Franz Wright reading

I just got home from listening to poet Franz Wright read and talk. A couple days ago I got his book God's Silence (2006) and read it straight through in two sittings. I started out loving it. There are precious tweaks of words and meaning in virtually every poem. But eventually I got tired of reading mostly about his own pain and depression, to the point that I almost didn't go tonight. I'm glad I did. He won me back, with the caveat that one shouldn't read too many of his poems in one sitting but just nibble there now and again. He is an odd-looking man who walks hunched over as if every step hurts. His face is puffy and his eyes squinty (until he widens them when making a strong point), like he doesn't go out much. His reading voice is strong and just slow enough, and he tells little side-stories behind the poems that enrich them for us. Definitely an odd duck who has never quite decided to live life and has almost stopped, probably more than once, and who has likely gone through some hells that I don't know about along the way.

Thanks for staying, Franz. You have a kind and honest soul, just warped enough to shed light into life's dark corners, from angles we mostly don't see from ourselves.

So, now I'll read the book that won him the Pulitzer, Walking to Martha's Vineyard (2004).

BZZZZZZTTTTTCHHHHH!

That's the sound of my brain fizzling and sizzling when I tried to migrate my blog from its current home to Blogger's home (can't FTP any longer to the server in my son's basement in Portland). It's supposed to be quite simple. But geeks just don't speak non-geek. Within a minute, I was frozen. What's a CNAME? Example provided is "www." Oh, I don't have that www-thing. Do I need it? Do I need to change my URL? (I thought I was educated knowing what "URL" means.) The form has a blank for "New URL." Can I just write the same one? These are simple questions, but those who write the instructions don't even know they are out there, crying. I couldn't even take the first itty-bitty step on my own, even after watching the video, which right away used three or four terms completely alien to my experience.

I am so fucking lucky I have a son who knows all this shit and will help this weekend when I visit. What happens to all the people, enjoying their blogs up to now without need-to-know, faced with uninstructive instructions?

I lied

Sorry, I didn't do it yet (the blog move thing). Stuff piled up on me, like as usual this month. Today. I'll do it today.

My ol' electric Braun filter drip coffeemaker finally kicked the bucket, so I drug out a (also old) French press I'd for some reason been annoyed at. By gum, the coffee IS better. (I knew that, really I did.) But I don't much like having to mess around with yucky (and tending to fly around unexpectedly) coffee grounds. I like the neat package of coffee grounds held in a filter that I can transfer to the garbage, fingertips touching paper only. This year, I don't seem to mind the grounds as much. Then there is the issue of not staying quite hot enough. Oh, well.

Two films from the Scottsdale Film Festival stand out in my memory, so before I forget... "Mother and Child" was a film about adoption, which almost put me off, but Annette Bening and Samuel L. Jackson are too good to miss. Bening's character had given birth at 14 and never recovered from giving up the baby at her mother's insistence (neither had her mother), and the daughter, well, I won't give it away. Bening is just such a fine actress I can hardly bear for any movie she's in to be over. It's spooky how she grabs my psyche. And Jackson, well, it's more like fond affection. A black couple wanting to adopt is the third strand of the story. All three strands eventually interconnect... in unexpected ways. It's a good story.

The other favorite was "Lovely Still." The writer/director came out before and after, to introduce it and to answer questions. Omigod, he was barely out of diapers! The film starred Martin Landau and Ellen Burstyn. What miracle got these two stars into the hands of a baby? Talent, apparently. It's a story of aging and romance and family with an odd twist, heart-twisting and almost requires a second viewing to see how he did it.

Aerobics class last night was brutal, as usual -- half-hour of step, then some weights & ab work. What is this fetish with balls and half-balls? Oh, I know, they increase the effectiveness of ab/core work, which for somebody like me means they make it so intense I just can't do it. Or, well, I do it briefly then collapse in a lovely back-curve over the ball (or bosu, the half-ball) feeling like surely I will die. Sometimes this just makes me stubborn, determined. Other times it makes me feel like shit. But I keep coming back. I had been improving, but skipped a class last week for films, backslid. Next week will be better.

Blog moving again

Blogger.com tells me I have to move my blog again. If I am interpreting things correctly (which often I do not), the URL should still be the same and this whole thing may actually be invisible to my beloved readers. I hope so. I'll try it tonight.

