Sunday, July 30, 2006

poignant

that's the word i think of when i hear susan graham sing reynaldo hahn's "si mes vers avaient des ailes" the lyrics of which come from a victor hugo poem.

Si Mes Vers Avaient Des Ailes

Mes vers fuiraient, doux et frêles,
Vers votre jardin si beau,
Si mes vers avaient des ailes,
Des ailes comme l'oiseau.

Ils voleraient, étincelles,
Vers votre foyer qui rit,
Si mes vers avaient des ailes,
Des ailes comme l'esprit.

Près de vous, purs et fidèles,
Ils accourraient, nuit et jour,
Si mes vers avaient des ailes,
Des ailes comme l'amour.

the song reminds me of two things: the first is standing in the living room of my first singing teacher's house after a long day of work as a tour guide at the national historic site i used to supervise. i was sunburned and a little dirty from long hours toiling in the period kitchen in full garb, but in front of me was an impressionist painting proped up on a music stand that i gazed into while working my way through hahn's piece. through the opened window i could smell the faint breeze blowing off the niagara river.

the second is a moment in a drive back from toronto with an ex-boyfriend. we had spent an early summer afternoon prowling around queen st. west and i had found graham's cd in a used cd store. i was elated. as we spend down the highway back to niagara, i remember looking at the stars out over the water and listening to graham's voice ripple out of the car stereo.

though the lyrics do not really reference water, i hear in the lines "si mes vers avaient des ailes/comme l'oiseau" --- "if only my poems had the wings/of a bird." --- the longing that i feel when i'm near the water. it is the longing i felt this afternoon as i lay out on a dock at the yacht club with confessing mermaid and shani, laughing, talking and occasionally jumping off the dock into the dark blue of the lake. underneath the discussions about unsuitable men (never date a man who has a tattoo involving flames or trucks!), body weight, the skill of sailing and the rigours of rowing, there it was --- that strange feeling of longing that i can never quite quel. i longed for the deep blue of the lake to fill me and quiet it. moving through me was the desire i hear in graham's voice, the wishing for, the dreaming, the closing one's eyes tightly in hopes that when one opens them the world will be different. "if only my poems had the wings/of love".

Friday, July 28, 2006

lunches with L

as the week moves forward, i'm finding that the car accident has affected me more than i'd like to admit --- even to myself. i've been reaching for things in my life that make me feel secure and that put my universe back in the place it should be after the spiral it was sent into on tuesday morning. CM and i have been spending some quality friend time together; i've been reconnecting with a friend who is beginning work on her art history masters thesis involving her great aunt's complete ouvre of early 20th-century paintings; i've been more open with my crewmates (quite a feat at 5:30 in the morning, i assure you); i've been talking to my mom with a little more regularity; i've also been indulging in perhaps a little too much diet cherry vanilla dr. pepper, hence the chattiness. one other such therapeutic venture is having lunch with my friend L. we usually arrange these rather impromptu lunch dates every month or so and spend a couple of hours catching up on each other's lives. L, the friend with the jewelry budget i talked about in a previous post, is completely unaware of how the timing of these lunch dates has coincided with rather cataclysmic events in my personal life; i feel as if i were to confess this fact to her, the magic of these lunches would quickly disappear. i don't think she's aware of my blog, so i'm probably safe discussing it here.

my life was sent into a bit a tailspin when i had my heart broken in february. the morning of the breakage i was saved from myself by meeting with L, who i hadn't seen in at least a semester. in talking to her and catching her up on what was going on in my life (i didn't talk about the broken heart -- i was afraid if i did i might come a little unglued), i was forced to put everything that had happened in the last 36 hours into perspective. suddenly what had moments ago been a chasm that i didn't think i could cross appeared to be more of a crack in the sidewalk that i could easily step over. i'm not sure if she suspected something was up, what with my rather disheveled look and red-rimmed eyes; if she did she never let on. in talking about schoolwork and conferences and her kids and her band (yes, she's that cool; she plays in a funky little band) the pain never really went away, but it did take the form of something i knew how to manage.

L and i met for lunch another day, down by the waterfront in the late spring. the sun was warm and we both perched a little chic-ly on a bench wearing trendy sunglasses and sunning ourselves while eating our packed lunches. again, my heart was the problem because of the potential for a repetition of what happened in february brought on by a surprise visit (he was here for a conference, not to see me, but the potential for that horrible accidental meeting was high), and again, in talking with L i was able to locate that sense of perspective. it's the same perspective i have on life after returning from time away. life looks different; the tracks you make through the world as you go about your everyday routine mean in different ways. it's refreshing, really. we talked about writing and about my moving beyond the rather dysfunctional relationship i've had in the past with language. we talked about self and words and ideas and fear. we talked about her recent trip to Savannha, Georgia. we talked about music. the panic i had felt earlier in the day --- the looming dread that had settled itself about half way down my throat in a round, little ball --- dissipated and i knew that if i ran into him, i'd be okay.

today was the first day that i purposely scheduled a lunch with L to coincide with life's little disasters. we scammed and flirted our way to a patio table at a local restaurant, much to the chagrin of one of the busboys, and watched bustling, busy people stream by as we talked about ballads filled with narrative gaps, playing "fiddle" without playing fiddle, the joys of academe, what to do when you realize that your favourite t-shirt is no longer wearable and you lament not buying 4 or 5 of them, and how much fun it is to read nineteenth-century journalism. we talked about new york city and if it's actually possible to write a book while living there. we also talked about rowing (no surprise there; L used to row), eating, busking and the manliness of the 4 heavyweight men who have just returned from the under 23 worlds in belgium who were out on the water this morning. between the two of us we managed to weave an interesting, if somewhat incongruent, tapestry that looked more like my life than my life had been looking recently. when we sat down, i had been very hungry and this appetite of a starving 16 year old boy that has somehow crept into my body was causing my tummy to make very loud rumbling noises. i was also hungry in another way that i hadn't quite admitted to myself. i was hungry for normalcy --- for those long, languid chats, punctuated by our embarrassingly girlish laughter, that characterize our friendship. when we stood up to leave, me to return home and L to head back to her office, as clichéd as it sounds, i felt as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. i had somehow managed to transition from that space where i felt as though the world might fall in on me at any moment to a space where life again had rhythm, melody and that strange mixture of wit, charm, and sauciness that characterizes the ballads that L loves so much. i guess this post is my way of giving thanks.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

you know you're a victorianist when ...


i'm borrowing a page from confessing mermaid's blog and compiling a list. lists are fun. i like lists. in an attempt to salvage the reputation of victorianists everywhere, here's my humourous list "you know you're a victorianist when ..."

