The Mixed Metaphor Marriage by Wiley Miller

 Another winner, Non Sequitur by Wiley.......

A commentary on pandemic mandates

This New Yorker cartoon by Peter Kuper from February 4th made me laugh. Perfect commentary on some of the pandemic-related stupidity we see around us. 

Todd Rundgren - Hello It's Me (1972)

Just a beautiful, classic song. Thank you to And Just Like That for using the song in such a poignant way. Raw and emotional scenes between Carrie and Big, not easily forgotten.  

And just like that, Big died

And just like that, I cried. I knew Big's death was coming, because it's all anyone who's watched And Just Like That (the Sex and the City reboot) has been talking about. It's been discussed on social media and media generally. He died of a heart attack after training on a Peloton machine, Peloton got involved and then uninvolved, and then the entire issue died once Chris Noth who plays Mr. Big ended up in real trouble with women who have claimed he sexually assaulted them years ago. But it is a testament to both Chris Noth and Sarah Jessica Parker (who plays Carrie) that they could enact such a moving scene--Carrie coming home to find her husband close to death. It follows earlier sequences that show Carrie and Big interacting at home, making dinner together, listening to music--Todd Rundren's Hello It's Me, Big singing along to the song, and both acting lovingly toward each other. They were finally happy, enjoying married life, doing the things that happily-married couples do. That's why the scene where she finds him slumped on the floor was so emotional and raw, it was preceded by happiness of a special kind, the kind of happiness that was the reward for years of pain and waiting. Carrie waited a long time for Big to acknowledge that he loved her. 

The reboot itself has been painstakingly dissected and either praised or panned. I've watched three episodes so far, and the first one was by far the most moving. I'm sure there's a lot to criticize but I'm not in the mood to do so. I'm in the mood to praise the series for what it gets right, because there are certainly things it doesn't get right. But the woke reviewers who demand complete social and racial awareness/relevance in every episode need to remember one thing--this show was always a fantasy show for many people. It wasn't meant to be a 'deep' or relevant show. I know many people who didn't like the show because it was not a real depiction of the lives of single women in Manhattan. The original show was about four friends living in Manhattan who worked, made decent livings, but who always had more than enough money for clothing, shoes, eating out, wine, expensive vacations, and whatnot. I don't think I ever heard any of them say they couldn't afford something. They dated men and talked about the men they dated and the sex they had; they married and divorced and then married again. There was never a dearth of male suitors waiting in the wings for these women. That's not reality for a lot of women. But a focus on reality wasn't what viewers required; I loved the show because it showed how four women remained friends through thick and thin, who were pretty much always there for each other. Men came and went, but the friendships survived. That was what was truly real about the show; when you have women friends like these four had, you know you are blessed. The Sex and the City films were a bit over the top, especially the second one. But I challenge you to prove to me that any of the adventure/crime thriller/drama films starring our reigning male heroes (Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, Dwayne Johnson, Tom Cruise, Daniel Craig, to name a few) are films that depict real-life. Get over it. They're fantasy films, pure and simple. We accept them as entertainment, knowing that most men will not be hanging off planes trying to save humanity, or jumping off buildings, or surviving being shot at by automatic weapons. We don't require these films to be 'real' and woke. These films are rather silly as well, yet we accept them. It's in that spirit that I watched the original Sex and the City series. I enjoyed the escapist fantasies of the lives these women led. 

The series was criticized for portraying independent single women whose lives revolved around having men in them. But the show never pandered to those who thought it should be about women who didn't need men at all. Because the reality of life for most women is that their lives often do revolve around men in one way or another. And many women make foolish choices when it comes to men; many make stupid mistakes as well (sleeping with men too soon, that sort of thing). When they're older, they may look back and regret that they did both, but the fact remains that these choices and mistakes are part of their past, part of who they are. They learned from them and moved on. We cannot require perfect women, any more than we can require perfect men. There is no perfect world. What does exist is forgiveness, of others and of ourselves. 

And that leads me to the few things that the series could omit. Some of them are the cringe-inducing scenes where Miranda (played by Cynthia Nixon) tries to show that she's not a racist. She's trying too hard, and that is rather out of character for Miranda, who always seemed to be the sensible one before. So far these are the only scenes that I've wanted to fast-forward. But I haven't, because I'm giving the series a chance and trying to understand why they're included at all. Why can't there just be important black characters without all the hoopla, as was the case in the first Sex and the City film (Carrie's assistant Louise, played by Jennifer Hudson)? There's no need to try so hard to make it all so relevant; just introduce the characters naturally and it will be fine.

