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Few Clothes in Egg-Frying NYC – Tu-be or not Tu-be

July 7, 2010

Wishful Thinking? (On ManicDDaily's part)

One thing that has taken me aback in these last few egg-frying days in New York City is how few clothes women have been wearing in public.

I’m someone who has always worn a fair amount of clothing in public.

One reason for this is a lot of my travel has been to hot places which are also very prurient places, places where women, people in general, cover up (i) because of cultural modesty (in situations where people live in tight quarters, they sometimes seem to use cloth as a boundary), and (ii) to try to protect their arms, shoulders, eyes, heads, from blistering sunshine.

I tell myself I’ve adopted such practices—longish sleeves, highish necks, loose clothing—in the name of comfort and good sense.  But another reason for the cover-up, and perhaps the truer one, is simply that I grew up with a strong bodily sense of original sin.  This is different from traditional original sin in which the soul is embued with innate moral failings;  rather it is a sense that the body is embued with innate imperfections, imperfections which, if not corrected by diet and exercise, are at best camouflauged.   (I’m not sure whether to blame this on Twiggy or my mom.)

Whatever the reason, tube dresses were never my style.

I seem to be an anomaly in the modern U.S., however, at least on 102 degree days.  I find it frankly breath-taking.

So many breasts, so many thighs, so many fleshy bits, bits that in my sheltered mind are usually not seen outside a dressing room or swimming pool.

So much confidence, so much nonchalance, so much skin!  And so many many different attitudes (from “God I’m hot!” to “God I’m hot!” to “God I’m hot!”)

I vary between admiration (for the freedom and unself-consciousness), to understanding (of why certain other cultures are so very hostile to us), to confusion (on one level it seems anti-feminist and self-negating while on another it seems incredibly feminist and self-accepting), to chagrin (I don’t always want to see all that skin), to–

God I’m hot.

Categories: elephants, Stress, Uncategorized
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Super Hot Day Brings Up Edward And Bella Again – Is The Fascination About Sex, Marriage, Feminism (Or Lack Thereof)? Or Just All the Carrying?

July 6, 2010

Modern Harried Female and Embarrassed Robert Pattinson (as Edward Cullen)

I hate to try the patience of my regular followers.  I ask for forgiveness based on the fact that it was 102 degrees in my city today, and  I have used very little AC for several hours in a perhaps misguided attempt to support Con Edison (as well as our troops abroad, and our environment at home.)

So, under guise of a very wilted brain, I am returning to a discussion of Twilight, it having re-entered my consciousness with the new Eclipse movie.  Only this time I’m approaching it from a sociological perspective and not an “isn’t-Robert-Pattinson-so-much-cuter-than-that-Lautner-guy” perspective.

There has been much discussion of the sexual conservativism of Mormon Stephanie Meyer’s books (the lesson of “sure, dear, sneak a vampire up to your bedroom every night, just don’t, you know, have, like, sex with him. “)

But the truly old fashioned aspect of the books relates to sex as in gender roles, rather than to sex (or the lack thereof) as an activity.  Frankly, when viewed through this lens, the appeal of the books to middle-aged women (the mothers or grandmothers of the target teen audience) is really kind of sad.

Much is made in the movies of a love triangle between Bella and her vampire suitor Edward and werewolf suitor Jacob, but, frankly, in the books – spoiler alert- Edward wins hands (ahem) down.

No, the true choice for Bella (as written) is not between Edward and Jacob, but between a) Edward, a life of very ample financial security, sex (finally) and devoted, if controlling, companionship, and b) having a life on her own—that is, going to college, having a career (vampires have to keep too low a profile to pursue work or renown in any meaningful way), having an ongoing relationship with her birth family, having children (although this one doesn’t come up for a while), having her choice of friends, having to wear sunblock, and (though rarely mentioned) eating food.   (Edward sort of sums all these things up in “having a soul”.)

This choice, if you think about it, sounds an awful lot like the choices faced by many women in the past (and currently in much of the world) in marriage.   Going from one set of fairly controlling males (the father and his sphere) to another (the husband and his sphere).   Trading off the possibility of independent personal development for material security and sex with a sole partner.

Even more strange from a feminist perspective is the fictional fact that Bella feels forced to make her choices quickly primarily because of her vanity.  (Okay, and hormones.)  She can’t stand to delay a transformation to vampiredom, even to go to college for a couple of years, because it will cause her to become “older” than her vampire beau.  She feels the tick of a biological clock that is not based on reproductivity but firm thighs and an unlined countenance.

