…Canada entered the Second World War.
A propos, please visit my other website.
Timely Words
When Extreme Left Meets Extreme Right…
…it’s always rather horrifying. One place they meet is anti-Semitism. Another — and I’m noticing it a lot during this American election campaign — is the spot at which dwell these very bizarre Vladimir Putin/Aggressive Russia apologists.
I suspect the leftists who make excuses for Russia these days miss what they view as the halcyon days of the USSR (I think of Stephen Cohen here); those on the right? Maybe they just like strong-arm tactics.
At any rate, this American election cycle is massively depressing.
Colorado, 2006: Wolf and Deer
From 2006, when I was at a conference in Colorado Springs. (Neither shot is great, but they are associated with fond memories.) I ducked out of most of the conference when I found out there was a wolf preserve nearby. I remember how fast they moved, and how hard it was to get a shot. This blessed fellow stopped for about three seconds, though, and looked in my general direction.
This was taken from a taxi. The driver knew I loved animals (we had been chatting) and he slowed down ever so briefly when he spotted these two on the side of the road.
September 1…
…1939
It’s always the right time for this poem, though I have always disagreed that “we must love one another or die.” (LBJ used that imagery frequently.) I don’t think that is so. I think “love” is not the only alternative to killing each other. That said, I would consider my life’s purpose fulfilled were I able to write something this beautiful.
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
‘I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,’
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Family Portrait
Dubonnet
Idea for a Canadian Horror Story
Submitted for your approval: a Canadian woman goes abroad for the first time in her life. She is excited to visit Paris, London and Rome and brings her fancy camera with her. But when she downloads all the photographs she has taken, she notices that Justin Trudeau appears in the background of each and every one. He is peeking out from under the Arc de Triomphe; he is brushing snow from his hair at the foot of the Matterhorn; he is biting into a Margherita pizza at a popular lunch spot in Naples. At each site he is dressed appropriately for the place and the weather.
It is horrifying.
The woman goes to the prime minister’s web page to check his official schedule and sees that for the duration of her trip, he was in Canada. She even checks news sites and discovers that on the day she was at the Matterhorn, for example, he was in the House of Commons. She tries downloading the photographs on a friend’s laptop and again, each photograph features the prime minister’s smiling face. She takes her camera and the memory card to an expert in photographic technology, who is unable to find an answer. “Just accept it,” he says, shrugging. “You can’t fight sunny ways. And why would you want to? He’s so cute!”
A month after her vacation, she has put the incident behind her, with the help of a trauma counselor. She has spoken of it to only a few trusted friends, one of whom recommends the healing powers of nature. Out for a walk one day, she spies a young doe in a clearing. She pulls out her phone and clicks. She checks to see how the picture came out and is very pleased with the outcome but for one troubling detail. Justin Trudeau is cozying up to the doe, his smiling face alongside the startled animal’s face, his arm draped over her elegant neck.
Cue ‘Psycho’ theme music.
[I realize I need to flesh this out, but I think it would be a great horror story. – RA]
When Spencer Tracy met JFK
Before JFK was even a Congressman (or a war hero) and when Spencer Tracy was a top Hollywood star (a status that would last till the end of his life). Tracy was getting his copy of JFK’s book, Why England Slept, autographed. Very touching.
Other Movies I’d Like to See Remade with a Female Cast, a la Ghostbusters
John Sturges’ brilliant 1955 Western/suspense film, dealing with themes of bigotry, mob mentality and redemption, is one of my favourites. The story of a one-armed stranger (Spencer Tracy) ready to give up on life, taking on a town of thugs and scoundrels (a mostly male cast that includes Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and Lee Marvin) when that life is threatened, never fails to inspire. And how much more inspirational will it be with Dame Judi Dench as the one-armed stranger who unwittingly uncovers a hate crime, and Emma Stone, Angelina Jolie and Rachel McAdams among the criminals eager to keep their involvement in that hate crime hidden?
I just have a feeling that David Lean’s work of pure genius, a film many would say should never be touched, would benefit immensely from some feminine mystique. All the more so as there are no female speaking roles in it, unless you count ululating. Imagine the unforgettable “we want two large glasses of lemonade” scene with Meryl Streep as the charismatic Lawrence, Keira Knightley as the boy and Catherine Deneuve as Colonel Brighton; picture Marion Cotillard uttering Anthony Quinn’s darkly humorous line, “Ah, it was written then.” Anyone who believed Lean’s classic could not be made even more classic would have to eat their arrogant words.
Another great movie with no female speaking roles, but oh, the possibilities with an all-female remake: Viola Davis as Bartlett; Helen Mirren as The Forger; Megan Fox as The Scrounger; Anne Hathaway in Charles Bronson’s role as the claustrophobic Tunnel King; and the bittersweet final scene with Drew Barrymore as the cocky Hilts and Diane Kruger – a German actress who has said she doesn’t like to play Nazis – as von Luger, a Nazi about to be sent to the Eastern front, admitting that Hilts will see Berlin before she does.
Who says women can’t do action flicks? The World War II story of a bunch of anti-social psychopaths – described during the film as “one religious maniac, one malignant dwarf, two near idiots and the rest I don’t even want to think about” – saved from the gallows in order that they might help the Allies kill Nazis would look so much prettier with Sandra Bullock as Jefferson, Lucy Liu as Franko, Nia Vardalos as Maggott, and Julianne Moore and Kristen Stewart reprising the roles made famous by Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson. And how about the entire female Dirty Dozen reciting the rhyming chant that helps each member of the group remember their part in the mission? Worth the price of a ticket and a large container of popcorn in and of itself.
If there is any worry that an all-female cast wouldn’t bring in the gentlemen, wait till audiences see Monica Bellucci and her large breasts wearing a skimpy dress and trudging sweatily and desperately through the hot streets of Rome with her adorable daughter trying to find her stolen bicycle so she can work because she’s really, really poor and it’s after the war and everyone in Italy is miserable even though they get to live in Italy. Vittorio De Sica’s masterpiece of neo-realism and human suffering never looked this voluptuous.