By Marge Piercy
Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.
It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.
It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.
I can't do it, you say it's killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.
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I had a busy Tuesday with lots of chores because my kids are both coming on Wednesday -- younger son in the afternoon when we pick him up from College Park, and older son when his flight gets in at night! So I had laundries and cleaning, plus my new glasses arrived, so I went to the eye doctor to get them fitted to my face. And I made a brief list of things I loved about Rogue One.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
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I love everything about Jyn. I've been told by reliable sources that The Force Awakens is more feminist because it has more women in supporting and background roles, but The Force Awakens only scrapes a Bechdel pass because Rey and Maz discuss the Force in the abstract a teeny bit in and around discussing the Luke-Vader connection -- the whole universe could use more women. I'm bummed Mon Mothma didn't fight harder for Jyn's ideas but I loved seeing her there, and it makes sense to me that there are a lot more women in top position among the rebels than the Empire.
Chirrut Îmwe: I like that I don't know whether or not he used the Force for the last big thing he did -- that it might have worked for him or he might just have been lucky the Imperial fighters often can't shoot for crap, until one of them finally got luckier. Also, Chirrut and Baze are TOTALLY a couple, it didn't even occur to me that they might not be until I saw the internet arguing about it -- and hello, that last scene was totally a callback to Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan.
K-2SO is a perfect mix of humor and pathos (a lot of times the pathos WAS the humor -- his odds were pretty spot on about how likely they were to die).
The Empire. Yes, I know, a weird thing to love, especially Vader's Lord of the Rings-type castle, but it wasn't all faceless stormtroopers, one-note generals, and pure Eeeeeevil -- it was
On which note, I loved pretty much all the Star Wars No Bloody I, II, or III aka A New Hope ties, from Red and Gold Leaders to the droids to Vader's abortive Force choke to the cantina guys to K-2's percentages. (Does Jimmy Smits' presence mean the prequel trilogy remains canon? Well, we can't have everything, or rather we apparently have to keep Jar-Jar.) BUT...
I'm on the fence about Tarkin and Leia as speaking characters. On the one hand, wow that was cool, since it was only brief appearances. But it kind of raises the idea of it happening in other franchises or other movies, and the idea of Hollywood deciding to bring back, I don't know, James Dean or Marilyn Monroe played by other actors through the wonder of CGI is really creepy. And the idea of actresses being replaced by younger CGI versions of themselves for any reason other than a specific flashback film like this is REALLY creepy.
Finally, the way the music picks up Williams' themes without being a straight riff on it (I did not mind the lack of the usual opening chords) is a thing of beauty. I'm sure there are other things I'll think of later.
I also have to squee briefly about the POTC, Wonder Woman, and Logan trailers, though the latter looks like it's going to be horribly sad. We had dinner late tonight because we got haircuts and did some shopping, then we watched most of the Boca Raton Bowl and caught up on Timeless (decent, but no Man in the High Castle). The eggs from the VMFA's new, much larger Faberge permanent exhibit:
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