~ ~ ~ Ripples

Now is the time of the year that’s most gratifying.  The Award season is coming up in just a few months.  So this is when possible contenders are released, albeit some with just limited screening, and they aren’t likely to be your Hollywood blockbusters that might stay on for a while. That’s why I opted for ‘An Education’ over the weekend.  ’A Christmas Carol’ can wait.

An Education is the little British film that comes with high acclaim.  The coming-of-age story is based on the memoir by British journalist Lynn Barber.  It first appeared in Granta magazine, later published by Penguin.  The screenplay is written by Nick Hornby, the popular writer who gave us About A Boy, Fever Pitch, and High Fidelity, all turned into movies.

An Education won the Audience and Cinematography Awards at Sundance earlier this year.  And it might well propel Carey Mulligan to an Oscar nomination, which she so deserves.  She has been noted as the young, modern Audrey Hepburn.  But my impression of her is one fresh acting talent, sweet and extremely amiable. I’ve enjoyed her role in the BBC TV drama Bleak House as Ada Carstone.  She’s Kitty Bennet in the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, and has a small role in the memorable When Did You Last See Your Father (2007).  An Education is her first major role in a feature film.

Carey Mulligan plays 16 year-old Jenny convincingly.  Jenny is a top high school student aiming for Oxford as she graduates in a few months, an aspiration directed by her protective yet gullible father (Alfred Molina).  Oxford is certainly within reach.  Jenny is smart, talented, and self-assured.  She has all the potentials needed to excel academically and to launch a successful future in life.  She loves art, foreign films, classical music, and French pop culture.  The city of her dream, naturally, is Paris.

In the cloister of 1961 Twickenham, a suburb of London, all a girl needs is just a little door open for her and she’ll leap right out.  This door to the adult world and high culture seems to have swung wide open as she meets David (Peter Sarsgaard), a man in his 30’s who offers her a ride home from school in the rain.  That fateful afternoon marks the beginning of a dramatic turn in her life.

David brings her to art auctions, concerts, fancy restaurants and ultimately, Paris.  Yet he remains secretive regarding his work.  No, he did not go to Oxford, but he has graduated with flying colors from the University of Life.  Thinking her new-found friend is their daughter’s ticket to higher society, Jenny’s parents gladly give their consent to their friendship, but not without some suave persuasion from David.

David also introduces Jenny to his friend and business partner Danny (Dominic Cooper, Mamma Mia!, 2008; Sense and Sensibility 2008) and his girlfriend Helen (Rosamund Pike, Jane Bennet in Pride & Prejudice, 2005)  They are to Jenny the mesmerizing and glamorous circle of adult sophistication.

Cheered on by her peers, Jenny is only frowned upon by two people, her hard-nosed headmistress (effectively played by Emma Thompson) and her English teacher Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams, who plays Jane Austen in Miss Austen Regrets, 2008), whose devotion to her student turns out to be extremely valuable.  And then there’s her school mate Graham (Matthew Beard, When Did You Last See Your Father, 2007) who has a crush on her but is no match in front of towering David.

An Education is a film of revealing.  Danish director Lone Scherfig takes her time in telling the story, leading the audience through passages of beautiful cinematography and fine acting, suspenseful scenes and memorable interludes.  David does not at all appear to be the nasty predator.  And Jenny, on her part, also attempts to test the limit.  She’s not vain, but honestly dazzled and bewildered. The consent of her naive parents passes the ball back to her court, she must learn to make choices herself.

And so the story leads the audience through twists and turns to a gratifying end.  After the ordeal, Jenny said: “I feel old, but not very wise.”  It could well be the sign of maturity itself.  There’s no short cut to adulthood after all.  Great cast, impressive performance,  entertaining story, enjoyable education.

CLICK HERE to read Lynn Barber’s essay in Granta magazine, chronicling the process of writing from memory, and transporting print onto screen.

AFTER you’ve watched the movie, you might like to CLICK HERE to read an excerpt of Lynn Barber’s memoir.  I urge you NOT to read it if you don’t want SPOILERS before watching the movie.

In the postmodern scheme of things, the old saying ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ takes on a whole new meaning.  It is not so much what those thousand words are that the picture intends to convey, but rather what the thousand responses it evokes.  Be it a painting, a film, or a literary work, all have the potential to elicit a myriad of responses, reactions as varied as each individual life lived.

