Election Day Blues

Election Day was not a holiday for me, and I find myself here at the end of it a little tired and without a topic. Some people in the store today were talking politics, and while I at first gave my opinion freely, I later decided to stay out of it. I respect people having different opinions from mine and was actually rather envious of people who came into the store with “I Voted” stickers. It’s been a while since I felt sure enough of anything politically to be convinced I knew what I was doing when I went to the polls. The more I read and thought about things deeply, the more confused I got. Once I realized that figuring out people’s positions on the issues really wasn’t enough, and that people whose ideas were much like mine weren’t necessarily the best people to vote for for other reasons, I was both sadder and wiser but more clueless than ever.

I think I would have a difficult time teaching information literacy these days when it comes to politics. Perhaps it’s asking too much to expect people to read the politicians’s souls and see into their minds, and simply making a choice and voting for someone is the best you can do, but I feel I was a little too blithely unaware in the past when I developed enthusiasms for people, and “Once bitten, twice shy.” I felt that way about Bernie Sanders during the last election—I really liked a lot of his ideas and the things he stood for, but something would not let me be wholeheartedly enthusiastic. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and this was despite the fact that I saw he was being treated unfairly by the media, especially early on. Any time Bernie Sanders is made out to be clueless on race relations, something he has been passionate about all his life, you know there’s a tremendous amount of spin going on. But I kept thinking, “What don’t I know about him? And not just about him, but all of them?”

One of these days, I’ll get back into full participation mode in our democracy, and I look forward to that happening. It’s not out of apathy that I have been hanging back, but rather out of literal fear that endorsing the wrong person would bring about tragic, irreversible consequences, and this is despite the fact that I know there are good people in both parties. It’s been a long time since I was that teenage girl whose dad drove her to the polls to vote in her first primary, so elated later on that fall to have voted for the winning candidate.

Seemingly Abandoned Places in the Mind

I’ve searched high and low for something else to blog about this week and couldn’t find anything other than what’s really arrested my attention, a video (now almost a year old) that came across my radar only recently. I’m speaking of Hozier’s “Movement” video, starring Ukrainian ballet dancer Sergei Polunin, directed by Christopher Barrett and Luke Taylor. Occasionally, I get interested in something to the point that I end up studying it closely; this week, I’ve almost felt I was in film school, so many times have I pored over this short film, scene by scene.

I first heard the song, an ardent expression of sexual love, at Starbucks, and liked the music and Hozier’s passionate performance without really hearing all of the lyrics. When I found the video online, my initial reaction was, “This is an unforgettable performance, and some of the scenes really resonate with me in a strange way, though I don’t know why.” (The film itself is sensual but not explicit.) Mr. Polunin is the only actor in the film, appearing as three (no, make that four) different characters. 

The ballet sequences are extraordinary for their sheer physicality and expressiveness, and Mr. Polunin also has a remarkable ability to convey emotion even when he isn’t dancing. I’ve never seen a more mesmerizing performance by a male dancer. If you think of male ballet dance performance as sissified, this video will knock that idea entirely out of your head forever. While I recognize some classical technique in the video, there seems to be a mix of styles in the performance. (Bouncing off the walls, literally, isn’t something I’ve often seen in ballet.)

At the beginning, Mr. Polunin’s character, dressed in street clothes, appears to be having an internal debate of some kind and seems both troubled and weary. He gets out of the van he’s sitting in and walks up the steps to an abandoned industrial building. As he pauses on the threshold, another Mr. Polunin (seemingly out of nowhere) emerges from the van behind him, from the opposite door. The second character, in torn clothes and showing signs of some barely suppressed but strong emotion, follows the first character into the building. What follows is a series of solos, duets, and group performances as the characters dance their way through the building from the ground floor to the roof.

The first character appears most interested in dancing solo and at times seems unaware of the presence of any other characters. I related to the first character as someone absorbed in creating or expressing himself without reference to what anyone else is doing. His relationship to the second character is difficult to gauge; at times they dance in tandem, but the overall impression one gets is that the first character is continually moving away from the second one, while at the same time dealing with some strong, unresolved emotion concerning his presence. The second character is almost hungrily appreciative of the first character while also seeming angry; the first character continually runs away while seeming at times to be waiting for the second character to appear.

