I thought I posted these earlier but I hadn't done so, probably since I meant to write captions. It's too late for captions now I guess - photos are all from my instagram so feel free to go explore.
Can't believe I walked 25,000 steps one day while there - my current average daily step count is around 4,500 I think. :-/
Honestly, this has not been a great week. The bits I can share include a hurricane warning on my birthday, being stuck inside all weekend long with our kittens, unable to go anywhere to celebrate, and our house flooding on Monday. I'll stop there and leave the rest to your imagination.
As you may have guessed, I did not finish any of my 40 before 40 or 400 before 40 or 4 before 40 lists or anything similar. I now have one more thing that I think I did poorly though, so I could easily make a list of 40 failures before 40, and perhaps to cap off this week of turning 41, I could even list 40 failures since 40. It's been a sickening unsatisfying messy cycle of getting wind in my sails and then having my sails fall apart over and over and over again.
Life is good, though. I could be incredibly or uncomfortably unhealthy, rather than just inconveniently and embarrassingly so. I could be destitute and without the safety of a roof over my head, or I could be living life with no amazing wonderful cats which would also be terrible.
Overall things aren't terrible but I just expected more, you know? I just expected more, that's all.
Not to sound like an old fuddy-duddy or anything, but I'm so happy to be watching a movie that doesn't have lots of blood and cursing. What a joy!
This particular film won an Academy Award for best original song (The Way You Look Tonight) and many say it's the best Astaire-Rogers film (although there's a common perception that the plot needs improvement). It's funny to me that Lucky initially sings this beautiful song to Penny while she's washing her hair, a clichéd excuse women gave for not going out. (Yes, Lucky and Penny...)
Much of the film is centered around their performances at a club mysteriously called the Silver Sandal. I wish I'd been able to go out for dinner and see entertainment like this. What an experience that must have been! It makes me wonder how they can afford it though. Cover charge? Overpriced entrees? Sixteen drink minimum?
Some of the performances were less romantic than the above. For instance:
(so many feelings)
I mean, he's so talented. It's really unbelievable. And how did they even do this? I mean, I read how they did it but I just don't see how it's possible. It's so impressive. And yet... blackface. What a weird thing blackface was. Some people even said blackface was a way for whites to pay homage to African-American culture. I can't even. But my god, he's just so talented!
And perhaps the pièce de résistance:
Now, I'm not trying to talk smack, but I will say that the three minutes of film above, if Wikipedia is to be believed, were the result of 47 takes in one day, and that Ginger Rogers' feet were bruised and bleeding by the end of it. And you thought Goodfellas were tough.
Whew! So it's been a while. Lots happened, including my awesome trip to SF, which I will write about later. In the meantime, though, here's an update on what I've been doing.
Forty Playlists:
I'm falling behind on these because they are really hard! I'm almost done with 1987-1990, which will bring me right into adolescence and grunge music, so that should be a breeze, right?!?!
1 - repair paint on carl 2 - get NC license plate
3 - get ivy from trees 4 - remove dead weeds from walkway [I feel like I've done this a million times and they keep coming back. I think that's the nature of weeds, which makes me wonder if I should take this off the list...]
5 - trim azalea
6 - file all paperwork 7 - update blog background 8 - replace filter on cat fountain
9 - do something about the doors
10 - plant something?
11 - get a new passport (need to wait until after July) 12 - go to the eye doctor
13 - go to the lady doctor
14 - go to the dentist
15 - go to the dermatologist?
16 - find a real doctor 17 - cancel Foreign Affairs subscription 18 - update address at SFFCU and get new debit card 19 - hang plants from ceiling 20 - hang intentions board 21 - edit video footage of Louis from 2015
22 - edit video footage of Collin from 2016 23 - edit video footage of Devon from 2017 24 - renew library books and return books that can't be renewed anymore 25 - fix slow draining shower!!! 26 - Write May Minimalism Challenge blog entry
27 - edit video footage of Greer's wedding from 2017
28 - finish year 1 (SF) photo book! :-)
29 - photobook for Greer!
30 - take donations away from the house! 31 - oil change for Carl
32 - curtains for the bathroom 33 - make shed lockable
Forty Unbroken Chains:
I have been steadily accumulating stuff and feel certain I will be able to accumulate more.
Forty Letters:
Honestly I'm reconsidering writing these. I'll think about it more and if I change my mind I will explain why.
Forty Acts of Self-Love:
1 - 14 - I started doing Richard Hittleman's Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan. I'm on day 14, so I'm counting it as 14. :-)
15 - another sweet half hour in the massage chair while Collin got another haircut
16 - visited some of my wonderful friends in SF
17 - mani-pedi in SF!
18 - shiatsu massage with communal bathing at Kabuki Springs & Spa, which should really count as 50 self-care acts because it was so amazing and I'm so glad I didn't find it when we lived in SF or I would have spent all of my money there, which actually may not have been such a bad thing come to think of it :-)
19 - signed up for regular facials
20 - massage and facial at Massage Envy
21 - lots of foot soaking!
