Are You There When You’re There?

Damselfly with shadow. Photo by Jean LeBlanc

Thoughts on poetry, on photography, on presence.

                                   

“Stand in the place where you live.” –R.E.M.

As my Facebook friends know, Miss O' does what I guess you'd call word portraits of my adopted city of New York—its people, scenes on the subway, sights around the various “cities,” for as I did this, I learned that there was more than one New York. It’s not only differences among boroughs (five of them). Architecture and attitude shift in startling ways, separated sometimes only by a cross street. Sometimes you don’t even realize a new city has happened: You are no longer on the Lower East Side, but in the (artificially named) East Village; did it happen crossing Delancey Street, or coming on Second Avenue and East 4^th Street?

The other thing about New York is that one day, unexpectedly, you realize the city is your Big House, that the Laundromat is another room in it, the green produce market like the pantry, the pizza place your fridge. What’s more, people here do all manner of private grooming chores publicly, in transit, from flossing to shaving to putting on makeup to clipping nails. It’s never “okay,” really, which is the relief, because we most of us still have standards, dammit; but then because we have to make exceptions for ourselves, we look a little sideways about others. For example, yesterday morning Miss O’ got an offer to see a show for FREE at 2 PM, and so had to do laundry to have anything to wear (not just something to wear), which meant loading the laundry, returning home to shower, and returning to the Laundromat with wet hair (her mother, Lynne, still scolds, “Only tramps go out with wet hair,” and is she wrong?) because, well, I want to have it all! At times like this, I just put on personal credo blinders and focus, focus, focus on the task at hand, as if moving not down my public street but my private hallway in Queens.

In moments like the laundry episode, I don’t exactly want to be present, if you see what I mean. I am placing myself into a special slot of “nonexistent” and therefore try not to notice the kids playing handball and the two women with gorgeous coats chatting on the corner and the mother saying in a thick Asian accent to her tiny daughter, “If you have six dollars and I take away five dollars, how many are left?” because I'm out here with WET HAIR that ONLY TRAMPS would wear in public and oh my god, but there it is.

Since discovering the work of Patsy Rodenburg (see a couple of posts back) and reading her book, The Second Circle, I have been thinking about what it means to be present. I’ve thought about this for years, actually: In college I studied the work of Joseph Chaikin and The Open Theater, where one of the challenges for a show I worked on was to “live in the present” all day. It’s just about impossible, and for a reason, but it was marvelous to talk about. (Try it sometime. It changes you. I say this as if it’s automatically a good thing, so maybe I should say, “It grows you.”) In my first two years in New York, I worked with Polina Klimovitskaya and her theater company, Terra Incognita, and Polina’s directive at the start of each rehearsal was to lie on the floor and remain fully present, move when there is a natural impulse to do that. Amazing to watch—what it means to have a natural impulse, to act on it, and to see that happen. It’s the very definition of honest.

Present

Photo by Jean LeBlanc, Bread Loaf, 1994

What does it mean to experience a moment, to experience our lives, fully in the present? It’s one thing to be jarred by the guy on the subway platform who places a hand to close one nostril while blowing snot out onto the ground from the other. (It’s really quite unbelievable the first time you see it. And every bit as gross ever after, and oh, yes, there will be many, many afters); or a yelling match on the subway precipitated when a black woman sits next to a (racist) white woman who leaps up and shouts racial epithets until she’s red and purple in the face for as long as it takes for her to make the sudden departure at the next stop; or to turn a corner into eight dusty, black plastic garbage bags piled atop a wheeled contraption and pushed by a man buried under layers and layers of grimy coats—in other words, to be jarred into recognition of a moment by the unusual.

But what about, you know, just living? To discuss this, I asked my dear friend Jean LeBlanc if I might borrow her poetry and photos. So today, Jeannie is my special guest star. Allow me to introduce her.

Poet Jean LeBlanc with husband George Lightcap

(the guy in photos with Miss O' here) at a poetry reading, in a photo by, I think, Miss O'

Jean LeBlanc has published four volumes of poetry and has a website, which I urge you to visit:  http://www.jeanleblancpoetry.com/

She writes poetry in many forms and is what I think must be a master of the Japanese forms of haiku (3-line poems, typically (but not exclusively, in English, anyway) 5-7-5 syllables/line that focus on image) and the tanka, (a 5-line poem, 5-7-5-7-7 syllable structure, though not necessary to be followed strictly, in English anyway), which focuses on an image in the first three lines, and allows the “ego” to return in the last two lines, as for commentary. I learned about these forms in a workshop she gave in Sussex County, New Jersey. She's a brilliant teacher of her art.

In her book of poems, The Stream Singing Your Name, I found a tanka that I think captures perfectly a moment in the present:

  one more day

  of morning snow,

  afternoon rain —

  the hemlock decides

  enough

—Jean LeBlanc, The Stream Singing Your Name, Modern English Tanka Press, 2009 (p. 69)

When I read this, I hear the crash of snow, see the branches bounce, a relief, like a shrug of weight thrown from the back. I am aware that this results from a continuing morning of snow and rain, so even here, a little of the past is present, too, but in the final two lines, I am fully made present by the hemlock, by the personified decision to drop the snow. Now, the hemlock could also be falling over in a suicidal collapse. Either way, this moment of surrender has me firmly in the present experience. (There is metaphor here, too, should you want to go there: There is only so much anyone can take before she breaks. I think the image heightens this.)

Future

Photo by Jean LeBlanc, New Jersey Appalachian Trail, 2011

Being present does not mean denying a future. In fact, what I learned in that “be present all day” exercise in college is that in order to function in a human world of commitments and obligations to yourself and others, you have to anticipate, which is to say we live a good part of our days in the (unknowable) future. We anticipate going to class or to work, meeting friends later, performing in a show, things like that. We have to prepare. We go to the store for the ingredients of a meal, for example. And while we may have a present tense experience shopping for ingredients, we are also thinking about future meals.

Here is a tanka that anticipates the future:

  what will set apart

  this day—

  the storm approaches

  tossing little sticks

  ahead of itself

—Jean LeBlanc, The Stream Singing Your Name, Modern English Tanka Press, 2009 (p. 65)

The speaker sees a day in motion, and sees (in the present) an approaching storm, and knows the day will not be the same; destruction, in fact, is already suggested in the windblown sticks. (Metaphorically, I imagine a confrontation with forces beyond our control, a fight with another person, a battle.) The present moment is about anticipation of the future event.

