bitterfig

For the last month or so I’ve been engrossed in Susanna Clarke’s novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.  It’s a huge book, a meticulously detailed 19^th century style novel.  In 1806 as the Napoleonic wars are raging, the reclusive Mr. Norrell takes it upon himself to revive practical (as opposed to theoretical) magic in England, where it has been dormant for the past three centuries. 

 

Of course Mr. Norrell has some very specific ideas of what magic ought to be.  Over the years he’s amassed the definitive library on the subject, yet he has no desire to share his books or knowledge with other magicians so that they might make the step from theoretical to practical.  In fact even the existence of theoretical magicians seems to irk Norrell.  His first demonstration of practical magic is tinged with his possessiveness of magic and malice towards those he considers unworthy of calling themselves magicians.  When the Learned Society of York Magicians doubts Norrell’s claim to be a practical magician (after all, it has been 300 years since magic was practiced) Norrell agrees to prove himself but the members of the Society are required to take an oath that if Norrell is capable of performing magic none of them will ever again study magic or call themselves magicians.  

 

Previous to Mr. Norrell’s rise in prominence magic and fairies were synonymous in the public imagination, something Norrell, an association Norrell is determined to see buried.  So far as he is concerned fairies are dangerous and should not be dealt with by a proper magician.  As such Norrell dismisses the magical legacy of the mythical Raven King who once ruled in both England and Fairie. 

 

An avarice hoarding of knowledge and an aversion to fairies are the twin pillars of Norrell’s vision of English magic and yet he violates both of his dearly cherished principles—and there are far reaching consequences.

 

When Norrell arrives in London, he is unable to convince the government to take him seriously or see the usefulness of his magic.  When Lady Emma, the fiancé of high ranking government official Sir Walter Pole dies Norrell strikes a deal with a fairy king referred to only as “the gentleman with thistle-down hair” to revive her.  Pole get’s his wife back and Norrell gets his in with the government but there is a considerable price to be paid.  According to the deal Norrell made, half of Emma’s remaining life belongs to the gentleman with thistle-down hair and he holds both her and household servent Stephen Black in magical thrall. 

 

Later Mr. Norrell meets Jonathan Strange, a young man presumptuous enough to practice magic.  Though largely self taught Strange is an imaginative and innovative magician.  Norrell is impressed and rather than crushing Strange’s magical aspirations takes him on as a student. 

 

Strange proves to have a very different approach to practical magic then Mr. Norrell.  While Norrell has remained in London and aided the British army from a distance, Strange encamps with Wellington and experiences the triumphs, discomforts and horrors of war firsthand.  His natural creativity emboldened by his wartime experiences Strange longs to venture deeper into magic.  He quickly grows impatient with Norrell’s cautious approach to magic and the way he hordes his knowledge and the two part ways.  They eventually become rivals, struggling to define English magic. 

 

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is taking me forever to read (I still have about 200 pages left at this writing) but I’m enjoying every minute of it.  Clarke flawlessly incorporates real-life historical elements into the world of the novel which has a complex and richly detailed past involving magic, magicians and fairies.  There is a great deal of wit in the novel that seems quintessentially British to me.  Clarke draws her characters with a spot-on sharpness reminiscent of Jane Austen.  Really a wonderful novel. 

When I was 22 and 23 years old (in 1994 and 1995) I lost over 100 pounds.  I've managed to keep most of that weight off (though at a tremendous cost-- the time and energy I devote to keeping my weight down has pretty much crippled me in a lot of other areas.  For instance, I don't exactly have a social life or a career.)

While I was at my parents house last week I was looking through some of my things and found some pictures of myself from when I was college age.  Photos of me from this time are fairly rare, I was very reluctant to pose because I thought I was so disgusting.  Looking at them however I can't help but think that I wasn't quite as bad as I thought.  In all honesty the first thing that strikes me when looking at them isn't my size but  my glasses.  They're hideous.  I really should have gotten smaller frames but that wasn't the sort of thing I'd have  ever considered doing at the time because all I could think of was that I was fat and I had to fix that before I could even consider anything else.  I guess I've always had tunnel vision where my weight is concerned. 

I ended up calling in to work yesterday and today which is pretty sad considering that I’ve only been back from vacation for two days.  I sort of knew I was going to do it yesterday.  When I saw the schedule on Sunday I really felt like there was no way I could go in for the All Store Meeting from 6:30 to 8:00 a.m. and then work a 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. shift.  Then today I was tired (I slept most of the morning) and having weird chills and didn’t want to deal with working. 

 

Exactly what is it I find work so difficult?  First there’s the sheer tediousness factor which I think everyone feels.  I of course add to that a whole level of various stresses—worries that I’ll displease a customer, that I’ll break one of the numerous rules, that I haven’t responded properly to a question, that I’m a failure, that I’m stupid, unfriendly, ugly and an all around miserable excuse for a human being.  Then there’s the level of physical discomfort and pain.  My legs and feet hurt from standing.  I grind my teeth when I’m anxious so I usually have a sore jaw and a low level headache that’s made worse by all the background noise and music.  Something with the air conditioning makes my sinuses feel very raw, almost peeled.  When I don’t eat properly I don’t really get hungry per say but I do get very, very tired and it’s an effort stay focused.  Of course when I do eat I feel really, really cold for the next hour. 