22 - facial steam
23 - haircut
24 - rainbow mani-pedi
25 - massage chair at Collin's haircut
26 - lying out in the sun on the porch reading Borne
Forty Job Applications:
I am currently working part-time as a companion and just finished my application to be a Lyft driver. I'm also in talks to finalize another part-time job opportunity, so I'm feeling slightly optimistic. I'm very thankful for the opportunity I've had to really focus on finding work that makes me happy, while also taking some time to get settled into our new life in Durham. I'm ready to be at work full-time, though. This gig economy is exhausting for real.
Forty Photos:
1983? (age 6?): I love this photo of me with my dear grandma Helen reading The Value of Understanding: the Story of Margaret Mead, which may have been responsible for me deciding to be a sociologist, not to be dramatic about it or anything...
I gave a print of this to my mom one Mother's Day and this year I got a print for myself too. It's hanging beside my computer screen so I see it whenever I am in my office and often look at it when I take my "space-out breaks" (not sure what they are actually called but I'm sure you know what I mean). It's very special to me.
Forty Haiku:
Five:
my motto of late:
suck it up and suck it in!
(not sure it's helping)
Six:
seagulls gathering -
in the twilight they sort through
abandoned memories.
Goodfellas was a movie that I had seen long ago and rewatched. As I remembered, it's super good but it's really violent. This movie came out in 1990, four years before Pulp Fiction (and two years before Reservoir Dogs). It made me realize that it's difficult for me to imagine a cinematic world before Quentin Tarantino. Movies now are more violent (no more bright red
I actually read they cut out some of the bloody shots from one of the post-Lufthansa murders, which is hard to imagine when I watched the scene. It's hard to imagine more blood, and how much blood does one scene need anyway? And also, was that really a lot of blood? Who can even tell anymore? #thanksquentin
Roger Ebert pointed out in his original review of the film is that Goodfellas is largely about guilt. However, it is more complex than typical films about guilt "in which good is established and guilt is the appropriate reaction toward evil. No, the hero of this film feels guilty for not upholding the Mafia code - guilty of the sin of betrayal. And his punishment is banishment, into the witness protection program, where nobody has a name and the headwaiter certainly doesn't know it." In fact, "the real guilt, the guilt a Catholic like Scorsese understands intimately - is not that they did sinful things, but that they want to do them again" (source). In a later review, Ebert explains the way that Scorsese uses the tools in his filmmaking tool chest to allow us to see from Henry Hill's perspective why the "Goodfella" life was so appealing and the break from it so difficult.
Three groundbreaking minutes of film.
In the most famous shot in the movie, [Henry] takes his future wife [Karen] to the Copacabana nightclub. There’s a line in front, but he escorts her across the street, down stairs and service corridors, through the kitchen area, and out into the showroom just as their table is being placed right in front of the stage. This unbroken shot, which lasts 184 seconds, is not simply a cameraman’s stunt, but an inspired way to show how the whole world seems to unfold effortlessly before young Henry Hill. At first the mob seems like an opening-up of his life, but later, after he starts selling drugs, there is a claustrophobic closing-in. The camera style in the earlier scenes celebrates his power and influence with expansive ease. At the end, in a frantic sequence concentrated in a single day, the style becomes hurried and choppy as he races frantically around the neighborhood on family and criminal missions while a helicopter always seems to hover overhead.
...
A very different 3 minutes of film for a very different point in this goodfella's life.
It is an indictment of organized crime, but it doesn't stand outside in a superior moralistic position. It explains crime’s appeal for a hungry young man who has learned from childhood beatings not to hate power, but to envy it. When Henry Hill talks to us at the opening of the film, he sounds like a kid in love: “To me, it meant being somebody in a neighborhood that was full of nobodies. They weren't like anybody else. I mean, they did whatever they wanted. They double-parked in front of a hydrant and nobody ever gave them a ticket. In the summer when they played cards all night, nobody ever called the cops.”
The thing that concerns me about this and films like Pulp Fiction is the way they celebrate a zero-sum version of masculinity, and one that is relatively celebratory of violence.
Even when revealing the unfortunate brutality of the lifestyle, the violence is made to seem like, at best an unfortunate way to get what a man wants or is owed, and at worst a way to bond with fellow men and prove oneself worthy of respect.
Unfortunately I have to kill you because you owe me money.
See how it tears me up inside?
See how we're bonding now that you picked a side and it was our side?
It alarms me that young men seem drawn to this version of masculinity, which is, ironically, a very weak and fragile masculinity, dependent as it is on the subjugation of others rather than the lifting up of oneself.
Nevertheless, this is part of the definition of masculinity inspiring and teaching our young men, and training and desensitising our young women.
Example one: GoodBros
The worst part is that apparently many of them won't grow out of it. What would our future look like with men like this in charge? Oh actually I know this one:
