InnerActions

Another Year (writer/director Mike Leigh)

2011-08-05T15:12:33Z

If you love character films, "Another Year" is the film for you. Granted, even for a British film, it seemed rather slow for most of the first half but I couldn't stop watching---the characters lured me immediately and persistently.

Lesley Manville plays Mary: a very pretty and exceedingly lonely woman who tries painfully hard to create a life for herself. The depths of her despair but valiant effort to be happy is paralleled by her best friend Gerri, played perfectly by Ruth Sheen. Gerri and Mary have worked together for twenty years. Gerri has always initiated kind and regular invitations to Mary to come to dinner.

Gerri and Tom (played by the brilliant Jim Broadbent) have a mature and loving ease to their marriage of so many years. They are solid realists. Their compassion for their friends and family is equal, their acceptance for a broad range of people in their lives is not only notable but admirable. They have a great heart each and melded together as a couple. Mary has had a tough time of it and it is apparent to the audience that she needs Gerri.

As she and Tom have always invited Mary to dinner for twenty years, Mary has also watched their son grow up---who is now thirty and still single. Mary has a gift for "getting ideas" about things that are not always true. She's a bit naive and therefore foolish---yet generally harmlessly so. Until one night....

Mike Leigh (writer/director) carefully develops---no, allows his characters to evolve---through ordinary, daily living that as each character's desires come more into focus, they also come into conflict with the desires of others. This drives the story to bring these relationships to a troubling climactic point: Mary's loneliness and deluded need to belong is more than awkward when she meets Joe's (played sweetly by Oliver Maltman) serious girlfriend when he surprises his parents by bringing her to dinner one night. While everyone "understands" Mary is quirky, no one foresees how toxic her pain has become. Nor how protective Gerri can be of her family.

Has Mary finally overstepped her bounds? Will Gerri and Tom turn on her afterall? Has she lost her best friend Gerri forever?

Other characters enter the story to fill out these three who are the pivotal characters. The film is tender and haunting. These characters will hold your attention and your heart.

It would seem that popular culture is spinning out of control with hypersensitivity to a frenetic need to be in touch with everyone---fast, furious, superficial hydroplaning relationships. Thank God for Mike Leigh. This film is human, rooted, stable, real in its depiction of how beautiful and calm life can be, and how each of us longs for friends like Gerri and Tom. Some of us even wish we could be them. We still need to slow down, to touch the earth, to touch each other, to linger in the presence of those we love.

It's not a feel-good movie, but it is hopeful and satisfying. The characters are so distinctive and memorable. I hope everyone involved receives the recognition they deserve for this meaningful collaboration.

See the film.

"Letters to Father Jacob"

2011-05-15T12:30:00Z

A Twist of Faith...

Once again I have fallen in love . . . with a character from a 2009 Finnish film called "Letters to Father Jacob." Father Jacob has spent untold years living alone in a rectory in the pristine woodlands of outerlying Helsinki. He seems content, he seems patient, he seems dedicated to his mission of receiving letters requesting prayer and returning encouraging words from the Holy Scriptures which we learn later he has never read himself because he has always been blind. Still, he sees far more than most of us.

One day a woman in the nearby penitentiary is pardoned after believing for over a decade she would spend her life imprisoned. The prison official releasing her encourages her to fulfill a priest’s request for an assistant to help him read his mail and pen his responses. With no ties to family or friends, having severed all contact during her incarceration, Leila has no where else to go so finds her way to Father Jacob’s home.

Every day the mailman brings letters, and with deep concern Father Jacob prays and responds as this is his life’s purpose. Leila is a woman of few words; her facial expressions speak loudly of her contempt that the old man is wasting his time. Then one day the letters stop coming.

While the story is somewhat predictable, it is far from cliche. And while things happen that are heartbreaking, the quiet, persistent power of faith—or rather, the power of love—will open anyone’s heart who needs, as Father Jacob says, "to believe that there is someone watching over them."

It is not preachy. Not a sermon. Not even a morality tale. It is not soft. Tender is not the word, either. But it is poignant and beautifully crafted. It is a love letter that ends just like you expect it to. With a profound twist on what you believe, or fear, about having a purpose in life.

The above is a summary review. But here is my further reflection with spoilers. I marvel at how thoroughly and powerfully Christian Catholic the film is. There is a clever and clear message that it isn’t just about the pardon, but about the discipleship—and that word may have become too specialized when really what it means is time and patience are needed in a relationship where one is given the space and invitation to feel safe enough to learn what the gift of being pardoned really and deeply is. But the gift isn’t just one way.

These two characters are revealed in the subtle exchanges. Jacob several times insinuates Leila’s corroboration signifies companionship, a shared mission, and each time he takes that liberty, she summarily slaps him back into his loneliness. Likewise she is hardened against believing these letters matter at all; they seem silly and a waste of time and she even throws more than half of one day’s stack down the well.

When the letters stop coming, it is natural to assume that it’s the terrified mailman who is simply withholding them because of his fear of Leila, the "Lifer." But Jacob has no knowledge of their conflict or the threat the mailman has increasingly felt. All he knows is that every day the mailman on his bicycle turns before coming to the parsonage. He wrestles with this profoundly to the point where he contrives, or hallucinates, that he is needed for a wedding ceremony, needed for a funeral. He fears his life has lost meaning. He visibly struggles in prayer, his spirit is tormented; no one needs him. He struggles with the inevitability of the end of his life. This is his "Gethsemane" where he is coming to terms with death. Leila comes to find him and is horrified by his insanity and when she storms out of the little church, he takes his final Eucharist and stretches out in front of the altar to die.

Leila goes back to the rectory, packs, calls a cab and tries to leave but can’t—not because she can’t leave the old man, as some film reviewers suggest, but because she has despaired that she has no where to go, and Jacob has lost his mind, so she tries to hang herself in the bedroom.