And now I've seen all ten episodes. All I can say is that the show dragged me back into their messy lives again and I'm better for it. Watching it was cathartic in some ways. Perhaps you need to have lost a loved one to death in order to relate to it on some level. I don't know if there will be a season 2. Even if there isn't, season 1 did a bang-up job of reintroducing us to Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte. There are critics who wrote that the show was too sad, too flat, lacking fun, and lacking sex. I disagree. I'm not sure what those reviewers wanted, but Big was a huge part of Carrie's life, and to make a new show that honors the death of a loved one, grieving and trying to find meaning in life again needs to be applauded, not panned. But I think it's because you either like the show and the characters, or you don't. I happen to be one of those who loved the original show and the first movie (not the second). The reboot deals with the lives of these characters who are now in their 50s, with all that entails--menopause, teenage children, sexless marriages, happy marriages, childless marriages, not being on the same page, new friends, old friends, and just change that is part of life. Change plays a big role in the reboot, not surprisingly. Miranda changes (divorces Steve and falls in love with a queer nonbinary stand-up comedian and podcast host), Charlotte's life changes (her daughter Rose changes her name to Rock and does not want to be labeled a girl, a boy, a nonbinary, Jewish, or a New Yorker), and Carrie's life changes (Big dies and the rug is pulled out from under her). The show would have been roundly criticized if Carrie had just bounced back from Big's death and went out dancing a month later. Real life isn't like that. It takes her a year to grieve, and the last episode ends with her taking his ashes to Paris to spread them in the river Seine from the Pont des Arts bridge where he found her at the end of the original series. I wish Big could have made a final appearance but that was not to be. I think Sarah Jessica Parker did a great job with a tough storyline for Carrie. She made it real, emotional, raw, and heartbreaking at times. Just like real life. Perhaps the objections of the reviewers lie there. This time around the show was more like real-life. I want more of that, and they want less of it. That's fine, we can agree to disagree. 

Voodoo by Chungking

Another favorite of mine--Voodoo by Chungking from 2005, with lyrics. The vocalist is Jessie Banks, and she's got a great voice. 

Voodoo

I feel strange
Dancing again
Next to you
It's your voodoo
I won't let my eyes well up with tears
Seems like yesterday
It's been a hundred years
How you doin', what's been goin' on?
Can't believe I've been away for so long
And I feel if I let ya
Something good's gonna get ya
So I gotta decide
And I'm telling ya somethings
Always better than nothing
Go on give it a try
Never mind lookin' stupid
'Cause there's always a new kid
And you're just gettin' old
Gonna be who I used to
'Cause I don't wanna lose you
And tonight's gettin' cold
Oh, shouldn't be by myself
Oh, don't wanna be myself
I feel strange
Laughing again
Feel brand new
It's your voodoo
I can see what you're saying
'Bout the game that we're playing
No one said it was cool
And I'm tagging along
I don't know where we belong
It used to be next to you
Are you looking at her?
Tell me, would you prefer to be with somebody else?
Come on, give me something
'Cause I'm waiting for loving
Shouldn't be by myself
Oh, shouldn't be by myself
Oh, don't wanna be myself
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
Oh, shouldn't be by myself
Oh, don't wanna be myself
Oh, shouldn't be by myself
(fade)

Twilight World by Swing Out Sister

Twilight World

Swing Out Sister

Time out
World in a hurry
There's more love than money changing hands

Lights out
Thinking out loud
Turn your back on the world outside

Night thoughts
No one can share
As darkness breaks through another day

Secrets
Talking out loud
Silence waits just a dream away

Forget lonely crowds, unfriendly faces
They'll soon become familiar places
Before too long, before too long

Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
You're living in a twilight world
Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
Don't give in to the twilight world

Time out
World in a hurry
There's more love than money changing hands

Lights out
Thinking out loud
Turn your back on the world outside

Forget lonely crowds, unfriendly faces
They'll soon become familiar places
Before too long, before too long

Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
You're living in a twilight world
Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
Don't give in to the twilight world

Forget lonely crowds, unfriendly faces
They'll soon become familiar places
Before too long, before too long

Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
You're living in a twilight world
Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
Don't give in to the twilight world

Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
You're living in a twilight world
Don't be fooled by love songs and lonely hearts
Don't give in to the twilight world

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Martin Jackson / Corinne Drewery / Andrew Connell

Twilight World lyrics © Union Square Music Songs Ltd.

After Hours by Swing Out Sister

Swing Out Sister is one of my favorite groups from the 1980s. Their album It's Better to Travel from 1987 is a masterpiece. I bought it as an LP and it got a lot of play time on my stereo back then. I just downloaded some of the songs from that album onto my iPhone; one of them is called After Hours and it's a beautiful song, sung by the vocalist Corinne Drewery who has an incredible voice. Here are the lyrics:

After Hours

Swing Out Sister

Day time surrenders
And the shadows fall
Your cigarette lingers
You spent the night alone
With no one at all
Another mellow mood
And the silence calls
Another fleeting glance
Another call long distance
To no one at all
No one at all
Day time surrenders
And the shadows call
Your cigarette lingers
You spend the night alone
With no one at all
After hours, after hours

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Andrew John Connell / Corinne Drewery / Martin Boyd Jackson

After Hours lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Remembering my brother

My brother Ray died seven years ago today. I still remember the shock of hearing about his death. I was at work and it was all I could do to gather together my belongings, call my husband, and find my way home. Seven years. So much has happened in that space of time. Too much to write about here; there is a lifetime of sadness that has occurred during that time. However, his two children seem to have survived the tragedies that unfolded around them during these years and are now flourishing. Ray would have been so proud of them both. 

