Call Me By Your Name

Call Me By Your Name

Oliver leaves Elio.

I was late to all of the Oscar nominated or buzzed about films this year and have been catching up. It was, in my estimation, a good year for movies. This one, "Call Me By Your Name," devastated me and brought to surface memories that when called are as fragile and raw as it appears to be for Elio here in this frame from the movie as he clutches at his throat because, obviously, his heart has moved there and no words are expressed as Oliver climbs on to the train to leave Italy. Leaving him behind.

When I first saw the movie, I was distracted. I saw the novel that the film was based on in the store and picked it up. It wrapped around me and made me feel like I was writhing in deep, warm, sea water- drowning, but quite alive at the same time. The novel moves beyond the film in time, so I read the ending twice. In the same day. And as soon as I had the chance, I watched the movie, alone, for a second time and am left wondering how many times it will take to the point that I can't watch it anymore.

Sometimes, movies, small, quiet ones, capture me and hold on through several viewings until I am able to walk away from them. When I first saw Parker Posey's "Broken English," I watched it on three successive evenings. One, I love Parker Posey. Two, a Frenchman was involved. And three, a trip to Paris ensued. The quiet of the film allowed for the character, Nora, to explore the general malaise that she felt and the disappointment in not fulfilling what she thought was to be her life by the deadline that many of us impose upon ourselves. Nora's inner dialogue that runs through the movie could be what goes through mine on any given day. Nora figures it out. And lucky for her that the figuring had something to do with a Frenchman and Paris. If only!

Another small, quiet movie that I got caught up in recently was "Sophie and the Rising Sun," which was set in a beautifully filmed South Carolina circa 1941. Sophie is adrift, without family or opportunity, and crabs to make ends meet. She is an artist and paints the gardens that are prolific in her small town.  A Japanese-American man comes to town under mysterious circumstances, and Sophie is drawn to him. Theirs is a bittersweet story- two vagabonds who do not fit into the lives that have been given to them. Fortunately, the sun rises and they find each other. The cinematography is stunning. And their quiet passion is heartening. I watched it three nights in a row.

And now for Oliver and Elio. I know this scene at the train station- leaving, separating, not knowing if or even when they'll ever physically be in the same place, understanding that emotionally, they'll never part. Their youth and the overwhelming surprise that love could take over every cell in one's body makes for the perfect storm of joy, grief, and wonder. It reminds me of the boy I loved, love, who would take me to the airport after heady days of wandering around his city, each other, in quiet and not so sure how to be together. On leaving, he would buy me magazines and gum, stick a twenty in my pocket, and my heart would swell one hundred times its size, catching in my throat blocking words. I wonder about the people who would sit next to me on the plane and how they felt about having this huge, blubbering heart sitting in such close proximity. Of course, this may be why this film resonates with so many. Who hasn't had their heart swell so large that words could not express its feelings. Oh, Elio. And Oliver ... I'll certainly watch this film again ... and again.

Serena Williams

Vogue February 2018

Perhaps, the cover of Serena Williams for Vogue would have more appropriate for March, not February, so as to celebrate Women's History Month. Clearly, she is representative of what has become the real struggle for women today- balancing a career and family, especially when one's career is at its pinnacle and the baby comes, and for Serena, changes the game for Serena's continued dominance on the tennis court. How can a baby not change the psyche and certainly, the body of an elite athlete. The wonder will become not how many grand slam titles Serena won before now, but how she won them after when she's had to regroup, retrain, and figure out to be selfish in her pursuit while being selfless in her new role as a mother.

The key to her and what is provocative to me is this from this article: "'I remember ow stressed I was about getting to Grand Slam number eighteen, tying Chrissie and Martina," she says. "I had lost every Grand Slam that year. I was in the U.S. Open, and Patrick [Mouratoglou], my coach, said, 'Serena, this doesn't make sense. You're so stressed about eighteen. Why not 30? Why not 40?' For me, that clicked. I won eighteen, nineteen, and 20 right after that. Why would I want to stand side by side when I can stand out on my own? I think sometimes women limit themselves. I'm not sure why we think that way, but I know that we're sometimes taught to not dream as big as men, not to believe we can be a president or a CEO, when in the same household, a male child is told he can be anything he wants. I'm so glad I had a daughter. I want to teach her that there are not limits."

