Wood with a gift for burning

 

Frank Harmon draws and writes this morning about the cold we've had...alligators in the east freezing, children skating on creeks not known for freezing over, and birds going about what birds do, even in this chill.  He is inside with a wood fire burning, about which, he notes, the climate people are confused whether that is environmentally good or bad.  I wrote back to him what first came to mind, and then decided to share it here:

"A wood fire burning in the fireplace.  Warmth of body and soul.  Wish I had one here, too.  Graduate students living in a farm house way out in the country halfway to Pittsboro, we had three fireplaces, one in each downstairs room.  The cozy front room where we built the bookshelves was my favorite.  I burned old wood all winter and sometimes into the spring, and read there."

Do you know that poem by Adrienne Rich, I asked him, and now ask you, about the difference between being lonely and being alone? It's called "Song"; I listen to it often these days.  That last stanza,

If I'm lonely/ it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore/ in the last red light of the year/ that knows what it is, that knows it's neither/ ice nor mud nor winter light/ but wood, with a gift for burning.

Last week, feeling the cold sneak through these old aluminum-framed windows while I sat reading, no fireplace to warm by, I called the window man and ordered new ones.  It's been on my continuing list of things to make sure the house is ready for when I'm old.  As I walk each room, doing what I usually do, I keep an eye on what needs to be changed or bettered (re-fitted, the elderly-care people say) for aging here.  I've kept my eye on such things ever since I first walked into this house, the only one for sale inside the small circle I drew on the town map, outside of which I firmly declined to consider living.

Despite the scepticism of some ("I wouldn't buy it," from my perfectionist cousin), I could see its potential for the long term.  I could spread out in first years, and consolidate in later years, leaving room for others, should I need them (not for loneliness, no...I know the difference between lonely and alone...but for care.  As it happened, theirs as well as mine).  There were lots of windows for light, and being high on the hilled street, walking distance to everything, gave it a wonderful outlook.  I bought it exactly ten years ago, never questioning, and thus began its renovation toward age.

Two weeks ago, I began the 12 months toward my 80th. (There's a funny story about that, but it's for another time.)  The years of the 9's have, historically, not been kind to me, or me to them, although this one began with lots of friendly and loving fanfare and gifts, for which I'm grateful.  But I'm more intent than ever on keeping up with that list.

Even Joseph felt it time to have the talk with me..."But what if...?" he asked me over again, attaching clauses rife with possible crises as they occurred to him.  Thankful as I was, I had to smile...it's a younger person's question, after all.  We who are about to age know it has no answer.  And, anyway, do we really need to know?

Because we can renovate all we want to or can do, but there is a double edge to that word re-nov-ate:  a freedom in knowing the future is wide open to reinvention.  In the last light of the year, ice-fast on the shore, still there, with a gift for burning.

Movie nights and days

 

I've been waking up earlier and earlier these days, my head full of ideas of things to do, changes to be made, better ways of thinking and acting.  January, my Capricorn month, has always been the time of energy mode...papers, shelves, closets and fixit house projects, yard projects, life patterns.  If by February some of those are unfinished, they mostly languish for another 11 months.  But in January, it's amazing what things get done, morning by morning, concept to completion.  Note, however, that "morning by morning" doesn't include much past the second hour of afternoon.  No matter the month, I slump by then.

Waking today, my first thought was to make a list of the movies I watch after that  witching hour when I can do no more...or, more positively put, during those later knitting and tea hours, especially on these cold and (like today) rainy days when a walk is out of the question.  

Except one or two, these won't probably be found on a Golden Globe list.  A lot are quirky, more are lighter than air.  And, also with a few exceptions, the ones I most watch were made before 1950.

I could be defensive and say that I don't watch film the way other people do, but there's no reason to be defensive.  I just don't.

So here they are, stories empty of car chases, guns blazing, cities blown up, mean men acting out political hubris in war and business, and strange creatures with molten heads running the world.  These are watch-in-winter films, in no particular order of importance, except the first.

1. I Know Where I'm Going, with Wendy Hiller (she wasn't Dame yet).   It didn't take me half a second to begin with her.  Set in Scotland during the war, the film has a lot to say about a country's home pride and those who muscle their way into it.

2. The Young in Heart, with Billie Burke and Paulette Goddard. Billie Burke has been a movie idol of mine since, as a teenager, I borrowed a book from the library on her life.  She dated Enrico Caruso, but married Florenz Ziegfield and said she got up every morning before he did, so she could do her hair and put on her makeup.  The next ones won't be a surprise.

3.  Dinner at Eight, B.B. again, with two other comediennes you won't regret watching strut their stuff:  a comedy, with tragedy woven in, it is one of those movies made of a showy extravagance, when people went to see films that for little over an hour could relieve their minds of their economic reality.

4. Merrily We Live, with B.B. and Constance Bennet.  No tragedy in this one. Only slapstick, or what you will recognize as "screwball comedies", with butler.  

4a. My Man Godfrey, in which William Powell deals with Carol Lombard over an ash heap he's living in and becomes their butler.  Don't bother with the one made after 1950.  Lots of re-done film after that time just didn't come up to the original, no matter who got to play in them.

5. Grand Hotel, with some of the same actors from #3 and the brilliant addition of Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo.  Plenty of tragedy and also redemption.

