I had a brief chance to check out my old university newspaper during a break in the directing over the weekend. I jumped right to the Viewpoint section to see if the same old was still the same old. And it is. I read a letter from two of my favorite professors that frankly and succintly illuminates the central problem at ND: a student social life retarded by a reactionary institution wielding an obsolete morality.

Most of the people who ask me about Notre Dame seem surprised to hear that I hated it there. The only thing that kept me from transferring to another school where I could have received an equivalently excellent education was the fencing team. My main reason for wanting to leave was the immature and unconstructive social life led by the students. The pitfalls of binge drinking have been discussed to death, including the spectre of date rapel; but the causes of binge drinking itself are rarely touched upon. I’d like to offer my own suppositions on this matter.

I was amazed at the sheer number of Domers who had spent their entire lives ensconced within the Catholic school system. Even more amazing to a country boy like me was the fact that many of these same Domers has spent their entire lives ensconced in single-sex Catholic schools. Twelve years of segregation and indoctrination in sexual repression by sexually repressed priests and nuns. I’m not advocating free love, here. Everyone is allowed to be as sexually repressed as they want to be; but I see an obvious bias and fundamental disconnect with allowing the celibate to tell us how and when we should pork. It should be no surprise then, that when young men and women who have had little to no uncodified interaction with the opposite sex and a lifetime of sexual repression finally come into everyday contact with each other that they have no knowledge of healthy mechanisms with which to comport themselves.

Enter the hookup cycle. The main reason my college social life sucked. The weekend hits and everyone gets shitfaced and hooks up and pretends nothing happened come Monday. Girls who have had 12+ years of nun-warnings about protecting their virginity have a couple very bad first weekends their freshman year when Boys who have had 12+ years of priest-admonitions finally let their pent up sexual energy go wild. Social life at ND reminded me more of Connersville Junior High School than one of the top 25 Universities in the nation.

And now the new President of the University, Fr. Tim Jenkins, probably as a result of his Bishop’s directives, is furthering and broadening the scope of sexual repression on campus.

Of all things there are for a priest to get his panties in a twist about, The Vagina Monologues of all things, should be low on the list. For a brief time in college I dated a stripper. Who attended the University of Notre Dame. Who was smart as yeah. Who participated in a packed house [in DeBartolo 101] performance of The Vagina Monologues. I was a member of the campus Knights of Columbus at the time, and the Grand Knight tried to organize a praying of the rosary outside of the room during the performance. I ran into one of my anthro professors, Fr. Gaffney on the way to the monologues and discovered that he was going to the performance as well. The Grand Knight saw us coming and assumed we were there for the rosary. Woops. As a play I think the Vagina Monologues is crap, but its usefulness in empowering both women and men in an examination of the network of relations between sex and gender roles is extremely important. Especially in a repressive environment like Notre Dame.

Similarly, the University’s pantytwist about a GLBT Film Festival is just as stupid. For a bunch of [seemingly] powerful celibate old men, wigging out over a movie or two is ridiculous. Yet all I have to do is think back to other things that have been wigged out about at ND [The Last Temptation of Christ, that penis video at the student film fest, the VM every goddamn year, others I'm sure I've repressed by now] and I realize that the more things stay the same, the more they suck.

If the University aims to teach holistic and catholic values, it needs to stop focusing on the worldly interpretations of Catholic doctrine, the imperfect human interpretations of God’s love for us, and realize that appreciative inquiry and dialogue can do more to foster Christ-like living than ostracism and close-minded tradition. I’m still working my way through a reconciliation between the good that the Church does and the harm it has done to me in terms of my own development, my own relationships and my own understanding of the importance of sex in my life. These are all personal choices, and while the Church has every right to provide its own guidance it shouldn’t restrict the expression of dissenting opinions. The University always hears the rustle of money over reasoned attempts at dialogue, so until the students and faculty of the University take organized action on their own, or figure out a way to make ND’s policies hurt its pocketbook I expect few things will change. I do know that whenever I have children, I’ll encourage them to attend a University that will provide them with an open and welcoming environment in which to educate themselves both mentally and socially. If ND keeps on as it has been keeping on, it definitely won’t be on the list.

     - thanks to Joseph Campbell

“Through me; the way to the woeful city;”¹

a hero
with a thousand faces;²
a story you
always wanted to hear.

We continue
though we know we continue
ending.

A desolation of hope.
That is the story.

and I say: This
must be
a prophetic life-

Why else cry to the deserted places?
Why seek wisdom on mountains?

—
1 INFERNO III, 1
2 The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

---

I think this one is going to remain in pieces; appropriate I suppose. The main ideas are there, but I think the tone is wrong and that is why I can’t get them to bind. Any suggestions?

