The Oscars May Not Feel Like History

But today they are.

And as much as the Academy Awards are often ridiculous and political and shame-facedly wrong ('Crash'? You've got to be joking)

a woman, yes, a woman, finally won not just Best Director, but Best Picture as well.

Some facts are in order here.

Yes, Kathryn Bigelow started out as an extremely talented artist.

Yes, she studied under Susan Sontag. As in: Susan Sontag.

Yes, she was in direct competition with her ex-husband, another kind of glorious first.

Yes, she's only the fourth woman ever nominated for Best Director in the history of the awards. Which is, yes, a weeping crying idiotic shame.

But she won.

And more importantly than that simple historic fact is this:

She and The Hurt Locker deserved it.

One small film - the lowest grossing film to win Best Picture in Oscar history - that almost went straight to DVD,

that almost wasn't distributed, that almost no one saw.

Until now.

With a woman finally holding the gold in her arms.

For the first time in years, to paraphrase Michelle Obama, I'm proud of the Academy Awards again.

- Janet

Of Earthquakes, Squashed Fingernails, and the Passage of Time

I am practically numb with the news. The deceased. The buried, still to be dug out. The fight for food and water. The sense of hopelessness for Haiti. Horror for Chile. I feel for these people, deeply, and yet, even as sadness and disbelief hog the marquee of my emotions, that other side of my brain grapples with the more existential side of it. The small opening act that gets less attention in the news: What does it mean?

Maybe it doesn't mean anything. I sometimes think that assigning meaning is the task of idiots. (Case in point: Pat Robertson's assertion that the earthquake in Haiti was God's payback for that country's pact with the devil.) And maybe meaning isn't even the right word at all. Maybe what I'm looking for is a kind of sense. Or something to take away from all this. Something instructive. And what I get, while the link isn't at all linear, has something to do with time.

Human time, geologic time, light time. Time.

We tend to think in lifetimes—our own. Or, more often, in the spans of weeks and days. To Do lists. Short term plans. Before I go to bed tonight. When the kids are out of high school. Before I die. Etc. And in our minds, it's all peculiarly concrete and measurable. Familiar.

But the fact of the matter is that we exist also in completely other time frameworks.

It's likely no consolation to the humans of the planet who are suffering loss right now, that Earth is living its own time, just as we are. That it needs to stretch and shrug, grow and shrink, address that itch on its back. It's probably no consolation that fault lines are going to toss us aside every 60 or 500 or 300,000 years, and that the Earth is going to count those years according to its own needs, not our careful human calculations. It's no consolation, no, but it is true.

(We read this morning in the newspaper, that the Chile earthquake was powerful enough to shift the Earth's axis by 3" and that because of this shift, we will now enjoy an almost infinitessimally smaller amount of daylight each day. So much for human timetables. Just like that, the Universe has demonstrated that our measurements are no longer valid. Wrong, in other words. Meaningless. Next?)

And what this all does, strangely, is make me relax a little my own concept of time. I have lived much of my life in a hurry to pack in as much as possible. I have tried to control and "make happen" and reach goals. This has not always been a bad thing, and I don't intend to say "What does it matter in the big picture?" even though it seems like that is where my argument is going. What I mean to say is that there's a proper time and place for such clocks to tick loudly. And there's a time and place for them to fall silent, because they just don't measure up, nor do they serve us particularly well.

Let me explain. I've begun to think that we humans have two times, perhaps three. The times of our minds (this is the To Do list time), and the times of our bodies and our psyches. My Italian husband always said to me, "Life is long." I thought he was crazy. (Didn't he perceive, like everyone else, that life is simply too short, i.e. ticking along at a rapid clip?) But now, I am beginning to understand what he meant. Even as we rush around, some things simply take time. They take the time they take. And no amount of disciplined action-taking will change that.

