Getting back to this...surprise surprise, right...

"An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way."
- Charles Bukowski

Okay, so I fibbed a little. I'm only getting back to one part of this. But it's a good part, I swear.

I love that statement, that distinction, between the intellectual and the artist. Lately I've been thoroughly overwhelmed by the sheer brilliance of a number of different works, and it's made me think about the mediums of art.

I saw Edward Albee's Peter and Jerry the other day. I had read the second act, The Zoo Story, before, and seeing it played out on a stage by two astounding actors was amazing, especially with front row, center seats. But I was even more floored by the first act. The Zoo Story was written in 1958 - it was Albee's first play - and I love it for its timelessness and for its daring, for the way it calls society out on the way they reject eccentricity and those who don't fit into their neat, structured world. Homelife, the first act that Albee wrote in 2001, was quite possibly even better.

In it, Albee looks at one of these picture-perfect people - Peter, who represents The American Dream in The Zoo Story - and looks at the flaws of his relationship with his wife Ann, at the cracks in the egg. Peter has an executive position at a publishing house, two daughters, two cats, two parakeets, and a brownstone on East 74th Street or so. He and his wife live comfortably. Yet, in Homelife, he discovers that though she appreciates the secure, smooth, orderly little world he has built, sometimes it's not what she wants. Ann reveals insecurities, fears, loneliness, and desire that she has been hiding for years as she explains that it's not that she's unhappy, not that she doesn't love him - she just wants more. She wants a little chaos, a little something different. She wants to shake him from his placid perch and rile him up a little - she wants him to act more like the animal he is.

You can see Peter struggle to comprehend this and accept it, and when the second act begins and Jerry presents another threat to his perfect little world, the meaning of it is a thousand times stronger. As is Jerry's final declaration to Peter: "You are an animal - not a vegetable." The depth, the focus, the layers, the intensity of the meaning and the incredible statement about life that these two acts make together - it's amazing to me, not only that Edward Albee wrote it, but that forty years passed between when he wrote the second and when he wrote the first, and that the more recent one is possibly even sharper and more astute than the first. The critic who reviewed it for the New York Times called Homelife a slap in the face and The Zoo Story a punch in the gut. He nailed it. But truly, the playwright is an artist - one with incredible skill and talent.

The other night, then, I watched an old movie called Holiday for the first time. The screenplay, which was by Donald Ogden Stewart, had been adapted from a play by Phillip Barry, who also wrote the play upon which the film The Philadelphia Story was based. Though The Philadelphia Story was better than Holiday, I still enjoyed the latter immensely. It was fun. Playful. Delightful and charming.

Yet, at the same time, it had a lot to say. The main character, Johnny Case, is in finance, and comes of no background worth mentioning. His plan is to make enough money to take a holiday, and then quit his job, and take time to discover himself, and to discover what it is he's working for - he wants what he does to mean something - he wants to find meaning in general. His fiancee Julia Seton is a rich heiress, spoiled and coddled, and she doesn't agree with him at all. Her sister Linda, though, is frustrated with wealth, society, and her life in general, and she rebels and does whatever she can to escape, including spending most of her time in the old "play room." Their brother Ned shares Linda's views, only chooses to avoid his life by seeking solace in alcohol instead of dealing with things or trying to change theme - he lives with a resigned, sluggish attitude.

Aside from making a statement about how people view life and choose to make it worthy, it cleverly shows how people can be blinded by "love" and see a person as they want to see him, not for whom he truly is. Yet, the whole thing is humorous and overall, very amusing. It's marvelous.

In both of these cases, the writing is superb. But what makes them a thousand times stronger to me is the fact they are both also performances. Theater and film are both aural and visual, combining sound and speech and music with setting and physical expression. In Peter and Jerry, you can see what Albee is getting at in his writing. You can understand the words and know what is meant by them. But to see those feelings written on the faces of the characters, in their body language, to hear them in the tone and inflection of their voices - it's so powerful. And in Holiday, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and the rest of the cast fall into rhythm perfectly. Their timing as they sail through their repartee over and over is great not only in terms of how they relate to each other, but for capitalizing on every comedic possibility. Their reactions, their smiles, their pauses, are all perfectly synchronized.

