tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78156553163002443652024-02-07T11:56:57.503-08:00Sold Out Mountain MonkeyEnvironmental news with an Emersonian slant. Issues facing America's deserts, borderlands, and Western wilderness. Literature, film, and music reviews.Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-37937985344139160122011-10-12T11:23:00.000-07:002011-10-12T11:24:58.941-07:00MOUNTAIN MONKEY ON THE RUNThanks for visiting! Sold out mountain monkey has taken to the alpine tundra for cooler climes. All monkey writings can now be found at <a href="http://soldoutmountainmonkey.org/">http://soldoutmountainmonkey.org</a><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1AZn5nWIj_g" width="420"></iframe>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-63036183676979547032011-10-06T15:22:00.000-07:002011-10-06T16:20:53.740-07:00Where Art Thou, Hester Prynne? Occupied Street, Unoccupied Mind<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #522929; font-family: Arial, Verdana, Helvetica;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b></b></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small; font-style: italic;"><b>It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude after own own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.</b></span><br />
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<dd><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b>-- <i style="font-style: normal;">Self Reliance, </i>Emerson</b></span></dd><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqya6nswvK6R4PLjUqteGbbXo33bJWmLvoYDloTpfmdfCroRdyyCtn97GysBPgNvAvTAuBfsluGRoJaSOULx6aDabgyp_5wRlGKCb3-px-L3H9tTrJWbC0iBSsIt0ueyj48LTELPDe-q0/s1600/cbd02d12-9e6c-4a0d-8ccb-7c10bc74f800wallpaper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqya6nswvK6R4PLjUqteGbbXo33bJWmLvoYDloTpfmdfCroRdyyCtn97GysBPgNvAvTAuBfsluGRoJaSOULx6aDabgyp_5wRlGKCb3-px-L3H9tTrJWbC0iBSsIt0ueyj48LTELPDe-q0/s400/cbd02d12-9e6c-4a0d-8ccb-7c10bc74f800wallpaper.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">(top to bottom) Occupy Wall Street slogan, witchcraft symbol, Sean Hannity, 99% protester, Barack Obama, Tea Party sign</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>At a certain period of human history, one which we today label 'the dark ages', women of an unfavorable social standing were burned at the stake, executed based on the popular consensus that they practiced black magic in service of His Unholy Majesty Below. <i>Popular consensus. </i>The law largely vanished in the West with Great Britain passing the Witchcraft Act of 1735. When Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote <i>The Scarlet Letter </i>in 1850, hysteria over witches was largely diminished, yet the worldview which legally prosecuted individuals on hearsay of supernatural prowess was still enough intact for Hawthorne to organize the fundamental structure of his plot and the plight of his protagonist, Hester Prynne, upon the mob mentality of 17th century New England communities.<br />
<br />
For me, I remember <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> first and foremost not for its place in American literary history, but for Hester Prynne. I see her daily. She is the customer service rep at the airport, taking universal blame from commuters for flight delays. She waits tables during the morning rush hour, and getting 50 cents in tips all morning because the cook is drunk and messing up the orders. She looms in execution chambers, files up and down death row in Georgia, maybe in Italy courtrooms too. She's the child of abusive alcoholics, the ghost that's haunted middle school student council and congressional election campaigns since the advent of elections or campaigns. And she does not always inhabit the blameless commoner. She's also President Obama. She's the whole of Congress, she's Andy Reid, she's even the slimiest of Wall Street executives. Hester Prynne is anyone who receives ill-informed assault and battery of character, based upon theatrical shouting, mindless emotion, and most of all - mob mentality.<br />
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Here in America the common consensus is that politicians in the 21st century get nothing done. An increasing number of people agree that Democrat and Republican alike, Congressmen are out for themselves first, and their primary campaign strategy is to play popularity contest over rational discourse. This is an astute observation. Yet what have we the people taken to this firestorm? We charge into the political arena with blowtorches and gasoline, leveling accusations and claims no more informed, no more even-handed, no less baseless, than the same madness which attends "conversation" between competing candidates. We tune into Fox News and MSNBC and pay news reporters with less journalistic integrity than Perez Hilton to pander to our biases and arm us with the necessary talking points to choose between the lesser of two evils.<br />
<br />
We set the model for our politicians, and they set the model for us. It is a ceaseless and circumambient cycle doomed to repeat itself indefinitely, unless we have the maturity to change our worldview.<br />
<br />
This is democracy, many will say of Occupy My Soul protests. This is what America was founded upon. Freedom of individuals motivated by passion and an unerring sense of the rightness of their cause. But what was James Madison saying in <a href="http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa10.htm">Federalist Number 10</a>, when he warned us of the dangers of factions, if not the dangers of the witch-hunt, the value of the popular sentiment based on its popularity? "A pure democracy (direct democracy) can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction," Madison wrote in 1787. "A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party." This is why our government is not run by rule of majority opinion; our very Constitution was defended and instituted in large part due to the corrupting influence of factions and mobs. And yet when it comes time to affect change, the only people who seem to be successfully arguing for constructive discourse are comedians, and large groups of intelligent individuals are doing something akin to fighting the Great Chicago Fire with napalm. And amidst the inferno, I see the charred husk of Hester Prynne burning at the stake.<br />
<br />
And how does that differ from any large committed mob in world history? The legions which stormed the Bastille in the French Revolution deposed a barbaric monarchy by guillotining the nobility. Streets run red with blood regardless the governing regime and we are forced to ask, what is the difference? The question is one that could be applied to the annals of time. Each kingdom claims a right to justice just as each cause does; one replaces the next and we are blinded to their identical nature by their newness, their apparent freshness; a faux-virginity that is but a veil to disguise their thoughtless source. Today hundreds of thousands march to the tune of a drummer directly descended from a long line of witch-hunts and communist trials. <br />
<br />
Americans whose political memory or history education reaches back a few decades should remember that one of the primary reasons Richard Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy was the sweat beading down his forehead during a debate which, by all critical accounts, he handily won. We live in a nation - the greatest on earth, no less - where vain and shallow popularity contests have long held sway over our destinies. And we allow that. We permit that. We see ourselves as people with no power. The world acts upon us, we do not act upon the world. We feel so powerless that we are deluded into believing the only way we can have our sentiments heard is to join <a href="http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/10/06/what-occupy-wall-street-wants-parsing-the-unofficial-demands-list/">a Faction that has no logical expectation, no definite goal</a>, no researched answer, no idea of mature negotiation. And we actually believe that marching in a mob of people shouting into megaphones and waving signs in the name of such a Faction is some kind of representation of our democratic, American right.<br />
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Yes, that is our right. It is our right in the same way that it is the right of a child to smack its head into a brick wall next to the swingset when given free reign of the playground. And of course corrupt Wall Street CEO's are to blame for our economic crises. As are the President and Congress. And maybe Wendy-Sue had something to do with the eggs at Mr. Johnson's table being sunnyside up instead of over-easy. Yelling at her isn't going to change a thing. Because in the end, the social pressure of these movements is a kind of witchcraft all to itself, asserting influence over even the most brilliant and reasoned minds, high school dropouts and college professors alike. That this black magic, pandering to petty egos and the modern mind that has patience for naught but instant gratification, should be allowed to permeate our individual genius, that it takes but one finger to be leveled at some Hester Prynne of the political-economic spectrum, is directly reflective of the clownish acrobatics that attend the election process itself. Like Luke we go into the dark of the cave armed to the teeth, thinking to strike down Vader when truly - truly it is ourself. We are precisely what we claim to hate.<br />
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In 2011 it should no longer be deemed acceptable to allow the future of our nation to be controlled by the sort of unproductive, cowardly, pandering mania that runs it today. Real, constructive change of the worldview that has brought us to this state will never occur from a large group of shouting citizens hiding in the shadow of their neighboring protester, letting raw emotion dictate action, consume discourse. It will come from individuals who, uncorrupted, hold within them the power of a thousand mobs. It will come from individuals with the serenity to to sit down and have a conversation with someone whose opinions are intensely opposite to their own. And perhaps most relevantly, most importantly, with the 2012 election just around the corner: it will come from individuals who rock the education, before they dare unleash that wolf in sheep's clothing that is rock the vote.Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-46012985842434853312011-07-12T16:13:00.000-07:002011-07-12T16:36:57.883-07:00To Hell and Back Again: A Woodsman's Tale<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Satan’s home had become God’s own temple.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Paul Schullery, Searching for Yellowstone (1997)</i></span></div><br />
<br />
At the edge of the thicket I turned. Thick mud ran up my boot as I planted, listened. Far away between the mountains and the clouds there was the lake, floating platelike, serene and blue, beneath the wispy cumulus. And then came the sound again: the gradually increasing beating of drums, up and up and up to a fever pitch that echoed through the valley like the warring gong of some primal army announcing its vengeful intention. The echo lingered there in the soil at my foot, the way a touch may linger on your skin long after the touch itself, and I listened to it still till its portentousness dimmed and then faded to memory. It was the third time I had paused to hear it. <br />
<br />
You are imagining it, I said to myself. <br />
<br />
The forest is speaking to you, myself said back.<br />
<br />
With the fading portent of the war drums came other sounds to replace it, hymnals of the forest that, like opening fanfare, welcomed our rugged dozen conservation crew leaders into the Lee Metcalf wilderness for trails training. Somewhere there was the trickle of water, dribbling inchwide perhaps down steps of mossy rocks; the trees, now growing thick, rustled proudly their new springtime leaves in the light breeze. Smaller birds chirped and whistled tunes of pleasant surprise, of coming peace. And the sound of our footfalls on the wet dirt trail, heavy beneath sixty, seventy pound packs, completed the wistful melody. There came to me the inevitable sense that I was in the presence of something at once holy and incomprehensible. Spots of sunlight glittered through the trees, lit the trail in sprinkles of yellow dots, and drums forgotten we marched onward to camp. <br />
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*<br />
<br />
Hours waned and the sun rose to its zenith in the sky. Six of us stood on the side of the slope, sweating and cursing and laughing a little maniacally at the few hundred odd pounds of food latched to the tangled climbing rope that lay in the grass between the two great spruces. Their thick branches stood stock still in the wind, as though immune, frowning quizzically at the failed enterprise at their foot.<br />
<br />
We have been at this for two hours too long, someone said. This is the fourth place we've tried to get this thing to work.<br />
<br />
At this point, let the bear have it, chorused through the hillside. <br />
<br />
For a time longer we mired at the task at hand, climbing high up each tree and rearranging branches and ropes for weight distribution and sturdiness, and soon we were ready to try again. We all gathered by the untied end, and with a dozen hands on the rope we heaved. Slowly in miniscule increments the load lifted into the hot Montana air, the brightly colored food bags wavering improbably against the a panel of white cloud. <br />
<br />
Sweating and breathing audibly now with tightened forearms we yanked. For a moment it appeared as though the load would rise, the bags wiggling slightly off the line with our pressure. Then came the sound of a crisp snap; the pressure was released, the bags crashed to the ground, and the six of us were shot backwards down the slope. <br />
<br />
I remember laughing hard, harder than I had in recent memory, laying back on the long waving grasses and looking at the sky which looked in back grimly and neutral and then laughing at that too. I remember dimly shifting my spot, of the others beginning to argue over the next step, and then of the crack and the hiss of the bear spray as it shot from my hip, coating my leg and wrist and safety glasses.<br />
<br />
For a moment everything was perfectly clear. I stood up and removed the bear spray from my hip and backed away slowly from the others. Probably stay away from me, I said. <br />
<br />
Annie came with me down the slope and to the creek. For a moment I thought about laughing, the way I had laughed when the rope snapped, not at the failure necessarily, but at the absurdity of our effort and the ensuing futility, and if for no other reason than for laughing for laughter's sake, because how else to address the fickle quirks of existence, the temperamental hinges upon which fate swings to and fro? Consider the exact series of events that brings about any great or terrible or important moment in your life, and then remove just a single one of those elements, and suddenly you are no longer you, but some other stranger that will never exist due to the dictums of random chance and circumstance. So I did laugh and grin a little as we went down to the creek, not because I could have been blinded truly, but because I was not, because for the thousandth time catastrophe had brushed my edges and for the thousandth time a part of me I did not know had dodged. <br />
<br />
In the little gorge I dunked my burning wrist into the icy creek, squatting in the mud and patches of grass that interrupted the brief flow. Thistles tugged persistent at the exposed place between my boot and the cuff of my pants, almost pulling, as if to lure me off the bank and to the darker places. A sudden sunshower spat down from the blue sky. An attempt to be cute, idyllic, innocent. Kneeling there, the stench of the spray thick on the crisp air, the drumming noise began again.<br />
<br />
I could die here, I thought to myself , a little sardonic, a little manic. There was no response.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Galelike and apocalyptic the winds roared down through the valley, driving up the rain and hail and collected sediment into a vicious horizontal force that seemed to proclaim a final judgment upon the workers of the land. Thick fog rendered the rest of the slope more than twenty yards distant in foggy obscurity. Hooded and helmeted figures loomed in that mist, heaving picks into the dark earth, teeth bared and eyes blazoned grimly beneath dropletcoated safety glasses. Movements betrayed moods; the slow lethargic arc of the spirit being crushed by the storm stood side by side with the methodical madness of one that had yet weathered the depravity. <br />
<br />
Lunchtime came. We paused only if to stay in vain keeping with the order and schedule and sanity that we had tried to bring with us from without the wild. Eating seemed a lame ritual now; already some dim part of me would have rather dropped my tool at a later hour on a whim and scoured the mountainside for a fresh meal. I even considered it, the sight and smell and taste of the nickelscented air racing through my lungs as I tore through the brush in search of impossibilities ancient to my kind. In forest daydreams I run with lions and hunt bull moose with a pocketknife. I followed it till I was alone there on the trail in the mist at lunchtime, and there were voices calling me. <br />
<br />
I hiked up the slope and into the trees after the others and found my drenched sack in the failed cover of spruce branches. I pulled out a large slimy ziploc baggie which contained some grayish-red and gelatinous organlike substance that had, at one point, four days of sunlight and two days of hurricane ago, been considered six peanut butter and jelly tortillas. Shivering and nibbling and gagging I held the substance in my dirtgristled fingers and ate away the fury of my imagination. <br />
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*<br />
<br />
At a brief respite from the storm, Mark and Heidi from the Forest Service led a meaning of service discussion on Billy Collins' poem The History Teacher: <br />
<br />
<i>Trying to protect his students' innocence<br />
he told them the Ice Age was really just<br />
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years<br />
when everyone had to wear sweaters.<br />
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,<br />
named after the long driveways of the time.<br />
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more<br />
than an outbreak of questions such as<br />
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"<br />
"What do you call the matador's hat?"<br />
The War of the Roses took place in a garden,<br />
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.<br />
The children would leave his classroom<br />
for the playground to torment the weak<br />
and the smart,<br />
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,<br />
while he gathered up his notes and walked home<br />
past flower beds and white picket fences,<br />
wondering if they would believe that soldiers<br />
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories<br />
designed to make the enemy nod off. </i><br />
<br />
I did not want to say what I truly thought. That it was strange and even cruel irony to hear that poem amidst those pines and amidst that seeming judgment raining down. That the idea that all nature could be less good than evil had haunted me since the moment almost two years ago I set out to see the world alone. That we could clear out and even transport into the backcountry the goods that fill the material shrines dedicated to weathering the wild: REI, Cabelas, LL Bean, Base Camp; and still there would be an element to that uncivilized air that could penetrate any gear to permeate any soul. And finally that perhaps this was knowledge that should not be conveyed to the next generation, to children, even to members of our crews. Because who volunteers to conserve hell?<br />
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*<br />
<br />
After the workday the rain slowed to a drizzle and the eye of the tempest seemed to settle itself on the mountainside. It imparted in that furious calm an ominous quality, the way silence pervades a locker room before a championship, the way calmness may inhabit the corridors of an executioner's lair: the perhaps nostalgic recollection of all that has gone before and the grim foreknowledge that you stand upon the brink of a thing that must end. So I decided to go run.<br />
<br />
Out of camp, out the thin dirt path that arced through the prairie and back into the forest where the lodgepoles were laden with droplet-heavy branches and the trails were more puddle than earth, slippery like fine ice, this sense of seething doom, of fate momentarily attenuated, was held in the air thicker yet. We ran on our toes, Adam and I, just to stay upright, stumbling and sliding almost as much as running, past trees more ancient than the concept of trails themselves and in the fresh pawprints of what was guessed to be an adult <i>Ursus arctos</i>. <br />
<br />
At points the trail opened into meadows, and trusting my footfalls for the thousandth time to the fate of the never-even ground below, I looked out from the ridges to the other mountainsides across the valley. The armies of frost-tipped ferns gently reclined with the slope, the ancient andosite bluffs volcano-shaped and framed in a wispy background of steadily progressing cumulus. Remote and vacant places where ghosts of bears and lions and bears and lions may lurk, where fanged creatures long since extinct have walked more recently than man. With infinite ease I became lost in detail, in the way you become lost watching dogs play, in observing the darker spaces between the trees and the truths they held, truths whose nobility became less unassailable the longer I ran and breathed and slept and sweat and bled there on the mountain, an unwitting supplicant to an ever unfolding mystery.<br />
<br />
When we reached the sagebrush plateau where we had parked the rigs, Adam and I split. We were short on food for dinner and I piled into three boxes as many tortillas and extra snacks as I could hope to hold. I paused for a moment there, kneeling on the dry leather of the seats and breathing the warm and stale air inside the vehicle. I paused a moment more than I would have liked to. Through the tinted back window there was a flash of lightning somewhere in the range far to the north, and from that perspective, halfsheltered there in the back of the truck on top of the plateau, the coming sky was absolutely black, in imminent collision with the sunless steady gray that had pervaded during the eye. I shut the doors quickly, gathered up the food in the crook of my elbows like two footballs, and dashed back into the woods.<br />
<br />
You were really pretty happy to see those cars, a voice said in my head as I ran.<br />
<br />
I really don't want to talk about it, I said back.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
In midmorning darkness our crews labored away. The temperature hovered at thirty-five, drizzle having turned to rain and freezing rain and now sleet. What had once been a misty mysterious (and perhaps to some) enchanting fog had become an impenetrable miasma, relegating workers to corridors of constantly shrinking visibility. The sound of the rain and the incessant war drums drowned out conversation and at times I knew only by blind faith that anyone remained with me on the trail at all. <br />
<br />
We worked till rumors of hypothermia began to circulate and we quit at noon, nearly everyone returning to their tents in hopes of dreaming away the cold and the wet. Sleep becomes a strange thing in the woods. It is required not so much for rest as it is for escape. Rarely do I know right away where I am when I wake up, all my dreams sourced from places so far distant and so differently shaped that the morning reality is always unclear and foreign. Yet there is something soothing in the opacity it offers, the even momentary ambiguity that all is not as it seems. There is always a part of the true woodsman spirit that craves that sanctuary, even if it may express itself in different ways.<br />
<br />
When I came to our communal shelter, a ripped and ravaged piece of tarp strung loosely between the flagging branches of two trees, Jake was the only person that remained there. He sat rigidly immobile and crosslegged, his hands on his knees, his eyes shadowy beneath hood and winter cap, watching the wind move the grass. <br />
<br />
Welp, he said, This sucks. <br />
<br />
We were to make dinner that evening by five. Some interminable number of hours remained until then and I settled down under the tarp and began to watch the grass too. Jake began describing the symptoms of hypothermic victims and then started to exhibit them himself as he was talking. It was unclear whether he was example or victim and I didn't trust my brain to make the distinction. Time waned. We quoted Star Wars for hours.<br />
<br />
I wish we had a taun-taun to cut open, I said.<br />
<br />
This may smell bad kid, he said, But it'll keep you warm. <br />
<br />
I wouldn't care what I smelled, I said.<br />
<br />
From the one time I was there, I don't even remember Hoth being this cold, he said. <br />
<br />
This soon morphed into picking which Star Wars character each of our coworkers fit best. When we finished we swore to each other to keep the conversation to ourselves (we broke that promise as soon as people started showing up for dinner). Whenever we became too present in the moment the cold settled, the dampness piercing our jackets and freezing against our skin and the wind cutting through tarp and layer upon layer of clothing straight to the core. So we willfully inhabited the past and the future, living memories and hopes aloud and silent, and then began to play the game of the things we would do to keep warm, which rapidly deteriorated to punchdrunk incoherence. Somewhere in there the rain turned to snow. <br />
<br />
Oh, I said, nodding to the frost now coating the valley, It looks as though hell actually is freezing over. <br />
<br />
I have to go the bathroom so bad, Jake said, But I highly doubt I'll survive. Assuming I can unzip my pants. <br />
<br />
I'd probably just go in the dinner pot, were I you, I said. Like in old times. <br />
<br />
Is that what happened in old times? he asked.<br />
<br />
Jake left to go relieve himself. It seemed right to start dinner then and I sat shivering and fiddling with the stubborn lighter, fingers numb and swollen and bloody and filthy and unworking and watching the quinoa sit there in the plastic bags, hardened and notcooked and seeming even to condescend a starchy frown at my futile effort. You are not doing very well, I said to myself, when even the quinoa begins to take on a personality.<br />
<br />
Jake returned, paler and soggier and lankier yet, the sleeves of his coat soaked and dangling past his hands, his lips purpling now, though it could've just been my blindness. Hey Justin, he said, as he ducked under the flap of the tarp. I think I figured out why there are so many bones of dead things all over the place<br />
<br />
I snatched the bait; Jake is a master of all things fauna, surely there was some ecological quirk here that I could write about later.<br />
<br />
Oh yeah? Why? <br />
<br />
He hesitated not a second, his voice rising suddenly above the gale like a preacher declaring to all his eager parish: Because this is a barren, godless place where nothing lives ever! We're in hell and we never should have come! The freaking grouse doesn't beat its wings as a mating call or as self defense but as a warning to get the hell out and stay the hell out!<br />
<br />
And then, though the storm howled like a beast composed of all creation, and the snow and the sleet and the hail and the rain slapped the tarpulin like bullets, and though the mountains funneled the fury of creation into our beaten valley, that sound of drumming emerged again from peak to valley floor, a steadily building resonance answering and affirming Jake's declarations.<br />
<br />
In a way I had known all along that it was a small bird that made this noise. But that didn't really change anything.<br />
<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
The rest of the night was a blur. I vaguely recall marching out a mile down the trail we were constructing with a few others to retrieve our tool cache for our departure the next morning. I remember the almost funny way your shins feel, when your feet are numbed into blocks of notflesh and you are only vaguely sure they are touching the ground at all. I remember putting on muddy and frozen work gloves and glasses whose fogginess didn't matter because you couldn't see two feet in front of your face anyway. I had become stripped to my absolute self, barren even of the simplest and most innocuous of creature comforts: 20/20 vision. And I remember carrying three picks, a pulaski and a handsaw and dropping them and picking them up and dropping them again into the muddy slush. There were screams and shouts of terror or laughter or both, my ability and desire to distinguish them long since gone.<br />
<br />
We have progressed to the sixth circle of hell, I said. I didn't know what the sixth was and I don't think I even knew if anyone was behind me. I was just talking.<br />
<br />
I understood that just like running, the mountains do not take their toll on you by the brunt of their force. It is a long and slow accumulation, the ceaseless repetition, the endless unassailable force of a thing that refuses to diminish. It is not the 20 mile Sunday run that makes a runner a runner, it is the three-hundred and sixty four days of doing it all over again. And it is not any one storm, any one night, which forges the soul of the woodsman, it is the lingering storm that rushes like a river, ceaseless and indomitably willed, until you are callused or until you are destroyed.<br />
<br />
All this, yet I and everyone I am with is soon to return. <br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Maybe I'm not old enough yet. When all was said and done and we returned to the world there was time for it all to marinate. And now when I close my eyes there is no white-out. The nickelscented air that lingers at the heart of the most wicked tempest beckons me off trail all the more powerfully for its bitterness, into the darker places, to chapels of the barren plain, synagogues amidst the flaky schist where timberline has vanished into fog, mosques at the densest and deepest forest places; not without fear, never without fear, but absolutely and without reservation. <br />
<br />
The sun glints shapes and figures off the rugged turbulence of a dozen rivers; this is the scripture I read. For priest, rabbi, shiek, shaman, I have myself. <br />
<br />
And so does anyone. Like Luke you go guideless into the black of the cave beneath the old willow tree and you emerge with more than you entered with. Hymnals range the spectrum of sound, the silences of the crushing dark, the tranquil songs of streams in summer, music not of praise or worship but only of being. Prayer is a matter of breathing, not kneeling. There is no distinction between the secular and the pious, between being and benediction. You could call it a sort of zen, but there is no confuddling or corrupting social history. Rituals do not stray from life necessities for they are not of a separate piece. Legends and ghosts from nations and kingdoms and oceans away and long since lost are so many Ozymandias', memories rightly lost to the natural oxidization of time. Instead of worldly luxuries, of which there are none to sacrifice, we give up sweat and blood. Instead of abject worship or prostration of self before some terrible unknowable power, I simply become a part of the thing that I used to be. The thing that I came from. We need no elegant or archaic prose to champion our cause, or martyrs to eulogize and evangelize the world to our faith. The world will recognize what is sacred for itself, if only given the chance to search.<br />
<br />
And still I would never deny, hell could be found in a thousand places in the wild bowels of our earth. Damn me now.Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-62232966712199998212011-03-20T21:05:00.000-07:002011-03-20T21:05:45.789-07:00ChampionshipCold November slush and mud coated his calves as Walter tore up and down the back hills. Some of the runners were coming back to him now. He ran in a blind fury, dumb and animal like and unconscious of his pain, tearing in air as he flew by the other boys one by one by one slowly and slowly in the dark dunsplattered woods. Leaves of brilliant autumnal pastels tore underfoot, his spikes tearing into the earth and flicking the loose wet gravel back and up his pulsing calf and into the eyes of the boys behind him. He came to a final incline and then a long flat, and in the flat the long line of runners ahead of him and behind him stretched across the gray light and drizzle and to the bridge over the Henry Hudson Parkway beyond. Redfaced, deep in oxygen debt, his mania heightened. There were still too many people. There were still so many people. Cross country racing as he understood it was the gradual tortured process of attaining independence and solitude. Yet there had been so many that had started so fast the first mile, and he had forced that unnatural patience (so lauded by books and coaches and even certified by logic yet still unnatural) to govern and contain his early strides. <br />
<br />
Countless hours comprised each step, ten sunburnt summer miles behind each breath, dashing over concrete and trail and track envisioning each time these very dark and damp forest corridors, these very winding quadburning hallows, a hundred pushups for every second spent on an incline, a year's worth of early nights and broken toenails and missed dates and appointments and assignments, all, so he believed right then, for roughly fifteen minutes spent on the bitter edge of sanity in a park in New York City. <br />
<br />
He crossed the parkway and made the right hand turn down the long and steep hill and sidled up along the brush and the trees and sprinted down with the momentum of the hill. He demanded room be made for oxygen in compartments that had long since ceased to have room to spare. In a rush the other boys slipped behind him one by one by one, and then yet more came into view, as in a race car game that endlessly invents faster opponents as the skill of the driver augments. Deeply into his lungs Walter heaved the frosty latefall air. The roar of the crowd came from ahead as the runners were expelled from the woods and onto Van Cortland Park's legendary finishing straight.<br />
<br />
The cinder path arced around the fields, the banners of the finish only just visible in the moiling fog and drizzle. The fans and coaches and other athletes lined the path and Walter hugged the turn so tightly that some of the spectators issued in irrelevant sibilance warnings to back away. And still he passed them, one by one by one. Tall boys, loping boys, struggling boys, muscular boys, suspiring needy breaths and approaching and shying from their threshold, crumbling at the sight of the homestretch, the deceivingly distant finish. And the line of them still vanished into the fog, ten at least, probably closer to twenty, some dying and some only just striking, and some like Walter manic and crazed in the eye like a rabid dog gathering itself for a final display of frothy viciousness before death. <br />
<br />
Though his conscious mind made no logical connections, though he did not for even a second consider that the world of his childhood, the emotions that had fueled his youthful passions, were powering this very hysteria, there was nonetheless evident in his every step the desperation of someone who has spent more than he can afford to not win back on a single task. <br />
<br />
He began to tighten, his legs like glue hardening and contracting, the rapid turnover of his steps limber and athletic in the cold slushy cinders beginning to fade and diminish and slow as he breached his oxygen capacity. And then it was a different boy who came alongside him and sidled past him, equally irreverent and equally manic, and went on to the next boy ahead with the same calculated indifference. And it was Walter who slipped now, slowing into anonymity, straining futilely and watching without recompense a few more go by him, before the timestopping agonies of the penultimate steps passed and the finish line relieved his furor.<br />
<br />
The gray day swam in his vision; someone put his hands on the bony shoulders of the boy in front of him, and soon he felt grimy paws on his own shoulders, and as if in some perverse congo line they traipsed together through the finishing chute. Walter dry heaved to the side, felt his stomach convulse again and retched out dry notair into the latefall bitterness. A card was placed in his hand that had the number 16 scrawled across it in black marker. <br />
<br />
Without knowing what he was doing he exchanged frozen halfembraces with the other anonymities that had finished before him, after him, that happened to moil in nausea or an endorphin-crazed affability in his general vicinity. Coach came up to him and shook his hand. <br />
<br />
That's not too bad, he said. Not too bad at all.<br />
<br />
Walter dry heaved again and cursed. Coach shook his head and slapped his shoulder and started to walk away.<br />
<br />
I've never lost a race that bad in my life, Walter said.<br />
<br />
Coach turned, his form blurry in the postrace haze and the mist and the runners passing between them vomiting on the grass and stumbling and limping their recoveries about. <br />
<br />
Well, he said, turning briefly and nodding to the wounded, Neither have they. <br />
<br />
Coach moved on. Walter put his hands on his slushfroze kneecaps, felt the hot blood boiling in his legs beneath his numbed fingers. His neck joined other necks, dozens of other necks, spines supine to the sky, spitting or bleeding or cussing violently to the tundra, searching in that frantic state of heightened and unreasonable emotion for some answer, some reassurance, some mitigation to the raw truth all too evident in that massed collection of bodies, that unfamiliar postrace company. <br />
<br />
And as more and more necks joined the fray, as the exit from the triage swelled steadily with the bodies of the countless hundreds yet incoming, there did seem to move within that rolling fog and mist the palpable presence of a generation of kindred spirits, their dreams held still in that same warground soil which had seen their undoing. For it is a truth universal among runners that each must one day run the race that tells them they are more than they thought they were, and each must run the race which tells them they are not (and never will be) what had they dreamed they could become. And though these wraiths knew better than to laugh, they did grin slightly, knowing, perhaps, what was to come to those who had the serenity to take wisdom from the brutality of finishing less than best.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Song of the Day: My Body is a Cage by Arcade Fire<br />
<br />
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Pyp34v6Lmcc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-91842949188385119052011-03-12T16:48:00.000-08:002011-03-12T16:48:53.389-08:00Magic City BluesA cold wind was gusting up the street and gathering scattered Billings refuse, whipping between the buildings with a sibilant fury. It was the kind of cold you feel in your lungs, the kind that hurts to touch directly. The kind that gangrene will take, if you let it. <br />
<br />
The old Crow Indian was staring unblinkingly into the gusts and the trash which they carried. Scarred face and ratted old gray hair worn by and callused to the brutality in that air, air which settled like a glaucoma in the shivering bodies outside McCormick's Cafe. With curved and mangled fingers the old Indian shakily lit a cigarette and huffed in, then spoke without introduction. <br />
<br />
My greatgrandfather was a chief on the Crow reservation, he said, nodding. Yes mhmm. He was there on through 1910.<br />
<br />
When he spoke his words sounded ancient and seemed to age him older still. His eyes were pale razors, blue and sharp and exacting, focusing for a few moments on each of us in an almost rote fashion. They were not so much accusatory as guilting, as if in an effort to invoke some truth that in a just world should have been self evident and which he was disappointed he had to explain. <br />
<br />
See that rock over there, he nodded his head to the formation jutting out from the Rimrocks which girded the city. That is called Suicide Rock. When the Europeans came and gave the Crow smallpox, they would leap from that rock to their deaths, rather than suffer out their disease.<br />
<br />
While he spoke the old shopkeep had come out from McCormick's and stood with balded head and frowning face at the fringe of the group. Something in the Crow's tone or his confrontational disposition was an affront to the shopkeep and perhaps even to the group. Heads turned away from the emotion of his words and the gravity of their implication. Some kind of fear lurks above any sentiment too real; this Crow was no exception. <br />
<br />
Javier, the shopkeep said curtly, <i>Vamonos. Que no son bienvenidos</i>. You know you can't be here. <br />
<br />
Yeah yeah, Javier grumbled, and turned stiffly away. He waved one of his mangled claws broadly at the group watching before turning and limping away down the road. <br />
<br />
Sorry about Javier, said the shopkeep. I've caught him dealing meth on this very doorstep. He always comes when he sees new faces. <br />
<br />
It's alright, I said quickly.<br />
<br />
We left in the opposite direction. The freezing wind gusted up the long industrial Billings streets, seeming to push out or to freeze out whatever it encountered, succeeding only in veneering everything with a crisp iciness, the sort of iciness that could slice flesh to the bone when the thermometer read (as it did on that morning) negative ten. As we walked back to the trucks I looked up to the Rimrocks and pictured the diseased Indians pitching off the edge in endless droves, killed as much by the killing virus as by the piles of bodies that lured and beckoned with promises of an oblivion that knew no Lewis and knew no Clark, a vacuum unimbued by settlers or settler thoughts, a sanctuary of nothingness from the heretical debauchery which swept through land and man alike. And for a moment through the bitter grayness it was as though something wraithlike in the ancient bluffs seemed to demand justice, as clearly as that grizzled and drugtorn shadow of a man spending the coin of his lifeforces lurking about coffee shops and alleyways. A gust of wind shivered down the trashblown streets again and I huddled my shoulders into that wicked air. It is times like these that I am glad to have left my jacket at home.Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-21932733671799866712011-03-12T16:44:00.000-08:002011-03-12T16:44:11.729-08:00A Brief Engagement in the Pennsylvania Dutchlands<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">There is no such thing as virginity...Purity is a negative state. </span></i><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">-Mr. Compson from William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury</span></i><br />
<br />
Becky comes out into the dusk. Cornstalks rustle as the sharp wind undulates over the land and into the gravyblue of the sky distant. Goosebumps pimple her chilled body through her dirtstained white dress. A shiny silver ring glimmers on her finger. Dinner sets heavy within her. Night is coming.<br />
<br />
She does not walk far from the house. Ten steps down the crusted freeze of the roosterpath tundra the clatter of the dishes fades into the rural silences. About her the stripped bushes and the naked branches of the trees are whipped about into frenzy by the gusts. She does not squint or wince to that tempest. It even seems to caress her. It runs the trajectory of her high cheekbone and sharp jaw. It smoothes the line of her hair back. It writes a healthy ruddy hue upon her olive skin. As though the elements had composed the girl kindly, the dark evidence of their truer natures rattling the windows behind her, scouring over the land to seek unsheltered life and snuff it out. A Fedallah to this as yet unwitting and as yet unprovoked Ahab.<br />
<br />
By the edge of the woods where the forest meets the cropfield there is a stump. Mossdecayed, rotting, hard like a block of steel in the winter bone. There she sits crosslegged and without hesitation, the wind blowing back her hair and jetstreaming her jawline and perhaps even forming that self-assured expression of her closed mouth. An expression that seems to doubt its appointed task but not how that task must be done: the bear that is dusklight voyeur to the mountain lion's fresh kill.<br />
<br />
