So, six months after doing a Separated at Birth? post I get a comment today. Which reminded me I’ve been meaning to do this.
Patrick Fugit and Tobey Maguire:
Hairy
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Separated at Birth Redux
Hugging at a management meeting
I dreamt that three of my co-workers were John Malkovich.
Which just proves that dreams are stupid.
One was thinner, one was dark-haired, but all three were Malkovich. I had a crush on one (the non-thin, non-dark one). He was in management. Then we slipped into an elevator together and hugged and held each other. It was a secret—office affair and all—but then we were in a meeting, and I was seated in a chair and he was perched on the table next to me and he put his arm around me, natural as can be, so I thought, “Guess it’s not a secret anymore” and leaned into him.
I love how hugging and holding feel in dreams; so real, so satisfying, so encompassing. And I love how smoothly things flow; from crush to affair to public relationship.
It wasn’t completely random; just before bed I was looking at movie listings and saw that Ripley’s Game is going to be on. Still, I find the banality terribly funny; I dream about Malkovich and it’s hugging at a management meeting.
Irony
Irony alert: Last week when picking Arthur up at dance on Monday, the traffic in the studio parking lot was terrifying. It took me several minutes to be able to safely back out of my spot. When picking him up at his second class on Friday, I noted that being five minutes late was a real advantage; all the “drop-off” parents are gone, only “pick-up” parents are there, so the traffic is cut in half. I told him from now on, expect me to be five or more minutes late.
Irony alert #2: I was very, very tired yesterday. So tired that, after dropping Arthur off at dance, I went to the mall and ended up driving right past it. Just spaced and kept going. So I told myself to drive extra carefully; I felt so tired that I was at risk of causing an accident. So I was kind of peeling my eyeballs to make sure I was being a good driver. I felt really shaky.
Ironic results: Last night, after finishing up at the mall and the supermarket, I was miraculously still a few minutes early for picking Arthur up at dance. So I parked in the very same spot I was in last Monday and waited. And after Arthur got in the car (about five minutes late), while I was still parked, I got hit.
Crunch.
Big ol’ van trying to maneuver in the crowded parking lot, watching the moving cars and the kids walking around and not even looking at the car parked right next to him. A little too right next to him.
Crunch.
So. Fucking A.
Tuesday Trivia Time
You know the drill: The image, quote, character sketch, or vignette will lead you to a movie. Name the movie.
1. While in Paris, a little girl buys a present for the policeman she has a crush on.
Hint: This movie is connected to Star Wars and My Fair Lady.
2. A drunken playboy, a horse trainer, and a doctor are all in love with the same woman.
Solved by Melville.
3. Part of her occupation involves showing people the Grassy Knoll.
Solved by Tom.
4. The couple meets while sweeping a wooded area for a missing girl.
Hint: During the "present day" of the movie, they are no longer a couple, but both continue to work in the business that gives the movie its name.
Solved by George.
5. A proposal and rejection is secretly recorded and played back in front of a large group of musicians.
Hint: When they meet, she is singing, he is drunk, and he ruins her favorite lipstick.
Solved by Roberta.
6. “Stirred, not shaken. That is right, isn’t it?”
Solved by Tom.
7. His unfinished home is full of memories of his late wife, so he lets another couple use it.
Hint: This movie is famous for being the last completed film of two big stars who died young, and one of the last for another star who died young.
Solved by Tom.
Permission to heal
A lot of people new to the use of magic are very interested in the ethics of what is and is not allowed. It seems to me, though, that these questions are often a way of glossing over other, more important, issues.
Someone asked me the other day, “Under what circumstances is it ethical to do a healing spell without permission?” A question like that envisions a universe in which there are XYZ allowed circumstances, and ABC disallowed circumstances. A rulebook.
Now, I could say “there is no rulebook,” or I could approximate the rulebook, and give you an extensive list of hypotheticals, but all of that is beside the point. There are other, more important questions to ask before we even get into a bunch of ethical what-ifs.
