Brothers and Sisters

When I was a young whippersnapper student writer, somewhere in later undergrad years, I won a place in a one-day seminar with the novelist/short-story writer Audrey Thomas. It was a cool honour and an interesting day, but the organizers overbooked the workshop a little, and Ms. Thomas wasn't really able to comment specifically on much of the student work. She may havesaid one or two other small things, but the meat of what she said about my story was how nicely unexpected it was that the close friends in the opening scenes eventually turn out to be brother and sister.

That stuck with me--not so much the compliment, although that was nice, but the pointing out that brother/sister relationships are not the most popular topic for stories, and that may well be because not everyone *has* an opposite-sex sibling, especially one that they are close to. It was a good reminder that I needed to check my work carefully for that sort of autobiographical creep--it may be that almost every one of my main characters in my earliest stories *did* have a close sibling. Maybe.

This goes back to that teenager centre-of-the-earth thing--I wasn't entirely sure how people without such relationships functioned, and I suppose I suspected not very well, even though I know some people who didn't, and did (something went wrong with that sentence). I've met a lot more people since then, only children, people estranged from their families, people perfectly polite with their sibs but just none-too-chatty, mainly all perfectly functional, and thus I've gotten over the urge to give every character a brother or a sister.

But I'm still immensely fond of my brother, and I guess I'd like to see our vibe represented in art a little more. I say this because the two of us just finished watching You Can Count on Me, a film that everyone in the world recommends as a great brother-sister films, and that we both loathed. I'm so disappointed, especially since every critic in the world (see the above link) loved it. Not sure what the misfire was there.

We loved The Savages and even Home for the Holidays was pretty good (I think I liked it more than B. did) but...are there others? Because I really can't think of any, and would love some recommendations if anyone has any... (yes, I make a point of watching these sorts of things with B.--what, it's the same as watching romantic movies with your SO, isn't it?)

I'm probably just blanking out of panic, but I'm having the same trouble with books. Of course there's Franny and Zooey, and I want to say Holden and Phoebe in Catcher, but that's kids and I'd actually like adult relationships if possible (being as I'm adult and all). What else... Oh, dear. Maybe I'm having this problem because it's late. I'll try again tomorrow, but if you have ideas, please share!!

RR

Be nice to everyone week!

Longtime Rose-coloured readers may know that I hold the wildly unpopular position that Family Day is fascist. I'm less alarmed about Valentine's Day because it's a Hallmark initiative, not a legislative one--if the government gets involved in telling people how to woo, I'm moving to Sweden--but it's not my favourite occasion.

I am certainly very fond of the concepts of both familial and romantic love, and don't think there's anything wrong with celebrating them--I just think that since not everyone finds themselves in a situation where a celebration is possible or appropriate, maybe the government might stay out of it (especially since they're really just trying to keep Ontario businesses from inconveniencing American sister offices by being open on Presidents' Day).

But I'm not going to prevail on this one, and I've (largely) stopped ranting. As you'll see in the posts above, I'm trying to use this week for a more relevant campaign of affection--for strangers and friends and acquaintances, whoever doesn't have a socially prescribed position in my life. Taking out my earbuds at the cashier and saying "How are you?" like I care about the answer (I do!) . Giving my seat on the subway to whoever looks tired. Taking down my garbage early so it's not a hassle for the super. Tipping generously, giving to charity, baking for bakesales (Thursday!), noticing new haircuts, and carrying the heavy stuff--I'm always trying to remember to do this stuff, but this week I'm trying extra.

When I start the "Family Day/Fascism" stuff, friends always point out that I have an awesome family, and I do; I know I'm lucky. It just seems weird that we would have a day where those who are lucky celebrate that, and those who aren't so lucky get to feel extra bad about it. I think maybe my viewpoint is somewhat skewed because I volunteered for several years talking to people who didn't have anyone else to talk to, but I do feel that more people are isolated and lonely in our society than us lucky ones care to think about. And those people might not be feeling so great about the weekend o' mandated emotion coming up. A little niceness might go a long way for them right now--or anytime, really.

RR

How I Learned to Read

I am loving Kerry's Family Literacy Week posts so much that I want to play. However, most of my knowledge of kidlit comes from when I *was* one, so I'll be writing about that. My story actually fits in perfectly with the theme, since it's about family and reading (also two of my favourite things).

All authors seem to have some seminal story about the moment they realized the words on the page made a story, and they could have that story, right then and there, by reading. You see such anecdotes in all the big bio interviews with writers, and they're often tales of dweebish precociousness--"Oh, I couldn't speak clearly or run without a helmet, but I was reading novellas by the time I was in kindergarten." Or preschool. Or out of the womb.