She sits there and watches how the gray clouds, in holding the final imprint of the light from the day, in bestowing their swirling gusts with a knifelike chill, wash like turkey gravy over the navy of the young sky. In fusion they seem to say something to her, something of the nature of liminal moments.<br />
<br />
Becky had emerged from the womb a lonesome child, made brotherless seventeen years past by that pubescent plight of all thoughtful young country boys who take books too seriously. She did not know about him until she was seven. She made friends with a girl in school who had four older brothers. The other girl told her all about what a brother was. One day, sitting on the old dead stump, Becky asked her mother what she thought a brother was.<br />
<br />
Why? her mother asked.<br />
<br />
Just cause, Becky said through her braces.<br />
<br />
That is not an answer.<br />
<br />
Just cause mamma. Everyone says something different about everything.<br />
<br />
And that was how Becky found out about her brother Moses. Her brother Moses, hidden from Becky until now, born when her mother was but sixteen, born in a barn on a bed of hay because Becky's father scorned modern medicine, born into the screams and wails of a suburban teen who had thought picking apples would be a romantic job one summer and got a baby in her belly because of it, born into the arms of that very father, preacher of alternative medicine, library bedecked with Kesey and Ginsberg and Whitman and Kerouac but not Flaubert or Goethe, owner of an apple farm and father to a baby from a girl who had once felt, when lost in the woods on a school field trip to Loyalsock State Forest, such a total enervation of spirit and pleasant silence of mind, that she swore to work towards the reattainment of that wildernessborne ecstasy forevermore. It was from such a womb, into such a pair of hands, that the child Moses was born. From such a womb, into such hands.<br />
<br />
Though young, Becky's mother performed her tasks in what most would have called an admirable manner. She married Becky's father immediately and took little Moses for long walks on the apple farm during the day when it was not raining. At night when her husband went into the basement to get high, she would set Moses down between her knees by the fire and read to him parts of her favorite stories. She read to him of Arwen and Aragorn, of O. Henry's Jim and Della, later of Odysseus and Penelope; finely selected bellywarming treatises of fantasy from the world's most vivid imaginariums. When Moses was old enough he read too, of great travels, of adventure, of love and sacrifice and good living. All this his father encouraged, all this his mother adored.<br />
<br />
Accordingly, Moses grew into a young man of a precocious idealism, the depths of which his parents could have never imagined. This was not a little helped by his saturation into Judeo-Christian culture. Invocations of guilt infected his high school life daily; altruistic sentiments of sacrifice appealed to him far more than what was normal for a youth his age. Though he publicly spurned all institutionalized dogmatism with the flair of a wartime orator, he took to heart and to practice the ideals to which he was exposed. And his love of literature only burned deeper as he grew. He voraciously read Ernest Hemingway. His favorite was For Whom the Bell Tolls. His least favorite was The Sun Also Rises. When pressed by his teacher, he said that he did not find weakness to be very motivational. Nothing is stopping Brett, Moses said. Nothing is stopping Jake. Even worse, Becky's mother reflected (in telling this story), Moses found it funny when Tom Sawyer says to Huck Finn, when Huck wants to set Jim free by stealing the key to his jail cell, <i>Why, hain’t you ever read any books at all? Who ever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? </i>Moses had laughed at that part. Moses was Tom. Tom in a later era, an era which charged for such lofty sentimentality a far more lasting price than a single bullet to the leg.<br />
<br />
Things could have gone no other way. The first love which idle chance inflicted upon Moses was illfated from the instant of its inception. The girl was Pegeen O'Reilly, a classmate, born of the countryside the same as him, purported to be a lover of books the same as him. She of course had a soft, gentle way about her. Her wide, pale eyes seemed in constant peril of being swallowed by the rushing swells of their own skyblue innocence. He glowed in the attention she turned on him, in their childlike games, in a sweet intimacy with another person which he had never really considered possible. He would meet her by moonlight in the country between their farms, sneaking out his window and dashing over the dark verdure hills, a book of poetry tucked under his arm like a runningback, a note for her tucked deep in the folds of his jacket. The illicit nature of their union, the embers of romantic rebellion in his chest that had, since opening his first book, yearned to be kindled, and coupled with the pastoral beauty of the Pennsylvania Dutchlands, made their seemingly blossoming love a perfect storm of catastrophe.<br />
<br />
Moses' lifelong search for an ideal to defend had come to an abrupt halt. Never before had he been so alive. It became his sworn duty to defend at all costs the glimmer he had seen in Pegeen's eyes. He called it the skyblue, in the journal he kept. As if this comparison, this name, described her precious quality better than any photograph, any essay, any other description ever could. A simile is worth a thousand words. What could compare to that sort of sweetness and innocence, other than the endless light azure of the sky on a pleasant day. He knew no better than to wax such mawkish cliches; in fact, that he knew no better was the point. He quickly and effortlessly came to do all of his thinking in such lofty language, saying it aloud and proudly to anyone bold enough to broach the subject of love or lust. His life had become reorganized around this priority, and the weight of commonplace tasks vanished, like dust swept from an object long inert.<br />
<br />
In all true stories, Becky's mother said, there is a wrong which cannot be righted. Pegeen came from a rigorously Amish family that sent her away to public school after she was banned from her first for some unnamed blasphemy. Sadly, the precise breed of girl that Moses would swim across oceans for; chaining the cement blocks to his ankles himself, if that's what was necessary.<br />
<br />
Pegeen's mother was abusive and unfaithful, her father too pious to do any more than deny the reality that was his fractured family. Time and again Moses confronted them without Pegeen's knowing, and, wielding all the holy righteousness of his literary upbringing, eloquently inspired them to be honest with their daughter. He spoke, in not so many words, of ideas such as carpe diem, and of the power of love, of forgiveness. He told them he thought of them as his family, or something to that effect. He may have even said he cared about anyone who cared about Pegeen. Something in his voice must have been reminiscent of their churchly hours, because the O’Reillys fell irrevocably in love with Moses. When he left the final time, it was with three jars of freshly pressed cider, teary hugs, and insistent promises that things would change.<br />
<br />
Like many young men and women raised in anything approximating American middleclass society, Moses had done very little of what could accurately be called real living. He had an inherent and instinctual belief in the goodness of the human race and had been exposed to nothing to lead him to believe the contrary. Anyone could do anything. He had found his flower, skyblue-eyed with dimples beside her smile. Faith was required, and Moses practiced constant faith. He idolized, in a near apotheosis of admiration, Franny Glass and her Jesus Prayer. He believed that anything done with a good intention was holy beyond conception. He did not believe the quote about the composition of the path to hell; in fact, he openly scorned all competing dogma. To say he was blinded would be severe and perhaps melodramatic, yet the point remained that all logic and reason that fell outside of the spectrum that was the five feet and two inches that comprised the form of little Pegeen O'Reilly, was blurred out into irrelevance.<br />
<br />
What came next was absolutely inevitable, as unstoppable as the monthly rains or the winter freeze or the occasional droughts or the gusts of wind which famously tore across the open pastures of that country. It happened one frigid November night, when he found her trembling on the bank of the hill that was their meeting spot. He knew instantly something was horribly wrong. Her chin rested between her folded knees and she was staring off to the starless night and the sweeping skies and the darkened country that had been her family's for generations. She did not turn into his arms when he held her. He sat down, caressed her cheek, kissed her forehead, his blood boiling and his stomach flipping over and his heart slamming hard against his ribcage like a trapped lion. When she finally turned to him he saw: her shirt stained pink with blood, tears and sweat running down her cheeks. A purple welt swelled beside her eye, which was bloodshot. Her lip was fattened, cut deeply in separate places. Crimson rushed from a gash on her cheek and ran down her neck. His whole body shook and she told him not to go.<br />
<br />
It was her? he asked.<br />
<br />
It was both, she said, taking his hand in her own.<br />
<br />
But he did. And the last time he ever saw Pegeen was when he glanced back up the slope to her crumpled form, her eyes only dimly ruminating his stumbling egression through the folds of her dirtied garments, his own eyes a shade of possessed entirely not his own. He ran the mile to the house with that unholy power vested in him, that power reserved for all those damned to the crueler fates of his kind, that power of such immense evil that it can only be unearthed from a starting velocity of such great good. He went and punched holes in the walls of their house and smashed his forehead against the windowpanes until they broke and ripped the doors to all the rooms off their hinges. He was not an animal, not yet, anyway; he was merely stripped of any of that loose effluent material that makes a man a man. There was no one home. He sprinted back to the top of the hill. Pegeen was gone.<br />
<br />
A trail of blood led into the cornfields. It was there that he mired for the next twelve hours, through the night, into the day, until he had searched every row and the woods beyond the rows and the riverbanks and dusty fields beyond that. When the police came around noontime he told them everything, and they took him home.<br />
<br />
Pegeen did not turn up that week. Moses spent each night camped by her house. He lasted three more weeks until he leapt off a cliff in a nearby valley, there to perish amidst the glittering quartzfreckled shallows of the Susquehanna River.<br />
<br />
Her mother said that Moses would sometimes talk about Pegeen, in those last days. She knew nothing to do but to listen. Declaring love, he said, was like playing a fatal round of poker. You threw all you held within you on the betting table: the light of your insoul, the strength and courage and power of your convictions, the holy unassailable love around which you organized your life. You threw it carelessly, unknowingly. You let it slip gladly, sure that all your chips would be returned to you tenfold. To gain anything worth gaining you had to risk everything, this was a freely admitted preconception. Seemingly you were without a choice. And when you lost you were left with nothing. You not only did not gain the girl but you did not gain back your chips. Your idealism, your passion. She took a bit of it, perhaps; even the most unrequited of loves flatter the rejecter in some way. Yet most of it slipped away into nothingness, that black pit of vapidity where all crushed faith was sucked away to forevermore, until it was recycled in cruder form to a child some years on who must live through that same excruciation again, should he be cursed with the sworn enemies of the tranquilized contentment that moved our world: passion, thoughtfulness, imagination.<br />
<br />
Out on the stump she sits, statue in the wind with brown hair billowing like a maestro's curtain sweeping dramatically into the night. On her finger glints the shiny silver ring, numbed now and made red by the cold. <i>All those days me, Becky, spent running into the wind and all those days you, wind, spent running into me. And all that shaping of me done by you that happened in my face and my skin and the muscles in my legs yes but shaping that went on deeper too. </i>She kneels down into the hardened tundra by the stump and begins to pry at its holdings. Stiff and cracked clumps come away, the keratin of her short fingernails bending as she digs in. After a few minutes of prying she loses all feeling in her hands. <i>And is it even such an absurd thought to think that natural beauty comes from the wind, from the sky, from the elements of the earth? Are not the genetics of our forefathers, passed down to them from their forefathers, passed down to them from the first mean scrap of an atom in some cosmic explosion at the dawn of time, the same thing as that very wind? </i>She breaks through the surface and chunks of the earth began to come up in her hands. Chunks of black hard earth with pebbles and frayed gray arrows of dead roots molten against the frozen masses like specimens interred in amber<i>. Is what comprises and what fuels the wind any different from that which comprises and fuels our cells? </i>When the hole is deeper than her elbow she drops the shiny silver ring into the hole and refills it with dirt and returns up the rooster path to the house.<br />
<br />
Inside her mother sits at champagne with her father and Arthur. They have loosened their belt buckles and crossed their ankles over their knees. They turn to regard the reentrance of the daughter, the bride: dirt smeared back across her darkened windburned cheek, her perennially coiffed plait of hair a bouquet of ruffled feathers, hot red blood soaking through - and in fact obscuring - the black earth writ upon her stiffened fingers.<br />
<br />
I have decided to cancel the engagement, Becky says.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Song of the Day: Blackberry Stone by <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/I-Speak-Because-Can/dp/B003C5MNSC?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Laura Marling</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B003C5MNSC" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important; padding: 0px !important" /><br />
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SI-cuKKQrN0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-23326970998102449672011-02-07T20:14:00.000-08:002011-02-10T18:22:07.102-08:00Mountain Monkey's 10 Best Films of 2010 and Oscar Predictions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1H1nThmONiUMI9ejBbo-y6Mr9kjzE7yNxyw843EpbQt7meAQ0OVXUAi8SWdlz6W33-qhsZXBeR_-UB8FZOjRWh75JeiTf4BlFBws-YmMMKCsMoErKSi4OOpHGsgDC7r9rXg-4e7YMBZk/s400/Mountain+MOnkey+at+the+Cinema+2010.jpg" width="400" /></div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Vicious indie political satire veiled as a horror flick. An insanely disturbing movie about ballet. A sports movie that avoids abusing montage or the pump-up speech. A romance which ends badly and without hope of redemption. A film which almost entirely takes place in a crevice between two rock walls one hundred miles from civilization. These anomalies, seemingly oxymorons, all hit theaters last year. And they are part of the reason 2010 surpasses any single year in recent movie memory. </div><br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001GCUO5M&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Honorable Mention</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1130884/">Shutter Island</a></span><br />
Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000217/">Martin Scorsese</a><br />
Written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0436164/">Laeta Kalogridis</a> (screenplay), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1212331/">Dennis Lehane</a> (novel)<br />
Starring <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000138/">Leonardo DiCaprio</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0749263/">Mark Ruffalo</a><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IMDB Ranking: 8.0</span></i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Metacritic: 63 ("generally favorable")</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mountain Monkey Scale of 2-212: 178</i></span><br />
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Beautifully filmed with stark noir scenery, and bearing a first-viewing unpredictability reminiscent of <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sixth-Sense-Collectors-Bruce-Willis/dp/B00004BZIY?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Sixth Sense</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B00004BZIY" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, Shutter Island </i>is perhaps Scorsese's most critically underrated movie in years. Two U.S. Marshals are hired to investigate the disappearance of a patient at a highly guarded mental institution on an isolated island off the coast of Massachusetts. The ongoing investigation exposes a multilayered conspiracy of spookiness that crosses elements of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Alfred-Hitchcock-Legend-Begins-Classics/dp/B000UVV25Q?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Hitchcock</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000UVV25Q" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Maltese-Falcon-Humphrey-Bogart/dp/B003ZEQMH8?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Maltese Falcon</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B003ZEQMH8" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Truman-Show-Special-Collectors/dp/B0009UC7QQ?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Truman Show</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B0009UC7QQ" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> with the best of The X-Files. Though the ending twist is sudden and perhaps difficult to believe, its unpredictability more than compensates.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0036TGSIK&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>10. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1282140/">Easy A</a></span><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0323239/">Will Gluck</a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1421629/">Bert V. Royal</a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Starring <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1297015/">Emma Stone</a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IMDB Ranking: 7.2</span></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Metacritic: 72 ("generally favorable")</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mountain Monkey Scale of 2-212: 178</i></span></div><br />
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A genuinely hilarious high school comedy that lambasts our witch-trial culture, <i>Easy A</i> is the best written movie in its genre in a very long time - and maybe ever. Eschewing the vapid nostalgia of something like <i>Varsity Blues </i>and the truly braindead comedy of most <i>American Pie</i> imitators, <i>Easy A </i>only appears to be anything like its predecessors. The story is the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Scarlet-Letter-Nathaniel-Hawthorne/dp/1936594277?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Scarlet Letter</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1936594277" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> rewritten: a girl willingly sacrifices her reputation to perpetuate a lie that is serving and protecting her classmates and teachers. Aside from offering a scathingly sarcastic condemnation of the way we live - during (and well after) high school - it also offers the perfect engine for the sharp tongue of an actress startlingly capable of handling big words (a preciously rare skill, given our society's recently born desire to abbreviate and amputate the English language). If extreme at points, it only serves to highlight the satire.<br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003UESJME&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">9. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1403865/">True Grit</a></span><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001054/">The Coen Brothers</a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001053/">The Coen Brothers</a> (screenplay) and Charles Portis <a href="http://www.amazon.com/True-Grit-Charles-Portis/dp/1585673692">(novel)</a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Starring<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2794962/"> Hailee Stenfield</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000313/">Jeff Bridges</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000354/">Matt Damon</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000982/">Josh Brolin</a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IMDB Ranking: 8.2</span></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Metacritic: 80 ("generally favorable")</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mountain Monkey Scale of 2-212: 182</i></span></div><br />
Filmed in typically epic Coen Brothers fashion, <i>True Grit </i>brilliantly evokes the colors and character of pre-citified Texarkana. Endlessly witty and darkly comic dialogue transcends a very simple and straightforward story: a young girl attempting to mete homebred country values on the world which murdered her father. This true grit, immediately apparent in Mattie Ross, is peeled slowly back from the in-town, on-trial drunken Rooster Cogburn as the story progresses. Though the conflict of the story is perhaps resolved too easily to allow for the suspense of past Coen masterpieces, <i>True Grit</i> stands on its own for its wit and artful narration.<br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001UV4XHY&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">8. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0926084/">Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part I)</a></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0946734/">David Yates</a></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0460141/">Steve Kloves</a> (screenplay) and J.K. Rowling (novel)</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Starring <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0705356/">Daniel Radcliffe</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0914612/">Emma Watson</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0342488/">Rupert Grint</a></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IMDB Ranking: 7.9</span></i></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Metacritic: 65 ("generally favorable")</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mountain Monkey Scale of 2-212: 183</i></span></div></div><br />
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Very clearly, <i>Deathly Hallows </i>is the first Potter film to truly transcend, and even surpass, its novel counterpart. In my opinion the seventh book has always been the weakest of the seven part series, but that does not diminish what this movie has accomplished. By giving themselves nearly six hours - and two installments - to tell the conclusion to the story of Voldemort's rise to power and the ensuing hunt to end his immortality, Yates and Kloves finally have the space with which to capture the beauty of the Potter story. The greatest parts of the book are not only captured, they are expanded. It is everything that the first five films could have been, everything which number three seemed to touch briefly, which six explored successfully. The horcrux-seeking, wilderness-wandering travels of Harry, Hermione, and Ron have a distinctly <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Picture-Theatrical-Editions/dp/B000X9FLKM?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Lord of the Rings</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000X9FLKM" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></i> feel to them (and the excellent cinematography to match), which is entirely fine. The cliched, child-oriented, disneyesque character of many of the other movies is entirely absent here, and any real Potter fan will appreciate the depth of detail and emotional reality these adaptations have long lacked.<br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0041KKYDI&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">7. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1542344/">127 Hours</a></span><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000965/">Danny Boyle</a></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000965/">Danny Boyle</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0064479/">Simon Beaufoy</a> (screenplay) and Aron Ralston (book)</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Starring <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0290556/">James Franco</a></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IMDB Ranking: 8.2</span></i></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Metacritic: 82 ("universal acclaim")</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mountain Monkey Scale of 2-212: 188</i></span></div></div><br />
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The Beaufoy-Boyle team, plus cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle and composer <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rahman-Music-Magic-Composer-Slumdog-Millionaire/dp/B001TH2DYY?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">A.R. Rahman</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B001TH2DYY" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, responsible for <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Slumdog-Millionaire-Dev-Patel/dp/B001P9KR8U?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Slumdog Millionaire</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B001P9KR8U" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></i>, faithfully dramatize the story of a desert hiker who must hack off his own arm when it becomes trapped under a rock. Boyle, whose directing past includes<i> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sunshine-Blu-ray-Cillian-Murphy/dp/B000Y7U98W?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Sunshine </a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000Y7U98W" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></i>and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Days-Later-Blu-ray-Cillian-Murphy/dp/B000VDDWEC?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">28 Days Later</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000VDDWEC" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> </i>(both Mountain Monkey Hall of Fame movies), proves yet again he is one of the best directors alive today. The story of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Between-Rock-Hard-Place-Ralston/dp/074349282X?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Aron Ralston</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=074349282X" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />'s tragedy is interspersed with bits of his past, from the moments that made him who he is, to the adventurous and independent conceit that led him to disappear into Utah's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Desert-Solitaire-Edward-Abbey/dp/0671695886?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Canyonlands National Park</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0671695886" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> wilderness without telling a soul. The deftly handled transitions from past to present are a major highlight, along with an outstanding soundtrack and a best actor-worthy performance from James Franco.<br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0036TGTDE&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">6. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1120985/">Blue Valentine</a></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0161834/">Derek Cianfrance</a></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0161834/">Derek Cianfrance</a>, Cami Delavigne, Joey Curtis</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Starring <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lars-Real-Girl-Ryan-Gosling/dp/B0014D5RBE?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Ryan Gosling</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B0014D5RBE" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wendy-Lucy-Michelle-Williams/dp/B001EUSYIA?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Michelle Williams</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B001EUSYIA" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IMDB Ranking: 8.0</span></i></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Metacritic: 81 ("universal acclaim")</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mountain Monkey Scale of 2-212: 189</i></span></div></div><br />
It took Cianfrance 12 years to write <i>Blue Valentine</i>, and it shows in the careful craftsmanship of the plot and dialogue connections and references. The film alternates between the dark heartbreak and fury of a marriage in the present, to scenes of its humble and innocent beginnings six years earlier. It is filmed in a slow, stripped-down, detailed, contemplative style that seems a cross between <i>Once </i>and <i>The Wrestler. </i>Incredibly realistic, it contains none of the crowd-pleasing Hollywood archetypes which seem to saturate, and eventually poison, even the best-conceived stories. Ryan Gosling's role as a well-intentioned, simple-minded mover was the best acting performance of the year.<br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003UESJHO&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">5. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0964517/">The Fighter</a></span><br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Directed by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Three-Kings-Blu-ray-George-Clooney/dp/B003SEWMF6?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">David O. Russell</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B003SEWMF6" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Written by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson (screenplay), Keith Dorrington (story)</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Starring <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Invincible-Mark-Wahlberg/dp/B000J3OTT6?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Mark Wahlberg</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000J3OTT6" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Psycho-Uncut-Killer-Collectors/dp/B0009A40ES?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Christian Bale</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B0009A40ES" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Enchanted-Widescreen-Amy-Adams/dp/B0011U52EC?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Amy Adams</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B0011U52EC" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Frozen-River-Melissa-Leo/dp/B001KEHAG2?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Melissa Leo</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B001KEHAG2" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IMDB Ranking: 8.2</span></i></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Metacritic: 79 ("generally favorable reviews")</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mountain Monkey Scale of 2-212: 193</i></span></div></div><br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fighter-Christian-Bale/dp/B003UESJHO?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Fighter</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B003UESJHO" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> ignores and at points defies all the protocols of the typical cliched sports film. Where Rocky 19, We Are Titan, Remember Marshall's Last Friday Night would resort to montage, empty romance, and filler side-characters, David O. Russell delivers a poignant, excellently acted, and complete story. The film is distinctive within its genre for risking to avoid the guarantee of mediocrity that is the formulaic docudrama, and instead shooting a grisly and gusty movie that is real. The sentimentality is never cheap, which is the single greatest threat to all sports movies. It focuses on a boxer from a bad Massachussetts neighborhood, spited by family and fate, clearly competing for more than the empty claim of a championship. It relishes in its focus on detail and overlooks almost nothing in its character analysis. Mark Wahlberg, Amy Adams, and especially Christian Bale prove they can convincingly fill untypical, dangerous roles. One of the better original screenplays of the year, and probably the best sports movie since <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Chariots-Fire-Two-Disc-Special-Cross/dp/B0006HBLUA?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Chariots of Fire</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-color: initial !important; border-width: initial !important;"><i><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B0006HBLUA" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></i></span>.<br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002ZG980U&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
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</div><div style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0634240/">Christopher Nolan</a></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0634240/">Christopher Nolan</a></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard</div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IMDB Ranking: 9.0</span></i></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Metacritic: 74 ("generally favorable")</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mountain Monkey Scale of 2-212: 198</i></span></div></div></td><td style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important;"><br />
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Perhaps the most popular movie released since Christopher Nolan's own 2008 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Knight-Widescreen-Single-Disc/dp/B001GZ6QC4?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Dark Knight</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B001GZ6QC4" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, Inception is an incredibly original action movie continuing Nolan's line the line of innovative action movies. In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Memento-Guy-Pearce/dp/B00003CXZ4?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Memento</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B00003CXZ4" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, Nolan created a film which began at the end, and traced the story of an amnesia victim backwards, scene by scene. Inception is a similar subversion of action-film conventions, taking place almost entirely within a dream, a dream's dream, and a dream's dream dream. The unpredictably of the plotline and the very effective eeriness of the dream storyline is underlined by a consistently built tension that does not cease from the very first moment of the film. If the film had been slowed down and lengthened by another 45-60 minutes to examine some of its complicated twists and fascinating locations in closer detail, it would certainly be a threat for a number one spot.<br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0034G4P7G&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">3. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/">The Social Network</a></span><br />
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</div><div style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000399/">David Fincher</a></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Written by Aaron Sorkin (screenplay), Ben Mezrich (book)</div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Starring <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Adventureland-Jesse-Eisenberg/dp/B002BFBAWO?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Jesse Eisenberg</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B002BFBAWO" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Never-Let-Me-Keira-Knightley/dp/B004EQAVHI?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Andrew Garfield</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B004EQAVHI" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/FutureSex-LoveSounds-Justin-Timberlake/dp/B000H305U0?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Justin Timberlake</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000H305U0" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rooney-Mara-Magazine-February-W-Magazine/dp/B004K4V6TG?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Rooney Mara</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B004K4V6TG" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Billy-The-Early-Years/dp/B004H6410I?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Armie Hammer</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B004H6410I" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IMDB Ranking: 8.2</span></i></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Metacritic: 95 ("universal acclaim")</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mountain Monkey Scale of 2-212: 202</i></span></div></div><br />
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A thoroughly riveting and razorous examination of the founding of Facebook, and the reflection which the popularity of this new form of communication makes upon the human condition. The film is exceptional for its brilliant acting and writing, and more specifically for the cultural relevance to the state of the world in 2010. Every facet of Facebook reflects some aspect of human personality, and each is unflinchingly and often unflatteringly revealed in the story of the website's founding. Admittedly fictionalized and exaggerated for effect, it nonetheless displays, in witty fashion, the darkly comic underside of one of the most successful entreprenuerial ventures in history. The obvious favorite for Best Picture at the Oscars.<br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004BZ5AN2&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">2. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/">Monsters</a></span></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2284484/">Gareth Edwards</a></div></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Written by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2284484/">Gareth Edwards</a></div></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Starring <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1058940/">Scoot McNairy</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2016345/">Whitney Able</a></div></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IMDB Ranking: 6.5</span></i></div></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Metacritic: 63 ("generally favorable")</i></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mountain Monkey Scale of 2-212: 204</i></span></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A reflective and thought-provoking metaphor of a film, veiled as an evolved <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cloverfield-Mike-Vogel/dp/B0014Z4OQG?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Cloverfield </a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B0014Z4OQG" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />yet working more in the strain of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/District-9-Blu-ray-Sharlto-Copley/dp/B002SJIO5E?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">District 9</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B002SJIO5E" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> than anything else in recent memory. A photojournalist attempts to escort a woman home to America through a ravaged Mexican that has been infected by 'monsters' - massive extraterrestrial creatures who have been engaged in combat by human military. The giant wall that has been erected at the U.S.-Mexican border plays a prominent part in the film. A final scene near the end, where the true nature and identity of the 'monsters' is revealed, a scene very reminiscent of the legendary lights scene in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Close-Encounters-Anniversary-Ultimate-Blu-ray/dp/B000VECACG?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Close Encounters,</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000VECACG" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> was one of the more powerful single moments in a film this entire year. The movie is filmed realistically, with a sharply edited style that cuts all unneeded Hollywood dialogue and filler-explanation. Revelations in plot and scenery are made naturally, and you have the feel that you are discovering the story with the characters, not be guided by an omniscient directorial hand that needs always remind you of its presence. </div><div><br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=widgetsamazon-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0041KKYEM&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0947798/">Black Swan</a></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Directed by<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004716/"> Darren Aronofsky</a></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Written by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, and John J. McGlaughlin</div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Starring <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000204/">Natalie Portman</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005109/">Mila Kunis</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001993/">Vincent Cassell</a></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">IMDB Ranking: 8.6</span></i></div></div><div style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Metacritic: 79 ("generally favorable")</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Mountain Monkey Scale of 2-212: 209</i></span></div></div><br />
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A perfectly directed, written and edited film, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Natalie-Portman/dp/B0041KKYEM?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Black Swan</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B0041KKYEM" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> was obviously meticulously planned by director <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Requiem-Dream-Pi-Ellen-Burstyn/dp/B000MEYKD2?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Darren Aronofsky</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000MEYKD2" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> for tremendous emotional effect. A woman wins the coveted lead role in a ballet company's production of Swan Lake, and undergoes a personal transformation to fit the dueling personas of the black and white swan. Despite the seemingly innocent nature of the ballet background plot, the film maintains a distinctly portentous air of doom. The grisly cinematographic style perfected by Aronofsky in Requiem for a Dream to display the brutality of drug abuse is used here to analyze the precarious kinetics of professional ballet. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Natalie-Portman-Celebrity-Anywhere-Garden/dp/B000FC2FQU?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Natalie Portman's</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000FC2FQU" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> character is in constant flux, evolving from real to imagined, innocent to evil, white swan to black, with such smoothness that your perspective of the story changes with her. The lines gradually blur between reality and art, and by the concluding scene, the final production of the ballet, they vanish altogether. Ultimately the movie is a comment on the inseparability of those two things: real life, and real art. By far the best made movie of 2010.<br />
