Taming of the Shrew

I was a very young teenager when I discovered Elizabeth Taylor. She was also very young, though a bit older than I, but already a star and the most beautiful woman who could ever be. I have never stopped believing that. I have not watched a movie with her in it for a very long time.

Today I saw most of the Taylor/Burton/Zeferelli Taming of the Shrew. She was breathtaking as always. Burton looked so young an vital, not the picture of the alcohol sodden man I carry in my mind. The play itself is over the top, the movie, especially with Zeferelli's sets and costumes, was over the top. Who cares? This was a total visual treat and Shakespeare be damned.

The coordinator of the course in which this was shown [last week we saw the Pickford/Fairbanks version] asked what obligation does a movie maker have to Shakespeare. I didn't speak up -- many others did, complaining that neither movie was true to the Bard. I don't think movie makers have, or even should have, an obligation to the original source -- they butcher living writers' work; should we expect any greater fidelity to a long dead writer even if he was the greatest dramatist in the English language? Of course not. It's entertainment, pure and simple. If Hollywood ever attempts Shakespeare [very rare!] we should rejoice. A few of the "rabble" will become acquainted in some way with the great man. This movie was a money maker after the flop of the ridiculously expensive Cleopatra. Hurrah! People saw it, some people realized they could enjoy Shakespeare, maybe a few even went to see other Shakespeare production, even on stage. Who knows? I know young people discovered Shakespeare because of Zeferelli's overwrought [but beautifully photographed] Romeo and Juliet. Meanwhile I"m just as amazed by, and painfully jealous of, Liz's perfect face and incredible eyes as I was when I was 15. Many women are very beautiful but Taylor had a special perfection, and she actually could act.

Sad Part of Being 70 and More

Growing older also means one's friends and acquaintances tend to be older and that, inevitably and awfully, means some will die. I have been lucky, in a way, not to be near a lot of contemporaries, such as those I went to high school and college with, and that a great many of my friends are younger than I am. [I also think I am younger than I am.] The Christmas letters brought news of a dear college friend who died last year. And several of my small high school class are gone -- mostly it's the men; which is statistically likely but nevertheless a sad thing.

When I moved to Cape Cod my daughter very quickly took me to a poetry reading with students and teachers at the school where she works. I met a beautiful woman, a poet, English teacher, administrator there who read a poem and who mentioned wanting to start a poetry group. I and my daughter and her husband were quick to say yes, we'd like a poetry group too. So a few other people were found and we met every couple of weeks for a brief while -- until the rug was pulled out from under us when this lovely woman was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreative cancer in October. She died last week and a lovely memorial service was held yesterday. Many, many ex-students and others who knew her were there. And for the first time I had to stop and think about how quickly life can disappear and that, as I know but wish I didn't, the stroke of the scythe doesn't discriminate between those who are living rich, full, beautiful lives and others who are less vibrant and seem to have slowed and be more ready. And I read in the memorial pamphlet that she was just my age, though I thought she was younger.

And, yes, I think some are ready. The last member of the generation before me, my mother's youngest sister died this fall. She was a vibrant woman too always full of laughter and enjoyment. But she had suffered from congestive heart failure for many years, and then macular degeneration that robbed her of much enjoyment. She was tired, she had seen several great-grandchildren arrive [whom she did expect to live to see], but I think she was ready.

My briefly known friend enjoyed gardening. Mmany pots of flowers were in the sanctuary and people were encouraged to take a pot home. My daughter, who knew her well, has a pot of primroses, thus the primroses in the blog. Perhaps eventually I'll find a poem to write, I feel mute today.

Writing With the Whole Brain

Teaching a writing class was an idea I had when I first moved here. At first I thought of a class called "Writing from Life," which would be based on the premise that people in art school have to take life drawing classes whether they are going to be realistic painters or not. Observation of a living human being is a necessary discipline. I still think that's a valid premise for the writer -- because I'm tired of the navel gazing of so many writers, especially the young ones and, in a sense, also the older ones who write memoirs. [However the older memoir writers at least have lived and have experiences to write about as many young one's really don't where as the young ones are mainly asserting their identity. A necessary step but often unoriginal and boring.

I decided to call the class "Writing With the Whole Brain" when I read Gene Cohen's The Mature Mind and realized there is a valid reason for telling older people -- people have to be over 55 to enroll in the Lifelong Learning program -- they have access to their whole brain and can integrate the rational writing most of them have been doing with more creative writing. It means sometimes overriding the voice of the grade school teacher with all the writing rules.

The first thing that happened that surprised me, happily, is the participation. I had six enrolees and two more had called to ask to join the class. When the coats and mufflers finally all got hung up there were 13 people arranged around the square of tables. Clearly this title is appealing. In introductions people spoke of being attracted by the title. How important a few little words are!

I'm making notes about the exercises and what I'm learning, perhaps it will become a separate blog. If not I'll return to things I'm discovering in later posts. For now I'm mulling and considering what to do next. I had the first class planned with an exercise to do in class and an assignment for next time. There will be 12 classes, and I have only a sketchy set of ideas how I'll proceed but already some discussion in class has given me a clue. I trust my own integrated right/left process to know I'll think of something. It won't be perfect but when it's all done, I will have learned a lot and then I can teach it again next fall and incorporate my learnings.

