Kale and Zen

It's a football Saturday in Lexington, and that means coming up with a plan. Not only do you have to figure out how to outwit gridlock on the streets, you have to decide how sociable you want to be if you're on foot. Cars and people stream in from everywhere to converge on Commonwealth Stadium; if you don't meet humanity on the road, you meet them on the sidewalk . . . lots of them. Late this afternoon, I was still trying to decide how to find some fresh air without getting caught up in crowds and finally let my stomach make the call. If I went ahead and fixed dinner, I could go for a walk afterwards and get back before dark.

I spent an hour or so chopping and rinsing and putting things into the Dutch oven while sounds of cars and people increased to a mild roar outside. After eating two bowls of Italian soup with tomatoes and kale, I decided a walk in the Arboretum would likely involve fewer crowds on a football evening than it would otherwise, so I put on my shoes and started out.

I walked outside into the quintessential fall evening in Lexington, with football fans everywhere on my block, a bustle on the streets, golden sunshine, and a pleasant coolness in the air. Though I sometimes don't enjoy crowds, the feeling of festivity was very congenial after a quiet day spent mostly inside. There were cars inching along, white tents with knots of people under them, smells of barbecue, radios broadcasting sports chatter, and faces bright with anticipation of the game. The atmosphere was merry but not rowdy.

I passed fans heading toward the bleachers, security officers directing traffic, and RVs jamming the parking lots opposite the stadium. Once I got into the Arboretum itself, a mellow air of quiet reigned. Most of the people I saw were passing through the park on their way to the main event. It was lovely to be able to set my own pace and not have to contend with a crowded path. I noticed lots of squirrels rustling in the leaves for acorns, seemingly at leisure in the absence of the large numbers of fast-moving exercisers more typical of a mild evening.

The sun was going down in tangerine splendor, I could hear myself think, and the air felt newly washed after yesterday's rain. Near the footbridge, I passed a black cat under the trees, intent on some business of his own, though he paused to take a look at me. After the path bent toward the north, I had a view of the campus water tower up ahead, bathed in apricot light from the sun, and further off, the stadium, its powerful overhead lights contrasting sharply with a dark mass of clouds building up behind it. It looked suitably dramatic as a place of contest, and I could hear the noises of the crowd. When I got to the part of the path that parallels the road, I saw that traffic was still heavy around the stadium, and I was glad to be on my own feet.

I don't know what it was--a burst of energy from the crisp air, the feeling of revelry nearby, the waxing moon overhead, the placid beauty of the park (or maybe it was the kale--it has a lot of healthy properties, I hear)--but as I entered the final Arboretum loop, I experienced a rare thing: without meaning to, I stumbled into the Zen of walking. There seemed to be no resistance to my forward movement; my legs felt strong and my feet invincible. Even the feeling of my feet coming into steady contact with the path was a pleasure. My stride became so effortless that I almost felt the need to put the brakes on to keep from floating off. (I know what you're thinking: If it's the kale that does that, I'm getting some.)

The feeling held, then passed, and then I was making my way across the grass toward the sidewalk skirting the parking lot, encountering stadium-bound stragglers and the same slow line of cars trying to go who knows where and not getting there very fast. The game was underway, things had calmed down on my street, and I could see the lights of home ahead. I was moving at a more mundane pace now, having crossed the invisible line back into ordinary, purposeful walking, and was thinking of dishes and other things I needed to do.

I'll tell you what, though. After I got home and put the dishes in the sink, I sat down with some good, old-fashioned Hershey's dark (with almonds and toffee for extra zest) and tried to eat it slowly. Maybe, somewhere in my mind, I was hoping to build on the essential vitamins and minerals I'd already derived from the kale, but mainly, I just wanted dessert. It was one of the things I was thinking of as I walked down my street.

The New Romance (But I Liked the Old One)

By happenstance, a couple of movies have come my way recently that ended up surprising me. One of them was the 2007 version of A Room With a View (from E.M. Forster's novel), and the other was last year's Before Midnight, the third in a series of romances starring Ethan Hawke and Julia Delpy. Both movies play with and in some ways topple expectations set either by prior versions of the same story (A Room With a View) or previous films in the series (Before Midnight).

A Room With a View is set in the Edwardian age and concerns a respectable but inwardly adventurous young woman named Lucy on holiday with her chaperone in Italy. While there, she meets and is attracted to a young man who is not only of a different social standing but whose father is a socialist. Lucy gets engaged to another man, Cecil, who is outwardly suitable but emotionally incompatible with her. The first young man, George, shows up in Lucy's village back home, and she is faced with the problem of deciding whether to honor her attraction to a young man who loves her or take the conventional route of marrying the respectable but insufferable Cecil.

