You go to bed

Make sure you know

The means of escape

In case

Of fire

Know how

And where

To raise

The alarm

Always pledge

That doors

Between

Across

Corridors

Stairways

Are closed

Especially at

Night

Doors

For protection

From fire

In the Heart’s Hallways

From the very opening scene, I was struck with visuals of a lush and verdant English countryside replete with a mare giving birth then frolicking across the hillside with her young stallion foal. I settled into the movie made comfortable with expansive panoramas and life affirming human and animal nature. I found myself considering the job of color-timer – the person later in the post-production process whose job it is to balance the color, tone and density of a film. It is a job that is usually noticed for its annoyance when there are shifts or bounces in color as a film progresses from scene to scene.  Not so with War Horse.  I was wrapped in a blanket of greens, tweeds, dun earth and rich sunsets that moved seamlessly from the first dramatic moment to the last.

Life lessons abound in War Horse. There are lessons in courage, selflessness,  what it means to be a real man and the ubiquitous battle between the haves and have-nots.  Joey, the war horse is sold (his ownership changes hands more than a few times after this) in a bidding war to Albert’s father a Boer War veteran struggling to maintain his farm and family. Once the long-suffering wife scolds her husband for spending too much money on a thoroughbred rather than a draft horse, the emotional trajectory of this film is obvious with the time-honored theme of Eric Knight’s 1938 short story and later novel, Lassie Come Home. Like the entire Lassie franchise, Spielberg also wrings every human/animal bonding cliché from every scene.   In spite of cliché, this theme works for War Horse just as it did in reality. According to writer Nigel Clarke,

the original Lassie who inspired so many films and television episodes was a rough-haired crossbreed who saved the life of a sailor during World War I. Half collie, Lassie was owned by the landlord of the Pilot Boat, a pub in the port of Lyme Regis. On New Year’s Day in 1915, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Formidable was hit by a torpedo from a German submarine off Start Point in South Devon, with the loss of more than 500 men. One of the ship’s life rafts, containing many bodies, was blown by gales along the coast and was washed ashore in Dorset. The bodies were laid out on the table of the local pub. The pub dog, Lassie, began to lick one sailor’s feet, and someone noticed the man was reacting to it—so they revived him.

This was life awaiting art (enter Hollywood) to validate the experience. Suspending disbelief is good for the soul. It provides a delicious alternative to the certainties of life today – for as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow the political landscape will continue to offer podiums for patriotic scoundrels conferring the blessings of improper gods. Children will make life-altering decisions out of starvation and necessity. A mother will make choices that in sunnier times would seem unthinkable but now – hauntingly probable. This is a world where the transitive verb, occupy now does double duty as a noun. War Horse is a movie that allows the viewer to address the issues of the human heart and run free when the heart is held hostage to what seems to be man’s congenital desire for war.  On the back of Joey we can escape the many handlers who do what they have to do to keep the war machine alive. The scene in which the horse is actually able to bring two sides together is antithetical to the Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan – there is no blood just one English and one German soldier cutting free the horse from yards of barbed wire. Even these characters are given enough intellect to acknowledge the irony of their duties.  “We’ll be fighting in a few hours…” the Englishman in his thanks for the German offered wire cutters.  Joey is free and in a coin toss returns to the  English trenches unknowingly passing a gas-blind Albert being treated in a front line Red Cross facility. It is Albert’s well-known whistle that saves the badly injured horse from destruction. Cue John Williams and his mounting crescendo when long-lost horse meets his loving now blind master on the WW I battle field. This could have been the end to a very sweet movie.  But no – Spielberg has more emotion to wring from us. Such as the return of the grandfather of the beautiful yet sickly little French girl (into whose hands Joey fell when his two German deserter handlers were shot for their troubles)  who walks three days to the  auction of all English military property at the war’s end. In a show of love and good-will Albert’s entire unit pools their pounds to purchase Joey for Albert but it is not enough to compete with the grandfather who wants the horse to remember his now dead granddaughter. What is a heart to feel?  The granddaughter was so sweet and precocious that we want the horse to go to the grieving old man. But then there’s Albert, he’d been blinded by mustard gas in service to his country and we are happy he can see now so, “gee, let the soldier have his horse old man.” And the grandfather relents. It is what the young, beautiful and precocious girl would have wanted.

Albert returns home in the most touching and emotional scene in the entire movie. Mom and dad are in the garden unaware of the silhouette on horseback moving across the horizon. Mom puts her hand to her eyes prolonging the dramatic irony – it could be anybody riding up to the farm but we know who it is. This lasts long enough for both mother and father to come to full recognition of their son and then -  group hug. Big – group hug.  Joey is left to display his great profile for us to admire. The rich, fire-inducing sunset backdrop screamed Gone With the Wind and the moment when Scarlet falls to the red earth of Tara and screams, “as God is my witness I’ll never go hungry again…” Seriously, I indulged in a claymation visual of Joey the horse laying on the ground at the gate furiously pounding a many-scarred hoof neighing, “as God is my witness I’ll never go to war again.”

