Melsville

Bits and Bobs

As did her brother before her, and their parents before both of them,  Emma loves the CD Yellow Submarine .  She doesn’t go on and on about what the songs mean.  Wee Em just sings what she hears.  The Liverpudlian accents  muddle her  a little, but she does sing; her current favorite is the one she calls, “Baby, On a Ritz Bat” ( “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” to the rest of us ).  That, and my girlie singing “Hey Bulldog” is the sound of cute running straight at surreal , and passing right  through it.

In June, I wrote that I hoped Liam would draw animae and start learning to play guitar this Summer.   It’s July, and Liam keeps wood and carving-tools in an old tackle-box in his room.    This weekend at Art Beat,  Liam pleaded for a bamboo flute, which I bought him.   Earlier that week, he stood surrounded by the used guitars in Rockin’ Bob’s Guitar Stop” and told me that he really wanted to play the flute   Any music is music enough for me.

Maybe I’m the one who  learn to play the for-string bass.    After I gain   a firmer hold on Long-fist Form, once I can say I walk an extra 3 miles on purpose, then I’ll consider music lessons.  Small goals, but mine own.

More Snogging Please!!!

There was no way I wasn’t going to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince  last night; absolutely no way.  I’m not sure what we would have done if Sonya couldn’t baby-sit, but we would have had to do something short of bringing Emma with us; the domain of the Half-Blood Prince is no place for a three-year-old child.   The world of this movie is dark, tense and close, it has to be .

The movie begins with panic, with bridges collapsing and dementors descending into the Muggles’ world.  It also begins with a sixteen-year-old boy in a cafe reading the newspaper while an alluring waitress flirts with him.  No sooner does she tell him she’d love to see him after work than Albus Dumbledore appears, extends a withered hand, and pulls Harry Potter back into the Wizarding world. 

This movie is filled with teenagers yearning for all the snogging they never get.  The book is  loaded with with the romantic / sexual tension that has been building since the early books, and the tension finally busts open just the way we always would.  In the book, Ron and Hermione finally admit that all their fighting may have been supressed attraction, and  love and Harry and Ginny give into some pretty intense feelings.  And everybody gets to have have a hormonally-fueled good old time.

As a recovering teenage girl, I will also note that it is the girls who are making the first moves.  It's Hermione who says she wanted to ask Ron to the party, and would have if another girl had not welded herself to his arm.  It's Romalda Vane who gives Harry love-potion-laced chocs. And, who is it finally iniciates the kiss in the room of hidden objects?; it's Ginny, of course.  Girls are taking the risks.

The only one who gets a little action is Ron, and all that amounts to is comic relief.  Maybe the director leaves Hermione dropping heavy hints and Harry and Ginny barely avoiding contact because he doesn’t want to alienate a large part of his audience.  Maybe he doesn’t want the nine-year-olds recoiling shouting, “ew, Ew. EWWW!!!”  

I don’t know how uncomfortable some kissing would make the younger kids in the audience, but I know my son missed the fighting.  In this movie, there is no battle, no big, bloody clash between Good and Evil.   I saw Death Eaters hit Hogwarts, and I know that Hogwarts drives them away.  I can’t remember how that last part happened.  No sex, no violence, and lots of tension and energy that don’t go where they need to go.

As the movie ends, Harry is set to go off into the dark. dangerous world.  Ron and Hermione are united, ( but how, when?), and determined to join him.  He giving up on a carefree life, and hoping to someday return to the girl who loves him.  I know this because I’ve read the book.

Actually, I did like the movie because I like the characters  and the cast.  They deserve more!

Not All of These Things Fit Together

Quick, can anyone remember the text on the last page of Where the Wild Things Are?   My parents must have read it to me hundreds of times, and when I read it to Emma, I saw afresh  what a great ending, “ and it was still hot,”  gives that story.

If you’ve never read. Lolita, you don’t know just how much that first page pulls the reader into the book.  The inside of Humbert Humbert’s head, his story, his perceptions might not be where you want to be; but there you are.  After being challenged to read Ulysses, a friend once guiltily confessed that he abandoned Bloom for H.H. when he stole a peek at the start of Nabokov’s novel.  I told him that I totally understood.

Lolita was my mother’s favorite book.  That and The Wind in The Willows  were the books she always said she loved the most.  Her favorite song was “Summertime”, and I think her favorite Beatle was George. She fostered a long movie-star crush on Al Pacnino.  Mama would have been 74 today.

