An Old-Fashioned Song
By John Hollander
No more walks in the wood:
The trees have all been cut
Down, and where once they stood
Not even a wagon rut
Appears along the path
Low brush is taking over.
No more walks in the wood;
This is the aftermath
Of afternoons in the clover
Fields where we once made love
Then wandered home together
Where the trees arched above,
Where we made our own weather
When branches were the sky.
Now they are gone for good,
And you, for ill, and I
Am only a passer-by.
We and the trees and the way
Back from the fields of play
Lasted as long as we could.
No more walks in the wood.
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Quoting John Hollander on Emma Lazarus yesterday put me in the mood for a Hollander poem.
Much of my flist seems to be deeply in love with SWE3:ROTS, which I saw Sunday with my children. I must admit that my first impression held and was strengthened: this is an enjoyable film, but I don't think it's a very good film, and the things that bothered me only a little the first time around irked me a lot more the second -- particularly Padme's role, or non-role.
And sorry, Hayden fans, but while I agree that he has the very worst of the terrible dialogue in the film, he still comes across horribly in my eyes compared to Ewan and Natalie. I can forgive Anakin for whining and sounding like a little brat in Ep II, but at this point it undermines the character -- it's fine if we're not feeling sorry for him and it's even possible to rationalize if we are, but when the audience is giggling at him after he's massacred a group of children, something is wrong. I suppose I could blame Lucas entirely but people weren't giggling while Natalie was uttering atrocious lines like, "You're breaking my heart! You're going to a place where I can't follow!" nor while Ewan was proclaiming that he couldn't look after announcing that he had to look at the security logs. It's funny, because the film is grabbing my imagination in ways the first two did not even though I don't think it's particularly better -- when two October Project songs are stuck in my head because they make me think of a movie, I know it's gotten under my skin -- but I'm sorry I was so harsh to ROTK given how much harsher I could be to ROTS.
My children were not in the least traumatized by the film; they were both much more upset by Theoden's death and Frodo's suffering in ROTK, and they talked at much greater length about the nature of evil and choices after HP:POA. My older son said it was funny in an ironic way that the kids asked Anakin for help, not realizing that he was the source of the slaughter and was going to kill them; that scene did not scare them, since apparently they perceive such situations as, thankfully, quite removed from their own lives. They did on their own draw parallels between Bush post-9/11 and the Chancellor declaring himself Emperor. So I must thank George Lucas for that!
Oh, while you're back here, a SW quiz that cracked me up, gacked from my fellow Jedi master
 | You scored as Yoda.
Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you? created with QuizFarm.com |
We came home for a little while after the movie, then our family was in charge of snack for younger son's soccer practice and I had to write a couple of articles. In the evening we dropped off one of the vans for servicing -- I will be vehicle-free Monday, unfortunately -- and went to IHOP since it's next door to the car place. Every time we go there, the people in the kitchen seem to have gotten slightly stupider and the waits even longer: tonight they left the EGGS off my eggs benedict (I asked for no Canadian bacon, as I don't eat pork -- they thought I was a vegan and didn't want the eggs -- I ask you, what vegan eats bacon and hollandaise sauce?!) and brought my husband steak instead of bacon with his eggs. They're starting to make the service at Denny's look good and that is a very scary thing.
I wasn't going to watch Desperate Housewives, because it makes me feel kind of icky -- I don't like the characters, I don't root for the characters, I don't like myself waiting to see who gets killed or maimed or trashed -- but I had laundry to fold and it was the season finale, so I put it on. I wasn't surprised by anything that was revealed and I'm not going to watch next season. I've watched soaps with characters who made lots of stupid decisions before, years of Dallas and Dawson's Creek have left me with a healthy respect for soaps, but this show isn't quite a satire where I can wholeheartedly enjoy the characters' idiocy and I can't figure out the point of watching a soap where there's not one character I like or admire or at least find compelling in some way. I guess I'm just not a good TV watcher: can't get into Lost, can't get into Alias, couldn't even stick with Buffy through the bad times and the only reason I never missed an episode of Enterprise was that I had to review it. Is it a form of attention disorder to have no patience for entertainment the moment it stops gripping me, or is that healthy? There was a time when I finished every single book I ever started, and now I find that laughable too.
Since we were back at the multiplex, we took the kids to see the geese. They were around the far side of the lake, swimming and then eating the grass -- they came out of the water when they saw us as if hopeful that we might feed them. Since a lot of people here seemed to enjoy them, I thought I'd share.
And a heron in front of the hotel on the retail side of the pond.
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