I am not a movie critic. I was very touched by this film, and, thus, had to examine it. Here are my minderings (“mind wanderings”). Please forgive any grand sweeping generalizations or idiosyncratic notions. This essay comes as is, with no guarantees. Be forewarned, some minor spoilers are included.
Frida Kahlo was a great artist who led a very tragic life, but who was able to create art from it. Julie Taymor’s movie, Frida, is a beautiful film that captures both the essence of Frida's life, in all its love and pain, and the translation of that life into her paintings. Salma Hayek does a good job playing Frida as a sensual woman who had so much to express and fought to do it despite being a cripple and being married to a larger-than-life cultural symbol and a great artist, Diego Rivera, while her painting went mostly unnoticed during her lifetime.
Frida was an interesting movie that was worth while renting, but there are a few aspects of it that prevent me from calling it a great movie. I think the writing was pretty good most of the time. There were some slow, long scenes, and the movie moved forward in fits and starts. It was very hard to track how much time had passed, and what year it was. There was a big hullabaloo about the communists and the fascists, Stalin and Hitler, when Trotsky (played lovingly by Geoffrey Rush) shows up. It was pretty cool to see a connection to Trotsky here. And then we heard no more about Hitler and Stalin, or World War II. I know that Mexico was very far away from Europe, but the characters were very involved with politics, if we are to believe the creators of this film. So, it seemed odd when all of this is dropped entirely from the last third of the movie. I was very impressed with Ashley Judd’s performance as a photographer and political activist. I didn’t recognize her at first: she was muscular and sexy and exotic. My impression of Judd in her other roles was more of a hometown girl.
SPOILER
Trotsky has an affair with Frida, which seemed very odd to me – I wonder if it is a fact, or just a rumor. Anyway, the paring was a little strange. I didn’t get so much fact as feeling from the film, which is OK, but you were distracted by facts that did unfold – the director could have chosen to show us less, but she didn’t. Film is a visual medium, and unless the visual is done in a very abstract way, the human eye feeds it to the brain, which takes it as fact. Oddly enough, this brings me to my favorite part of the film – the paintings and the images shown throughout the film, which are coming from Frida’s head, showing now she saw things. These images may not have been accurate (how would we know for sure except we have all those raw paintings), but it was intensely artsy and I loved it.
Another unfortunate thing: the mother was completely 2-dimensional. Although it was clear that she did not approve of Frida’s activities and interests, she loved her daughter, and we are left to assume so much because she was the quiet sufferer, and we did not see her very often. Her Dad was clearly the major influence in Frida’s life, but her mother was, too. For example, I would like to see more build up to the moment, after Frida’s bus accident, when both parents bring her a portable easel, which she can use in bed, and, thereby, acknowledge her as a painter, as what she is and loves. Her mother had a great distance to travel to get to this point, but we don’t get much of a hint of that. Her father was an artist himself, so this is a clear progression for him.
SPOILER
And finally, the movie held false promise for me: the opening scene showed Salma Hayek in heavy make-up—looking a little unreal, but I can forgive that – being carried in her bed through her exotic house to the back of a pick-up truck to attend her one-woman show in 1958. A close-up of her shows her looking up into a mirror that hangs from the canopy of the bed. She slowly smiles into that mirror as she watches herself. We later discover the significance of the mirror, but what about that smile? I was not fully satisfied that I understood the smile: not only why she smiled, but what was it about her as a person that would make her smile like that after living such a life? By the end of the movie, I should have known, but I didn’t. I think, perhaps, Salma could have given us a more penetrating performance, which would have aided in telling this aspect of the story. But I also feel that the director and writer (I was surprised that Edward Norton, who also appears in the film as Nelson Rockefeller, helped write the script) spent so much time squeezing in all that had happened during Frida’s life, that Frida’s character got a little lost.
But go rent it now. Go. Now.
Driving home tonight at 6:20pm, I turned north on Foothills Parkway, and I saw a gaping red crescent, like an evil smile at the crest of a hilltop in the foothills above Boulder. It was now dark. All day long, in the sunshine, we had watched the northward progress of the smoke across the western horizon. But the flames were invisible to us—they were somewhere, over there.
Now it was right in front of me. The flame and the burning. It reminded me of the volcanic eruptions on the Big Island of Hawaii. I drove slowly northward towards Longmont and home. When I was almost to Airport Road, I noticed sudden a heavy, smoky smell. When I turned onto Airport Road, clouds of smoke hung above the farmer’s fields. The smoke must have been blown all the way north and east to Longmont from above Boulder. I felt as heavy as the air.
I remembered last summer, and the fires down south, just west of Colorado Springs. We drove down because Dave had a conference, and I could visit my cousin, Kathy. As we neared Castle Rock, the clouds became grayer and heavier. Soon, a smoky black veil hid the foothills from us. It rose up the sky to tamper with the sun, which became red and bloated. Eerie reddish shadows covered the road ahead. It was just like Mordor.