 

I’m sure it’s all psychosomatic or brought on myself.  I guess the question is why should I find my life so overwhelming that deliberately shut down like this?  Maybe because I’m unhappy with where I am and I know I can’t go back to living in my parent’s attic which means I’ll have to find something else to do, something new and different and unfamiliar the mere thought of which makes me want to give up already, curl up and disappear. 

 Yesterday was my first day back to work after the vacation.  I was on express and my second customer didn’t think the bottle of sake he was buying was ringing up at the right price.  I paged the Specialty Department a couple of times but no one answered so the customer took off to check the price himself leaving me at the register with his half rung up order and a long line of annoyed people. 

 

I have to get out of there, I really do.

 

Here’s my brilliant idea, a deadline.  Yesterday was the 20^th of July which means that in two months, the 20^th of September, it will be my second anniversary working at the market.  Except I’m not going to have a second anniversary, I’m going to be gone.   Ideally I’ll have another job by then but if not I’ll just make a leap of faith and be uninsured and live off my savings or my mutual fund or my parents until I find something. 

 

Of course I may just be thinking this way because I have a 6:30 a.m. All Store Team Meeting to look forward to tomorrow morning and because I still feel like crap from my lovely vacation (details on that later).  I figure I’ll try actually eating at maintenance level for someone my size with no skimping on food to balance out the calories in alcoholic beverages and see if my job seems quite so unbearable then (I’ll also be in much better condition to attempt job hunting). 

I got back from my visit to my parents yesterday evening and tomorrow I’m back to work.  Today was devoted to reacquainting myself with everyday life, things like going grocery shopping and collecting the Kitty from my sister’s where he stayed while I was away (thankfully he didn’t scratch my niece or nephew). 

 

Upstate New York is breathtakingly beautiful this time of year, fields of wildflowers—tiger lilies, Queen Anne’s lace and blue chicory.  I saw turkeys, deer, hummingbirds, a rose breasted grouse beak and several fat, furry woodchucks, visited my grandmother everyday, went to a fascinating exhibit on Synagogue carvings at the local art museum and read a pile of comic books, mostly back issues of Elfquest and Urusei Yatsura.

 

I can’t say I’m exactly refreshed from my vacation however.  The tension between my parents grated on me like fingernails on a blackboard during the entire visit and perhaps to drown it I sort of created my own internal white noise by drastically cutting down on my daily caloric intake while drinking huge amounts of caffeinated diet soda in addition to sampling some of the prescription grade painkillers Mum had left over from a root canal she had last month (a Hydrocodine tablet and half a Vicodin a couple of days later—I didn’t really get buzzed at all but they did help with the shin splits I had from walking on hilly terrain).  

 

I’m not sure what gets into me when I go back to my parents.  Half of me that strives to be the perfect daughter and the other half works equally hard to be a perfect horror.  Interestingly I got some insight into this watching Batman Unmasked a History Channel special on the psychology of Batman.  It talked about how Batman is a person who is filled with overpowering rage and fear yet is able to master it and how in a way that strength of will is his superpower.  Joker on the other hand is described as seeing the world through a mad kind of logic wherein the existence of injustice cancels out the possibility of justice and where the fact that innocence is corruptible means that no one is innocent.  Sometimes (like this last week) I feel like I contain both these persona and they’re warring it out in every decision I make.  No wonder Batman has always appealed to me so much.

Tomorrow I fly to New York and despite my considerable trepidation I am rather looking forward to having some time off.  Between work, and my burgeoning (and occasionally bludgeoning) efforts to increase my social interaction I’ve been pretty busy lately and am getting pretty worn out. 

 

During the past couple of days I put in two late nights, staying out until 1:00 and 1:30 a.m.   Monday night I hung out with Tycho after work.  He’s going to be out of town for a couple weeks and I’d really wanted to see him again before he left.  On Wednesday I ended up spending a couple of hours at an impromptu party of Whole Foods employees on the roof of the parking garage.  I didn’t drink anything because I was driving and also exhausted from work and mainly because by the time you get to be 36 years old getting drunk on the roof of a parking garage has severely limited appeal however I talked to a couple people I know by sight from around the store but have never really had a conversation with, sort of expanded my horizons a bit. 

 

The reason for the impromptu Wednesday night party in the parking garage roof was that everyone needed to do some serious decompression after a particularly hellish day at work.  I work at the Lakeview Whole Foods and that afternoon the Lincoln Park Whole Foods which is a couple of miles away was closed down on account of health code violations.  Or as the tenants used to say when I worked in the property management office “Mices!”   

 

The closing of the Lincoln Park Store resulted in an inundation of customers from that store (which sort of baffled me—I don’t mean to question the loyalty of our customers but I’d go to the nearby Trader Joes or Stanley’s Produce Market or even Jewel or Dominiques which are on the way before I’d haul all the way from the Lincoln Park store to Lakeview store in rush hour traffic) and a frenzy of panic cleaning least our store too be inspected and found wanting.  I lucked out on the cleaning end as I’m in a department that does not actually handle food.  “Deep-cleaning” the registers only took about half an hour longer than the usual closing routine however people in other departments like Prepared Foods and Seafood were running an hour and a half to two hours over the usual time they finish. 

 

Lincoln Park finally re-opened on Saturday afternoon but Friday was extra busy with a lot of indignation over the closing.  “What an embarrassment,” one customer sniped.  I had a hard time not snipping back, “It’s not an embarrassment for me.  I don’t work there and I don’t shop there.”  Also, I know enough about agriculture and pre-modern hygiene and food production that I really can’t be shocked to realize that there are such things as rodents and pests.  There always have been and there always will be until food is grown and prepared in sterile labs. 

