The Reader

We stopped to watch these deer about a block from our house tonight on our way home from the movies.

We went to see "The Reader" and it was excellent. Definitely one of the best movies of the year. It's a fascinating, thought-provoking story, the acting is great, and it's thoroughly engrossing all the way through. I rank it much higher than either Slumdog Millionaire or Benjamin Button, both of which were good, but flawed.

My favorite movies of the current awards season (so far) are:
#1 The Reader
#2 Doubt
#3 Milk
#4 Rachel Getting Married
#5 Vicky Christina Barcelona

The news

I was clicking through the TV channels while on the treadmill today and clicked right past the president speaking live on CNN. This was the result of a habit I'd developed during the last eight years. I had trained myself to avoid all potentially disturbing political speeches and soundbites by tuning them out. It was a reflex, a Pavlovian response. But, wait a minute, I thought, this is Barack Obama. I might like what he's saying!

So,I flipped back and listened as the president explained to reporters some of his specific plans for the country, and it was interesting and enjoyable. How unusual! Perhaps I'll be better informed during this administration since I can once again stand to watch the news and news channels.

So far I'm pretty pleased with everything Obama's done. Except for inviting that homophobic, fundamentalist cult leader to speak at the inauguration. I'm still getting over that.

January Thaw?

Today is my twin sons 28th birthday. And it's the first time I won't be with them to celebrate. I'm in Detroit, they're in Kalamazoo, and since they're grown up married men it seemed about time their mom stopped planning their birthday celebration. But still... I miss them, and I miss the tradition of getting them a special cake and lighting their candles twice.

I dreamt last night about planning a birthday party. I made a lot of cupcakes and invited a lot of guests, but things kept going wrong. I overcooked the spaghetti, there wasn't enough sauce, the guests were getting hungry and bored, and then the birthday boy, my son, disappeared. He went somewhere with his friends without letting me know and I didn't know how to find him.

There was also something in this dream about curtains that wouldn't work and a broken phone. It was obviously a frustration dream. I was trying so hard to make this event a success, a happy success, but everything kept going wrong and working against me. Which sounds a lot like my life. There's no need to dig too deeply into the psychological interpretation of this dream.

There's often a thaw right about the time of my sons birthday, but not this year. Winter is really getting to me. I've had my fill of cold and snow and grey skies. I would be somewhere else if I could, somewhere warm and bright and esthetically pleasing, but I am here, in the rotting industrial hulk of Detroit, far away from everyone and everything I care about (except for bb and rust), in the middle of another winter, during a recession, with the crazy world in peril - but at least George W is gone. Hurray!

minus four

The low tonight is predicted to be minus four! That's pretty cold, and has me wishing I could be somewhere warm, with the sunshine baking my bones. I'd happily hop on a plane & go to the tropics or the desert, even though I've told BB that I don't want to travel right now, or even think about planning a trip.

She recently had an idea about driving down to Asheville NC. I'd really like to see Asheville, and so it was an appealing idea. I looked at the map and saw that we could drive through the Smokey Mountains National Park on our way & that would be nice. We were beginning to plan the trip for this April, but I had to call a halt. There's just too many other things on my mind right now. The writing for one thing. And for another, finding a new place to live.

This spring will be filled with finding a new house or apartment - no easy challenge in Detroit, especially considering BB's commute. But I've got to get off this island where I feel so isolated, and we've got to get away from living across the street from a high-school before drum practice season begins again!

BB is still hooked on Facebook Texas hold 'em. She has played every night since she discovered it, though she claims the appeal is beginning to wear off. At least it's not for money. But since she's begun we haven't played cards, had dinner together, or watched TV. Between the two of us the computer is in nearly constant use these days. BB says we've got to get wireless in our next place!

New beginning

I worked all day today on a new first chapter for my book. This is something I have been trying to avoid for a long time. I knew I needed to start in a different way, but it was too hard to figure out how - especially since the story I'm telling is so complex in terms of who's who and what's what.

I still really like my original first chapter which began:

" When I think about finding my father, I don't think about it for long. It's too late, I think. It's too hard, hopeless, there's hardly anything to go on..."

My book is both a memoir and a journal of the search for my father, but I think starting with a journal entry about the search has been one of my problems - one of the reasons I haven't found an agent yet. Almost every memoir I've read recently begins with a scene & I knew that's what I needed, but, what scene to start with?

I decided to pull something out of the middle of the book and put it up front - which means I won't have to write something new, but I will have to go back to where that scene had been in the manuscript and reconfigure.