Yes, pure schmaltz. But schmaltz never tasted so good.

He was carrying two bags. One was a red postman’s bag slung over his shoulder, the other was a black heavy-duty garbage bag he was half carrying, half dragging behind him. He put them both on the ground, propped his feet on them and leaned back in his seat.

The reader is intrigued by what the man might be carrying in these bags. The narrator describes the look of this middle-aged man before entertaining a host of possibilities as to why he is looking and behaving as he does.

The man, unaware of my musings, took a long sip out of the bottle. It looked like plain, clean water—why did it stink so much?

Once again, my imagination started to wander. Maybe the man had gone down on luck, and had spent the night hunting for meat to feed his family. Maybe he worked as a sewage-cleaner during the night. Maybe his washing machine didn’t work, and when his clothes reached a state of utmost dinginess, he finally gave up and is now going to his mother’s house to use hers, which would explain his state and the smell emanating from the bag.

This is the innocent rationale offered before the narrator takes off in her own self-described flight of fancy after seeing the blood on the man’s hands – blood that contrasts greatly with the shiny gold ring on his finger.

Horrific visions of my mutilated body danced before my eyes.

The nurse gets off the bus one stop later chiding herself for letting her imagination take things too far.

I rang the bell and was getting up to leave when the man looked at me and winked. It startled me. I tentatively smiled back. When he smiled, I felt utterly ridiculous. A man with such a nice smile couldn’t be a murderer. I got off and told myself that the extra walk would serve me as a lesson.

This short story ends in  the fashion of  O’Henry albeit lacking in cleverness.  Having convinced herself of her foolishness, the narrator is shocked when she gets home and opens up the daily news paper.

Looking up at me was the man from the bus. Over his head was the title: “Man caught on tape killing wife and kids.” It seemed that I had been right, after all. I fearfully looked around. I had been right about the man’s past actions; had I guessed right about his future actions, including my possible demise? I hurried inside the house and closed the door firmly, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to sleep anytime soon.

Why does this story disturb me so? This story and follow-up questions was a homework assignment for my ten-year-old niece. Is our world not crazy enough that we need to continue to stoke the fear machine for simple reading pleasure? And is this what would make a young girl want to continue to investigate the beauty that can be created with words?  I think not. When I was twelve-years-old it was A.M. Rosenthal’s New York Time’s story of Kitty Genovese, the Kew Gardens nurse who was stabbed and left to die as 39 people watched and listened to her early morning hour screams, that scared me beyond reason. This story has since been updated with corrections as to the number of actual onlookers and the coming and goings of the perpetrator who did return to the scene to eventually silence (kill) Genovese. But, in 1964, my take-a-way was that a woman could be beaten and killed by any man and the first assumption is that, in spite of  the obvious physical assault,  the commotion is simply a domestic dispute. This was the beginning of a female-victimizing world for me.  A man had a right to beat his wife and no one has a right to “get involved.” That Kitty Genovese may have fared better had she simply screamed “FIRE!” rather than ‘I’ve been stabbed’ was not lost on my young mind. But again, I was 12 almost 13 years old. At 10, I had not been imprinted with the blood and guts of dismemberment.  At 10, I was fearing wicked stepmothers and loving the little girl going to live with her grandfather in the Alps.

Could there have been other stories for my nieces 5^th grade educators to choose from that would not make her fear disheveled men who happen to carry bags? Also, are there stories available that would not make her fear the male gender in general? The subtext here is my niece should fear for her life in the presence of men who don’t look a certain way.  Yes, the world can be a vile and dangerous place for anyone. But I believe these are the lessons best taught by concerned parents who understand their child’s capacity to assimilate the contradictions inherent in human nature.

I suppose the story, The Bus Ride, has its place in the pantheon of homework assignments. But, for a ten-year-old girl whose father has completed numerous military tours in service to this country, this story should have no quarter. It is a cheap knock off of so-called television crime dramas that I can’t believe took more than two hours to write.

But I remain an author. I deem myself so as I follow the dictates of the poster I had posted in my high school creative writing classroom, Don’t leave your story for someone else to tell – they’ll probably get it wrong.  So, here I sit telling my story.

For Sisters Who Pick the Rose is fiction although I do use bits and pieces of my Compton childhood to support my storybook events. I’ve been working on this (my third) novel for two years now and have completed what I believe are five acceptable chapters. I would appreciate constructive input from any and all readers of For Sisters Who Pick the Rose Please find chapter one at my wordpress writing blog:

http://gwenatplay.wordpress.com/

and if you like what you’ve read please feel free to hit the subscribe button and you will get each new installment in your e-mail.

