Your body is a temple...

So in the course of a discussion last night, I discovered the latest diet fad in holy circles: the Maker's Diet , which comes complete with recommendations for Garden of Life products.

On the one hand, it's an incredibly brilliant feat -- stealing an entire subculture in a consumer market away from the mainstream diets. On the other hand, trying to show how "science" backs up the ancient dietary restrictions from the Book of Leviticus just screams dogma and denial. (Because, of course, only the science we selectively agree with justifies God's eternal wisdom... The evidence that doesn't jive with the doctrine is just plain persecution.)

If you flip through the diet guidelines, though, it's the same "eat organic foods and exercise" regimen that non-religious hippies and yuppies alike have taken up as a lifestyle mantra. It just has the tagline Because God wants it that way added. (Forgive those on Atkins and South Beach, Father, for they know not what they do).

From an environmental standpoint, this could be good news: more consumers are buying organic foods and (ostensibly) making informed decisions! The "Eco-Christian" movement has its merits, after all. But it's a little disturbing to see a particular diet become such a trend in communities of faith only because a religious person markets eating healthier as a scriptural mandate.

Hey, if people are living healthier lifestyles, who am I to judge?

I were Michelangelo, though, I think I'd have the right to comment...

"Somebody told me..."

Always a good show!

The Killers have enjoyed wild success, despite having released one lone album. Of course, being featured on FOX's AOL promo vehicle, The OC, always helps with album sales and popularity.
Last night's Seattle concert was good -- although all-ages shows sometimes suck. There's nothing worse than obnoxious high school kids who think they're so worldly mingling with their intoxicated middle-aged aunts and uncles who are trying to dance (and very badly at that). Oh, the humanity. . . .

So cute!!!!

Awww.... how much fun is it to shop for a baby shower? And how did a half-hour turn into two? The tough part is choosing, balancing practicality with blatant frivolity. (How much $$ is too much, if the kid will outgrow clothes quickly anyway? What exactly is the cuteness factor post-diaper? Toys, clothes, or books? Stuff for the parents?)

Then, of course, there are the political issues. Deliberately not get blue or pink? Don't pander to gender stereotypes by getting clothes with imagery of flowers, sports, or transportation? Try to find organic cotton? Sweatshop-free baby clothes? Expediency always wins out in the end ... in the form of Nordstrom, of course, where I've been spending so much time since the election.

And the girls' section was at least three times as big as the boys'! Early socialization and gendered consumerism, or what? Fun, though, to look around. =)

Not that I've had a ton of baby showers to shop for, but normally I get bath books or picture books. In this case, I browsed the kiddie section at Barnes and Noble for a good 20 minutes before it dawned on me that the father-to-be in question is a manager at B&N... Not that my cheap ass was going to buy the bargain books or anything. But I feel like literacy won't be an issue for this kid. Likewise, I usually go out of my way to try and get multicultural/happy tolerance books for kids. Again, this won't be an issue. MF, maybe, at some point.

And in other good news, I found the elusive bottle of Escape.

Okay, forget the Naked Chef... unless he reads this book ;-)

Funny website, to be taken tongue-in-cheek!

Is she a Party Girl? Make her Very Happy Hour: Bar Food and Screaming Orgasms. Is she an Academic Girl who loves Hemingway? Pack up a picnic of Papa's Tapa's: A Moveable Feast. Is she a Gourmet Girl up on the latest trends in
cuisine? Serve her the Spanish Surrealist menu, There's No Taste LikeFoam.

And apparently one can be a very predictable hybrid....

Sometimes life's soundtrack is set to Robbie Williams...

Pop culture texts must, by nature, be polysemic... So I feel no guilt in saying I swear, there's just something post-colonial, post-Empire-national-identity-crisis about "The Road to Mandalay":

...Everything we've ever stolen

Has been lost returned or broken

No more dragons left to slay
Every mistake I've ever made

Has been rehashed and then replayed

As I got lost along the way...

He also has vaguely religous lyrics, and vaguely religious imagery in many of his album liner notes. A fellow tortured ex-religious soul, or just a God complex? SO much to read into it! Or maybe it's just a personal Obsession... since I still can't find Escape...

Not the Naked Chef (although that might be fun...)

