Escapism, thy name is French news radio. *

Once upon a time I kept a sabbath. It was a way not to stress, and it was a dictate of my faith; though I had to work Sundays, I focused on personal development, gave all that I earned away, and released myself from all expectation of doing homework. I would do other people's side work and generally be of good cheer and not worry about how much I got tipped, unless I was particularly excited about whatever I was giving it to. In short, I relaxed. It was my day off--not from showing up, but from worrying about it.

It was an important distinction, in some ways; waiting tables is intense work if you do it well (at least till you've been doing it well for awhile), and though being of good cheer is half the battle, the other half involves heavy physical and mental labor. Efficiency is a big deal; details can be a big deal; timing can be a big deal. These things did not come naturally to me.

I'm not a Mormon anymore, and though I maintain a certain code of ethics and still keep a sabbath in an economic sense, somewhere along the way I've lost that ability to make it a day off--a day when it's time not to worry about it. The things I worry about now are different, but also strangely the same.

I used to worry whether I had the capacity to competently preform and keep my job; now I worry whether I have the capacity to competently fulfill my duty to the children I protect. I used to worry that I would always be useless, as evidenced by my chronic failure in school; now (despite the same chronic failure), having chosen to study what is most hard for me, I wonder much more confidently how I'm going to pull it off--knowing that when I have done this, I will be able to do anything. I used to really worry whether I could ever figure out how to get along with people; now I only wonder how to do it without selling my soul.

As any of you who've been in contact know, I've been dealing with some stress; it's a challenge to sleep, a challenge to focus, a challenge eat or not eat as a matter of fuel rather than emotion, and a major challenge to study. Every moment is precious, and somehow that makes it that much harder to know what to do with them; there are always things to study, people to talk to, questions to ask, problems to solve, and often significant conflicts to negotiate. With a strict 6-8 hour sleep schedule, an above average diet, and five workouts a week, I still find myself strung out like a caffeine monkey on finals week. It takes me an hour after going to bed to relax enough to go to sleep.

It is from this background that I again approached sabbath--today--when I strangely awoke to realize I had a full six hours ahead of me before I had any sort of commitment to show up to. I wrote in my journal and cleaned my house and then sat on my bed feeling unoccupied yet overwhelmed, wishing I had a movie to watch or a pizza to eat or Something. Finally I googled "French radio" and thence discovered a new form of zen. Momentarily I was ensconced in quilts and pillows, listening to the crisee financial et something about l'ittalie -- a young woman had been killed, and someone was being extradited? Hard to say. I lapsed into a delicious nap, and after I awoke the radio stayed on for the rest of the evening.


*anyone able to explain what this post has to do with an elephant wearing a tiger mask gets peanuts.

for dancers--and everyone else?

I came upon this on youtube tonight, and was delighted. I found it said something about the dance that I've been failing to articulate for some time now.

Metal is very stylized, and in some ways that makes it perfect for the ballet.

Ballet is all about extreme stylization. Each generation of dancers since the court of Louis XIV has faced some pressure to be lighter, more stately, graceful, delicate, and higher on their toes--growing generation after another towards heaven, up out of dark medieval symbolism that associated downwards and bodies with hell and earth.

As time has come and passed, that heavenly ideal became an idol of self-destruction. In a world where virtually all the stars are women, blooming young and retiring by thirty, generations of men follow student to master as they shape, dictate, choreograph and direct. By the late 1980's the image that dominated ballet was the inherited ideal of Bruce Balanchine's work: transparently slender, long limbed, tall, and young, with the disposition of an adoring child and skin the color of a freshly peeled apple.

In keeping with the tradition of Dance, the visual surpassed the corporeal. Balanchine taught his dancers how to "cut some corners" on technique, creating spectacular stage performances alongside premature retirements and tendinitis. Children ready to give anything for the New York City Ballet sacrificed physical maturity as they starved themselves into--and then sometimes out of--the shape proscribed.


Set against nightwish, figurine grace and surreal, doll-like perfection have made ballet real for me again. In this fantasy playground, historical footage emphasizes every marionette pause, and the dark undercurrents of ballet's approach to sexuality and gender are left clear. Here we remember her invisible bones, the impossible thinness of her ankles, the irrevocable constancy in which she exists only for her beauty, and the way all of us worship her for it as she dances on, forever--in every way that matters--alone.

Here, removed a step from The Great Western Heritage of Culture And Dance, it is easy to believe the ideal is not real; it is easy to believe that no one really thinks this is the ultimate embodiment of who and what I am supposed to be.

Here it is possible to conceptualize ballet as only one aspect, to raise it from it's dark beauty and, in some small way, integrate it to myself--without being eaten by what I would have left behind.



Here's a link to the blog of the fellow who did it; deep thanks for a masterful and insight provoking job.

This is another amazing film piece. It showcases a very tangibly corporeal side of the dance, and at the same time, overwhelming performance, grace, and technique.

shameless

But so beautiful.



So That You Will Hear Me
By Pablo Neruda

So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.
Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.
You listen to other voices in my painful voice.

Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.




Full text including the original can be found here.

Experiences slightly like getting hit by a truck

include
1) Watching Hotel Rwanda
2) Reading Crime and Punishment
4) Getting hit by a car
5) Noticing that your closest friend is not only a violent fascist but intends to fully pickle himself in alcohol before the night is out.


So. . . here's the thing about reading Dostoevsky, or at least Crime and Punishment. As far as I can tell, there are three options; you can try to stonewall it and not feel anything, you can take it tongue in cheek, or you can read the whole thing literally and let the melodrama of it sweep you into its world.

I have a bit of a problem with taking things literally, so naturally my first reading was all about this third approach. . . hence, slightly like getting hit by a truck.

Lately I've been introduced a little into how the rest of the radical left carries its self. Some are just bitter and/or delusional; a few are very well read and insightful. Among the many ideas I'm not particularly familiar with yet is that socialism is the next stage in some sort of natural progressive order, to succeed our present system just as capitalism replaced monarchy.

It occurs to me that some people have a kind of literalist-Dostoevsky approach to the world; they see all the wrongs that come of this stage in that "historical order" in vivid detail, perhaps even exaggerated, but as a matter of perspective, not dishonesty. They walk the streets and meet a man whose family is starving, and over the course of a thousand pages they watch helplessly from a very slightly less precarious position as that family--and the various exceedingly human individuals in it--continue in their abject poverty until they are mercilessly crushed by the system in which they've no choice but to exist.

They experience all this in a sort of vivid technicolor detail, and for them life is rather like getting hit by a truck. I go through stages of being this kind of person, but most of the time I've only a relatively blunted underlaying awareness. Still, the awareness is there, and the emotional-truck people are impossible to discredit. After all, the world is much more full of Marmeladovs--people whose lives actually, rather than emotionally, resemble being hit by a truck; perhaps the world is a lot like Fyodor saw it after all.

Speaking of which

For any of you who, like me, have found yourselves lost by recent news about the finance markets, a very useful link. . .

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/diamond-and-kashyap-on-the-recent-financial-upheavals/?em