My memory of the early years cuts in and out--I don't think I'm missing much except a lot of apple-juice spills, but dates are distinctly sketchy. I know my mom taught me to read, and I can remember bits of the process, but I can't exactly slot it into chronological time. I never asked about this, blithely assuming that I had been an early reader too--I certainly did well enough in the early grades, although some of those good marks may have been for not eating play dough (anyone who doesn't retain a residual longing for play dough obviously somehow got hold of a can when no one was looking and *ate it all*, thus finally slaking that hunger all children experience).

Anyway! One day, and I think this might have actually been in support of an interview I was doing for *Once*, I asked my mom whether I too, had been a magically advanced, obvious-writer-to-be infant.

"Did I learn to read pretty early?"
"Oh, no, not really."
"Like, only average?"
"I guess you were about...eight or so. I really had to push you, you didn't want to learn."

I was a single-digit illiterate! Oh, the shame! I finally managed to extract from my mother that I had in fact been able to read sentences in grade 1. But those were 40-word stories read aloud to the teacher, and my mom equated being "able to read" with being able to sit alone and turn pages, to immerse oneself in the story.

Which I had actually had no interest in doing, so readily available were adults to read to me. Of course I really liked stories, all stories (but especially those about plucky orphans or Laura Ingalls Wilder)--I just didn't associate them with something I could do on my own. It's funny, trying to remember the experience of learning to read now, because the sense I recall most from childhood reading now is physical--the feeling associated with reading is *snuggly*, because when I was read to I was held in someone's lap, and when my mom began teaching me to read that's where I remained.

I certainly watched television, and actually often with my parents, who liked to keep an eye on things. But I sat alone for that, or at least could. And playing outside or games or whatever (yes, I did occasionally go outside)--those could be independent, solo activities. But reading was interactive, intimate.

So when (apparently the summer after grade 2!) my mom said I was old enough to read chapter books, I had to start by reading the first page of each chapter of *Little House at Plum Creek* and *Charlotte's Web* before she would read the rest to me. I do *not* recall a lightning bolt moment when the words became a story for me--I recall it being extremely hard and *dying* for my mom to take over. But it's still a positive memory, and it is weird that I can recall exactly how my head fit under her chin and my legs sprawled on either side of her knees.

I am not at all suggesting that I was a lazy reader because I was read to too much--that might be impossible, I think. Of course, this is biased, but I am of the opinion that the way I learned to read was the best way possible. It was never a school subject for me, or any kind of subject at all. Reading was just a tool I could use to get at the best things in the world, stories--getting meaddicted to those was a far better goad to learning than any phonics book ever could be.

And by the time I started grade 3, I could read myself to sleep, and have been doing so ever since.

I like this topic, and would love to hear other reader-creation stories--how did you learn to read?

RR

Not by any other: on names and naming

I have stolen a rose. It is in a glass water on my kitchen table, and I look at it as I eat breakfast. It's pretty and I like looking at it, but I also feel a little guilty. I'm pretty sure no one misses it, but it was still not my rose to take.

Except there is a part of me that feels that all roses are mine. Because of my name, you see: when I see a rose, a tiny part of my brain says "mine" or, sometimes, "me."

I identify very very strongly with my name. I have a strong interest in all the other Rosenblums in the world, of which there are not that many. There are more Rebeccas, and I always enquire after them if I hear the name mentioned--I want to make sure they are upstanding women and not doing anything under the aegis of Rebeccaness that might sully our reputations.

But I am willing to admit that their ways of being Rebecca, whatever they are, become the definition of Rebeccaness in their context. Names are tautological--whoever you are, that's you! For that reason, as soon as I know a person slightly, I have no trouble keeping him/her straight from other people with the same name: the personality hooks into whatever the person is called (at one point I knew 13 Jasons). I have never met a person whose name didn't seem to me to suit him or her; everyone simply becomes the embodiment of that name to me.

The only people whose names aren't a simply tautology to me are, ironically, my parents, because I don't know them by their names (although of course I know what they are). I have been known to obliviously introduce them as simply "my mom and dad," and leave them to give their proper names themselves, which in fact sound strange to me, though I don't honestly expect people to address my mom as "Rebecca's Mom"--I just forget that that's not actually her name.

I have known people who changed their names when they married, when they immigrated, when they broke away from their families, or when they began writing. They seem just fine with the change, learning to identify fully under the new rubric. I imagine that must be a huge transformation of self, a serious mental and emotional change. It's enough for me to even remember to call them what they now want to be called.

So I am not one of those authors who takes great joy in researching names, keeping lists of cool names, or matching the meaning of the name with a character (my name means "bound"--not even close). To me that's not how names work: the person inflates the name with his or her being, not the other way round. Because real people come to me with names in place, in my mind so do characters. I generally think of an appropriate name within the first few paragraphs of writing about someone, and then that's it--it becomes who they are. I almost never alter the names of characters once I've been writing about them for a while, and though maybe I can fiddle with a minor character's name if she's only on the page briefly, the characters I know well would disturb me greatly by another name. It would be as if my mom suddenly demanded I call her Barbara.