1. you name your cats (and you have several) after 19th-century novelists that you admire.
2. you think George is a fine name for a girl.
3. you have publically referred to those vehicles that power the local transit system as omnibuses.
4. you date entries in your research journal "March 16, 1869" and don't realize the mistake until days later (the date was actually March 16, 2006 *ahem*).
5. friends and non-Canadian colleagues call you on Victoria Day to find out what the holiday is "really" all about; they phrase their questions as though they are asking about a day of religious observance: "So what does Victoria Day mean for you?"
6. you own, and have worn, a corset.
7. when discussing friends' love lives you use words like "paramour" and "courting".
8. you know the value of a good knick-knack.
9. you honestly believe your addiction to british soap operas like Coronation Street is merely an extension of your interest in the historical development of serial fiction.
10. you know why a Prince Albert is really called a Prince Albert (think about those tight breeches!).

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

what are friends for?

to help me recover from my little adventure this morning, confessingmermaid and i spent the afternoon just being girls: wearing dresses and our favourite shoes (in my case those black heeled sandals i talked about in an earlier post), having an indulgent lunch at my favourite restaurant, and shopping downtown followed by lattes. it was just the affirmation of normalcy that i needed.

while sipping our lattes at the local café, confessingmermaid was making me laugh till i cried with the crazy stories about her zanie british mummy ("it's important to feel fresh!"). we then took to talking about hair and eventually descended into the dubious zone of swapping driver's license photos. very dubious indeed.

according to CM in my driver's license photo i look like "a cross-eyed convict who has had her hair done with a weed wacker" and in my passport photo, which does double duty on my international student identity card, i look like "a chinese cupie doll with a wig and an artificial neck". it was difficult to feel maudlin about the future with assessments such as those!

i ask again: what are friends for?

and no, i'm not going to post the photos here.

*boom* *crunch*

i awoke this morning to the wind tossing around the tree tops outside my bedroom window. in the very early morning light i could see the shadows dancing on my wall. dancing shadows on my closet door mean only one thing: possibly no rowing. that qualifier "possibly" has to be there because one is never sure. no matter what the weather, even if you strongly suspect you might not row, the unwritten rule in boathouse culture is that you come down to the boathouse anyway. weather is fincky and knowing how luck seems to run, if you didn't head down the wind would die down or the sky would clear and you'd spend the rest of the morning wondering if you'd stood your crewmates up.

so, this morning i donned my new unisuit (more on that in another post!) and i biked down to be greeted by the sight of my crewmates milling around and our coach standing with her hands on her hips hemming and hawing at the sky. it was windy and dark. even if the wind died down it was still definitely going to rain -- not that rain is ever a deterent. i've gone out in rains that would make a duck squeemish. the real danger is lightening.

we decided amongst ourselves between two options: head home and back to a possibly still-warm bed, or stay at the boathouse and pull a piece on the ergs (rowing slang for the rowing machines or ergometers). two of my crewmates and i decided to hang back and erg while the other (smart) ones headed home. we pulled the ergs out from the back room and put them on the pavement in front of the boathouse and started to pull our sixty minute pieces. the wind was still blowing and occasionally there were drops of rain, but nothing too threatening. it was actually quite pleasant as an erg goes. around the thirty minute mark we heard booms of thunder. around the thirty-five minute mark the sheet lightening started. not relishing the idea of rowing outside on a long strip of metal with a sliding seat, we cut short our workout and wheeled the ergs inside just in time. the rain started coming down in sheets.

a friend was kind enough to offer to drive me home as i had biked to practice. in the short sprint from the door of the boathouse to her car i got completely drenched. we laughed as we were driving home, dripping wet, listening to the pop music playing softly on the car stereo. what a joke, we thought, to forego going out on the water because of the weather only to get hit by lightening while erging. to us, amid the warm confines of the car and crew commraderie, that irony seemed distant and laughable. as my friend pulled away from the stop sign to drive up the hill to my house we got hit by a truck.

neither of us saw the truck coming. the rain was coming down so hard that you could barely see three feet in front of the car. my friend inched away from the stop sign and slowly began to crawl through the intersection. out of no where a truck came barrelling down the road at an unbelievably high speed and hit the driver's side of the car with such force that we were spun around in a circle. just for good measure he nicked the back of the car mid-spin.

both my friend and i are fine. other than another bruise on my knee where it hit the front of the car upon impact, we were fortunate enough to walk away unscathed. the car, however, will be a total write-off.

there's a strange sort of awkwardness in that window of time between ascertaining whether or not you are both okay and the arrival of the police. though we've rowed together for two years and though we've shared moments of strong crew commraderie, my friend and i live very different lives. we found ourselves swapping the strangest stories. she told me how she and her husband met (over a cadaver in a life sciences class!); i told her about the nasty break-up i went through with my most recent ex. we talked about other things that one might not feel comfortable voicing in everyday interactions such as what we thought of the strange feeling of tension that has existed among the crew lately. when he finally did arrive we agreed that the policeman was definitely a cutie and that he had a nice butt. sadly, when my friend borrowed his phone to call her husband to come and pick her up she noticed that the first number programmed into it was for a "kristy".

is that what it takes to break down the walls of reserve that are built up between people? those moments extraordinary when all of the true insignificance of the dross of life is revealed? as clichéd as it sounds i was just plain happy my friend and i were alive; there were moments when the car was spinning in a violent circle in which that wasn't looking like a possibility. it bothers me that in tracing over and over the familiar contours of our lives, we often don't allow for those brief moments of connection and that it takes a downpour, the threat of lightening and a careening truck to transgress what are boundaries that really don't amount to much. what will it take for people to be more opened?

Monday, July 24, 2006

shoe budget

this morning, as i was putting on my shoes to leave for the library, i had a stunning, and rather disturbing, realization. since the start of the summer, i've probably spent about $250-$300 on shoes. now, that doesn't sound like much, but as a percentage of a graduate student's non-income, that's quite a bit. i'd convinced myself that i needed not only new birks, as my old ones were slaughtered and dunked one too many times at the boathouse last year, but also black heeled sandals with an open toe, brown heels (in a lighter shade than i might wear in the fall), brown mesh-y slip ons (picked up in chinatown in philly for one dollar american), two pairs of boat shoes, a new pair of running shoes as the mileage on my old ones was reaching that critical point, and preppy butter-yellow slip ons from land's end. which do i wear the most often? none of the above. i spend most of my quality shoe time in a pair of goldish brown flip flops i picked up on sale at old navy for four dollars (similar to these someone is selling on ebay).

now a friend of mine who teaches in my department, and who is much farther along in her academic career than i am, was lamenting the other day that she had far exceeded her jewelry budget for the year, yet she needed to buy one more necklace to go with a new summer sundress that she had recently purchased. as i sat on the steps of the deck and watched her rout through the arugala and lettuce in the garden of the house i was recently housesitting, i let out a long sigh and said "oh for a jewelry budget!" we then went on to discuss finding a suitable retailer in downtown kingston that might carry what she was looking for. underneath the surface of the conversation i was more than slightly seething with envy; i'm surprised that my skin didn't take on an emerald hue.

