On to R!

Having had the opportunity to enjoy the recent release of Marie Antoinette, and to have read the countless reviews of the movie, I would say that it is another of Sofia Coppola's lovely, largely plotless explorations of the feminine experience - much like Lost in Translation, that it would have been un-make-able by a man, and that Roger Ebert is the only one to have properly reviewed it. His comment (I'm paraphrasing) was that it was about the lonliness and isolation of a woman caught in a world that doesn't understand how to value her. Again, much like Lost. And a true reflection of the experience most intelligent and creative women have in a world dominated by the male perspective.

What I find striking about MA, and Lost, is their similarity to Virginia Woolf's works - especially To the Lighthouse - in which the feminine experience and perspective is defined in terms of the abstract and non-linear - the globular, and so starkly contrasted to the male perspective. Remember Mr. Ramsay in Lighthouse? His relentless forward drive - his mind organized like the alphabet or the keys of a piano. "On to R! He must reach R" His fear that he may always be stuck on Q, that he is therefore a failure?

I think MA, the movie, only missed the boat (reference to Lighthouse somewhat intended there, as I think Woolf did this much better) in that it represented the feminine experience without adequately exploring the strength, bravery and pithiness that is often so characteristic more of women than men. Certainly MA herself provided the material for such an exploration; she endured unimaginable hardships and horror. That said, I liked the refreshing lack of focus on the beheading in the movie. The mob scene in which Marie lies her head down on the railing of her balcony for a jeering crowed substituted for any violent depiction and served as a nod to her bravery.

If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend it. If you haven't read To the Lighthouse, I even more highly recommend that as it is one of the truly great works of modern literature.

Here's an excerpt for your enjoyment, and one that I think helps to substantiate the connection between Coppola and Woolf.



There wasn't the slightest possible chance that they could go to the
Lighthouse tomorrow, Mr Ramsay snapped out irascibly.

How did he know? she asked. The wind often changed.

The extraordinary irrationality of her remark, the folly of women's minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now, she flew in the face of facts, made his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies. He
stamped his foot on the stone step. "Damn you," he said. But what had she said? Simply that it might be fine tomorrow. So it might.

Not with the barometer falling and the wind due west.

To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people's feelings, to rendthe thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There was nothing to be said.

He stood by her in silence. Very humbly, at length, he said that he would step over and ask the Coastguards if she liked.

There was nobody whom she reverenced as she reverenced him.

She was quite ready to take his word for it, she said. Only then they need not cut sandwiches--that was all. They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions. Then he said, Damn you. He said, It must rain. He said, It won't rain; and instantly a Heaven of security opened before her. There was nobody she reverenced more. She was not good enough to tie his shoe strings, she felt.

Already ashamed of that petulance, of that gesticulation of the hands when charging at the head of his troops, Mr Ramsay rather sheepishly prodded his son's bare legs once more, and then, as if he had her leave for it, with a movement which oddly reminded his wife of the great sea lion at the Zoo tumbling backwards after swallowing his fish and walloping off so that the water in the tank washes from side to side, he dived into the evening air which, already thinner, was taking the substance from leaves and hedges but, as if in return, restoring to roses and pinks a lustre which they had not had by day.

"Some one had blundered," he said again, striding off, up and down the terrace.

But how extraordinarily his note had changed! It was like the cuckoo; "in June he gets out of tune"; as if he were trying over, tentatively seeking, some phrase for a new mood, and having only this at hand, used it, cracked though it was. But it sounded ridiculous--"Some one had
blundered"--said like that, almost as a question, without any conviction, melodiously. Mrs Ramsay could not help smiling, and soon, sure enough, walking up and down, he hummed it, dropped it, fell silent.

He was safe, he was restored to his privacy. He stopped to light his pipe, looked once at his wife and son in the window, and as one raises one's eyes from a page in an express train and sees a farm, a tree, a cluster of cottages as an illustration, a confirmation of something on the printed page to which one returns, fortified, and satisfied, so without his distinguishing either his son or his wife, the sight of them fortified him and satisfied him and consecrated his effort to arrive at a perfectly clear understanding of the problem which now engaged the energies of his
splendid mind.

It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of difficulty in running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until
it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q. Here, stopping for one moment by the stone urn which held the geraniums, he saw, but now far, far away, like children picking up shells, divinely innocent and occupied with
little trifles at their feet and somehow entirely defenceless against a doom which he perceived, his wife and son, together, in the window. They needed his protection; he gave it them. But after Q? What comes next? After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely
visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R it would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at Q. Q he was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q--R--. Here he
knocked his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the handle of the urn, and proceeded. "Then R ..." He braced himself. He clenched himself.

