Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed

Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed

            In the sweet, slow-moving Spanish  film Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed

 I like the main character, who teaches English and uses Beatles songs in his lessons.  His students repeat lines, and he explains what they mean in Spanish, the old translation method.  But he has his heart in it. He's very kind and gentle, so it's a little bit surprising that he hasn't become a family man although the examples we see of all heads of the household shows them slapping kids around.  The fact that he is a dedicated teacher who may not always be successful makes it easy for me to identify.  Of course, I associate "Living Is Easy" with the song "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess, but the title comes from "Strawberry Fields Forever."    I associate the Beatles with my brother David, who loves their songs--one of his pleasures (or escapes?) in his life at a neurobehavioral facility, where he's kept under lock and key twenty-four hours a day--except when we take him out to lunch, and yes, he would like to escape with us and go on a road trip far from the facility.  David used to sing along with the Beatles more than he does now.  He'd love this teacher's lessons provided the music, not just the English words,  was part of them.  The teacher, Antonio, is in his mid-forties, pushing fifty, but he lives poor and he lives alone in an apartment where he can't get the gas stove to work, so he heats his soup on an overturned iron.  He starts out on a road trip to see John Lennon, who's filming How I Won the War with director John Lester in Spain in 1966.  His dream is to speak to John Lennon and tell him about his students and get Lennon's help with lyrics he can't pick up from just listening, so in a sense he's traveling with his students, too, but the only people who get a ride with him are two runaways, ready to learn.  So what are the lessons?  You should get on the road to fulfill your dream (or to keep it from being dashed), and on the road, you should welcome the unexpected into your car, which will often break down, and  you will need HELP!    Juanjo and Belen are the two he meets at separate stops.  Juanjo has run away from home because his father insists he get his Beatles-length hair cut.  Belen has run away from a home for unwed mothers because she wants to decide what she's going to do with her body and her baby. 

            This  2013 film won the 2014 Goya Award for Best Film and Best Director, but it took another year for it to arrive here, where it was submitted into the category as Best Foreign Film but wasn't nominated.  Now I read it's being sponsored by Honorary Consulate of Spain in Seattle, Consulate General of Spain in San Francisco, Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain, The Tourist Office of Spain, Dragados USA, Bellevue Club.

            If Andrew Crocker-Harris had taken a road trip to meet the Beatles, I'm not sure whether he would have had two passengers.  He might have failed even at getting someone to accept a ride--unless a Taplow happened along. 

            John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote this when they were young, but the words conjure up someone who's older, so it seems reasonable that the English teacher in Spain would identify. 

Help, I need somebody
Help, not just anybody
Help, you know I need someone
Help!

When I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone I'm not so self-assured
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me?

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But every now and then I feel so insecure
I know that I just need you like I've never done before

Songwriters
LENNON, JOHN / MCCARTNEY, PAUL

Published by
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

A Better Ending for Sparks' The Notebook

            I put in the Netflix DVD of The Notebook, which I'd put in my queue after hearing Dana and Karl mention it on recommended movies.  I watched it more or less while peeling vegetables and roasting eggplant.

          We're made to suspect that the Gena Rowland-looking woman with Alzheimer's (played by Gena Rowland) is Allie grown older, so the question is who is the man called "Duke." who's faithfully coming to read to her every day from The Notebook.  Is it Noah, the man who won her heart by harassing her on the ferris wheel at the opening of the movie and later wrote her 365 letters she never saw, or is it Lon, the man she became engaged to and also loved but who didn't make her feel the way Noah made her feel?  We go from seeing the Rowland-Duke (James Gardner) couple to returning to the past for the various stages of Allie's love life.  We also see another woman in the arms of Noah, who treats her with coolness and never tries to comfort her when she feels unloved.  This is Martha Shaw.  There's a scene in which Martha and Allie meet and then Martha says goodbye to Noah, who stands there showing no emotion and not even suggesting, "You'll meet a wonderful guy who will love you."  There's also a scene in which Allie tells her fiance Lon Hammond that she loves him, but she's still in love with Noah.  Lon still loves her and wants to marry her.  Then, as the music swells,  we see Allie going back to Lon and the house he built for her.