But Jamie Oliver aside, why is it so frustratingly difficult to cook a new dish???? (So maybe I shouldn't have multitasked, and just concentrated on watching the chicken bake for 25 minutes, instead of running off to do errands ... Still, though, the gravy recipe needed more clarification!)

I think Gardner should revise his theory of multiple intelligences to include cooking. And speaking of Gardner, last time I had to study his theory, he had seven "intelligences" -- apparently since then he's identified an eighth (!), but it's not in the culinary realm...

"I have gazed upon the face ..."

In reading through previous posts, it has become apparent that I am obsessed with masks.

Eat your hearts out, Heinrich Schliemann and Paul Lawrence Dunbar!

From J Calvin to Calvin K...

Recently, a good friend recommended that I try to recognize "signs" in life. "Signs" smacking too uncomfortably of predestination, I've become very good at logically explaining away life's freakier moments of coincidence.

But... gasp!!! I can't find my bottle of Escape by Calvin Klein!!! What does this "mean"???

;-)

If you're thinking of an elephant ...

This is a great book!

Lakoff explains frames of reference and how language conveys ideas within those frames. As a cognitive scientist and linguist, he addresses how political discourse is shaped by frames. It's a quick and easy read, and thankfully doesn't outline one specific platform for political reform.

In the first few chapters, Lakoff attempts to explain complex ideas in noncomplex sentences (apparently he believes staunchly in bringing academia to the masses by de-constructing the hierarchy of language.) At first it's a little condescending, even Seuss-esque: "Do not think conservatives are stupid. They are not. They are smart. They are very intelligent." But eventually, as the compilation of essays progresses, this talking-down ceases.

He addresses how the right wing has brilliantly compiled a united media front and think tank empire, and effectively uses language to gather (not manipulate) support for its worldview and public policies. Sadly, even liberals use the rhetoric of the right ("partial-birth abortion", "gay marriage", etc.) , and in doing so undermine the validity of their own frames of reference. Lakoff also emphasizes how conservatives can agree to disagree on many issues in order to further a larger common cause, something liberals can't seem to do.

Lakoff offers no sound bytes or PR slogans for liberals to use for defensive purposes. Which is exactly the point, of course. The idea is to start dialogues and generate concrete solutions. There is no one genius or guru who can spout the answers, the rebuttals, the successful campaigns.

Now, if only Seattle's famous washed-out hippies (who love complaining but never actually do anything) would read this and actually compile an action plan!

Oh, wait. That might be my generation's job. (See first post).

Ah, Prufrock

Whenever I feel like pondering time and mortality (as on this, the first day of the next four years), and need a reminder to stop and smell the roses, T.S. Eliot always does the job. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" manages to evoke empathy for an unfulfilled life, and to inspire a drive for truth, authenticity, and passion.

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea. . . .

Everyone dons a different mask for a different social occasion. "Prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet" -- such a facade that we all endorse and perpetuate by default! Eliot obviously didn't mean it this way (writing in the early decades of the last century), but it also echoes the facade of depression: present a happy face in public, to mask the private despair. And Prufrock is depressed, representing as he does the post-Great War era engulfed in gloom and misery.

In a way, the poem also speaks to the postmodern (also clearly not Eliot!) If everyone wears a mask, what's "real"? At what point does the mask itself become an identity?

. . . And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— . . .

. . . Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. . . .

Complacency wastes time and life, in the end.

My favorite verse:

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume? . . .

And the most haunting verse:

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

If that's not a call to make a difference in some way, what is? It practically screams "Carpe Diem" or "Go for broke!". Does it matter if it's God, arbitrary and selective history, or someone else's fleeting happiness that determines a "successful" life? Well yes, IMO, but that's another discussion...

A Confederacy of Dunces

Again, why did I try to read a work of fiction? I plodded through this book for five chapters before realizing --yet again-- that a made-up world just isn't worth my time, even if it puts forth a valid commentary on social relations.

The main character is an arrogant fat farter who mistreats his mother and doesn't utilize his education for his own good or anyone else's.

