Anna Karenina: the abbreviated edition & this blogger's addendum

absorbing anna

The abbreviated edition:

“Anna spoke not only naturally and intelligently, but intelligently and casually, without attaching any value to her own thoughts, yet giving great value to the thoughts of the one she was talking to.” 

Keira Knightley and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Anna Karenina

And then she fell under a train.

Everybody was very sad.


-- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

_____________________

absorbing anna:

This blogger's addendum:

Except Anna's children grew up with a half of them still a part of her, and half of her a part of them, and this part would remain alive and shine brightly beyond all despair, hardships or even time.

Like her, they would follow their own truth, but would be carried along with an invisible strength  -- a courage which only springs from having been loved by someone with such an open and loving heart.  They would know how to follow the faintest echoes of her lingering warmth and laughter all the days of their life.  Echoes of Anna were her final gift, yet, one they were not even aware of.  It was only evident when they listened to their vaguest memory of her voice and touch when they realized which paths to follow by the voice in their heart.  

And in time there would be no family, or regime or withering stare which could ever succeed again quieting what still remained of Anna.  A spirit refusing to die, even at her own hands.

Anna and her children would remain forever bound by an inner silver thread connecting all three of their hearts.   She would be the distant star, shining brightly in the cold, black sky.  Forever bright, no matter how far the distance:  This invisible tether of love remaining her final gift which could never be lost twice.

In the end, only those who's lack of kindness and humanity toward Anna would truly feel the gravity of their actions when mirrored back to them in the eyes of her beloved children.  

And this, too, would be her final gift to them in return for their small, cruel choices.  And what they cost the world.

-------------------
Okay --  It's sappy, I know.  But the best thing about fiction is being able to alter that which is otherwise unbearable.

Merry Christmas to all...

…and to all a good night.

Apocalypse tomorrow? Ain't nobody got time for that!

For it is always Dickens in December on a cold winter's night

". . . for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself."  

- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.

"There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories - Ghost Stories, or more shame for us - round the Christmas fire; and we have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it."  

- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Tree.

Our cold, quiet Christmas of 2012

This is us not listening to the news today, oh boy.

Today we will think about joy and light and being here in the present.

Today we will choose finding joy even when darkness is all around.

We are not choosing light because we do not feel pain, darkness or despair.

No, we choose joy because it is what keeps us eternal.

And in this bleak winter month we are required to do this with even more tenacity.

Our lives challenge us to keep joy alive, however it is what anybody who ever loved us,  who ever walked this earth that we loved would demand we do.  They would demand  we choose joy, not despair.

So listen to me, no matter how dire the news is, you trust the universe, okay?   And you find your joy. Because, because -- love is all you need -- Love is all you get.

Are you listening to me?  LOVE IS ALL YOU GET.

Don't squander it.

Love really is what makes the world go round.  Not anger.  Not mean.  Not insecure.  Not fear.  Not money.  Not bitterness.  Love.  Love is what makes the world go round.

Love and joy is all we get so when you find joy, hold it fast to your heart never let it go.  And if you can't love, then just move aside peacefully and let others love -- for you.   Even if you can't be loving, don't prevent others from loving.

Love is all we get.  Love is what remains.

I have to believe this in my heart.  Like a balloon released to a gray winter's sky.

I have to believe this.  I have to trust this.

Choose joy wherever you roam, wherever you are needed, wherever you realize that you are truly happy.  Realize what you love and honor that.

We're here, then we're not.  One day, we're just -- not.

And it's the joy we leave behind that counts.

Are you listening to me?  It's the joy you leave behind that counts.

So seize your joy, whatever this is, and hold it fast to your heart -- and don't ever, ever let it go.

Follow that joy.  Follow it all the way home -- wherever that is, wherever joy leads you.

Trust the universe.  Do you hear me?  -- Choose joy.  And follow joy no matter how disheartened you are.  Do not let go of that which makes your heart sing.  If you do -- it's done.  You are here now, so just -- love.  Now.

Take joy where you are happiest and in doing so you will make your own light and then, I promise you,  there's always a way home.

Trust the universe.

Beachmint's very groovy play list...

So, work brought us up to Los Angeles yesterday to spend a bit of time in the always hip Smashbox Studios.

There I was lucky enough to discover someone else spinning a dj list with precisely my taste in music. I was forced to go make conversation asap and discover just who and what we were listening to for the day.

The dj was very gracious and shared some of their extremely terrific playlist with me.  Naturally, I had to share it, here, as well.  (Too wonderful not to share the wealth.)

Oh, one of the many thing's left off this list are selections from a music duo from France, called Air.

Hearing them is what got my attention to begin with. Never can get enough of them. However, yesterday he introduced me to even more tunes I loved but had not heard before: Such as  XXYYXX, etc.  

So, a large muchas gracias to the awesome, Mr. Aaron, along with his stellar team at BeachMint. --  Rock on.

Today the news just flattened most of us, especially those with children.

Not much to say other than the problem is beyond obvious.
My heart aches endlessly for those in headlines at this time.
The only panacea I can offer is a promise to make tomorrow safer.
And God bless your souls on this dark day.

I can almost see you

hammock

"You," by Gold Panda

Discovered these guys a few years ago and really ready for them to be discovered on a larger stage, they're wonderful.

Cool music find from the StyleMint team today

They've got one of those impossible names, XXYYXX -- But, me likey very much.

Santa's elves kind-of messed up

My mother has this thing about sending both my girls a new advent calendar every year.  It's very sweet.  This year she sent them early on, in November, 4th Class, USPS.

This is how they looked when they arrived late yesterday (12/10/12)

Part one:

The good news is that both advent calendars finally arrived and brought us much joy -- however thought I'd let folks  know that postage upgrades appears to be worth it.

