Out and Back

Revolutionary spirits...

Now that I'm a crazed road warrior, I get most of my news from USA Today -- either the online version or the print edition left outside my hotel room door. This afternoon, while unwinding from a long day, I came across this interesting article. Rev. Gary Kowalski, a Unitarian Universalist minister, has written a fascinating-looking book called Revolutionary Spirit: The Enlightened Faiths of America's Founding Fathers. In the book, Kowalski takes on the obnoxious myth that our nation's founders were Christians and that our country was founded on (big air quotes here) "Christian values." From the article:

Instead, [Kowalski] depicts them as curious, strong-spirited, scientifically-minded men who were determined to keep religion out of government.

"I wanted to set the record straight," said Kowalski, 54, senior minister at the First Unitarian Universalist Society in Burlington, Vt. "I really felt that their legacy had been misappropriated by the religious right."

Before he could educate the public, Kowalski had to educate himself.

He first became interested in the early Americans' spiritual beliefs as an undergraduate at Harvard. In 2003, Kowalski could no longer tolerate what he saw as an influx of historical inaccuracy, and set about researching the true spiritual nature of the historical icons.

As an unwilling resident of South Carolina, which is rife with wingnuts who actually believe we're a Christian country, this article definitely piqued my interest. (If you think I'm lying about the wingnuts, here's some food for thought: the county where I live went for Huckabee in the Republican primary on January 19. Barf.) I'm looking forward to reading the book; I cannot tell you how many times I have read remarks on the editorial pages of the newspapers around here lamenting the fact that the "Christian" values our country was supposedly found upon have gone down the tubes. Good grief. When I finish Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, I'm definitely picking up Kowalski's book.

So cool

I just found out that Stephen Graham Jones, one of my favorite writers, has a blog.  Even better, my favorite of his short stories, Screentime, is posted there for your reading pleasure.

I attended a reading that he gave at Southeast Missouri State University back in 2001 or 2002 and it pretty much changed my life.  (So I guess there was some good to come out of the two years I spent living in the hellhole that is Cape Girardeau, Missouri.)

His incredible way with words both inspires and intimidates me.

The real Daisy Buchanan

Readers of this blog know that F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is my favorite book... ever.  During the past week, I've gone on a full-blown Gatsby bender, re-reading the novel itself; re-watching the movie starring Robert Redford, Sam Waterston (who will always be Nick Carraway to me, Jack McCoy be damned), and Mia Farrow; and, finally, reading Gatsby's Girl, the delightful novel by Caroline Preston.

Preston's novel is a fictional account of the real-life romance between F. Scott Fitzgerald and a young debutante named Ginevra King (though her name is Ginevra Perry in Gatsby's Girl.)  Their relationship, though short-lived, inspired the creation of some of Fitzgerald's most memorable female characters, including Daisy Buchanan in Gatsby and Isabelle Borge in This Side of Paradise.  As a sometime-writer myself, I've often based my characters on people I know.  I frequently wonder if any of them would recognize themselves in my work.  I daydream of one day writing my own version of the great American novel, and I am forever sketching out characters in my head that incorporate aspects of the people who have come in and out of my life at various times.  The common writer's axiom of "write what you know" is definitely true for me when it comes to crafting characters.  Some of the people I have known in real life are so colorful that an entirely fictional character would simply pale in comparison to them.

What I most loved about the novel was the thread of "what might have been" that ran through it.  After Ginevra and Scott go their separate ways, he is never fully out of her life... she reads his novels and stories and keeps a file of clippings about him, and there are moments when she wonders if she made the right decision in "throwing him over with supreme boredome and indifference."  I'm a romantic at heart, and the whole "star-crossed lovers" thing gets me every time.  I relish the mournful beauty of stories of the one that got away.

I re-read The Great Gatsby... again

...One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees -- he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something -- an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

- Chapter VI

What a morning

I watched The Hours over the weekend and it moved me enough to dig out my copy of Mrs. Dalloway, the Virginia Woolf novel that inspired Michael Cunningham's novel and, in turn, the movie.

This early sentence struck me:

And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning -- fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

I went right to these photos, taken last year at Coney Island.  (The first one was taken in April and the second one was taken in August.)

You Nazi cow

The crazy-ass conservative soccer moms are at it again.  This time, it's some beyotch down in Georgia (just a little ways from me) who is trying to get the Harry Potter books banned from the school libraries in Gwinnett County on account of the fact that they supposedly advocate witchcraft.

