A Movie Review by BD Bondy
Movies you may not have seen, or for that matter, heard of. My last movie review, on Prey, was a huge success. I received accolades from around the world, praise from Roger Ebert himself, from the grave no less, and a contract with NBC, ABC, and CBS to have my own movie review show. As fantasies go, that was a doosie. Which brings us to the movie, Welcome to Marwen. It was apparently not well received by critics or audiences. My guess is that it is one of those category defying films that people aren’t accustomed to, and critics don’t know what to make of. It’s a favorite of mine, and I think Steve Carell deserves an Oscar for his performance. Welcome to Marwen is based on a true story, a real person, Mark Hogancamp. His ordeal began with a severe beating which nearly killed him. He was a graphic artist prior to this, but afterwards, he was unable to draw, and as he says in the movie, he could barely write his name. He also was left with such a traumatic brain injury that he didn’t remember his life prior to the beating. This movie has some very difficult moments, with Mark deeply disturbed mentally by the beating, and physically trying to get back to normal. His PTSD is palpable throughout, and triggered by many things, like loud noises, references to him in the news, and an angry neighbor. Sometimes, the trigger is in his own head. The movie graphically describes the beating, and his new artistic endeavor, photography. His photographs are very internalized, representing the event of his beating. His trauma is expressed in a WWII scenario, where he is the hero/protagonist, and the women that helped him in real life, like the woman that found him in the street, his nurse, his physical therapist, they are the supporting cast. The Nazis play the men that severely beat him. Throughout the film, Mark falls into his fantasy world of Nazis and fighter women, living in the town of Marwen. A fictional Belgian town which is built in Mark’s back yard, and scaled down so that the characters are the size of GI Joes and Barbie dolls. He then sets up events in the town and photographs them as if they are real. You can see a gallery of some of Mark Hogancamp’s pictures HERE. PRINTS | Mark Hogancamp The film’s timeframe is centered around 3 years after his horrific beating, when the men guilty of the crime are to be sentenced, and Mark is asked to speak before the judge about what happened to him. His trauma plays deeply into his life, and obviously, this causes more triggering of his PTSD. He copes as best he can, he takes meds, he photographs, he has a job in a restaurant, he collects women’s shoes, and he tries to live his life. The coping mechanism of his fantasy world is played out throughout the movie. It gives a sense of what a man in this position must live through, and I imagine, what a severe trauma causing PTSD may be like. I have no comparison in my life, thank goodness, I am grateful. I know several people that are not so lucky. Ultimately, Mark must face his demons, and he begins to understand that some of his coping mechanisms are crutches that also support the PTSD. He stands up to some of them, and becomes stronger, if still quite damaged. Mark will never be his old self again, but he will be a new self, and we see him beginning to be comfortable with that. The movie starts with a fantasy, builds with all the drama of his daily life trying to cope, and ends on an upbeat note of artistic success and some relationship success. I found it to be a fascinating insight into mental illness brought on through trauma, the resiliency of a man’s spirit, and the ability to cope when life becomes impossibly difficult. Steve Carell captured every aspect of this man’s emotions, a range expanding far beyond the norm.