Seeing that, as well as a few interviews with actors on working with another director, Nancy Meyer, reminded me how much a film or play relies on the pacing and the rhythm. Movies and plays are really just intricate dances, like a full company number in a musical. Timing does so much - it not only sets the pace, but thereby also sets the mood, the feeling, the undertone. It just really made me appreciate so much more everything that goes into a truly great play or movie. There are so many individual threads that need to be good in order for the whole thing to be great. When you really think about it, it's a wonder that there are as many great films and plays as there are. But I guess you can appreciate them that much more.

P.S. Sorry this is wicked long.

You know what amuses me greatly?

Think of everyone you know.
Now mentally remove alcohol.
Mentally remove all alcohol-related stories, jokes, conversations, etc.
The number of truly interesting people you know has greatly diminished now, hasn't it?
And if not, then their degree of interesting-ness, at least, has decreased significantly.
God, what would people do without alcohol? What would they talk about?
Like with Tootsie Roll pops, "the world may never know."

"Though justice be thy plea, consider this:

...That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy..."
- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Being raised Christian in America is an interesting paradox.

Aside from being taught that God is just, Christians are taught that He is merciful, and they should be merciful as well.

Americans live under a government with a powerful justice system. Wrong-doers are punished, as they should be - as is fair.

Mercy, though - mercy isn't fair. Mercy is absolving wrong-doing wholly, even when it isn't deserved. There is no punishment. No retribution. Just forgiveness, freely given. There is no justice in mercy.

And I don't mean to say that the teaching of mercy is limited only to Christians. Anyone with a strong moral compass may believe in being merciful. Yet even these people, I'm sure, at some time or another desire justice. Not revenge, not pay-back - only justice, fair and simple. Yet how can they desire justice and mercy at the same time? And which road should they take?

Because then, isn't justice sometimes necessary to acceptance, and consequently to receiving closure? Aren't there times when mercy and forgiveness don't result in closure? How do you get it then?

Furthermore, where is the line between forgiving mercifully and forgiving out of, indirectly, fear? Avoidance is a form of fear, and avoiding confrontation thereby a motivation born of fear. True, forgiving someone just to avoid having to confront them isn't true forgiveness and therefore, not true mercy, but for the sake of this thought, how do you determine whether or not you are forgiving someone to be merciful and truly forgive them, or if you're forgiving them merely to end or avoid a conflict?

And after all that...why does it matter?

Yes, this is seriously the kind of stuff I think about when I'm bored or alone. Or sometimes even when I'm not alone. Haha.

This is super random, but so I don't forget:

In all seriousness, I really do get that men and women are different, and I'll admit that in some ways, men are generally superior. Physically, they're mostly taller, stronger. Statistics show they score higher on standardized tests and get in fewer car accidents and all that blah blah blah. But I also have to point out that in other ways, women are generally superior. And that just because they're different, that in no way indicates that they aren't equal. And if a given man and given woman aren't equal, it's probably in terms of humanity and completely regardless of their gender/sex.

And even though I say that, I still maintain it's not a matter of which sex is superior and which is inferior. One isn't better than the other or worse than the other at all. It's all subjective, and there's no judgment - just distinct differences.

That's all.

Well people come and go in our lives and no one stays forever...

...New loves come and new priorities and new responsibilities and new lives and death. We do what we can with people with the time we have with them. You come and go in and out of others’ lives, and if you’re lucky, you will change them before they are gone. For, they will be gone, sooner or later, whether you’re ready to move on without them or not. If you’re lucky, you’ll move on knowing that you have left your mark on their lives, that they carry a bit of you with them – knowing that you have not forgotten, and they haven’t either.


So I wrote that back in February. Except it's not completely right. Yes, you're lucky if you change someone before you leave their life (or they leave yours). But I should have placed more emphasis on, "If you're lucky, you'll move on knowing that you have left your mark..." Knowing. It's so hard to know that you've changed someone's life, yet most of us need that knowledge - that reassurance that our time was not wasted.