Yes, young love is powerful.  But why do older women (much to their own embarrassment) read the books so avidly?

The only answer I can come up with (and I should know) is that Edward promises to take care of everything.   He is handsome, considerate, unconditionally loving, but, more importantly, extremely attentive to detail.  He loves to buy presents.   He arranges for house cleaners.  He cooks!  He carries Bella around, never ever complaining about how heavy she is.  One big reason he wants to get married is simply to be allowed to pay Bella’s bills.

The modern older woman a) rarely has anyone carry her groceries much less herself, and b) generally has to pay her own bills.

Of course, the success of the books probably also arises from the fact that even as Bella makes some very unliberated choices, she ends up repeatedly saving the day, and generally doing adventurous, independent, types of things.   (All the while being carried at moments, and having important bills, such as medical and travel, paid.)

It’s interesting that the non-Mormon director and screenwriter of Eclipse, presumably sensitive to feminist issues, actually change the dialogue to have Bella say that her motivation for becoming a vampire is to be her truest self (rather than her love of Edward.)   While the change may be intended to promote the idea of strong women, it ends up meaning that Bella’s choice is for wealth, supermodel looks, superhero/bloodthirsty strength.  (And still no college or family!)  Somehow the doing-it-all-for-love part seemed better.   (Especially given the carrying.)  (And the saving the day.)

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More About Guns (And Personhood)

July 4, 2010

Elephant With Gun (Sorry, a Repeat on a Busy Day)

I’ve been thinking a lot about guns lately – not particularly because it’s the 4th of July –but because this blog has gotten recent thoughtful comments from someone who is much better informed about gun types and usage than I am.  Also, I’ve been staying in a house with someone who has an active interest in recreational shooting.

I am a non-apologetic supporter of fairly restrictive gun control.   I live in a city; I move in crowds, largely on public transportation.  But my antipathy for readily available guns does not just arise from the fact that I don’t want to get shot in a public space.  (I don’t.)

It doesn’t even arise from the fact that both me and my dog Pearl get totally freaked out by the crack of gunfire up here in the uncrowded countryside.  (We do.)

What really concerns me is madness both as a term for anger, and a term for craziness (they really do overlap.)

What concerns me even more is the combination of madness and power.

Guns are the metallic distillation of power; they pack, as it were, a very great deal of punch; brass knuckles raised to the nth degree.

I’m guessing that punch is one of the reasons recreational shooting is so popular; I’m guessing that it provides a taste of power, excitement, control, release, kickback; a discipline at which one can become skilled and also charged.

I do understand that.  Sometimes you feel like you are jumping out of your skin; sometimes even very cool humans have to physically let off steam.

I’m not saying that gun owners use guns in that way.  I just don’t have the experience to know.  The only time I ever fired a handgun I fell down.

But I do have experience of human nature; of how angry, crazed, mad, people can become, sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes less so.   I especially worry about how that type of anger, madness, may be abetted by a culture that supports a “tit for a tat” as a short-form equation of justice and also as an ultimate deterrent.

I know that hostility for guns may come more naturally to me than others.  I was raised by a mom who was a longtime pacifist; a dad who was an old school turn-the-other-cheek Christian.  More importantly perhaps, I I’ve been lucky enough to have had enough emotional support and societal favor that my ego is not continually on the line.   A sense of personal validity was, thankfully, instilled a long time ago.   As a result, it takes a fair amount of aggravation to make me feel truly “dissed;” even when I have that aggravation, I’m pretty good at just (eventually) swallowing it.

I am sure that most gun owners are not that different from me; that they don’t misuse their guns or assault weapons, view them as tools to support their personhood.

But the fact is that there are many people who do misuse guns; sometimes serially, sometimes just a terrible once.  The availability of a handgun or assault weapon can allow a breaking point to break a very great deal.

Categories: news, Stress, Uncategorized
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Fourths of July Past – Swimming Pool Beauty Contests – In Search of Sparklers

July 3, 2010

Sparkler?

The 4th of July was a day of mixed blessings for me.  Oh, I was proud of my country sure.  In the years before 1967-68, when I was also ten or under (oops!), it was hard for me not to think of the U.S. with anything but absolute pride.   My parents had either fought in, or been very marked by, World War II, and the feeling of the U.S. as the ultimate good guy, the savior of the world, was strongly imprinted on me.

