article 30

They have no right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Neither do you. Neither does anyone.

Article 30, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day.

article 29

She has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of her personality is possible.

So do you.

Article 29, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day.


Nini gets this one. Of course she does. She's much in my thoughts just now, having just passed. I worked with my cousin on her obituary which reports not only a life well lived but on all the civic activities that she made a contribution to during her life. She gave so much as a small business owner in Mill Valley and a mother in Sonoma. Among them: She was instrumental in the founding of The Church Mouse, a thrift shop that supports education.

so this is cincinnati

so this is cincinnati
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Waiting.

Posting by cameraphone from Cincinnati International.

cincinnati chili 3-way

cincinnati chili 3-way
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Because I have it on good authority that one of the things you do when you're laid over in Cincinnati for six hours longer than expected due to ice storms in Chicago is to ferret out that Cincinnati regional specialty: The Chili & Spaghetti 3-way.

"3-way" because it has 1) spaghetti 2) gold star chili & 3) cheese. I guess. (They tell me onions would make it a 4-way.)

Surprisingly good. In a stick to your ribs comfort me with carbs and greasy goodness kind of way.

pat down

So apparently ordering a ticket at the last minute for cheap via Priceline to go visit your grandmother in her final hours can mark you as a security threat, requiring further pat down and pawing.

Because you know what frugal spontaneous devil-may-care characters those terrorists are.

To their credit the TSA guys were awfully compassionate when I explained to them why my luggage was overpacked with things like framed pictures and a lovely hand embroidered shawl that still smells, even now smells (oh that it always smells) like my Nini.

Headed home. Sonoma on Friday for the funeral.

Posting by cameraphone from the Phoenix Sky-something (Harbor?) Airport.

charred saguaro

charred saguaro
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Looked like a lightening strike. Much like how this weekend felt.

In an instant the unexpected happens, then passes, and everything is changed.

Shot earlier today on Lost Dog Trail, Scottsdale, AZ

Posting by cameraphone

king of the road

king of the road
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

The view from my Nini's bed, where she passed away yesterday under the careful compassionate care of hospice and in the company of four of her six daughters. The wall is covered with dozens of pics, of which these are only two: Her husband, my Bumpa, and the Silver Streak trailer they
traveled in together through North and Central America.

The dozens and dozens of others are of family and friends and memories of a life well lived.

Posting by cameraphone from Phoenix, AZ where I'm saying goodbye.

Ite, missa est.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes --
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs --
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought --
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone --

This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow --
First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go --

— Emily Dickinson

Nini passed this morning. Just as my flight touched down she let go.

I'll write more later: Right now there's much to do.

Thank you friends, for your kind words, wishes, prayers and hugs.

hold me.

So I travel, oh, I dunno, let's say a LOT, through airports, most of it wearing that shit kicking business armor that I put on when I'm on the clock.

And, after the initial strip down, I usually move through security without incident, gather my goods and continue to the gate.

But this morning, after rising at 3 AM and driving through the dark and the cold to board a plane that will take me to the many tears of Phoenix where my grandmother lays dying instead of the weekend of laughter long ago planned with friends; planned long before Nini -- who was expected to live to 100, hale and strong and sharp -- felt the slow ache in her back, the shooting pain across her chest, the knocking on the door of normalcy called cancer.

So this morning, of all mornings, they decide to mark me and pull me into the "special" line, call me solicitously by my last name and swab my boots and paw through my bag.

This morning I'm the enemy, and, with my exoskeleton split wide open to expose my soft underbelly, they pull me into the pen and pat me down with unfeeling hands sheathed in plastic gloves.

This morning, when all I ache for is to be held close, to remember where I end and the rest of the world begins, this morning they brush their hands unfeelingly across all my extremeties as though I'm packing malice aforethought, and then, just as they tip me past the point of tolerance (how can anyone so acutely *not see* another human being?), turn abruptly and send me on my way.

Outbound to Phoenix.
To grandmother's house we go.

article 28

Afghanistan
Originally uploaded by babasteve.