If you’ve sent an email in the past three days to my email account on this domain you need to send it again. The blacklist on my webmail isn’t the most intelligent and spammers are ever devious, so when I ran my blacklist over the 70+ emails I had waiting for me this morning all 100 or so of my emails were summarily deleted and purged. This is because one of the email addresses on the blacklist ended with an @, and the blacklist then decides to delete mail from any domain after the @. Argh. Mr. Rijks, I know you sent me mail, [hola!] so please send it again, if you please. Please. That goes for the rest of you too.

This weekend I’m going to be directing at the Notre Dame Fencing Invitational. It’s an easy way to make a couple hundred dollars and an excuse to eat at CJ’s. I’m doing some serious brushing up on my USFA rules, since I’ve not actually fenced since I’ve graduated. [I can't believe it.] The Invite is two long long days of fencing, starting at 8 and usually ending 8 or more hours later, so I’ll definitely earn my cash. Since I’m leaving after work today, I had to accomplish all the normal stuff I do on the weekend last night. So I did my laundry, got my car serviced, et cetera. But the Lube Stop broke the valve stem in one of my tires, so I ended up having to put on the donut in the sleeting rain and drive to NTB in Lakewood for a replacement stem. The guy that fixed my car goes to the Greek Orthodox Church in Tremont, and another guy who was there waiting has a daughter around my age that lives there.

I’m going to send a complaint to Lube Stop, and maybe next time I’ll get a free oil change. The whole affair killed about two hours of my time. Tremont West gave me a call because they’d like to send me to a leadership conference in Nashville in May that is sponsored by Neighbor Works. I stopped in to check out their new offices and explained that I’d like to go, but since my status in the Cleveland is now unstable that they should continue asking people, but to keep me in mind and that I’d keep them updated.

I finally made it back to my apartment at about 7:45 and was able to shove some clothes in my overnight pack and snarf some leftover vegetable stew before I had to meet up with Des and Steve at the Lit to discuss the logistics of installing webcams in tactical spots in Tremont. Busiest Thursday I’ve had in a long time, I didn’t even have a chance to think about running.

we wrote love poems
before pomo.

now, all must
         represent,
         symbolize.

not just
          your body
under mine
its
            t
           w
            ist;
but also,
           a hand;
          under the
    table.

I had a crummy run today. I was supposed to put in six miles, but only did 2.5. My calves felt like bad clockwork. I think If I’d run much farther I would have torn something. No matter how much I stretched, they were still tense. Better take it easy.

This is posted on my brand new résumé page.

I am a man of action, and a man who thrives on communication. I do my best when I am constantly challenged and required to use critical thinking and problem solving to reach a desired outcome. Yet this is all too general. If you are involved in advertising, public relations, consulting, publishing or new media, read on, and I’ll tell you why you should hire me. If you’re not involved in any of those, read on anyway, I’m probably willing to work with you as well.

• Advertising and public relations

The art of rhetoric and the tactical placement of words and images are vital components to successfully selling your product; from mouthwash to public policy. I have the stubbornness, tact, and personality to maintain a brand image in the face of opposition, and the chops to prove it. I also know when to keep my mouth shut.

• Consulting

Analysis, synthesis, quantification and qualification are paramount abilities for an effective consultant. I can absorb vast quantities of information, burn the chaff and provide a distinct and focused briefing of any problem. My cooperative nature makes team brainstorming sessions the perfect setting for best use of my brainpower.

• Publishing

With over two years of experience with a major publisher, nearly perfect grammatical skill, and a voracious appetite for the written word, I am well-suited to the deadline based workflows of the publishing industry.

• New Media

As hobbies go, a fascination and facility for the logic and syntax of new media products is rather high on the geek scale. Yet few things flip my switches more than a thorny standards compliance issue or delicate piece of video editing. If you’re looking for a detail-oriented, on-the-ball self-starter, look no further.

So if you’d like to talk with me about opportunities at your workplace, or have any questions, give me a call at 216.287.1370 or send me an email at aharvey@organicmechanic.org. I hope to hear from you.

I feel a bit mercenary doing this, because money isn’t the only reason I’m seeking a non-dead-end job. But while I’m crafting my online Statement of Ambition as it pertains to my career, I might as well dish out some basic metrics for what certain salaries would mean to my lifestyle; at least in Cleveland. I’ve tried to frame it so that it should be easy to see how much money I’d actually end up giving back to the community. $30k won’t get me far in NYC.

If I had a job in Cleveland that paid me $30k a year I could:

• Drink more than one beer at local bars like Edison’s and The Literary Café.
• Buy beer for my friends at aforementioned bars.
• Go out to eat at local places like Stevenson’s Hamburgers and the Lincoln Park Pub on Taco Tuesdays.
• Have an internet connection at home.