2 Comments
aka, HAPPY NEW YEAR, I think? By Zach Hively I live in paradise. It’s not everyone’s idea of paradise: if, for instance, you appreciate access to such modern amenities as reliable internet and trash service, this is not paradise. But it is my version of heaven on earth—most of the time. Even I have my moments. Like the other day, just before New Year’s Eve, I was walking my dogs down our neighborhood arroyo. Normally this is paradisiacal. But this time, we were following some a-hole’s ATV tire treads tearing through the sagebrush, and pretty quickly we came upon their heap of ashes and burned cans and bottles dumped right in the middle of where my dogs like to walk. To be clear: we do not like to walk through a public dump. This is, in fact, privately owned property. We have permission to walk through this land from the landowner, because the landowner is me, and this stretch of arroyo is basically right outside my front door. Now, the compassionate, thinking part of my brain—the part that was not shouting obscenities to see if I could hear an echo and get double the swearing satisfaction—recognizes that people have been dumping garbage in arroyos here for many, many more years than I have been alive. And, what choice does one have when one’s county trash service is, by all accounts, corrupt? (If it even exists in the first place, which is also dubitable.) But this is not my rant and rave about ATVs and illegal dumping and misuse of county funds. This is all merely to keep you from thinking that my chosen home is so idyllic that you should build your vacation house here. Also, it is to illustrate why even those of us who live in paradise need a holiday. So to relax, unwind, and get a fresh perspective on life, I went to Belgium in the fall, when it was wet and damp and miserable, even to Belgians. And, to cheer myself up, I went to a museum exhibit on book censorship. (Citing my source: the exhibit is (Un)chained Knowledge, held in the University Library at KU Leuven. It’s up for another week. Still time to book your ticket!) It won’t surprise you to learn that I think a book is one of the most sacred human-made things (both as an object and as an idea) on this planet. You can’t compare it to something like, say, the arroyo out my front door—except that both are intensely sacred, and I never come so close to understanding vengeance heroes like Batman and Inigo Montoya as I do when people thrash what I hold most holy. Some of the censorship on display was laughable in its execution, such as these naked ladies given skirts to shield our eyes from their hand-drawn genital regions: Some of the censorship bowled me over with its brazenness—like, why even keep the book if this is what you’re going to do to it? (P.S. — still pretty legible, numbnuts.) Some of the censorship made me cry. And not the way that, very occasionally, other museum exhibits have made me cry (out of awe, or beauty, or wonder), but out of recognizing pieces of my own humanity torn from me that I never even knew were missing: You’ve heard of book burnings. Maybe you’ve seen pictures of book bonfires. Maybe you’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Maybe you’ve even seen the remnants of a house fire, recognized pieces of books and other belongings tragically destroyed.
Maybe I have too. But I had never, ever seen a book that had been willfully burnt. This wasn’t, like the Beowulf manuscript, some fragment rescued from a tragic fire. This was a partial survivor of a willful inferno, in 1914, by an occupying force deciding to decimate a university library—the very library I was standing in at that moment. My friends moved onward through the exhibit. They let me linger. We didn’t even talk about the burned books afterwards. I didn’t know what to say, exactly. I still don’t, except to say this: This is why I write. Writing is cheap, now. Probably cheaper than ever. Not even going into AI (which is not writing, but accumulation of words, advanced plagiarism), but normal people-writing. Anyone can publish a book now, for negligible or even no monetary cost. We are flooded with books. Millions of new ones every year. And that’s not counting all the internet writing! But this does not—it cannot—lessen the worth of a book as an idea. Of any written expression, or any creative expression, as an act of being human and shouting it to the world to see if it echoes back. I don’t think what I write is particularly important. I doubt our modern-day Nazis are going to come burn my books on purpose, unless incidentally as part of a whole library-burning. I like that sometimes I make one of my readers smile, and that sometimes I get a note from my other reader because I used a bad word, like “numbnuts.” But writing them? Writing these pieces on Substack for you? Writing, period? It’s my barbaric yawp to the world. No one can possibly burn every one of these millions of new books—partly because many of them are eBooks, but also because their matches can’t keep up with us. Their flames cannot truly lick our paradise. Which is all to say, believe it or not, happy new year to both of you, my darling readers. This is a year of redoubling my efforts to actually put my writing in your eyeballs. Like many writers, I’m good at the writing part (though never as good as I want to be), and terrible at knowing how to share it. So I’m going to bumble my way through it, here, with you, every week. I welcome your input on what you like, what you want more of, what makes you want to