Some ready examples can be found in Ripple Effects’ comment sections.  On a post about a movie I highly recommended, a reader responded that she had fallen asleep while watching it.  Or, take the Edward Hopper paintings.  While I found the phrase ‘existential loneliness’ to be an apt description for his works Nighthawk and Automat, a commenter expressed a sense of coziness and quiet content as her response to these paintings. Conversely, while I perceive Cape Cod Morning as anticipatory with positive excitement, the commenter sees “a woman trapped, caught in frustration or even despair, longing to move into the world but still constrained inside the structures of her life.”

There had been readers’ responses in the past long before the computer age. But what we have now is nothing short of phenomenal.  The Internet has enabled us to share and exchange our very personal reaction to a single source material simultaneously, allowing multiple voices to resound instantaneously from all corners of the world.  Every voice has the potential to call forth attention, every subjectivity can be equally amplified.  Reader’s response is thus given a heightened significance.

From this perspective then, the reality of a piece of writing, or artwork, seems to have shifted from the author to the reader, or the artist to the viewer, for it is the recipient now that speaks to the work, giving it meaning and application.

Should we still be concerned with the original intent of the piece?  Is it mere speculation to discuss about it, while in the mean time, it is more real and substantial to talk about what our response is, our own personal engagement with it?  Further, instead of focusing on one intended interpretation, should we explore rather the multiplicity of interpretations elicited from readers’ own perspectives and experiences?

Writing before the rise of the Internet, the French literary critic Roland Barthes put it most starkly in his essay “The Death of the Author”:

“… a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there  is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author.  The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination…”

and a warning here, the language used in the following excerpt may be objectionable to some:

“Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature.  We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favor of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth:  the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”

The postmodern theorist Michel Foucault wraps it up succinctly:

“What difference does it make who is speaking?”

The listener seems to have taken up a much more significant role these days.

Our postmodern literary theorists have thus spoken: The author is dead, long live the reader, and the words.

This idea may not sound so radical, for similar notions have been expressed. Instead of an all-knowing authority, the author is more like a recorder of a tale, the scribe writing down the oracle.  The Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje’s words come to mind.  Even as an author, it seems his creative process is one that awaits the revealing of his story, capturing it in words as it unfolds itself:

“I don’t know what would happen… I don’t want to know.”

Further, Ondaatje welcomes the multiplicity of interpretations.  In his discussion with film editor Walter Murch, he addresses this issue in a positive light:

“We are not held hostage by just one certain story, or if we are, we know it is just one opinion: there are clear hints of other versions.”   – The Conversations, p. 160.

Multiplicity enhances and enriches a scene.  That is the amiable way of putting it, while Barthes is more matter-of-fact in pointing out where meaning and significance lie:

“… it is language which speaks, not the author.”

In a way, such a perspective could be a much-needed humbling reminder in our too crazed, celebrity-driven culture.

But for those of us who strive with all earnestness and honesty to instill meaning in our writing, who have been meticulous and intentional in our craft and guarding its integrity as we create, when we speak, don’t we wish someone out there would receive our message accurately, as it is intended?

Why do we write, or create anyway?  Do we want our readers to know about us or just to hear the words we happen to utter?  Further, shouldn’t we be concerned that what we elicit could well be interpretations far from what we have intended to get across?  How do we balance author’s intent with readers’ response?

Simple questions, but ones which I’m sure can elicit a thousand responses.

***

To read Roland Barthes’s essay ‘The Death of the Author’,  Click Here.

To read Michel Foucault’s essay ‘What Is an Author’,  Click Here.

Visual: ‘Self Portrait’ by René Magritte, 1936.

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:– Do I wake or sleep?

— John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale (1819)

1819 was the most prolific year of the English Romantic poet John Keats.  Many of his well-known works were created then, two years before his untimely death from tuberculosis at age 25.  His muse was Fanny Brawne, his 18 year-old neighbor, a fresh and self-assured young fashion designer whom he met a year earlier. Untrained in poesy or prose, Fanny Brawne had nothing in common with the brooding poet, but Fate, cruel or kind, instilled in them a burning passion for each other.

Unable to maintain a living financially, Keats was honorable to restrain his love for Fanny, knowing marriage would never be realized.  Yet Fanny’s incessant devotion for him soon won him over.   In a short time, she devoured all of Keats’ poetry, as well as other literary works through the ages.  Their short-lived romance culminated in an engagement.  But they were never married.  Stricken by tuberculosis,  Keats left for Italy in 1820 to seek better climate for his ailing health, knowing that would be their last farewell.