Dental update: The flawed assistant to my marvelous dentist built and installed my temporary crowns, with the result that eating was so aggravating over the weekend I lost two pounds. Felt like somebody had jammed a stick between my upper and lower teeth, and my poor overworked TMJ jaw ached like hell feeling propped open when visibly closed. She (the assistant) was hurried, impatient, and rude. I was too wiped out from all the numbing and grinding to be appropriately vocal when interrupted and negated while trying to voice concerns about my jaws not knowing which position to use while biting down into the gummy trays. Later, I heard her mumbling to herself about something being too high, and that was probably the moment I should have stood up and demanded intervention. By then I was too intimidated to do so. (I am too easily intimidated!). On the advice of the friend to referred me there, I called on Monday to describe my aggravation and was quickly whisked in (today) to have them ground down. This was done by a different assistant, and she was wonderful. I am so happy now. Today, I ate lunch "out" and had my first all-round chewing experience in days! (Hope I don't gain the weight back.)

More dental events today: Saw a periodontist to evaluate my scary upper left quadrant and learned that two teeth will have to be pulled. More lectures about gum bacteria going systemic and impinging on one's general health in multisystem assaults... Dum-da-dum-dum! Okay, okay, I give up. Yank 'em out, and give me implants. No teeth in a jar overnight for me. June. I can hardly wait. Good (backup) pain drugs promised.

I got a boost today in poetry class. This class studies aspects of poetic form, and we had an assignment to manipulate time without altering the poem's length: 2 poems, 20 lines each, keeping line lengths closely similar also, such that in the same (more-or-less) volume of words, one poem covers 3 seconds of time, the other 3 days. I, feeling ass-bitten by certain for-the- time-being private issues (nothing remains private for long, you are hissing), got a little cranky and outspoken in these poems and felt a hell of a lot better for it. I was very surprised (as in this class our poems are never evaluated or critiqued except for the particular point of the assignment) when the professor, on his way out the door, said that he really liked my poems!!! Inside, I was doing a little dance; outside, I grinned and thanked him. I'm so pleased with myself that I'm going to read those two at the open mike poetry session tonight. I'd better get busy poking at them a little.

Payback day & Herzog stuff

Today I'm getting payback for all the years I allowed to pass without seeing a dentist. You see, every year my employer went bargain shopping, and when they got a better (i.e. cheaper) deal for employee insurance, I usually had to change dentists. I hate to change dentists. Each new dentist poo-poos my claims to sensitivity and has to first hurt me before agreeing to give me pain shots prior to cleaning my teeth. When I finally get all settled into a regular maintenance program, one of the following eventually happens: My dentist refuses to accept my dental insurance any longer because they are so slow to pay, or the insurance is changed again to a dental plan my current dentist does not accept. Finally I just threw in the towel, waited so long to find a new dentist that I let about seven years go by, maybe more. For somebody like me with periodontal disease, that's a really bad idea.

Then I retired, and I let it go even longer, but now, thanks to a recommendation from a friend, here I am now with a fine, friendly, considerate, and very high-tech dentist to fix all my accumulated problems. First we attacked the gums. In all the years I've been absent, gum technology has really advanced. I had deep pockets, lots of 6's and 7's, so the dental hygienist got to work cleaning the teeth, scraping the roots, lasering to seal the bleeding pockets, and sent me home with a fierce prescription antibiotic rinse. I obeyed orders, and a month later most of my pockets were 2's and 3's and the only place still bleeding was my one worst gum area around a root canal, a really deep one where bacteria have gone deep and built condos. Go figure. That has never happened to me before, that much reduction of pockets and bleeding.

Then for today we scheduled a massive do-over: replace a leaking crown, two new crowns, two three-quarter crowns, and seven new and replacement fillings. This dentist is speedy and efficient, and pain control was excellent. I'm reeling from todays head job, sat around all day and night watching TV shows and reading Roger Ebert's blog -- fascinating blog entry (April 5) including video clips of Werner Herzog talking about a new film for which he maneuvered permission to enter and film in one of the sealed caves in France with 32,000-year-old paintings. There's also a wonderful short film about a plastic bag, directed by Ramin Bahrani, narration by Werner Herzog. The narration is so soulful and sweet, from the bag's mystified point of view, and the video is startlingly moving and beautiful. [Over there on the lower right is a link to the blog.]

My jaw still feels like a brick, so I'll get some sleep.

Films, "The Reader"

Ah, so Anthony Lane (New Yorker, 3/29) not only despises "Chloe" but "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" as well. Pooh on him. He hates Larsson's left wingity, clearly, and Lisbeth Salander swoops right over his head and he can't catch her, not even in print.