However, Jacob’s purpose isn’t finished yet. He is awakened by the leak in the roof gently dripping water on his face. Leila manages to recover herself and take the rope off her neck when he comes into the house. A momentary sense of hope sweeps over his face in finding she is still there, he’s no doubt heard the taxi come and go. Yet he takes himself to bed as the days continue without letters. Leila confirms it isn’t the mailman hoarding them and instructs him to come the following day at the usual time to announce that there are letters—she intends to retrieve the letters from the well but that is a lost cause, laying the ground work for mutual redemption.

The mailman comes and shouts "Letter for Father Jacob" as he was instructed, but there are no letters; he hands her a catalogue. She will have to make up letters. As Leila takes this profound step of attempting to protect Father Jacob from despair, she succeeds in opening her own heart. Their relationship has become mutual in their gift to one another. Neither is aware of this, of course, but to keep Jacob from wholly losing heart, Leila begins to "read" a letter which is, of course, her own story, and now as they are truly entering the space of trust and reciprocation where they sit together outside under the enormous tree that shelters their wicker chairs and small table, she is at confession. What I find fascinating is that the depth of her confession is not that she murdered the man who was abusing her sister, but that she believed that in doing so, or not doing it sooner, has ruined her sister’s life. This is her guilt, her core for remorse: a broken relationship.

Leila, now at the point of openness, can receive the gift Jacob has had waiting by the side of his bed—the stack of letters her sister wrote asking Jacob for prayer. There were hints all along that he was responsible for her pardon, and we suspect that something like this has transpired. Her sister has "never stopped writing" and longs for word from her sister, longs for the relationship to be restored. Now the journey has come full circle and Leila is not only free from prison, she is free to go home to her sister who has never given up on the hope of reunion.

Ultimately, though, for Leila to be truly pardoned, to fully realize her freedom beyond being physically pardoned from life in prison, Jacob has had to walk a difficult stretch of his own path to the epiphany he is given before death. His revelation is, for me, far more profound than Leila’s. He has believed his whole life that he is helping God, that he is helping to bring people closer to God through his prayers by way of this correspondence. He comes to realize, humbly, that perhaps he is not helping God so much as God is helping him by bringing letters to him so that he feels needed, and this is how God has daily brought him closer to Himself. In this way, the intimacy of a mutually giving relationship is completed for Jacob. All that he has seen on behalf of others lands in his own heart that he, too, has needed someone to watch over him, and now has needed to learn intimately that Someone has been watching over him all along.

The most surprising thing about the film is that it is only 75 minutes long. It is so successfully captivating, enthralling, that immersion is inevitable and transportation into this other world, into the depths of these two characters, is complete and sustaining.

If you have read this whole reflection prior to seeing this film, I sincerely hope it hasn’t taken the place of your desire to experience the film yourself. No doubt, a masterful story like this has the capacity to bring a slightly different gift to each viewer. Please see the film yourself.

Amnesty International Write-a-Thon

2010-11-14T14:54:00Z

Just so you know...I've had a couple of extra days off from school, which simply means I've had a greater opportunity to delve into the dark side. Instead of narrating the past four days, I'll just list the highlights and then I'll get to my point.

I watched "Winter's Bone" twice--originally just because the trailer was compelling and my perpetual interest in strong female characters drove me to it. But the story's impact has gone far deeper than that, not the least of which is that it's set in the Ozarks, very similar in feel to my own mountain roots in the Appalachia. It was like going home for a couple of hours. Disturbing. (I highly recommend the film)

Then I watched "The Stoning of Soraya M." which I have put off watching for almost two years...but it kept popping up on netflix with a 4.2 stars "best guess for Kimba" rating. And the character who is burdened with telling the story is played by a favorite character actress Shohreh Aghdashloo. I recommend this film also, but it's not for sissies, and yet the ending is powerful and full of the kind of compelling hope I can't describe, only recommend you see it. Watching this film sent me on an odyssey to learn more about stoning as a practice still going on in the world today. I searched NYT and hit 4,230 articles on the subject. My stomach hurts.

The article at the top of the list mentioned the woman in Iran accused of adultery and attempted murder, Sakineh Ashtiani, who, as far as I can tell, is still awaiting execution (the article is dated November 2).

Somewhere in the article, clicking for more information linked me to Amnesty International and it turns out that December 4-12 is the write-a-thon letter writing campaign to put pressure on international governments to release prisoners like Sakineh Ashtiani, journalists, prisoners of conscience, and others who are imprisoned as a result of governments' international human rights violations.

Words have power. I've committed to writing 8 letters. I am turning this into a class project for my international baccalaureate students to give them an opportunity to write a persuasive "paper" with direct relevance in their world today.

And I am compelled to tell you about all this because I believe it is a real and tangible way we can make an actual difference in someone else's life. It's just a letter. It's just a few words. It's just 98 cents for an international postage stamp. It's just your voice and my voice harmonizing with other voices that will reach a pitch to shatter the glass prison of injustice and free an individual who lives and moves at the mercy of powerful and often corrupt governments---including our own.

First thing I did this morning was read the headlines of the NYT which announced the release from house arrest of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (which I'm sure we've all watched off and on for years---highly public case), an exciting article continuing to be updated as to the particulars at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/world/asia/15myanmar.html?hp and later when I was looking through the individual cases on the Amnesty site, she is among the top 8 on whose behalf letters may be written.

Anyway...by now you know that my point is to invite you to consider writing a letter on behalf of one of these people who need our voice, our words, to help shift their fate from certain death to freedom and life.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/writeathon/index.php?c=banner

How to Save a Life

2010-11-14T14:53:00Z

last night's dream...