I published a poetry collection in 2019 entitled Cemetery Road dealing with his death and with death generally (https://tinyurl.com/muxk95hb). One of the poems in this collection is called Photo of You in a Manhattan Café . I wrote it in 2017, two years after his death, and am including it here. 

And on this day, the second anniversary

Of your untimely death

A long-buried photo of you surfaced

Causing me to catch my breath

 

We had met for lunch in some downtown Manhattan café

That you frequented—eager to share with me your find

Proud that you were working there in that melee

Of New Yorkers milling about with their own kind

 

The contours of your face, your photogenic smile

Your youth that emanates from a decade ago

Your furtive smile, the one that could beguile

And persuade the most stubborn of us so

 

Your hidden secrets that remained unearthed

You did not give them willingly away

And those of us who tried to probe and came away

Unenlightened frustrated rather gone astray

 

If walls could talk, and photos likewise

Perhaps you would still walk upon this earth

And smile your stealthy smile for all to know

That happiness was yours, there was no dearth

Achtung. Dismissed. And a special place in hell

There is a special place in hell for men who diss women just because they're women. It doesn't matter what the age of the man or the woman, nor does it matter whether they're wealthy or not. I've seen this behavior at social functions, parties, dinners, and at work. Men can deny all they like that this behavior goes on; it does, to the detriment of both sexes. Dissing is a power play; it says that men are smarter/better/more articulate than women. Dissing women in front of others is reducing women to nothing and making sure that 'they know their place'. 

Does this really occur in 2022, you might ask? It does indeed. It happens everyday. Men and women are in conversation, mostly one-sided from the start (a man is talking), a women tries to insert her viewpoint only to be told that 'no, that's not the way it is' or even better, the man just keeps talking over her. He dominates the conversation and criticizes any attempt on the woman's part to contribute to it. You might think this happens mostly among older couples, but no, that's not the case. I've seen it in younger couples as well, where the women concede to the men's behavior rather than challenge it. If women have an opinion about what might be wrong with a car/plumbing/stove/oven/electrical gadget, their opinion is overlooked or pushed to the side in favor of men's opinions about what might be wrong. It also can happen with certain male doctors, those stuffed-shirt types who think they are high and mighty; the ones who dismiss you before you've even had a chance to make a statement or express your opinion. They know best. Achtung. Dismissed. Or what about those men who write emails with no greeting or no signature, just an order 'barked out' in an email, like the one I got recently from a man who shall remain unnamed, who wanted me to send him data files he could open easily. This is what he wrote: 'Send me attachments that I can open without any problems'.  No 'hello', no signature, no 'I'm sorry to bother you but I'm having problems opening the files that were sent to both of us'. These rude emails are the kinds of emails I got on a routine basis from a former boss who never addressed me by name. Achtung. Do as I say. Dismissed. How much intelligence would it take for these men to figure out that basic courtesy and respect would go a long way toward dealing with and getting results from the women from whom they want/need something? 

Dissing is one of the main reasons I let my husband handle all of the problems relating to car engines, oven repair, instrument repair, etc. Whenever I have tried to explain a problem that has arisen to a repairman, I've been pushed aside or ignored by the men involved. When my husband takes over, they listen. Simple as that. Maybe repairmen feel more comfortable talking to men. I don't know. It happened early on in my career as well; when I called a major flow cytometry company for service and explained the problem, only to be told that I should check to make sure the instrument was plugged in. Achtung. Dismissed. What I knew then and know now is that I didn't and don't like being treated this way. But protests are often to no avail. The same company blamed the women in my department who were running the instrument for its failing to work; but one of the service engineers they sent out (a man) told me the truth--that the company had marketed a half-assed product that didn't work optimally. So not all men diss women. When my husband looked at the instrument and concluded that it didn't work, just as we women had, the company took the problem seriously. So if my husband complains that he has to handle all of these things, I say, yes you do, because they don't listen to me. Simple as that. 