Already, of course, there were doubts about what was going on in Vietnam, but I felt with childish certainty (strengthened by the fact that the beginning of the war was associated with the martyred John F. Kennedy), that the U.S. had, at least, entered into that conflict trying to help people.

So what marred my childhood experience of the 4th was not any doubt in the indivisible goodness of my country and countrymen, but, well, beauty contests.

My uninformed sense is that the juvenile pageant circuit is considerably larger and more professionalized now, accompanied both by heftier prizes and far thicker applications of eyeliner.

In my day, these were extremely local events, held at our local swimming pool.  Which means, yes, that they involved a bathing suit portion.  As well as a talent portion.   I don’t remember any evening gown portion, but occasionally there was bicycle decorating—crepe paper bunting was used.  Sometimes, it seems to me that the contestants were also draped in bunting, but I have a feeling that this may have been only part of my mother’s ingenuity.  In other words, I may have been the only contestant who wore bunting.  (Yes, it was red, white and blue.)

There was no congeniality part—since everyone knew each other that would probably have been considered a hurtful popularity contest.  (As if the rest of it wasn’t! )  (Some bitterness there?)

I don’t mean to impugn my mother, although she was the instigator of my participation in these activities.   She bought the new bathing suits, arranged for whatever bunting was applied, listened and encouraged my choice of “talent”, and, after the inevitable defeat always always to a girl named Karen A. (whose full name I will not use in this internet-find-your-old-friends world), she complained bitterly at the bias and short-sightedness of the judges.  (They chose Karen A., according to my mom, because her parents were super popular at the pool, i.e. they drank and partied. )

Of course, I knew there was more—even my mother would admit it eventually.   Dimples.  A certain sassiness of hips.  A two piece suit and culique of eyeliner (even way back then.)   And even more importantly — a sparky conviction which Karen A. had and I didn’t a) that the contest was fun and  b) that she definitely deserved to win it.

On my mother’s behalf, she, a brunette, was born with what was then charitably called a “Roman nose.”  It actually gave her face a striking handsomeness.  But she grew up in the age of Shirley Temple, Ginger Rodgers, Betty Grable.   And when her daughter was born short-nosed and blonde, it felt miraculous.   How could a daughter with such innate advantages not win whatever contest came her way!? !

I don’t know why I kept trying. (Correction—I don’t know why my mom kept me trying.)  I guess the only answer is that people repeat their mistakes.  (See e.g. the U.S. government and foreign wars started ostensibly to help protect fledging “democracies”.)

I say, the day held mixed blessings.  In the evening, when suburban pre-much-airconditioning Maryland finally cooled down enough for us to leave the pool, we had fireworks.  Funny little black smoking worms that my brother was permitted to light on our back patio, flame-emitting cones that only my Dad could touch, eyes averted, and sparklers, many sparklers that, even as kids, we could wave about in almost any way we wished.

Categories: Uncategorized, Vicissitudes of Life, writing
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Feeling Loss in Bright Green of Early July – Giotto Blue

July 2, 2010

Giotto Blue

I am right now in a beautiful country place.  My eyes are bathed in a bright light green.  I’m even wearing a light green sweater so I am literally surrounded by the color.

Though I’m also sitting beneath bright blue—not sky, but a screened-in porch, which I like to think of as a Giotto blue.  The paint does not shimmer like the green (or true Giotto blue, for that matter) but it’s still quite lovely.

All this loveliness.  It’s an odd time to think about death, but it’s amazing to me how the thought crops up.  “Crops” seems an anachronistic term till I think suddenly of the “Grim Reaper,” and then it all makes sense.  The fact is that just about anything that grows, dies.  (See how I manage to hedge that—“just about anything.”  How about “anything” plain and simple?)

Now you see it, now you don’t.

I’m not quite sure why I am thinking about this on a 4th of July weekend.  Maybe it’s because when you return to a place that you have long returned to, especially a country place, where you see people you have long seen, but only periodically—you become very conscious of time’s passage.

So here I am in all this bright green, nearly the same bright green as in every single July I’ve spent in the last twenty to thirty years, but the people walking around the green are, well—balder, shakier, heavier, thinner, frailer, greyer, and, in the case of those who were very young in past years, perhaps even more beautiful, and also now able to cook.

Not quite so many day lilies by the garage, more down by the pond.

In my manicddaily way, I focus intensely on these kinds of changes, and can get very sad about them.  Manicddaily kinds of people tend to be extremely good at calling up past losses and imagining prospective ones.   I can become quite mournful even in the midst of what should be joyful moments at the absolute inevitability of loss, disappearance, death.