Qualities that would have saved a ship's company exposed on a broiling sea with six biscuits and a flask of water--endurance and justice, foresight, devotion, skill, came to his help. R is then--what is R?

A shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over the intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of darkness he heard people saying--he was a failure--that R was beyond him. He would never reach R. On to R, once more. R--

Qualities that in a desolate expedition across the icy solitudes of the Polar region would have made him the leader, the guide, the counsellor, whose temper, neither sanguine nor despondent, surveys with equanimity what is to be and faces it, came to his help again. R--

The lizard's eye flickered once more. The veins on his forehead bulged. The geranium in the urn became startlingly visible and, displayed among its leaves, he could see, without wishing it, that old, that obvious distinction between the two classes of men; on the one hand the steady
goers of superhuman strength who, plodding and persevering, repeat the whole alphabet in order, twenty-six letters in all, from start to finish; on the other the gifted, the inspired who, miraculously, lump all the letters together in one flash--the way of genius. He had not genius; he laid no claim to that: but he had, or might have had, the power to repeat every letter of the alphabet from A to Z accurately in order. Meanwhile, he stuck at Q. On, then, on to R.

Feelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that the snow has begun to fall and the mountain top is covered in mist, knows that he must lay himself down and die before morning comes, stole upon him, paling the colour of his eyes, giving him, even in the two minutes of his turn on the terrace, the bleached look of withered old age. Yet he would not die
lying down; he would find some crag of rock, and there, his eyes fixed on the storm, trying to the end to pierce the darkness, he would die standing. He would never reach R.

He stood stock-still, by the urn, with the geranium flowing over it. How many men in a thousand million, he asked himself, reach Z after all? Surely the leader of a forlorn hope may ask himself that, and answer, without treachery to the expedition behind him, "One perhaps." One in a generation. Is he to be blamed then if he is not that one? provided he has toiled honestly, given to the best of his power, and till he has no more left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr Ramsay ironically, staring at the hedge). What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.

His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still. (He looked into the hedge, into the intricacy of the twigs.) Who then could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after all has climbed
high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing of the stars, if before death stiffens his limbs beyond the power of movement he does a little consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his shoulders, so that when the search party comes they will find him dead at his post, the fine figure of a soldier? Mr Ramsay squared his shoulders and stood very upright by the urn.

Who shall blame him, if, so standing for a moment he dwells upon fame, upon search parties, upon cairns raised by grateful followers over his bones? Finally, who shall blame the leader of the doomed expedition, if, having adventured to the uttermost, and used his strength wholly to the last ounce and fallen asleep not much caring if he wakes or not, he now perceives by some pricking in his toes that he lives, and does not on the whole object to live, but requires sympathy, and whisky, and some one to tell the story of his suffering to at once? Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by
the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her--who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world?

The Sky Must Open

Today I thought I'd post a poem I wrote some time ago but rediscovered this morning. I'm in a poetic and open frame of mind. Enjoy.

Princess, hero, god
For C

The saguaro rises tall
over the dust and scrubs,
the sky. Its long shadows
damp scraped valleys,
call jackrabbits.

She came to it wrapped
in a terry cape –
A princess or hero or god; a child
playing at imagination.
It was eaten by coyotes.

Intolerant desert, you are workworn
and tired. Rarely the cacti blooms
scarlet blossoms or spreads seed,
Each scorched flower is
squeezed from the sand.

Still, in the spring they whisper:
Even the desert is touched by gods.
The sky must open, the rain must fall.

Articulating your pain

I revisited my blog recently to find a strange post. Something about Bill Clinton. Did I write that??

Apparently I did. And now that I think about it, I may have written that after drinking perhaps more wine than I should have.

In fact, Bill WAS inspiring during his speech at the BIO 2006 convention. Yet after reflecting a month later on his 45 minute eloquent, effortless delivery about how biotech can address two major crises - food shortages and the need for alternative energy sources - I realize now that Bill is interchangable with any person in power. He's just better at hiding his willingness to make the "hard trades" behind a pink tie and a well articulated but feigned interest in the wellbeing of the rest of the world. I was surprised, for example, that he would bring up during his speech the 1994 crisis in Rwanda. I would have chalked up the bloody deaths of some 800,000 people at least in part to the Clinton Administration's gross failure to act. After the killings started, Clinton spoke to the press and said the following:

"... I mention it only because there are a sizable number of Americans there and it is a very tense situation. And I just want to assure the families of those who are there that we are doing everything we possible can to be on top of the situation to take all the appropriate steps to try to assure the safety of our citizens there."