I was out with a friend. I only remember city scenes and almost hotel like lobbies so maybe we were traveling. The phone rang. But before that or because of that but beyond that the phones were some kind of focus. Kept changing shape—well not really the shape but rather the size of its rectangular dimensions. It looked like every device that’s been advertised on the market—particularly an iphone, blackberry or flat screen tv. So many overwhelmingly crowded bits that I could see nothing and the screen kept changing, not just when I swept my finger across it to twirl the images to the left, but seemingly at random. At some point in the noise encrusted evening of the dream the phone rang and I couldn’t quite make out how to answer it because it had changed and then the ringing stopped and the phone stretched to a larger size, not enabling me to read the itty bitty things better but only to cram more itty bitty things under my nose.

Somehow I detected it was Dad who had tried to reach me and it was so noisy and lively where I was, I figured just as well I missed it, I’ll call him back.

But the phone rang again and then I knew, could feel, something was up, so I did my best to answer it and couldn’t. There’s a little screen near the top of this flat thing and briefly there came an image among the high tech, high flash, neurotic sales bits and movie trailers, briefly there came an image of my Dad sitting in his chair with the bubby standing on his chest in respiratory distress and the look on my father’s face and in his eyes at the camera, at me, was holy terror that the most precious thing in his life couldn’t breathe and if something wasn’t done immediately . . . And so I began to try to call him back except the phone kept taking over. I couldn’t dial the number because the place and pattern of dialing kept changing. The friend who was with me stood by helplessly with her own phone. I was crazy, the harder I tried to dial the number the worse it got and more obnoxious the changing tones and choices for apps and advertisements on the phone. The frantic chaos of it all is indescribable. Even a hotel steward tried to help and merely got in the way like another app or change of screen and the sounds kept following all the frenetic sounds of mass advertising and blockbuster meaningless films and I couldn’t make the phone make a simple phone call or save a life and I was distraught and beside myself.

And when I awoke, there was no break from dreaming, my emotional distress and angst in my throat still linger now thirty minutes later. I cannot get the panicked look on my father’s face out of my mind or throat or that feeling of utter powerlessness to save him or that wonderful little dog...and I realize as I write this that it was my own phone number I kept trying to dial into the phone.

Peacock (2010)

2010-08-16T01:41:00Z

*Spoiler* (I tried so hard not to...but...)

Everything just needs to get back to how it was before.

Cillian Murphy is brilliant. If you love psychological thrillers, true psychological thrillers, this is the film for you! LOVED it. Great story, tight tight tight story. No condescending explanations or monologues or voice overs.

Set in the 1950s, the slow and subtle revelation of one man’s traumatic struggle unfolds among kind, caring, but wholly inept citizens of a small town called Peacock, Nebraska, population 800. A year after his mother dies, a train crashes, leaving a caboose planted firmly in his back yard and his whole world begins to unravel. Worse yet, the mayor and his wife want to use the caboose, with its sign to "re-elect Senator Wyatt" draped on the back, to gather a rally to redirect voters’ attention.

You see, John has a problem. Today we might be fooled into thinking it’s asperger’s. But the real psychological problem is far deeper than that.

He is adamant that everything just needs to get back to how it was before.

Nobody does creepy better than Cillian Murphy ("Batman Begins," "Dark Knight," "Inception") . . . and he plays John and Emma with shivering precision and believability (tag: "If he only knew what she was doing"). The rest of the A-list cast provided extraordinary performances, including an equally challenged supervisor, played by Bill Pullman ("Independence Day," "While You Were Sleeping"), the mayor (Keith Carradine of "Damages," "Crash") and his wife (the ever captivating Susan Sarandon), Graham Beckel, Ellen Page, and the strong, involved and kind sherif (Josh Lucas with killer dimples).

The cinematography clips and plays out shots that are pristinely composed, mirroring the character’s severe need for order, routine, and predictability. The severity of the setting of John’s house profoundly conveys the overpowering presence of a mother dead only a year but still haunting every move, every thought, every element of the house—reflected in the heavy lined curtains, the pervasive dark reds and earth tones throughout a dark and boldly furnished home, the tight shots on mysteriously prepared meals, clothes laid out for John each morning, and the notes of instructions signed "Emma." Heavy laden. And yet it is the feminine personality that will ultimately both eliminate and emancipate John Skillpa—the human being beyond the gender.

The film is reminiscent of a classic Hitchcockian thriller but with the style that goes beyond stereotypical conventions of similar tales. The story isn’t about what happened to him as a child, but how he navigates the crisis at hand. While the town is called "Peacock" as is the film, the word fits John’s particular dissociative identity disorder. According to the National Geographic online, "The term ‘peacock’ is commonly used to refer to birds of both sexes." This might be a stretch, but I also found it curious that the peacock’s tale feathers, when spread proudly (think election and rally in the back yard), appear to have eyes everywhere but they do not see.

Compelling. Heart-breaking. Natural. Simple but not easy. Deep without preaching, without condescension. I was tempted to doubt that a town would fail to catch on that one of their own was wholly psychotic, but then names and images of a disturbingly long list of serial killers began flashing in my mind. If I say more I will betray the great initial surprise and the iconic nods yet fresh treatment of such a great story pattern.

So much of the story is familiar. Yet there are surprises and unexpected turns and revelations—subtle, exquisitely crafted depictions of a quintessential internal conflict. More is done with gestures and expressions than with words. Masterful little story. The only real problem I had with the story was its ending. The better ending for the story, I think, was the alternative ending that the dvd includes in the special features section.

Everything just needs to get back to how it was before. Before a mother abused her tiny son. Before a mother rigidly controlled every aspect of her son’s world. Before a mother made it necessary for her son to split his sensibilities in order to survive. The train wreck brings everything to a moment of imminent confrontation—the old ways of coping are no longer working for John. Or Emma.

email address change...

2010-08-15T02:59:00Z

So today I'm loading up three blog entries and it's been about two years since I've been on this site! Where does the time go?

I also noticed today that I cannot get into the hotmail account...not at all...I have a feeling it's been simply cancelled from disuse. So I've gone back to the website and changed it to read scopkimchi@aol.com ---- so let me apologize profusely if you have ever written to me at the inkieballard@hotmail.com and haven't heard back because I don't know what rock I've been under but I have been negligent and I sincerely apologize. Please write me at scopkimchi@aol.com.

