Things I Learned This Week

Aunt Gladys, Chickens, Kurosawa, Spike Lee, and Yiyun Li

The past two weeks have been nuts, but mainly I’ve been filled with a complete and total sense of dread. Not having responsibility for the last few months has been great, and now that school is coming into focus, that damned imposter syndrome is rearing its ugly head. But I’m pushing through and holding onto everything good. That’s the romantic, tortured version of why I’ve been absent for a few weeks from this space. The real reason is that I hate writing on my laptop, and since I’m between offices, I struggle to settle down to write at the dinner table. I’ve never understood those people who can work at a coffee shop. I need a real keyboard and a mouse, dammit! Whatever. Anyways, here are the things I learned of late.

If I was apprehensive about being a teaching assistant, all that went out the window at my IA orientation. The two professors who headed it up were so inspirational, and it made me remember all the reasons I love books, love people who love books, and love seeing young people get excited about books the same way I did when I was 18. After the session, I’ve gotten psyched about the teaching aspect of the MFA in ways that I wasn’t before. I saw the future, and it made me really hopeful. For myself. For young people. So what if the end is nye! Books still exist, and we can spend our time lowing (insert sad cow noise here) at the thought of disaster, or we can spread knowledge, thoughts, and ideas, and regardless of down the road has in store for us, we have to keep creating and enjoying creation.

The other time I had chickens, they were bantams, so they were small and dainty with wee little eggs. At four weeks old, these six bastards are gigantic already. It’s like junior high in my back house with feathers that stick out at weird angles and premature flying and awkward struts. I have to clean up a pound of poop a day, and there’s nothing adorable about them at this stage. Bring on the eggs already!

Now, with my son’s getting ready to head back to college, we’ve ramped up the movie watching, so bear with me as I spit too many reviews at you. First, my son has started warming up to horror movies. I’m not a huge horror fan (I prefer ghost stories to slasher films), but I grew up with an older sister who loved them, so it’s a tradition to watch them in her honor. Weapons is definitely horror, but with a deeper psychological edge, so we both liked it. More than that, though, when you get to see a fabulous older actress who is not botoxed out the wazoo and looks her age and is willing to wear makeup that makes her look even older, it's a treat. Especially when she kicks ass and literally kills the part. The film is worth seeing for Amy Madigan alone. After you’ve seen the film *spoilers*, go back and read this interview with her; she is such a badass. Note: Because of this, we watched the director’s earlier film, Barbarians, since everyone raved about it, but it was just meh.

Next, we watched Kurasowa’s classic High and Low, and then Spike Lee’s recent remake Higher 2 Lower. I’d never seen the original, and it was incredible to see an early take on a police procedural infused with class struggles done with such precision, especially in a time when the gap between those with and those without has grown even larger. The Lee film was a bit of a disappointment, as it altered several key plot elements that had made the gulf between the winners and the losers so profound. The less-than-intimate relationship between the main character and his driver in the original is what makes the drama so compelling, and in Lee’s version, he makes the two so tight that the choices that are made hardly make sense. That and it’s hard to believe that a music tycoon who lives in a home filled with diamonds and Warhols and Basquiats would have a hard time coming up with a paltry 17 mil in ransom, no matter how much he has tied up in investments. But now I’m spoiling.

Lastly, we saw an early screener of a film called Lurker. I won’t tell you much about this movie, but it made me more uncomfortable than any movie I’ve seen of late. During the Q&A session after, they likened it to Mike White’s Chuck and Buck (which I have not seen), but my son and I, too, thought it had major Challenger vibes. Hoping it’s going to be a sleeper hit for the fall. Not to be skipped.

A friend recommended the memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow by the novelist Yiyun Li about the suicide of her son at 19, six years after the suicide of his older brother, then 16. Being a mother at all takes a particular kind of bravery, and enduring the death of one child, much less two, makes you the type of hero no one wants to be. It’s a beautiful rumination on the nature of life and death and loss, and what’s left after the years of love and anticipation and money and support parents pour into their child come up empty-handed. Not for the faint of heart, but tuck in if you want to understand the mindset of a mother in retrospect.

I’ve never been a Fleetwood Mac fan, but recently I have been revisiting The Chain. As the kids today would say, that song goes hard. Still not a Stevie Nicks acolyte, but I am a little bit closer to understanding what the fuss is all about. Play it loud.

Quote of the week?

"The verb that does not die is to be. Vincent was and is and will always be Vincent. James was and is and will always be James. We were and are and will always be their parents. There is no now and then, now and later, only, now and now and now and now." — Yiyun Li

‘Til Tuesday kids.

Burgin

(I finished college at 50+ and am headed to grad school… follow along and read my story here.)