Steamy notes on quiet nights

Last week I was telling my senior colleague how much I loved my Astor Piazzola CD (you know, the tango guy from Argentina). Did I ever read the album notes to some of his records and CDs – my colleague asked. No, can’t say that I have. I just like playing it in the background, especially when I am writing – it is so sensuously moody, a melancholy kind of music.

Today I opened an email from my colleague and there they were: program notes from some of the albums I did not have. They came with a suggestion to drink wine, listen to the music and read them out loud (presumably to someone). I am alone at the moment and if I drink wine I wont be able to work or do whatever I have set forth for myself tonight, so I’ll just share the notes with the blog readers. Remember the dry language that typically accompanies classical recordings? Piazzola is every bit a classical artist (this recording is from the 1960s I believe). But read this and tell me if you find it boring (if you are prudish, skip this post):

Album notes to Astor PIazzola y su Quinteto Tango Nuevo: Hora Zero (listen to it here)

Strip to your underwear if you’re not in black ties. Get obscene if you want, but never casual. You feel an urge? Touch its pain, wrap yourself around it. Don’t put on airs. What you seem must be what you are, and what you are is a mess, honey, but that’s okay, as long as you wear it inside. Look sharp! Don’t slouch. See anyone slouching here? Stay poised, taut. Listen to your nerves. It’s zero hour. Anxiety encroaches, wave after wave, with every squeeze of the bandoneon. Already twisted by the contraposto of uprightness and savagery, this new tango turns the screw even tighter with its jazz dissonances and truncated phrasings. No relief. No quarter. At zero hour only passion can save you… It’s all a game. You’re going to play too. You’re going to dance with the tiger. Don’t worry, your life is in danger. Remember your instructions. Listen up. And suffer, m*****f*****, this is the tango.

Man, they don’t write them like they used to!

"They are a symbol of power without responsibility, and that's what we feel about you guys right now"

This statement about SUVs (and Americans) was made by a professor of transport psychology at a university in Edinburgh (IHT story here).

SUVs are a fairly recent phenomenon in Europe. Driving around tight spaces in old cities and the astronomical cost of gas do not, for the most part, invite large-car ownership. But slowly, SUVs are making their way into the automobile market across the ocean amidst the protest and dismay of many. Read this (emph. my own):

European wariness of SUVs is expressed in different ways. In Rome, the city government has proposed charging SUV owners triple the regular rate for permits to drive in the historic city center. ... [T]he feeling goes, there is just no room for the unwieldy and intimidating SUVs.
The city's transportation commissioner, Mario Di Carlo, said that, if he could, he would put up signs saying, "Please don't come here with these cars."

"I don't want to be like Freud, but SUVs are a projection, a compensating thing," Di Carlo said in an interview. "They're when you want to show how rich, how powerful, how tall, how big you are."

..."SUV drivers are less respectful of other people - you can tell by the way they drive," Di Carlo said. "They park on the sidewalks. Mobility is freedom, but these cars in cities mean immobility, and someone has to have the guts to say it."

...In London, where SUVs are known derisively as "Chelsea tractors," after an upscale neighborhood in which they are especially thick on the road, Mayor Ken Livingston recently dismissed their drivers as "complete idiots."

Drivers report having rude things shouted at them by pedestrians, and a group called the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s has taken to slapping fake tickets on parked SUVs, citing them for poor vehicle choice... "People who see Hummers driving around think, 'Oh, disgusting Americans,"' said Sian Berry, a founding member of the group. "We're saying that what happened in America must not be allowed to happen here."

I sense a lot of displaced anger in this charge. In general, the more you read the international presses, the more you sense that the relationship between the US and Europe needs a nice long session on a shrink's leather couch. Of course, as in a dysfunctional marriage, it'll be the children of both who will be paying the price for years to come.

Starting the week with an up-beat story

Several of my friends are dating these days. Looking to find a partner in life, they turn to me with questions that I find difficult to answer: should I call him if he hadn’t called me? Should I bother, given the fact that he is shorter than I am? How should I interpret his email behavior, or lack thereof?

Recently everyone has been talking about the book He’s Just Not That Into You. Amidst the cacophony of reactions I hear one that stands out: since the beginning of time, men like to be the chasers. Do not bother calling: if he wants to see you he’ll call back. Add a few other conventional wisdoms: men don’t like smart women and women don’t like short men and you’ve limited your universe of acceptable dating behaviors considerably.

It’s all good advice I’m sure. I mean, what do I know about American men anyway.

Yet, last night, someone pointed me to a true story that breaks from the gaggle of noise about the one right way to date. (You can also find it if you follow the link from the salon.com story on dating short men here.) Sure, you can adhere to the *sound* advice of He’s Just Not That Into You. Or not. Here is an excerpt from a wedding announcement appearing in the New York Times:

The bride and bridegroom met two years ago at a dinner party. It was a few days after Ms. Schonfeld had taken the bar exam, and she was so exhausted that she fell asleep on a couch, awakening only after everyone else had left.