See you "there" :o)

The rat in my kitchen!

2010-08-15T02:55:00Z

I entended to upload this after I wrote it. This was written May 15, 2010

It was a quarter to 5 on a Wednesday morning near the end of April. Just got out of the shower, crossed the house to the kitchen, walked into the kitchen, flipped on the light and a big gray animal thumped off the chair and scurried across the kitchen floor, flattened himself and disappeared under the oven.

First let me say that Monday evening, the kitchen was swarmed with 470,000 plus carpenter ants flooding through the electrical outlet behind the refrigerator. I discovered this around 9p.m. and was horrified! Ran to Walgreens and got Raid at Mama’s advice, came back and saturated the demons. Two hours later I went back in and vacuumed them all up. So disgusting. I swore I would call Nozzle Nolen the first chance I got after classes the next day but...things got busy...you know how it is. So as I stood paralyzed, not breathing, waiting for the visual imaging to sink in for explanation, I also realized that this was a new pestilence of Exodus proportions, divine intervention, that I could not COULD NOT procrastinate another day.

How long I stood motionless and speechless I cannot say. The animal was a rat about the size of your foot. As I stared in disbelief, realizing I had taken a step backward into the dining room, I heard metal banging and then he poked his head out to launch a getaway from under the oven and I freaked—jumped back and hollered. He turned back under the oven. I remember thinking being very glad that I am a hollerer, not a screamer. Weird but true—it was a proud moment. Still I couldn’t move for a very very long time. To this day I have no idea where he went from there but he somehow got back out of the house.

Needless to say, I didn’t make breakfast. I didn’t gather lunch or even water bottles. I did, as I recall, risk making tea, never taking my eyes off the oven, and verbally expressing loudly everything that I was about to do and what I was doing, just to keep the monster fully hidden from view. I think the only way I got up the courage was to remind myself that he was far more scared than I was....

First chance I got, I called Nozzle Nolen and a guy named Dean met me at home that night. He ultimately quoted about $600 total, wanting a check for $300 before he left. I was depressed because I had wanted to get Mamandad a new tv and this took a chunk out of that intention. But then after he left I checked my email and my check had come and as it turned out it was the check that they didn’t take out insurance for that pay period which was almost exactly $300. Nice.

Dean set traps under the oven and up in the attic. He told me how rats, roof rats, get into a house and he found evidence all through the house. I had left the sliding glass doors open that night before and so I asked if they could have gotten in through the screen which was pulled out at the bottom...he said unlikely, there was plenty of evidence there had been activity in the attic, but I confirmed I had never heard anything from up there, not even squirrels across the shingles outside...he mentioned that there was evidence they’d been in and out of the house before—behind the washer/dryer, under the oven, even (and this is so sick I don’t even want to record it) there was a poop between the bed and the closet in my room so no doubt that trespasser had gone in there the night before the morning I caught him! OR during the day after I left perhaps as he was trying to get out... Horrifying to think they were coming in and out every night as I left the doors open!!! But I had closed up for the past couple of weeks...and this was the earliest I had been up and I had not yet turned on the tv so the usual sounds didn’t get rid of them maybe. I had also closed up the house before I left so I wonder how the rat got out while I was at school. But I’m not spending a lot of time thinking about it.

That night after Dean had been there to set traps, I thought I might have heard a scuffle and thud from upstairs but apparently not because nothing was ever found. That night and several nights after I had REAL TROUBLE going to sleep, that’s for sure!

Todd came out on Saturday and checked...then about every three days for the next two weeks. Finally on Monday (5.10.10) he said he thought we could start the "exclusion" process—sealing up the house, starting with the screen against the porch which I asked him about because clearly it was busted, and clearly to me it was how the rodents were getting in. The Thursday before Mother’s Day weekend I came out here and cleaned thoroughly and that’s when, to my horror, I found piles of rat poop behind the tools I have in the corner for outside. Well a lot of that was fairly recent because it hadn’t been that long before I had cleaned it so I was sick! I cleaned it all out thoroughly and took a long hot shower after.

Then the next morning, Friday, I saw five or six fresh poops out there and they were not lizard poops! So I sprayed them with bleach just to kind of neutralize how gross it was so Mamandi could sit out there over the weekend. Then when Todd came back Monday and saw them he said he was pretty sure they were lizard poops but he couldn’t swear to it without a microscope and I gave him my teacher look that said I wasn’t as stupid as he looked, because they were rat poops.

So Thursday, knowing he was coming Friday or Saturday, I decided to take the two giant sticky panels out from under the oven and put them by the screen where it was unrolled, then I went all the way out on the patio and poked the rubber thingy back against the screen to refasten it but only half heartedly—that way it would be less likely to be a poor lizard coming through there and getting stuck rather than a rat who would easily come through to get to the slim jims on the sticky pad. It’s why they’re called rats—they don’t care what they tear up to get through to the tasty stuff. But still can’t figure out what it was about the patio that communicated to them that it was a potty. Anyway, during the night it occurred to me...what would I do if I DID catch something?

Friday morning, as the sun began to slowly send out rays, just before time to leave for school, I carefully chose the angle of my checking to see if I’d caught anything and I saw a tail curled on it and a leg...didn’t seem to be moving. A tad disturbing but also gratifying (those WERE rat poops! I KNEW it!) and I went on my way to school. I certainly wasn’t going to try to do anything with a dead rat before school! I was also entertaining the notion it would be just fine right there until Todd came back even if that wasn’t until Saturday. I was then under the mistaken impression that those sticky pads somehow also were poisonous.