As Ever,  Gwen

The beauty and pain of life and the road beyond...

Two former colleagues will be burying their son today. Their son: my son’s lacrosse goalie, two years younger. This is tragedy writ large across the small town landscape of the human heart. A tragedy that speaks to the lie that the cities are where it’s at. Maybe when I figure out the IT of everything I will be better able to make a distinction between the pain wrought by a life – and a death.

What I do know is that becoming a parent can be the most joyful experience two willing people can embark upon together – the endless dreams founded on faith in love and the innocent sounds of new names – mommy and daddy. It must be what an addiction is like; looking into the eyes of your child and succumbing to the bone-melting moment when you realize that there is nothing, no one in the world you could love more. It is the moment you watch your toddler waltz around the lawn in a spring rain babbling the language of sheer happiness, arms spread wide, head held high as if sipping from some celestial chalice of innocence,  that you know you would lay down your own life for this moment to continue. Children, loved, cherished – as it should be – infused into your veins every morning, every handhold, every neck hug, every embrace of that small sturdy body that holds the contents of your elixir, the potion you need to survive. Liquefied, cooked love – injected in the open for all to see – the tracks of which you are proud to expose. Children can make us whole.

As children can make us whole so too can they lay us low. There is emotion that resides in the cracked plaster and glass of all adolescent door slams – an emotion whose power, we

that road untraveled - to self-hood

forget, is as strong an elixir for the adolescent as our fresh-parent love was for us. But it is the road out of the nest, to selfhood that we keep our eyes upon – beyond adolescence – when the parent-child relation ship is supposed to right itself – the waters begin to calm, the phone conversations end in “I love you(s)”  – both ways. But before the road untraveled, we believe we are cursed; what did we do wrong? Worry – the congenital parental condition beginning, not with ours but with our child’s birth. Even as we wrangle with adolescence we begin to paint pictures of that road out of the nest, putting our dream-child squarely upon it, smiling and ecstatically babbling that sonorous, personal language of sheer happiness – it is this emotional chimera that saves us when all hell breaks loose. It is what keeps us on the edge of the grave looking in even as our flesh and blood is lowered into the earth – buried.

I realize my tears are useless in changing the scenario. They will not revive the loved ones of the T’s, A’s and the F’s. – the first initials of those friends and colleagues who have all buried their young.

To be a parent is to expect to see your child to a healthy adulthood

To be a parent is to expect to bring that child to a healthy adulthood – it is what you deserve for all the love and parent-hours spent keeping that child alive and well. What these parents get for all their love is not what they deserve. There is no crime that warrants such catastrophe.

And so I wonder what it all means? I think of my own son, the vessel that walks the earth holding my heart and dreams – for him. And now my frustration with him, for his comparatively minor infraction of the adult responsibility code, pales with the knowledge that this frustration could be easily trumped – any day, any time…

Photo courtesy of Kelsey Johnson

*Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what’s going on
What’s going on
Ya, what’s going on

Wall Street: a neighborhood that handles the finances of those elusive job creators who have perpetrated the ultimate coup: enacting a suspect political dogma that the masses think they understand. Simple wording and snappy sound bites are all part of the gelatinous political-stew of lies and half-truths. But wait a minute, not all the masses have eaten this last supper of deception. Zuccotti Park has become a festival of signs and faces of protest which brings to mind a certain declaration – the emotional genesis for many a proletariat movement – “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”  Today, life imitates art imitates life… (I could go on). The art here is the 1976 movie Network (written by Paddy Chayefsky, Directed by Sidney Lumet) where the mad rantings of prophetically sensitive newsman Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) send the network establishment into the hair-pulling tizzy of damage control. They fire the unhappy newsman deeming this much easier than attending to the root of his suicidal outbursts. Beale’s position is saved by a friend’s intervention and his promise to apologize to his viewers. But the emotional waters have already boiled and all it takes is heat from the lights, camera and the countdown to spill over. Once more, rather than the promised apology, Beale rages at the camera calling life meaningless and “bullshit!” The “angry man” scenario is an overnight (today it would be instantaneous) ratings hit moving the network to give Beale his own show. Network is ripe with subtext and the firing of Beale highlights the old Hollywood maxim – “…you’ll never work in this town again — until we need you.” The personal urgency behind Beale’s rage remains unexplored by those he works for and the audience he entertains with his emotional antics as the “Mad    Prophet” who refuses to be ignored any longer. Timing is everything in love, politics and business and Beale hits the perfect note when he persuades his audience to throw open their windows and shout the “mad as hell…” mantra of the masses. The people have found their leader  and, at his behest, will send letters and telegrams (yesterday’s e-mail and twitter) to the White House in protest of the UBS network company being bought out by a Saudi conglomerate (any of this sound familiar?). Beale’s pending emotional breakdown is ignored even as his message is being co-opted and twisted by his employers who fear his power.  The big boss does manage to get a naïve Beale to put his evangelical zeal to work on another, less populist cause. As a result, ratings tumble but Beale is kept on and, like a public hanging in which the corpse is left (as a lesson) to twist in the wind, his messages, along with Howard Beale the Mad Prophet, are barely remembered.