The theme of the story is authenticity, or the lack thereof, as it relates to passion and love. In Lucy's world, passion is a disreputable thing, especially if paired with unconventionality. Many of the people around her feel that appearances are more important than truth, and Lucy partly believes this herself; the main reason for her engagement seems to be a wish to protect herself from a strong vein of emotion that she recognizes, fears, and is encouraged to discount. Her decision to break her engagement and trust her feelings for George is a tremendous act of rebellion.

The 2007 TV movie goes further than the lovely 1986 Merchant-Ivory film by including a coda dimly inspired, apparently, by Forster himself but not included in the version of the novel I read. Instead of ending with the newlyweds in Florence, the TV movie concludes with Lucy alone in Italy, George having died in World War I. The revelation of George's death comes as a shock, and the reason for the film's introduction, in which actress Gillian Anderson rather chillingly invites viewers to decide for themselves whether letting Italy "change your life" is a good thing or a bad thing, is finally clear if no less strange. Are we supposed to think Lucy would have been better off if she'd never met George?

I take it that the more modern version of the story is attempting to tamp down the romance with a dose of reality: this is what happens once they live "happily ever after." It's true that George, in real life, would have been likely to meet such a fate, and in a way I admired the gumption of this production. On further reflection, though, it began to seem as if tacking a second story with a different emotional vibe onto the first one had more to do with shock value than realism. The beginning and end of the story don't seem to match; however, I can see that someone coming to this film knowing nothing of its antecedents might not see a disconnect. It might become, for that person, a different story, a darker one about the uncertainty of life, not an ode to being true to yourself. In the 21st century, we're supposed to be over those old hang-ups, so perhaps this film wanted to be about something else.

Before Midnight induces a similar cognitive dissonance in its look at two lovers who met on a train in their youth, reunited nine years later, and nine years further on are the parents of twins, weighted down with worries over kids and careers but apparently still happy. The first two films in the series were wistful, cheery, and romantic. There are a few signs in the third movie of darker undercurrents in the relationship, but overall the film maintains a gentle, humorous approach to its protagonists until a final, protracted fight scene in which resentments boil over into ugly words, venom, and incompatible viewpoints.

Holy mackerel! Personally, I've never had a fight like this one, but I'm sure many long-time couples would say it's realistic. Evidently, a decision was made with this film to brings things out of soft focus and into the nitty gritty, but the difference in tone between this and the first two films is a bit shocking. I'm surprised the script didn't find a way to explore the tensions inevitable in a long-term relationship with a bit more humor in keeping with the élan of the earlier films. Even fighting can be funny, but here the two people actually become unlikeable, and one is left not really caring if they stay together or not. It's not the movie you think you're going to see.

So, is romance dead in the edgy new light of the 21st century? Are we supposed to believe now not that it's everlasting but that it never lasts? Of course, it depends on the people and the circumstances, but I would take a less harsh view than either of these two films. Is it "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"? I think most people would still say "yes." I don't know that I'd ever say "happily ever after," but I would say "it's up to you." Isn't romance simply an opening?

Seventh Heaven

The other night I watched, or rather re-watched, Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders' rumination on angels and humans. I first saw this movie, if I remember correctly, in 1992, and though I've thought about it many times since then, I hadn't seen it again until Wednesday night.

In the film, angels exist unseen (except by the very young and perhaps a few others), brooding, watching over, and sometimes helping people without their awareness. The setting is 1980s Berlin, which looks rather austere and lonely from an angel's-eye view (and from a human view as well). Parents, children, subway passengers, library patrons, circus performers, clubgoers, passersby on the street . . . all seem caught up in isolated worlds, although the angels can hear their thoughts and sometimes intervene in their lives in small, delicate ways.

How much less lonely would all those Berliners be if they knew where that encouraging thought, in the moment of deepest despair, really came from, or with how much sympathy their private sorrows were known, or the degree of anguish with which angels view human suffering. And how surprised would they be if they knew with what longing angels sometimes view their troubled, painful, complicated, but glorious mortal lives full of color, sensation, tastes, smells, and three-dimensional embodiment. Yes, as it turns out, eternal life can be tiresome; omniscience and invisibility are not all you might expect. Sometimes all you really want is a hot cup of coffee, the feel of the sidewalk under your feet, and a good hamburger.