If I had a job in Cleveland that paid me $35k a year I could:

• Drink more beer at local bars, and do a Bar Crawl of the fancy places like The Velvet Tango Room and 806 for Tremonter.
• Buy more beer for my friends at aforementioned bars.
• Take girls on dates.
• Pay off my student loans twice as fast and save a bit.
• Go out to eat at local places and continue my search for the best burger in Cleveland. I could also probably eat at a fancy restaurant like Fahrenheit once or twice without having to save up for it first.
• Join Cleveland Colectivo.
• Take a programming class at Tri-C or another local college.
• Move into a larger apartment that would allow me to have a dog.
• Take a small vacation to go camping and fishing.
• Buy a small piece of art from a local artist.
• Have an internet connection at home.
• Start fencing again.

If I had a job in Cleveland that paid me $40k a year I could:

• Drink more beer at local bars.
• Buy more beer for my friends at aforementioned bars.
• Pay off my student loans thrice as fast and also save or invest a bit.
• Go out to eat at local places and continue my search for the best burger in Cleveland. I could also probably eat at a fancy restaurant and even take a girl on a date there.
• Join Cleveland Colectivo.
• Take a programming class at Tri-C or another local college.
• Buy a fixer-upper house and get a dog.
• Afford to enter Notre Dame Football Ticket lottery.
• Create a small scholarship for walk-on fencers at ND.
• Take a fun vacation someplace.
• Buy a small/medium piece of art from a local artist.
• Have an internet connection at home.
• Start fencing again.

I now own a $20 nametag. I also had an excellent mediterraneanly catered meal from Middle East restaurant. Their grape leaf rolls were the best I’ve had. I also got free parking in downtown Cleveland. [!]

Now that the important stuff is out of the way, I’d like to share my thoughts on my first meeting as an alternate on the Neighborhood Connections Grantmaking and Monitoring Committee which is sponsored by The Cleveland Foundation. Scott Muscatello, a fellow NEO blogger, is also an alternate on the Committee. The Committee is comprised of just under 20 folks who are engaged community leaders in their respective neighborhoods. As soon as I walked in I started networking with the people in the waiting room. Isiah Powell is another new member on the committee and is also doing field coordination for local and statewide politicians. He’s a cool guy. There is a fair representation of both east and west of the river and it is a pretty diverse bunch, which I found heartening. I’m still the youngest person on it, of course.

The GMMC is unique across the country. The members have real ultimate power in determining the logistics of each award. The relationship between The Cleveland Foundation and the members of the GMMC ensures that TCF trusts the decisions we make implicitly. They have a well defined conflict of interest policy, which is pleasing to me.

The grant review process is gruelling. TCF received a record number of applications this year, ensuring that each subcommittee will have around 30 proposals to examine. There is also an extensive interviewing schedule and discernment process. One of the most important things I concluded from the 4 hours I spent at the foundation last night, is that there are no losers in the process. Even those people whose grants are declined are assisted through work shops and other technical matters in order to improve their direction and presentation. I’m looking forward to learning more about Cleveland neighborhoods and the ideas that my fellow Clevelanders have about improving them.

They say that it takes six weeks of any exercise program before you start noticing results. And by results, they usually mean weight loss. I don’t think I’ve lost much weight, apart from maybe a pound or two, but my body has definitely changed shape. I dropped a waist size and am now back to the ever-cursèd size of 32×34. Suddenly my hopes for finding pants that both don’t hang off my ass and cover my ankles are dwindling. I ran three miles quickly today.

The library is a natural resource. And I really enjoy that pun. I had a dream that I was in a library, and specifically in a computer room in a library with a bunch of ruckus friends. This computer room was from an Irish movie I saw years ago, and I remember a character watching Frank Patterson[?] sing at the papal visit to Ireland on the computer. Maybe that didn’t actually happen in the movie and I dreamed it, and remembered dreaming it in this dream. [Update: When Brendan Met Trudy, thanks TS!] So this room was not real to me, but real to my experience. In any case we were being loud and an old mean librarian came in and started copying our identification in order to report us to the Department of Homeland Security. I grabbed what she was copying of me and discovered it was a copy of my social security card. I refused to give it back to her, saying I didn’t want her to have my social security number, and she said she’d have me arrested and no one would ever hear from me again. I think I called her a dinosaur and said I hoped she got replaced by an upgraded librarian with piercings and tatts. Then I woke up because my pillow had fallen off the bed. I managed to grab it before it landed on the floor, although I felt very strange because my mind was still mostly asleep and my body was wide awake thrumming.

Life in Cleveland is becoming increasingly unfulfilling for me. I have spent the last 9 months looking for another source of employment in this area, and have been most unsuccessful. This is my third Cleveland winter, and in the time I’ve been here I feel that I have offered plenty of myself to Cleveland through time and effort, yet Cleveland hasn’t offered me much in return. And by much I mean one thing: a decent job. I like the people, the culture, the pace, but when, as a young professional, I make so little money that I have to budget whether or not I can afford to go down the street for a beer at the Lit, there is a problem. I’ve tried the networking routes, cold calling, browsing through every career board and classified and even out on the limb things like searching through my referrer logs for possible leads [Penton Media, I'm looking at you]. My skillsets are welcome as long as there is no price tag attached, but otherwise, this area doesn’t seem to have much use for them.