Oh, please.

I'm reminded of my favorite scene in Field of Dreams when Amy Madigan's character takes on the book-burning beyotch at the PTA.  "Step outside, you Nazi cow!"

News flash: Harry Potter's been around for years now.  J.K. Rowling is almost finished with the series.  Have we seen legions of young readers turning to witchcraft, devil-worship, and all those other horrible, horrible things that the Nazi cows are afraid of?  I don't fucking think so.  Get bent, Laura Mallory.

Dirty little secrets

I was checking the headlines on MSNBC.com this morning when I discovered this excerpt from a new book by Dr. Gail Saltz (the Today Show's resident shrink, apparently.)  It caught my attention and now I'm very curious to read the book in its entirety.

This new book, Anatomy of a Secret Life, deals with something familiar to all of us: secrets.  I can't imagine anyone who doesn't have at least one secret, something that they keep hidden from even those closest to them.  I know I have my share of interesting secrets... some of them are so secret I don't even know what they are.

I find it fascinating that there are aspects of ourselves and our lives that we choose to keep under wraps.  Even more fascinating to me are the reasons we keep those things hidden, and the lengths to which we will go to keep them hidden.  This blog has served as a confessional of sorts for me, but there are a lot of topics that I consider "off limits" and won't discuss on my blog.  (For instance, there are reasons why I don't write much about my work on this blog except for the briefest of mentions here and there in passing.  There are reasons why I only use my first name and don't refer to my husband by his name at all.)  By the same token, there are other topics that I might discuss on my blog but that I wouldn't dream of discussing in real life with people I know.  It's an interesting contradiction.

So how about you, readers?  Any secrets?  (You don't have to share them, just say if you have them.)

The Great Gatsby

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound.  And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes -- a fresh, green breast of the new world.  Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his wonder.

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock.  He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.  He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.  It eluded us then, but that's no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . .  And one fine morning

My Fairy Godfather

This past Sunday was a lovely day....

Carson Kressley, of TV's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy came to the Borders in Whitehall to sign copies of his new children's book, You're Different and That's Super.  Since I love Carson and Queer Eye and since I had some spare time on Sunday, I went to Borders a couple of hours before the 2 p.m. signing to get copies of both the children's book and the book Carson put out last year, Off the Cuff: The Guy's Guide to Looking Good.  I also picked up a few magazines and a soda from the Borders cafe and spent a very pleasant couple of hours waiting for Carson's arrival.

Never before in my life had I agonized so much over what to wear to a freakin' book signing at Borders.  Since Carson is a fashion savant, I chose my outfit very carefully, opting for a casual but put-together look involving a cute floral top, my Seven jeans, and my pink and green Manolo Blahnik wing-tip mules.  I topped off the outfit with my mother's vintage chocolate brown leather poncho, which she got in 1972 and passed on to me in 2003.  My husband thought I was nuts, but all I could say was.... "Honey, it's CARSON!"

Since I had arrived on the early side, I got ticket #10 for the book signing, so I didn't have long to wait once things got underway.  I should mention at this point that Carson is a local boy -- he grew up in the Lehigh Valley and attended Gettysburg College, and he regularly returns to our area to visit.  A lot of the people who came to the signing were folks who knew members of Carson's family or who had friends in common with him, and it was nice to hear people chatting in line about how nice Carson is and how they remembered him from "back in the day."

When my turn came to meet Carson, he was just as sweet and nice as can be.  He signed Off the Cuff for my husband, writing "Read this... now!  Love, Carson."  As he was signing it, I said, "It's for my husband... he needs a little help in the style department," and Carson replied, "He can't possibly need that much help if he's married to someone as glamorous as you!"  He signed the kids' book for me, writing "To Jeanne... Keep stylin'! XOXO, Carson," and then he posed for a photo with me, which I'll post when I get the film developed.  When he stood up to do the photo, he noticed my shoes and told me how much he liked them and that they were his favorite colors.  I replied that I had worn them just for him.

It was a fun afternoon -- Carson was so friendly with everyone and it was clear that he was happy to be back home for a little while.  I'm not the celebrity-stalker type, but I get a huge kick out of Queer Eye and it was fun to meet one of the "Fab Five."  (I do harbor a secret longing to be Grooming Guru Kyan Douglas's fag hag, so maybe someday I'll have a chance to meet him as well.)