He is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

So are you.

Article 28, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day.

LA diptych

article 27

George Ward Tjungurrayi
Originally uploaded by Paul Gosney.

He has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

He has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

So do you.

Article 27, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day.

butternuts

or how gourds got their reputation

Exhausted. Starved. Glad I baked up that metric ton of butternut squash that I scored from one of our last CSA hauls and froze the meat. Glad now that I can pull it from the freezer and cook up a pot of sweet soup in no time, freely adapted from my girl Georgia's Pumpkin Soup.[1]

Bake the pumpkin butternut squash. Mash it up good and blend 1 cup (or 2) of squash with 3 cups chicken veggie broth and 1 cup of cream or half & half. Blend until smooth; heat but do not simmer. Season with herb sea salt and freshly grated nutmeg.

Eat it up, yum.

[1] Realizing too that, even given all of the recipes I dip into over time, most of the ones that I share here at detritus come from one of three books, so let's have this post do double duty and serve up a recommendation for some killer cookbooks for your favorite cooker come Christmas:

• A Painter's Kitchen


• Bistro Cooking


• Verdura

cacophony

Garbage shot. I know. But there's something about it I like.

Posting by cameraphone from LAX.

Praying they let us land at ORD.
Where 4 inches of snow awaits me.

sugimoto horizon line

Outside window 1D, outbound to LAX.

Coughed up the miles to score a first class seat for this roundabout to LA today (both legs in one day, returning in snowfall late tonight so I can be around for a uasability lab in Chicago tomorrow) which, as an especially wise individual recently pointed out to me, is a somewhat crazy thing to do, seeing how I was in San Francisco on Sunday and coulda just hiked down from there.

True. Coulda. Probably shoulda.

Scratch that: Definitely shoulda. But it came up at the last minute and I wasn't thinking straight.

Posting by cameraphone at 30,000 ft and frustrated that my cameraphone adds those extra few pixels along the bottom outside the range of the viewfinder because I had such a perfect Sugimoto [1] horizon line thing going.

Ah well. There's always post-production in Picnik when I get back home.

[1] will update on my return -- in the meantime the curious might want to search this blog for "Sugimoto."

Update: Little better post-Picnik. Probably shoulda brought out the Canon point-and-shoot.

article 26

the trio
Originally uploaded by janchan.

They have the right to education.

So do you.

Article 26, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day. What are you gonna learn?

lather. rinse. repeat.

secondary orality. The tendency of electronic media to echo the cadences of earlier oral cultures.

“If you examine the Web through the lens of orality, you can’t help but see it everywhere: Orality is participatory, interactive, communal and focused on the present. The Web is all of these things.”

From the Sunday New York Times piece Friending, Ancient or Otherwise, citing Irwin Chen, a design instructor at Parsons who is developing a new course to explore the emergence of oral culture online, in reference to the term "secondary orality" as it was coined in 1982 by the Rev. Walter J. Ong, a professor at St. Louis University and student of Marshall McLuhan.

article 25

mother-child
Originally uploaded by Arjen P van de Merwe.

They have the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of themselves and of their family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond their control.

So do you.

Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day

subtext

a found poem

it depends

but the lens shows
not just the surface

the levels underneath
are revealed

somebody
told me once
how optically

this was possible

I just thought
it was magic

Found in Nan Goldin's piece Camera Ready in this Sunday's New York Times Style Magazine in which she writes about her Leica.

Posting via Sidekick from the road home.

sunset over san andreas

sunset over san andreas
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Posting from I-280
by cameraphone

frank is a miracle

frank is a miracle
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Nob Hill, SF

Posting by cameraphone from San Francisco, CA

article 24

grandmother in esquipulas
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

She has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

So do you.

Article 24, International Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day. How you gonna recreate?

the unmade bed

the unmade bed
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Few things sweeter in this life than an unmade bed (and friends, don't you pretend you don't know what I'm talking about).

And a little bit of that doorframe tilt is my doing; but most of it is this great old building.