I have just spent the week in the world my son and his friends.  It was a week with  a cookout, two fireworks displays, lots of Pokemon trading and battling and a Super-Soaker war by the pool.  This week,  was his July week of Martial Arts camp, and he learned lots of new movies with older students; a big treat.  I spent a week walking through Davis Square four times in three hours.  I must love that boy.

This week, Liam and I plan to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” on the first day; Jamie’s coming too.   Last month, I thought I’d watch all the movies.  I toyed with the idea of watching the movies from V to I.  I thought it might be fun to watch the characters get younger and younger.  I didn’t make the time to do that, but I did see  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on Saturday night.  After spending the week with young boys, just seeing Daniel Radcliff so little and scared was almost enough to make me cry.   In the first few minutes of the movie, Jamie said the same thing he said the first time he saw the movie: “why does that poor little kid live with those horrible people?!?!”   All I could think was that Harry Potter just needed someone to love him.

Walking Down Highland Avenue

Two nights a week (if I'm lucky). I practice kung-fu in a  basement.  Hot in the Summer, cold in the Winter, the classroom smells like mold and children's socks.  It's humble, grubby, and the only place I would ever take kung-fu.  Three hours a weak, I empty out my head and get sweaty.

Part of going to class is the long walk home.  With U2 (or the Beatles, or Sam Cooke, etc.) pouring in through my i-pod, I slip into the city night.  With every step, I feel the satisfying exhaustion settling over me.  By the time I get through the front door, I wonder why I'm still standing.  Feels so good.

Just as I left the building this evening,  Somerville offered up its loneliest  couple. The young woman and her boyfriend walked with arms around each other, close as if they had been together for years.  Both of them had a cell-phone pressed against an ear, and they leaned away from one another.  They chatted animatedly into their phones, and they both seemed happy.  She giggled, he talked loudly.  Each could have been talking to a best friend.

As I passed the CVS, I noticed the man with the cup in his hand. "I'm homeless," I heard him say, "and sick and hungry."  I slipped my hands into the pockets of my jacket, which I could feel were not empty.  A cell-phone, a hair-pick, and a rock that Emma handed me as we walked to preschool.  No money at all. 

Unexpected Meeting

On my way to the library this morning, I stopped at the Dunkin Doughnuts for an iced coffee.   Almost didn’t, but I had time before the library opened.  I carried The Iliad in my shoulder bag because I am going to read it this Summer,  and this offered me an opportunity to read the five -to-ten pages I meant to read every day. The coffee was lukewarm, so the ice was already melting.

Right at the back of the store, at the table next to the last empty one, there sat an elderly man.  I noticed that he was wearing a cap that identified him as a W.W.II veteran.   I sat, opened my weighty tome , wondering why, “The Gathering of the Armies” is such a long Book.  Before I found my place in the Robert Fagles translation,  I decided I would ask the gentleman where he had served.  Seemed more respectful than asking if he did fight in World War II.

 He asked me if I’d heard of Patton, and pointed to the circled 3 on his cap saying that it signified Patton’s unit

He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and in  Normandy.  

He’d been wounded.  I’m guessing he meant  at Normandy because that’s the one he’d told me about.    The soldiers had started hitting the beach at 6:30 am.  He’d been in the third wave,  the waves came ten minutes apart.  His wave had been sent onto the beach by, “this big Texan.”

He’d been twenty, and had graduated from Saint John’s School.  He’d always lived here,  near here, in Cambridge.    The recruiters came into the  High Schools and told the young men to get their degree before they joined up.  He did.

Said something about smoking a cigarette with the Texan. He’d smoked then.  I said I’d always figured everyone did in the 1940s.  He told me that you could get two packs of cigarettes, in supermarkets, for twenty-five cents  for two.  I said this explained how my father had smoked since he was thirteen.  The gentleman said he’d smoked since he was sixteen, stopped twenty years ago,

He told me that he was eighty-five, that his birthday had been last week. 

I hadn’t talked much.  While the old Army vet spoke to me, he stared straight ahead, I had been sitting on his left.  When I’d walked past him, before I sat, I wondered if he could see.

He left just before I did, and did not say good-bye.   He didn’t tell me his name.

I’d never gotten to The Iliad.  I text-ed Jamie from a bench outside the library and told him who I’d met.

I started writing this as soon as I got home.  I’ve written down what I remember as I remember it.  Some buddies of mine, men my age, have told me they’ve, “always been obsessed with W.W.II”.  If the man in the Dunkin Doughnuts had embellished  historical details to make his story more interesting, they might have spotted them.  If he’d added things, I thought that was okay.  He might have claimed experiences that didn’t happen to him.  I thought I’d tell you what he told me.