But then who is the strange, almost ethereal figure in white who appears in the second half of the video, seemingly anticipating the arrival of Character 1 while erecting a barrier between them? Why are there two Character 1s in the same scene, one dancing, and one sitting almost unnoticed against a pillar in the foreground? Why is Character 2 continually stumbling, recovering, and hitting the wall? Why does Character 1 suddenly seem fearful while fleeing to the roof in the final sequence, with Character 2 in hot pursuit? And if he is fearful, why does he, at the last, stand with his back to the other character, seemingly unconcerned as the latter approaches him at high speed with his hand outstretched?

You know enough by now to realize that I cannot answer these questions definitively and that there is likely a lot of layering going on. I think I saw myself in all of the characters at one time or another and possibly you would, too. My general feeling is that Character 2 feels a passion for Character 1 that is being both encouraged and rebuffed, which explains 2’s somewhat haggard appearance. He appears at one point in a doorway, not quite patient but certainly in command of himself and expectant, only to have Character 1 slip by him once more. 

The dreamlike quality of this video doesn’t lend itself to a clear, linear explanation. From a depth perspective, I can see all of the characters as different aspects of a single person, the ego, the id (the hungrily pursuing Character 2 who obviously thinks it’s time to come out to play), and the superego, the third figure. Perhaps what appears to be a duplicate of Character 1 is actually the Self, the fourth factor that completes the personality, although he does not appear to be altogether down with everything transpiring behind him.

I encourage you to watch the video and see for yourself. As a piece of visual, musical, dramatic, and dance art, it’s spectacular; as a type of shadow play depicting the workings of the unconscious, it’s eerily on point (or en pointe, maybe); and as a story of passion and sexual tension, it’s spellbinding. Character 2’s appearance in the doorway with all his tattoos on display as he watches and waits is the central image of the film around which all else is built. Character 1 seems to be leaving him behind after that, and yet the final scene on the roof tells a different story. While seemingly in a reverie, Character 1 has allowed Character 2 to erase almost all the distance between them. What will happen when Character 2 touches him with his outstretched hand?

Jimmy Stewart’s Come Hither Look

I tried to resist it—I really did. Yesterday, I saw another sexy planet, this time on CNN’s website, a beautiful purple Neptune-like exoplanet. I don’t even know where in the universe it is, but, wow, what a stunner. However, in my attempts to live a balanced life and not fall under the sway of just any importuning god or goddess that beckons, I resolutely closed that CNN window and looked for something else to post. This morning, though, I was still thinking about that beautiful planet and just knew somehow that I’d find enough purple desserts to make anyone weak in the knees if I spent a few minutes looking. Sure enough, purple is an unforgettably gorgeous and dramatic dessert color. It turns out that there are plenty of purple cakes, purple pies, purple macarons, and purple ice creams . . .  And all of them are lookers. My goodness me—who knew?

I’m not sure I can analyze the reasons purple is so devastating in this regard, and I don’t really want to. It should be used more often in cooking, in my opinion, but maybe it wouldn’t have as much impact if it wasn’t so unexpected. Purple is very close to blue on the color spectrum, and both are surprisingly mouth-watering when used in certain ways with food. My mini-photo essay on the sexy Neptune-like planet and a train of accompanying desserts can be found on Wordplay’s Facebook page. There were many other photos I could have included, but you’ll see that for yourself if you go out looking for them.

Eros is really getting to be a problem here on Wordplay, but I haven’t paid Aphrodite her due in a while, and everyone who knows anything about mythology knows how mad that makes her and the lengths she’ll go to when she feels neglected. She’s getting her revenge on me now. Once you open yourself up to it, you start to notice just how beautiful the world is every day, in many ways, despite the ugliness we all have to deal with. Eros is always thrumming along in and behind things, but if you ignore it, it stops paying court to you. I came across a photo of actor Jimmy Stewart on the Internet a few weeks ago, and while I always liked him, I never thought of him as sexy. But suddenly, after a couple of weeks of these erotic planets and Aphrodite-induced dessert binges, I started realizing just how handsome he is in that picture, and it’s just a subtle thing, really, something in his eyes and his smile.