 

In addition to all this other stuff, I’ve been doing a lot of biking- in the last week I only used my car three out of seven days which I’m quite proud of.  Still, I have to be careful not to over do it.  Fatigue from too much riding on restricted calories was definitely one of the factors that contributed to my accident last summer. 

 

On Thursday, my last day off, and again yesterday when I was working a closing shift I ended up spending most of my free time during the day sleeping.  I have today off as well which is good. It’ll give me time to pack and take my cat over to my sister’s house where he’ll be staying during my visit (he actually lived there for a couple years but I doubt his little cat brain remembers that far back).  After I get the kitty squared away I’d like to do some cleaning.  I don’t vacuum as often as I should because he hates it.  Nor do I sweep as often as I ought because he tends to get in the way of the broom.

I’m going to be going to visit the parents in Upstate New York on 07/14/08. 

 

I’ve afraid I’m less than thrilled at the prospect.  Despite the highly detailed e-mails my mother has been sending me for weeks about things like the condition of her play house (don’t ask) and all the “fun” things we might possibly do over my visit I think I’ve been  was more or less in denial but now it’s really breathing down my neck. 

 

On Monday I got an e-mail from my mother with “Goody Goody Goody” as the subject line.  The text was something to the effect of “Only a week till you’re back home where you belong.”  Somehow this makes me feel like I’m about to be gobbled up.  

 

 

Yesterday I had lunch with my sister, her husband and kids and my brother-in-law’s mother and sister at the Hancock building.  Traffic was light because of the holiday so I was able to bike in.  There are people I work with who regularly bike 20+ miles a day but for me the five miles from my place near Logan Square downtown and back was a pretty long ride, definitely the longest I’ve attempted this year and it left me pretty exhausted.  This may have been for the best because I was actually able to sleep last night despite the war zone like noise levels that go along with the 4^th of July. 

 

Still, I do think I might need to start adjusting my calorie intake a bit for my level of activity.  I’m riding my bike fairly regularly now and I know that burns more calories than my usual walking but I’m still eating the same amount (around 1800 calories per day which according to thedailyplate.com is a little less than maintenance level for a sedentary person of my size).  I’ve been quite tired the past couple of days but also restless, I can’t seem to concentrate on anything and I think it may have to do with this but I’m afraid to eat more.  Every time I do manage to eat 1850 or 1900 calories during the course of a day I usually counter it by doing extra exercise or eating less the next day.  

 

I find it very frustrating that it’s still so difficult for me to make these adjustments.

 

On a more positive note lunch went well.  Everything seemed okay with my sister and I talked and had a nice time without drinking (or really eating since we had lunch at The Cheesecake Factory where about the only item that fits my caloric restrictions and vegetarian standards is a dry side salad). 

 

I don’t get downtown very often so following lunch I decided to pay a visit to the nearby MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) and see the Jeff Koons exhibit.  When I got there, there was a sort of installation/performance piece called “Peace Salon” taking place out front on the plaza.  It was by Chicago based artist Genevieve Erin O’Brien and she was offering “free buzz cuts for peace.”

 

I picked up the handout that explained it, which I quote here:

 

“Participants who would like to make a commitment to peace are offered a free buzz cut.  By having their heads shaved, the artist believes that the participants are acknowledging their connection to a larger world around them.  In doing so, she believes that they are symbolizing their solidarity with out soldiers at war and honoring their sacrifices in their ongoing commitment to create peace.  Furthermore, my shaving one’s head O’Brien hopes that the individual is released from a physical attachment since she sees attachment—to ideas and things—as the source of war.  By shaving one’s head, the participant is choosing to be one step closer to peace.”

 

I thought this was a pretty interesting idea.  For me, cropped hair is associated not with soldiers but with holy people, monks and nuns.  It also inverts the 60’s notion of long hair as a symbol of rebellion and peace loving. 

 

An interesting idea.

 

And I’ve always been sort of curious about how I’d look with a shaved head.

 

So I decided to give it a go. 

 

I have to admit a big part of my motivation to go through with it comes from the fact that I’m going to visit the parents in Upstate New York on the 14^th.  “How Far Will You Go For Peace”, a sign near the installation asked.  I think I read it as “How far will you go to piss off your parents.”

 

I’m still trying to decide if what I did was very bold or very stupid.  I’ve never had my hair this short before so it’s going to take some getting used to.   If nothing else it'll be interesting to see how it effects my lesbo street cred. 

( more pictures of me with no hair )

I had both Thursday and Friday (07/03 and 07/04) off so I ended up getting a bit of a holiday weekend.

 

Thursday I did mostly mundane stuff—laundry, grocery shopping, seeing my therapist—but in the evening my brother-in-law took me to see Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears.  It was playing at my favorite theater, the Music Box, which is one of the few old style, non-multi-plex movie houses left in Chicago.  It’s so beautiful, it’s been around since the 1920’s and has the old fashioned marquee outside, a huge, ornate theater, even a red curtain over the screen that goes up when the show starts.  They operate as an art house and revival theater and show a lot of foreign films and more off-beat movies.  It’s actually been ages since I’ve been there.  Lately I’ve only been getting to the movies about once a month.  Back when I was working for Biff (and making a bit more $$$$) I actually used to go to the movies at least once a week.  I rather miss being able to do that. 