I can identify with her coming to the realization that she needed to focus beyond the immediate goal of achieving someone else's record when her conditioning, practice, and dominance suggested that she could far surpass the records. And she did. But her limits ... I suggest that we have put 'man limits' on us when we need to determine what the limit or expectation or expanded goal should be based on what it is to be a woman in the pursuit. Raised in the era when the movement took a real hold on society, I was raised to believe that I could do anything that a man could do. The only limits that I had were socio-economic, which is another argument, but I was able to achieve, within my group, anything that the boys did. I suppose that was the first step, but as time moves forward and more girls are are doing just that and surpassing them in many ways, I think that it is time to stop comparing ourselves to boys and work it out for ourselves as girls. And girls alone. Not the same as boys.  Or better than boys. As we are.

Serena is the greatest. And now, she'll show us how great she is as she climbs back to the level of play that she beat everyone with. I expect that this period of her career will be her biggest challenge and her greatest.

@coco_pinkprincess

Elle March 2018

These are the best pages in a rather standard issue March edition. Miss Coco is soooo fash-on at only seven. Her parents own a vintage store in Japan's Harajuku district, so Coco has been raised in the store, which to me seems only fitting that she has absorbed the vibe of her playpen to make a distinct statement of her own. My sister's eldest children, in particular, were raised in their physician father's office and want to be doctors themselves, so why wouldn't this tiny tyke not take on fashion as she lives among it. As customers noticed Coco's bold choices, her parents created an Instagram account for her which now has 432,000 followers. Noted in the article that part of her success is in the Japanese's own obsession with 'tiny houses, tiny food, and toddlers in tiny versions of Oscar gowns.'

My youngest niece is now nearly 14- about twelve years ago when she must have been about 2, we traveled to  Lake Louise, Canada. On a snowy afternoon, grandma and I stuffed her in her red snowsuit for a walk around the lake. She was quite confident and navigated the snow packed path well. Along the route, two young men, who were Japanese, stopped us and asked if they could take her picture. I didn't mind, and she was unaware. Of course, huge lenses came out and they 'snap, snap, snapped' her like fiends. It was so strange ... but my niece was adorable and her dark hair was cut similarly to Coco's here. My niece also had beautiful, slightly coco tinted skin that was flawless. I supposed at the time that the guys thought that she looked like an anime character. Because she did ... look like an anime character.

Of course, little Coco here is beyond that ... 

God Awful Small Affairs

Driving home late on a Sunday evening, the radio played a song, "Persephone," by the Chicago band "God Awful Small Affairs." I liked it. I liked it so much that I was able to remember the band's name and song title forty-five minutes later when I arrived home. The DJ of the new music hour, found the band on Sound Cloud, where I was able to find them. The band lists themselves as 'femme-fatale space rock,' and I saw somewhere that they also identify as folkish. I like the sound, but my thought isn't so much about them as it is about radio.

A week ago, I happened to catch the last broadcast of The Loop, a rock station staple in the Chicago market for more years than most would imagine, before it moved to a Christian rock station. I was surprised by this as I had not read anything about the sale, new ownership, or change of format previous to listening to the last show. And since then, I have read that many radio stations in this market and across the country are struggling to continuing to make it. Apparently, the various and assorted platforms for streaming has severely impacted the economic viability of traditional radio. The country is getting Pandora'd. And, to me, that is bad news. I don't mind listening to streaming radio ... I have friends who regularly listen to this or that band station. The choices pulled to support the selection of one band makes sense and is easy to listen to for a couple of hours.

But how will one find NEW music?

I still listen to CDs in my car. When I get an album, okay ... CD, I listened to it over and over so as to get to know it. In the fall, I was heavy on repeat of LCD Soundsystem. And when U2 released "Songs of Experience" on December 1, I've not listened to much else for 3 months. It was just a matter of time until I would be comfortable enough to pull away from that one CD to see what else was going on. I moved to the radio. And I don't listen to one station ... I listen to many. I'm always looking for the next obsession, I suppose. When I did this, I found God Awful Small Affairs. This band doesn't have a release, except for the seven songs on Sound Cloud. How would I have heard of them if not for the radio program that focused on new music/sound that was sent in by local bands.

I know that my nephew is big into seeking out new music on YouTube, but I wonder how he does that? Or has the time to surf it. The car is the perfect place to find it, especially as I live in a big city and always seem to find traffic. Listening to the radio was the activity for the car, and it was the reliable outlet to find new music.