This book was first recommended to me at a Worms Society meeting. (Ah, yes, the Worms Society ... meeting weekly in a dingy room in a dorm basement of Scotland's oldest university, to discuss books and music and philosophy and life. Named for a line in Dead Poets Society. I miss nerdy shit like that.) Then I recently came across it on some post-election discussion board, which I now can't find. At any rate, I though it might deserve a chance. Wrong! I don't care if the intricately-crafted characters and scenarios illustrate the irrationality of a pluralistic society. In the back of my mind the whole time, I'm thinking of everything worthwhile I could be doing, of the other magazines and books I could be reading, of the movies I could be seeing this three-day weekend.

That's it. No more forays into fiction for me, unless it's to re-read a classic I already know is well-written.

About Being Bored

I TRIED TO READ FICTION. I tried, but couldn't do it! A fan of the movie and after so many rave reviews of the book from people I hold in high regard, I tried to read it. Got halfway through it before I couldn't pretend to be interested anymore. Having seen the movie, I know the selfish, sexist prick of a main character eventually comes to have warm fuzzy feelings for humanity, befriends a lonely outcast weird child and his hippie, neurotic mother, and learns that love and friendship and community are all about being yourself.

So why waste my time reading about it? Yeah, Hornby is a good writer. In the half of the book that I read, he manages to capture the unifying isolation of both bachelor life in London and the awkwardness of adolescence. I get it. I get the symbolism of the title as it relates to the positions of the characters of different ages. I understand how the individual and individual relationships are often lost in the anonymity and conformity of postmodern urban life.

But fiction is still an underappreciated realm for me. I understand the beauty of language, and how an author can create characters and scenarios that make larger statements about life and society and people, or just create pure escapist worlds simply because they don't make larger statements about life and society and people.

Hell, I used to want to write fiction, with my wacked-out, angst-ridden teenage worldview. I also used to read a hell of a lot of it, when there was really nothing else to do in middle and high school. (When you're not allowed to watch TV, everyone from Carolyn Keene to Jane Austen provides appropriate mental escape routes).

Again, though, why read it? Why not just deal with (and fix!) life, society, and people? Why create alternate worlds that can only serve as commentaries, but never offer concrete solutions?

Oddly enough, my two favorite books (In Our Time and The Great Gatsby) are works of fiction! I suspect I like fiction from earlier times because I see them more as historical texts. I can analyze and study them as cultural artifacts.

The historian in me knows that today's fiction will be the artifacts of tomorrow. The sociologist in me can analyze the impact of the commodity and the socioeconomic structures of today's literature. But I can't read it myself. Not now. Not anymore.

Lifting the lamp beside the golden door

Amid all the tsunami aid coverage, I went to see a local documentary about the "Lost Boys" of Sudan. Very well done film, and the panel afterwards was fairly decent.

One of the people profiled in the movie mentioned that Americans love to hear their story (NBC did some huge special on the "Lost Boys"), but that nobody cares about stopping the civil war in Sudan. Unfortunately, it's true. Because the Lost Boys' stories fit so perfectly into the American myth of rags-to-riches. Audiences soak up the scenes of the third world kids staring in wonder at a telephone, a milk carton, a shopping mall. These images reinforce notions of national superiority by underscoring the terrible conditions of an underdeveloped country, conditions that drove them from the longest-running civil war in modern history. The Lost Boys' mass exodus evokes overtly biblical imagery: wandering the wilderness from Ethiopia to Kenya until finally coming to the promised land of tennis shoes, education, fast food.

Of course Americans don't care about the war. (How many even know that a peace deal was even reached?) The war was about, in part, access to the oil fields in southern Sudan. The Muslim/Christian and Arab/black differences that are thrown in are all too familiar, though equally as epic. Interest in the stories from Sudan are more about the American ego, of reassurance that the "wretched refuse" and "homeless, tempest-tossed" from others' teeming shores can only find peace in the U.S. The stories speak to historic feelings involving third world/first world, black/nonblack, and dominant culture/immigrant dynamics.

Americans continue to be mentally isolationist, while believing themselves to be wonderfully enlightened and international.

Purple Haze

Gotta love The Economist ...

