Both literary giants -- Thomas Wolfe and Thornton Wilder -- reached the same conclusion about the same time during the Great Depression. You can't go home again! Not really. Not safely.
In "Look Homeward Angel" Wolfe captured for all time how the reality of Then is unachievable ever again. In "Our Town," Wilder's Emily tries from her grave in the third act, only to taste the bitter ashes re-captured time can mean. Seems the sentimentalists and memorialists among us should take heed.
But I didn't.
More correctly, I couldn't as I drove through my old neighborhood on the far west side of Chicago. Where searching for your best memories is a hunt that can only take place with your heart, not your eyes. The sights you lived are long gone. The canopy of elms caressing quiet side streets...the cozy red brick bungalows and white frame houses...the within-a-walk mom & pop stores...the churches, the schools, the movie houses, the big parks and little prairies...the lilac and peony bushes at every corner...the aproned mothers putting out laundry in their back yards...the milkman and iceman easing down the alleys in his horse drawn wagon...the unlocked front doors and over-the-fence gossiping ...and yes the morning and afternoon newspaper and mail deliveries from folks you knew by name.
All gone.
And yet as I parked for a silent while in front of my old home, I thought I could still hear the clink of teacups Grandma would fill along with her blueberry muffins whenever she visited. I could still smell the zing of Mom's pasta dishes waiting for Dad every night at 6 when he came home from his office. I could -- I'm sure of it! -- feel the cushion of love and protection that swaddled my younger brother and me during the bite of the Depression and later the wounds of the War.
Home here was safety. Security. A gentle castle-fortress against the slings and arrows of a cruel time in America to which I would flee to in a moment. Wolfe's hero couldn't. Wilder's heroine failed. But as I sat there in the 2012 gray reality of aging homes and locked doors, somehow I could experience everything in the sepia tones of my youth. When inside this shuttered home there was still a fantasy of fun...laughter...homework...bills...and lives that time has tried its best to fade out.
But has failed magnificently.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
ADAM IS BACK, BUT THIS TIME JULIE ROBERTS AIN'T TAKING THE RAP
A warning to today's woman -- there's another Adam out there sorta putting you down!
Here's the deal. Psychologist Adam Pazda of the University of Rochester has been researching the effects of the color scarlet worn by women. He reports in ScienceNow.org that when a woman wears reds and especially scarlets, men assume she is communicating an interest in intercourse. Why? "When female chimps achieve peak fertility, a rush of estrogen opens up their blood vessels, flushing their faces and giving males the signal that it's time to mate...."
I don't know a lot about our primate origins, but this Adam seems to suggest they are still pretty active here in the 21st C. He may be right. Darn if a great many of his fellow researchers don't also suggest we're only a short evolutionary step away from said origins. Making you wonder if thousands of years of great architecture, music, literature, art and honorable pursuits by our species pretty much all comes down to merely working out our evolutionary destiny.
If that's what we're discovering, perhaps our species had best get used to it. Being just another species on this just another of a billion planets. And while I suppose I can learn to adjust, I'm having real trouble adjusting to Disney's newest hit "Mirror Mirror." In this re-make of the Grimm fairy tale of Snow White, Disney has not only portrayed the cute seven dwarfs in the more primitive nature of the original, he's struck a cruel evolutionary blow to my gender.
Mind you, I haven't seen the film yet, but alas the reviews report Disney knocks Prince Charming off his great white charger. In other words, sassy Snow White doesn't really need him -- or any other Adam -- to save her. She pretty much does it herself!
Great theme for today's independent women. But what about Adams like me? Who've always thought, yes, we could be some fair damsel's Prince Charming? Now, however, we're being told: Forget it, zippy, the gals in scarlet probably aren't wooing you; probably they're laughing at you!
Here's the deal. Psychologist Adam Pazda of the University of Rochester has been researching the effects of the color scarlet worn by women. He reports in ScienceNow.org that when a woman wears reds and especially scarlets, men assume she is communicating an interest in intercourse. Why? "When female chimps achieve peak fertility, a rush of estrogen opens up their blood vessels, flushing their faces and giving males the signal that it's time to mate...."
I don't know a lot about our primate origins, but this Adam seems to suggest they are still pretty active here in the 21st C. He may be right. Darn if a great many of his fellow researchers don't also suggest we're only a short evolutionary step away from said origins. Making you wonder if thousands of years of great architecture, music, literature, art and honorable pursuits by our species pretty much all comes down to merely working out our evolutionary destiny.