It's a god awful state of affairs ... everything is changing, and I wonder to what good- especially in this respect.

Kobe Bryant's "Dear Basketball"

I didn't pay attention when Kobe Bryant retired from the NBA. I am a Chicago fan. I lived wonderfully through many magical seasons of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. I think that I'm good for NBA basketball after that experience. Sure, I catch some of the games, and I pay attention to what the Chicago Bulls are doing by reading the newspaper. Honestly, my impression of Bryant was never a very good one.

But he won an Oscar for Best Short Animation. I had no idea. I had to check it out.

I teach boys. Boys who dream of bigger and better, but the world seems to have forgotten them and left them behind without any intention of picking them up in the draft ... of life. And that's devastating because I have found them to be so much like any other boys that I have taught in my career who, unfortunately, live a step away from anything that could pull them in. In class, we have just finished reading John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Most of the boys have never read a book in its entirety, and we do have to read aloud to capture the range of levels in the classroom, but the strategies that I employ for students to analyze the novel are rigorous. I taught if for the first time last year to a different group of guys, and I was surprised at the end of the novel when we watched the film version (a treat for having finished the book) when they yelled out when John Malkovich and Gary Sinise first appear on the screen, "We thought that they were black!" And we did talk at length about the norm of racism in America at that time even though it takes place in California, not the South, and they knew that the character Crooks is black and not allowed to live in the bunk for that reason. Though he's not supposed to, Lennie visits Crooks in his room when the guys have gone out because he is lonely. Lennie doesn't know that as a white man, he's not to enter the black man's space. My students know this, but they still identified the main characters as black. They see the struggle and relate to it. This year's group had the same reaction.

Which brings me to Kobe's poem. The Principal visited our class to observe my co-teacher. The kids, as usual, were engaged and dynamic. The co-teacher wanted to treat them because they made him look good. We can't do cookies or much else. I don't want to play an hour of Chief Keef music videos on YouTube, which I could probably do, so I looked to Kobe.

And he was more than I could imagine a Los Angelas Laker to be. He articulated his dream of basketball and the respect and love that he has for the game ... for himself ... so beautifully. The boys hadn't heard of it, which was so surprising as they all follow the NBA and wishfully think that they too could be NBA players even though the odds are against them even graduating from high school, some even elementary school. I've printed out the poem to bring to class tomorrow. Often, I have the boys write their version of the story like they did with the dream that Lennie and George have in the novel. So many of their dreams are not about living off 'the fatta the land,' but getting out of Chicago and being safe. With Kobe's poem, I want them to think about what their 6-year old selves dreamt about ... if they can remember it. Maybe, in recalling it, they can find it again and the strength to conquer the mountain that is in front of them to find their 'fatta of the land' and a place where "I never saw the end of the tunnel/ I only saw myself/ Running out of one," as Kobe writes.

France is Putting the Cork in Wine?

Chicago Tribune 11 March 2018

The minister of health in France is campaigning to point out the health risks of wine. I've nearly spit out my coffee while I was reading this Sunday's paper when I stumbled across this article. So few things in this world today are sacred ... common sense, inclusion, fair and equal ... and the government, a foreign one albeit, wants to suggest that wine is bad. Zut Alors! I need that wine because we've lost common sense, abhor inclusion, and have lost fair and equal in a bombastic political environment that is our country, and we need our wine. Let me correct this ... we need our FRENCH wine. Although, maybe there would be more for us if the French didn't drink as much of their own wine. That's a thought ...

According to the article, "President Emmanuel Macron begs to differ [with the minister of health]. Macron reassured his compatriots that he enjoys wine every day with lunch and dinner and that, yes, there is a difference between wine and other types of booze." Whoa. Wine with lunch? Sometimes, I need to have a glass of wine with lunch before I go back into the classroom, but I'm not sure that would be very prudent. Are the French drinking too much wine after all? According the article, the French consume, on average, 3.2 gallons of "pure alcohol" per year; whereas, Americans drink far less at 2.4 gallons annually. I was surprised by this number for the sheer number of beer advertisements that show up on television or are plastered on billboards across the city. I don't ever see the same proliferation of wine ads slapped across the French landscape, thank goodness. But, apparently, the French do not need suggestion to fill their gullet with the perfect way to consume a grape. Vive la France!

In the end, do you know what's really interesting ... Russians consume 4 gallons of alcohol a year on average. No wonder that Putin is nuts. He's drunk.