 

Mother of Tears is the third installment in Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy that began with the 1977 classic Suspiria (one of my favorite horror films) and continued Inferno (which I haven’t seen) in 1980.  These movies deal with three sister witches—the Mother of Tears, The Mother of Sighs and the Mother of Darkness—who have houses in Germany (Suspiria), New York (Inferno), and Rome (Mother of Tears) from which they spread chaos and evil. 

 

I’ve always preferred the chilling, atmospheric giallo of Argento’s early days to his latter work which is more baroque and vividly horrific.  Still, Mother of Tears was a pretty enjoyable as a gory horror movie with strikingly bizarre imagery and minimal story.  Many creative things were done with intestines, and some gorgeous Roman architecture was shown as packs of witches resembling Madonna circa 1983 descended on the ancient city. 

 

There was actually a strangely retro vibe to the whole film, as if it had come a few years after the previous chapters of the trilogy rather than nearly three decades later.  All the witches wore new-wave make-up and the scariest witch, a Japanese girl with a silver front tooth reminded me of nothing so much as a particularly menacing Tama Janowitz. 

 

The heroine of the film was played by Dario Argento’s daughter Asia.   She’s been in several of his films but this was the first I’d had the opportunity to see.  I’m fascinated by the idea of a man directing his daughter in horror/exploitation films being terrorized, raped, tortured and occasionally grotesquely murdered.  There’s something so pathological yet telling about it.  It really lends a whole other level of uncomfortableness to something like a routine fan service shower scene when you know that the director is the actresses Dad.

 

My brother-in-law Dean had brought a bottle of citron vodka along and we had spiked cokes but I didn’t drink enough of mine to even get buzzed as vodka sort of turns my stomach.  Even with the citrus flavoring it still tastes thick and chemical and sort of vile to me.  I consider this repulsion a good sign.  My ex-boyfriend, who was a recovering alcoholic, always said that one of the things that separated alcohol abusers from casual drinkers was that the abuser would drink anything available to the point of intoxication whereas the casual drinker tended to have personal preferences and wouldn’t drink if they couldn’t have something they enjoyed. 

 

I’ve been drinking again for a little over a month and it really is an experiment to see if I can drink socially and casually.  So far I feel like I’m doing all right.  I did go out of bounds at the party a couple weeks ago where I embarrassed my sister but I didn’t totally lose it.  In the past I’ve often figured that once I go past a point I might as well relinquish all control and finish off the bottle.  I didn’t do that this time and I think it’s because I’m trying to look at drinking differently, not as a huge cathartic experience I allow myself a couple times a year but as something I can incorporate into my life and do in moderation maybe once a week or so. 

 

As I said, it’s an experiment.  If it doesn’t work I’ll probably go back to not drinking at all because I know how dangerous problem drinking can be. 

I e-mailed my sister about how it had hurt my feelings when she told me I had embarrassed her and that I felt like I needed encouragement more than correction at this time.  She apologized so I guess we’re okay though I’m a little nervous about the upcoming holiday.  I’m off on July 4^th so I guess if I’m invited to any kind of family thing I need to try to go but either not drink at all or limit myself to two glasses at the most.  I feel like I always have to watch myself and keep a rigid control over myself though I guess that’s what everyone has to do if they want to function in the world. 

 

Last Monday, I had off from work and I did some painting for the first time in ages and finished my sister’s Christmas gift.  I like to give multi-part gifts and since my sister has been fascinated by Batgirl since we were children the first part of her gift (which I actually gave her in December) was a collection of Batgirl stories from the 60’s. 

The second part (which I finished last week) was a sort of Batgirl/Marie Antoinette painting.  The basic concept of the painting owes a lot to Ray Caesar, a digital artist who uses a lot of Batgirl and Catwoman type imagery, but it’s pretty much in my own style which is much more low-tech/decorative/folk art derived.

 

On Wednesday evening I met up with my Tycho Brahe, a supervisor at work who I like quite a bit, and we had a couple of drinks (two which is probably going to be my official limit from now on) and talked for quite a while. 

 

He has a girlfriend so it was strictly a friendly, hanging-out type thing (though I do find him rather adorable).  We’d planned on discussing books, movies and graphic novels.  He seems to know a lot about McSweeney’s writers and Wes Anderson movies and more comedic stuff that I tend to enjoy when I read it or see it but don’t seek out on my own because I tend to be drawn to darker, fantastic material.  However we ended up talking much more about the personal background and family history. 

 

Talking to other people in depth always astounds me, there’s always so much more there than I would have ever imaged.  It’s probably something I should do more often because I really am genuinely interested.  It’s almost like everyone has certain major themes in their lives.  With Tycho, some are very different than mine but others are almost eerily similar.   I think it’s too easy for me to forget that other people have internal lives and to assume that they don’t struggle because unlike me they don’t walk around bleeding.

 

Tycho’s going to be leaving Whole Foods soon.  He’s going to graduate school for literature in the fall, and he also really encouraged me to get the hell out as well because really, I could probably do a lot better. 

 

I know he’s right.   I sort of know what I have to do but I’ve been putting it off because it requires me to move beyond my comfort zone by dealing with people in interview situations, maybe traveling to unknown neighborhoods and risking rejection.  It also requires I refocus energy and spend less time on both things I enjoy but use to insulate myself from reality (reading manga, watching DVD’s, blogging and my fan fiction writing) and things I do compulsively (obsessing over what I eat, worrying about grocery shopping, and downloading music files I end up never listening to). 