So the fact that I now need to change a character's name is making me bonkers. It's a coincidental reality/fiction overlap, and since I have no wish to edit reality, it's fiction that's going to have to take the hit, so as to avoid confusion. I thought I would avoid upsetting myself by writing the story with the original name in place and then search'n'replace it right before submitting the piece for publication--I wouldn't even have to see this alien name on the page for very long.

But my attempt to pull this clever trick on my own brain isn't working: now that I know this guy isn't keeping his name, he's shifty on the page whenever I try to write about him. "Who are you?" seems to be my question for him, although I thought I already knew. It's really slowing down the writing, as I stare at the paragraph where he drinks the soda and think, "As Paul took a sip of his soda," "As Nick took a..." "As Dave took..." We can't spend 20 minutes on the soda-drinking paragraph!! It's only two lines long! This problem remains unsolved, and in progress.

I love my brain--it is a very interesting place to live, but sometimes I wish it were just a little more flexible. Even my father, who has been living under the Rosenblum rubric the longest, is baffled by my enthusiasm, and claims to "not really think about it." He does sometimes give me roses, though.

RR

Incommunicado

Until my late teens, almost everyone I knew had not only the same area code but the same first three digits in their phone numbers. It was a very small town, but as far as I was concerned it contained everyone it needed to. Sure my extended family and parents' old friends lived in the faraway U.S., but so they always had, and it was hard to miss people whom one rarely saw in two consecutive years.

Nevertheless, I delighted in post from such farflung correspondants, and a few made an effort to write to my young self on a regular basis. I was a far more ardent correspondant than any one recipient could handle, however, so whenever the elementary school penpal program circulated, I signed up again, winding up with a worldwide network of fascinating penpals, all of whom I would exhaust into silence within a year or two. I also wrote a family newspaper for distribution within my household, with articles on such topics as whose birthday it was that week, and what we needed from the hardware store (oh, this blog was so clearly presaged). I was also likely the only kid in the world who didn't have to be nagged to write thank you notes for gifts.

I went away for the summer I was 17, made no friends, and used up half a dozen books of stamps. I went away the summer I was 18, wrote only slightly fewer letters but did finally actually make genuine friends who didn't live in my township. They were older than I, already in university and conversant in the ways of university email addresses. I had no idea about any of this, but when I returned home, I tried to figure it out.

We'd had a computer in the house since the end of the eighties, which my brother and I used to play endless video games of steadily evolving complexity, and occasionally to do schoolwork. I had no idea what my folks were doing with it, or with the shrieky dialup "internet"; work of some sort, it seemed.

So the fall of my last year of high school, my dad taught me about email. I don't know if freemail accounts hadn't appeared on the scene yet or I just didn't know about them, but my father generously shared his work email account with me, leading to a whole new form of household nagging ("Did you email Amanda back yet? That note's been in my inbox all week? You really should...") Everyone was sad when I moved away for university, but at least I got my own damn email account. By then I was hooked.

Far away from my area code and all the relevant people it contained, I started emailing my friends and family constantly--minutia about school and new friends and food and weather and clothes and health...and people *emailed back*. Letters had become old-school and boring: you had to buy stamps and envelopes and remember to walk past a mailbox, so I very rarely got post, but email still had the gloss of novelty to it, and I was thrilled to get email every day.

More than a decade and several technological revolutions later, I'm still pretty excited to see that Inbox (1) bar pop up! Letters have largely gone dormant for most people, though I can't resist that heart-leap hope when I unlock my mailbox that today will be a day that one of the six people on earth who still use post will have sent me something.

In truth, I think the bloom is off the rose a bit with email, too. Most people's jobs require them to send and receive dozens per day, and most of those are of the "Please reconfigure the pages completely and within the hour" variety that rarely causes heart-leaping, even in me. I'm sure I know a lot of people who, off the clock, would like their computers firmly silent and email-less.

Not me. I've never gotten over my childhood desire to hear from those distant, and much as I love to talk, I still feel my best self-expression--most coherent, most thoughtful, most amusing--is in writing. I like to think over a letter/email/story, rewrite a line or two, delete (some of the) extraneous stuff. I think I have a career as a writer that I could never have had as an "extemporizer," and I think you'll agree if you've ever gotten voicemail from me.

So I'm an email junkie. I send and receive dozens a day in a professional context, and although fewer in personal context, I'm still ever-emailing. I do get that not everyone wants to write long discussions of life, the universe and everything in their off-hours. Actually, I'm sort of amazed that some people (other than myself) do, and that I can be the recipient if only I continue to respond in kind.