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain…

Nominated for a Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year, Jane Campion’s Bright Star is a beautiful tapestry weaving together the visual and the word.  Based partly on Sir Andrew Motion’s biography on Keats, the film depicts the bittersweet romance between the poet and his muse, tragically short-lived yet ever burning bright.

Campion has created on screen the dazzling visuals of the master painters.  There are numerous Vermeer moments in the interior shots, all done by the window with natural light seeping in as Fanny sews, makes her laces, reads love letters.  Outdoor scenes are a natural cinemascape reminiscence of impressionist vision.  Like the paintings of Monet and Seurat, hazy and dreamlike, they effectively convey the illusive union the young lovers achingly long for but is teasingly placed out of their reach.

Although never consummated, their passion for each other is no less ablaze.  The film is a clear statement that love is not synonymous with nudity and sex on screen.  Campion has depicted their passionate ardor with sensitivity and restraints.  There are moments of utter quietness, for love needs no language.  There are scenes adorned with melodious vocals and instrumentals, augmenting the yearning within.  Campion is a master of cinematic effects.

The talented Ben Whishaw (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, 2006) is aptly cast as Keats.  Fanny Brawne is played by Abbie Cornish (Elizabeth: The Golden Age, 2007).  Both are award-winning rising stars in their homeland of England and Australia.  Bright Star could well be their breakout work in North America.

Paul Schneider (Lars and the Real Girl, 2007) is convincing as Keats’ friend Charles Brown, and what looks like Fanny’s love rival.  A stark contrast in character with the poet, Brown offers much needed tension and conflicts. Fanny’s adorable little sister Toots (Edie Martin) gets some of the best lines. Her brother and chaperone Samuel is played by Thomas Sangster.  But why Thomas Sangster?  The talented young actor who has held his own in such films as Love Actually (2003), Nanny McPhee (2005), and The Last Legion (2007) playing against such calibre actors as Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Colin Firth and Emma Thompson, is put in the background only, with less than half a dozen speaking lines.  There’s definitely a miscast here. (Watch for his role as Paul McCartney in the upcoming John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy.)

While the film is a beautiful testament of a star-crossed romance, compared to Campion’s previous works, I find it lacks the depth and complexity of The Piano (1993, Palme d’Or) and the intensity and riveting effect of The Portrait of a Lady (1996).  I have no problem with the slow pacing of Bright Star, but I do wish to see more dramatic conflicts and deeper exploration of character.  A thing of beauty should indeed bring us joy, or deep emotion, but for some reasons the visual beauty has not come across to me as affectively and engagingly as they are intended.

Nevertheless, as the only woman director to have won the Palme d’Or in the 62 years history of the Cannes Film Festival, and one of three women ever nominated for an Oscar in directing, Campion has much to offer.  I’m excited to see that it looks like the trajectory of Bright Star is one that shoots for the Academy Awards comes next March.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

(Photo Sources: canada.com, ctv.ca)

***

Before the French publishing sensation The Elegance of the Hedgehog, there was Gourmet Rhapsody.  We in English-speaking North America were not aware of such a delicacy until after the translation of Hedgehog was introduced to us.  Too risky to sell to a different palate?

As a first novel, Gourmet Rhapsody, the 156-page collection of short chapters, is like an appetizer to the main dish that is Hedgehog.  It is a foretaste of the more meaty philosophical pondering of the latter.  Now that we have savored the main dish first,  might as well treat Gourmet Rhapsody as the dessert.  Does the cover not make you think of a raspberry sorbet?

If food is a metaphor for life, then the food critic is almost at the status of divinity, especially ‘the greatest food critic in the world’.  That self-ascribed praise is the egotistic utterance of none other than Pierre Arthens, the celeb resident on the fourth floor of the luxury apartment at 7 Rue  de Grenelle, the setting for Hedgehog.

Pierre Arthens’ pen is indeed mightier than the sword.  The knowledgeable and merciless food critic, the ‘true genius of the food world’, is feared from all corners of the world, ‘from Paris to Rio, Moscow to Brazzaville, Saigon to Melbourne and Acapulco’.  He holds the power to exalt a chef and restaurateur to stardom or crush their ego and future like eggshells.