share with your friends. Use the ol’ comments section below. And, as subscribers, you’ll be the first to know of new things. Like, new books (and cover reveals and bears, oh my!). And workshops. (Like Misfit Poetry, next Thursday!) Thank you for being here, for reading—not just my work, but in general. It’s the best way we have of giving the bird to the censors out there, both the blatant ones and the more covert. Zach’s Substack is free. The free stuff today will remain free tomorrow. Someday, he might offer additional stuff. Zach+, as it were. You can tell Zach that you value his work by pledging a future paid subscription to additional stuff. You won't be charged unless he enables payments, and he’ll give a heads-up beforehand. You can subscribe for free to Zach's Substack to receive weekly short writings -- classic Fool's Gold columns, new poems, and random musings. Image: Pepe, Credit Brooks Coe Shea
By Hilda Joy Reprinted from December 2018 Abiquiu got to be a better place when Diana Coe moved here from Colorado. She quickly became an integral part of our community and was loved by all. Among Diana’s horses and donkeys was Pepe, a miniature donkey whose forebears originated on the Island of Sicily, off the coast of Italy. This breed of donkeys is known for its gentle disposition and for having a cross on the back of the animals. Pepe certainly was gentle and often gave rides to children on his cross-marked back at community events to which Diana took him and donated his services. “Pepe is a celebrity,” Diana would boast as she fondly scratched him behind the ears. Pepe immediately came to mind when fellow mayordomo Ray Trujillo and I learned that we were in charge of the annual Christmas posadas that started out each year in Abiquiu’s church, Santo Tomas el Apostol. We learned of our responsibility from our pastor, Father Joseph Vigil, just a few days before the first posadas, and the very first thing we did was to call on Diana, who happened to be home, to ask if we could have Pepe carry the young girl, who would portray the Blessed Mother in the procession before Mass. Diana thought it was fitting that this breed with the cross on its back would carry Mary, and she said, “Yes.” Our second step was to recruit young parishioner Christina Crim to portray Mary and to ask her to ask a fellow student to portray St. Joseph to accompany her during the procession. She did, but he was a no-show, so Christina’s mother Erma pressed into service another young man, Matteo Garcia, who asked, “Do I have any speaking lines?” The third step was to call a number of people and to ask them to bring food for the after-Mass potluck in the gym, which we quickly set up with tables covered with green cloth and red ribbon and pots of poinsettias that someone had donated to the church. Father was so thrilled when he learned that we would have a live donkey carry Mary that he asked us to have the procession go throughout the church plaza before evening Mass. The night of the first posadas, however, turned brutally cold with a strong bitter wind sweeping across the plaza. Father Joseph said that he did not want anyone to get ill and directed us to walk only a few feet from the library across from church. Diana parked Pepe’s trailer there, and, when he emerged from it, we could tell that he realized that something special was about to happen. He stood patiently and proudly as he awaited his passenger. When Christina got close to Pepe, she became frightened, saying, “I don’t do donkeys.” Her dad Allen stood on one side, and on the other side Ray picked her up and set her on Pepe, who immediately made Christina feel so much at ease that with a smile she said, “I can do this.” With silent St. Joseph at her side and with Diana leading and Ray following, the group processed to the front door of our church. Inside, the church was dark, lit only by the altar candles. St. Joseph knocked on the door, and the choir outside sang the traditional request for a room in the inn. Pepe cocked his head and looked at the choir and listened. Then the congregation inside sang its traditional denial. When Pepe heard the singing inside, he lunged toward the church door as if he wanted to enter. The choir outside and the congregation inside repeated the request/denial verses about a half-dozen times, and Pepe paid attention to each group, again lunging toward the door each time he heard the singing inside. Finally, the innkeeper opened the door, the congregation changed its tune to one of warm welcome, and the church lights and the Christmas-tree lights were turned on. Pepe immediately felt that he needed to be a part of this celebration and charged into church and headed toward the main aisle with Diana holding Pepe on one side and Ray securing Christina on the other side of the happy animal who then fell into a dignified gait as he headed to the front pew. Surprised congregants were saying, “Look. . .that is a real live donkey!” Father Joseph and I were the last to enter, and I said to him, “Father, this was not planned,” and he replied with a laugh: “It’s okay. It’s wonderful.” And it was. Amen. Another time, Diana brought Pepe to our parish’s annual Fiesta de Santa Rosa de Lima, which occurs every August, so that Pepe could provide rides for delighted children. Thank you, Pepe. Thank you, Diana. May you rest in peace with our heavenly Father. Hilda M. Joy April 2016 Posadas Afterword: My first Christmas season in Abiquiu, I attended my first posadas in Canones with Agustin and Merlinda