Two years ago there was a renovation of the bathroom in the apartment above us. The couple involved had hired a Norwegian firm to do the work, but this firm employed foreign workers who could not speak Norwegian and who had a rather outdated view of women to put it mildly. I have no problem with foreign workers generally, but I do have a problem with them when they cannot speak the language of the country in which they are working and when they diss women. These workers fit that bill. I called them the Neanderthals after I had dealings with them; they behaved crudely and were hired simply to do a wrecking job, in this case, smashing a concrete floor to bits. The problem was that when they did that, all of the small bits rained down into our bathroom that was directly below the one being renovated. When I went up to talk to the workers about my concerns that something was wrong, they and their leader did not take what I said seriously; the head Neanderthal was particularly rude and 'in my face'. Achtung. Dismissed. After that I called them the Neanderthals. When I spoke to the woman whose bathroom was being renovated, she told me that she had problems talking to them and she let her husband deal with them. What a great world we live in. What happens to women without men in their lives? Do they get pushed around all the time and get ripped off? Update, two years later; as I predicted, there are problems with the bathroom upstairs. The job that was done at that time by these workers was shoddy and there is now a mold problem in the floor tiles. Which means that the tiles need to be taken up, which means more hammering and smashing and removal of the smashed pieces. Which means more noise and bother for God knows how long. What about if my concerns had been taken seriously two years ago, when I wondered if these Neanderthals really knew what they were doing? It might have been possible to get rid of them then or to have changed to another bathroom renovation company (they're a dime a dozen in this country now). Because obviously they didn't know what they were doing. And in my experience it's always the case that when you ask men who really don't know what they are doing about what they are doing, they get angry and dismiss you as a know-nothing woman. So here we are two years later; I only hope that the mold hasn't made its way all the way through the concrete floor such that it ends up in our bathroom ceiling at one point. What could have been a minor problem has now become a big problem all because one Neanderthal controlled the show and refused to communicate with two women who expressed some concerns about the work he and his team were doing. He would never have admitted he was wrong. I blame him and his team of Neanderthals, but mostly I blame the Norwegian firm that outsources these jobs to illiterate foreigners in order to save money. You can bet that I will make quite a stink if it turns out that our bathroom ceiling is teeming with mold. 

And don't get me started about my former workplace. Three of the men in my former department had very low opinions of women; I know for a fact that they had pretty much decided among them that they did not want to hire women for career development positions when they could hire men instead. Why? Because women got pregnant and disappeared for a year or more on maternity leave. You ask again, does this really happen in 2022? Yes, I'm sorry to say that it does. These men were also experts at ignoring women in other ways, regardless of their age. The only women they didn't ignore were the young ones who were pretty and with whom they could flirt. So those young women had some advantage, but not much in the final analysis, not once they got pregnant or moved up on the career ladder and suddenly posed a bit of a threat to these men. Because that's when men get testy and start to diss women, when they feel threatened. God forbid a woman should be smarter than they are, or question what they do or how they do it. Crisis. Achtung. Dismissed. Such men just have to bring those women down, and my former workplace allowed/condoned that behavior by never confronting these men about their Neanderthal behavior. 

The older I get, the less interested I am in conceding to this behavior. I don't want to be nice anymore or ignore the behavior or turn the other cheek. I will call out men who diss women and who generally behave badly. I'm tired of the bullshit they dish out. In the cases where I have been dissed by men, nine times out of ten I was right about a particular problem. But I'll never get the credit for being right. If women experience enough of this treatment, they become disempowered and that is not good for them or for men. You can dismiss me or make light of this problem, I really don't care, because I hope there is a special place in hell for Neanderthal men and for the women who support them, because they deserve to exist there for eternity.

The Family Way--a touching film from 1966

The film The Family Way, starring Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett as a young married couple who have problems consummating their marriage, is billed as a comedy/drama/romance. I watched it yesterday and found it less a comedy than a serious drama with some comedic moments included. My first thought when I saw that it had shown up on Netflix was that I will finally get to see this movie. When it was released in 1966 my parents told me that I was too young to see it, and after having seen it, I understand they were right because I wouldn't have understood it. But I was old enough to have read about the film in The New York Times, and because it starred Hayley Mills, I wanted to see it. 

Hayley Mills was an actress we grew up with and whom we all wanted to be. She starred in so many films that we loved as children--Pollyanna (1960), The Parent Trap (1961), The Moon-Spinners (1964), and That Darn Cat (1965), to name a few. Pollyanna was shown in our grammar school, in the auditorium as I remember. Schools did that way back when--got a hold of a film for general audiences and gathered us all together to watch it on 'movie day'. We didn't see it in 1960, rather around the late 1960s. The Moon-Spinners was shown on television's The Wonderful World of Disney and we were fascinated by the story as I remember, which was a crime adventure, a romance, and a travel film. We saw it on television in the late 1960s. I liked this film especially since it also had a romantic interest for Hayley Mills who was already a teenager (18) by that time. My mother took us children to see That Darn Cat when it was released in 1965; I remember the lines to get into The Music Hall on Main Street in Tarrytown. We enjoyed that film as well, as we did most films because going to the movies was always a fun time. 

Hayley Mills was 20 years old when she made The Family Way. The film was quite a departure for her in terms of theme; it was a 'grown-up' film because she played a young woman, Jenny Piper, who marries a young man, Arthur Fitton (played by Hywel Bennett), about her age. Due to circumstances beyond their control, they cannot go on their honeymoon and they end up living in her husband's parents' house. There is very little privacy, and Arthur has a difficult relationship with his father Ezra Fitton, played by Hayley Mill's real-life father John Mills. Jenny and Arthur do not consummate their marriage on their first night together, and as time goes on, it seems less and less likely that they will. The reasons for this are not completely clear--lack of privacy is one of them, a practical joke played on them involving a collapsing double bed is another (Jenny laughs but Arthur doesn't), but his overall  inexperience with women is another. He is the bookish sort, a quiet, non-rowdy, serious young man. It is hinted at one point that he might be homosexual, which turns out not to be true. What he really needs is a push, but that doesn't come until close to the end of the film, after both sets of parents have gotten involved and after his humiliation (as Arthur sees it) is complete. When he finally gets angry and expresses his feelings, he overcomes the hindrance in the way of his being a true husband to Jenny. While this storyline could have been played for laughs, it wasn't, and that's why I liked the film. It made viewers feel sorry for the couple, it made them want to wish them well, to try and work out their marriage. It also presents their parents as real human beings with problems and regrets of their own. I won't give away the film's ending, but suffice it to say I'm glad I finally got to watch it after all these years. 