Past

The author's great-grandparents in the 
Council Bluffs Nonpareil, ca. 1947

"I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past." –Virginia Woolf

Another difficulty of living in the present, of course, is that our past is not only in us, too, but is a guide for us; we call it up. We learn from it. Fortunately for us, our learning from past experiences often becomes so integral that we don’t really have to think about it. At other times, it torments us. Some of us drink to it, or because of it (cheers!), and healthy people like Jean write poems about it.

From a tanka sequence called knowing this world, this last poem in the sequence captures the hold that past can have on us, how it informs who we are, and how we gain a knowledge of ourselves in the present by seeing clearly, in a past moment, who we were.

  humble, direct

  a backdoor family —

  at the heart of our house

  a grand staircase

  no one ever used

—Jean LeBlanc, The Stream Singing Your Name, Modern English Tanka Press, 2009 (p. 43)

(Metaphorically, I think of personal genius buried by habit, by custom, as well as humility.)

General time, infinite time

Jeannie also writes in a Korean form called the sijo. The sijo consists of three lines, approximately (in English) 16 syllables per line. It’s an epic, really, in a small space. In this sijo, the speaker reflects on something out of specific time, outside of even specific experience. It’s a universal, in the best sense of that term, and a wondering.

  Always two as one, two as one, that’s how lovers are described.

  No one sings about a solitary woman in a garden,

  the sun reddening her shoulders, her hair full of bees.

—Jean LeBlanc, The Stream Singing Your Name, Modern English Tanka Press, 2009 (p. 65)

As a woman who lives a solitary life, I am emotionally connected to this poem; but more than that, I remember a professor I had at Oxford who did a lecture called, “Reader, I Married Him, or, Can a Novelist Be a Feminist?” in which she pointed out that Jane Austen wrote romances, but never her own story, for example. Can a solitary woman ever write that novel, and if she does write it, would anyone read it, or want to? (I am determined to write and perform that play, am writing it, and my dream is to make people line up to see it.) (Dammit.)

Take a Picture

Lyle Lovett’s song “Family Reserve” captures a question I hold:

And we're all gonna be here forever

So Mama don't you make such a stir

Now put down that camera

And come on and join up

The last of the family reserve

Is it possible to be present to life while taking a picture? Is being present with a camera being present to life? Let's look at that opening photo again: 

 

Photo by Jean LeBlanc (damselfly with shadow)

One might just as well ask if, in the doing of any task, we are capable of being ever-present to everything all around us. I think that if we are fully present in the doing of any task, then we can later have the joy of being present to what the task accomplished. Does that make sense? Last weekend, for example, I took the mound of stuff in the corner of my living room and turned it, somehow, into an office. Was I aware of the world spinning, the sunshine outside, the temperature of the air? Sometimes. Mostly I focused on making the damned office area, putting things into canvas crates (thanks to Martha Stewart, Home Depot, and the good workers of China), tossing old papers, and arranging the shit out of it all. The next day, I could stare and marvel at the new space, the completed task; I also thought of the future, of what there was room for now. I wept.

I think taking a photograph can be like this experience. I tend not to take pictures. I like to (try to) live every, every moment I am with people, out in the world, and I take in as much sensation as I can. A camera has only ever been an extension of that at finite times of my life: when I was in middle school and got a Kodak instamatic camera for my 13th birthday; when I got a job at The Virginia Farmer writing articles and photographing dairymen; and the summer I studied Virginia Woolf at Oxford. A camera came along with me at other times of my life, too, but my heart, my art, wasn’t in it. It’s not my form, though I wish so often it were.

I cannot be “present” to where I am when I have a camera. In fact, only two people I know can engage fully with the place, the people, the companions, and the moment while also taking pictures—my friend JC in rural Virginia, and my cousin Kerry in California. The camera is a natural extension of their brains, hearts, arms: I never feel excluded from the scene, and they both take great pictures, but snap for the sake of holding memories rather than to exhibit.

People who are out taking pictures for the sake of art, however, focus entirely on the art, are present to the art. In addition to being a poet, Jeannie is also a photographer. When I asked Jean to share a haiku and a photo about this subject of photographs and presence, Jeannie emailed me, “The haiku I chose shows how I can write haiku about the things I can't capture with a photo.”

   all morning, the curve

   of the swan's neck,

   the snow-bowed reeds
—Jean LeBlanc

It’s time passing, in perpetuity, these shapes, these mirrors, the morning. A photo can’t do such a moment justice, this experience. To be present to it is to write it, then read it, when one can’t be there.

[Saturday, May 12: I reread Jean's haiku for the 80th time, and had the sudden sensation of grading papers, how I used to sit at a desk, my back bowed over a desk all Sunday morning for many, many years--not that I felt that elegant, but that buried by the snow of the papers.]

I Am a Camera

I awoke this morning remembering the day in the summer of 1991 when I was sent to a farm in Central Virginia (we capitalize regions in Virginia, announcing our distinctions that way, because we all understand that “Northern” Virginians barely “count” as Virginian (that's me), and that Tidewater people do not speak the same language as their Southwestern (Appalachian) counterparts (and that “lachia” is a short a, which people not from ’round chere wouldn’t understand); that once one crosses the Rappahannock River where Stafford County becomes Spotsylvania County, one is in Vajenya. But I digress) to photograph a dairy farmer for the agricultural publication The Virginia Farmer. And how badly I did it.

But what I was really thinking about is how much I regret not photographing Carter Martin, because the photograph I didn’t take is so clear to me, and I’d like you to see it.

In my mind’s eye, I took Carter Martin’s picture in early spring of 1991 when I was walking along Rt. 644 and his road, too (735, I think), teaching myself to photograph on a Pentax K1000 SE, using various F-stops and adjusting the aperture—snapping his tobacco barn, which rested in impossibly green grass, the weathered brown facade framed out by redbud trees, all against a wildly shifting grey sky. I’d write down what each setting was, do several variations, noting the frame number and what I’d done. While standing along the road after one picture, Carter had pulled up in his white pickup truck, seeing me with my camera; I’d walked over to talk to him to say hey. In his seventies, he had the reddest face I’d ever seen on a human—years of exposed farmer’s skin—and the merriest blue eyes, receding white hair, a curve to the lips when he smiled that is like a parenthesis on its back, a Southern mouth, which pushed his cheeks into sagged but still round apples. You see, I have to tell you all this because I didn’t think to take his picture, and I must have known to memorize his face there in his truck window, because inside of two weeks he was dead of a heart attack and stroke.

And that's why we take pictures. One way or another.

There are people who photograph nature, who photograph architecture, and people who photograph people. I’ve tried my eye at all of these subjects, but whatever is that impulse to capture an image that way, I don’t have it. (I memorize the details and put them into words even as I have the experience, as I did with ol’ Carter back there, bless his soul.)

