Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Oscar Levant: and so, good night














Go gentle (unfinished)

If I should see you on a flickering screen
And hear you set your instrument on fire,
I want to reach into your silver time
And show you all my cockeyed, strange desire.

To love a man who’s gone into the mere
Who leaked away in 1972
It’s stranger than 



http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

Revenge of the Big Hand (or: I hate fun fairs)


Tuesday, April 9, 2013

OPTICAL ILLUSION: just stare at this photo for five seconds. . .


Best photo of Oscar Levant EVER






Taken by Richard Avedon, shortly before Levant's death at 65. It's all there in the face. The craggy survivor: stepped-on, grimly resolute, sweet-eyed as a child, and yet with the tinge of desperation. People didn't give up on him. I don't know personally if I could have stood being around him, but then you never know: depends on whether there was a piano in the room.



http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

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Little sexpot (or: the smooch and snuggle)




It’s not that she wasn’t grateful. When you don’t get to go anywhere on a Saturday night because everyone thinks you’re a loser and full of shit, you should be grateful for any kind of social contact at all.

Or so her siblings thought. Her sister Noreen was thirteen years older than she was, and obviously Mum and Dad were going to trust her with her little sister's wellbeing. Besides, it was good for her to “get out”, much better than hiding in her room crying like she always did.

Her older brother Don had lots of friends too, and their wives came along, but that didn’t stop the “goings-on” that were considered to be all part of the fun. She noticed the minute she stepped into the babble and funk of these parties that she was the mascot, younger than anyone else by ten years or more. Was she game? A target? Who knew, but what she did know was that she was supposed to be grateful.





There was an obnoxious creep called Shivas, but after a while she figured out that it wasn’t his real name, that it came from his habit of making a certain drink called a Shivas Special. Chivas Regal and one ice cube. Another was Tang crystals dissolved in vodka.

They were all quite interested in seeing how the mascot would react to having her glass filled and refilled. After all, she was allowed wine at home. Lots of it. Her parents didn’t frown on her drinking and even seemed to think it was “good for her”. Her brother and sister waved the banner of booze at every opportunity, insisting it was an unalloyed good, even when they woke the next day vomiting and ashen.




The party deteriorated over time, got louder, with people bumping together and the smell of pot wafting under door-cracks. Once she felt a hand, someone’s hand, didn’t know whose. Then her brother’s best friend started smiling at her. She looked the other way. Like the Ugly Duckling, she just didn’t believe it at first.

But then he sort of beckoned with his eyes. Come upstairs with me. Upstairs?? His wife was over in the corner flirting with her brother like they always did. Did she dare to do this, could she sneak up with him and –

This is how it always happened.





It happened because her brother’s friend was a really good kisser. He knew the spots to touch. Her body responded like flame, though she felt overpowering shame at her reaction. She knew she wasn’t supposed to feel this way, to feel anything at all. But she also knew she had caused this, somehow. He managed to convey without words that he had always found her attractive and not mousy or fat.

All she knew about sex she had learned from books, the books stashed in her father’s bureau drawer under his underwear and pajamas. When her parents were away at choir practice, she took them out. They were very clinical and  did not deal with passion or pleasure, as if those sensations did not belong in the field of sex.

But she knew about erections, because he was pressing his against her body with force. Her heart beginning to race, she wondered if she would be raped. She wondered if she should fight back, break away. But the truth is, she loved the attention.





“Hey, you two!” a voice came up the stairs. “Get down here, will you? Quit messing around.” It was a woman’s voice, and at first she wondered if it was the man’s wife.  When she came downstairs, stumbling a little, she saw it was her brother’s girl friend, her makeup badly askew. The woman grabbed her around the waist and squeezed: “Little Lolita,” she crooned. “Little sexpot.”

The booze continued to flow. Her sister held court in an astonishing display of vanity and narcissism, “looking after” her little sister by ignoring her and handing her over to the good graces of Shivas and his endless noxious drinks. People made less and less sense. She felt more hands on her and didn’t know who they were.