 

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

I finished reading Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven the other night.  My copy was a gift from the woman who took over my job when I left Philly.  During a conversation, I mentioned that I loved amusement parks and she asked if I had read this particular book.  I hadn't, so on my last day of work she brought me a gift-wrapped copy.  That was a year and a half ago, and I only just got around to sitting down and reading it.

One of the things that finally encouraged me to get off the dime and read it was that at least 3 out of every 5 people that came on the house tour and saw my "Coney Island room" asked me if I had read it.  When I said I hadn't yet, they looked shocked.  Having read it, I can understand why they were so stunned... the Ruby Pier, where the main character, Eddie, is employed, contains many clear references to Coney Island.  One passage that was especially telling was this:

[He] ... built the most wonderful place, a massive pier using timber and steel he already owned.  Then came the magical attractions--races and rides and boat trips and tiny railways.  There was a carousel imported from France and a Ferris wheel from one of the international exhibitions in Germany.  There were towers and spires and thousands of incandescent lights, so bright that at night, you could see the park from a ship's deck on the ocean.

When I read that section, I pictured the hundreds of thousands of electric lights that lit up Coney Island's famous turn-of-the-century parks, Steeplechase, Dreamland, and Luna Park.  There were other elements that reminded me of my beloved Coney Island, as well, but the amusement pier setting was just one small fraction of what made this book such an enjoyable read.  The premise of the story is that when you die, you meet five people in heaven who explain your earthly life to you.  You have clear and obvious connections with some of them, while other links are more tenuous.  I loved the idea that when we pass on, there are five people waiting to explain to us why our lives turned out the way they did.  There are so many chances in life for regret, confusion, and doubt, and I was deeply reassured by the idea that perhaps, in the end, all will be made clear.

Another favorite passage:

There was a pier filled with thousands of people, men and women, fathers and mothers and children -- so many children -- children from the past and the present, children who had not yet been born, side by side, hand in hand, in caps, in short pants, filling the boardwalk and the rides and the wooden platforms, sitting on each other's shoulders, sitting in each other's laps.  They were there, or would be there, because of the simple, mundane things Eddie had done in his life, the accidents he had prevented, the rides he had kept safe, the unnoticed turns he had affected every day.  And while their lips did not move, Eddie heard their voices, more voices than he could have imagined, and a peace came upon him that he had never known before [...] He floated up above the sand and above the boardwalk, above the tent tops and spires of the midway, toward the peak of the big, white Ferris wheel, where a cart, gently swaying, held a woman in a yellow dress -- his wife, Marguerite, waiting with her arms extended.  He reached for her and he saw her smile and the voices melded into a single word from God:  Home.

There's no doubt about it -- I want to spend my hereafter at an oceanside amusement park.  See you there someday, Eddie.

Willy Wonka and Harry Potter

It's been a busy weekend on the pop culture front.  Friday night, we took in Tim Burton's glorious re-make of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and as far as I was concerned, everything about the movie was perfect.  I was transported back to being eight years old and the summer afternoons and evenings I spent reading some of Roald Dahl's wonderful  books.... among them Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and my personal favorite, Fantastic Mr. Fox.  I've made a mental note to myself to find copies of those books and read them again, for the stories are rich and delightful, just like Mr. Wonka's candy.  (I remember being able to get Everlasting Gobstoppers as a child, but to my knowledge no one's ever made a Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight bar.  Tragic.) 

As far as the acting goes, Johnny Depp really outdid himself... I couldn't believe this was the same guy who played Mort Rainey in Secret Window, or J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland, or even Edward Scissorhands.  His Wonka was much more quirky and complex than Gene Wilder's, with a vulnerability that was surprising and yet made perfect sense.  And to those who are easily creeped out, fear not: the people who've been saying that Depp's Wonka bears an icky resemblance to Michael Jackson have their heads up their arses.  Michael Jackson loves children a little too much, whereas Willy Wonka can't stand them.  Go see this movie!  And then go see it again!

On Saturday, my pre-ordered copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince arrived in the mail, but I was so busy all weekend that I haven't even had a chance to start reading it yet.  Part of me is eager to begin, but another part of me would like to stretch it out for as long as possible, because I know it will be a long wait until the next book comes out.  I heard on NPR this morning that one young reader cruised through it in about six hours -- now that's impressive.  I, on the other hand, plan to take my time.

Have a good week....