Now I knew what vision Tolkien had in mind for the evil force at work in Middle Earth. This was it. But not as clearly identified not as obvious as an eye seeking in the dark. Here was Nature and Man. Man and Nature. At crossroads, perhaps. At times working together, when Man decides that seeking an outlet for anger is more important than preserving what he swore to protect. But, are we shortsighted to see Man and Nature as separate? Are we all just a part of Nature? A part of Good and Evil?
How to conceive of something, like a wildfire, which seems both good and evil? It clears dead brush on one hand, and destroys people’s homes on another. Clearing the forest to start life anew here, but leveling Man’s structures and achievements over there. And what does Man do? He comes back to build again in the same place. It is Man’s nature to try to overcome all other Nature.
Is that Good or Evil? Or is this language to limiting to describe the phenomena. It is a tragedy. It is Evil in the eye of the Beholder. It is a Life Interruptor. A Life Taker. A Life Changer. But there are many forces that have these effects on us. From a distance, a wildfire looks like one of many tragedies, interspersed with the wonders of Nature and of Man.
At a distance it is just life. But close up, it is Mordor. And those who get closest to it, will not forget.
I am not a morning person. But sometimes I try to be anyway. There is something to be admired about a person who can get up well before dawn, write the next chapter in her novel, then go off to the office at 9:00am. Some very famous and successful novelists did that for years.
I got up the other morning after tossing and turning for a couple of hours and decided to just get to work. I was doing it in my sleep anyway. It was 4:45am. I felt fairly focused. I thought, "I can do this! I am awake! I could be a morning person!"
I sneaked down to the kitchen so as not to wake anyone up, and hit the brew button on the coffee maker that was not set to go off for another hour. Then I sneaked back upstairs to begin to work. I closed the door over on the office instead of closing it so that Eva could still get in (otherwise, she would howl at the door) and then turned on the light. I walked over to the computer and turned on the monitor. I was still feeling fairly refreshed and ready to go at it. I was going to march right through this deadline.
I logged in, but something was wrong. The computer wouldn’t let me in. Oh. I mistyped. Dang. I was having trouble seeing the screen, or the keyboard. You see, my eyes wouldn't open all the way. That damn overhead was just too bright. I blinked a few times. Is this what those morning people go through every morning? They have to fight through the bleary-eyed stage after first turning on the light and before they can start their day? Yuck. Maybe I don't want to be a morning person!
After about an hour of blearily entering edits, I was awake. I sure hope I made the edits I thought I had. I did it without coffee. I did it without orange juice. I did it without being able to fully open my eyes.
Maybe getting up at 6:30 isn't so bad after all. This 5:00am stuff is for the braindead. At least, that's how morning people must feel at this hour. They are human after all ... aren't they?
I love it when the furnace turns on that first cold day in fall. The air has been slowly getting colder, but I haven’t really noticed it until I am quite chill one morning. The sun doesn’t come up as early as it used to, either. I am feeling a bit mopey because I don’t want to leave my warm bed. But I go downstairs in the gray dawn and turn the thermostat switch from Off to Heat. I hear a whirring sound, then a steady metallic vibration. The air begins to whistle through the floor grates. The heat is coming!
This sound is my favorite all winter. I wait for it in the morning before getting out of bed. Our set back thermostat always turns the heat on at 6:00am, when I know I want to be up to start my day. I never get sick of the sound. Then one day in March or April, when the Colorado sun has heated the house so thoroughly that we can put the cat door up and the cats trot out to bask on the back patio, I turn the thermostat switch from Heat to Off. It will remain there for the day, and then I’ll turn it on again before going to bed to keep the cold early morning from cooling off the house too much. But soon, the nights begin to warm, and the switch will stay Off again. And I won’t really miss the sound of the furnace at all – I’ll be too busy listening to the open-window sounds of birds, kids shouting in play, and airplanes overhead.
But when fall returns and it is that first cold morning again, the sound fills me with joy as soon as I hear it once more.
Coffee is an important start to my morning. Has been for years. During the week, when I have to be on time for work, I set up the coffee maker the night before. It has a timer, which I can set for exactly 10 minutes before I expect to be up. When I wake up the next morning, the smells of freshly-brewed French Roast fills the house. It is easier for me to get up knowing the coffee is already made and smelling so good. I get out of bed and bring Dave coffee, usually in bed.
On weekends, I get lazy. I often don't set the coffee up the night before because Dave and I have stayed up late to finish a good movie, or gone out with friends. So, on Saturday or Sunday morning, whoever is the first one to feel the caffeine withdrawal most strongly, makes a pot. I look forward to the possibility that on weekends, it might be Dave who gets out of bed first, and makes the coffee, and then brings it to me when it is brewed. I have inherited the tendency from my mother to be a night person, huddled under the covers at night with a flashlight, reading the latest engrossing novel. The unfortunate side-effect of such a wonderful trait is that I, and my mother, are not morning people. We need an extra boost to get our brains in gear before noon. I remember bringing coffee to my mother every school morning before boarding the bus during high school. Is it wrong to ask as much for myself on weekends?