Some say that the best response to these types of feelings is “to be more in the moment”.  I’m not so sure.  For me, that poignant sense of loss is part of the moment (even if just the moment as experienced by my head or hormones.)

Okay, so maybe a better answer is to be more in the physical moment;  to focus on the coolness of the breeze against your skin, the green before your eyes, the gently warm sun lighting parts of both that green and skin.

But, sometimes the understanding of loss is part of  your physical experience of the moment as well as your mental experience, part of your very chemistry.

For me, one effective (though perhaps obvious) way to deal with this chemistry of loss is to try to summon up some kind of appreciation.  Gratitude  Even just relief.  Any one of these can work as a neutralizer, a base to the acid.

After all, I’m still right here, thinking these things through.  (Hurrah!)   And that mix of green and sun and breeze and Giotto blue is really quite wonderful, and also amazingly enduring.  At least, for now.

Categories: Stress, Uncategorized, Vicissitudes of Life
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Twilight Saga Eclipse – Embarrassing – Something To Learn From

July 1, 2010

Embarrassed Pattinson

I’m putting aside all this discussion of constitutional issues and the Second Amendment today and getting to something really important:  the new cinematic installment of the Twilight Saga – Eclipse.

And I’ll stop right here.  I can’t, with a straight face, call it really important.  With a straight face, all I can call it is really terrible.

The most fun part, in fact. was standing in line in the theater with two twenty-somethings who kept talking about how much they hoped that they would not run into anyone they knew, and which particular person they would least want to run into.

At the end of the movie, we all three walked away very very fast.

The problem, aside from idiotic dialogue, and visuals that, on individual shots, make the actors look incapacitated by angst or glum boredom, and group shots, as if they are on a fashion photo shoot, is that its makers disdain the basic material.  Yes, the books are goofy; yes, the writer is a Mormon; yes, a big feature in the plot is the maintenance of chastity before marriage; and yes, Edward is just too “good” to be true—yes, these factors are all pretty dumb and very uncool (as is a lot of the Twilight crowd),  but they are the givens; a big part of what made the books popular.

One can feel the director, David Slade, the script writer, Melissa Rosenberg, strain against these very uncool, unhip, givens; they seem embarrassed to be connected to a movie promoting them  (just as we, hip New Yorkers, were embarrassed to see it.)  (Although Slade and Rosenberg are, I’m sure, eager enough to make money from it.)

The exceptions here are perhaps Taylor Lautner who seems, sorry, clueless enough, not to mind the story, and still too thrilled by the fact that they kept him in to be disdainful of anything, and Billie Burke, who is just a good professional actor.  Okay, okay—I’m not going to blame Pattinson (who is given truly awful lines, and very little leeway to smile charmingly) or Stewart either.  It’s the Director and Screenwriter, who seem like the true teenagers here, mortified by their parent, i.e. their base storyline.

But a movie that doesn’t like itself is just not likeable.   To make a stupid, uncool, story work, you have to just go with the stupid, uncool flow, not try for a stupid cool flow.  (Otherwise, it just doesn’t make internal sense.)

Bringing this around to something that may be of more interest to followers of this blog:  it really is important, in pursuing any kind of artistic endeavor, to make a kind of peace with it, to let go of that edge of embarrassment that sometimes clouds one’s work and commitment.  If you find your work truly embarrassing (not because of modesty, but because of something deeper—because the work is it is too personal, too openly reflective of your goofy side, or the opposite, too blatantly commercial and not reflective of your goofy side), it will be very difficult for you to really push it to any kind of happy fruition.

Categories: Robert Pattinson, Twilight Saga, Uncategorized, writing
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Clarification re Push-Ups (Prefer doing to wearing)

June 30, 2010

I am writing to clarify one point in last night’s post re anecdotal connections between the sales of assault weapons and push-up bras.

My concern about push-up bras isn’t based on prurience.  I do think that the culture is over-sexualized, but putting that aside, I worry about young (and old) women feeling like they constantly have to “fix” their physical selves.  (I thought we’d gotten over that!)  I’m all for diet and exercise, but the nearly bottom line is that I’m more in favor of doing push-ups than wearing them.  The bottom line is that anything is better than cosmetic surgery.  So, if push-up bras allay women’s desire for that–more power to them!