Garcia and with Alfonso and Ninfa Martinez. It was a very cold, clear dark night, and the stars were enormous. After the church service, we were welcomed to a dinner of posole, which really took off the chill, and other posadas delights in the gaily decorated church hall. On the way home, Agustin asked, "So, Hilda, what did you think of your first posadas?" I replied that I thought it was all wonderful except for one thing---NO LIVE BURRO! He said they were hard to find, and I said that if ever I were responsible for a posadas, I would find one. In Pepe, I did. A 2.5 Magnitude earthquake occurred on the Santa Fe National Forest in the Cuba District around 3:00 p.m. yesterday followed by a 3.5 magnitude around 4:45 p.m. If you are interested in learning more about the magnitude energy release, and other interesting facts about earthquakes from the USGS please visit the attached links:
https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/earthquake-facts-earthquake-fantasy The larger was Mag 3.5 (orange dot) and a smaller one of Mag 2.5 (yellow dot) in the afternoon of Wednesday, December 20th. Both were a little east of Cuba in the Nacimiento Mountains, just south of the San Pedro Wilderness area. Faults in this area trend SW to NE, so these earthquakes are likely connected, and more earthquakes might occur as stress and strain is released by these 2 quakes. This is ludicrous. I know it. The tree knows it. The woodland creatures know it. By Zach Hively When I was a younger man, I had a grand vision for my future: I would buy (or otherwise acquire) some land, and with this land I would grow a Christmas forest, planting a pine tree each year to create homes for woodland creatures until enough of them became my friends that I could dispense with human interaction altogether. I have grown and matured, though, and so has the vision. Namely, I am less certain that the forest is a Christmas one. I might more honestly call it a solstice forest. Or a Thanksgiving forest, since that is closer to when I buy the trees. Or a January forest, because that is when I plant them. Or, perhaps most accurately, I could call it a money pit. Regardless of cost, this is one dream coming true. I may not be a world-famous paleontologist ballplayer with a commercial pilot’s license (yet), but by Jiminy Christmas I have a forest. It is five feet tall, four trees large, and counting. Mostly it seems to be counting up. It almost counted down last year, when one of the trees developed an infestation of some kind--not the type of woodland creature I hoped to befriend—that made me abandon, with prejudice, my no-chemical kumbaya approach to winter forest management. This tree also had a comorbidity, a second infestation, that I could not identify despite my four years’ experience in forest stewardship. I showed a picture to a man at the nursery. “Looks like bird vomit,” he said. In hindsight, I question if he actually worked there. These are the difficulties that confound my annual tradition. You see, growing a magical EOY forest is less simple than picking up a tree from a lot and strapping it to the roof of any ol’ car. It is predicated on several factors, chief among them that picking up living trees is really, really hard. Living trees require dirt. Dirt is heavy. It is also notoriously difficult to strap to the roof. If we are perfectly frank—and why shouldn’t we be—half the reason I keep the registration current on my thirtysomething pickup is so that, once a year, I can drive it to my tree dealer, and he can direct two much younger men to hoist the tree into the bed, and I can drive it home where I unload it by my much older self. This is relatively easy to do; I have the advantage of gravity. The real trick is sliding this half-ton or so of wood and soil from three feet high to ground level without seriously injuring the tree, or myself, or my pride. If we are still perfectly frank—why stop now—this moment, usually taking place in dwindling daylight and encroaching cold, when I must navigate this living being and its dirt to the earth without the aid of an advanced pulley system, this is the moment I use to assess the state of my physical health. In short, it is my annual exam. When getting the piñon to the ground goes well, I am also doing well. When it is a struggle, or I throw out my back, or I wonder legitimately at any point if I will be spending the night pinned under a root ball, this motivates my exercise regimen for the next twelve months. I say this in earnest: other people train for beach bods or lower cholesterol. I look at a pull-up bar in May and think, “Better try to jump and touch that—I got a tree to unload this winter.” This is ludicrous. I know it. The tree knows it. The woodland creatures know it. But I can make myself think that I can indeed transform my body and my physical capabilities from one winter to the next. It sure seems much more plausible than transforming my body in a month, which is about how long I have to enjoy the tree, festooned with white twinkle lights outside my living room window, before I need to put it in the ground. This requires an even greater feat of strength than dragging the tree out of my pickup truck. Because I cannot get the tree back into the pickup truck, I have nothing but my wits and my muscles—mostly my wits—to walk the tree, all while battling friction and pine needles to my face, from my living room window to the Yuletide forest and the too-shallow hole I tried to dig after the ground had frozen.