Posting by cameraphone from SF -- shot from the hallway that unites the bedroom, sitting room & bath of the suite that I scored on this trip -- for the rate of a regular room. sweet.

san francisco skyline

san francisco skyline
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Posting by cameraphone
from Taylor Street.

Sanfrancisco, CA

article 23

II Trade Union Forum of the Americas
Originally uploaded by Tatiana Cardeal.

They have the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

Without any discrimination, they have the right to equal pay for equal work.

They have the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for themselves and their families an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

They have the right to form and to join trade unions for their protection of interests.

So do you.

Article 21, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day. What are you going to work out?

silent meditation

My Nini, my mother's mother, aka She Who Shows Up, is mother to a huge brood of seven kids, each of them with kids of their own, and many of those with kids as well. She is much loved, because she loves so much, and often visited and spends much effort balancing the distribution of attention to each and all.

Since my Bumpa passed away earlier this year she's been nursing a sore back; in the last few weeks she's been experiencing strange persistent chest pain. The pain was so bad that she was admitted to the hospital so that they could figure out what was going on, and they discovered that a morphine drip wasn't enough to quench the angry ache. So they gave her something stronger.

One of my aunts was down there visiting when this all reached a head; another flew down as things started to heat up.

The doctors are still testing, they haven't pinned it down exactly, and yesterday the doctor told her that they hoped to have a diagnosis for her today.

My Nini being the practical Oakie that she is figured they knew enough by now and said to the doc: "Tell me straight: what do you think I have?"

And he said: "We think you have an aggressive form of cancer."

And this is what Nini did: She asked her kids not to call. She asked her kids to ask their kids not to call. For 24 hours. So that she could sit and think in peace and make some decisions about the rest of her life.

Call on Saturday, she said. Give me a chance to think. Give me room for my thoughts.

And so I will. I'll wait awhile to show up. And while I wait I'll hold her in my heart. No thoughts. Just hold her there, surround her with love. Surround her with life; the life she gave me.



p.s. Last year Nini self-published her memoirs -- here's a snippet »

And, while we're still in the holiday season, you really oughta try Nini's cherry jello recipe »

(cameraphone shot from this summer's Rocky Mountain road trip; shot in Silverton, CO, 9k+ feet in the air)

les nuits de paris

les nuits de paris massage and sauna
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

I stay in the classiest neighborhoods.

Sign out front (the door is in the alley) next to the red velvet curtain says: "Please ring the bell."

One block up from my hotel on the edge of San Francisco's Tenderloin District.

(It's surprisingly nice, actually. And this trip I scored a suite.)

Posting by cameraphone from San Francisco, CA

article 22

Old Lady
Originally uploaded by Suyog Gaidhani.

As a member of society, she has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for her dignity and the free development of her personality.

So do you.

Article 22, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day. What are you going to realize?

@ 30,000 ft

as if they wished to
(fully clothed in this tangle)
induce osmosis

Couple to my left on this flight to San Francisco has the whole row to themselves and they're getting quite, shall we say (while applying unnecessary quotation marks): "Frisky".

but to this day imperishable

a found poem

by this time
it was February
and although
still shaky
I knew
I had emerged

into light

I felt myself
no longer a husk

but a body

with some
of the body's
sweet juices
stirring again

I had my first dream
in many months
confused

but to this day
imperishable

with a flute in it
somewhere
and a wild goose
and a dancing girl

Found in William Styron's Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness in which Styron writes of the passing storm of his crippling depression.

Posting by cameraphone outbound from ORD to SFO

article 21

certeza
Originally uploaded by eastlincolnstreet.

He has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. He has the right to equal access to public service in his country.

His will, and the will of his fellow citizens, shall be the basis of the authority of government; this shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Same for you. And your country. Same for the U.S. of A.

Article 21, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day. Get out the vote.

speaking of effigies

speaking of effigies
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Divorce is most of all lonely.

