OPI Just Lanai-ing Around
Laura Mercier Antique Pink
Author: 459856pwpadmin
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Restitution and Reconciliation
Sometimes we go to see a movie or read a book, and we are surprised. Something about the story engages us, sticks with us, catches us in its web and alters our perceptions. Of course this is what a good story does. Stories play out all around us every day; everyone has a story. But often we are too busy with our own internal lists and goals, our own stories, to notice other stories. Sometimes, to escape our own stories for a little while, we go to a movie or read a book, and our worries are temporarily pushed aside. But the respite is short-lived; we return to our lives entertained but unchanged.
Until we are surprised.
I was surprised by the film Woman in Gold. I was not surprised that I enjoyed the film. It came well recommended; it sounded like a film I would enjoy. The story was expected, and yet, at the same time, completely unexpected. I knew it was a film about art restitution, and so it was. But it is also a film about so much more. By taking a grand public issue and making it personal, by compressing a large idea into an intimate tale of family, loss, history, and memory, director Simon Curtis has made a film that is not only about restitution but about reconciliation.
Helen Mirren's luminous portrayal of Maria Altman captured my heart from her first words. She seems to have gathered together, and understood deeply, the reserve, the wry wit, the ways of thinking, acting and speaking, the complexities even, of my late mother-in law's generation of once upper-middle class to affluent Austrian Jewish refugees. Although she did not remind me of any one person, her characterization is so spot-on, so true to my experience, that almost every phrase, every expression and action flooded my mind with memories of women I have known, women now gone. Throughout the movie my heart was going "Yes. Yes. This."
I also felt Ryan Reynolds was well-chosen to play Randy Schoenberg. I am aware that reviews of his performance have not always been positive. But to me his all-American affability was the perfect counterpoint to Mirren's complexities. His light hand in his portrayal of Randy Schoenberg helped to keep the film from being overwrought, from being emotionally toxic.
But the truth is, in my experience Reynolds's characterization is also spot-on. I know these men, children who were deliberately protected from the pain of the memory; children who were encouraged to be as American, as lighthearted and unencumbered as their grandparents were not. I know them. And Reynolds's character held many direct associations for me. I would think "this is X", or "yes, this is Y" and I would love them. I could see their interactions with their own families, sometimes the interactions in my own extended family, in the exchanges between Mirren and Reynolds. The choice of these actors, the portrayal of these characters shows us something about the dynamics of family, of history and starting over, of the sharing of memory within families, that may otherwise be lost with time.
Woman in Gold is a film of stories within stories, stories that will stay with you if you let them in. It is some of the quiet moments that echo the most deeply, the moments that could be missed that stay with me. In particular, this exchange between Maria and Randy, and exchange that occurs immediately following a moment of triumph, continues to make waves in my heart: "My mistake was in thinking this would make everything better. But it does not. I left them here. I left them."
Do not worry. The film does not end on that sad note. As I stated earlier, this film is about more than art restitution. It is about memory and reconciliation. But for that, you will have to watch the film yourself.
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Listening
I discovered soundcloud yesterday. So much to listen to.
I don't know what I think yet, but this makes me smile and dance around the house and I've been playing it over and over.
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Monday: Sunshine and Blues
The Brugmansia, or Angel's Trumpet is blooming and this alone brings me great joy as I sit outside on the porch this morning with my computer and coffee.
The air is cool, and although it is not quite crisp, which I might prefer, the nights not quite as cool as is normal in the Hudson Valley in early August, it is still lovely to be out. I am amazed at the difference a few degrees have made in my own acceptance of the hot weather. It is still hot, and I believe today's high is expected to be near the record for this date. But I am accepting it better, primarily because I have longer windows in the morning and evening in which to enjoy the beauty of nature, even manicured suburban nature.
Even the act of simply sitting, of the softness of the fresh morning air, looking at flowers, and dirt with its damp loamy scent, lifts my spirits. This is good because I kind of crashed and burned this weekend and I needed a bit of a rekindling spark.
There was more than enough good in my weekend. I attended a great training session on Saturday where I met new people and had a wonderful time. I was filled with excitement, filled with a sense of promise and potential, offset with just a touch of trepidation over pushing my own boundaries. But really, I have come to accept and even embrace trepidation, for there is no growth, no creativity without a little tinge of discomfort. But by Saturday evening I realized I had experienced an accidental contact with gluten and I was as sick as a dog. Sunday morning I had to force myself to pull myself together. I am grateful for Sunday morning: giving someone a ride to church; the rituals of liturgy; the thoughtful and thought-provoking sermon that poked me exactly where I needed it; the camaraderie of working altar-guild after the service; the joy I find in tending to the altar linens (my main job) — of keeping things white and crisp — all of these things elevated my state of mind away from myself, away from my discomfort. I thought they would carry me through the remainder of the day.