"We do what we can with people with the time we have with them." I sort of found out this year that often, that time is a lot shorter than you'd think, and when its over, all you have is your memories of it. And it's hard to hold on to those. You want to let them go, and in some ways, you need to. Memories are things of the past and you can't hold on to them like they're the present. But you can't forget them, even if all evidence of their occurrence has dissipated. Even if you can't recognize the changes you inflicted, you have to remember that at one time, they were there, and even if you can't see them any more, they could still be there. You can't let yourself feel like you wasted your time with anyone, and if you do, you have to ride it out and get past it.

"Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods."
- C. S. Lewis

"Without doubt there's no free will, without free will there's no humanity, without humanity there's no divinity."
- God, 'Joan of Arcadia'

Faith is like a shape-shifting factotum. It looks different all the time, and it does so many different things. It pops up everywhere. There are so many different kinds of faith, and when you get down to it, I guess you could say that everything is faith. Well, memories are faith too. Holding onto memories is trusting that the past did happen; in this case, it's trusting that you did really do something worthwhile. It's easy to say that you want to do something to "change the hearts of men," even if it's only fleeting, but it's harder to hold onto that memory of what you did and continually gain strength from it after it's gone. Often, it seems, the effects of what you do really are short-lived, even if we'd like to think that everything we do is going to change people's lives forever, including our own. Perhaps it does change people lives forever, but if it does, it's often subtle, like a scar or blemish covered over with make-up: invisible and unknown to everyone but the person who inflicted it and the afflicted. After a while, it fades and the person seems to forget it was ever there, but he can't ever truly forget - the mark has been made. Forgetting the marks you've made on others is a crisis of faith.

"Life is doubt, and faith without doubt is nothing but death."
- Miguel de Unamuno

"Skepticism is the beginning of faith."
- Oscar Wilde

We make marks in all sorts of ways, on our friends more than anyone else. On the most basic level, our best friends bear our marks more than anyone else - those friends that we can trust with everything, who are always there for us, to listen, comfort, help, cheer up, or just be around. You don't have to be a person's best friend, though, to be a good friend. Sometimes you don't need someone who's going to listen to your problems and talk you through them and help you out - sometimes you need someone who's not going to ask you any questions and will just take your mind off things. Sometimes you don't need someone who's going to be particularly kind and sensitive and thoughtful - you need someone who's not going to treat you any differently than normal. Sometimes, a good friend is simply one who will give you what you need - or, rather, what you think you need - what you want.

Elliot's thoughts: Listening to Molly made me realize a person doesn't have to be perfect to be exactly what you need.
- Scrubs

I guess it comes down to what kind of friend you want to be. Do you want to give friends what they want, what sometimes they only think they need, or do you want to give them what they really need? The problem is, people are more apt to like you if you simply give them what they want all the time. Giving people what they need, what is best for them in the long run, isn't always the most popular route, and it's usually not the easiest. If you want to give them what they really need, you have to be sharp. You have to be able to tell when they really need to be distracted from when they're just running away from something. You have to be able to tell when intervening is going to help and when it's going to push them to the edge. You won't get it right every time, but hey, you've got to try. Right?

And all at once the crowd begins to sing
Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same...
The Fray

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Now playing: Matchbox Twenty - Bent

Promises to Keep

My favorite thing about Christmas is that at Christmastime, people feel like it's okay to tell/show the people they love that, well, they love them. It's acceptable to be emotional. It's acceptable to be sentimental. It's acceptable to do generous things for others. It's acceptable to be frank and straightforwardly honest about how you feel about others, without need for eloquence or fanciness - without dressing it up. Generally, it's acceptable to be yourself and love others for being themselves. It's the whole "Christmas spirit" thing. It's really rather beautiful and moving and whatnot.

