Poem for Saturday

Garden Homage
By Medbh McGuckian

Three windows are at work here, sophisticated
spaces against the day, against the light.
The sky looks as if it has been added later
to a glimpsed world as nobody saw it.

Small gaps of awkwardness between overlapping leaves
bring their time to us, as we our time
to them. The hand alone is amazing,
the skull and the owner’s hand holding it,

together on a page for fifty years,
with the earliest smile. A rope vase
of flowers returns the angels
to the ground, that still beautiful brown.

--------

Friday morning I gritted my teeth and wrote a review of the very first Star Trek episode ever aired, "The Man Trap". I had watched it a few weeks ago and found it painfully dated and sexist. Some switch in my brain must have been tripped by watching "Terra Prime," "These Are the Voyages...," Sweet November and Revenge of the Sith this week, however, because watching it again this morning I found it not at all painful, only moderately sexist (plus the excuse of having been written in 1966) and encompassing everything I love about the original series...Kirk/Spock/McCoy as best comrades as well as a strong command team, the extended friendships among the entire crew -- we see as much interaction among Uhura, Sulu and Rand in this single episode than we do among Sato, Mayweather and Reed in an entire season of Enterprise -- what it means to be Vulcan, how the crew works together. These are the reviews I was afraid might ruin my love for the original series, but this one, at least, reinforced it greatly...though I haven't got any hate mail yet and I'm not reading the BBS, so who knows how I will feel if it starts getting ugly there. I only know that it was a welcome nostalgia.

And tonight, following up on The Phantom Menace last night, the whole family watched Attack of the Clones. I confess that I was somewhat less attentive than the others, as I just watched it recently with and I still have to go get ice cream during the "love scenes" or risk injuring my ears, but it didn't bug me as much as it did the first time and I must admit that somehow I have fallen for Obi-Wan this week, after managing to resist him for nearly six years. I think maybe Ewan is finally old enough for me. *g* Either way it is somewhat embarrassing though quite entertaining to come stumbling late to the Q/O party, which while not as welcoming as the Highlander party is still large and diverse enough that I'm sure there are lots of fun things to read. Many of my Trek fans passed through TPM slash on their way to LOTR, HP and other current fandoms, so there are lots of familiar names when I check out some of the stories I stashed away, too.

: Name 5 movies that worked better as television shows.
1. M*A*S*H
2. Highlander
3. La Femme Nikita
4. The Dead Zone
5. Alien Nation
The ones that come immediately to mind for me are all movies that were later TV shows. There are numerous TV shows that were made into movies but were so much better on the small screen with their original casts -- The Avengers, Mission: Impossible, any number of '70s shows and Saturday Night Live skits -- and some I'm ambivalent about, like Star Trek and The X-Files, where the movies were okay but altered the franchises enough that I would have been perfectly happy had they stayed on television.

: Moods
1. What made you happy this week? My sons getting Hebrew school awards.
2. What made you sad? The end for the foreseeable future of both Star Trek and Star Wars.
3. What made you angry? Being manipulated by relatives.
4. What are you looking forward to in the next week? Going to visit my in-laws in Pennsylvania.
5. What are you not looking forward to? Missing my great-aunt's birthday party and attendant guilt trips.

: And it's hard for me to take a stand
1. How tall are you? 4'10".
2. When is the last time you stood up for yourself? To my father at dinner a couple of days ago about Father's Day plans.
3. Are you scared of heights? Only if there's no railing.
4. Tell us a tall tale: I won my high school long jump competition.
5. Wookie-hookie: Did you see the new Star Wars movie? Yes, I did, and will again on Sunday.
And in the "Things I Learned From George Lucas" department:



Um...did I have a real life on Friday? Well, not much of one, since I spent the morning writing articles and the late afternoon putting away the laundry that got folded but not put in drawers on Wednesday night. I did spend several minutes dragging a piece of yellow string across the floor at Cinnamon's behest. And made very good Indian food for dinner, pav bhaji and chicken masala and choley, and I got my star skirt to go with the top got me from Karuna Arts, so I can be as Hippie Goddess as I like. This is good, as I have an insane Saturday (Hebrew school meeting from 9-11, soccer game from 12-1:30, DC United tickets for the evening plus my son's team gets to parade at the stadium because they won a sportsmanship award so we have to be there early. It ought to be lots of fun but I am expecting to be rather exhausted after all this family togetherness. *g*


This upper-floor room in Portchester Castle was used as a theatre in the 1800s. You can still see some of the decorative painting on the walls.