Four months ago, I smashed my finger in the door of my daughters' room. Blood began to spread under the nail. It throbbed for days. Then it turned black. Then the black spot began to grow out from the cuticle. For much longer than I thought, my nail continued to grow out black. A couple weeks ago, the top layer of nail came out of the cuticle separated from the new nail growing underneath. The "black spot," which was of course, dried blood, slowly disappeared as the water with every bath, hand-washing or dish-cleaning, did its invisible, gentle job of washing it away. Now, I have this unsightly layer of fingernail which looks like a dirty piano key. Thick, yellowish. Unattached at the bottom, still attached at the top. There's nothing I can do about it, and nothing I want to do about it. It would hurt! So I leave it, and look at it. Day after day after day. We're not talking great loss here. We're talking a single fingernail. But it's teaching me a whopper of a lesson: It's going to take as long as it's going to take.

That's a finger. But then there's my heart. In 2006 my father died. This is the sort of earthquake we all suffer, and there could be no more apt geographical metaphor. The plates shifted. My grounding, which I so trusted, fell away. Nothing was solid. And here I am 4 years later, still putting things right, or trying to rebuild with lighter more flexible materials the structure of my heart. The pain is still there, but it has morphed. And it has changed me. Time is passing. It will continue to pass. It will take as long as it takes.

Marriage. (That subject again.) My marriage is a miracle to me. It has grown and evolved according to its own clock. It has a sense of time that eludes me. It seems to have a timeless faith in itself that keeps it going, even when we have run out of patience or nice things to say. Darkness, light. Another day / month / year.

We have to trust in these times. We have to surrender to them. We are in their grasp and their flow. They will confuse us, serve us well, outlive us.

And so, as I've written this, I've overcooked my lunch, unaware of the time. Geologic time is no good for steaming vegetables.

For Chile

To all our friends in Chile, and to all those who have friends and family there as well, we send our hope and our sympathy and our prayers. Because, yes, prayers of any kind are needed now. - Janet

Violence and Women

I'm not talking about the horrendous act of violence against women. I'm talking about the violent acts perpetrated by women that, too often, our gender (and the media) assume are infrequent. Because, unfortunately, it's not actually infrequent at all.

Awhile ago several women wrote both The New York Times and The Oregonian about how they 'simply couldn't believe' women could be suicide bombers, as the Christmas Day Pants Bomber (we need a better name don't we?) warned.

Yet they can be and they are. There have been female suicide bombers, acting as martyrs, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. And of course before that, for at least dozens of years. We can read about them online, watch them on TV, read report after report. But perhaps we don't want to, because it screws with our idealistic view that 'If women ruled the world, there'd be no war.' Again, it's pretty to think so. But reality, well, it bites.

What is about us that wants to believe women, and girls, are incapable of horrible acts like this? Why do we want to idealize ourselves in this way? Yes women commit far less violent acts than men do: a fact. But we've always been capable of it, and quite often act on our impulses. We're human and therefore culpable of terrible things. I think accepting, and demanding, absolute equality means refusing to think we're better, greater, deeper than an entire gender. The male one.

There is a terrific article about Amy Bishop right now in the NY Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/arts/28bishop.html?hp. She's the neuroscientist who just killed three colleagues and injured three others in a rampage that everyone should have seen coming. To read about how she murdered her 18 year old brother in 1986, and yet served no time, is honestly chilling.

Women. We're wonderful, we're amazing, we create gorgeous art and bear children and advocate for peace and hold families together. We can do anything. We can even be Medea when we want to be. - Janet

Signs of Spring

Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to.

Someone said that to me on the phone this morning, and as it's a line from one of the best holiday films of all time, I immediately agreed. Agreed even though this man works in a business where faith seems patently counter-intuitive (the stock market) and that I've had an awful lot of dumb, blind faith lately for someone who works in advertising, faith that's jumped all over me like some sadistic heavyweight boxer with a grudge.

But after all, what does common sense actually get us?

It tells us not to talk to strangers. And then we miss things like true love. Or that soul mate Charlotte spoke of.

Or some honestly terrific conversation once we discover he/she/the stranger isn't as creepy as we originally thought.

It tells us not to judge a book by it's cover. And when the cover is inordinately well-designed, that's just idiotic.

It tells us to stand in the shorter line when history tells us the shorter line is always going to get slower the moment

we join it.

It makes us surly and boring and common, common sense does, and no fun at parties.