Look

In Emily Webb’s Act III speech to her (unhearing) family, in Thornton Wilder’s marvelous play, Our Town (really a play for older folks like me, though we have teenagers perform it), during her ghostly visitation to her home on her 12^th birthday, she begs the attention of her mother, who is bustling around of a morning making breakfast, too busy to see her—and it is in the visitation that Emily is overwhelmed in an understanding of the power of the present:

EMILY: Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama!

Later, when she leaves to return to the graveyard, she asks:

EMILY: Does anybody realize what life is while they're living it - every, every minute?

STAGE MANAGER: No. Saints and poets, maybe. They do some.

It’s unbearable to Emily, this return to Earth, the rush of this realization, all that we miss in the moments as we live them.  Can a camera help us? Can poems? I think yes. Poets and photographers, playwrights and filmmakers, composers and players, choreographers and painters…and all honest laborers hold us in the present, keep us from flying off the earth.

Coda, in case you'd like to explore the idea of Presence more on your own...

Wim Wenders did a film about the late choreographer Pina Bausch, a marvel of the present, whom I’ve mentioned before in blogs past:  Here is the movie site:

http://www.pina-film.de/en/pina-bausch.html  Go to the Trailer tab: http://www.pina-film.de/en/trailer.html  If you can see the film in 3-D, it shows you what 3-D can BE.

And this is a wonderful site for photography of New York City. You can “friend” him on Facebook: Humans of New York:  http://www.humansofnewyork.com/

I'd also like to recommend Leo Tolstoy's short story, "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" which is available online, about the cost of focusing too much on the future, too much on acquisition, on amassing things over having experiences: http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2738/

I leave you with some words from the astounding Pina Bausch:

“Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost!"

...and a photo of a really fine quote...

   Photo by Lisa DiPetto, NYC

For Shakespeare, On His 448th Birthday, April 23, 2012

I Am What Iamb

Today Miss O' would like to enjoy the plunge of sharing and analyzing a Shakespearean sonnet. What the hell? It's cold and rainy. Pour a glass of wine. Lean back with your laptop. Have a lark.

Here is my favorite of Shakespeare's sonnets, the one I know by heart and learned with ease, anyway, and recite to myself often. I think everyone should memorize at least one of Shakespeare's sonnets before dying. You can find this one, and others, at Poetry Foundation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174357

If you would care to engage fully with today's post, wherein we explore how to read a sonnet, I would ask that you read the entire sonnet once through. Get whatever you can out of it. (Maybe you will get the whole thing, and that's marvelous, and you can brush the sweat beads from your brow and log out of The Miss O' Show for the week. Kudos! Should you wish to remain, know that after the sonnet I'm going to do the kind of lesson I used to so with my kids at school, or How to Learn a Sonnet.)

Sonnet XXIX: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

In a blog post last April, I talked about how to teach a poem. I thought I’d do a demonstration with this sonnet as an aid to getting inside what might seem to be a difficult text. As Robert Frost said, “The best way out is always through,” and in the words of someone who was analyzing Greek tragedy, “One always meets one’s fate in the path one takes to try to avoid it.” In other words, if you try to avoid learning this sonnet, the chances are very good that what the sonnet has to offer you will haunt you in your willful ignorance of it. Or something.

When teaching a sonnet, it’s nice to share the rules. Writing a sonnet is like playing any poetry game, not unlike writing a rap song: Can you deliver your message in a prescribed pattern of beats and rhyming words? That’s what it amounts to. The message is made more beautiful when it is given form restrictions. I read somewhere, but can’t find it on Google, that Frank Lloyd Wright said that limitations were his best friends. Think about it: Write anything? Build anything? How do you start? But when one has a certain space, a budget (of money, or in the case of a poem, lines and syllables), one has to get really creative.

Quick Sonnet Rules:

·      A sonnet has 14 lines. The first 12 tell the “story,” or give the background of the narrator’s thinking, and final 2 lines sum up the poem’s message. 

·      Each line of a sonnet has (usually) 10 syllables, which is its meter. There’s a beat of da-DUM you can tap out as you read each line:

When IN disGRACE with FORtune AND men’s EYES,
I ALL aLONE beWEEP my OUTcast STATE...

·      The syllables I put in all caps are called “stressed” syllables, so the other syllables, then, are “unstressed.” Each set of unstressed/stressed syllables is called, in poetry-speak, a metric “foot.” There are 5 pairs of these “feet,” making 10 syllables.

Sonnets were THE form of poetry during Shakespeare’s time, and the reigning monarch in England was Elizabeth, hence the form was called the Elizabethan sonnet. Schools at that time, being not that far removed from Roman rule, historically speaking, were big into teaching Latin and Greek, so everything got a Greek or Latin name. Hence that metric foot back there was called by the Greek word for “metric foot [SEE NOTE],” or iamb. There are five iambs, and the Greek root for five is pent, so the whole metered line was identified as being written in iambic pentameter. See? [CORRECTION, FROM A CLASSICAL SCHOLAR FRIEND: A slight correction on iambs. The word doesn't really mean anything beyond the rhythm (except, sometimes, "invective," which is what the rhythm was originally used for). Greek meter is based on the alternation of long-short, and iamb refers to short syllables and long syllables (or, if your language is stress-based, unstressed-stressed). "Metron" is measure, and in Greek poetry an iambic metron is made up of two iambs--so what classicists call "iambic trimeter" is what English scholars would call "iambic hexameter." I.T. is very important, as it's the meter of tragic dialogue.

(So iambic trimeter is six iambs, but six dactyls (LSS) are dactylic hexameter--go figure. Maybe a metron has to be at least three syllables. DH is the meter of epic, and Longfellow hits you over the head with it in the opening of Evangeline. THIS is the FORest priMEval, the MURmuring PINES and the HEMlocks.)] [SO I guess the "foot" I'd been taught was metric, and not a literal foot. Oh, kids, Miss O' is learning all the time!]

·      I told that history back there in the same way I tried teaching the sonnet rules to my students, and I haven’t the vaguest whether they got anything out of it, of if you did, either. But I do know that understanding the rules and form helped me memorize Shakespeare for acting purposes. Does one POUND out SYLLABLES when talking? Of course not—but the rhythm and sounds and rhymes really help when you have to learn all the goddamned WORDS.