Even asleep, Ms. Schonfeld, stretching to 5-foot-10, made an impression on Mr. Leib. He made an impression, too, not only, she said, because he is ''notably short'' -- he is 5-foot-6 -- but also ''notably smart,'' with a disregard for small talk.

Even when she told him she thought she recognized him from a high school hockey game, she said, he seemed to have his mind on other things. ''I thought it was kind of neat,'' she said.
Mr. Leib acknowledged that he can seem brusque, adding, ''I have a tendency to be that way upon first impression.''

Two months later, through their dinner party host, a date was arranged.
''It seemed almost experimental to date someone who was four inches shorter than me,'' Ms. Schonfeld said with a laugh.

Mr. Leib said he wore his ''tall shoes.'' And as their first date extended to six hours, they discovered they had something in common worth talking about: both had engaged in comically bad behavior in previous relationships.

With that kind of history, Mr. Leib recalled, he was not certain either of them would want a second date.

Rather than call, he sent her an e-mail message, concluding, he said, ''Of course I should never see you,'' and ''of course I'm way too short for you.''

But she was not quite ready to walk away, she said.
''He was so emotionally intelligent about where he was coming from and what he was thinking,'' she noted. ''We were both so incredibly frank with each other. That was quite impressive to me.''

So she called him.

So ends the wedding announcement, so begins their life together. Sweet and unconventional, just the way it should be.

Taking heart in being part of a decadent majority

It’s odd to feel pleased in reading that we are not, after all, moving in a direction of strong “family values” and good “clean” fun. We are, according to Frank Rich of the NYTimes (Arts&Leisure Section), as decadent and coarse as always, whether we live under a Blue or Red sky. Rich writes:

There’s only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media’s conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results – and about American culture itself – confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry’s defeat notwithstanding, it’s blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of “The Passion of Christ” should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.

I cannot emphasize how relieved I feel. The idea of Democrats pandering to the Fox-news watching anti-same-sex marriage and stem-cell research banning moral absolutists turned my stomach. It is so heartening to read that, at least according to this commentator, there has been no real shift: nothing has pushed these people into a statistically prominent forefront. They remain a small (albeit vocal) minority.

I’m on a new campaign: let’s lobby for the “old biddies,” shall we?

Is there a person on this planet who hasn’t yet heard that I am 51 years old? I am on a campaign to infuse with pride the adding of deliciously complicated and brimming-with-experience years to one’s log book.

So I was somewhat disheartened to read in the NYTimes today that the Academy is, more than ever, dishing out Oscars to the dishes and I don’t mean of the type you put in your Whirlpool at the end of the day.

It has not always been thus. Even though lovely young things have always gotten their share of Academy accolades, we’ve also had the occasional “mature” stars recognized (Shirley Booth and Jessica Tandy come to mind). But as the article points out, since 1990, only one woman over 50 has won an Oscar and that was for her role as supporting actress (Judi Dench).

Why raise this now? Because the last two movies that I saw featured absolutely sublime performances: Annette Bening (a mere 46) in “Being Julia” and Imelda Staunton (48), absolutely brilliant in “Vera Drake.”

I will not be a happy movie-goer if these two get pushed out by the little ones (Rossum, Moreno, Swank or the cute and loveable little Winslet). Step aside, young things, and give the luminous "older" actresses a chance.

Swing day

It was so good not to have to work this morning.
I climbed up on the roof and cleaned gutters this morning.

Friends got me moving early on with a walk in the woods.
After that I hardly moved all day.

We were to eat at Greenbush, the old basement Italian place on Regent.
It was too crowded, we couldn’t get a table.

We ate at Nattspil instead. I’d never been there. It’s a cool, homey bar with food.
The food was slow in coming.

We caught the last showing of Vera Drake.
One of us was a doctor who saw this as an ominous and timely movie.*

* The movie is about a backstreet abortionist in post-war London. The acting, combining improvisation and script, is unimpeachable. I’m still shaking.

Now that I’m done guest-posting (for a while), am I a changed blogger?

Yes I am. It was great fun to react to the good, the bad and the ugly too. Like in politics, you can never be as clever pushing your own agenda as you can knocking someone else’s, or defending your choices against the attacks of others. [The blog where I guest-posted invites anonymous as well as registered comments and the commentators are sometimes thoughtful and sometimes, shall we say, quick and dirty in their responses]

Of course, banter without slander is even more fun, but I have yet to figure out how to get that without also getting the gratuitous nastiness that often makes people say and write things that are mean-spirited rather than sumptuously witty.

