On How to see _Apocalypto_ Before Hell Freezes

The previews for Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto are tremendously breathtaking, and the early word is that the movie is pretty darn amazing.

Although who wants to give Mel Gibson their money? Ummm, no one? Exactly.

I guess there’s always buying tickets for another movie and then slipping into this one.

(And I don’t know whether I deserve a therapist, an agent, or a parole officer for that brainflash.)


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The Amazing Ask-for-Directions Show

I’ve driven into the city hundreds of times, so it says something about the “spontaneity” of my navigational skills that I can still get myself lost getting there or back. Usually in downtown Newark or Hillside, which are, as i've been "warned," economically depressed areas. This last is advertised by the chains of police cars, sirens all a-blaring, racing to some routine crisis. Being female, however, I’m able to ask for directions and repair my route instead of--ahem!--ending up in Edison (why, hello, A.D.L. :). But the most memorably fun directions to date weren’t from the street-corner kids or the cop who escorted me to the highway. It’s, hands down, the NJ Transit bus driver who not only stopped alongside me at two traffic lights, coaching me on how to get on I-95, but also, when the time came for me to branch out of the sheltering shadow of his colossal bus, turned on all his blinkers and lights and his P.A. system and reminded me to, “Turn right. Here! Now!” through the SPEAKERS. And when I turned to wave my thanks, some of his passengers waved back. It made me laugh all the way to Prince Street--where sadly, I kind of got lost again. All of which makes it kinda sweet,* I guess, that Big A wants to go on The Amazing Race with me. * I think he’d prefer--by a very small margin--to be called “sweet” rather than “stupid.” ___

NOTES FROM A LECTURE

Part 1: Finding a Seat

He chooses his seat carefully
Not the front row

Not too far back
Not anywhere his eyes

Can swivel to look at her
And look again

Not too far from her though.
He sits.

Directly in front of her,
Warmed by her breath

And the gaze
At his back.


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Part 2: The Middle of the Lecture

Prof. Sakinawa
Does not know Prof. Ichiguro.

Still, disrupting the lecture
By leaving in the middle

And embarrassed by it
She moves on tiptoe,

Eyes sliding in the distance
Until she sees

Another pair
Familiar to her as a mirror

Prof. S does not know Prof. I--
Yet she unclips her smile.


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Part 3: The Departure

At the time
Her pen alights

To describe
The clear flare

The speaker
Lit in her brain

The words vanish
As if in a puff of smoke.


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Love All

Family conference time in the car and I’m all-out nagging at the boys to do their fair share of picking up after themselves. Big A suppresses a smile, Li’l A pays attention--to the New York skyline, as though expecting a Spider-Man sighting.

Hey, I demand. Pay attention, I’m full of feminist rage here.

Big A laughs. The words that escape him sound like, You can't even fake anger right.

Li’l A crows, Nah! She luuurves us.

And then… and then... they high five. Gleefully.

It was entirely too much. I bit the driver’s shoulder, and i tickled the foot of the booster-seat -riding backseat-passenger until he yelped for mercy too.

P.S. For the record, i'm proud and willing to count as feminist. And also for the record, unconcerned when affection trumps ideology.



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My Human Family

I’ve felt most human when poor people have offered me food --boiled peanuts, puffed rice, chappati and pickle, unripe mango with chili powder-lime-salt.

Sometimes there’s an explanatory smile at my shoulder drooping with the weight of the Krishnaesque child asleep on it, sometimes simply an encouraging nod, at other times a loud lament that although I seem educated I’m not being very smart.

And I feel as though I’m fulfilling my human potential when I can successfully suppress my suspicions that neither a guarantee nor the provenance of their next meal has been established, and can simply accept their gifts with an outstretched right hand, a smile, and gratefulness.




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Happy Thanksgiving :) !!

 

You Can Call it Dark Matter

This Saturday, there will be an international conference in Oxford in memory of Li’l A’s birth-father. The kindhearted organizers are making digital copies of the entire proceedings as a keepsake for Li’l A, per my request.

Sir Roger Penrose and Harvey Brown are two of the plenary speakers--and really, it’s a happy event with seriously impressive paper titles such as, “A New Fermionic Quantum Field for Dark Matter.”

Still, when I read Harvey‘s e-mail with the mock-up of Saturday’s program--for no good reason that I can think of--i cried for hours after.



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