My sister, singing along to Akon while driving my nephew home from school:
That girl is so dangerous. That girl is so dangerous. That girl is a bad girl. I’ve seen her type before.
My nephew, inquiring with surprising innocence:
I don’t get it, Mom. What could be so dangerous about the way she types?
A rough week at work led to a short break for daydreaming toward the end of my shift tonight. Recently, daydreams tend toward thoughts about my mom, who died last month. Tonight’s catalyst was “Manuela,” the name of the woman on the other end of the phone.
Enter (brain right) another “Manuela,” this one played by Cecilia Roth in Almodovar’s Todo Sobre Mi Madre. Toward the end of the film Manuela comes face-to-face with Lola, the baby daddy (now baby mami — it’s Almodovar, after all) of their son, who dies near the beginning of the film, so I can skip the spoiler alert.
Lola’s past actions and Manuela’s pain have led us to expect a confrontation marked by anger, rage, and hatred. Instead, there is calm, peace, and acceptance, although not reconciliation, since there is nothing to reconcile.
Anger is an abandoned possibility. Manuela would not choose to hate, and she understands that a person must decide to be angry. Anger, she has learned, does nothing for those you love, including (especially?) your own damn self.
Back to the then present moment, I opened up a web-browser to check my Facebook newsfeed. Cabby Dave had written a thoughtful post, “A Dishonorable Man,” about an easy target for the Madison Left, Dick Cheney. Scanning the post’s comments, I jumped to the words of Rebecca, my friend, life coach, and coworker:
Wishing an asshole like Cheney dead does, in fact, commit spiritual violence, which is why it’s a self defeating wish that plunges the wisher into his world. Not a world I want to be part of.
Whereas pain can be inflicted, anger is an emotional state we enter by choice, usually but not always a bad one. My job is filled with moments where understanding this can make the difference between comfort and exasperation.
My own mother, however, would have freely admitted she did not teach me this lesson. She would sometimes revel in her anger, refining it to a point whereupon she was clearly having fun, such as that time when out of nowhere and with great pride she announced during her last Thanksgiving dinner that she hoped Rick Santorum would someday “get caught fucking his cat.” (I think he preferred talking about “man on dog,” but whatever.) My mother was more like Manuela’s friend Agrado, who ruffled her costumes until they were real. She had fun faking it til she was making it, having learned to love it by the time she succeeded.
My 10-year-old nephew reports that my 66-year-old dad has announced plans to patent the video game “Tuba Hero.”
According to my nephew, what’s truly funny about this pronouncement is that he can’t tell if his grandpa is joking.
In other tangentially guitar-hero related news, my 7-year-old niece is working on a re-write of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” The little I’ve heard so far sounds promising: “He’s smelling us all with the nose …… of the Tiger!”
While watching the Superbowl, my friend Rebecca and I discovered that what went came out of the TV speakers as
went into our ears as
Jokes about New Jersey (“What Exit?”), like jokes about Wisconsin (“Cheese & Beer & Snow“), are easy to come by.
I’ve spent my first two and past 12 years in Wisconsin, but my mother was raised in New Jersey, and I still return (not as often as I’d like) to visit my cousins and friends who live there. I’ve enjoyed a few summer weeks on the Jersey Shore, as well as on Wisconsin’s middle-coast cheddarized version thereof. Perhaps that’s why I want to point out one or two more deep connections between what appear on the surface to be culturally distant states. Or a third:
This week, the entire country had a chance to learn “The lessons of Jersey Shore“ (courtesy of Fourfour’s precision brand of hilaro-snark).
Next week, I hope New Jersey will teach us in Wisconsin one more lesson. New Jersey Peeps: Contact your legislators today!
There’s no harm in making fun of either state. But this time I hope New Jersey gets the last laugh.
Update (12/7/8) : via Joe. My. God. “Victory In New Jersey! Marriage Vote In Full Senate Slated For Thursday”
I was angry when Ralston-Purina, focusing their energies on the chocolate chip flavor, stopped production of vanilla Cookie Crisp. I was nine years old. I wrote them a letter.
And so began my political activism, and relative indifference toward chocolate.
There’s nothing quite like a car running over your foot to make the rest of your body feel lucky.
I’m beginning to suspect these two songs have something in common, other than that they both hold up well.
This got me thinking of two things I learned from Allen Ginsberg, whom I briefly met 15 years ago after he read and sang to a large group at my alma mater:
(1) William Blake’s poems are meant to be sung. Ginsberg performed some of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience” with a slightly slobbery awkwardly energy I would never forget. (I had yet to hear these.)
Bunnyblinks Pics |
| From Roll 8 |
Tangents for the Chasing