I was wrong. I got home and was felled by a massive sinus headache, a headache from hell, a headache I could not escape. It stunned me because I have been mostly sinus free of late. But I have learned that food affects more than just our guts; that our bodies are complex systems with multiple and overlapping reactions. But that is not the subject of today's post. The subject of today's post is that I allowed that headache to bring me down. Yes, it hurt to move, yet it hurt to think. But I allowed myself to succumb to discomfort and misery. I allowed myself to curl up on the sofa and spend the afternoon watching bad movies as I sank lower and lower into the sea of despond. I allowed my trepidations to rise up out of the mists and give birth to fears.
Luckily for me I do tend to have a shut-off switch. I noted this long ago. I can wallow, I can flirt with things I shouldn't flirt with, but I am very reluctant to lose control. I can only go so far and then I throw the switch. This may be a gift I have received from my alcoholic father, inadvertently as it were. It is not a gift I wish to take for granted, for even gifts can be lost if held too lightly. Like all gifts, this switch has its benefits and its dangers. But today I am grateful and lucky to have a switch. I am also grateful for Tikka who dragged me out for a walk right in the middle of the neighborhood puppy-social hour, where I had to interact with other people and other dogs, and accept the gifts of conversation and wagging talks and many licks.
Today my head still hurts. Today I still feel a bit punk. But I will keep moving, albeit slowly. Today I am grateful for flowers and dogs and cool mornings. Today I am grateful for friends and obligations, for those things that pull us outside ourselves. Today I am grateful for an altar linen that needs to be washed and ironed, because although life is not white and crisp and pure, ironing linen reminds me of what we are striving for and why life is worth living.
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Pink and Blue
Pink and blue and full of promise.
IPhone snap. Looking west, the sun behind me and still below the horizon, approximately 10 minutes before sunrise.
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In The Garden This Week
Confession: I slept in this morning, slept until nearly 7:30, a full 40 minutes after sunrise. Although the sleep was wonderful and I have no idea why I needed it — I am not complaining about sleep. Being able to sleep in occasionally, or take a nap, is one of the joys of retirement (or vacation).
But otherwise, Yuck. Although the temperature only read 74 when I went out for my morning walk, the air was thick with humidity and high fog and the air felt like it must be at least 80 or higher — to high for 7:40 AM, in my humble, I-don't-really-love-hot-weather, opinion. Oh well. I am here, and life is, generally, good.
This week in the garden the daylilies are continuing to bloom, and the greenery is looking more vigorous too, as if they are finally settled in and comfy. The lily bulbs I planted are also doing well, despite my initial doubts. A couple are blooming now, and the others all have buds, so there will be more lily blooms in the future. This is particularly exciting as I never saw a lily blossom in my Hyde Park garden. Just-about-to-open lily buds were quite a delicacy to the resident deer population, and living next to a national historic site, it was a battle I never won, despite heavy investment in deer repellents of every known variety.
I have rabbits and foxes, and crows or ravens although I've never paid enough attention to tell which.
Again, I'm not complaining.
I did climb up the hill behind the house this morning to take a photo looking down at the house and the back yard. The large stones on the left side of the walk in the photo above were just uncovered yesterday, and although I am not as happy about the way that part of the walk looks, I continue to have hopes of getting it right. I think I will be sitting in the gravel shifting stones come cooler weather and fall.. There are also still plenty of areas to plant. The beds at the base of the hill stay pretty wet, so choosing plants for that area has been a little tricky, but I think I have a rough plan now. More on that later.
This is the hydrangea on the far right in the picture above, at the back of the house, I love the remnant of foxglove peeking out under the hydrangea blossoms. Another bit of excitement is that the Angel's Trumpet on the patio is about to bloom. You can (barely) see a small patch of yellow next to the house in the pile of greenery beyond the table and the tilted chairs. A little yellow beacon of promise. The thrill and excitement, the pure potential, the risk, the sheer audacity even, of gardening always makes me catch my breath with unbounded joy and anticipation. It is an anticipation tinged with a hint of fear, but anticipation nonetheless, and the uncertainty of it only serves to make the pleasure all the greater.
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H is for Hawk; H is for Human.