People talk about catching breaks, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it happen. Every success I’ve had, I’ve had to fight for tooth and nail, but me versus Cleveland is a fight I can’t win. So today begins my search for employment elsewhere. I’m going to start in the big metro areas, NYC, Chicago and LA [where I've recently started corresponding with some old friends from the ND Film Department], places I already have friends in, and places that might feel that they could use me. If all else fails, by mid-summer I’ll move back to Indiana and go back to school in order to get my teacher’s license. Cleveland has had its chance.

I think 12 miles is the longest distance I’ve ever run. I managed to do it in three minutes under two hours today, which is three minutes faster than pace. About 5 miles in I started singing “Venus in Furs” to myself, which is a very bad idea. “I am tired/I am weary/I could sleep for a thousand years…” So I tried to get Acceleration by Machines of Loving Grace stuck in my head instead. “White light inside of me/acceleration all around/till it don’t seem/like I’m running at all/till it don’t seem/like I’m running at all” That didn’t help, but I did settle on Veruca Salt’s Volcano Girls, which has a bit about running in it, although it isn’t much better than Venus in Furs. “A million miles of running and/I hit the wall,/I bounce back and I run some more.”

I hit the wall about mile ten and beat on it for the rest of the run. It was one of those times when you know if you stop to walk you’re done done and won’t start running again. The wind was absolutely horrible and my lower lip was totally numb by the end of the run, and my beard fur was all bristled up to keep my face warm. I tried to let a homeless dude know I was passing him, but only managed to make blub-blub sounds, which still served the purpose, I suppose. Brr! but done! I’m pleased. If you’ve got recommendations for good running songs, that I’ve not mentioned [I just thought of Pink Floyd's Run Like Hell] please let me know. I think I’ll make a compilation.

After a week like this week, it isn’t really a surprise that I ran like a fiend today. Only three miles, but I busted it out like the fat kid in dodgeball and was raring for more at the end. I’ve got a 12 miler tomorrow though, so I didn’t run more. I finally got my training t-shirt from the Cleveland Marathon, and I almost regret it. It is possibly the ugliest shirt I have ever worn. And for those of you who remember what I wore in high school, that is saying something.

My left eye has been twitching an awful lot lately. Not the eye itself, but the flesh and muscle around it. I’m sure I don’t have a vitamin deficiency and pretty sure I’m not dehydrated, so until it goes away on its own I’ve decided to make good use of it. I’ve added a hunched back, a violent stutter and a tendency to scuttle to my already horrific appearance and am currently practicing my sinister lurking abilities. Does anyone have a meat hook I can borrow? Maybe I can borrow his.

After my run yesterday I went to Dave’s and made myself a salad and grabbed a Braeburn apple. It was what my body was craving, so apparently I needed some iron [the majority of the leafy greens were spinach] and sundry other ruffage. It disappeared in no time. When I was working over the summer at Notre Dame, I used to take my lunch break and drive over to the Martin’s in Mishawaka with one of the guys on the ND cross country team who lived next door to me in the athlete dorm. There was a very limited and somewhat costly DH option, but the Martin’s salad bar was a nearly neverending source of relatively cheap and filling healthiness. Especially when I didn’t want to make tuna mac in the community kitchen.

Last night I also purchased some chocolate morsels, because I realized I didn’t have anything to bake with. So I anticipate cookie baking in the near future.

A little over 6 miles in a little under and hour today, but I was bushed. I did a truncated version of what I’m already coming to call the Bridge run, since I cross over Abbey, Carnegie and Detroit bridges, not to mention Bridge Avenue. When I extend it, I’ll also run over the W. 14th Street Bridge, the W. 25th Bridge, the W. 44th Bridge and Clark Avenue bridge. That’s the main thing I like about running in the city, the routes can be easily modified. In Connersville, you basically had to choose which country road to run down, and stick with it until you were done. The main thing I don’t like about running in the city is the air pollution; I’m becoming a master of shallow breathing.

This is the time of year when I’m extra-fidgety, extra-grouchy, and extra-dissatisfied with life in general. The miracle that is February, and perhaps Seasonal Affective Disorder; but diagnoses for every little thing aren’t really my bag. What I could really go for is about three hours in a fencing gym and a lazy dinner with no dish duty. I can’t have that so I’m going take care of my 2 o’clock appointment, strap on my kicks, pound some pavement and attempt to cheer myself up by enjoying the excellent weather we have today.

If I ever get a job that pays enough for me to let me splurge once in awhile I might actually be able to afford to start fencing again. That’d be the day.

Three miles - check.