From the 13 Nov issue, re: the Washington State gubernatorial election:

"Mr Rossi was the most electable Republican would-be governor in 20 years, because the party's right wing has previously pushed forward nutty candidates doomed to get clobbered on election day. The moderate Mr Rossi uttered hardly a peep on social issues, and was rosily simple about economic matters. Ms Gregoire, on the other hand, bent to the left to win her party's nomination. Since the outgoing Democratic governor, Gary Locke, was less than universally loved, she also tried to offer both continuity and a fresh face. No easy task."

How hilariously snide!

Holiday Magic

In an attempt to minimize public exposure due to a brow wax accident, I went to see The Polar Express Saturday night. Having read the book years ago (and after an enthusiastic refresher from my sister the preschool teacher), I was happy to see a holiday movie.

Overall, I liked the film. It had the typical "love thy brother at Christmas" message, complete with precocious children in a cynical society. And of course, the film added characters for multicultural and socioeconomic diversity. It was also a little obvious that half the adults were the voice of Tom Hanks (some even resembled him). There's something to be said about pure silence -- certain scenes in the film, particularly involving snowfall, capture that silence eloquently and accurately. Too bad members of the audience had to chomp on popcorn and ruin that magic of Quiet.

My all-time favorite holiday story, though, remains the New York Sun essay written in 1897 (and made into a cheesy Christmas special in 1991, starring JohnBoy from The Waltons!):

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus.

We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of "The Sun":

Dear Editor:
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says "If you see it in "The Sun" it's so."
Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O'Hanlon
115 West 95th Street

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

F.P. Church
New York Sun, September 21, 1897

Somewhere Only We Know

Attended the Deck the Hall Ball sponsored by The End last night. Great lineup of bands!

Went specifically to see Keane (making it twice in three months!). Was pleasantly surprised by Snow Patrol and The Killers. Not wowed by Franz Ferdinand at all. And as a proud Northwesterner, I'm almost embarrassed to admit I was completely UNIMPRESSED with The Shins and Modest Mouse. They were completely unintelligible and inarticulate onstage.

Luckily, no band played holiday songs.

The Edge of Reason

Saw the new Bridget Jones movie. Hilarious!

I disagree with several friends' assertions that the BJ books and movies are sexist. Quite the contrary, I think BJ is the 21st century Anne of Green Gables: always getting in to scrapes, never "perfect" by the beauty standards of the day, always straightforward. Sometimes out of her element, but always able to come through with dignity.

The one issue I had with the story was the whole Thai prison sequence. Somehow, I don't think a Thai women's prison would be so amicable a place that a wronged British woman could have all the inmates singing Madonna's "Like a Virgin". I agree with the Weekly's review -- it makes too much light of the Thai sex trade and prison conditions. Ironically, the Colin Firth character is a human rights lawyer. Plus, Bridget would've lost a hell of a lot of weight in that prison!

Of course, I did have ulterior motives for going to see the film!

Must read the book sometime soon.

Taking arms against a sea of troubles ...

So, the post-election camping trip was enlightening as well as therapeutic. We had a "no politics" rule. The others talked about work, their volunteer lives, and school. Apparently, everything I do is political. I had very little to talk about.

Still not reading the newspapers, although I am scanning the headlines.

Instead, I'm reading the horoscopes, the comics, and fashion magazines. Uranus is in opposition to Saturn, so hidden tensions in my world are being released from now until mid-June. Garfield still loves lasagna. Winter coats should either be waist-length or cover the entire length of your skirt, but never fall mid-dress. There are people under 40 who will bid $800 at a fundraiser for lunch with the Mayor, and $500 for a flan at a gala/auction.

Who knew any of these things??????? This is the world I've been immersing myself in since November 3, having remained heretofore blissfully ignorant of its existence. ("There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy . . .")

Bought Franco Sarto shoes, then returned them. Threw a fun spa party. Attended three fundraisers, a discussion group, and a housewarming party, and have come to the conclusion that every intelligent, fun-loving, and politically-aware straight guy in Seattle is married, engaged, or otherwise unavailable. (As I have discovered in the past 8 months, the same is refreshingly not true for London, San Francisco, or DC. Perhaps I should take a cue from Hamlet. The nunnery, or Toys in Babeland? In the end it's the same, really. Still a lonely night.)