This is my new beginning:

"I am sitting at the kitchen table watching my mom make dinner. She's busy with something sizzling in a cast-iron frying pan - pork chops maybe, or pirogues with onions. Dressed in my blue plaid school uniform, I am absentmindedly dipping my finger into the sugar bowl and licking it clean."

I took this scene from my fifth chapter, rewrote it, added some new stuff, merged it with another scene from later in the book, added some more new stuff, and it all adds up to four sharp pages, but now what????

Now I have no transition between this and the next chapters. And it's really hard to figure out how to reveal the vital information that readers need in order to follow the story in a way that makes sense. It's a difficult puzzle.

Today was one of those writing days when I was so absorbed that hours went by like minutes. I did a lot of good work, but it took my WHOLE day. And it will take days and days and days like this if I'm ever going to get this thing finally finished.

Gran Torino

Our snowy weekend turned out to be as snowy as predicted, but we only played one game of scrabble (which I won) because BB discovered, and quickly became obsessed with, an online Texas Hold'em game. It's played on Facebook and it's just for fun (no money) but once she started playing, she couldn't quit.

We didn't leave the house until late on Sunday afternoon when we went to a movie. We went to see "Gran Torino," which was TERRIBLE. We picked this movie because it was filmed in Detroit, and also because it's currently one of the most popular movies in the country (it made 29 million dollars in 3 days.)

We went because we were interested in seeing familiar Detroit settings on the big screen, and because we figured it had to be a fairly decent movie with so many people going to see it, but we were wrong.

Gran Torino is badly written, cliche', contrived and predictable. All the characters are one dimensional, with bad actors portraying them. Clint Eastwood does his Dirty Harry grimmace, and the rest of the actors are on par with what you'd see in a high-school play. There is also a lot of spitting.

It just kills me that droves of people are going to see this, and that it's making millions of dollars. How can this be???? Is the taste of the average American really THAT bad?!

snow

Five to eight inches of snow are expected here today, so there's not much to do but hunker down for the duration. On days like this I'm really glad that I'm unemployed. Or rather somewhat sporadically employed. I do make a few bucks now and then, here and there. And I do work on my writing every day at home.

I recently sent off submissions to four literary journal contests, I'm working on some stories, some essays, and continue to revise the manuscript of my book and my query.

I've been able to concentrate on my work a lot better now that all the holidays are over, but it's Friday already, another week has flown, and here I am writing this instead of something I "should" be doing.

BB and I will most likely spend the snowy weekend playing lots of scrabble, reading, and maybe watching some movies.

getting the hang of this

Okay, so I guess I'm starting to get the hang of this. I've discovered some interesting blogs, put up some widgets, and even got my first "follower" (my lovely daughter-in-law.) But navigating around this Blogger world still seems pretty clunky to me. (Or am I just spoiled by Flickr?)

Doubt

We went to the movies last night and saw Doubt, which was excellent. One the best movies I've seen in a while. Wonderful writing, incredible acting. I remember being in NYC when it was playing on Broadway. We were seeing some shows but I completly ignored Doubt in spite of the fact that it had won a Pulitzer Prize, because who'd want to sit through two hours of nuns, priests, and child abuse? Not me. I felt the same way about the movie at first too, but with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and all the buzz, how could I miss it?

In addition to the great writing and acting, the details were amazing and really took me back. I went to grade school in a building exactly like the one in the movie. In that exact time period. And the film was much, much less of a downer than I thought it would be.

Other good movies I've seen lately include Milk and Rachel Getting Married. Movies that were also good, but slightly disappointing, are Slumdog Millionaire and Benjamin Button. I also enjoyed Bolt.

some questions

So. Here's the thing... I'm still not completely clear about what I'm doing here. Is this just something meant to entertain myself, my family and friends, or should I be aiming my thoughts and observations at a larger audience?

I'm still not sure how this all works. It's not like Flickr where I can look at other people's work and comment upon it, or if it is like that then I haven't figured it out yet. I imagine there must be something like groups of bloggers interested in the same topics, but how do I find them? How do they find me?

It bugs me that we're living in a time when we're meant to learn new things intuitively, and no one bothers to write directions or instruction manuals anymore. I miss instruction manuals. Reading and comprehending instructions and directions was something I was good at; a valuable skill that's now almost completely obsolete.

In order to learn something new these days we're expected to spend a lot of time stumbling around until we figure things out for ourselves - which sometimes makes me feel like a lab rat in a maze. Or maybe I'm just guilty about the inordinate amount of time I've already spent fooling around online?