I’m including the picture here, and you’re welcome to agree with me or to disagree about Mr. Stewart’s charms, but if you can withstand the sight of a bunch of artfully scattered pink and purple macarons with flower petals against a dark background, you’re a better person than I am.

Jimmy Stewart. Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s International Realty/Getty Images

Deconstructing Banana Pudding

For a topic this week, it would probably be difficult to beat Wordplay’s National Dessert Day tutorial on apples, banana pudding, chocolates, and other topics, posted today on the Wordplay Facebook page, complete with photos. Therefore, I won’t try. I thought I’d said all I needed to on desserts, Aphrodite, etc. last week, but when I found out what day it was today, I just had to seize the opportunity. (And really, can you ever get tired of looking at pictures of desserts? Probably not.)

I guess I was also trying to make a point about the impossibility of putting life experiences into separate silos and the lack of neat boundaries between categories of knowledge, experience, etc. If you’re reading this page for the first time, that may sound pretty far removed from National Dessert Day, but if you think in terms of mythology, depth psychology, and layers of meaning, it’s really not. I’m a librarian, too, and while I semi-enjoyed the cataloging class I took in school—which taught us how to organize and classify areas of knowledge—I saw even then that some subjects just don’t fit into a single slot. Some librarians might argue that they actually do if you’re doing cataloging the right way, but I don’t agree. There’s too much overlap between subjects.

I have a fairly strong teacherly instinct, which I’m sure annoys a lot of people (at least, it seemed to in the past), but I have realized that I take a lot of pains to explain things because I have spent so much of my life feeling misunderstood. I don’t mean to make that sound tragic; it’s just a fact that I often felt my experiences were not like those of other people, and that people really didn’t understand my jokes, my references, or even my real feelings about things. I was not always the forthcoming person I am on this blog, and I really was one of those young people I was talking about a few weeks ago who lacked communication skills. Through much of my life, I had a hard time speaking up for myself in person (though never in writing). Actually, what someone said to me once turned out to be true, and that is that you gain greater confidence in yourself by doing. I’m much better at talking now than I used to be.

So I tend to favor clearness in communication, but it’s also true that no matter how clear you try to be, some people will never understand you because they are seeing you through the filter of their own experiences. I don’t like misunderstandings, but they are unavoidable at times, so sometimes you just have to say your piece and move on. I might say something like, “It’s supposed to rain tomorrow,” and really mean that just as a literal statement of fact based on the weather report. And yet I often feel that people try to read much more into my words than I intended. On the other hand, I often have to caution people not to be “too literal” when it comes to interpreting stories and mythology. Sometimes there is no “literal truth,” but rather a psychological or artistic truth. I’m really not speaking a secret code that other people are supposed to decipher (I would find that extremely tiresome myself) just because I talk about poetry, myths, art, and other things that have layers of meaning. It’s not true that a person named Daphne literally turned into a tree because someone named Apollo chased her, but it is true that it’s sometimes necessary to put your foot down and make a stand.

Others things I learned from National Dessert Day:

1. There are an awful lot of blogs out there on cooking that almost look like someone just made them up and slapped them on the Internet a week ago. It’s not that they are lacking in quality, it’s just that they don’t quite seem real.
2. Banana pudding is one of the most appealing desserts there is to look at; you hardly ever see a photo of banana pudding that isn’t mouth-watering.
3. It takes a little courage to write about food and Aphrodite, as one feels that one is almost bound to be judged, or misjudged, for the attempt, even though you may only be saying what other people are thinking.
4. Fruits are more “erotic” than vegetables, and it’s probably because of the sugar.
5. Some fruits are more “erotic” than other fruits. Never really thought it through in those terms before, but it’s true.
6. Chocolate truffles, according to one source, were named for the truffles that grow in the ground because of the “earthy” appearance of their centers. That never would have occurred to me, though both kinds of truffles are expensive gourmet items.