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Letter from a Hot Apartment (With Elephant)

June 26, 2010

Hating Air Conditioners

Letter From a Hot Apartment

Dear dear one,
I miss you tons.
I hope you are not too hot up there.

Down here, it’s hot.
Yes, I could turn on
the air conditioners, but
you know how I am.
I don’t believe in air conditioners.
I say it’s because of the war.
I say it’s because of the environment.
I say it’s because I’m so broke.
All of which is true.
But the greater truth is that I just hate
their buzzing hum, and worse, the vacuum that descends
when windows that can open
are closed up tight.
You could say that I
am a sensitive type,
with issues of
control.

Though if you were here, I’d let you put
one on just as much as you wanted,
(for a few minutes at least.)
(No, seriously, for just as long as you wanted),
(as long as it wasn’t too long.)

Because despite what I am,
which is not
an air conditioner.
I really would do just about anything
for you, dear, whom I miss
tons.

Categories: elephants, poetry, Uncategorized
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Mixed Feelings About the City

June 25, 2010

Full Moon in City

It was a great relief, at first, to step into the warm summer evening.  Not only was it Friday evening—the air conditioning in my New York City office is cold enough to leave one, after a long day or week, chilled through.

In the embrace of the sultry air, I decided, on a lark, to walk all the way from mid-town on the East Side down to the West Village where I was meeting someone for dinner.  How wonderful, I thought, to live in a  city I could walk, a city with sidewalks, avoidable tunnels and throughways, a city that allowed for random exercise.

A few blocks later and I began to wonder  if the good effect of the exercise  was not counterbalanced by the negative effect of the pollution.  Plus my eyes were grainy with soot.

But I had told myself I was going to walk, and, as followers of this daily blog may sense, once I make a commitment, I am not readily shaken from it.

Soon, I was thinking of Horatio Hornblower, and how, in one of the novels, his feet become so blistered he can hardly hobble.

Still I kept a steady pace, even in places where the crowd was thick enough to warrant the regular dodge, and a hand clamped hard on my purse.   I kept it up through hoards of shoppers, cafe-gazers, people pushing into and out of subway entrances.  I kept it up even when my slightly rapid, attempting-a-light-heart pace, felt very out of place.  Although, truthfully, there is nothing like a walk in the streets of New York City to make almost anything odd about yourself  seem as run of the mill as an annual 5K at a Gold Medal Flour factory

“Characters” abound.  Some of them fill you with wonder; some pity; some dread.  Most you just don’t want to stare at too long.

Around mid-town, for example, there was the seemingly elegant woman wearing a fur-lined mad bomber hat.  Her walk stately walk was burdened by bags from such high-end stores that, at first, I wondered whether she was someone traveling from a Northern place, or, perhaps, in the midst of moving, someone, who, despite the 90 degree day, simply felt like wearing her mad bomber hat instead of packing it.  Then I saw her face.

Then there was the guy sitting on sidewalk, propped up against a mailbox, on an extremely crowded 34th Street.  It took me a moment to understand that a large black dog was lying (on its back) between his legs, its wandering muzzle seeking out the large slice of pizza he balanced on his chest.

After supper in the village, I felt so stuffed with Ethiopian food – there’s something about those spongey pancakes – I felt the need to walk some more.  It was cooler now that it was dark, less gritty though the wind had picked up.   A huge, beautiful, orangish, full moon hovered just above the shorter buildings, blocked by most others.  I pointed it out to one trio who waited with me at a stop light (they thanked me), did not point it out to the guy in the small park who, for no reason except perhaps to show off for his friends, called me a very nasty epithet (I figured that he wouldn’t thank me),  did not even think about it when I dashed across one street in Tribeca to avoid the darting dark shadow near my footsteps (yes, I know what it was and they terrify me!), and, finally, as the street corners became a little more open at the bottom of the Island, found it again.

Fell into a doze almost immediately when I finally got home, shoes off.  The cooling summer night that now wafted through my open windows felt somehow softer from the other side of a screen, from inside four walls, and I tried not to think too much about that man, that woman, that curse, that dog.

Categories: New York City, Uncategorized
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Isner as Elephant, Wimbledon 2010

June 24, 2010

John Isner, as Elephant, Wins Longest Match in History

Some people draw conclusions;  others draw…elephants;  others draw on incredible reserves of focus and stamina;  others draw on pieces of paper too small to hold their elephants.

Congratulations to both players for holding up.

If they can do it, we can.  Enjoy the heat!

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