Lo que hay

I'm going with SH to Casa Grande to visit Mom this weekend.  I'm just not looking forward to it.  The standing joke when Dad was alive was that Mom would always wait until you were walking out the door and then ask, "Do you really want to wear that?"  Nowadays it's worse.  I never see her without ending up feeling down, depressed, mad.  She picks me to pieces and then seeming surprised and hurt that I took things the wrong way.  Some of it is me - hell, who can get to you as easily as family? - but a few times there've been others around and they've had about the same reaction I have: why the hell is she trying to make me feel bad about everything I do?  I can't say good morning without getting slapped down, and it's getting old.

I know some of it is that since Dad died I'm the one who had to step in and take over, so she needs to reassert herself.  Fine.  It's been two years, you're on your own, get over it.  I don't mean Dad dying, whatever, I mean needing to lash out at other people to make herself feel better.  I'm not the enemy here.

Last time I saw her, I mentioned something about China developing gunpowder centuries before it hit the West, but never inventing guns.  She got in my face upset - in tears - talking about how awful it was that people were always putting other civilizations down, how rude and ignorant it was.  I was just sitting there, jaw on the floor, thinking WTF?  I tried talking to her for awhile before I walked out, because she wasn't hearing a word I said.  Some people might think that making fireworks instead of weapons showed more civility, not less - aw hell, I still want to make her sit down and make sense.  Later, she told me she was sorry she got upset and...forgave me.  For mentioning China, apparently.

Grr.  But hey, we'll be coming back through Phoenix, so I'll have a chance to pick up things we need and go to a bookstore.  Bookstores good.

JohnB got a new puppy the other week.  This morning, he was telling us all about a dream he had last night.  He was flying an old WWII plane and his dog was in the rear seat, paws crossed over the button that dropped the bombs.  He was plunging it up and down while JohnB yelled, "No!  Not yet!"

Nine of Cups Rx
Wishes blocked, excess, need to step back and think.

(168.5)

I slept through forty of the last forty-eight hours.  I have to go to work tonight because my lío says he's got all of his documents together; if m'ijo doesn't show up, I'm going to hunt him down and breathe on him.

A man who raped an 80 year old woman and then ran a car over his friend escaped from Clifton jail yesterday.  They had traffic stopped for miles, although I'm not sure what they were trying to accomplish with that.  Made SH late to work.

The Apples insisted on SH coming down to talk to them about the trailer park, but then didn't say anything to him that they hadn't said to me.  Not sure why they thought it was so important to talk to him as well as me, unless they just thought SH might see it their way?  Don't know, but their zoning hearing is tomorrow.

Nine of Swords
Worry, guilt, anguish.

I feel terrible.  And I've had 'Generals and Majors' stuck in my head for two days.

At least, not if you can make the alternatives believable in context.  There's a reason it's called fiction.  Still, it'd keep the geeks happy.

And how often has progress/development/whatever followed logical routes?  Scientists and engineers, much as they would like to be in charge, aren't.  Economics, politics, social struggle - history is not linear.  If it was, China would have dominated Europe and discovered the world trade routes.

So I come right back to establishing the universe before I can follow the story, or at least having to do it as I go.  No wonder people write sequels.  Saves some work.

Speaking of my love/hate relationship with sequels, I've decided to embrace rationalization and declare that sequels are artistically OK as long as they're based on comic books.  I'm changing my icon to celebrate.

The loneliness of sea and sky have always been equated; that old word, astronauts – sailors of the stars, the same search continuing into vast, into empty, into unknown.  The only difference is that in space, even the horizon has been left behind.

Map Museum

Nine of Coins
Discipline.  Self-Reliance.  Refinement.  Wish I could apply a little more discipline to writing.

(166.5)

Nine of Cups
Wish fulfillment.  Satisfaction.  Sensual pleasure.

(166.5)

...a.k.a. The Merchant of Venice.

Be o' good cheer, for truly I think you are damned. - William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 5.