One of the angels, Damiel, falls in love with a trapeze artist, Marion, whose costume includes an awkward pair of wings that make it difficult for her to perform. In one scene, Damiel paces below, invisibly and nervously, as Marion does her act, dazzling and graceful but all too fragile with her imaginary wings. After observing her loneliness for some time, Damiel tells another angel, Cassiel, that he's decided to give up eternal life and become human. It turns out this is an option for angels that's taken more frequently than people realize.

Damiel gets his wish and wakes up one day on the ground to the rude sensation of his breastplate thunking him on the head. He wanders about with a bleeding scalp, drunk with the rapture of having a living, breathing body. It is now apparent that, without his omniscience and ability to fly and walk through walls, he will have to search for Marion, and it takes an effort to find her. They meet at last in the bar of a club where Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are performing, and the connection is instantaneous. At the movie's end, Damiel spots Marion, his true love, as she practices, anchoring the rope watchfully while she dances above him. Who's the angel now? It's obvious that in Damiel's eyes, it's Marion, a struggling trapeze performer with a traveling circus that can't pay its bills.

Imagine, angels giving up eternity to slum for a few years on this old earth--and being grateful for the privilege! Not on the Riviera either, or in Beverly Hills, Miami Beach, or The Hamptons. In Berlin, a city of broken buildings and urban desolation still suffering from the wounds of its past. You'd think there must be something truly wonderful in the world to make an angel, who's above all the earthly cares that weigh the human race down, fall to ground and throw in his lot with the rest of us. But what could it be? Are we missing something?

Colors and Memories

We're making the transition around here into fall, and it was really evident today. Yesterday when I walked to the library, a heavy rainfall had made the field behind the sports center as fresh and green as May; the major tell-tale signs of September were a few scattered brown leaves on the sidewalk. But somehow, overnight, the oak tree on my street has let loose a load of acorns, the air is cool and damp, and the sky has turned gray.

When the harvest moon rose a few days ago, it almost seemed too soon for it. We've been having summery weather, including thunderstorms, and the trees and lawns still had the look of July, if not June. The night before it was full, the moon had an evanescent spring appearance, rising pale and ghostly above the rooftops in a sky still full of daylight. Cicadas were shrilling, and the air was muggy. Now, just a few days later, the grocery store has a huge pumpkin display, leaves are falling in greater numbers, and the summer heat is nowhere to be found.

Well, fair enough. The summer days seemed to just melt away, so that it's hard to believe the entire season has come and gone, but fall is often brilliant around here, and change, as they say, is life. Sometimes a dry summer causes drab fall colors, but with all the rain we've had this summer, we may really have something to look forward to as the leaves begin to turn.

I still clearly remember our first fall in Kentucky, after we moved back here from Florida, many years ago. Days of an unbelievably gray, wet dreariness, in stark contrast to the hot, bright light of Florida, alternated with glowing days in which dazzling orange and yellow leaves stood out so sharply against the cloudless blue that it almost hurt your eyes. That's autumn in Kentucky, which can veer from crisp and energetic to funereal and back again many times over.

When I was out walking earlier, acorns crunching underfoot, I had a sudden memory of myself as a first-grader in Florida, coloring in leaves and acorns with those big, fat Crayolas they make for young children, helping to decorate the classroom for fall. I can still see those autumnal browns and oranges, which were largely conceptual for me, since colors didn't change much with the seasons where we lived, practically in the Everglades. We imagined fall (and winter). How nice it would be to be able to see this fall's colors with imaginative beginner's eyes all over again.

Sounding Brass School of Oratory

A news item on CNN caught my eye the other day: in it, President Obama said he blamed the media for stirring up fears and making things seem worse than they are in our country. Here's a link to the story:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/01/politics/president-obama-media/

After I posted the link to the article, along with my reaction to it, on my Facebook page, I noticed it was not showing up in my news feed. I had to post it a second time before it appeared, and that little difficulty got me to thinking about the importance I attach to freedom of speech.

I'll repeat what I said on Facebook: yes, one must be judicious in evaluating news sources. You definitely can't believe everything you hear, and no librarian would ever say otherwise. However, it's the media's job to report the facts, even when they're unpleasant, not to be a public relations outlet for the status quo. I appreciate the complexities we're all facing but would respect the president more for acknowledging the country's mood instead of blaming the messenger. That's a diversionary tactic that, to my mind, insults the public's intelligence. My sense is that people are responding appropriately to sobering realities while trying to figure out the best way forward.

