By Jane Hirshfield
I want to gather your darkness
in my hands, to cup it like water
and drink.
I want this in the same way
as I want to touch your cheek --
it is the same --
the way a moth will come
to the bedroom window in late September,
beating and beating its wings against cold glass;
the way a horse will lower
its long head to water, and drink,
and pause to lift its head and look,
and drink again,
taking everything in with the water,
everything.
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We got up early and went to see Enchanted -- the 10:30 show, which we thought was likely to be the least mobbed of the day. We were the first people in the theater half and hour before it started, but by the time the previews began, the theater was nearly full. I don't think it's as good a movie as the Shrek series, certainly not as subversive, but I enjoyed it anyway, especially Susan Sarandon as the wicked witch and Idina Menzel (Wicked's wicked witch) as a woman who deserves more respect than she gets in this film where innocence is the the most valued quality a woman can have).
I love the music, which Disney still does better than any of its imitators, and Amy Adams is absolutely brilliant -- I was all ready not to like Giselle, the whole frothy male fantasy of an adult virgin utterly lacking in adult sexuality still squicks me when I think about it, but she really made it work on the screen, in a lot of ways better than the voice actresses who played Ariel and especially Belle ever did (I loathe the Disney Beauty and the Beast). And I'm a total sucker for fantasy New York movies, which this one certainly is -- that glorious Central Park sequence with its musical melting pot! I think it's a shame there weren't actual queens at the Queens Ball and typically Disney keeps everything pretty heterosexist. At least the women get to do a bit of heroics. If I think about it too much I'll probably find more things to dislike as a matter of principle, so I'm just going to leave it at fun, pretty and my kids liked it too.
In the afternoon, since the weather was just as gorgeous as yesterday's, we decided to go to Great Falls. Like the zoo, it wasn't terribly crowded -- probably lots of people were at home watching the Redskins, but we knew better than to expect anything in that regard and sure enough, Washington lost. The canal barge has stopped giving rides for the season, the inn is closed for renovations and lots of trees have been cleared out -- but the autumn leaves are clinging in patches and there was a heron standing right in the low water between the two locks of the C&O Canal where the double-decker boat has been docked for the winter.
A tree reflected in the C&O Canal at Great Falls National Park.
The Mercer is up on concrete blocks for the winter to protect the wood.
There was a great blue heron standing in the low water eating.
I'm not sure what was there for catching, but it seemed content.
The Potomac River is still very low for the season from the drought.
There weren't many people at the overlooks on the Virginia side...
...but the color across the river was very pretty.
While I'm thinking about Enchanted, I wanted to note for locals that fritterfae has posted about the DC Radical Faerie Yule: Legend of the Snow Prince, a gay seasonal fairy tale performance and dance. I watched Brotherhood's belated Thanksgiving episode, which was very dark -- not really an enjoyable note to end the weekend on, though an odd compensation of sorts for fairy tales as Rose turns stereotypes on their head. The plot revolves around the fact that Mama Rose elects to blow off her family for Thanksgiving to meet an old lover, and shows up at the hotel with a suitcase full of vibrators and lined handcuffs and stuff! He announces that these days his plumbing isn't working, and she almost leaves in a huff, but he ends up getting it going for her anyway. I hope Rose never gets old.
The kids (meaning Tommy, Michael and Mary Kate's generation) naturally fall apart without Rose there to supervise Thanksgiving dinner, or maybe they just want to fall apart and have an excuse to blame one another, since previously both Eileen and Mary Kate were established as decent cooks. Mary Kate had her best line of the entire series: "Jimmy, get your ass over to the kitchen and help me cook or I want a divorce!" And that was a positive marital exchange by the standards of this show!
Michael sent Colin out to do his dirty work (killing the two criminals whose wives truly adore them), then went over to Kath's and threw a tantrum that she was paying more attention to her brats than to him, which ended with her smashing him in the head and both of them bleeding and crying. Eileen demanded to know whether Tommy was going to fight for their family after Mary Rose came home from the store stoned. Right now Freddy's on the loose and it looks like a happy ending this season is out of the question, but what I really want to know is: Does anyone know who did the acoustic cover of "Satisfaction" played at the end and over the credits?
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