on the green beans (ready by the end of the week) and the early tomatoes (ditto), sitting near the window from which I can see my own bleeding hearts (Dicentra alba) between ferns and lilies-of-the-valley. Learn the Names of Things
Start small. Learn daffodil,
then tulip—you'll see those
early. Ask about pansies—
they hang in baskets here—
then, is this a lily? You will
hear day lily or fire lily. Go
find morning glories, honey-
suckle. You'll thank me later.
Walk around, hover at a low
tree, bury your nose upwards.
A stranger will smile, say I
love lilac, and you will agree.
There's another name. Continue
up the street, kneel at markers:
Bleeding hearts. Beside lupine
leaves? Ask Alice. You got it,
she will say. Blooms in two weeks.
She'll give you nasturtium seeds.
Take them home, look up photos,
wish you were near her in Castine.
Bend down in your Bryn Mawr
garden. Whisper to your unripe
tomatoes, your will-be green beans,
When you come, I promise, I will
learn ten new names for things.
Then do it, each year again like this,
listening on your knees.
– Darla Himeles Tags: gardening, monday poems
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1) The Winter's Tale is a fascinating play, but it is also, as Geoffrey Tennant might say, extraordinarily difficult to stage effectively. On Monday night, I saw a production that was pretty much flawless. It was beautiful and surprising and convincing and — astonishing, really. 2) Tom Stoppard's Arcadia is probably my single favorite play. I adore it. And I've never seen a really good production of it — or rather, I hadn't until tonight. Tonight I saw a production that... I just can't imagine how it could possibly have been any better. Easily one of my top three theater-going experiences of all time. I was a mess by the end: giddy and crying at the same time, laughing and exhausted. And happy. So, so happy. I may try to write up notes on the productions I've seen in the last two weeks, just to help me remember them, but I'm not sure I can say anything about these two besides perfect. Tags: london, theatre
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1) I am not sure that the Bertram problem in All's Well That Ends Well is resolvable; and I am increasingly convinced that that's actually Shakespeare's point. Also, it really helps to think of All's Well less as a problem comedy than as an early romance — a point that the National's current production emphasizes clearly and cleverly from the set design on out. 2) I'm developing a slight crush on the Minerva Theatre in Chichester. Last time there we saw an absolutely amazing Macbeth (with Patrick Stewart in the title role), so I thought it might just be that production. But this time we saw Schiller's Wallenstein, about which I knew nothing, with a cast about whom I knew nothing, and it was excellent as well. I am impressed. (Also: Schiller! Who knew?) 3) Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman is a remarkable play, and the current production at the National is utterly brilliant. The whiteface is especially inspired. I really want to get my hands on Soyinka's other work now, especially his memoirs. 4) I just scored a ticket to this afternoon's matinee of the new version of Ibsen's Doll's House playing at the Donmar (where I saw a tremendously good production of Pinter's Betrayal two years ago). Cast includes Gillian Anderson, Christopher Eccleston, and Toby Stephens. Only sheer force of will is keeping me from abusing capslock right now. Tags: london, theatre
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So for a while there I was checking in with Teh Internets only sporadically, and thus I kind of missed the whole Dreamwidth thing, except that then I somehow ended up with an invite code. (I don't even know.) So I have set up shop at Dreamwidth, where by "set up shop" I mean I copied over my LJ bio and some interests and thought briefly about adding icons or trying to port over old content or figuring out how to crosspost... and then came to my senses and realized that there's no way any of that is getting done for a month or more. Not that it makes much difference either way, given how little I've been posting lately. All of which is to say that I am LJ-only for the foreseeable future in terms of my reading list, but I'm logged into DW in order to be able to read and comment on DW posts whose authors are centralizing comments at DW. So if you want to grant me access to stuff, knock yourself out. I have no idea how this works in terms of crossposts showing up on my LJ reading list, but I'm sure those of you actually crossposting have figured it out; I leave it in your capable hands. Setting up my DW account got me thinking about my handle, and how if I had it to do over again I would choose an actual name rather than the title of a Honeydogs CD. Though actually this is probably wishful thinking on my part, and I would simply have ended up with a different album title, like kitchenradio or emblems or longknives or softlife or wehavethefacts or paratodavida. That last one would actually have been sort of convenient — I could have gone with paratodavids for the vid site domain. It's possible that I've thought waaaaaaaay too much about this. Tags: dw meta, lj meta
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For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I have had an unusually stressful and also just plain busy semester (stress and busy-ness have no inherent relationship in my world, but this semester I got both in spades). For the past couple of months I've been almost entirely offline, both fannishly and literally, and for the past week I've been feeling rather painfully crushed under the weight of sundry responsibilities and obligations, some of them not unpleasant but nonetheless pressing. So I was sitting here on the couch taking a few deep breaths, as is often a good idea when feeling crushed, and then I remembered that just over a week ago I was at my college reunion, which was weird but happy-making, and that at one of the weekend's picnics as I stacked watermelon slices on my plate I was greeted by the sort of person one runs into at reunions, someone I wasn't precisely friends with but interacted with semi-regularly and liked very much and remember fondly. She asked how I was doing and I told her that I have a job that I love at a place I can walk or bike to, colleagues whom I only infrequently want to set on fire, friends with whom I can be silly or serious as the occasion demands, a little house of my own, a big vegetable garden, four cats, more books than I will be able to read in ten years, and an assortment of wacky hobbies. "That sounds like the perfect life," she said a little wistfully. "It's pretty close," I said, and felt the truth of it as I said it. "It would be even closer if there were Thai food, but what can you do." I spent that weekend in a tailspin of emotions that I am still trying to sort out: all the different ways I felt at being back in that place, at once strange and unutterably familiar, the place where I turned into a person, the place that I loved, and maybe still love, more than anyplace else I have ever been; at seeing people I care about, and people I once cared about, and people whom as it turns out I have missed not at all, and people whom I have missed more than I realized, and people to whom I expected to have emotional reactions but didn't. But mostly I came away with a renewed sense of the rightness of where I am and what I am doing. And that was a good thing to recall just now, sitting here tired, my tea going cold on the table beside me. Breathe in, breathe out. Upstairs the cats are sleeping and outside the tomato seedlings are making faint shadows in the moonlight and in this little room of my own I am doing work that matters to me. I don't need things to be easy; I have what I need, and it's right here. Tags: good things, personal