Last night "The Reader" was on TV and I miraculously noticed it at the exact time it started instead of halfway through. I was deeply moved, loved that film. It reminded me how marvelous is Kate Winslet. When "Titanic" came out, I refused to go see it (because it was way too romantic and insanely popular), and still haven't seen it, and because she starred in it, I didn't like her either, even though I'd never seen her. (I can be stupid sometimes.) Then she was in a few films I had to see, because they were wonderful films ("Revolutionary Road" in particular), or happened to see, and grudgingly I've outgrown my original prejudice to admire her extremely. I think maybe "The Reader" is her best because her character is so not beautiful, so not romantic, so flawed, and so tough yet vulnerable. The moral dilemmas in the film are harsh, and there are no resolutions or apologies. This is unusual for an American film. No obligatory happy ending, just a greater level of understanding and a drop of compassion.

I'm in a bad mood today. It's getting warm, and I have a mouthful of expensive dental work next week, and I'm trying to find all the documentation I need for taxes (excavating the mounds on my desks). Blah!

Chloe & yard work

I finally got my ass out of my chair and went to a movie this weekend. "Chloe" didn't get rated very high on Rotten Tomatoes, but I found Ebert's comments intriguing, so I went. Atom Egoyan's films are always interesting, unique, and sexually/erotically aimed at an unusual angle. The title role is played by the actress who does the rebellious daughter on "Big Love," the wacky Mormon TV series that explores the polygamy issue on many levels and manages to leave me bug-eyed so often I can't stop watching. What a bunch of weirdo characters! Anyway, Amanda Sayfried goes deeper in "Chloe," and she's very good at it. She's one to keep an eye on. Her face is a constantly shifting silent screen. The Liam Neeson & Julianne Moore characters have a marriage that's floundering a bit, and by the way, their faces are equally expressive silent talkers, but I'm used to them & have loved them longtime. Sayfried is an emerging sparkler, and it'll be interesting to see what else she does. Egoyan manages to tangle her with both partners and their son, each for different motive. It's a powerful film, though the ending is not as satisfying as the rest of it. It seemed like an easy way out.

Friday through Sunday, I tackled the front yard, which had gotten to the point where "hayfield" seemed a fitting descriptor. Mind, it's supposed to be gravel, but ecological succession fueled by unusual amounts of rain had gotten way out of control. I am so sick of hiring self-proclaimed yard workers who won't deign to bend over and can't tell one plant from another. I did it myself, hands only, no machines, only a forked weed lever in areas where the dirt is hard to get roots out of. All this exercise I've been getting lately has made me strong enough, finally, to get the job done. I left intact the beautiful yellow-orange composites that have spread from somewhere to occupy the majority of yards in my neighborhood, bringing smiles and gladness to more than just me or they'd be gone by now. As more rain is coming this week, they say, these desirables may get to flourish a bit longer before drought sets in. A couple of lupines have also survived from what used to be a much larger population that I encouraged years ago before giving up and turning the yard over to mindless machines and poisons.

Did I mention I didn't get accepted into the low-residence poetry MFA program I applied to? I was glum for a weekend. I'm over it. I'll start earlier, do more research, and apply to several different places next year. I've sent poems off to three journals and so far been rejected by two of them. That's all right. I'm a beginner, and I aimed high. I'll follow up with slightly more humble efforts until I find my level.

Visit to Boyce Thompson Arboretum

We (Lady and I) drove an hour to get there (60 miles east on hwy 60), walked an hour and a half, then drove an hour plus to get home in rush hour traffic (because I never time things right). Beautiful day, flowers in bloom, birds singing, and one butterfly flitting. Yeah, it was worth it. We followed the Main Trail Loop, deviating to the High Trail for the last half mile (very slightly rugged with inclines & nice views). So many people! Not exactly a wilderness trip.

Perched high on a "lava ledge" is a nice house with a weird name: Picket Post House. According to an article in the Arizona Republic (May 11, 2009), "Picket Post House is named for a mountain south of the mansion which hosted an Army encampment during attempts to quell Apache raids on settlers and miners." Damn. An awful lot of the signage & historical exhibits in beautiful parts of Arizona refers to this history of grinding Apaches into the dust. The best example I've seen is the Chiricauhua National Monument, which is rugged enough that Geronimo and Cochise were able to hold off their eventual conquerors longer than anyone else. A fog of sorrow cloaks this land. Makes me queasy. Anyhow, here's my photo of rich Col. Thompson's former house, from which he could look down upon his collection of desert plants from all over the world and Queen Creek. His arboretum and finally the house ended up in state hands. We can enjoy it, with or without pangs of guilt and regret for all the suffering required to make it available to us.