Friends

( tl;dr )

PS: Hello new friends. I don't usually use this journal, but I think I might start.

"There's this warm white light"
Samantha Schutz

that comes in the window
of the waiting room in Health Services.
I've been in a bunch of times
for back pain, sinus pressure, dizziness,
a hemorrhoid that I thought was ass cancer.

I like how the blood pressure cuff feels
tight around my arm,
the way the nurses put the cold stethoscope
to my chest and listen,
listen,
listen.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/world/news/e3i015c08bd6f66cc49a693fdf9c88cc732

BEIJING -- State-run China Film Group has pulled "City of Life and Death" from the Palm Springs International Film Festival (Jan. 5-18) to protest the event's inclusion of a film about the Dalai Lama, director Lu Chuan said on Wednesday.

The episode is the latest incidence of the Chinese government interfering with the participation of Chinese films at international festivals.

Last July, Chinese directors came under government pressure to withdraw their films from the Melbourne International Film Festival to protest a film about the life of Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, who, like the Dalai Lama, is considered a separatist by Beijing.

"My feelings are very complicated," Lu told The Hollywood Reporter. "On the one hand I'm very grateful to the film festival for giving my film greater exposure, on the other hand, when it comes to Tibet and politics, we directors have no choice but to stand together with our film company."

State-run China Film is the largest producer and distributor of films in China and holds great sway over the careers of many young directors who have come up under its influence.

"City of Life and Death," about the Nanjing massacre of Chinese citizens by invading Japanese troops in 1937 earned 180 million yuan ($26.5 million) at the Chinese boxoffice in 2009, catapulting Lu into the commercial limelight.

Soon after, Lu was signed by the Creative Artists Agency in the United States, which then brokered China Film's sale of the film last year to National Geographic, which hopes to screen the film theatrically beginning in March.

"It's my dream that the film get a theatrical distribution in the U.S." he said, hopeful that such a deal was near to closure.

Lu said an official from China Film's foreign affairs department tried to reach him last week while he was on holiday with his family to explain why the company would boycott Palm Springs by pulling the film, known in Chinese as "Nanjing! Nanjing!"

"She didn't give me the name of the government department that demanded China Film pull the movie, but she intimated that it had to do with Tibet and politics," Lu said, adding that he hoped at some later date to discuss the episode in private with whomever made the decision to pull his film.

The film in question is most likely "The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom," a documentary by directors Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam.

"I have absolutely no knowledge of the film they're talking about," Lu said.

Another film about Nanjing, the German-Chinese co-production "John Rabe" was scheduled to show at the festival. The Chinese half of that film was the Beijing based Huayi Brothers Pictures, the first publicly-listed movie company in China.

---

http://tibet.net/en/index.php?id=1336&articletype=flash&rmenuid=morenews&tab=1#TabbedPanels1

Dharamshala: Dhondup Wangchen, the Tibetan filmmaker who was arrested by the Chinese government for documenting the current situation in Tibet and Tibetan people's aspiration for return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet, has been sentenced to six years in prison, according to information received by the Central Tibetan Administration.

The sentence was pronounced was on 28 December 2009, according to the report. But it is not known where the filmmaker was tried.

Dhondup Wangchen, aged 35, was arrested with his monk assistant named Jigme Gyatso on 26 March 2008 for making the film “Leaving Fear Behind” in Tibet, which documents the lives of Tibetans under China's rule, views about His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Beijing Olympics.

Jigme Gyatso was released on bail seven months later, on 15 October 2008, and reported that he had been tortured in detention.

Wangchen was initially detained at the Ershilibu detention center in Sining, Amdo. He was transferred a few months later to a government-run guesthouse nearby, probably for the purpose of interrogation, before being sent to the No. 1 Detention Center in Sining. Wangchen has been suffering from hepatitis B, for which he said he has been denied adequate medical treatment, the International Campaign for Tibet, the US based rights group said in its report on 17 September 2009.

