I'm not a big celebrity hound, but I do appreciate a few traditional California events, such as the Movie Premier.
This week, the independent film Expecting Mary premiered in Palm Springs. Produced locally by Kim Waltrip and Jim Casey, the movie tells the story of a teen-aged pregnant runaway who finds an unlikely family in a trailer park in New Mexico. It's totally heartwarming, and not in a syrupy kind of way. Linda Gray stars as a faded Vegas show girl who takes the young Mary in on Thanksgiving. There's also a totally fabulous appearance by Della Reese as the owner of the trailer park.
In addition to Gray and Reese, the film includes several veteran actors over the age of sixty, such as Eliot Gould, Lainie Kazan, and Cloris Leachman. After the screening in Palm Springs, several cast members stuck around for a Q&A session with local TV host, Gloria Greer.
Producer Kim Waltrip, Lainie Kazan, Della Reese, Linda Gray, and Gloria Greer after the premier of "Expecting Mary."
The Q&A was very lively. Lainie Kazan was asked about her role as the owner of a small-town casino. She talked about her career playing interesting and weird characters: "I've played everybody's mother except Whoopie's."
Asked if she shared her character's love of cooking, Della Reese replied, "I didn't get this big by going hungry."
The best thing about seeing a premier isn't proximity to stars but, especially in the case of an independent film, hearing the artists talk about a project they really believed in and how they made it happen.
Sometimes reading a book is like spending a long sunny Sunday afternoon with an old friend, catching up and talking about Big Issues. When you come across that kind of book, especially when it's written by an old friend, you don't write a review of it, you write an appreciation.
I looked forward to reading Amie Klepnauer Miller'sShe Looks Just Like You: A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood. The sub-title says a lot about what the book covers, and a lot about what I am not. I will never be a lesbian or a mother, biological or "other." But I know the couple and the child in the book. I remember some of the events and conversations in the book. And I genuinely like Amie, her partner Jane and their daughter Hanna. From the beginning, Klempnauer Miller hits the right note, sounding like a woman having a friendly, funny and meaningful discussion with an old friend. The occasional dialogue with Jane catches Jane's voice as surely as it does Amie's.
People read memoirs for different reasons, I suppose. We read some to live experiences that we will never have. I'll never be a chef in a New York restaurant (I rarely have even eaten in one), so Kitchen Confidential was an educational as well as entertaining read. We also read memoirs to relive the familiar through someone else's eyes. I read the first of William Mann's Jeff-and-Lloyd trilogy, The Men from the Boys, in about a day and a half. It was so like my life. It's a novel, officially, not a memoir. But it's autobiographical fiction, so I'm thinking of it in the same terms. The author is my contemporary, almost exactly, and he treats the eighties very nearly the way I lived it. (I had less sex and did fewer drugs probably.)
She Looks Just Like You pays off in more ways than one. Amie is a fan of the Big Issues discussions, best held when on long car trips in the midwest. There are plenty of Big Issues in this book: religion and faith, the legal status of glbt families, and the changes that adult relationship go through. These and more are discussed while Amie and Jane make the decision to have a baby, try to get pregnant, have Hanna, and endure the first year of her life.
A writer of grant proposals and articles for free newspapers Amie's writing is smooth and readable. She has a talent for boiling Big Issues down to their essentials and seeing them from multiple perspectives.
It's an odd thing, in the gay community, that family is both devalued and hypervalued. Because so many people have relationships with their biological families that are remote even on good days, there is a tendency to write off family as a loss, part of the price of coming out of the closet. ... When the family is not accepting, it is relatively easy to conclude that family doesn't really matter. Family becomes something to leave behind in Fargo or Trenton or Louisville.
Klempnauer Miller is also achingly honest in her portrait of how the arrival of baby Hanna changed the relationship between Hanna's two Mommies.
Here is the truth: when Jane was pregnant, I found her irresistible. I loved her scent, her roundness, her exuberant possibility. I don't find postpartum Jane irresistible. I don't even find her attractive.
Eighteen months seems to be the adjustment time needed for a relationship to absorb a new baby. Amie thinks they can make it to eighteen months but wonders what's next. The book ends just after Hanna's first birthday, with Mama and Mommy not sure they are going to make it. Luckily, she includes an epilogue that assures the reader that Amie and Jane are still a Committed Couple. Not that I was worried.
