1. New Wes Anderson movie trailer, if you haven’t already seen it. I believe my actual reaction to someone sharing this was, “I just peed a little.”

2. Portland’s version of community libraries.

3. A roundup of religion-approved sex toys. Not just for Christians, either– Jews & Muslims can get some, too.

4. If you thought Bark was a Tebow-free zone, think again, my friends. (And yes, the religious sex toys provided a natural lead-in for this.) To mark his exit from the playoffs and in the hopes that we won’t hear about him for a while– at least until he pays for more obnoxious ads during the Super Bowl– I give you…Tebowie.

5. For all you Apple diehards: NPR wants you to know where and how all those great products are made.

If you’re lucky enough to have the day off, enjoy the hell out of it, all right?

Click here to view the embedded video.

My reason for casting this conversation has this goal:   to suggest that in 2012 we will have the opportunity of the century.

One hundred years ago, the Titanic sailed into posterity and sank in the cold Atlantic primarily because of  hubris and arrogance.   We wanted to cross the sea faster with as much fine china as possible, and we wanted to do it in a way that reinforced the stratification of upper, middle and lower classes.   Well, rather than seeing that all recounted in 3D, we might glance to the left and to the right and find on dry land a partner who longs for the humility of dialogue.   That is — not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill conversation, in which one party rehearses his jargon while the other is speaking…  Not a Reality TV meltdown with tears and dramatic fisticuffs, sponsored by Coke:  Drink Happiness!   Rather, a dialogue that gets at the muddled roots of an on-going theological, philosophical debate that simply will not die.   At issue is the existence of THE OTHER, and the problem I see is the polarizing tone of both a Newt Gingrich and/or a Bill Maher.   

Click here to view the embedded video.

First, we come upon A High-Toned Old Christian Woman, who is addressed like so:

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven.  Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle…

You see, what’s at stake in this polite re-contextualizing of religion happens to be the institution, which is the thing that has been clearly crafted by folks with oppositional thumbs and therefore are handy at building walls with stained glass windows.   The poet infers that we are somehow impressed with the largeness of the peopled organization and like Sigmund Freud would side with those who believe God and heaven to be mere imaginative constructs… or a transference of the intentionality we experience in making New Year’s Resolutions to the Universe as a whole.

However, rather than see this verse as refutation of blind and stupid belief and believism, I’m impressed with the way Wallace Stevens leaves a door open with this line:

This will make widows wince.  But fictive things
Wink as they will.  Wink most when widows wince.

Again, the reader may be under the misapprehension that a “wink” is meant to cast dispersions upon theological discussion and authentic philosophical exploration.  I do not think so.

On the contrary, a wink suggests a playfulness in which two or more parties agree to some hidden narrative, an inside joke which cannot be named or told directly…  A wink proclaims I’m with you in this house of cards and if the whole thing collapses I’ll be with you in the effort of discerning what, if anything, provides the foundation for the house.   We agree, then, that we make.  We poetically make a structure and we inhabit it and make allowances for the sake of convenience.  Its comfortable to gather with others and to wink and to think through a story of revelation.   Finally, however, we must admit that the revelation has been divulged and passed down to us via a cadre of winking eye-lids with hands that will eventually develop arthritis.

Not to worry.

In the Stevens’ poem, Sunday Morning, another woman is pictured enjoying her “coffee and oranges in a sunny chair.”   Her solitude is briefly interrupted by “that old catastrophe,” referring to the crucifixion stories of the canonical gospels — Jesus, his suffering and death!   In response to this annoyance of guilt (so often equated with the goal of the local congregation’s observance of worship), the omniscient narrator of this snippet (not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) pens this second of eight stanzas:

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in   silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods of falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch
These are the measure destined for her soul.

Rock on, I say, Mr. Omniscient Narrator (Wallace Stevens imagines himself inside and outside this person’s psyche)!!!!

And yet, what is this if not another wink?   A fictive thing?

The most ardent of atheists might want to consider this in conversation with the thick-headed conservatives who push for theocracy and ‘In God We Trust’ on our coinage.   Fictions work.   Fictions get at the Truth of that Mysterious Given.   We ALL create or co-create plausibility structures and seek out communities that support and reinforce those structures.   Get used to it.   In 2012 resolve to wink at the walls we tack into place and perhaps not lean too much weight upon them.