 

One thing that might motivate me a little is that a lot of people I like are leaving the Market.  In addition to Tycho, another supervisor I really (and wish I’d made more of an effort to get to know) just put in her notice.  Also in September it’ll be two years that I’ve worked there, which is longer than I ever intended.  This might be a good time to start thinking seriously about moving on. 

 

If only the economy didn’t suck so badly right now...

This weekend was Gay Pride in Chicago but I didn’t end up going to any of the events.  .  There weren’t any signs posted about being on the float so I didn’t get to be in the parade like last year.  I didn’t even get to go to the parade because I had work and of course I wasn’t exactly in a celebratory mood either yesterday or today.  

 

First, let me explain the situation with my medication.

 

I’ve been off Effexor entirely for over a week and am now taking just 60 mg of Cymbalta each day.  A couple of weeks ago my brother-in-law had suggested that my tendency to shut down and isolate may have as much to do with over-medication as it does with depression and I think he might have been right.  I feel much more alert and engaged in the world around me now that I’m taking less medication but I’m also much more sensitive and volatile. 

 

At the beginning of the week I did some painting for the first time in ages and actually finished up my sister Vienna’s Christmas gift which I’d sketched out back in December but never completed.  On Saturday morning I rode my bike over to her condo to give it to her.  During the course of the visit the subject of my behavior at the MBA graduation party for her sister-in-law Staci came up.  This was a small party, mainly family except for Staci’s boyfriend (who she’s only been seeing for a couple months) and a guy who works with her. 

 

I was very nervous about attending but I decided to make the effort and when I got there I ended up drinking about 4 glasses of wine (I will say in my defense that at least one of them was much less than a full glass, probably only 2 or 3 ounces).  As a result of this drinking I talked much more and much more expressively than I would have otherwise and Vienna was very much not pleased with some of the things I said—mainly allusions to my eating disorder and mental health problems and a remark that I wasn’t interested in having a relationship, I’d just like someone I could call to come over and have sex when I felt like it. 

 

Vienna sort of pointed out all the things I’d said wrong and told me that she had been embarrassed and more or less scolded me for drinking too much. 

 

It was almost something I’d expected.  I’d spent the last session with my therapist going over the exact same things Vienna mentioned but we’d ended up agreeing that I need to let myself make mistakes and that I shouldn’t obsess over what I’d done wrong or feel guilty and that these things weren’t that big a deal and that is was positive that I’d attended the party despite my anxieties and been able to interact…

 

I still got really upset.  Being told my family members that I’ve embarrassed them always cuts me right to the core.  When I was in high school my father used to bludgeon me on an almost daily basis with what an embarrassment I was to him, how my clothes and my grades and my conduct were a reflection on him and I was making him look bad and humiliating him in front of the other teachers. 

 

It just really upset me, to the point where I started crying.  My 6 year old nephew and 3 year old niece were there.  Luckily I don’t think they noticed because they were playing with their tricycles across the room but I really feel bad about losing it in front of the kids like that. 

 

Even after I left, I was still really distraught.  I kept tearing up and having crying jags for the rest of the day including at work.  Today I got through work without incident but I felt drained and very sad. 

 

I can’t blame Vienna for this; my reaction has been completely disproportionate to what she’d said to me (which was nothing I hadn’t already said to myself).  This makes me think (hope) it might have something to do with the medication because it seems like the only other possibility is that I’m just weak. 

A couple of days ago I went to see The Fall, an opulent fantasy/allegory directed by Tarsem Singh.  Tarsem (as he is called) is best known for directing music videos and commercials.  His pervious feature film is The Cell, a 2000 science fiction film starring Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn which received pretty bad reviews and was generally dismissed as being all style and no substance. 

 

I’ve never seen The Cell but I wasn’t expecting much from The Fall.  I went to see it mainly because I’m a fan of Lee Pace.  Pace is best known for his work on the television shows Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies but he’s played a MTF transsexual (The Soldier’s Girl) and In Cold Blood killer Dick Hickcock (Infamous) in Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies)—just the sort of bizarre combination of roles that attracts my attention. 

 

The story of The Fall is fairly straightforward.  It is set at the dawn of the motion picture era it concerns two patients recuperating from falls in a Hollywoodland hospital.  One is a little girl named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru was is the cutest little thing I’ve ever seen)  who has been working as a fruit picker and broke her arm when she fell from a tree.  The other is Roy (Lee Pace), a stuntman who is suffering from paralysis that may or may not be permanent as the result of a back injury he incurred when he fell from a horse during the shooting of a cowboy movie.  We later learn that his accident may have been a suicide attempt.

 

Roy and Alexandria befriend each other and he begins to tell her a story about a mismatched band of adventurers including an Italian explosives expert, an Indian prince, a masked bandit and Charles Darwin (who wears an amazing multi-color fur coat), and their efforts to stop the evil Governor Odious. 

 

Making the story up as he goes along, incorporating other patients, hospital workers and every little bit of information he has about Alexandria, Roy soon has his audience of one captivated.  From there he starts manipulating her to do things for him, specifically to get him pills so that he can commit suicide (ah, the days when a very tiny child could toddle into a hospital infirmary and make off with a bottle of morphine).

