Then and Now

This is a band called The Julie Ruin, and it features Kathleen Hanna a "few" years after Bikini Kill, which happens to be one of my favorite bands way back when (and maybe even still today).


I'm still thinking about this new version.





For the record, this is an official band video.

and when she opens her mouth to speak

and when she opens her mouth to speak
Snakes of rage and pain
roar from her throat
Careful! they will
force you to eat an apple
dripping with her sweet juice,
the poison of knowledge.


Pass judgment on her:
for not having children,
for being smart, for being
-according to Erikson-
isolated and stagnant,
for attempting to be herself instead,
for wanting to be heard.


Exorcise her sin, the slither
of her hips, the stomp of
her heavy boots. Forgive her
for the earthquakes she causes,
the lives she ruins.
Save her from her power
to destroy your world.

A book discussion: Dear Mr. Knightley

Dear Captain Wentworth,

I recently read a book composed entirely of letters to Mr. Knightley. Yep, you read that right- ENTIRELY of letters. The only part of the book that wasn’t a letter was the end, when Mr. Knightley of the letters became a real person. So, to be just as clever, I decided to direct my discussion of the book to you in a letter, Captain Wentworth. Unlike many Jane Austen fans, you are my favorite of her male lead characters, “heroes” if you like. You are my favorite, perhaps mostly because you were lucky enough to be in my favorite Jane Austen book, Persuasion, and actually noticed Anne Elliot, the main character in that book, for what she was, and were smart enough to realize that she was the one you wanted to accompany you on your adventures on the sea.

The book, by the way, is called Dear Mr. Knightley. The premise is that a young woman who has spent her teenage years in foster care receives a grant to go to graduate school (it has to be journalism, what’s up with that?) and all she has to do is write letters to the director of the foundation who gave her the grant, and address those letters to Mr. Knightley. When I bought the book (on sale, thankfully), I didn’t realize that the WHOLE thing was in the form of letters. I didn’t stay an English major, but I remember being told that this format was clichéd, contrived, trite, and overdone. Guess what, Captain Wentworth? It is.

By the time I had read a few of these letters, I was tired of it. It did get better toward the middle of the book, but it didn’t take long after that for me to just want her to be quiet.  This book is sickeningly sweet. Now, Captain Wentworth, people who know me will tell you that I have a huge sweet tooth. But this book isn’t sweet like that piece of wonderful chocolate that you put in your mouth and savor, let it melt on your tongue so that the taste of that piece of chocolate floods every nook and cranny of your mouth, the type of melting and flooding that makes you think the type of carnal thoughts FAR FAR more carnal than the main character of this book even knows exists. No, Captain Wentworth, this book is the aspartame type of sweet: fake, slightly off, weird and odd, and leaves a bad aftertaste in your mouth. It’s the pickup line “you’re so sweet you make my teeth ache” which should make any woman with half a brain and not very many drinks in her walk off.

Don’t get me wrong, dear Captain Wentworth, there are a couple of amazing sentences in the book. Here they are:

"The way pale yellow should look, like sunshine and butter, mixed with hope and cream"- from page 76 of the Nook book version, to describe the yellow walls of her new apartment.

And to describe the Indian food she ate with her boyfriend at the time, from page 91: "Dinner, time travel, and sunbathing rolled into one culinary experience."

However, there was a lot of wading through the mud of introspection, self reflection, and maudlin ramblings in these excruciatingly long (some of them) letters to find these gems.  And the character herself, Captain Wentworth, could actually be very likeable, whatever her name is. I was glad when Kyle found a family, and when she did also. I get that people need to work on forgiveness and relating to other people, and I especially get the building of walls. In fact, dear Captain Wentworth, if you were to sail your ship into my walls, your ship would break in pieces before my walls would even show a tiny hole. And I like you, Captain Wentworth.

But just give it to me in a story. I can only take so much. I found myself wanting to bang my head on the wall behind me in frustration way before the main character does so in the hallway of a hospital when she finds out that Alex Powell is the Mr. Knightley of the letters. For the first time, I felt in sync with this character. I would have been incredibly angry at his deception also. Of course, she promptly forgives him, probably because she’s been working so hard on relating to others and forgiveness and all that. I still wanted to bang my head against the wall.

My Jane Austen, my dear Captain Wentworth, is witty and at times caustic. Have you read her juvenilia, The History of England? Too funny, Captain Wentworth. Although she does give her female leads neatly arranged lives romantically in her novels, others do not merit such careful treatment. The character in Dear Mr. Knightley writes that she likes Fanny Price (I’m on the fence, personally), so let’s take Mansfield Park as an example. Lady Bertram and her pug are quite the comic duo, and Maria Bertram and Mrs. Norris are left sniping at each other at the end of the book as punishment for their behavior. I picture Jane Austen rolling her eyes (if they did that back then) and writing a highly satiric letter to her sister Cassandra about this book.

Anyway, Captain Wentworth, thank you for reading my letter. I know you’re married and have been for centuries, but if you weren’t and lived now and could sail your ship past my walls,

then it would be

Love,

D.D.

Men

Men.

They really are interesting creatures.

As I'm writing part of this post (in my nifty Wonder Woman journal), I'm sitting in a Barnes and Noble café surrounded by them. There's the cute one in the corner, for whom I had my friend switch seats with me so I could have a better view. They're sitting at tables with their wives or girlfriends reading, or solitary, hunched over a book with a cup of coffee or over a laptop with earplugs. One is even studying. In fact, there are far more men than women in this café in the middle of this weekday afternoon.


Eenie meenie miney mo- how much do you cost?


And when the cute one gets up to leave, I notice a tattoo peeking out from below his shirt sleeve, which prompts a debate between my friend and me about tattoos on men.  I like 'em (with some moderation), she doesn't.


Then another, slightly less cute one asks me to watch his stuff while he goes somewhere. I don't ask where. I also don't say what I would usually say to friends who ask this favor: "Sure, I'll let you know if someone steals anything." I figure I don't know him well enough to joke around like that.





On my visit to Jane Austen's cottage in Chawton, England, several years ago, I remember seeing a display that included a list of the men in her life, from the ones with whom she mildly flirted to the one from whom she accepted a marriage proposal before changing her mind shortly after. However, when I went through my pictures from that trip, I didn't find one from that display. Perhaps it didn't turn out, maybe they have a rule that states "no pictures", or maybe my memory is fooling me, as Oliver Sacks discusses here, which I found via this. Anyway, even Jane Austen wasn't immune to the cute one in the corner.


I'm pretty sure I don't have an actual point in this post.  They just are. Men.


And at least a few of them like books.