And it tells us we can't make a difference in this world. A difference of twenty dollars to a cause we believe in. A difference of taking a working vacation and volunteering while we travel. A difference of saying no sometimes when we mean no, and yes when we believe yes, taking a chance, being who we wish to be. A difference of rescuing just one animal who desperately needs a home. Not all of them. Just one. One child, one person, one animal, one difference.

It may feel like the least we can do; sometimes it's actually the most.

I don't believe in God, not at all, not even a little. Although every time a fox hole comes up, I say the words out loud.

In case I'm wrong and somebody is listening. In case even the stars pay attention now and then.

Faith doesn't require anyone listening at all. That's pretty much the beautiful thing about it.

- Janet

Live as if you were younger.

This just in from Anna H. via email: a fascinating article by the BBC about psychologist Ellen Langer and her experiments to demonstrate, if not scientifically "prove", that living and thinking younger actually reap observable physical benefits.

In 1979 she conducted an experiment in which she asked a group of elderly men to re-live, well, actually to live, as if it were still in the 1950s. They spoke about all things 50s in the present tense, imagining that they still inhabited those halcyon days of their own youth. No one cooked for them, lifted heavy luggage for them, clutched their elbows as they went up and down stairs. They were asked to take care of themselves, live for themselves, all the while imagining that they were young.

The results were astonishing. One man, by the end of the trial, abandoned his walking cane. Blood pressures dropped. Participants were judged by witnesses to look and appear younger than before. Langer even adds that such youthful thought staves of dementia.

I believe it. Never having purposefully conducted this experiment on my own, I can say that I have proven it to be true over and over again without being aware: never do I feel older than when for some crackpot reason I am actually telling myself I am old. And never do I feel younger than when I am cruising around town on my bicycle from yoga to shopping to the post office to work.

I invite you to read the article, and check out the video, whippersnapper.

(Thanks Anna.)

—Charlotte

Soulmate. Schmoulmate.

Well, here I am back on the marriage bandwagon. It's a fascinating topic and one that seemingly occupies a large portion of my gray matter. But it's not really marriage I want to talk about, it's this notion fed by the media and, unfortunately often by our own best friends, that our soulmate is out there—somewhere. If we just wait long enough, look hard enough, bend ourselves into the right positions—eventually we will find, attract, and hold in an everlasting and perfect embrace "the one." The one that was meant for us.

I hate to say it, but what a bunch of crap. It simply doesn't happen like that. And expecting that it will or even should probably impedes the possibility of something much less glamorous but much more viable and fulfilling actually ever happening.

As often occurs, I've run across the topic out of the blue in two very different media sources just this week. The first time was in an Italian psychological monthly. The second was in the book, Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat Pray Love), which I can easily, even happily, recommend. Both recount as a departure point the mythic allegory presented by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium. He tells us that "humans originally consisted of four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces, but Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning them to spend their lives searching for the other half to complete them." (Wikipedia, "Soulmate.") Thus, here we are today, many of us, in perpetual search of the Mr. Right who just happens to be looking for us, Ms. Right. Hmmm. When you put it like that, it just doesn't seem like such an intelligent way to spend your time does it?

In Committed, Gilbert conducts fairly exhaustive, though admittedly purely personal and non-academic, research into the the marriage rites, rituals and raisons d'etre of many (often far flung) cultures. Places where being man are wife are more or less job descriptions. Places where marriages are conducted by arrangement. Places where divorce is all but unheard of. Places where the notion of your husband being Mr. Right is laughed right out of the grass hut...because it's just such an inconceivably inconceivable notion. (Do you think maybe if they'd read Plato's Symposium they wouldn't laugh so much?)

The funny part is this: no one disputes that your spouse or life partner can become your soul mate, in a sense. What's disputable is the notion that a couple can instantly click without the benefit of: maturation, sticking together, living and working side by side, tolerating each other's faults, being honest about their own, hurting each other, misunderstanding each other, irritating each other, etc. And I'm sorry, but the part where the other person "completes" you will forever and always remain a myth to be brutally debunked. Our task in life is to complete ourselves.