            So Duke says that he's Noah, and Gena Rowlands is Allie, but we know it's not true.  At first we suspect that Noah is Lon replacing the memory Allie lost of their marriage with the marriage Allie sacrificed when she married Lon instead of Noah.  Even though she didn't wind up with Noah in reality, she can wind up remembering that she did.

            That's not bad.

            But the truth is that Gena Rowland is Martha, and Duke is Lon.  They wound up together after being rejected by their first love interests, and his loyalty to her as she goes deeper into dementia is the proof of the enduring depth, height,bredth of their love, which would never have been had Allie married Lon and Noah married Martha.  

As for Allie and Noah, we suspect that they were disappointed, disillusioned, and divorced after five years of marriage.  

The News and Me

I spend at least an hour and usually two hours reading the newspaper every day, which gets my brain into the spin cycle.  Not spin as in PR work.  Spin as in going, getting fueled and getting in gear.  So...just as an example, let's take today's Chronicle.  (I spent only one hour on the news because I have the 600-page Un avion sans elle to finish, and even though it's a bit phony, it's engaging, and we may be discussing it --rather than our objections to it--on April 15.)

First there was what Leah Garchik (subject of last night's dream) related about Pope Francis and the homeless--an item provided by Frank Viviano:  Police are told to leave them in peace.  "Francis has ordered his almsgivers to distribute sleeping bags, and has installed showers for the homeless (not like those from St. Mary's sprinkler system) under the St. Peter's Square colonnade.  Hair-cuts are offered as well as lanundry services; clean clothes are distributed.  And on Wednesdays, when the pope has general audiences, many of the homoelss pass out prayer books."  I fear that some of our homeless would not want to help out.  I liked Caille Milner's column describing how much more St. Mary's is doing for the homeless than the rest of us are.  I really don't know WHAT should be done.  I know that Oxfam says the 1% will own more than half of the world by 2016, and that's reason to be plagued by doubt.  But that's doubt, not certainty or even clarity.

So then I read about a wonderful 93-year-old woman who "unites religions to do good," nominated as Visonary of the Year.  Among her many causes has been the homeless, and she's the co-founder of the winter  homeless shelter system.  She could shame me if I had a great sense of shame.  And I feel sad for my mother, who wanted so badly to do good, and died with Alzheimer's.  This makes me want to write about Mother rather than to do good myself!

I see a report on young female activists profiled by Sam Whiting, who once interviewed me and wrote me up as a fake indoor person.  (That was January 2006, and I could have been so much more honest if I'd left out the mess of papers to respond to encircling me.  Instead I'm in the corner of my study sitting demurely with my hands in my lap.)  Anyway, I look at these young women, two of whom are in dresses showing knees and all of whom are wearing very high heels, and I'm aware that nto all the world wears sensible shoes and avoids eating meat.  (The meat bit may seem like a disconnect, but it's connected to my world view.  I often feel that meat-eating is a barbaric rite of the past cultures only to be awakened to the fact that only 4% of the American population is vegetarian, and Americans define themselves at "meateaters."  Only in India, which has more vegetarians than the rest of the world combined,  is my worldview true.  There 40% of the world is Indian.)

Miss Manners is asked "How to talk to the dying" and I think of Pam Anesi, who wanted to read crime novels, and Andrea, who wanted to play Pictionary and just have a good time.  I also think of Jeanne, whose brother has stage 4 cancer,  and want to ask her how her brother's doing.  Dear Abby advisese a man who defends himself AS a man by saying that ihe'd served eitht years in the Army with four deployments between Iraq and Afghanistand and been twice wounded.  Does he have to be interested in sports too?  I wish a real man didn't have to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.  I wish "real men" didn't wage wars that are the ultimate crime according to the Geneva Accords.

I want to write to Javier about Pope Francis and "Why homeowners aren't cashing in" because after April he'll be selling the house in Millbrae.

I want to tell Jonathan about the Middlemarch opera Joshua Kosman has written up twice, focusig on Dorothea Brooke and the demise of her "utopian dreams for the re-engineering of society."  I don't like opera, but I'm tempted to listen, as I did to the 25 CDs of George Elliot's novel before a strand of it was made into an opera.

I'll send Linda Michael Bauer's review of Mourad Lahlou's new restaurant, named Mourad, because she once worked with him on some committee in Marin, when he had the Ksbah there or was abotu to begin it in 1996.  The review is one that oozes wishing the new restaurant was better and wanting to be both honest and supportive--very different from the critic in Chef--or the drama critic in Birdman.