After school I had a chiropractic appointment and Mastellone and I swapped rat stories. They lived on a small stretch of acreage with a barn and a gorgeous owl and never had rats until the neighbor cut down trees just at the lot line so the owl would move away so he could build there (what a jerk) and after that, when the owl did move away, it wasn’t but a couple of months before Mastellone heard the scuttle and shuffle of rats in the barn. He said he learned a very valuable lesson about those giant sticky pads. Rats can get stuck in them for a minute or two and then they can walk off with them stuck to them and keep struggling and end up dying somewhere rather hidden until the stench emanates. What a yucky yucky story!!! He also advised me the minute I got home to get an old towel I wasn’t planning to keep and just throw it over the thing and dispose of it with minimal visual connection. I agreed that was a very very good idea.

Got home around 5 or 5:30 and had been gathering the courage to see for sure that it was a rat and not a giant lizard tail...I looked through the sliding glass doors and ... the pad was gone! I looked all around the screened porch from the safety behind the closed glass doors. It took a minute to register that the rat had no doubt regained its composure and managed to pull himself and that pad back through the screen! I looked as well as I could onto the patio beyond...nothing...I gathered all my courage and went out to the screen and looked as far into the yard as I could...nothing. Unbelievable, where could it have gone! Did another animal come and take it away? I ventured through the screen door out into the courtyard and looked. Nothing. I went further out and about and saw nothing under the bushes or in the boston ferns. Nothing behind the oak tree or around the other side of the bay kitchen window, nothing. Freaky freaky.

Came back into the house to get the phone because I had to call Todd anyway and of course I had to tell him this! I noticed he had called at some point but instead of listening to his message I just called back through. He mentioned having been sick this week—well it was a crazy week for me too. And he asked if "tomorrow" was still okay to come work on the screen and I said sure but I had to tell him what happened. So I told him the whole story—getting the sticky pads out, seeing the tail and leg that morning, Mastellone’s story of the barn rats, then coming home to find nothing anywhere so that rat made off with the sticky pad or another animal got him or something.

He chuckled and said, "Well, as it turns out, I had to be in the neighborhood today on another job and dropped by your place to measure out the screen area for tomorrow and saw you had caught something so I just took care of it for you." We laughed and I thanked him and then he said, still chuckling, "Let me tell you this. If you had caught a rat strong enough to get up and pull that pad through the screen and get off the property without it getting caught up in anything in your courtyard and disappear, I would be advising you to find another neighborhood to live in because that would just be too much rat! And I would be finding another line of work!" We laughed.

So now the screen is fixed and next week begins the exclusion of the roof areas as well as traps being set out in various places around the yard.

Big Fish (2003)

2010-08-15T02:43:00Z

"Dad, I have no idea who you are because you’ve never told me a single fact," says Will, the journalist son of a story telling salesman.

"I’ve told a thousand facts, Will. It’s what I do, I tell stories!"

"You tell lies, Dad. You tell amusing lies. . . I believed you. I believed your stories so much longer than I should have." He looks away in shame as he reveals his regret at having trusted his father.

"You think I’m fake?" his father responds.

"Only on the surface, Dad. But it’s all I’ve ever seen." The problem for Will is that he’s about to have a son and, "it would kill me if he went through his whole life never understanding me."

The pain this accusation evokes in the father, played poignantly, heart-breakingly by Albert Finney, lingers on the man’s face as he repeats his son’s statement. "It will kill you, huh? What do you want, Will? Who do you want me to be?"

"Yourself . . . just show me who you are for once."

With clarity and great dignity, Mr. Bloom declares, "I’ve been nothin’ but myself since the day I was born. And if you can’t see that, it’s your failin’, not mine."

As this verbalizes the central conflict of the film, we of course begin to see some pretty unusual (bordering on the mythical) experiences in Will’s helping his folks that confirm "facts" about his father.

By this point, too, our suspicions have been satisfied that there are many meanings to the title:

Big Fish in a little pond

Big Fish that got away

Big Fish is a tall tale

Big Fish is a woman you’ll never catch

Big Fish is the father whose stories about himself make him larger than life...

In a word, the "big fish" is elusive and will get away.

The son needs facts to know his father. Knowing the stories served to disillusion him. It’s obvious to us that the son is blind deaf and dumb—his father is a consummate story teller. THAT’s who he is. If we don’t catch that, then it’s revealed to us as it is revealed to the son in the climax of the film in the dialogue above. Anyone who knows anything about life knows that the story teller is the most important person in the world. Anyone who knows anything about himself knows that a father is the most important person in his life. The most elusive. The most critical to formation. The most difficult to know intimately. The most difficult to individuate from while growing up.

The Irish are the first to implore you not to let the facts get in the way of a good story. But a child in search of himself must first go in search of his father, apparently. Are you searching for the true identity of your father? Answers to all the reasons for the quirks, odd comments, embarrassments in public, strange persisting habits, unexplained gaps in his life’s story? As is also true of a good story, this one, originally told in the novel by Daniel Wallace, and now here by John August and directed by the transcendent, enigmatic Tim Burton, this story may be just what you need on your own journey of self-discovery and the kind of forgiveness that embraces our parents. C. S. Lewis once said that we read to know we’re not alone. Another powerful gift in a good story.

The thin subcutaneous line between what is imaginary and what is imagined...what the truth is and the way the truth is told...is magical in this film. Even the characters seem to not get the difference. "If I had to choose between the true version and an elaborate one involving a fish and a wedding ring, I might choose the fantasy version," says old Dr. Bennet (Robert Guillame) to the waiting son in the hospital at his father’s bedside. Fantasy version? Is that part of the point? We interpret story as fantasy? We can’t bear very much reality, T.S.Eliot says to us and so this reality must be transformed by the way we imagine our lives; is the essence of our embrace of that life, of events, of relationships, of desires, of successes, of failures, of the way things are.

After the son hears the fact of his birth, his father awakens distraught about needing to get to the river. And Will presents to him the story of waking to find his father awaking and ready to escape....