But I love my coffee even more than I love my bed in the "early" hours. So, I stumble to the kitchen between 7:00 and 8:00 to brew the coffee. I am usually awake enough to do this-- usually. I've gotten quite good at going through the correct motions in coffee making even when half asleep. Unfortunately, Dave does not have the extensive experience that I do in these early morning coffee makings. Yesterday morning, Dave gets out of bed first. He lets Cocoa upstairs and goes to the kitchen to make coffee. I hear him turn on the water tap. Good. He's making the coffee. Then I tune out and go about my business. Several minutes later, I am preparing Cocoa's medicine in the kitchen, and Dave comes in to get the coffee. He pours some into his white Emulex motion mug. He begins to laugh. I look at him. He is just staring into his mug, his shoulders shaking. "I forgot the beans," he says. "No worries. I'll make some actual coffee now." I am snickering. At least the coffee maker is a little cleaner now that all that hot water when through. Sort of.
I sigh and trudge up to the writing room to do my morning pages without coffee. Something I haven't had to bear for quite some time. But I am so amused that my perfectly in-control husband has forgotten something so vital, that I am quite awake by the time Dave brings me actual coffee twenty minutes later.
Thank you, Dave.
Sometimes my urge for adventure and good food clashes with the word mumble in my head – you know: that nether region of linguistic miasma, where words slide around, hitting each other and bouncing off to get lost around another corner of the brain, or leap in front o f each other like a parent jumping in front of a child to block a runaway bus. So you access that linguistic center, calling, calling. …and the word never even admits it is there. You pick the next best word lying around, hoping it is the right word, because the clock is ticking and your conversation partner is waiting -- You don’t want them to think that you are a moron -- and you move forward, expecting you probably got it right.
Today at lunch, my friend and I ate at a Mexican restaurant in Boulder. Fairly authentic. I wanted to try some of the native dishes on the menu. I decided on a harmless corn tortilla with chicken and vegetables. But I wanted a little something more adventurous. I hadn’t eaten in a good Mexican restaurant in a while. So, I looked at the soups. They had three. One caught my eye because it sounded completely different from any soup I’d ever had. I was just going to get a cup to try.
When the server came to take our order, I asked if the Menudo could be ordered as a cup of soup. “No, ma’am. Just a big bowl.” I took the plunge and ordered it anyway. The server asked me twice if I wanted the tortillas and the Menudo soup before he left our table. I said, “Oh, yes,” figuring I was hungry enough to finish it. From the description, it sounded like beef and some kind of fish. It would be different, but I was excited.
The soup came in a HUGE bowl: tomato base, with lots of whitish and grayish stuff floating in it. Hmmm. I sampled it. It was different. Not bad. Rather fatty. Lots of animal fat. Kinda gamey. After several attempts, I decided I really didn’t like it, and focused on the rest of my lunch. My friend and I chatted for a while and ate our lunch. The server returned and asked if I was finished with the soup, which was still brimming almost to the top of the bowl. I said, “Yes. I didn’t really like that.” He cleared my bowl from the table, a slight smirk on his face. Curious.
My friend asked me if I didn’t like the soup. “Not so much,” I said. She then asked me if I knew what tripe was. “Isn’t that a kind of fish?” I remembered thinking that when I read the description “beef tripe.” Then she told me: beef intestines. Yuck. I laughed so hard, I nearly laughed up those beef intestines. The restaurant should have labeled it a “bowel of soup!” Gaffaw!
I can only guess what had gone on in my mind: “Tripe….er, what? ...snipe? No, that’s a joke….pike?”
So much for adventurous eating!
I was going to try really hard to write on another topic tonight, but this is the one that seems to dominate.
On Thursday night, I surged! Even though I was on Follistim. Apparently, they don't expect that. But I had three big, beautiful eggs, so they went ahead with insemination. I won't go into too many details on that. I will say, they make sure you read your name on the "turkey baster" packet before they inseminate you. Good thing. That's one detail that I don't want to have to worry about. That was Friday. That's when they told us we had to do it again the next day. Because the next day was Saturday, and the Boulder office was closed, we had to drive to Littleton, which is almost to Pueblo as far as we were concerned. (Actually, it only took us 70 minutes using E-470, our wonderful new toll road.)
We already knew that if things were happening in my cycle on a weekend, we would have to drive to Littleton, Colorado to take care of it. On weekends, that’s where the only open Conceptions office resides. I wasn’t familiar with Littleon. It was somewhere in south Denver, I knew, but I had a hard time remembering the town’s name. I kept telling Dave: “Thorton…. Ah… No, Littleton.” He was a bit confused. He was clinging to the Thorton idea, because that was north of Denver, and much closer to our house.
On Saturday, I wanted to get there early because I heard there could be crowds and a lot of waiting. Apparently, on the weekend, the Littleton clinic supports 4 reproductive clinics, and they must do 8 hours of appointments in 4 hours. So, I made a 7:45 a.m. appointment for my ultrasound. I got up at 5:00 and we left the house by 6:00, to make sure we got there a little early (we still were new at this, and wanted to leave time for surprises). We were back home by 10:30, exhausted.
Can you imagine, if we really do get pregnant, telling our offspring, “Yeah. You were conceived in Boulder. Oh, wait. Wasn’t it Littleton? Or was that Thorton? Westminster? All I remember is that it was a very long drive home.”
!