I really owe Dr. Freeman a lot. He's my good friend and frequent writing partner. What a great birthday present he gave me. A book. (Surprise.)
A Great Unrecorded History, the new biography of E. M. Forster by Wendy Moffat, has gotten some good reviews. Some have said that she focuses too much on Forster's belated sex life. Quite wrong, I say. She does a great job with issues others have skated around. (P. N. Firbank, writing the official biography soon after Forster's death, left out a lot.) Moffat had the benefit of working with material not before available, namely, Forster's Sex Diary. What a lot we learn.
I won't recount details here, it's a lot of fun and you should read it yourself. Forster kept the diary mostly because he had few people to confide in about his feelings and his relationships. Unlike today, when we talk about everything to everyone.
However, this isn't so much a review as it is an appreciation. Moffat has shown through a great example how to approach material that others have gone over before you. How to plow a new row in an already planted field. She's given me a look into a new project of my own. One I thought I wouldn't be able to tackle for a while. So, hat's off to you Wendy Moffat.
And Dr. Freeman, I'm trying to think of something significant to give you for your birthday very soon...
Okay, so I haven't been writing. Put it down to romance, or business, or the effect of daily sunshine on the already-indolent. Sloth, plain and simple.
The goal of the blog was to get me writing more regularly, and, in that sense, it's been somewhat successful. Dr. Freeman and I published that little ode to Christopher Isherwood in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January. We then finished off the Dead Poet Project in the spring. (An article on W. H. Auden's relationship with Isherwood for a forthcoming British anthology.) With all that writing, who needs a blog?
Also, in the meantime, to update you on previous posts: I sold that rat-trap in Duluth I used to own. At a loss. After 36 months on the market. I feel lucky given These Tough Economic Times. Also, I was forced to relinquish the Writing Porch, both because I loaned the laptop to a friend and because I had to vacate the apartment when the owner decided he wanted to live in it. The nerve.
Then the plans for writing in these long, summer nights in Palm Springs. Who can write with a love-interest around? But I won't tell tales out of school. Plus he's away for the summer, so what's stopping me from a few weekly stream-of-consciousness ramblings fueled by a spot of vodka? (Or gin and Dubonnet, as the fake Queen_UK spouts on Twitter.)
I mentioned the sloth.
But wait, a new project is cooking. Nothing like a new project to get your writing juices flowing. It looks so good, and so long (it'll take five years, I'm thinking), that the blog will cry out! as a diversion from the real work.
And PS? My friend and model blogger Jocelyn has packed her family up and taken them to TURKEY for a year. She's blogging about it, with drawings by her multi-talented husband, Byron, over at layingfallow.com. Stop by.
My sister and I said the same thing when I finally received an offer on my house, which has been for sale since I left Duluth in July 2007.
I truly can't think of the last time I used that phrase.
The following week, a friend was approved for tenure at her college. It had been rough going. After the committee and the administration had passed it, she still had to wait for the board to approve. They did. Neverthless, she didn't trumpet her success.
"I don't want to jinx it!" she said, in hushed tones. After all, she's not really "tenured" until next fall when she comes back for her fifth year. I think she told her dad.
It's funny how major life experiences can send us back to childhood, to superstition. I'm not really superstitious at all, but this house thing has gotten me nervous. I never did bury a statue of St. Joseph in the back yard, but I wouldn't be surprised if my agent did.
So after living in southern California for two-and-a-half years, I am close to selling my house in Minnesota. For far less than I bought it. For just a wee bit more than I owe on it. Which means I'll still have to bring my checkbook to the closing (metaphorically speaking, as I won't actually be attending the closing in person) mostly to pay the agent fees.
Considering the whole It's the End of the World as We Know It nature of the housing crisis, I still consider myself lucky and will not bemoan my lost thousands too much. Folks I know have lost tens of thousands, and other folks I know have lost their homes while they were still living in them. I was not a victim of a scam, or a sub-prime mortgage, or balloon payments, or a bad romance (well, not this time). I just got a job in a different part of the country and couldn't sell my house.
Since it's nearly done, and I may never see the inside of it again, I'll post a couple of memories of the house and the times it had. Enjoy. I did.
My good friend Jean at my Elizabeth Taylor party.
Another good friend, Tami, at ET party (note the purple cocktail).
The big dig, to fix a broken water main and repair the driveway, cost nearly $10,000 and took six months.