She remembered trying to tell her sister about what was happening to her at these parties, what was being done to her. Done to her by married men with their wives in the next room (or even the same room). Her older sister rolled her eyes a bit and said, “I don’t know why you’re so upset! You don’t seem to have any friends your own age. This way you can have a social outlet with the grownups.”

When she told her a little bit about the seductions, she shook her head.

“Are they having sex with you?” For one second, concern seemed to flicker in her eyes.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re exaggerating. I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little smooch and a snuggle.  Look, we’re trying to include you and I really think you should be more grateful.”

Much later, she read about something called Walpurgis Night, a sort of witch’s Sabbath with hideous swarms of demonic figures that swept through communities leaving blackened wreckage in their wake. But this was supposed to be an advantage for her, a social outlet!
How many 14-year-olds wouldn’t give their right arm to be included in a group of adults with full-blown adult privileges?




She would go home after midnight, stagger into the bathroom and throw up all the Chivas Regal. The next morning, pale as a spook, she would throw up again, with her mother hearing her but saying nothing.

Her mother knew. She knew everything. Wanted to be rid of this social liability, to hand her over. Keep her happy. Later that day the family received a bouquet. She knew it was from her brother’s friend, the one who had pinned and groped her. It couldn’t be anyone else.

Had a great time last night," the sloppily-written tag read. "See you next week."

It was not signed. Incredibly, her parents did not ask who had sent it, but put the pink roses in a vase on the table. 

Twenty years later, the family was absolutely horrified to learn that Little Sister had joined AA. It was a total disgrace to the family, who had never had problems like that and never would. It was obviously an act of hostility on her part. They could never understand why she wasn't more grateful for all they had done for her. When she began to see a therapist, it was even worse, for that implied that the family was crazy. Then they decided that SHE was the one who was crazy, and the matter was closed.





Post-script. Some years later my sister's lover, the one who liked to send me roses and take me to the movies, lost his job and all his money and (finally) his wife, and shot himself in the head. I suppose these things never end well. For me, they never end at all. 


Sunday, April 7, 2013

"Just a nut case with a gun": the tragedy of Matthew Warren




Something has been rumbling underground - you can't say it's in the air, because it doesn't live there, but down under, in the murky land of social stigma.

Every so often it dives to the surface. When that happens, society is ill-equipped to deal with it or even talk about it at all.

I came across this tidbit of news on Facebook (which I almost never look at):


LAKE FOREST, Calif. - Popular evangelical Pastor Rick Warren asked members of his Southern California church for prayers as he and his family coped with the apparent suicide of his 27-year-old son.

The church said on Saturday that Matthew Warren took his own life at his Mission Viejo home.

Matthew Warren struggled with mental illness, deep depression and suicidal thoughts throughout his life, Saddleback Valley Community Church said in a statement, after his body was found Friday night.





"Despite the best health care available, this was an illness that was never fully controlled and the emotional pain resulted in his decision to take his life," the church said.

Allison O'Neal, a supervising deputy coroner for Orange County, declined to release the cause and manner of death pending an autopsy of the young man.

Rick Warren, the author of the multimillion-selling book "The Purpose Driven Life," said in an email to church staff that he and his wife had enjoyed a fun Friday evening with their son. But their son then returned home to take his life in "a momentary wave of despair."

Over the years, Matthew Warren had been treated by America's best doctors, had received counselling and medication and been the recipient of numerous prayers from others, his father said.





"I'll never forget how, many years ago, after another approach had failed to give relief, Matthew said 'Dad, I know I'm going to heaven. Why can't I just die and end this pain?'" Warren recalled.

Despite that, he said, his son lived for another decade, during which he often reached out to help others.

"You who watched Matthew grow up knew he was an incredibly kind, gentle, and compassionate man," Warren wrote. "He had a brilliant intellect and a gift for sensing who was most in pain or most uncomfortable in a room. He'd then make a bee-line to that person to engage and encourage them."





