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Vanessa Regrave, Heroine worship

Monday, June 4th, 2007

Last night CBS News Sixty Minutes featured an interview with Vanessa Redgrave, and although I was infuriated by Mike Wallace’s conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism during the interview, I was enchanted (as always) by Redgrave. She’s eight years older than I am, and all my life she’s been the woman I wanted to grow up to become. (That is, when I wasn’t wanting to grow up to be Pema Chodron, Barbara Jordan, Mary Oliver, or Audre Lorde: I have been blessed with glorious role-models!) Well, that won’t happen, but we’ve lived by the same ideals. I’m so glad she has been in the world at the same time I was. I could go off on the anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism thing, but I won’t. I relish the way she presents herself in the world, and I also clicked on the photo-essay and sat back and enjoyed every single photograph.

It reminds me of what I wanted to become.

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

Just saw Venus. God, what a film. How can it be so? Here’s a film about a “dirty old man and a slutty girl,” to quote Peter O’Toole himself, and yet it’s not about either of those things. It’s about the incredible drama of aging–despite the sordid details, the creeping decrepitude: there is still the beauty of the human desire to give pleasure, to appreciate beauty, and to dance. [read on]

Daughter poem

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Alicia just returned from her daughter’s commencement ceremonies at NYU this past weekend. Alicia said she didn’t expect the waves of emotion that overpowered her as they made this passage together, she and her daughter. Alicia brought to the poetry group this heart-stopping poem by Philip Booth, from his book, Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999. It says exactly what Alicia and I both hope will be true for our daughters: [read on]

Zen Poem

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

Tai just sent me this poem by Ryokan, a Japanese Zen poet of the eighteenth century (it, and more like it here). It’s not yet where I am, but it’s where I’m aiming to be, and it helps me understand that odd detachment or distance I experienced at the workshop: [read on]

Hanging out with stars continued

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

Now I’m sitting in class, slightly dazed and disoriented from the shock of travel between identities and localities, while one fifth of my students pores over their final exam which I will soon need to grade. My route home from Hartford/Springfield to Baltimore, to Birmingham, and finally to Houston took six hours, time enough for me to re-read Nawal El-Saadawi’s powerful but deeply depressing novel, Woman at Point Zero, which added to my sense of disorientation (why did I take that novel?). The long series of flights gave me time to write some notes to myself, trying to integrate (1) the workshop and my odd sense of mingled hero-worship of the stars and detachment from the whole event; (2) the feelings that arose from being at Kripalu again, the overwhelming power of familiar smells of the place and the woods surrounding it; (3) deep talks with old friends who know me well and whose lives continue to unfold in surprising and adventurous ways; and (4) the relevance of all of that to my on-going quest. [read on]

Hanging out with the stars

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

I’m in the airport, standing up at a free computer with a red-dot mouse that doesn’t work very well, so here goes: I’m on my way back to Houston from Massachusetts, where I’ve been hanging out with the stars. [Links added May 10th] Here’s the quick and (like it or not) clean: [read on]

Packing my bags & going back

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

I’m packing tonight because I’ll be at the prison till late tomorrow, and Friday I’ll be leaving after class for…Massachusetts. Old friends, cool weather, and a workshop on Women and Film at Kripalu. [read on]

Arundhati Roy’s Vows

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

I just clicked on Joan Halifax’s blog and found this wonderful quotation from Arundhati Roy: [read on]

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Pilgrimage

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

Today His Holiness the Dalai Lama was in Houston. I didn’t go and couldn’t listen to the streaming audio of his talks at 10 a.m. or 2 p.m. I had classes to teach (this is the last week of classes before exams), and I have already had the astonishing privilege of sitting just ten rows away from him when he talked in Durban, South Africa in–oh, I guess 1997 or so. But by remarkable coincidence, my rental of Werner Herzog’s film called Wheel of Time (about a pilgrimage and ceremonies led by the Dalai Lama in 2002), arrived in today’s mail, as did a letter from a prisoner who had just had an argument with a fellow inmate about whether it is right to call any living being “His Holiness.” So the day has been a weave of thoughts, memories, and impressions centered on the man who calls himself “a simple monk who keeps his vows.” [read on]

Whole slew of movies

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

Over the weekend, between naps and fits of crabbiness and soreness, and despite six hours I spent grading humanities projects, I gorged on movies. Last year’s hits have just come out on DVD: The Queen, Freedom Writers, and The Last King of Scotland. Surprisingly, of the three, it was Last King that moved me most. [read on]