 

The fantasy sequences in The Fall are lavish and ornate, full of vivid colors with an emphasis on the exotic-- Indian, African, Asian and Middle Eastern motifs.  I actually found the exoticism to be a bit much.  To me scenes of frenzied “primitive” drumming and dancing seem a little too close to racial stereotyping.  Or maybe they just reveal a little too much of Tarsem’s roots in music video…  Still, there were some truly gorgeous images, some with sadomasochistic undertones that I responded very strongly to. There’s a scene where Lee Pace is half-conscious and tethered to a post in a vast desert under the beating sun where the camera lingers over scraped cheek and peeling lips that I found  particularly memorable... 

 

While spectacle is the main thrust of The Fall I actually found its content rather affecting to the point where I wish it had been more carefully developed.  The Fall touches on some potentially interesting ideas about the way that stories can be used to both control and to heal.  Early on Roy is very deliberate in creating his story to please Alexandria but as his emotional state deteriorates he seems to lose control of the fantasy.  She is hurt and frightened as he kills off his characters but he can’t seem to stop it any more than he can stop his own pain.  I would have loved to have seen more exploration of this concept of deliberate versus unconscious story telling; however that wasn’t really the film’s focus.  It was, like Across the Universe, more of a dance than a novel, more about motion, space and color than about character, story and ideas.  Still, it almost seemed like there were enough half formed characters, story and ideas that I was sort of disappointed not to see more done with them.

First, congratulations to ozma914 on becoming a grandfather x2 (twins).

 

His post reminded me that I’d neglected to mention a rather important tidbit of news—on 06/13/08 my pervious employer Biff and his partner Jorge became the father’s of a little boy.

 

While part of me had hoped that Biff would completely lose it and name the infant something wildly inappropriate like Tardis however apparently sanity prevailed and the boy’s name is Julian.

 

Friday the 13^th Baby: Young Julian contemplates existence. 

 

It’s funny, but on an abstract and grandiose level I can’t help but equating Julian’s birth to two daddies with the recent legalization of gay marriage in California, almost as if the two events show—one on a personal and one on a public level-- the legitimacy of love and family that goes beyond the traditional definition. 

 

 I have to admit it’s been a long time since I’ve felt optimistic and hopeful about the capacity of the American people to accept and include.  The past decade or so seems to have been a downward slide into intolerance and polarization.  I think the approaching end of the Bush presidency and the possibility that Barack Obama could replace him has done a lot to brighten my outlook. 

 

I don’t talk about politics a lot (because if you haven’t noticed I’m kind of self obsessed) but I am behind Obama in the current campaign.  He’s from Chicago, which makes it really exciting that he might be president but it’s more than that.  I actually believe in him.  I believe he’s real and decent and has the nation’s best interest at heart as opposed to his own (something I’ve never believed about Hillary Clinton). 

 

While I’ve always had a great deal of respect for John McCain as a veteran, a former P.O.W. and as someone who has always bucked the system and gone against the party line he’s really disappointed me in this campaign by allying himself with religious extremists such John Hagee (known for the notorious statement that Hurricane Katrina occurred because God was displeased with an upcoming Pride Parade), taking an anti-diplomatic stance in international affairs, and for his support of using continued military action to deal with the situation in Iraq.  It just seems to me that someone like McCain should know how destructive and fruitless war can be.  About a year ago I had hopes that he would be at the forefront of finding a better way but apparently that isn’t going to be happening. 

 A poster of Obama by Shepard Fairey.

I had my six month job dialogue at work on Tuesday. 

 

I’d filled out the paperwork for it at the end of May when I was feeling pretty down in general and also before I resolved to stop relentlessly putting myself down  and I have to say I really wish I had been able to re-do it.  Everything I wrote was so negative it was almost embarrassing going over it with the Assistant Team Leader.  When I wrote it up I thought it was a realistic appraisal of my abilities but it totally wasn’t because I completely omitted everything I do right.  I’m not a superstar sort of cashier but I’m competent, I’m efficient and I prioritize doing the job which is a pretty big deal when most of the people you work with are 20-something slackers more interested in where their going after work than in keeping lines moving and helping out co-workers.  Also my numbers are really good—I’m fast on the register, I move a lot of customers through my line and I balance my till consistently.  Also I really do care about the store and the people I work with and I’ve made a lot of effort to stand up for them and make their concerns known.  I have my weak areas—I’m not outgoing, I don’t have a lot of energy, I’m occasionally moody, and my attendance has been poor over the past six months due to my mental heath problems—but I don’t suck nearly as much as my self-evaluation made out. 

 

I managed to convey some of this verbally during the job dialogue and luckily the supervisor I ended up doing it with was someone who knew me and knows how I work so she cut me a lot of slack.  I’m really glad it wasn’t with the Team Leader who’s only been there two months and would have had have to more or less take my word for things.  I also talked to her a bit about the previous Team Leader leaving in April, something I still harbor a certain amount of guilt and mixed feelings about.  She assured me that while my letter had helped bring things to a head, there had been problems for a long time and that my letter had really gone a long way towards giving the team back its voice.  That was really reassuring to hear.  It’s very hard for me to let go of guilt—something else I need to work on. 

 

I got a twenty-five cent raise, which adds up to a little less than $2 per shift before taxes but every little bit helps and I think it was a good learning experience.  It really showed me how false my views of myself (and reality in general) can be get when I’m depressed and when I’m focusing strictly on the negative. 

Saturday night, I went to the movies.  Given my obsession with Tim Roth and my love of comic books (not to mention a long time interest in Ed Norton’s work) it probably seems like I’d want to see The Incredible Hulk but I honestly don’t have any desire to see it.  On the other hand I was very excited to see Tom Kalin’s Savage Grace.  Kalin directed Swoon, one of my favorite movies, in 1992 but hasn’t done a full length film since then so in my world the opening of Savage Grace was a big deal. 

