Forced Conversion Expressions

"I was filled with anticipation; the tension had grown to the point where I didn't want to have open space behind me." -- Bill Johnston translation, location 237

In the not so distant past, Hari Sreenivasan was the good guy, fighting for a more sound equilibrium among our numerous yet fragile masses. There are still many cases of egregious exploitation everywhere, but this PBS profile also has its own egregious tilt. Never mind the lack of any sort of sexual discipline in inner city communities; never mind the fructose-heavy husband who we can speculate has some sort of disability claim pending that games the system and hurts real chronic condition inclusion. We all game it these days, even me, playing evasion to the last resort, angry that I allowed desire to trap me here, even though I did not realize it in my twenties. In my own lack of efficacy, I did not realize my conservative provider had already activated the 5c. The tranquility, however temporary, is luxurious, yet hesitation remains. Utility and device. No one has ever quite sold me. Google and Amazon better than Microsoft, yes, but I will never quite see micro chip miniaturization as indispensable.  My sister Stephanie, on the white end of slovenly entitlement, sent me a text. Can't open it. Still in the tutorial stage, but we'll get there, despite women with more children than they can handle. Who am I to judge with my over-extended self-reliance? If I was smart I'd euthanize Vinnie and send the little female back to the no kill track and neuter shelter. It may come to that, but I can scream common sense while I learn to post home shots. Don't have children you cannot afford, regardless of your position on termination.

Progressives need some sort of reigning in, some sort of personal responsibility, just as I knew, before I pulled on my last decent affinity with another woman, that disability center assurances were broken reeds, piercing though the palms, poor adductor. Too much proficiency may be dangerous, but universal leveling leads to collapse under its own weight. Twenty five words in to an abstract that has more layers than I supposed, the signatory status of an auteur we hope survives extinction. Demise. Distinction may be all we have, but it is not much of an answer to destructive overkill.

For the most part, the better part of valor, I forgive Stephanie, and little Benny. I understand their precarious dashed hopes, despite the fact that they believe in a straight jacket containment for spastic investments. I cannot, however, love them as fully as I used to before they allowed this city to grind me into chum. Children are important, but not so important that they narrow futurist import.

Queens, Courtiers, Something Other Than Bianary

If I write the abstract and submit the abstract and as a proposal the abstract is accepted, I shall then be trapped, and viewers will only see a post like a yelp in the dark while I attempt to gain access to vaunted European film directors. I did not realize Alejandro would be young and pleasing to the eye. There is a distinct possibility an (the) abstract would not be accepted, but that does not rip out the fingernails. Remember Peter O'Toole's no audio screams? Being a dry literary critic is annoying. We want to medicalize art, dice it an slice it in our fascination with our own aesthetic inclinations, distracting ourselves from flight or fight responses to our frustrating inability to ask the Why? about life. Why is the misdirected question. Henry James is an obsession, and this has cycles of love and hate, stupid little patsy, not very well educated, and yet his insight into repression, his mastery of insinuation that makes me look for the damn code to loosen that twist of the screw, I cannot stand it, and my critique of James is essentially life long warfare to catch him, beat it out of him. This is why I forgive his tortured sexuality, regardless of how active it was or wasn't. I see his struggle, but mine was not the same. My brain is too injured for that paradigm, my body forcibly altered and fused, I did not envision lesbian games growing up, and that my own sex finds suckling teats attractive beyond weaning, this was classified as regressive. The Gay Shame cover, recollected, is reminiscent of the advanced homo sapiens body paint in The Quest for Fire, a pastiche allegory of a film, one which no longer impresses me, though it was one of the few times Jerry and I discussed rape as victimology over a way of life. Let us be lenient on the cinematic quality. It is a visually engaging narrative.

