Carte Noire

As all my regular readers know...okay, as I alone know, I am a bit lazy when it comes to the blog posts and will look for almost any excuse to avoid doing any extra work. So I am quite happy to offer random vistors a clue about a great reading series sponsored by Carte Noire. Dominic West of The Wire fame reading a shall we say polemical scene between Lizzie Bennett and posh Mr. Darcy? Do I have to say more than that? Oh, you poor, benighted sots. Just click the damn link.

An essay by Georgine Balassone (But she doesn't like the picture, so ignore it.)

Sometimes I think too hard about something that should have been obvious all along. Here I was, realizing that I hadn't posted here for quite some time, and wondering what little essay or story or whatever I could mention here, when I realized the answer had been staring me right in the face.

My good friend, co-worker and larger than life personality in her own right, Georgine Balassone, has recently published an essay about the forces that made her what she is today. Or, getting right to the heart of the matter, maybe we should just say, The Force.

A little shy to let the world know of this, her first web publication, she first swore me to secrecy, but has since freed me from the vow of silence.

Here, forthwith, What I Learned From My Mother, by Georgine Balassone.

Did I mention she was funny?

I Am Troy Davis

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, man can save the world. We may be powerless to open all the jails and free all the prisoners, but by declaring our solidarity with one prisoner, we indict all jailers.--Elie Wiesel, Nobel Lecture, 1986

I must admit that, initially, I failed to understand the reasoning behind the Amnesty International T-Shirt that bears the words that head this post until I read this quote from the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech by Elie Wiesel the other day. I had previously thought it presumptuous to express an identity between myself and a man who has spent decades in prison, under the shadow of death, most probably for a crime he did not commit.I am not Troy Davis, I thought. I have never had to live through what he has and it is naive to think I could simply 'empathize' my way into his situation.

All true, of course. But what the shirt is really saying, at least if I understand Wiesel correctly, is that in expressing solidarity with another human being, we are showing ourselves willing to share an identity with them, and even to stand in for that human being in situations where he or she can not themselves stand.

I have posted here about Troy Davis's case before. It is not my general intent to make this blog a soapbox for issues of the day. But the plight of this one particular human being moves me deeply, and his fate hangs heavily on me. As Wiesel says, there may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time we fail to protest. In Troy Davis's case, there are a great many people in the world who have protested a great many times, and after such a long drawn out issue, where one is handed defeat time and again, the spirit languishes and there is a temptation to step back and not raise your own tiresome voice yet one more time. But by Wiesel's lights, this is exactly the time when you must lift it, and shout loudly.

Martha Silano has a thoughtful meditation on her blog about a poem by Emily Dickinson and Abu Ghraib here. It seems appropriate in this context as well.

Apparently with no surprise
To any happy flower,
The frost beheads it at its play
In accidental power.


The blond assassin passes on,
The sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another day
For an approving God.


Troy Davis may be innocent. He deserves a new trial in the aftermath of witness recantations. All channels of justice may now have been closed to him. But that fact in itself doesn't make him any less deserving of it.

If you would like to check out the Amnesty International position on Troy Davis, and see what you can do, please go here.

Is Anyone There?

No, I don't care all that much if there is anyone there or not--that's the title of a movie I saw this weekend. It's set in a home for the elderly, and initially portrays the strained circumstances of the family that is trying to run this place, including a very malcontented little boy named Eddie. The old people die around him from time to time and his response to this is the scientific approach--he'd like to find out what happens to them next, and he uses their death in his esoteric experiments.

Into this slightly depressing scenario careens the Amazing Clarence, a.k.a Michael Caine, almost mowing down Eddie before they ever meet. Clarence has come to the end of his days and is a very reluctant new addition to the old age home, for which, as he well knows,there is really only one exit.

Although there are some aspects of the movie which seem pretty standard and predictable, there is a lot that breaks out of the mold. But the main thing about this movie is Michael Caine as our aging, remorseful, caged magician. The portrayal he gives of the end of life is so profound that there is really no possibility of a happy ending. Yet, because we feel we have been told the truth about something, we walk out of the movie feeling readied in our spirits for the reality that lies at the end of all lives.

I won't give too much more away about the story, though I would say that even the more predictable elements contribute to the subject in a meaningful way. And I will add that if you go to this movie only for the moment where the Amazing Alexander stands in front of a mirror hopefully, skeptically, mournfully addressing the spirit of his dead wife, you will feel it was worth the price of the ticket.

