I live two lives — one is here, and the other is on the Isle of Touperdu.
Tag: dailyprompt
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so there are many films I’ve seen more than five times, mainly classics — Citizen Kane, The Shining, The Big Sleep, Casablanca, Jaws, The Shining, Metropolis, Gone with the Wind, The Godfather I & II, The Seventh Seal, The Wizard of Oz, Fanny and Alexander…
A truly great film yields something new every time you watch it. Among the things I’ve noticed in most recent viewings:
In Citizen Kane, one of the most iconic characters, the loyal Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloan), makes what I suspect is an oblique comment on the anti-semitism rife in the early 20th century. Most people remember him from the moment when he reminisces about a lost love he glimpsed only once on the Statin Island ferry. (“a white dress she wore…“). Every time I watch that scene I’m struck by how Sloan says the investigating reporter’s (William Alland) name. “Well, you’re pretty young Mr… Mr. Thompson…” The slightly skeptical emphasis makes me wonder if Bernstein is commenting on his supicion that Thompson is the anglicized version of a Jewish name.
In The Big Sleep, director Howard Hawks mercifully shot veteran actor Charles Waldron from behind when he had to utter one of the script’s more purple lines, General Sternwood’s comment on orchids. “Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men. Their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.” (I blame Faulkner, who worked as a screenwriter on this film.)
In The Godfather I & II, the matriarch, Mrs. Corleone, is often thought of as the saintly moral center of the family. She has plainly been a good, affectionate mother to her sons, even the adopted Tom Hagan, but her treatment of her daughter, Connie, borders on uncaring. Especially revealing is a scene at the dinner table, (warning — the N word is used) where Mrs. Corleone is shot from the back as a sort of dark, looming presence. Connie’s abusive husband tells Connie to shut up and Sonny, the only family member willing to protect his little sister, tells him, “Don’t you ever tell her to shut up, you got that?” Mrs. Corleone raises one hand and says coolly, “Don’t interfere.”
SPOILER
Finally, as a bonus, I’ll point out something often missed in V for Vendetta, which has long been a guilty pleasure of mine. In the wonderfully edited dominoes falling scene, as Finch talks about what he sees happening. there is a glimpse of his and Evie’s future. In this video it’s at the 2.46 mark. Evie, with her hair grown out, is arranging a vase of Scarlet Carsons, and Finch can be seen as a reflection in the mirror behind her, sipping a drink.
Bonus trivia: As someone who read the original V for Vendetta comic when it was serialized in Warrior Magazine I can tell you that in the graphic novel, Finch gets his “feeling” by visiting Larkhill while under the influence of LSD.
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We all like to imagine we aren’t superstitious. I enjoy a good ghost story, but they don’t keep me awake at night. In my teens, I was impressed with Ouija boards — until someone pointed out we were communing with the infinite using something manufactured by Parker Brothers. I collect and read tarot decks, but I think tarot spreads — and how someone reacts to them — are more likely to reflect a person’s inner life and expectations than the actual future.
Back in college, I used to perform cartomancy at parties, usually after a few drinks. At one, feeling especially confident (drunk) I decided to do a large, elaborate past/present/future tarot reading for a lesbian friend’s date. I had never met the date, who was a a rangy woman a little older than us, in her mid twenties, goodlooking, with long reddish hair. She sat on the sofa smoking a cigarette while I spread out the cards– probably Rider-Waite — on the cleared-off coffee table. Once I had laid them all out I sipped my drink, stared down at the spread, and tried to decide what to say.
Most of the time, you have to dig a meaning out of a spread, but in this case, the cards were absolutely, disturbingly clear. In her past were three men. All three had been important to her — lovers. All three had died violently.
Naaah. I couldn’t say that. So I didn’t. In my tipsy, befuddled way, I offered a generic reading about troubles in her past, but a better future, etc.
After I’d finished, She puffed on her cigarette, for a moment, her eyes on the cards. “I’m disappointed,” she said. “I though sure they’d say something about my three dead boyfriends.”