Then there's "Ravages of mystery goo:  Resources target only oil, fuel spils" and the bill by two senataors to offer financial support to other gooiness.

Greece "Debt bail out revives claims from Nazi era" when, in 1943, thousands of Jews had to pay for their own transport to Poland's death camps.

Richard III has been given the burial he was denied 530 years ago after his bones were found in 2012 under a parking lot and long after he, the last Plantagenet King, was killed in battle by Hnery Turdo in 1485.  I think of our Shakespeare group.

The Prime minister who led Singapore ito the Modern Age, Lee Kuan Yew, made me wonder about the caning in that country and the law against chewing gum.  If that were Afghanistan, where we need to present a de-humanizing picture of the people, it would be attributed to the extremisim of  the Taliban.

And the sea all at Ocean Beach is being mended.

Explaining the Loss of the Civic Center to Those Who Care

(Because I can't access my San Francisco CCSF Connection blog!)

I'm privileged to have an ongoing correspondence with former City College students who have become friends over the years.  I call us the Anminiroti for Annie in France, Minako in Japan, Nicole in the USA, Rosa in Spain, and me, Tina, right here and trying to explain what's happening at City College, a school that meant and still means a lot to these  former students in other parts of the world. 

Back in the year 2000 we found out that Annie, who always dressed like a Parisian model, got her clothes not in Paris Boutiques but at  the Good Will Thrift Shop in San Francisco, so I related the report of the severed body parts found at Good Will South of Market, suggesting that this served as a metaphor for the plight of the Civic Center Campus.   This was  after Civic Center Teachers were told on a Friday afternoon, January 9, that they would not be teaching the following Monday because their school  was closing for earthquake retrofitting.  The students didn't learn about this until Monday, January 12, when they showed up for the classes scheduled there and  were met by teachers trying to explain the situation.  At first these students, who are learning English and need very clear explanations, were told that the classes would be held at 33 Gough,  where the administrative offices of City College are located.  That turned out not to be the case.  Instead the following month they were sent to the Chinatown/NorthBeach and Mission centers. 

The Anminiroti are more privileged than many, but four of the five are teachers  and very concerned about the widening gap between the haves and have-nots.  As Heather Knight reported last summer, citing a report from the Human Services Agency, San Francisco now compares to Rwanda in terms of the disparity in incomes.   The Tenderloin is an area NOT made up of the most privileged in that spectram. 

Now Steve Rubinstein is reporting on the missing prosthetic limbs!  The man whose prosthetic leg was found  turned out to be a victim of thieves pushing his  wheelchair to an area where they could rob him of everything he had of value.  They later tossed his prosthetic leg. 

Do you see what I mean by metaphoric?

(Actually, the first word that came to my mind was metamorphic, and that might work too.)

I'm not antagonistic towards administrators.  .  In fact, I've always felt sorry for them  and wouldn't take their job no matter how high the pay.  But I feel agony-bordering-on-antagonism over this closure of the Civic Center Campus and the way it was handled, so only by creating a new word can I express how I feel:  Very agonistic  

 Since the accreditation of City College was threatened by the ACCJC in 2012, I've attended a lot of rallies and board meetings, but one that stands out in my mind is the one in October 2012 that went on until 1:30 in the morning.  Faculty and staff had to wait until midnight to be heard, and then they were told they would have one minute each to speak. 

            http://fog.ccsf.edu/~mantonic/HTMLPractice/BOT_Excerpts_102512_3.html

Into the Woods

It was really thinking of my post-Oscar night party with the usual food theme that got me to the Century Plaza Cinema, and going to my seat on the second floor to screen 6 among dozens was a little like going Into the Woods, which is what I saw there--wanting to find a dish to serve from that film.  (I had already thought of and rejecting little girls and grandmothers.)  Of course, I thought of the bread she was taking, and that song came up quickly as did the song about the green things stolen from the witch's garden.