All this email-relection has been brought on by the fact that I'm headed out of town this weekend to a cottage, on an island...with no internet. This has never happened to me before, really--not since that critical turning point back in the late nineties. I think it'll be good for me, although challenging. I think the lake water, sunshine, friends, tofudogs, boardgames, actual dog, boat, bonfire, and coleslaw will help.

But I'll still miss you, interent, and all my lovely far-flung friends that live inside you!

You just can't do that again
RR

On free will

Mom: And the cheese has been in the freezer since January, so we're all set.
Rebecca: I don't think you can freeze cheese.
Mom (indignant): You can freeze *anything you want*. It's whether it will survive the process that's the question.

Reachin' for the stars
RR

Shocking News: I'm in Tokyo

I am sure I'm the only one who had doubts that this would happen, especially after I paid for the ticket and renewed my passport. But I suffer from a certain lack of faith in the future and when the wheels touched Tokyo tarmac, I was genuinely agog, and couldn't have been prouder if I had piloted the plane myself. I turned to my charming Korean teenage seatmate, with whom I had exchanged no words in 13 hours, and I beamed and beamed. "Isn't this amazing?" I would have said, had we shared a language. (on the mutant interantional dateline day that was Tuesday-Wednesday for me, I said almost nothing other than, "Excuse me," and "Do I stand in this line?" and "I don't eat beef." It was a very very hard day for me.)

Even more amazing: after a horrendous half-hour on the tarmac being checked for swine-flu (apparently I don't have it), they *let us off the plane* and into the rest of Japan. Which turned out to be significantly better than the plane. I guess I have only been here for 36ish hours, but I have seen so much so far. Including:

--dozens of beautiful women wearing smocks. Smocks are all the rage in Japan. It's sort of a good look, actually.
--teeny little hole-in-wall bars on labyrinthine side-streets that are over a hundred years old. Drinking and hanging out here seems an almost mystical art.
--hundreds of Poe-style crows, cawing and skulking about and being generally terrifying. There are crows everywhere, and they seem to want to eat you. One of my brother's roommates said there is a rumour that 5 or 6 ganged up and killed a cat.
--My brother!!! Tokyo's great and all, but I would have visited Ben in Kentucky. With who else could I have a conversation like this:
(peering over the side of a bridge into a river at a bunch of carp)

Me (pointing): Those two are in love!!
Ben: Ah, all fish are male.

--giant Uni-Qlo (I'm sorry, this computer's crap so I can't deal with doing links; google to see the wonder that is Uni-Qlo and you won't be sorry). I bought a smock.

Much more to do after I take a shower and my bro comes back from his run (I wussed out early to post this missive) and we head for Yokahama, where there is a beach and trees and a Ferris wheel from which you can see far away.

I'll try to report back, although due to computer issues I'm not too sure about posting pictures. Very important: unlike every other time ever, I am not up on anything like other people's blogs, Facebook minifeed, the general Toronto news, etc. But I am reading email. If something important happens to you, be it fame and fortune, crow attack, or giving birth, you know I wanna know.

Oh, and they put shredded potato on pizza here. It's shockingly good.

I've been meaning to call you
RR

Goodness

As anyone who has ever gotten involved with Mr. Popsicle Pete knows, many things we want ardently in life turn out to be sadly disappointing. And yet some are better than we could ever have imagined. When I was but a naif last summer, I sure knew I was excited to have *Once* be published, but there are amazing things about the life of a book author that I would never have seen coming. Sometimes books get transcribed into Braille editions by the CNIB. Sometimes, you send your parents on a search for your first ever hometown review and they wind up meeting the staff of the H Mag. Sometimes children ask you if you know J.K. Rowling. And sometimes you get interviewed by a puppet.

I keep waiting to be blindsided by the converse downside of it all, but really, nothing thus far.

You came into my town / you came and you fell down
RR

Niceness

So, my "Family Day is Fascist" position is not winning many supporters (Family Day, right up there with eyebrows and butter on popcorn on the list of things everyone else finds benign but Rebecca despises). Which is fine, really, I probably need less arm-waving rants in my life, anyway. And since Family Day weekend coincides with Valentine's Day weekend this year, and last year I finally came up with a suitable position on V-Day, I have extrapolated that to include Family Day, another day of dictated affection!

And the position is, of course, for many of us, families and romantic others are amazing presences and deserving of whatever they desire on any given holiday and also every other day of the year. And for some, that is not the case, temporarily or permanently, for whatever reason. Which might be fine with them, or not at all fine with them, but is certainly none of the government's business! Sorry. Arm-waving.