 

The film Orders to Kill--a morality tale from 1958

Netflix Europe has been expanding its repertoire of classic films, especially films from the United Kingdom. Many of them are black-and-white films from the WWII- or post-WWII era. Orders to Kill from 1958 is one of them that made a lasting impression on me (Orders to Kill (1958) - IMDb). It's a morality tale about an American soldier during WWII who is ordered by his superiors to kill a French lawyer (living in Paris and married with a teenage daughter) who is thought to be collaborating with the Nazis. The information that the US Army has on the lawyer is that several agents working in the French resistance movement have been killed after having had contact with him. The army believes he has sold out these agents to the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied Paris. The soldier who agrees to kill him, Gene Summers (played by Paul Massie), has flown bomber planes and is considered to be a good choice for the mission. 

The first hour of the film deal with the Summers' preparation for the task before him--assume a French name, familiarize himself with all the details about his new persona and the person he is to kill, connect with Léonie (played by Irene Worth), the woman in Paris who helps him with the practical aspects of being there (a place to live, having a 'cover' job, necessary papers to present to the Gestapo in case he is stopped on the street, getting him out of Paris when the job is done). This part of the film moves rather slowly in contrast to the last hour (the film is almost two hours long). When he finally makes contact with the lawyer Lafitte (played by Leslie French), the suspense builds as the viewer wonders when (or if) Summers will kill him and if in fact Lafitte is actually guilty of collaborating with the Nazis. 

Spoilers ahead--Summers gets to know Lafitte, an extraordinarily friendly man who takes Summers under his wing, allowing him to stay overnight in his office when the Gestapo are searching for a young man in that area of Paris who has killed a Nazi officer. Lafitte invites him home for a drink to meet his wife and daughter. Lafitte has had a cat stashed in his office that he feeds, which is against his wife's wishes since food is rationed and she does not want another mouth to feed. She finds out that he is keeping the cat in his office and tells him to get rid of it, so he tells his wife that Summers will take the cat to live on a farm outside of Paris, when in reality Summers is to return the cat to Lafitte the following morning at his office. Lafitte's friendliness, empathy and compassion (for both animals and people) creates a picture of Lafitte as a decent man, which Summers finds confusing. Summers is in a quandary--is this man a traitor who deserves to be killed, or is he innocent? He delays killing him as he tries to sort out his feelings and thoughts. He tries to share his hesitation with Léonie who is horrified that he is sharing any details of his job with her, since the less she knows the better off she will be if she is captured by the Nazis and tortured into giving them information. Ultimately she tells him that he is too sentimental and that Lafitte could in fact be a traitor. She reminds Summers that he has killed innocent people before when he has dropped bombs and that he had no qualms about that; her point is that in war, both innocent and guilty people get killed. When Summers brings the cat to Lafitte's office the morning following his visit to his family, he sees a Gestapo officer leaving the building. When he arrives at Lafitte's office, he sees him handling a large sum of cash and he assumes that he has gotten it from the Gestapo officer. He doesn't let on that he thinks this, but when he hands over the cat, Lafitte bends down to pet it and Summers hits him on the head with a heavy object. Lafitte falls facedown and the cat runs for cover, but when Lafitte moans and turns over on his back and faces Summers, he asks him 'why?' before dying. This pierces Summers to the bone as it tells him that Lafitte was innocent. He messes up the office to make it look like a robbery, and then takes the money that Lafitte had and goes to a cemetery where he buries it. Too late, he receives a message from Léonie telling him to not go through with 'the job', and when he tries to reach her, she uses a code word on the phone to warn him that she and he are in danger (she ends up captured, tortured and killed by the Nazis without revealing any information about the resistance). For the next month he drinks himself into a stupor, using the money to purchase liquor. When he is finally rescued by the US Army following the liberation of Paris, he ends up in a military hospital, where he is visited by two of his superiors, one of whom tells him that he has done a good job and that Lafitte was in fact a traitor. The other one tells him the truth when the first one leaves the room, that Lafitte was innocent, as Summers had surmised. Summers insists on knowing the truth, and when he understands that he has killed an innocent man, he absorbs the information and asks for all of his pay that has accrued. The film ends with his visiting Lafitte's wife and daughter and giving them this money, and telling them that Lafitte was his colleague and a hero in the French resistance and that they should be proud of him. 