i wonder if my friend has a similar problem? does she find luscious pieces of jewelry and purchase them with a flourish only to find that she spends most of her time wearing no jewelry at all? come to think of it, she doesn't sit in my memory as a necklace sort of gal, though she does have an inspiring collection of earrings.

i keep mulling over the best possible way to assuage my shoe guilt and have found that the salve that works best is to start thinking about shoes for the fall ...

such as these from franco sarto:

Sunday, July 23, 2006

wrinkly noses and messy hair

those seem to be the side effects of my new career in the pair. my coach has made jokes about my hair and kindly refrained from comments about my face. here are some pics of me out with my pair buddy shani on the water one afternoon last week. i don't exactly know why i wrinkle my nose -- i can only imagine what my face looks like when i'm rowing hard. confessingmermaid, intrepid photographer and master of the camera in a sock (don't ask), took them.
getting ready to leave the dock

grinning like an idiot (yes, i should have one hand on my blade at all times, and yes, those are piles of goose cr*p on the dock ... bloody birds.)

i'm not sure what i think i see in the bottom of the boat, but by the look on my face, it's pretty strange.

i think this is my fav

it's 2:33 pm in paris


and i wish i was here, at this café: Les Deux Magots

Saturday, July 22, 2006

flying with the girls


this probably won't come as any surprise, but lately, i've been thinking a lot about rowing -- not just the physical act itself, but also the culture that surrounds it. the article that i just sent off to the editor this morning theorizes this community and how it grows from the physical act. today in part because of this, and perhaps for the first time, i fully appreciated the diverse and intriguing group of women who are a part of my life six days a week. cixous celebrates the infinite and variable female subconscious whose "stream of phantasms is incredible"; today, i just wanted to celebrate the women who in those moments of 'swing' when the forward movement of the boat feels like gliding swiftly across glass live with me "in flight, stealing away, finding, when desired, narrow passages, [and] hidden crossovers" between ourselves (Cixous).

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

my new vice

so i have a new vice.
it all started innocently enough.
we were standing around outside the boathouse on monday afternoon; my doubles partner shani and i were waiting for our coach so we could go out for our afternoon row. our cox, karen, was waiting for some of our other crewmates to arrive so that they could tackle this week's cleaning roster duties (masters women = the women's changeroom. ick.). karen had brought along a bottle of pop to give her a much needed afternoon caffeine burst. i was shocked to discover that the flavour was diet cherry vanilla dr pepper. so much goodness all in one can. i voiced my amazement.

later that evening, shani called me as she was trawling through the isles of a local discount store while looking for a 10 mm wrench to fill me in on the whirlwind dating life she's been living for the past two weeks (that's another story!). while we were talking, something about the tone of my voice (it must have been the longing) inspired her to look for the pop that i had been coveting earlier. at practice on tuesday morning, there sitting on the scarred blue picnic table outside the boathouse was a bottle of diet cherry vanilla dr pepper, all for me.
i think i've fallen in carbonated beverage love. the lines to that song recorded by frank sinata run through my head:

I get no kick from champagne.
Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all,
So tell me why should it be true
That I get a kick out of you?

Some get a kick from cocaine.
I'm sure that if I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrific'ly too
Yet I get a kick out of you.

last night, during a trip to the grocery to buy some cat food, i discovered it in cans, on sale. i promptly transported a case home and stuck it in the fridge. i packed a can in my lunch this morning and am currently sitting in the fireplace reading room at the library, sipping while i type. it feels wonderfully illicit.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

*happy dance*

do you remember the scene in the charlie brown christmas special where all of the characters are dancing to schroder's piano playing rather than rehearsing for the upcoming christmas pagent?



that's just about identical to the "i've just finished a complete draft of the hardest article i've ever had to write and now i'm ready to edit dance" which i would be doing right at this moment if i wasn't in the library.

*dance* *dance*

rush hour on the henley

we're finalizing our travel plans to attend this regatta:



and i'm getting nervous.

racing here, there's more at stake than just a gold medal (though the medals are reputed to be lovely. the phrase "henley gold" is magical) -- more than, perhaps, i'm even willing to admit to myself. you see, this race happens to be the biggest, and most prestigious club regatta in north america; to make things more complex, it's in my hometown. when i moved away, i was a much different person than i am now. though i've been home countless times to visit friends and family, this is the first time i'll return there in the guise of a rower; the first time this different self (and different body!) i've crafted for myself will be tested out in this way. the henley course means a lot to me -- it means those years of yearning, when i was wondering what my place in the world was; it means the desire for the confidence and determination that for so many years i lacked; it means confronting socio-economic differences that can sometimes be a hinderance and sometimes a crutch; it means many more things that i can't quite articulate, that seem to slip just beyond language and that exist as a sort of raw grey feeling of desire situated just behind my tongue.

yes, i'm getting nervous.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

me, kurt and claude


today, to take a break from writing, i dug out some music. underneath my bookshelf in my bedroom, wedged in a dusty bundle under the bottom shelf is a pile of sheet music from the days when musicianship was just as important to me as being in linguistic shape. throughout high school and my undergrad i worked as a musician in one setting or another. there were my sunday gigs at the church my mom used to work at with vocal solos on christmas and easter (hence the very dusty copy of Mozart's "Alleluja" from his motet "Exsultate, jubilate" with the photocopied programs for undergrad masterclasses where i tried to perfect the frustratingly intricate melodic line on pages 5 and 6) and the year i spent in the community orchestra that played in the pit of our community theatre group (to this day i can sing solos and recite lines from the musical The Secret Garden despite never actually having seen the show because the pit was underneath the stage -- oh yeah, and it wasn't heated!). there are two musical moments, however, that are my particular favourites.

the first was during a lesson with my vocal coach, deborah, at her house in niagara falls. i had arrived at my lesson particularly shaken up that day because on my way, while driving on the 406 between st. catharines and niagara falls, my car door had flown open suddenly. i managed to pull over and shut it, but i was still pretty freaked out by the time i made it into her driveway. noticing how shaken up i was, deborah offered to give me an easy day (yay! no Puccini arias) and so we set to work on some kurt weill songs, ending up focusing most of our attention on "I'm a stranger here myself" from One Touch of Venus. after weeks of focusing on developing the precision and delicacy it takes to sing stuff from Tosca (not to mention working on channelling my inner pissed-off woman) it felt like flying to play the role of a very confused venus who has just ended up on earth, frustrated that none of her wiles seem to work on the one particular man she fancies. there is a time in the writing process when the words just seem to come from some dark place inside and they rise up and pour out effortlessly onto the page. there's a similar moment for singers, and though i'd experienced the writerly equivalent often enough, getting that sense of "swing" (to borrow a slang term from rowing -- not jazz!) as a vocalist was less familiar. this time it was transformative. even deborah, who was infamous among her students for her chilling demeanour, her perfectly coiffed hair and her killer pant suits -- think hard-nosed female ceo in an armani suit who had no qualms about making her vocal students do endless rounds of sit ups to strengthen our abdominal muscles -- was taken aback. i don't know that i have ever sung in quite that way, and i don't know that i ever will again. i felt like i could literally taste the notes.

