Every Day Above Ground (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mallorys_camera) wrote2005-07-17 08:33 am
mallorys_camera) wrote2005-07-17 08:33 am
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Aqaba! Aqaba!
My husband has an unnatural preoccupation with Dakota Fanning.
His idea of a really good movie would be one in which Haley Joel Osment pops up on one corner of the screen piping, "I see dead people!" while Dakota Fanning pops up on another, piping, "I see aliens!" Then they beat each other to death like sock puppets.
With this in mind, last night I rented something called Hide and Seek for him.
Hide and Seek may be the most mediocre movie ever made. I found it utterly enthralling during those intermittent moments I managed to stay awake. There's something about mediocrity that's fascinating. Bad is transcendent. Good, ditto. But mediocre is kind of like Michelangelo's Prisoners In the Stone. You think to yourself: okay, at some point there was a screenwriter who for some reason thought this was a good idea. Maybe the kid needed braces. Maybe the wife needed boob job. Maybe he was reading himself down from a cocaine crash and stumbled across John Collier. The reasons are not important, what's important is that he lived and worked in close enough proximity to the Guys With Briefcases Filled With Cash to get one of them to listen. And then that guy thought it was a good idea. ("Except can the Beasley. Name the evil demon, 'Charlie.' And throw in some guys in bunny suits giving blow jobs. Subliminal flashes. You know. Arty.") And then Vito Corleone thought it was a good idea – not the old dumpy Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) but the young buff Vito Corleone (Robert DeNiro) except that the young buff Vito Corleone is now old and dumpy and suffering from prostate cancer and – wow. Your head could start spinning 360 degrees except that would be the wrong movie.
Hide and Seek was the conclusion to what otherwise was a relaxing, solitary day. I remembered I have children and mailed them both gift packages – a five pound bucket of Red Vines to Robin at the Montour Falls 4-H camp; various Trader Joe candy assortments plus Harold & Kumar Do White Castle to Max at Deep Springs. (Now that is a good movie.)
Then I went to the library and checked out biographies of D.H. Lawrence and T.E. Lawrence, conveniently located adjacent to one another on the Dewey Decimal aisles. The point is arguable, I suppose, but to my mind T.E. Lawrence's personal psychopathology has had more influence on the 21st century than any other maniac around since by lavishing preference on Shiite over Sunni, Lawrence can be said to have institutionalized Arab tribal bickering. (Yes, Hitler had more influence. But he is so last century.)
FUN FACT: Did you know that in his declining years, T.E. Lawrence actually paid someone to come to his house to flagellate him on a weekly basis? David Lean left that part out of the movie!
D.H. Lawrence was one of my favorite writers when I was in my late teens and early twenties though I haven't been able to read him in years. I had an occasion to quote from one of his poems the other day – "not me, but the wind that blows through me" – and so he's taken up residence in my brain again. What I liked about him when I was young, of course, is exactly what I dislike about him now: a certain Messianic resonance, the sons of God serviced by the daughters of Man, underscored by that annoying Old Testament lilt to his prose: "And yada yada yada yada, and yada yada yada yada, so yada yad." Now. The Old Testament had to rely on the overuse of the definite article because italics had not yet been invented: repetition was their only tool for emphasis. With D.H. Lawrence, it's just an irritating stylistic tic. I may need to reread Sons & Lovers for Max's sake, though, just to bone up on the lifestyles of domineering mothers.
Then it was time to take the dogs on their beach outing.
Monterey has had very strange weather this week – it's been sunny. It's also been 105 degrees in the Central Valley, which means by rights it should be very foggy here – and indeed, a hundred feet outside the city limits, it is foggy (and when I say foggy, I mean dense, swirling, sinister mists.) Unfortunately the prevalence of sun lured everyone to the local beaches, which means the dogs & I could not find parking. So I had to drive all the way to Marina to let them run, to the State Park of the Damned. The waves were fifty feet tall and thunderous; the beaches were littered with the skeletons of dead seals and manta rays. It was freezing cold and hideous. I shivered in a heavy down jacket reading about T.E. Lawrence's chivalric obsessions. Aqaba! Aqaba!
I warmed up by coming home and cleaning the kitchen for 3 hours.
This coming week, it's off to Portland on Tuesday for more mall negotiations and (I hope) assignations with Lucius and dear Mark.
His idea of a really good movie would be one in which Haley Joel Osment pops up on one corner of the screen piping, "I see dead people!" while Dakota Fanning pops up on another, piping, "I see aliens!" Then they beat each other to death like sock puppets.
With this in mind, last night I rented something called Hide and Seek for him.
