Late Night, Grand Hotel

Post olive-harvest hike, in Italia, late-October. Me and my nano, a Nanci Griffith tune that struck a cord.

I'm working on a morning flight
to anywhere but here
I've watched this evening's fire
burn away my tears
all my life i've left my troubles
by the door
because leaving is all i've ever known before

it's not the way you hold me when the sun goes down
it's not the way you called my name and left me standing on the ground
it's not the way you say you hear my heart when the music ends
i am just learning how to fly away again

and maybe you were thinking that you thought you knew me well
but no one ever knows the heart of anyone else
feel like garbo in this late night Grande Hotel
cause living alone is all i've ever done well.

"You probably cheated at Choose Your Own Adventure!"

Little chat message from PW to me that seems to bear repeating.

My question, right back at him - wouldn't we all, Paul, wouldn't we all?

Actually, now that I think about it, I do remember carefully flipping through pages whilst holding my place until my fingers were stretched and fanned throughout the book in order to fulfill every possible outcome; and then every possible outcome based on the myriad first possible outcomes; and then...um....jeez!

What is it about me and my intense dread of regretting the road not taken. I still have trouble believing another astute piece of observation, cum advice, about the glories of the 'chosen path'. The path is fun. The path is MORE. The path transcends the crossroads. Go down a path and you too will flourish and thrive in your maturity and wisdom....

Ugh. I am the worst decision-maker going.

Here comes the sun. I'm gong outside.

There. A decision.

My Name Is Rachel Corrie

Although I've heard more positive responses with regard to my kook-o film dispatches; I feel the need to climb up on my political soapbox once again and insist that you all click the above link and buy a couple of tickets to the Alan Rickman production 'My Name Is Rachel Corrie', now playing at the Minetta Lane theater in New York. Below is an excerpt from one of Corrie's final emails -- one which I find to be particularly stirring and right in line with the sinking feeling I have that yes, indeed, we should all drop everything and devote our lives to making horrible things like this (and much else) stop.

February 27 2003

(To her mother)

Love you. Really miss you. I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house and you and me inside. Sometimes the adrenaline acts as an anesthetic for weeks and then in the evening or at night it just hits me again - a little bit of the reality of the situation. I am really scared for the people here. Yesterday, I watched a father lead his two tiny children, holding his hands, out into the sight of tanks and a sniper tower and bulldozers and Jeeps because he thought his house was going to be exploded. Jenny and I stayed in the house with several women and two small babies. It was our mistake in translation that caused him to think it was his house that was being exploded. In fact, the Israeli army was in the process of detonating an explosive in the ground nearby - one that appears to have been planted by Palestinian resistance.

This is in the area where Sunday about 150 men were rounded up and contained outside the settlement with gunfire over their heads and around them, while tanks and bulldozers destroyed 25 greenhouses - the livelihoods for 300 people. The explosive was right in front of the greenhouses - right in the point of entry for tanks that might come back again. I was terrified to think that this man felt it was less of a risk to walk out in view of the tanks with his kids than to stay in his house. I was really scared that they were all going to be shot and I tried to stand between them and the tank. This happens every day, but just this father walking out with his two little kids just looking very sad, just happened to get my attention more at this particular moment, probably because I felt it was our translation problems that made him leave.

I thought a lot about what you said on the phone about Palestinian violence not helping the situation. Sixty thousand workers from Rafah worked in Israel two years ago. Now only 600 can go to Israel for jobs. Of these 600, many have moved, because the three checkpoints between here and Ashkelon (the closest city in Israel) make what used to be a 40-minute drive, now a 12-hour or impassible journey. In addition, what Rafah identified in 1999 as sources of economic growth are all completely destroyed - the Gaza international airport (runways demolished, totally closed); the border for trade with Egypt (now with a giant Israeli sniper tower in the middle of the crossing); access to the ocean (completely cut off in the last two years by a checkpoint and the Gush Katif settlement). The count of homes destroyed in Rafah since the beginning of this intifada is up around 600, by and large people with no connection to the resistance but who happen to live along the border. I think it is maybe official now that Rafah is the poorest place in the world. There used to be a middle class here - recently. We also get reports that in the past, Gazan flower shipments to Europe were delayed for two weeks at the Erez crossing for security inspections. You can imagine the value of two-week-old cut flowers in the European market, so that market dried up. And then the bulldozers come and take out people's vegetable farms and gardens. What is left for people? Tell me if you can think of anything. I can't.

