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    • Apr

    27

    “Blindness” to be a Movie

    Filed Under books, movies, people, quotes | Leave a Comment

    I’m not quite sure what to think yet. One of my favorite novels, Blindness, is being adapted to the big screen. The cast list has me scratching my chin - it includes Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Sandra Oh, Danny Glover, and Gael Garcia Bernal. The inclusion of North Americans puzzles me a little as the writer, José Saramago, is Portuguese, and his stories tend to be set in nameless Iberian countries. 

    But … it could be good. The premise - in case you’re wondering by this time - is this: a man on his way home from work or wherever is sitting in his car at a light, when all of the sudden he goes blind. Of course, he cannot drive so he is assisted to his home by another man. The man who went blind visits the doctor, who isn’t sure what’s going on. But very soon after, the doctor goes blind. The blind man’s wife goes blind. Pretty soon many people have inexplicably gone blind, and the government starts housing them all in an unused asylum.  And then we see what happens to people in these situations, and what becomes of society as more and more people lose their sight.  

    Back to the film: The director, Fernando Meirelles - also Portuguese - is responsible for City of God and The Constant Gardener. Oh my god - two films that can grind even a stone heart into sand for an hourglass. I’ve only a little exposure to the screenwriter Don McKellar. He is a Canadian, who seems to travel (at least some of the time) within this circle of excellent and interesting Canadian actors and directors like Egoyan, Cronenberg, Sarah Polley, and Oh. He made the indie film, Last Night, which I thought was … okay. In general, I find Canadian films made by this group of people to feel slightly frozen. I like them, but the characters always seem to be in the midst of thawing. 

    Maybe something truly remarkable will be the result when these two Portuguese and Canadian sensibilities are mixed. The novel itself gives the experience of being rent from a long distance. Saramago is magical that way.

    This afternoon I skimmed through some of the book, rereading underlined passages. It’s a challenge to quote Saramago because his “sentences” are the length of paragraphs, while his paragraphs are the length of chapters; his humor is difficult to take out of context, and the dialogue is not separated from the narrative.  But here are a couple of excerpts that I like:

    …The good and the evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much-talked-of immortality ….

    … She did not waste time asking herself where such a thought had come from, she was only surprised at its slowness, at how the first word had been so slow in appearing, the slowness of those to follow, and how she found that the thought was already there before, somewhere or other, and only the words were missing, like a body searching in the bed for the hollow that had been prepared for it by the mere idea of lying down. 

     

    … animals are like people, they get used to everything in the end.

    That last one reminded me of something Dostoevsky wrote in another of my favorite pieces of fiction, House of the Dead, - “Man is a creature who can get used to anything, and I believe that is the very best way of defining him.” 

    There are many days when I think this is true. In Blindness, Saramago offers a great parable. 

    Popularity: 45% [?]

    Jan

    11

    More on Money as Debt (from the 18th C.)

    Filed Under books, capitalism, class, college studies, happiness, history, questions, quotes | 3 Comments

    Never say never, indeed. It’s nearly 4 in the morning, and I’m delighting over pamphlets from 1720 about an ill-managed public land bank experiment in Massachusetts. Having just watched Money as Debt sheds some light on the subject, as did the 1953 article The Land-Bank System in the American Colonies (courtesy of JSTOR).

    The best thing is that my professor (the class is Muckraking: Activists’ Role in History) provided us with a format that links passages from the Colman pamphlet to another that refutes it (by a fellow named Wigglesworth).

    Colman is in despair about the middle class landowners who have taken out paper currency loans against their estates through the public land banks; they are now in dire straits because there isn’t enough paper money in circulation to pay off the debts with interest. While I sympathize with Colman (but disagree with his faith in the private bank), one of Wigglesworth’s responses is what I want to note here (emphasis is mine):

    For it is easie to see, that if we had never trusted one another, the worst Husbands of us all could not have spent more than we earnt ; for when we must pay ready Mony for every thing we buy, we can’t buy more than we earn Mony to pay for; unless we borrow Mony at Interest to support our Extravagance; a thing which but few would have been so foolish as to have done. Indeed when Debts are already contracted, Do but set up a Bank to borrow of, and we have found from sad experience already, that men will be ready enough to mortgage their Estates for mony to pay their Debts. But (I say again) where Debts were not before contracted, few men would have been so foolish, as to borrow Mony at Interest to provide needless Fineries and Gew-Gaws for their Families. The Folly of so few could not have affected the Country.

    Oh wow; does any of this sound familiar?

    I am fascinated by these papers, and also by the fact that in our society today - 290 years later - we are encouraged as a people to buy more in order to spur the economy, to take out more loans, to spend, and spend, and spend. That is our “role” as consumer-citizens.  And yet, as individuals, we are shamed and chastised if unable to pay on our debts; then we are irresponsible, foolish, and greedy.

    And while that may be the case (though, not necessarily), what then, is the vice? Is the vice to borrow money (at interest) in the first place, for things we can get by without? Or is the vice to fall into a situation where one cannot pay on the money borrowed?

    Popularity: 35% [?]

    Sep

    26

    Riane Eisler Comes to Portland - Real Wealth of Nations

    Filed Under books, capitalism, class, events, heteropatriarchy, local, people, workshops | Leave a Comment

    I agreed to serve as moderator at Riane Eisler’s presentation on her book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics. Dr. Eisler is best known for writing The Chalice and the Blade, and having been an influence on David Korten, author of The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community.

    Dr. Eisler’s talk will be followed by a panel discussion featuring four Portlanders who are working in areas related to children, sustainability, food, and local currency. We’ll be looking at how to create and support a “sharing and caring” economy in which meaningful work, families, health, and the environment are priorities - not afterthoughts.

    The event will be held at First Unitarian Church (SW 12th and Main) in downtown Portland at 7pm on Friday, October 26, 2007. Co-sponsors include KBOO community radio. Tickets will be sliding scale, $5-$20 - but no one will be turned away due to lack of funds. Seating is limited (to about 600), so purchase your ticket today!

    Click below for a link to pay using PayPal, your debit/credit card or checking account.

    A little background information: Real Wealth of Portland was organized by several local women, namely Marcia Meyers and Pat Osborn, who both attend First Unitarian Church. They started a small group, which expanded to include me (Hafidha), Andrea Drury, Celeste Howard, Kimberly Ford, and Judy Bennett. The group has been meeting weekly since the first week of August to strategize ways to organize book groups, and foment a caring and sharing revolution in Portland. Marcia’s been indispensable; she has helped to coordinate bringing both Dr. Korten and Dr. Eisler to General Assembly in the past.

    For more information, questions or comments, please visit realwealthpdx.com or email realwealthpdx@adrury.com

    Click here to buy tickets!


    Popularity: 39% [?]

    Aug

    21

    A Poetry A Day

    Filed Under being creative, books, inspiration, local, movies, poetry, quotes, small happinesses | 1 Comment

    Poetry every day this week:

    Last night the DH and I had a few hours to kill before our movie (Sunshine) began, so we went to Powell’s Books. I spotted a $9 copy of Writing the World, a book about William Stafford’s poetry. On the first page of the Introduction is the poem from which the title came:

    In the stillness around me that no one can cross
    I am writing for life.
    The world like a leaf turns as it falls.

    Those first three lines have been revolving in my head all night, even as I slept.  I also picked up two books by Stafford himself, The Answers are Inside the Mountains: Meditations on the Writing Life, and a collection of poems, Even in Quiet Places.  The only book of Stafford’s that I owned before is Every War Has Two Losers, which was how I became introduced to him.

    Earlier in the week, while cleaning at my old house, I found a deck of Poet’s Corner Knowledge Cards. Over the next few days, I read through them, setting aside the cards that interested me the most. So now I have it in my notes to read (more) Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Visits to St. Elizabeth’s” by Elizabeth Bishop, Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” the works of Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay, and Rilke’s Duino Elegies.

    While at Powell’s I was very tempted to get some of those works, but decided against it. I can still hear Robert Fritz’s suggestion to focus on one thing at a time. That is very hard for me to do, but necessary for long-term sanity.

    This morning when I woke up, I prepared myself a Medifast chai latte, loaded the dishwasher, and then sat down to write my “three pages.” After this, I read through my favorite poetry cards again, wrote two poems, re-read sections of Writing for Life, and THEN I pulled out the laptop.

    And the first UU blog I read is MoxieLife - where today’s subject is a poetry contest! There is even a prize - a copy of The Practice of Poetry. The challenge is:

    Write a poem that introduces a family member and a superhero. Of course, this is an imaginary encounter, but because you know your family so well the poem can be rich in reality. There aren’t any other rules except I think it is fun to use either my most repressed relative or my most flamboyant. It also works well to have this be a rather long poem of 20 - 30 lines but that isn’t necessary and there is no particular form of verse ether.

    If you are so inclined, join the contest! It will be fun. Hopefully later sometime today I’ll be able to squeeze a poem out. One thing the poetry workshop I attended earlier this month taught me is that to write a poem is no big thing. You can do it any time of day, and it doesn’t even have to be finished. You just have to do it. It may not be good, but at least you’ve done it. You can’t write a good poem if you don’t write anything at all.

    Popularity: 31% [?]

    Aug

    7

    No Less Real than Myth

    Filed Under books, islam, questions, quotes, religion, spiritual practice, uuism | 4 Comments

    Priests in Xela, Guatemala 2005

    I’m still thinking about my prior post, The Gods You Didn’t Choose, the responses to it, and posts on other blogs - such as Peacebang, Trivium, Liberal Faith Tradition, The Hanif Blog - related to UU concerns about religious legacy.

    What I don’t like is the centrality of Christianity. The expectation that Christianity is the starting point, when for me, it doesn’t feel as though it’s my cultural starting point.

    But as others have said, you don’t get to choose your parents. Whether I like it or not, Jesus is mainstream, and although I was raised to swim against the religious current, it may no longer be appropriate to feel resentful about it.

    As one commenter suggested, rebelliousness can be a pretty immature reaction (I’d rather not use the word adolescent).

    I was taking this whole thing very personally. There are many people who study religions, histories and cultures for the sake of expanding their horizons - not necessarily their religious practices. Why couldn’t I do the same? Improving my understanding of Christian theology doesn’t mean becoming a Christian or even wanting to be one.

    So I’m good with that. I can handle that. What is likely to frustrate me for the rest of my life, however, is watching people become ensnared by religious teachings, debating and making points of faith out of answers to questions I consider to be inherently problematic (e.g. was Mary, mother of Jesus, a literal virgin?). More painful than that is seeing how these questions are given great value simply because they are religious questions, when to me they are no more crucial to living a moral life than raging debates about the motivations, lifestyles and destinies of any other mythological characters - be they Han Solo, Orpheus or Ophelia.

    Yes, I equated people we all know to be fiction with the characters of great monotheistic traditions. Not to diminish them, but to put them in perspective. Jonah of the Bible is less real to me than, say, Omar ibn al Khattab, but that’s because Omar ibn al Khattab was part of the mythology that I grew up with. This isn’t to say he didn’t exist -  even you and I have stories that can one day be larger than life. The stories we tell of our more immediate ancestors demonstrate this possibility.

    Another quote from Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul:

    When we tell stories about the family without judgment and without instant analysis, the literal persons turn into characters in a drama and isolated episodes reveal themselves as themes in a great saga.

    I respect myths - no, I love them. Let’s make some more.

    The reason I referred to my last post as The Gods You Didn’t Choose is because I really do believe that it’s a choice - which gods you want to believe in, which world view. And I’ve seen this ever since I was a child: so many Christians who take for granted that there is something more real about what they believe.

    It would be unfair of me to suggest in any way that this is an issue specific to Unitarian Universalism, because that would be false; but all the talk about theology and “going back” to “our roots” raised some sort of internal alarm. The “please tell me we aren’t taking ourselves so seriously” alarm. I’ve hit the snooze button on it for now; I want to keep an open mind.

    I’m a humanist; it just becomes more apparent by the day. And I’ll try to keep that in perspective, too.

    Popularity: 27% [?]

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