A theologian and literary critic, by the name of Amos Wilder, has commented on Steven’s poetry and taken Sunday Morning for what its worth:   “Our faith appears to say ‘no’ to life…”

to be a blasphemy against the beauty and goodness of the natural order.  Here, indeed, a very basic issue is raised even when we recognize that many such charges are superficial.  The Christian cannot admit that the poet is partly right…  The best literary expressions of our secular culture can be understood on one side as the protest of the modern soul against the starved and meager aspects of the Christian heritage in this period (Modern Poetry, Wilder:  242).

Another scholar who has Stevens trained in his sights is M.L. Rosenthal, who unlike Wilder, will advance an interpretation of Sunday Morning without an interest in preserving the integrity of the church’s proclamation.   Rosenthal emphasizes the core experience of the woman who juggles the elation in the sun with the guilt of the crucifixion “encroachment.”   Upon closer examination, however, that supposed core is not really core.   It actually orbits like a satellite “an overwhelming sense of loss at life’s transience” (Poetry and the Common Life:  19).

Stevens, in fact, does not recommend a pagan alternative to the Christian story, as he understands and represents it.  In the seventh stanza, “devotion to the sun” will give way to the phrase “Not as a god, but as a god might be,” and with this MIGHT there is a powerful opportunity.

Where have Stevens, Wilder and Rosenthal learned to stand in awe and in reverence of something so imprecise?   At the same place where Tim Tebow learned to kneel on the football field?  This very question allows for hope in 2012.   It is tantamount to the ‘Titanic’ that will not sink….

Happy New Year!    Happy New Year to both… a high-toned old Christian woman and to the lady on the terrace, munching on citrus… I know you’re out there still.

Peace–

it’s unconscionable how much time i’ve spent watching that movie.  yeah, i’ve read the nick hornby novel, too, but the movie (coincidentally?) set in chicago is the one i keep going back to:  when i learn something about actual relationships that i should have learned waaaaay back on my 57th viewing.  when i’m happily drunk.  when i’ve just been dumped by a girl.  when i want to hear to hear lisa bonet’s character cover peter frampton (the absence of which is a tragic oversight on the soundtrack album).

anyway, this week i returned once more to the adventures of my hapless hero, rob gordon (as played by john cusack)—primarily for his thoughts on what makes a good mix tape.  primarily because this past week i made a pretty damn good mix for someone, but (in the words of rob himself) “did not give it to them for personal reasons.”

(coincidentally?) a friend of mine who is a teacher recently received a mix cd from one of their students.  as in, the student presented the cd in the course of asking this teacher out to dinner.  before grades were finalized.  yeah—i know, right?  kids these days… nevertheless, i couldn’t help but reflect on the legitimacy of music mixes as a companion piece to communicating (like, you know, grown-ups do).  especially when using rob gordon’s opinion as a starting point:

the making of a good compilation is a very subtle art—many do’s and don’ts.  you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel.  this is a delicate thing.

obviously, even the best curated setlist is no replacement for real dialogue between people.  but is there still a place for a good mix when you’re talking about a developing adult relationship?  can a mix be thoughtfully compiled and presented as a meaningful aide to communicating?  or is it hopelessly juvenile to try sketching out real emotion by simply putting pop songs in a particular order?  maybe it should just be a nice gift to give to friends as they drive off into the sunset?

let’s take a poll.  use the comments section to describe the last time you made a mix for someone, including the relationship you had to this person, the occasion for the giving, and (if ye be so bold) the tracklist itself.  put it all out there for the world to see, you pathetic bastards.

What would T.S. Eliot say about the financial crisis of the last few years, if not decades?   And what would he DO about it?   The answers are complicated and filled with dizzying contradictions.  Consider, if you dare, items one through five:

1.   T. S. Eliot worked in the finance industry.
2.   In April of 2011, the British Arts Council Arts voted to defund the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry which designates a whopping $23,000 for the winner each year.
3. Over one hundred British poets protested the resolution.
4. Aurum Funds, a hedge fund corporation, said that it would be happy to take over the bankrolling of the T.S. Eliot Prize.
5. Alice Oswald, who won the prestigious prize in 2002, has just recently pulled out of this year’s competition, saying, “I think poetry should be questioning and not endorsing such institutions…”

Indeed.  Perhaps “poetry” should be.

