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April 13^th, 2010

I saw a very nice movie the other night.  Spanglish.

Very much a girl movie so not really my genre (not being a girl) but it was a little bit different from the standard girl and boy meet in cute way but there are insurmountable obstacles or they totally hate each other but eventually they get together because they are in love.

SPOILER ALERT.  I don’t mind spoiling the ending because it isn’t such an action drama that that is critical to your enjoyment of the story, and it’s not a new release.  I saw it on TV, so there’s a good chance that those of you reading this already know the ending anyway(Adam Sandler stays with his wife), but that was only one of the traditional Hollywood cliches that the film violated.

I like films that violate cliches.  Of course, I may be overrating it because I saw it after 2 big, full joints at the end of a stressful day, but I don’t think so.

First, it was Adam Sandler not playing Adam Sandler. I liked The Water Boy, and loved Happy Gilmore, the Wedding Singer and especially 50 First Dates.  Even though the plot was a little bit morbid, when you think of it, that scene where Drew Barrymore is beating the shit out of Rob Scheider is comedy gold.  Still, it was nice to see him play a more or less normal guy, without the histrionics.

They dealt with the language issue in a realistic fashion.  Of course, they kind of had to since that was the plot of the film.  I hate watching a WWII movie where the Germans all speak English to each other – with comical accents.

But the biggest taboo of all, the super cliché that was violated:  There wasn’t a single bad guy.  Oh, sure, the wife acted like a super rich, arrogant asshole through most of the movie but in the end she acted like a normal human being and presumably the marriage was saved because she took, word for word, the advice of her lovable alcoholic mother.

Nah, I was probably just stoned.

As I wrote yesterday, the idea I  want to get across, that I want to write an entire collection of poetry  about because it’s too large and complex to get into  one poem, has to do with the growth and evolution of human consciousness, and the spark of intellectual curiousity and how magic, religion, science and art were, at the dawn of intelligence, not necessarily differentiated, and animal shrieks and natural bodily reactions, such as widening of eyes, raising of hands, shifting of balance gradually became words, and words became oral history, and then somebody came along and invented an alphabet and things got written down and their were records and history and then eventually, thank his noodly appendages, fiction and gradually things began to solidify, stories became legends, then fairy tales,  then a part of the human psyche, then somebody invented the printing press, then somebody invented the computer and now we have a swiftly developing universe which is entirely imaginary, or maybe something between imaginary and real, the noosphere, and we need to build a bridge out to it, find some kind of transition to it.

My plan was to write today’s blog and add to that, because I want to write something that actually raises consciousness to a different level, but I read it through, and that about covers it.  Except possibly adding some detail about the choices of futures we have in front of us, where do we go from here, how does the real world relate to the noosphere, how do we want it to relate, what is the next stage in human consciousness and how do we get to there from here.

It’s a rich source of ideas, when put like that.

So, the book of the month thing is running into snags.  Not so much on the writing end, but for some reason we are having a godawful hell of a time getting April’s book of the month onto the blog.  It all has to do with converting it into a PDF file, but since I don’t even know what that means, I sit by helplessly while my wife deals with the frustration of knowing a little bit about the problem, but not totally being able to solve it.

The next book will just be poetry, maybe the next two.  Soon I will run into the other problem, actually writing a book which isn’t just a collection of previously written material.

There is one book of poetry I think will be a major, defining work, something into which I’ve put a lot of thought, but on the other hand just another one of my gimmicks.  The title will be 155 Sonnets.  The title is chock full of arrogance and will no doubt tick some people off, which is kind of the point.  Otherwise, why sonnets at all?  It’s a totally outmoded poetic form based on an outdated mode of speech.  Everything’s 8 syllables nowadays.  It comes much more naturally.

Another reason I like playing with Sonnets, however, is just that it is a strict form, and I feel that by sticking to a strict form and finding the possibilities within it, I can produce poetry.  Same with Haiku.

But they are harder than they look.  I have about 30 or so, which means I still have to write about 120 or 30, which means if I write 2 or 3 a  week I could complete the project in a year.  And I’m having a hard time coming out with that.  I don’t know how Shakespeare did it.  Filled with respect.

On the other hand, I have an idea that I want to get across and it’s too big and complicated to get across in a poem, any one poem, for it is multifaceted and I don’t even understand it myself, but it has to do with the growth and evolution of human consciousness, and the spark of intellectual curiousity and how magic, religion, science and art were, at the dawn of intelligence, not necessarily differentiated, and animal shrieks and natural bodily reactions, such as widening of eyes, raising of hands, shifting of balance gradually became words, and words became oral history, and then somebody came along and invented an alphabet and things got written down and their were records and history and then eventually, thank his noodly appendages, fiction and gradually things began to solidify, stories became legends, then fairy tales,  then a part of the human psyche, then somebody invented the printing press, then somebody invented the computer and now we have a swiftly developing universe which is entirely imaginary, or maybe something between imaginary and real, the noosphere, and we need to build a bridge out to it, find some kind of transition to it.

