Poem for Friday

So
By John Allman

It wasn't just the war. Or wearing a little officer's uniform,
     the leather strap across my chest
Like a seat belt so I wouldn't hit my head on the future.
My sister turning so red from measles she lit up the dingy
     back room where mother siphoned

electricity from the hall fixture. It wasn't poverty that pulled
     darkness down. Maybe the slap
across the face, my mother's glasses flying across the kitchen,
my father swaying like a branch some bird just left, flying away
     from emptiness. But two nights

later, I'd hear them grunting in the bedroom, so it wasn't homily
     or forgiveness. That's not why
my eyes dilated against the light, against the laws of the body and
reason. Or why they opened wide in the cigarette smoke of movie
     balconies. Seeing what wasn't there.

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This is just going to be more fannish babble, because most of the RL stuff that happened to me today was of the mundane domestic crisis sort...older son lost the $20 he brought to school for the book fair and came home hysterical, younger son had a spider hanging over his bed and became hysterical, mother blew it and slipped news to sister that sister's husband is making her a surprise party so sister and her husband are extremely irritated at mother and father is irritated at them for being so irritable and I am getting the phone calls about it. *g* In between all this family fun, sons came home and announced they wanted to watch The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones before we all go see Revenge of the Sith on Sunday -- they grilled me about it extensively and insisted on being spoiled about all onscreen deaths in gory detail.

TPM, which we all watched together tonight, was exactly as I had remembered it -- boring during the pod-racing, the running around trying to capture the viceroy and the Gungans vs. Battle Droids, and simply intolerable any time Jar-Jar had significant screen time. I always got warm and fuzzy when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan got warm and fuzzy (sometime I would appreciate it if someone could make me understand both the master-padawan bond and the rules about Jedi and attachment/love/sex, because while there might not have been any nookie going on, that sure looks like love and attachment to me of something more than the "compassion for all living things in the universe" sort). I am having a big urge for Q/O songvids still and can only find a couple online -- links anyone? There can be a full minute of battling with Darth Maul in there, I won't mind. It would be nice to be able to watch the parts of the film I like without the rest of the film interfering, which I suspect is why I've always been at some distance from TPM fandom. I think part of my problem there was also the same one I have with Remus/Sirius and various other doomed couples; the doom itself makes me want distance. But then I think about ghostly!Obi-Wan and ghostly!Anakin and the other ghostlies who show up in Return of the Jedi, and I think...wait a sec, this isn't DEAD-dead. And then all sorts of things become possible. *g*

So I forgot to blab yesterday about Batman Begins, for which I watched the preview on the WB last night and the trailer in the theater today. I have a problem with this movie. I like the entire cast a lot...so much so that I am seeing not Batman, Chief Gordon, Alfred, etc., but Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and especially Katie Holmes whom I really liked on Dawson's Creek but who is just too Joey Potter in everything else I've ever seen her in for me to see any other character. I'm seeing Bale a la Equilibrium, Neeson as Qui-Gon crossed with Godfrey and Freeman as God for chrissakes...even though it looks glossy and dark and well put together and has Rutger Hauer ohh thank you Christopher Nolan, what if the movie isn't fabulous enough to make me get over this? I never had this problem with Smith as McGonagall, Rickman as Snape or Oldman as Black when I watched Harry Potter previews! I am sure I will see the movie because I love all these performers so much, but I have never really fallen in love with a comic book franchise, and I feel like with this one it'll be like X-Men for me...I'll be seeing it for Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, et al, not for Xavier, Magneto, Wolverine, et al.

As long as I am blabbing about previews, I want to see The Island, NOW. I think somewhere I knew that Sean Bean was in this movie but to sit there watching this amazing looking preview and hear his voice, while Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson are running around onscreen...I cannot wait for this film even though I generally despise the idea of a "cloning may lead to the harvesting of human body parts from sentient beings OMG let's ban it ASAP!"-themed film (yes, I am sure the theme of the film is not that extreme but the ads all suggest that possibility and make me ashamed of how badly I want to see the movie). Also, said of The Island, "Maybe that's where the people on Lost are!" and now I cannot stop thinking that, heh -- wouldn't it be funny if none of them were the real people but were duplicates of real people being used in a cloning experiment? I am sure this is not the case, and it's very easy for me to theorize since I don't watch the show. Hee.

And finally, speaking of shows I don't watch, I had to make call me after tonight's CSI and spoil me about the ending because I was so upset just reading descriptions of the episode -- I am extremely claustrophobic, 1984's Room 101 with rats gnawing my face sounds like a walk in the park to me compared with being trapped in an enclosed space for any indefinite period of time. I feel better just because it's over. *g* I shall leave you with the photos I took outside the multiplex this morning -- I brought my camera, because there is a big artificial lake and when we were there to see Kingdom of Heaven we had spotted many baby geese, so I didn't want to miss another chance to get some pictures. Yes, I am a true dork even if I'm not a true geek, thank you very much.

















And this one's of the ducks in front of the closed kabob restaurant. There was a nest here last week with just-hatched eggs, but I guess the little ones have moved on!