Greens Green and Nothing but green! Parsley, Peppers, Cabbages, and Celery. Asparagus and Watercress and Fiddlefern and
Lettuce

I'm even a vegetarian with aspirations towards being vegan, so I had my dish from Into the Woods.  But I stayed because I love musicals and because I thought it was all enchanting.  I'd gone straight from planning a reunion in Florida, getting my car washed, going to Andronico's and dropping perishables off at home to the movie, and I was surprised that I was the third person in Theatre 6!  After the movie, as the mother-daughter team were leaving and saying "I didn't know it was a musical.  There were too many songs," one person joined us--the janitor, and I thought of The Flick!

I'd like to write more, but I'm going to get ready first to pick up Javier and maybe make it over to Bill and Tom's from there.  I'd initially turned down his invitation for a pre-dinner tea, but his latest message coaxed me into it, and this will give us a chance to see his photos.

A Day in the Life of a Retiree and unprocessed writing

I just got off an e-message to a friend I wanted to invite to lunch before or tea after a show.  (Candide at Yerba Buena Center.  Samovar.) I'd already invited him and his husband to Oscar night but, as I suspected, they already had a well-established Oscar group, not like mine, which is composed of Javier and me already in our pajamas or a group small enough that everybody can lie prone as they wash on a sofa or a recliner.  But as I was proposing lunch or tea, I got a better idea:  A dinner the Monday after the Oscar telecast.  I could still serve food from the nominated movies and we could complain or rhapsodize about the results.  I didn't go back an rewrite because as I told him, a retired English teacher, "At this point (Why go back and rewrite?  Our students never did that when they changed their mind about their thesis!) I like the post-Oscar idea!"

But this is how a day goes in the life of a retiree.  A day is like unprocessed writing. 

I am already up at midnight, finishing an e-message to a friend who was once a romantic interest.   (I proposed a short-term marriage the day before we were to go to our villages in  Peace Corps Tonga back in 1970, but he wasn't ready--not even for the Peace Corp.  He dropped out and wound up in the original case of Grease, and invited me, after performing my two years of service and on my way to Spain with my Peace Corp readjustment allowance, to join him in New York and be his date at Sardi's after opening night.)  Jim has been on my mind because of the east coast blizzard (Did it affect his wife's dream house in Connecticut?), Birdman (He lived in New York as an actor and then flew far above the theatre to wind up teaching classics at a boys' school), and "Ave Maria," which I heard yesterday at a memorial service at St. Cecilia's.  (I begged him early in the Christmas season to put the recording of him singing that on YouTube.  But all YouTube has is "Magic Changes" from Grease.)     

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRo6a8uYzYs

I look it up, and it's better than ever.  But it's not "Ave Maria."

I want BOTH!

I make a quick and easy entry to my writing journal, expressing concern that I'm spending my brightest, freshets hours of retirement responding to and deleting e-mail and arranging appointments for hand rails and roofing. I created one bit of dialogue representing a scene from when I saw Jim in 2003, after not seeing him for fifteen years.

Tina:  (Opening door at the Eastgate Towers)  Jim!  You look wonderful.  I thought you were going to be fat!  And old!  Hey, we are old now.  What's the matter with you?  Are you in denial?    Did I say that before?  Hi!

Jim:  Hi!

But now  more than a decade has passed, and we are almost seventy.  My dark hair has turned to the bottle. 

To be continued

Seeing San Francisco--Past and Present--while Presenting City College of San Francisco

I just wrote a friend about today's outing--during a couple of hours when it wasn't raining--and I think I'll share here what I shared with her:

I had a nice outing--except that I was disappointed in my local bookstore, where the clerks/people in charge used to be much more receptive.  There's a new guy now, and I can't figure out why he's not receptive.

I suffered in verse--and now I'll make you suffer:

She'd brought in some flyers to hang on the wall

So why, when she looked, were they not there at all?

This was the time the community needed

To all come together.  Was her plea not heeded?

She'd bought her books there, so she'd been a good client.

So why when she asked them were they not compliant?

The classes would close if folks didn't posthaste

Go to register for them.  What a loss!  What a waste!