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<i>Mountain Monkey also recommends: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Never-Let-Me-Keira-Knightley/dp/B004EQAVHI?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Never Let Me Go</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B004EQAVHI" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Happythankyoumoreplease-Malin-%C3%85kerman/dp/B003L20IKG?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">happythankyoumoreplease</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B003L20IKG" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shutter-Island-Leonardo-DiCaprio/dp/B001GCUO5M?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Shutter Island</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B001GCUO5M" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Love-Other-Drugs-Jake-Gyllenhaal/dp/B004L3AR0K?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Love and Other Drugs,</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B004L3AR0K" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Writer-Ewan-McGregor/dp/B0036TGSR6?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Ghost Writer</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B0036TGSR6" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B0036TGSR6" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Way-Back-Ed-Harris/dp/B004C45AZU?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Way Back</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B004C45AZU" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Winters-Bone-Jennifer-Lawrence/dp/B003EYVXTG?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Winter's Bone</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B003EYVXTG" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />.</i><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Other Top Ten Lists From Around America</span></div><br />
One of my favorite parts of watching good movies is comparing them. Consistently, critics, particularly well known ones such as Roger Ebert, offer up some claim that 'art cannot be ordered' and that is 'futile to rank films', yet they still do it every year. It is not futile to rank films, it is difficult to rank films - big difference. Every movie can be compared to every other movie. How different writers do this is the subject of another post entirely, but for now, before I expose you to a slew of reviewers who will tell you the exact opposite without any real explanation, I want to make it clear that it is done and that it should be done. To nominate films for any award, they must be directly ranked. To even distinguish ten films from the rest, their must be some form of ranking.<br />
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Take care to note that some of the frequently overrated films on the lists below deserve a final lambasting from Mountain Monkey before they are given props by media monkeys around the globe.<br />
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1) <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Story-Four-Disc-Blu-ray-Combo-Digital/dp/B003XKPPOU?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Toy Story 3</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B003XKPPOU" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> is a cartoon. It should not be compared with movies which required the full bodies and voices of real people, and the ensuing realities of production and directing, which comprise a live action feature film. Award the animators and screenwriters in a separate cartoon category, but don't compare it to a real movie - it's not! And I use exclamation points about as often as CNN or Fox present an unbiased and educated perspective. So...<br />
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2) <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Kids-Are-All-Right/dp/B003L20ICE?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Kids Are Messed Up</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B003L20ICE" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> I admittedly did not see, nor will I see. Perhaps stubborness is a terrible trait in a film critic, but I don't think I'm being closed-minded. I will give just about anything a fair shot. This was instantly marketed to be over-hyped, and I have every expectation it fulfills its boring and feel-good promise.<br />
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3) <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Town-Ben-Affleck/dp/B002ZG99N6?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Town</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B002ZG99N6" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> Good and suspenseful action movie. Not <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Man-Widescreen-Denzel-Washington/dp/B000GFLKF8?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Inside Man</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000GFLKF8" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />, not even <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Heist-Gene-Hackman/dp/B00005UQ9T?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Heist</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B00005UQ9T" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />. Keep in mind that many critics use affirmative action to form their best of the year lists. By this I mean they think by selecting the best in a genre or from a certain subgroup, they are portraying the best of the year. Not true, and also misleading to moviegoers.<br />
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4) <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Kings-Speech-Colin-Firth/dp/B003UESJH4?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The King's Speech</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=widgetsamazon-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B003UESJH4" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> was another well-made movie that gets a bad name on Mountain Monkey because of how overrated it has become.<br />
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<a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101216/COMMENTARY/101219978">The Chicago Sun Times</a> (Roger Ebert)<br />
<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101220/ap_en_mo/us_ye_top10_movies/">Associated Press</a><br />
<a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2011-01-07/2010-screens-top-10s-marc-savlov/">Austin Chronicle</a><br />
<a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/movies/bal-best-10-movies-2010-pg,0,5040689.photogallery">Baltimore Sun</a><br />
<a href="http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2010/12/26/ty_burrs_top_10_films_of_2010/">Boston Globe</a><br />
<a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2010/1215/Ten-best-movies-of-2010/Winter-s-Bone">Christian Science Monitor</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20326356_20451419,00.html">Entertainment Weekly</a><br />
<a href="http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/ten-best-films-of-2010.php/all/1">Film School Rejects</a><br />
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-kenneth-turan-2010-tops-pictures,0,4340632.photogallery">L.A. Times</a><br />
<a href="http://movies.msn.com/movies/year-in-review/top-10-movies/?photoidx=12">MSN</a><br />
<a href="http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2010/12/2010_top_ten.html">New Orleans Times</a><br />
<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2010/12/27/2010-12-27_blue_valentine_is_best_movie_of_2010_how_do_you_know_is_worst_neumaier.html">New York Daily News</a><br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/movies/19holden.html?_r=2&ref=movies">New York Times</a><br />
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/12/richard-brody-films.html">The New Yorker</a><br />
<a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/21/the-best-movies-of-2010.html">Newsweek</a><br />
<a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-best-films-of-2010,49101/">The Onion</a><br />
<a href="http://blog.oregonlive.com/madaboutmovies/2010/12/post_7.html">The Oregonian</a><br />
<a href="http://www.reelviews.net/reelthoughts.php?identifier=657">Philadelphia Inquirer</a><br />
<a href="http://www.awardsdaily.com/2010/12/peter-travers-top-10-films-of-2010/">Rolling Stone </a>(Peter Travers)<br />
<a href="http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/our_picks/index.html?story=/ent/movies/2010/09/29/movie_list">Salon</a><br />
<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/24/PKLA1GO7DV.DTL&type=movies">San Francisco Chronicle</a><br />
<a href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2035319_2035308,00.html">Time</a><br />
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2010-12-30-moviesyearender30_VA_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip">USA Today</a><br />
<a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/filmpoll/view/critics/Simon+Abrams/2010/">Village Voice</a><br />
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703581204576033683480980572.html">Wall Street Journal</a><br />
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/12/17/GA2010121702212.html?hpid=topnews#photo=1">Washington Post</a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #073763; font-size: x-large;"><b>Mountain Monkey at the Oscars </b></span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMwZyrd8u6hjCoZRAJlVhV8EUhCHmBduzmd4kcSElEXeugigIPq0QnHL_zMJcUNReWdVBZLR1HoNIxaEUNCvZnITh8e06TeTwseGvgVoz0F4xiW433ND1MAh7QCeARnrBx2KXODF75pNz1/s1600/monkey+the+knockout+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMwZyrd8u6hjCoZRAJlVhV8EUhCHmBduzmd4kcSElEXeugigIPq0QnHL_zMJcUNReWdVBZLR1HoNIxaEUNCvZnITh8e06TeTwseGvgVoz0F4xiW433ND1MAh7QCeARnrBx2KXODF75pNz1/s320/monkey+the+knockout+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">To view a full list of the nominees, check out <a href="http://www.imdb.com/features/oscars/2011/nominations">IMDB's informative page</a> on the upcoming Academy Awards.</span></i><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Best Picture</span><br />
Who Should Win: <i>Black Swan.</i><br />
Who Will Win: <i>Social Network</i>, because Mark Zuckerberg was Time person of the year in 2010, and it's more socially relevant, etc., though not a better movie, than Black Swan. And god strike me down if it goes to <i>The Kids aren't Alright</i> or <i>King's Speech</i>. Or Toy Story 3. I don't care if it inspired the revolution in Egypt, cartoons should not be considered in the same category as live action films. P.S., my friend alerted me to some factual inaccuracies in <i>King's Speech</i>, particularly regarding the relationship between Winston Churchill and the supposed anti-Nazi self-deposed predecessor and older brother of King Firth. <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2282194/">Check out Christopher Hitchens outing Edward VIII as a Nazi-sympathizer in Slate Magazine.</a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Best Actor</span><br />
Who Should Win: Ryan Gosling for <i>Blue Valentine</i>, but since he wasn't even nominated, it should to James Franco for <i>127 Hours.</i><br />
Who Will Win: King Firth, of the Royal British Society of Monarch-Worshipping Filmgoers<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Best Actress</span><br />
Who Should Win: Natalie Portman for <i>Black Swan</i><br />
Who Will Win: Natalie Portman, and if not I will likely not be paying any attention to this ceremony in the future.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Best Supporting Actor</span><br />
Who Should Win: Torn between Christian Bale for <i>The Fighter,</i> and Geoffrey Rush, the therapist from <i>King's Speech</i>, which was undoubtedly the best part of the movie. Andrew Garfield was decent in <i>Social Network</i> as well, but was not nominated. Bale's part involved losing a significant amount of weight and taking on a drug-addict's accent and persona, so I think he deserves the win here.<br />
Who Will Win: Geoffrey Rush. They will have to make up for not giving Best Picture to a feel good flick. Not to mention, he was the only truly sympathetic character in the whole story.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Best Supporting Actress</span><br />
Who Should Win: Either Amy Adams or Melissa Leo from The Fighter. Though the main character in True Grit, played by Hailee Stenfield, was undoubtedly good, I don't think she was given enough room by the Coen Brothers to expand beyond the overly (and sometimes unbelievable and so distracting as to be detracting) western vernacular of the screenplay. The former two each played out characters that were pretty shocking, and handled clearly more demanding roles.<br />
Who Will Win: Melissa Leo - with a small possibility of another point for King's Speech with Helena Bonham Carter's six-line role (is there not a minimum limit of screen time or dialogue spoken in order to be considered "supporting"?)<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Best Original Screenplay</span><br />
Who Should Win: <i>Inception</i>, 100%. The mind of a literary novelist was required to conceive the plot. The structure itself is similar to William Faulkner's Light in August, where two characters are presented, and a story is told about their past involving other characters and events, and a story about those characters is told involving even more characters and events. This parenthetical technique of storytelling, simply put - (two men walking down the road meet two children (two children come from a house where a woman was just murdered (the woman was murdered by the mentally deranged cousin of the two men walking down the road))) - is employed by Christopher Nolan in Inception with the dream within a dream within a dream idea. <br />
Who Will Win: <i>The Kids are Alright</i>. There's a double feel good option in this category, as King's Speech was also nominated. I will take this opportunity beforehand to vomit, for manufactured sentimentality being so lauded in our world.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Best Adapted Screenplay</span><br />
Who Should Win: <i>Social Network</i>, though <i>127 Hours</i> was excellent and would win in most years.<br />
Who Will Win:<i> Social Network</i>.<br />
<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Share on LinkedIn</span> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http://soldoutmountainmonkey.blogspot.com/2011/02/mountain-monkeys-10-best-films-of-2010.html&title=Top%2010%20Films%20of%202010&summary=Oscar%20Predictions&source=Soldoutmountainmonkey"><img src="http://press.linkedin.com/images/LinkedIn_IN_Icon_25px.png" /></a>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-5284917508277665762011-01-06T21:41:00.000-08:002011-02-10T16:21:02.447-08:00Snow<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow to him, that mortal man cannot be true…The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. ‘All is vanity’, ALL…There is a wisdom that is woe, but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he forever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than the other birds upon the plain, even though they soar. </span></i><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">- Herman Meville’s <i>Moby-Dick</i>, from Chapter XCVI ‘The Try-Works’</span></div><br />
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<br />
In a thousand ways man is outshone by nature. To say nobility has vanished from our society is an understatement of the vastest proportions. ‘Chivalry is dead’ is a cultural cliché, yet what cliché is not founded in some truth? In wintertime, the wasteland that has become our popularly vaunted suburbia is made clearer by the distinction which snow presents. Blanket the earth in a uniform whiteness and all our created wickedness vanishes; the temperature slips into the 40’s and we are left with a poignant reminder of the pure fetidness that is the legacy of our race.<br />
<br />
Imagine that, like Kurt Vonnegut’s Tramalfadorians, you have the power to see all of time at once, not as a linear line, but as a swirling globe. You see the world as it is, as it will be, as it once was. Virgin forest and open prairies blending seamlessly into gas stations and ratridden apartment buildings. You see these generations of bespoiling, of beauty and nobility fouled for the sake of base convenience and veneers of class. Cement and brick replace oak and rock, chemical filth and gasoline replace soil and grass. Perhaps then the truth of our condition would be made plain. How celebrated would cities be, were we forced to constantly contemplate their genesis? A knot twists my stomach every time I hear someone speak of the beauty of a metropolis; and when pressed for the source of that beauty they have nothing more than geometrical symmetry, or human accomplishment, to justify their statement. Yet when a man is beaten to death and the bloodmarks that pock his face happen to fall in a pleasing geometrical alignment, even though that deed has been accomplished by humans, we do not deign his passing with the adjective beauty. So seem cities to me.<br />
<br />
The sun renders truth over the earth, laying plain the waste we have wreaked upon the land we have been given. Troll through a city and see the oily wastelands, the filthy back alleys, the trashstrewn walkways, the smogged out atmospheres circulating above our freeways and between our towers. During a snowfall these verities are hidden, obscured, veneered by nature's freeze to appear uniform and in following with the universe's plan. Snow can make even a rusty old trashcan appear beautiful; almost no one will not admit that to be true.<br />
<br />
Yet is it really because this white frozen moisture is so beautiful, that even the dullest and most vapid of individuals remark upon its glory? Certainly to environmentalists, or contemplative people of deep thought, there is that silent nobility to snow, the hush which it carries over the earth, the simple and quiet way which it commands whole societies to a halt, as if urging the world to step back from the onesound of suburbia, to stop and to listen, nothing more. Yet in our age of the iPerson, of instant gratification, or perpetual impatience, of ceaseless lethargy, could this deeper sacrosanctity of snow be said to be broadly reckoned? More likely by far do these finer details go unnoticed. So then what is it about snow which makes even the masses of idiots, even the Tom Bradys and the Sarah Palins and the Perez Hiltons of the world, stop and marvel at the winter wonderland?<br />
<br />
And we cannot forget the nature of snow. Each snowflake is uniquely individual, yet countless trillions of flurries come together to form a perfectly coordinated, and harmonically blanketed, whole. Snow and society rest at the farthest polar extremes; we are a world of disjointed masses who easily and greedily fall prey to conformity, yet instead of the grace of a snowy landscape, we come together to produce the epic disharmony of a polluted metropolis. From nature, if nowhere else, should mankind learn the futility of order, the imperfect chaos that is the fate of anything artificial in this ignoble world. Humans are like snowflakes, born from a chance encounter between opposite elements, floating beautiful and innocent through their early lives, untouched by the powers of the social earth. Each is somehow entirely unique, different from the next, bearing different shapes, consistencies, characteristics. And each is fated to join the larger whole. When the snowflake does so it is merely a stage of development, a stepping stone to seamlessly and joyfully join the greater community. A collective of individuals in perfect accord, this is what the world could be. But the transition of an infant to an adult, a snowflake to a blanket, is the corruption of innocence, the assimilation of individuality; a process which our world deems necessary for progress. And so we turn a blind eye to the model for utopia which winter offers us up, free of charge.<br />
<br />
It took me many years to realize that my joy for snow was much more than the ecstasy of having off school. It took a few more years after that to realize that snow, like rain, made me happy because it was different, and I liked things that were different because I was bored by, and generally did not approve of, life as it was being presented to me. And it has only been the last few winters that I understood, on a deeper level, what snow actually does: it transforms our plain, boring, often disgusting metropolises into wonderlands and wildernesses of adventure. Cars cease to pollute the streets; fortitude, not gas money, is required to travel. The constant reminders that adventure is impossible, that there can be no journey or voyage of danger to be undertaken, vanish into clouds of puffy white freeze. Freedom to be challenged by something made by god, rather than something made by man, seems within reach. And most importantly, all the brutal ugliness of the world is hidden from sight. And it is this last feature of a snowstorm which, consciously or subconsciously, appeals to just about every living citydweller on the face of the planet. Even dumb brutes have some base aesthetic sense, whether they like to admit it or not. Even the movers and shakers, builders and planners of our filthiest cities recognizes the comfort of that deception, though whether they know they are being deceived, or care to know so, is another matter entirely.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Song of the Day: Dog Days are Over by Florence and the Machine. An anthem to a coming storm!<br />
<br />
<object height="340" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rsr8oXxzFEI?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rsr8oXxzFEI?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br />
<br />
<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fsoldoutmountainmonkey.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F01%2Fsnowmen.html&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=650&action=like&font=arial&colorscheme=light&height=80" style="border: none; height: 80px; overflow: hidden; width: 650px;"></iframe>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-35745279871675693792011-01-01T22:47:00.000-08:002011-02-10T16:22:53.693-08:00Glory, Athlete (complete)<div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The Penn Relays have been held annually at the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field along the banks of the Schukyll River for 112 years running. It is both the oldest and the largest track and field relay meet in the world. </span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">On April 24th, 2010, an estimated record crowd of 54,000 watched Olympic gold medalist and world record holder Usain Bolt anchor home the Jamaican 4x100 to a victory in the USA vs. the World event. He won by a lot and looked damn good doing it. Further details of the other events that week have been greatly obscured. </span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">A vernal wind is rolling in off the darkened cesspolluted banks of the Schukyll, whisking city refuse about the twisted form that is hobbling along the streets. Chipbags, candy wrappers, soiled toiletpaper dance and kiss about him like lost cohorts, gusted favorably so as to shadow something kindred. He seems not so much to move as to be moved, as though by the strings of a lazy puppeteer, across the empty windblown night from some ungodly origin and brought now to the step of the cheesesteak stand shutting down in front of Franklin Field. You getting ready for Bolt tomorrow? he asks the vendor on approach.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy peers out from his stand, a shiny red cap with a stitched P glimmering atop his head. The shape before him is still but rumor by the faint moonlight. Something short and ill balanced, emanating a stench of alcohol and subway-piss from the leeward breeze. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I’m gettin ready for everyone, Speedy says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The shape hobbles a step closer and when the streetlamp steadies Speedy can trace the lines of the figure. Skin that is darker than his own deep chocolate hue. Broken aviators which perch crookedly on a puff of wild unwashed hair. A tattered Phillies jacket bearing the old maroon eighties logo hangs over a bony frame. The figure seems not of a piece but rather a collection of garbaged tangibles, relics sought out from a collective runoff that was better left to run its rotting course undisturbed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">But Bolt's the biggun, says the drunk. And comin here too. I ain't never think I'd a see the day.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I sell cheesesteaks to everyone, Speedy says. He turns on the little faucet and collects water in the rag and then turns off the faucet and wipes down the bleached surfaces.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm talkin for your business and shit, man. I'm talkin, like, Bolt, man. They say he's the fastest man on the planet. And we earned him, mayun. This city earned him. Dat's the troof. You think for one second Bolt woulda come here four years ago? Forget that shit, mayun.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Bolt did come here four years ago, Speedy says, and pauses midrub to see the figure creep even closer to the stand. And five years ago too. He was on a Jamaican schoolboy relay team.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">If the drunk hears any of this he gives no indication of it aside from a sharp twisting of his dirtied brow. As though the mere idea of admitted mistake, a reconsidered principle, was a preposterous implication to his tortured psyche. He tells Speedy quite simply that the advent of Bolt's apotheosis is not only just but that it has brought meaning back to athletics and glory back to Philadelphia.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I mean take this city as of recent years, the drunk goes on. It earned that shit. Changes is goin down. Changes has gone down. Two straight pennants for the Phils. A black man in the White House. This city won rights to Bolt.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy starts to inquire as to what one of those might have to do with the other but he stops himself silent and busies himself locking up the freezer.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now tell me somethin son, the drunk slurs, and looks Speedy up and down with a disapproving smugness that seems eased by an apparent goodwill. Where was you on the night of the twentyninth of October, 2008?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was right here.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The hell you doing here?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I wasn't doin nothin but sellin cheesesteaks.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">You was sellin cheesesteaks? The drunk pschooshes him and sucks his teeth. Lifts his brows, turns his chin in what amounts to a grimace. His voice takes on a highpitched whine before demuring into a terse, wicked, whistling teapot of a cough. Christ man. Do you know what happened in this city on the thirtyninth of October? Of 2008?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not off top of my head, sir, naw. I don't know no specific dates too well really. I could venture you a guess.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">You could venture me a guess. Jesus H. Christ. Then how'd you know what you was doin?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy scratches beneath his cap and then along his beard. His own fur of a dubious caretaking. The faintest hint of what might be silver probing at the edges of his mustache.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Cause I don't do but one thing, he says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Christ man. That was the night everything changed. That was the night that brought Bolt here. The night the Phils won the series.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He places his greasy palms on the tin counter, fingers a bag of unclaimed Lays dangling by the side. Up closer his stench is refined. Both whiskey and malt liquor to be distilled from within a liberal radii of his person.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was right here, Speedy says. I listened to the whole thing on the radio. Afterwards the people came through the streets.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Youse damn straight they did, comes the guttural response. And he leans forward again so that his metal orbs all crazed and crossed seem to peer out at random angles, as though sighting in those atmospheres events of an equal and terrible exigency. Things only reckonable on a certain wavelength to which he alone is privy. Everything changed that night, he says. After that night we got pride. We got respect.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He proceeds to tell Speedy a story. It is a story of a city not only spited by fate but teased by the promise of it. In the year 1980 all four major Philadelphia sports teams won championships. This was a misjudgement of the deus ex machina according to the drunk. An importunate random coincidence. He said that most of the universe existed on a scale of equality which constantly corrected itself and that most of the twenty-eight years following 1980 were of just such a correction. A measuring of karma. To lose was not enough. The losses must be tortured ones, salted by glimmers of hope and promise. This promise manifested in the form of men. Men like Greg Jefferies. Men like Scott Rolen. Men like Dale Murphy. Men like Bobby Abreu. Men like Pat Burrell. And yet in each case an agony of failure swept the Delaware Valley with an increasing severity.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ain't that a bit harsh? Speedy says. Jefferies, Rolen, they were MVP candidates. And Burrell was just overhyped. Ain't his own fault. We just wanted him to make J.D. Drew look bad.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The drunk says that men such as these are best left forgotten. That it doesn't matter what stats they had or how they did at the plate or what they did in the clubhouse. No one cares and no one remembers if they have ever known. The Phillies did not exist in those years nor did the city, not truly. The twentyninth of October in 2008 marked not just the end of that period of nonexistence but the beginning of a new age. The creation of a thing which many of these present fans are too young to have ever been graced by had they been graced by it at all. All the years of failures and all the agents of those failures swept away by an 0-2 Brad Lidge splitter to Eric Hinske.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The burner has been long clean and Speedy finally ceases to rub its spotless exterior. He excuses himself and pulls down the gate over the counter and latches the gate to the metal U inside and then steps outside the stand and begins to arrange the padlock on the door. He then asks the drunk if the accomplishments of those who had gone before might not even be respected the greater due to their insignificance. That to perservere against impossible odds and without hope of the reward of glory demonstrated a respect for the Phillies uniform. For the sport itself. For the very idea of athletics in broad. For the qualities inherent in a true man which no situation regardless how adverse can exorcise.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">We brought them sons of bitches here to win ball games, the drunk says. And we didn't. That's what you call failure. End of story.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy eases shut the padlock to his stand and looks the drunk in the eye. Naught to see there save perhaps the same thoughtless degeneration which cohabitates with him the sweating backalleys and dumpster-shelters and oily forsaken cantinas and birdshat parkbenches he calls his home. Somewhere off in that vast city gone a train grumbles through the night.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">You didn't bring no one nowhere, Speedy says quietly. And you can't talk bout failure like that. Like it only mean a single thing. I mean it ain't the winning that counts. It's how you do the winning. I mean you can't judge failure by somethin like statistics. By somethin likes wins and losses. Failure ain't math. It means more 'n that. It means you've lost on the outside and lost on the inside, too. It's about faith, man. Trust me, I can take but one look at some men and see whether they still believe in their cause and if they do they hasn't failed. Not in my eyes they hasn't. Don't much matter if they don't stand a chance at gettin done what they's tryin to get done. Like could you really say that a man who dies tryin and protect his family from a killer - and can't stop the killer in the end - is really a failure? Not in my mind he ain't.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The drunk heaves into another great teapot coughing fit and Speedy shifts awkwardly beside his stand and looks off into the night, from road to shopwindow, scumworn alley to the sides of the scarred trees. Nearby the only sound is of beer cans rolling manless and hollow, lapping mercurial against curbsides like docked vessels in the tide. The two men stand there, two ragged men of the night, spokespersons of ancient causes, at a standstill amidst these darkened springtime hallows. After a time of Speedy jerks his head to the side.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Gotta catch a train, he says, and starts to move off. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The drunk holds a hand up and bends over again to his knees in the throes of a renewed fit. Speedy halts and then goes again and looks back and halts once more. The figure before him seeming at last barren of any thin skein of humanity he may have held claim to in a sunnier hour. The scourge of his life seeking expression with each wicked ejaculation from the depths of diseased bowels. Each round of coughing bends him double and when he straightens again he seems blacker yet, as though made by nature to be chameleon with the cruder night. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another man, says the drunk, heaving in again. Another man might find that cough a mine staged. Another man might keep on walkin to wherever it is he's suppose a go.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I ain't another man, Speedy says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I know it, says the drunk. You ain't any kind a man I ever knew at all.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I wish that was true, says Speedy. He looks at his hairy wrist upon which there is no watch, but only the lightened skin that still remembers its sunless years. He starts walking and the drunk comes along.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">They come to the corner of Walnut Street and and Speedy turns right and the drunk stumbles a correction to his course so that he may follow. They pass the ice skating center and the bank and the business towers that line the roads penultimate to center city. To the left they pass small alleys with porchlights and garbage bins standing plump and sedate on the curbedges. Off to the south the sidewalk drops off into old trainyards and empty lots that loom filthy and dangerous in the night. The lamplight burns orange on the walk and the drunk peers steadily at his companion.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hey man, the drunk says. Hey man, now. I rec-erg-nize you, now.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I doubt it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fer real man, he says. I ain’t playin. You go to Overbrook High?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy looks away. Looks off to darker side of the street. The stray cats peering yelloweyed like homeless lions into the night. The lights of the cars zipping away on the highway distant. I don’t deal no more, he says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The drunk shucks his teeth.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Homie. I mean, homie. Cool it man. I mean just cool it, man. I seen your face before is all, man. Like in the newspaper. Fer track. Back in the day. What's yer name man?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy looks at the drunk closer. Squints by moonlight to perhaps reread something kindred in his eyes, something overlooked or gone unseen upon first appraisal. They continue down Walnut and under the train bridge to the stoplight at 30th. Two cars zip past. A small liquor store spills a ghastly working class glow out into the night. Atop the door a rusted sign says LIQUOR-SHOP-SNACKS-GOOD EALS with a busted out D. A Coca-Cola display is the predominant feature of the corner. Speedy looks around for oncoming traffic and then into the store and up at the starless sky and everywhere but the face of the reeking form at his shoulder.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some people used to call me Speedy, he finally says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's chill, it's chill dog, says the drunk, and casts his ragged arms out before him as if to surrender any illdeed to Speedy's plain sight. Hey man, listen. You got seventy cent?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy digs from his pocket eighty-seven cents in change and puts it in the dry pink cup of the drunk's proferred palm. His nails are untrimmed and long like a witch's and curve from his bent fingers across the length of his hand. Speedy can hear the coins crackle against the scraggly keratin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">You got fortyfive more cent? the drunk asks.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">No, says Speedy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's chill, it's chill.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The light changes and the drunk comes with Speedy across the street and towards the bridge. With a bend in the street they can see the river and the skyscrapers of center city beyond it. Great rectangles with rows and rows of lights extending back into lines like metal dominos. Infinite caverns and hollows to be read in the spaces between. At their foot the Schukyll runs black and strong in its cleaving of the city. The lamps along its bankpaths make a shimmer of its surfaces. Its depths plain and frightful in the empty darkness, tamed now by neither traffic nor sunlight.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hey man, the drunk says. What ever happened to you? What'd you stop runnin for? You was good right?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Wasn't never my choice to stop, Speedy says. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">They walk in silence to where Walnut crosses 76. The drunk halts there, stands stock-still, his feet teetering off the curbedge and his ankles bent. As if he'd reached some border visible and applicable to him only. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy looks to him and then tightens his coat around his neck. He nods forward. I'm this way, he says. I'll see you later.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He walks a few steps. The drunk does not acknowledge his farewell in any shape. Then he calls out.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">You ain't got too much Philly pride, he calls, his voice seeming to whisper up from the streets, as if made of sentiments coagulated from the urban distances and reprised to his ear.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Does you, he calls again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy ignores him and walks ahead with a quickened gate. At this harried shuffle a favoring of his right leg is plain to see. Near the center of the bridge he turns.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The drunk stands beneath the blinking yellow traffic light. Lit at intervals and at intervals invisible so as to protect half the world half the time from that paupered nightmare. His eyes wordlessly and shapelessly monitor Speedy's progress. He stands as if he has not spoken at all but rather is audience to something else altogether. Of his calling. To which he is but symbol and soothsayer and no more.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">No one wears a redder cap than me, Speedy calls to him. We just ain't rootin for the same thing. We sure as hell ain't rootin for the same thing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The drunk gives no indication that he has heard nor that he has even noticed Speedy turn. Speedy continues on to the night and does not look back again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">II</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now he moves along the streets alone as is his custom. His fists balled in the sidepockets of his jacket and the vicarcollar pulled up around his nape. The burning calentured embers of a city night brushing his coattails and carrying him forth. Though his speed betrays his catch it exudes a vigor altogether unknown to this part of town and to this time of night. The streets become pliable, bend to his will. Cars speed up to pass by him in the road. Bikers do not stop at stop signs and continue on with their helmeted heads down to the spokes of their wheels as if safeguarding their eyes from some harmful visage in that focus. Women cross the road to avoid close contact. Other haggard men approach him with all the diplomacy of a foreign delegate, eyes eager to seek armistice already at ten paces afoot, holding up their hands as if to disavow themselves of illdoing, spitting thick wads of mouthpoison to splat on the sidewalk and haggling for crack and pixie dust and mescaline and worse yet. An elderly genderless hunchback stooping in the lee of a stoop makes for a narrow alleyway from which it tracks his passing across the alleymouth. Turning its neck a full ninety-degrees in examination of Speedy. Its eyes set deeply back in the skull and black and unreadable beneath folds of ribbed flesh and a torn fedora. Movements which betray a certain prejudice, an unspoken suspicion. A city which fears him because he does not fear it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">At Rittenhouse Square a policeman casts his light across the dewy grass and follows Speedy's movements with the temerity of a searchlight prowling the seas it has been charged with keeping. The white sphere of hallogen covers his back like a target until he moves out of range across 18th. The parkbenches are empty and beneath the white lamplights in the park moths aspire heavenward. Relentless, colliding, seeking to become undisturbed. Speedy tucks his fists closer together from within his jacket and tightens his shoulders and limpstrides on.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The PATCO is off of 16th street. By the little firered bannister heading underground there are camped a denizen of homeless on a ratty afghan unrolled to accommodate their streetwise flanks. Their eyes dimly ruminate something mirthworthy and a few them emit toothless and worn out bursts of sounds that could be construed as chuckling. As if fulfilling an ageless tradition or ritual the one nearest the entry holds up sullenly and hopelessly a foam cup in which chatter a few sad nickels and pennies. Speedy finds a dollar bill in his wallet inside his coatpocket and craftily fingers it free of the fold, for the open air is a pathogen to displayed currency that you do not seek to give away. He drops the proffered dollar into the foam cup.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">God bless you, the homeless manages, and a small impoverished chorus echoes, echoes his footfalls down the long dank stairway and into the hollow keepings of the subway. The hall at the foot of the stairs is long and well lit and tenanted by nothing save an overstuffed trash can that spills haphazard from its appointed nook into the hall. Onelegged pigeons and blind pigeons and tarstained pigeons and pigeons without toes forage therein. Some follow him partway down the hall to the next set of steps yet lose their ambition when he turns back to regard them. Expressionless, oiled, sweating. As if they too had come to see whatever it was the aboveground had seen in him, judging him accordingly better left companionless.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The PATCO train is huffing and hissing in wait and the platform stands dusty and cavernous smelling and absent of a single soul. On board there are a few drunk college girls huddled together in the back laughing about something and when Speedy comes aboard they cease their laughter. As if his presence had brought with it a gust of something to water all fires of mirth. He limps quickly to a seat near the front and lays his head back upon the plastic pukecolored headrest and lets out a deep sigh over his beard and shuts his eyes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When he wakes again a young man is across the aisle from him wearing a Hamels jersey and eyeing him with a kind of drunken fraternal appreciation, as though they had each come through some kindred struggle though from a source disparate. Speedy touches the brim of his bright red hat as is his custom with all whom look his way without animosity. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sup, the man says. Now that he speaks Speedy can tell that he is hardly more man than boy. Faint adolescent glimmers of a mustache peach the skin atop his upper lip. His youthful eyes are glazed over in a way that bespeaks the twilight of a long and satisfying inebriation. Yet even about this manboy there lingers that aura of refuse, excess - a crushed beercan and a halfeaten sub lie tossed on the floor before him. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Go Phils, yeah? the manboy says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mm-hm, Speedy nods. Go Phils.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Punchdrunk, whiskeydrunk, the girls had moved up to the foyer of the shuttering doors and stand now in the access way whiteknuckling the rails with both hands. Their eyes worn and languid and looking out the plastic window at the subtarranean unknowables flashing past. One of them smiles timidly at Speedy and he tips his cap to her in much the same manner. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">You out at a party? the boy inquires. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Naw, says Speedy. I been workin. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Where dya work at?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I got myself a cheesesteak stand.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Oh yeah? You got good steaks? </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Best in town.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Best in town? What about Pat's and Geno's?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy chuckles. You don't wanna ask me about no Pat's and Geno's, he says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">What, says the boy. Why?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Cause they's made out of cardboard, Speedy says. Plastic cheese, cardboard bread, paper-frozen patties. You can go to a bowling alley outside Death Valley and find yourself better cheesesteaks than what they got there. People only go there cause they lights is bright. People only go lots of places cause the lights is bright. But let me ask you this, does bright lights feed yo soul? Not last I checked they doesn't.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In diatribe beyond a few pairs of words the boy's attention is lost. Lost, wandering to the exposed thighs of the girls standing with whiteknuckled grips on the poles in the doorway, back to the black square in his palm that is his phone and too much more, to the musty cellar depths of the ratridden underground zipping by the window. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">So how is business? the boy eventually asks, thumbing his square, plugging the white umbilical of a headphone into his ear opposite Speedy. At this stand of yours? </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's about okay, Speedy says. This is the best time of year for things. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">When's the worst?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">New Years, he says. New Years is the worst time. Erryone looks at me like I done something wrong to ‘em. Like my just standing there flipping them steaks was some kind of an offense. It usually lasts about a week and then either the smell gets to bein too good or their fitness club memberships run out or some such and they come on the hell back. Like wild. Late January is wild. Everyone makin up for pretendin to be dedicated to somethin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The boy grins. The train stops at 8th and Market and the girls trickle out and onto the platform and the train moves on. Soon out the window the long brackish seaplain of the Delaware River emerges into sight, and the train clatters onto the Ben Franklin Bridge. Aqueous spires spotted with tiny bright bulbs tease the starless skies above. To the north the lights of Philadelphia glimmer in dancing coins upon the black water. Ahead the eastern banks of New Jersey are lined with dark trees, offering dim adumbration to the world without end beyond. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Those were some pretty pretty girls, says the boy. And one of um was smiling your way too.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I don’t really understand women all too well, Speedy says quietly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ain’t nothing to understand, the boy says. They’re just like you and me. All you gotta do is make um </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> laugh. You make a woman laugh and she’ll more’n likely forgive you the rest.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">That what you think?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">It ain't much a matter of what I think, says the boy. Just happens to be the way it is. And it's not even just me. Marilyn Monroe said that shit. He goes silent for a time. Why do you think there's some women out there that fall in love with murderers? </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Like who?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Like who? I don't know. Let's say Bonnie, for instance. Nice old country girl like her. Why'd she fall in love with a murderer?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Cause the murderers ain't so bad on the inside?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nope, says the boy. That's not it at all. It's cause murderers or not, they happen to have a damn good sense of humor. Or at least they got whatever it is that can tickle a lady the right direction. And so does any old jackass.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The train slows as it plummets beneath the surface and approaches the City Hall-Camden stop. Speedy stands. Night, he says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the doorway he turns back. I don't think that's true, you know. About women and laughter and all that.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The boy nods. Yes you do.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Well. Night.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">And he slips through the doors before they shut with a snake's hiss. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Again the night has featured him an empty platform. He stands there as the train recoups and lumbers away, the tempo of its shrill machinations gathering decibels with its speed. Distant amphoric echoes chartering its egression. For a time he listens to the rattle and the shake and takes deep breaths and thinks about his night. He has a sudden urge to see his image in a mirror, if only to put to rest the visage of the drunk gnawing a cavity in his core. The air is heavy with the taste of nickels. He watches the subway walls for a time, lost perhaps in some perverse reverence. Supplicant to the empty black. Soundless now save for the pitterpatter of vermin scurrying to safety. Of roaches invisible, inevitably lurking, clicking their arthropodic beat in the scarcer places. Here in America by urban midnight. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the foot of the stairs a man lies on the cement, couchant and grinning and looking about with all the levity of a boy watching television. He smiles a mirthless smile through a grimesoaked and pale visage. Something distinctively dungeon-like in his cadaverous complexion. As though this had been the place he had been born and the place he had died and therefore the place to which his spectral soul was henceforth quarantined. He stands and pulls out a pistol and levels it at Speedy as he comes up the stairs. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Bang, he says, and pulls the trigger. Bang. Bang. Hollow clicks echo the empty staircase. Bang. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy limpstrides up the steps quick out into the night and though the man turns with him he does not follow across the threshold out of doors.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Market Street Camden is ill-lit and peopled by denizens and drugdealers and other troubled figures with no right purpose to their late evening wanderings. People beaten by the earth, frowning at alleyways, shouting out to the night to no one at all. Men plopped on buckets with forties of Olde English between their knees call out to him as he passes and he does not turn, does not turn. A cloud of hooded figures struts near the intersection with 4th, animosity beading from their darkened forms, and Speedy keeps a steady gaze to the street before him.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The night the police found him the Sixers had just dropped game five to the Lakers in the 2001 Finals. Shattered beer bottles betokened Rittenhouse Square, blood from failure-fueled brawls sprinkled the walk. He was lying facedown in the icysheathed grass without a blanket, whispering incoherables to the lunar soil. Almost laughing, manic-crazed in his depravity. Sir, the police had said. Sir. You are going to have to come with us, sir. </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br />
</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>And Speedy had leapt up, full for a moment of zane and power. Oh holy lordy holy, he'd said, seeing the two navyblue officers. Praise be to Saint Judas. And then he took off at an impossible limp-run across the park. A dash towards what no one could guess. In moments he was down again, a knee in the small of his back, cold silver cuffs tight on his wristveins. Praise be to Saint Judas, he'd said again and again. Praise be to that biblical bastard.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He heads down Fifth and past the Tabernacle of Faith and makes a right on Lawrence. There he finds the sleeping cranny between the window well and the dumpster left undisturbed. He peels back the ragged little curtain and slides into the ruffled spread of dried leaves and newpapers and then slowly pulls the curtain back across the opening. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Once inside and settled he is warm. From the depths of his jacket he takes a wrapped cheesesteak and a halfempty gallon of water and sets them both in his lap. He unfolds the cheesesteak and takes a ketchup packet from his pocket and squirts the contents evenly across the steak. The steak has gone cold and the water when he slurps it is near tepid. Still it is a good meal. I know how to appreciate a good meal, Speedy grumbles to himself, thinking All this night spent lookin for a mirror. As he sits there chomping he watches through the interstices of the ragcloth the lights of the bridge flickering against the black framework of the night. He listens to the foghorn of the freighter sounding off as it passes beneath the trestles of the Ben Franklin. In the distance voices and shouts, sirens wailing. Darker places go sleepless.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">III</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The next morning instead of going straight to his stand Speedy walks on down to see the schoolbuses arrive near Chestnut. The disembarkment of a hundred leanjawed youths into a mist of CO2 and sunshine. Eyes steely and straightfacing, some with headphones bobbing subtle and serious to a wartime tune. Teams come in clumps of matching colors, a spectral arc of colliding armies marching to a battlefield commons. He sits there for a long time, thinking and still. Cruder thoughts pass him by unreckoned.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">***</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Her name is Jill and he has seen her before. Speedy remembers everything that has ever happened at his stand. But they happen in his mind not in a chronological line but in a swirling globe, from which what has gone past is to be plucked for purview without bias as to its when. A day ago or a year ago, says Speedy's vendor memory. That is specificity. She comes to the stand the same as she did that time past. Tangerine and white warmups, blazing round eyes of amber. Smooth windswept features. The peeled back forehead, the slick nearperfect brown ponytail which leaves but a single hair left to dangle in the wind by her nape. Possessing a sort of narrow angularity which suggests constant forward movement, conditioned by days to pass the earth by in a slipstream: a runner.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hi, she says, and smiles. I'll take a chayeese steak with some onions, and some...some greens.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">He slaps the steak on the burner, dashes oil upon it to let it sizzle, digs out a horde of vegetables from the freezer. I seen you, he says to her. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Her smile broadens, travels up her face to dimple her cheeks and light her eyes and prick her ears as she does so. I know you have, she says. Behind her the crowds have gridlocked the walkway, people swing wide to rush past the stand on their way to the stadium. The line strings back across the walk and up to the grass. The crowds carry with them the smell of Philadelphia springtime, oil and pollen and antiseptic with a hint of cityreek, all of it tempered by the chill of the latemorning air.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">You done already run, Speedy says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thursday night. I won the 5k.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">And you come back to watch Bolt.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">My team's in the sprint med final. You know. The Championship of America. But yeah. Her words seem to savor their slow exit from her lips, a sweet tea southern drawl. Behind her the line has continued to grow. He can see them endless, he can see them standing about and fidgeting and suspiring like panting canines, staring past the girl at Speedy's now slow hands with something approaching fury. All of them come to see the fastest man alive run one quarter of one lap and no more.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">You ain't none too old, Speedy says. Is you.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm a sophomore. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Yeah, Speedy says. He slices the finished steak in two and puts it on a paper plate and hands it to her. And you ain't never lost a race, has you.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not since middle school. No. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I could just tell. Goddamnit to hell. I could just tell. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">How much I owe you?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Goddamnit to hell. You don't owe me nothin.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Well how's that?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I mean that you don't owe me nothin. Shit.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She blushes, for a moment it appears as though her face has widened, full and healthy now from its streamlined structure, from its hollow and caved singlepurposed form. She dumps a crumpled ten dollar bill from her fist into his tip jar.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hey, she says. Are you going to watch the meet? </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy tilts his cap back slightly on his skull, his face lit and his eyes scrunched by a mirthless grin. Naw, he says. Goddamnit to hell.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">She picks a broccoli from the steak and pops it in her mouth, her lips a perfect oval. She is backing away now, backing away into the wall of the crowd. Before him a man in a suit is ordering but Speedy does not hear him. You should come, she says, melting limb by limb back to the rest of them. Come sit with me in the top row. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">A breath later the morning takes her.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">A wiz wit? demands the suit before him. Speedy only stares. Behind him the line has grown, the men sending quick anxious glances to the girl with her food and back to the stand again with a quick snap of the neck, as if it should disappear if not kept under proper surveillance. Well? </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speedy does not look up and begins absently collecting materials for the steak. He places the bread on the burners and lays out the meat on the paper like it were the sandwich. He almost gets to the point where the onions would have been added. That is how far he gets. Then he drops the contraption altogether on the burner and walks out of the stand, barks and growls of the expectant chasing his footsteps till they know not how to distinguish him from the rest.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">***</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Never before has he entered this stadium as a fan and a fan only. In those years gone by since he last set foot within he has seen much: the long and slow despair of age, the perpetual repeopling of his youthly hallows, the fading of his dreams like objects in a nighttime wind, gusting away and passing into the ever-dark. His life has become a game of waiting and watching and clutching, clutching to that which the wind did not blow away entire, that which stuck upon the sides of buildings or caught in the gaps of the trees or came to rest gentle and forever against the curbside cobblestones. Glimmers that to him were and are signs. He read of it in papers, of how a girl collapses from heat stroke and crawls on her hands and knees a hundred yards to finish a race, of how the most mediocre of mediocre backup junior college shortstops swings a pinch hit double long after the game has been decided, of the long and constant fury burning alive still in saintly young people who have been fated (ever since whatever level of play made them obsolete) to be hidden in plain sight. It is for this that he would enter the stadium, as a fan and a fan only, because where else if not on the track does that noble and enduring silent fight of martyrs live on? Where else do men and women, boys and girls, compete so absolutely and without any thought whatever as to the glory accorded their superiors? Yet here the pain is too acute, here when the cold swells of the drunk’s manic-mob philosophy and séance gather citywide, from Kensington to Tinicum and Chinatown to Olde City, to crash over the stately brick barracks of Franklin Field, Speedy simply cannot watch. And so for seventeen years he has not. Never for seventeen years has he entered as fan and as fan only.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">When the guards see him they move aside, and with an almost deferential air wave him on to the concourse. Inside the air is heavy. Waves of sodasyrup and piss, and the ancient peppermint oils used to stay bleacherfated hamstrings, and now this new reek, this new collective reek of 50,000 new fans of track and field, flowing by in all shapes and sizes in a mad disrhythm. It moves as a thing disjointed, in constant offbeat, bound by random chance to collide upon itself like a curling snake stuffed in a tiny box. Limpstriding, his eyes on the ankles before him, Speedy enters this flow. Here immediately to be consumed: the concrete sticky and musty, slipping along the rough spongy wet brick of the halls, deafened by the raucous, incoherable chants rising above the general clamor. Hot dogs and saltfries and funnel cakes and sports drinks passed and consumed and clutched amongst and within the moving mass. Sun speckles the mass from high windows and other narrow portals but the corridor is dim, illuminated faintly by wall lamps and night lights. Tunneled breezes blow the trash into dustdevils which swirl above, unreachable and appearing and fading within the same instant. The crowd moves as an entity, obscuring all else without, the sounds of the city, of horns blaring and traffic rolling and the heady din of a metropolis made mute beneath its gathering genesis. Blocks of humanity clot vital organs of the structure, clustering about the concessions and the restrooms and the part of the concourse which leads to the paddock area where the athletes gather before they race. There is no way to see the stadium or the world outside the stadium but only the passageway between. Fans stopper the exits to the seats. And it is only with his earthy-dumpster aroma clearing away those who idle too near that Speedy finds himself finally back in the sunlight and at the rail, and the lithe young bodies gliding by in lanes on the track below, arms pumping and striding fluidlike with earnest sharp breaths and toes touching down upon the tracksurface like antelope.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Jill is in the top row above the high jump pit, well under the rafters and sitting a few rows displaced from the tangerine and white conglomeration of her school below. She does not act suprised at the sight of him nor does she greet him. There he is, she says when Speedy sits down beside her, pointing towards the endzone of the infield below. He just did a strider. He just waved to the crowd.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not a patch of seats has been left vacant in the entire stadium. It is a throbbing mob, its heartbeat sufficient to quake the very earth, to make dizzy the old stately clocktower ruminating against the blue sky those events to which it plays unwitting host. Speedy follows Jill's finger to where Bolt is crouching now, stretching, gesturing with his relaymates. About him bustle the others. Those to which Speedy can recognize just as he recognized Jill: Walter Dix, Shawn Crawford, Nesta Carter, Richard Thompson and more. They stand and stretch and stride like Bolt, unnamed hulks of power and runningback-like flesh who but lurk in the shadow of the tall and wiry Jamaican. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">They are finishing the last of the 4x200's and Speedy puts his hand on Jill's shoulder and tells her: he sees beauty made obsolete by flashy shadows, shallowness, the haunting stride of something unearthly and the thousands which will mimic it in turn, mimicked without thought or consideration of themselves. He asks her if any great art has ever come of an artist who created art for the sole purpose of becoming another artist.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then why did you come here today, she asks. Why didn't you just tell me no? Why didn't you stay in your stand? Have you come here for Bolt?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I can't say I know, Speedy says. I think I maybe just wanted you to know. Just in case one day you lose a race. That there's more. And also I wanted to be here to see it all die, once and fer all.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">See what die?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Track.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">***</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now the entire stadium stands and so do Jill and Speedy, as if pulled up by the sheer inertia of the crowd. The announcer is calling out the names of the relay teams for the USA vs. the World 4x100. He lists each runner's accomplishments, his voice merely seeming to propel the decibel of the crowd as if up a ladder, proceeding inevitably to the crescendo of Bolt. Speedy looks at the track. There stands Dix, there stands Bailey, there stands Mario Forsythe. All of them getting themselves crouched in their stagger, flattening their sunglasses, kicking out their legs high to the sky. Two American teams, two Jamaican, and one from Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, and Germany. The first time the official calls set he waves off the start and the announcer comes on the loudspeaker again Ladies and gentlemen in order for the race to begin fairly we must ask for your silence and then they are lined up again and called to set and an unnatural soundlessness comes over the earth. Arms long and rippling with gleaming muscles set firm into the track. Backs arched, eyes to their fingers set along the start line, sweat trickling to make tiny dots on the earth, the sun now finally brilliant and full in the midday sky. There comes the chomping of distant jowls working on popcorn, the slurp of soda, a pair of shoes scuttling on the concrete and a dull sneeze. There are shouts from the concourse within the bowels of the stadium, meaningless echoes. The gun sounds</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">***</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Do you understand me, he is asking her, his eyes shielded from the sun and the reflection of the sun from track. He screams to hear himself above the roar. Glory ain't the only thing that an athlete becomes and he don't just go from bein nonglory to glory. Just like a boy don't just go straight from bein a boy to bein a man. They's steps. You ain't white one second and black the next and it ain't just gray that's in between. They's glory, yeah. That's part a it. But then there's the next step.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">***</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Flawlessly and seamlessly the planet's fastest men exchange the batons, but two strides between the leader and last place as the staggered start is made up. Going into the final turn the American Crawford and the Jamaican Anderson are near even. Bolt is handed the baton a half step off the lead.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">From his vantage diagonally across the track Speedy can only just make out the details of the handoff, the yellowgreen singlet immediately ahead, immediately drawn a step to the lead. The others dash at his heels and rearrange their places yet they are in a different race. Bolt does not just run, with that manic whitetoothed focus, rather he is pulled, pulled by the string of an attentive and infinitely powerful puppeteer, one who has decided finally and absolutely to be the arbiter of the relay. And as Bolt approaches the finish Speedy sees in him all the godlike smoothness of his gait. The transfusion of energy from muscle to muscle as he touches earth for an unseeable instant before departing again: the ripple in his calves going up to his hamstrings, to his biceps and to his jaw, settling finally in his eyes a raw power, a joy unknown. He flies untouched, but phantom to history. Unofficially the split for his 100 meter leg is 8.79 seconds. They announce this sometime later, when he is jogging about, when flowers rain from the crowd upon his shining skull, when reporters dash from their trackside holdings trailing wires and stray notes, when the Jamaicans and Americans alike in the crowd have united to this sight entirely inexplicable, this sight unseen. And during all of this Speedy remains standing, rooted and wordless beside the undefeated girl in tangerine and white, staring at the spot in the middle of the final straightaway with something like a dreamlike smile.</div><br />
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fsoldoutmountainmonkey.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F01%2Fglory-athlete-complete.html&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=1100&action=like&font=tahoma&colorscheme=light&height=80" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:1100px; height:80px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-65504964885816439132010-12-28T00:39:00.000-08:002010-12-28T00:57:54.874-08:00The Beast Mesa: Desert Restoration in the Nation's Most Forgotten Country (Section I)<div><div><div style="margin: 0px;"><i>i. thirty-eight who saw murder didn't call police</i></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin: 0px;">It's 2:00 a.m. in the halfdark, twenty-five miles east of Holtville California, and I'm wrapped in a sleeping bag on a tarp with five other prone psychotics. These are the sanest people I have ever met. I blink unsteadily, peer about in the predawn desert. The creosote and sagebrush but black shapes looming. The desert soundless, void-like, the flattened earth holding a bare echo of the midnight hours past of howling coyotes, scuttling kangaroo mice, darker reptiles lurking. Above a brilliant canvas of galaxies, white and brilliant and offering the only hint of light to the manless wild. I am awake, I sit bolt upright. Instincts watered by city life are distilled in the desert; my life here has been a rediscovery of ancient blood, ancestral lusts. I look out from our camp and I know that something is horribly wrong.</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin: 0px;">Our tarp-commune in miniature sits on the edges of main camp: a semicircle made by a beaten, dented, brand new Ford pickup truck, a haggard white trailer, and our massive white dinner tent. From appearances all would seem to be right. I look about and see no light, I look down the tarp and count all five of my crew mates. I listen and I hear the nosound, the desert, the hum of nothing that beats in tune to our arid spirits. As I focus I can make out the chugging spit-drone of the geothermal plant: a nonexistent background, like cicadas in the summer in Tennessee. But on further listen the wrongness, the force drawing me from sleep, is made plain.<br />
<br />
A far roar draws nearer. The black desert a province of the unknowable, the terrible. I think of what terrors the night may hold solely because it is night, thinking <i>three weeks ago outside Shoshone California I woke up in the desert with this same feeling and looked around and saw black shapes moving and they were wild dogs growling and they very much wanted to kill Jake and I</i><br />
<br />
<i> </i>A far roar drawing nearer, stars sitting silent witness. Creosote in the night only a black shape, waving in a wind gust, sitting silent witness. In the distance looming scraggled hulks of mountains, Chocolate Mountains and San Jacinto Mountains and all that rims the Imperial Valley, all that sitting silent witness. Like Kitty Genovese: thirty-eight who saw murder didn't call the police. But in the desert, for half a dozen desert rats, for a team of environmental restoration experts, the cops, if they even existed, are not the good guys.</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin: 0px;">Lights are flashing now at intervals, the roar is growing guttural, the bowel of the darkest desert sand dune clearing its throat in intermittently increasing decibels. I stand, my sleeping bag slips away and I step into my overturned shoes. My crewmates stir. In the wild it has never paid to be a heavy sleeper. In my hand I clutch my flashlight, my opened pocketknife, and step forward into the doughy sand thinking <i>whatever growls there must come through me first </i>and trembling and thinking <i>you are not as brave as you imagine you are</i></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br />
From the distance now emerges the onus, the senators of civilization come to civilize. Beams of hallogen shoot rays across the desert landscape, shouts and profanities ejaculate from windows to blaspheme the silence of the night. The gunning engines sputtering like something diseased, foreign pathogens to the spotlessly endemic land. The vehicles follow no path, follow a straight trajectory through creosote and underbrush, tearing across the open country and past the campsite, the swirls of dust illuminated crimson by rearlights.<br />
<br />
Get the hell outta our desert, they scream.<br />
<br />
We see them pass, we see them circle to come by again. Their tracks through the virgin landscape plain in the starlight. No different than a god being murdered before your eyes. In my palm the knife is sweaty.<br />
<br />
Our desert is not flashy. Little subsists to attract the tourist, the developer of parks, the salesman and bottler of natural beauty. The East Mesa contains scarce evidence of human existence. The ruins of a military base, a hohoba farm, and an old airport bear rusted testimony to past failures at domestication. As Mary Austin wrote, <i>desert is a loose term to describe land that supports no man</i>. The East Mesa subdivision of the Sonoran is just that sort of desert, the word in the truest sense. Our plight to protect our new home is not one of volition alone - no one will replace us if we go. <br />
<br />
The others are up now, peering sleepily to the carnage. Imagine: Steve Jobs' prototype of the first Apple being vaporized in front of his eyes, in his bedroom, by a pack of redneck cesspool-dwelling meth-dealing high school dropouts. The world is delicate beyond our wildest imaginings.<br />
<br />
Jake places a call to the dispatch number the BLM gave us. There is nothing more to do. There are far more pressing concerns to law enforcement than the preservation of the earth. </div></div><div></div></div><br />
Song of the Day: Calexico's cover of Neil Young's Heart of Gold. The band Calexico is named for a border city of the same name which lies fifteen miles from the East Mesa.<br />
<object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8l3rzjSVUdE?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8l3rzjSVUdE?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-22115738548879161412010-12-22T22:40:00.000-08:002010-12-23T14:55:05.982-08:00A Year in Reading<b>January</b><br />
<br />
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall<br />
California Deserts: An Ecological Rediscovery by Richard M. Pavlick<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson</div><div style="margin: 0px;">King, Queen, Knave by Vladimir Nabokov</div>Red by Terry Tempest Williams<br />
<br />
<b>February </b><br />
<br />
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut<br />
Goodbye, Columbus by Phillip Roth<br />
Best American Short Stories 2009<br />
Best American Essays 2009<br />
<br />
<b>March</b> <br />
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy<br />
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov<br />
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut<br />
<br />
<b>April-May </b><br />
<br />
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy<br />
Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky<br />
<br />
<b>June</b><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
Sorta Like a Rock Star by Matthew Quick<br />
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy<br />
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner<br />
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell<br />
<br />
<b>July</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor<br />
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy<br />
Rabbit Redux by John Updike<br />
<br />
<b>August</b><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
Rabbit is Rich by John Updike<br />
American Pastoral by Phillip Roth<br />
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy<br />
The Centaur by John Updike<br />
<br />
<b>September </b><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert (Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum)<br />
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy<br />
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy<br />
<br />
<b>October </b><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
The Odyssey by Homer<br />
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy<br />
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy (reread)<br />
Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy<br />
<br />
<b>November </b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy</span></b><br />
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev<br />
<br />
<b>December</b><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
Light in August by William Faulkner<br />
Moby-Dick by Herman MelvilleJustin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-73594519379705618112010-10-05T23:12:00.000-07:002010-10-06T00:19:25.558-07:00Glory, Athlete: opening section<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Penn Relays have been held annually at the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field along the banks of the Schukyll River for 112 years running. It is both the oldest and the largest track and field relay meet in the world. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">On April 24th, 2010, an estimated record crowd of 54,000 watched Olympic gold medalist and world record holder Usain Bolt anchor home the Jamaican 4x100 to a victory in the USA vs. the World event. He won by a lot and looked damn good doing it. Further details of the other events that week have been greatly obscured. </span></span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">I<br /></div><br />Wind whisks park leaves wet and orange through the streets, a city hallow. By the failing light of a dying streetlamp Speedy wipes clean the fatoil from the burners in his cheesesteak stand. A bright red cap with a stitched P glimmers atop his skull. The hour is long past midnight and little sound comes from the darkened streets but his curse with each premonitory fizzle of the lamp. The leaves make but a whistling scratch as they touch and dance off the empty streets. Somewhere far off the banks of the Schukyll slurp murkily beneath the midnight birdseye of this everlit city.<br /><br />Ahead and out of those darkened mercurial depths comes a sound of scraping and dragging along the cement clipping nearer by the moment. Speedy looks up and sees hobbling just out of the light of the nearing streetlamp a small and illconceived thing of dubious form. Something ragged beyond all description and seeming not so much to move as to be moved by the broken tethers of a lazy puppeteer. In his background the great brick arches of Franklin Field loom stately and silent and cast a strange colonial context for this meeting imminent upon its proper.<br /><br />You gettin ready for Bolt tomorrow? the night emits its cackled inquiry. The outline of its shape is but a rumor by the edges of moonlight. Something short and illbalanced, emanating a foul stench of alcohol and subway-piss from the leeward breeze.<br /><br />I’m gettin ready for everyone, Speedy says.<br /><br />The shape hobbles a step closer and by moonlight Speedy can trace the lines of the figure. Skin that is darker than his own deep chocolate hue. Broken aviators perch crookedly on a puff of wild unwashed hair. A tattered Phillies jacket bearing the old maroon eighties logo hangs over a bony frame. The figure seems not of a piece but rather a collection of garbaged tangibles, relics sought out from a collective runoff that was better left to run its rotting course undisturbed.<br /><br />But Bolt's the biggun, says the drunk. And comin here too. I ain't never think I'd a see the day.<br /><br />I sell cheesesteaks to everyone, Speedy says. He turns on the little faucet and collects water in the rag and then turns off the faucet and wipes down the bleached surfaces.<br /><br />I'm talkin for your business and shit, man. I'm talkin, like, Bolt, man. They say he's the fastest man on the planet. And we earned him, mayun. This city earned him. Dat's the troof. You think for one second Bolt woulda come here four years ago? Forget that shit, mayun.<br /><br />Bolt did come here four years ago, Speedy says, and pauses midrub to look up at the figure that has creeped even closer to the stand. And five years ago too. He was on a Jamaican schoolboy relay team.<br /><br />If the drunk hears any of this he gives no indication of it. Speedy understands that such men are of no caliber or condition to admit mistake or reconsider principles and opinions which they have so firmly established and so clearly professed. Their convictions are the product of a lonesome hour's philosophy and to that hour they pay an eternal and unwavering devotion.<br /><br />I mean take this city as of recent years, the drunk goes on. It earned that shit. Changes is goin down. Changes has gone down. Two straight pennants for the Phils. A black man in the White House. This city won rights to Bolt.<br /><br />Speedy starts to inquire as to what one of those might have to do with the other. The drunk speaks cryptically and does not give any real response at all and Speedy understands that for this man it does not matter what the relation is or even if there is any relation beyond coincidental timing. All that matters is what is.<br /><br />Now tell me somethin son, he slurs, and looks Speedy up and down with a dissaproving smugness that seems eased by an apparent goodwill. Where was you on the night of the twentyninth of October, 2008?<br /><br />I was right here.<br /><br />The hell you doing here?<br /><br />I wasn't doin nothin but sellin cheesesteaks.<br /><br />You was sellin cheesesteaks? The drunk <span style="font-style: italic;">pschooshes</span> him and sucks his teeth. Lifts his brows, turns his chin in what amounts to a grimace. His voice takes on a highpitched whine before demuring into a terse, wicked, whistling teapot of a cough. Christ man. Do you know what happened in this city on the thirtyninth of October? Of 2008?<br /><br />Not off top of my head, sir, naw. I don't know no specific dates too well really. I could venture you a guess.<br /><br />You could venture me a guess. Jesus H. Christ. Then how'd you know what you was doin?<br /><br />Speedy scratches beneath his cap and then along his beard. His own fur of a dubious caretaking. The faintest hint of what might be silver probing at the edges of his mustache.<br /><br />Cause I don't do but one thing, he says.<br /><br />Christ man. That was the night everything changed. That was the night that brought Bolt here. The night the Phils won the series.<br /><br />He places his greasy palms on the tin counter, fingers a bag of unclaimed Lays dangling by the side. Up closer his stench is refined. Both whiskey and malt liquor to be distilled from within liberal radii of his person.<br /><br />I was right here, Speedy says. I listened to the whole thing on the radio. Afterwards the people came through the streets.<br /><br />Youse damn straight they did, comes the guttural response. And he leans forward again so that his metal orbs all crazed and crossed seem to peer out at random angles, as though sighting in those atmospheres events of an equal and terrible exigency. Things only reckonable on a certain wavelength to which he alone is privy. Everything changed that night, he said. After that night we got pride. We got respect.<br /><br />He proceeds to tell Speedy a story. It is a story of a city not only spited by fate but teased by the promise of it. In the year 1980 all four major Philadelphia sports teams won championships. This was a misjudgement of the deus ex machina according to the drunk. An importunate random coincidence. He said that most of the universe existed on a scale of equality which constantly corrected itself and that most of the twenty-eight years following 1980 were of just such a correction. A measuring of karma. To lose was not enough. The losses must be tortured ones, salted by glimmers of hope and promise. This promise manifested in the form of men. Men like Greg Jefferies. Men like Scott Rolen. Men like Kevin Millwood. Men like Bobby Abreu. Men like Pat Burrell. And yet in each case an agony of failure swept the Delaware Valley with an increasing severity.<br /><br />Ain't that a bit harsh? Speedy says. Jefferies, Rolen, they were MVP candidates. And Burrell was just overhyped. Ain't his own fault. We just wanted him to make J.D. Drew look bad.<br /><br />The drunk says that men such as these are best left forgotten. That it doesn't matter what stats they had or how they did at the plate or what they did in the clubhouse. No one cares and no one remembers if they have ever known. The Phillies did not exist in those years nor did the city, not truly. The twentyninth of October in 2008 marked not just the end of that period of nonexistence but the beginning of a new age. The creation of a thing which many are too young to have ever been graced by had they been graced by it at all. All the years of failures and all the agents of those failures swept away by an 0-2 Brad Lidge splitter to Eric Hinske.<br /><br />The burner has been long clean and Speedy finally ceases to rub its spotless exterior. He excuses himself and pulls down the gate over the counter and latches the gate to the metal U inside and then steps outside the stand and begins to arrange the padlock on the door. He then asks the drunk if the accomplishments of those who had gone before might not even be respected the greater due to their insignificance. That to perservere against impossible odds and without hope of the reward of glory demonstrated a respect for the Phillies uniform. For the sport itself. For the very idea of athletics in broad. For the qualities inherent in a true man which no situation regardless how adverse can exorcise.<br /><br />We brought them sons of bitches here to win ball games, the drunk says. And we didn't. That's what you call failure. End of story.<br /><br />Speedy eases shut the padlock to his stand and looks the drunk in the eye. Naught to see there save perhaps the same thoughtless degeneration which cohabitates with him the sweating backalleys and dumpster-shelters and birdshat parkbenches he calls his home. Somewhere off in that vast city gone a train grumbles through the night.