The Rhyme Scheme

Not to be all condescending or anything, because you know this: To see how a poem rhymes, you look at the final vowel sound in each line. But to understand how a sonnet rhyme scheme works, I'll label the sounds. The first vowel sound you find, you label “a.” The next vowel sound is “b.” The next, “c,” and so on. When you find a sound that matches the first one, you call that “a” again. Beside each line of the sonnet, I’ve added a letter for the rhyme scheme:

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, (a)

I all alone beweep my outcast state, (b—a new sound)

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, (a—it matches “eyes”)

And look upon myself and curse my fate, (b—it matches “state”)

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, (c—a new sound)

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, (d—another new sound)

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, (c)

With what I most enjoy contented least; (d—the rhyme scheme tells you that in Shakespeare’s time, this word was most likely pronounced “lest”)

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, (e—new sound, and you’ll notice an extra syllable here—this rhythm shift shows distress)

Haply I think on thee, and then my state, (f…but it’s really b, isn’t it?)

(Like to the lark at break of day arising (e)

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate; (f/b)

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings (g, typically)

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings. (g)

The typical rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg, or abbacddceffegg, or some variation of it. The reason to note it is for memorization purposes. It’s so helpful to have some rhyming there to coach you to the end of a line.

So let’s take this sonnet line by line, word by word, and figure out what the hell it means.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

What does it mean to be “in disgrace”? Out of grace—either in a scandal, somehow ruined, life falling apart—it’s the bottom, and the speaker starts there. To continue: When in disgrace “with fortune”: 1) To be out of fortune (lowercase f) is to be out of money. Simple. But if one is hearing the poem, one cannot see whether or not the letter F is capitalized, and this is how words take on dual meanings: In Shakespeare’s time, to believe in Fortune rather than God was a big mistake (Romeo cries, "I am Fortune's fool!"): Fortune, Lady Luck, Chance—these are whimsical, changeable. What is true and unshakeable is God. To be in disgrace with Fortune (capital F), then, is to be out of luck, but also an admission to being out of faith. Now to in disgrace “with men’s eyes”: Men are looking down on him, or away from him, is how I read that.  The speaker is out of luck, out of faith, out of money, and friendless. And yet how prettily it’s said. [Note: Different sites include a comma after the opening—When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,—but the Riverside edition of Shakespeare and lots of other sources do not. I think the comma was added by some grammar freak editor—the punctuation in Shakespeare’s work is all over the place—and I think that comma destroys the flow and limits the meaning—minimizing the disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, to cut to line 2, which we are doing next. This does a real disservice to the opening punch. No comma!]

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

What is there to say? The speaker is all alone, crying about being an outcast, or cast out of society. Since he (or she, but for simplicity’s sake, he) more or less says that in the first line, why repeat it?  Here he moves from “I’m alone” to “I feel sorry for myself.” A giant word like “beweep” says, to me, that he knows he’s feeling sorry for himself, and self-knowledge draws me in.

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

Let’s start with “deaf heaven”: Heaven, or God, is not listening, and not only will not hear but cannot hear.  The word “bootless” means “useless”: In Shakespeare’s time of foot travel and horse travel, to be without boots was to be of no use to anyone, presumably. “Bootless cries” are useless cries. To start with the line’s opening, “And trouble deaf heaven”: The word “trouble” is really interesting: “I don’t mean to trouble you…” is the kind of thing we still say, as if our asking for something, for a favor, will be a bother, or even emotionally difficult for the person we ask. How can you trouble a heaven that cannot hear you? Again, I think the speaker knows he’s feeling sorry for himself. He redoubles his efforts by adding “with my bootless cries”: Clearly if heaven is deaf to his calls, his calls are useless. Self-pity is becoming a theme. [Note on SOUND: "deaf heaven" has great assonance, or matching vowel sound, for emphasis; and "bootless" sounds a hell of a lot more frustrated than "useless."]

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

“And look upon myself”: So here he is, the speaker, looking at himself as in a mirror. He is taking the time to be introspective, which is what poetry is for. This is why this sonnet exists. By cursing his “fate,” he is again aligning himself with Fortune, shaking a metaphorical fist at the heavens as if to say, “Why me, oh Lord?” This is where he is, in case you missed it before.

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

“Wishing me like” means “Wishing myself to be like,” or “Wishing I were like.” He wants to be like “one more rich in hope.” With "rich," the speaker returns to “fortune,” but the riches here are not money but “hope.” He feels hopeless and envies ones who have it. Here the sonnet turns: The speaker, having identified his problem, is giving us specific examples of his behaviors in the face of it.

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

“Featured” is an interesting word choice. It can mean physical features, or looks: “Featured like him” might mean “as good looking as that guy over there.” It might also mean situated: Set up (with a job or a lifestyle) like that guy. I think it’s about looks—the speaker is admitting to a shallow kind of envy. The next part, “like him with friends possessed,” brings in a second “him” to envy: And I want to be like that other guy, there, the one with all the friends.

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

“Desiring this man’s art”: The speaker envies still another man’s “art,” which could mean his skills in speaking, drawing, what have you, but it comes down to envying another's talent. The next part, “and that man’s scope,” refers I think either to vision, or forward-thinking ability, or else to a breadth of life, living large, so to speak. Either interpretation works, I think. Our speaker is doing a lot of envying of other people, of what they can do and see that he can't.

With what I most enjoy contented least;

“With what I most enjoy:” Whatever it is the speaker likes the most—eating, or whoring, or writing, we don’t know—he is now “contented least,” or made most unhappy, by doing it. Clearly our speaker is depressed, and his most pleasurable pastime cannot shake him out of it.

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

“Yet in these thoughts”: The “yet” does not mean “but,” but rather “still, to this moment” or “even as we speak.” His admission, “myself almost despising” is clear enough: I am almost hating myself for thinking all this. It’s the “almost” that redeems him, it seems. He’s not quite done with life, because he’s at least thinking about all of it.

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

“Haply” means, not happily or even perhaps (which is too casual), but as it happens, or as luck would have it (another Shakespeare line). “I think on thee”: Just as this mood happens, I think of you, I think about you. When he adds “and then my state,” he means his state of being, and the poem takes yet another turn, from problem and elaboration to solution. The “and then” is the turn. 

The "thee" is huge: Who is the “thee” to whom the speaker refers? We don’t know. It could be a lover, a friend, a parent, a sibling, a collective of all. All we know is that the “thee” is the single thing in his life that can turn him and his mood around.

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

This parenthetical thing is curious. Let’s do the words first and I’ll talk about the parenthesis in the next bit. “Like to the lark at break of day arising”: He’s making a simile, that when he thinks about “thee,” his state can be compared to the lark, the bird that calls at dawn, or break of day. The “arising” is a word that brings to mind uplift, and also the image of sunrise. It’s a line about awakening.

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

“From sullen earth” is a continuation, the second half of the comparison: “Sullen” is a deeper sadness, a funk, in a way, a depression. To personify the earth as sullen is to see himself, really, as the earth. He’s talking about his own world as sullen. The speaker, who is now thinking of sunrise, arising, awakening, is also comparing the darkness of earth before dawn to a dark, sullen mood that changes with the break of dawn and light. 