It turned out she was an ex motorcycle Mamma who’d had three biker boyfriends. Two had died in motor collisions, one after being shot. She’d decided after that she was a mankiller who should to stick to women.
I don’t recall my exact reaction, only being flabbergasted and alarmed, though I did have the presence of mind not to add to my humiliation by muttering “Oh, well, yes, of course I saw that,” as I gathered up the cards. For a long time afterwards, I remembered this as my own brush with The Unseen.
It took years for a very simple thought to occur to me.
Other people can read tarot cards.
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it’s hard for me to say.
My western astrology sign is Scorpio, but nobody likes to compare themselves to an arachnid. In Asian astrology, I was born in the year of the dog, and that never bothered me much, so perhaps that’s the answer.
One of my very early memories is the moment I realized, no matter how hard I pretended, I could not turn myself into a dog and go trotting around the neighborhood having adventures with our spaniel. I must have been about two or three, and sat under the kitchen table feeling my face and realizing I could not get it to grow into a muzzle. Very disappointing.
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It’s called a diary.
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I understand it’s one of the biggest, most comprehensive tarot stores in the world.
I have collected tarot decks since college and still have the one I used back then (Crowley’s Thoth deck.) Decades of collecting have left me with fifty decks and a collector’s pickiness. No, no, not just any deck will do, not just some mass-produced deck on Amazon. I prefer privately published editions, or at least decks I haven’t seen a hundred times in bookstores.
Tarot collecting came into vogue a few years ago, the volume of published decks exploded, and I watched the value of my collection plunge, but I never bought them with an eye to selling them. I just like the pictures, and those haven’t changed. My reaction to a deck going from three figures to two (or even one) is a shrug.
The prices still rise and fall, however, and occasionaly I’ll check online and note the deck I paid $15 for in the early oughts is now worth several hundred dollars. Which is nice.
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Daily writing promptWhat is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?
It’s nothing special in itself (aside from being my mother’s name), but when included with my full name there’s something weirdly elaborate and frilly about it. A high school English teacher once told me all three of my names strung together sounded like the name of a romance writer.
It’s not hard to imagine it in Edwardian font floating beneath the title of one of those mass-market 70s-era bodice-rippers inspired by Rosemary Rogers. An apprehensive-looking woman with blowing hair and a ruffly, low-cut dress wades through long grass, her mouth half open. Behind her, a glowering man in a big shirt smolders against the background of a distant harbor view with clipper ships. Loves Throbbing Call, by…
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This apparently happened occasionally during the Spanish Flu epidemic. It’s how Katherine Anne Porter, who almost died from the flu, got her signature, prematurely white hair.
I’d thought it was because physicians had dosed her with strychnine in a last-ditch attempt to save her, but a docu-drama I watched last night showed it happening to another patient and ascribed it to the fever.
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I have no problem saying “I don’t know,” “Yes,” “No,” “Fine,” or “That’s none of your business.”
Questions are often regarded with suspicion in online conversations. “Sealioning” it’s called. The origin is a cartoon by David Malki in which a couple having a private conversation is accosted by a sea lion who follows them into their house and peppers them with questions even after they’ve retired for the night.
Ever since, the word “sealioning” has been used to derail any internet conversation a participant feels isn’t going well. It’s invoked in response to uncomfortable questions like, “Which historians back up your statement about the Weimar Republic ending in 1928?” or “What peer-reviewed study proves this bizarre claim of yours about vaccines causing Walter Keane syndrome in children?” or “Can you cite the direct quote in which (fill in public figure here) called for the murder of all vegetarians?”
“SEALIONING!” the other person shouts, which typically guarantees nothing on topic or sensible will be added to the thread.
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Daily writing promptHow has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
involve doing something wrong until you get it right.
Like many people who write, I have more than one hard manuscript of a bad novel stored away somewhere. “Failures” I suppose, but without them, I could not have finished the novel I don’t consider a failure.
Pam Troy 