NYCweboy

When Autumn Leaves Start To Fall...

I'd love to say I got tons of work done, but my days off were pretty much what I thought they'd be - a lot of resting relaxing and recuperating away from the online grind (and I have the 900 backed up e-mails to show for it).

I also raked a lot of leaves.

Leaf raking is a chore, no doubt about it; but after a (dull) morning of political talk and catching up on my new obssession (USA's White Collar), I was ready for manual labor and a new project: clearing a plot to expand our garden and plant bulbs.

I'm no plant person... but gardens of colorful flowers... I can do. And I want to do. And that makes the leaves a necessary, not altogether unpleasant, step along the way.

Making the piles turned out to be surprisingly speedy and easy... it's the bagging, I realized that's the headache. When you get to bag 4, and still everything seems chaotic and undone... it's hard to see the endpoint. But I just kept bagging away, and reducing the piles one by one.

In the end, six bags total, it was worth it: the spot is identified, and the trip to get the bulbs, and the dirt, is next on my list. And without the ground cover, the beauty of our wild, untamed, fading garden as it moves from fall to winter is actually kind of striking. Fall's colors - the riches of gold and bronze and red - look especially nice against the expanse of uncovered lawn, itself dying away.

I don't love fall - or the fading light now that we've fallen back in time - because it symbolizes that moment when leaves fade, and fall and the cycle of death to rebirth moves to... well, death. I believe in love and life and light... and that's why "endless summer", or maybe "eternal spring,"  I think, may be the season I want most. But I like seasons, and the change of seasons... living in the Sun Belt, always warm, never a cold day or enough rain or the thrill of first snow... that just feels wrong. Always has.

Six bags, and a lovely back yard later, the autumn leaves continue to fall, the light fades, the days grow shorter and colder and the year moves to its conclusion. And as I resume my writer's journey, and plan a garden for next spring... it's nice to have the distractions of the rest of life, for a moment, to remind me - remind you and all of us - that we are more than our politics, our disputes, our national and world problems. And what we can do, when it seems like too much, is rest, recover... and rake. It's not the worst way to pass the time.

The Wheels On The Car Go Round And Round...

It's been a fairly weird set of days here at the we-household. Last Thursday, my Mom ran into a curb late at night at her bank, on her way to the drive through ATM. Though she was able to drive home (after a Triple-A tow driver was essentially no help to her), it was clear the car was having serious problems, and late Friday we towed it to the dealer.

Today we got the news: the whole front driving system needs to be replaced and realigned, and possibly the steering rack will need replacement as well. I know I sound fairly "car knowledgable" saying all that... but I have very little idea what that entaisl. All I know is I put the key in the ignition thingie... and you're supposed to be able to go places.

We'll see what develops; what I've been feeling, most keenly, is the sense of frustration that cokes from a suburban life, stranded without one's ride. So far I've relied on the kindnesses of strangers, the kindnesses of my sister (they have two cars, and need about 1 and a half, so we can pick up some slack, like we did this weekend), taxi service, and today, a rental car. Nothing is simple. Nothing is easy. Everything has been a headache and a process and up in the air - well, to be fair, the kind stranger, and my kind sister and brother in law, have been wonderful. The rest of it is what's frustrating.

It's not as though things can change... but I'm reminded of what I liked about my urban life. Life without a car - or just the occasional rental to run out of town or to the mall - was entirely preferable to a life where a car is anything but optional. I have places to go, work to do, errands to run. I have a bridal shower this weekend. There needs to be a car. And it needs to certain. And I don't like the feeling - which I never had in the middle of the city - that without wheels, I am stranded, and out of control of my destiny. This is what a culture built around car ownership has gotten us... and if you ask me, just now... I could do without it.

And I miss our car. *sob*

The Labor of Preserving Illusions Or Letting Them Go

More than most Labor Days, I suspect that this year's official "end of summer" (yes, yes, autumnal equinox is 2 weeks away... but you know what I mean) is meant to be a real "restart" for many people and many issues. Summer in America is all about escape, and our escapist tendencies, I think, have kicked in a little more than ever in this post economic apocalypse year. Take the vacation while you can... or don't worry about the job search until later... I've just seen a lot of "I'll think about it tomorrow" or more like next month, especially all through August.