Catching up with January New Yorker Magazines, I've just read a longer than seems necessary article about Van Gogh's famously mutilated ear. A pair of German art researchers have written a book to convince us that Gauguin actually was the one who did the cutting - with his fencing sword. The immediate reaction is "so what?"

I've been having the same reaction when "news" pops up on my AOL homepage with a picture of some actor or actress saying, "remember X from X TV show from the '60s or '70s?" Not only do I not remember, I wonder whether the apparently now retired actor wants a trumped up new 15 seconds of attention reminding the world that he or she was once considered glamorous.

I make that connection because the final paragraph of the Van Gogh article observes that in his last year or so he continued painting furiously with the insane conviction [he had been in and out of asylums] that someday his garish colors and somewhat cartoonish portraits would be appreciated. Unlike most people who harbor such delusions, he was correct. Meanwhile those remembered or not remembered actors are not [I assume] insane and have probably made lives for themselves without such illusions of glamor.

Out Stealing Horses

I never write about truly current books, because I don't read books that way. I find them, usually in second hand stores, and buy them because I remember reading or hearing they were good, or because I know the author's work or because of the jacket blurb and sometimes because I want to read something from the author's country [which isn't, in those cases, the US] Out Stealing Horses has been on my to-read shelf for a few years. I read a later novel by Per Petterson first and was only mildly impressed -- it had the wintery chill I think of as particularly Scandinavian [he is Norwegian] and which I find in most Bergman movies and in Ibsen's plays [and of course the bleak Strindberg's]. But I like the feeling of getting to essentials that I get from Scandinavian writers and the blazes of warmth and sunshine that come with the long, long summer days. This book won major prizes and acclaim in Europe and America five or six years ago. Most deservedly. From the first simple but reverberant scene when Trond Sandler, a 67 year old retiree, steps out of his barely livable cabin on a dark night to investigate a sound his neighbor is making, to the unfolding of his memories especially about a summer when he was 15 in 1948 and this neighbor was a neighbor then as well, Petterson tells a story in powerful scenes, both memories and present time. His writing has the assurance of a story teller who trusts the reader to make connections.

I'm rather tired of the too-popular "boy grows into man" genre,"girl into woman" as well. I'm actually much more interested in what people do with their lives when they are adults. Nevertheless, Petterson's writing is so compelling I will remember it, and especially remember it's author, for a long time to come.

I Stand Corrected

Conda commented on my dog/cat post a couple days ago. She made a some of points that are important and that I am sorry I did not make -- I'm sorry I even got into the mind set that prompted that post. She lived in Southeast Asia and tells me, as, in fact I knew and should have remembered [although I have traveled only Thailand and southern China in that part of the world], that people there, and especially tribal people in the jungle areas, but also city people, eat just about everything. They are not starving but they do not have enough food. When you do not have enough food, you eat what is available be it it dog, cat, or grubs, crickets, whatever. This is human nature and it is necessary and not to be considered heartless or awful in a moral sense. It is awful that the people do not have enough food such as rice and vegetables and the sort of high protein meat most of the world considers necessary.

Furthermore people living in that situation do not have the luxury of having pets. They cannot feed pets when they can barely feed themselves. We in the west and other developed countries are lucky to be able to afford the luxury of pets. This is something most of us take for granted. We should not.

And then let me add that traveling is not something we should do just to entertain ourselves or to relax on exotic beaches and eat exotic foods [not dog and cat, I hope]. Travel is something to undertake so that you might have a broader picture and understanding of and respect for the world you live in and the people who share this world with you. I have traveled a good bit, and I thought I had learned that lesson but, thanks to Conda's remark, I realize I can fall into knee jerk reactions and type up a blog post before I've properly thought though what I'm writing about. Thank you, Conda.

Too Good to Eat

When I went to southern China a few years ago the guide asked, as guides should do, "Is there anything you don't eat?" I answered, "dogs, cats, monkeys and snakes." I know that dogs and cats are eaten in China, that snakes are also eaten in the areas near Thailand and Laos. I don't know if they eat monkeys there but I know monkeys are called "bush meat" in parts of Africa and perhaps other jungle countries. Snakes are just too abhorrent to me to even think of eating, and I know some people in out Southwest eat rattlesnake.

I've just read in today's NY Times that the Chinese government passed a law making it illegal to kills and serve dog or cat, punishable by fine and jail time. The same very short article quotes a restaurateur in Guiyang, a city I visited, as saying that dog is the best and most popular item on his menu. Immediately a picture popped into my head of the restaurant we ate at there -- I'm sure it wasn't his. I think I knew what all the meats were that we had that meal.

Look at these pictures of dogs and cat and think about whether you could eat them, short of actual starvation when, for sheer self preservation you would eat anything, from the family pets to boiled shoe leather. You might choose shoe leather first. I read of many Chinese laws that are as abhorrent to me as eating or sleeping with a snake, but this one sounds like a move toward a greater understanding of the love we and our most usual animal companions share.