*Anyway*, I think there a lot of important people in everyone's life that don't have a formal title like mother, sister, partner, second-cousin. I think that people who we interact with in small ways--the colleague that checks the printer and finds your lost invoices, the supermarket cashier with the really long fingernails who is still superfast, the woman who helped me scramble out of a snowbank a couple weeks ago--are also deserving of a good deal of niceness. Maybe we won't be cooking dinner for them Saturday night (man, that cashier would be surprised), but maybe this weekend could just be a weekend of niceness to everyone.

I guess I don't like the restrictions of these "days"--this is who you should be kind to, *exclusively*. But there's nothing stopping me, someone pointed out, from expanding the definition of "family" to include everyone I like. Which I think the OED people would have something to say about, but in the interests of limited arm-waving, I'll try it. And then I'm going to try expanding the day into the rest of the year.

I promise not to cook dinner for you unless you want me to.

I'll dig a tunnel / from my window to yours
RR

Credit

In the entry YouTube Revolution, I neglected to give credit to my brother, Ben, who introduced me to all the wonders that YouTube has to offer. He's the one on the right:





Just live your life
RR

Thanksgiving

It would baffling and onerous to try to make a list of all those things for which I am thankful--this is the burden of good things, I suppose, insufficient time in which to list them. But really, though Canadian Thanksgiving was originally conceived as a harvest holiday and it is supposed to have vague connotations for being appreciative of all good things, I believe most stereotypical images of Thanksgiving feature mainly a) family and b) nice things to eat. And I certainly am grateful for both, and will now attempt to encapsulate that emotion in the following transcription of a conversation held earlier today:

(my father and I rummaging through the coffin-sized deep-freeze in my parents' basement)

Me: Green beans, green beans, oh, pizza! Green beans, green beans...

Dad: Beets, do you like beets? Do you want these?

Me: Sure. Thanks. Green beans, Broccolli...

Dad: Yellow beans, green beans...you know, I don't really like vegetables anymore.

Me: What? You like vegetables. You've always liked vegetables.

Dad: Some of the thrill is gone, I think. I don't even know what the hell this is.

Me: (peering intently at frozen green blog in his hand) Is it broccoli? It could be broccoli.

Dad: (speaking to the green lump like Hamlet spoke to the skull of Yorrick) That may be. That may well be.

RR

Rumours of Asia

I have always had a pair of brass sculptures of Thai dancers. These are young women with high pointed headdresses and sinuously flailing arms. The arms are brassed in mid-motion pushing through the air--on each body, one hand high, one low. When you arrange them with the lowered hands touching, as I always do, they form a wave with their arms. Their faces are impassive, more impassive even than you'd imagine for being formed from metal. Their arrangement is also impassive to me, though you could put them together another way or even just have each on it's own. But why would you, when you could the wave.

I have no idea how I ended up with these; their presence in my life predates memory. Almost certainly, they were given to me, as I was not shopping for objets d'art, or anything, in nursery school. Of course, a heavy pointed metal objet seems a spectacularly inappropriate gift for a nursery scholar, but it never occured to me to play with them in a way that could result in me or anyone getting hurt. I have always just kept them on shelves or tables, in the hands-touching arrangement. Until:

B (picking one up): This is an unusually weapon-like hat, isn't it?

Me: Put it down.

B: You could kill some with this, probably. (gesturing Macbeth-like at me) Stab stab.

Me: Put it down put it down.

B: Fine (puts it down the wrong way, so that the wave is flawed)

Me: It goes on the other side of the first one.

B: (moving it) And do you want me to flick the lights on and off 25 times?

Me: With their hands touching!!!

B: That's a complicated way of saying yes.

Me: ARGH!

B: (nudges them so that they are again perfectly arranged) You're gonna miss me.


B. is in fact my brother, whose presence in my life also predates memory, and whom I will indeed miss when, tomorrow, he moves to Tokyo. For someone who likes things consistently arranged, it's hard when a loved one flies off to the antipodes. But there is a bright side to this, of course (in addition to B. having a wonderful year abroad): watch this space in Spring 2009, when Rose-coloured reviews the Tokyo transit system. I can't wait, can you?

I can barely stop
RR

Love

Last night I sent out the following email to almost everyone I know. In the interests of overkill, I'll put it here, too:


Dear Everybody,

This is just to say, in case I somehow didn't mention it to you, or send you a Facebook invitation or an airmail letter about it, or show you the event listing, or grab you by your shirt and yell, "My book is launching on September 15!!!!!"

well, it is.

Here's the official details for the launch of *Once*, my first
collection of short stories:

Time and Place: Monday, September 15, 2008 at 7:30pm (Doors at 7pm.)
Location: Gladstone Hotel, 2nd Floor Gallery (1214 Queen Street West)

To launch her first short story collection, "Once," Rebecca Rosenblum will share the stage with John Metcalf and Leon Rooke. "Once," a collection of stories, is the winner of the 2007 Metcalf-Rooke Award and the work of one of Canada's most promising new writers. This event is part of Pages Books' This Is Not A Reading Series.