Why don’t you have permission? If it’s someone you aren’t comfortable communicating with, why are you doing magic for them? Is your magical connection going to be effective if you can’t even have a conversation with them? How much can you even know about the illness if you haven’t discussed healing it? If you don’t have permission because they disapprove of magic, isn’t that something of a barrier to your work? Won’t you be thinking about that disapproval while you work?
Under most circumstances, in the absence of other information, it is ethical to assume that people want to be well. Absent a DNR (Do Not Resucitate order), medical professionals assume that an unconscious patient would wish to be resucitated. In other words, you don’t need a Do Resucitate order, because that’s the default.
But chances are, you’re not talking about doing magic in an Emergency Room. You’re probably talking about a chronic or active but non-emergent condition. And in that case, your question shouldn’t be ethical at all; it should be practical and interpersonal.
Before healing, what you want to know is, who is this person? What is our connection? What is this illness? Securing permission is one way to answer all these questions. A problem securing permission could indicate a problem in knowing what needs to be known in order to be an effective healer.
An Urge to Invade Poland
I am pleased to announce that Arthur, after a hiatus of a few months, has found a way to add blogging back into his schedule and plans to blog several times a week.
Besides being his mother and proud and goofy and all that, I find Arthur’s thought processes interesting, and I enjoy reading his blog. Often, he’s said something on his blog, I’ve answered on mine, and then we’ve had a lively discussion of the whole thing over dinner.
There aren’t a whole lot of sixteen year-olds blogging about politics and the state of the world. So cool on him.
Monday Movie Review: Garden State
Garden State (2004) 10/10
Andrew Largeman (writer-director Zach Braff) returns to his New Jersey home to attend his mother’s funeral, after being away for nine years. Tentatively exploring the life he left behind, he meets Sam (Natalie Portman) and hangs out with his old friend Mark (Peter Sarsgaard).
Garden State was nothing like what I had expected, which is, of course, the danger of a movie getting “buzz”—you think you know what to expect. The buzz, as filtered through my understanding, was that this was some kind of total slacker movie with disaffected, ironic characters and a disaffected, barely-there romance, all about how disaffected “this generation” is.
Instead, what I saw was a movie about the value of life and the way that being disaffected is a trap. Dead-end people are, it turns out, dead-ends, and not really living their lives, and the notion that this is somehow noble is just one more nail in the coffin of misery clouded by being stoned.
Sunday Meditation: Darkness
Soon it will be Winter Solstice, and light begins to return. Now is an excellent time to meditate on darkness.
Prepare a dark and silent space for meditation. Ground and center.
Visualize the darkness. Allow light to drain away, and see yourself in the dark.
What waits for you here?
What secrets belong to the dark, that can be revealed by exploring this space?
In the space of silence and sleep, what can be known?
Know that sleep and rest in the dark is refreshing and renewing, and always returns you to the light. Know that the light will always be there for you.
Casino Royale Redux
Arthur and I saw Casino Royale again last night. Damn, what a great movie. Still, I may have to downgrade it from a 10/10 to a 9/10. How perfect can a movie be if it takes two viewings to understand it?
Oh, sure, it’s not as Byzantine as Octopussy, but it takes a lot of work to figure out what’s going on and why. I may do some kind of diagram for a future edition of my book (if there is one).
Delightfully, when you know what’s going to happen, you can see little hints dropped throughout. Unlike, say, The World Is Not Enough, you can actually see little acting cues that there’s something going on behind the scenes.
By the way, if you’ve seen the movie I highly recommend this spoilerific and interesting discussion of the medical facts surrounding a particular scene in Casino Royale.
Filling in the “the”s
On the surface, I’m doing an acrostic puzzle. But really, I’m with Nana.
The acrostic is in a Simon & Schuster spiral bound book of “Crostic” puzzles edited by Thomas Middleton. I am doing this puzzle at the kitchen table, but the binding and the flat, hard cardboard cover make it easy to sit in bed and do these puzzles on my knees.
Like Nana did.
When Nana would come to stay with us, she would have a suitcase full of mysteries and Middleton Crostics. She would read and do puzzles. She used sharp pencils, deadly, blood-drawing sharp pencils, always long. She never seemed to have stubby pencils. And I would get in bed with her, and she would teach me how to do the puzzles. » Read more..