“Between these two extremes — the rich warmth of a daube and the clean crystal of shellfish, I have covered the entire range of culinary art, for I am an encyclopedic esthete who is always one dish ahead of the game — but always one heart behind.”

But what use is the allure of fame and power when one is on deathbed, at 68, given only 48 hours to live.  Alas, from the years of Epicurean pursuits of cream and butter, oil and sauces, games and other culinary delights, the world renowned food critic is dying not from liver or stomach ailments, but cardiac failure.

Gourmet Rhapsody is a collection of Arthens’ own reminiscence of a life with food and his final quest.  The vividly evoked memories are interspersed with poignant commentaries by those who have come into the path of his life, including his wife, children, nephew, granddaughter, restaurateurs, his doctor, his concierge, his mistress, and even his cat.

And alas, what pity it is to find that none of the entries from these people is positive.  His daughter Laura stays in the stairway, refuses to go into his room to see his last.  His son loathes his ego and his ruthless destruction of theirs.  His wife Anna, whom he had loved as an object of possession, is ever more ambivalent at his deathbed.

And what irony, the only positive review of his life comes from his cat Rick:

“… here I am, nineteen years I’ve knocked about as head tomcat on the Persian rugs of my abode;  just me, the favorite, the master’s alter ego, the one and only, to whom he declared his thoughtful, undying love…”

So, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses the love from his wife and children, or respect from those who have crossed his path?  This ultimate question belies the enticing and delicious offering described throughout the chapters.  As in Hedgehog, Barbery has cleverly created a philosophical concoction without appearing didactic.  Here in Gourmet Rhapsody, food is the delightful sauce bringing up the taste of such rumination.

As a lover of sushi and sashimi, my favorite chapter is ‘Raw’, in which Arthens reminisce on his first taste of these Japanese culinary delights:

“It was dazzling… True sashimi is not so much bitten into as allowed to melt on the tongue.  It calls for slow, supple chewing, not to bring about a change in the nature of the food but merely to allow one to savor its airy, satiny texture… sashimi is velvet dust, verging on silk, or a bit of both, and the extraordinary alchemy of its gossamer essence allows it to preserve a milky density unknown even by clouds.”

But the powerful food critic has but one final quest on his deathbed.  There is one particular food that he wants to taste most before his imminent demise, but which he fails to name.  No, not the coq au vin, or the extravagant pots-au-feu, or poulets chasseur, or the grilled meat of Tangiers, or the Moroccan kesra, or the velvety, melt-in-your-tongue sashimi.  Should I reveal it here?  Alright, Spoiler Alert.

It is the chouquettes, cream puffs, but not from fancy patisserie.  Pierre Arthens wants to taste those chouquettes that are stuffed in plastic bags from the supermarket.  After a life of bourgeois elegance and Epicurean odyssey, it is the mundane, ordinary thing that Arthens seeks on his deathbed.  In the face of mortality, every single moment of mundaneness is something to devour.

If only he had savored that sooner, not just food, but the people in his life, and everything else.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, Europa Editions, 2009.  156 pages.         

To read my review of  The Elegance of the Hedgehog, CLICK HERE.

***

 

~ ~ ~ Ripples

I can’t recall how many times I’d watched roller derby on TV, years back, maybe just a few times.  When I asked my niece who watched the movie with me, as a twenty-something, she hasn’t even seen it once.   But Drew Barrymore, in her directorial debut, has effectively captured the human side of a sport not many know about.  And with it, she has poignantly woven in some relevant issues her audience could relate to, no matter what demographics they’re in: coming-of-age, finding love, confronting parental expectations, searching for personhood and empowerment, parenting and letting go.

After watching Juno (2007), I knew I must see more of Ellen Page.  Here in Whip It, Page has proven that she’s not just impressive as an actor, but also as an athlete.   She plays Bliss Cavendar, a 17 year-old small town Texas girl, bored, docile, shuffled from one beauty pageant to another by her overbearing mother Brooke, a former beauty queen turned middle-age mail clerk (sensitively played by Marcia Gay Harden, Mystic River, 2003; Pollack, 2000).

After she watches a roller derby game with her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat), and successfully tries out for the team Hurl Scouts in Austin, Texas, Bliss, now Babe Ruthless, sees her life take off with high octane energy.  She has passionately fallen for the high contact sport and a new boyfriend, rock band member Oliver (Landon Pigg).

