R is for Rant

A curious and rather frustrating thing happened to me on Saturday. I came up against the cinema establishment's finest (insert heavily ironic tone) and came away with a bloody nose. It went something like this:

My son and four of his friends wanted to see the latest Resident Evil flick--cute girl kicks lots of zombie ass in post-apocalyptic Las Vegas--so I am volunteered as driver to above mentioned establishment.

I dropped them off at the door and pulled away, but within moments I get a phone call requesting that I return to "give my permission." Okay.

So I go to the ticket window and say to the ticket person: "They have my permission." Whereupon I am informed that unless I also buy a ticket and see the film, they cannot attend. Okay.

So I say, "Alright, then, I'll buy a ticket." Whereupon I am asked, "Are you the legal guardian of these children?" "Yes, I'm their aunt," I said, lying *convincingly*, I thought. The ticket person repeated, "Are you the legal guardian according to the court of law?"

Here is where I lost my cool. I mean, how can they possibly enforce this? Even legal parents don't go around carrying some kind of "offspring" identification. It's not like they can card for this, you know? My driver's license does not read Hair: Red, Eyes: Blue, Offspring: 1 now does it?

So, according to the cinema establishment's finest, as a film goer, I have to put up with idiots bringing in their screaming babies because they have "legal guardian" status, but I can't bring five basically well-behaved teenagers?

I was spurred by my righteous indignation into a little research. It was my impression, based on the age and prim disapproval of the woman at the ticket window, that this was some attempt at enforcing some kind of moral code. But after reading into it a bit it turns out that most theaters are more concerned with the behaviour of unsupervised teens than anything else. Interestingly, the "rules" are all over the place. Some places require parent permission at the very least. Others require a parent to accompany the child. Still others set a limit at two children per legal adult. Others specify the adult must be 25 years or older. Some places refuse to allow children into adult movies starting after 7pm. Others use price as a factor and hope to discourage people from bringing their kids by charging adult prices only for the evening pictures. Others try to educate the masses, requiring parents and children attend "theater etiquette" classes together before the kids are allowed in on their own. However, most teens have observed that if they go to the big cineplexes, nobody really cares who is buying the ticket.

I think I just need to be a better liar. Nobody's going to believe I've given birth to five teens of the same approximate age, but I could try to swing this scenario: Mo and Curly there, those are my foster kids; and poor little Larry, I adopted him when my sister passed last year (may she rest in peace and pray don't mention another word I'm still grieving); Tom and Jerry here are my biological sons by three different possible fathers; and me? I'm the Whore of Babylon. Now are you going to sell me those tickets? Or am I going to have to break into your house some unspecified night, strap you to your sofa, and force you to watch High School Musical until your eyes bleed?

"One may tolerate a world full of demons for the sake of an angel."

~Madame de Pompadour, The Girl in the Fireplace

Doctor Who, Season Two

How old do you feel on the inside? Is that younger or older than your real age?

Today, I feel 102. But this, too, shall pass.


100 Years
~Five For Fighting

I'm fifteen for a moment
Caught in between ten and twenty
and I'm just dreaming
counting the ways to where you are

I'm twenty-two for a moment
and she feels better than ever
and we're on fire
making our way back from mars

Fifteen, there's still time for you
Time to buy and time to lose
Fifteen
There's never a wish better than this
When you only got a hundred years to live

I'm thirty-three for a moment
I'm still the man
but you see I'm a they
A kid on the way, babe
A family on my mind

I'm fourty-five for a moment
The sea is high
and I'm heading into a crisis
chasing the years of my life

Fifteen, there's still time for you
Time to buy and time to lose yourself within a morning star
Fifteen, I'm alright with you
Fifteen
There's never a wish better than this
When you only got a hundred years to live

How the time goes by
Suddenly, you're wise
Another blink of an eye, sixty-seven is gone
The sun is getting high
We're moving on...

I'm ninety-nine for a moment
Dying for just another moment
and I'm just dreaming
counting the ways to where you are

Fifteen, there's still time for you
Twenty-Two, I feel her, too
Thirty-Three, you're on your way
Every day's a new day...

Fifteen, there's still time for you
Time to buy and time to choose
Hey, fifteen
There's never a wish better than this
when you only got a hundred years to live

Sure Shootin'

About 10 days ago, my friend Connie took me shooting. We went up to a range off Highway 9 outside of Saratoga. She brought along a pair of old rifles--her grandfather's--that had been cleaned and checked and cleared as "safe." These were manual load, one-bullet rifles with iron sights and very little kick-- very quaint next to the military grade, heavy duty automatics in the hands of the men standing next to us. When those things went off, I felt the vibration in my bones and could swear it loosened my dental work. They even set off a car alarm in the parking area behind us--no kidding!