<br /><br />You didn't bring no one nowhere, Speedy says quietly. He tries to explain that failure is not an absolute term as the drunk has suggested. He says that losing and failure are two different things and that to win is not the important thing but rather how the winning is done that truly matters. He asks the drunk if you could really say failure to be defined by things such as wins and losses? He believed the word deeper. To signify not just the lack of an exterior result but rather an internal despair. A loss of faith. He says that you can look at some men and see whether they still believe in their cause and if they do they have not failed. After all he asks the drunk could you say that a man who dies attempting to protect his family from a murderer - and is ultimately unsuccessful in preventing their deaths - is truly a failure?<br /><br />The drunk heaves into another great teapot coughing fit and Speedy shifts awkwardly beside his stand and looks off into the night. To where and for what he does not know. They stand for a time longer and then Speedy jerks his head to the side.<br /><br /> Gotta catch a train, he says, and starts to move off.<br /><br />The drunk holds a hand up and bends over again to his knees in the throes of his fit. Speedy halts and then goes again and then halts once more.<br /><br />Another man, says the drunk, and heaves in again. Another man might find that cough a mine staged.<br /><br />Another man might keep on walkin to wherever it is he's suppose a go.<br /><br />I ain't another man, Speedy says.<br /><br />I know it, says the drunk. You ain't from around here at all.<br /><br />Sure I am, says Speedy. He looks at his hairy wrist upon which there is no watch but only the lightened skin that still remembers its sunless years. He starts walking and the drunk comes along.<br /><br />They come to the corner of Walnut Street and and Speedy turns right and the drunk stumbles a correction to his course so that he may follow. They pass the ice skating center and the bank and the the business towers that line the roads penultimate to center city. To the left they pass small alleys with porchlights and garbage bins standing plump and sedate on the curbedges. Off to the south the sidewalk drops off into old trainyards and empty lots that loom filthy and dangerous in the night. The lamplight burns orange on the walk and the drunk peers steadily at his companion.<br /><br />Hey man, the drunk says. Hey man, now. I rec-erg-nize you, now.<br /><br />I doubt it.<br /><br />Fer real man, he says. I ain’t playin. You go to Overbrook High?<br /><br />Speedy looks away. Looks off to darker side of the street. The stray cats peering yelloweyed like homeless lions into the night. The lights of the cars zipping away on the highway distant. I don’t deal no more, he says.<br /><br />The drunk shucks his teeth.<br /><br />Homie. I mean, homie. Cool it man. I mean just cool it, man. I seen your face before is all, man. Like in the newspaper. Fer track. Back in the day.<br /><br />Oh.<br /><br />Whats yer name, man?<br /><br />Speedy looks at the drunk closer. Squints by moonlight to perhaps reread something kindred in his eyes, something overlooked or gone unseen upon first appraisal. They continue down Walnut and under the train bridge to the stoplight at 30th. Two cars zip past. A small liquor store spills a ghastly working class glow out into the night. Atop the door a rusted sign says LIQUOR-SHOP-SNACKS-GOOD EALS with a busted out D. A Coca-Cola sign is the predominant feature of the corner. Speedy looks around for oncoming traffic and then into the store and up at the starless sky and everywhere but the face of the reeking form at his shoulder.<br /><br />Some people used to call me Speedy, he finally says.<br /><br />It's chill, it's chill dog, says the drunk, and casts his ragged arms out before him as if to surrender any illdeed to Speedy's plain sight. Hey man, listen. You got seventy cent?<br /><br />Speedy digs from his pocket eighty-seven cents in change and puts it in the dry pink cup of the drunk's proferred palm. His nails are untrimmed and long like a witch's and curve from his bent fingers across the length of his hand and Speedy can hear the coins crackle against the manacled keratin.<br /><br />You got fortyfive more cent? the drunk asks.<br /><br />No, says Speedy.<br /><br />It's chill, it's chill.<br /><br />The light changes and the drunk comes with Speedy across the street and towards the bridge. With a bend in the street they can see the river and the skyscrapers of center city beyond it. Great rectangles with rows and rows of lights extending back into lines like metal dominos. Infinite caverns and hollows to be read in the spaces between. At their foot the Schukyll runs black and strong in its cleaving of the city. The lamps along its bankpaths make a shimmer of its surfaces. Its depths plain and frightful in the empty darkness, tamed now by neither traffic nor sunlight.<br /><br />Hey man, the drunk says. What ever happened to you? What'd you stop runnin for? You was good right?<br /><br />They walk in silence to where Walnut crosses 76. The drunk halts to a stop.<br /><br />Wasn't never my choice to stop, Speedy says. He tightens his coat around his neck. He nods forward. I'll see you later.<br /><br />He walks a few steps. The drunks does not acknowlege his farewell in any shape. Then he calls out.<br /><br />You ain't got too much Philly pride, he calls. His voice seems to whisper up from the streets, as if made of sentiments coagulated from the urban distances and reprised to his ear.<br /><br />Does you, he calls again.<br /><br />Speedy ignores him and walks ahead with a quickened gate. At this harried shuffle a favoring of his right leg is plain to see. Near the center of the bridge he turns.<br /><br />The drunk stands beneath the blinking yellow traffic light. Lit at intervals and at intervals invisible so as to protect half the world half the time from that paupered nightmare. His eyes wordlessly and shapelessly monitor Speedy's progress. He stands as if he has not spoken at all but rather is audience to something else altogether. Of his calling. To which he is but symbol and soothsayer and no more.<br /><br />No one wears a redder cap than me, Speedy calls to him. We just ain't rootin for the same thing. I'll tell you that much right now. I may not know much but I can tell you that right now. We sure as hell ain't rootin for the same thing.<br /><br />The drunk gives no indication that he has heard nor that he has even noticed Speedy turn. As if he had crossed not just a bridge but breached some liminal oratory spectrum in that crossing. As if the looming towers framing in dark pastels that lonely scene rendered null his senses, forbade his comprehension. Speedy continues on farther into the city and does not look back again.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div><br /> Now he moves along the streets alone as is his custom with balled fists in the sidepockets of his jacket and the vicarcollar pulled up around his nape. The burning calentured embers of a city night brushing his coattails and carrying him forth. Though his speed betrays his catch it exudes a vigor altogether unknown to this part of town and to this time of night. The streets become pliable, bend to his will. Cars speed up to pass by him in the road. Bikers do not stop at stop signs and continue on with their helmeted heads down to the spokes of their wheels as if safeguarding their eyes from some harmful visage in that focus. Women cross the road to avoid close contact. Other haggard men approach him with all the diplomacy of a foreign delegate, eyes eager to seek armistice already at ten paces afoot, holding up their hands as if to disavow themselves of illdoing, haggling for crack and pixie dust and mescaline and worse yet. An elderly genderless hunchback stooping in the lee of a stoop makes for a narrow alleyway from which it tracks his passing across the alleymouth with a full ninety-degree turn of its neck. Its eyes set deeply back in the skull and black and unreadable beneath folds of ribbed flesh and a torn fedora. Movements which betray a certain prejudice, an unspoken suspicion. A city which fears him because he does not fear it.<br /><br /> At Rittenhouse Square a policeman casts his light across the dewy grass and follows Speedy's movements with the temerity of a searchlight prowling the seas it has been charged with keeping. The white sphere of hallogen covers his back like a target until he moves out of range across 18th. The parkbenches are empty and beneath the white lamplights in the park moths aspire heavenward. Relentless, colliding, seeking to become undisturbed. Speedy tucks his fists closer together from within his jacket and tigthens his shoulders and limpstrides on.<br /><br /> The PATCO is off of 16th street. By the little firered bannister heading underground there is camped a denizen of homeless on a ratty afghan unrolled to accomadate their streetwise flanks. Their eyes dimly ruminate something mirthworthy and a few them emit toothless and worn out bursts of sounds that could be construed as chuckling. The one nearest the entry as if fulfilling an ageless tradition or ritual holds up sullenly and hopelessly a foam cup in which chatter a few sad nickels and pennies. Speedy finds a dollar bill in his wallet inside his coatpocket and removes it from the fold without exposing the wallet to the pathogen that is the air and drops it into the foam cup.<br /><br /> God bless you, the homeless manages, and a small impoverished chorus echoes, echoes his footfalls down the long dank stairway and into the hollow keepings of the subway. The hall at the foot of the stairs is long and well lit and tenanted by nothing save an overstuffed trash can that spills haphazard from its appointed nook into the hall. Onelegged pigeons and blind pigeons and tarstained pigeons and pigeons without toes forage therein. Some follow him partway down the hall to the next set of steps yet lose their ambition when he turns back to regard them expressionless, oiled, sweating. As if they too had come to see whatever it was the aboveground had seen in him and judged him accordingly better left companionless.<br /><br />The PATCO train is huffing and hissing in wait and the platform stands dusty and cavernous smelling and absent of a single soul. On board there are a few drunk college girls huddled together in the back laughing about something and when Speedy comes aboard they cease their laughter. As if his presence had brought with it a gust of something to water all fires of mirth. He limps quickly to a seat near the front and lays his head back upon the plastic pukecolored headrest and lets out a deep sigh over his beard and shuts his eyes.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Song of the Day</span>: Bruce Springsteen's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Wrestler</span><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/G-6DM6iWKKo?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/G-6DM6iWKKo?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/soldoutmountainmonkey@gmail.com">© Justin Heinze 2010</a>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-82726969518101983732010-07-23T14:16:00.000-07:002010-07-23T15:06:21.769-07:00Why I Hate Literary Criticism and You Should TooThis is a generalization, but it is a generalization against generalizations. To apply a theory to a book - feminist, Marxist, deconstructionist, whatever - is to arrogantly assume the writer even knows what the hell those terms mean. It shocks and appalls me when I see essays about Cormac McCarthy's "Freudian Conscience in the Move Westward". What the hell does that even mean? To me it is the equivalent of people who said Jar Jar Binks is racist. I mean fine, he's annoying to a lot of people. But that there were those who interpreted it as an attack on Asian culture just the pinnacle of absurdity. Inevitably, the meaning of great novels will be argued over, but it should be based on their CONTENT - excuses should not be made to broadly apply these overarching, generalizing, confining critical philosophies that just have nothing to do with the actual content of the novel. To study great books is not easy. To pick out a few incidental passages separated from the whole and give them the veneer of neo-nazism or some nonsense is the simplest (and most degrading) pasttime. It is so rare these days to read a critical essay about a novel that addresses what the entire novel means and what it was trying to do; instead, the reference section of any classic will be jam-packed with 90% of its pages comprising, "Feminist Theory in The Sun Also Rises", or something along those lines. How can you read a book like Sun Also Rises and somehow think Feminist Theory is the most important thing to take away? That's being judgmental, but I'm not asking for a unity of opinion. Only relevance and a respect for the author and the art he or she has created. <br /><br /><br />Things I have learned from some time in an MFA Program:<br />1) It is apparently considered widespread and popular, and thereby unsatisfactory, uncool, and somehow naive, to write a story with Hemingway's Iceberg Principle in mind (show only 1/8th of the story). <br /><br />2) The white whale in Moby-Dick has no symbolic meaning.<br /><br />3) No book on your bookshelf leaves you with questions or ambiguities not answered directly by the author (apparently Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel 'The Road' (of which the author said "I don't know" in response to a NY Times query about what the unnamed environmental disaster in the book truly was) is not on anyone's bookshelf).<br /><br />4) Because mediocre writers go through 100 drafts of their work, and great writers go through two, you should be taught to go through 100. <br /><br />5) All dialogue must be subtext (seems to incriminate rule #3).<br /><br />6) Refer to simple things in complicated ways. Example: "inactive narrator", "unreliable narrator", "comma splices", etc. <br /><br />7) All novels must be about three things. A journey from innocence to experience, the influence of society upon characters, and the effect of time upon characters. <br /><br />As a quick response, number one stems from a need to feel as though something greater has been recognized - that the theory of "show do not tell", is the general fault of this generation of aspiring writers - that the 'secret' has been discovered, and that secret is to avoid the greatest influence on the sentence in the 20th Century (Hemingway). Two falls into the same kind of pretension. Saying Moby-Dick is only Moby-Dick may be trying to prove a point of some sort. I don't know. The only point it proves to me is that you read the Bantam Abridged Classics edition instead of Melville's full text. Have some respect old Herman. Hell, for Ishmael. Three underestimates the reader and supports subpar writing. Four, every writer is different. You can't apply broad rules. Everyone should be encouraged to discover their own formula. Insisting upon dozens of revisions leads to over-thinking; the greatest crime, in my opinion, for anyone creative. Five, take a look at any scene from anything McCarthy, anything Faulkner. Lines are included for the sake of establishing a brutally realistic scene, but they aren't saying anything deeper. Six, an inactive narrator can be a literary device and in and of itself is not a valid criticism of a creative work. Talking about a narrator's unreliability is a two minute discussion and is brought up by people who do not understand what the novel is really about - if the narrator can't be trusted, it is blatantly obvious. Move the hell on. Seven, how fascinating would it be to turn those 'rules' on their heads? Satisfying, in the very least. <br /><br /><br />What I've learned from a lifetime of reading every single book I can get my hands on, and reading everything I can find about every writer I want to imitate, is that for great writing, there must be no rules. Any writer that accomplishes anything beyond their decade makes their own rules. The 'rules' are self-learned and self-taught in any self-respecting high school and by a few years at the public library. And as soon as they are learned they should be broken. <br /><br />If you are seeking to write only as a profession, if you are looking just to learn to write what other people want to read, if your sole interest in the art of literature is to have a job that you like more than what you have now, then these rules aren't such a bad thing. But by and large - and here come more generalizations - I don't think these rules, these ideas, aim for greatness. They aim for the general. They assume from day one that a future John Updike is not sitting in that room and they aim to teach with that determination in mind. That classes continue to focus on irrelevance is to me an incredible pretension. So often, in the literature classes I have been in over the last few years, someone will not know what they are talking about and speak as if they were. In early years of college undergrad, when I was not as adept at seeing this deception, I just thought everyone was understanding something that I didn't. That I had somehow read all of this literature wrong because I came to different conclusions. Slowly I came to realize that somewhere between 50 and 80% of the class discussion has involved bullshitting. People saying things THEY don't even believe. All that's fine and dandy, too, if you want to join a bookclub. But bookclubs don't put you into 100k of debt.Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-81349941650423305052010-07-16T12:33:00.001-07:002010-07-16T13:16:14.630-07:00The Death of Mount Taquitz<em>Note: An excerpt from a story I'm working on. Inspired at least in some way by two very bold and not quite justified claims I came across while traveling in the San Jacinto Mountains this past winter. The first authored perhaps by the selfsame genius architects of the tourism industry who came up with the gem "Idyllwild is one of the 100 Best Art Towns in America." The claim - often placed side by side with that latter gem of knowledge - is that the evil spirit of an Indian maiden killer resides in the lee of the mountains. The second claim was uttered in passing by a few very ancient and thereby wise oak trees in what I shall leave to be an undisclosed location along the South Ridge pass, and it said something to the extent that evil shall find no safe harbor in the wild, and that this untruth has perpetuated your society is a mystery of the most profound depth. </em><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />See the man. See him laboring through the pines, wind-whipped and reddened and hair blown through and through by the needles of the trees and the icicles of sweat forming like daggers. Grinning. Disturbed. Knees-weakening, buckling now. He struggles to move. There is much blood on him, more than he knows. From his collarbone to his ribcage runs a strawberry burn from a crash to the ice. The blood drips drips down from his hip down his shorts to his knee.<br /><br /><br />That is me there. He’s me. Watching the granite peak of Mt. Taquitz approach around the curve in the trail. Mountain lion footprints dot the snow. The sun is banking off the snow and warming my bare chest. There is no cold. The wind gusts and then there is cold for a small time but it fades when I sweat. In the crisp air the wood tells no lie and knows no fault but the men who move within it. Far and farther away, miles down the mountainside, miles long ago since passed, there is a warm little town nestled twixt warm little alleyways and dirttrodden streets. In town there are shanties within which scrambled eggs are being cooked by those reading about that day’s weather and who Obama’s killed now. I spit congealed spit from cracked lips which burns through the frost of the trail. They are thrilled by the proximity of the unknown monstrosity I know to be Taquitz. Having lived in its shadow for years they take from that imagined darkness some serenity which exists in a constnat presence. They listen to the thought of the water trickling through the stream from the back window in the woods by the base of the mountain, on the outskirt of town. They drink their coffee in unintentional sync with that town, they breathe the thin air in unintentional sync with that town. This breathing and this drinking is in sync with what goes on in these woods but they do not know that. They will smile at the thought of what I do and I will smile back.<br /><br /><br />I remember telling someone once: the mountains to me are like a cathedral, and running is just my way of praying. What the hell does that mean? I ask now. But I’m grinning. Disturbed. Knees weakening, buckling.<br /><br /><br />The road to the trail to the summit of Taquitz is 11 miles of winding root-ridden dirt whose breadth of ice grows as the oxygen in the air thins. Something heavy in those misty pineladen skies. To breathe is to sift through that sky’s bitterness for those things which might sustain you.<br /><br /><br />Come with me. See where I pause on that trail to observe the bullet-riddled sign on the edge of the wilderness. <em>This area is known for its high population of mountain lions. Please observe wildlife safety regulations. Do not approach, attempt to feed, or touch a wild animal</em>. I plunge on. I am not brave. Do not think I am brave. There is slush frozen to my shins and I spit dehydrated spittle into the frost. The heat of that spit does not break the freeze now.<br /><br /><br />I have no notion of bravery. Or much else, anymore. This is why I am not brave.<br /><br /><br />Birds crash through the pines and twiddle serenely. The heights have made them scarcer. I see hawks prowling, soaring across the rim of the range and framed to the backdrop of cloud-blue and the tips of whitefrosted trees. Around the bend I come and I can see Taquitz again.<br /><br /><br />Here is the story of Taquitz: he was a bold leader of an Indian tribe in these very San Jacinto Mountains. In a time when places were not a name but just a place. Taquitz was not satisfied with his power. With his popularity he was able to manipulate his faithful. He stole away innocent maidens, had his way and smote them on the mountainside. In battle he was defeated, though his spirit escaped to the mountains to lurk in the cavernous rocks near the peak, forming that distinctive A-shaped, whitewashed scraggle which juts above the entire range.<br /><br /><br />His address is <em>33°45′36″N 116°41′01″W</em> if you’re looking for the bastard yourself.<br /><br /><br />Here is the story of me: I want to kill Taquitz.<br /><br /><br />I’d never heard of him until the day before. Rewind and take that blood from my chest drip dripping down to my kneecaps purpled by the cold. Peel away that ugly strawberry-magenta snarl of reddened skin. Pick me up off that ice and put me down in air which men are meant to breathe. Hand me a shirt. In Idyllwild the tourists and vagrants and rich snowbirds and mountain-beaten hick element juxtapose a brutal image. From that twisted visage imagine spewing forth this line of pithy wisdom scrawled on the welcome sign: Idyllwild is one of the 100 Best Art Towns in America.<br /><br /><br />The hell you are, I said out loud. I felt wise and Buddha-like with a toothpick in the corner of my lip.<br /><br /><br />What? a passing pack of the touring enraptured said. They had not heard the thought of the water trickling through the stream through the backporch window yet. They had only read of it. They were only just thinking about those scrambled eggs and what the newspaper may say about Obama killing someone somewhere. Oh, that’s interesting, they said, and pointed to that sign.<br /><br /><br />Below the sign were a series of pamphlets. One was of directions to an art show which would show a copy of a painting that had been inspired by a selfdescribed raw photo entitled: A Wintering Taquitz. Below these directions was the story of Taquitz. The one I have just told you. They did not include his address. I found that for you on my own.<br /><br /><br />Put me back on the mountain. The trail is called Devil’s Slide Trail. Perhaps the breath of Taquitz gusts down that slippery slope and whips his would be conquerors into the riparian gorge below. Without thought, without effort. This is the Devil. Here is real evil. The root of it. I mean to kill that. I mean to summit and destroy, grinning and disturbed.<br /><br /><br />A month ago I would have thought this: when Taquitz the Indian committed those crimes and murdered those maidens and betrayed his people, he separated himself from the mountains. He and they were no longer one big One. He violated a thing sacred and for that you do not become part of the earth but you are banished from it. You are sent to some other place, where no chilly mountain gusts can breathe. The mountains are a cathedral. Running is just a way of praying.<br />Yet this dear friend is not a month ago. This is now. Now those are not just chilly mountain gusts. Those are biting maelstroms which make my lips crack and turn me into a redskin. I cannot make a fist. When my feet land on the ice, it feels as though I am landing on a rounded nub attached to my shin.<br /><br /><br />I have no notion of cold. Or much else, anymore. This is why I am not cold.<br /><br /><br />Taquitz is a harbinger of this wickedness and it is to him I am drawn. I flatter myself into thinking that opposites attract. You are good, I tell myself. Taquitz is evil. This is why you are attracted to one another.<br /><br /><br />The trail is become steep again. I run hunched over because this is how you keep down nausea when running uphill for very long. Nausea I still have a notion of. Steadily steadily the burning grips my thighs. I take measure of the trail ahead, the dirt almost entirely obscured by frozen snowdrifts, the branches weighted still with the snow that had not melted and hanging over the path, the woods on either side thick but still offering at points spectral visions of the whitewashed summit. I take measure. To run mountains is to be like a miser counting his pennies, wanting to be broke at the exact moment he has no need of his coin.<br /><br /><br />The uphill does not end. I understand I am approaching the final switchbacks. Sweat bears down round my brow to my chin and the whipping wind rips this moisture straight off my face like some ethereal force bound for or emerging whence some distant hell. I look to the trees with increasing desperation as if they might offer some guidance but they remain silent and speak in creeks and whistles only at the wind’s demand.<br /><br /><br />Soon I will kill Taquitz. I catch a glimpse of my thighs on impact. The muscle pressed through the purpled skin made slick by blood and sweat and slush. I have no notion of what murder is. I have no notion of what cold is. This is why I am not a murderer. Nor will I be. Still I grin a bit when I try to spit. Still I am disturbed.<br /><br /><br />Perhaps you would like to step back from my trot and make for warmer climes. Search out the most arid desert in your memory and place there a girl. Make her a darkhaired one. Hair black as the night, skin reddish-gold. Eyes which can glow green embers should you seek your heart made to become a fizzing crackling electrical thing. Give her broad happy red lips which say hello! without speaking. There.<br /><br /><br />Make that arid desert into a black night lit by a blanket of stars so extensive you’d be hard pressed to find the black spaces between. Where is there room for God between those kingdoms? The universe full. We needn’t have God. See me, leaning over, kissing the sand from her knuckle, kissing those chapped and sunrusted lips, the desert seeming to caress us in a suspended embrace. That is me being me. You cannot see the nearest towns but we will go to them. The desert will not hold us, even though from where you’re standing, it sure as hell looks like it’s got a pretty good grip. We will go to the ugly places and in those ugly places I will not be me and she will not be she. I do not want to show you this going. You can imagine it yourself. That is me<br /><br /><br />losing my religion.<br /><br /><br />Soon the world will become a pyre, I think to myself, back on the mountain, on Devil’s Slide Trail, blowing into my numbed hands, and Taquitz will burn upon that fire.<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /><br />I am not as strong in the mountains as I thought I was sitting in the village. Sitting in the village I had but a notion of the animal I wanted to be. Sitting in the village I was surrounded by such finicky and delicate excesses of luxury that I could not help but feel like a growling misplaced lion. I make myself fit the image of a beast completely. I eat everything I can put my hands to. I roam for the outskirts, am drawn to the brink. I lurk in darker and remote places to seek out some acceptable substitute for the solitudinal solace of wilderness.<br /><br /><br />Yet here and now I betray it. I betray it by giving a whimper as I run because my body is getting ready to collapse in on itself. My legs have gone numb and are spasming. Floods of sweat pool off my head and coat my windburnt skin. Animals do not whimper. Watch the antelope take a beating on the African Sahara by a pursuant cheetah. Watch it heaving in the throes of lactic overload as the successful cheetah rips its flesh out with its teeth. Watch it take this de-fleshing silently and calmly before gathering the strength for a final push to freedom and another few bitter moments of life. Cheetahs can run up to seventy miles per hour. Everyone knows this. But they can not run like an antelope. The cheetah has exhausted itself, this is proven by its weakening grip. The antelope digs to its ancestral reserves and tears its halfeaten ribcage away from the jowls of this desert cat and darts in a vicious determination across the plain. The cheetah gives a brief chase but keels over in exhaustion soon after.<br /><br /><br />I want to be that antelope. I want to be that antelope that turns back to the cheetah and tramples that sorry bastard into the ground where he lay panting. I want to be that antelope that says, no thing and no one of this Earth can eat me. No thing, and no one.<br /><br /><br />I am not that antelope, though I want to be.Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-32477339022411543752010-07-10T13:10:00.000-07:002010-07-14T01:19:35.534-07:00The Greatest Sentence Ever WrittenFairly self-explanatory. The excerpt below is from Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece <em>Blood Meridian</em>. A gang of soldiers turned vigilante cowboys bent on settling the West is witnessing the approach of an Indian platoon from across the plateau.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;">"</span>A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.<em></em><br /><div id="bleacher_report"></div>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-58262021960888260572010-04-26T00:02:00.000-07:002010-04-26T00:12:26.039-07:00Dropped Dead and Sunkissed - an excerptThe Morrison kitchen was a nice kitchen for a nice home of nice parents and children. There was ring of advent candles on the table, the first purple burnt to its stub. Ornamental plates decked the cleanscrubbed walls. There was the right amount of mess by the front door where the mail was to suggest proper human habitation, and nothing more.<br /><br />The chicken potpie had been served into six exactly equal portions, and almost every plate reflected this unique mealtime brand of justice. Gentle protestations of no more, too much filled the dining space as each took their due, punctuated by a modest narrowing of the eyes and a shake of the head with a tired, fauxstretch-induced tilt back from the table. Every eatingplace echoed this habit save for the corner, where a plate had already been scraped clean before the man of the house had filled his beerglass.<br /><br />For the praise of the ‘amighty, said Mr. Comfort.<br /><br />What is it, deer?<br /><br />Mrs. Comfort was dabbing at her unsullied dimples with a napkin.<br /><br />Woodja take a look at Jack’s plate?<br /><br />For the praise of the ‘amighty, said Mrs. Comfort. Well I don’t have enough food to even say he’s eaten with us.<br /><br />There’s half the potpie left, said little blondehaired Sammy Comfort from the depths of her own missized wooden chair.<br /><br />For the praise of the ‘amighty, the parentals muttered at shifting intervals, the little voice either going entirely unheard or coming from a place that was too far away to reach their ears.<br /><br />Across the table from Jack was the oldest Comfort child of them all, old Daniel Comfort, who peered through blackrimmed spectacles at the iPhone in his right palm, thumb furiously working over the keys, while he held captive and aloft in his left the pieshovel dripping with gravy and the chickensauce.<br /><br />Well, said Daniel Comfort from behind his spectacles. Apple’s on the move again.<br /><br />Out the window behind old Daniel the treebranches were wavering light in the breeze and split the sunrays glittering in that star’s setting. The light cut a semicircle of shadow on the table and Jack could feel the apex of it envelope his head in its warmth. His gaze shifted freely between the upheld pieserver and the branch waving just beyond, the dance of the latter a cruel backdrop to the stillness of the former.<br /><br />Deer, Mr. Comfort was saying. Have you seen what they did to that place off Archer?<br /><br />Deer, I haven’t.<br /><br />I mean old Wellington’s place. You know the one.<br /><br />I think I do, deer.<br /><br />There was no change of the position of old Daniel’s arms. Thus emerging from that technological Ovid –<br /><br />Have you seen what DuPont did last week? I mean…<br /><br />That place sure could use that show, said Mrs. Comfort. You know deer?<br /><br />The man of the house took a moment to rip from his potpie laden fork and with a hearty swallow said something about needing to give that bastard Higgins a call about the gutters.<br /><br />Did you hear me, deer?<br /><br />What?<br /><br />I said that place sure could use that show. You know the one. Where they go in and give it a fixup and all.<br /><br />She twiddled her fingers in the air and cracked her wrists when she said a fixup and all in a motion of both carelessness and happily detached pre-eminence.<br /><br />Whatsitcalled. Dreams of Your Home, or something.<br /><br />Ah, said old Daniel, shifting in his seat. Ah-ah. So Meredith has finally Facebooked me. Ah-ah.<br /><br />Either pass that serving utensil, Jack said, or - leveling his eyes on his mother - may I be<br />excused?<br /><br />America’s Next Top Home, said Mr. Comfort through a Coors Light mustache. He patted his stomach and looked about with something amounting to a sly grin.<br /><br />No, that’s not it…<br /><br />I do wonder what she was waiting for, said old Daniel, using a shoulder to slide his glasses farther up his nose. The motion of his shifting figure blocked the window from view across the table.<br /><br />Either pass that serving utensil, Jack said, or may I be excused?<br /><br />Mama, said Sammy.<br /><br />I wanna say – no, wait – Extreme Top Makeovers, is it?<br /><br />What’s this now?<br /><br />The man of the house had just finished his brief foray into sidelonging irrelevance and had returned with answers. What we should do, he said, is call up that bastard Higgins tonight. That way he’s getting the message first thing. Have him come take a look at the gutters later in the day.<br /><br />Mama.<br /><br />Either pass that serving utensil, Jack said, or may I be excused?<br /><br />Mama.<br /><br />What is it, sweetie-candle?<br /><br />Jack. She nodded to her brother.<br /><br />What is it, Jack honey?<br /><br />May I be excused?<br /><br />But we’ve just sat down for our family dinner, she said.<br /><br />Thank you, he said. And he stood from his chair, kissed his sister on her forehead, and left through the front screen door with a tinny whine echoing his steps down the walk.<br /><br />***<br /><br />The air was rich with burnt charcoal and pine drifting on the cool breeze, tempered by the warming glow of the sun. It felt good on his neck which was cold and stiff from sitting for so long. He knew then that he would not be home for nightfall.<br /><br />For a time he walked. He did not know how long. He walked until his legs felt loose again and his stomach was light and he remembered that he had on his running shorts underneath his jeans and without hesitating he stowed his jeans and his t-shirt in a bush by the side of the road and he began to run.<br /><br />He ran down the tarpinched cement block and veered away to the other reaches of the town, staying upon the road and the letting the woods he frequented pass him by with a blush of gentle farewell, the hopes of home kissing their warrior away to a foreign battle. Sometimes he ran to go places and for that purpose only was he concretebound. Soon he realized he had found a place that he had not been ever and continued still. Sweat beaded down his collarbone, his chest, pooled in his feet which squished with each stride. He wore no watch, told the distance he’d come only by the level of burn in his legs and how much the dancing ape in his chest had subsisted.<br /><br />He’d come through a stretch of developments and apartment complexes hidden between groves of trees too thick to invite bipedal exploration. His vision was made murky by the sweat and he peered from those clouded orbs into the greens to search for an opening. And when they did come or he imagined they came he turned his gaze away to the dirt freckled sidewalk and his worn footdrops upon it with regret for that was not the way onward.<br /><br />There was a little town by the end of the trees and it was beaten well by both the sun and what those who moved prepossessed in better circles might know to call as this economic climate. Singlefloor square homes with cement porches and lawns littered with windblown trash were the vanguard of its outskirts. Sidestreets led to fenced properties whose identical layouts flanked one another and were differentiated only by the type of weeds which grew unkempt in that section of this lot of long forsaken aesthetics. People, when they moved about, did so strangely, in sweatshirts and jackets toting plastic bags on their staggering ventures, as if seeking to make their condition more horrible to test the limits of whatever might be watching. Through this humid squalor the boy ran and when he came to the town’s edge he suddenly understood a tremendous thirst in his burned throat and like a cruel mathematician counted each continued step as yards away from the assured point of rehydration.<br /><br />It was there that he turned, on this obscure brink of nowhereville, giving a nod from where he knew not towards the old man sitting frizzled and filthbearded by the gas pump in the shade of the overhang. He gathered his momentum and headed for him.<br /><br />When he realized he would not make it home without water he did not know. The sun flicked through the trees in cruel nauseating step with his stride and when he spat it was a thick congealed wad that made it halfway across his cheek and stuck to the burnt flesh puckered by sweat. In horrible daydreams he imagined great towering stone fountains with bubbling waterfalls spilling out into an iced brook of cold sports drink. The world faded in focus but finer images at random sharpened themselves in his mind: passing cars became traveling boxes of salvation with holier oils held in juice bottles and soda cups. No though came to him and no thing was seen by him outside of the perspective of water. He giddily entertained fiendish hypotheticals as a matter of idle entertainment: were he to know it would take five years from his life, would he still welcome that fire hydrant bursting open? If he would never again fall in love with a girl, would he still welcome the road transforming into a gushing river of Gatorade? The answer would be no. All he knew of death he knew in that moment yet still he understood the principle of sacrifice. At the point he had brought his body to there was no conscious decision of morals or principles but only a realization of what is what, and such is how the boy came to know himself.<br /><br />It was as though he had no peripherals. Even as he came back down the road to his town on the narrow shoulder split from the dirt by a ragged edge of crumbling asphalt and the cars were riproaring by him with the hot stink of motoroil burning on a summer’s day still he knew not his distraction. Little girls selling lemonade offered him a cup free of charge. Give one to the sweaty boy, they giggled. Sprinklers fanning the lawns at the edge of town. Mexican landscapers passing coolers filled with iced liquids. Middleaged women by the more moderate homes womanning their own gardens and flicking a hose from the shade of the porch outwards. Of all this he saw and contemplated nothing and he staggered on.<br /><br />He came to the neighborhood a tripping and squishing spectacle, his skin pale and sweat pruning his fingers and palms. Long red chafe marks marred his sides beneath his shoulders where his elbows passed in friction pumping these long miles.<br /><br />The street to his home was a long alley now in his tunnel vision, the simple ranch houses only neutral colored blurs. There was a row of cedars paralleling the road which stood still and erect under the sun and provided spits of shade to this otherworldly figure.<br /><br />Somewhere in the distance he could hear the shouts of children at play, the crack of a capgun and an uproar of commotion. A woman scolded her faulty oven from the cracks of a passing windowsill. A crowd of teenagers played basketball by a hoop down the street, the echo of the bouncing ball ricocheting off the hollow parts of roofs and walls nearby before losing itself in the willows and ivies beyond the houses. Expletives of domestic fortitude came his way from god knows where. All this superimposed, coming to his pounding skull in varying degrees of ultraclarity and obscurity, this other normal world of man that somehow still existed after all his trial.<br /><br />Old Mario across the street may have said hello to him, may have waved with a furrow to his brow. The dribbling at the court ceased and had he known to feel many pairs of eyes on him he would have but he hardly cared. He sat by the garden and drank.<br /><br />***<br /><br />He had once read of the great Joan Benoit who had said she swore after every marathon that she would never do that again and yet each time there she was. To say of the boy that he empathized with the great would not be true. By the top step leading to his room his leg gave from him and he collapsed. He smiled to the carpet and there he lay prone with eyes titled like a madman till came the shrieking of the dinner horn.<br /><br /><strong>Song of the Day:</strong> 'Flightless Bird, American Mouth', by Iron and Wine<br /><br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OYUFcxBq1y4&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OYUFcxBq1y4&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-43450872902702934392010-04-20T16:57:00.000-07:002010-04-20T17:19:55.382-07:00Science versus RomanceI don’t like to use the word hate, as a matter of personal principle. It makes me disgusted with myself. Yet sometimes you just develop certain prejudices, fair though they may be, no matter how hard you try.<br /><br />Example: I hate <a href="http://www.experienceproject.com/groups/Hate-The-Sound-Of-A-Vacuum-Cleaner/41693">vacuums</a>, the <a href="http://www.stoparmstosudan.org/china/2008/03/where-do-janjaweeds-weapons-come-from.html">Chinese government</a> (for so many <a href="http://www.flotrack.org/videos/play/70318-olympic-haze">reasons</a>), cartoons,<a href="http://www.grizzlybay.org/SarahPalinInfoPage.htm"> Sarah Palin</a>, and numbers.<br /><br />Vacuums – understandable, you are probably saying to yourself right now, and I appreciate your support. I agree with you, who likes vacuums? No one interested in being happy, that’s who.<br /><br />I assume the Chinese government probably likes itself fairly well, or at least parts of itself like itself, but I wouldn’t think it’s hazardous to assume anyone else does, aside from bizarre Satanic cults interested in the spoiling of the Olympics and the murder of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese.<br /><br />Cartoons? Well, that’s kind of an unrelated argument.<br /><br />But numbers - I just might hate numbers more than anything on this list, with the possible exception of vacuums. Numbers are the cold byproduct of the pisspoor attempts by society to rationalize and organize itself. Numbers lead to scientific progress, which borders on that list of things I hate – particularly when ‘scientific’ is blindly used as an adjective to justify literally anything (let’s see, things that count as ‘progress’: industrial waste, the atomic bomb, cloning of full human beings like in <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/">Moon</a></em>, the perfection of handguns and other devices designed for the sole purpose of ending another person’s life, online report cards, and the perpetuation of a culture of instant gratification which thereby spreads severe lethargy with the effortlessness of, let’s say, a Mad Cow Disease, or a Foot and Mouth Disease. Your preference.