A run across Carnegie Bridge,
I see for miles.
The north
rock towers,
Lake Erie
distance. Underfoot
swans tack the
Cuyahoga snow crust.

Art deco, overhead
eyes swaddling Cleveland,
steel carved in stone on
steel under stone.
Traffic
is light.

There is silence
even in my stride. The pace
a great muffler:
my girl,
her slow smile,
that dead-end job like
dish duty.

   now

   else
   where

wires in my calves
tighten unstrung
rewind. That heart
beats—
   my
   heart?
—slowly faster.
The south is
a whole county
of people; none running.

   Amen.
   Amen I say.

Still Sunday, a pilgrim
eastward, mantra of
foot in front
of foot
body bends to
shape the street
eyes on graffiti, backs
of billboards,
concrete concentrate
mouths forget words
feet forget miles

   This tang of street salt;
   this winter air.

          2.12.2006

---

I took a rather extended hiatus from running due to the crumminess of the weather last week and the extended crumminess of the sidewalks and road-edges even after the weather crapped out. Yesterday I woke up to snow, but by midafternoon it had mostly melted and I did 7.5 miles in 70 minutes, which is just a little faster pace than what I want to maintain for the marathon. I really got into the zone yesterday and time seemed irrelevant along with everything else. So I drafted a poem about it last evening.

I went to the dentist for the first time in several years today. They kept exclaiming over how nice my teeth were, but it seems like going to the dentist is now akin to getting your oil changed at LubeTown; every three seconds someone is trying to sell you a little perk that you don’t need. No, I don’t want to drop a sawbuck of c-notes to get my teeth whitened, nor do I want to shell out a few less clams for white strips, even if they are 20 times stronger than what you can buy in the store. Nor do I need a fluoride treatment, that shit is a government conspiracy to dispose of toxic waste. Besides, I drink so much tea that I’m likely fluoridated up to my eyeteeth anyway.

I do need to start flossing though, I agree with them on that point.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #9: John Woo’s Hard-Boiled.

John Woo must like Jazz clubs, because both The Killer and Hard-Boiled feature them, with Woo making a cameo as the club bartender in Hard-Boiled. Rarely have I seen a film with a body count as high as Hard-Boiled. The influence of Melville’s Le Samouraï is still apparent, [birds in cages, jazz club] but the vivacity of Hong Kong culture once again takes precedence. The characters and plot are basic action movie fare, complete with a tough cop that doesn’t play by the rules, a megalomaniac gang boss and rather blunt critiques of bureaucracy, but while it has the same sort of humor and destruction as Die Hard, there is also a strong sense of wish-fulfillment that isn’t quite as obvious to me in American action films.

What I mean is that films like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon are about how Americans see themselves, cocksure and tough as nails, a traditional retelling of What it Means to Be an American. In Hong Kong action, on the other hand, those traits are prominent but ultimately secondary to the emergent culture’s need to define What it Means to Be a Hong Kong Chinese. Thus we get Tequila Yuen’s [Chow Yun-Fat] troubles with his boss/girlfriend Theresa and his difficulty in being able to afford a decent place to live despite being a sergeant on the police force, Tony/Alan’s desire for a private place on Guam, and Theresa desire to have a child despite being a hard working woman. Even Johnny the Triad boss’s search for power reflects a young culture wrestling with an old one.

So Hard-Boiled rings with poignancy at odd times, even during the midst of wholesale slaughter, when Tony and Mad Dog allow some hospital patients to escape before fighting, only to have them mown down by the gang boss who has tossed aside all pretenses of cultural sophistication to feed his ambition. So ambition is considered a virtue [for the cops], but not when it runs over other people [the Triad boss]. I’d contrast this to American action films which preserve the status quo. The characters are focused on their immediate situation and not really on long term goals external to it. The message is “do what needs to be done now, and don’t think about the future” as compared to Hong Kong’s “do what needs to be done now, so we can focus on the important things.”

I’d probably say that Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the mature expression of the new Chinese/Hong Kong culture, and one that probably manages to reconcile that ambition with the ancient traditions. I’d say that The Killer is a better film than Hard-Boiled, but Hard-Boiled is more fun to watch.

• Criterion Essay by Barbara Scharres
• The Criterion Contraption’s review.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #8: John Woo’s The Killer.

There is something of a directorial dialogue between Eastern and Western filmmakers. Few things so appropriately evince this tendency than the relationship between Jean Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï and John Woo’s The Killer. Woo readily states that Melville is a great influence of his [The Criterion DVD liner notes for Le Samouraï contain an essay by Woo] and Melville’s interest in Eastern culture is readily apparent. Why would a Hong Kong director be so obsessed with a French director who made a film called The Samurai? And the obsession is obvious, for The Killer is rife with homages to Le Samouraï. Both concern hitmen who become obsessed with female lounge acts who witness their murders; that very obsession results in their destruction.