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I think there's probably something interesting to be said about Luke Warm Water's choice of nom de plume (his legal name is Kurt Schweigman) in relation to issues of language, authenticity, and self-representation in contemporary Native culture; the question of self-(re)naming seems to me to be part of a larger constellation of questions — what name to choose for tribal affiliation (in Warm Water's case, Lakota rather than Sioux), is one an enrolled member of a tribe, did one grow up on the rez, etc. I am hoping to talk about these issue, both in general and in relation to Warm Water's poetry, with some local friends more knowledgeable than I. Having now finished the collection, I have to say that while I didn't dislike Shedding Skins, it mostly made me want to go read more Mark Turcotte. This is partly because Turcotte routinely explores issues of, for example, the rhetoric and ambiguities of Native authenticity, which are issues that interest me personally, but I also just like his poetry better. That said, I did like some of the poems, including this one. John Wayne's Bullet
Tunkasila (Grandfather)
John Wayne and his like
shot us
Wounded we are recovering
removing the bullets:
racism, genocide
booze, heroin
Big Macs, cable television
and so on...
Nursing our torn flesh
filling the holes with good medicine
the circle of life
and the seven sacred rights
Gun powder from their dud cartridges
to cauterize our wounds
Building common sense
out of their spent metal casings
Keeping their extracted iron bullets
from our wounds
to construct an impervious tipi (lodge)
around our culture
Grandfather
John Wayne's followers are still shooting
with their hammer of greed cocked ready
with their chamber of oppression filled full
with their itchy ignorance finger on the trigger
with their barrel of assimilation aiming down on us
Grandfather
we won't steal John Wayne's gun away
that would make us
just like him
So we are saving gun powder
from their dud cartridges
to cauterize our wounds
searching for their spent casings
from the urban city back alleys
to the Reservation prairies
keeping their extracted iron bullets
from our wounds
to build the new sacred lodge
Tunkasila (Grandfather)
we will soon have saved enough
from American society's nothing
To finally protect our grandchildren
from John Wayne's bullet
– Luke Warm Water
from Shedding Skins: Four Sioux Poets Tags: monday poems
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I've been thinking about Wallace Stevens for the past couple of weeks after mentioning his work in conversation with a student, so tonight over dinner I opened The Palm at the End of the Mind for the first time in years and flipped through it more or less idly — and found this poem, which I had quite forgotten. It gave me a moment of much-needed peace. The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
– Wallace Stevens
from The Palm at the End of the Mind Tags: monday poems
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In the last four days, 60 of the 64 garlic cloves I planted have pushed strong little green shoots up through the soil (and I still have hope for the last four). Elsewhere in the yard, glory-of-the-snow are blooming, tulips are coming up, and the little white crocus I planted last fall are starting to open — which means it's time to plant peas and spinach. I'm tilling up parts of the backyard this weekend as preparation for planting asparagus, strawberries, and raspberries in a couple of weeks. I've cut up my seed potatoes and put them out to dry in the sun so they're less likely to rot after planting. I've got a new digging fork (having broken my last one on some unforeseen tree roots last fall), several new packets of seeds, and a great many little envelopes of seeds saved from last year's harvest. This time last year, I had a great deal of enthusiasm, a fairly large stack of books, and virtually no experience. Now... I still have the enthusiasm and the books, plus 1) a long list of things to do differently this year, and 2) a lot more confidence; I managed a pretty decent garden last year despite having very little idea what I was doing, I learned a tremendous amount in the process, and I anticipate an even better garden this year, assuming the weather more or less cooperates (which is never a safe assumption, really, but it's not as if worrying about it in advance helps at all). Happy spring, everybody. Tags: gardening
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Last Friday was the kind of day that — I was going to say "reminds me why I am a teacher," but no, pretty much every day with my students reminds me why I am a teacher, and this was bigger than that. Last Friday was the kind of day that reminds me why I am a teacher here — a place where I can work with students over the long haul, where we can treat each class together not just as a worthwhile experience unto itself but as a continuation of the class that came before, where I can witness their growing up, where I can watch them start to fulfill their potential, where I can watch them start to see and to take seriously that astonishing potential in themselves. Last Friday was the kind of day that reminds me that — as I wrote five years ago — it is my blessing, every day of my life, to have a job that loves me back. Last Friday was the kind of day that fills me with bewildered joy that this really is my life. This is what I most want, and I have it. Not very many people get to say that, you know? I mean, I know how I got here — I can trace every improbable step — but it still feels like a miracle. I keep thinking that feeling's going to fade, but it doesn't. I forget about it sometimes in the blur of grading and bureaucracy and petty wrangling and everyday bullshit that all jobs have to some extent and that an academic job has in spades. But when I take a deep breath and look around at my life? Still a miracle. Every time. B, if you're reading this: Seriously, so proud of you. Tags: teaching
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