Watching this film, especially the scene where Lafitte asks Summers 'why', was gut-wrenching, as it was intended to be. The knowledge that you have likely killed an innocent man must really break a person, mentally and emotionally, if not physically as well. But Summers, once he finds out the truth in the hospital, seems to 'accept' the reality that he murdered an innocent man. Perhaps he had to accept it in order to go on living. It made me realize what soldiers have to deal with during wartime, the moral quandaries that arise and that have to be dealt with every day. It is not always easy to know who is the enemy; in this film, based on circumstantial evidence alone, Lafitte could have been guilty. Even though Summers suffers knowing he killed an innocent man who looked him in the eyes before he died, was it any better that he flew airplanes that dropped bombs on people he could not see? Women and children died, men too--some of them enemies and most of them innocent civilians. The film doesn't answer these questions as much as it asks them and then shows the results of certain decisions in the life of one military man. It also raises the question of following orders; soldiers must do that, but sometimes the orders are wrong or immoral or both. If they follow orders that result in the deaths of many civilians and even fellow soldiers, what then? Who is responsible? Can one argue that all deaths are acceptable in a war? How many innocent deaths are acceptable? One need only look at some of the atrocities of the Vietnam War committed against civilians to know that this is a real problem in wartime.

Films like this are uncommon in today's world. We have become used to watching war and spy films where mass killings are de rigueur. The body count mounts and there is little reflection on that fact. We are witness to the atrocities, the violence, the brutality. We see arms and legs lost, soldiers shot up, twisted bodies on the battlefield. We rarely get a glimpse into the workings of a soldier's mind, much less into the workings of the minds of ordinary civilians. Orders to Kill is worth seeing, and I hope to watch more films like it, even though I know that most of them will probably be classic films like this one. 

Finding joy in the snow

Oslo has gotten a fair amount of snow this year, which was nice during the month of December in preparation for Christmas. This year snowfalls have not bothered me, probably because I no longer work and no longer have to drive to work. Driving to work each day meant snow and ice removal in the wintertime. Now I don't have to do that anymore and I'm free to simply enjoy the snow and the magic it brings. So far in January, a lot of the snow has melted and turned to ice, which means icy sidewalks. Since the city of Oslo is not stellar at salting or sanding the sidewalks, it's up to the individual co-op and apartment complexes to do those jobs, and that can be an iffy proposition. Long story short--be careful where you step on the sidewalk, and if it gets to be too bad, walk in the road, because they are always plowed and salted, thankfully. 

The following is true; I've been trying to remind myself to find joy in all the things that characterize winter. Since I haven't really been a winter person earlier, it's slow going, but I'm getting there.  

A very good opinion piece--'We will look back on this age of cruelty to animals in horror' by Ezra Klein

Opinion | We Will Look Back on This Age of Cruelty to Animals in Horror - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

After I read this article, which was hard to read but worth reading, I made a promise to myself to try to cut the amount of meat I eat in half. I do eat fish, but try to eat only fish that swim freely in the ocean. I do not eat farmed salmon, only wild salmon. Norway is a major fish farming nation, especially for salmon; we're talking big business, I am no fan of fish farms; I do not support them because of the crowded conditions for the farmed salmon. It surprises me that the same people who are up in arms about the crowded conditions for chickens and livestock do not get just as upset about the crowded and unnatural conditions for farmed salmon. 

A few years ago I started to divide in two the packages of meat I buy, mostly chicken and ground beef, so that one package that used to provide food for one dinner, now yields two dinners. These are the ways I have begun to cut down on my/our meat consumption. 

I would be perfectly happy eating much less meat than I do at present. But when one makes meals for a family, one has to consider the wishes of all involved. I have tried meat substitutes--plant-based sausages and the like, but my husband does not like them. I do like them, however. I have tried plant-based cold cuts, and they are pretty good. And I could happily subsist on anything made from chickpeas. I love hummus and falafel and eat them as often as I can. Baked eggplant is a good substitute for a meat dinner; it is delicious served over rice. I do like cheese so that would be hard to give up completely; the same is true for canned tuna fish (I love canned tuna but I know that tuna are overfished. But at least they are not farmed). What I'd like to try is laboratory-produced meat (producing a chicken breast, etc, from a chicken cell--that sounds promising, at least at present). 

I think we just need to start somewhere. We need to rethink meal planning and the importance of eating less meat for all the reasons listed in the article, but also to improve our health. We don't need to eat the amount of meat we eat currently to survive. Our parents' generation managed to live on much less meat, and we can too. I am including a link to a short pamphlet that one can download from World Animal Protection; it's called Meating Halfway and it's worth downloading. You have to join the #EatLessMeat this Year movement in order to download it:

World Animal Protection | We move the world to protect animals

The mind and imagination of Philip K Dick

Philip K Dick was an American science fiction writer whose life, despite being a short one (he was born in 1928 and died in 1982) was a prolific one in terms of his literary production--44 novels and about 121 short stories according to Wikipedia. A number of popular movies are based on his books/stories: Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and Total Recall (based on We Can Remember It For You Wholesale). What struck me when I read about his life was how little money he earned as a sci-fi writer, since that type of literature was not considered mainstream. It was so unfair that he should have struggled in his lifetime to make money when after his death his stories were made into profitable films. He lived long enough to see only one of his books, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, approach the movie screen as Blade Runner; Dick backed Ridley Scott's vision for the film but died shortly before its release in 1982 (source Wikipedia).  But that is the inherent nature of an indifferent universe, which does not care a whit whether a writer (or anyone for that matter) succeeds or not.