I do think that blog-versations are just in their infancy. Within a year, we’ll have fashioned more options and formats that fit our great desire to create something out of the mess of thoughts thrashing about inside our skulls. And when these blog-versations come out sounding intelligently funny or sardonic, or even poignant, or pensive, whew! they can be a thrill to read.

Adrift

This is the first Saturday morning at home for me since early April. [For those who are new to Ocean, I occasionally moonlight at the restaurant, L’Etoile, and this past season I did Market shopping for them every Saturday.]

I cannot get myself to look at the news. I’m sure I’ll read something like "Can Bush Deliver a Conservative Supreme Court?" and I’ll wish I were talking to the farmers instead of sitting with a computer perched on my lap.

Maybe I should revisit old allies (that word!) over at the Progressive. Here we go – Molly Ivins has posted her December piece in which she writes:

Of course, I'm devastated by the news John Ashcroft is leaving. Do you think we'll see tits on statues in Washington once more? [referring to Ashcroft’s prudish request to not be photographed by a statue that had a certain degree of nakedness about it]

Unfortunately, Ivins gets graphic in her speculations on what the next years will feel like for Americans. Consider this excerpt:

My friend John Henry Faulk always said the way to break a dog of that habit [of chasing and killing chickens in the yard] is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog's neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad the dog won't be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won't kill chickens again.

The Bush Administration is going to be wired around the neck of the American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.

That’s a tough one to take with your breakfast granola and café au lait.

Maybe I could just go outside and shut the yard down for the winter. Good idea.

Where in the world is this?

I’ve written that I spent this morning in the Dells. And I’ve reminisced about a winter sun gently touching Polish river banks. So where are these photos from? Can you guess?

river banks... 

...and winter light 

Correct, it’s Madison. This afternoon I took a long walk with someone I hadn’t seen for a long time. We hiked along the Wingra creek – just a short stroll from downtown Madison. Lovely. And so peaceful after another uncomfortably stressful week.

Board of Directors is Stumped

I attended a meeting of a Board of Directors of the State Bar. It was brought to our attention that Wisconsin will also have a referendum (either this April, or, strategically, when Doyle runs for reelection) on the same sex/civil union issue. It is believed that the 11 states that have already passed measures prohibiting same sex unions have created a momentum and that there is a good chance that Wisconsin may join the pack of blood-thirsty wolverine states.

We were asked for our input on this. It was clear that just about everyone in the room wanted to give a resounding “no!” to the ban. But we are elected representatives within the Bar and so we must weigh all arguments.

Our charge was to come up with ways in which these unions may affect families and in particular, children. The pro (union and/or marriage) side was easy: if you give a legal standing to relationships where children are being raised and cared for, then the couples will have tangible benefits available to them and their children. Moreover, the highest courts in Hawaii, Vermont and Massachusetts have already rejected state arguments that such unions are detrimental to the child’s well being, finding that children are better off living in stable, state-sanctioned family units.

Okay, but what’s on the other side? In what way are children hurt by these unions? Come on, Camic, the directors implored (more formally of course). You teach the stuff, give us some reasons to weigh here. No one, Camic included, could come up with any.

We agreed to have a special meeting where a lawyer from “the other side” will be invited to educate us. Then we will be able to issue a statement acknowledging that we will have fully considered both sides before reaching a decision.

Sadness, one person at a time

Thursday conversation with a guy who was holding something sharp over my head:

So, have people been talking about the elections here?
Not much. People talk about odd things when they get their hair cut.

How about you, did you watch them with your partner?
Yes, we stayed up half the night...

And?
And at the end of it, I called my mother, of all people, and cried, really hard.

The gentler Dells, as seen in November

When I wrote earlier about the pleasures of “escaping” for a while in times of stress, I did not exactly count the little sojourn to the Wisconsin Dells that I had on my calendar for today. But I am glad I came (there is a State Bar meeting at the Kalahari Resort that I have to attend). Not only did I get to see a large formation of geese heading south on my way up, but I also saw something that so reminds me of the Polish countryside in the winter that I had to choke back on nostalgia: hoarfrost. I think that is the correct English word for it. It’s not unique to Poland, I know. But it is something I have woken up to repeatedly, because Poland has moist winters and the freezing layer of wetness creates a beautiful landscape on a snowless winter morning. Picture it: farmsteads, narrow strips of farmland and meadows, a birch forest, a riverbank, all muted by a white veil, to be dispensed with when the sun approaches the eleventh hour. So beautiful.

“They don’t think like we do”

European commentators are scrambling to interpret the American elections. Unfortunately, the sobering reality is that many are skeptical about finding common ground with us in the immediate future. Jonathan Steele (at the Guardian) has this to say about us (emphases are my own]:

In the wake of the huge support given to George Bush last week, it's time we realised how different America's majority culture is, and changed our policies accordingly. ...

American majority's social and moral values differ enormously from those which guide most Europeans.