the second memory is from my senior flute recital that i had to perform in the third year of my undergrad. two friends and i had teamed up with an assorted group of accompanists to pull off an full evening of music in brock's sean o'sullivan theatre. (it has always made me laugh that the abreviation for that theatre was "s.o.s." -- something akin to that sick feeling you get in the green room before you go on). for my portion of the program i spent months preparing Mozart's G+ Flute Concerto, Louis Ganne's "Andante and Scherzo" and Claude Bolling's "Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio". for the latter piece three of my friends, matt, pete and barry (can you tell they were jazz musicians?) played piano, bass and drums. there's a narrative to Bolling's piece: sweet innocent baroque flute meets three nasty jazz musicians and is corrupted by them. it was one of only a handfull of times that i've ever played jazz. there were several times in the piece, where all four instruments were playing that the sound was really lush and full and i literally could feel the wooden boards of the stage floor vibrating under my bare feet. yes, bare feet. i was going through what my flute coach, doug, referred to as my jessye norman phase (the famous soprano always sings shoeless), and i sincerely believed that i played my best in my bare feet. my claim was that shoes, especially heels, threw off my body alignment and hindered my playing, so that evening i walked out on stage wearing a floor-length evening gown, more make-up than i'd ever worn in my life, and glittering toe rings on the index toes of both feet. artistic pretensions aside, i've never felt music move through my body in the way it did that night. it was a little like i imagine it feels to be electrocuted.

tonight, along with the book that is the bane of all flutists, Taffanel and Gaubert's Grande Exercises Journaliers de Mécanisme, my copy of which i found in a used book store in zurich and which has German swear words penciled in beside the particularly difficult passages, i've pulled out Chaminade's "Concertino for Flute and Piano" and her "Sérénade aux Étoiles". i think i need to remember this part of myself right now.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

why write?

why write? every time i'm faced with a mammoth project that seems millions of times bigger than i am and i wonder where it all is going to come from i ask myself why do i bother? why not pick some nice, safe, stifling, mind-numbing career that entails a cheap polyester suit and a cubicle? if anything, i'd have the joys of watercooler gossip.

in those dark moments, i read things like the quotation below and i am once again able to reach inside myself and blur the page (or, as this article i'm writing at the moment proposes, the water) with an infinite number of colours --- blinding, beautiful, buxom colours. okay, maybe my (brush) stroke needs a little work, but for now, i'm happy to dip my finger tips in and smear the paper with infantile, gooey blobs of paint.

"When I write, it's everything that we don't know we can be that is written out of me, without exclusions, without stipulation, and everything we will be calls us to the unflagging, intoxicating, unappeasable search for love. In one another we will never be lacking."

-- Hélène Cixous.

Friday, July 14, 2006

insatiable hunger

as i promised myself last night, i curled up on my futon to watch Adam's Rib. i plowed through the necessary book and though i didn't quite roll around and get dirty in Cixous, i did dip my toes in. at the opening of her essay, Cixous exclaims:
"I write this as a woman, toward women. When I say "woman," I'm speaking of woman in her inevitable struggle against conventional man; and of a universal woman subject who must bring women to their senses and to their meaning in history."

i'd like to open this blog post with my own exclamation:
i write this as a hungry woman, toward hungry women. when i say "hungry woman," i am speaking of woman in her inevitable struggle against societal expectations of what a woman's appetite should be; and of a universal hungry woman subject who must bring hungry women to their senses and to their meaning in a history of appetite.

i've seen Adam's Rib more times that i'd like to admit in a public forum. for the first time last night, i noticed how katharine hepburn's character is frequently eating. in fact food, and the act of consuming it, are almost a running gag through the entire film. one of my favourite scenes in the film is the evening at the end of the first day when the bonners are hosting a dinner party (btw, if any of you were wondering where my screen name came from, now you know). in the scurry of getting ready after arriving home late from work both amanda and adam are running around in various states of undress. amanda runs downstairs to greet adam's mother and father, her evening gown still gaping open at the back. more guests arrive and one of them asks for a drink, vocally choosing amanda to get it for him. she rushes into the room, only aware that her name has been called, but unsure of what the person wants. what i love about this moment is not only that she is refreshingly harried, but also that her mouth is full of cracker and she is visibly enjoying it. later in the film, after the trial is over and things look gloomy for the fate of her relationship with adam, amanda, dining at a flirtatious neighbour's apartment unwittingly pops a cracker into her mouth just at the moment the neighbour asks to kiss her. lost as she is earlier in the maze of her own reflections, she doesn't respond, but merely licks the crumbs from her fingers and continues her soliloquy about her and adam's philosophy of marriage ("equality, mutual everything"). in my experience of the genre of the 1930s/40s screwball comedy, this natural display of eating and appetite is unusual. thinking back over claudette colbert in It Happened One Night, veronica lake in Sullivan's Travels and even a younger kate in Bringing Up Baby, very rarely to screwball heroines eat, and if they do it is always a moment of heightened comedy (think colbert and the raw carrot or lake and the ham and eggs). movie goddesses with their mouths ringed with crumbs licking their fingers while debating philosophies of relationships is not a common sight.

as i type this entry, i myself am licking from my fingers the crumbs of a delicious blueberry muffin i bought this morning at the grocery store. as of late, what with at least 2 hours on the water each morning and a continuous gain in muscle mass over the past two months i am constantly hungry --- and i'm not talking a sort of vague craving for something chocolatey, though i still experience those cravings from time to time! --- but full on, tummy-rumbling, mouth-watering hunger. i eat a sizeable breakfast and no sooner do i settle down to work, then i am hungry again. this goes on till i go to bed at night. i've noticed however in expressing this hunger, i've created many socially awkward moments. people don't seem to know what to do when faced with a genuinely hungry girl, a girl who isn't too worried about calories (but is worried about the nutritional content of what she puts in her body), who isn't afraid to relish her food. most manage the moment with wry humour, a few have subtly indicated that my proclamation that i'm so hungry i could eat my own arm is somehow only confirmation of my gradually receeding femininity (or perhaps it's just shock at my apparent willingness to descend into cannibalism!). female appetite, at least in my experience is surprisingly still out of place.

realizing that amanda is an eater, and remembering what i've read in biographies of katharine hepburn regarding her voracious appetite, comforts me a little when i think of my own hunger and new-found willingness to feed it. many women that i know struggle with having a healthy relationship with food. it is also one of my own struggles. every person manages her/his relationship with food differently, so in no way am i trying to make a statement about how others should go about it, but this recent (re)discovery of the joy of satisfying my hunger makes me hope that someday hungry women everywhere will have the courage to satisfy their hunger with what ever it is they desire.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

tonight on the big screen ...

yup, it's at that point in the writing process. i need to crack out the Adam's Rib.