But where Le Samouraï is art cinema, The Killer was meant for a more mainstream audience. Where Le Samouraï is almost mythical and timeless, The Killer is very much a part of the 1980s. There might be a slight tendency toward melodrama in The Killer, as opposed to the emotional austerity in Le Samouraï, but by no means should this be taken as disparaging of Woo’s film. It is necessary, for Chow Yun-Fat’s character is a killer with a heart of gold, much more heroic and sympathetic than Alain Delon’s version of the hitman.

An equivalent amount of pathos ends each film, despite the differences in tone and content. This is very much enhanced by Peter Pau and Horace Wong’s outstanding camera-work Fan Kung Ming’s editing and Woo’s eye for a shot. There is a simple dolly move that starts an extraordinarily well done rooftop chase sequence that I had to rewind and watch two or three more times. Its timing ramps the tension and pace up smoothly and immediately. Similarly, in the final shootout, there is a shot of a white dove smothering a candle, a bit of foreshadowing of the death of the white-suited hitman. I’m really looking forward to watching Hard-Boiled, the next John Woo film in the Criterion list.

• HK Cinema review
• Blood Lines: The cinematic senses of John Woo.
• The Criterion Contraption’s review.

I try too hard and then I marvel at the patience of others. I was hanging out with Girl the other night and after breaking her work computer once, and thereby causing her workplace to institute a “you break it, you pay to fix it” policy, I did the same dumbass thing that I had done the first time, thereby causing unnecessary stress and monetary damages upon the poor benighted Girl. I can pay for getting it fixed but I can’t remove the stress. Perhaps I can make it up somehow.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #306: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï.

In a film like Le Samouraï, “never” means “always”. When the police inspector says that he never thinks, we know he is always thinking and when hit man Jef Costello [Alain Delon] says he never loses we know he’s already lost everything. This film is a study in cool; the smooth control that so many of us strive for, and which often transfers awkwardly on film, comes across here as natural and essential. Melville referred to Costello as a schizophrenic, but to me he appears more sociopathic than anything else. I think the reason his cloak of cool is so authentic is because of this neurosis. Melville also said he was trying to make a black and white film using color stock and the greyscale of much of the film enhances the coiled equilibrium of Delon’s character.

Dialogue is as sparse as color, and when color becomes vibrantly present we feel that Costello is in a place he should not be. This is assisted by the fact that he looks like a three day dead corpse in the best of light. That adds to the grave coolness. Despite his meticulous patterns, he is a sloppy killer. There are 5 witnesses to his murder, and although is alibi is airtight, he eventually faces the music we all know is playing for him.

What is really interesting is the way you can feel the hand of the director, showing, not hinting, but ultimately as objective and heartless as the assassin. But where it is possible to sense tightly reined emotions in Costello, Melville seems bereft of them all. The film is defined by what it lacks, it is almost a documentary, it makes no excuses for what it can and cannot show, and leaves it to us to draw our own conclusions.

• Criterion Essay by David Thomson
• Roger Ebert essay
• Slant Magazine Review

I was supposed to run 10 miles over the weekend, but the weather was so bad that I had to put off the run until today. I put in 4 to 5 instead of the full ten, because the streets and sidewalks were still pretty ice-covered. My time was good nonetheless, and I’ll just crank up my pace for the rest of the week in order to compensate.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #301: Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table.

Despite being hailed as one of the world’s best female film directors, I’ve been ultimately disappointed with Jane Campion. In regard to the technical aspects of her filmmaking I have nothing but praise, she is quite able to gather the people she needs to make her vision appear and to direct them to her goal, but to me at least, the content of her films leaves something to be desired. Perhaps this is because I’m a man. The Piano is a nearly perfect feminist film, but the last ten minutes cut the legs and a few more fingers from all the excellence that precedes it. And In the Cut is both a mailed-in thriller and a study in tactical misandry. An Angel at My Table is basically a cinematic version of The Bell Jar and it is based on the autobiogaphies of Janet Frame, who is essentially a Kiwi Sylvia Plath.

In my last semester of college I took a class called “Fictions of Insanity” which was supposed to be an English course on how insanity as a theme is used in literature. In actuality it was a course on how patriarchy drives women mad, taught by a grad student whose thesis was on the same subject, only in an even more specific area, how patriarchy drives women mad in the Victorian Novel. She appeared to read from her thesis instead of lecturing. Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy the class and ended up dropping it. I’ve now come to the conclusion that I don’t like it when any -ism focuses more on assigning blame than more constructive actions. I’m not saying that feminism does this, but that some feminists do, whether intentionally or not. I think Jane Campion knows better than to do this, but ends up forced into it by audience considerations. I mean that most viewers aren’t going to find autonomous agency very appealing. That kind of independence is certainly hard to achieve, if it is even possible; the ultimate failure of any of Campion’s heroines to achieve it and their inevitable reassimilation into society seems to say that there can be no victory, but there can be peace.