In the past week I read Helen MacDonald's H is for Hawk. It is a hauntingly beautiful book that is also deeply painful, often mesmerizingly so, in its exploration of the depths of grief and the accompanying loss of self. By the writing the book as an interleaving of three stories, the loss of her father, the training of a hawk, and a thread about TH White's life and similar book on training a goshawk she manages to touch on the darker side of grief, the part we don't really want to talk about: the wild, feral aspects of our own emotions and the foundations of our own sense of self. Yes, the book can be read on several levels, and at times the connections between the different threads seem disjointed and almost jarring, but then so is the experience of grief, so is the process of redefining oneself in terms of a newly perceived reality, and in this book that swirling maelstrom of loss and despair is never far beneath the surface. Nor is it neatly resolved at the end of the book, and this may indeed be discomfiting for some readers.
There were so many things that struck me as "true" about this book: the way the loss of a defining person in one's life takes one back to the very essence of how one became one's own self; the wonderful details of environmental, natural, and social history and how they combine to create the background in which we all live; the itemization and details of hawking which remind me of the Medieval penchant for list-making and the way these lists both jar the reader as they seem out of context while at the same time their very existence points to the fractured nature of existence and the way we piece our perceptions together; the exploration of the author's own conversation with TH White's book and how the process of reading closely changes with age and life experiences but how deep reading can alter and enhance our own understandings of both ourselves and the world. But there were also portions of the book where I wished I could just shake the author and knock some sense into her, even as I realize that of course this is not possible, not because I am reading a book, but because no one can knock anyone else to their senses. It is not only fruitless, but ultimately more damaging, to try.
I like the way the book ends, just ends. Simply and bluntly without apology. Well, that is not completely true. There is a postscript. The author seeks out more information about White, and she goes to his cottage. The book ends with the author watching, as she often does, but with a sense of acceptance. The closing paragraph, in many ways less beautiful and meaningful than so many things I underlined and commented upon in my own personal notes while reading this book, continues to resonate, as it points to, and almost shimmers with, a sense of acceptance, and the appreciation of one's solitary walk through this life, that comes on the far side of clawing one's way out of the pits of grief. The closing paragraph is in fact a closure of sorts, an acknowledgement of the solitude and acceptance, and yes, concern, of the process of becoming more than just a person, of becoming more fully human.
But then I put that thought aside. I put it down, and the relief was immense, as if I had dragged a half-tone weight from myself and cast it by the grassy road. White is gone. The hawk has flown. Respect the living, honor the dead. Leave them be. I saluted the man, though he could not see me. It was a silly, wobbly salute, and even as I did it I felt foolish. And then I turned and walked away. I left the man who was not a ghost, and I walked south. Over the bright horizon the sky swam like water.
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Friday Morning
I have been sitting at my desk in the early morning, actually until this very moment, the moment I begin writing, pre-dawn light. There is enough light behind me that I can see my computer, see my coffee cup, and items on my desk. This has been a calming and reflective time.
I've been struggling with the day ahead and the blog post I haven't written, struggling with the frustration of not writing. Yesterday was supposed to be a day to write, but it didn't turn out that way. Instead yesterday was a day of phone calls and interruptions, and periods of mental stress and turmoil but also periods of insight and restoration, so not at all a bad day. It was simply a day that was too scattered to give birth to the words I was seeking.
And yet, yesterday was exactly as it should be. And today? I don't know about today. There are things I am looking forward to today, and things I most definitely am not, but at least the good things are timed well, as a reward. And I suspect that it too will end up being exactly the day it should have been, if I am willing to accept its flow.
I looked up from my desk, the light behind me, the hall with its rather mundane view of laundry room and small print made by a friend and artist from our former home, and this snapshot was born. I looked up and this post was born. How apropos of today's mood. Did I anticipate this when I arranged my desk, when I hung this print? Every new day is like looking through a doorway in the half-light. Every day there are choices to be made, obligations to be met, the world looming large. And yet there is also time for art, for reflection, for whatever it is that nourishes us. Perhaps some days the obligations seem to dominate, perhaps to overwhelm. But even then we don't lose the spirit, even when it slides into half-light and shadow. It is all in the angle of perception. Its time will come as long as the door is open.
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Wordless Wednesday
A few details from my daily walks through my routine suburban neighborhood.
A daylily from my own front yard, the morning after a rain.
The remaining photos are from my neighborhood, taken on my morning walks, where I continue to be entranced by small details in otherwise anonymous suburban spaces.