<br /><br />There are a lot of things and a lot of people which you can blame for those little horrors, but to me it comes down to numbers. Motivated, also, perhaps by a vicious desire to avenge those tortured and wasted hours of my youth with my nose buried in a geometry textbook.<br />I realize now, looking back on high school, middle school, even college, that my epic struggles in Physics and Calculus were not solely the byproduct of my lack of ability. Something deeper lurked in my hatred, one of those things that you always know about but cannot quite put into words, something defined by emotion and gut instinct more than organized communication or logic. But now I think I have a grasp of what it was: numbers were just so irrelevant, just so antithetical, to what I wanted the world to be and to what I wanted myself to be, that to spend so much time seemed such a waste.<br /><br />It’d be like if Jesus had gone to an ITT class over at the temple, straightaway after woodworking. Just ain’t happening.<br /><br />Numbers not only take away from a focus on more relevant topics of study, they guide us into the same line of thinking which has caused immeasurable suffering in our world. Specifically, I mean scientific ‘progress’, as in what <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five">Kurt Vonnegut</a> spent his whole life trying to curtail, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle">time </a>and time <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirens_of_titan">again</a>.<br /><br />To justify the death of numbers, it is only fair to give them a farewell by noting one of their positive upsides: statistics. Without statistics we could not measure the harm which numbers have done. Before numbers came to places like Africa, where a large portion of the world’s suffering occurs today, life was much better. Imperialism, colonialism, and missionaries were the carriers of this number-born disease just like they were the carriers of so many other city-borne plagues, except this one - the plague of numbers, more commonly known as unthinkable suffering, widespread poverty, genocide, persecution based on race and religion - has no known scientific or medical or numerical-borne cure.<br /><br />Popular misconceptions abound when it comes the history of the impoverished in the world. Starvation, disease, dehydration, and unthinkable urban suffering and decay as know it today did not exist on this planet until roughly four hundred years ago. Exceptions can be made to the romantic view of primitive cultures: yes, they fought wars, yes, their environmental practices were not always perfectly in balance with the land. But overall – as a massive generalization – tribes, rural communities, nomadic nations, were without the ‘benefits’ of scientific progress, and therefore, they were without all the unspeakable numerical horrors which accompanied European expansion.<br /><br />Simple, rural, tribal societies all over the world were plunged into these horrors in the wake of the success of numbers as they were forced to live unnatural lives suddenly based on capitalistic, materialistic ambition instead of personal happiness and survival. Massive metropolises began to form. Resources were not available to provide for everyone. In these unnatural conditions, squished together by colonials impressing upon them a new way of life, their populations skyrocketed. The system of capitalism relies upon the suffering of many for the success of the rest. In what became known as the third world – places not wealthy enough to successfully implement this numerical plan – justice and happiness slipped away together, back to the mountain, to the plain, to the river from which they were borne.<br /><br />It is hard for most to imagine a life without technology and luxurious creature comforts at every turn. Repulsive, even, to those who have been bred to be lazy. Yet the benefits of a simple life are of a far deeper value. To live as we were meant to live, communities driven by face to face contact, nourishment provided by a brotherhood and sisterhood of trusting labor, capitalistic ambition replaced by the thrill of being alive, of tearing through the wild jungle in search of red meat, of feeling the satisfaction of physically providing for your friends and family, of using your life energies to truly help a society thrive.<br /><br />Numbers cause our lives to be wasted on nonsense. The universe has given us one chance at existence, and yet people see fit to spend those precious seconds quibbling about the size of their cars and debating accounting technique while living vicariously through reality television and slowly oozing away their precious life-fluids to the sands of time. And now, today, heartfelt efforts are made by this numbers world to ‘save’ the poor. Imperialists, colonists, may not have as significant of a role to play – but missionaries and ‘volunteers’ are still dogooding their way across the globe, in a largely genuine (to their credit) effort to help those who have been afflicted by four hundred years of scientific progress. “It is time for us to consider that our way of life is not alive enough to be shared,” Ivan Illich famously said in his speech ‘<a href="http://www.swaraj.org/illich_hell.htm">To Hell with Good Intentions’</a>, in which he controversially lambasted America’s volunteer corps.<br /><br />What it comes down to is a shifting paradigm, a changing of what we see as ‘development.’ We can complain all we want about ‘greening’ society, about painting our Earthships with ‘sustainable’ paint and toting around copies of An Inconvenient Truth everywhere we go – but that is not going to really change anything. To truly solve the problems our world faces we need to think outside of accepted paradigm. A market based society (world, even) seeks market based solutions for its issues. Money is carelessly thrown at third world countries. Grieving ‘first world’ Christians satisfy the slight ache in their heart by donating a few hundred dollars a year. Yet these are problems which can only be resolved by the freeing of minds. Dollars are part of the problem, thus they cannot heal the problem – they serve as a band-aid at best, and as a comforting thought to capitalist consciences worldwide, at worst.<br /><br />And we are left with numbers, figures, which are truly horrifying, which we are largely ignorant of, and which most of us will see, shake our heads sadly at, and turn the other way, because we feel powerless. But we have looked away for too long. How can you in good conscience go on living without considering the massive ethical problems which these numbers pose? It is not just time for the world to wake up to these problems – awareness is but the first step in what must be a two-part process. It is time to radically change the way we live, or die trying, and I need no further proof:<br /><br /><strong>1/3</strong> (percentage of people in the world that are under-fed according to the World Health Organization)<br /><br /><strong>1/3</strong> (percentage of people in the world that are starving according to the World Health Organization)<br /><br /><strong>1/3</strong> (percentage of annual deaths – roughly 18,000,000 people a year and 50,000 per day – due to poverty related causes, according to the World Health Organization)<br /><br /><strong>19,500 – ~400,000</strong> (present number of civilian deaths in Sudan’s Darfur region incurred by the Chinese-sponsored Janjaweed militia, according to various international estimations)<br /><br /><strong>1,000,000</strong> (number of Rwandans murdered under the Hutu Power Ideology – an inflammatory, prejudicial, fear-mongering policy first sponsored by the Belgian government during occupation - during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, according to various international projections)<br /><br /><strong>270,000,000</strong> (number of deaths as a result of poverty since 1990 – mostly women and children – according to the World Health Organization)<br /><br /><strong>500,000,000</strong> (number of people in Asian, African, and Latin American countries living today in what the World Bank calls “absolute poverty”).<br /><br />I write this last sentence, only so that numbers do not have the final word.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Song of the Day</strong>: Only fair to give credit to Rilo Kiley for the title.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HPdCBHM7JUE&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HPdCBHM7JUE&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-53270097616723503062010-03-05T22:52:00.000-08:002010-03-15T16:11:50.231-07:00Athlete<div align="left"><span style="font-size:180%;">Down by the old courts</span> whenever a good wind picked up the leaves would scatter about like flurries, paperthin and colored melancholic pastels of golden browns and greens. There were cracks in the cement, bits of grass sprouting through, and the leaves would dance above them, never touching. Spraypainted graffiti marred the once stainless black tar; crude images had been poorly splashed against the backboards, ruining the stately pastoral image of trees in bloom rimming the lake beyond. The nets had been torn completely on one end, where the mesh lay in a dirtied heap by the sideline, and partially at the other end, so that what had once hung straight and true now dangled like any leaf dying in the postautumnal freeze. Staring at the hoop for too long Girard could hear in his ears the swoosh that his fading jumper had made so many times on that net, but it was wrong, lacking somehow – empty of meaning. No chill ran down his back, and when he shut his eyes he did not see the board the way it once was, the way it looked when you lied down on your back between games and saw it practically luminescent against a cloudless summer sky.<br /><br />Sometimes he would hold his hands by his eyes to shield the sun and all he could see in his vision would be the basketball, the hoop, the blueness. As if nothing else existed. As if his universe contained exactly that: the things of his forming. The world that he knew, cut away from the one which he did not in a dreamlike specter of solitude.<br /><br />***<br /><br />When he was a boy the city kids would call him the White Horse. White because he was white and horse because he could play all day without tiring, like a horse. For pickup games Girard would take the NJ Transit over the bridge and into the city.<br /><br />Any of the parks along Arch or Spring Garden would always be overcrowded if you went during the right time of day, if you knew the right kind of people. Summer afternoons on Spring Garden, crowds massing in old lots, sweatshirts tossed over the fences, water bottles lining the edge of the courts – these were his proving grounds. Only Girard never thought of them that way. He spent all of his twenty dollar a month allowance on bus tickets, just so that he could play with these boys.<br /><br />Girard slowly earned the respect of the city kids. He made friends with the best player on Spring Garden, a boy named Payden. “My man the White Hizzorse, he would always say, and they would play and Girard would always win. But Payden kept coming back. Many didn’t. And he became better. And so did Girard.<br /><br />“The hell don’t you play at school for?” Payden asked him once when they were walking down the street after a game of twenty-one.<br /><br />“Just don’t,” Girard said. </div><div align="left"><br />“Can’t take practice?” </div><div align="left"><br />“That ain’t it,” he said, firing the ball off the brick siding of a convenience store. </div><div align="left"><br />“Yo he’s like Iverson, dog,” chimed in Payden’s brother Chris. “Practice, mayun, I’m talkin’ ‘bout practice…” </div><div align="left"><br />“Practice isn’t it,” Girard said again, and maybe he grinned, and that’s all he would say, “<em>not a game, not a game</em>” chorusing the streets long after. </div><div align="left"><br />What Girard had which most of the boys he played with did not was patience. Patience to stand and shoot three-pointers from the same spot until he drained a dozen in a row. Patience to run full loops of the court just to gain a half a foot with which to take a clear jumper. Patience to wait for an opponent to make a mistake on offense (he almost always did) instead of forcing one. Where the patience came from Girard did not exactly know, and only vaguely recognized its existence himself. He only knew that regardless of the speed of some of these incredibly coordinated boys, they lost interest quickly – he knew how to see each defender’s weakness and exploit it thoroughly. More often than not, that weakness was impatience. Girard lived for that instant when he could read defeat in the face of an opponent; the sagging of the eyes, the laziness of limbs following through on motions – and in a gesture of both triumph and gentle admonition drain a loping fadeaway.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Girard liked to come back here now, to these courts. He never played, never brought a basketball with him. Did he even have a ball anymore? He couldn’t remember. Maybe. Maybe, he did. There was that old red and yellow one Rick’d given him for Christmas one year (“Merry Christmas, dude.”) No, that had been run over walking home from school senior year. </div><div align="left"><br />He stood up, not bothering to brush himself off, patches of dirt and sediment clinging to his blue jeans, his flannel shirt, as he wandered down through the trees towards the lake. The leaves crunched beneath his feet into the tall and waving grasses. As he descended the light incline he could see over the lakeside bushes, the gusts of wind shaking the multicolored trees on the opposite bank free of their holdings. The water churned lightly in disturbance. He glanced down to the dock, distantly remembering the bass he’d caught just where an old woman was now standing. He couldn’t remember what it looked like – only its fine-slippery finish, smooth like a buttered cookie sheet, the way its belly felt when he ran his finger down it before releasing it back to the muddy shallows. What else had happened? he wondered. Where was I then? But he could not remember. </div><div align="left"><br />The old woman was hunched over her cane, distributing bits of bread to a flock of collected geese, honking their excitement from across the water as they rushed to the source. Somewhere in the back of his mind he balanced the visceral gratification of providing for another living thing against the all too natural consequences. That old woman would die – in a week, a month, even ten years from now – and the geese would have no recourse, no way to get the food to which they had become accustomed. Their bellies would violently protest as they moved to readjust to the constant hunger inherent in a wild life. Those that did not die would suffer immeasurably.<br />He angled himself away. </div><div align="left"><br />He wandered down toward the lake and towards the thicket of woods, not just away from the old woman but away from the courts and the Y and the apartment complex and all the buildings that he could see. There was a fresh woodchip path paralleling the lake that had not been there in his boyhood, or at least he could not place it, and he avoided it instinctively, walking through the itchy highgrass and the splotches of creek-mud that suctioned his shoes as he strode forward. The gnats buzzed the discolored shallows, lent their hymn to the remorseful lapping of a tired current against the murky shores. Girard’s sucking footsteps made no noise, left no print. The grasses folded back over the earth where an imprint should have been. The hymn beat on steady and slow, renewing itself with the tide. Whether it swallowed the sound of his motion, he did not know. He knew only what he could hear and what he could not hear. Thus spake the lakeside orchestra.<br /><br />***<br /><br />What was it, he sometimes idly wondered; was it the way the ball could arc so neatly, so mathematically sublime – drawing a semicircle straight out of the pages of a Geometry textbook - from his open palm, and across the sky, and through the net? Was it the sound – the noiseless noise that gave Nike a logo, that made children stand in the same spot beneath the backboard for hours, attempting to replicate what they saw on television, or in the park that one Thursday after school? Maybe it was a sense of power, of possibility – of knowing you can control and produce something of great beauty, if you only tried hard enough, if only you were willing to feel the pain that came with the pleasure of anything worthwhile. </div><div align="left"><br /><em>Fun</em> never did it for Girard; the word was lacking, too childish, shallow. Fun was going to the zoo to see the orangutans. Fun was lazing in the ocean on a hot midsummer’s day, drinking Coke, throwing Frisbee. Fun was wandering barefoot down the boardwalk, playing in the arcades, eating pizza and funnel cake, riding the Tilt-a-Whirl. Fun was hanging out with friends, watching a movie with family, meeting new people, drinking hot chocolate, wrestling with a dog, organizing baseball cards, entertaining simple new pastimes and possibilities about life…<br /><br />***<br /><br />Girard was seventeen and a senior in high school the first night he could feel it slipping and her name was Tracey Ellis. She was captain of the tennis team and she was a tall and angular blur of green eyes and white-toothed smiles. When she was excited (like anytime in History class, Girard had noted sophomore year), she would arch her chin up and pull her lips back and raise her eyebrows so that the muscles in her neck pressed against her golden skin. <em>Ouch</em>, he had thought then. </div><div align="left"><br />It was a cold October night and Girard had borrowed his parents’ car to take Tracey and his best friend Rick Mallory to the high school football game against Cecilbrook. The wind was gusting a harvest chill; the night smelled of burnt leaves and cooking hot chocolate. An aura of liquor loomed in the deeper patches of fans. Cecilbrook was winning very much. </div><div align="left"><br />At halftime he went with Tray to get hot cocoa and a hot dog from the concessions under the stadium. They walked side by side down the steps, overlooking the muddy field and the mist of rain floating in the shadow of the stadium lights. He held her hand, she told him she loved him. He leaned over and kissed her warmly on the lips. It was one of those nights, he thought, that can only be warm if you have the right kind of girl and you kiss her the right kind of way, and Girard had the girl and he knew exactly how to kiss her. </div><div align="left"><br />“My man the Whiiite Hiizzorse,” came a voice. “Check it.” </div><div align="left"><br />Girard spun. It was the boys from Spring Garden, Payden and Chris with a pair of their friends, decked out in Cecilbrook garb. </div><div align="left"><br />“You never told me your boys sucked so bad,” Payden said, cackling. </div><div align="left"><br />“You never told me you went to Cecilbrook High,” Girard returned lamely, grinning, handshaking and half-hugging all of them. </div><div align="left"><br />“We’re headin’ out to play on your court right now,” Chris said. “By the lake. You down, right?” </div><div align="left"><br />“Uhh,” Girard said. He awkwardly put his arm around Tracey’s waist. He knew it was a futile gesture: he did it anyway.</div><div align="left"><br />“Aww shit,” Payden cackled again, sizing Tracey up. “Your homegirl can come.” </div><div align="left"><br />“<em>Yeah</em> I can come,” Tracey said, beaming. “I’ve never seen you play.”<br /><br />***<br /><br />Over the heads of the trees, down a valley of bushes through which ran a trickling creek, over the flat surface of a baseball diamond marred by its fall incarnation of a soccer field, the stadium lights played dimly over the old court. The lake behind the forest was invisible, enshrouded in black by the trees in the night, ripples echoing faintly in their lapping on the far shores. </div><div align="left"><br />It was not pretty, the game they played that night. Rick was his team-mate, and Rick was not very good. Payden was not as good as he once had been. Something was gone from his boyishness, from his speed. Girard was quick and efficient, pointed with his shots and merciless with his hustle. His focus never left the thinly lit patch of cement at the feet of his opponents. His feet never stopped moving, crossing behind one another and pouncing agile at just the right moments with the trim buoyancy of a cat. </div><div align="left"><br />When it was over the others clapped him on the back, laughing amongst themselves about something unrelated, suffusing themselves effortlessly from the game as they wandered down the dark street in hooded sweatshirts, doing lazy crossovers. Rick, anxious not to miss the third quarter, ran ahead back to the stadium. Girard was left then standing, slightly meekish – sweat blanketing him thickly and mixing with the mist to give his skin a glowing sheen. </div><div align="left"><br />“What the hell was that?” Tracey asked from her perch on a courtside log. </div><div align="left"><br />Girard sat down crosslegged at center court, draping his longsleeve over the arch in his neck. </div><div align="left"><br />“What the hell was what?” he feigned good-naturedly, pretending to stretch. He knew he should have been upset with himself for giving in so easily, for allowing this clash of his two lives, for not doing something drastic like just holding back in the game a little, or just running away the instant he first saw them, back out of the gate to the stands and down through the parking lot back to his home. The second thought he’d briefly entertained – there was rarely a time where turning on his heel and sprinting as hard as he could in the opposite direction did not hold a tremendous appeal - the first, he had not. </div><div align="left"><br />But now he could hardly hold back a grin, a pleasant feeling of well being coming over him as he lay back on the cold, wet pavement. Otherwise innocuous happenstances gave him pleasure; he observed his surroundings from a new light, as though he were seeing them now through a lens that had been absent an hour before. How nicely the clouds lined up in the sky, he thought. How good this pair of jeans has been to me. </div><div align="left"><br />Bits of mud were seeping through the strands of his hair, sticking to his skull. </div><div align="left"><br />“Why didn’t you tell me you were Michael Goddamn Jordan?” </div><div align="left"><br />He glanced over to her, her profile sideways from his prone posture, flecks of gold spotting her hair against the faded light above the trees. </div><div align="left"><br />“I’d rather be Grant Goddamn Hill or Christian Goddamn Laettner,” he said. “But O.K.” </div><div align="left"><br />She was silent for a moment at this – she was not a Duke fan. From his position at center court he could see her lip furling in confusion at the brief derailment before she longreached it back on course. </div><div align="left"><br />“Why don’t you go out for the team?” she asked. He spoke the words with her under his breath, a subtlety she did not miss. </div><div align="left"><br />“Well?” </div><div align="left"><br />“Just don’t,” he said. </div><div align="left"><br />“I mean that was half of Cecilbrook’s varsity right there,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard him at all. “If I’m remembering last year right. I mean you’d be good for the <em>school</em>. The <em>school</em> stunk last year.” </div><div align="left"><br />“I know,” he said. </div><div align="left"><br />“How are you just blowing this off, I mean how are you just sitting there like that, after all that just happened, you have to –” </div><div align="left"><br />But Girard stood up, moved swiftly over the blacktop with long strides, went to her on the log and wrapped his arms around her. He had an acute awareness of the moment, of the person he dealt with; knew that there would be a limited amount of times in her life that Tray would ever see that kind of basketball – knew too that there would a limited amount of times when he could silence an irate woman with nothing more than an embrace – and taking on half a high school varsity team all but on his own in a game of half-court was probably one of those times. Mixed in was no small amount of his desire to bask in the quiet of an hour of basketball with the girl, to know what it was to sit back and beat a complete peace, a complete stasis of mind and body; to float unhindered, unbothered, even if for only those few moments. </div><div align="left"><br />Long after the sweat had dried on his chest and sent shivers down his back with the gusting breeze, long after the crickets had quieted themselves in the nearby bush and the lights of the stadium distant had begun to dim and the cheers emanating from them ceased; long after that he felt, offering a gentle affirmation, her fingers on the back of his head, holding him in return.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Those walks home walks home from the city were always the best time of day. There was nothing like knowing that he had loosed that dancing nymph from his oversoul, that giddy restlessness which never ceased to make his calmer, deskbound hours a trial. When the sun was setting over the city the air would grow cooler, crisp, the clouds purpling in their molding with the night, the sweat crusting the dirt to the side of his face as it dried. Autumn would be best. Cries of children heading home punctuating the dusk. He would let his thoughts wander, then. He would inspect the happiness inside of him with a happy curiosity, like a nutty professor waking up in a laboratory of his own making. What if God had not made the Earth, but only found it? Like a stumbling supernatural deity wandering the great abyss. <em>Hey, here’s a great blue and green</em> ball, He must have said, <em>and oh how fun it could be play with it</em>. <em>What delightful trickery must lie</em>, He must have thought,<em> in the mastery of its movements.</em><br /><br />***<br /><br />Girard was in fifth grade at the Catholic school the day he walked over to the rectory to see Sister Joanne. It was a cold winter afternoon just before Christmas, on one of those days of the year where there is almost no sunlight left once school is over. He even thought he could see the sun setting as he hurried from his last class, splashes of yellow tinging the cloudedges over the tops of the chapel and the big apartments rising through the trees beyond. </div><div align="left"><br />The lawn of the rectory was hard and cold, soil hardened by the freezing temperatures, the cement walkway smooth and graywhite leading up to the old wooden arches by the door. It was going to snow that night, Girard reflected. There could even be flurries on the ground by the time he came back outside again. Next time I see you, ground, he said, you will be covered in white. This made him happy, happy in the way that Fridays would make him happy when they came. </div><div align="left"><br />Father Farraday greeted him at the door, led him through the old foyer and into Sister Joanne’s office, which was so tidy to the extent that it suggested a desperation to be anything otherwise. There was that distinct old-person smell in the air – thinking back in later years, that would always be what Girard remembered the most. The smell not of death but of things that must be undertaken very slowly, very politely, very tidily. </div><div align="left"><br />Father Farraday left with a smile, shutting the door on the way out. Sister Joanne was kneeling behind her desk praying with her rosary beads, and turned to see him when he entered. She possessed a broad, open, oval face, a face that suggested illimitable kindliness. When he had first met Sister Joanne Girard had subconsciously assumed this feature to indicate some inner warmth of spirit, some profound and encompassing pleasantness, the type that a part of him automatically struggled to associate with all religious people. Now that he knew her, he knew this was not true. Now her face was just fat. What had seemed oval and pleasant before was now hanging jowl-flesh. Some people are born with a smile on their face not because they are smiling, but because their genetics have defined their facial muscular structure in such a way that forces the corners of their lips at an upward angle. Appearance had nothing to do with personality, Girard was discovering, contrary to a myth that seemed to permeate the air he breathed. </div><div align="left"><br />“So,” Sister Joanne said, seating him across the desk in a plush chair. “Did you wish to talk about your grades this quarter past?” </div><div align="left"><br />She looked at him in a way that made him feel guilty for something of which the details he did not know. </div><div align="left"><br />“No.” </div><div align="left"><br />“I see. Did you wish to speak to me about confirmation?” </div><div align="left"><br />“No, Sister. It’s about…is church supposed to be fun?” Girard sighed with relief as he said it, as if dropping a heavy load. </div><div align="left"><br />“Fun in what way?” </div><div align="left"><br />“Just fun.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Well, I suppose it depends what your understanding of what ‘fun’ is, Girard. In a classic sense, yes. The worship of our Creator fills us with His boundless love. Doesn’t that sound fun to you?” </div><div align="left"><br />Girard turned red. He did not know what to say, and felt profoundly uncomfortable. His heart was hammering against his ribcage. </div><div align="left"><br />“What I mean to ask,” he said, after an agonizing interim of silence, “Is that is it bad if I am not having fun in church?” </div><div align="left"><br />“Do not get me wrong,” Sister Joanne said. “There is a certain…fineness, to understanding the mysteries of the Holy Trinity. A certain…subtlety. When in proper contemplation of Gospel truths, you should be filled with a lightness of being. A massive weight is being released from your shoulders, you understand. You are being graced with the presence of God. Exactly what is happening is by its very definition indefinable. Do you see? You can only know it when you see it.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Have you seen it?” Girard asked. </div><div align="left"><br />“Yes, I have. I see God in everyday life. I see Him in the arrangement of spring flowers in bloom. I see Him when I close my eyes after I get up from praying the rosary and my joints ache. I see Him…Girard? Is that helpful to you? Girard? Girard, where you are going? Girard!” </div><div align="left"><br />But Girard was gone, out of the office, down the hall, and out into the grey night, tearing across the snowless lawn and into the lamplit streets, still-mittened hands pumping, the ball in his backpack flopping up and down, up and down, in tune to his bouncy stride. </div><div align="left"><br />And Sister Joanne, bearing a frowning smile of almost comical contradiction, shut her office door with not a small amount of muttered generalities regarding the younger generations, and such, and resumed attending to her beads.<br /><br />***<br /><br />He’d read a book about music once. One that he’d found in the library, about music and how it didn’t really belong to anyone, and how the whole world wasjust kind of an open orchestra, and it was just silly to think that people could actually buy and sell it. And there were these people – art professors, music teachers, homeless accordion players, etcetera– and what they all said was that it had always been there. The music. From the beginning. Like anything else. No one was creating anything. They’re all just listening really hard. They’re channeling something ancient. Something as old as mankind. Older, even. Older than the Earth. Something that has always been there. Something that was written in the way the universe was made. And what they did was just seek it out. They pictured music as being on this different frequency – surrounding the universe in its every movement. What the best musicians were able to do was relay that frequency. The best musicians were just able to see something which the rest of us could not. The lesser musicians were just replaying something that had already been found. </div><div align="left"><br />That was the whole thing of it, they said, was that it was never creation, music. It was discovery.<br />Kind of like what religious people might think of as God.<br /><br /><br />***<br />Once she had cornered him, after the season opener against Cecilbrook. The score had been ninety-four to twenty-seven, in favor of Cecilbrook. Payden Atkins was game M.V.P. with nineteen points, eleven assists, and eleven steals for the triple-double. She had watched from the first row of the stands. Girard was never, for his part, at any point inside of the gymnasium. </div><div align="left"><br />She walked to his home, he was reading Russian literature on the sofa with his parents. This was how he liked to think of it. She smiled at his mother who let her in and gave her tea in the dining room. She was wearing a blue tanktop; a sheen of sweat from the strangely hot December night made her shoulderblades glisten attractively. He led her away and into the kitchen, her all the while holding the teacup ceremoniously between parted lips, steam rising over the bridge of her nose, smoking over her pale forehead. </div><div align="left"><br />“What’s this Dostoevsky shit you’re reading?” she said, motioning to the book at his side, his index finger marking his place, the pages folded over between his thumb and pinkie.<br />“It’s called Brothers Karamazov,” he said. </div><div align="left"><br />“We were only supposed to read Crime and Punishment,” she said, accusatorily. </div><div align="left"><br />“I know what we were supposed to do,” he said, grabbing her roughly by the arm and pulling her farther into the kitchen. </div><div align="left"><br />He watched her with some satisfaction as the color went from her cheeks and she turned her eyes away. He never was severe with her – for better and for worse – and on the rare occasions that he was, she knew to pay attention. She recovered fairly quickly, though, pulling her arm back to her side. </div><div align="left"><br />“Guess where I just was?” she said, her eyes brimming with that assured glittering of the enlightened. </div><div align="left"><br />“The library?” </div><div align="left"><br />“Yes. I wear a tanktop to the library in December.” When Girard pictured her words – as his imagination had a restless, inexplicable habit of doing – they were icicles, sharp, crystalline, beautifully and wickedly harsh, with chipped edges dangling precariously in an Arctic mist. </div><div align="left"><br />“I was at the stupid basketball game,” she said. Ya wanna know who won?” </div><div align="left"><br />“Tray.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Cecilbrook did. Ya wanna know the stupid score?” </div><div align="left"><br />“Tray, c’mon now. Listen to me.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Ninety-four to twenty-seven.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Okay. No it wasn’t.” </div><div align="left"><br />“The goddamn hell it wasn’t. Ya wanna know who the stupid M.V.P. of the stupid game was?” </div><div align="left"><br />“Ogilby,” he said the name of his classmate looking away. </div><div align="left"><br />“No, it wasn’t that gangletron 2000 Ogilby. It was that kid <em>Atkins</em>. Payden goddamn <em>Atkins</em>. That’s who it was. He had a goddamn double-triple.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Triple-double, but…” he said, offhand. </div><div align="left"><br />“I don’t care what the hell the technical term is,” she said. “The score would’ve been closer if it was one on five. Jesus, Girard, for all I know you can beat all five of them.” </div><div align="left"><br />“I don’t know,” he said seriously. “They’ve got that real lanky bastard of a power forward. Some kind of 6’6 lanky bastard. They’re whole defensive shtick is to double him up on the best shooter.” </div><div align="left"><br />“They’d be fiving up on you, so I don’t even see how that comment is relevant. But that’s not the point. The point is – the point is, it’s embarrassing.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Since when do you care about school pride so much?” </div><div align="left"><br />“I don’t,” she said. “I care about <em>you</em> that much. I care about you just sitting here reading your book. I care about you waiting for me to be done with tennis practice every day for two hours by shooting hoops, and nothing ever coming of it.” </div><div align="left"><br />“What makes you think,” he said very quietly, “That nothing is coming of it?” </div><div align="left"><br />She looked at him dead on, the color going again from her face, the flame lingering in her eye. </div><div align="left"><br />“You could be great,” she said. </div><div align="left"><br />“Great! Hah!” he gave a horrible bellow of a laugh, the echo of a sentiment which it was plainly obvious he did not feel. “The pursuit of ‘great’ is what people have used for centuries to justify all kinds of horrible things.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Don’t start with that. Don’t start getting philosophical.” </div><div align="left"><br />“From starting wars to neglecting wives,” he continued. </div><div align="left"><br />“You’re not on a team,” she said firmly. “You’re not winning championships. You’re not getting your name in the paper. You’re not getting recruited by colleges. You’re not rising above your peers. You’re not working with your peers. You’re just sitting there…alone…” she paused, hesitant to let fall the words from her tongue. “Hiding. Afraid, almost. If I didn’t know you better that’s what I would say.” </div><div align="left"><br />They were silent for some time. From the living room their drifted the sounds of a family at home – sipping of tea, rustle of the pages in a book, the occasional sneeze, the constant of the television playing CNN. The noises morphed into a cacophony of quiet and peace, the calm forging a wicked contradiction between the rooms. And as the two teenagers stared at the kitchen tiling near the other’s feet, they listened with that detached disbelief of the person in despair, who cannot believe that the simplicities and banalities of everyday life were still continuing on as if the world of trouble and tumult had never happened. </div><div align="left"><br /><em>“You see the thing is Blah I don’t see your point, you guys have been doing this since day one. What the Republican Party needs to do is denounce George Bush entirely.” </em></div><div align="left"><br /><em>“Do you, uh, realize, Mrs. Blah-Blah, that George Bush has just won the general election for President of the United States…” </em></div><div align="left"><br /><em>“He’s going to sink them, he’s going to bring them down, and the Democratic party is going to rule again…”</em> </div><div align="left"><br />“There is a serious difference,” he finally said. Between dislike and fear. And real basketball is about none of the things you have mentioned. Not a single one.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Oh it’s not, is it?” </div><div align="left"><br />“No.” </div><div align="left"><br />“You’re wasting your gift.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Innate skill is not my gift. I am the way I am because I made myself that way. Me. Sure genetics played a part in the whole deal. In my limits. What I can…become. But random chance is hardly a gift. It’s not like I owe a favor, or a goddamn <em>responsibility</em>, to the way my cells happened to collate.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Well I –” lines creased her forehead as she stammered in frustration. “I think you do. You owe it to yourself. What Coach Quinn always says is ‘the saddest thing in life is wasted talent.’ And that’s true. It is.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Tray. Don’t quote Coach Quinn to me. You know goddamn well what I think of that quote. The whole idea is so absurd. I mean, waste on whose terms, exactly? What may be ‘wasteful’ to you and I – take <em>recycling</em>, for Chrissake – is absurd to others. I mean, do you think remote tribes in the middle of Africa are recycling? It’s not even on their goddamn radar. I mean you can’t define things like that. Not in this day and age.” </div><div align="left"><br /><em>“Goldbond medicated powder is ideal for those suffering from acute ailments, particularly of the…”</em> </div><div align="left"><br />She was looking away now, looking at the blank of the refrigerator behind him. </div><div align="left"><br />“Listen to me, Tray. Do you remember the story you told me about when you first started playing tennis?” </div><div align="left"><br />“Of course I do, and how is this relevant.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Tray. Please. Trust me,” he said, and pulled out a chair for her from behind the refrigerator, and sat her down, and sat across from her in the little alleyway between the pantry and the entrance to the bathroom. Their knees were touching. </div><div align="left"><br />“But I’ve told you all about that summer, you – ” </div><div align="left"><br />“I know. Remind me again.” </div><div align="left"><br />“I was down the shore at my uncle’s. It was during Wimbledon. We were watching it, he used to be semipro, and he taught me to backhand like Justine Henin.” </div><div align="left"><br />“No,” he said. “The first time.” </div><div align="left"><br />“That was it.” </div><div align="left"><br />“The first time you used a racket.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Well I bought the old wooden one at my best friend’s garage sale. And then I was alone, and I had just one of those high-bounce pink balls, the kind you said you used throw grounders to yourself as a kid. And I just started playing, like I was Justine Henin and the wall was Martina Hingis, or Venus Williams, or something, but really…” </div><div align="left"><br />“Really, it was just you against you.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Really it was just me against me.” </div><div align="left"><br />“And that was the moment.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Yes,” she said, somehow morphing from wistful to suspicious in a single syllable. </div><div align="left"><br />“In other words,” he said, “It was just tennis. Nothing else. Just tennis.” </div><div align="left"><br />“You’re being cryptic.” </div><div align="left"><br />“No cheerleading, no coaching techniques, no after-game barbeques with parents you don’t like, no schedules, orders, discipline – ” </div><div align="left"><br />“That doesn’t bother me like it bothers you – ” </div><div align="left"><br />“It shouldn’t be a matter of bother at all. I mean your whole life can be one grand attempt at appeasement and neutrality, if you let it.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Sometimes,” she said with a flourish, “You need to suck it up. Life’s not that easy. You gotta go through crap to get what you want.” </div><div align="left"><br />“There’s enough crap, though, without creating any, for chrissakes. I mean, answer me honest, how much of that joy that you felt the first time you picked up a racket is there when you do goddamn stretching drills, and <em>skips</em>, and all that clown shit, it’s not what <em>sport</em> is. <em>Sport</em> isn’t about drunken fans, and contracts, and scholarships, and memorabilia, and autographs, and trillion dollar stadiums, and used-car salesmen who rip off little kids’ dreams with cheap coaching videos…” </div><div align="left"><br />“It’s not all perfect,” she said tersely. “And it can’t all be fun. Not if you want to be a champion.” </div><div align="left"><br />“Yes it can,” he said. “Yes it is.” </div><div align="left"><br />He sighed. He did not look into her eyes, which were green and gloomy. Instead he eyed the portrait on the wall of the Giant in the Sky, as if he did not entirely trust its confident gait heading in the opposite direction. </div><div align="left"><br />“Listen. My point is that I didn’t fall in love with you because you’re captain of the tennis team, or because you almost won districts as a junior, or because you lead the goddamn stretch circle at 2:52…not anymore than I did because of your S.A.T. score, for that matter.” </div><div align="left"><br />He heaved a deep breath. </div><div align="left"><br />“You’re being cryptic,” she said, but her voice was breaking, her gaze had warmed as it fell over his words. </div><div align="left"><br />“I fell in love with you, because,” he began, failing at feigning a levity of tone, his words falling heavily on both of their ears. </div><div align="left"><br />She was looking into his eyes now. </div><div align="left"><br />“I know,” she whispered. </div><div align="left"><br />***<br /><br />It came to his mind then, an assault of detail in a burst: </div><div align="left"><br />The stout, dark Township girl returning Tray’s serve to the far right quadrant; Tray, bounding over in two quick strides; planting her feet, her white shoes smacking the green court; arching her pale arm back, ponytail bouncing over her shoulders; neon orb spinning towards her through crisp air, cutting a line in the sky; the arm, swinging forward, racket held relaxed but firm in her palm, fingers pink from the cold – and then just one sound, that delicious punk of felt hitting the sweet spot between the racket strings, sending the ball sailing just over the rim of the net across the court, reversing the Township girl midstride; the ball landing at just the precise limit of the white line, midcourt, tailing away with a topspin that would be the envy of Justine Henin herself, canceling the stout girl’s desire to even reach her arm out in the midst of her dash back. And Tray – Tray, coming square after the shot, smiling just a little bit to herself, landing so exactly, so evenly, in an effortless completion of the movement – the shadow of which would be the best feet-first popup slide Ricky Henderson ever accomplished – like it was all one great fluidic act, rhythmic to not only her forehand return but the whole set, the whole match. </div><div align="left"><br />He saw it like a lightning flash, blinding him for an instant with its brilliance before crackling away. He saw the whole shot, then the upwards curve of her lips, then her shot again. Like someone were switching slides back and forth on the projector of his mind at an endlessly increasing rate. Until the end when all he could see was a blur of inapproachable perfection.