The head-smashing, rowdy derby culture is probably the farthest away from the frothy and genteel beauty pageants of Texas, thus forms the great chasm between mother and daughter.  Of course Bliss tries to hide all her activities from her mother, until it can’t be covered anymore.  For she has become the poster girl for the final championship.

There are cliché sequences that we’ve all seen before, the light version of physical prowess as in Million Dollar Baby (2004), the get-back-up perseverance of Rocky, and, reminiscence of Shall We Dance (2004) in the final championship.  But, it’s all fun and even exhilarating.  Thanks to a great cast, the humor comes through naturally.  I must mention some great deadpan act from diner manager Birdman (Carlo Alban), who reminds me of Pedro in Napoleon Dynamite (2004).   Another great support is Hurl Scouts coach Razor played by Andrew Wilson.  His performance makes me feel like I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie.  Later I find out he’s older brother to Owen, then it’s all clear to me… it runs in the family.

  Barrymore has effectively created some powerful and touching scenes that make the comedy worthwhile.  It’s scenes like these that propel a comedy into the realm of meaning.  She has balanced the comical with hard reality, for it’s not simply about a girl choosing what she wants to do, purely from her own point of view.  Often our choices are entangled in a web of relationships.  Yes, we may have the autonomy to choose, but our choices also affect others.  Some gratifying moments are sensitively performed, between mother and daughter, father and daughter, and a 36 year-old derby teammate who openly shares her heart with Bliss in the car, with her young son in the back seat.

Into its second week of screening, Whip It has not fared as well as expected at the box office.  But for screenwriter Shauna Cross, who has turned her own novel Derby Girl into screenplay, I trust this is just another blow she’s got all too used to, as a roller derby girl herself from Austin Texas, before moving to L.A.  She knows how to get back up and keep on skating, even in the aggressive arena that’s L.A.

(Top Photo Source: USA Today, Bottom: PicApp.com)

My screenwriting course is wrapping up soon.  For the past six months, I’ve been learning a new language, the language of the visual.  It’s not as easy as it looks.  I’ve to un-learn a lot of ingrained principles of prose writing to re-learn a whole new genre.  And it has been an ego-shattering process.

Take this for example.  A comment on one of my assignments:

“… I’d also like to see you snip away at excess verbiage in both dialogue and action paragraphs.”

Ouch!  That hurts!  Honestly, it took me a few weeks to get over that one.

‘Verbiage’.  When the word is not used by yourself as a self-deprecating joke, now that’s tough to hear.   The reason for such a judgment?  Simply because I used complete sentences in my descriptions.  The language of the screenplay, I’ve learned, is condensed language, not unlike poetry.  It should be spot on, visually driven, and clear.

Readability is the key.  I’ve been learning to write a ‘good read’.   Reality is, my script will first be sent to the ‘gatekeepers’ of the film industry, and many of them may not be readers (that, I was told).  So, nobody wants to see a bunch of words crowding the page.  White spaces are what keep them interested.   So, make it swift, succinct, use minimum number of words to convey maximum information.  Yup, just like that, easy.

Right… so, here are some notes to myself, gleaning from the books I’ve read on the subject of screenwriting, to personalized feedbacks:

• Sentence fragments, though frowned upon by English teachers, are welcome in scripts.
• Action speaks louder than words: Whatever that can be conveyed by actions, no need for dialogues.
• Enter a scene as late as you can and get out before it finishes.
• Think minimalist and evocative.
• Layers, layers, layers
• Avoid clichés like the plague, both visuals and words.
• Avoid ‘On The Nose’ dialogues: stating directly what the writer needs to convey, instead of the more realistic everyday mundane, allusive, cut-off, inarticulate, real life conversations.
• As with all literature, learn to write subtexts, the undercurrents of emotions and contexts that are meant to be hidden, but only revealed by actions and dialogues.
• Do the above with razor-sharp clarity.
• The central dramatic question should be clear and simple, but not simplistic.
• Have the proper proportion of words and pictures to create a synchronicity of content and poetry.
• Don’t insult your actors by writing down specific reactions, or telling them their tone of voice…etc.
• Write organically: If a writer knows what is going to happen before writing, then the scene will often feel contrived because it will fail to surprise the writer, therefore the audience.

Now, come to think of these points, aren’t they useful for writing in other genres as well?  Except the sentence fragments recommendation, that is, if you’re writing prose.  And, the last point exactly echoes what I’ve heard Michael Ondaatje say:

“I don’t know what would happen, I don’t want to know”

Let the scene breath on its own, take its shape and grow.