The Chinese government arbitrarily replaced the lawyer chosen by Wangchen, Li Dunyong, with a government-appointed lawyer in July 2009. The Human Rights Watch strongly condemned the move as a “violation of China’s criminal procedure law and its obligations under international human rights law, which guarantee criminal defendants the right to choose their own defense counsel and to meet with their counsel while in detention”.

Wangchen's lawyer, Li Dunyong reported that his client had been tortured in order to extract a confession and that some of the injuries he sustained as a result were still painful a year later. During that discussion Wangchen stated that he intended to plead not guilty and had admitted no wrongdoing during his 16 months in detention.

“A verdict against Dhondup Wangchen under the present circumstances will have no legitimacy whatsoever,” Human Rights Watch said in its statement on 3 August.

"Tiara"
Mark Doty

Peter died in a paper tiara
cut from a book of princess paper dolls;
he loved royalty, sashes

and jewels. I don’t know,
he said, when he woke in the hospice,
I was watching the Bette Davis film festival

on Channel 57 and then—
At the wake, the tension broke
when someone guessed

the casket closed because
he was in there in a big wig
and heels, and someone said,

You know he’s always late,
he probably isn’t here yet—
he’s still fixing his makeup.

And someone said he asked for it.
Asked for it—
when all he did was go down

into the salt tide
of wanting as much as he wanted,
giving himself over so drunk

or stoned it almost didn’t matter who,
though they were beautiful,
stampeding into him in the simple,

ravishing music of their hurry.
I think heaven is perfect stasis
poised over the realms of desire,

where dreaming and waking men lie
on the grass while wet horses
roam among them, huge fragments

of the music we die into
in the body’s paradise.
Sometimes we wake not knowing

how we came to lie here,
or who has crowned us with these temporary,
precious stones. And given

the world’s perfectly turned shoulders,
the deep hollows blued by longing,
given the irreplaceable silk

of horses rippling in orchards,
fruit thundering and chiming down,
given the ordinary marvels of form

and gravity, what could he do,
what could any of us ever do
but ask for it.

"Dear Miss Emily"
James Galvin

I knew the end would be gone before I got there.
After all, all rainbows lie for a living.
And as you have insisted, repeatedly,
The difference between death and the Eternal
Present is about as far as one
Eyelash from the next, not wished upon.
Rainbows are not forms or stories, are they?
They are not doors ajar so much as far-
Flung situations without true beginnings
Or any ends—why bother—unless, as you
Suggest—repeatedly—there’s nothing wrong
With this life, and we should all stop whining.
So I shift my focus now on how to end
A letter. In XOXOXO,
For example, Miss, which are the hugs
And which the kisses? Does anybody know?
I could argue either way: the O’s
Are circles of embrace, the X is someone
Else’s star burning inside your mouth;
Unless the O is a mouth that cannot speak,
Because, you know, it’s busy.
X is the crucifixion all embraces
Are, here at the nowhere of the rainbow’s end,
Where even light has failed its situation,
Slant the only life it ever had,
Where even the most gallant sunset can’t
Hold back for more than a nonce the rain-laden
Eastern sky of night. It’s clear. It’s clear.
X’s are both hugs and kisses, O’s
Where stars that died gave out, gave up, gave in—
Where no one meant the promises they made.
Oh, and one more thing. I send my love
However long and far it takes—through light,
Through time, thorough all the faithlessness of men,

James Augustin Galvin,

          X,

His mark.

- meet with prelaw execs
- go to the gynecologist
- finish Breakfast of Champions
- literature review + method for thesis
- pornography paper
- watch 2001 A Space Odyssey
- Steel Banana articles

is that so hard!? come on, Nancy, pull it together.


I might have a job soon. ffffffuuuu credit card debt.

