September 4, 2013

I took this picture of Lake Michigan, near my house, one early morning last week.

Well people. I’m spent. Utterly spent.

The travelling has taken a larger toll than I thought it would. I lost all my notes of what books I read, of what films I watched. Between doing publicity for my book, doing publicity for Monsters University (only two weekends, but still…) doing Jill & Julia Shows, and going with my family on vacation, I lost control of all those little things that kept me sane. My lists. My routines. All shattered. I thought, as I got older, I could juggle various travel and work projects more easily. But it hasn’t turned out that way. I’m worse at it than ever before. I need a structure that I can rely on. I need the daily grind. I need repetition and habits that are unbroken for long periods of time. I did do a little writing while I was away, but not nearly as much as I thought I would.

So, I’m trying very hard to slow things down.

After the next twelve Jill & Julia shows — which we’ll perform this month, in September and then in November — I’m going to take a break from stage performances. I’m drawn more and more to writing, and it takes an enormous amount of concentration and juggling with my family life to make it happen the way it needs to happen. So, if you’re interested in seeing me onstage, please check out the appearances page and see where we’re doing shows in the next few months. After that I’m going to take a long, long (perhaps life-long) break from all that. I’ll still do the TED conference round-up this year, and I’ll probably always be speaking (and at the very least attending) at the Freedom From Religion Foundation conferences. I don’t want to make any big pronouncements, but I feel a shift is occurring, and I’m going to gear up the writing and the routines, the quiet and the thinking, and downgrade the stage shows.

All that being said, I’m excited to write this blog entry once a month (I’ve promised myself that I’ll be timely)

To be honest, I like my once a month appointment with my website - it feels like a homing device. I enjoy keeping track of all the films that I watch and all the books I’ve read. For this entry, however, I’ll mention only the books I read and the films I watched in August. As I said, I can’t find my notes for the other months. Maybe someday.

One literary experience dominates the summer. While I traveled (in June I went to Los Angeles, London, and Dublin to promote my book, then in July I did eight shows with Jill Sobule in the NE of the US, and then I went to Hawaii with my family for two weeks) I read more by Arnold Bennett.

Arnold Bennett! Arnold Bennett, how I love thee!

I read The Old Wives Tale, (published in 1908) which, according to many, is his masterpiece of fiction. I fell hard into this book: lived it, breathed it, dreamed about it, too. I can’t believe I’d never heard of this author until I stumbled on him this year! Now, I’ve fallen in love with him. The Old Wives Tale is about two sisters, born in the middle of the nineteenth century in rural England. They’re very different, ultimately similar. The book simply follows their eventful and uneventful lives. And it’s riveting! Insightful, painful and joyful, too. Bennett’s antagonists are the ones we all ultimately battle: Time, Mutability & Death.

While I was in London, I went to the fancy dining room at the Savoy Hotel, and had the “Arnold Bennett Omelette” for lunch. While I ate the delicious - decadent! - egg custard (not really an omelette,) with rich sauces of both hollandaise AND bechamel, plum full of lobster and cheese and other goodies, I reread Bennett’s entire self-help book (it’s a very short one) called How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. Apparently Arnold Bennett lived at the Savoy for a quite some time. While he was living there he became extremely fond of the special omelette the chef made just for him. He had it each morning. My Savoy afternoon was sweet and lingering: just me and Arnold Bennett (metaphorically of course) enjoying his omelette. I sat and ate and read and tried hard not to laugh out loud (his 100 page aforementioned self-help book about using time more efficiently is hilarious.)

I went mad while in London going on these guided tours, you can find out about them here: London Walks. You just show up at the appointed place, pay your 12 quid, no reservations necessary. Each tour was a revelation. I went on: Secret London, Somewhere Else London, Christopher Wren’s London, The Hidden Pubs of Old London Town, The Inns of the Court: Legal and Illegal London, and the Literary London Pub Walk. I went on an all day Cotswolds & Cambridge walking tour. I was in a euphoric state almost the whole time I was in London. You could spend a month, maybe even two, just doing these tours.

Here’s another great thing about travel that is new for me: no more unwieldy maps. On my iPhone I could find where I was at any given moment. I was in London eight days and took a cab only once. Many days I walked over ten miles. I used Airbnb: Vacation Rentals, Homes, Apartments & Rooms for Rent - Airbnb to find a rented a room in a flat near Oxford Circus, perfectly located.

In Dublin I went on only one guided walk, a Sunday walk about The Easter Uprising of 1916. My grandfather was 8 in 1916, and he had memories about the uprising. (My mother’s father was from Dublin.) After that I got serious and started going to the National Library every day and writing for an hour or three. I dialed down the touristy activities and tried to behave as if I lived in Dublin. It felt familiar, like Seattle. Rainy, breezy, sometimes sunny. I rented a lovely Georgian apartment and walked across the River Liffey many times on my daily walks. Which reminds me - I’ve never read Ulysses. I’m going to tackle that in the next year. But I feel like I’ll need someone to hold my hand through the whole thing. Anyone up for it? Then maybe Finnegan’s Wake? Those books just daunt me. Oh! Here’s a movie I watched while I was in Dublin, the apartment had a DVD: Nora, with Ewen McGregor as James Joyce. Wow, fantastic. Really insightful, surprising and sordid and sad and romantic. Oh, and I watched the most impossibly sad movie about Ireland’s troubles, too - The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Lord. That’s a two-boxes-of-tissues movie.

