grace

The New York Times wrote an obit for Grace Paley today. I knew she hadn't been well for a while but it still caught me by surprise. I really admire and love this woman, first as a writer. Her stories always have so much compassion for her characters, who she writes as being harried and uneventful, but very very honest with and interested in one another. Her spot-on dialogue always seem able to represent multiple generational or social perspectives. But within all this openness and effort to understand the motivations and situations of others, she also communicated very clear moral stances: there is one story where she discusses being in a segregationist context, on a bus, and she is holding a black baby boy and a white man tells her: "I wouldn't touch that thing with a meathook." And in the context where this violent and dehumanizing statement represents the status quo, all she can do is hold the baby closer to her. So even her protest manifests itself as an act of love and protection: love as a fierce rejection of articulations of hatred.

I love her work, but as I think about her, I realize that I model myself after her: I think she was the first truly elderly woman that I knew who could glory in being silly and childish and I didn't think she should act her age and I didn't lose any respect for her. I think admiring her and loving her as much as you can love someone who hardly knows you and whose life you are not a significant part of gave me a kind of permission to be silly and crazy and enjoy those aspects of my person without worrying that these outbursts would make me a less Serious Person.

The Lists

TO DO WORK: Write chamoiseau close reading for c3. Write a first draft of research statement. Analyze dvd for c4. Finish revising c2 (intro/signposting, performance of identity tie-in for both close readings, coda)
DONE! Revised half of c2, still have to do tie-in for Pepin and the coda. Totally aborted attempt to rewrite the first parts of c3.

TO DO LIFE: Pay down debt (currently $1,031.09). Procure dog. Buy suit. Read Therí's paper. Go to dmv and figure out car insurance. Get Tanya's present. Return boxes to the container store. Paint the bathroom. Resend Siff letter. Sell file cabinet.
DONE! Didn't need to send Siff letter--they found it! Bought more items for the bathroom, a shower caddy that stands alone and a shelf structure for above the toilet. Now I have to put them together. A setback: I cannot resurrect my suspension shower curtain, so I am left sans shower until the door gets installed. When? Who knows. More setbacks: my fridge seems to be irretrievably lost. The soonest I'll be able to get it will be next friday, I believe. Totally unacceptable.

TO DO BLITZ: sarah, marilyn, giulia, irmary, mariana, dar, nv, sf, marzena, thérèse, toño, jerven, magdalena, staceymo.
new subset: TO DO CALL: hen, lauryn.
DONE! sent packages to Rafe and my cousin Cindy, blitzed Marianne.

Netflixed

The Iron Giant
I knew nothing of this movie other than it was Brad Bird's first (despite the kind of elitist ideological leanings of his movies, I totes admire and enjoy The Incredibles and Ratatouille). This one is hand-animated, forcibly creating a very different feel: it's mostly in the timing I think. Whereas the characters in pixar films have very malleable facial expression, shifting between nuances of a singular emotion very quickly, here, emotional change moves evidently frame by slower frame. It's not quite as fluid, and as a result, not quite as subtle. But anyway, The Iron Giant still does beautifully what animation does best, to my mind: to endow objects and animals with sentience and take seriously the emotional lives of non-human beings.
Moreover, I cried myself a boatload of tears at the end of the movie, translation: two thumbs up!