"Auburn Poem"
Hayden Carruth

A book I was reading this morning
by Milan Kundera contains this: "In the algebra
of love a child is the symbol of the magical

sum of two beings." And now that child
is thirty-nine years old; she is suffering
from a cancer which we are told is incurable

and will become fatal. You have been married
for thirty years to another man, and I
have been married to three other women

and have lived with six whom I did not
marry—a disgrace but there it is, done
and irrevocable. We are old. You are

sixty-nine and I am seventy. It would be
sentimental folly to say I can see in you,
or you in me, the lineaments of our

loving youth. Yet it is true. Your voice
especially takes me back. We are here
because our daughter, whom we conceived

one fine April night in Chicago long ago,
is crucially vulnerable. We meet in agony,
in wordless despair. We meet after years

of separation and mildly affectionate
unconcern. But it's true, true, this child
who is a mature, afflicted woman

with children of her own, is still a symbol
of that magical sum we were, and in this
wretchedness, without word or touch or hidden

glance, I hold myself out to you, and I know
I am accepted without word or touch or hidden
glance. This, so late, the crisis of our lives.

I'm stalking this girl's facebook ... I don't really know her but Matt and I looked after her cat while she was gone. So I'm creeping her photos not because I give two shits about her but to look at pictures of Charlie, her cat.



Fuck, my heart - it is goop.

"Snow"
Anne Sexton

Snow, blessed snow,
comes out of the sky
like bleached flies.
The ground is no longer naked.
The ground has on its clothes.
Trees poke out of the sheets
and each branch wears the sock of God.

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
I bite it.
Someone once said:
Don't bite till you know
if it's bread or stone.
What I bite is all bread,
rising, yeasty as a cloud.

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail.

"January"
John Updike

The days are short,
The sun a spark
Hung thin between
The dark and dark.

Fat snowy footsteps
Track the floor,
And parkas pile up
Near the door.

The river is
A frozen place
Held still beneath
The trees' black lace.

The sky is low.
The wind is gray.
The radiator
Purrs all day.

---

Do you have any New Year's resolutions?

"The Coming of Light"
Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

"Fragments for the End of the Year"
Jennifer K. Sweeney

On average, odd years have been the best for me.

I’m at a point where everyone I meet looks like a version
of someone I already know.

Without fail, fall makes me nostalgic for things I’ve never experienced.

The sky is molting. I don’t know
if this is global warming or if the atmosphere is reconfiguring
itself to accommodate all the new bright suffering.

I am struck by an overwhelming need to go to Iceland.

Despite all awful variables, we are still full of ideas
as possible as unsexed fruit.

I was terribly sorry to be the one to explain to the first graders
the connection between the sunset and pollution.

On Venus you and I are not even a year old.

Then there were two skies.
The one we fly through and the one
we bury ourselves in.

I appreciate my wide beveled spatula which fulfills
the moment I realized I would grow up and own such things.

I am glad I do not yet want sexy bathroom accessories.
Such things.

In the story we were together every time.

On his wedding day, the stone in his chest
not fully melted but enough.

Sometimes I feel like there are birds flying out of me.

"The Bat"
Claudia Emerson

We didn't know what woke us—just something
           moving, lighter than our breathing. The world
                      bound by an icy ligature, our house

was to the bat a hollow, warmer cavity
           that now it could not leave. I screamed
                      for you to do something. So you killed it

with the broom; I heard you curse as you
           swept the air. I wanted you to do it until
                      you did. I have never forgiven you.

"Letter To The Woman Who Stopped Writing Me Back"
Jeffrey McDaniel

I wanted you to be the first to know - Harper & Row
has agreed to publish my collected letters to you.

The tentative title is Exorcist in the Gym of Futility.

Unfortunately I never mailed the best one,
which certainly was one of a kind.

A mutual friend told me that when I quit drinking,

I surrendered my identity in your eyes.

Now I'm just like everybody else, and it's so funny,

the way monogamy is funny, the way
someone falling down in the street is funny.

I entered a revolving door and emerged
as a human being. When you think of me
is my face electronically blurred?

I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniest
satellite dish in the universe, your smile
as the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed.

Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder.

I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash,
how I once held the soft audience of your hand.

I've been ignored by prettier women than you,
but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence
so far, without spilling a drop.