Still, somehow, I have survived this odyssey every year, and so have the trees. We will more likely than not survive it this year, too. The forest will not be any taller, but it will be one tree bigger, and I will swell with pride every time I gaze upon it instead of doing a workout. In the spirit of frankness—in for a penny, in for a pound—I sure hope the birds don’t hurl on it. Zach’s Substack is free. The free stuff today will remain free tomorrow. Someday, he might offer additional stuff. Zach+, as it were. You can tell Zach that you value his work by pledging a future paid subscription to additional stuff. You won't be charged unless he enables payments, and he’ll give a heads-up beforehand. You can subscribe for free to Zach's Substack to receive weekly short writings -- classic Fool's Gold columns, new poems, and random musings. Republished from 12/2019 By Hilda Joy Christmas and cookies go together ofcourse. I have many happy memories of cookies sweetening this year-end holiday, but my favorite is of a woman with whom I worked who took Christmas cookie baking seriously. Every December 1, she bought 20 pounds of butter. Every day after work, she would make a light dinner and go to bed early. Then she would awake about two o’clock in the morning and bake a batch of cookies. These would be packed into candy boxes she collected throughout the year at the office, where we had a custom of celebrating our birthdays by buying two pounds of chocolates, passing them around after lunch, and then giving my friend the empty box. These boxes of cookies would be stashed in her freezer to be shared at Christmas, especially at her annual Christmas open house. In addition to all the Swedish recipes she learned early in life, she made Mexican besos (kisses) and a shortbread cookie so rich that she cut the dough into half-inch cubes, sprinkled with red and green sugars. Another woman, with the help of two of her friends, gathered all of her grandchildren into her large kitchen on a Saturday early in December for a full day of baking and decorating cookies while their parents had the day free for serious Christmas shopping. When their parents returned, each child offered them a tin of Christmas cookies. My all-time favorite Christmas cookie is my Mother’s unusual butter cookie, which is offered here for you to try. Please do and remember to leave some out for Santa Claus. EnJOY Christmas Eve in our Unger household always was scented by pine from the Christmas tree, furniture polish in the living room, the fishy smell of tuna salad (the only time in the year that this meal was served due to a meatless vigil), and the best smell of all---Christmas butter cookies. My Mother’s Christmas butter cookies are like no others due to their 1/4-inch thickness and primarily due to the inclusion of sieved hard-boiled egg yolks, which affect the texture and enhance the yellow color. The cookies should be golden yellow, not brown, so one must watch the baking carefully (my Mother would pull up a chair to the oven with its light on to watch color). This recipe was lost for many years until a happenstance long-distance phone call with our long-time next-door Illinois neighbor, Laverne, gratefully brought it to light. On Laverne’s recipe card, this recipe was attributed to another neighborhhood baker with whom my Mother shared it but who claimed it as her own. I still use my Mother’s five old Christmas cookie cutters; they are willed to my children, Lisa, Sheila, and Patrick, and to my granddaughters, Haley and Zoe.
|
Submit your ideas for local feature articles
Profiles Gardening Recipes Observations Birding Essays Hiking AuthorsYou! Archives
September 2024
Categories
All
|