This article brings up so much stuff for me, so many "issues" (as those chunks of living gore are so euphemistically called) that I don't know where to start. What jumps into my head first is the irony: this pastor who wrote a wildfire bestseller on how to live a meaningful life had a son so driven by despair that he simply could not go on with his own life and had to end it.

Another thing is the rather elaborate, detailed explanation of Matthew Warren's exhaustive (and no doubt exhausting) medical treatments over the years, how he had tried everything,and how in the end "even prayer" (the panacea for fundamentalists) didn't work.





Why does this cause that squirmy twinge in the pit of my stomach? 
Compounding the shock and horror of this unimagineable tragedy is a sad public pressure to "explain". If he had died of a heart attack or an accident, I don't think there would have been any need for all these elaborate verbal back-flips. He was sick, yes - but he couldn't help it! He tried everything, even prayer! So it could not have been his "fault", it could not have been personal weakness or a spiritual taint. 

I see "mental illness" (a term I loathe - I'll explain that later) as an issue that's slowly coming out of the closet, but unfortunately it only seems to show itself when someone commits a horrendous and very public suicide or shoots up a shopping mall or a primary school.





"Suffering from mental illness" - that's the tag. So it really isn't ALL his fault - well, maybe not - or maybe he went off his medication (a very bad decision on his part). In spite of all this faux compassion, the taint of judgement hangs around like a faint but noxious odor.

Never are we presented with an example of someone "living with", not "suffering from". Our society is big on suffering, but it was only recently we changed our vocabulary from "cancer victim" (almost universal 20 years ago) to "cancer survivor". And it took a lot of effort on the part of activists to wake people up.

Public attitudes towards mental illness are much more distorted and resistant to change. People's perceptions are tainted by a combination of pity and fear. Or terror. Only recently, Mark Kelly, the astronaut husband of Congresswoman Gabby Gifford, declared that before anyone was sold a gun in the U. S., they should have a thorough background check (so far, so good). Two groups should be eliminated immediately without question: convicted criminals and "the mentally ill". 





I love that "the" part, a little three-letter wedge driven between those with this illness and the rest of humanity. But what scares the shit out of me is - no, several things do, actually. To automatically lump in the "mentally ill" with criminals makes me want to chew tinfoil because it hurts me less. They're all corralled in the same pen, it seems: wild-eyed, inherently violent, unable to control themselves, and deserving of a sort of wary contempt.

When something sticks out like a sore thumb, like a rusty nail, that's all we see. If I were bipolar and had not had an episode of any kind for 20 years, I could not (theoretically) buy a rifle for duck-hunting because I am "mentally ill" and therefore a bad risk for handling firearms, presumably for the rest of my life.





OK, I hate firearms on principle and would never think of buying one for any reasons, but is it fair that a person with a treatable medical condition should have the same kind of "background check" as a convicted criminal? How exactly do they DO this background check? What sort of private medical records would need to be invaded? Does anyone even think of the sense of personal violation this could create?

Oh, but if it saves even ONE child it's worth it, people say, using the kind of cockeyed logic that seems to rule this twisted culture.

Why not apply that rule to all the Charlton Heston-esque yahoos who keep a gun in every room of the house? Why not take THEIR guns away, in case somebody gets totally hammered one night and "loses control" (maybe deciding his ex-wife or her boy friend have inhabited the earth for long enough)? Isn't it worth it to confiscate all these potentially-deadly weapons, even if it only saves ONE child?





We might do background checks on criminals and perceived nut cases, but what about assholes, sons-of-bitches and nasty little men with a grudge? If we took even one step in that direction, they'd be waving signs claiming someone was violating their civil rights.

I once talked to a psychiatrist at a cocktail party who shocked me by saying, "The vast majority of my patients lead stable, productive lives if they are willing to participate in their own treatment."

The vast majority.