Looking at these I remember painting the living room and dining room. Dark red dining room and mustardy yellow living room, so warm in the morning light. I decorated them to look like a southern California bungalow. "If you can't live there, you might as well pretend," said the X-BF. Prescient.
There are other photos of living in Duluth that involve winter and sports and winter sports. But those will have to wait for another time.
Every ten years or so I eat beets just to see if I still hate them. Sure enough, no matter how you slice, cook, steam, or candy them, beets are the most disgusting food in the world to me. The only time I have ever enjoyed them was shredded for a sweetener in a chocolate cake. Even Oprah can recommend that one, see here.
Some things can be gotten over, some not. I don't even want to get over my hatred of beets, but every now and then I test it out.
Yeah, I'm going up there.
Fear is another thing entirely. Fear has often ruled my life, in big ways and small. Generally timid as a kid, I carry into my adulthood specific areas of anxiety. (See, I've learned a bigger vocabulary now, but the feelings are the same.) I tend not to rush into things, take new experiences cautiously, and don't go where I "have no business" going.
At the age of about four, my sister and I went on the Ferris wheel at the fair. The rocking of the seats scared me a little right away. The wheel went up one stage: I was very frightened. By the time the wheel went up two more stages, I was screaming so much the operator, protesting that he never does this, put the wheel into reverse and let me get off. I couldn't have been more than 20 feet off the ground. It was the Ferris wheel equivalent of the kiddy pool. But I felt totally disconnected from anything solid. I was floating in the air, bound to fall and get hurt.
That fear, not exactly a fear of heights, but it's hard to pinpoint otherwise, has always been with me.
I tested out a ropes course once. Also known as a challenge course, these are the wires strung between poles that you climb and do a tightrope walk while your team mates hold onto the harnesses and cheer you on. Somehow it's meant to teach team work and, yes, make you face and overcome your fear. (I did the Husky Challenge at St. Cloud State University, see it here.)
Well, I did that: I managed (fully tethered and safe) to walk from the pole out to the center of the wire. Yea! faced that fear. Getting back to the pole wasn't as easy.
Once out onto the wire, fear and panic had me. Gentle, calm encouragement from the trainer got me back to the pole. Once hanging on to the pole, however, I could not climb down. This is what is known as being "petrified." For once, mind and body were in total unison: don't move, don't let go.
I told Sean, My Tormentor this story the other day, after bouldering in Joshua Tree National Park. He tried empathy, "Yeah, when I was a kid..."
"I was 35," I said.
Gene, showing no fear.
The common notion that you can do something to "overcome" your fears is crap, Dear Reader. Face your fears, conquer them once and for all. Crap.
I read that TV's Craig Ferguson had become a pilot to overcome his fear of flying. To that I say, Bullshit, Cheeky Monkey. Some fears are not overcome. They may be temporarily bested, but they are still there and there is no predicting when they will come back.
Bouldering seems a mix of hiking and rock climbing. In Joshua Tree, there are rock outcroppings that go quite high. Not shear cliff rock here, but big boulders arranged in artful compositions.
Think of the scene in Galaxy Quest where Tim Allen is fighting the Rock Monster.
In fact, I could structure an argument that Galaxy Quest is all about facing your fears and becoming a team. That would be very easy, so Reader, I leave it to you to do for yourself.
At Joshua Tree, I had two warning signals. I heeded them and pressed on. Climbing up some of these rocks was difficult, but I first felt really anxious at the very top of one. There did not seem to be enough room for everyone at the top, and the other side was a very quick drop off into oblivion. Cheryl and I held onto each other until we could make the climb down.
There we are huddled at the top (thanks Maria for the photo).
It was the final descent that did me in. We had scaled to the highest peak, a climb that was precarious, but not particularly difficult. I declined to make the final jump across a crevasse as two of our group did. The view was spectacular, and we were all very pleased with ourselves. I was the last in the line to head down, and right away I felt the second warning go off. I watched the others go back the way we came, and a gap that had seemed small on the way over was now practically a gorge going back. Cheryl and Franco talked me through it. Feeling fine, I continued down the rocks.
The next and last challenge was a nearly vertical descent. Here Cheryl and Franco approach it, with Gene below:
From where Gene is standing, it's another drop of about 100 feet.
It probably didn't help that I was the last in the group to make this descent. Or that I couldn't actually see how the others were doing it.
Geologists can explain how the boulders are cut through with harder rock seams (called "dikes" according to the Park Service). One of these seams formed a small shelf just below the rim of the rock. It looked a little like a horizontal staircase. Somehow, I was supposed to use this to get down.