Its dangerous ignorance of the world, a mixture of intellectual isolationism [ouch!] and imperial intervention abroad, is equally alien. In the United States more people have guns than have passports. Is there one European nation of which the same is true?...

Of course, millions of US citizens do share "European" values. But to believe that this minority amounts to 48% and that America is deeply polarised is incorrect. It encourages the illusion that things may improve when Bush is gone. In fact, most Kerry voters are as conservative as the Bush majority on the issues which worry Europeans. Kerry never came out for US even-handedness on the Israel-Palestine conflict, or for a withdrawal from Iraq.

With this assessment comes a call for an end to NATO:

Many commentators now argue for Europe to distance itself.

We must go all the way, up to the termination of Nato. An alliance which should have wound up when the Soviet Union collapsed now serves almost entirely as a device for giving the US an unfair and unreciprocated droit de regard over European foreign policy.

In fact, a handful of European states never saw the need to join NATO in the first place. Holding themselves out as “neutral” during the Cold War, Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden declined the invitation to find security in an alignment with the US. [These countries were also the most lenient toward Poland at a time of tremendous travel restrictions faced by Poles; they permitted visa-less travel even at the height of Communist Party rule. Interestingly, the US continues to refuse even tourist entry to Poles without a visa, a source of great bitterness among many of my friends who refuse to subject themselves to the indignity of begging for permission to visit.] These days many Europeans are wondering why the stronger nations (the troika: France, Germany, Great Britain) continue to keep the pretence of a unified front alive, given the increasing chasm between what is perceived to be the American worldview and the European one. Unfortunately, from their point of view, I have to agree. From ours, here in the States, I can only hope that countries across the ocean will fight and challenge our isolationism. Ours is a dangerous path and we need friends to put as many obstacles in our way as possible.

Speaking of politics…

I was at a dinner tonight where early into the election-politics discussion, one of the guests said “I would prefer not to talk about politics.” Now, I am not certain, but I assume that he was a Kerry supporter (one can get some indication by looking at the subject matter of the research, can’t one?). As were the three others. Where then was the glitch?

It is amazing how many topics these days suddenly hinge on the mention of politics and/or the election. The minute someone says “let’s not speak of xx” you right away find that every subject you can bring forth leads you back immediately to xx. Thus, with the imposed restriction, I found myself tongue-tied and incapable of saying anything sensible for the better part of the evening. In my head, I sifted through all possible conversational insiprations and came up with nothing.

I have not become a mouthpiece for political blogs, no I have not. But I do think that now, more than ever, it is impossible to step outside the political box and fein interests in matters that have no connection to the events of the day. We don’t begin, nor do we end the day with a clean slate. I wish we did, but some things have been just too damn difficult to erase.

Overheard, pt.1

Quote of the day:

GWB: “The cost of reforming [social security] is insignificant compared to, err much greater than leaving it…”

Which one now?

Overheard, pt.2

November 10, 2004 -- SEN. Zell Miller (D- Ga.) laced into New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd yesterday on the "Imus in the Morning" radio show, saying, "The more Maureen Loud [sic] gets on 'Meet the Press' and writes those columns, the redder these states get. I mean, they don't want some high brow hussy from New York City explaining to them that they're idiots and telling them that they're stupid." Miller also suggested "that red-headed woman at the New York Times" should not mock anyone's religion: "You can see horns just sprouting up through that Technicolor hair." Dowd responds: "I'm not a highbrow hussy from New York. I'm a highbrow hussy from Washington. Senator, pistols or swords?"

Word choices

So you’re blogging elsewhere as well?
It’s temporary – maybe for a couple of days or so.

Are you liking it?
You could say that it is like jumping into a steamy bathtub and finding out that sharks are swimming in it, ready to nip at your ankles and work their way up to your derriere.

Steamy bathtub? A curious choice of words.
Don’t you start in on me! On a blog where there are open comments, you are held accountable for every word you utter. It sucks. I can say it sucks here and nothing will happen. On the host blog, I say it sucks and thirty people can be rolling with laughter at my inopportune word selection. On the Internet. Communal glee.

Why don’t you quit then?
Because life is a challenge and I love the challenge writing presents. Besides, I can, at the end of the day, retreat to my safe little Ocean, where the only threat comes not from sharks in the warm, steamy tub, but from a weapon-promoting website pointing its menacing rifles at me. I mean, it’s like coming home! Mmmmmm, I love it here in my own little Ocean.

And while I am at it – thank-yous are again in order. To the Milwaukee reader who wrote that extremely nice email about wit and women writers – so wonderful. To the Republican-voting reader who called a recent post *endearing* – thank you. To those who wrote the *cool* comments to my posts on the other blog, I know you are Ocean loyalists who are helping me out over there –thank you. To those who read this blog regularly and let me know it – thank you. Your words mean a lot to me. Especially now when I am concurrently tredding the perilous waters of another blog.