Weblog 284

July 24, 2011~ 12:00 am
Intense heat for days at a time feels like a prison. It has walls. There is a sentence. You have nothing to say about the length of your stay.....



you're LOCKED IN. Your personality changes into something darker. You seethe.

This has been a heat run of over a week now where it doesn't cool at night, so the houses remain ovens, getting hotter and hotter. I've taken to going up to bed earlier and earlier to be in the air-conditioning, but my little window unit is laboring mightily to offset the ooze of humid July, and my room doesn't seem nearly as cool as I'm used to. No matter what is happening or the occasion, I'm a bit pissed off underneath. (Looking through old photos online, I came across this one that stopped me. Made me study it.



Can you feel any tug of something not quite right?) That reminds me of me in this weather: all dressed up at times, but hand clenched, posture stiff, expression tightly blank. I think it's a vintage wedding photo, but it's not a bride and groom.

I believe this is an unhappily paired couple in the wedding party, not too pleased to be thrust together. Look at their poses in relation to one another. The gal is facing front for the picture as though she's saying, "Ok. We have to do this, so here's the pose. Snap!" LOL!! And the guy is three-quarters turned away from her. He looks like a 'dandy'. Probably thinking, "The gal is a looker, but man, what a pill!" (Being irritable myself allows me to recognized it easily in others....even in old photos.)

Due to the oppressive heat, Wayne decided to forego the movie for Saturday evening, but it's the second time I'd taken it out from the library, so I decided to watch it alone. (I've just discovered the joys of the local library again.... even DVD's, loaned for a week at a time!) I saw LOTS of titles I need to check out, but I'm particularly pleased with what I watched on Saturday, albeit solo. It was



The Reader, starring Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet. Marvelous film! Kate won a well-deserved Oscar for that one. She's one of those actresses who acts primarily with her face. It's a musical instrument, I swear. "The Reader" is a film that examines initial sexual awakenings and first love, the weight of secrets-- and the frightening power of truth. It's a story about not being able to forgive, others or self. Fiennes very capably played his part (and goodness, he's a fine looking man!)



but he was blown right off the screen by the young male actor who plays Fiennes as a fifteen year old boy. David Kross is an actor I've never seen before, but his portrayal was so wounded and real, he stole my heart. Amazing performance.

Just like Garbo, just like Ingrid Bergman, the cameras LOVES Kate Winslet.



She glows. There's a luminosity about her pale skin and liquid eyes. She seems to have swallowed light.

Since the story begins in post-war Germany in the 50's, the viewer is drawn back into the war years, the Holocaust and those who participated in the SS in the Jewish camps. The wonder of this film is that the conclusions are not neat. The emotional complexity of human entanglements are never easily unraveled, nor are answers obvious. Guilt and forgiveness have as many shades as the changing sky, and those who watch this movie will find themselves conflicted..... trying to place themselves inside the principal players, and it's only then you see that nothing is without painful dichotomy, everything has a price-- that mostly we decide things on what we're willing to pay.

In other words, in this story, the white knight has a few dark spots-- and the villain has more humanity than we may be comfortable in admitting we see. It's a film that's remained with me after I placed it back in its container. I think my own responses to it will preoccupy me for a long time. Nothing is simple. Least of all...... love. When I picture myself in the storyline, in the actors' shoes, I really can't say for certain what I would have done, yet part of me cries out for a simple black and white response. It hasn't come. It's a fine film.




July 25, 2011~ 5:30 pm
I'm saying 'UNCLE!' right now, and packing it in for the day. Headed upstairs to re-enter John Irving's 'Until I Find You', which is a strange combination of humor, the human circus.... a precocious young boy and (yep. no other way to say it)... extreme childhood sexual molestation. (Don't ask.) It's one of his stranger novels. Almost 900 pages, with 'Garp-ian' characters and lunatics aplenty.

The heat has won and I give up. I'm sayin' 'UNCLE!' and retreating upstairs. My brain has been rendered down and is now a sodden lump of gelatin due to TORRID temperatures that even today's rain but chased a mere inch. For those of you in like circumstances, broiling in your own skin, brainless...... how's 'bout we amuse ourselves with this



(Honestly, it's all I'm fit for a this point.) Remembering my way home was a stretch. (And just about everything has begun to make me cry.) LOL!!




July 27, 2011~ 12:00 am
19 F*cking Innings?? Yep. The Pittsburgh Pirates 'lost' the game in the last inning. And why? (I'll let this snippet of an article from newswriter, Paul Zeise, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tell the story.)

"ATLANTA -- The Braves and Pirates produced a classic as the two teams battled into the 19th inning Tuesday night (and Wednesday morning) before a crowd of 22,036 at Turner Field.

But in the end, few people will likely remember all of the great defensive plays and clutch pitches both teams made because of the controversial way it ended and the fact that, by most accounts -- and backed by video evidence -- home plate umpire Jerry Meals blew the most important call he had to make.

"The game deserved better," said Pirates manager Clint Hurdle shortly after the Pirates, 4-3, 19-inning loss to the Braves. "You'd like to see the game finished by the players, win or lose, and for it to end that way, is as disappointing as it gets in a game. You had every player in the game and for it to end that way ... the game deserves better than that. The game tonight deserved way better than that."

Can you believe that?? Makes me want to cry, it's so low. (I can't help but think of Roberto Clemente looking down, shaking his head.)



*(By the way, that jewel of the Pirates- both as a man and a player from 2 World Series wins in 1960 and 1971 -the man who died in a plane crash on a mercy mission he'd organized for the victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua in 1972......that call? Would have broken his heart.)

P.S.- A bit of trivia: that glorious but gone right fielder is remembered in the our PNC ballpark....the right field wall is precisely 21 feet high in honor of his uniform number and playing position.) That loss last night knocked us out of first position down to third in the league. It's a cryin' shame.





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