It's true: we're facing a difficult set of circumstances. But blaming the messenger is a species of logical fallacy, which I'm sure the president knows as well as I do.

I agree with him that America is a great nation, insofar as its founding principles and its people go, imperfections notwithstanding. The difficulty I see, as I discussed in a previous post about our current guiding myth (see "Shall We Gather at the River?"), is that power has shifted away from the people and into the hands of monied interests. This has happened gradually, and many factors have contributed, but the end result is that the story most Americans believe in--the one about freedom and opportunity--is not the story we're being governed by. There are now conflicting stories, and one of them is called "It's About the Money."

It's sad to say it, but there have been times in recent memory when "patriotism" seemed synonymous with "jingoism." If you considered yourself a patriot but didn't go along with the "Might Makes Right" style of things, you felt uncomfortable. If you called yourself a patriot, would people assume you supported every clause of the Patriot Act, even the ones that infringed on your rights? If you displayed a flag, would people assume you were a hawk? If you believed that the duty of a patriot is to question things, would people call you un-American? These were real questions.

For better or for worse, it now seems fashionable for Democrats as well as Republicans to openly drape themselves in the flag. The trouble I have with it, as regards politicians, is that it often comes across as self-serving, as if they're trying their darnedest to bask in Lady Liberty's reflected glow while having circumvented--in numerous, cynical ways--all that she stands for. Gilded phrases about America have a hollow sound falling from the lips of people who wouldn't know "making ends meet" from a golf outing but know exactly where Wall Street is.

There's a verse from Corinthians that comes to mind: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal." As we know, it's always a good idea to judge more by what people do than by what they say, but since they will talk, I've made it a practice to watch their body language and to notice how I feel when they speak. This can be quite revealing sometimes.

Nemesis

This week I've been on a Miss Marple jag. I've been watching videos from a TV series starring Joan Hickson, who seems about as perfect as anyone could be as Miss Marple. The character is a cross between a fairy godmother, a cool-headed logician, a busybody, and an avenging angel. In the first episode I saw, in which the elderly crime-solver was vacationing in the Caribbean, she spent a lot of time just sitting quietly and watching the other guests. It was hard to tell from her subdued demeanor how astute she'd be once she sprang into action, but when she did, she was a true force of nature.

With her knitting, old-fashioned clothes, and keenly observant eye, Miss Marple walks a line somewhere between maternal and formidable. She's easily underestimated by strangers because she seems like a harmless old woman, but her tongue can be as sharp as her eye. While entertaining a local police detective, who resents her tendency to solve cases under his nose (and doesn't mind saying so, loudly), she is both assiduously proper and slyly satirical, telling him that the wine she's serving is a bit bold but no doubt suits his character.

In one of my favorite episodes, a young, newly married woman has settled into a new house with her handsome and loving husband only to be plagued by a sense of déjà vu and foreboding. Fearing that she is going mad, she confides in Miss Marple, who calmly points out the possibility, overlooked by everyone else, that the simplest explanation is that she has in fact lived in the house before--which turns out to be the case. 

Later in the same episode, Miss Marple dispatches a would-be attacker by blasting him in the face with hot water--hardly the reception he expected--and turns to comfort the young wife without missing a beat. She is both Demeter and Nemesis. The latter appellation, "Nemesis," is actually the title of another episode, in which a deceased acquaintance charges Miss Marple--from the grave--with solving a murder case involving his n'er-do-well son. Of course, she does it, while at the same time looking after her own newly separated nephew and figuring who's who and what's what on a motor coach tour of the English countryside.

Despite her quaint ways and kindliness, Miss Marple is a consummate philosopher, serving up some surprisingly pointed observations for such a conventional, god-fearing aunt and godmother. When a character is shocked at the full revelation of a character's wickedness, Miss Marple responds, "That's because you believed what he told you. It's very dangerous to believe people. I haven't in years." While staying in a posh hotel that hasn't changed since she was a child (and is actually a cover for a diabolically clever operation involving doppelgangers and stolen cash), Miss Marple observes that what had at first seemed comforting now seems simply wrong, because even when some changes aren't to our liking, "life is about always moving forward."

Of course, Miss Marple has her faults, like anyone else. While hardly a snob, she doesn't seem overly fond of Americans and is not above a put-down where they're concerned. When a friend tells her over tea of an American repast in which a tea cake with raisins was passed off as a muffin but wasn't one a'tall (in the British sense), Miss Marple tsk-tsks and replies, "The Americans have a lot to answer for." Ouch! Touché, Aunt Jane! But that's a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it? No doubt you're right, but after all, the murders have all been committed by seemingly proper members of English society. (If pressed, I'm sure Miss Marple would agree to the justice of that observation, while perhaps pointing out that had she been in America, she would no doubt find murderers there, too.)