The unofficial details are that the evening may consist at least partly of me twisting a wad of crumpled notes in my hands, failing to operate the microphone, and maybe tripping over something...but mainly I think it will be lots of fun, and there will be drinking afterwards. I'd love to see you there if you feel like it, are free
on Monday September 15, and, you know, dig that sort of thing.

No need to RSVP, unless you like RSVPing, in which case, please do!

Bestest,
Rebecca


Lots of people did in fact RSVP and send me nice notes, which is always lovely. This is my favourite so far, though:

Dear Becky:

We'll be there! (Are you kidding?)

Love, Dad

I wanna talk to you
RR

Mother's Day...

is one of those occasions I feel politically opposed to, but personally fond of. I don't like officially dictated emotion—love your mom in May, your Dad in June, and your significant other in February. It's weird to celebrate only these traditional roles and not others, and certainly hard on those people who don't have people, or people they want to celebrate, in those positions in their lives. I was fairly irrational on the subject of Family Day in a few months back--now they're *legislating* our affections? But the fact is, I love my family 365 days a year, but it *was* fun to take a day to emphasize that. Similarly, I adore my Mother, and it's nice to have an occasion to bake her a loaf of bread and spend the afternoon together.

So, it is with mixed but genuine feelings that I wish those of you who are a observant a very happy Mother's Day.

This sentimental heart that beats / I don't really mind
RR

Rebecca Has a Bad Week

RR--I'm such a loser, I think I've called you every day this week.

Mom--That's not true. I haven't heard from you in ages. I've missed you.

RR--I called you on Sunday, and another day besides today...

Mom--So?

RR--And today is Thursday.

Mom--That leaves lots of days you didn't call...well, several.


This weekend will be better, not least because I'm going to see my Mom (and Dad), because Kerry was wearing a spring skirt yesterday, because I am booked solid with frivolous things to do. So in case I don't get a change to post before then, I just wanted to say that my brothers-and-sisters in educational trajectory, the masters in creative writing crew '08, will be reading on Monday evening, and they are charming and I'll be there and maybe you'd like to come, too?

Deets:

Monday, April 28
Bar Italia (582 College Street, between Manning and Clinton)
7:30pm
No cover

See you soon!


Don't worry girl you weren't around
RR

No particular war

So last night I saw Charlie Wilson's War and liked it very much. This was not a surprise, as it was written by Aaron Sorkin the writer of my most-loved tv shows. And indeed, the film did contain Sorkin's much-beloved banter, walk'n'talks, long-shots and high-flown political wonkery. And, as with much of Sorkin's work, he faltered on the ladies, who were condescendingly drawn on occasion, and also saddled with awkward religious hypocrisy, as if that were just the lot of he fairer sex.

But Julia Roberts fares better than most of Sorkin's recent lady-stars, in part because he downplays his personal issues to give her some of the best lines in the flick, and in part because she's Julia Roberts and, dammit, she can make the best of anything, even having her gorgeous hair bleached and sprayed in a seemingly desperate attempt to make it look like a wig. And she's opposite Tom Hanks, which is such a wonderful pairing of easy charm that I don't know why no one thought of it before. And how great, too, that a movie that concerns events of the twenty years ago would star people so seminal at that time. Big came out in 1988, one of the first films I saw in theatres, and it filled me with joy to see that maturity and the ability to feed and clothe oneself didn't matter one whit if you had honesty and enthusiasm. There was hope for me, apparently, to take on the world, as soon as I could get myself to Manhattan.

Julia's big break, in Pretty Woman didn't come until a few years later, which is just as well, since even my oblivious parents noticed taglines like, "Who knew it was so much fun to be a hooker?" I did eventually see it, and love it. Even then, I knew there was something wrong with the conceit that the way to a man's heart was to sell him your body and hope he noticed your soul, and something wrong with a country where a girl could really find herself forced by financial circumstances to do so. Still, even now, if you were to somehow break into the feminist enclave that is my apartment, fix the DVD player and put on *Pretty Woman*, I'd sit down and watch, and swoon. I'd feel dirty about it at first, but then I'd block out the real circumstances presented and just enjoy the banter.

As I did in *Charlie Wilson's War.* With the office hijinx and even fairly serious arguments, the movie could've been about almost anything, because the conversations focused on strategic alliances, media, and money--the necessities of war, of course, but also the necessities of anything. Perhaps because of Sorkin's history on the small-screen, coupled director Mike Nichols' reputation as a "poet of the living room (I read that somewhere, possibly The New Yorker), they seemed to want to prove something with the battle scenes. I think they could've done the whole thing with radar-screen blips and intense conversations, as Sorkin did on West Wing, as I've seen in several deeply unsettling low-budget *Hamlet*s, but they had to show the guns, and that was pretty wretched, half video game, half propaganda film.