And so, it is with a heavy heart, that I say that there are women I love and respect and about whom I care deeply who continue, despite their intelligence and their talent and their otherwise brilliant insights, to look for the one headed, two-armed, two-legged creature that completes them and their soul. It is painful, really, to witness. If they could just visit the right country, go to the right cocktail party at the right time, go to the right book-signing of the right debonair writer, be in the right vegetable aisle at the right organic grocery store at the right hour of the right man's day...

Right.

I don't want to bruise their already bruisy hearts, but I want to tell them as lovingly as possible to stop. Not stop as in give up hoping for love. But stop as in stop looking for that kind of love. I want to tell them to shut their minds to the soul mate and open their hearts to the flesh-and-blood guy who's likely right in front of them. Right there. The one buying non-organic white bread. (Ick, bad choice of bread...but maybe he just needs someone to gently set him straight...or not...for the rest of his loving life.) See what I mean?

—Charlotte

With Love and Squalor

Because perfect sentences are a kind of prayer, I offer these of Salinger's:

She was sixteen, and beautiful in an immediate yet perfectly slow way. She had immense eyes that always seemed in danger of capsizing in their own innocence. Her hands were very pale brown, with slender, actionless fingers. When she sat down, she did the only sensible thing with her beautiful hands there was to be done: she placed them on her lap and left them there. In brief, she was probably the first appreciable thing of beauty I had seen that struck me as wholly legitimate.

She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

I don't really feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.

And I have one.

-- Janet

Sad Day.

Of course it had to happen. And maybe he's glad it did. But it still makes me sad. Very. Like another one of the necessary voices is gone. (How many can we afford to lose?) As the obit says (NYT, "J.D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91"), paraphrasing Janet Malcolm's article for the New York Review of Books, "That the Glasses (and, by implication, their creator) were not at home in the world was the whole point...and it said as much about the world as about the kind of people who failed to get along there."

It feels like another goddam perfect day for bananafish.

I Feel Bad About My Neck, Eyes, Cheeks,Knees, Etc.

Ever have one of those days when you wake up and look in the mirror and think, oh, man, I'm beautiful? Me neither.

Sometimes the right lighting might trick me into thinking that yes, I really do have but one chin, but then that lighting fades or someone turns it off and reality slaps me back into shape. Wait, 'shape', that's the wrong word. Just slaps, that's all.

A few years ago I suddenly realized my face was a souffle, and it had fallen. Someone carefully took me out of the oven and then banged the door shut - cooks, you know the sad result. And as I pushed my souffle-face back into a resemblance of self I thought Well, what now? Injections? Plastic? Prayer? Needles and novacaine or whatever they use? All the above? Charlotte and I have talked about this through the years and we constantly come up with this: We're not against it, not at all. We applaud it, especially when its admitted. We just, well, I don't know. We still love Georgia O'Keefe and Virginia Woolf. I didn't want Bette Davis eyes but I had them by 28, maybe earlier. Was I supposed to fix them then? If so then youth really is wasted on the young.

We, Charlotte and I, maybe we're crazy. We still think our wrinkles do not define us. We know that age can't really be erased. Some days I feel 68. Somedays I feel 25. Somedays, I get so brave there is no number attached. And those, without a doubt, are the best days of all.

Let's give. The other kind of love.

Leaping from romantic love to love of mankind...

Blogging, particularly about personal observations / feelings / thoughts, seems horribly self-indulgent these days. There just seems to be one thing out there that is urgent enough to actually say: Let's try to help the Haitians, and let's pray that the people that are actually attempting to distribute our help, can soon figure out how to do it given the chaos on the ground. Here are some ways to contribute:

American Red Cross

Beyond Borders

CARE

Catholic Relief Services

Clinton Foundation

Clinton Bush Haiti Fund

Habitat for Humanity

Haiti Children

Oxfam

Save the Children

UNICEF

Yele Haiti

A more complete list is on the MSNBC site.

—Charlotte

Semper fidelis: The couples of Elliott Erwitt

I could go on and on and on and on. But somehow I think I won't. Suffice it to say, that in my marriage, all of those wonderful abstracts (safety, intimacy, respect) ebb and flow...but with a predictable tendency to return, and boy and when they do! We're not always even nice to each other...but that's us. We're still maturing, what can I say?