(according to a Frontline report, which can be found here): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/

Like most good politicians and people of power, Bill has an aptitude for saying what people want to hear anyway. And so in that way, he was and is perhaps better at articulating your pain than feeilng, and actually addressing, much of anything.

Bill (fucking) Clinton, Baby

I believe I referred in an earlier post to my innate egalitarianism...

it still stands.

But today, I was in the presence of greatness, and for a moment there, I had a little chill run down my spine.

Bill Clinton. Talking in a seemingly offhand manner about biotech and how it could conceivably make our "integrated" world a better place.

Bill Clinton...

Someone, please, bring me a cigarette.

Counting on Solutions

In response to Seth Abramson's post on March 22. Check out his blog at http://sethabramson.blogspot.com/ I very much admire Seth for his expressive capabilities. He's as much an artist as a lawyer, but I often think his brand of politics may be facing extinction.
----------------------------------

Time and again, we find that numbers lie. They therefore neither adequately support nor undermine an argument in favor of one policy or another. And while mandatory sentencing is generally odious to me since it undermines the power of the judicial system, we must acknowledge on some level that we sometimes have to make decisions that aren't ideal, but at least approach our objectives. In this case, we find ourselves with a need to provide better protection for the population at large, and especially for those who are unable to defend themselves, by which, in this case, I mean children. We haven't done a good job. I can think of Jessica, Danielle, Samantha, and several others just in the past few years that have died horrible deaths at the hands of sex offenders who had a history. And truth be told, I'm much less inclined to care about the offenders, whatever their crime, than about their next victims. This is not to say they are completely undeserving of consideration, but instead that we can't practically institute a system that gives everyone an entirely fair shake - sex offenders, tax payers, kids etc. - without consequences. I'm happy to pay a little more and to punish more severely a few people than is necessary if it means better protection for even one or two children.

We find, unfortunately, that we are sometimes required to make sacrifices in order to meet our aims. One can't get around the sad fact that having your cake and eating it too is simply an impossibility.

And by way of extension, one of the biggest reasons for the unfortunate national lean to the right of late is that there is a type of overcorrection - a backlash - against the liberal MO wherein problems are defined less in pragmatic terms and more in theoretical or philosophical terms. We more liberally minded sorts have simply been too concerned with knocking down practical solutions to real problems because they aren't perfect, and not concerned enough with finding and implementing workable solutions.

Late Breaking Ad Lib

2:56 a.m. and can't sleep. Lightbulb: blog! Hey, I can't find time in my daily life to keep up with it, but I can find it in my night life!

Alright, fair warnings and legal disclaimers upfront, this blog is NOT, I repeat NOT a good place to come if you want the latest, most up to date info on trends (outside of fashion), gadgetry, etc. I'm the girl who writes on Brian Greene how long after he published The Elegant Universe after all. The one who discovers "new" shows after they've already gone to syndication (I watched every West Wing episode available on Bravo). The one who only just discovered itunes and ipods. But on this point, I must express public thanks for what a friend of mine refers to as 'our wonderful capitalist system.' My nano is the most amazing little thing - so much sound in such a tiny package. And the ability to browse music in a whole new, personally-directed, interactive way... to have immediate access to totally new sounds for under a buck... amazing. Actually, I discovered itunes first after being challenged by my Indian friend to create a CD for him and my other friends. He's a big music buff and seemed rather emphatic about the CD: had in fact made me three. I began creating a CD that is personally reflective of musical influences in my life, my name, where I live. But to find just those right songs... only online (all state songs and an ecletic but elegantly arranged mix of jazz, folk, country, rock and roll and blues.) It was my hubbie who thought if I was into itunes I could be into a nano. And he was, indeed right. An early birthday present of sorts, it has already brought big booming joy into my, well, ears.

And aren't nanos still cool?

At least I'm wearing my brand new Nannette Lepore pants - very hip cool designer I discovered at local boutique Twigs, and my gorgeous Burberry polo which was hugely sought after this season and unbelievably hard to find. So cute. Fashion I can do. My two year old takes after me in that way - it's been very important to her that everything "match" (and look out if it doesn't).

Books I can also do (forgive my late find on the Brian Greene Elegant Universe discussed in an earlier post. Did I ever share that I heard him speak thanks again to my hubbie? He seemed rather a polished speaker, and not so much the impassioned young physicist I took so much pleasure in listening to during his NPR video. That said, he can still hang out in my basement as my sexy human pet.) But all that aside, here's one you should try if interested in armchair physics: Parallel Worlds. An excellent compendium on the latest trends in physics and cosmolegy. (Sigh, I once wanted to be an astrophysicist and now it's all come to this.)

