(posts) a poem, "Bedecked"

Bedecked

  —Victoria Redel

 

Tell me it’s wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy store rings
               he clusters four jewels to each finger.

He’s bedecked. I see the other mothers looking at the star choker,
               the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock.
Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says sticker earrings
               look too fake.

Tell me I should teach him it’s wrong to love the glitter that a boy’s only
               a boy who’d love a truck with a remote that revs,
battery slamming into corners or Hot Wheels loop-de-looping off tracks
               into the tub.

Then tell me it’s fine—really—maybe even a good thing—a boy who’s
               got some girl to him,
and I’m right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the seesaw in the park.

Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son who
               still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means—
this way or that—but for the way facets set off prisms and prisms spin up
               everywhere
and from his own jeweled body he’s cast rainbows—made every shining
               true color.

Now try to tell me—man or woman—your heart was ever once that brave.

 

 

 

Note: Using smaller font to preserve more of the poet's own line breaks.

 

a review of a new album I disliked

Doomy shoegaze band Lanayah set to release new album

Reverb and echo flood "I’m Picking Lights in a Field...," an album of obfuscated doomy shoegaze. Lanayah’s cooling lava flow of sounds try to muster some shape, some force, some proximate of artistry.

“Insects in Their Immersion” loudly blasts melodic doom, a vocal barking into the wind, sucked up into a warming atmosphere of futility before being suddenly cut off for the next track. The best song is “Nameless Fluttering”—breathy vocals echo down halls of smooth bass guitar. The good part ends and, after a pause, a coda tries to recover a moment nobody remembers anymore. The album goes like this. A thick bass stands out amid a wash of noise. Songs stray and dissolve into decadence. You wake to find an arm dead asleep.

Lanayah is based in Santa Barbara, California, and Seattle, Washington. The experimental group released its first album, North Pinion, in 2016. Forever in May followed in 2019. The new album, I’m Picking Lights in a Field..., will be released June 16, 2023.

 

about seeing herself

She stood in front of the mirror, turned the wineglass upside down, and watched the throat muscles work. Her posture and body spoke quiet—her face said trust, her eyes told of a search. But when she sees this reflection, she heard only the thirst.

 

 

(posts) a John Prine song

"One Red Rose" almost gives you intimacy even when you listen to it while driving mom's car alone to the grocery store over the holidays.

something about “Better Living Through Criticism” by A.O. Scott

After Roger Ebert died in 2013, A.O. Scott at The New York Times became probably the most respected and read movie critic in America. In 2017, he published a thoughtful book on criticism, Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth. A central idea in Scott's book is that all art is criticism.

I enjoyed Scott's exercises of criticism using selected works of art and writing. I did not enjoy the dialectic chapters; these were supposed to be funny, but Scott's humor is stale.

Notes:

• Scott shoehorns a quote from Greek poet Hesiod into this thing—it is completely unnecessary, but I read it a couple times to savor its prose: “Never by daytime will there be an end to work and pain, nor in the night to weariness, when the gods will send anxieties to trouble us.”
• Scott stopped reviewing movies in March 2023 and started writing for The New York Times Book Review.
• He attracted haters (and defenders) online after publishing an indifferent review of Marvel's “The Avengers” in May 2012. Indiscriminate actor Samuel L. Jackson led the attack.
• Scott's review of "Joker" was much more negative than “The Avengers.” But I enjoyed "Joker."

 

character idea number 8

Vain Dad. He dresses trendily. Tailored fits. Wears noticeably thick-rimmed glasses. Head shaved to the part. Tries hip activities with his average, comfortable son, like riding "public" electric scooters and shouting out because it's so fun.

about waiting in DC's underground Metro stations

Crazy how the train, its headlights beaming the anger of God, comes, a whooshing birth out of the tunnel, squealing curses to stop in a scraped-out cavity under the city—just so you can get on the damn thing.