i've promised myself that if i make it through my list of writerly tasks today (to get my article revisions done for saturday) which includes finishing a necessary book and rolling around and getting dirty in Cixous's "The Laugh of the Medusa", then i'm going to spend 1 hour and 45 minutes living in a world where people have conversations like the following. Adam is in the process of giving Amanda a massage and he playfully (or not) smacks her bum:

Adam: What are ya? Sore about a little slap?
Amanda: No.
Adam: Well, what then?
Amanda: (outraged at him) You meant that, didn't you? You really meant that.
Adam: Why, no, I...
Amanda: Yes, you did. I can tell. I know your type. I know a slap from a slug.
Adam: Well, OK, OK.
Amanda: I'm not so sure it is. I'm not so sure I care to expose myself to typical instinctive masculine brutality.
Adam: Oh come now.
Amanda: And it felt not only as though you meant it, but as though you felt you had a right to. I can tell.
Adam: What've you got back there? Radar equipment?
Amanda: You're really sore at me, aren't you?
Adam: Oh, don't be 'diriculous.' Ridiculous.
Amanda: There! Proves it!
Adam: All right, all right, I am sore. I am sore. What about it?
Amanda: Why are you?
Adam: You know why.
Amanda: You mean Kip? Just because he's having a little fun?
Adam: No. Because you're having a little fun. You're having the wrong kind of fun - down in that courtroom. You're shaking the law by the tail, and I don't like it. I'm ashamed of you, Amanda.
Amanda: Is that so?
Adam: Yes, that's so. We've had our little differences and I've always tried to see your point of view, but this time, you've got me stumped, baby.
Amanda: You haven't tried to see my point of view. You haven't even any respect for my, my, my -
Adam: There we go, there we go, there we go - Oh, oh, here we go again. The old juice. (She begins to cry because he refuses to understand her strong feelings and point of view.) Ah, guaranteed heart-melter. A few female tears...
Amanda: (sobbing) I can't help it.
Adam: ...stronger than any acid. But this time they won't work...
Amanda: I didn't...
Adam: You can cry from now until the time the jury comes in and it won't make you right and it won't win you that silly case.
Amanda: Adam! Please...
Adam: Nothing doing... (He leaves the room, upset about their argument)
Amanda: ...please try to understand.
Adam: (He returns) Ah, don't you want your rubdown? You want a drink?
Amanda: No.
Adam: Do you want anything? What, honey? (She kicks him in the shin) Ow!
Amanda: Let's all be manly! (She marches offscreen)

nothing like a little edgy gender debate.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

my mother's daughter

there are days when i know for certain that i am my mother's daughter. there's something almost tangible about those moments when i feel a part of our mother-daughter relationship slipping into the everyday. it's always a bit of a shock, but not always displeasing. specific traits mark me out as my mother's daughter: the ability to bake very good bread from scratch (also due in part to spending some of my childhood living in a house rented from italian immigrants), a personality quirk that friends call "scrappiness" and less-than-friends have other words for (something that enabled my mom to meet the challenges of being a single parent), a knowledge, alabeit somewhat disturbing, of the genre of the western film from the 1930s-1970s, and last but by no means least, the ability to change a tire.

it was the latter that i employed this morning when, after rowing practice, one of my crewmates found she had a flat tire. in a panic because she didn't have a membership to the auto club and she didn't want to attempt the change on her own, i found myself nonchalently offering to change it for her. in that moment of offering, there it was -- the tangible knowledge of my ancestry. now, incidently, there has been a strange spat of flat tires at the rowing club lately. just a week ago, i helped another friend change a tire on a different car (lets not talk about our inability to see the 1-800 volvo assist number stickered to the back window!), so my tire-changing skills have had little chance to get rusty. soon, with the help of another friend, i had the hubcap off, the car jacked up, the bolts off and i was replacing the flat with the little doughnut spare from beneath the lining of the trunk.

in the process of changing the tire, i couldn't help but recall a story that my mom had told me about one of her tire changing experiences. it was her first day of work at a new hospital as a medical technician. she dressed up in a white pant suit and took extra time with her hair and make up that morning because she wanted to make a good first impression (hmm ... so that's where i get it from). on the way to work along a two lane country highway she got a flat tire. muttering under her breath words that she didn't think were proper to pass on to an 8-year old the first time she told me this story, she got out of her car and began that now too-familiar process of prying off the hubcap.

approaching in the distance was a car that slowed and pulled over to the edge of the road. a middle-aged, distinguished looking man got out and offered, quite civilly to give my mom a hand. her hair was disheveled from the wind that was blowing and her white pant suit had acquired more than one greasy smudge. in a fit of temper and materialist feminism she barked back that she was fine and she could change the tire herself. the man seemed somewhat taken aback. he hadn't been at all condescending, but without another word, he got back into his car and drove off.

my mom managed to get the spare tire on, which i guess in the early 1970s was more along the lines of a regular tire as opposed to those "don't go over 80km an hour or you might die" mini-tires they hide under the trunk lining. she arrived late at work, a completely wind-blown and greasy mess. as she was taken to meet other employees at the hospital she tried to forget that she looked and smelled a little like the guy who pumps gas at the corner station. the first person she was taken to meet was the head of the hospital, and as she and her new colleague approached the man coming down the hallway from the opposite direction, my mother had a horrid, dawning realization. seconds later she was standing face to face with the man who had an hour ago stopped on the road side and offered to change her tire.

in my tire-changing career, i've met with many helpful people from the bourgeois man who slows his sports car to offer to call a tow truck for me to the three city workers driving three big orange dump trucks who all climbed down from their truck cabs to help a friend and i. i've learned the importance of both asserting my ability (there's my mom's materialist feminism for you) as well as of graciously accepting help. i think that might be another way that i'm my mother's daughter: she taught me to negotiate the inherent contradictions of being a woman and the trick of balancing those contradictions in everyday life. i don't always do it successfully, but when i manage to scrape by, i'm reminded just a little more of what an amazing woman my mom is.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

the most unflattering garment known to wo/man


i spent all day on sunday running around a grassy field, climbing all over a boat trailer, and rowing in my boat wearing what is perhaps the ugliest piece of athletic clothing on the planet: the unisuit. now, i realize that athletic clothing is supposed to be functional. depending on the nature of the sport, an athlete might need extra protection (think hockey pads) or as little between her/him and the environment as decently possible (think cycling or swimming), but i think the unisuit belongs in a category all its own. now maybe i'm just a little jaded because my university's crew has what has been voted by other rowers in their league as the ugliest unisuit around (see picture on left); i think, however, there is more to it than that. many people ask why rowers wear such a hideous garment -- and if you've seen a 55-year old, pot-bellied, old-schoolboy rower wearing one, you are well aware of the horrors of such a spandex display -- and there is a logical reason: in a boat there are a lot of moving parts including, but not limited to, your hands and your seat, which slides back and forth. the less loose fabric there is to catch on things the better. still, there is something about the unisuit that exudes a certain kind of ugliness. aside from the enhanced display the viewer receives of a man's "masculinity", it poses some other problems both aesthetic and practical.