But the main reason, I am at a loss for words, is that Janet's last post featured one of my favorite images of all time, by one of my favorite photographers. And when pictures tell stories, it's often time to be quiet and just look. Elliott Erwitt faithfully (and I say that because of the constant heart with which he confronts the world through the lens) photographed a lot of couples in a lot of situations, and somehow always seemed to look at them with a hopeful, benevolent eye. They are not necessarily faithful to each other, but he was always faithful to them. I attach three of them here in what I consider a sort of Timeline of Love for further study. No further comment. —Charlotte

Marriage and Infidels: Part III

So a good marriage is what? I love how Charlotte said it was a metamorphosis, that her husband has changed before her eyes and she before his. And that she's glad she witnessed those changes; honored, even. And there's a chance she nourished that evolution. Allowed and enabled him to be the man he is now. Maybe they fertilized each other (is that too farm-y a word? Look, I live in Oregon) and without the other a quite different metamorphosis would have taken place. Something not quite as beautiful. And maybe the best way to stay married is to stay. If it's good, that is. If it's right. If it's real. But ah, there's that rub again.

None of us wants a marriage that's just X marks on a calendar, a prison term of required days. It's not a trap we absentmindedly stepped into. Most of us weren't actually forced into someone's devious clutches, were we? Even at the Little Chapel of Love in Vegas, we're usually somewhat awake. Whoever we were we stood up before God or Man or someone wearing something formal, we said some words we thought we meant, we made our girl friends wear dresses they didn't want to wear (taffeta, bows, knee length, emerald green) we paid for champagne or beer or cheap wine, we cried and ate cake and made people give us presents, lots of them, and again nobody forced us into this. In sickness and in health. To love and to cherish. I take you, whoever you are. Some of us made mistakes. Some of those mistakes turn out miraculously wonderful. Some don't.

Right now I'm sitting in a hotel in Santa Monica, working on a job away from home for three weeks, and I miss my husband already and I just got here. Reader, how sick is that. He is, absolutely and unequivocally, my best friend. We actually like each other. We actually love each other. There are still mysteries here, and we've been together for 19 years - what? 19? Who knew? And as I sit here almost watching 'Revolutionary Road' (a film you don't have to watch because you can literally hear it a hundred miles away) and its portrayal of a marriage I wouldn't want in ten thousand years, some thoughts on a good marriage come to mind. See if you agree:

Respect. Respecting each other's uniqueness, the way he's not you and you're not him, instead of vainly forcing the other into your mold of...'be this, be this dream in my head.'

Intimacy. The ability, and not just the wish, to reveal thoughts and ideas and truths you never thought you'd reveal to anyone. Having them caught, understood, acknowledged. Not laughed at. Not thrown back in your face during a fight. Not reduced or ridiculed.

Safety. Knowing that if you blow a gasket, or he blows his, no one will just walk out the door. Safety enough to hold you both when things go bad, money fades, jobs are lost, wrinkles grow, changes come.

Honesty. The ability to say 'Yes that does make your ass look fat' and 'I do kind of wish your ass wasn't so fat, but I love you anyway.' The ability to want to be better to the person you're spending your life with instead of worse. The way you don't take each other for granted all the time, because you know, eventually, time ends.

Wanting them in a way you still don't want another. Letting that want be heard, and met.

Gentleness. A great word.

Remembering the vow you took and knowing this was a choice you made, a choice all your own. He's not a pair of boots you can just return on a whim. She's not a chore you must endure. And if you made the wrong choice, then confess already. Work on it or change it, have the courage of your convictions, have some convictions at least. Not every marriage will work or last or go on for decades. Some, like cars and blind dates, run only for so long. So does that mean they're a failure? Or just ended on their due date?

And so back the to adultery/infidelity/infidel question: seriously, can you be unfaithful and still have a good marriage? If both sides know about it, no secrets, no lies, then I say yes. And good for you. But if it's a lie and something you do behind the other's back, then no. One of you has a marriage and the other has...convenience. One has a smorgasbord, an all-you-can-eat-buffet. And the other is on a lousy diet. Infidel, infidelity. Yes perhaps they are the same thing. - Janet

I second that emotion.