6. Dancing Lady, speaking of Joan Crawford.  Yes, she really can dance as well as be dramatic.

7. Good Girls Go To Paris, with the wonderful Joan Blondell being her spunky self.

7b. The Stand-In, where Joan Blondell makes her mark again, this time with Leslie Howard on a movie set. Humphrey Bogart is in it, but I watch it for those two.

8. The Animal Kingdom, Leslie Howard here too, with Ann Harding and Myrna Loy (from the Thin Man series, though she plays a very different woman in this).

9. Sin Takes A Holiday, another Constance Bennett...a very old one, in which her diction is quite mannered...not sure who directed her that way, but you can ignore that lapse, and enjoy her weird situation.

10. If Only You Could Cook, with Jean Arthur and a gang of gangsters who save the day.

11, 11a, 11b. You Can't Take It With You, Easy Living, and The More The Merrier...all with Jean Arthur and a full cast of famous people from those other movies above, doing silly, sometimes inspiring things.  If you like movies with seduction scenes, there is nothing better than the one in TMTM.  Easy Living, on the other hand, will have you turning to your calculator.

12. The Rage of Paris, with Helen Broderick, a character actress I'd follow in any film, and also Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. from #2, bringing his comic charm.

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13. Born Yesterday. Judy Holliday had to have won some major prize for that game of gin rummy she plays with Broderick Crawford.

14. The Philadelphia Story, with Katharine Hepburn and all the people famous from that era.  But that's probably on everybody's list.  Never mind.  Instead watch #15.

15. Holiday, with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, who's also in #14, but believe it or not, this one's better.  Their acrobatic scene was "borrowed" by Gene Kelly for Singing in the Rain...I spotted that, Gene.

There are lots more old ones in my like box, but in case you think I see only in black and white, I'll put in some newer ones. 

16. The Kindness of Strangers, with Bill Nighy.  Any movie he's in is worth it.  I don't know how I found this one, but I'm glad I did.  He plays a Russian, sort of.

16a. The Last Bus, with Timothy Spall.  He's in Enchanted, too, but you'd never know it by this film, in which he travels with the help of strangers across a country on a very emotional mission.

16b. Finding Your Feet, with three British actors I couldn't live without seeing, including Timothy Spall, who apparently can play anything.  And dance.

16c. Calendar Girls, with all the best British actresses except three, and I'm sorry they're not in it, too.  I would have loved to see what their characters made of themselves in the nude.

17. In Your Dreams.  It's Turkish, and made me want even more to go to Istanbul.  Trouble is, you can't find the film anymore.  All it says is "error" when I try.

18. Still Breathing, set in the King William district of San Antonio, a strange little film, but I like it, and Celeste Holm is in it, and the Alamo.

19.  The House by the Sea. It's in French, but you will recognize the story from old family stuff, I'm sure, no matter who your family is and even if you don't know French.

20. Amour, also in French, a beautifully done, but searing, emotional story we should all watch.

21. Louise en Hiver, about an old woman who is stranded over the winter at a seasonally abandoned beach.  It's a quiet, slow but pointed film about survival, animated in the plain gentle way of children's picture books. 

22. The Women on the Sixth Floor, French again, about class and counter-class with a bemused character who goes between.

22a. The Gilded Cage.  French and Portuguese.  A good story about who we are when we can be who we are outside of who others think we are.

23. Queen to Play, in which Kevin Kline takes second best to Sandrine Bonnaire in the game her character learns.  In French totally.

24.  A Little Game, a charming little New York tale to watch right after #23.

25. A Tuscan Wedding, purely for the fluff and looneyness of it.  It's in Dutch and Italian, believe it or not. "You can smell the Prosecco in the air!" says one of its more pathetic characters.  And she says it twice.  To her dog(s). 

26. Twelfth Night (1996) .  Yes, Shakespeare, and the best film of that play ever done.  I could watch this every week and not get tired of it.  Bonham Carter and her co-stars take over Shakespeare's language as if it were their own.  Really.

27.  The Elephant and the Butterfly.  Another good story about what we learn from others in childlike ways.  See it along with The Sense of Wonder.  Their titles could easily be interchangable, I'm realizing now.

28. The Farewell, with Awkwafina, who made a serious character out of her own life story, I think.  She's the Golden Globe winner for this.

29. This Beautiful Fantastic, one of my favorite garden rescue films.  Tom Wilkinson is in it.  You might want to pair this one with Greenfingers.

30.  Little Forest, about food and the hunger that drives us to it.  No, it's not a documentary...it's a real story.  But like #17, In Your Dreams, it's hard to find any more.

30a. Tasting Menu.  Delicious all around, though it does have a man or two with doses of hubris.

For the travel-hungry, some armchair-travel films...Perfumes and Haute Cuisine and Food Club and A Five-Star Life and Learning to Drive and The Station Master and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont and The Grocer's Son and Border Cafe and Bagdad Cafe and My Afternoon with Margueritte and A Man Called Ove (not the later American version) and the Australian Strictly Ballroom...

That should get me (and you) through the last cold day of March, if we do more than one film on a couple of afternoons and evenings.  Which I often do.

Oh:  Here's one for all you Hallmark fans...Chicklit, where the men in the pub go clear off their gourds so they don't lose their evenings of pints.