Tomorrow, a lot of that putting off will come due, especially in terms of our national politics. In two days, President Obama is giving two major speeches, one to "reset" the health care debate, the other to indoctrinate children into his unholy schemes to... oh, sorry. Just kidding.

The serious side is that President Obama will return to the national stage - and let's give credit to him actually taking "vacation" seriously enough to not make a lot of public appearances, except for the most necessary one (Kennedy's funeral) - to a nation that is not what it was, even a few months ago. The distinct sense that there's more bad than good right now, that people are growing disillusioned with the President, Congress, and government generally, can't really be ignored. Whether anyone, even the President, can fix that, remains to be seen.

But in some ways, contrarian that I am, I think "disillusion" is the wrong word - perhaps the more useful way to think about what's changed, especially over August, is that illusions, dreams, and fantasies have come hard up against some necessary realities. The limits of Presidential power, of the potential for massive progressive change, of stopping real change solely through fear, anger and desperation... these things needed to sink in. And maybe, when President Obama returns to the national stage, we can see him in a more realistic, human way... and begin to make progress - however slowly - on the real problems we face.

The Haze of Summer Lawns

Yes, I took the weekend off - well, not exactly, since I sold coffee all weekend long, but I took a writing and thinking break... and I've been a little slow to get restarted.

The heat finally broke sometime last night, as Hurricane Bill finally pulled the hazy humidity out to sea behind it (after flooding rains on Saturday afternoon in Westchester County), and so I could finally do a regular task this morning... mow the lawn.

Like many weboys my age, I have a lifelong enmity with lawn care. We were the last generation, or so Ifind, of suburban youth where weekend awn mowing was the teenage version of slave labor: paid nothing, or possibly subsistence wages called "an allowance" we were forced for hours at a time, to plow fields of a half acre or more, strewn with vines, flower gardens and whatnot.

Opposition to lawn mowing was one of my real efforts at rebellion - I didn't have the temperament or the energy for it, and (as I try to explain to this day), my 16 year old girl mentality didn't see why "because you're a boy" answered my preferences for shopping, reading magazines and styling my hair.

I still have that girl in my head.

But I am older, the lawn is smaller, and now I find lawn mowing to be a surprisingly serene act: orderly rows fall beneath the blades, and a lush green carpet replaces an unruly field. My one weakness is that I like to have something to show for mowing the lawn... so it generally gets extremely overgrown before I can muster the will.

And then, too, I find myself  wondering why we need so much open lawn - I have been advocating a switch in the backyard to make it more of a garden, which I feel is what it wants to be - now that I've seen the lush, overgrown meadow that grows up where grass, generally, won't, I think the yard is teling us something... if we choose to listen. And in middle age, I find listening to nature, heeding its directives and not ours to tame the wild, to be the more compelling choice.

I also have to admit I am grateful that we have a lovely neighbor, just now, who lends her lawn mower for our use (in exchange for a cooperative arrangement where I hit her yard too). My mom will not relent in her belief that a small manual push-cutter can get the job done... though it can't. In my youth, I may have argued more but resentfully followed through with her wishes. These days, I find myself being just guy-ish enough to prefer the call of power tools with loud motors, after whicvh one can retire to watch the game in the den. Although we don't have a den. I get the appeal though, now. Just like I get the sense of accomplishment that comes, when the lawn is done, and I can smell the fresh scent of newly cut grass. Simple pleasures on a summer afternoon... in the haze of summer lawns.

What's More, Baby, They Can Cook

Julie and Julia is superb. Indeed, the more it marinates in one's brain, the better I think it gets. Deftly balancing two completely separate stories, Julie and Julia finds the shared highs and lows of writing as a process, of food and cooking, and life in general, specifically, lives of women.

The sense of accomplishment is nothing short of inspiring. Of course there is Meryl Streep doing the uncanniest channeling of Julia Child ever, but there is much, much more.