Here's the story my friend told me about waiting for me after the movie ended. She was sitting outside on a bench surrounded by other viewers of the film. Everyone was silent, stunned mainly. One couple was addressed by a cheery new couple, their friends, apparently, with a chipper "Oh, what movie did you see--Adventureland?"

"No," the man of the couple said, "I just saw Michael Caine," he said, and started crying.

I could say more, but really, just go see this little movie with a big part for a great actor. It's likely to be lost in the wake of larger things, but it's well worth the price of the ticket.

The Unearthed by Brian O'Rourke

Normally, I would probably put this over on my Not New for Long blog, but that's already got a new post about another hot new title, so I thought I would use this blog to not only mention Brian O'Rourke's new horror novel, The Unearthed, but to talk a bit about the E-Book revolution as well.

The Unearthed is in part the story of a paranormal investigation. You've seen all those accounts of people who spend their free time going around trying to photograph ghosts in old barns and other abandoned places, right? Well, Tim and his sometimes reluctant brother, Eddie, are those kind of people. You'll recognize this type of brotherly duo, I bet--Tim's the serious one, the methodical one who is trying to impose just a little order on the universe, if it wouldn't be too much to ask, and of course Eddie in reaction to him acts the perennial screw-up. Yet he's got talents that Tim lacks--he's good with women and children in ways that Tim is not. There's a long-festering scar and sorrow in the brothers' lives--their parents died in a car accident at which both brothers were present. Eddie was apparently the screw-up in that one, too.

Not much of a horror story, you say? Oh, I was just leading up to that. Tim has taken a job at the infamous Moriarty house, where three out of four members of a family died in a single night, leaving only the youngest brother, Eamon, to tell the tale--and he has been shocked out of remembering. The house seems to be carrying some interesting trace memories, which are what the McCloskey brothers have come to investigate. A new family, the Rosellis, have seized a 'real estate opportunity' and moved in. But after a series of mysterious events, including odd behavior by Billy, the Rosellis' only child, they may find that a cheap house is not necessarily always a bargain.

The story amps up steadily with several surprising revelations along the way. For me, though, the underlying themes of conflict between brothers, half-brothers and pseudo-brothers remains one of the most intriguing aspects. Is the whole history of masculine life the story of one brother telling the other what to do, and the other suppressing the desire to kill him for it? I am strongly tempted toward this conclusion...

The Unearthed is available through Lyrical Press in E Book format. Fans of the old print medium will be happy to learn that it has been picked up for printed publication by British publisher Ghostwriter Publications. While this is gratifying for dinosaurs like me, who find reading a book in e-format on my computer somewhat cumbersome, I do think the e-book world is a wonderful new stream for emerging writers like Brian. The editing is every bit as professional as the 'big houses' and by minimizing their initial outlay, publishers like Lyrical Press can take chances that more established houses are averse to. These new outlets are good news for everyone.

More shameless self-promotion

I have mentioned this to a few people already, but I am finally getting a moment to catch my breath and give a link to an on-line journal that graciously accepted one of my stories and has recently published it. The story, "The Living" is in the California College of Arts and Crafts lit mag, Eleven Eleven. You can find the link here.

Now, I don't know if the story is any good or not. And I do mean that sincerely. I am not sure how anyone ever can detach themselves enough from their own effort to view it objectively. The one thing I will assert, however, is that there is something more going on here, or maybe trying to go on here than the writer really knew. And I find that interesting.

Considering that I'm the writer.

Mary Holmes on Eduardo Carrillo

My teacher and mentor, Mary Holmes, had this to say about the artist, Eduardo Carrillo.

And he got the money together and he went to Spain because that is where Bosch is. He simply submitted himself to Bosch and in that submission, of course, he became enormously powerful as a painter.

The worst thing that can happen to people is they never submit themselves to anything, and there they are floating in a kind of limbo and it doesn’t matter what they do. The power to submit yourself and through that become strong is the greatest thing anyone, a painter or anybody, can do, certainly anyone in the arts at the present time when there is no powerful tradition to make you this or that. You are on your own to create not just yourself but the whole meaning of your life, in terms of art.

I discovered these words of hers, spoken at a memorial service for the artist, quite by chance today. Although I knew her, or rather, observed her, over a long period of time, I did not know of this moment, or her relation with this artist, many years her junior, but also some years my senior. As is said, the hand of the artist is revealed in everything they do, so the voice of a wonderful speaker is apparent even in the less lively lines of type. It is maybe not so apparent without her voice. But I, blessed that I am, can still hear it. For the complete (and short) speech, check here.