FILM : Amour - The End of their Time

It's deserved to laud this film about a soul-mate couple whose 80-some years come to an end.  They are high culture: two musicians and teachers who have lived lives of discipline and devotion to the piano.  In this it is reminiscent of the character played by Christopher Walken in The Late Quartet.  They face the end of life together in a the typical,  predictable downward gyre caused by strokes and advanced old age.

The pace of the film is chillingly glacial.  And clinical - as a person who has and is experiencing the decline and passing of parents, friends, and an ex-spouse,  I can testify to the shocking quality of viewing this and being the caregiver. Here's this info: it's much worse than the film depicts.

 However this may be useful as a documentary for those who haven't had to endure throughout a life's end, there's only teeth-gritting patience and the certain knowledge of what comes next for the rest of us.  I found this makes the film boring, stifling, and immensely sad, the same way the caregiving process was for me.

The husband is called a "monster" and "loving" by his wife at one point; and so he proves to be, descending into obsession.  The pigeon who flies into the apartment is released the first time, but after he smothers his wife with a pillow, he captures the pigeon with a blanket and smothers it, too, cradling it and cooing to it like a baby.

Of course the film is an excellent film, with superior acting, directing, and editing.  As I left the theater, I realized that I had been released from the ambiguity and pain I'd always carried about the choices made to give care to my own parents in their passing.

I wouldn't want what happened to that couple to have happened to my own parents.  I am grateful that their passing, as slow and sad as it was, was theirs, not taken from them in anger or grief.  They had their dignity, making their own choices, even as they suffered as I shall.  No storm clouds loom over their story, as they did in Amour.

I pray for the grace to accept the circumstances that will be my particular finality and endure the indignities and pain that will end love.  Maybe that's the reason death is so painful -to give up  human love must and needs, hurt body and soul most grievously.

ART: Lois Dodd - Everything to Like

An ad in Art and America:  just one look, and I knew.  I wanted to paint like this, with a vision like this, a use of color like this, this compositional strength, this beauty and delicacy.  Of course, I will not. But at least I see that figurative artists still come to the public's attention, and I will be her sponge, in my own path and time.

 Lois Dodd, Self Portrait, 1989; oil on Masonite, 16 3/4 x 14 3/4 inches

Lois Dodd, Door, Staircase, 1981; oil on linen, 60 x 40 inches

Cow Parsnips

SHORT ESSAY: The Pope Resigns:Hidden from the world

"Even if I am withdrawing into prayer, I will always be close to all of you and I am sure that you will be close to me, even if I remain hidden from the world". - Pope Benedict's retirement statement.

I hear no conversation about the dignity, grace, and poignancy of this decision.  The questions that arise within one's own spiritual being:  what spiritual path takes one to a withdrawal from the world and its ever-present beauty?  

There's kind of wistful envy: what blessed certitude of God's grace this man possesses, that he can turn away from the world into a life of deep relation to his God.  

He did not turn away; I am certain myself that he was called.  For me, it was a chilling spiritual event to experience being called. In moments of doubt I think I only responded to the concept of commitment and focus heard in the context of a beautiful church, a distinguished priest, and the Christian message of constancy.  

In moments of transcendent happiness, I believe that I am being called to my purpose by God, that I am being warned and informed of what I am meant to do on this earth. It is an end; an end of the denials, distractions, and evasions.  It's like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and knowing that I am supposed to jump and I will be only airborne, earthbound no longer. 

ART: Will Barnet, died at age 101

Idle Hands, 1935

I love this artist - what joy and freshness, what an evident and delighted response he made to other artists, and what charming results came from it - I suppose critics would ding him for "platforming", or "scaffolding", working on the seminal achievements and the germinal design, color, and style content implied in the accomplishment of other artists. But these works seem to embody such breadth and wholeness of receipt of the seminal artists' gift; this is remarkable to me, and a great accomplishment in its own right. Extension and deeper understanding of the artists themselves and of Barnet's remarkable use of them result. It's as if seminal artists' gifts include a compass of options, for the artist and viewer to journey according to his will and whimsey.

(from the NYT obit) ...Mr. Barnet started out as a Social Realist printmaker responding to the struggles of ordinary people during the Depression...... He went on to work in graphic arts for the Depression-era Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. He also made prints for the Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco and the painter and political cartoonist William Gropper....