Julie and Julia is actually the adaptation of the story of Julie Powell, a  worker at the Lower Manhattan Dvelopment Corporation who cooks to escape the dreariness and sadness (she works in the LMDC support center in the months after 9/11), who decides to start a blog built around the idea of cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking.

Over the course of film, we see not only Julie's journey through the cookbook... but Julia's in creating it.

It's easy to get lost in the Julia Child biopic that's going on here; Streep is radiant, with one of the real cappers for her career. But there's also Stanley Tucci as Julia's supportive husband Paul, and a number of great character actresses in supporting roles. There's also postwar Paris, and the joys of watching Julia's transformation into The French Chef role that defined her after the cookbook was published.

But what caught me short was the power of Julie Powell's journey. Director Nora Ephron has the right instinct for this material (including the deft, respectful way to reflect the recovery of New York in the aftermath of 9/11), and she imbues the modern day story with great feeling and style. In showing such respect for writers, and telling what I think may be the first really heroic tale of blogging on film, Ephron rescues and confers dignity on the blogger's work, and brings blogging into the mainstream of writing.

After years of auditioning for the kind of leading lady stardom she seems capable of, Amy Adams has found the right role for her talents. Shedding her tentative qualities and that "slightly smaller than the film" quality she'd been carrying, Adams plays Powell as determined, yet vulnerable, capable of greatness, but only beginning to find her voice. Conveying the frustrations of both cooking and writing, Adams manages to show the work involved... but also the payoffs in pursuing the things you love. And Powell's journey with her husband (a supportive and generous Chris Messina) as part of the story, adds the key personal dimension of seeing your partner through the hard parts for the possibility of what can happen as a result.

What is ultimately moving about Julie and Julia is the very universality Ephron finds in bringing both these women's journeys together. There's a timelessness to the struggles that each endures, so similarly, and yet so individually. Julia Child was an amazing woman, with the strength and sense of purpose required to not only change her own life, but to have such an enormous cultural impact. What she conveyed about cooking - that it was hard, but worth it, and with a great payoff at the finish - is really the whole metaphor about taking risks in life, and not being afraid to fall down and get back up. Julie and Julia finds the power and unexpected grace in just such an approach, celebrates it, then puts it on the table and lets us savor it. Delicious. Just delicious.

That's What Friends Are For

If I've seemed a little distant... I kind of have been; this weekend was spent visiting an old friend, and helping him out with a big project, one that left little time for regular blogging (though I tried to keep up... but yesterday pretty much got away from me).

Over the past few years - since blogging started, really, for me - much has changed in my life; I've had a lot of time to contemplate friendship, what it means, what one can and should expect in a friend. I've made new friends, lost old ones (and some new ones, even), and I've had friendships come, go, come again, and change.

Through it all, I've come to believe the best you can do is try - you can try to be the kind of friend who shows up, who listens, who tries to go above and beyond when it's possible. At the same time, it's reasonable to expect something in return - a measure of support, a sense of being heard, and understood.

I've said here any number of times, I feel lucky and blessed to have the friends I have; lucky because I'm never entirely sure I do enough on my end to be there for them... and blessed because with their love and support, almost anything is possible.

So the stars aligned and somehow, this weekend, I was able to give something back, to help out, to be there for someone else. That's what friends are for, good times and bad times. It's even worth losing a day of blogging. :)

(Flower - photo by weboy - for... Elizabeth)

There's No Place Like Home... There's No Place Like Home...

Consider, if you will, the end of The Wizard of of Oz.

I think as critics, we shy away from reexamining the "classics" of film, the real warhorses that are so bulletproof you can't challenge the accepted wisdom (though it's fair to counter that, I think, with the question of what, if anything, there's left to say). I mentioned it a while back with that penchant we have for making movie lists, too - we're conferring some notion of "classic" onto films that deserve more consideration, more examination, and always, more thought.