If that's what we're discovering, perhaps our species had best get used to it. Being just another species on this just another of a billion planets. And while I suppose I can learn to adjust, I'm having real trouble adjusting to Disney's newest hit "Mirror Mirror." In this re-make of the Grimm fairy tale of Snow White, Disney has not only portrayed the cute seven dwarfs in the more primitive nature of the original, he's struck a cruel evolutionary blow to my gender.
Mind you, I haven't seen the film yet, but alas the reviews report Disney knocks Prince Charming off his great white charger. In other words, sassy Snow White doesn't really need him -- or any other Adam -- to save her. She pretty much does it herself!
Great theme for today's independent women. But what about Adams like me? Who've always thought, yes, we could be some fair damsel's Prince Charming? Now, however, we're being told: Forget it, zippy, the gals in scarlet probably aren't wooing you; probably they're laughing at you!
Thursday, March 29, 2012
LIGHTS..! CAMERA..! BUT PLEASE THIS TIME NO ACTION..!
Progress is a wonderful thing. And yet like everything else in life, it doesn't walk a straight line. On its way from A to Z there are a great many little letters you didn't expect to find in the alphabet of time. Take photography. It was developed in the 19th C...progressed to moving pictures in the 20th...but now here in the 21st maybe it's time to stop some of the action!
From Hollywood to television to our ubiquitous home videocams, everything now is in action. Busy, intense action. But here's the thing. The visuality of action may be great for experiencing what's happening; but lousy for examining what just happened. There for an instant, then it's not!
No way today's society will ever stop the action. But there still IS the still camera. And all those magnificent still candids which capture and freeze their subjects in time forever. As with paintings and murals, here we can examine, explore, excite to the drama of this particular moment. Its venue... composition...faces...oh and especially its eyes and hands which tell us so very much not otherwise as noticed in film or video.
There are legions of photographic exhibits and collections. But I'm thinking an even more accessible use of our time. The daily newspaper. Why not take the time to study these photographic moments in time. The joy of victory...the passion of purpose...the moment of sorrow...the instant of panic... especially the unguarded splices of time in which the leader or celebrity is caught and caged inside a frame which our memories will never be able to forget.
Better even than the exhibit or the newspaper, why not those neat but dusty old family photo albums? Tucked inside those covers -- if only you can remember where you ticked them -- sleep hundreds of moments-in-time that probably go back generations. Want to get in touch with those faces? those lives? those parts of your existence? Grab a cup of tea, and sit back to enjoy your favorites. It's something every person should do before someone does it for you at the wake.
And every nation too! It's why we require our kids to take history. Traveling through the history of their country should be one of the most consequential collections of moments they'll ever have....
From Hollywood to television to our ubiquitous home videocams, everything now is in action. Busy, intense action. But here's the thing. The visuality of action may be great for experiencing what's happening; but lousy for examining what just happened. There for an instant, then it's not!
No way today's society will ever stop the action. But there still IS the still camera. And all those magnificent still candids which capture and freeze their subjects in time forever. As with paintings and murals, here we can examine, explore, excite to the drama of this particular moment. Its venue... composition...faces...oh and especially its eyes and hands which tell us so very much not otherwise as noticed in film or video.
There are legions of photographic exhibits and collections. But I'm thinking an even more accessible use of our time. The daily newspaper. Why not take the time to study these photographic moments in time. The joy of victory...the passion of purpose...the moment of sorrow...the instant of panic... especially the unguarded splices of time in which the leader or celebrity is caught and caged inside a frame which our memories will never be able to forget.
Better even than the exhibit or the newspaper, why not those neat but dusty old family photo albums? Tucked inside those covers -- if only you can remember where you ticked them -- sleep hundreds of moments-in-time that probably go back generations. Want to get in touch with those faces? those lives? those parts of your existence? Grab a cup of tea, and sit back to enjoy your favorites. It's something every person should do before someone does it for you at the wake.
And every nation too! It's why we require our kids to take history. Traveling through the history of their country should be one of the most consequential collections of moments they'll ever have....
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
ANXIETY ATTACKS? EVERY HEADLINE, EVERY BROADCAST, EVERY DAY!