That’s about it for this week. Thanks for reading, but remember this: if you take an idea from this page and run with it, only to find yourself at the business end of an international crisis, don’t blame me. Learn to be a little more thoughtful about what you read; take a couple of classes or something.

Wordplay Indulges in Broad Generalizations. You’re Welcome.

With last week’s post, I thought I had gotten Aphrodite and Eros and desserts and all out of my system, but that does not seem to be the case. I know this because I keep finding myself looking up pictures of the most elegant desserts I can find on the Internet. Of course, you cool kids know that when we speak of Aphrodite, we are speaking of more than romantic love. Aphrodite encompasses luxuries and indulgences of all types: fine wines, beauty, fashion, flowers, and, of course, desserts. If you’re not sure how this works, or what the goddess of love has to do with any of this, think of it this way: Aphrodite encompasses romance, and all of the above are considered enhancements or accompaniments to romance. And certainly, it is quite all right—healthy, actually—to fall in love with yourself and to treat yourself with appropriate indulgences as needed.

I know that my readers understand this because reductionism is a kind of sin in depth psychology, and if you follow this blog, that means you have some appreciation for the nuances of the soul. In mythology, too, it’s unusual for simple mathematics to rear its head: rarely does “this” equal “that” in any kind of neatly delineated way. Aphrodite and Eros reign over an entire class of experiences, not just sensual love, and that includes a group of things we might categorize as “the finer things in life.” Most people realize that life is made up of not just one or two but a variety of different types of experiences. “To everything, there is a season,” as Ecclesiastes tells us.

Nevertheless, just as people often have one or two qualities predominating in their makeup, so do places. L.A., for instance, is one of the most Aphrodite places I’ve ever seen, and Lexington, KY, (where I live now) is one of the least. There’s nothing unusual about a place or a person having a dominant cast to it, but it’s also true that whatever is undervalued or outside the comfort zone tends to go into the shadow. Thus many people have the perception that L.A. is an anti-intellectual place and that Kentucky is a very hearth, home, and family type of place. I’ve spent enough time in Kentucky to know that there’s a lot of truth in this perception and also to feel that people here have a suspicion of “Aphrodite.” It’s not that they don’t feel it, it’s that they’re not quite at home with it. It seems like frippery, perhaps, or something that might lead you astray, away from the things that really matter: hearth, home, family, and God. Of course, if it weren’t for Aphrodite, there wouldn’t be children or families, but somehow Aphrodite seems to get divorced from the rest of the process, as if she had nothing to do with it at all, and Demeter rules the roost.

My current preoccupation with Aphrodite springs, I’m certain, from my current experiences. If you ever find yourself living in your car and getting by from paycheck to paycheck, you may discover, as I have, that a healthy person eventually rebels against all that cheapism and tries to seek balance as best it can. You throw a chocolate bar into the grocery cart once in a while or check into a hotel to experience cool sheets, pillows, and air conditioning. A person who lives in his or her intellect much of the time (Athena/Apollo) will, at the best of times, seek out sensory enjoyment just to stay in balance, and if you’re living in very reduced circumstances, it doesn’t become less important but rather more. Certainly, it’s possible to have too much Aphrodite in one’s life, which amounts to overindulgence; it’s also quite possible to have too little, which amounts to poverty.

So it was that, being off work today and still thinking about dessert, no matter how hard I tried to find other “more important” things to read about, I decided to set myself a task: to discover an Internet photo of the most luxurious fall dessert not involving pumpkin that was out there to be found. This was how I made what was, to me, an interesting observation. The majority of fall desserts that don’t involve pumpkin contain apples, and no matter how long I looked, I couldn’t find an apple dessert that seemed luxurious in the same way a profiterole or chocolate mousse is. (An exception might be a galette, simply because the French have a deft way of putting Aphrodite into their food that does not seem to come as easily to most Americans.) Vast quantities of cinnamon, sugar, butter, and cream notwithstanding, all the apple desserts I saw, as delicious and appealing as they looked, seemed wholesome rather than gourmet, and I think this has to do with the apple itself. Introduce an apple into a dessert, and you’re suddenly speaking of harvest, Grandma’s kitchen, and the farm rather than of luxury.