The parentheses, I think, keep the speaker from going “over the top” when declaring his change of state. He’s still down, he’s still depressed, and the mood shifts not to jubilation, but rather to humility. This is an example of where punctuation is a vital cue to the reader or performer: Don’t bellow your lark call.

To follow the phrase after the parenthesis, you have to return to the line before the lark image: “Then my state…sings hymns at heaven’s gate.” Heaven may be deaf, but thinking of you makes me want to rise up singing, and sing hymns at the very gates of (deaf) heaven. The speaker, in other words, finds again his faith. Thinking about his friend, whoever it is, gives him faith, and indeed, strength.

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

These lines are called the rhyming couplet, and they are the message of the poem: “For thy sweet love remembered”: When I remember how I love you, or, when I remember how you love me, “such wealth brings”, I feel rich. In fact, the speaker feels so rich, “That then I scorn to change my state with kings.” He scorns, or rejects, the idea of changing places—whether a depressed mood or a lousy situation—with a king. Whatever his money woes, whatever his lacks, it is the love of this unknown “thee” that is, in the end, his world.

What a compliment! And really, what a journey to get to this new place. This is the sonnet that, as I said, I know by heart, carry with me, and in my darkest moments recite to myself. It’s like medicine. My “thee” is vast. I always remember how lucky I am.

And then I drink. (Ha, ha!)

Here’s the poem again. Read it all the way through once more, aloud, with all your new knowledge. I hope you have enjoyed the journey. Maybe it will embolden you to pick up a few more and learn those, too.

Love to all!

Sonnet XXIX: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Stop. Facebook? Wait a Minute Mr. Boss Man!

The Face to Meet the Faces That You Meet

“A mask tells us more than a face.”

—Oscar Wilde, Pen, Pencil, and Poison

Look at the great masks of history: Try though we may, we cannot unsee them: The Phantom of the Opera. Freddie Kruger. Joan Rivers.

But Oscar, of course, is not talking Halloween (or how, for a price, you can celebrate it every day of the year). He’s getting at something the Victorians obsessed over: That a face was who you were. In other words, the face did not lie. A beautiful, gentle visage bespoke a beautiful gentle person, and a malformed face meant “evil.” (Back in the ’80s, even my mom, Lynne, had a hard time believing Muammar Gaddafi could be all that evil: “He’s so handsome,” she’d say, and he really was, back then. By the same token, a brilliant, decent man like Dennis Kucinich is not handsome enough (or tall enough) to be president.) Oscar knew that most people are, at bottom, shallow. Not much bottom.

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.”

–Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

The mask we use when we go public is important information. Pretense is fascinating, how we show ourselves is revealing: A woman whose face consists of bare flesh, unadorned, is wearing just as much of a mask as is a woman in heavy makeup with feline features as a result of plastic surgery. In other words, a face is more than a face, whatever you think you are reading in its features.

So what does Facebook reveal?

Are You the Sum of Your Facebook Parts?

Miss O’ is this week on the hunt to understand why a potential employer would think it is useful, wise, and legal to demand Facebook passwords of its prospective employees. The subject ties deeply into not only our corporate and political culture, but also our personal one. Allow her to be fatuous and superior, if she may.

Here’s one lawyer’s “trying to be oh-so-reasonable” take on the “I deserve your Facebook password” argument, which I find unbearably lame. I can’t find any substance in it to even argue with:

http://www.tlnt.com/2012/04/10/take-a-deep-breath-its-not-ridiculous-to-ask-for-social-media-passwords/

“Work with me,” he begins. Ahem. One of the arguments against this, he points out, is the following:

It may violate the federal Stored Communications Act. The SCA prohibits unauthorized access of an electronic facility so as to obtain access to an electronic communication that while it is in electronic storage. But the SCA expressly excepts conduct that is authorized by the person who makes or is the intended recipient of the communications. Employers have been using this “consent exception” for almost two decades in their technology use policies – if you want to work here, sign this policy that gives me the right to monitor your technology use.

He continues:

Think it’s not consent if the employer requires access?

Actually, nobody thinks that, Mr. Lawyer. If you require it, and I give it, that is “consent.” However, should you require access, and I deny it, I then lose any “opportunity” to “work” for you. That is the sticking point, you see.

 If employers cannot compel applicants and employees to consent to things they do not like as a condition of employment, then we will need to rethink noncompete agreements, drug testing, and really any kind of background checking whatsoever. Certainly applicants cannot be forced to consent to things that are otherwise illegal, so for example you would not demand consent to information beyond what you have determined you can properly review. But the SCA standing alone should not render illegal the review of applicants’ social media information.

See, this is where I get pissed off. First, “noncomplete” is not a word. Second, I don’t believe in drug testing except in the cases of employees who will be handling firearms, such as the police and the military; I also think that sports associations that ban steroids should have the right to test for those steroids. I think it’s an invasion of privacy in any other case: You are either performing well at your job or not performing well.  Third, background checks unearth what is essentially public information, but consolidated through an agency so that it can be located efficiently. For example, when people want to buy a unit in my co-op, I as a board member run a credit score, criminal background check, and proof of employment. That’s all I am allowed to have, and it’s basic for my purposes of determining good credit and general honesty. (If the buyer does not have good credit and cannot pay maintenance fees, for example, our heat could get turned off if our co-op’s bills do not get paid.)

But here are the arguments and the tone that really piss me fucking off (boldface and underline mine):

I submit that, if everybody calms down, the job-relatedness consensus can be applied to applicant information on social media. Legislators who are rushing to ban the consideration of social media are doing a disservice to employers, to good employees who are entitled to work with colleagues of a certain quality and, in extreme situations, to the public by depriving employers of job-related information about applicants.

I disagree with his premise, beginning to end: “Work with me here” my ASS. I don’t have to “take a deep breath” or “calm down.” DICK. He’s the kind of boss/leader-type who meets every “I disagree” with “You are an hysteric.” It’s beyond condescending: It’s manipulative and, as for the other boldfaced comment, snobbish.

He keeps talking about “job-related information” that not knowing Facebook stuff will “deprive” him of.

Then I took a deep breath. I calmed down.

And I remembered back to the interview for my first teaching job.

My First Teaching Job Interview: Demand and Supply

The superintendent himself was conducting the interview, as this entire county in Central Virginia where the high school was located consisted of only four schools: one for primary (K-2), one for elementary (3-6), one for middle (7-8), and one high school (9-First Prison Sentence/Farm Harvest without Dad). He was very kind, this man, whom I’ll call Mr. Lipscomb.