Was it the truth that set him free to participate in his father’s story? His father needs water. His father needs to go to the river. The son colludes by telling his father the story of their conspiratorial escape to the river. Of course, the greatest universal symbol for both life as well as death is the river.

We all know from the very beginning of the story that the fish who got away is the metaphor for the father, and a metaphor encompassing the son’s lifelong pursuit of knowing his father, yet there is far more beauty and satisfaction in the film than the pieces revealed here. The greatest gift the son gives to his father is companionship at the end of his life in the context of the gift the father had given his son since birth: story telling—the gift of dying as he’d lived, in the context of an elaborate story...only to find out that the gift of all his stories was not the lie he had presumed. All the characters embodied in his father’s stories show up at the funeral.

"You become what you always were . . ." The story will save you. It will inform who you are. It will carry on beyond you and a piece of you will become the breath of its life. This is the metaphor of immortality. The thread that connects us all. And it is why we continue to tell the story.

Oprah gives away Kindles by Amazon

2008-10-24T21:37:00Z

Now that Oprah has endorsed Kindle by Amazon and given everyone in her studio audience their own device, I am concerned about how this ebook and kindle business will affect authors’ royalties. It’s already slim pickens for us at about 10 cents on the dollar, and now books are even less expensive when bought and downloaded into the kindle. So since it’s a revolution I cannot change or win, let me just encourage you then that if you do have a kindle, download me.

Gentle Truth in a poem

2008-09-27T12:16:00Z

After a While

After a while you learn
The subtle difference between
Holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn
That kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes ahead
With the grace of a woman
Not the grief of a child

And you learn
To build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is
Too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way
Of falling down in mid flight

After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers

And you learn
That you really can endure
That you are really strong
And you really do have worth
And you learn and you learn
With every good bye you learn.

Veronica A. Shoffstall

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?

2008-09-14T17:11:00Z

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?

Where are those who have gone before us?

For over a year now, the most bizarre thing continues to recur. Nearly on a daily basis, and in the most unexpected places in this little house, I will find a penny. Impossible to keep losing a penny every time I turn around, right? I go into the bathroom, there’s one on the floor. Get up in the morning, there’s one on the floor by the bed. Reach into the breakfront for a bowl, there’s a penny. Under the desk, in front of the tv, by the automan, in the sofa. Everywhere. One at a time, nearly every day.

It became apparent that the message was obviously that I needed to mind my finances. I had already begun to desire to invest the little money I have, the little money I make. These pennies showed me undeniably that money was "dripping through my fingers" and I needed to tighten the reign. Soon I found a financial advisor and began to gather my files and plan toward working investments.

The pennies continued to show up intermittently, and I found them frequently on sidewalks, near where I parked my car at work, around my office, and so forth.

A friend asked me outright: "Could there be someone who is trying to get your attention?" Immediately I thought of my grandmother.

They say when a loved one dies, the living one will feel her closeness more strongly, more intimately. Perhaps that’s true. Even those of us who do, that closeness changes in substance, frequency, like all relationships.

When my maternal grandmother died, the force of loss threw me into a tailspin I never would have guessed or could have foreseen. There were other difficult things in my inner life at the time that rendered unconscionable the possibility that Mama Ruth, such a force of nature, could be humanly lost to me, or to our family.

Though she was not always an easy person (no one really is), she was always true to herself, dignified, sincere, dedicated to God and her family, and bossy—with the best interest of her loved ones at heart. She was foundational and still is. I knew her mother, too, briefly. A similar presence, a similar strength, but somehow Mama Bagley was already more spirit and deific than human to me when she died.

Soon after Mama Ruth died, my Mama gave me her engagement ring. Since I don’t ever plan to have children, the one condition was that I would leave it to my niece Emily, who was born a week after Mama Ruth’s death, and was named Emily Ruth.

Several weeks, or maybe even months, before Mama Ruth had her stroke that would eventually take her life, I visited her on my own. Having finally reached adulthood, this became a treasured tradition for a short amount of years. On this visit, I took a picture of her in her kitchen one early morning. She is in the corner making cheese toast from biscuits made the day before. Rounded corner shelves frame the space between her windows and cabinets; on those shelves and window ledges are miniature pitchers as well as two healthy dark green ivy plants cascading behind her—these live on, cascading in my kitchen. She’s turned because I called her name from the doorway. She has on her house dress with a white sweater over it. The kitchen is bright and clean and evokes happy and eternal memories. I’m looking at it now, sitting prominently on a little dark wood corner shelving that she’d used in a bedroom.

At the moment I live in a tiny 495 sq. ft. cbc cottage with no sheet rocking. It is a glorified garden shed. But there is something in its coziness, and in the furniture and in the atmosphere that is reminiscent of her home. From the moment I found it, there was never a question that she is present with me here. There have even been times when it felt almost as if the wee cottage was, in a sense, her very self. Like I am living inside her presence. There were times early on when I could feel a palpable presence—hear her voice or the little grunt she’d make when she didn’t like what she heard or saw. She was overwhelmingly with me and I was exceedingly grateful.

As do most things, the sense of her presence faded somewhat.

The pennies began to show up. Looking back, I can see a correlation. As if she were indeed trying to get my attention. As the living metaphor for pinching pennies, it made perfect sense this would be the symbol used to attract me to the reality that I needed to attend to my finances and take responsibility for shifting more fully into investment mode. She was perhaps instructing me, nudging me, encouraging me toward a more conscientious saving.

Since moving into this little place, I have been interested in the prospect of investing in my own house. Although this place is more than adequate for the basic need for shelter and peaceful living, I need a bit more privacy from my landlord 10 feet away who begins dinner on the grill around 8:30 or 9, the very time I want to go to bed. He has also turned the vacant lot about 20 feet from my sliding glass doors and only means of looking out, into a shooting range. He is a plastic deer hunter. No laundry and no closet space are beginning to bother me, parking on the street and having no mail box, and the fact that I am here somewhat illegally, paying for his boat and hunting trips while I am not wisely investing, is beginning to bother me. So I have been looking for a house for almost two years.