My mind and body were once again working in perfect unison and telling me again: don't move, don't let go of the rock. Cheryl and Franco tried to talk me through it but I could not will my hands to move to the next safe spot nor my feet to lower to the next ledge. I was stuck. It seemed like forever and was probably three minutes.
Sean (who, I suppose, I should stop calling my "tormentor" and call my "teacher") was the first to go down the rock this way, and he bounded back up to help. He not only talked me through the moves, he managed to balance himself and use his own body to steady mine. I rested on him in order to move away from the boulder and down the shelf to the next solid spot.
Sean, My Teacher, who has no fear.
On the ride home, someone said, "you made it down, though, you conquered your fear."
Not really. I met my fear, recognized it, and yielded to it. I am, and remain, powerless when gripped by this enormous anxiety. In all three of these instances, I got through it with the help of others. I have not "conquered" my fear. It is still there and will, at some time, come back.
I don't know what I would have done if I had been alone on that rock. But then, I would never be there alone.
I will, however, still try new experiences that take me out of my "comfort zone." I will do so knowing that I could be faced with a similar situation. The support of friends, and certified professionals, will get me through.
Sit at computer for about five minutes. Type some stuff.
Check the mail--outside at the mailbox.
Check email.
Mess around on Facebook and Twitter.
Look again at what I've written.
Brush the cat.
Eat some cashews.
Have a drink of water.
Check Facebook.
Write a sentence. Erase it.
Text Will.
Think about dinner.
Re-write the sentence I just erased.
Sigh forlornly.
Walk out to courtyard. Sit on deck chair. Fall asleep.
Wake up and repeat many of the steps above in any order.
I have written nearly 1000 words on the Dead Poet Project. None of them are good.
It's a rare thing. To be a scholar of some (small) repute on a minor English writer is reward enough itself. The joy is in the work.
Nevertheless, when that minor writer has his best book adapted into a film, there are many other pleasures, small though they may be. I've been very pleased to watch Christopher Isherwood's novel, A Single Man, climb up the Amazon.com best-sellers list since the release in December of a recent adaptation, starring Colin Firth. The novel's publisher, the University of Minnesota Press, came out with a movie-tie in version of the book in early December. My very casual eye has seen it break the top 500 on Amazon. Not bad for a book 45 years old.
As I said, the joy is in the work. So, with the help of the UMP, I pitched an article about the novel to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the most-read national publication dealing with college and university issues. I enlisted my sometime collaborator, Chris Freeman, to write about the genesis of Isherwood's novel in his own experience teaching in southern California universities. The article, called "Isherwood the Multiculturalist," can now be seen online at The Chronicle Review. It's password protected (ooh, we're "premium content") for now.
Oh yeah, you can also watch the trailer for the film online.
I have set myself the totally artificial task of writing a blog about the ten words I used most often in my Facebook status updates. Perhaps if this goes well, I could turn the challenge into some kind of meme for bloggers. For that to work, I think I would have to have more readers than I currently do. Also, maybe someone has already mined that meme and I’m coming late to this. Who knows?
Using the Top Words application in Facebook, these are the words that appear most often in my status updates in 2009: today, run, thinks, good, work, week, off, tonight, new last.
A bit about the words themselves. “Today” is not a surprise, since most of my status updates have to do with the contemporary. What are your plans today, and how are you feeling now tend to be the common status update themes. Same could be said for “tonight” and “week.” Only two verbs occur: “run” and “thinks.” (I would bet that “work” appears more as a noun than a verb for me, as a synonym for “job” more than something I or the toilet do or don’t do. I could be wrong.) I ran a lot in 2009, and I guess I thought a lot too. “Off” might be related to work or not work, and “new” probably relates to things I bought. “Last” is curious, unless it’s related to “week” and it relates to the past tense. (I can’t think of anything I stopped doing, as in “that was the last time I’m going to eat sardines.”) “Good” is puzzling—I don’t think of myself as a really positive person, but things in 2009 were pretty good, I guess, which is as good a segue into a year in review as any…
Today. There were fifty occurrences of this word in my Facebook updates in 2009. I was surprised it wasn’t more, given that I update my status frequently, usually more than once a day. There are times when I am an absolute fanatic about FB, checking it, refreshing the page, trolling friends for new friends. Facebook has become for me a regular part of how I keep in touch with people. I used to check email obsessively, but now my hotmail account sees less activity than my Facebook. Still, at fifty, that’s nearly one “today” a week. “Tomorrow” and “yesterday” aren’t even in the top ten.