 

Like Swoon, which dealt with the Leopold and Loeb murder, Savage Grace is based on an actual case—the 1972 murder of socialite Barbara Baekeland by her son Tony.  Barbara (Julianne Moore) is married to Brooks Baekeland (Stephen Dillane) whose family earned a fortune from the invention of bakelite plastics.  Their marriage is deeply troubled.  Brooks is discontented with the sort of pretentious, upper-crust social circles that Barbara obsessively courts.  From the beginning, Barbara seems dangerously unstable or even mentally ill.  She puts a great deal of work into being accepted by high society then sabotages her own efforts with inappropriate outbursts—in one scene she begins as a doting hostess and ends up denouncing her guests. 

 

Barbara’s behavior alarms and exasperates her husband but Barbara creates an unwavering and worshipful ally in her son Tony (played by Eddie Redmayne as an adult).  Which works very well when Tony is a precocious child but gets much more complicated when Tony becomes a sexually confused adult and Barbara and Brooks’ marriage dissolves. 

 

It’s quite an amazing little film, darkly comic and profoundly disturbing.  Anyone who’s read my fiction knows I have a sort of twisted fascination with the idea of incest as a trope for the way family members use and misuse each other.  Savage Grace brought these ideas chillingly to life.  Barbara refuses to allow the appropriate boundaries between herself and her son and a horrible interdependence grows between them that leads first to the scariest threesome on film (suddenly the brother and sister in The Dreamers seem vaguely wholesome) to an outright sexual act between mother and son that was frankly, shocking (people in the theater, including me, we literally gasping).  I knew there was incest in the film but by the time Barbara mounts her son he seems so emotionally damaged that it seems like an act of deliberately, selfish and nearly violent cruelty on her part. 

 

Really chilling, and yet despite all the implicit emotional violence part of me thought it was a really cool scene in the sense that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman being that aggressive or that much in charge during a sex scene before, at least not in an American film.  It’s sort of a shame (but not really a surprise) that the rare sexually dominate woman (or femme seme as I like to say) is a bit of a monster.

Over the weekend I finally got out and did some serious bike riding.  On Saturday morning I rode to an ANAD meeting which was a couple of miles away and then on Sunday I rode to work. 

 

It’s taken me an inordinately long time to get back on my bike this year.  Part of it has to do with the crazy weather we’ve had this spring (I actually just missed being caught in a really bad storm yesterday) but it’s mainly fear, sort of a delayed reaction to my accident last summer that was really brought home when I found out that two cyclists had recently been in fatal accidents not too far from my neighborhood (one death was literally a block away from where I live).

 

On April 20, 22-year-old Tyler Fabeck was hit by a car at the intersection of Logan Boulevard and Western Avenue.  On April 30, 24-year-old Amanda Annis was killed at the corner of Kedzie and Armitage (another girl was killed at the same corner back in September). 

 

When I rode my bike to work last year, I often went through the Logan Boulevard/Western Avenue intersection and frankly it made me very nervous because of the heavy traffic and poor visibility because of a highway overpass.  When I was riding over the weekend I tried to stick to side streets, though you really have to get on a main thoroughfare with a light to get across Western Avenue. 

 

Right after Memorial Day weekend, something called a Ghost Bike was put up to mark the spot where Fabeck was killed.  A Ghost Bike is a bicycle that’s stripped down, painted white and chained to a place where a cyclist died as a memorial.  After it appeared, I hiked down to the intersection and took some photos of it.  Since then some more candles and flowers have been put around it.  It’s really a chilling reminder of what can go wrong and I’m trying to be really careful when I ride this year and also to drive more carefully and pay more attention to bicyclists.

 

If anyone is interested on more information there was a piece about the Ghost Bike's on Chicago Public Radio a few weeks ago.

Last weekend ended up being pretty interesting from both a social and a personal growth stand point.  I wound up going out an unprecedented two nights in a row.  On Friday I went to a party for a guy I work with who was getting married and Saturday was my arranged introduction to my brother-in-law’s friend. 

 

The party on Friday was a spur of the moment thing.  When I came into work I saw signs saying where it was and that everyone was welcome so I decided to stop in on the way home.  It was fun, I really like most the people I work with and they seem to like me so I enjoyed being with in a social setting. 

 

I’ve mentioned that I am drinking again but I’m being very careful to practice moderation so I had a light beer.  I hate beer.  I hate the way is smells and the way it tastes.  I think I was basically using the beer bottle in my hand as a sort of a prop, something to show I was participating in the party. 

 

Part of the reason I went to the party was of course that I was hoping to get an opportunity to cozy up to long time crush Tycho (which I evilly enjoy doing from time to time despite the knowledge that he has an age appropriate girlfriend).  I talked to him a little but ended up having a pretty in-depth conversation with his roommate Hugo, who also works at the market.  Hugo was more or less drunk off his ass but a lot of the things he said really made an impact on me. 

 

A bit of background—A few days ago Hugo was strolling around the work place with his shirt unbuttoned to his naval inviting people to run their fingers through his chest hair (this is the sort of thing Hugo does).  When approached I said something like “Keep that thing away from me.  It’ll be six years in November since I’ve had sex and I can’t held accountable for my actions.” 