The Wheelbarrow, c 1935

Eventually his interest in Modernist formal innovations led to colorful, Picassoesque paintings depicting domestic family scenes, often featuring young children, and by the end of the 1940s his paintings had become entirely abstract. He soon fell in with a group known as the Indian Space Painters, who created geometrically complex abstract paintings using forms derived from both Native American art and modern European painting.

But Mr. Barnet returned to traditionalist representational painting in the early 1960s. Under the influences of early Renaissance painting, Japanese printmaking and, perhaps obliquely, Pop Art, he made flattened, precisely contoured portraits of the architect Frederick Kiesler, the art critic Katherine Kuh and the art collector Roy Neuberger.

... His later images of mysterious waiting women showed the influences of Pre-Raphaelite narratives, Magritte’s Surrealism and Edward Hopper’s taciturn romanticism.

Summer Idyll

In 2003 Mr. Barnet again changed course, returning to abstraction and resuming the engagement with bold shapes, vivid color and dynamic compositions that characterized his painting in the 1950s.

The North American, c 1940, Indian Space Art movemen

The Enclosure, 1963-2003

Woman and the Sea, 1972

ART: Olga de Amaral & El Anatsui

 This is a golden hanging, small pieces of gold metal foil wired together in the workshop of Olga de Amaral, a now 85-year old Columbian artist.  I saw her work in Santa Monica at a gallery called "Latin American Masters".

I saw in again in the crafts exhibit rooms at MOMA last summer, and was thrilled to know that this artist, to whom it seemed few in Los Angeles attended to, was collected and exhibited here.

 I was struck with the elegance of these shimmering creations, and one wishes for a dress, or to cloak an altar, the Virgin, or KwanYin in one such as these.

El Anatsui at LACMA, where I first encountered his work.  These opulent draperies, fit for a cathedral, that are made of beer caps wired together.  I have actual pain when I think how folks in outsider art and some Midwesterners I recall used to save beer and soda caps and make hokey thing-a-ma-bobs out of them.  I never had time for this, and dismissed the use of them, despite how intrinsically attractive I actually found them.  

It's astonishing to me that both artists achieve similar effects, so far from time and place.  Yet each has the relation of a exploitative colonial heritage to manifest, and so they do, each in his/her own way.

POETRY: Brenda Shaughnessey

from a NYT book review:

We will find our kind in Andromeda,
we will become our true selves.
I will be the mother who

never hurt you, and you will have your childhood back in full blossom...
We might not know

who we are at first, there, without our terrible pain.

...And here we are again
no cake without breaking

eggs, unless it's a vegan cake
in which there are never any eggs

only the issue, the question,
the primacy of eggs,

which remains even in animal-free
foods, eaten by animal-free

humans in an inhumane world.

"...honesty and the unflinching gaze", the reviewer describes the poet's vision.
And so I would, for myself, take on this firm gaze, will it,
unwilling to relinquish the pain if it means denial.

ESSAY: Yoga and Lavender

 At yoga today the teacher offered us  a spritz of lavender aromatherapy spray, for Valentine's Day, as a gift.

And it was - it summoned my first encounter with lavender, when at 18 I walked into a shop that sold herbs and found lavender - that English scent beloved of old ladies in literature.

I found it opening me, in a lovely heartbreaking way, and I thought of all the fields of flowers I've seen in my life - sunflowers in France and Iowa, the hills of Tejon Pass madly foaming with spring desert flowers,  the poppy reserve in the Mojave dense with shimmering orange waves.  The hills of the Cleveland national forest clad in goldfields.

And I prayed that I would see them once again before I died.

ACTIVITY: Skiing Again

Snow Valley, in the local mountains:  after 25 years, and 2 months of gym/yoga, I tried skiing again.  Ski design has changed, and it was much easier to ski, though perhaps not as gracefully, on the newer "parabolic" design - they're quite forgiving.  The day was warm and sunny, and The Hublet gallantly provided chauffeuring services.  It was exhilarating, truly, to be out on the snow, in the crystalline day, seeing forever on the lift.

PHOTOS: Winter's Camellias

One of the greatest Southern California garden pleasures of the winter are the glorious camellias possible - much work was done at the turn of the century to import and hybridize them for SoCal - they love the oak woodland soil's acidity.  I have taken special care of these and they are especially large and glamorous, especially the white ones.

POEM/PRAYER My Gratitude Prayer

My Gratitude Prayer

O Heavenly Creator, Divine Inspiration, Holiest of Spirits, 

On this day of thanksgiving, as on all days,

 I turn my full heart to thee,

In humble acceptance and with deepest gratitude

for the gift of abundant life and love bestowed on me.