(posts) Raymond Carver's poem, "Reading"

Reading

Every man’s life is a mystery, even as
yours is, and mine. Imagine
a château with a window opening
onto Lake Geneva. There in the window
on warm and sunny days is a man
so engrossed in reading he doesn’t look
up. Or if he does he marks his place
with a finger, raises his eyes, and peers
across the water to Mont Blanc,
and beyond, to Selah, Washington,
where he is with his girl
and getting drunk for the first time.
The last thing he remembers, before
he passes out, is that she spits on him.
He keeps on drinking
and getting spit on for years.
But some people will tell you
that suffering is good for the character.
You’re free to believe anything.
In any case, he goes
back to reading and will not
feel guilty about his mother
drifting in her boat of sadness,
or consider his children
and their troubles that go on and on.
Nor does he intend to think about
the clear-eyed woman he once loved
and her defeat at the hands of eastern religion.
Her grief has no beginning, and no end.
Let anyone in the château, or Selah,
come forward who might claim kin with the man
who sits all day in the window reading,
like a picture of a man reading.
Let the sun come forward.
Let the man himself come forward.
What in Hell can he be reading?

 

something about William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel "Barry Lyndon"

Barry Lyndon (or, The Luck of Barry Lyndon) is the fictional memoir of a lower-middle-class Irishman who scratched out a rocky spot for himself in English aristocracy. The protagonist, roguish Redmond Barry of Ballybarry, exhausts his wits and ambition imprinting himself over society’s vulnerabilities and corruption. Though Redmond satisfies some big ambitions, his insecurities insist, and success and failure come in equal measure.

Redmond believed—no, knew!—he was a gentleman who belonged in the aristocracy. But events brought his Irish family low, and Redmond came of age feeling victimized, stewing unhappily among the unwashed.

Barry Lyndon is written in Redmond's pompous, earnest voice, and he tells of his travels, military enlistments, ruined affairs, con jobs, rivalries, and retributions.

After scrambling a while, Redmond’s ambitions gain traction finally when he unites with his uncle, a fellow adventurer and conman. Redmond then marries into wealth, his mark being the Countess of Lyndon. Redmond promptly spends her money, runs out of luck, and ends up living on an allowance in prison.

Redmond has scores of confidence and self-belief but belongs nowhere and is without principles.

I saw Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation, “Barry Lyndon,” years ago. I loved the film, which is different from the novel, but the novel is a fun, special read on its own—largely because Redmond’s phrasings are incredibly droll.

Note: Barry Lyndon is considered a picaresque novel. It was written by William Makepeace Thackeray and first published as a serial in 1844.

something about "You and Me" by Penny & The Quarters

Ever hear "You and Me" by Penny & The Quarters? I love the rawness of the recording, which was apparently a demo. The guitar shimmies through highs while plump root notes feed the lead vocal, which shoots green right out of the dirt. The backing vocals, ambient in the recording, move in a three-spirit harmony. When the backing vocalists rise on the "me" in "you and me," they convey vulnerability. The vocal arrangement captures the joy of starting one of those meant-to-be relationships. That sense of joy and vulnerability, when heard by the life-weary listener, combine for poignant perfection.

 

"You and Me" by Penny & The Quarters played on a commercial a few months ago, but I first heard it while watching "Blue Valentine," the painfully moving 2010 American drama. The movie shows the exciting beginning and exhausted end of a serious long-term relationship that produced a child but starved for something more than love.

about CVS

I had never had covid yet, but the quarter and change I got back from the self-checkout kiosk at CVS definitely had a virus on them. That is how I caught the flu this year. So that was last Saturday night. I felt bad Sunday, but I was wearing a mask when I left the house Monday morning—I noticed it was gone when I woke up feeling bad on the bus and the bus pulled up to the train station downtown, which is nowhere near where I normally go. I probably had a high fever, but I was so parched that I doubt I was spraying many droplets of infection or anything else if you know what I mean. I suddenly found myself on the wrong train and wearing a mask that was definitely not mine. I got off at the next stop and was accosted by all these females that live around there I guess. They were advertising drugs. Not one of those ladies had my mask, too.