The third anniversary of the day Dad died is this Thanksgiving. Grandpa is in the hospital after falling down the basement stairs. It's the first Thanksgiving without Grandma. Lovely. It's no wonder I'm reading only the headlines.

Outrageous fortune, indeed.

Looking forward to the weekend in Portland for the official start of the commercial holiday season. Here's a fabulous quote from one of those forwards a friend sent:

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave

with the intention of arriving safely

in an attractive and well preserved body,

but rather to skid in sideways,

chocolate in one hand,

martini in the other,

body thoroughly used up,
totally worn out and screaming

'WOO HOO... what a ride!' "

I'll drink to that, in answer to Hamlet's question.

Ah, therapy ...

"In the streets and in society
I am almost invariablycheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean.

No amount of gold or respectability would in the least redeem it
-- dining with the Governor or a member of Congress!!

But alone in the distant woods or fields,
in unpretending sprout-lands or pastures tracked by rabbits,
even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related,
and that cold and solitude are friends of mine.

I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get
by churchgoing and prayer.
I come home to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.
I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight,
but I think they do not believe it.

I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America,
out of my head and be sane a part of every day."

-- Thoreau

After the deluge ...

"The weariness will pass. It must. And the faith will return. I hope. But for now, I mourn."

Actually, what I did instead was go shopping. Coincidentally, Nordstrom's Half-Yearly Sale for Women and Children started on 3 Nov 2004.

Because on top of the election results, yesterday I also got a text message that a certain someone is getting married and then shipped out, making him the fourth guy I know in Iraq.

For the first time in my life, I didn't watch the news or read a newspaper or magazine. I bought PJs for the long 4-year hibernation, had a fabulous pomegranate margarita after being approved for a Nordstrom card (which I've avoided for several years), and almost purchased every possible brainless fashion mag at Barnes & Noble.

Anything to stay numb. Anything to not think.

Ah, Prufrock:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Give me one week to completely sell out and be in denial, and then I'll get back down to business.

It started four years ago, driving down to DC for a massive Inauguration Day protest, and it hasn't ended.

It also means I won't have a life for the next four years. . . .

"Have you ever transcended time and space?"

Fabulous film on navigating the meaning of life in a postmodern, poststructuralist society!

*** BRILLIANT MOVIE ***

This now beats Garden State as the latest worthwhile and very relevant film. The central premise is an examination of the age-old debate: is everything in life meaningless, or is it all part of some cosmic connection?

For one, the characters were hilarious. The enviro organizers and the anti-petroleum, anti-corporate crusader (my life, anyone?) The scene at the family dinner summed it up nicely, especially since the family is religious. The suburban, sprawling existence creates the need for saving nature's open spaces --unfortunately also perpetuating a car-centric infrastructure that necessitates detrimental foreign policies in oil-laden countries, creating regional strife and, in the movie's case, refugees for random (or meaningful) coincidences.

(And just what does happen in a meadow at sunset -- everything or nothing?)

The ending question, "How am I not myself?" -- love the double meaning! (What masks do we don to define ourselves for social purposes? Or do even the masks we don define us and become part of our identity?)

The resolution, of course, was in the same vein as Forrest's feather. ("I don’t know if we each have a destiny or if we’re all floating about accidental like on a breeze. But I think, maybe it’s both. Both happening at the same time.")

One thing "Huckabees" didn't do, though, was address the differences between micro and macro interaction -- the film just treated all events equally, as if international policy and environmental standards are on a par with smaller market-driven consumer options. Somehow, I think refugees fleeing the janjaweed carry a different burden than the one I had when buying birthday cards at Hallmark. But still, it's a great thought-provoking movie.

On a tangent (or not, depending on your philosophy!) today's UNA luncheon, I was a little taken aback by the well-dressed protestors handing out leaflets. Yeah, let's just all retreat into isolationism when it comes to diplomacy and cooperation in solving world issues, but maintain a freakin' cowboy manifest-destiny attitude when it comes to creating those world problems.

Think I might go see "Huckabees" again, if and when I get some free time after the election. There's so much to mine...

Three years ago, I never thought I'd say this, but ...

... The Economist is the best news magazine ever!

I might disagree with a few of their assessments of American domestic policy and international development, but where else can you get in-depth news from around the world?

Saved!