<br /><br />***<br /><br />She’d left that night much later. He walked her home, under the stars, through the tree-lined streets. Kissed her goodnight by her window-sill. Held her foot in the palm of his hand to boost her inside. Watched her house from the curb on the other side of the road until the glow of her light was muffed out, restoring the block to blackness. </div><div align="left"><br />Coming back he walked very slowly. At one point he counted his steps, thinking it may come in handy later. To know. He lost track in the thousands. It was very hard to do all that math on such a night.<br /><br />***<br /><br />“It was the motion,” he had told her, walking back home after the match. “It was just so deliberate. It was just so perfect. And it was almost as if everything else was getting in the way. Like not just the crowd, or the fence, but the other girl. The whole court. The net. Your racket, even, and the ball. It was you that was perfect. You, and that motion.”<br /><br /><br />***<br /><br />From his perch on the log at the top of the hill Girard had a bird’s eye of the park. The lake, from here, was a massive blue plateau, rippling in its coming and recession. Gusts of wind caught him forthwith, chilling him to his bony center. But it was a good chill, in the way than only an autumn chill by a forested lake can be a good chill. It was a chill that made him want to fold his arms against himself to keep warm, not angrily stalk into an artificially heated building to sulk against the sky. Yes, a storm was coming. </div><div align="left"><br />At some point he began to shake without realizing it. In the far distance through the now gray sky he saw the sun sloping slightly downwards in the beginnings of its setting, reddish-gold embers melting in a corner of the sky and letting trickling in bits of bloody sparkles the light that was the last hope for a spectacle of sunset. The tops of the trees along the opposite bank received this light well, their leaves brilliant shades of amber and eggyolk yellow in the midst of a different passing. Watching the sun try to display its setting, and leaves to fall, and the gray sky which belonged to winter take over, he felt an unfamiliar new comfort. Keeping his left arm folded across his chest, he unfurled his right, slipped it into the back pocket of his blue jeans, and pulled out a white envelope. </div><div align="left"><br />He let it sit in his lap, bristle in the wind. The front was blank and coffee-stained. The right corner was slightly torn; as if someone had thought about opening it and then abruptly changed their mind. </div><div align="left"><br />This was precisely what had happened. </div><div align="left"><br />His hands were stiffening from the cold as he held the single sheet open and flexed his fingers, feeling the blood flow return slowly, painfully, as it always had after so many childhood winters of exploring, playing, running to the brink of frostbite. Stopping not out of fear, but curiosity. For how long could you remain between two places? Looking at one, living in another. The disparity tearing physical body in two. A punishment for your failure in balance.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">3/1/006 DEER, GIRARD. I HOPE IT IS O.K. TO WRITE LETTERS TO YOU. DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU CAME OVER ONE TIME AND TRAY HAD TO GO TO DROP HER BOOKS AT THE LIBRARY AND YOU STAYED AT THE HOUSE. WELL THAT TIME DO YOU REMEMBER WE PLAYED ONE ON ONE AND YOU ONLY USED ONE OF YOUR BIG ARMS AND YOU SAID NEXT TIME I WOULD BE OLD ENOUGH TO PLAY YOU WITH BOTH OF YOUR BIG ARMS. WELL I THINK I AM READY NOW. MAYBE NOT BUT I STILL WANT TO PLAY YOU WITH BOTH OF YOUR BIG ARMS. SINCERLY FRIEND, CHARLIE (TRAY’S BROTHER)</span><br /><br />The letter was dated three springs ago, almost to the day. It had not been two weeks since he had found the envelope stuffed under his front door. That night he had confronted his landlady, a serene woman who drank too much coffee and saw too little sunlight. </div><div align="left"><br />“What is this?” he waved the envelope under her nose. “Who put this under my door?” </div><div align="left"><br />“You’re being cryptic,” she said, and slowly hobbled away. Her footsteps made no sound on the cobblestone.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Vaguely, now: </div><div align="left"><br />The tickets. Yes there had been tickets. Dropped off in an unmarked white envelope between a typed note on university heading, <em>Enjoy, you and a friend. Yours, Coach C</em>. </div><div align="left"><br />Courtside, the thick necks of the players just feet away. Sweat dripping down their thick necks. Trainers tossing towels, players tossing towels. The hardwood floor was shiny, colorful. Every movement reflected. Beautiful orange hoop. Yes, and glass boards. Strange, foreign things.<br />And two young men, yes, two men with Eric Snow jerseys where they were not supposed to be. Two men yelling, two men not listening.<em> I’m sorry, but you’re in our seats</em>, Girard had said. Or something like that. Most common of mistakes. Happen to anyone. <em>That right?</em> And then he’d said something more, and then they were standing, and beer had been tossed all over Tray, and Tray was screaming, and he was backing away, and the security guards were coming but they were on top of him, the both of them, and pummeling, and Tray screaming, and a man in yellow holding his hands saying sir, sir? Sir? </div><div align="left"><br />Bright lights, big court. His nose felt wobbly, like it was separate. Tray said something that sounded like blood tickets. What had he said back? Did he shrug? He shrugged, probably. Maybe a salty pretzel in his mouth. Tray’s hair golden, straight around her face. <em>So beautiful</em>, and he just shrugged. <em>What’s wrong, what’s wrong, tell me, tell me, what is it?</em> But he handed her his soda to share. He’d never really drank soda, before. Burning in his throat. Arena rumbling but in his ears silence. Complete. Crowd a fading echo. Reading Tray’s lips, the smack of red together. He kissed her, then, probably. Yes, he definitely had. Still, after, something about your nose and my fault and you were always right, and he watched Larry Brown patrol the sideline like a raving professor at a roomlength chalkboard. Iverson never stopped moving. Gameplay was a blur. Sweatbands, fancy mesh fabrics. Cornrows. Thick necks with big animallike beads of sweat running down them. <em>Let’s stay</em>, he had whispered to her, when the game was over. </div><div align="left"><br />He had blackrimmed glasses, the newspaperman. A greasy nose. Short greasy hair. Little greasy notebook fingers. Empty stands, no drowned roar in his ears. He’d met him in the bathroom at halftime, read his lips too: <em>You’re Girard Spencer, aren’t you?</em> Girard had his thumb and forefinger around the bridge of his nose. He yanked. He remembered that, the yank. Stars in his eyes. <em>Sure</em>, he’d said. <em>We’re in Row One, Section blah blah</em>…to that extent. </div><div align="left"><br />The newspaperman asked many questions. Girard remembered few of them.<em> How is the season going?</em> many of them began. …<em>and will that affect your choice of university?</em> He remembered repeating that, that phrase. Back to the newspaperman. As if to anticipate his response. To give him material. <em>When we are state champions, this will not affect my choice of</em>… Tray shaking her head, <em>don’t tell him thats and why are you doing this’</em> permeating the nacho-beer stink to the air. </div><div align="left"><br />His greasy eyes on her now, asking her now, and do you play sports? And her saying, <em>no</em>.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Now he was not tormented always by the details. They came and they went, and Girard accepted them, like they were an inevitability, without sadness or comeuppance. He felt himself a third party to these memories, when they did come. Had that happened to him? Or had he just been watching? Maybe it was a movie. Yes, maybe a very bad movie that he should not have been watching. Movies were so bad these days. He really did not like so very many of them. No he did not at all. </div><div align="left"><br />This he saw with detachment. With carelessness. To call it apathy would suggest that he even noticed something to ignore in the first place. </div><div align="left"><br />Outside the arena was very quiet. In his boyhood he had always begged his father and his mother to stay late after the game so that they might see the players come out to their cars.<br />“They might not like people watching them very much,” his father would say, knowing that only in the iciest of hells would his mother consent to another two hours in a basketball arena on a weeknight. </div><div align="left"><br />That was how the night felt. Like one of anticipation, from childhood. Waiting to move, from the edge of one world to the next.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Only patches coming: the night icy, her shivering, her coldly shaking away his jacket. Him scrambling back to pick it up off the asphalt.<br />The two Eric Snows there, suddenly, from between the cars,<br />and Tray screaming,<br />and a gun was out,<br />and one was on him,<br />and he was on the ground.<br />Tray screaming. The night cold, cold. Face gone numb. Nose breaking again: with a single crack. Time passing. Tray facedown on the ground. Him scrambling up. The gun in his hand now. The report of the pistol echoing through the night: <em>one, two, three, four…tell me that you…</em><br /><br />***<br /><br />There was a light drizzle coming down through the trees as he hiked along the edge of the lake towards the perimeter of the courts. There were a few boys playing there, the report of dribbling having carried through the woods for many hundreds of yards to his spot at the top of the hill. He stood there for a while, lurking, in a manner, he realized later, that would have been disconcerting to any adult watching. The rain began to come down harder – near the Y he saw the baseball players running for cover in the dugouts, he saw the old lady moving steadily towards a car with a swiftness that betrayed her cane. There were shouts over near the old sled hill, parents calling from the porches of their apartments to one another, rushing about to bring all their things in-doors. Girard waited for the boys to stop playing, but they did not seem to notice. These were children, eleven, twelve years old. They did not understand such things as rushing inside from a rainstorm yet. They did not know to care of such things yet. They knew only of their game. </div><div align="left"><br />The ball was knocked loose from the paws of one of the boys, and came tumbling over towards Girard’s spot near the corner of the court, where he was toeing a crack in the asphalt. One of them came dashing over, slipping on a corner of paint on the sideline that had not yet been washed away and crashing spectacularly into the asphalt, ball locked between his forearm and his ribcage like a running back. He bounced up immediately, grinning like a madman, a long, weeping scrape speckled with flecks of concrete running up the side of his leg. He looked to Girard, grinning still, sweat and rain pouring down his cheek. Oblivious to the blood. </div><div align="left"><br />“Hey man,” the boy said, flipping the ball deftly between his dirtied hands, “You wanna play?” </div><div align="left"><br />The boy bounce-passed the ball to Girard, the mud-spattered orb hitting him square in the chest against his new flannel shirt. In his hands it felt cold and warm at once, bristling with bits of dirt, raw from its usage, the grip on it fading. Girard bounced it once, twice. Felt the splat it made against the wet court, felt it come back quickly into his opened palm. He took a step back, then a step forward, over the crack. He looked at the boy. He cocked the ball back. He shot.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />_______________________________________<br />Bibliography, or, where undoubtable inspiration arose from:<br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/27/john-updike-rabbit-run-extract">http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/27/john-updike-rabbit-run-extract</a><br /><a href="http://www.dibache.com/text.asp?cat=51&id=173">http://www.dibache.com/text.asp?cat=51&id=173</a><br /><a href="http://us.macmillan.com/lifeatthesespeeds">http://us.macmillan.com/lifeatthesespeeds</a></div>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-66654970482833208182010-02-25T22:17:00.000-08:002010-02-26T00:11:22.794-08:00Best American Short Stories 2009 - A Suburban Gothika Revival"There is nothing safe about these stories," Heidi Pitlor writes in the foreward to 2009's Best American Short Stories - and that is certainly the case, if by safe you mean something that you might lie down with after lying in a desert war zone for two weeks in desperate need of something quiet cushy and warm. What these stories are above anything else is real. They are not an effective escape from the real world - they form no kind of alluring alternative reality a la <em>Harry Potter</em> or <em>World of Warcraft</em>. They reflect back to you, in a thousand ways, the icy indifference of the hand of random chance which we are all dealt.<br /><br />Yet this is not a collection of despair, per se. The resounding voice at the conclusion is not one of despondency or hopelessness. What many of these stories address is what Edgar Allen Poe described as Gothic: "hidden vices and perversions beneath the veneer of virtue." These stories merely out that veneer, in the way a good Mark Twain burlesque might out some fad of absurdity commonplace on the 19th century Mississippi - the way the financial success of the King and the Duke in <em>Huckleberry Finn</em> is meant to make society re-evaluate the mob mentality of witchtrialing that has been such a thorough part of American culture from Salem through Hester Prynne and all the way on up to McCarthy and the Patriot Act. Our world has always seemed to have a peculiar way of hiding its ugliest bits and pieces behind that veneer - the same veneer which drove Thoreau to say that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation." We are busy holding up a guilded bevy of optimism, of positive reassurances - in many ways we have never passed from that time over a century and a half ago which Twain himself named with a title of one of his books: <em>The Guilded Age</em>.<br /><br />In her introduction, Sebold (author of <em>The Lovely Bones)</em> notes that "Narrative, after all, is perhaps the most powerful antidote we have in the face of what at first may appear to be insurmountable odds." These stories address issues which Hollywood and most popular literature would rather gloss over. The confrontation which they provide is exactly what a society needs to move forward in the aftermath of epic tragedy. Not only confrontation, but an artistic interpretation which gives meaning, establishes a spiritual resonance, an empathetic bond, between victims and sufferers and all men and women spited by the darker side of the indifferent universe.<br /><br />Since any reader of any story inevitably passes judgement, it was hard for me not to rank the stories below - not to pit them agaist one another in competition, but to explain my personal view of the collection. There were two stories which I profoundly did not like: Alex Rose's 'Ostracon' and Joseph Epstein's 'Beyond the Pale.' The former because I did not understand it and found myself reading every sentence ten times (this does not mean it was not a good story), and the latter because of unrealistic dialogue and my own personal vendetta against writing about writing (as a rule I dislike all such self-indulgence not in small part due to a quote by Quenton Cassidy given when asked by Bruce Denton in <em>Once a Runner</em> what he thinks of Hemingway's Nick Adams stories: "Yes, I liked them pretty much. Except for all the stiff-upper-lip crap. But the guy went out and did things, you know; I mean you could tell he really did those things, <em>knew</em> about them before going out and shooting his mouth off. He just sat down and tried to tell it as honestly as he could. That's a shitload better than sitting around New York with a bunch of other artistes diddling each other and writing about the state of being Jewish, or how anguishing it is to be an anguished writer.") 'Beyond the Pale' is almost precisely about that: an anguished Jewish writer living in New York writing about another anguished Jewish writer living in New York, the story itself written for a New York magazine. Like rungs on a concentric circle the reader passes deeper and deeper into an exclusive club which - imagining the outer rung of the circles as the ideal perch for the audience - not only is he severely removed from emotionally and intellectually, but in which he feels unwelcome.<br /><br />On the other end of the spectrum are six incredible stories, of which Annie Proulx's 'Them Old Cowboy Songs' emerges as the cream of the crop. Sometimes the greatest tribute a critic can pay to a movie is to say that it feels like literature; Proulx's story, in that vein, feels like an old Arlo Guthrie or Johnny Cash song, lonesome heartfelt country music before it became branded by the banalities of Toby Keith and co. It tells the story of Archie and Rose McClaverty, young newlyweds on the countryside in the 1880's setting out to make a living. From the start events play out in an almost Tolstoyan fashion of inevitability - there is the distinct sense, like in <em>Old Yeller </em>or <em>No Country for Old Men</em>, that something brutal lurks beneath the silent goings on around this desert homestead, that something dark and horrible is about to shatter the lovely pastoral vision of two people living happily in solitude. As the story progresses - as we see Archie and Rose's respective roles manifest themselves in Archie's looking for a job as a cattlehand hundreds of miles away, Rose left to have a baby all alone in her shack - we begin to understand their plight as part of the land, inextricably linked to the natural elements which have formed them to begin with. Their tale, like any spoken in whispers across the countryside, is just another old cowboy song, sung by those who do not understand but only see the world and the exacting hand of fate. "Some lived and some died," the pentultimate paragraph reflects. "And that's how it was." <br /><br /><br />1. Them Old Cowboy Songs - Annie Proulx<br /><br />2. Sagittarius - Greg Hrbek<br /><br />3. Into the Gorge - Ron Rash<br /><br />4. Modulation - Richard Powers<br /><br />5. Hurricanes Anonymous - Adam Johnson<br /><br />6. Magic Words - Jill McCorkle<br /><br />7. A Man Like Him - Yiyun Li<br /><br />8. NowTrends - Karl Taro Greenfield<br /><br />9. The Briefcase - Rebecca Makkai<br /><br />10. Yurt - Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum<br /><br />11. Rubiaux Rising - Steve De Jarnatt<br /><br />12. The Peripatetic Coffin - Ethan Rutherford<br /><br />13. The Farms - Eleanor Henderson<br /><br />14. The Idiot President - Daniel Alarcon<br /><br />15. Muzungu - Namwalli Serpell<br /><br />16. The Anniverary Trip - Victoria Lancelotta<br /><br />17. One Dog Year - Kevin Moffett<br /><br />18. A Shadow Table - Alice Fulton<br /><br />19. Beyond the Pale - Joseph Epstein<br /><br />20. Ostracon - Alex Rose<br /><br /><br /><strong>Song of the Day: <em>Miss Ohio -</em> Gillian Welch</strong><br /><br /><object height="315" width="500"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9NPEj63d0jY&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9NPEj63d0jY&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="315"></embed></object><br /><em></em>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-17043714619723495962009-09-17T20:00:00.000-07:002010-02-01T11:46:04.034-08:00Two Centuries Later, a Forsaken Rousseau Finding Vindication in KafkaRalph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, along with a slew of other 19th century transcendentalists that formed the face of the movement, were influenced by a Revolution-era Frenchman named Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who aside from being a namesake of a character on Lost, was also the author of one of the most influential political science documents in history, <em><a href="http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm">On the Social Contract</a>.</em> But eight years before Rousseau's social contract was written, he published a slightly less known pamphlet, <em><a href="http://www.constitution.org/jjr/ineq.htm">Discourse on the Origin of Inequality</a></em>. 'Discourse' was what the set the stage for the transcendentalist and humanist movements in 19th century American philosophy, becoming a crucial inspiration for Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy, and eventually even the French Revolution and the Romantic movement as a whole.<br /><br />But none of those figures lived out, nor did that movement or that revolution create, a world in which ideals of 'Discourse' were carried out - even to the slightest degree.<br /><br />Yes, it is true that some people take communism from Rousseau. He was, after all, the first person to say that society "wrongly injects into the savage man's concern for self preservation the need to satisfy a multitude of passions which are the product of society and which have made laws neccessary." It was these new, unnatural passions, Rousseau argued, that led to crime, suffering, and inequality. In the natural state - the state which writers like Thomas Hobbes believed was one of immorality and anarchy - these passions did not exist. Rousseau used the famous example of the 'noble savage' and claimed that "Nature, in giving men tears, bears witness that she gave the human race the softest hearts." From such worldviews, Marx took various critiques of capitalism, applied them to economic theory and the tremendous suffering of the masses at the time, and came up with communism. Years later, a butchered and severely skewered version of this theory came to be the calling card of the Soviet Union, and ever since, a loosely educated Western world has come to identify communism with evil - an opinion which 99 times out of 100 takes little consideration of the history of thought, and much consideration of popular, albeit ignorant, persuasions.<br /><br />Yet still, it was Marx who designed communism, not Rousseau. Rousseau put forth his own political ideas in the social contract, ideas such as rule by the general will of the populace, and the separation of the government from the sovereign (which could be the people at large), but he never created anything so intricate as Marx, and moreover, his governmental suggestions were suggested <em>in response</em> to the already regrettable status of human civilization as a developed consumerist society, in which habits of jealousy and greed were developed, thereby making war, crime, and other horrors effectively inevitable. The social contract is far from Rousseau's true utopia; that was implied eight years earlier with the release of 'Discourse' and the implication that the first step down the dark path, away from our naturally ideal state, was the reasoning man.<br /><br />"Reason is what engenders egocentrism, and reflection strengthens it. Reason is what turns man in upon himself. Reason is what separates him from all that troubles and afflicts him. Philosophy is what isolates him and what moves him to say in secret, at the sight of a suffering man, 'Perish if you will; I am safe and sound.' No longer can anything but danger to the entire society trouble the tranquil slumber of the philosopher and yank him fro his bed. <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/comics/mooreportal/kitty.html">His fellow man can be killed with impunity underneath his window.</a> He has merely to place his hands over his ears and argue with himself a little in order to prevent nature, which rebels within him, from identifying him with the man being assassinated."<br /><br />This crucial, underlining aspect of Rousseau's philosophy is either ignored entirely, or only given lip-service towards in later romantic literature and general thought said to be influenced by the famous Frenchman. It is, after all, a bit more than inconvenient to believe that reasoning, philosophizing human beings are the source of all the world's suffering, and that therefore an ideal world is not only one in which ideas of property rights and owernship and consumerism are absent, but one in which humans are closer to animals, than they are to any kind of supreme being. Instead of idealizing the merits of human accomplishment and achievement, Rousseau views the price of progress to be far too steep.<br /><br />Even perhaps the most ingenious man in the history of the world, Albert Einstein, questioned the consequences of progress. "I made one great mistake in my life," he says in his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038001159X/ref=s9_simz_gw_s0_p14_t1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=1HXMEY9SXHHWJC5WB67T&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938811&pf_rd_i=507846">biography</a>, "When I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made." Though it is unfair to lump all scientific development into the basket of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the symbolism of Rousseau's original point remains: the thinking human mind, separated from its savage state, is capable of horrors which animals can only gape at. Kurt Vonnegut takes a satirical spin on this idea in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cats-Cradle-Novel-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/038533348X">Cat's Cradle</a>,</em> when he uses the fictional Dr. Hoenikker to represent a sort of alternative universe Einstein - well-intentioned, but the tool of uncontrollable societal predetermined fate which was set in motion long ago. His son Newt says:<br /><br />"There are lots of good anecdotes about the bomb and Father ... For instance, do you know the story about Father on the day they first tested a bomb out at Alamagordo? After the things went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin?'"<br /><br />Though Hoenikker's existential questioning 'what is sin?' seems to be more of a reflection of the blank nihilism and meaninglessness which envelopes many of the enlightened characters in Vonnegut's fiction (often critically seen as a direct response to the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Candide-Optimism-Penguin-Classics-Voltaire/dp/0140440046">Candide</a>-like optimism which infects the masses in the wake of tragedy), it also highlights the apathy - in this case seen as helplessly inevitable - which progressive science bears towards morality.<br /><br />I say 'helplessly inevitable', because what is the reality of Rousseau's vision being realized? "The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say <em>this is mine</em> and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: 'Do not listen to this impostor. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!'" The damage has effectively been done, and there is little hope for a return to the time <em>before</em> that first man who said 'this is mine.' This is primarily true, however, because of how much the world has changed in the time that has passed since this writing - the industrial revolution and the advent of metropolises have assured that human life will never be so simple on a global scale ever again, barring some kind of massive holocaust. Yet in 1755, it was not too late. But the next generation of philosophers and thinkers supposedly inspired by Rousseau did not carry on the extremism of his legacy.<br /><br />Emerson and the transcendentalists ignored this bit of Rousseau, I think, not for practical concerns (Thoreau can be seen as a possible exception, as he lived on his own in a tiny cabin for two years - he essentially <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/society+into+the+wild/video/x3tjb2_eddie-vedder-hard-sun-official-vide_music">lived </a>what everyone else could only write about), but rather for theological ones. Emerson especially, and most transcendentalists, were still steeped in a strongly Christian - albeit antinomial - tradition. Emerson was a reverend, even if he was rogue-ish. But the justification for his proposal that humans were naturally good came not from biological or ecological roots like Rousseau, but from a faith in the divinity with which each of God's creatures were created. Yes, both agreed society planted false needs within man, and led him away from himself, but the power of the individual unfettered which both sought to idealize was grounded in opposing scientific and religious ideologies. Rousseau even speaks to this very contrast:<br /><br />"Instead of the sublime maxim of reasoned justice, <em>Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, </em>pity inspires all men with another maxim of natural goodness, much less perfect but perhaps more useful than preceding one: <em>Do what is good for you with as little harm as possible to others</em>." This, to Rousseau, was the natural state of man - in the wild, a savage would hunt and kill a deer to feed himself and his family, but he would very rarely kill it for pleasure. He would fight to protect himself and his family, but would very rarely incite violence as a natural impulse. That instinct would have been more than sated by the rigors of life in a world where every day was not a luxury, and each breath was an accomplishment.<br /><br />Emerson, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_god_is_within_you">Tolstoy </a>and others, still did not see outside the specter and worldview of Christian religion, regardless of how independently he thought, and regardless of how comparatively free he was from the strictly nomian structure which has dominated religious practice in the Western world for centuries. In a twisted way - in a way which defines the difference between the pure romanticism of Rousseau and the transcendentalist take on self-reliance as the contrast between those two maxims above, the contrast between the noble savage in the wild and self-reliance in the world - in that respect, it was the institution of religion which prevented Emerson from agreeing with Rousseau, that rational, thinking man was the downfall of mankind's good nature. A fact that is of course ironic, both because Emerson was strongly against instutions like the established church, which wrongly influenced the human mind, and because even as he argued this, a bit of that institution had become a part of his own thought process.<br /><br />This brings us back to the original point of the post: how Franz Kafka's 1922 short story 'A Hunger Artist' serves to vindicate the extremism of the Rousseauian philosophy that was overlooked by even hardened 19th century transcendentalists like Ralphie the W. The story involves a man who makes his living by starving himself for 40 days at a time, placing himself as an exhibit for the public to see.<br /><br />"I couldn't find a food which I enjoyed," he says, by way of explanation.<br /><br />Food, in this case, bespeaks the general human appetite for life in society, life in the world. Food, here, is synonymous with unfaithfulness to self. If 'A Hunger Artist' is about fundamental solitude as a part of the human condition, it is about the solitude that is crucial to maintaining an individual identity in the midst of a world which will strip such tendencies away like paint-remover - reckoning of course Emersonian nostalgia for 'Self-Reliance': "A great man is he who can maintain within the midst of a crowd the indepedence and perfect sweetness of solitude."<br /><br />When the hunger artist explains why his chosen profession - being locked in a display cage for 40 days at a time without food - is the only thing he can do, when he says that he simply could not find a food which he was able to eat, he is effectively saying that there was no part of the outside world which he found acceptable. The man realizes he must suffer immensely to protect himself from this world - to avoid 'eating', or partaking in social, civil living, he must 'starve' himself. So he in turn uses his suffering to create something beautiful, redirecting his pain and agony into an artistic creation which reflects an altruistic ideal - an ideal which almost transcends his own wretched condition.<br /><br />No one appreciates the hunger artist's work. He quickly falls from popularity and is seen as a joke. Even his admirers seek to limit him, restrain him to 40 days fasting, which they do not realize is an affrontal to his sensibilities. 'Eating' to him is the equivalent of canniabalism to the average person - vile, taboo, unpure. The scene where he is forced to eat is described in stark, revolting detail. The process of eating food, is akin, as an allegory, to selling out - it is an almost Satanical temptation, where the forbidden fruit is actually raw human flesh.<br /><br />What Kafka seems to suggest is the extreme difficulty, the near impossibility, of maintaining "the perfect sweetness and independence of solitude" - and in the process he sees a darker vision of what the individual must do to avoid the loss of that nearly divine ideal. At the same time, he romanticizes the struggle through portraying it as an art form, making even the sickeningly casual death of the hunger artist at the end seem idyllic. The death is even reminiscent of the death of Aslan in <a href="http://www.blogger.com/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Narnia"><em>The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe</em></a><em> - </em>a noble sacrifice followed by a anathematic display of disrespect.<br /><br />As the hunger artist finally dies in pursuit of the perfection of his art of starvation, he is replaced in his cage by an eager jaguar (he had come to be a part of a circus show at the end of his life). The jaguar is shown in sharp contrast to the dying hunger artist. The hunger artist, aware of his condition as a reasoning human being, was cursed by his understanding of philosophy and life, in the way that the secular man is doomed to a life of assuming that there is no afterlife. His self-inflicted suffering came about as a result of his understanding that the world was a vile place. The jaguar, conversely, is ignorant. He welcomes the cage. It is well fed, and that is enough. "It enjoyed the taste and never seemed to miss its freedom," Kafka writes of it.<br /><br />Rousseau writes: "The people, already accustomed to dependence, tranquility, and the conveniences of life, and already incapable of breaking their chains, consented to let their servitude increase in order to secure their tranquility." He may as well be speaking of the 'jaguar', who is clearly representative of the sated society man, who is well-fed, reassured with lies, and accustomed to the comforts of living out the days of his short life in a cage. Rousseau also describes the hunger artist, who alternatively represents the "barbarous man who does not bow his head for the yoke that civilized man wears without a murmur, as he prefers the most stormy liberty to tranquil subjection."<br /><br />That his intentions were misunderstood and his art seen as a failure during his lifetime only further cements this reading of Kafka's text. "To be great is to be misunderstood," Emerson famously said in 'Self-Reliance.' Thus, the hunger artist is the epitome of the man who had the strength of spirit to take to heart the extremism of Rousseau, and attempt to live it out in a sincere and genuine manner. And the fact that Kafka had his protagonist brutally starve himself to death to achieve this ideal is far from coincidental.<br /><br /><br />Song of the Day: None other than the greatest song of all time, 'The Sounds of Silence' by Simon and Garfunkel. Though there have been mixed interpretations as to the direct influence for the song, the most popular belief is that the murder of Kitty Genovese inspired the haunting melody and lyrics. Seeing as the apathy regarding her murder is a key point relating to the nature of human nature, and the squashing of natural pity by society as discussed above, the song seems fitting.<br /><br /><div><object height="414" width="480" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"><param name="_cx" value="12700"><param name="_cy" value="10954"><param name="FlashVars" value=""><param name="Movie" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/xmdsz_simon-garfunkel-the-sound-of-silenc_music"><param name="Src" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/xmdsz_simon-garfunkel-the-sound-of-silenc_music"><param name="WMode" value="Window"><param name="Play" value="-1"><param name="Loop" value="-1"><param name="Quality" value="High"><param name="SAlign" value=""><param name="Menu" value="-1"><param name="Base" value=""><param name="AllowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="Scale" value="ShowAll"><param name="DeviceFont" value="0"><param name="EmbedMovie" value="0"><param name="BGColor" value=""><param name="SWRemote" value=""><param name="MovieData" value=""><param name="SeamlessTabbing" value="1"><param name="Profile" value="0"><param name="ProfileAddress" value=""><param name="ProfilePort" value="0"><param name="AllowNetworking" value="all"><param name="AllowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/xmdsz_simon-garfunkel-the-sound-of-silenc_music" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="414" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object><br /><b><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmdsz_simon-garfunkel-the-sound-of-silenc_music">Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence</a></b><br /><i>Uploaded by <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/scootaway">scootaway</a>. - <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/us/channel/music">Watch more music videos, in HD!</a></i></div>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-66904502532982561052009-08-27T23:47:00.001-07:002009-08-27T23:47:38.893-07:00<img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.0NXC/bHQ9MTI1MTQ*MTg*NDU5NSZwdD*xMjUxNDQyMDI4MTE5JnA9NDExODYxJmQ9Jm49YmxvZ2dlciZnPTEmbz*yNzc*YWQ3NjQxYzU*NDQ5YTMyM2U3YWQzN2Y4ZGQyZiZvZj*w.gif" /><b>Top 10 Greatest Sports Songs of All Time</b><br>An analysis of the top ten greatest sports songs ever written, focusing on the artistic merits of the music, rather than their fame, their fortune, and everything that goes with it. <br><a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2112057/top_10_greatest_sports_songs_of_all.html">http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/2112057/top_10_greatest_sports_songs_of_all.html</a>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-60926214852213997942009-08-25T11:27:00.001-07:002009-08-25T11:27:35.717-07:00<img style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.0NXC/bHQ9MTI1MTIyNDgxNTgwOSZwdD*xMjUxMjI*ODQ5MTg3JnA9NDExODYxJmQ9Jm49YmxvZ2dlciZnPTEmbz*yNzc*YWQ3NjQxYzU*NDQ5YTMyM2U3YWQzN2Y4ZGQyZiZvZj*w.gif" /><b>U.S. Distance Runners Closing the Gap on East Africans</b><br>Last week's World Track Championships revealed that USA distance running is taking the next step up to compete with the world's best-namely, the East Africans that have been dominating the championships ranks for three decades. <br><a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2101847/us_distance_runners_closing_the_gap.html">http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/2101847/us_distance_runners_closing_the_gap.html</a>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-36548772275887642322009-08-16T23:12:00.000-07:002009-08-16T23:26:04.255-07:00What Human Fitness Means in the 21st CenturyRunning is never something you'll do with any consistency if you allow dread and cultural stereotypes to anticipate your workouts. And that’s a fairly easy thing to do. Step one: grow up in a household with multiple game consoles and more than one television. Step two: allow popular opinions to permeate your daily thoughts. Step three: listen to what a doctor has to say regarding the specifics of your athletic career. After that, it’s just a matter of buying an unnecessarily cushioned, overpriced pair of sweatshop-produced, sparkly white running shoes to stare at behind a mound of Power Bars and you’ll be well on your way to never taking a step out the door. <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Staying in shape gets a bad rap, infested as the world is with Neo-healthnazis, organic grocers, and 24 hour fitness plans. That’s certainly understandable. Infomercials showcasing abdominal belts that “do the work for you,” en-route to “giving you the body you only dreamed of” should never be considered anything less than nauseating. In these commercials, in advertisements for the whole spectrum of liquid vegetables and proteins in pill form, the end goal always seems to be the same: improve your <i style="">image</i>. Make <i style="">others</i> jealous. Change your <i style="">self-respect</i>. Always they focus on the negative; always there is the underlying assumption that you are disturbed by your own image, that you harbor jealousy towards your peers, that you no longer care for yourself. They rarely take aim at the hot core of the issue, and thus they have not succeeded in lowering <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s world leading ratio of a 64% overweight populace. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The time has come to look these health schemes in the eye and tell them, on no uncertain terms, that they have failed. <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">They have failed, and they have failed in the worst way: by continuing to fail again and again, and reeling in easily duped customers, again and again. Always the world continues to do things the same way and yet still expects different results. Einstein said that was basic definition of insanity, and I don’t think it’s wise at this point not to trust old Al. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The first mistake of these advertisers and health planners and Neo-healthnazis is their general attitude. Always they start things on the lie that has predicated billions in annual revenue: “it’s as easy as…” The thing is, <i style="">no</i>, it’s <i style="">not</i> as easy as…nor will it ever be. And no one should endeavor to spend time or money on something that is based on a lie. The truth of the matter is, taking a body accustomed to all of the luxuries of 21<sup>st</sup> century mechanical wonders, and transforming it into the rippling, powerful collection of flesh that it should be, will never be an easy thing. It could be the hardest thing you ever do - but that does not mean it won’t be enjoyable. One of the popular opinions that permeates the daily thoughts of the masses runs something along the lines of: “working out is <i style="">so</i> hard, and I’m really gonna hate it.” Well, if you had any chance of taking something positive from one of the most riveting emotions we as humans can experience – taking our bodies to the limit – you probably just blew it. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The best things in life are always hard to attain. Try and imagine the last thing you truly enjoyed that you didn’t really earn. It’s a cliché, but we still overlook the message it entails. Everyone can convince themselves that they have gained much from doing little, if for a short period of time. But living an entire life based on such shallow experiences? Diving into an icy cool river on a summer afternoon loses its appeal if you spend the day on your laptop within the air-conditioned confines of your office or home. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is not just our population that is unfit – and we should not blame our individuals. It is our society which is unfit, in every way. We not only encourage a love of idleness and a hatred of physical effort, we have built a world which thrives on it. Popular conceptions of athletes are as jocks, while serious academic pursuit, or serious anything out there in the skyscraper world, has come to be viewed as directly opposed to sport. Everyone says, and it is generally agreed, that “it’s only a game” – but that statement never took into account the human motives behind and beyond the game. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I used to think, a very long time ago, that I was strange for enjoying running so much. I suspected some mystery behind my enjoyment, something beyond the fanfare of simply winning an arbitrary race. It had always been more than just athletic glory. I cared about winning races, but I cared more about something I couldn’t define as a 10 year old. I cared about the instinctual urge to explode through the wilderness, to chase down some phantom of my or my teammates’ imagination, to rip through the wild heart of the woods with a ferocity which no amount of fame or trophies could ever inspire within me.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">To exercise is who we are instinctually are as human beings – and to run long distances is the best equivalent of that in 2009 <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place>. John L. Parker says in the cult classic <i style="">Once a Runner</i> that the deepest hidden yearning of the runner is to “fly naked through the primal forest, run through the jungle.” Quenton Cassidy winning an Olympic silver medal may have been a key part of the story, but the climax of that book is when he runs sixty quarter-miles in training, taking his body to a place that allowed him to discover something about himself that few people ever have the privilege to know. It was what allowed him to complete the transformation from the comfortably jogging product of the healthnazis, a “pussycat stretching lazily on the carpet” to a “puma prowling the jungle for fresh red meat.”<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The puma is the Plutonic ideal of cat – in the same way that the fit man is the complete version of humankind. It is not a statement meant to insult or intimidate; everyone has the capacity to be fit, barring serious health issues. We need to start by recognizing athletics as something more than athletics, and not “just a game.” Sports reflect our more primal past – a past that has been largely lost, at least in the popular sense, to the advents of modern technology and a social attitude which prizes ease over all else. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Always, the “reward” of work is leisure. Yet more and more often we are finding that what we call work – a pastime that, in Native cultures, had once been healthy for the growth of both man and culture – has become something like slave-labor. We have earned our leisure only in name. And that is the fault of a world which has become a collection of pussycats, run like robots, by our institutions. Our society of healthnazis, which will try to guilt you into exercising for the sake of their products, for the sake of easy leisure, has helped to sacrifice the individual. We never willingly parted with our healthy, primal, puma-natures. They were stripped away when it became more convenient to step away from that ideal of man – referred to by Ralph Waldo Emerson as “Man Thinking” – and become nothing more than the “parrot of other men’s thinking.” When we start to lose our original, independent thought, we lose everything that is best about us as human beings.<span style=""> </span>And these days, it is almost impossible to preserve the beauty and innocence of original thought, seen occasionally in children who haven’t been taught “better” yet, and seen elsewhere like lightning, powerful but rare, in the remainder of our sadly content society. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Becoming physically fit is a shortcut past all of these problems. The process alone – aside from being the most emotional and riveting thing a person can ever do, if they only allow themselves the opportunity – will help our population reconnect with their inner spirit, with their more human natures. I want a revolution - but this time, it’s not for the sake of the evils of capitalism, or the goods of socialism, or the merits or downfalls of any world political system. It is simply for you. You as a human being. You as a living breathing thing that is not taking full advantage of life. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Academics, scholars, politicians, businessmen, may think they are excused or somehow exempt on the pretext that they already live meaningful lives. They may spend countless hours a year working a job that provides for their family and that may just contribute positively to society. But as Emerson said in his American Scholar address, “character is higher than intellect.” What we do when we live trumps what we do when we think. “Thinking is the function,” he said. “Living is the functionary.” It is the ultimate clarion call for fitness: for work over leisure, for hard over easy, for willingly throwing yourself into a fiery hell of aching legs and burning chests and spasming joints – because in no institutionally constructed, leisure-based replacement for life will you ever even catch a glimpse of that glittering orb inside you which we often think to call our true selves. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> Song of the Day: 'Two Weeks" by Grizzly Bear. </o:p>Part Pink Floyd, part Revolver-era Beatles, part entirely unique 21st century indie rock, Grizzly Bear's new album is a landmark achievement of modern music. Veckatimest is a collection of anthems that have undoubtedly contributed to the face of a new generation of sound. The opening "Southern Point", a psychedelic-experimental cross of rhythms, sets the theme of an almost pre-apocalyptic alienation from the established world. "Our haven on/The southern point/Is calling us", reflects a draw to nature, yet the song at the same time bemoans a lost love - "You'll never find me now." Early on there is a cultural split established: one side has human touch, but also everything they seem to want to escape from, while the other side is the necessary step to safety they must take for the sake of this "haven." The remainder of the album follows in this vein, telling the story of a group on the brink of departing for the 'southern point', encouraging a final remembrance of a life past; a life that will soon fade away into the slipstream of time, into the echoing, mournful moans and powerful reverberations speaking of nostalgia for a passing world. Highlights include "Two Weeks" and "All We Ask" - but the album does not truly have a weak point, and makes a serious artistic effort from start to finish.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>The version here, from the Jools Holland show, is an absolutely flawless live performance, and I think indicates that 'Grizzly Bear' will only continue to improve as they age.<br /><br /><object width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rbrq9CC1ips&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rbrq9CC1ips&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-3318540222404203432009-07-21T15:22:00.000-07:002009-07-23T19:28:12.257-07:00A Jaunt Through Dixie and The Gut of AmericaI just returned from my inaugural jaunt through Dixie and the ‘real’ South. It is in every way the gut of America. Not gut as in fat or dirty or even nasty or anything like that. But just real, in a way things around here don’t feel very real anymore. Dixie is uniquely American in a way that nothing I’ve ever seen is American. By that I mean there are places in New Jersey and California and Florida and Maine that are not all that dissimilar from things on the other side of the globe. There is no Dixie in Turkey.<br /><br />I came across the phrase ‘gut of America’ during my first run from Jesse Stuart Lodge at Greenbo Lake in Kentucky. I was on the Michael Tygart trail, ostensibly a 7.8 mile loop which circled the lake and the park boundary (park-folk down there measure trail lengths with a ruler on a map, not taking into account mileage accumulated by switchbacks and winding turns). At the entrance to The Tygart, as I came to call it so that I could try to convince myself it was some kind of Amazonian tribal path – such self-inflicted delusions are part of what makes running exciting – there was a large sign with detailed rattlesnake warnings, and an extensive description of how to tell a nonpoisonous snake from a poisonous one. Kentucky is rattlesnake capital of the continent. Even Jesse Stuart, the writer for whom the lodge was named, dealt extensively with the way his county had a rattlesnake culture, human and lizard affected equally by the other.<br /><br />Immediately below the description read: “Treat the fauna of the park with respect. Do not approach any wild animal. If it has to change its behavior because of you, then you have already caused damage to the balance of Greenbo ecosystem.” Which got me to thinking, then why the hell do you go through the trouble of examining the difference? Because yes, when I am bit by a rattlesnake, the first thing I’m going to do is bend my face down closer to its likely-neurotoxic fangs to examine whether or not the slit in its eyes is vertical or horizontal. Not to mention the paradoxical side effects of claiming nature is only natural when humans are absent from it (see William Cronon).<br /><br />The first run through a new and strange wilderness is always intimidating. Last summer, running up the steep, sandy path at John Muir Beach outside San Francisco, there was a sign with an even more dire warning: “Marin County is home to a variety of wildlife. Bobcats, coyotes, and rattlesnakes are all frequent occurrences within the Marin Headlands. Please use caution at all times.” They never tell you the statistical odds of even sighting dangerous wildlife are miniscule – that’s not important. Rather, they do what America has always done best – scare you – except this time it’s actually something you have cause to be scared about. Not to mention the more people which that sign turns around, the less there are wandering the wilderness, which is always a good thing.<br /><br />At Muir, when you crested the summit of the coastal cliff after a mile and a half of winding trail, you came to a flat mesa and a view of the Pacific Ocean that made you no longer care about your chances of stepping on a rattler’s rattle or being mauled in the face by a mountain lion. When you see something like the biggest ocean on the planet from a thousand feet above, your perspective starts to change. Not only are little things no longer important. But even big things are no longer important. For a few seconds I seriously did not care if I was killed by wildlife during the run to Pirate’s Canyon, the cove a few miles down the coastline that was my ultimate destination.<br /><br />Back to the Tygart. I stopped stepping with caution at Muir because the natural spectacle was literally overwhelming and life-changing. In the American South, such views may exist in well established, accessible-by-car, crowded-with-day-tripping-family parks like Shenandoah, or along Skyline Drive and the infamous Blue Ridge Parkway. But that is not the gut of America. The gut is down in the heavy and thickened green woods, where there isn’t a sightline for miles, where you always seem to be going up or down without end, where the deerflies swarm your every movement, where a cloud of humidity makes the air heavy to breathe in your lungs and sweat covers you like an extra blanket.<br /><br />At the Marin Headlands, you may feel in the presence of God – even for the hardened atheist, it is difficult to not marvel like a child. But in Dixie, in Americana, you are human. Unadulterated human. You feel real again. Every feeling is magnified, everything good, everything bad, every pain and pleasure is magnified to the realer proportions which Northern civilization has forgotten in the midst of their cities and technologies. There is nothing to rescue you down here. The Tygart trail borders farmland which stretches green and undulating and spotted with hayseed for miles – so many miles that if I were bitten by a rattlesnake I would not know where to find the farmhouse.<br /><br />But the fear I felt first stepping on to the Tygart slowly slipped away as I ran, and there was no scenic view. Running in any new place is a matter of becoming, of accepting. Of the new land accepting you as a part of it and of you accepting the new land as part of you. You almost feel, once this transformation is complete, that now you are untouchable, invulnerable. You are a cemented-in part of the landscape, and no longer a stranger. Once you have assured the woods that you are nonthreatening, there no longer looms the danger of a Timber rattler beneath every clump of rocks. Maybe the feeling comes from nothing more than a few good miles without seeing a snake, of establishing a familiarity, with feeling nothing but the buzz of the flies drowning in the sweat by your ear. The danger you sense upon entering is a warning, a test of merit, a cautionary measure. For both place and person.<br /><br />Everyone undergoes a similar test the first time they encounter new surroundings, even if it be a city or a town. Something in the mystery is not exactly unfriendly, but somehow cold in its unfamiliarity. Multiply that several times over and you have Dixie.<br /><br />To get out of Dixie is not easy by foot. I see at as a valley, a huge gap running in and amongst the larger foothills and mountains of Appalachia. To escape you must go up – straight up for as long as you can, avoiding all downhills if you can – and eventually the landscape starts to change. The forest which was once impenetrably thick begins to open, the sky is suddenly a reality beyond the foggy canopy of misty branches covering the wood, the earth is open and clear and there is no place for black bears or even rattlers to hide. In Kentucky itself there are few such places. It wasn’t until I penetrated further south to the Roan Highlands in Tennessee that I saw real mountains, and a way out of this new and harsher world.<br /><br />Southerners live in the wilderness, but in the forested hills, not the mountains. As you go up you see why. The terrain is very difficult. Original settlers, after displacing many of the local Cherokee tribe (white folk have graciously split the Roan Highlands into Tennessee’s “Cherokee National Forest” and North Carolina’s “Pisgah National Forest”, as Carver’s Gap, near the peak of Roan itself, actually straddles the two states), did not desire to move farther west for fear of the Appalachians. They are not mountains as you would imagine a mountain would exist in the eastern United States. I of course did not believe this. Part of me was bitter that I was running up an Eastern mountain, because of course nothing could compare to the Rockies or the landscape in the American West.<br /><br />My first morning in the Roan I woke up to the 8:30 shining sun, with the moon still shining palely, almost phosphorescent in the blue sky. I was being very arrogant about the whole deal. I had planned my route out the night before and did not bring a map with me even though I had never been to these woods before, nevermind Dixie itself. I’d gone at least 12 miles when I came to the foot of the Chestnut Ridge trail, the one which billed itself as the most difficult in the Highlands and which warned that only experienced hikers should continue forth. Even though at that point I should have known better, I made the sharp turn up the hill.<br /><br />I consider myself a mountain goat (while running – otherwise it is of course mountain ‘monkey’) but I was soon having trouble staying on my feet. The trail began on a winding mile long climb over jagged granite, mossy scree and rich, black Dixie mud. What I was doing was a poor excuse for running and I was humiliated into stopping on a few occasions (stopping on a run for me is like if you were in a foul shooting competition and made twenty in a row and then started intentionally missing shots – that’s the best metaphor I can imagine up) and literally crawling. Then the trail began to head downhill, sharply downhill, which was discouraging as I knew I would have run back up the downhill on the return journey. At no point could I see the summit I was running towards. Halfway up the Chestnut I was hoping for rattlesnake bite, because then I truly would not be able to run.<br /><br /><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5361079270559660626" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihu3z2Nbn9u1MA_VZvYomqBXNGFASqX3bBNvVtBKBTxKFv1lOwvCiHuXJu_scIup4i1Qd4KRBGEz_WOImlkeqiYv5yzfOgMM3dnbKJoFIpg_Z8UNOv0mtXOnY3WTYUFzKI53Mv-OPUfC8/s320/chesnutridgetrail.jpg" border="0" /></p><p>I had been very foolish but I did not yet realize just how foolish I had been. I forced myself to the top, still feeling arrogant and thinking thoughts like ‘I can run as far as feel like, it does not matter how tired I get, there are no more college races to save my body for’ – and the sheen of invincibility that had been wearing thin was reengaged. When I did reach the top, dripping and gasping and my body pulsing and numbed by the effort, I knew instantly that I had for the first time truly escaped Dixie. The view of the Highlands was incredible, the air was cooler, the humidity vanished with the winds blowing off the top of the bald earth. Far below was the gut of America, below in the heavy air and the thickening green that contains the most thoroughly diverse ecosystem on the North American continent.<br /><br />Running across the summit I soon realized that I literally had no energy left. The run up had been rewarding, but it was very draining to try to leave Dixie. I had not had good respect for just how draining it would be. I had underestimated the mountains very much. I do not know how long I was able to run for after that. I managed to stumble down the mountain and with a great effort make it back over most of the Forest Road Trail that returned to the highway. I tried to take a shortcut on the roads and immediately found myself in a trailer park, swaddled by Seventh Day Adventist and Southern Baptist congregations, both fully in session.<br /><br />I had to walk then. Maybe something about seeing all the earnest church folk made me lose my faith in myself. But my head was swimming now and I thought of the boy who was going to run for William and Mary and was running a workout in the middle of the summer before along a country road and collapsed in the bushes from heat exhaustion. He wasn’t found until he was dead. I saw a picture once and he looked exactly like me.<br /><br />My return journey was a long, lonesome, shameful walk through the heart of Dixie. Above me the peak of Strawberry was invisible and I was surrounded on all sides by a cavernous thicket of ancient pines and sweetgums. I had run twenty-five miles, thirteen more than I intended to, but some part of me realized, soon after I had water again an hour later at the tent, that near death experiences are what make up a good life. I’ve never felt more completely evaporated of every scrap of energy, never been so ravaged by an attack on a landscape which backfired so spectacularly. And I've (almost) never been so happy with myself lying down to sleep at night.</p><p>I knew that it had not been only a near death experience. Like Tyler Durden might say, it had been a near life experience as well. Things like that are hard to come by around here. Stay in Dixie a week and the gut of America is bound to show you something you won’t forget.<br /><br /><br /><br />Song of the Day: Although the Fleet Foxes do provide an endless soundtrack that will never leave your mind on a long sojourn in the wilds of Dixie, for the sake of diversity I must go with <strong>First Aid Kit's</strong><em> cover</em> of Fleet Foxes' "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song." This First Aid Kit is not to be confused with the earlier version - this one is founded by two Swedish teenage sisters influenced by Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, Conor Oberst, and the more recent phenomona of bands like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver. Like Fleet Foxes, they have a sound that seems to come from the earth, and their narrative lyrics echo themes both timeless and natural. To cap it all off, they even sing in the woods outside of their home near Stockholm. They have a number of excellent original songs, which is highlighted by "Jagadamba You Might", a cross of many of their influencing sounds that comes out as an original achievement. It is almost unthinkable that they are only 19 and 16. For a comparison, look at what present 19 and 16 year old American singers deem important.<br /><br />The song itself, penned by Robin Pecknold of FF, follows a main character, a 'Tiger Mountain Peasant' who has lost someone dear to him and is searching in the forest for remnants of the deceased's spirit. Throughout the song his wanderings seem to be his way of coping with the loss. The peasant feels his loss as closely tied to nature, as the tall grass and the birds "do not know you anymore" implying that they once were a part of him. The peasant seems to ponder the meaning of death, feeling himself becoming a kind of "demon" as he confronts that harsh realities of this other, colder, more overlooked side of nature.<br /><br />At the top of Strawberry Mountain in Tennessee, the terminating point of the ruthless and brutal Chestnut Ridge Trail, there is a cemetery in the tall and waving grass that makes up part of the "bald" peak. The graves are unmarked and fenced in by small, shin-level wood posts. When I reached the little mountaintop prarie, free from the embrace of the trees for the first time in weeks, I was dizzy and weak with sweat and exhaustion. This song was still running through my mind. As if it was coming straight from the graves. As if the people that were now a part of the earth were singing their mournful, searching death-knell to the wanderer passing in the morning light. I may have been staggering through premonitions of my death, but Dixie is no place to die. Not for a born and bred Northerner. Ice-fields and glaciers in the Arctic and Alaska may have called my name in that moment. I like to think so. If nothing else it gave me a moment's coolness to dry the sweat on my forehead before heading back down the dark green path - thinking, wondering <em>oh dear shadow alive and well, how can the body die? </em>- and scared now that I might've seen a glimpse of the answer.</p><br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HMrqBldlqzA&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HMrqBldlqzA&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7815655316300244365.post-66359030242596773172009-07-05T21:09:00.000-07:002009-07-23T19:32:03.693-07:00Mountain Monkey's Top 10 Films of 2008Only recently have I finished watching every movie that I think deserves to be on this list. Trust me, it was not an easy task. Aside from the obvious dangers and difficulties of obtaining copies of films that aren't in theatres any longer, but still haven't been released for DVD, a number of the movies I saw were not very easy to finish. Many of them were films I really thought had a shot at cracking the top ten list which I kept constantly updated as I went on.<br /><br />An example: I gritted through <em>Rachel Getting Married</em> until Anne Hathaway's infamous wedding dinner speech scene. I'm a big fan of Anne Hathaway, and to her credit, in the forty or so minutes that I watched of the movie, she acted very well (originally I wrote "performed brilliantly", but then I remembered how much I dislike it when people write that). But a good acting performance definitely does not equate to a good movie. You have to give screenwriter Jenny Lumet credit for creating something unique - everything from the camera work and the slow transitions were a welcome change - but in this case it simply did not work. I was cringing the entire time I watched the movie, it was so awkwardly uncomfortable. Anne Hathaway plays a woman emerging from rehab, returning home to her not so welcoming family for her sister's wedding. Her character is tremendously unlikeable, embarassingly open about exposing her issues, shamelessly attempting to divert the attention from her sister to herself. And as the film progresses, you realize that the rest of the main cast, for the most part, is also tremendously unlikeable. Watching was a thoroughly unenjoyable experience, regardless of how I might have appreciated the film's unique artistic efforts. In a similar vein, Darron Aronofsky used his trademark style and tactics to wrestle the viewer through <em>The Wrestler</em>, but at no point does the film draw you in. You are never interested in Mickey Rourke's character, only depressed as you watch. And if you're not depressed, it's because you've probably been put to sleep.<br /><br />Still, in terms of time, the task of seeing all of the possible nominees for a top 10 2008 spot really was not that difficult. Certainly not as difficult as it was to create the movies - even the ones which I shamelessly lambast.<br /><br /><strong>10. Vicky Cristina Barcelona</strong><br />Directed and Written by Woody Allen, Starring Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, and Penelope Cruz<br />Major Formal Awards Won: Oscar and BAFTA, Best Supporting Actress (Penelope Cruz)<br />IMDB's Kitsch Rating: 7.4<br />Metacritic's Avant-Garde Rating: 70 ("generally favorable reviews")<br />Role I'd Most Like to See Transplanted: Javier Bardem's character Anton Chirugh from 2005's <em>No Country for Old Men </em>suddenly replaces Juan Antonio - we're going to have to guess Juan gets the upper hand in the domestic dispute with Marie Elena.<br /><br />Clearly Woody Allen's best effort since 2005's <em>Match Point, </em>the film involves the title characters (two best friends) and their year spent in Spain, where they both fall in love with the bad guy from <em>No Country For Old Men </em>(no, he does not flip a coin to choose between them). This movie has its obvious downsides - a somewhat predictable plot, somewhat cliche dialogue moments - what makes the movie is the aura of art and artists, and human beings searching deeper for something to move them beyond the scope of what traditional society has to offer.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://mentalfloss.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/nocountryforoldmen.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 258px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 303px" alt="" src="http://mentalfloss.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/nocountryforoldmen.jpg" border="0" /></a>The film is unashamedly anti-capitalist, and almost effortlessly captures the transcendent spirit and soul of a different mindset, a different way of life. The soundtrack helps to better evoke the city of Barcelona itself, and is expertly utilized. While it at times the startlingly plain voice of the narrator (don't expect something along the lines of <em>Annie Hall</em> - it's not) seems to trivialize an already trivial romance, it also avoids any typical Hollywood fill-in scene. In terms of making major mistakes, the movie is clean, and is a testament to Allen's talents as a director. It is at its best when romantic intrigue involving Anton Chigurgh is <em>not</em> present, and instead focuses on the liberation of Cristina and the entrapment of Vicky in her loveless, empty marriage. Although Penelope Cruz deserved her Oscar win, the return of her character in the second half of the film did little to prevent cliches of sexually liberal Europeans, and the movie would have done better focusing on some other drama to help avoid the plain, anti-climactic conclusion - which was, alas, assisted by the ever present voice-over.<br /><br />Despite these downfalls, it is far better done than the majority of 2008 films, and though it may fall into the trap of cultural stereotypes, it is well aware of, and strays far from, Hollywood stereotypes...while still being an enjoyable watch.<br /><br />(The link below is to one of the best movie reviews I've ever read - absolutely read it, especially if you have seen the film - it is short and hilarious, even if it is sarcastic just for the sake of being sarcastic).<br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jun/24/vicky-cristina-barcelona-woody-allen">http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jun/24/vicky-cristina-barcelona-woody-allen</a><br /><br /><strong>9. Doubt</strong><br />Directed and Written by John Patrick Shanley, Starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Phillip Seymour Hoffmann, Viola Davis<br />Major Formal Awards Won: Nominated for 5 Oscars, 5 Golden Globes, and 3 BAFTA's (Best Supporting Actor and Actress (Hoffmann, Davis, and Adams), Best Leading Actress (Streep), and Best Adapted Screenplay<br />IMDB's Kitsch Rating: 7.8<br />Metacritic's Avant-Garde Rating: 68 ("generally favorable reviews")<br />Role I'd Most Like to See Transplanted: Phillip Seymour Hoffmann, instead of a guilty priest, becomes internationally reknown brutal terrorist Owen Davian from <em>Mission Impossible 3</em>. Upside for him: in all likelihood he's not going to be taking any crap from Meryl Streep or Amy Adams. Downside for him: probably will be officially dismissed from the priesthood.<br /><br /><em>Doubt</em> uses the story of a young boy who may have been sexually assaulted by a priest to reveal the spiritual questions and deeper character of two devoted nuns. In the wake of the horrors they think they percieve, all which they believe in is suddenly thrown into question: everything from the authority of the male figurehead, Father Flynn, to that larger ruling power which would allow such a heinous transgression to occur.<br /><br />Although at times the quick dialogue is a bit too quick, and it becomes obvious that Shanley's screenplay was first a play for the stage, the tension built up more than makes up for it. Few movies in recent memory manage to convey so much through nothing but conversation. You don't need to care for church-related drama to be taken in by, and become utterly involved with, this story.<br /><br />The acting in this movie is incredible - all of the main characters earned Academy Award nominations - and for a film that takes place within a very short period of time, with a very small setting, and without any kind of real action, it is as good as it can be.<br /><br /><object height="265" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OnrmWLp1Ub8&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OnrmWLp1Ub8&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object><br /><br /><br /><strong>8. The Dark Knight</strong><br /><br />Directed by Christopher Nolan, Written by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan, Starring Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Aaron Eckhart<br />Major Formal Awards Won: Oscar win in Sound Editing (Richard King), and Oscar, BAFTA, and Golden Globe Win for Best Supporting Actor (Heath Ledger)<br />IMDB's Kitsch Rating: 8.9<br />Metacritic's Avant-Garde Rating: 82 ("universal acclaim")<br />Role I'd Most Like to See Transplanted: Heath Ledger's Joker is substituted by Bob Dylan in his 'rebellious actor' stage from 2007's <em>I'm Not There</em>. Dylan reassures Gotham: "It's alright, ma..."<br /><br />Wildly popular upon its release, <em>The Dark Knight </em>will become legendary not just because it is part of the best comic-book to film adaptation franchise in the business, but also due to Heath Ledger's iconic final performance. The plotline is incredibly complex for an action film, and heightens the genre standard to a new level. The role of the hero is thoroughly analyzed, and the film somehow manages to make one of the oldest super-altruistic characters unique and original, even in a day and age of dozens of lesser spinoffs. Action sequences are expertly done and the film's numerous other Academy Award nominations were well-earned. The more powerful the villain, the better the film - and that is why both <em>Batman Begins </em>and <em>The Dark Knight</em> have succeeded: they are not afraid to be dark and unforgiving, and they refuse to pander cheap happiness to an audience in the form of welcoming victories, universal popularity, and easy romances. Where other films sugar-coat for the sake of the audience, these films sacrifice nothing for the story - almost to a fault. The inclusion of Two-Face feels rushed, and the movie is too long - it would be better without him. Moreover, though the actions scenes were well done, they became dizzying in their length and relentlessness, and in this category at least the film is not neccesarily an improvement on its predecessor.<br /><br /><object height="265" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xxKJgOZXEho&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xxKJgOZXEho&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object><br /><br /><strong>7. Forgetting Sarah Marshall</strong><br /><br />Directed by Nicholas Stoller, Written by Jason Segel, Starring Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand<br />Major Formal Awards Won: None<br />IMDB's Kitsch Rating: 7.5<br />Metacritic's Avant-Garde Rating: 67 ("generally favorable reviews")<br />Role I'd Most Like to See Transplanted: Kristen Bell's Sarah Marshall becomes Elle Bishop from 'Heroes' - I'm guessing Mila Kunis never gets to leave Hawaii.<br /><br />By far the best of its kind in years, <em>Forgetting Sarah Marshall</em>, despite what the misleading title may indicate, is a far cry from both typical romantic and comedic films. It sidesteps all mushiness by Jason Segel's hilarious and original dialogue, and avoids shallowness by creating intriguing, immensely likable characters that keep you thoroughly entertained, through humor that is at turns subtle and graphic, from start to end.<br /><br />Peter Bretter is a music composer stuck composing "dark and ominous" background sounds for the TV Show 'Crime Scene' in which his girlfriend (played by Kristen Bell) is the main character. His relentless ripping of 'Crime Scene' is undoubtedly based on Segel's own time on CSI and his mockery of the poor plotlines is spot-on. The main premise involves his flight to Hawaii for a grief vacation after his girlfriend cheats on him and breaks up with him. In Hawaii he finds her already there, vacationing with her new boyfriend, the hilariously terrible singer Aldous Snow. The humor is better not just because it is smarter, but because it is original. While similar to other very likeable films involving similar producers and actors, such as 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, it is a step beyond - smarter, better acted, better directed. Supporting appearances by Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd are great additions to one of the wittiest, and most critically underrated, movies of the year.<br /><br /><br /><object height="265" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/X5ZtwbzUFZE&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/X5ZtwbzUFZE&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object><br /><br /><strong>6. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button</strong><br />Directed by David Fincher, Written by Eric Roth based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett,<br />Major Formal Awards Won: Oscars and BAFTAs in Art Direction, Makeup, Visual Effects<br />IMDB's Kitsch Rating: 8.1<br />Metacritic's Avant-Garde Rating: 70 ("generally favorable reviews")<br />Role I'd Most Like to See Transplanted: Benjamin Button does not grow older, but rather stronger as time goes on and soon completes the transformation into Achilles from <em>Troy</em>. Not good for the German navy when Brad Pitt is called to war.<br /><br />An interesting David Fincher adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. The story was never seen by critics as one of Fitzgerald's masterpieces, but rather a just an original, creative story probably written for money, with only hints of the razor-sharp social criticism that defined his novels. The movie, however, takes an entirely different route with the story, focusing instead on the actual fantastic premise of Fitzgerald's story, rather than the reactions of the local society.<br /><br />Though it does wind up dragging on for a while, the film has moments that really delve into the heart of mortality. Perhaps there is something about the main character growing younger, instead of growing older, that makes the viewer think more profoundly about the aging process and about the precious amount of time which we truly have on Earth. But Fincher also does an excellent job with imagery: the use of the old World War I clock which bookends the story, ticking in reverse, symbolizing Benjamin's life, coupled with poignant and evocative scenes of love and loss, make this as a movie that you don't stop thinking about once it is finished.<br /><br />Immediately after Benjamin realizes he is growing too young to be a good father and he leaves Daisy, he travels to India to more fully experience life. During this brief sequence, Brad Pitt's melancholic voiceover does not feel like an intrusion (like voiceovers often do), and it really drives home the point of how pointless it is to waste the small window of time you've been given with pursuits that don't thrill and engage you. The movie is in every way an improvement over the short story, with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett both turning in career-performances.<br /><br /><object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OyafDfNvTJU&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OyafDfNvTJU&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br /><br /><strong>5. Milk</strong><br />Directed by Gus Van Sant, Written by Dustin Lance Black, Starring Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Allison Pill, Josh Brolin<br />Major Formal Awards Won: Oscars for Best Actor (Sean Penn) and Best Original Screenplay (Dustin Lance Black), nominated for five BAFTA's and a Golden Globe<br />IMDB's Kitsch Rating: 8.0<br />Metacritic's Avant-Garde Rating: 84 ("universal acclaim")<br />Role I'd Most Like to See Transplanted: It actually turns out that George W. Bush shot Harvey Milk, not Dan White.<br /><br />A story about the most important man you may never have heard of. It is not just Sean Penn that makes the movie great, it is the reality of the story. It's shocking to think that in the 1970's, the American population was still bigoted enough at large that laws could still be passed to prevent equal rights for minorities like homosexuals. Having not known the complete story of Harvey Milk before, this is a great historical lesson for the average American who may be sympathetic, yet still ignorant, of an underground struggle to preserve human rights in the "land of the free" just thirty-one years ago.<br /><br />It is great to give credit to Josh Brolin too, who has now helped portray infamous crusading cowboy right-of-center politicos twice in one year.<br /><br /><object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tvQlcr-jQjc&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tvQlcr-jQjc&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br /><br /><strong>4. Burn After Reading</strong><br />Directed and Written by Joel and Ethan Coen, Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, John Malkovitch<br />Major Formal Awards Won: Nominated for two Golden Globes<br />IMDB's Kitsch Rating: 7.4<br />Metacritic's Avant-Garde Rating: 63 ("generally favorable reviews")<br />Role I'd Most Like to See Transplanted: Brad Pitt uncovers even more complex government secrecies as the insane man from <em>12 Monkeys.</em><br /><br />By far the most underrated movie of the year, Burn After Reading is the best dark comedy since maybe Dr. Strangelove. Few other films in recent memory capture the absurdity of the misinformation age with such hilarious accuracy. The movie deeply critical of our postmodern state, brutally mocking both the average American who presume to know too much, and the political system of VIP's who usually have even less of a clue as to what's going on. The ridiculous turn of events may not be exactly realistic, but it is sympotmatic of a chaotic capitalist culture that has too many people trying to do too many things for increasingly shallow reasons. One of the Coen brothers' bests of all time.<br /><br /><object height="265" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oYjOYpN0Pew&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oYjOYpN0Pew&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"></embed></object><br /><br /><br /><strong>3. Gran Torino</strong><br /><strong></strong>Directed by Clint Eastwood, Written by Nick, Starring Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang<br />Major Formal Awards Won: Nominated for Golden Globe, Best Original Song<br />IMDB's Kitsch Rating: 8.4<br />Metacritic's Avant-Garde Rating: 72 ("generally favorable reviews")<br />Role I'd Most Like to See Transplanted: Clint Eastwood doesn't exactly play a wide spectrum of characters. Rest of the cast is relatively new.<br /><br />Incredible performance both on and off the screen by Clint Eastwood, in his portrayal of a racist Korean War veteran who is forced to defend his innocent Asian neighbors from a local gang war. The first thirty minutes of the film is hysterical and perfectly done. A few moments later in the film, particularly between "Toad" and Eastwood, feel forced, as if their acting never found a rhythm. Otherwise, this is one of the best made movies of the year, and there is no excuse for its being snubbed at the Oscars. The obvious explanation for this is the extensive, and even glorified, usage of guns by private citizens, something which the Academy is probably opposed to. I don't like it either - but it doesn't change the fact that Gran Torino was an excellent movie and a very poignant way for Eastwood to end his acting career (he has mentioned he may want this to be his last on-screen appearance).<br /><br /><object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/c8Z2n534q1Q&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/c8Z2n534q1Q&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br /><br /><strong>2. Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in)</strong><br />Directed by Tomas Alfredson, Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Starring Kare Hedebrandt, Lina Leandersson<br />Major Formal Awards Won: None, but nominated for 51 smaller awards with 11 wins<br />IMDB's Kitsch Rating: 8.2<br />Metacritic's Avant-Garde Rating: 82 ("universal acclaim")<br /><br /><br /><strong>1. Slumdog Millionaire</strong><br />Directed by Danny Boyle, Written by Simon Beaufoy, Starring<br />Major Formal Awards Won: Oscars for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and 5 other categories<br />IMDB's Kitsch Rating: 8.5<br />Metacritic's Avant-Garde Rating: 86 ("universal acclaim")<br /><br /><br />Best Performances of 2008<br /><br />Best Actor<br /><strong>Sean Penn – Milk</strong><br />Clint Eastwood – Gran Torino<br />Brad Pitt – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button<br /><br />Best Supporting Actor<br /><strong>Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight</strong><br />Michael Sheen – Frost/Nixon<br />Russell Brand – Forgetting Sarah Marshall<br /><br />Best Actress<br /><strong>Cate Blanchett – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button<br /></strong>Meryl Streep - Doubt<br />Rebecca Hall – Vicky Cristina Barcelona<br /><br />Best Supporting Actress<br />Amy Adams - Doubt<br /><strong>Taraji P. Henson – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button</strong><br />Frances McDormand – Burn After Reading<br /><br />Best Song<br /><strong>Gran Torino – Gran Torino</strong><br />O. Saya – Slumdog Millionaire<br />Dracula’s Lament – Forgetting Sarah Marshall<br /><br />Best Screenplay (Original)<br />Dustin Lance Black - Milk<br /><strong>The Coen Brothers - Burn After Reading</strong><br />Jason Segel - Forgetting Sarah Marshall<br /><br /><br />Best Screenplay (Adapted)<br /><strong>Simon Beaufoy - Slumdog Millionaire</strong><br />John Adjvide Lindqvist - Let the Right One In<br />John Patrick Shanley - Doubt<br /><br />Best Director<br />Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire<br />Clint Eastwood - Gran Torino<br /><strong>Tomas Alfredson - Let the Right One In</strong>Justin Heinzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18363355545042763009noreply@blogger.com0