I met with a couple of cousins of mine who live in Dublin. We had coffee at Walter Mitty’s, a coffee shop near Trinity University. I learned more stories about my family. How random and willynilly life is! How many accidents, momentary impulsive decisions, and larger uncontrollable political and economic forces lie buried in each person’s particular lineage. My mind boggles at the scope of the randomness.

Before I get to August books and movies, I’ll write a quick word about Hawaii. I stayed in a tree house for a week on the North Shore of Oahu (not as great as it sounds, or maybe just as bad as it sounds) but later stayed in a South African tent in the middle of the island, which was fantastic! Michael and I went to the Big Island for a couple of days to see a dear friend of mine, Robert, who lives near Hilo. While I was there I ran into another dear friend who I’ve lost touch with over the years: Cheryl. She was the music director at SNL who I used to know quite well. She now goes by the name Quack! We had a glorious reunion. I fell in love with Hilo, which is unlike any other city in Hawaii. It’s Hawaiian Hawaii. Not many tourists. A great, old, western downtown. Oh, how I fell for the Big Island. The stars at night, the rain five times a day and the sunshine, the tropical plants, the Macadamia nut trees, the ukulele music, , the volcano - oh, the volcano! One morning Robert and Michael and I got up very, very early and hiked over miles of lava to watch the flow sputtering into the ocean - all before sunrise. Magical, unforgettable, a this is alive-alive-alive experience. Now all we can think about is how we’re going to swing moving to Hilo after Mulan goes to college. Dreamy. I think we’ll go back next summer.

OK, and now for the books I read in August, 2013. Not many, but here goes.

In traditional paper book form:

1.) The Orchardist, written Amanda Coplin

2.) Buried Alive, written by Arnold Bennett

3.) The Human Machine, written by Arnold Bennett

4.) Yesterday’s Weather, written by Anne Enright (actually I read this in July)

5.) Making Babies, Stumbling into Motherhood, written by Anne Enright (also read in July)

On my Kindle:

1.) Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age, written by Susan Jacoby

2.) The Last Man on Top, written by Susan Jacoby

3.) The Author’s Craft, written by Arnold Bennett

4.) 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, written by Ha-Joan Chang

Well, I’ve written about my love of Arnold Bennett. But now I have to write about my love for Amanda Coplin. The Orchardist devastated me. And I mean that as the highest compliment possible. I felt I was living inside this book. It’s slow, it’s about quiet people, and long stretches of time goes by without any surprising action. Yet, I was holding my breath the whole time. I woke up in the middle of the night to read this book. I wandered around with it in my purse, consistently in a dazed, elsewhere state-of-mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about Talmage and Della and Caroline Middey and the orchard of apple and apricot trees in Washington - my home state - I loved that - and all the broken hearts and wounded souls there are in the world. What a stunning book The Orchardist is.

Anne Enright’s Making Babies is my favorite motherhood memoir I’ve ever read. Truthful, revealing, nuanced, and with such specific details of what it feels like to be pregnant, I now feel I’ve carried a baby to term - something I never thought I would understand.

I love, love, lerve Susan Jacoby. She’s written so many books about freethinkers and agnostics - many of which I have not read, but some which I’ve read parts of. In any case, I like her quite a bit. The New Old Age is revealing and somewhat frightening. I’d love to meet her someday.

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism was just up my alley, I drank in every word and am behind him all the way. I might be a full fledged socialist. Enough Said.

Now, let’s move on to the movies I watched in August.

1.) The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 2012, directed by Stephan Chbosky

2.) 56 Up, 2012, directed by Michael Apted

3.) The Queen of Versailles, 2012, directed by Lauren Greenfield

4.) The Little Colonel, 1935, directed by David Butler

5.) Dimples, 1936, directed by William Seiter

6.) The Loneliest Planet, 2011, directed by Julia Loktev

7.) Kadosh, 1999, directed by Amos Gitai

8.) Albert Nobbs, 2011, directed by Rodrigio Garcia

9.) Kippur, 1997, directed by Amos Gitai

10.) Father of the Bride, 1950, directed by Vincente Minnelli

11.) Price Check, 2012, directed by Michael Walker

12.) Star Wars, 1977, directed by George Lucas

13.) No! 2012, directed by Pablo Larrain

Okay, as usual, I’m getting to the end of the time I gave myself to write a blog entry, so the movies are going to get short shrift. The Shirley Temple movies, Dimples and The Little Colonel, we watched because my mother was visiting and she loves Shirley Temple. I was chagrined by her determination to introduce Mulan to more and more Shirley Temple, but in the end, I have to admit, I got into it. Shirley Temple is good! She’s a good actress. However, there’s so much that’s astonishingly horrendous - stuff that had me explaining to Mulan late into the night what “blackface” was. Try explaining blackface to a kid! But blackface - it has a very interesting history. The days of Shirley Temple led Mulan and I to a night of watching You Tube videos of Bill Robinson tap dancing. I love You Tube. I didn’t realize how many movies Robinson had been cut from. Oh! And Stepin Fetchit, who appears in Dimples - yes, there was a lotta splanin’ to do.