cyclists, i think, looking smashing in their shorts and jerseys, but no matter how well-chiselled your body, no one really looks good in a unisuit. if you're a woman (with breasts, hips, thighs and a butt -- i know there are others of you out there!) it's especially unflattering. the garment's colour scheme depends on the colours of your team or club; ours are navy blue on the bottom and light blue on the top with a dark blue stripe across what one of my crewmates refers to as "the breastular area" (see picture in the post below). the blocks of colour fall in all the wrong places, drawing attention to portions of the female anatomy that any self-respecting woman with even a smidgin of body fat would, on a normal day, drape with sheaths of fabric (yes, i have thigh-specific body image issues). and just try manouvering around in a porta-potty when you're slick and sweaty after a race and trying with some grace to get back into one following your post-race pee. i'm telling you, it's a nightmare.

there's a bumpersticker out there that i plan on sticking on the door of every porta-potty at every regatta i attend this season in my one-woman campaign to get the designers of athletic clothing for rowers to rethink our sport's main garment. with a little alteration it will read: "keep (north) america beautiful. ban unisuits."

Monday, July 10, 2006

breaking rowing news, hot off the presses!

here's a copy of my coach's press release about our little adventure at the South Niagara Rowing Club:

Kingston Rowing Club Masters Win 3 Golds at Ontario Championships

Kingston Rowing Club Masters Rowers won 3 Golds at the Ontario Masters Rowing Championships held in Welland Ontario June 9th, 2006.

The Women’s C Coxed Four of Susan Sarantos, Kelly Smith, Diana Hopkins-Rosseel, Jane MacDonald and coxie Jeanette Herrle-Fanning started the medal streak with a win in their race. Gold followed in the Men’s C Double of Rod Pollock and Martin Ten Hove. Pollock and Ten Hove then team up with Lisa Eyles and Isolda Penny to capture Gold in the Mixed C Quad race.

Silver was won by Eyles and Penny in the Women’s B Double. Sarantos, Smith , Hopkins-Rosseel, MacDonald and Herrle-Fanning teamed up with Shannon Smith, Shani Doucet, Kate Petersen and May-Louise Adam’s to capture bronze in the Women’s B Coxed Eight. 5th place was earned in a tough race by Smith, Doucet, Petersen, Adam’s and Herrle-Fanning in the Women’s A Coxed Four.

here's my favourite picture from the races (we're boat #1)

Friday, July 07, 2006

if a package arrives from acme ...

I'M NOT OPENING IT!

do you remember those road runner cartoons where wile e. coyote would order a big wooden crate of stuff from acme that was supposed to help him in his life's work of anihilating the road runner? yeah, well i feel like i've been living in a warner bros. cartoon for the past few days.

tuesday: i almost fell off my roof trying to rescue my kitten, charlie, who escaped out an opened window. the fact that i was wearing nothing but a pair of purple panties and a giant t-shirt from bob rae's campaign for the liberal leadership --- the front says "call me bob" and the back says "let's talk about the future"; friends gave it to me as a joke), and the fact that my neighbours were hosting a garden party for which i was unwittingly the entertainment, only makes it that much worse.

thursday: i set out with my friend confessingmermaid to fetch a cup of coffee on a brief hiatus from working in the library. i almost got hit by a bus. some jfs was backing her car out of her driveway and i jumped off the sidewalk on to the road to avoid getting hit by her, placing myself smack in the path of an oncoming coach canada bus. confessingmermaid pulled me out of the path of sure death, and i believe, saved my life.

according to my calculations, something horrid should happen tomorrow.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

identity cliche

whenever i find myself in the throws of writing difficulty (such as this very moment, as i'm trying to revise an article for publication) i feel pieces of myself slip away. i'm never sure that i can hold on to all of myself, or that i have enough of myself to put into whatever it is i'm writing. these are often the times i turn to various identity salves that i believe help me reassert this tattered, stitched and patched notion of "me". they take different forms: sometimes i buy shoes (my foot size is a constant), sometimes i eat chocolate (i know the day i stop liking chocolate, i am no longer the girl i used to be), sometimes i watch a beloved movie for the billionth time (Adam's Rib anyone?). today, i'm going to paste below a silly list of behaviours that mark one as a rower. this is a part of me that i need to hold on to right now:



YOU KNOW YOU ARE A ROWER WHEN.....

-you don't mind walking in frozen bird shit barefoot

(i wear socks)

-everything you do is "in 2..."
-you need to have a small pushy person around telling you what to do all the time
-you can get up, get dressed and get out of the dorm before your eyes are fully open
-the phrase "cox box" doesn't make you giggle
-you believe the world wouldn't exist without spandex
-you only recognize your friends from behind

(and you tend to slap their butts as a demonstration of affection)

-when you need to go anywhere, you have a sudden urge to throw your car over your shoulder
-you stick water bottles in your shorts for no reason at all

(okay, i stick them in the back of my sports bra or uni, but same thing)

-you feel naked without clothing enough for 10 people on
-you believe all authority figures carry a megaphone
-you sit in class leaning to your rigger
-half your body is bigger than the other
-you blame bad moods on "the set"

("but the boat just wasn't balanced" should be an excuse for all bad moods, no matter the cause)

-when your play softball at your company picnic you are psyched to get old people on your team for the age handicap
-your friends need a rowing translator to decipher your language

(friends have noted this)

-you can wear the same thing every morning for a week and not think twice

(uhm yes ... 4 rows this week, one unisuit)

-you think sleeping late is waking up at 8:30.

(i actually slept in till 8:45 am on canada day. i had to get out of bed. i felt guilty. a friend more practiced in the art of sleeping in says i should just increase in small increments, so that i don't freak out)

-when someone mentions being awake, you turn parallel and set up for it.

(that is quite possibly the worst rowing pun i've ever heard)

-when you sit down in class, you look for the tie-in shoes.
-you constantly check the tightness of nuts in handrails, chairs, door handles, etc.
-you think gloves are for sissie

(a guy i know cut someone's hand when he shook hands with him; his hands are that calloused ... ewwww)

-you bring up the beauty of the dawn, and people give you blank stares
-overhearing people talk about how little sleep they got causes you to smirk, and maybe get medieval on their ass
-your vision of going away for the weekend is other people's vision of Hell

(i really like that one. hell would be an old wooden hull with slides that dig into your calves, seats that come unseated and oarlocks that squeek really loudly. you would have a little, gravelly-voiced demon as a cox who would continually yell "harder on port")

-you know more than 4 brands of porta-johns by name.
-you're giving directions to a friend and you wonder why she's looking at you funny, until you realize you just said "turn to port" instead of "take a left."
-you dress and undress one-handed so you don't have to take your hand off the oar.