Odd coincidences occurred not long ago and the search seriously kicked in and intensified. Now I have found a house that seems perfect. Only a tad out of my price range, I put an offer on it last Thursday night. Awoke Friday morning after another night of odd and semi-disturbing dreams. The feelings were not buyer’s remorse, but rather a terror that I will be turned down, that my offer will be rejected, that somehow, I will not be able to buy this house and it disturbed me turbulently.

After first block class this same Friday (I teach high school during the day), I left my portable for the break only to find a penny (heads up, even) on the ramp. My entire being washed through with the realization that Mama Ruth affirmed me in my efforts—I had done the right thing to offer, I was doing the right thing taking the risk, pursuing investment. While it doesn’t impress me as a sign that I will get the house, it is an affirmation of the presence of her spirit, and confirmed that I am following the right path, whatever comes.

A couple of friends have said I should save the penny, that it means I’ll get the house, thoughts like that. But it isn’t about the penny or getting the house I want, it’s about being connected within our lives to the lives that have brought us to this place and to the spirits that have given us life and continue to strengthen our souls, linking with us, comforting us in our struggles and in our pursuits. We are fortunate to know some of their names, the ancestors we have met and overlapped with in time. Each of us is fortunate to have even the nameless ones among us, companioning us on the journey.

wc: 1269

091308

—Kim Ballard

In honor of my mama, Mama Ruth, Mama Bagley, all my family and friends here and beyond.

Title Change: Capstone becomes OakTara Publishers

2008-09-14T17:04:00Z

If you are having trouble finding Capstone Fiction . com, it's because that name has had to change. The new name is OakTara Publishers and the website is OakTara.com.

It's only been a couple of weeks and they are doing everything they can to reload all the title. Julia's Quest is not yet back on the front page or in the catalogue or bookstore. So if you want to order "Julia's Quest" the best thing to do is go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

I'm so sorry for the inconvenience!

Homeless

2008-08-09T12:30:00Z

Upon reading www.inwardoutward.org August 9's article...

At the end of my block an elderly man lives in a wheelchair and sits just off to the side of the driveway that leads to the back of a gas station and a prominent injury lawyer’s firm. He faces the street, across which are two majestic banyans, as if framing a driveway, that may have been there once and may have led to a home but now frame only a bit of open space surrounded by dense woods. Hurricanes tend to swallow things here.

The man is sometimes between the two banyans. Sometimes he is in an open garage area of the gas station that is no longer used, but I think when the station changed from a "Pure" to a "Shell" they made him leave. There is a younger man with a bicycle who is there with the man probably every day. I see him often.

I am aware of this man’s presence. I wonder if he is aware of mine. I have "done nothing" for him. Seems absurd to be wary of a stranger who appears so helpless. But I am wary. I’m not afraid of him—emotionally or physically. I’m curious about him, who he is, who he was, how he got to a wheelchair off US Hwy 1 in Martin County. But I haven’t asked. When I consider stopping and chatting...it seems almost intrusive. He is in his "home" with no doors for me to knock on first...I have never knocked on the doors of my other neighbors. I have never presumed that his need is dictated by my assessment. Or that he would welcome me...

When I worked in Chicago I visited the Art Institute everyday during my lunch time and noticed a homeless woman who watched folks who might discard food into the big trash cans on the street. One day I managed to catch her eye and I made sure she saw that I had a sandwich and that I put half of it back in the bag. When I finished my half, eating as I sat on the steps to the Institute, she continued doing her thing but noticed me when I stood. I walked by the trash can and laid the bag on top and crossed the street heading back to my office. I did turn to see if she had understood my message and she was there, eating the sandwich, watching me walk away. I was only there six months and I didn’t see her every day and I never spoke with her. But we were connected.

The message today to be aware is greatly encouraging. At some point perhaps there will be an opportunity to "do something" for the man at the end of my street.

The image of the man sleeping by the escalator, disturbing no one, yet becoming the victim of someone who noticed him is a profoundly troubling image. It should be. But which is more troubling to me—that the woman insisted on having him be removed? Or that the reality of his situation dictated that he had to sleep by an escalator?

Knowing how best to respond (or how best to judge need) is a constant question for me.

Perhaps you (fellow readers on a similar path) might have an insight?

Doubt

2008-08-07T23:35:00Z

August 7, 2008

lectio: right thinking

Sunday’s lectio 8.10.08: I Kings 19; Matthew 14

today’s lectio Matthew 16

Initially the word "saw" from "But when he saw how strong the wind was" called my attention. Peter is actually walking on water until he sees how strong the wind is and it scares him. He cried out, Jesus grabs him, saves him and tells him he has little faith, asks him why he doubts.

What does he doubt? He doubts his or Jesus’ power over the storm? He doubts he can walk on water when a storm is coming? Isn’t it wise to see that a storm is coming, something beyond my strength, and call out for help?

Wait. A few verses back the folks on the shore fear they see a ghost in the early, early mist predawn. Jesus says "Take courage" because it’s himself. Peter calls back, "IF" . . . there’s the doubt. Peter doubts Jesus’ identity and calls out a condition for faith—that he will be able to walk on water just as Jesus is doing.

The doubt doesn’t seem to be about the ability to walk on water, or the capacity to survive the storm.

Maybe Jesus is asking, "Why did you insist on putting yourself in harm’s way? What is this ego demonstration? To take on what is beyond you to prove I am who I say? You changed the issue to become something about you—believing you could do something supernatural that would prove how cool you are or how much God loves you by doing something "miraculous"—rather than simply believing what I say—that it’s me out here on the water walking toward you. You cannot do what I do simply because your motivation, doubt, fear, beliefs that the elements have power to destroy prevents you from breaking the laws of gravity of your own doubt."