My mother didn’t think any of these characters in the movie needed any explaining at all, however.

So, there was that movie experience in August.

I didn’t know about Amos Gitai, the Israeli filmmaker. OMG. He’s greeeeeaaaaaat. Kadosh is about an orthodox Jewish couple who are infertile. The husband is forced to divorce his wife because she hasn’t concieved in ten years of marriage. It’s forbidden by their religion to even find out if the problem lies with the man or the woman. The first ten minutes of the film consists of us watching this husband get dressed in the morning. So many rituals! Was it terrible that while I watched the elaborate obsessive compulsive nature of the garments and prayers that I yelled out “Jesus Christ!”?? Of course the Catholics have sects that are as archaic. Or I imagine there are… But wowza. The film was good. I loved the look, the feeling of Jerusalem. I want to go there!

Then I watched Kippur which is Gitai’s film based on his own experiences in the Yom Kippur war in 1973. There are some of the most astonishing tracking shots in Kippur that I’ve ever seen anywhere.

56 Up is so good. I’ve watched all of them. As I get older - almost as old as the participants in the movie, the more tragic everyone’s (and by that I mean every single person’s) life is. We all don’t become what we think we might, we all get in our own way, we are all oblivious and sometimes a bit insightful, and in the end, life is a tragedy. Does that seem pessimistic? I sincerely don’t mean that to be.

I loved The Loneliest Planet so much, I watched it twice. I love the slow movies, like Meek’s Cutoff and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, and this one too. You enter the film. It’s about a young couple hiking through the Caucus Mountains in Georgia. It’s just them hiking with a guide. Then, about three-quarters of the way through the movie a small incident happens. A knee-jerk reaction happens - subtle, small. But now everything between the couple is changed. Maybe irrevocably. See it! This is such a good movie. Plus Gael Garcia Bernal stars in it. Just that makes it worth seeing twice.

Star Wars: I had never seen Star Wars. I knew enough to get by. I knew the references, the major characters, all that. But I’m just… not into that kind of thing. What can I say? Maybe it’s a failing, I dunno. I’m not apologizing, I’m not embarrassed by this, it just IS. Anyway, I finally saw Star Wars. I figured Mulan should see it. I was amazed at how schlocky it was. I felt the same way about Star Wars as I did when I finally read the Bible: this is what all that came later was based on? I’m sure it felt revolutionary at the time. Maybe. Did it? I guess it did. I have no desire to see the rest of them.

No! was really good, again starring Gael Garcia Bernal. It takes place in Chile in 1988. Pinochet, bowing to international pressure, puts his dictatorship up to a vote. Bernal’s character is hired to develop the “No” campaign. It’s all based on true events with the Bernal character a composite. It’s cynical about politics and people but weirdly hopeful and beautiful too. I recommend this film.

The Queen of Versailles - it was my second time around seeing this film. I could watch it again too. I’m just - it’s just so damn amazing how compulsive spenders justify themselves to themselves. I find it endlessly fascinating.

Albert Nobbs was really wonderful. I didn’t expect to like it, I don’t know why. I think Glenn Close was astonishing and the circumspect tragic androgyne. I found the character real and complex. All around exceptional movie.

Price Check was a complete surprise. I really didn’t think I would like this movie. It’s so dark. It has the darkest view of women - and men, but mostly women. And yet I think it’s accurate. I don’t know why everyone isn’t talking about this movie. It’s really funny, and it’s really horrendous. Parker Posey stars as a manipulative boss, Eric Mabius is in it, he’s so good. His wife is so scary, played by Annie Parisse. I think people thought this was going to be a light comedy - and it is really funny, but it’s real heart is one of darkness - and I love that. I was so shocked to find this film - it was really good.

Okay…

I can’t watch the news right now because I’m so upset about the US getting involved in Syria. I can’t stand how they (the elected officials) bring up the children in Syriawho died from gas. It’s terrible, horrible - horrifying what happened. But why is gas any more horrible than other ways of dying? The 100,000 killed in Syria so far must have included at least 500 children. And how will bombing Syria do anything?

Seeing politicians I normally like, like Kerry and Pelosi and even Obama argue for such an ill-fated response is impossible for me to watch. I’m just avoiding the news right now.

Okay, until next month people.

I go on the road with Jill a week from tomorrow morning. We’re going to have fun.