So, here’s my contribution to world peace: 1. Aphrodite, so often either overvalued, maligned, or misunderstood, is probably most to be feared when overvalued, maligned, or misunderstood. 2. American culture has a Puritan cast to it that gives Aphrodite sort of a bad name here, but this possibly diminishes the further you get from New England. 3. If you require an indulgent dessert with apples in it, you might have to go as far as France. 4. Kentuckians are great at getting in the harvest but suck at experiencing (or creating) sensory delight. 5. People in L.A. fear being ugly or wearing their pants too loose as much as the rest of us would fear the plague. 6. It often costs more to make things beautiful, but the payoff in psychological well-being is probably vastly underrated.

The Eros of Planet Raphael

On Wordplay’s Facebook page, we have been visited lately by a rather persistent Aphrodite who keeps making her presence known via images of luscious desserts and sexy planets (yes, you read that right). Here at Wordplay, we take responsibility for noticing and commenting on these aphrodisiacal moments that keep appearing in our culture, but did we invent them? No, we did not. Aphrodite is much older than anybody here, including Wordplay, and Wordplay is practically Methusaleh (we remember Beatlemania: think of that). Perhaps we will take credit for letting our imagination run and associating one thing with another in ways that might not have occurred to someone else.

We admit to always having had an eye for beautiful desserts, but sexy planets? As you know from reading our blog, we have an interest in both astronomy and the mythology of the night sky. Many celestial objects are named for gods, goddesses, and other mythical creatures, and it’s not surprising that some of the attributes of these mythic beings cling here and there to their namesakes. We respect scientific objectivity and understand that the methods and objectives of science and mythology do not always coincide, but we suspect that scientists are just as human as anyone else and (at least some of the time) respond to the “romance” of the night sky as well as its “objective reality”: the seductive quality of moonlight, the impulse to wish on a falling star, the allure of celestial visions swimming far out in space and brought into focus only with the aid of high-powered telescopes.

I am sure there are scientific reasons why astronomers and astrophysicists would apply filters that cause images of the planets to become saturated with certain colors, but the eye of imagination responds to the color’s allure, not the technical rationale for using it. When an artist’s rendering of a celestial object lovingly emphasizes its beauty, I assume that the artist is bringing Eros to bear on his or her work. This would explain why I look at an image of the planet Jupiter depicted in swirls of brown and cream by the Mabuchi Design Office/Astrobiology Center of Japan and see a cream puff or tiramisu, and why a rendering of a blue planet with the irresistible name of GJ 3512b seems to beckon like a love god.

In thinking about planet GJ 3512b (which I would probably name “Raphael”), I realized I’d been presented with a challenge. Some of the other planets were photographed or drawn with warm colors more associated with food and appetite, while GJ 3512b was enticingly swathed in bands of blue. Since blue is a “cool” color, more associated with spirit than with carnality, I wondered at the source of the allure. In looking at images of the color blue (and that was how I started my search), I realized almost immediately that while blue is indeed cool, it is somehow hot at the same time. This is perhaps not as strange as it seems if you think about the sensation in your fingers after you’ve been holding an ice cube: the intense cold almost feels like heat, in some contradictory-but-true sense. There’s a yin and yang to heat and cold, and they blend into one another. Robin’s egg blue may seem like an innocent color, one you might use in a child’s room, but there’s also the smoky blue of jazz.

I remember once being inspired to write a poem about the color blue, trying to interpret it through each of the senses (what it sounds like, what it tastes like, etc.), through a sort of applied synesthesia. (I did it on my lunch hour; yes, I suppose you have a lot of pent-up creativity when you’re surrounded by dusty law books all day.) I thought about that when putting together my photo essay on the erotic qualities of the color blue. To me, it’s as if, instead of throwing down an apple, Paris threw down three planets and asked, “Which is the fairest?” In the end, I’m not quite sure blue didn’t win out over some of the warmer colors, the blush pinks and the cafe au lait browns, because I kept finding more and more images of blue, all steeped with an intense allure, many more than I could use.

