CHANGING THE CALENDAR

 

trees in the rain

 

An image of John Lennon just now ran across the movie screen inside my head. I recalled seeing a headline a week or so ago of his son by his first wife telling the world John Lennon was not a nice man at home, that the kid never saw any love in him. John wrote songs about love, but didn't live the love he wrote songs about. Therefore, he was a hypocrite. What does that have to do with anything? King David wrote the most beautiful songs about love ever, period. He was a rogue. John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, was a slave trader. I read in John Berryman's Dream Songs and see video of an interview with him, I don't see all his poems in him. I see just a man whose mind pieced together with words and rhythms some amazing compositions. I don't see suicide in his poems when I read them. I don't see suicide in Robert Lowell's poems either. How they ended their lives is as irrelevant to their art as the brand of tires on their cars. I felt a degree of sorrow for the kid who tried to be a star with his daddy's name and it didn't take. He sees his half-brother, Yoko's son, bathed in luxury, privilege and wealth as son of John Lennon. Julian was left out, never made it to stardom and evidently turned bitter. What a dreary old man he might be, "I'm the neglected son of John Lennon...he was a sorry-ass hypocrite," in the pub night after night.

 

 

 

The last two evenings being year's end and year's beginning, another turn around the sun, I decided to see my favorite movies. Last night's choice was Hero, a film by Chinese director Yimou Zhang. Hero is at the top of the list of the most beautiful films I've seen. This was the fifth or sixth viewing. It is billed an action movie starring Jet Li. The action is choreographed martial arts ballet in flowing clothes of colors that sound like a Chinese violin. It is an historical drama given a touch of fairy tale. Then today I chose to see another favorite film, King of Masks, a Chinese film by director Wu Tianming. A good Chinese story, a gentle roller coaster ride of the emotions, of an old man and a child he bought in the market to be his heir. He was the last to carry the traditional art of the mask, an entertainment of changing masks seemingly by magic. He needed an heir to pass his art form to and bought a little boy. Turns out he was cheated, the boy was a girl and he did not want a girl, the art could only be passed on to a boy. From there it goes round and round to a tear-jerker happy ending Chinese style. A story of everyday life realism with the sense of a fairy tale. Exquisitely beautiful photography in both films. 

 

 

 

Didn't do anything else to acknowledge the change of calendars. Haven't even put up the new calendar. Aimed to walk the dog today. Justin stopped by on his way to his deer stand and brought some hay up from the barn in his big pickup. He advised staying out of the woods today. Jan 1 is the last day of hunting season. Everybody was out. I said we'd stay on the road, in that case, and he advised blaze orange if I want to walk the road. Decided to let it go. Lead won't be flying in the woods from Saturday onward. A week ago, Justin killed the big bear living in this area. He estimated it 425 lbs, said the "cape" was 150 lbs. He wants to make a rug to hang on the wall. For a hunter, it's a good trophy. This was the bear he'd said earlier was going about in daylight. He said it means the bear was getting brave. A good one to cull from the sloth. I saw it on the back of his pickup within twenty minutes of being shot. I have a hard time with killing. I have no judgment of hunting. It's necessary, I know it, just don't care to participate in it. I also know my attitude about not killing is a minority of one. Justin knows I'm not a killer, he also knows I admire his skill with a bow and a gun. He brought the bear down with one shot. He said the bear came into view just as it turned dark, "A black bear is hard to see through a scope in the dark."

 

 

I've known Justin since he was a baby. We were friends in his childhood the same as I am friends with his baby, Vada. Vada is a feist, just like her daddy was. It's like the same kid, one a boy, one a girl. Vada is becoming a rowdy little kid. She and her daddy play rough and she loves it. It's in her horoscope. She got in trouble in pre-school; when she fights little kids her size, she hurts them. Her dance class had a recital a few weeks ago I'm sorry I missed. She ruled in it. Vada was the star performer and did it like she was born to the stage. Crystal told me after their trip to Disney World, Vada dressed up as Elsa was to walk behind Cinderella around a big circle of people clapping. Not Vada, Crystal said, Vada doesn't follow anybody. She walked around the circle holding Cinderella's hand. I would so love to see Vada grow up. She'll be out front in whatever she does. She is a balanced blend of her mommy and daddy. And her daddy will go crazy when he sees her drawn to rowdy boys. By the time she's in high school, she will have as many deer kills as the best of the boy hunters. She'll make all A's, be head cheerleader, play baseball and be homecoming queen.