This was one of those cases when I wished that I hadn't asked and had just posted on the bulletin board they have at the back.  (I brought in material again today in case they'd "accidentally" recycled what I took a couple of weeks ago--which they said they'd post after they painted the area, which has now been painted. )  It's in an easy-to-access area, and clearly three people had taken it upon themselves to post things.  When I presented material, he said, "We already have the material you brought us.  But we did some painting, and I don't know when we'll put things back up."  I offered to do it for him, and he said, "No."  Usually people are very receptive, but other times it's like pulling out of my garage on 19th Avenue.  I have to be assertive but careful.  In this case, I don't want to alienate him.  But I'll tell you something.  If I go in again, and nothing is on that bulletin board, I'm going to start boycotting them.  I'm sorry because I like that store and it's within walking distance of my house.  I'd rather support them than Amazon.  But that lack of responsiveness upsets me.  Today I bought the book they'd ordered for me, A Literary Christmas.  But I'm not going to buy anything else there if they don't put up any CCSF flyers.

What  a contrast to the Russian Hill Bookstore, where the guy in charge said, "Sure.  Take down whatever is out of date.  There's always something."  Their bulletin board is right by the door, and the only way to access it is to block the door a bit, but no one complained, and I was there as an obstruction for quite a while because I had to keep my foot in the door while I was taking down and putting up flyers!  I took down West Coat Craft for December 6 & 7 (which was at the Herbst Pavilion at Fort Mason Center, where we'll continue to have classes, I think, because they found out that it costs less than some other sites), a flyer for a Z space presentation, The Totalitarians, which ended last Sunday, Deck the Hall, which seemed to have everyone performing on December 7--the SF Symphony, Beach Blanket Babylon, the SF Boys Chorus, the SF Ballet School Trainee Program, and MORE.  I'm thinking that I might steal their design for my Christmas card and substitute photos for the Christmas balls they have on their tree. ..Dancers, Prancers & Vixens" with the "Well Strung" Singing String Quartet, part of the SFGMC that Randy Larouche has just rejoined.  Oh, and I took down a flyer saying "Study English with ELI at a great new location, Park Presidio Church"--that's the one on Geary and 7th Avenue where some of us used to teach a class or two in addition to the ones we had at John Adams.    I took it down because it said "Classes begin September 22nd."  But one of the flyers I put up for the Civic Center Campus had a nearly-expired date too--December 19.  We know that these classes continue, but I'm afraid my flyer will be taken down because it seems to have expired.  ..Tim Guydish, Artists Reception for "The Oddists", which was back on October 24th..."Santa Claus in the Japan Center Malls" was over December 14...An art show at Holy Trinity Cathedral, where my first husband and I went a couple of times and found nobody else in attendance--sort of like the Stonestown Theatre.  That was over December 14.  (Oh, I'm mistaken!  The one we went to was on Bush and  Gough Street, not Green.  Could there be two Trinity Churches?  I guess there really should be three!)  I put up the flyer that Susan Lopez created, "A More Amazing You" because it's catchy and gives the beginning date and link to the schedule website, English classes in the Sunset, the "expired" one about the Civic Center, one about French classes at the Downtown Camus,   one on Music at the Ocean Campus, and a schedule of classes--just one because there wasn't space for more.  But people everywhere are telling me that they've gotten a schedule of classes in the mail, so that's good.  They've gotten it and they're aware that they've gotten it!

Once I got my foot out the door, I realized I was right next to Cole Hardware, so I went in to get the oil-based sealant for grout that Small Property Owners advised me to use to "back up" the work done.  ..I rarely go to that part of town, so I enjoyed seeing the old Alhambra Theatre, which advertised Crunch Fitness right next door to a place called "No Judgment," as if they wouldn't make any comment on whether the fitness place created results!  (In a protest in Sacramento, we held our banners and heard speeches right across the street from the Beauty Center, and there was a sign nearby saying "Dreamers welcome," as if implying that you'd have to be a dreamer if you expected results.)  I noticed that Boulange was across the street from Cole Hardware, and that's where Javier and I had wound up one day long ago when we were trying to find some other place--maybe a restaurant that turned out to be closed...Then I left Polk Street and realized that on Van Ness going back home, I could stop at Staples near Sacramento and get some of the sheet protectors I need for my pages of recipes.  So I stopped there, and I asked the manager if he had room for some CCSF material.  He said he'd put it in their break room.

But the trip was also nostalgic.  I saw the Episcopal Church on Van Ness at Clay, where Jonathan and I went briefly after my divorce from his dad, and the First Old Church, where we saw a performance of Amahl and the Night Visitor, with someone we knew as Amahl.  Jonathan was a toddler and, before (not during) the performance, he climbed around on the pews.  As I thought about all the personal history, I realized:  I'm old!