Except it's kind of lame that this is only acceptable at Christmastime. Most people only show their love, gratitude, faith, and hope around the holidays, and it's so silly. "It's Christmas" becomes an excuse to be like this only for two weeks out of the year. I know everyone else in the world laments this conditioning around Christmas every year, but no one ever does anything about it. Everyone makes resolutions at New Year's to be more patient or more loving or this or that and no one ever keeps them. It'd be nice if we actually did that for once. I don't know what I'm getting at. I'm just saying.

Christmas time on a cold December morning -
All is calm and the world is still asleep.
Christmas lights that have been caught without warning
Gently glitter on,
Stars to wish upon,
All the world is at peace.

Christmas time and the year will soon be leaving,
Cloaked in time till it's just a memory.
Christmas stays if we don't forget its meaning.
Days go quickly by,
Years they multiply,
And we go searching for thee.

And the dream is still alive
From that first December morning,
And it always will survive
As long as we can see
That the dreams we find in life
Are the dreams we tend to seek,
And Christmas has its promises to keep.

Christmas time, and the moments just beginning
From last night when we'd wished upon a star.
If our kindness this day is just pretending,
If we pretend long enough,
Never giving up,
It just might be who we are.

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Now playing: Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Promises to Keep

Chew on this.

"The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that, perhaps, is what makes him different from others."
- Leo C. Rosten

"An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way."
- Charles Bukowski

"Why do some people write? Because they are too weak not to."
- Karl Kraus

I'll get back to this. Eventually. No time now.

Steps to being happy:

So here it is. Backwards:

7. Love life.
6. Be loved for who you are.
5. Love other people for who they are.
4. Love who you are.
3. Be who you are.
2. Accept who you are.
1. Know who you are.

Jeez, that makes it sound so easy. Really though. How can you love others or be loved if you don't love yourself? And how can you love yourself if you don't be yourself? And how can you be yourself if you don't accept who you are now and know what kind of person you want to become? And how can you do any of that if you don't know who you are?

Conundrum.

"Find out who you are, and do it on purpose." -- Dolly Parton

I like this better:

3. Smile. Laugh.
2. Stop thinking.
1. Stop caring.

Hahahahahahahaha. I'm so funny.

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Now playing: Missy Higgins - The Sound of White

Billy: What’s the big deal here? So ya lost a job? Jules, I’ve lost twenty of ‘em since graduation. Plus a wife and kid. And, in a new development this morning, a handful of hair in the shower drain. That’s better. Ya know, this smells to me like a little bit of self-created drama. I should know; I’ve been starring in a few of my own.
Jules: Do you know what I’ve been doing every day since I got fired?
Billy: No. What?
Jules: I’ve been going down to the hospital and sitting with my step-monster. We’ve had the best talks we’ve ever had. Of course, she’s in a coma, which really pisses me off, because all that time, I just waited for one word from that woman about why father hates me so much. [Sobs, refusing cigarette] No!
Billy: Jules, y'know, honey, this isn't real. You know what it is? It's St. Elmo's Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them... there was no fire. There wasn't even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep ‘em going when things got tough, just like you're making up all of this. We're all going through this. It's our time on the edge.
Jules: I’m just so tired, Billy. I never thought I’d be so tired at 22. I just don’t even know who to be any more.
Billy: Join the club. You know, no one was buying this “together woman of the ‘80s” stuff anyway.
Jules: And all this time I was worried that you’d find out I wasn’t fabulous. [chuckles]
Billy: It’s cool. All this time I was afraid you’d find out I was irresponsible. [Jules laughs] Ha ha.
Kirby: [outside the door] It’s her laughing!
Kevin: Yeah, the hysterical laughter of the most freakishly schizophrenic paranoids.

-- St. Elmo's Fire

"Her rejection so fained and humiliated me that I justified myself to her at every turn." He sighed. "We exchanged words that I will regret to the end of my life. Later, I wrote her a letter explaining my actions in regard to her sister, for which she will never, I believe, forgive me. As for the misunderstanding, I have hopes of being acquitted in that quarter, but none so strong that would support a rapprochement. Her opinion of me and my faults, she made quite clear. No, she does not, nor can she ever, love me, my dear." His voice dropped.