 Thee has granted me the presence of beautiful children and family,

 and surrounded me with a world of infinite fascination and wonder

 in which to make my  journey.

Oh True God of Light,

 grant that my being rises and moves like clouds in the wind,

 and my face and soul know only Thee and Thy infinite grace. 

Grant me centered firmness, sustained strength and focus

that I make  this passage to the unknown with dignity and purpose

 befitting a recipient of Thy holy time.

Amen

ART: Auction Results, Egon Schiele

New York real estate developer Fred Elghnayan won Egon Schiele’s brilliant gouache, watercolor, ink and pencil portrait on paper, “Erich Lederer Standing with Hand on Hip” (1913) for £657,250 ($1,027,939) (est. £300-400,000).

I have loved Schiele since I walked into an exhibit in Milan in 1993 in the rain and was struck by his powerful fluid drawings and their erotic content.

A million dollars for a drawing.

ESSAY: Yoga Chakra Muladarha

Muladhara:  the root chakra, by Arlene Eve Johnson

Element: earth, the material foundation of the living organism

Issues:  stability, security, management of the material, patience, perseverance, reliability

Energy:  serpent energy, creative manifestation

from:  Dr. John Casey, Yoga and Sanskrit instructor at Loyola Marymount, from LA Yoga Magazine, 2-13 issue





I will....attend to these issues.
I will...take this energy to alchemy.

I will...become a tree.

POEM: Los Angeles Winters

Today the sunshine is thinned
by high milky clouds thin themselves
a translucent skin of the sky's blue dome

The waiting goes fast here
the winter is mercifully brief,

I attend the birch tree, a memory-aid
to the passing of four true seasons,
to leaf
It will be soon now

The hillside grasses are an impossible green
don't need Ireland's green heart
or the jungle's profligate growth

They spring up overnight
invited by little rains

Cold dry mornings
Yield to the sunlight, warming quickly
like bread rising.

ART: Charles Reiffel

Mountains, c. 1930's

THE QUESTION OF THE DECORATIVE

Charles Reiffel, 1862-1942, is called an American Post-Impressionist and a leading California plein-air painter.  As I look over the images printed in American Art Review, I'm struck with the Reiffel's stylistic fluidity.  I think I see references to other painters.  Back Country, San Diego   looks like a softened version of Charles Burchfield's ecstatic turbulent landscapes.  "...Expressionist landscapes of remarkable verve and complexity...neither a simple pastoral scene nor a vision of spiritual uplift common to conventional American landscape paintings...[the]...contrast [of]calm stability for/and the manic exuberance unfurling inside the frame...pathos...a poignant sense of precarious human existence in a roiling world of natural beauty both delirious and dangerous..." Quote from LA Times review by Christopher Knight (1-19-2013)

 Harbor Night 
Oil on Upson Board, 1936-7 
Inscribed on reverse of board: “Old National City, 1936” 
36 x 47 7/8 inches 

Chaim Soutine, La Place du Village, Céret, ca. 1920

Knight thinks that Chaim Soutine is the major influence and comparison for Reiffel.  The Céret landscapes are madness, the images of a delirious vision.  

I don't hear a whiff of disapproval of Reiffel from Knight, though.

 San Diego Back Country  
Oil on Board, mid 1930s 
30 x 36 inches 

PERSONAL: Yoga & Running

It's been over a month now.  I'm working out at my gym most days and the lost strength and flexibility is returning.  I find it astonishing that the aging body will respond so.

I have tried various classes, and find Pilates and yoga most challenging and effective.

What I've found is the psychological and spiritual component to fitness must not be lacking in whatever practice I use.


This is a chakra response poem/statement to use. I write them nearly every day I work out.  I also meditate on my chakras to discern which is powering me of needs attention.





I am.....in motion
I feel...forward
I do....choose
I love...the green world
I speak...of only kind things
I see....far far away
I understand...more than I wish to
I know....the dark

Sometimes during the workout I receive visions - of dark sanguine rivers, or emerald richness flowing over me, or out of me. Today I found a dark sky profoundly studded with stars.