Run. In a way, 2009 was my most serious year of running. I completed four half-marathons: Palm Springs in February, Duluth in June, Disneyland in September, and Malibu in November. For the last several years, since I started running really, I considered organized runs (not “races” please, I don’t race) as the motivation for me to run: if I am signed up for an event, my theory went, I would stay in training. I did a lot of training in 2009, most of it informal. I run sometimes with a small group of guys in Palm Springs, and it makes the training almost fun. Toward the end of the year, however, after a dismal run in Malibu, I started thinking that long-distance running may not be what I need to achieve my fitness goals. Moderate exercise and a new diet may achieve what I set out to do when I turned forty. I’m not sure where my running will go this year, but I am reassessing my priorities.
The boys before the Palm Springs Half Marathon, February 2009.
Thinks. I don’t remember if it was in 2009 or earlier when Facebook dropped the word “is” from the pre-programmed status updater. But when “is” disappeared so did the generic update, “Jim Berg is.” It may have been funny the first time but not as profound as the teenagers thought. “Thinks” turns out to be, for me, a good generic intro for some rant or rave that I want to share. “Jim Berg thinks that cod liver oil just may be the thing to keep his joints lubricated.” “Jim Berg thinks that Up! was his favorite movie of 2009.” Plus, as an academic, having the word “thinks” be the third most common makes me seem seriously smart. I should just have “Jim Berg thinks” as my default status update. Therefore, he is?
Good. I’m taking a cue from my friend Jocelyn and calling 2009 a good year. Sure it sucked in a lot of ways: economic collapse (but that is soo 2008), two wars (soo Bush-Cheney), California going down the tubes (blaming Arnold for convenience here). But for me personally, and this is ALL about me personally, I think I did okay. Not 7/10 okay, but maybe 6/10. But still, even 5/10 would be “good.” After a lot of initial to-ing and fro-ing, I made some progress on the Dead Poet Project, I lost 15 pounds on an easy-to-follow diet, and I look and feel better than I have in years. Went on a few dates. So, yeah, let’s go with 7/10.
Work. I try to keep complaints or ruminations about my job to a minimum on the FB. A lot of my co-workers are there, and they see stuff. Anyway, in the larger sense, my “work” is my scholarship. And much of this year was given over to the Dead Poet Project. Toward the end of the year, however, a little movie came out called A Single Man. Now this movie just happens to be based on a book that I am something of an expert on. So, Dr. Freeman and I have penned (typed? keyboarded?) a piece for a national publication about the novel, its author (Christopher Isherwood), and what it all means for the classroom. Not a bad ending for a year that was sometimes frustrating in the library and at the computer. Come back next week for a link to the essay.
Week. This unit of time measurement is clearly as old as the B-I-B-L-E. If it weren’t for that little creation myth, it would be hard to see why we humans are so tied to the seven-day week. How, really, is Saturday different from Tuesday? Or, why do I have to go to the office on Tuesday and (usually) not on Saturday? Can’t every day be Saturday? Wouldn’t THAT be fun?! Sigh.
Off. Status updates must have as much to do with not going to work as going to work. “Jim Berg can’t believe he had the last 11 days off and didn’t do his laundry.”
Tonight. The feel-good club hit of the year has to be “I Got a Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. Club songs are often of the “I’m going out to get hammered and laid” variety, and nothing said that better than this song, with its refrain: “tonight’s gonna be a good good night.” Even Oprah used it to kick off her 2009-10 season, complete with a “flash mob.” Watch the video and then tell me I’m wrong. Try.
New. I’m nothing if not optimistic, cutting edge, and short of attention span. So I’m always on the hunt for the next new thing. Yeah, no. The word “new” was used twenty-two times: could that correspond to the number of times I bought a new article of clothing? The number of times I saw a new movie, play, or concert. All very doubtful. I’m still wearing those jeans that made my “ass look dangerous” back in 2005. New is not me. Really.
Last. Is the last word on the subject, except for my final challenge, the thing that will perhaps make this silly task meme-worthy. Use all of your top ten words in a single sentence:
Jim Berg thinks that after a runtoday the new work week will get off to a good start, especially if he is able to see Avatar, at last, tonight.
