By Anne Pierson Wiese
St. Nicholas Park in Harlem is one of few spots
on the island of Manhattan where you can stand
on terraces of rock untouched since men
with surveyor's tools stood on them
to deliver the bad news, back in the last
century but one: Gentlemen, here is a substance
we cannot move. So they built around,
below and above, leaving this uneven
pleat of ground, rocks surfaced between the trees
like whales in strips of sun, stunned to find themselves
landlocked among buildings, illuminated
at night by lamp posts. The old maples and oaks,
roots plumbing the hill as humans could not,
whisper of what's below: more rock—more rock—more rock.
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I had my van back and got out of the house on Thursday! Not that I did anything that exciting, since my lunch date, postponed from Wednesday, had a sick child we had to postpone again. I went to Tiara Galleries to get one of the new $16 canvas Vera Bradley pocket wallets, I went to Bath & Body Works to pick up the March Thursday freebie (candles, yay -- I got vanilla coconut and island margarita), I got an egg and cheese omelet -- then I came home to get work done. Plus I saw a deer in the woods while I was out walking.
Paul made me very happy by making peanut soup for dinner, then since Nikita was a rerun we watched Never Let Me Go. It's a very pretty film, well-acted, but it has all the flaws of the novel, and in some ways they're more obvious on film because we've seen a whole range of movies on the same theme from the sublime to the ridiculous(ly fun). The scenario is so phony that the characters seem phony, and I can't take their emotions seriously enough to feel for them.
Spoilers: So these ridiculously well-behaved clone children cannot be real humans -- clearly they're bred for docility. We're supposed to believe Tommy has anger management issues, yet it never seems to occur to Tommy to, oh, kill the people in charge of Hailsham or blow up London. That's what would happen in a Michael Bay movie or a Ridley Scott movie, and maybe I am a Bad Human but even I, nonviolent person that I am, would rather blow my OWN brains out than let some silent majority cut my organs out and leave me to die.
And the kids must be bred to be docile because their childhoods are so idyllic. No one ever has to be dragged out of class for discipline? No one is ever deemed unfit to donate organs and made to disappear from school? There's no black market in body parts or just bodies, sex for sale by these disposable humans who move in "real" human society -- no "real" human ever falls in love with a clone and tries to save him or her? Of course they all order the same sausage, egg, and chips with Coke!
Some random Longwood Gardens photos while I watch Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert's ice cream grudge match:
GORGEOUS!
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