(yeah, even when you're not in the boat)

-every time you sit in a chair you are mildly surprised to discover that it doesn't slide back and forth.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

bank on it


i like to go to the bank early in the morning, before it opens, to do my banking. mostly, it's because my super-discount student service plan allows me more free face time with the bank machine that it does with an actual teller. (on a side note, did you ever wonder why folks who work in a bank are called tellers? other than communicating the rather dismal fact of my rapidly declining bank balance, and making me privy to the workings of their accounts information system when i had to change the greeting on my monthly bank statement from "mr. smith" to "ms. smith" -- i kid you not --, tellers don't really tell you all that much. i personally think that every time i go to withdraw money for yet another shoe sale purchase, one of them should tell me to put it back and that i need another pair of shoes like i need a hole in the head, but alas that never happens.)

so banking in the early mornings ... yes. my bank is one of the banks in town that still resides in its 19th-century stone building and for that reason, it's quite imposing, if not a little chilly when approached from across the street while the sun is still settling in the sky. things change however, when you open the door, for sitting on the steps that lead up to the instant tellers is a funny little old man in a tilley hat and glasses playing an array of harmonics that he keeps in a tattered old canvas bag. he always greets folks who come in with a cheerful comment on the weather and then proceeds to play a jaunty tune while tapping his foot on the step. he'll stop somewhere in the thick of the over-embellished melody and turn to whoever is handy and say, "now that sounds good, don't it?". you can't help but smile and reply that it does. the accoustics of the stone building really bulk up the sound of his mouth organ, and he's just so darn happy while he's playing. he usually leaves by the time the bank opens at 9:30, and where he goes is a complete mystery. i've encountered him there in all seasons, and on all days of the week. he reminds me of a sort of happy little elf that a science fiction writer forgot to collect after he submitted his manuscript to the publishers.

i used to think that he was a little crazy, but this morning, i realized that he's just as sane as i am (maybe that's saying something). i barge into the building, and in order to hear him while he's speaking to me, i have to take the headphones to my iPod out of my ears. i'm tense and worrying about the vaguarities of my financial health (i consider myself currently "financially indisposed", a condition that sounds like something out of a jane austen novel), and i have to admit to being a little gruff with harmonica man. as i'm waiting for the machine to spit out my withdrawl, i realize that i shouldn't really be annoyed with him. he's found something that makes him happy, and he makes every person who comes through the glass doors of the bank smile. does this mean that i'm going to start haunting the loggia of stauffer and start tap dancing and playing a kazoo, probably not (though one can never tell what extremes one will be pushed to when one is shaping -- hacking, throttling, beating senseless -- one's dissertation), but i think i'm going to smile more, and try to be more direct in loving what i love. loving without shame isn't always easy for me, but it's something i'm slowly learning to do.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

you do the math ...

1 pointy end of a single (fibreglass)
1 smooth stern end of a four (fibreglass)
1 dopey stroke seat

knocking a hole through the hull of the boat you are supposed to row on sunday:

priceless


actually, i lie. the repair costs are going to set me back about $300.


*no boats were harmed in the typing of this post.

Monday, July 03, 2006

alice in the looking glass or the mirror stage as formative brought to you by RKO and Pandro S. Berman


apparently when Katharine Hepburn was collaborating with George Stevens on the set of Alice Adams both wanted the ending of film to reflect the reality of class politics in small town america in the late teens/early twenties. rather than have Fred MacMurray (who I still think of as The Happiest Millionaire)proclaim to Kate that he loves her and thus provoke the movie's closing line, "Gee whiz!", both Stevens and Hepburn wanted the film to end with alice awakening to the reality of the class system in small town usa and realizing that she could fulfill herself by going out, getting a job, and thus building a future for herself that ranges outside of the picket fences of alice's neighbourhood, or the iron gates of the society she so longs to be a part of. in an interview in which she discussed this unfilmed ending, you can see Hepburn's face light up as she describes it. Fred MacMurray is no where in this scripted future for alice. after the horrors of the dinner at her parents' house, he was meant to leave and never look back at the dusty porch swing and dying fern on the verranda.

the bosses at RKO felt differently, and knew the movie would sell better with a happy ending. Alice is not chastized for her social climbing and her dreams for the future, of elegant parties (what her more earthy brother refers to as "frozen face parties"), many dresses, and dinner out at restaurants where her beau has enough cash on hand to keep tipping the orchestra to play the same song over 5 times are destined to come true.

this somehow seems a fitting movie to watch on the last night that i'm going to spend in this house. as the credits were rolling across the screen, i was attempting to ascertain exactly what the nagging feeling was that i had, and that i couldn't quite place. by the time Alice was picking violets from the public garden (the entrance to which is marked by a giant sign that says "do not pick the flowers")to snag herself a cheap corsage for the society dance she's wrangled an invitation to, i had identified it, but i didn't want to admit it to myself. when alice defends her father's honour in a spat with her father's boss over the origins of his secret recipe for superglue (don't laugh, it's quite a touching scene), and promises to work to pay off her brother's gambling debts, i knew that i could no longer hide from it; it was time for me to go home.

i don't just mean returning to my attic apartment, i'm happy to go back there (though sad that i have to leave behind the brand new stereo receiver on the bookshelf in the living room), but i also mean that i think it's time for me to stop being ashamed of my origins. it's difficult, especially in a place like graduate school, to own up to the fact that you've been dealt a short hand when it comes to cultural capital. why is admitting that you don't know something such a sin in an environment where a love of learning is supposed to be the motivation for discovery? gee whiz. i'm not sure i can answer that.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

the champagne savvy of bunny watson


peg costello: "there are 85 calories in a glass of champagne."
bunny watson: "i have a place in my neighbourhood where i can get it for 65."

today i nestled in the loft for another katharine hepburn screening. i armed myself with a whole wheat pita filled with an imaginatively-concocted arugala-garlic-mayo dip, snap peas, some old white cheddar and for dessert a handful of 70% cuban dark chocolate. to drink i had some orange juice mixed with soda water. as i stretched out on my belly, (i recently confessed to a neighbour that the university library was not my favourite study space because it didn't allow one to assume such positions for the purposes of enrichment and education), i realized that part of the charm of housesitting is the make-believe that is involved. while i've been here, it has been brilliantly simple to delude myself into thinking that this house is mine. i've built a whole imaginary life for myself that invovles tending a garden, feeding a cat and breakfasting on front steps that do not, in reality, belong to me. for the time i am here though i can quickly pass through the decade or two of my life in which i work tirelessly to achieve all this space represents and i can enjoy the fruits of my (hastily skipped) labour. in this imaginary world i've been able to satisfy so many desires: i can fill my house with music thanks to the unbelievable stereo system; i can do my laundry and hang it out in a clothes line in the sun; i can cook myself delicious french meals in wonderful ceramic cookery; i can play the hostess to my cherished friends; in short i can play fast and loose with space, time, obligations and money. i can believe in a world like the one in Desk Set, the eighth of the nine Tracy/Hepburn films, not where a woman like Bunny Watson is cursed to play the sidekick to an insufferable executive boyfriend like Gig Young, but where, between bookshelves in the research stacks, Spencer Tracy, slightly drunk on too much Christmas champagne can tell Katharine Hepburn, more than slightly drunk on the same champagne, that she must write beautiful letters. in the past of the film, i've found my future of the present which will in time be it's own past at the same time that it will be (hopefully, with lots of hard work) the future.