"As Far As Cho-Fu-Sa"
Mookie Katigbak


"If you are coming down the narrows of the river Kiang,
let me know beforehand and I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-Fu-Sa."
- The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter, Li Po
translated by Ezra Pound


What I am, ever, is this: composure of stone.
Spare weather visiting the garden, small as the hours
I keep watch by. Beyond this wall

Must be better weathers. This claw of stars
Must constellate somewhere into a bear,
Else names would lie.

Since winter's thaws, no script from you
Save this: "I travel the river and follow
The white gulls—"

Husband. See me walking the dusty pass
Where loom our prior lives?
Here the years pass that I enshrine

Within these walls, sparing nothing
From the ardors of my stare. Blue plums,
Paired butterflies repeat you

In a walled world. I tell myself
To clear the moss, mend the gate
So long unswayed and caked with dirt,

But nothing moves. Somewhere
You are actual. Happen to me there.

---

The poem upon which this poem is based/from which this poem drew its inspiration has been posted. You can find it if you click "Li Po" on the tags. (Those would be at the bottom of this entry and on the left side of the main page.) There are three versions of Li Po's poem posted, including the one translated by Ezra Pound.

enroll in art and photography classes
enroll in actors studio
find a job I enjoy and can build off of
work towards moving out
get my license
start saving
start sewing
fix family relationships
work towards graduation

It's all so close I could get it, another year has passed, and I'm still working dead end jobs, I havent gone an tried to get my high school diploma, I'd got the habits that I wanted to quit last year still going, and that 10 pounds of my ass and thighs I wanted to lose, still hasn't gotten lost. I'm still in a bedroom and still with a man who can't yet even be considered a man because he still has the maturity level of an infant(he'd love to beg to differ, but I think not). I need change, and I can't feel it, I need to start mastering my talents, and molding my future, because now for the first time I've decided I can't really keep doing what I'm doing, because If I kepp doing that my future is going to be pretty fucking bleak. I'm sick of shopping trips, it'll never satisfy, I'm unsatisfied in my relationship, I'm unsatisfied at my dead end job and I'm unsatisfied with me. I want to enrole in acting classes, and I actually want to learn songs on my ukelele, I want to stop making photography a play thing and maybe think of it as a job oporunity. I want to start sewing and making all the ideas in my head a reality, an maybe open my own store. I want to graduate this year, or at least work towars graduating. I want to start saving money so I'm not constantly in and out of debt, I dont want to keep living from pay check to pay check. I want to stop talking about moving, and actually move. I wanna do it.I want to be happy with my body, I want to lose that 10 pounds, plus 10 more. I want something constant and I want something fufilling, I want to give my relationship one last shot, try to rearrange it, try to add something to it, and finally finally if there is notihng I can do to satisfy myself in that relationship. I want to give up on that relationship. Even though I love him. I'm so sure that each day I'm loving him less. I dont want days of boredom. I want to be happy, I want my mother tobe happy, I want to make her happy and proud of me.

I've had it so comfortly, I've been so spoiled everything has been handed to me out of guilt for the life I endured before this life. I have nine lives, and this is life three. It's time for me to have life four start. I will do this, because I'm putting my foot down, by this time next year, I wont even recognize this person. I promise

"Christmas 1963"
Joseph Enzweiler

Because we wanted much that year
and had little. Because the winter phone
for days stayed silent that would call
our father back to work, and he
kept silent too with our mother,
fearfully proud before us.

Because I was young that morning
in gray light untouched on the rug
and our gifts were so few, propped
along the furniture, for a second
my heart fell, then saw how large
they made the spaces between them

to take the place of less. Because
the curtained sun rose brightly
on our discarded paper and the things
themselves, these forty years,
have grown too small to see, the emptiness
measured out remains the gift,

fills the whole room now, that whole year
out across the snowy lawn. Because
a drop of shame burned quietly
in the province of love. Because
we had little that year
and were given much.

---

Merry Christmas.