I have to say, I was very impressed with the behavior of our fellow shootists. There was no swaggering or bragging. If anything, the mood was subdued. This is serious business, this shooting stuff. There are Rules. And Everyone Follows the Rules. Otherwise, people could get hurt, or Very. Very. Dead. So at 15 minute intervals, we were asked to unload our weapons, leave them pointed downfield, and stand behind the white line for inspection. After all was clear, we were free to check our targets and see how we did. The thing is, the target is so far away (I have forgotten already how many feet) that one can't really see how one is doing while one is shooting. I just lined up my sights with the little dot at the end of the field and hoped that I was hitting it. As it turned out, I did rather well for my first time out. Connie said so. ;-)

Now before you start running for the hills, I can assure you that I am no danger to either myself or society, or any woodland creatures for that matter. By the time I managed to focus on any furry forest creature, it would have had ample time to scamper away into the underbrush. If I had to rely on this as a means of getting my dinner, I think I would probably starve before I got any good at it.

Besides (I say to myself to assuage any residue feelings of guilt), shooting at targets is very clean, isn't it. No blood, no mess; no harm, no foul. And everyone is Oh So Polite. Almost gentlemanly, if I may use such an old-fashioned term.

Ironically, earlier that same week I had read Joy Williams' "The Killing Game" for my composition class. If you have not yet had the pleasure (a questionable term in part), Williams launches a vitriolic attack against hunting and hunters that leaves you wondering how we could suffer such barbarity in our so-called "civilized" world. That is, if you are an average civilian. If you were a hunter, no doubt you'd want to string Ms. Williams from the nearest tree. But I digress. The point is, well, go read it. Yes, it is unapologetic and harsh and she uses some very confrontational language--it is completely slanted to her point of view, of course, but that's natural, because it is her essay.

What I appreciate about it, though, is that she made me question some of my own belief systems that I had come to accept as true. This idea that we need hunting to keep nature in "balance", for instance. I, like many others I imagine, have always lived under the impression that, Oh, what a shame, the encroachment of man has upset the natural balance of predator and prey, so now, too bad, we have to keep hunting to keep critters like deer and rabbits from overrunning the world. Wrong, says Williams. Hunting is decimating the environment all out of proportion to a natural predator-prey "balance." And they are using their own spin on language and statistics to skew the general population's perception as to what is actually happening. Her report on what is happening to migrating birds is, if her facts are correct, more than a little disheartening; it's devastation on a phenomenal scale.

Once military weaponry gets involved, this issue is no longer about hunting to feed one's family. It's no longer about refining a skill in tracking and hunting that has been passed down from father to son (or parent to child) for generations. It's not even about giving the animal a sporting chance. It's about blowing things up. It's not about survival; it's about destruction. And if a people are destructive and wasteful, how long 'til a society destroys itself?

Connie told me a funny story. She said that one day she was out shooting on a range and all of a sudden, as daring as you please, a huge buck stepped out from the trees and just wandered across the field in front of the targets. As one, everyone stopped shooting immediately and watched it, just watched it progress slowly from one side of the field to the other until it disappeared into the trees on the other side. And then they all started shooting at their targets again. It was a completely surreal experience.

What strange, strange beings we humans are.

All still just the same

I heard Pete Seeger singing this song on the radio this morning. Brought back a memory.

7th grade, I was in guitar class and the final exam... we had to choose a song to play and sing... And I don't know why, but I chose *that* song... I think there was a very limited selection.

Anyway, I sucked. Big time. Couldn't play it. Couldn't sing it. Not to save my life.

I'm not exaggerating. I got a D in guitar.

So I always associate that song with my failure.

I actually like the song. Very hippie protest kind of thing.

Too bad there wasn't a Kate or Tori or Jewel around then. I might have had a chance with one of their songs.

Today, I really listened to the words. I don't know if I totally grasped it back then, but today... it's more meaningful than ever.

Anyway, here it is.


Little Boxes
~Pete Seeger

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes
Little boxes
Little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

And the people in the houses all go to the university
And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same
And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
And they all get put in boxes, and they all come out the same
And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same

There's a green one, and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

The going forth is home.

Ars Poetica

Achilles, long after Troy,
ventured forth again,
and in the going out,
returned home to homelessness.

And what could he know but like Odysseus
slap of wave on bow
and the stories they tell
about the dear dance of Thanatos and Eros

and the loves,
triumphs and betrayals of ordinary men . . .

Odysseus, homeless on the wine-dark sea,
with aching heart
dreams of his Penelope
as he sails into infinity.

Heroes are the ones
move forward in the dark,
Seferis said as he groped on,
neither Thetis nor Circe enticing him,

but the slap of wave on shore,
scorching Mediterranean sun
"riveted" to a rose,
and the voices,
always all those many voices in a poet's ear,

begging him to pause
during war
to observe the certain sway
of a tall palm tree,

a sleepy Arab garden in the harsh sunlight

recalling the house that once was ours,
that was, for a moment,
a kind of Paradise.

But dreams can sour. And wars don't simply arise.
Paradis ne pas,
but is within,
waiting to be found
beyond the pain,
the suffering
to which we are not bound,
but to which we so tenaciously cling.