If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled, lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew, because of previous experience, that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment and destroy all the greenhouses that we had been cultivating for however long, and did this while some of us were beaten and held captive with 149 other people for several hours - do you think we might try to use somewhat violent means to protect whatever fragments remained? I think about this especially when I see orchards and greenhouses and fruit trees destroyed - just years of care and cultivation. I think about you and how long it takes to make things grow and what a labour of love it is. I really think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could. I think Uncle Craig would. I think probably Grandma would. I think I would.

You asked me about non-violent resistance.

When that explosive detonated yesterday it broke all the windows in the family's house. I was in the process of being served tea and playing with the two small babies. I'm having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole. Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the wilful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me. I really can't believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it. It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be. I felt after talking to you that maybe you didn't completely believe me. I think it's actually good if you don't, because I do believe pretty much above all else in the importance of independent critical thinking. And I also realise that with you I'm much less careful than usual about trying to source every assertion that I make. A lot of the reason for that is I know that you actually do go and do your own research. But it makes me worry about the job I'm doing. All of the situation that I tried to enumerate above - and a lot of other things - constitutes a somewhat gradual - often hidden, but nevertheless massive - removal and destruction of the ability of a particular group of people to survive. This is what I am seeing here. The assassinations, rocket attacks and shooting of children are atrocities - but in focusing on them I'm terrified of missing their context. The vast majority of people here - even if they had the economic means to escape, even if they actually wanted to give up resisting on their land and just leave (which appears to be maybe the less nefarious of Sharon's possible goals), can't leave. Because they can't even get into Israel to apply for visas, and because their destination countries won't let them in (both our country and Arab countries). So I think when all means of survival is cut off in a pen (Gaza) which people can't get out of, I think that qualifies as genocide. Even if they could get out, I think it would still qualify as genocide. Maybe you could look up the definition of genocide according to international law. I don't remember it right now. I'm going to get better at illustrating this, hopefully. I don't like to use those charged words. I think you know this about me. I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that I'm witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I'm really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don't think it's an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital Lake and said: "This is the wide world and I'm coming to it." I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide. More big explosions somewhere in the distance outside.

When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I've ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.

I love you and Dad. Sorry for the diatribe. OK, some strange men next to me just gave me some peas, so I need to eat and thank them.

Rachel

When they kiss you I bet they put their bubblegum in your mouth

Wait a minute. Are there any closet STEALING HOME fans out there - 'cause it's on Cinemax right this very second and I must say I was shockingly jerked back in time to my teenage love of earnestness and Jodie Foster's irresistible blonde limbs (plus that great husky voiced 'I love ya, Billy Boy' right before she prances off to the sure hell of becoming a middleclass wife and her ultimate demise).

What an odd film, it is though. But, can I just put it out there that this kind of earnest wannabe schmaltz, starring Mark Harmon has about a zillion fairly great moments PLUS both Foster and Blair Brown at the exact peak of perfection. Young and soft and round and just...lovely. Dewy - one might say dewy. Anyway, to be sure it has its fair share of cringe inducing scenes; but, overall there's just something about the Jod-ster and her dead-on take of 'that girl'. The one we all, guys and girls included, sort of fall in love with during our adolesence. The cool babysitter who gives us our first puff of a cigarette, our first swallow of rum, our first glimpse at sexuality. And then she goes and offs herself. Well at least in this movie that's what she does. Right off the bat, she's dead and he's got the ashes, not to mention that he's turned into an honest to god loser somewhere between the age of 18 and 40. Or um....right, yeah, somewhere between stealing home and now. So.

Not that I want you to run out and rent it, but...if you could just close your eyes and remember the film and how you felt when you watched it (if you ever did)...it's one of those things. One of those evokers of fond feelings and true insight somehow into who we were when we were young. Kind of like all that nostalgia packed together into 90 minutes belongs to us all. Rum and cokes and losing our virginity, singing on the beach while fireworks go off overhead, the weird uncomfortable thing it is to be 17 and just thisclose to losing our childhood. But, not yet knowing enough to be sad about it...

Ah. Tuesday nights with Cinemax

Why I'm more Pro-Black Dahlia today than I was yesterday

O.K., enough already. First of all, I'm sick of hearing it everywhere - onstage last night, while listening to music; on the phone; in the subway; standing on line at the supermarket.

THE BLACK DAHLIA is an awful movie (enter primordial scream of countless accusations - bad script, bad acting, bad, bad, bad! BAD!)

And so it goes. I'm sure everyone has heard this litany of criticism echoing on down the line. People, I ask, what do ya like?! What have you been brainwashed into accepting as 'good film-making'? Sentimental Indy garbage with an earnest story and actors trying desperately hard. Hey look at me act. Hollywoodland is an example of earnest talent at work. Look at them act, look at them make a movie, look at them try and fashion a meaningful story from a film noir script. Look at them try and copy CHINATOWN and fail.