Alright, 3:17 now....

3:18...

3:20...

Snore.

Get Gitanjali

Poet re-discovered this week: Rabindranath Tagore, India's only Poet Laureate.

Yeat's comment on Tagore/Indian poetry: "A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, gathering from learned and unlearned metaphor and emotion, and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and of the noble."

My older Indian friend concurs and comments that Indian poetry is a mirror-image of Hinduism, much more a way of life than a religion.

My comment on Tagore: He's been around a long while, but his work has something that is just so FRESH about it. Pick up Gitanjali again and see for yourself.

It's Just Stupid

Favorite quote of the week: “It’s like you’re throwing
darts, and the bullseye is just one part in 10^120
of the dart board,” says Leonard Susskind, a
string theorist based at Stanford University in
California. “It’s just stupid.”

From "Outrageous Fortune," published in Nature by Geoff Brumfiel, the beginnings of which is excerpted below.

Why are we here? It’s a question
that has troubled philosophers,
theologians and those who’ve
had one drink too many. But
theoretical physicists have a more essentialist
way of asking the question: why is there anything
here at all?
For two decades now, theorists in the thinkbig
field of cosmology have been stymied by a
mathematical quirk in their equations. If the
number controlling the growth of the Universe
since the Big Bang is just slightly too
high, the Universe expands so rapidly that protons
and neutrons never come close enough to
bond into atoms. If it is just ever-so-slightly
too small, it never expands enough, and everything
remains too hot for even a single nucleus
to form. Similar problems afflict the observed
masses of elementary particles and the
strengths of fundamental forces.
In other words, if you believe the equations
of the world’s leading cosmologists, the probability
that the Universe would turn out this
way by chance are infinitesimal — one in a
very large number. “It’s like you’re throwing
darts, and the bullseye is just one part in 10 to the 120
of the dart board,” says Leonard Susskind, a
string theorist based at Stanford University in
California. “It’s just stupid.”
One in a zillion
Physicists have historically approached this
predicament with the attitude that it’s not just
dumb luck. In their view, there must be something
underlying and yet-to-be-discovered
setting the value of these variables. “The idea is
that we have got to work harder because some
principle is missing,” says David Gross, a
Nobel-prizewinning theorist and director of
the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in
Santa Barbara, California.
But things have changed in the past few
years, says astronomer Bernard Carr of Queen
Mary, University of London, UK. String theorists
and cosmologists are increasingly turning
to dumb luck as an explanation. If their ideas
stand up, it would mean the constants of nature
are meaningless. “In the past, many people
were almost violently opposed to that idea
because it wasn’t seen as proper science,” Carr
says. “But there’s been a change of attitude.”
Much of that change stems from work
showing that our Universe may not be unique.
Since the early 1980s, some cosmologists have
argued that multiple universes could have
formed during a period of cosmic inflation
that preceded the Big Bang. More recently,
string theorists have calculated that there
could be 10 to the 500 universes, which is more than
the number of atoms in our observable Universe.
Under these circumstances, it becomes
more reasonable to assume that several would
turn out like ours. It’s like getting zillions and
zillions of darts to throw at the dart board,
Susskind says. “Surely, a large number of them
are going to wind up in the target zone.” And of
course, we exist in our particular Universe
because we couldn’t exist anywhere else.

Bumpers Beware

Believe it or not, I've taken a six month hiatus from this page to start a "Stop the Snark" bumper sticker campaign aimed at all the too-cool-for-you, FOX-network watching, haven't-been-sincere-(at least publicly)-a-single-day-in-my-life, let's-poke-tongue-in-cheek-fun-at-pretty-much-anyone-who-actually-
CARES-about-anything types. Write me if you want one.

How's the Weather Out By You Then?

After rejoicing over spring weather back in March, which quickly gave way not to summer but to shivery wind and miserable dampness, which then gave way to 90 plus with humidity, I am pleased to once again announce that it is 76 degrees today with sunshine and little humidity! SEVENTY SIX baby. SEVEN-SIX. It feels like a day on a San Diego beach (sans the crime, the traffic, the value devoid residents, and the exorbitant housing costs - yes, there are reasons we left).

And perhaps it's just the sunshine and balmy breezes, but I realize now that a trait I've long loathed in Midwesterners - a mindless affinity for endless discussions about weather conditions - is not only completely reasonable but totally inevitable. When a day like today is as unexpected as it is pleasant, it really does become life's collective high point and a headlining topic for discussion.


So stay warm, stay dry, enjoy the sun. And if you want to talk about the weather, feel free to call and chat.