Or the advice given by Anne Lamott reinforcing succinct writing:

“You listen to how people really talk, and then learn little by little to take someone’s five-minute speech and make it one sentence, without losing anything.”

And… the wonders of paradox:  ‘Expressing the visual in words’,  ’Be clear in conveying subtext’,   ‘The minimalist creating layers of complexity’, ‘Write organically within the structure’…

Oh… the bittersweet experience of screenwriting.

****

If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.

In general it can be said that a nation’s art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

—- Edward Hopper (1882 – 1967)

Edward Hopper’s words point to the power of the visual.  I always find Hopper’s realist paintings hauntingly retrospective, convey indescribable feelings, a sense of loneliness, a touch of alienation, yet, it’s hard to say exactly what it is.

Some use the phrase ‘urban loneliness’ to pinpoint the sentiment, as most readily expressed in his famous painting Nighthawks.  But others find the term too parochial even, opting for the more universal description of the human condition, ‘existential loneliness’.

In this visually-driven age, where pictures are instantly produced by a click, eliminating the wait for film processing, and where digitally created images can elicit unimaginable possibilities, has the value of words diminished, both in function and significance? In a time when ‘reading skills’ refer not only to the comprehension of the written language but the deciphering of graphics and visual symbols, has the power of words been eroded?

Does the recent passing of William Safire, called ‘the oracle of language’ by the NY Times, represent the passing of an era?  How many are left to champion the traditional form of communication, to point out word origin, to extol proper grammar usage?  While these gatekeepers are frowning on the split infinitive, the rest of the world has already jumped on board the newer vessel to boldly go where no person has gone before. The reign of literal communication has gradually (or quickly, or___ you fill in the blank) been replaced by the more accessible instant imaging, flickring, youtubing…

Let’s hope too that the traditional art form of painting will not be soon replaced by iPhone sketching.  If the New Yorker’s cover artist is using an iPhone app to touch-produce its cover pages, will the demise of oils and paints be far away?

Of course, I come to praise Hopper, not to bury words, or paints. Rather than saying his paintings defy literal descriptions, let’s just take up this bemusing challenge and do a role reversal:  What words conjure up in your mind when you look at these Hopper paintings? Let’s celebrate words, and paints, while we still have them.

Of all the subjects in his works, I particularly like the solitary figure, or the non-figure, like the room devoid of human presence.  Here are some of them:

Automat (1927):  Layered with subtext, what are the stories behind this lone female customer at the automat in such hour?  What is a good description of her predicament?

.

New York Movie (1939): Here’s the reason why I love Hopper’s works.  The contrast, the darker side, the quiet undercurrent beneath the glamorous, the sombre reminder of complexity.

.

Rooms by the Sea (1951):  A touch of Magritte I feel.  An example of what I call the non-figure.  The philosophical quest of knowing: If nobody’s around to see it, does it still exist?

.

Cape Cod Morning (1950):  Unlike his other works, this solitary female figure is positive, eager,  enthused, and achingly expectant.  Is she a symbol of the optimism of a new age, or will she be disillusioned as reality sets in? 1950 or 2009, is there so much difference anyway?

.

Gas (1940):  I’m sure it’s not all about gas… does it allude to the lone traveling salesman like Willy Loman,  or the lone gas station owner like that in the Fitzgerald novel.

.

Nighthawks (1942):  Perhaps the most famous of Hopper’s paintings.  As some call it, the depiction of ‘existential loneliness’.  Is that Sartre sitting there all alone at 2:00 am, contemplating in a diner with no exit?

****

Click here to go to a related post ‘Inspired by Vermeer’ with another Edward Hopper painting, Morning Sun.

Arti disappeared from Cowtown for a few days and reappeared in Ketchikan, Alaska.  That’s the cause for the delay in replying some of your comments from the last post.  I decided to rid myself of all internet and phone access so I could make these short few days a real getaway.

But herein lies the nagging dilemma:  Is there a better way to access nature other than the commercial route?  Arti had to follow the crowd and board a cruise ship, not her choice of transport, but … what are the options?