FILM & PERSONAL: Disney and the Vault/Weekend Babysit

 Clyde Geronimi animated fairy tale, SLEEPING BEAUTY (1959) starring the voices of Mary Costa, Bill Shirley, and Eleanor Audley. This feature was in active production from 1951 until the end of 1958 and was the last Disney animated feature to have cels inked by hand. The beautiful art direction is inspired by European medieval paintings and architecture, and the elaborate background paintings took between seven and ten days to paint. This is the first Disney animated feature released in 70mm. Though much of the soundtrack in based on the Tchaikovsky ballet, George Bruns received an Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score for his original songs. 

1941 - Dumbo gets drunk and learns to fly!  He is beautifully drawn, the music is great, and the black crows all sing wonderfully sweet minstrel-style,  seem familiar from Song of the South.  Dumbo is out of the vault right now in 70mm.  It was lovely to see the pink elephant dream sequence, reminiscent of  Fantasia and the stunning animation of Oscar Fischinger. It's on Time Magazine's 2011 list of 25 best animated films.  It was made cheaply to recoup the losses from Fantasia, released in 1939.

We spent Saturday and Sunday taking care of our two younger grandchildren while the oldest, Mom and Dad went for a short ski weekend. I was so happy to think of them in the snow and our  6-year old grandson having his first ski lessons.

We took the 4-year old to Live Steamers, a singular monument to older mens' obsessions.  It's a hobby group that used land in Griffith Park to build miniature train tracks for their individually-owned engines and cars.  I was told an engine can cost $50,000.  On Sundays the group offers rides on the trailing cars, and it's a favorite of the "boykins" (our two male grandchildren).

It was one of those heavenly warm wintertime days in Los Angeles, sunny, a slight wind, sparkling; I have such joy living here when these occur, a  reprieve from the rest of the world's snowy bitter cold existence.

I am told that "miniatures" appeal to control freaks of all natures.

BOOK REVIEW: Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan

A kind of espionage-fairy tale!  It's  a play-within-a-play.  It's As You Like It.   All these funny layers and oblique references.  How novel this charming novel is.  A young woman is recruited into the British secret service by her older professor lover, who is the only one to die - a normal death.  The book ought to come with a disclaimer:  no characters were harmed in any way during the making of this novel.  The bad guy reminds me of Malvolio, though his name is Max.

She "runs" a writer who is secretly funded by a government-sanctioned though clandestine operation whose mission to create and spread a kind of cultural literary disinformation and thus influence public opinion. (Unlike Hollywood, it understands its intentions and results, though both can be dim sometimes.)

She and the writer she works have an affair, fall in love, and both are disingenuous about their functions and purposes, also.  They are like hit men married to each other - or are they the characters from The Getaway  or  The Thomas Crowne Affair?   

The writer's short stories are retells of some of McEwan's own. The books' narrative is actually the writer's narrative narrated by Sarah, his female protagonist.  Got it yet?  Hope I haven't spoiled it for you.  So I say no more, but it's a delightful, intelligent read, after which you can respect yourself, unlike the literary shower you will need if you choose some of the other best-seller faux thrillers on the list.

I did't  feel sheepish after this, unlike the expensive cheap thrill of mediocre reads (Baldacci, current Bosch, Joe Reacher, that alphabet female detective series, that croissant-laden Canadiana detective series, etc.)  that insomnia has caused me to purchase on my friendly Kindle.

BOOK: "Restless", by William Boyd

A young woman teaching foreign students English while working on her doctorate is given a diary written by her mother which reveals that during World War II she was a secret agent.  She was recruited to work for the British in the United States as part of a program to influence the U.S. to enter the war.

The past does not remain so, defying time, in this novel, as payback is sought and won.  I will leave you to the enjoyment of narrative suspense.

What is worth discussing is the ambiguity in Boyd's characters - how human and unlikeable they really are, and then sometimes poignantly appealing.  This is a dimension of spy/thriller novels that  is usually lacking, or only inferred, and it makes for a denser story.

Boyd writes well and that's a pleasure when one who loves this genre must frequently endure quite mediocre writing in the service of enjoying that suspenseful narrative.

What's really puzzling and perhaps annoying, is Boyd's signature style - his novels close with even more ambiguity than the characters possess.  And this is more serious, because it's about the plot unresolving, resolving?  Did it?  No, don't think so, but maybe!

And there's not the play within a play or a shell game like Iwan McEwan spins in SweetTooth.

You get to laugh darkly at the joke on you.


This book was made into a TV show on the BBC starring Charlotte Rampling, who seems most fittingly cast as the mother.  I shall have a look one of these days.