This movie is hilarious! Mainly because I grew up smack in the middle of all that.
Great parody of contemporary Christian culture! Also does a good job of emphasizing that Christians don't have to be that way (at the end of the film, nobody's become an atheist, they've just re-examined the way they practice their faith).

A little odd, watching it with a good friend from Africa who has a completely different experience of Christianity --certainly not the American, consumerized Christianity of rock concerts and teeny bop magazines and special jewelry. I swear I was laughing nonstop during the film because I know people like the characters in this film, and to some degree was like them when I was in high school! (The Newsboys used to be my favorite band...)

At any rate, great comedy with a great message. My sister, who should see it, never will, but nonetheless, it was a great way to pass a Sunday night while sick and sniffling on vacation in Virginia!

A Tale of Two Movies

Imelda screened at the NW Asian American Film Festival. Saw Garden State last weekend.

The documentary on Mrs. Marcos was really well put-together! Basically, she's crazy and is in denial that she and her husband embezzled millions from a third world country and foreign investors, and had tens of thousands of political prisoners locked up. She's so out of touch with reality that her mantra of "beauty, truth, and God" illustrates how detached she is from the economic situations of the people that both love and hate her. And though the filmmaker interviewed family members, former colleagues, diplomats, political prisoners, etc., there was really no need -- Imelda clearly shone thought in her own words as loo-HOO-ny!

There were naturally the personal connections. Grandma left the Philippines the year before Marcos declared martial law, and Mom left the year after. We didn't visit until the year the dictatorship ended and Corrie Aquino was officially recognized as president. I remember visiting Quezon City as a little 7-year-old, knowing that she was president but not knowing all the previous history, just that Marcos wasn't the greatest political leader. And knowing we weren't travelling too far south because there were guerillas (that was my first introduction to homonyms -- I thought Dad meant gorillas, and pictured them lurking in the jungles). I remember Clark AFB -- and 15 years later, even wrote a paper on the US policy of containment that created the "need" for an American presence that blindly excused all the Marcos human rights abuses because at least he wasn't communist ...

It's a little tragic how the second generation knows so little because the first generation is so reluctant to talk about anything! And tragic too that the second generation sometimes doesn't care until it's too late to get most of the oral histories.

And of course, the shoes. 3000, was it? There's an interview with one of Imelda's nieces, saying "You have to understand Filipinas!" LOL -- I know I have a ton of shoes, so does Mom, so did Grandma. ;-) Maybe there's a little bit of learned culture there ... Anyhoo, since the shoes are the only thing people know about Imelda, the fabulous voice-over in the beginning is Imelda's son saying "Forget about the shoes, get beyond the shoes." Good advice.

Ah, and Garden State. It's not on my Top Ten List or anything, but I liked this movie for the simple reason that it's my life! The sudden parental death; the hometown friends who live in such a vastly different world and haven't moved; the childhoods so crazy that strangers don't believe true stories because the lies are more comforting ... There were some awkward moments where the comedy was tragic and I couldn't laugh, and moments where the tragedy was almost hilarious. Some scenes are really disturbing, some are simply wacky, some awkward, some sad, some funny, some weird. Mais c'est la vie, n'est-ce pas?

Thoughts on Burnout

I think it's the religious background: the whole your-life-doesn't-matter-only-God's-plan-does mentality being drilled into my head. Add to that the whole Asian thing about deference and sacrificing yourself and knowing your place. Then toss in the vaguely socialist, bleeding heart liberal attitude about the village raising a child.

At any rate, my schedule is way too packed doing civic, selfless, organizing, social justice, and/or political tasks. I love my job, but for once I'd like to be in a social situation where I didn't have to answer questions about organizational positions. I love planning commission work, but I'd really like to know what it's like to walk downtown for no particular reason at all! I don't need to save the world all on my own, but for some reason I feel and act as though I do.

The mountains on the drive to Yakima were magnificent. The stars on the drive back were so pretty. The silence on Whidbey was so goddamn peaceful. . . .

Counting down the days till I'm wandering around the Chesapeake and hiking in the Blue Ridge.
It's funny, I'll be able to relax more among the Virginia conservatives than the Seattle liberals!

Looking forward to the foliage!