Ever since Sophomore Philosophy, I find myself quoting philosophers. It's cool, it's academic, even if it is a tad sophomoric. But sometimes these fellas really nailed it. Take my favorite Dane, Kierkegaard: "Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate."
Speaking for a few hundred million of us, I'm anxious. About a lot of things. Whether in the right way or not is something else that makes me anxious. In no particular order, these are among my anxieties. You may recognize a few. Frankly I hope so, for I don't relish wallowing in anxiety all alone:
* I am anxious about the loss of predictability in my world. At one time there were certain absolutes I could count on. God is in charge [now we're told he never was!]...We're living in a post-racism America [instead the number of white militia groups has jumped from almost none to almost 1300 since the 2008 election!]...After 65 we can retire [instead almost 20% of the workforce are seniors!] ...Detroit was calamity city [now Miami and others are passing it up in calamitous fashion!]...another absolute: My lilacs bloom for Mothers Day [so why are they already starting in March!]
* I am anxious about the won't-go-away sexism which persists in pretending 53% of the population is still second class status. How so? In a hundred different ways, the latest the silliest. The prestigious European Chess Union has just introduced a dress code that bans female players from plunging necklines [seems the boys just won't ever let go of that Eve thing!]
* I am anxious about the drums of war whose beat has never stopped since the day Cain bumped off Abel [families and countries have carried on grudges ever since!]
Anxiety breeds fear and fear can become terror. One of the reasons so many of us muffle our terrors in the anesthesia of drink, drugs, spectator sports, and one of history's sickest displays of distraction since the old Roman Colosseum: TV Reality Shows. The people and the behaviors on these 60-minute spectacles instantiate those nether regions of our psyches which have made psychotherapy as important to today's anxiety-ridden humanity as castle-moats were a thousand years ago.
My therapist would agree. For instance, right now he's anxious that I pay my over due invoice.
Speaking for a few hundred million of us, I'm anxious. About a lot of things. Whether in the right way or not is something else that makes me anxious. In no particular order, these are among my anxieties. You may recognize a few. Frankly I hope so, for I don't relish wallowing in anxiety all alone:
* I am anxious about the loss of predictability in my world. At one time there were certain absolutes I could count on. God is in charge [now we're told he never was!]...We're living in a post-racism America [instead the number of white militia groups has jumped from almost none to almost 1300 since the 2008 election!]...After 65 we can retire [instead almost 20% of the workforce are seniors!] ...Detroit was calamity city [now Miami and others are passing it up in calamitous fashion!]...another absolute: My lilacs bloom for Mothers Day [so why are they already starting in March!]
* I am anxious about the won't-go-away sexism which persists in pretending 53% of the population is still second class status. How so? In a hundred different ways, the latest the silliest. The prestigious European Chess Union has just introduced a dress code that bans female players from plunging necklines [seems the boys just won't ever let go of that Eve thing!]
* I am anxious about the drums of war whose beat has never stopped since the day Cain bumped off Abel [families and countries have carried on grudges ever since!]
Anxiety breeds fear and fear can become terror. One of the reasons so many of us muffle our terrors in the anesthesia of drink, drugs, spectator sports, and one of history's sickest displays of distraction since the old Roman Colosseum: TV Reality Shows. The people and the behaviors on these 60-minute spectacles instantiate those nether regions of our psyches which have made psychotherapy as important to today's anxiety-ridden humanity as castle-moats were a thousand years ago.
My therapist would agree. For instance, right now he's anxious that I pay my over due invoice.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
TODAY'S BIGGEST FRAUDS YOU CAN WEAR BUT CAN'T AFFORD
Rolex...Piaget....Monet...Baum & Mercier. Anyone can wear them, but at up to $75,000 each, not many of us can afford them. Or should even want to. Because, you see, they are arguably the biggest frauds sparkling on today's richest wrists.
If you have to ask why a fraud, no need reading the rest of this. It's this watch wearer's modest opinion the fraud comes from all that these dashing digits and dials promise you. I mean, yeah they can tell you the time. But sundials can do that. At these prices, these pretentious baubles should be able to do something more. A lot more.
But they can't.
I ask you -- can they stop time? reverse time? fast forward time? spin time so you and I can affect time? I think not. So what's that extra $74,500 buying us?
