catch-all post

I don't know if it will really "catch all" my thoughts of late, and I don't think anyone would really want to be privy to all my thoughts, to be sure. But here are things that don't warrant long posts, but just what is on my mind...

• we watched the 1946 version (? date?) of Pride and Prejudice, with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, and it was much better than I had anticipated. The costumes were less than period, bordering on a cross between hairdressers in the land of Oz and a Dickens 1840's piece, but even with the obvious visual absurdities they got the spirit of the book. Elizabeth's mother was a foolish, blustering imbecile, her father droll and resigned, her silly sisters very embarrassing, and Darcy taking it all in with characteristic distaste and pity. Olivier's reaction as Darcy to Elizabeth's refusal was perfect. I think that the mark of a superb actor is not how they say things, but what they do when they aren't saying anything at all. They show that there's a brain inside that beautiful head (and might I mention, Olivier's was quite beautiful), who has fully become the character. I hadn't seen Greer Garson in anything but the blub-your-eyes-out Mrs. Miniver, so it was interesting to see her playing a comedic role.
  
• Another brilliant piece of cinema I recently saw in New York was Tropic Thunder. Well, brilliant is stretching it but I have not laughed that hard in a movie since the Incredibles. I might have embarrassed myself laughing too hard if others weren't doing the same. The humor is raunchy at times, disgusting at times, but also a spot-on send-up of Hollywood, method acting, diva behavior, and the trend of fabricated memoirs. Tom Cruise plays a smaller part than the three main guys (Downey Jr, Stiller, Jack Black), but his role as the soulless movie executive alone is reason to watch the movie. Cruise is creepy in real life, but I still think he's hot. What can I do? This movie completely jettisoned his good looks for a fat suit, ample body hair (except up top), gold rings and a taste for rap. It's crazy gross.
  
• I have discovered that Legos are hazardous to my health. Actually, the way I sit while I'm building stuff with A has been the culprit in making my left hip a real mess. I thought it was all the gardening and bending and lifting which might have started it, but I've also spent hours sitting Indian-style on a hard floor all summer, or sitting at the computer with one leg tucked under me, and now my obliques and back are wacked. So I've been going to physical therapy a couple of times a week, and am really trying hard to be aware of how I am sitting so that these exercises are not wasted. But it's a pain, and I haven't figured out a good way to continue playing with A that won't mess me up.
  
• Since starting PT, I have seen several of my former teaching colleagues in random places. It's been really interesting to hear how former students are doing, families of teachers growing, and being able to truthfully say that I am doing well and enjoy being a mom. I don't know if these people have appeared in my life now to remind me of that, or if it's "just coincidence--" my favorite mystery-story sleuth Maisie Dobbs says coincidence is a messenger sent by truth, and I am inclined to agree. I see my three years of teaching there as a crucible, where I finally learned that I cannot be a workaholic and expect to be sane, where I realized my search for identity was wrapped up in my hopes for students, and I expected way too much from them and myself. I learned too that if I expected to be treated as an adult by my superiors, I needed to become more assertive and not take things so personally. And then I got pregnant when my close friend and colleague had just had her third miscarriage, and shook my head at the inscrutable ways of God. She has since had two babies, which I am so thrilled about, but at the time it was so difficult sharing an office and feeling so conflicted, not being able to talk about any of it because it was so painful. And I had three "scares" as well, as it seemed that A wasn't going to hold on or I wouldn't be able to provide a cozy home for the little bean. That's a lot of goings-on in three years, not to mention the sniper scare, the 2000 election, and September 11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq...
  
• Speaking of huge events and crucial elections, wow. I was completely shocked to find my own eyes filling up with tears when Obama gave his speech at the convention. D makes it a habit to listen to everything on CNN, unedited speeches and the like (or ones that haven't been chopped into sound bites) and then tells me what interests him in all of it. Up till now I have remained, if not unbiased (as I have voted Republican more often than not), then thoroughly skeptical of any promise, movement, political event, etc. All of the elections have been this sham play of insults, character assasination, false hopes, and the sort of wink-wink feeling I get that once all the big boys get back in their offices everything will be the exact same as it has been, whichever party happens to hold the reins. Big corporations, vested interests, lobbyists, all of those people are so thoroughly entrenched in both parties that I had resigned myself to picking the President with a grimace on my face. "It could be worse," I have said each election. Listening to the Obama speech, I felt something completely different. I felt like, for once in my life, a candidate is talking about bigger things than party crap and hurling insults at their opponent (though there was a bit of that...). He talked about a vision, a mood, a unity of purpose--something I'm struggling to find words for, but it was lighter, it was hopeful and human. There was Truth, and perhaps that is what has been missing for so very long in public discourse. And it's not just the fact that here is a man who is calling men to account (keep it up! every woman will vote for that!), and it isn't even the fact that here is someone who can string more than two words together without filling me with embarrassment or boredom, but it was a completely new experience of feeling like somebody understands what I care about, and they care about that too. If only he had picked someone other than Biden, who is a total stooge. At least Biden will be used to sitting in congress and doing nothing. I hope he can keep is yap shut.
  

With that, I'm going to shut my own yap for the night.