"Dear brother!" Georgiana's pity was sweeter than he had ever suspected pity could be.

"I raged against the crushing of my heart and the advent of a joyless future. I blamed her for deceiving me, fate for toying with me, everyone and everything save myself. As you said, we have been brought up to think well of ourselves, perhaps too well. Since my return from Kent, I have meanly thrashed about in my pain without a thought for those who care for my well-being... In my pride and conceit I have behaved abominably, foolishly. I stand shamed." He swallowed hard. "I am not the man I had thought to become, before the memory of our father. Further, I have given you pain, Georgiana, most selfishly," he concluded, "and I am heartily sorry for it." He released her hand and waited, steeling himself for whatever should come.

"Brother," she gasped, putting fingers to her lips to force back the sob in her voice. "Such pain, Fitzwilliam! I knew your anger, your isolation came from hurt of something, but this! To love so and to receive..." Emotion caught her up again, preventing her from continuing.

"My pain..." He reached into his coat pocket and brought out his handkerchief to daub at her cheeks. "My pain is not sufficient excuse for my actions even if I had not brought its cause upon myself."

"What a sorry pair we make." She looked up at him as he did her his gentle service. "We have, both of us, been given to see ourselves and have responded like children, unwilling to be taught and resentful of our discipline."

"But you are reconciled, I think." He looked at her closely. "Whereas I am only resigned."

Gently, her head came to rest upon his shoulder, and her hand was shyly laid over his heart. "I know," she whispered. "But it is a step away from the angry pain you have been suffering so cruelly and alone. Pray, do not continue so, Fitzwilliam!"

Slipping his arms around her, Darcy held her close and placed a kiss upon her curls. "Shall you be my Portia, pleading my case before the bar?" He laid his cheek upon the place he had kissed.

Georgiana sighed as she burrowed deeper into his shoulder. "Not I alone, dear brother; but yes, ever your Portia."


Pamela Aidan, These Three Remain
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Now playing: Trans-Siberian Orchestra - This Christmas Day

"Back to a Reason (Part II)"

Time, standing all alone.
I bled for you.
I wanted to,
Each drop my own.

Slowly they depart,
But fall in vain
Like desert rain,
But still they fall on and on and on.

Got to get back to a reason,
Got to get back to a reason I once knew.
And this late in the seasons,
One by one, distractions fade from view.

So, drifting through the dark,
The sympathy
Of night’s mercy
Inside my heart.

Is your life the same?
Do ghosts cry tears?
Do they feel years
As time just goes on and on and on?

Got to get back to a reason,
Got to get back to a reason I once knew.
And this late in the seasons,
One by one, distractions fade from view.

I’m looking for you,
I’m looking for I don’t know what.
I can’t see there any more,
And all my time’s been taken.

Is this what it seems?
The lure of a dream?
And I’m afraid to walk back
Through that door
To find that I’ve awaken.

The night seems to care.
The dream’s in the air.
The snow’s coming down.
It beckons me, dare.

It whispers, it hopes,
It holds and confides,
And offers a bridge
Across these divides.

The parts of my life
I tried to forget,
It’s gathered each piece
And carefully kept.

Somewhere in the dark,
Beyond all the cold,
There is a child
That’s part of my soul,
That’s part of my soul.

Got to get back to a reason,
Got to get back to a reason I once knew.
And this late in the seasons,
One by one, distractions fade from view.

The only reason I have left is you.

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Now playing: Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Back to a Reason (Part II)

"I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started."
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms


One step forward, twelve steps back. Argh.
Why can't I just frickin forget about all this.
Damn me.
Oh wait. I'm already damned. Otherwise this wouldn't be a problem.


Roland: We all die in time. It’s not just the world that moves on… But we will be magnificent… There’s more than a world to win…
Eddie: What are you talking about?
Roland: Everything there is… We are going to go… We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end, we will stand… Even the damned love.
- Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three


"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

How do I stop myself from relinquishing my consent without meaning to all the time???
Argh.


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Now playing: The All-American Rejects - Move Along