The Wizard of Oz is one of those things I've watched for years, but not necessarily considered deeply; like for many, it was my introduction to Judy Garland, and it took me years to see her as anything but Dorothy - gay icon, forever teenaged, pretty and perfect. And when I did broaden my appreciation of Garland, it sort of cheapened "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" - I've come to admire most the battle weary survivor, the gal who could still put on a show almost to the end, and the powerful singer she became. Those pretty, innocent early tunes have less call than "Hello Bluebird" or the no-stops version of "Just in Time" she did in her later years (or to bridge past with present, compare her teenage version of "You Made Me Love You" to the one from her concert years... that's a woman who's aching with desire, not a girl with a crush).

Watching The Wizard of Oz again while on my recent cruise - we got back yesterday - I was struck by the ending, and something I hadn't noticed before: that what really bugs me about the film is the ending. You remember - when, Glinda tells Dorothy she had the power to go home all along, and Scarecrow asks "what have you learned?" and Dorothy says (I'm quoting roughly, because it's not on IMDB) "I think I've learned that everything I need is at home. And if I think I need to go searching for something, I don't need to go any further than my own back yard... because if it's not there, than I probably don't need it anyway." And later, when she wakes up, Dorothy adds "Oh, but anyway, Toto, we're home. Home! And this is my room, and you're all here. And I'm not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all, and - oh, Auntie Em - there's no place like home!" (That last line was on IMDB.)

That hokey ending, of course, is pure MGM; I spent my cruise finally reading Neal Gabler's book on the Hollywood moguls and how they remade America through its dreams, and you can, as he writes, see the moralism of Louis Mayer in that ending. All the platitudes about home and family wrapped up in those sentiments, mouthed by Judy Garland, corseted into her role as America's perfect child-woman sweetheart. And of course... it's not true; it's not even true for the character of Dorothy and her actual experiences, considering that she's just learned "there's no place like home"... by not being at home. Moreover, it flies in the face of the other lesson American movies give us - that we need to go out into the world to become the self made people we are meant to be. There's no place like home... that's why we leave it. "I'm not going to leave it ever, ever again" is the voice of the shut-in, the paranoiac, the agoraphobe. We need to be out in the world.

Or consider Garland herself, who of course found a whole world by never wanting to go back to her own backyard. Indeed, Garland is in many ways the emblem of post-modernism as an adult: when she starts to deconstruct the pretty images created for her, to let us into the life behind the mask, the makeup and the costumes - A Star Is Born is her tour-de-force because it takes the manufactured elements of Garland's persona and rips them apart: its a fake name, makeup, a wig... and none of it can hide - or define - who the woman actually is. Yet it does define her, lock her into certain expectations... always on, always performing.... always eager to please. You want the girl next door... go next door. The Wizard of Oz can't be her best work because all it gives us - all she's allowed to give us - is the picture perfect image of a total fantasy without the leavening of realizing that what we're being sold is a lie; and many I think, supply The Wizard of Oz with more depth than it has by layering on what Garland became in real life... but of course... that's not in the movie.

I've realized that what frustrates me about The Wizard of Oz is that lie it tells itself, and us - after seeing a world of such magic, such possibilities... it says we should want nothing more than to stay home, never search, never explore... never even dream. We're given a Technicolor fantasy and then told we're better off if we never go to it. And this, in the end, we celebrate. And call classic.

And yet... coming home from the cruise - five days at sea in a fantasy world of commerce and manufactured expectations - it's true that coming home is, in its way, a relief. A return to the familiar, the expected, the way of life you already know... it's comforting, safe. And less expensive. That's the hallmark, really, of a good vacation - just enough of an escape from your everyday life to le you appreciate coming back to it. There's no place like home. It's good to be back. Forgive me, though, if I still believe in putting more faith in the value of escaping.

Crossposted from New Critics.