This is a silent, buried majority, obviously. I guess they're too busy going about their lives to jump up and down and scream about these things. When the sons of bestselling preachers who seem to have all the answers to life's dilemmas shoot themselves in the head, we notice. When a congresswoman is mowed down and permanently disabled, we mutter, "Mental illness".





Better maybe than cracked or whacked or all the other lovely synonyms we've come up with. But what does it mean to be "mentally ill"?

How can one be "ill" and "well" at the same time?

You can't. You're stuck in "ill". You're sick for life. You "suffer from", you don't "live with". 

In other words, you're a victim.

As for the "mentally" part: I don't need to tell you that in a culture that worships the idea that we have total control over our lives (see Pastor Warren), being "mentally" out of the groove in any way at all is a sign of weakness, of passivity, of giving up. "Mentally" means "of the mind", and if it's "of the mind", it is voluntary, under our control, like bad habits or unwise decisions. 





When the stigma is so buried in the nomenclature that no one even notices it, we have a problem. I see it as something more like diabetes. It can vary in severity, perhaps waxing and waning throughout life, but the one constant is that it needs to be monitored. But if it IS monitored, the person no longer "suffers from diabetes", but has learned to live with it, can live a long life, a productive life, with diabetes existing in the person's peripheral vision, not constantly staring them in the face.

Why isn't the culture even aware that an alternate vision of this disequilibrium (as I like to call it) exists? Because we like drama. We don't like shootings, but when there IS a shooting, we must quickly point a finger of blame at a subject that will make us all say, "Ohhhhhhhhhh." (One of "those".) There is even a degree of comfort in telling each other, "He suffered from mental illness." "Ohhhhhhhhhh." That explains it, doesn't it? Isn't that the way "those people" are? The solution, the thing that will "fix" it: let's get that legislation in place as quickly as possible so that NOBODY with "mental illness" can ever buy a gun.

If it violates their privacy and their civil rights, if it marginalizes them and makes them feel like gum on the bottom of somebody's shoe, hey, isn't it worth it if it saves just ONE child?



POST-POST: Since writing this piece, I've had a ton of other thoughts, but it's a mistake to try to fit them all into one piece.

What hit me just now - while tacking away at my antique keyboard - is WHY the stigma is so damaging. When you're stigmatized, that is, if you have a stigmatizing condition, you may be driven to pretend you don't have it, or to deny it even to yourself. This leaves you much more vulnerable to your illness (if in fact you're feeling ill: I DO believe in the mentally well, and will insist on believing it for the rest of my life!). If you feel stigmatized, you might not want to take "those pills" that you're invariably supposed to take. The pills remind you of the stigma. That leads to another stigma, of course: "Oh, she went off her medication." The most insidious form of stigma, or denial perhaps, is feeling so well that you are sure the illness has gone away forever. Society LOVES this attitude because it implies "triumphing", "vanquishing" and all those bullshit terms that mean absolutely nothing ("victory" being the worst, with its warlike/Christian fundamentalist taint). Living with something that lasts a lifetime makes a great many people profoundly uncomfortable. 




GALLERY. Maybe this is yet another form of stigma, or one of those clunky, heavy-handed attempts to "banish" it that only serve to underline it. But when I was compiling images for this post (all of them taken by me in my back yard with my 1923 Brownie box camera), I kept coming across celebrities grinning away. Then I realized: oops, this is the category of "celebrities with mental illness"! This is either supposed to make sufferers feel better (if, in fact, they are suffering), or to make us all less uncomfortable about nut cases, since SOME nut cases seem to become famous! Famous is the ultimate goal in our society, better even than being rich, so if you're famous AND mentally ill, whoo boy, it must be OK to be mentally ill, or at least not horrible!

I liked this shot of Dick Cavett grinning away. He has been open about his bouts of depression and (I think) bipolar, though I think he was only manic once (which is, believe it or not, relatively common). I like it because he's 70-something, still has good cheekbones and that Nebraskan resonant voice, and looks happy.