Part two:  Behold our two wonderful advent calendars which survived the crushing blows of the USPS!

One is a wonderful Andy Warhol calendar and the other is a NYC advent calendar filled with little windows which each show a little famous NYC iconic image in a pop-up NYC ice skating scene.

Both courtesy of my mother who always knows where our hearts are!  Thank you!!!

The King Of Hearts

I grew up seeing The King Of Hearts on more than one occasion -- and remember being told it was "pure genius."

Not sure if I'd call it pure genius by today's standards, but it was a one-of-a-kind, enchanting cinematic fable.  It was even something of a cult favorite for a while, although now it seems to have dropped off the radar.  Today nobody's even heard of The King of Hearts.  The campy charm of this wacky anti-war tale is probably lost on today's audience.  Times change.

What has always been unforgettable for me is the appeal of Alan Bates and Geneviève Bujold who light up the screen in this absurdly innocent, romantic confection.

 Which is why it's become one of my personal favorites -- even if it's far from pure "genius."


 

The power of a muse

Renée Perle and her times as seen by Lartigue


Music from soundtrack to 1988 film The Moderns.

When I was a teenager someone gave me prints from early 1920s VOGUE covers and I plastered my walls with them. They followed me from dorm room, to dorm room and back home during the summers.

Then, later, they followed me to college where I guess they just fell apart from so much thumbtacking…

I never knew there was an actual "real" woman who inspired the covers. But, of course there was. (There always is.) She was a muse -- and her name? Her name was Renee Perle.

There are always muses and they are so often overlooked. A creative crime, really, considering they're usually more interesting than the artists who celebrates them. Everything is alchemy.

In this case it was Perle's long, cool grace which cast a unique spell on the talented artist, Lartigue, whose advertising images of her inform our ideals of marketing beauty to this very day.

Pretty cool fashion history-find today on the interent -- So naturally, I had to re-share.

Casting: still life(s) real l a

my cellphone

her casting address

& an hr btwn Eng. Lit and Pre Cal on a bday in downtown los angeles

note: guard dog in baby carriage under dangling spoons wind chime

This is what we do

Who knew Roald Dahl was such a monster? (But, was he?)

I just read a salacious piece from an interesting blog called This Recording, entitled ANGRY MAN, by Alex Carnevale, about the so-called "real life" of Roald Dahl.

It was interesting, but was it really all true?

Carnevale's post basically states that uber successful children's author, Roald Dahl, the creator of classics such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and The Giant Peach, was no more than a racist, bigoted, womanizing, pedophilic, raging, not to mention extremely cruel son-of-a-bitch.

The piece has another title as well:  In Which We Consider The Macabre Unpleasantness Of Roald Dahl

Naturally, I found this piece impossible to put down.  But as everyone knows, good non-fiction cannot live by salacious grandeur alone.  Facts are good, too.  As in this case, I suspect there's so much more to The Long and Winding Tale of Roald Dahl than has yet been told.  Somebody very clever should tell it.  Complicated people are usually very interesting.  But they are also, when told with dimension, a bit more universally accessible than An Angry Man suggests.

Speaking of tales, I could never trust any fairytale that ignored the inherent corruption and senseless cruelty in our world. Kids are betrayed, stolen and eaten every day while others get to wallow in obscene wealth inside over-protected cocoons of safety. 

It's a spin of the wheel who gets the life they have. But hey, that's life. Best to just accept these quirks of fate and tell some really entertaining stories based on universal truth.

Why ignore these realities to children? I am bored to tears by television entertainment for children, these days. It's mind-numbingly devoid of anything real. I marvel at how brain-dead children have to be to focus on Disney or Cartoon Network for more than two minutes.

However, in my case, I was quite relieved as a child to have someone talk about very real dangers and injustices in the world. My world. Better yet, get me to laugh at it, too.

Truly, I would be lost without subversive work from a variety of children's authors. Folks from Maurice Sendak to Grimm's Fairytales to Roald Dahl. Having a grown up not hide the truth about how scary, unfair, mean things can be was a relief. I am grateful to them for letting me know my feelings of alienation were not my own freakish reality in a vacuum, but were actually quite universal. I marvel those producing children's entertainment today have not learned to do any honest story-telling to kids.  The money folks  lack the courage to take risks, I suppose.  Time to find another "JT" for television, I think.  By refusing to find truly moving, truly scary children's film/writing, we all lose out. Luckily for Mr. Dahl, he had a few publishers with courage.

I found Carnevale's blog post interesting. Over the top. Probably far less than even half-true. And,  well, shamefully I still went and read the whole thing anyway.

It is a universal truth that we all get to be idiots now and then, and if Mr. Dahl was guilty of this, that's fine with me. And I don't mind reading about the more tabloid-like bits, as long it presents a more 3-D version of the man in doing so, which this article does not do whatsoever, I should add.

After all, we are all human. Some of us are more colorfully human than others, and hey, that's usually the stuff of entertainment.

It does leave me wanting to read much more, though.  Perhaps a counter view of the one dimensional view.   Shame on Carnevale for not including some real facts to substantiate his sweeping (often damning) commentary, as it was an easy way to keep it entertaining. Even Dahl would have to approve of entertainment, but it wasn't, perhaps, a fair look at Dahl at all.

However, he should now go and write his real story. Add some substance to all that juicy bite. I think then the product will improve. It's an enthralling story. Even if there's still a much more human side to Dahl very much left out of this rough draft of what he painted to be a literary monster --  or not? Perhaps that's the real job of  real writer: to inform us about all this.

Until then, I suppose I'll have to seek further clues as to who both Dahl and his first wife Patricia Neal really were (Neal was a very distant cousin, so I have to admit I am a bit biased and protective of her memory) by checking out previous, no-doubt sanitized biographies from my local library.