It was one thing to show refugee camps, and mangled children's bodies--eliciting pity, showing the evil that must be stopped (who were those child actors, I wonder). But it could've been almost any war, or an informercial with Sally Struthers: the only political message of those scenes was: children good, people who hurt children bad. Then there was a scene, and I still don't know what I was meant to feel during it, that showed young Russian soldiers piloting planes and strafing villages, killing women and children while talking in Russian over their walkie-talkies about their girlfriends. This is late in the movie, when the Afghan villagers had finally been given shoulder-mounted missile launchers. They are able to destroy the planes before they can do as much damage as they meant to. We get to see the panic on the Russian soldiers' faces before they are engulfed in flames.

Of course, the villagers had no choice, if in fact it happened that way. I wasn't rooting for the kids on the ground to die, but I wasn't particularly rooting for the kids in the air to die, either. Is that a happy moment? Nichols and Sorkin play it as wild celebration for all the good guys.

The only militaristic footage that looked real was actually real--taken from news reports of the time period. And here's where we get the third star of the period, and the first one of my youth. Before Julia, before Tom, pretty much concurrent with The Muppets, I loved Dan Rather and the CBS Evening News. Every evening at 6:30, since long before I was born, my parents watched "Rather", and then they had dinner and talked about what they had seen. When I was small, and eagerly awaiting my spaghetti, I watched too, or at least sat around and listened to words I didn't understand. Years later than excusable, I actually thought Dan Rather was President of the United States, and that every evening they wheeled the cameras into the Oval Office so he could bring anyone who was interested up to date.

Dan's is one of the first faces we see in this film, and it set me right at ease. I probably haven't heard his voice since I moved out of my folks' place, and it was tremendously soothing. I probably actually sat through some of the news reports from the film, though I remembered nothing. And the movie didn't explain much--the news was for exposition, but precious little of it. I had to come home and google to find out what was going on with the Russians in Afghanistan. Sorkin wasn't going to explain, make the war weird and particular and complicated, and not just a generic Good v. Evil, with all that stuff. Not that the Russians were so far off the mark of evil in that war, as far as I can tell, but they had some motives, they weren't just psycotic baby-bombers. For the purposes of the picture though, they could've been just any bad dudes in history, or James Bond films.

And it's funny, because for a movie that so ignores and generalizes the history here, at the end there is an alarming about-face, as the final scenes set the movie up as the history of our present tense, showing the Americans as over-confident in victory and setting in motion the terrible events that are even now occuring in Afghanistan. This takes place a while after the worst of the battle scenes, after a lot more joyful triumph and Roberts-Hanks banter and silly smooches. I was enjoying myself again, I'd been lulled by the semi-facts, that good things had happened in some war somewhere, and that everything was now fine. The end of the film was astounding in that it pointed out the lie of it's own Hollywood-ishness, and yet I wasn't sure as I left the theatre that I had really wanted that. I was sort of happy, for a while, to go back to the days when the News wasn't news of any particular war, it was just the noise in the background before you sat down to supper with the people you loved best.

The body says no
RR

Gratitude

Thanksgiving is always a good time to be thankful for various sorts of food, and various forms of family, and believe me, I adore both, and spent a weekend rife with them. I also spent a lot of time absorbing bits of culture, which I have time right now only to ennumerate but not describe. Will it suffice to say that everything below is very very good?

When I Was Young and in My Primeby Alayna Munce -- lyric novel

30 Rock -- tv show

Across the Universe -- film

Those are all worth experiencing, as are the other highlights of my weekend, but M and L's house, my mother's apple pie, and the experience of applying black lipstick in a housewares store while T holds up a pot lid to reflect your face, are sadly not linkable.

These are days you'll remember
RR

13 days, plus thanks!

Soon, the mystery will be solved as to whether I am a poor enunciator because of jaw deformity/orthodontia/surgical recovery, or simply sloppiness. Even if the latter, I imagine I can solve it somehow, possibly with a book or else elecution lessons in the manner of Anne Shirley and also my mother when, as a child, she developed a Brooklyn accent (due to growing up in Brooklyn) and her midwestern mother wouldn't stand for it. My point is, once the braces are off, I'll be able to get to work on this issue.

I am thankful for this possibility, and many other things, like how it is now Thanksgiving weekend and within the hour I am headed to the tiny town from whence I sprang. This evening I shall visit the house of my friend Mary, a house for which she and her husband have been hoping, pining, scrimping and saving for five years now. I have a vague idea what it looks like, but whatever it is, I know it's a dream house, and I am thankful I get to see it tonight!

And lots of other things. More soon!