Hide and Seek may be the most mediocre movie ever made. I found it utterly enthralling during those intermittent moments I managed to stay awake. There's something about mediocrity that's fascinating. Bad is transcendent. Good, ditto. But mediocre is kind of like Michelangelo's Prisoners In the Stone. You think to yourself: okay, at some point there was a screenwriter who for some reason thought this was a good idea. Maybe the kid needed braces. Maybe the wife needed boob job. Maybe he was reading himself down from a cocaine crash and stumbled across John Collier. The reasons are not important, what's important is that he lived and worked in close enough proximity to the Guys With Briefcases Filled With Cash to get one of them to listen. And then that guy thought it was a good idea. ("Except can the Beasley. Name the evil demon, 'Charlie.' And throw in some guys in bunny suits giving blow jobs. Subliminal flashes. You know. Arty.") And then Vito Corleone thought it was a good idea – not the old dumpy Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) but the young buff Vito Corleone (Robert DeNiro) except that the young buff Vito Corleone is now old and dumpy and suffering from prostate cancer and – wow. Your head could start spinning 360 degrees except that would be the wrong movie.
Hide and Seek was the conclusion to what otherwise was a relaxing, solitary day. I remembered I have children and mailed them both gift packages – a five pound bucket of Red Vines to Robin at the Montour Falls 4-H camp; various Trader Joe candy assortments plus Harold & Kumar Do White Castle to Max at Deep Springs. (Now that is a good movie.)
Then I went to the library and checked out biographies of D.H. Lawrence and T.E. Lawrence, conveniently located adjacent to one another on the Dewey Decimal aisles. The point is arguable, I suppose, but to my mind T.E. Lawrence's personal psychopathology has had more influence on the 21st century than any other maniac around since by lavishing preference on Shiite over Sunni, Lawrence can be said to have institutionalized Arab tribal bickering. (Yes, Hitler had more influence. But he is so last century.)
FUN FACT: Did you know that in his declining years, T.E. Lawrence actually paid someone to come to his house to flagellate him on a weekly basis? David Lean left that part out of the movie!
D.H. Lawrence was one of my favorite writers when I was in my late teens and early twenties though I haven't been able to read him in years. I had an occasion to quote from one of his poems the other day – "not me, but the wind that blows through me" – and so he's taken up residence in my brain again. What I liked about him when I was young, of course, is exactly what I dislike about him now: a certain Messianic resonance, the sons of God serviced by the daughters of Man, underscored by that annoying Old Testament lilt to his prose: "And yada yada yada yada, and yada yada yada yada, so yada yad." Now. The Old Testament had to rely on the overuse of the definite article because italics had not yet been invented: repetition was their only tool for emphasis. With D.H. Lawrence, it's just an irritating stylistic tic. I may need to reread Sons & Lovers for Max's sake, though, just to bone up on the lifestyles of domineering mothers.
Then it was time to take the dogs on their beach outing.
Monterey has had very strange weather this week – it's been sunny. It's also been 105 degrees in the Central Valley, which means by rights it should be very foggy here – and indeed, a hundred feet outside the city limits, it is foggy (and when I say foggy, I mean dense, swirling, sinister mists.) Unfortunately the prevalence of sun lured everyone to the local beaches, which means the dogs & I could not find parking. So I had to drive all the way to Marina to let them run, to the State Park of the Damned. The waves were fifty feet tall and thunderous; the beaches were littered with the skeletons of dead seals and manta rays. It was freezing cold and hideous. I shivered in a heavy down jacket reading about T.E. Lawrence's chivalric obsessions. Aqaba! Aqaba!
I warmed up by coming home and cleaning the kitchen for 3 hours.
This coming week, it's off to Portland on Tuesday for more mall negotiations and (I hope) assignations with Lucius and dear Mark.
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Do you revise at all before you post? Or is this the way you think?
My initial thoughts often seem clunky to me -- all clauses and clichés. (Alliteration unintentional). Maybe that's the way I think.
It's been a long time, though, since I've written as regularly as I now do on LJ. Hopefully, I'm working out the kinks. Are there books you recommend for writers who want to improve?
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The best How To Write book I ever read was Anne LaMotte's Bird By Bird. I think the trick is finding your authentic voice. Often that involves imitating other people's voices. And writing in LJ is really good, kind of like practicing scales.
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I've always been fascinated with turn-of-the-century British literati, Bloomsbury and its outskirts.
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I like those turn-of-the-century Brits myself, though lately I've been in love with Russian writers. I never realized how rich and delicious their writing could be before. I dearly wish I had more time to read.
Oh - by the way, I saw your comment above to