I am currently reading Dick's novels and have finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Flow My Tears,The Policeman Said, and Ubik. I've purchased two more--A Scanner Darkly and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, as well as a collection of his short stories. Stanislaw Lem, who wrote Solaris (one of my favorite sci-fi novels and movies) was a big fan of Ubik. I've written about Solaris in another post: A New Yorker in Oslo: The Martian Chronicles and Solaris (paulamdeangelis.blogspot.com). While I was reading Ubik and Flow My Tears,The Policeman Said, I had the same sorts of feelings as I had while reading Solaris. The first feeling is that I was in the presence of genius, but an otherworldly genius. His imagination knows no (human) bounds. The second was that I had truly been transported to another world, that I was living in that world. It's almost as though both Dick and Lem really lived the experiences and worlds they wrote about. Perhaps they did, even if just in their own minds. I'm not sure how Lem lived his life, but it is well-documented as to how Dick lived his. He was a drug user for most of his life; his choice of drug was amphetamines and he wrote while under the influence of speed, but he also tried psychedelics. He apparently made several suicide attempts and was preoccupied with the topic of mental illness. His stories make you understand the profound possibilities for mind expansion, fragmentation of the mind and thereby fragmentation of one's reality. I can understand that this might hold appeal for certain writers interested in exploring alternate realities, the workings of the mind, and the nature of the world around us and of the universe. Dick wrote at a time (1960s and 70s) when America was undergoing an upheaval of all the norms of society up to that time. The Vietnam War had completely unsettled American society. Psychologists such as Timothy Leary (born around the same time as Dick) were proponents of the use of LSD to treat different mental illnesses as well as to foster mind expansion in the search for personal truth. Leary received a copy of Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Dick was also a fan of H.P. Lovecraft (another favorite author of mine) because Lovecraft managed to convey in his sci-fi horror stories the sense that his stories were real. I read a collection of Lovecraft's stories over a year ago, and they still haunt me to this day. His writing grabs a hold of you and won't let go. It gets under your skin. I feel the same way about Dick's writing. I can recommend this link if you'd like to read more about Dick's interest in Christianity after he had a terrifying vision of what he was told was the devil: When Philip K. Dick turned to Christianity | Salon.com. 

Although the Old Testament is not considered to be literally true, it nonetheless presents some interesting divine pronouncements, one of which is “And the Lord God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die". Adam and Eve were warned against doing this. The implication is that they did not really know evil up to that point; the Garden of Eden was heaven. But they were curious as to what might happen if they did eat the fruit from this tree, egged on by the devil in the shape of a snake. I have always interpreted this passage to mean that humans would face the divine and the anti-divine head-on with no filters and that would mean that they were dead. To do so while living would split their minds apart and probably kill them. Are psychedelic drugs the fruit that could be consumed in order to reach that knowledge? If humans reach it, do they face good or evil or both? What if they cannot handle it? What if it renders them insane? I think there is something to this, but I wouldn't go down that road myself to find the answers. The reason is that I've read and seen too many sci-fi/horror novels and films that deal with such themes. Best to leave them to the realm of fiction. Even though many of these books and films are unsettling and haunting, they provide themes for reflection, which is always a good thing. I'm looking forward to reading more of Dick's works. 

Memories and the movies Nocturnal Animals and Dark City

Both Nocturnal Animals (from 2016) and Dark City (from 1998) are movies that deal with memories, albeit in different ways. I watched both recently and both made lasting impressions on me. Nocturnal Animals is a 'story within a story' thriller about a divorced woman, Susan Morrow (played by Amy Adams) whose ex-husband Edward (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) has written a novel and sent her a copy for her to read. They've been out of touch for twenty years; she left him for another man, Hutton Morrow, (played by Armie Hammer) whom she eventually married and with whom she had a daughter Samantha (now twenty), but not without first aborting her ex's child. Edward has not remarried. It was apparently a bitter divorce, as he pleaded with her not to leave their marriage. His pleas fell on deaf ears, as she was more interested in acquiring a lifestyle more in keeping with how she grew up, whereas he was more of a romantic dreamer who was not interested in money. She characterizes him as a weak and unambitious person. Her present life is unhappy; Hutton is cheating on her and she knows and accepts it. She doesn't sleep well (hence the title Nocturnal Animals, a term coined by her ex-husband to describe her). She hates her job as a modern art curator, and when she receives the novel from Edward on a weekend when Hutton is out of town on business (as he tells her), she begins to read it and finds herself immersed in its story. It is dedicated solely to her, and while she reads it, it brings back many memories of how she and Edward met, fell in love, married, and then parted, as well as memories about what they each wanted and how different they were. His novel is a violent and unsettling story about a man (Tony Hastings) whose wife (Laura) and daughter (India) are raped and murdered in west Texas while they are on vacation and how he was unable to protect them. The story spirals into a revenge thriller where Tony gets the chance to take revenge on the killers; he is given that chance by the local sheriff Bobby Andes who is dying of lung cancer. But even though he gets his revenge, the outcome for him is not a good one. The movie goes back and forth between events in Susan's present life, events in the novel, and her memories of her life with Edward. By the time she finishes reading the novel, she understands that she still loves him, and she makes plans via email to meet him for dinner at a restaurant while he is in town. He never shows up, and she understands that this is his revenge on her for how cruelly she treated him. His novel has jolted her out of her inert and unhappy life and made her feel something besides boredom. She may even be feeling guilt. She understands that her treatment of Edward has found its way into his novel; Tony calls himself weak because he could not protect Laura and India. They are raped and murdered by three depraved psychos out for a 'good time' on a deserted Texas highway. The anxiety and dread are palpable; we know that his memories of their relationship are so harrowing that the only way he can deal with them is to 'kill' her and to kill the man/men responsible for killing her (and his relationship with Susan in real-life). Their daughter is already dead (aborted years ago). He could not protect his marriage or his daughter. Susan understands this when she read his novel, so how she could actually think that he would be interested in her again after all that has transpired between them simply shows what a superficial and cruel person she really was. I may have misunderstood the ending, but the fact that she removes her wedding ring and dresses up to meet Edward is indicative of a woman looking for a second chance with Edward. But he never shows up. All she has left are her memories, now that his novel has awakened her heart and emotions. They will haunt her and likely persecute her for years to come. One could hope that her awakening leads her to change her life, but that remains a mystery to the viewers. The ending is ambiguous and you can read into it what you'd like, which in my estimation makes the movie a memorable and outstanding one.  

Dark City asks the questions, who are we without our memories and how are our souls involved? Are our memories and our souls intertwined? If you remove the memories, do you render people soulless and identity-less? Dark City is controlled by aliens called The Strangers who want to know the answers to these questions. As we find out along the way, they have created a world and populated it with a group of human beings in order to experiment on and to study them. Their civilization is dying and they need to understand what it is in humanity that makes humans survivors. The city is perpetually dark because they cannot tolerate sunlight. They wear the bodies of dead humans as their own, giving them a vampiric appearance (they reminded me of Nosferatu at times--tall, thin, white entities floating in the air). Their civilization is defined by collective memory, where no individual has his own private memories. Collective memories are what each of them experience, so they have no individuality, no soul. They mistakenly believe that the soul is found in men's minds that hold their memories, so they create experiments with the help of a neurological scientist, Daniel Schreber (played by Kiefer Sutherland), to remove the individual memories from the brains of each human being and to imprint their brains with new memories that are concocted by the scientist following the orders of the Strangers. This naturally leads to a sort of chaos in the city, as people can wake from one day to the next and not remember who they were or what they did yesterday. They no longer know who they are. But one man, the main character John Murdoch (played by Rufus Sewell) has not been imprinted completely; he awoke while he was being imprinted and he begins a quest to find out who he is/was based on the flashes of memory that plague him. What he knows is that he is not a serial killer of prostitutes, as his imprinting has told him he is. Unfortunately the imprinting of individuals is leading to collective memory in the humans; they have begun to forget who they are. It is almost impossible to fight against the Strangers because a person never knows when he or she will be picked out of the crowd to be imprinted. But John Murdoch decides to fight the Strangers with the help of his wife Emma (played by Jennifer Connelly), a police officer, Frank Bumstead (played by William Hurt), and Daniel Schreber who wants to end the experiments. They succeed in finding out what Dark City really is and about the experiment in which they are involved. In doing so, they destroy the community of the Strangers. The movie is quite good, even though it deals with an extremely complex topic. But sci-fi is allowed to do that--to entertain us and to create questions that perhaps cannot be answered (in our time). 

In the first movie, it is the individual memories of Susan and Edward that define who they are and their very different lives in the present. Both suffer but in different ways. Susan's husband betrays her as she betrayed Edward; Edward writes a novel to help him deal with the crushing memories of her betrayal. In the second movie, the idea of collective memory negates individual memory. Individual memories would eventually become part of the collective memory and humans would cease to feel and to be human. There would be no need for revenge, guilt, sorrow, or forgiveness, because all individual memories would be erased for the good of the whole. This is what the society of Strangers has misunderstood. Our physical (chemical neurological) memories may be found in our brains, but all facets of memory are not. They are also found in our hearts and souls and are probably a very complicated and hitherto inexplicable combination of all three. 

We are who we are as a result of the memories that we have built up and stored over time. Is that buildup orderly and coherent? Does the brain control the storage of memory in an orderly fashion? How the brain stores memories › Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (fau.eu). All the more terrifying to contemplate what dementia patients experience on their gradual downward progression toward oblivion. Without coherent memory, we lose our 'selves', our individuality, our identity. This is not to say that memories have died in dementia patients, just that their disease has tangled and fragmented them, and in doing so, has fragmented their lives. Over time, the brain cells atrophy. There is much to be learned about memories and how they are created, stored, and retrieved in the brain. But all facets of memory cannot be explained by the brain alone.