Yep, yep, yep. Janet, you said it. Significant things are harder. And you said it exactly when I needed to hear it. Not that I was packing my bags and walking out the door, or even looking at younger men, I was just having one of those ho hum moments (which usually lasts about a week) in which I think: "So, this is it."

And that's part of the difficulty of monogamy too, really. Not a fight. Nothing big and shaky and earthquaky like a wild, woolly extramarital affair. But the "dark matter" of conjugal reality. That much-of-the-time stuff that binds you together and becomes, inevitably, kind of "so-what." A bit boring. Or, no, just a bit quotidian. The slogging through difficulty which doesn't ever seem to abate. Financial pressure. The other's way of dealing with the things that bug them, which in turn, bugs you. That stuff. The habits that never change. All the things that inspired my Mom to say that the best way to stay married was to live in houses next door to each other. But she got divorced.

I think it's more what Janet was saying. Sometimes the best way to stay married is to stay. Because the moment-that-lasts-a-week passes, the dark matter leads to a bright shiny star, and you see beside you the person you married, except somehow new and improved, because they stayed with you too. That's always the thing that amazes me. As hard as it sometimes is to stay with him, look everyone! he has stayed with me! And we love each other. A lot. More now than before.

And then there's this. As much as marriage may seem a stale affair, it's a growing, shifting beast more comfortable with geologic time then the minutes we count day to day. People do change and grow and experiment within its hold. You don't see it while it's happening, but sometimes you glimpse the results-in-progress, and it's very exciting. The man I married is not the man I'm married to now. But the one I'm with now is better than the one I chose, and he made that metamorphosis in front of my eyes. I feel honored to have witnessed it. I hope he's being gratified by similar changes in me.

NOTE: I have to add this. I don't think that in all cases staying married is the right thing to do. Nor do I think that all marriages are saved by "sticking with them." Nor do I mean to slam people whose marriages failed for serious reasons.

Infidelity v. Monogamy: A Love Story

Is ‘infidel’ the root of infidelity? I look at that word sitting there in all its faithless glory and wonder. And when opportunity knocks (a glance across a crowded room, the friend in the next cubicle you’ve always kind of had a crush on, two mouths meeting at a party, both imbibed and uninhibited, the handsome man in Fiction Aisle B at the neighborhood bookstore let’s say) do you really have to open the door?

Some people can be unfaithful again and again with a kind of weird reckless abandon, and still think it doesn’t ‘affect’ their relationship, although these same people seldom rush home and shout ‘I just slept with someone and it wasn’t you!’ so I suppose I can see their point; what your other half doesn’t know doesn’t hurt them. Or something like that.) Some people are categorically unfaithful yet think their spouse would never, ever be the same way towards them, which seems like wishful thinking at the very least. An in-elegant lie. Or a profound failure of imagination.

And then there are others who wouldn’t be unfaithful with their bodies no matter what. Their minds, maybe. Their dreams, sure. But not unfaithful in the way our culture defines it, no matter how many years pile up. No matter how difficult and rocky a relationship can be. No matter how it’s the honest truth that no one person can salve all your wounds, answer all your needs, fill the hole in your soul, be impossibly perfect and unremittingly fantastic always and forever, come what may. But I’ll throw something out there and say that that’s what friends are for. That’s what all our great intimacies are for, the friends and non-lovers who are there for us of both genders and nod, listen, agree, disagree, shake us up, think we’re crazy or mad and share their madness with us. Because the reality is – and Charlotte and I talk about this all the time – every relationship is a changing thing. Sometimes easy, sometimes unbearable, sometimes marvelous, sometimes weepily lousily awful, sometimes a little miraculous. Show me one that isn’t and I’ll show you one that it isn’t a relationship at all.