Of course, I'd love to have my own Aunt Jane, despite her faults. How comforting to have her wisdom and steadiness and inability to let go until the case is solved. Despite the blood-chilling frequency with which she encounters evil deeds, things always seem to come right in the end, and people are always getting ready just before the credits roll to be married, have a baby, plant a garden, or in some other fashion live happily ever after. Except for her tendency to attract crime, she'd be jolly to have around. Who couldn't use a fairy godmother?

After the Storm

Yesterday we had a thunderstorm that, despite its brevity, managed to wreak a maximum amount of havoc in a minimum amount of time. It seemed to happen in the space of only 15 minutes. I was in the coffeehouse when it hit and would nearly have missed it if I hadn't glanced up from my book and seen how extremely Stygian the view had gotten through the front window. It wasn't even 5:30, but it looked like night was falling. It had all happened in a hurry.

Since I was planning to go to a movie, I left the coffeehouse to go home for dinner. The rain had passed over, but I heard thunder off to the east. I moseyed through quiet residential streets, not realizing the storm had done any damage until I got to a stoplight, half a mile from home, which was not working. When I turned left, I found myself stuck in a line of molasses-slow stop-and-go traffic. When I got clear of that, the next stoplight I came to was also on the blink.

When I walked into my building, there were no lights in the hallway, and an alarm was sounding insistently. In my apartment, there was no electricity at all, though I did have phone service. I called to let someone know about the alarm, discovering from our apartment manager that he had no power either. I went back out into the hall, crazily lit by a white emergency light on the exit sign but otherwise dusky, to locate the source of the alarm, which turned out to be a wall panel next to the stairs. The building seemed unfamiliar, transformed into a slantwise, alternative version of itself by the shrilling alarm and altered lighting.

I thought to myself that it was a good thing I was planning to eat leftovers anyway; my pasta salad was still chilled inside the non-functioning refrigerator. In the back of my mind while I ate was a lingering memory of the great power outage of February 2003, which lasted on my street for almost a week and for much longer in other places. I knew this outage would likely be resolved within a few hours but thought it best not to count on the lights being on when I came back home. I was doubly glad I had plans because watching a Jimmy Stewart movie in the familiar environs of the Kentucky Theatre seemed much more appealing than trying to read a book by battery-operated candles with an alarm shrieking in the background.

I took my pink piggy LED flashlight, my umbrella, and my foldable rain cape with me when I left, feeling somewhat like a Girl Scout assailing the wilderness. There were no functioning traffic lights as far as I could tell. Things were moving surprisingly well, if slowly, though I don't think I'd have wanted to be a pedestrian trying to cross the street. I encountered an officer directing traffic at the biggest intersection, but otherwise, it was inch forward, keep your eye on the cars approaching from various directions, inch forward some more, and wait for your chance to go. The slightly chaotic air gave the scene an upside-down quality that might have been more carnival-like if it hadn't also been nerve-wracking.

It wasn't until I reached High Street downtown that I finally found a working stoplight, and then it was as if I had crossed the border from a topsy-turvy country teetering toward lawlessness back into the familiar world of everyday, just by passing through an intersection. The trip had seemed longer than it was, and I was sure I was late, but by the time I found a parking spot, I realized I was right on schedule. It was as if time had slowed down in the place with the power outage, but the clock came right again as soon as I passed out of it.

The crowd was a bit smaller than usual for a summer classics movie, so the rain had no doubt kept some people home, but everything else was as usual in the theatre as we waited for the movie to start. The organ played, the crowd sang "My Old Kentucky Home," the smell of popcorn hung in the air, the movie was introduced, and the lights went down. Up on the screen, Jimmy Stewart's smiling face appeared, and we settled in for an evening of Harvey, which in itself is a comic meditation on the intersection of different worlds--one everyday, and one uncanny. It was rather appropriate, under the circumstances.

My trip home from the movie was uneventful. By the time I got back, the stoplights were working, the power was on, the alarm had been silenced, and we were back to business as usual. It was, I guess, a little reminder of how we are all, always, at the mercy of nature, no matter how secure the trappings of civilized life seem. None of us are bigger than the most fleeting of summer storms. I guess it's good to be reminded of that from time to time.