I couldn't really find a good shot of Carrie Fisher, because she seems to have erased herself with plastic surgery and no longer looks like herself. But she has surely had her innings with bipolar (I refuse to tack "disorder" on it - why do I need to?), and come out the other side more than once. She's a veteran, and besides I like this hair style.




I did a whole post on Stephen Fry ages ago, a poem actually. He is monumental: it's that Easter Island face of his. Like some of his confreres, he has been open about his experiences with depression. The only thing that bothers me about all this is: when a celebrity comes out like this, they are forever "branded". "Oh, didn't he have shock treatments a couple of years ago?" If you don't give a fuck, however, I heartily approve.




Patty Duke had a hard go of it from the start, but has come through it all. I like the warmth in her face and the LACK of self-erasure (rare in Hollywood and making her a target of unkind remarks). I purposely featured only older people here because they have the stuff, obviously. Brittney Spears: come back in 20 years.


http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

Ah! The blahs!









http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

The ultimate infomercial





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Saturday, April 6, 2013

Did you say SKYPE?




From a 1994 video on the future of computers: some sort of early version of the Dick Tracy Two-Way Wrist TV. Looks like she's trapped in an Etch-a-Sketch.


http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Sex, drugs, violence (in no particular order)





Poems by Margaret Gunning

                                Gone west


It seems in my life I have always
moved west, New Brunswick, Alberta,
the boardwalk behind the Quay;

it’s a left-handed sort of life
driving me heartwards, though never,

no never,

heartwise.


                                           that day
when I thought I saw you   on the boardwalk
my guts jumped:               it
jerked the hook in my colon
(you always knew about bait)

You know how it was:    I wanted to stand on my desk
on the last day of classes
and shout:  o captain!  My captain!

But you had your own rotation – I saw
it reel from view, and

(helpless to catch you)

watched your spiralling apogee

What is the remotest segment of an orbit?
Booze, blondes.  Too much of
a good thing.  But I did love you.
We wandered, Pooh and Piglet in an
Escher maze, searching for heffalumps.
You calmly said, “Watch this,” and set fire
to my mind.
I saw you as the human yoyo, bobbing up and
                                                                   down,
sleeping, walking the dog, in and out
and ‘round the world.





I knew you’d be back, like hounds,
like a cycle of blood, like black
fruit springing into tree.  When the
string broke, I hid my eyes, and
said, but it’s only a lute,
it will heal itself,
half-hoping I was wrong.

I don’t know why or how God looks
after you, beached like a Wellfleet whale,
stared at by the curious.  I don’t know
how God manages.  It was beyond me.

And so I kept on moving.


Stalked by surprise

 Part A:

Is Sprung the past tense of Spring?
Is the world (then) forever sprung
ruptured/like a
cosmic hernia?
Will I in fact (in spite of
Shelley Winters in spite of
everything) fall into the butter
again?





Part B:

If life is a puckered

Promise,

an orgasm

dipped in alum,

The dire fruit of an

(unsuspecting
(apricot,

A half-born bee,

then:  what are you doing

in my
coatcloset, HEY!
                          Einstein,
Get out of there,/Fondle me, man
Even with your subconscious
and  - even though God
doesn’t throw dice
                        (dead man)
I’ll throw you  (out)





Buzzed

Your hive was a hum of

Cortical surprise; a splendor
                                (golden fuzz)
Of psalms:  a salty                        of Bee
being.  Such passion
in the apiary!  Such dizzy repro- (se-?)
Duction!  Bee

attitudes frighten me.  I will pick
the salacious hairs, the

haloed laughter of swarms
From my bee-blurred eyes. 



SPRING-LOADED


April’s where I live,
         the place my heart opens
                   rose-burgeoning, shinyleaf-new

a smell of bursting peonies,
           bumble-dizzy bees bumping
                       butter-and-eggs

swollen buds thrusting
          in the lovesick air.

Leaden, laden, leavened, lavendered, loaded,
one big quivering nose, a moist surprise
hatched out in the nest of my body

April Pegasus-leaps
        in my pulse,

sun-shot                    Pan-piped
       heady, relentlessly

tender,
recklessly

sweet.