Living under the same roof with anyone (dogs, cats, birds not included) - spouse or friend, lover or family, child or partner – is difficult enough to make the poets bitch about it for centuries. And every time I think I’ve got life licked – the job or the kids, the marriage or the expectations, the friendships or the extended family – I realize again that all of this is a moving river. Some days it’s so smooth and glassy you just drift. Other times so tumultuous you'll certainly drown. It dries up till you’re walking on rocks. It brings storms. It turns beautiful. But it’s constant only in that it’s ceaseless; it's never rational nor logical and there is no GPS system so stop looking for it. At 14 you really want to believe in perfect endings and glass slippers and Nancy Meyers movies, but if you still believe in them at 26 or 38 or 44 or 51, then woe is you. Or actually: Whoa.

So anyway, fidelity. An article in the NY Times showed that for men who cheat, opportunity is far and away the number one factor. If the opportunity is there, no matter what she looks like, no matter how easy or hard or for how long, they (the ones inclined to wander) will take it. For women who stray, it wasn’t opportunity at all but the chance to feel more attractive, more appreciated or desired. But it made me wonder. These women are, by and large, with men who only see them as opportunity. Would they feel dejected by the truth? Or would it not matter at all? Does infidelity stop the river for awhile? Does it teach you how to swim, or at least hold your breath? It can be so easy to be unfaithful. Anyone can do it. Opportunity knocks everywhere you go. And being faithful to one person month after month, year after year, can be difficult sometimes, I suppose. But significant things usually are harder, aren't they? They mean more because they matter. And isn’t that the point? I mean really, isn’t that the point? - Janet

Peri-menopause on a sesame seed bun.

Hearts do not know they're wrong

Sometimes I wish we'd had the fortitude of other heterosexual couples, and simply refused to get married until everyone could marry. Everyone. Such a simple word isn't it? Such a basic thought. And to think that in 2010 this simple, basic, human right will still be denied to millions is insane. Immoral. Criminal. A sin in itself.

So for all those who try and succeed in making love a crime, a thought by Tennessee Williams, not that they'd know his name, or read his words:

What is straight?

A line can be straight,

or a street,

but the human heart,

oh,

no,

it's curved

like a road

through

mountains.

Here's to curves of every kind.

- Janet

Person of the Year

It's not the best film of the year. It's not the most brilliantly made or the most expertly crafted. It's didn't grab the headlines and for some reason - maybe fear, maybe bigotry, maybe thinking entertainment would not rightfully ensue - people stayed away. But the character of the year, the girl of the year, is Precious, as embodied by Gabourey Sidibe. She doesn't just rise, she conquers. She repels stereotypes. She refuses to fall into categories such as frail or wounded, naive or simple. She fights back with both dignity and generous intelligence. She is compassionate although compassion has never held her hand. She refuses to let her pain stand in for character, or let viciousness and cruelty inform her. She is never petty. She stands up. She stands out. She's beautiful.

And when she looks in the mirror and sees the image she wishes were reflected there - a perfectly happy, perfectly beautiful white girl with long flowing blonde hair - I really wanted to cry. But I didn't. I just kind of held my breath at the truth of it. How many of us saw, and still long to see, beautiful flawless blondes staring back at us? I wonder - what do beautiful flawless blondes see when they gaze into the mirror? Do they see the perfection? Do they ever realize it's there? Who we should all be lucky enough to see is Gabourey Sidibe as Precious. My personal nominee as human being of the year. - Janet

The Revolution will not be televised.

Janet's last post about Tiger Woods and the unbalanced news approach to the lives of athletes was wide and deep and full of stuff to respond to. In fact, I carried comments around in my head for weeks, never somehow finding the time to commit them to digital paper.

One of the things I wanted to share was a brilliant article by Malcolm Gladwell (October 19) from the New Yorker, "Offensive Play: How Different Are Dog Fighting and Football" which dives deep into the offensive, violent habits of Michael Vick but also into the possibly (if we take a long hard look) equally questionable nature of our nation's favorite sport, of which Vick himself is a participant. I urge you to read it. It seems that violence is all around us, and dogs are not the only victims, nor are the fans of dogfighting the only ones passionate about injury and permanent damage.