When men flash their Rolex's, it strikes me the same way they showcase their 150 mph sport scars that must be driven on 75 mph roadways. Or the sensational rock concert singer who intoxicates their audience only to leave the building without autographs. Or what about the drinks and drugs and campaigners who woo and wow us with an ecstasy of promises they never really deliver.
Today's expensive scholars in the fields of psychology and neurobiology also appear to promise more than they deliver. They try brilliantly. But in the end what they provide us is only more and more information about less and less. By brilliantly understanding more and more about our physiological parts, may not this allow us to ignore the whole that is more than the some of our parts? I was thinking that when scanning the latest study from Oxford researchers examining the way Popranolol may be able to "cure racism by affecting specific nerve circuits in the brain."
Back to Rolex and the gang. Time, Messrs Rolex, is such a fragile and at the same time mysterious cosmic power, perhaps you might reconsider your considerable talents. Try coming up with a watch that, on the hour, plays another passage from one of the world's Great Books. You know, those authors who struggled just as brilliantly to fathom as well as to tell time....
If you have to ask why a fraud, no need reading the rest of this. It's this watch wearer's modest opinion the fraud comes from all that these dashing digits and dials promise you. I mean, yeah they can tell you the time. But sundials can do that. At these prices, these pretentious baubles should be able to do something more. A lot more.
But they can't.
I ask you -- can they stop time? reverse time? fast forward time? spin time so you and I can affect time? I think not. So what's that extra $74,500 buying us?
When men flash their Rolex's, it strikes me the same way they showcase their 150 mph sport scars that must be driven on 75 mph roadways. Or the sensational rock concert singer who intoxicates their audience only to leave the building without autographs. Or what about the drinks and drugs and campaigners who woo and wow us with an ecstasy of promises they never really deliver.
Today's expensive scholars in the fields of psychology and neurobiology also appear to promise more than they deliver. They try brilliantly. But in the end what they provide us is only more and more information about less and less. By brilliantly understanding more and more about our physiological parts, may not this allow us to ignore the whole that is more than the some of our parts? I was thinking that when scanning the latest study from Oxford researchers examining the way Popranolol may be able to "cure racism by affecting specific nerve circuits in the brain."
Back to Rolex and the gang. Time, Messrs Rolex, is such a fragile and at the same time mysterious cosmic power, perhaps you might reconsider your considerable talents. Try coming up with a watch that, on the hour, plays another passage from one of the world's Great Books. You know, those authors who struggled just as brilliantly to fathom as well as to tell time....
TODAY'S BIGGEST FRAUDS YOU CAN WEAR BUT CAN'T AFFORD
Rolex...Piaget....Monet...Baum & Mercier. Anyone can wear them, but at up to $75,000 each, not many of us can afford them. Or should even want to. Because, you see, they are arguably the biggest frauds sparkling on today's richest wrists.
If you have to ask why a fraud, no need reading the rest of this. It's this watch wearer's modest opinion the fraud comes from all that these dashing digits and dials promise you. I mean, yeah they can tell you the time. But sundials can do that. At these prices, these pretentious baubles should be able to do something more. A lot more.
But they can't.
I ask you -- can they stop time? reverse time? fast forward time? spin time so you and I can affect time? I think not. So what's that extra $74,500 buying us?
When men flash their Rolex's, it strikes me the same way they showcase their 150 mph sport scars that must be driven on 75 mph roadways. Or the sensational rock concert singer who intoxicates their audience only to leave the building without autographs. Or what about the drinks and drugs and campaigners who woo and wow us with an ecstasy of promises they never really deliver.
Today's expensive scholars in the fields of psychology and neurobiology also appear to promise more than they deliver. They try brilliantly. But in the end what they provide us is only more and more information about less and less. By brilliantly understanding more and more about our physiological parts, may not this allow us to ignore the whole that is more than the some of our parts? I was thinking that when scanning the latest study from Oxford researchers examining the way Popranolol may be able to "cure racism by affecting specific nerve circuits in the brain."
Back to Rolex and the gang. Time, Messrs Rolex, is such a fragile and at the same time mysterious cosmic power, perhaps you might reconsider your considerable talents. Try coming up with a watch that, on the hour, plays another passage from one of the world's Great Books. You know, those authors who struggled just as brilliantly to fathom as well as to tell time....