When we spoke on the phone, he suggested we meet on my college campus, as he was a frequent visitor, Virginia Tech being his alma mater. We would meet in the lobby of the Donaldson-Brown Center, a conference hall and alumni hotel. I had aleady sent him my résumé, college transcripts, and recommendation letters, as requested, when I initially applied. Based on these things, he had elected to interview me. For the interview, he told me exactly what else to bring.

I had to borrow my friend Mark McPherson’s car to haul it all: the three boxes of personal journals and diaries dating back to childhood; my yearly calendars of class schedules and appointments, my address books (old and new), my photo albums, and the eight boxes of personal cards and letters, to say nothing of the memorabilia from all my years of high school and college theater. I had to ask the nice concierge at the lobby desk if I might borrow a hand truck or dolly. Mr. Lipscomb, seeing my burden as I wheeled through the automatic doors, also graciously helped me unload the collection at the small sofa there by the conveniently located lobby restrooms. He ordered us coffee and donuts: “This is going to be a long afternoon,” he quipped, and I giggled nervously.

As he began to sift the contents (“These are quite nicely organized by year,” he commented), my mind raced. “I sure hope my Auntie Clare didn’t write anything lewd in my birthday cards,” I thought. (“I don’t see your music and book collections here,” Mr. Lipscomb frowned. “Oh, wait, you supplied a list. That will do.”) “Had I mentioned anything about masturbation in my journals?” I began to panic. My palms sweated. “I don’t even know WHO I AM,” I internally screamed. (“I trust,” he intoned, pointing to a snapshot of a blinking sophomore me in short shorts and tank top holding a red plastic tumbler, “that you were not actually drinking alcohol in this picture,” and I smiled, shook my head, blushed.) “I will never work, not only in the American school system, but not in America, not ever,” I realized. I brushed away tears. “Perhaps in France….”

What He Actually Asked Me to Bring to My Interview

Nothing.

Instead, we held what used to be called “an interview.” In it, we talked. He asked me questions, and I answered them. This caused us to fall into what used to be called “a conversation,” meaning that what began as formal dialogue segued into a mutual sharing of information, ideas, and questions. It’s quite an experience, if you’ve never had one.

After an hour of talking about where I was from, my Virginia education, my goals for my profession, my teaching philosophy as I had come to know it, and my reasons for wanting to enter my vocation as a teacher of theater and English, we shook hands. He smiled. “Your transcripts and test scores are excellent,” he said. “You come so highly recommended, I feel confident in hiring you,” he said. And that was it. Right there in the lobby of Donaldson-Brown, I had become a professional teacher. I would start in August. “Call my office,” he offered, “and my secretary will give you the names of the realtors in town so you can find a place to live. In the meantime, I’ll schedule an interview with the high school’s principal, merely a formality, so you can see where you would be working.”

And I had the job. By the process of talking, we—both of us—had made decisions about my potential value and success as an employee. By looking into each other’s eyes, listening to one another’s vocal inflections, judging body postures, and using other nonverbal signals, we enhanced the verbal exchange. We seemed, hard though it may be to believe in the age of an electronic Social Network, to come to know one another through engagement in the same physical and aural space.

Why is this way of interviewing no longer valued? I think it’s about the newest American culture fear: Fear of the Real.

Fear of the Real

I listened to an interview on NPR’s podcast of “Fresh Air” between Terry Gross and her guest, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Maddow, who is by far the most marvelous combination of intelligence, education, honesty, and grace in our modern media age, spoke of the real wedge in our American political and personal landscape: We disagree not only in ideology, but on actual facts. Perhaps Monty Python illustrates it better than anyone else, as usual. This is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Plague “Bring Out Your Dead”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGFXGwHsD_A

He’s dead if I SAY he is. And if he’s not, we’ll MAKE him dead. There’s your “facts.”

But what is “fear of the real” in an interview? The employers who want your password claim to be searching for “facts.” What they really want to do is “not engage” in order to learn about you. They fear intimacy. It seems to be a disturbing national trend, and possibly it’s going viral.

Speak Up: The Human Voice

Intimacy is not sex. Sex is sex. Intimacy is closeness, the sharing of confidences in the same space, but more to the point it’s about being present. According to acclaimed voice teacher and acting coach Patsy Rodenburg, whom I heard interviewed years ago on NPR, humans have a fear of using their own human voices to express needs and desires. We used to sing, do call and response at gatherings, yell “Get the fuck out of my way.” Now we barely mutter an “excuse me” when we bump shoulders.

And it occurred to me as I walked up 6th Avenue (because I do most of my writing in my head when I'm in transit) that I needed to Google Patsy Rodenburg. (My friend Quinn has taken her workshops, but I never have. Now I really want to.)

In this brief clip, filmed at Michael Howard Studios in New York, Ms. Rodenburg is beginning to present a workshop on acting and getting inside a play. She talks about why she does theater. In the final couple of minutes, she tells a stunning story, and it has to do with reaction to human sound. Please watch all the way to the end of the 6:47, I beg you, before you read the next bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9jjhGq8pMM

When she got to the end, I was sitting on my sofa, wailing, shaking from my deepest core, tears falling, unable to stop—and only when I started to come out of it, did I notice how I was reacting. That’s why I do, love, breathe theater, and it’s why I write, and why I tell stories: To tell the truth, even if you don’t like me all the time when I try to do it.

In this next clip, Rodenburg talks about her theory of being present as a way of beginning to find character. She calls it The Second Circle. For background: All actors need “a way in,” a shorthand, to find a way into a character. There are all kinds of methods, from chakra work (from yoga) to locating centers of gravity; from sense memory to building a personal character history. This is the most effective thing I’ve learned about in a long time (and I think the best actors work in combinations of methods, probably), and I just found her work this last week.

“If you are not able to get present, you cannot succeed.”

The Second Circle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub27yeXKUTY&feature=relmfu

(I saw the London production of Richard II with Ralph Fiennes to which she alludes. His entrance, in First Circle I now see, is possibly the most memorable I've seen. His shift to Second Circle, in prison, again was stunning, and now I see how this work got him there.)

Here is more on the work of this remarkable teacher:

http://patsyrodenburg.com/PatsyRodenburg.com/Home.html

Present, Tense

One of the reasons I get depressed so often, I am now convinced, is that I’m in Second Circle almost all the time. In constant intimacy is an exhausting place to live. When I crash, I retreat into First Circle. To get through my day job, I push into Third Circle. This was an enormous personal epiphany, and I’m sharing it in case it can be of use.