So here it is, a visual account of my journey at sea to Ketchikan, the south-western tip of Alaska, north of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

We set sail at the Canada Place Terminal.  On deck looking out, Port Vancouver’s famous architectural sails look slightly surreal, a virtual outdoor gallery of sculptures larger than life:

Leaving Port Vancouver:

After a couple of days at sea, we arrived at Ketchikan, Alaska.  Among  other things like being the salmon capital of the world, Ketchikan is famous for its rain, measuring its precipitation in feet, not inches.

Here’s Ketchikan under overcast sky:

A little  more cheery scene:

Ketchikan is also home to The Tongass Rain Forest, the largest national forest in the United States.  It is part of the Pacific Temperate Rain Forest Region, which is second in size to the world’s largest Amazon Tropical Rain Forest.

Arti ventured into this area with a naturalist. Together with 15 others in our group, we trod the trails of the Alaska Rain Forest Sanctuary.  Here are the sights I’ve sailed all the way for:

.

.

.

.

.

Colorful undergrowth

.

.

.

One of the many species of mushrooms, some giant ones grow on trees.

.

.

Devil’s Paw, food for the bears.  Underneath are poisonous hooks, but the bears deftly eat off the stems of the plant.

.

.

Ferns and moss: Even tree branches are covered with moss.  As the branches grow heavier, they will break off the tree, fulfilling a natural pruning process.

.

.

Momentarily, we came to a creek.  Yes, salmon swam up here: Right in the middle of a rain forest we saw gulls gathering, competing with the bears for the salmon in the water.  We were fortunate to see a mother bear with two cubs.  Here in this fuzzy (sorry, Arti was too excited) photo, you can see, even though ‘bearly’, the mother and one of her cubs on the left:

And this next one is out of this world.  Gulls flying all around above the creek, a magical, even mythical sight to behold:

We next visited a reindeer farm.  I’ve seen elks and deers in my neck of the woods in Alberta, but this is the first time I saw reindeers.  Here’s a curious fella:

When we left Ketchikan, it was pouring rain:

On our way back to Vancouver, we cruised through the Inside Passage.  It offered one of the most beautiful sights in the whole journey:

.

Of course, it’s Arti’s nature to find ripples everywhere:

.

.

.

 

.

.

The Inside Passage at dusk, the silence punctuated only by the calls of gulls and frolicking dolphins splashing in and out of the quiet water.  Yes, I saw the synchronized dances of two dolphins jumping out of the water and diving back in, but it was just too impromptu to capture by my camera. 

This is my best memory, sunset along the Inside Passage:

*****

No, not another Twitter post… It’s the book by Anne Lamott.  Here’s what it’s all about:

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write.  [It] was due the next day.  We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.  Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.’ “

— Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Bird by bird… three simple words from a writer father.  Lamott carries these words of wisdom with her as she makes her long journey of writing and life.  A past recipient of a Guggenheim, now a national bestselling author and writing instructor, Lamott in turn passes on practical advice to her readers and students.  In a writer’s symposium, it’s mentioned that The Modern Library calls her book Operating Instructions one of the most significant non-fiction work of the century.  Click here for the full hour interview.

Bird by bird is a book full of down-to-earth advice on writing and life from one who has gone through tough times.  Coming from the hippie culture, Lamott had to overcome years of drug addiction, alcoholism, and deal with eating disorder and the challenges of single parenthood.  I admire her resilience and perseverance.  Further, her ultimately finding redemption and had her life turned around was one amazing story.

I’ve enjoyed her humor, and her sensible instructions; although I admit I couldn’t fully embrace her style of word-use and the occasional trite statements. But the authenticity shines through.  You’re reading a writer who has gone through all these hurdles, not just in writing but in life, and speaking to you with genuine openness.  Her directions give you a kind of ‘eureka’ feeling: The sudden revealing of something that you thought you’ve found it for the first time.  But on second thought, it’s just that she has put it into words for you, you must have known it before, so common sense, so simple.

Since I’ve been dwelling on quotes lately, I’ll just leave you with some of Lamott’s own words from her book.  They don’t all fit into a tweet, but just to point out that sometimes great thoughts take more than 140 characters to convey…. that’s why we have books.  But of course, you’ve known this all along.

Getting started:

The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth.

Flannery O’Connor said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life.

The problem that comes up over and over again is that these people want to be published.  They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published… Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up.  But publishing won’t do any of those things.

Short assignment:

E. L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night.  You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”  … You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you.  This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.

Character:

… a person’s faults are largely what make him or her likable… They shouldn’t be too perfect; perfect means shallow and unreal and fatally uninteresting.