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Circuit Boards and Sewing Machines
I cleaned out the garage a few weeks ago and at that time I brought the box labeled "speakers and stereo cables" inside and put it on the living room sofa, where I could not ignore it. There were two reasons for this, the first being that it is well past time that I get the stereo system up and running, and the second being that I needed to get everything that doesn't belong in the garage out in order to move to stage 2 of the garage storage plan, namely organization. Don't hold your breath, I have a remarkable capacity for sitting on projects, especially big projects with no externally regulated end-date.
Thursday the box got moved to the floor so I could sit on the sofa. Saturday morning I thought the situation was ridiculous. The simple truth was that I had attempted to set up the stereo when we first moved in only to find that the CD player didn't work. I made some attempt at replacing it locally but found nothing that was musically up to the standards of my existing unit, and the entire process of researching equipment and procuring it online was more than I could bear, as was, apparently, the thought of packing it up and sending it to the manufacturer for repair. So I shoved the cd player back on the shelf and piled entire process back into a box, labeled it speakers and wires, and stuck it in the garage. Out of sight, out of mind.
But it was time. I told myself I could at least open up the cd player and see if the problem was something simple and obvious, like a fuse. I can replace a fuse. But when I opened the box it wasn't as simple as I had hoped. It actually took me a few minutes, in my disappointed haze, to make the connection between what I saw, and what I know, or knew. I don't really know what I expected; what I found was a computer. In retrospect this is not really surprising.
Eventually it dawned on me that I might, in fact, be able to do something here. I still have my multimeter, I still have a few tools. Although it has been years since I have repaired or built computers and circuit-boards, and I have no knowledge of stereo technology, this looked fairly simple, and I thought I might be able to diagnose a simple power issue. In the end it was simple. The components in question were visibly damaged and it was a simple case of replacing a few wires and connectors, and then using the meter to check the power flows.
The most remarkable thing, really, was the way this connected me to a younger version of myself, my younger Jack-Jill-of-all-trades self, the young woman who worked for a computer time-sharing company back when PCs were new, the young woman who could make our mainframe talk to any pc program on the market; the young woman who could build a pc, fix a motherboard, design a database, reconnect a broken satellite link, the young woman who thought APL was fun. Even though I had long since realized I didn't want to design computers and didn't have the patience for programming, realized that since I didn't dream computing I had no future in a field where living and breathing your work were de rigueur, I have to admit I had missed that young woman's attitude – her deep conviction that there were no problems without solutions. It was a pleasure to meet that girl again and to realize she had been with me all along: older yes, hopefully wiser, but still filled with hope and determination. Determination seems to have been dormant lately; I'm glad to have her back.
So I set up the stereo, connected the speakers, and listened to Olivier Latry playing the music of César Frank. Admittedly the sound will be even better when I get the bookcase speakers up off the floor and actually in the bookcase, but that requires moving books, and snaking wires through cabinetry, and I wasn't really up for that task this weekend. Just hearing music throughout the house, good full rich sound in all its glory, not just the limited sound of an MP3 through headphones was joy enough.
That was Saturday. Sunday I finished setting up the sewing room. Or mostly finished any way.
I'd been unpacking for weeks, and most every thing was put away. All that was left was unpacking and setting up the sewing machines. You would think that would be the easiest part, but it ended up being the hardest. Sunday I pulled the machines out of their cases, unwound yard upon yard of bubble wrap, and inspected each machine. I noticed that there were a few, hopefully minor, mishaps: a broken bobbin attachment; a few cracks in incidental pieces; a door to a compartment that would not close completely; mostly all cosmetic rather than functional. Then I started setting machines on tables: two sewing machines, my old Elna and newer Bernina; the serger; an embellisher.
I had hoped that I would get everything up and running, that I could take a photo, and I could begin actually doing some test stitching. But that didn't happen. Disorganization ruled. I laid out the machines in the positions I thought I liked for ease of use, pulled out their cords, and started crawling under the tables to plug things in, only to find that some of the cords didn't reach, only to rearrange everything and start over. And over, And over.
Of course, I should have just attached all the cords to the machines and lined them up on the center table to begin with. I should have assessed cord length, space requirements, ease of use, suitability of extension cord placement if necessary before I started positioning machines and crawling under tables. But I didn't. It was Sunday afternoon. I was tired. I let my excitement get in the way of my common sense. It happens sometimes.
Now all the machines are lined up, all their cords are attached. They stand at the ready, waiting. Soon I. too will be ready. But this time I will measure and plan, I will make sure that I have everything I need, I will be methodical. Who knows, perhaps once I'm done with this I will be prepared to climb on ladders and snake speaker wires through cabinets. Perhaps not. Perhaps I will simply sew.