Photo courtesy of Kelsey Johnson

In 2000, because it was considered “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” Network  was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. And rightfully so. Those protesting in Zuccotti Park are mad as hell and (in a figurative sense) refuse to continue the dance with their executioners. It is as if Network creators had their fingers on the pulse of the future.

I have a journalism student who spent several days photographing, talking and sleeping at

courtesy of Kelsey Johnson

Zuccotti park as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This highly  motivated and intelligent young woman believes that education is her key (as it has always been) to open the gates of success. I wondered if she would come in contact with other college students, those who perhaps have already acquired the key to said gate. Would they tell her how the key no longer fits?  How can there be a future with bright horizons when there is no present to occupy? Sadly, it is part of the grand deception; the horizons that once belonged to today’s youth have been bundled, parsed and sold as part of the derivative stew of lies and half-truths. Yes, education can be the key to success, but not in a society that allows the 1%  to leave the building and take all horizons with them.

In the quest for lost horizons, frustration becomes the muse of the masses from Egypt to     Oakland and major points in between. If Howard Beale represents the 99%; those  unemployed without hope and those workers with more empathy than hope, then the 1%,

A wall Street-off Scott Lynch/Flickr

the vile and heartless who today would mock the protesters as they sip champagne on a balcony overlooking Wall Street, is represented by Diana Christiansen (Faye Dunaway) the network programming head whose spiked heels have pierced many backsides in her race to the top of the ratings chart. Like the Wall Street dwellers, Christiansen has crapped where she lives but a little cinematic license allows her to close the door on the smell.

Not so in life – today.  Chickens truly do come home to roost- witness Zuccotti Park. But, until these demonstrations manifest in a change that will slay greed thereby returning futures to their rightful owners, these Wall Streeters get the same warning of self destruction that Network‘s Christiansen received from her lover (William Holden), “You are [greed] incarnate…indifferent to suffering, insensitive to [true] joy.” For Diana Christiansen, “All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.” And so it goes with a life owned by those who would mock  misery with their bitter toasts.

   *From, What’s Goin’ On/Marvin Gaye

Mapping the metro world

My lapses in travel posts show a laziness that embarrasses and motivates me at once.  However, my time between posts was not all idle; I did use it to process my experiences in Paris – not in a lineal way (me lineal? Nah) but more visceral; I sorted the colors, the stories behind the structures, the tastes of the wines and the smiles of the genuinely nice people I was fortunate enough to meet. No, Paris was not all grumpy and ill-mannered people and from this distance I can appreciate, more fully, the good and the beautiful.

Speaking of the good and (sometimes) beautiful, the Paris metro system is by far the best means of getting around. Some Paris metros have a theme and my favorite was all copper Arts et Metiers (so named for the Museum of Arts and Crafts) with its constant luminous interior giving it an other worldly feel. Standing on the platform, at a loss for words, I could only guess at the fate of all this shining beauty if it existed in some U.S.

Copper clad metro - Arts et Metiers in Paris' 3rd Arrondissement

city: There  would be some Americans who would have this entire metro stop stripped down to its girders before anyone realized they were being robbed. The copper would be parsed and sold quick and silent to those who make a living in that shadow economy known as the black market.  Just a thought.

Without FDR , I suspect this metro would have a more German name.

The Metro Quatre-September (the closest to home base) was so named to commemorate the date of the beginning of the French Third Republic after the capture of Napoleon III in

Quatre-Septembre metro - line 3

1870. The entry, wrought iron twisted into the metro name became a point of arrival and departure so many times that I began to feel rooted to the area.

Opera lovers

Opera Metro with two lovers  sealing their pact  with Paris : they really were kissing with abandon.

And then there were those metros treated much like the starving unseen we fail to acknowledge due to a collective shame, guilt or worse, lack of compassion. These metros (usually in the outer arrondissements) wage war daily against the olfactory with the stench of unwashed walkways and walls crawling with urine and vomit. The steady barrage of smells are the only weapons that these metros’ have at their disposal. I did not capture the travesty of human injustice that is the unloved metro. The times I could, I chose otherwise as there were humans – often just one but other times children sat with their elder (on a thin blanket to protect them from the filth but not the stink) in simple supplication. The yoga of misery; sitting behind an empty cup, legs lotus-crossed, praying-hands together beneath a bowed head begging – for anything. To photograph this agony would be to cement the fate of the subject – for me, such a purloined image would never change. I began to see little difference between photography and thievery – making me a thief of space, time  and experiences that were not mine to share.

I get it now.