DePalma is fearless, and always has been - that's why any of his films will kick most film's ass any day of the week. Then bust it's head open and splatter its brains on the sidewalk, while following its double as it walks away in a crane shot that swoops up and locates us in the vast wasteland of the Angelika Film Center.

His pretty pop candy, drenched in brainsplattered pools of fake blood and outrageous performances is so damn dead-on American we can't bare to watch it. The same way some of us can't stand the work of Andy Warhol. We don't want to admit that we are what we are, a population whose surface shines with all that is meant to be inside. We live to be looked at, more now than ever before. And DePalma's films begged to be looked at. They shimmer with visual beauty and stunning cinematography.

The title link will take you to an A.O. Scott primer on this DePalma split we've got going on around here. I can't say anything better than it's said here (though I'm sure you'll notice he never references his own opinion, which I gather is the opposite). Read it and weep.

Lost and Found

Last night I went to Montclair, New Jersey to see this piece of theater - so damn good and I highly recommend it to everyone. Not difficult to get out there at all, especially with the bus. So no excuses. The Bierce story on which it is based is a masterwork of simplicity and Jamesian spookiness, capturing a specific 'America'. The piece (a staged chamber opera) does the story proud, by mirroring its sensibility along with its sense.

My friend Laurie designed the projections (her theater company creates a deeply layered look using scrims, projected images and film).

Now MOVE!

THE DIFFICULTY OF CROSSING A FIELD
Thursday September 14- 8PM
Saturday September 16-7:30PM
Sunday September 17-3PM

Kasser Theater Montclair State Univeristy Montclair NJ

All seats $35
FOR TICKETS & INFORMATION:
http://www.peakperfs.org
OR contact MSU Box Office (212) 655-5112

Complimentary Round trip Bus Service
with ticket purchase from Maritine Hotel
9th Avenue between 16th & 17th Street

Composed By David Lang, Written By Mac Wellman, Directed by Bob McGrath
Set Design: Jim Findlay, Film: Bill Morrison, Projections: Laurie Olinder
Costumes: Ruth Pongstaphone, Lighting: Matt Frey

The top

As all of you who read that email know, I am totally sick and way out of it at this point. See, my headlamp is still switched on. It's 7 a.m. and I've been climbing straight up, begging my guide to lie and tell me it was almost over, for the last 7 hours. I thought for sure I had frostbite on my fingers and my face is covered in tiny splinters of ice from my breath. The darkness of the night had been so monumental that the sunrise became this kind of holy grail. I thought for some reason that it would dispel all chill from my bones, all that was exhaustion and bad. In general, make the world a better and more hospitable place.

And, boy was it beautiful. No one has lied - it is one of THE places to witness a sunrise.

But, it was also not quite the answer to my every prayer. The air remained as cold as before and all I could think of was how desperately I wanted to get down and get off of the mountain.

Onward and Upward

After my day of acclimatization, we travelled out of the moorland and into the alpine desert. This was the day of not just the 1000 meter ascent to the next campsite but the beginning of our summit attempt - which was to commence at midnight. All in all on this fourth/fifth day we climbed 2200 meters. If you look closely, you can make out the switchback trail we used to get to Gilman's Point (the entry onto the crater rim). It is dark grey and barely visible but quite definitely there; scary upon first sight. I think my exact thought was "No fucking way."

While I'm on the subject of film....

Oliver Stone's WORLD TRADE CENTER.

Shameless, shameless, shameless.

Let it be said that I went under duress and already expecting to hate what I saw - however, to be fair, I allowed myself to be talked into the thing, if only to confirm my suspicians. Such sentimental trash. Disheartening to read a review in The Economist which says "the film contents itself with a tribute to the working-class heroism that shone out of the black hole of the event". Our poor working class Nicholas Cage, just as painful to watch as ever, with his Long Island accent fading in and out; his special family moment, doing what working class men do - sawing wood with his son, smiling up at his wife who is contentedly cooking dinner; the heartwrenching worry over another mouth to feed.

All this adds up to is an elitest idea of what it means to be working class. A film that, in a sense, denigrates the individual men and women who responded to the World Trade Center disaster by lumping them into a 'class' and presenting them as one-dimensional stereotypes, in the form of wincing actor who daydreams of jesus and prays.