Watched the Al Pacino movie version again.  Got into a long discussion with SH on the various aspects of the movie.  It's an interesting version because there aren't many cuts, and the ones that are there are for the most part subtle, but radically change the direction of the scenes.  For example, act 3 scene 3, the movie has Antonio declare: "Let him alone, I'll follow him no more with bootless prayers.  He seeks my life - his reason well I know."  After the description of the anti-Jew culture at the beginning of the film, the many visual moments emphasizing bigotry, and the careful editing of the worst of Shylock's moments, this comes across as Antonio realizing the consequences of his bigotry.  In the play however, he goes on, "I oft delivered from his forfeitures Many that have at times made moan to me.  Therefore he hates me."  Bit different.  The movie makes Shylock's offer to loan the money to Antonio more ambiguous - did he mean to go through with the bond or not before his daughter left?  (Although they kept in Jessica's declaration that he did.)

The original play is one of Shakespeare's most fascinating, and it's a pity that the anti-Semetic question scares people off of it so often.  I think that Shakespeare was anti-Semetic, like every good Protestant of the time.  I have no doubt that he believed, to one degree or another, that the Jews were Christ-killers justly damned to hell.  However, Shakespeare was no theologian nor philosopher, nor is there evidence of any rabid, personal belief against Jews - just the opposite, in fact.  If The Merchant of Venice was written as a response to The Jew of Malta, it has a very different thrust and meaning.  Although the sympathetic portrayal of Shylock is relatively recent, the meat of it is there in the writing.  The "Has not a Jew hands?" speech is a brilliant condemnation of both bigotry and hypocrisy; the sly equivalence between slavery and cruelty in the trial scene is something that might well have displeased Shakespeare's audience greatly, if it weren't in the mouth of an obvious villain.

IMO, Shakespeare, whose great genius lies partially in his characterization, was too honest and too acute of an observer and writer not to kick against the accepted discrimination of his day.  Three of his greatest plays center around a theme that in Shakespeare's day was far from the moral fad it is today: Othello, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice.  He was not a crusader in any sense of the term; he was a conventional, popular writer; but there is in his writing the recognition that people are not simple and cannot be classified simply.  Although the movie's alterations make Shylock and Antonio more palatable to modern audiences, the movie-makers did not invent the taste and feel of the injustice that Shylock addressed.  Shakespeare certainly did not agree with all of his characters, but he understood.

Which is not to say that Shakespeare didn't think all Jews would be better off spiritually and materially as Christians.  The trial scene is one of the neatest allegories I've ever read, a blazingly effective demonstration of the Protestant doctrine of Law vs. Gospel.

I'm also glad they chose to highlight a homosexual interpretation of the relationship between Antonio and Bassanio.  I just don't think the relationship makes sense without it; even given a cultural framework of manly relationships being more important than romantic ones.  Although as an illustration of the cultural shift from marriage as a feudal/business contract to an important personal relationship between two people, the conflict between Portia and Antonio is just lovely.

Nine of Cups
Again, a card about sexual pleasure, wish fulfillment, and satisfaction.

SH wants me to read The Faerie Queene so we can talk about it.  Suddenly I have way too much on my reading list.

(169.5) Dammit.

Wish fulfillment.  Satisfaction.  Feeling good, physically, emotionally.  Being smug, possibly arrogant.

What aspects of life can I relate to the nine of cups?

Sexual satisfaction, orgasm, sleek sensuality.

Emotional sufficiency, lack of fear, feeling loved, cherished.

Being overfull, stuffed, satiated, not wanting or needing more.  Nothing new to taste, everything loses its sharp edge of delight.  Bland comfort.  Living off the fat of the land.

The mother sits with her child, sleeping off a meal, cradled in her lap.  The pets are fed, the curtains are drawn, the house is warm and secure.  She settles on wide hips, and smacks her lips with satisfaction before beginning to snore.  Everything is there and nothing more is needed.  When there is nothing more to want, there is nothing more to seek, then all anyone can do is sit down in swelling comfort to die.  It is the essence of completion and stagnation.  There are times when this state is a welcome rest, and times when it is a suffocating bog.

It is not so much be careful what you wish for, but be careful never to stop wishing.

What should I look for today?

Look for ways in which you are content.

Look for needs that are being met.

What are you taking for granted?

In what ways do you need to rest and be happy with what you have? In what ways do you need to seek movement and change?