the rainmaker (before grisham)




last night i came home from the Canada Day festivities and curled up on the futon in the loft of the house i'm housesitting to watch the remainder of a 1956 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster. as many know, i'm an avid (obsessed? relentless? frightening?) Katharine Hepburn fan, and this is one of a handful of her films that i was still on my hit list. i was shocked and mildly surprised to find it in the "classics" bin at Classic Video yesterday afternoon.

the premise of the film is doubly strange. Kate plays a "plain" girl, named Lizzie, who grows up on a ranch in the US midwest in the aughts; by the numerous Tin Lizzies (the connection between her character's name and the no-frills, everyone can afford one car isn't lost on me) sprinkled around the set (that looked like something left over from a Gary Cooper western), i'm guessing around 1908. she has a disturbingly controlling older brother and a disturbingly stupid younger brother. the older brother has told her for many years that she is "plain" and destined to become an old maid. the younger brother takes up with the town hussie, Snookie McGuire who bleaches her hair and drives a bright red roadster (town guy: "she bleaches her hair" stupid brother: "she does not!" town guy: "she's bought two bottles of peroxoide since she came last week" sb: "well, i use peroxide to clean a cut" tg: "if she cut herself that much, she'd bleed to death"). Snookie also wears a little red hat with a pom pom, much like a knitted toque, and professes that she will only give the hat away to the man she gives her heart to (i kid you not). it was too similar to Anna K's little red handbag in my mind (the one Aritha Van Herk refers to in Places Far From Ellesmere as "the little red purse of her c*nt").

okay, i'm getting sidetracked. there's a drought on in the town of Three Point, and arriving to alleviate it is this mysterious huckster named Bill Starbuck (aka Burt Lancaster). Starbuck arrives on Kate's family's ranch and promises, for a fee of a hundred dollars to make it rain in twenty-four hours. Kate's father agrees to the bet and Starbuck sets about making the men in the family do crazy things so he can get Kate alone. her father is sent off to paint a giant white arrow pointing away from the house on the ground so the lightening, when it comes, will miss the house. Kate's younger brother is sent off to beat a giant bass drum three times whenever the mood strikes him (pardon the pun). the older, nasty brother is sent off to tie up the hind legs of a mule (that one made me laugh out loud; he returns later, limping and looking like he sustained a minor injury in the groin area). Starbuck eventually lures Kate out the tack shed where he proceeds to convince her to let her hair down, after telling her she is Mellisande, and they do the 1950s post-code equivalent of a roll in the hay.

as in all westerns, no matter their place in the cycle of the genre (enthusiasm for conventions, questioning of conventions, parodying of conventions), the sheriff arrives. he is going to arrest Starbuck and also to try and hook up with Kate. her father, knowing she's in the barn with Burt and unwilling to spoil what might well be his daughter's only brush with sexual gratification, tries to drive the sheriff off, but a mistimed exit on the part of both Kate and Burt throws the latter right in to the sheriff's clutches. Kate is, of course, transformed and Burt is looking quite smug. after convincing the sheriff that Burt has committed no crime (he promised rain and there's still a few hours left to go before he's proven to be a huckster), the sheriff agrees to let him go if he promises to leave town at once, without Kate. he does so, only after helping Kate to trick the sheriff into declaring his love, and on his way out is drenched in a downpour.

though Kate was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as Lizzie, i just didn't get it. this isn't the Kate that i know from films like Woman of the Year (if you forget the last fifteen minutes in Spence's kitchen) and Adam's Rib. this is Kate post-Bogie and pre-Desk Set and in the transition, i think she got a little lost. everything that her star persona is supposed to signify: early feminism, pants-wearing and acidic wit mixed with a certain blend of sex appeal is stuffed into this role that in many ways just seems too small for her. it's like she spills over the edges in too many places (such as when she performs a fantastic mimic of the town hussy). she is told by Burt not that she needs to know and believe in herself (classic Kate), but that she needs to know herself and believe that she can be a woman. huh? in Pat and Mike Kate delivers a line about beating one's self in the game of life, which given the centrality of sports to the film is highly appropriate, and surprisingly not cliched. this time, N. Richard Nash saw fit to take the line, twist it and pull it from Burt's mouth so that the strength associated with Kate's star persona is uniquely adapted to heteronormative ideas of femininity. ick.

perhaps what made this viewing of The Rainmaker so otherworldly was the storm that was quite literally brewing outside my window. within 5 minutes of Burt riding off into the lightening storm there was a terrific cloud burst that moved in sheets past the open loft window. i heard the thunder rumbling in the sky as Burt charlataned his way past the sherriff; the windows were rattling when Kate's evil older brother was giving a long speech about the necessity of "protecting" her from men like Starbuck. i couldn't help but think of e's thirsty garden out back as the cracked plains of a 20th-century Hollywood indoor set changed to smooth brown terrain.

aside from the storm in real time, the film perhaps hit a little too close to home. this is the time of year when i distinctly stop feeling like a girl. what with morning practice down at the boathouse, and runs in the afternoon, i spend most of my time in strange form fitting athletic clothing (ah, the unisuit)that while it undoubtedly reveals that i'm a woman, also has magical powers of making me feel anything but. this is the point in the season where your legs start screaming from lactic acid build-up after a practice and where your arms, after a few months of constant strength building, stop fitting into the sleeves of certain shirts. while i love having what many of seemingly-envious friends call "guns", i also begin to feel a certain disconnect from my body as anything other than some strange muscle-y monolith. in the past, this has been incredibly liberating, but this year, for whatever reason, it hasn't. the place of indeterminancy that has come with slipping on my all-in-one (as the British say) has lost some of it's thrill for me. as a way of counteracting this, i've been doing things i haven't done in years: giving myself pedicures and, perhaps more shocking, manicures! using firming lotion -- hey, it was on sale at the drug store -- along with wearing heels (ouch) and sporting not a little red knitted hat with a pom pom, but a giant pink purse. i wonder what Aritha Van Herk would think of that.

i've also developed a fondness for the rain: walking in it, the smell of it, watching it bead against my window. last night there was a light sprinkling of it while we were waiting for the fireworks to start. while my friends sent one of our party scurrying home for the foul weather gear, i felt perfectly content on my patch of grass (in my absurdly white, fluffy skirt), feeling the rain against my bare arms. water and femininity/femaleness --- that's nothing new, as my friend confessingmermaid can tell you, but this is the first time i've really, really understood it.