What else. Besides the absolutely juvenile film-making. An empty subway train to represent the people who were lost. The excruciating attention to providing a viewer with nothing more than the images we all saw on the nightly news, or heard about from New Yorkers. It was almost a primer to the day. Beautiful morning. Check. Shadow of a plane. Check. Papers falling. Got that. Man falling. In the can.

All in all, a film meant to become a classic. Shown to schoolchildren of the future - forever linking the attack on the World Trade Center with a call to American Patriotism and the war on Iraq. (Where is the natural conclusion to the tag about the religious Marine going on to serve two tours of duty in Iraq - namely, 'a nation that had nothing to do with the attack".

I only write this out of frustration with all of these positive reviews that I keep seeing.

Why?

Quick and probably obvious universal lament to follow.

Michael Heneke has finally gone the way countless fairly good European and Japanese filmmakers before him; he's agreed to remake his terrific film FUNNY GAMES in English, with Naomi Watts and Hollywood backing.

Why remake something that exists so perfectly?

Exasperating. Are we so U.S.-centric that we can't watch something with subtitles - all signs point towards yes. As with THE VANISHING, this is sure to disappoint, due to audience testing and a general lack of imagination among the movie going public. If it were to end the same, would it need remaking. In the HAMPTONS no less!

OK, I'll shut up now, eat a fig and bicycle off for some skim milk

through the first view....

With some time having passed, my body generally recovered and all of my more mundane concerns having filtered back into my conciousness - I think back on my week on Kilimanjaro like someone might remember an episode from one's childhood. Save for the physical exertion, the monotony and the exhileration I felt at being truly alone in my own head is my only real souvenir. It is something not easy to recreate. Walking for days on end is an almost mindless activity - it became, for me, a true exercise in endurance of a sort completely different than I had expected. With this in mind, along with my impressions of Ethiopia, I started - last week - to read Rory Stewart's book about his walk across Afghanistan, THE PLACES IN BETWEEN. I highly recommend it.

But, I digress.

The main point of this entry is to give anyone who didn't get that long, long email a quick photo essay on my recent climb. Now, you too can witness how a girl can go from smiles to complete done-in-ed-ness in less that seven days!

These pictures are of the first two days - see, I start out looking all outfitted and collected, shorts and waders. We move to our first night's encampment on the border of the rainforest and moorland - it was very misty, wet and chilly when the sun set. Not, too horrible though - and, exciting as it was the first day. The next day gets even more misty - we ate our dreadful boxed lunch (fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a tiny banana and sugary water) at a small circle of metal tables positioned just about halfway through our day's trek. The last picture is of our arrival at the second group of huts - our first view of the summit, covered and snow and impossibly high and far away.

This is where we stay for our extra acclimitization day....

From Roth to McEwan

More for the summer reading list....
Saturday.

One sitting and wrap yourself up in that almost perfectly pitched prose. Read it on the bus from Langano to Addis; all save last three pages. Damn. Had to be called out on that by Erin who wants me to personally ask redemption from LA book critic who suggested the read all in one place job!

Well...no matter how ya read it, just do. Then go and listen to your Goldberg Variations...now move!

mountains as high as plane windows

Goodbyes and breakfast of porridge; onto a plane and onto a runway.

Hours later, the pilots voice. Look to the left. To the left is the biggest damn mountain I have ever seen. Am I out of my mind?!

Bit of a tremble, than compose myself.

Land and fall in love with the landscape; different, so different than Ethiopia. So much less poverty; I gawk at the stores that seem as if they've seen westerners more than once. My heart races at the wide, wide fields of burnt corn and sunflowers.

I arrive in Moshi. Settle in. Get this great DSL line and write. I leave tomorrow at 8 a.m. with lots of warm clothes; feeling great at this point. So ready for this and excited. I am here in the middle of Africa alone and it feels so fucking great!

a sky so black

An hour on the sand, staring up at the blackest sky. The most star-filled sky I've ever een under, it seems; think of navigators and people on ships. Lack of light from any source other than those far pinpricks and I'm stretched out on the sandy beach of Lake Langano. Not alone, but flanked to left and right by quiet thoughtful lovelies who break the silence every now and then with a sonorous voice. A comment about the universe, Bill Bryson, the ozone being as thick as two layers of paint. Back at my room, I can't bear to go inside and instead stand alone on the edge of the small porch - my handwashed socks and underwear strewn over the railing. My breath thick in the wet air.

These three days, post-work. This small section of this vast country. Wandogent. Awassa. Langano. They mean something to me now and Ethiopia as a concept has disintegrated into a thousand bits. Roads and huts and people. Mountains. Lakes. Each with their own distinctive smells, people, attitudes. A month ago AFRICA seemed a single monolithic place. It all breaks apart - kind of like artistic style, from the precise and pseudo-real to the abstract all too real shadow filled life of it.