But, there's more. On the subject of Tiger Woods. It is true that our obsession with his private life is completely misplaced and, well, stupid. It is also true that our love of seeing our idols fall so far is ridiculous. But the fact is this: He was never the perfect man we made him out to be (or he made himself out to be, or his image-handlers made him out to be, or his sponsors made him out to be, or Accenture made him out to be) in the first place. He was, largely, a construct. A shimmering, mirage-like image built on top of true athletic skill.

The media helped create the myth. Now the media is helping to pull the myth to pieces. And nowhere in there (or at least not to a great enough extent) are we looking at the true story. Tiger isn't the issue. The media is the issue.

A free, intelligent, educated, analytical media is the heartbeat of a thriving democracy. Ours has turned into a numbing drug that is as numbed by its own stupidity as the people who are sadly subject to its output. A media that supports myths and image-making isn't doing any of us any good.

On this subject, nothing better than Frank Rich's last rant on the NYT: "Tiger Woods, Person of the Year." Reading it, I had one sad thought. Right when our country truly needs something revolutionary to happen, right when the power needs to be wrested from the hands of those who would abuse it only to rake in useless wealth at the expense of millions of others, right then...there will be no revolution and it will not be televised. Because the very media that could help bring it about (bloodlessly, one would hope, if such a thing is possible), is too involved in the lie-making to let the rest of us know what we need to wake-up and face.

This has been written in a rush, without the benefit of proof-reading. Please excuse.—Charlotte

The Private Lives of Tiger Woods and Michael Vick

Tiger Woods is not responsible for our morality, our hopes, our dreams, our better natures or our better angels. Tiger Woods is only responsible for his own.

What have we become when, ad nauseam, our airwaves scream about every move, rumor, innuendo, joke, cocktail waitress who may or may not have blah blah -- we're a nation of Rupert Murdochs. What does it say about the women who are selling their 'stories' of maybe/supposedly/ who knows/who cares/hooking up with him? He's not a criminal. There was no felony, no one died; why must we continually go through bread and circuses for national amusement? We want to make him a joke, a scandal, destroy his privacy because then we bring him down to size. There is, however, one athlete who does deserve to have his private life made public. And that is Michael Vick.

Vick is an athlete who's also a federal felon. When he went to prison fans cried out across the country: it would destroy his playing ability; he'd lose millions in endorsements and bonuses; his life would be forever ruined; were his crimes really all that bad? All lies. A court order said he can keep his $16.25 million in bonuses, even though the Falcons proved he used his contract to finance dogfighting. He now plays for the Philadelphia Eagles, with an option of 5.2 million more. Nike endorses him once again. Because of a plea agreement, he spent only 18 months in prison instead of the five years a non-celebrity would have meted. This for a crime that wasn't merely illegal, but unspeakably immoral, killing and torturing countless dogs and cats (pets, even his own, were used as bait).

Several weeks ago we pulled into a rest stop in Oregon. I noticed a dog wandering around unleashed and went to see if he had a tag. His name was Mickey something. Then I noticed his back was covered in scars. Thick, intersecting, two or three dozen railway tracks, a subway map of pain. Ears filled with holes. Scars lined his face, around his eyes, the back of his head, neck. He was well fed, clean, obviously a pit bull mix. Just then a male voice said 'Hi, can I help you?' His owner was scruffy, tattooed, a biker. Mickey ran over and jumped up and kissed him on the lips. The man said 'Three months ago he wouldn't have done this. He hid from everyone, shaking. Slept under the bed. Cried. He was a Michael Vick dog and I drove to Best Friends in Utah to get him. They called him 'Mickey Six' because he was six days away from being put down.' He then proceeded to tell me why. 'He'd been shot twice - there were still a bullet in his head here, and a bullet in his side, here. He had been ripped apart so many times they had to graft new skin here, here, and here. He'd been beaten so severely his legs and back were broken in several places. And in order to get him to fight, they'd stick electrodes in his ears and shock him. You know, get him frenzied. They did that to all the dogs. He still has seizures.' So. Let's see. Michael Vick has 'paid his debt to society' and we don't talk about him anymore. Tiger Woods admits he's imperfect and we crucify him. Why is sex in this country always more appalling than death? - Janet