 

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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HERO THE MOVIE

The weather goes on being steadily cold. Never a letup. The mud has dried enough that it's not slushy mudpit any more. The ruts are deep, but they don't sling mud. The ice has largely melted off the surface of Brown Road, though seems like it's still ice half an inch below the surface. Friday night I skipped driving to Woodlawn for the music at the Front Porch. The forecast was for ice rain, the temp at 31 and 32. On setting out I saw it was going to be one of those nights so black it absorbs the headlights so I can't see anything and makes oncoming headlights so bright I have to look away. It's especially disorienting between Woodlawn and this side of Galax where the cars are the thickest and I'm driving among extremely bright lights and can't see anything my lights are supposed to be shining on. Virginia doesn't keep their yellow lines and white lines on the highways very fresh, so I can seldom see them when the sky is so dark.

In Sparta, I made the decision, went to grocery store for some items, went home and called Scott at Front Porch to say I wouldn't be making it. Came home and went straight to bed. Got up in early afternoon today wanting only more sleep. Sleeping off a week of being on the run, though not objectionably. Every time I go to town, I stop at Selma's for some coffee in the morning, mocha in the afternoon. I and several others are happy to have her here. You can find Selma now on facebook at Backwoods Bean. Feeling like I didn't want to do anything but sleep some more, though wanting to be up some so I can sleep some tonight.

I put on a movie, HERO with Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, people who are big stars in Asian films. This is one of the great ones by Zhang Yimou, the director. It was made a few years after reuniting Hong Kong with mainland China. Art is waking up in China. Novels and poetry of high quality writing have been coming out of China over the last 20 or so years, recently more and more. Shanghai seems to be the art center of the new China. I've googled contemporary art museums there to see what the artists of the present are doing in China. What I see is they're coming on fast. The 21st Century is on the verge of becoming China's century. The Chinese have the potential to make 21st century art as dynamic as 20th century art has been. Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel Peace prize this year in prison. They wouldn't let him out. When Martin Luther King Jr won it, his government at home wasn't at all tickled about it, either.

The talk about the Hero in videos about the movie afterward, like Quentin Tarantino in an interview with Jet Li, and short videos on the making of the film, interviewing Zhang Yimou, and actors, calling it an action movie. Tarantino was surprised to see Zhang Yimou take on the action genre. It seems to me out of place to call this an action movie. Surely it is, because it has sword fights and million-arrow assaults, they're even the theme. Yet, where action is concerned, it's so beautiful it's something more like modern dance, like the long sword fight between two women dressed in flowing red gowns in a landscape of trees with red leaves for awhile and golden leaves for awhile, the leaves flying in the air. One of the women named Snow, the other, Flying Snow. They fly into the air, sail over the ground, in attempts to kill each other. The way it was filmed was more like it was dream reality instead of awake reality.

The time Flying Snow and Noname (Jet Li) stood on the roof of the calligraphy school fighting off the arrows of the Qin army with swords, flying around, swirling red cloth, hitting the arrows out of the air with their swords. And there was the time the two of them had a sword fight to the death, she in flowing pale blue silk twirling in the air, turning, slicing the air with her sword, giving her adversary some serious resistance. They all move like martial artists, though Jet Li may be the only one of them who is adept at the martial arts. The others learned their parts from a martial arts choreographer. Jet Li loved being in it so much he said he cried when he read the script. It was the movie he'd been hoping for. I can't contest that it was an action movie. It just didn't feel like it.

There was a bigger story going on, the unification of Our Land (China), 6 provinces that were continually at war. The emperor of Qin united them by conquering all of them. He was unpopular, a target for assassins. Jet Li was an assassin set on killing the emperor. By the time he was given the opportunity, he had come to understand the emperor's thinking and was with him. Another assassin, Broken Sword, had a swordfight with the emperor earlier in the story in a maze of yellow-green drapes of sheer silk hanging from overhead. They moved in the breeze as the men had their swordfight in that flowing dreamscape. There again, the assassin realized he was in agreement with the emperor and decided against killing him. The story had emotional depth and every scene was breathtakingly beautiful. Maybe this is the 4th time I've seen it. Every time, it has the freshness of the first time. I become so involved in the beauty of the whole production, I miss that it's an action movie. I think of it among the most beautiful movies of my life.