So I stand on my balcony and wait. And listen for a click.

Ethiopia

Apologies to anyone who has looked on this lately expecting a post. Due to lack of any kind of internet infrastructure in the Shashemene area, I've been keeping a journal and will publish it on my blog once I am back in the land of DSL.

Right this moment, I am sitting in Awassa - the clouds are heavy and grey overhead. Trees are blowing around in the wind, looks as though a rainstorm is brewing. But weather here is momentary. It comes and goes in a matter of moments, clouds give ways to blue expanses of sun and puffy clouds.

Today was the last day of my Habitat work proper - we've been, for two weeks, building homes (well mostly carting dirt and rocks - I have personally carried over a TON) in the same area of the Shashemene, Ethiopia. We have gotten to know the people, gotten to know the land. So much to tell. Mostly, I want to say that this experience is a great one. I have been happy here, uncomfortable here, triumphant here - felt so many things. A bit homesick sometimes, not for home per se - for familiarity.

I send you all love and promise to write more soon.

The world's first vaguely touristy activity that has ever worked out to anyone's (much less my) satisfaction

It almost defies believability - the notion that a place everyone says is SO beautiful really is SO beautiful. But, the Cinque Terre hike is proof to the contrary. I don't even want to say too much, other than that you can link to the website using my title to this post and if you are in Tuscany, don't miss it. Not one step. And, make sure to dive into the crystal clear, cool water at the end of the road....salty heaven.

New York

It always takes about a week for me to shake it off - to get used to not doing a thousand things in a day, to get used to there not being a thousand things to do in a day. It's like going through caffiene withdrawl (see below); my body gets all jangly and ennervated. I feel disconnected and lonely. Lonely for turning the corner at LiLac and crossing Hudson to get a coffee and a muffin. Lonely for the annoyance I feel when there are slow-walking, dare I say strollers, in Chelsea Market (even for the strange ballroom dance classes that block the western exit). Lonely for K and lonely for J and lonely for the thousand and one dinners, films, plays, concerts and readings that a person can fill an entire calendar with.

But.

The one thing I'm not feeling lonely for is....how do I put this....the feeling of feeling lonely. Introspection. Doesn't happen alot when a person's running from place to place, just doesn't. So, I'm crossing this river from one bank to the other, both seem to be dry land. It's all the rushing current in between that seems tricky to navigate. Yesterday, I saw the other side for the first time and it was full of flowers and slowness and time.

It's good, forcing oneself to do things that seem counterintuitive at the time - they often prove to stretch a person somewhere in the vicinity of the right direction.

"Full many a flower..."

Oh yes.

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

- thomas gray

Walking today, amidst all of the dying cooler air flowers of spring; the blackberry blossom wilting and turning into the hard green burr nettle that will ripen with the sun throughout the summer. Others, too. Glorious. Ruddy pink Azaleas that will last throughout the summer with their sharp, long leaves. Sporadic shoots of Poppy and clumps of Scotchbroom. Yellow Thistle and purple Trumpet Plants, holding strong - low to the ground, shaded by the jagged grasses and blackberry bushes that cling to the steep side of the hill. Listening to songs about flowers and songs with fiddles and songs with slowness to them. Solitary walks in the countryside.

Coffe, Cafe, Espresso and Latte

God, how I love it. And, God how I hate to give it up for a second.

I'm an addict, OK. There I said it. Damn.

Having just arrived in Italy, I'm taking the first step in my temporary back-turning on caffeine. I think it's (supposed to be) bad for altitude adjustment - which seems strange as it grows at altitude. Hey, someone tell Ms. Levin that! This anti-caffeine platform was promulgated by an art critic, to whom I had the misfortune to sit with, at a dinner in Vegas. (double damn Vegas now). By the sorbet she had me swearing to quit by the time my foot hit the lovely coffee-crop dependent country to which I am travelling.

Right now, I am having a coffee.

But, it's only one cup. One cup a day until, well until I see fit to take the next step. Methodone.

xo to you all - I miss you each and every one, already. More on that later.

Arthur Murray

Rhymes with 'flurry'...used to great effect in a Vic Chesnutt song.

Accurate description of life this past week. I've recovered from the 'most fake boobs ever' capital of the country and now have to get used to leaving the 'so many great things about it you don't want to leave ever' capital of the country. Mixed feelings about heading off...at least I get to go and see MacBeth before I go. Not Polanski, sadly. Schrieber.

Speaking of Polanski, I want to go on record with my wholehearted support.

So, there!