Being present is deeply tied to the use of the Voice. People have come to fear their own voices even in New York City, even to say “excuse me,” so I make sidewalk announcements, loudly and regularly, to the rude and clueless:  “When I have a decision to make, I try to stop in the middle of the sidewalk so I block EVERYONE…” or “When I’m not sure which way to turn, I STOP AT THE TOP OF THE SUBWAY STAIRS…” and it scares people, and they get embarrassed. And I think, “GOOD.” Maybe they won’t do it again. VOICES. So much better than a body block. But the intimacy required to use the voice frightens many of us, while a punch feels safely distant. It's curious.

The Second Circle and Teaching

How I wish I’d known about Patsy Rodenburg’s work when I was a teacher. Today, as I talked aloud to myself figuring out this blog, I found myself talking about teenagers, how much they hated giving speeches, and then of how many people get terrified to perform a public speech. And I realized, “They are giving the speech from First Circle.” So I found First Circle in myself (I’m already in it, today), and imagined having to talk to a group from that place: I began sobbing. Because when you speak from the private, protected place, you have no armor, you are giving away your safety. What you have to teach teens to do is move out of it, even if it means jumping into the Third Circle: the big generalized energy of the politician, the CEO, the “hail fellow, well met” sort of energy. Third Circle is where I lived with the out-of-control classes I had, the ones that needed to be constantly monitored and “sat on,” the ones I had to “fake” until I could learn about them.

The kids in those classes were afraid of Second Circle energy, as I think most people, at least in this country, are. Judging from nonsensical reactions to him, President Obama, I suspect, lives mostly in the Second Circle, and often in the First Circle. When he pushes into the Third Circle to give the grand speech, and he is feeling a good audience response, he can close in Second Circle (he may even begin a speech there, but he cannot stay there). Americans on the whole are only really comfortable with politicians who speak in Third Circle.

Intimacy scares them. Real connection is suspect. Because they don’t know how to do it themselves.

Implications in Personal Life

The man I “tried” for this year (as in dating)—lives in the First Circle, and in public lives in the Third Circle. It’s the Second Circle he can’t navigate, which I learned when trying to talk to him. By way of final proof, when I sent him the above videos via email as something of interest and as a way of checking in, he dismissed Rodenburg's work as “simplistic.” Of course he did.

Only a boss who has no conception of Second Circle, no tools for communicating with the voice, or understanding of how to read a body, needs your Facebook password. He (or, less often, she—yes, I said it) will learn no more there in your Facebook pages than in an interview, because such a boss has no understanding of how to “be with” anyone.

People, I think, fear those leaders who inhabit the Second Circle—Jesus, for example, must have lived in the Second Circle. Devotees who live in the same Circle are comfortable with such leaders, but no one else is. We all inhabit each of the Circles at some point, no mistake: As I said, when I’m in a depression I live in the First Circle; when I am formulating my notes for a blog or a play, I live in the First Circle, and once I am writing and fully engaged I am in Second Circle. And when I’m feeling introverted and quiet and walk into the office, I have to push to inhabit the Third Circle, armed with witty responses, “I’ve never felt more fulfilled,” for example, when someone asks, “How are you?” in order to “put on the show” and get the day started. Sometimes when doing tedious work, I have to live there in Third Circle all day; and then someone will approach to talk and expect Second Circle energy, and I can’t give it, and they look at me funny and become afraid of me, and I see now that’s because I’ve cheated them of intimacy. It strikes me that the Second Circle is the ideal place to live, and also the hardest. It seems I live there naturally, except, as I say, when I simply can't.

People who live primarily in the First and Third Circles live in a general and constant kind of fear, I think. And they create the culture of paranoia in their own image. Whether faced with “Give me your Facebook password” or “Let me legislate your reproductive rights,” we are in a cultural moment in America that we of the Second Circle must reclaim: Use your voice.

“Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.”

—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Consider Yourself BLOGOLOGUED: See This Show

A Dispatch from the New York Off-Off Broadway World

Miss O’ is enjoying her blog fest in bed this morning, after a night of delicious, nay, fulfilling theater-going at the innovative live arts sensation that is Lively Productions’ Blogologues™, now running (dancing, riffing, and playing delightfully) at The Players Loft theater in Greenwich Village (through May 5).

This incarnation of the serial show is called, in a perfectly-timed title, Younger Than Springtime! And it is. Or at least I felt that. The key to Blogologues™ is timing: It's a show of present-day explorations into the virtual, and yet very real, cyber world that many humans inhabit for many, many hours of each day. Whatever the form—Tweet, IM, Web Log (Blog), Tumblr, e-mail, online publications, or a desperate plea to Craig’s List, the communication longings of planet Earth’s hyperlinked denizens are on display.

Blogologues™ is the brainchild of two Yale-trained actors, Allison Goldberg and Jen Jamula, who clearly went in search of “the next thing” for live theater and saw what was actually happening in the daily lives of actual people, and made art out of it. To the weary eyes and weak heart of Miss O’—who is forever asking herself, “And the point of putting this on a stage would be…?” (when “this” is really a Lifetime TV Movie)—this show (and this is the third and best I have seen) is (true to its current title) a breath of fresh, spring air!

The premise: The Mizzes Goldberg and Jamula, along with fellow company member Matthew Cox, troll the Internet compiling comedy gold, scanning blog after blog after Facebook post, finding up-to-the-nano trends in texting and viral photo sending, and bring each worthy word to life as monologues, screen shots, and choral presentations. Every awful and absurd and rather wonderful letter to the world that is blogging can be found in the show, presented under a theme umbrella.

The actors are as terrific as anyone I've seen on a stage: Goldberg, Jamula, and Cox have appeared, or rather captivated, in each show I’ve attended, and are here joined by equally marvelous cast members, show veteran Wendy Joy and new-to-this-thing (but every bit as on) Dave Thomas Brown. They all help create the show, under the brilliantly imaginative direction of David Hilder. In their creative minds, morph-tastic bodies, and transformative hands (to say nothing of the spot-on music and projections), no blog is merely the sum of its words. All the physical possibilities are explored. Time travel is an option. Birds take wing. Allergies are lived and (not) breathed. Hunger games ensue.

I want to give nothing else away. You simply must see it. You simply must.

As faithful readers know, Miss O’ lives and (figuratively speaking) breathes theater, and yet her latest posts have found her mired in global misogyny and railing against the doofus-assed politics of the country known as “America,” leaving many to wonder of their writer friend, “What about art?” and “Have you lost your self-absorbed head up your fucking ass?” Blogologues™ was the answer to a (neopagan) prayer: How to embrace the weary-making "wonders" of this millennium’s chief product, narcissism, and turn it into 21^st Century art? New York audiences are in for a tweet treat.

