Saturday, May 2, 2009

All the Posts I'm Not Writing

Craig Arnold, a poet and professor from the University of Wyoming, is missing in Japan. Here is his webpage chronicling his first days in the country and his plans to visit a small volcanic island. There's a Facebook page supporting the rescue efforts.

My back is jacked again. Last night Randy was home at a decent hour for once this week and since May 1 is a special anniversary for us, it felt so sweet to talk and laugh over 30 Rock together that it got way too late too quick. The girls wanted donuts at 7:00 this morning. It's a beautiful morning but getting up and taking the girls to Dominicks took a huge effort of will. Mia found one of those grocery carts shaped out like a firetruck but when both the girls were inside and I tried to push the creaking wreck, my back said, "that was a mistake" and I had to get the girls out and ask Shaggy the Bagboy to haul the tank out of the entranceway.

The great Kim Moldofsky and I are hosting a brunch for the Chicago Moms Blog contributors at the end of May. Just got news my in-laws will be visiting the week before. I'll have one day in between to recover and rally. Raise your hand if you understand this.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's film Holy Mountain is showing tonight at Facets as part of their Midnight Movie lecture series. The trailer has some really great visuals that work so hard at blowing your mind, you nearly have to laugh. I did laugh, then recognized a cash-burning scene that I didn't initially know was an homage in the MGMT video, "Time To Pretend" the song that I obsessed over all last summer. The Jodorowsky trailer sent me back to Youtube to watch "Time to Pretend" again and once again get swept away with suffocating waves of ineffable longing and nostalgia that seems the leavings of a larger grief.

Spring can really hang you up the most. Another Saturday morning in Wilmette, the neighbor playing bongos and Mommy sobbing over the girl she was.

The two haunting and strange films Natasha Redgrave made in 1987 and 1988, The Kindness of Strangers and The Handmaid's Tale. The awful sadness on Vanessa Redgrave's face as she departed the hospital where her daughter lay dying. The raw but entirely artful grief she had showed us in Camelot ("So often in the past, Arthur, I would look in your eyes and I would find there forgiveness. Perhaps one day in the future it shall be there again. But now I won't be with you. I won't see it.") And Julia. And If These Walls Could Talk. The wish that life could have treated her more kindly.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks, friend, for spreading the word on Craig. You're a dear. I'm so sorry about your back, and I know precisely the carts you're talking about. J has been carrying on a love affair with the fire truck cart for some time now.

Kim Moldofsky said...

Did you, the woman who has a larger vocabulary and better way with words than anyone I know refer to me as "the great?" Or were you buttering me up to so I'd step up to the plate and assure you I will gladly do what I need to do to make our brunch a wild success? ;-)

It's going to be fabulous. You secured a great location and we have a superb group of invitees. Let's talk and coordinate oh, and send out that official invite.