This is a difficult lesson because gravity is a beautiful thing—keeps my mess in place. But that’s not the point. The point is right thinking. Pure mind and heart. It is hard work and no work at all.

What if Peter had said, "O Jesus! It’s you!" Then, with the excitement and trust of a child, had run out across the water to meet him—oblivious (in a sense) to the wind and the water? I bet he would have been "successful"—because he wouldn’t have been attached to the wind or the water but to the delight of being with the One.

It’s about what I see. It’s about what I think. The work of it is in letting go (Matthew 16, today’s lectio reading)—that’s the key to living in the abundance of God.

The Old Testament reading of I Kings 19 says God is found...

not in the disastrous wind

not in the destructive earthquake

not in the annihilating fire

but in the tiny whispering sound. . .

Computer Gloom Doom and the ACER

2008-08-05T12:03:00Z

On poor impulse I bought an ACER 5520 something or other and have regretted it almost from the moment I swiped the credit card. Why didn't I take it right back to the shop where I bought it? I was out of town, and I was traveling, and I was frustrated, and I was on deadline and...time flies.

We're still in the midst of trying to work it out...I need an affordable computer and the folks I bought the ACER from are working hard to please me, which I truly appreciate. Looking at a Toshiba. Had a Dell and loved it for a few years and then...long disappointing story about my experience with the last two techs before I threw the laptop off the fourth floor balcony...I mean, I imagined throwing it off the balcony and seeing it shatter into a million bits of plastic and metal when it hit the pavement below.

My point here is a firm grasp of the obvious morality tale: DO YOU HOMEWORK BEFORE YOU BUY. BEFORE you buy. I winged it. But in my defense, I had a Gateway tower years ago that I loved for a long time so I decided to get a laptop---the week ACER bought them out so I bought the ACER. BIG HUGE ERROR in judgement.

According to my salesman/tech yesterday, the ACER is one of the best computers out there yaddy yadda...and the true problem is that I can outtype it. Do what now? I can outtype the keyboard processor and that is my fault, not an indictment against the ACER. Right. So far I haven't outtyped this backup Toshiba that my dad has had for years and years with 512 ram memory and the ACER I had had 2GB ram! supposedly twice as fast... okay geek, if that's not related, I apologize.

But my point is, there are plenty of us writers out there who type really fast and can barely keep up with the story that ribbons out of our minds...so ANY laptop out there should be able to keep up and if it doesn't, it's crap.

I also didn't like the Dolby sound system...even with all the options and ways of listening to music (like underwater or through a pipe...please), none of it sounded pleasant enough...unless i put in my earbuds, then it was okay---and okay through itunes, not the youtubes...

At least I am now better educated. About $800 better. The keyboard matters, cheap shortcuts on anything will affect performance. That's true of equipment. It's true of human effort. I took the shortcut---didn't want to do the homework beyond assumptions based on past experiences...and one voice commendation. Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes it's not. I wish I had typed that thing into the ground before leaving town without the "oh, it will shake out" because all computers are essentially alike misconception.

Do a lot of writing? Don't get an ACER. Look it up---ACER has a history of really bad issues with freezing mouse, freezing keyboard, and then my issue, typing along, keyboard freezes a split second, and i lose up to eight characters. doesn't sound like a big deal but if you're being interrupted every two or three minutes while you're trying to work, it is a problem, and then the time it takes to correct the problem, and the frustration that mounts from being interrupted and spending the time and energy to fix it EVERY THREE OR FOUR MINUTES, is a whole lot of disintegrating negative energy and ... I can't take it anymore.

Now I'm paranoid about trying Toshiba. Sigh.

Have you seen "Stop-Loss" ?

2008-07-20T14:31:00Z

If you haven't, see it. If you have...what did you think? I saw it last night...truly a sobering look at what the "Iraq conflict" is doing to our soldiers and thereby to each of us.
    Maybe you're tired of hearing about Iraq. I am. In my opinion, my growing impatience and distancing from the "whole issue" is exactly what perpetuates the hell of hundreds of thousands of Americans and their families, then double or triple that number to include the Iraqis, Afghans, and all the others involved in this interminable war.
    Stop-Loss steps right into the heart and soul of a small group of young people who have fought valiantly for their country (whether they went overseas or stayed home) and got screwed by the government through stop-loss---reinstituting their contract to force them back onto the battlefield without choice (whereas initially they volunteered). It's a back-door draft.
    The wikipedia has a lot to say about it, and so does this film. For a more detailed review of the film, check out Travers' review, but he gives a THOROUGH look at the film and if that kind of thing spoils it for you, don't read it. Just see the film.

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/17357964/review/19580698/stoploss

I look forward to hearing your reflection on the issue, the film, the war... talk to me.

July 18, 2008

2008-07-18T15:15:00Z

Words are harder to
sculpt than clay. Each day drags me
into their darkness.

Reflection on The Alchemist

2008-07-17T12:44:00Z

Reading "The Alchemist" for school ... yesterday came across a bit that reminded me of a conversation with a friend about what makes us cry...:
"As he was about to climb yet another dune, his heart whispered, 'Be aware of the place where you are brought to tears. That's where I am, and that's where your treasure is'" (Coelho 159).
Then...what we treasure stirs our heart to joy, which is the fountain from which all our tears come. That would mean, then, that perhaps within sorrow and loss, the well of joy, of our treasure, is far deeper, supplying our hearts with the tears that come in remembering...

Signing party July 12!

2008-07-16T11:41:00Z

Great party last Saturday! Close, intimate gathering to celebrate the "birth" of "Julia’s Quest" and, well, "rebirth" (I guess) of "Light at Summer’s End"! Tremendous fun and wonderful to be supported by everyone. Of course, being teachers mostly, many friends were doing the summer travel vacation thing and I certainly missed them! Thanks to Chris and everyone for great wine, great nibbles, and great chats!! Wish I had pics to upload!

God

2008-07-12T01:36:00Z

In the music God
weeps with me. All I really
want is to be home