Mine was compounded by the fact that my family adored my ex- and, for whatever reason -- maybe because the realization that the happy shining life that I loved so much was, in part, a sham -- I didn’t share a lot of details with them about why we were getting divorced. Protecting him and myself, I guess. But the event largely proceeded in silence. My silence. They didn’t ask much, and I didn’t tell them much.

Which made for a very lonely time in which I settled into the understanding that everything I wished for was gone.

It all exploded (many years ago, now) around Thanksgiving and had settled some by Christmas, but I was feeling so raw that I declined invitations from family and friends and opted to spend my Christmas at home alone by myself.

I don’t recommend it. But it gave me plenty of room to cry. And feel lost and alone and as if my world had ended.

Right. Like I said. Don’t recommend it.

A few days after Christmas I received a package from my little brother. I felt I had disappointed my brothers most of all. I gave them the news indirectly, cc’ing them on an email that I sent to my father as a last minute impulse. They had a great relationship with my ex- -- he was like a brother, he fit my family so well -- and it was the wrong wrong wrong way to do it. But hurt skews your best rational impulses, and regret doesn’t mean you can take it back.

So I received a late Christmas package from my little brother. The late part made sense: as a clan we seem to share a collective phobia of post offices and things always get mailed later than they should. What’s unusual is receiving a gift on time from my family. Late is expected.

I received a slip to pick up the package at the P.O. and so I did, taking it with me next door to the sublime Espresso Vivace to have a shot of coffee before I headed back up the hill for home. My empty home.

I decided to open his package right there at Vivace, and this little porcelain figurine -- the very first and the very last porcelain figurine that I have ever received from any member of my family -- was in the package. (We are not, as a habit, givers of porcelain figurines. Plastic, maybe. Under certain circumstances.) Along with a note from my brother.

I saw the figure, read the note and immediately started to cry. Carefully, silently, my chest heaving and my trying to hide it as I sat in that cafe.

I’ve misplaced the note, so I’ll have to paraphrase it here, but first: a backstory.

The whole tribe of us are hams, and as kids we excelled at mounting theatrical productions. My older sister was the ring leader, and I can still mime for you her choreography to Fantasia -- with roles for all four of us -- that grew and took shape over several years of working it. The story line had nothing to do with the real Fantasia -- Fantasia was convenient because we had the LP and a record player -- it was our score.

I’ll spare you the ELO Electric Bump story. But put it on and I’ll bump it for you, without missing a beat.

So. To the fairy godmother.

One of our most spectacular productions took shape over a weekend at my grandparent’s home in Seattle. I think I’ve mentioned before the levels and layers of that home -- it was made for theater. We had just moved back to the Northwest from Denver, and were staying there with my grandparents who were also putting up some family friends who had a daughter about the same age as my sister and me. We seized the moment to mount a full-scale production of Cinderella, using my grandmother’s spectacular ball gown collection for costuming (my grandfather was grand potentate of the Nile Temple in the 1960s -- which meant she had an amazing ball gown collection).

We dressed Cinderella in blue taffeta -- A, the family friend, played the princess-to-be. My sister reprised her role of wicked witch (which she played to perfection almost every single Halloween of our childhood) in the role of wicked stepmother. I think my youngest brother A was the prince, and G played miscellaneous roles, including the priest who would ultimately marry the prince and his princess (the bride’s train, btw, was an extended roll of toilet paper that unspooled as she walked down the aisle).

I was the fairy godmother and I chose for my costume a killer sunshine yellow fringed flapper gown. Sleeveless with straight lines and long satiny fringe running in tiers over the whole of that dress. I asked my grandmother about it not too long ago and unfortunately it’s long gone. Although I’m sure it wouldn’t fit me now (we were unusually tall kids and she was diminutive, so we got away with it then), but if I could score it today I’d find myself a ball to go to. That was a gorgeous gown.

If I may say, I played the part of fairy godmother to perfection. It was my best role ever, wholly improvised, and played to uproarious laughter to a house of completely sloshed adults. They loved it. They particularly loved my crowning moment when, having dressed the ragged Cinderella in a flurry of magical accoutrements (G rushed the goods in when I waved my wand -- it was all very well done) the princess asked: “But I have no shoes. What will I wear for shoes?”