Blogologues™: Younger Than Springtime

Produced by Lively Productions

Directed by David Hilder

The Players Loft

115 Macdougal Street

New York City, April 13 through May 5, 2012

With Dave Thomas Brown, Matthew Cox, Wendy Joy, Allison Goldberg, and Jen Jamula. Runs approximately 90 minutes, with wine and beer. (God bless ’em, and yet you don’t even need a beer for this, which is more than I can say for Coram Boy…)

Go to Lively Productions website for ticket information: http://livelyproductions.org/home/

Kisses,

Miss O’

LARGER than LIFE: On DRAMA with GLAMOR in the age of the GOP

 I FEEL PRETTY. What the Hell.

As seen in previous posts, Miss O’ loves her some pretty fabrics, to say nothing of exquisite costume design and the beauty of the female form in said designs. She couldn’t have spent enough time in the Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Met. She fairly drools over the photos of old Hollywood—all the glamor, the studio gloss, the gowns by Adrian, Edith Head, Givenchy.

 And a Hollywood face to say it all.

But “glamor” is not fucking “news.”

Pardon me if I sound like an asshole. (My cousin Kerry says I've become really cranky lately, and is she wrong?)

Shall we talk of global misogyny? Let’s. What I don’t like to see, in terms of women and what they wear—for there is in fact quite a misogyny theme in my posts of late—are HEADLINES about such stuff in NEWSFEEDS, and such "news" includes “Pregnant Reese Witherspoon in Swimsuit” or “See Halle Berry heat it up on the red carpet,” to say nothing of “Claire Danes’ Patchwork Dress Mess” and “Swimsuit Styles Men Love” in the same newsfeeds that include, by contrast, “George Clooney Arrested for Protesting Sudan at Embassy.”

One could blame the media, but I'd rather look at the politics. The role of women in government is around 16% nation wide, all areas, even though women make up around 52% if the population. I’m not planning to run for office, either. I wish I had the ego and the love of the game, but I don’t. I also have the profoundly disturbing habit of saying exactly what’s on my mind.

So women—too many women—are complicit in this, is what I’m saying.

Gorgeous Gigantic Fabulousness in the Age of the Tweet: An Elegy

I’d like to take a tour of the growth of glamor, and the importance of it, in my cultural life. I’m all for glamor. But if the glamor is not informed by a genius talent and real substance, I couldn’t give a shit what dress anyone is wearing. I miss genius. I really do. (Was genius ever really enjoyed, in its time, I mean?)

Judy Garland: An Evolution of Style

I’m all for women growing, evolving, becoming. I am going to show an evolution of Judy Garland, because her “look” evolved along with her artistic genius. And her pain, her life experience, her heart.

Here is Judy Garland, freshly renamed out of Frances Ethel Gumm:

And here is her amazing break, when Shirley Temple was (mercifully) not made available by a rival studio:

And then came For Me and My Gal, and then Meet Me in St. Louis, where she found her makeup style, courtesy Vincente Minnelli, and her glamour (with a “u”) arrived:

And she continues, thanks to Minnelli…

And (skipping the very difficult 1950s) in her aged glory, where by 47 she’d lived a thousand years (primarily by taking amphetamines to stay "thin" because "thin" = "glamorous", and then needing downers and booze in order to sleep):

There is a new Broadway show about her final days, End of the Rainbow. Because glamor is a creepy illusion, I have stayed away from it as a lifestyle, much as I am drawn to the glossy pics of the greats. They are my icons, come rain or come shine, however bitter the night. Thinking on the meaning of icons at specific moments in our personal and political lives, this writer reflects on the importance of Judy Garland in the gay community:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/arts/judy-garland-gay-idol-then-and-over-the-rainbow-now.html?_r=1

We needed them, is what he's saying. And they change, slip away. Immortality ain't what it used to be, indeed.

I'm Always Chasing Rainbows

While I, too, love to sit the feet of an artistic idol, I know I cannot linger there. No thinking person can. We’ve had many celebrity idols over many ages, and the sirens of our glamorous times are ever women. And yet: How are women ever treated? Times change, but misogyny doesn’t.

I can’t say it better than Rachel Maddow. Naturally, given who you know me to be, I LOVES me some Rachel Maddow. Glad she’s on the airwaves being smart and real and a woman, all at once. It’s a good segment:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/rachel-maddow-reince-priebus-war-on-caterpillars_n_1407945.html?ref=media

The GOP House and state legislatures are spending all their bill-making time—and your tax dollars in their (and their staffs') salaries and benefits—in anti-abortion stuff, anti-contraception stuff, 90 of which have been signed into law since Republicans took over the House and the states in 2011, over 400 new anti-women’s rights laws introduced by Republican male legislators all over the U.S. in just one year.

The number of Republican jobs bills? Zero.

One of my former students on Facebook and her husband say that Obama can “suck it” because gas prices are $4.00, the same price as a gallon of milk, not seeing that this has come about in part because President Obama wants to end oil company tax breaks since their profits have never been higher.  This from 2011:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/26/nation/la-na-obama-oil-subsidies-20110427

And to punish Mr. Obama and to get the electorate to vote the Republicans back into office, the oil companies just don’t produce fuel, because they know that people like my former student and her husband will blame the President.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/28/business/la-fi-oil-refineries-20110429

AND where the hell is the news coverage on the source of high MILK PRICES?

Hey, look at Katy Perry’s tits.

There’s your milk price coverage.

Putting It Together: Let a Woman Say It

You see, I am a woman, and this is what I actually think about. Sure, I’d like to think about Judy’s singing and wonderful theater and the gorgeous spring in bloom via nature and poetry. But dammit, the planet hangs in the balance. So here I am, not talking clothes and glamor. Women want to talk about the economy, the future of energy, jobs, education, change. Obama knows this.  We—educated, thoughtful men and women—are bored by conversations and endless arguments about women’s basic right to reproductive freedom, to say nothing of gas prices, and the lack of jobs.

May I recommend The Lion in Winter? Katharine Hepburn plays Eleanor of Aquitaine. What better antidote and explanation could you need for all this?

Misogynists from the Taliban to the American Republicans never get tired of it, just as Republicans never tire of a bad economy or high gas prices. They’ll cry “fiscal conservatism” (whatever that even means) and “balanced budget” and then waste millions and millions in tax money in endless bills against women and not collect billions in taxes from too-profitable oil companies that destroy our environment, costing us billions more. It’s quite a cycle. That way you don’t have to actually solve anything. You just tread water long enough to get your buddies elected and make loads of money from corporate kickbacks. I get so nauseous.

I’m sick to goddamned death of it.

So here ends another fucking fun blog post from the ever-adorable Miss O’.

I’ll let Bette Davis have the last face on it, in All About (who else?) Eve: