Little Reviews: Poem for Tuesday

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Poem for Tuesday

Nexus
By Dan Fogelberg

Across the vein of night there cuts a path of searing light
Burning like a beacon on the edges of our sight
At the point of total darkness and the lights divine divide
A soul can let its shadow stretch and land on either side

And balanced on the precipice the moment must reveal
Naked in the face of time our race within the wheel
As we hang beneath the heavens and we hover over hell
Our hearts become the instruments we learn to play so well

So wealthy the spirit that knows its own flight
Stealthy the hunter who slays his own fright
Blessed the traveler who journeys the length of the light

Outside the pull of gravity, beyond the spectral veil
Within our careful reasoning, we search to no avail
For the constant in the chaos, for the fulcrum in the void
Following a destiny our steps cannot avoid

In a spiral never-ending are we drawn toward the source
Spinning at the mercy of an unrelenting force
So we stare into the emptiness and fall beneath the weight
Circling the nexus in a fevered dance with fate

Wealthy the spirit that knows its own flight
Stealthy the hunter who slays his own fright
Blessed the traveler who journeys the length of the light

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Ever find yourself listening to the first disc of The Innocent Age over and over because you got "Run for the Roses" stuck in your head because of an article about Barbaro and the Kentucky Derby? ...no? Okay, I suppose it is just me. *g*

I was very decadent today and did no work but spent the afternoon with , buying shoes for walking around in England, eating Indian food and seeing Notes on a Scandal. The shoes are my fourth pair of Merrells -- I have black and sage nubuck Jungle Mocs, black leather Primo Mocs and now Tumbleweed Improv Mocs, because I have yet to find any evidence that these shoes can be improved upon for comfort and durability (my oldest pair is more than five years, worn almost daily for two, the soles are worn pretty smooth but the body of the shoes are fine) and they were on sale for $39.99. The food was fabulous -- this is a little place in Rockville that has a lunchtime buffet, one of the few local Indian restaurants that consistently has fish, and there was also tandoori chicken and curry and lentils and chick peas and all that good stuff.

Notes on a Scandal is superbly acted and really quite sad, though the characters who are saddest don't seem to acknowledge their own worst points, so one doesn't really see them changing and a lot of the situations seem doomed to repeat themselves one way or another. Dench and Blanchett were as good as I expected them to be -- in some ways I think Blanchett has the harder role, she has to come across as guileless and almost childlike without seeming utterly stupid in pretty unforgivable situations -- and Bill Nighy was wonderful. I can't say the movie grabbed me the way The Queen did -- what's so astonishing about the latter is how easy it becomes to identify with the dynamics between these people whose lives are so utterly different, a figurehead and her family and a Prime Minister and his wife, whereas Notes on a Scandal goes out of its way to create distance with an unreliable narrator and a story that shifts as it unfolds. I guess I'm kind of bummed that at the core the relationship is so negative and Dench's character in particular is so toxic...I was hoping it would end with something redeeming about women's friendships, not so much ugliness. Dench reminds me a lot of a woman I adore, she physically resembles her more and more as they both age, and having her as a psychotic teacher with lesbian inclinations probably tapped into a place I just don't want to go!

After retrieving the kids and having dinner, we watched Heroes and then Rome, both of which had some great stuff and some typical TV stuff. I don't quite get Hiro's dad's philosophy of childrearing -- first you make him work in a cubicle, but when he goes off to chase dragons, you try to lure him back by promising to make him an executive vice president on the way to becoming CEO? Takei is wonderful in the role, very stern-faced and stern-voiced even when getting spontaneously hugged by his son, ripping up the painting and saying this is all from reading him heroic stories, ignoring his daughter because he's so tradition-mired that he can't accept her as his deserving heir. Meanwhile, Micah appears to have lost the ability to distinguish Niki from Jessica that he once had, and the whole sister business is getting a little weird. Is Niki really insane because she saw her sister murdered, and is Jessica an aspect of her own personality that has all the super-powers, or is Jessica actually a separate entity with super-powers that entered Niki's body when she died? It was more interesting to me when she was clearly one woman with an alter ego. Christopher Eccleston reminded me at so many moments of Doctor Who that it cracked me up! Such a shame that the Invisible Man thinks people suck ("alone, they're selfish, deceitful and gassy"), but I gather he had dealings with Claire's father that were not pleasant. I loved his explanation to Peter than throwing him off the roof was a win-win situation because if Peter discovered he could control the invincibility power, that was a plus and if Peter died and never became a human bomb, that was also a plus! And the scenes with Claire and her mom were lovely, though I howled about Nathan. I know so many people are about the brothercest but I just don't like him, and it would be so like him to bury having had a child with a woman not his wife to preserve his career!

On Rome, I can't say I blame Atia about either torturing and killing Servilia's sleazy boy or torturing Servilia herself, given how horribly that poor singing servant girl died, but I don't blame Timon for being pissed off that she doesn't get her hands dirty herself and leaves it to him. I would think Atia would WANT to cut off Servilia's face with her own hands! I suspect that Servilia is wrong when she warns Atia that as long as Atia lives, she will feel degraded by having tortured Servilia, but I am pretty sure she will be made to pay for it. (Oh, there should have been more scenes all along with Polly Walker and Lindsay Duncan threatening each other face to face!) I'm enjoying Timon's arc so much...first his religious brother calls him an animal, though Timon reminds the brother that he used to gamble and chase whores before Hashem became his reason for living, and Timon is very cognizant that it's Atia's money that bought their house and clothes whether or not they are really Roman. But when Atia pushes him too hard, he screams "I'm not a fucking animal!" at Atia, though one wonders whether he's really speaking to his brother or his brother's God. The new Octavian isn't too bad as an older version of Max Pirkis, though it's going to take me awhile to stop going, "Who is that?" when he's onscreen. I love Agrippa's crush on Octavia. And Pullo crossing Europe to find Vorenus, and trying to find a way to plead for Niobe's son's life without offending Vorenus...I love that relationship and how it has developed over the entire series. And Vorenus' reaction when he finally finds first the little boy, then his daughter who has been whored out...Kevin McKidd is just so phenomenal.