 

We ended up talking about this at the party, why it’s been no long, why I’ve only slept with two people in my life.  I gave my usual reasons—that I’m an ugly, undesirable freak and no one will ever love me.  Hugo’s reaction to this was very different than the usual responses I get.  He said that self-deprecation is just another form of narcissism.  I’ve always associated narcissism with self-love and therefore seen myself as the opposite of a narcissist but Hugo’s right.  Negative self-obsession is still self-obsession.  All I think about is me—how much I suck, how much I eat, how stupid and ugly and strange I am-- all me all the time. 

 

I’d never really looked at it that way before and honestly it did bring me down.  Accepting responsibility for my own unhappiness is not something I want to do.  I‘ve generally blamed my parents or all the bullying/abuse I went through when I was a kid.  I tried my usual whining about my upbringing with Hugo but once again he responded is a very different way than I’ve encountered before.  He told me that if these things were still holding me back I wasn’t being hard enough on myself.

 

Which is true.  It’s been a long time since I’ve really pushed myself to go against those internalized voices that make my life miserable.  I accept them, even give in to them.  I live my life as if all the things my mother said are true, as if I am as disgusting and pathetic as she always taught me I was. 

 

It was a lot to think about, maybe too much and I did feel sort of overwhelmed when I left the party.  Then on the way out I witnessed one of the more disturbing things I’ve ever seen.  One of the guys I work with is an active alcoholic.  He’s only 26 but he’s pretty far along, he’s already got that red flush heavy drinkers get and he’s been in a couple of serious accidents.  He was at the party.  Even though he’d had hernia surgery earlier that that day he was drinking a lot, showing his bandages, and handing out his prescription pain-killers.  By the time I left he was completely wasted.  I have honestly never seen anyone that gone and still conscious.  He was simultaneously flushed red and white the way my sister had been after her caesarian section.  Worst of all he was asking for more beer and his roommates were not only getting it for him but were holding the bottle up to his lips for him. 

 

It’s so horrible, to see someone doing that to themselves and not being able to do anything about it (I can’t help wondering if the people around me feel that way to a lesser degree when I start going on about how I need to lose weight…)

 

On Saturday my brother-in-law Dean and I were going to meet this guy he knew from his monster store days who had recently broken up with his girlfriend and really wanted to meet women.  Dean picked me up at my apartment so he could have a heart-warning reunion with my kitty who used to be his kitty before my two then year old nephew decided he really, really liked Kitty and started tangling with Kitty on a regular basis resulting in Kitty coming to live with me.  After the touching master and pet reunion we went to a nearby bar to wait for my prospective suitor. 

 

Who never showed up.  Or called. Apparently he didn’t want to meet women that badly after all. 

 

I didn’t really mind that much.  I had a good time drinking Merlot and talking with Dean about movies.  As I’d never met or even spoken to my prospective suitor I could hardly take his no-show personally.  Also I had the satisfaction of knowing I’d made and effort and put myself out there without all the awkwardness of actually meeting a stranger. 

 

Two late nights in a row is apparently more than enough to exhaust me.  Combined with the fact that I was working 6 days straight, an adjustment in medication and my monthly Pre-menstrual lethargy the next couple days were sort of difficult to get through however I managed to make it to work everyday whereas last month I called in sick so I think I’m gradually inching towards managing my life instead of just retreating into comfortable self-pity. 

Yesterday was really the first day of full on summer heat we’ve had this year.  I had appointments with both my psychiatrist and therapist.  Between the whole double-whammy treatment sessions and driving to Pilsen and back with the sun beating down on me it ended up being a really draining afternoon. 

 

The therapy session was difficult because it involved a lot of discussion of things that are way outside of my comfort zone at this point (though they weren’t always).  Things like how I need to try and make myself go to work even when I feel like I just can’t, looking for a new job and most daunting of all getting out once in a while and doing something fun or social. 

 

Very scary stuff given that for the past few months my comfort zone seems to involve staying in my apartment, doing a bit of useful stuff like writing and reading but mostly numbing myself by messing about on the internet, obsessing over what I eat and what a horrible, useless person I am and being lonely and miserable.  Just getting groceries, going to the Laundromat or returning library books seems to take a huge amount of planning and anxiety. 

 

Still, I’m going to try and make the effort to make things better.  I really wasn’t always this way.  In the past, I was willing to take risks and put myself out there—I was in that  writer’s group two years ago, I went to a book club for a while, I went to things like author appearances and poetry readings on a fairly regular basis, once upon a time I even dated. 

 

I already have my “fun” outing lined up for this week.  Tomorrow night my brother-in-law is going to be supervising an arranged meeting between myself and a friend of his from his monster store days who’s interested in meeting “weird girls who like weird movies.”  Given that I consider Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and I Spit on Your Grave to be cinematic masterpieces I suppose I qualify. 

 

I’m sort of nervous but I’m trying to keep things lite, treat this meeting casually—really, it’s no big deal and there’s nothing at stake.  If we hit if off fine, if not it got me out of my apartment for an evening in accordance with my therapeutic goals.  I don’t need to kill myself trying to impress this guy and I don’t need to make myself sick worrying about how things will go. 

I spent my day off going to see both my psychiatrist and my therapist. My brain is completely dead. I've been trying to write but ended up fucking about on-line instead and came upon one of those things that tells you what celebrity you look like. I did it for a few different photos. I don't know who half these people are but I seem to look like a lot of men.

( Sirius Black fangirls should take note who shows up the most often.... )