Paradise, Old Tom, the
Oirish revolutionary,
liked to say,
is a sometime thing.

And Elytis, that grand land-bound sailor
of dreams, reminds: Heaven and Hell
are made of the exact same things—
confirming Lao Tzu: Success and failure
each are mother of the other.

Heraclitus: The way up is the way down.

The sea retreats; the sea swells.
We need the story that only
the going-forth can tell. We need the tale
that spins the spell that gives us
eyes to see.

Thus, we grope, talking to ourselves,
unable to find
meaning in a growing darkness
wherein no meaning lies.

The heart sees far beyond the eyes.
This is no country for this old man.
I'll not find Byzantium.

My friend Ransom, no man's
idea of a pacifist, but a medic,
a humanist nonetheless,
gets it exactly right:
Peace is not idle inaction, but
a constantly negotiated
activity—
in the home or between nations.

I negotiate this poem with my Muse.
How could it be otherwise?
Some build prisons, some
write prisons,
and call them sanctuaries.

Between Eros and Thanatos,
a moment of enlightenment,
moment of bliss
amidst the redundant thunder of unholy
Ares.

Thus the oarsmen sing
against the pull of oar in water,
back bent to the rhythm
as sails unfurl the song.

In the poem of our lives,
there are many masters,
many tongues.
The seas are mysterious, deep and wide.

We listen to the rattle of the riggings
sailing on, on,
hungry and homeless,
sailing toward oblivion,

talking to ourselves
as if it mattered,
eyes fixed
on the rising smoke of precisely what
horizon?

Achilles with his bloody hands and aching heel,
Odysseus with his ears on fire,
Dante emerging from the bowels of Hell . . .
eyes peeled

skyward . . .
each with his heroic dream of Justice,
a dream of Paradise . . .

It is the dream itself, the listening,
the going-forth, singing,
that keeps us all alive.

We go down to the sea and set sail
for a world beyond war, knowing
we will never find it. We are not heroes.
We sail the Justice and the Mercy
because these boats need rowing.

And when our boats go down—
as, surely, all boats must drown—
we will not
walk upon the water
into the open arms of the Eternal Mother/Lover,

she whom we idealize in our robes of need
as the mind turns and the heart bleeds. . .

No. Not for us, salvation.
Sustained by a few essential metaphors—
the tale, the telling,
the mind’s music, the heart’s vision . . .

we venture out, each alone, to find
that the going-forth is home.


~Sam Hamill




Sam Hamill is Director of Poets Against War. "Ars Poetica" is from a collection, Measured by Stone, to be published by Curbstone Press. A volume of his literary essays and introductions, Avocations, will be published by Red Hen Press in April.

Squeezing the Watch

"What are you squeezin' that watch for? Squeezin' that watch ain't gonna stop time."

~ 3:10 to Yuma




( I have not seen this movie, but now I'm intrigued...)

I *am* Little Red Riding Hood. Know ye not that?

I taught my first class today. Folktales: with an emphasis on Little Red Riding Hood. Also, a recap of my trip this summer. It went really well. I had lots of enthusiasm (gawd, just open a vein--has this not been in me my entire life?) and the students responded with questions and discussion afterwards.

At the end of class, an undergrad with shining eyes came up and asked me, "How can I get where you are? How do you do what you do?" And I thought, Oh my God.... She's me. I was there, I used to be there, and now I'm here...

I get so caught up looking ahead to where I want to be, I forget to look behind and see how far I've come. The forest is deep and endless and the wolves are not always what they seem...

Illustrations by Gustav Dore

Starlight, Starbright...

You know, every time I read a reviewer's complaint that a movie's plotline is too "convoluted", I begin to wonder if they all have the mental capacity of a teaspoon. Stardust was brilliantly executed, with a very straightforward plot, and, from what I can remember, follows the book closely (with only a few minor variants). Charlie Cox is charming as the young hero, Claire Danes is quite fetching as a blonde and simply can do no wrong in my book, and Michelle Pfeiffer exceeds expectations in a role that was clearly written just for her. This one has a spot reserved on my DVD shelf for sure.

Two thumbs way up!

P.S. Of course, the Number One reason to see this film is Robert De Niro! He is perfectly hilarious!

Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007)

She once described herself as a French peasant cook who drops a carrot in one pot, a piece of potato in another and an onion and a piece of meat in another.

“At dinnertime, you look and see which pot smells best and pull it forward,” she was quoted as saying in a 2001 book, “Madeleine L’Engle (Herself): Reflections on a Writing Life,” compiled by Carole F. Chase.

“The same is true with writing,” she continued. “There are several pots on my backburners.”

Her deeper thoughts on writing were deliciously mysterious. She believed that experience and knowledge are subservient to the subconscious and perhaps larger, spiritual influences.

“I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him,” she said in an interview with Horn Book magazine in 1983. “I know that is true of ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice.

“It was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.”

(To read the rest of the NY Times article, click here.)