Plot:

Plot grows out of character…. I say don’t worry about plot.  Worry about the characters.  Let what they say or do reveal who they are… The development of relationship creates plot.

Dialogue:

You listen to how people really talk, and then learn little by little to take someone’s five-minute speech and make it one sentence, without losing anything.

The Moral Point of View:

The word moral has such bad associations: with fundamentalism, stiff-necked preachers, priggishness.  We have to get past that… We like certain characters because they are good or decent–they internalize some decency in the world that makes them able to take a risk or make a sacrifice for someone else.  They let us see that there is in fact some sort of moral compass still at work here, and that we, too, could travel by this compass if we so choose.

A moral position is a passionate caring inside you… Some of us are interested in any light you might be able to shed on this, and we will pay a great deal extra if you can make us laugh about it.  For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are the ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.

Now here are some quotes you can send, tweet by tweet:

“If you’re not enough before the gold medal, you won’t be enough with it.” [quoting from the movie Cool Running]

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen, widen, and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.

*****

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, Anchor Books, NY, 1995, 238 pages.

Don’t look for me on Facebook, I’m not there.  No Twitter account either.  But don’t mistake me for a Luddite, I have my iPhone as my defence… and the Apps for all the social networking sites ready to install.

Truth is, I have no need to lure a million followers.  If there isn’t such a phrase, let me coin it now: ‘Cyber Crowd Phobia’.  I think I have that… or ‘Cyber Agoraphobia’ will work too.  Why would I want to announce to the world what I have for breakfast?  No, I will not fall into the trap of offering free advertising for cereal companies.  Really, who’d care that I’m still having indigestion from last night’s chow mein?

Further, with the limit of just 140 characters to tweet, the message I send must be of prime importance, no verbiage whatsoever.  I can’t think of any such occasions where I need to reveal my predicament publicly except maybe in emergency situations like:

“Having a heart attack! Safeway check-out 5. Call 911!”

or this:

“AAAAARH! Chased by #zombie chickens! @oh dear, oh! Thanks!!”

Less than 60 characters, so I can call out twice.

Ok, seriously,  if I must tweet, I’d probably be tweeting quotes.

Quotes are one-liners, pearls of wisdom.  I know, I know… not all are pearls, but, gems can still be found.  And they fit right in the endurance level of Twitter.  Dense, sharp and swift, ideal for people on-the-go.

Thanks to Shoreacres, I’ve been thinking about quotable quotes after she left an ingenious one in her comment on my last post.  It speaks to those who fondly reminisce the good old days every time they watch the News on TV.  Here’s the line to ponder:

“Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect.”

Now, that gets me thinking about the future… simple quotes to tweet for all my followers.  A good quote for every hour of the day.

Let’s say, you’re struggling to get up in the morning, almost losing the battle.  Still lying in bed, you grab your iPhone and check your feeds. I have the best tweet for you, thanks to our modern sage, Woody Allen:

“80% of success is showing up.”

Hey, not bad for just 28 characters.  Showing up needs getting up… that’ll start your day.

Now you’re at the office, you just have a heated argument with your colleague.  As always, he’s wrong, and you’re  gravely mistreated.  But just at that moment, you stop and check your stream of tweets.  How timely,  there’s this piece of sound advice, yes, urging you in earnest from none other than Oscar Wilde himself:

“Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much.”

Ha… you win again.

Suddenly you hear your boss calling you.  Shucks!  You forgot all about the performance evaluation he wanted to discuss with you.  You start to panic, cold sweat, shortness of breath.  You instinctively get out your phone and check your tweets… Voila!  You’re in luck.  Here’s one just for you, from G.K. Chesterton, … no matter if you haven’t heard of him, just read this instant message:

“I believe in getting into hot water, it keeps you clean.”

Wonderful!  You’re all sweaty anyway.  Quotes on Twitter saves the day… again.

You get my idea… a timely tweet for every moment of your life.

I know how people love quotes.  The most viewed post on Ripple Effects is “Memorable Movie Love Quotes“.  That was for Valentine’s Day last year, now gathering more than 20,000 hits.  I still receive new ones every now and then from readers contributing to the list.

So this is my appeal to you all.  Send me your quotable quotes, 140 characters or less, so I can send them out should I open a Twitter account in the future.  Believe me, this could well be the most meaningful thing you do today, passing on words of wisdom.  And the world will thank you… some day.