This all fits in nicely with An Angel at My Table. Janet Frame has the “artistic temperament” but the demands of New Zealand society and culture create a strange childhood for her, as she is shuttled through the school system like a toaster on an assembly line and is time and time again set apart from the group. Her desire to be a writer and her obvious aptitude for the craft are supposed to be set aside for a “real job.” And fatherly men are constantly telling her what to do. Because she hasn’t been allowed to grow freely, she ends up in an asylum receiving shock treatments for 8 years. It later turns out that she was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. [If anyone had actually paid attention to the wallflower they would have noticed she was just a little shy]. Not until she is allowed bits of freedom, including a trip to Europe does she learn that she is quite capable of taking care of herself, and that it is okay to be who she is. For Ms. Frame, that is enough. After she actualizes, she can happily make peace with her place in the world and finally live as a person, not a carrot-topped toaster.

Hey, it looks like a Campion heroine successfully finds contentment! Even if her agency is only lightly used as a result of her reclusiveness, at the end Ms. Frame’s satori is still obvious. Apart from being about an hour too long, this was a good movie.

• Criterion Essay by Amy Taubin
• Senses of Cinema lecture by Sue Gillet

3 miles in about 24 minutes today. I need to keep pushing the short runs to build my strength and high gear stamina.

I filed my Ohio Tax Return online in about 20 minutes last evening. It was a piece of cake, you create an account and can then save your return as you work on it. I highly recommend using I-File if you live in Ohio. They’ll even direct deposit your refund.

Of course, bureaucracy increases by orders of magnitude as you go up the scale and instead of having such a simple and similar process available [that is, operated and offered free by the government] through the IRS, you have to pick from a list of approved private tax preparers who have “free” software available for use [and hidden fees like crazy]. The Feds would do well to steal a play from Ohio’s book, at least for the 1040EZ. They did have fillable pdfs of the forms, which was nice, but I still have to print it off and mail it in with my check, [so much for the state refund] instead of being able to complete it all online.

On the other end of the spectrum, my city/county taxes still have to be done fully through the snail mail. The middle road still seems to be the best.

I had a 5 mile run in the rain today and I finished it in about 40 minutes. My shoes are well and truly broken in now that they’ve gotten their first soaking.

     -for r.a.washington

These are-
granite days,
they demand-
hard men,
fortifications
of strange shapes
watchwords-
must blend in

We split
the rift
wider-
brother gives
grift- but my
words are
foreign currency
in his hands.

The songbirds
The long words
spill into our
ears- “from
whence came ye,
wanderer? to
loiter in the eaves
of spring.”

     ”I cannot fiddle,
     but I can make
     a great state
     from a little city.”¹
     Local anomalies
     in the second law
     of thermodynamics.²
     -raw vocalized.

Watch
the candle’s wick.
The times change
and light multiplies
but men remain
the same. Their
tongues estranged
by taxonomy.

I hit you
because I am
small.
And you are not
like me.
I am small, but
territorial.

Any truce
segregates our
speech, as war is
two cheaper
than peace.

How do I solve
for x in a language
that has no letters?

these riddles of
arranging adjectives.

—-
¹ cf. Themistocles
² cf. James Blish

---

I’ve been working on this for a few weeks now and I think it is finally sounding good enough to appear here. I’m still trying to tighten up some of the words and images, and smooth out some of the rhyme. Any suggestions or questions or workshopping would be appreciated.

Bachelorhood:

I have four
different kinds
of mustard
in my fridge

but no mayo.

I’ve been making my way through Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical Deus Caritas Est again. Essentially it offers clarification and direction on the uses of αγαπη, or spiritual love, or charity, in Christian practice. There is much of worth in this encyclical, but also some deliberately missed opportunities and some implications that make me uneasy. Encyclicals may or may not be subject to the rule of papal infallability, it basically depends on both the content of the letter and whether or not the pontiff decides to invoke his power. Often they are merely reiterations of present Church doctrine and offer focus an encouragement for leaders or lay persons regarding a present matter of importance.

Deus Caritas Est is addressed to all Christians [the word Catholic does not appear until over halfway through the encyclical] and takes the form of an exhortation to charitable acts and also navigates its way through separation of church and state, Marxism, and misuse of charity for other ends. Based on the tone of the piece, I do not think that Pope Benedict is invoking his infallibility, nor does the content stray from doctrine enough to warrant its use. Now on to the excerpts of the content that I found most interesting.

In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant. For this reason, I wish in my first Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others. That, in essence, is what the two main parts of this Letter are about, and they are profoundly interconnected.

…

Let us note straight away that the Greek Old Testament uses the word eros only twice, while the New Testament does not use it at all: of the three Greek words for love, eros, philia (the love of friendship) and agape, New Testament writers prefer the last, which occurs rather infrequently in Greek usage.