Queer theory is an intractable problem, intractable in terms of progressives with "untrammeled" glee (George Will's adjective) salivating over homoerotic subversion in literature and theater when it doesn't reflect real world consequences, and my willingness to make notable exceptions adds to the difficulty of getting out from under; it is an objection based on more than personal trauma, though insecure body image weighs into it, and failed associations cemented the deal. The thesis extrapolated from this is that homosexual culture being given *equal* legal and social status is unsustainable, which is not to plea for elimination, as that would be impossible. This does not mean there aren't gradations, evolutionary values in play, and more than a few of my old associates are on the extreme end of that scale. Jodie Foster is not, but there is more to it than the fact that she is not aggressive about lesbian identity. Sexual choices should not be an identity; sexual preferences as a classification is problematic, and I fail to see why celebrity status necessitates lack of privacy in personal affairs. Why can't we reformulate these membranes? Why do we need to know Ms Foster's personal intimacies, or see Montgomery Clift's war films as code for a faggot outcast who is made expendable? But The Young Lions, From Here To Eternity, these have to be read that way, even if we chuckle at the stigma of Ulysses as the dirty book, the forbidden book, annihilating formulaic stricture to reduce us to mucous. What a mucous, what a damn machine we are, humanity.   

A List Pose

The thought occurs to me that maybe I could one day approach Nicole Kidman's publicist about getting an interview in my own right, even if I cannot make the Henry James Review deadline, and it is quite possible that I will not make it, at the rate I am going. I care nothing about her personal life, and do not necessarily have to meet her in person; it is her art that interests me for a feature, along the lines of The Others (2001) and Birth (2004), if I could develop my own track, not that such a feature article has not been done. Of course it has, I believe in WaPo, and make a note to make a concerted effort to dig it out of archive, but not this morning. Her ex husband is insane, but too high in social status for anyone to admit that as obvious. Cruise and I are exactly the same generation, tail wind to the boomers of whom the gen X are so weary, one of us a self-hating sow always on the verge, the other a sometimes great actor always on, and a cultist, dodging trick wires. I wonder if Tom really has a central core, and knows himself for himself, but I doubt it. I have read some, here and there, about his religion, do not understand it, and a good federal conspiracy would set the Mormons and Scientologists up to kill each other. That's a fun idea.

I might be able to derive secondary material from such an attempted effort toward credibility, while groping toward a thesis in the fog, much as it was created by Amenabar on location.

Scarlet Verve

Nicole Kidman's travail after her break up with Cruise only entered my conscious minutely, as both she and he are manufactured Caucasian royalty, whatever nostalgia one wants to evoke over the demise of the studio mongul, Hollywood has not changed the ends, simply the means by which stars become different and untouchable. I can be critical of white cultural norms as well, and arguably, figures like Tom Cruise and Governor Romney represent the worst aspects of vestigal European privilege. I know these are real people, as Ebert said on the radio, but I disagree with him to this extent: They are real people trapped within the facade of what projects them, and can no more do the normal things like take a dump in my sterile public housing toilet than I can work myself to death to give myself even a simulated version of Nicole's body. Kidman and Cruise, and to an extent, our favorite vacuous Mormon, are the super whites, the top of the top, and I resent this almost, a sliver not as much, as I have come to resent urban black culture and homosexual lifestyles; but  Alejandro Amenábar deploys this aspect of Nicole's celebrity to great effect in The Others (2001), and I am kicking myself for two things, not seeing the great Jamesian influence on this film, which after doing a search, is quite obvious, and not seeing the film sooner, when Kidman did such interesting promotional articles for it, and I find it, as a cinematic ghost story, to be superb. The cinematography is excellent and achieves what Amenabar wishes to do in haunting us; that shot of the husband's profile on the pillow turning corpse-like next to Kidman's lilly pallor made me shiver with revulsion, and our macabre fascination with infanticide is handled with just the right touch. I evidently missed my calling by not finding my way into marriage with directors like Amenabar or Inarritu. They understand the power of what film can do organically, and how it is different, on a collective level, from narrative text. The Others is worth spending my money to view again, and Kidman managed to reach me more than unnerve me with her hyper vigilant iciness. To imagine what her life was like with Cruise literally makes me think of felines freaking out on a hot tin roof. She possibly deserves better.