All the yellow roses on her wedding cake
RR

Eleanor and the Horizontal Learning Curve

If you've spent time with the senior Rosenblums, or listened to protracted periods of my own nattering, you've probably encountered tales of Eleanor. Eleanor is the kitten I begged my parents to adopt shortly before I moved out of the house (it was an almost identical conversation to the one we had when I was five). Of course I abandoned the kitten, as reckless youth will, but she really only ever had eyes for my father and the dog, anyway, so it's just as well she stayed there. (5000 points if you can get the literary cat for whom she is named--this is a hard one.)

As an adult, Eleanor's central hobbies are sprinting around and killing stuff in the fields around the house. Apparently there is especially good stuff to kill in the wheat field over the road, for she is consistently tempted by it, despite the fast-moving automobiles and transport trucks that patrol that road. In 2005, she encountered one of those, shattering her tiny pelvis, but leaving her vital organs (heart, lungs, [negligible] brain) intact.

In case you don't know, you can't immobilize a cat's pelvis in a cast. Instead, you must put the entire cat in a very small box so she can't move. For six weeks. Poor cat. My poor parents: they put the box in their front foyer for six weeks. Unsightly and noisy (Eleanor was well enough to protest her confinement), they thought it too mean to put her in a more out-of-the-way spot. When they were nearby, they turned the box so she could see them. This cheered her only somewhat--it was a depressing six weeks, and on a visit I once found Ellie asleep facedown in her food bowl. Still she emerged intact, sprinting immediately away to go kill stuff.

Having learned, apparently, nothing. For yesterday she got run over by another car. This one hit her head, dislocating her tiny jaw, slashing up her face and (oh god) possibly destroying one eye. The worst part, if you are my folks, is that of course they weren't around at the point of collision and Ellie was wandering around injured for some time. The driver apparently called animal control (this is a rural agency that deals with, well, animals) who sent out a man to catch and kill our cat!! The first my folks heard of the situation was when they noticed the guy in the driveway, crawling around under their car with a net. When my father enquired, he was told that someone had hit a white cat (Eleanor is mainly orange!) and she had to be caught and put down because there wasn't "much left in her."

Lovely. Ellie, of course, bolted (wouldn't you?) and managed to hide out for over four hours until a neighbour found her in her garden and returned her in a laundry basket. This was late yesterday. Ellie is now in hospital, my parents hopeful, me as well.

What a dumbass cat! I mean, really, cars aren't subtle, you can see and hear them coming. And she's such a pretty kitty, and would be considerably less so with only one eye. Of course, I would be grateful if it were only that and nothing worse. Eleanor! I am thinking of you!

Groom's still waiting at the alter
RR

On family

The brief lull in posting at Rose-coloured this weekend can be attributed to a visit to my family, which proved far too distracting for any internet interaction (also: I am lazy). It was Canada Day, of course, and since June has been a busy month, we were also catching up on Father's Day and my brother's birthday. With that amount of celebration, of course it was going to be a good time. Really, though, the weekend was made for me in the single moment when my erudite father dubiously pronounced the word "celebutante." In fact, I think from now on, whenever I feel down, I will call him and ask him to say it again. Hilarious.

Is my family weird? Of course they are. "My family is strange" is one of those facts that I think people should really stop presenting as interesting and intimate secrets--along with, "Hospitals make me nervous" and "I get so impatient waiting in lines." These are truths, if not universally acknowledged, at least nearly universally felt (well, I like hospitals, but I know most don't). So is the bit about strange families.

In truth, every *person* is fairly strange--it is only the constant friction of decades of sharing bathrooms and cereal boxes, coupled with the legal certainty that these people can never get rid of you, that allows our strangeness to emerge completely. This is an especially great boon if you, like me, are slightly obnoxious. It is only the binding of blood and law that forces my family continue to tolerate me despite the fact that I constantly try to peck them in public. No, not a timid petite bise, like a schoolgirl, but with the nose, comme un oiseau. And there's not a damn thing they can do about it, except run away. But then I chase them. And criticize their clothes and eat food off their plates. Hooray for blood bonds!

Someday, my brother is going to have to invite me to his *wedding*, despite the fact, that, when last we met, I was attempting to brush my teeth whilst walking down the stairs. When he made me laugh, I choked, collapsed into the fetal position and dribbled toothpaste all over my dress slacks. You, gentle reader, will never have to deal with such behaviour from me, unless you should be so foolish as to marry or adopt me. But my family gets nonstop nonsense.

And while we might be united in our communal dislike of lines and medical establishments, I guess we are pretty much stuck in our respective familial strangenesses. I adore my family, as I'm sure you do yours. However, when I say some of my most rose-coloured memories of us include trying to tie various items to the roof of a car, you probably can't imagine why. And to me, that's just strange.

I want a photo opportunity / I want a shot at redemeption
RR