So, 120 or 30 sonnets should just about cover it.

I’m up early, in view of the fact that it’s Sunday morning and I don’t have to get up at all, Sam’s hockey practice changed schedule again. But I’m wide awake after a series of pretty unpleasant dreams.

In the most recent one I was at the airport and late for my flight to Saudi Arabia  while a couple of Saudis had me, just in a corner of the lobby, looking over my tent disapprovingly.  There was pretty good reason for their disapproval.  The tent was a gift from my brother and it was about the kind of thing one would expect from my brother.  A faded, old, massive green tent that smelled of the smoke of a thousand campfires, and had many questionable things, including bags of various herbs, inside it, and it was all a bit incongruous because I was supposed to be on a business trip and I was in a suit and tie and all and wearing an expensive watch. I asked them if there was someplace I could store the tent at the airport, just to expedite my trip, and they said “On a Saturday?” like good luck, so I said just a minute and carried the tent, which was fully assembled, not rolled up, through the lobby and over to a cafeteria where I dumped the most suspicious looking of the herbal packets in one of those tray stacker mini-closets like they have at fast food restaurants, and just a few minutes before (I remember the time in my dream – my flight was at 2 p.m. -it said 14 on the ticket- and it was 10 past 1) I’d been eating in that cafeteria and then stood up on the table and stepped over somebody elses food to get out in a hurry and before that I was sitting in a different airport cafeteria talking to some girl who looked a bit like my friend Alicia but it wasn’t her about what a lousy parent I was because I owed both my kids money (which is not true) and how I’d left Sam at home alone (which we do sometimes, but I still worry about it) and before that, I was at home and arguing with Sam because I’d promised him he could drive me to the airport (he’s 7) and now was renegging and I don’t know how I got from there to the airport,  in dreams teleportation is possible, and before that I’d been arguing with my wife, I remember one of us saying that we’d been dating since she was 14 and she was always the responsible one.  It is true that she’s always been the responsible one, and she’s significantly younger than I am, but 14 is a gross exaggeration.

The underlying them of all the dreams was that I was late for a flight, even though the action in the dream seemed to take place over a series of several days.

What does it mean?  I think it’s just a reminder that my passport has expired and I need to renew it. 

Not a Football Fan

We went to watch Sam play football this morning.  So, a few observations.

First, I am burned out by year round football and I think at the end of this outdoor season, I will suggest that he take a break and maybe switch to hockey.  Enough is enough.  Sometimes I wonder what drives us as parents to put up with it- with the time we need to spend, getting him to and from games, the time spent standing on the sidelines, this morning in pretty horrible (chilly and intermittently rainy) weather, the time that could be spent in other ways.  Then I realize, the other parents probably enjoy it a lot more than I do.

Perhaps that’s because I was never much of an athlete as a kid and I’m not much of a sports fan today.  Frankly, I think sports are for people who aren’t smart enough to read books.  Standing in the bleachers and shouting Go! Go! Shoot! is great fun for people who do not have any thoughts that are more involved than that and God love ‘em, but I get a bit bored with it.  Perhaps it’s partly a language thing.  I don’t really communicate with the other parents, beyond a nod and hello.  That’s partly my fault, because I speak enough Czech I could probably force my way into the conversation if I really wanted to, but I’m not motivated to push it.  Sometimes, if it’s just a practice session, I take a book along, but if I have Isabel with me, that doesn’t work.  Fortunately, Isabel isn’t bored at all.  She seems to quite enjoy the atmosphere.

Second, Sam’s team has really improved.  This time last year they were losing almost all of their games, could barely connect their foot to the ball if it was placed in front of them, and didn’t seem too bothered by that.  Today, they were 3-1-1, and were 2^nd only to a team that went 5-0.

I’m not sure why.  They practice twice a week, and they are a year older, but I’m pretty sure the same is true for the other teams as well.  Their coach really works them hard, and is a shouty, drill sergeant wannabe sort of coach, but I’ve been to the tournaments and he’s not exceptional.  Also, I’m not sure that is the ideal coaching method (but I’m not sure it’s not, either)

In any event, Sam loves the game, he likes his teammates real well and I suspect that if I try to pull the plug at the end of this summer, I might be overruled.  We’ll see.