I pondered the problem, studied it, and then resolved it in a flourish -- by pulling a pair of stilettos -- our stand-in glass slippers -- out of the top of my dress where I had propped them in anticipation, heels pointing out, like a stuffed bullet bra, against my then quite flat chest. (This was the summer of what would be my 5th grade year.)


The crowd fell apart.

It was my greatest triumph.

It took some time to mop up the mess, but we finally got the audience to settle down and we took the show to its logical conclusion. Flawlessly executed by all. And of course, after it was done, we talked and talked and talked about it. Told the story over and over.

Because that’s what you do when you put on a show with the best players you’ll ever perform with; when you’re perfectly in synch in a way that only folks who love each other unthinkingly can be.

And that’s why I cried when I read my brother’s note; my brother who felt so far from me just then, who I thought I had lost by making a hugely difficult decision. My brother said in effect: “Merry Christmas to my sister, the best fairy godmother ever.” And some more stuff about being the best sister ever.

Reminding me all at once that I was loved.

And reminding me of something every girl needs to know: that I was my own fairy godmother. That I held the power to make all my wishes come true.





Update: I asked my brothers to verify whether I got their roles right in our world famous production of Cinderella. A couldn't remember for sure (he was so young) but G had no doubt that I mistakenly swapped them -- he was the prince for sure, because he got to dance with the princess. So please consider this amendment.

A also reminded me that he was on the phone with my brother when my infamous cc' came across the wires, and G said: "Oh: I just got an email from D." To which A said: "Hey: me too." Thinking it was Thanksgiving greetings they opened it together and both went: "ohhhhhhhhh noooo." The best part is that they laugh about the timing of it today -- these are the kinds of things we laugh about in our family. 'Cause baby, if you lose your lose your laugh you lose your footing. (Ken Kesey said that first.)

hang on st. christopher

hang on st. christopher
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

St. Christopher, Patron Saint of Travelers

A recent gift from my aunt, who's also my godmother, and a good recovering Catholic Unitarian.

The tag reads: "Dayna: St. Christopher, to guarantee a safe journey back to yourself."

Godmoms always seem to know just what you need. Just when you need it.

title courtesy of Mr. Tom Waits

article 20

travelling bass player
Originally uploaded by Mr. Mark.

They have the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

And may not be compelled to belong to an association.

Same for you.

Article 20, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day. Who you gonna associate with? (Or not.)

outlook not good

outlook not good
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Regrettably, I did *not* follow the fine advice of my Flickr friends to put the man who revealed himself to me in the cheese [1] up on E-bay; instead I wrapped him in cellophane and put him back in the dairy drawer.

Until tonight. When I withdrew him from the drawer and asked him to part with a few more slices, to top off a buffalo burger.

Which he did, at some cost.

His expression, which before was a bit passive and stoic, has morphed into one of great concern and alarm.

I'm afraid, my friends, that this portent does not bode well at all.

Not well at all.

[1] apologies: posting by cameraphone. I'll circle back soon to link up the original man who revealed himself to me in the cheese -- until then you should be able to find him by browsing back in the stream by a few weeks.

Update: linked.

so busted.

Video: Dove Onslaught Exposed

article 19

lined up for the sun...
Originally uploaded by Maggie's World.

They have the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

So do you.

Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day. How will you express yourself? What information will you seek, receive & impart?

speaking of geometries

At the end of Capel Street
Originally uploaded by Slipping Away.

Flickrite slipping away, aka Karim of Dublin, has flattered me by citing a shot that I took in his fair city not too long ago as an influence on this beauty that he posted over the weekend.

One of the best things about receiving a sweet compliment like that is that it gave me a chance to get reacquainted with Karim's Flickr photostream, which is chock full of symmetries, geometries and surprising compositions -- and architecture. Lots and lots of architecture.

Here's a brief selection of images that he shot in Estonia -- they're lovely »

persimmons, piano hinges & parallelograms

Decided to go ahead and reactivate a post that I created back in July (as part of the Mighty Mo Road Show) and then quickly relegated to draft form. At the time I thought it was a cop out, and too shallow a treatment of the Frank Lloyd Wright house that we visited outside of St. Louis. Maybe it is. It's simply a letter that I wrote to my grandmother around that time, knowing how much she loves Wright's lines, and knowing how much it reminds her of my Bompa and his love of Wright's architecture.

I never did get around to doing it right, but something about persimmon season made me think about that place again and regret that I didn't at least mention it here. The Kraus House is available by appointment only and I suspect it deserves more attention than it gets. It's a gem, nestled in a persimmon grove, strung together with piano hinges and framed out in a series parallelograms.

The true marvels reside inside. The interior retains all of Wright's original furnishings -- down even to the bedspreads -- much like the Dana Thomas house but on a smaller scale. (And DON'T get me started about the gal from Southern California who compulsively flipped over and started fingering the bedspread, to our collective horror, as if she were in a J.C. Penney's showroom and deliberating whether she might buy it. The docent showed remarkable restraint in telling her "PLEASE. you mustn't. do. that.")

But of course they won't allow photographs of the interior. So here's a brief Flickr slideshow of the exterior of the home »

And here's a link to the original post: Kraus Haus »

The Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth Park
120 North Ballas Road
Kirkwood, Missouri 63122
To schedule a tour call 314-822-8359

jodi green's mfa thesis

dress #7 state 5 (back)
Originally uploaded by jodigreen.
I'm so digging this dress.

Posted by Flickrite Jodi Green -- an installment in her MFA Thesis project in which she's:

wearing exclusively dresses that I have made and printed on, wearing each only once before printing on it again, and documenting the printing, the wearing and the building up of ink/breaking down of fabric that occurs.

She's documenting the project on her blog »

article 18

hafauxtel 02
Originally uploaded by jewschool.

He has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

So do you.

Article 18, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day.

fig. 2

Figs are the new pomegranates.

The Editor of the Colorado Review, speaking with tongue planted firmly in cheek, as we swapped emails after she informed me that the journal would like to use my (fig.) image (which she spotted in my Flickrstream) for the cover of their Fall/Winter Issue and would I mind a few dollars and several copies in exchange?

To which I said: I wouldn't mind at all. And: Thank you.

article 17

Tiny People
Originally uploaded by Tal Bright.

He has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. He shall not be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Ditto for you.

Article 17, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day

on june 24th

Il tesoro del bosco ...
Originally uploaded by *chiara*.

ask Giuseppina

who appears to be
in her late 70’s

how to make nocino,
the walnut liqueur,
and the recipe begins:

On June 24th
pick the walnuts


From The Journey Home: Making a New Life in the Old Country, a sweet piece in yesterday’s New York Times about a Los Angeleno who returned to her grandmother’s Italy and found herself home.

of what is past, or passing, or to come

Saw the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men. Need to see it again, because on the first pass I only half understood it. But I’m pretty sure it’s brilliant.

I know for certain it’s haunting, and I suspect that was by design.

(If you haven’t seen the movie and plan to, you may want to skip this post, because I’m going to spill all kinds of information as I try to make sense out of it. But please come back after you’ve seen it and tell me how you parsed it, because this is the kind of movie you want to spend long hours dissecting with friends before you dive in to see again. And again.)

Anton Chigurh, the psychopath with the pneumatic cattle gun played by Javier Bardem who drives so much of the action in the film, has a curious trait that I wouldn’t have thought to name if Mr. Hoo hadn’t raised the question on the way home, namely: “Why did he kill off the two corporate guys early in the film? I didn’t get that.” The two corporate fellows who, it appears, brought in Chigurh to track down poor old Llewelyn Moss, Josh Brolin’s character, the welder who, while hunting, stumbles by chance upon a drug deal gone bad, and traces, through careful inference, two million dollars -- under a tree, on a far ridge -- that was no longer needed by the dead man holding it.