The focus of this encyclical is on agape, because the writings in the bible focus on agape. Benedict is addressing the confusion that modern translations have, using the word “love” which is often too broad for the necessary context. He then goes off on a rather long tangent about erotic love and its proper manifestations, and how it differs from charitable love. I was therefore expecting an important statement of purpose on the Church’s stance regarding eros. Instead, through the repetitions of “love between a man and woman in marriage” we find the Church’s stance essentially unchanged. However, I found all of that discussion to be irrelevant once I realized that the second half of the encyclical was focusing solely on agape. Why not just say “I’m here to talk about agape not eros” and be done with it? Instead there is this convulted reasoning that claims agape is necessary for eros to reach its ultimate expression. No offense to the Supreme Pontiff, but he sounds like a celibate curmudgeon who is treating erotic fire-blood love as a purely philosophical and semantic object while claiming

Christianity of the past is often criticized as having been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed. Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive.

And

Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness.

seems a bit out of place considering that Catholic vocations require rejection of flesh and animal nature in the pursuit of spiritual matters.

The mechanism of the equation of eros and agape is applicable to the second portion of the encyclical, and is essentially what I wrote about a few weeks ago: Our perspective should be that our bodies are a loan from God and should not be used in a way that he would disapprove of. But enough of this.

The second portion of the encyclical offers practicable direction for exercising charitable love, some meat to go with the metaphysics. By highlighting the Church’s historical precedents of charitable action [dating from the establishment of diaconal office [Acts 6: 1-6]]. There is much good advice here, but also a statement that governments should subsidize the Church’s charitable activities and at the same time not interfere with aims of the activities.

The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support. In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live “by bread alone� (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human.

While I agree that the State cannot supply “loving personal concern”, I think that any “State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces” is tacitly revoking its own sovereignty in favor of theocratic control. DANGER! DANGER!

But ultimately, the message of charity and its practice on an individual level, is something that any person with the slightest bit of agape can agree with.

Part of Marxist strategy is the theory of impoverishment: in a situation of unjust power, it is claimed, anyone who engages in charitable initiatives is actually serving that unjust system, making it appear at least to some extent tolerable. This in turn slows down a potential revolution and thus blocks the struggle for a better world. Seen in this way, charity is rejected and attacked as a means of preserving the status quo. What we have here, though, is really an inhuman philosophy. People of the present are sacrificed to the moloch of the future—a future whose effective realization is at best doubtful. One does not make the world more human by refusing to act humanely here and now.

“One does not make the world more human by refusing to act humanely here and now.”

This is the fundamental point of the whole encyclical. And a bit later Benedict uses this same point to castigate those who would misuse charity.

Charity, furthermore, cannot be used as a means of engaging in what is nowadays considered proselytism. Love is free; it is not practised as a way of achieving other ends.[30] But this does not mean that charitable activity must somehow leave God and Christ aside. For it is always concerned with the whole man. Often the deepest cause of suffering is the very absence of God. Those who practise charity in the Church’s name will never seek to impose the Church’s faith upon others. They realize that a pure and generous love is the best witness to the God in whom we believe and by whom we are driven to love. A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak. He knows that God is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8) and that God’s presence is felt at the very time when the only thing we do is to love. He knows—to return to the questions raised earlier—that disdain for love is disdain for God and man alike; it is an attempt to do without God. Consequently, the best defence of God and man consists precisely in love. It is the responsibility of the Church’s charitable organizations to reinforce this awareness in their members, so that by their activity—as well as their words, their silence, their example—they may be credible witnesses to Christ.

“Love is free; it is not practised as a way of achieving other ends.”

This is the fundamental point of the whole encyclical, and again a very strong argument against those who believe that salvation can be found through belief alone. Faith without works is ultimately no faith at all, because if “ó θεòς αγάπη εστίν” [God is love/charity] [1 John 4:16] and one does not practice charity, God is not present.

While Pope Benedict’s papacy is expected to be quite politically and morally conservative, and there are indications of that conservatism in this encyclical, the expression of agape remains a radical, practicable, tangible and powerful way of expressing that

Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working. Love is possible, and we are able to practise it because we are created in the image of God. To experience love and in this way to cause the light of God to enter into the world—this is the invitation I would like to extend with the present Encyclical.

I was supposed to run on Tuesday but I ended up sleeping instead and moved my schedule up one day for this week. So instead of getting next Monday off, it’ll be a cross-training day. I ran three miles again, but harder this time and cut a couple of minutes off my time. The wind was blowing against me in three directions, so I likely would have been slightly even faster if it had been calm. The weather continues to be excellent otherwise, but global climate change seems pretty obvious, this summer could be roasting.

My bros Bo and Phil [who are bros] just started an mp3 weblog. Go check out Lead Singer Disorder, bro.