                                               BIRD IN THE HAND


My bird in the
hand,

My bright dollar,

blonde head

Hard as a dime,

there in your
trench coat streaming
with spring, wet
as new robins
           or
Downy as stamens,

                          all
I would suck up/the
merry contempt in
your sleigh-bell
eyes,

Pepper my salt
with the wit of your
wounds,

Dive into the

iced-over pool

of your

voluptuous
disdain.
  

 

                                                            

 GINA



sweet shy
dark girl          I’ve seen her

here before


she always wore the best clothes
(silvery things/bangles
feathered skirts
necklace made
from the teeth of a wolf)


now I see Gina in the ward
kitchen.        Still beautiful
big-eyed
part Cree                            her hair tied back
she shows me the tracings of
partly-healed               gashes
sewn back together in
a gridwork


                                                                 hands/
on her arms,                                                 wrists.


She must be twenty or so
No one comes to visit

Once she had a boyfriend
but he got sick too





              

i)          Paul

(Biblical
spinning/verbs,

(so many gulled

fever
dreams swarming
in chaotic
blindness) a blueberry
moment --- Your
            (bees
hasty argument
My slant,    (arcing/jerked
dilapidated/heart

Your groin of sweated
     blood of the lamb
fire/Leo in a glass
snowstorm








 ii)  Cancun


      gusted
the             rustle

of a physics class



                                                                                                                                                aroused by the
                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                clouded haste



                                                                             of a subconscious
                                                                             baritone door:If this
                                                                             were an opera




(a damp weeping
head as if just
crowning a gush of
birth) orgasmic aria

                                            
                                                 another                                                 
                                                /       
                                             dizzy commingle
                                                   /

                                                   
                                                fruitstone
                                                    /
                                             the  fingerings

                                            of florence

                                           nightingale





                                               iii) Small fish



                                                                /discharging
                                                 i may not get there in time
                                                 The minute darting
                                                            /disengaging
                                                 (all of a mind/marineswarm
                                                                             (salty
                                                          severalness(sequence
                                                  multiplicity of           minnows
                                                           stirring severance
                                                              /drowsy
                                                  dousing in          dowsing
                                                                dis/       dosing
                                                  Persal dis
                                                  Proportionate dis
                                                                /Persian
                                                  passion
                                                        (possession
                                                  saul’s      Slick
                                                                              silksliver
                                                   (Slippery                    purse




                                                :This is the ship that
iv)        a                                    launched a thousand
clitoris        pearl                                           tiny---briny
                                    faces; this/mollusc/heart
                             dampalternate being/trace of shellfish                                       
                                                                              /flesh
                          (repairing its innerdamage)
                             The princess and the pea
                          A glistening eye/(that never

                                  stops seeing






     Points of departure

What did intelligent women
do then?  When their brains
were squeezed together by
whalebone
prisons,

when sexual lust was still criminal.
Men breathed and heaved then,
full of leviathan waters

what did intelligent women do then?
did they get examined
by dirty doctors
with a velvet speculum?

Did they speculate
on the nature of existence
and give themselves orgasms
under the sheets?

What did intelligent women
do then?  

                                              


You-riff (a favorite)

If mint ice cream could be made flesh,
(moreover
                Gershwin’s
                                   (innocent
piano keys (not the    (inanimate:  but the
        (hot
very (act of playing) teeth, a fine Mary-

morning

(could be a bald spot:a hunch of shoulders)
                                                                 (all
then I guess this Everywhere where we  (call
the universe/this minimouse, into the Here

would be exhaling you/expressing you
daily,
in daily bliss, dally, bless blush        doily
in gaily, earthshivering

Maymess triumphant, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’
hosiery/then, I guess your

Bashful tigersmile’s a paean to
“Great Chocolate!” eyes  (a-bleeding
                                         (monument to

(hooting hyaena’s
                            laugh’s a plainsong to)





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