If you have to ask why a fraud, no need reading the rest of this. It's this watch wearer's modest opinion the fraud comes from all that these dashing digits and dials promise you. I mean, yeah they can tell you the time. But sundials can do that. At these prices, these pretentious baubles should be able to do something more. A lot more.
But they can't.
I ask you -- can they stop time? reverse time? fast forward time? spin time so you and I can affect time? I think not. So what's that extra $74,500 buying us?
When men flash their Rolex's, it strikes me the same way they showcase their 150 mph sport scars that must be driven on 75 mph roadways. Or the sensational rock concert singer who intoxicates their audience only to leave the building without autographs. Or what about the drinks and drugs and campaigners who woo and wow us with an ecstasy of promises they never really deliver.
Today's expensive scholars in the fields of psychology and neurobiology also appear to promise more than they deliver. They try brilliantly. But in the end what they provide us is only more and more information about less and less. By brilliantly understanding more and more about our physiological parts, may not this allow us to ignore the whole that is more than the some of our parts? I was thinking that when scanning the latest study from Oxford researchers examining the way Popranolol may be able to "cure racism by affecting specific nerve circuits in the brain."
Back to Rolex and the gang. Time, Messrs Rolex, is such a fragile and at the same time mysterious cosmic power, perhaps you might reconsider your considerable talents. Try coming up with a watch that, on the hour, plays another passage from one of the world's Great Books. You know, those authors who struggled just as brilliantly to fathom as well as to tell time....
Monday, March 26, 2012
WHAT'S THE NEW HIT "HUNGER GAMES" REALLY HUNGERING FOR?
"Hunger Games" obviously must be a great work of art. The proof is in its record-breaking receipts this weekend. That IS the way we judge such matters, isn't it?
Without disdainfully dismissing the question with tales of great artists who have died penniless, let's consider for a moment why cinema such as Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and The Matrix are ringing up such hot ticket sales. Especially with the young. Its noun "hunger" is for me really a verb which cracks the question wide open. Modern western society hungers -- desperately so -- for someones and somethings to help fill that aching, empty feeling in our collective gut.
Empty gut in the midst of such glorious glut...? How can that be...?
Well, here's how. Man really does not live by bread alone. We need more. Want more. Seek more. The proof is in the sour pudding of so many rich and successful celebrities looking for fresh fulfillment from everything from fast cars to fast women to faraway gurus. They -- we -- are always looking for something. The irony is, always just after we have at long last "have everything."
What's this sad, old plot have to do with today's bright, new cinema? Damn near everything, because these film fantasies sweep us up into the one thing our modern scientific age has taken away: Magic! The magic of wonder and power and heroics and destinies so beyond our own Earth bound limitations that they allow us long forbidden thoughts of gods and immortality and eternal rewards.
Religious cynics like Bill Maher like to scoff: "Crazy dreams by herds of illiterate sheep herders from thousands of years ago!" You just may have a point, Bill. Because, you see, people have always had crazy dreams of something more to their existence than just their existence. To some of us, it seems that magic apparently still sells tickets. And, more important, still lights up hearts.
Without disdainfully dismissing the question with tales of great artists who have died penniless, let's consider for a moment why cinema such as Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and The Matrix are ringing up such hot ticket sales. Especially with the young. Its noun "hunger" is for me really a verb which cracks the question wide open. Modern western society hungers -- desperately so -- for someones and somethings to help fill that aching, empty feeling in our collective gut.
Empty gut in the midst of such glorious glut...? How can that be...?
Well, here's how. Man really does not live by bread alone. We need more. Want more. Seek more. The proof is in the sour pudding of so many rich and successful celebrities looking for fresh fulfillment from everything from fast cars to fast women to faraway gurus. They -- we -- are always looking for something. The irony is, always just after we have at long last "have everything."
What's this sad, old plot have to do with today's bright, new cinema? Damn near everything, because these film fantasies sweep us up into the one thing our modern scientific age has taken away: Magic! The magic of wonder and power and heroics and destinies so beyond our own Earth bound limitations that they allow us long forbidden thoughts of gods and immortality and eternal rewards.
Religious cynics like Bill Maher like to scoff: "Crazy dreams by herds of illiterate sheep herders from thousands of years ago!" You just may have a point, Bill. Because, you see, people have always had crazy dreams of something more to their existence than just their existence. To some of us, it seems that magic apparently still sells tickets. And, more important, still lights up hearts.
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