Here, then, is a supreme paradox in nature: how cool is, in reality, underneath it all, warm. (But props to blush pink and cafe au lait brown, too, for giving blue a run for its money.) It would be interesting to go through all of the colors like this and run a similar experiment. I suspect they all have the potential to be cool or hot; perceptions that assign this or that quality to certain colors are, to some extent, arbitrary. Eros is in the eye of the beholder.

Just No, That’s All

Dear Amtrak,

I read about your plans to create a more modern dining experience for your passengers. (See The Washington Post article, “The End of an American Tradition: The Amtrak Dining Car,” by Luz Lazo.) While I understand your efforts to control costs, I think what you’re actually doing is changing the Amtrak experience in a fundamental way. There are few things as old-fashioned as sitting down to dinner in an honest-to-goodness dining car on a train and few quicker ways to feel yourself almost magically transported to a more elegant era—or maybe what I really mean is what seemed like a more civilized era.

I realize that some people are down on elegance, preferring utilitarianism, but I say they are wrong, wrong, wrong. I’m all for practicality, but—seriously—when you decide to travel long-distance by train, you’re probably already over the let’s-get-there-as-fast-as-we-can-and-hope-the-airline-doesn’t-kill-us mentality that normally takes you to an airport. You’re traveling by train because it offers a different kind of experience, a seeing-things-at-the-ground-level type of journey. I know there are people who also ride trains simply to get from Point A to Point B, but even so—why not do it with a little flair?

In some ways, I sympathize with the Millennials who seem to be the intended recipients of these changes. Especially since life became Cubist, I don’t always feel like sitting down with God-knows-who and having to make conversation, either. Perhaps it’s the times that have turned people more in on themselves, and it really is the current Zeitgeist I’m addressing and not Amtrak. I do, however, remember my first experience in riding Amtrak years ago—my first trip out west—with great fondness, and a lot of the reason for that was the dining car. I was alone on that trip and was frequently seated with older, retired people who were traveling for fun.

As shy as I was then, I still recognized how special it was to get to converse with these (almost invariably) kind strangers and learn a little bit about their lives and reasons for traveling, all while watching the continent roll by outside and enjoying an actual three-course meal. I am NOT in favor of Amtrak doing away with traditional dining, and although I don’t want to sound like someone’s mom, there is a flip side to the dining alone conundrum: it probably wouldn’t hurt for some of the youngsters to put down their cell phones and spend a few minutes practicing their social skills. Lots of room for improvement on that score (for some of their elders, too).

I would guess the attendants have a pretty good eye for making appropriate seating arrangements, so your chances of getting seated with Uriah Heep are small, or at least, they used to be. The Amtrak staff back in the day appeared to have the entire dining service down to a science. I still remember the dining car attendant who, at 50 miles an hour, dropped the glass of iced tea he was preparing to serve me and than caught it again without either missing a beat or spilling a drop. When I goggled at him, he just shrugged. Years of experience, he said. It was one of the best things I’ve ever seen.

I don’t do much traveling these days, but if I’m ever planning another cross-country vacation, I’ll have to reconsider going by rail if there won’t be a dining car. I’m not saying we all have to make like Lord and Lady Grantham and dress for dinner decked out to the nines, but those thrice-daily trips to the dining car add some structure to the little community you become a part of for the duration of a train trip and are a good way to break up the day. As spectacular as the Colorado Rockies and the High Sierras are, one does like to stand up, move around, and have something to look forward to in the form of a nice meal, a big picture window, and professional service. It seems a shame to see the dining car go the way of the dodo, just sayin’.

P.S. While you’re at it, bring back the china, cloth napkins, silverware, fresh flowers, and silver teapot the article speaks of. Maybe people’s behavior would rise to the occasion if you served the dinner with some flourishes. Life is too short for all these cheap experiences we keep having thrown at us. Amtrak, you are by no means the only people doing these types of things, but I had hoped to someday repeat the first experience I had with Amtrak travel, and it sounds as if it might be something quite different if the time ever comes for me to do that. It would be nice to see somebody somewhere hold the line on all of this.