He's Your Guy, When Stocks Are High

For more than a week, I've been sitting on this post, hoping, in vain, that someone would provide the insights into the "bank rescue" plans of the Obama Administration. After stalling a day - ostensibly to "settle the stimulus bill" - Tim Geithner offered an explanation of his "plan" that left more questions than answers, and caused the latest wave of downward movement in the stock markets (where, I'd point out, people continue to suggest "we've found the bottom" shortly before another cataclysmic drop... does anyone understand that there's a pattern here?). Geithner's proposal, it seems clear, will not be enough... and that should not reassure anyone putting their faith in Obama's "foreclosure proposal" that arrives later this week - which so far appaears to be a $50 billion promise to rewrite some bad loans... and won't nearly address the problems at that size.

As our conversations - about the stimulus plan, the banking crisis, and our economy more generally - get more heated and less productive (I can't decide whether the conversation out of my Saturday post leaves me thrilled or terrified at the passions its provoked), I think reality is setting in, finally. And the reality is worse than many people want to face, and as bad as I've been suspecting all along.

Red asked over at her new place, a few weeks back, if we could finally have a serious conversation about nationalizing banks. The answer, I think, was pretty clear and has gotten clearer: no, we can't. Aside from the fact that - as I have to patiently explain to my Mom, too - we are not Sweden (it's the herring, I think, that's a deal breaker, not the social policies), we can't nationalize the banks because we lack the structure and the vision to make it so... and also because, that's not exactly our problem, just now.

Should we nationalize? I'd say no, still; not because it might not stave off some painful realities... but because I'm not sure we don't deserve pain. All the flailing around of the past few months - culminating in the horrendous stimulus bill and what I'd guess is our last attempt to "save" the banks - has been attempting to deny the obvious... and I'm inclined, out of it to finally say "let it come."

The Stimulation Method (or, The Economics of Everything)

As I said in the previous post, beyond some specific questions about how the "stimulus plan" may not help women in the workforce, I actually have alrger questions about the whole package, more generally.

I have to admit I've been skeptical since November, when in the rush of Obama's victory, we were told that the first order of business" would be passge of an enormous bill meant to "jump start the economy," mainly, it was suggested, through "infrastructure projects" (and something called "green jobs" which has been a mystery to me since it was brough up in the campaign).

In order to try, as best I can, for clarity and brevity, I'm going to try and stay to three basic objections: that this is the wrong notion of stimulating an economy like ours just now, that the specifics make no sense, and that there are other, more creative ways to address this than what we're attempting.

Hmmm... maybe I should rethink that whole "clarity and brevity" thing... :)

Just kidding.

Season Of Light

I love Christmas.

I just do.

The house is lovely and warm, and the tree is sparkling; it's smaller than in the recent past, so it seems especially laden with treasures. And being in charge of lights, I layered on an extra numerous jumble, so it practically glows. I also finally got to do the tasteful window treatments I've always wanted to try, and so our porch window gently glows. as well as the wreath on the door.

Mom and I are getting ready for our evening smorgasbord, a Swedish tradition we've kept since I was a boy (and since she was a little girl). It's basically a cold supper by candlelight, though with all the various alterations made over the years, a good bit of the food is fresh off the stove.  But we have salmon gravlax, two kinds of herrings, flatbreads, crackers and cheese. Plus a ham, and potato salad, lingonberry (a tart, cranberry-like sauce), and special baked beans that I started making when I was in junior high.

For me, Christmas is all about familiar tradition. Whatever the year has brought, wherever we are, I know that we can return, in the dead of winter, to these warm, familiar moments. Familiar in every sense - things that we know, with family that we love.

Thanks to my Mom's rampant agnosticism, and and the Judaism I've experienced, as well as my own quiet Christianity, I believe the winter solstice is a universal moment - all of us come together in the darkness of winter to share warmth and joy and light. Especially light.

These are dark, uncertain times. There' is much to be concerned about, even to fear. As well as the exciting, if uncertain, prospect of changes that the new year will bring. 

This moment, where we can gather together and huddle up, and make some light in the darkness seems especially crucial to me. My hope for us, for you, for the world, is that  you can be with those you love and cherish, that you can come together and care for and support one another... whatever kind of family that may be, the one you were born with, or the one you made. We will, I think, need the strength that comes from coming together and supporting one another to get through this. And we can.

Happy Holidays. May the season bring you light and joy.