Yeah. Doesn’t immediately make sense. But as the movie unfolds it appears there’s an logic baked in: Chigurh obliterates anyone who sees him in his official capacity. The corporate guys were dispatched to get him started on the trail, therefore... Too simplistic a syllogism maybe, but hear me out. Tommy Lee Jone’s character, Bell, who holds down the moral center of the film, refers to him as a “ghost”, and we hear passing reference to his immateriality as the story spools out.

“You saw him and you’re still alive?” Woody Harrelson’s Carson Wells asks Llewelyn. And while Llewelyn claims so, it’s not entirely true: he heard Chigurh’s approach, saw the shadows of his feet under the door, his ghostly reflection in the glass. Never do they face each other square on the way gunslingers oughta. Not even at the end do we see the moment of their confrontation: we only see the remains. (Although Wells himself reports having seen Chigurh the previous November, by the movie’s end Wells too is dead.)

“Are you going to kill me?” asks the Accountant, after Chigurh has obliterated the corporate guy who was the boss of the other corporate guys, and Chigurh asks him, while full on facing him: “I don’t know: did you see me?”



And finally: “You didn’t see me,” states Chigurh, as he pays off the boys on bikes who assist him after he’s been sideswiped in a violent car accident at the movie’s end. These are his last words in the film, and it’s a bit startling to see that he leaves the boys standing -- he is, after all, fleeing the scene of a murder, where he obliterated a poor woman who did nothing more than wind up on the wrong side of a deal that Chigurh offered to her husband (a deal to which the husband never nearly agreed), and then fulfilled on “principle”. We learn about his principles earlier in the film -- and one’s left to wonder if we’re to assume that Chigurh is supposed to be the film’s moral center -- in an upended wild west kind of way.

Because this is a Western, after all, and even though it’s set in 1980 and drug runners have replaced cattle rustlers, the men pack shotguns, ride horseback (when they’re not driving Fords), and the overriding impulse of the film is to reign in lawlessness that has overrun its rim.

Which is why I keep coming back to this image of the shadowy Chigurh. The hero who impacts his environment profoundly and then disappears into the horizon at film’s end to destinations unknown is a prevailing theme in Westerns. Alan Ladd in Shane. Lee Van Cleef in For a Few Dollars More. Even Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles. (Okay, okay: Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder. But buddies are allowed. And besides: Blazing Saddles was a parody in which they ride off on their horses before they pile into a waiting limousine. Fact that they parodied the ride to the horizon only strengthens my point. ;)

Our last shot of Chigurh in No Country for Old Men is from the back as he limps off into the horizon. Only in this film he’s surrounded by a Texas suburb rather than the wide open plain.



So what? Why does it matter? Is it a statement on the American West or the Hollywood Western that Chigurh uses a huge shotgun[1] outfitted with a silencer to enforce his disappearing act? Or is it just a really cool character device -- this violent impulse to be seen and yet remain unseen -- that Cormac McCarthy worked into the story for entirely different reasons?

The romantic notion of the tortured individual who’s seeking his soul's respite out on the broad Western horizon doesn’t hold up here. Maybe because the horizon’s run out -- there is no untamed West left -- and instead of wandering off into the far reaches where there is no one and none can find him and he can pursue his friendless solitary way -- in order to have the thing that Western heros seek, he must raze the horizon of all living things.

Maybe.

Or maybe it’s a statement on the American West: The human cost of that horizon; a horizon that, as wilderness evaporates under the forward movement of development, is increasingly illusory.

Hell I don’t know. Like I said: I only half understood it. Just haunted by a few of the possibilities. Haunted too by the theme of chance that circles strongly through the film.

But I need another viewing before I throw any more dust into this wind.


p.s. On a lark: it'll be interesting to see, given the film's dark & fleshy poster (among other things), whether the film's box office performance conforms to the law of dark movie posters »



[1] yeah. not a boy. can’t tell you what gauge the shotgun was. sorry.

article 16

Love Jump!
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As women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, they are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

So are you.

Article 16, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

December 10th is International Human Rights Day