But, should poets be?   Should the actual flesh & blood & sinew creator of verse be…?

The moral imperative of Immanuel Kant would prevail upon us here to be very frank with both the avid readers and non-readers of the craft.   It would remind us in fact that poets ought not to cozy up with private for-profiteers, whether the companies in question are responsible for the financial crisis or not; and that poetry, with all its tools of the trade, would show us, rather than tell us, that to be free of these perverse entanglements is akin to making one’s self available to the muse.

However, let’s play the devil’s advocate and consider how “Satan,” in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, might tackle the dilemma.   Satan, to be precise, is the most interesting character in that political activist’s magnum opus, from the Pandemonium palace to the blessed environs of Eden.  He is much more than the one-dimensional figure of say “The Exorcist” or “The Devil Went Down To Georgia.”   No, this fallen figure wants to get even with the Deity and so devises a plan that might infiltrate and plunder the character of human beings.   You see, it’s all very subtle, slant and indirect something that poets might like to consider when receiving direct deposits into their money management accounts.   That is to say, we could assume the role of the provocateur in the corporate garden.  We could, with intact conscience and admittedly flawed consciousness, sneak a Trojan horse into the whole shooting match.

Ooops, wrong epic-narrative.  But what the hell?   Poets are doing this thing all the time.   There’s even a phrase that’s been especially coined for this jarring juxtaposition of allusions or this mixture of metaphors.  It’s none other than Poetic License. And I’m pretty sure that British bards know where to go to sign on the dotted line.   American ones certainly do.One place is On The Amtrak from Boston to New York City, where Sherman Alexie goes through the motions with a fellow traveler and keeps quiet as she admires Walden Pond.   (Evidently, there are lots of licenses to be had there.)  During the course of the poem, the speaker gives us both the interior and exterior view of his persona.   He respects his elders no matter what color.   But he also learns how to handle “the Enemy.”   What’s up with that?  Does the native  poet mean by this expression to perpetuate the ugly chasm between European settlers and the indigenous peoples of North America?   Or does the Seattle artist simply want to toss a disturbing monkey wrench into the gears and measures we have for determining literary and cultural greatness?

doesn't he look like a banker to you?

I think it’s the latter.  I hope its the latter.  And I think, given the right circumstances, the T.S. Eliot Prize can still foster poetry that subverts “the Enemy” of the financial despotism.  The  problem, of course, is that Machiavelli monsters don’t appear in broad daylight.  Ninety-nine percent of the one-percent occupy the highest of moral high ground and will not relinquish it any time soon.  Another way of saying this is that the trickle-down economists of any community hire pawns who operate out of allegiance to the only system they know.  As far as they know, Aurum Funds is doing a good thing when it sponsors and subsidizes the memory of T.S. Eliot.  As far as they know, Alice Oswald is being a party-pooper… which means…?

 

…Which means that she and others must do what Sharon Olds has said, in so many words, to her parents, and to everybody’s parents really.   “Do what you are going to do and I will tell about it,” she writes in her great work, I Go Back To May, 1937.

 

Click here to view the embedded video.

I know.  I know.  You suspect that I’m copping out on a great opportunity to take a stand.  You worry that I’m appeasing the establishment because I’m not yet an accomplished and well-rewarded author in my own right.  Go ahead and whisper it or click it out in a comment:  You assume that I’m kissing up to the T.S. Eliot brain trust and that flattery will get me everywhere.

 

Well, not exactly.

Rather, I’m taking a page out of The Grapes of Wrath, and I’m raging against the following paragraphs of that John Steinbeck novel:

 

“Sure,” cried the tenant men, “but it’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours. That’s what makes it ours—being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.”

“We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man.” “Yes, but the bank is only made of men.”

“No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”

So, imagine if you will, a poet who infiltrates the banking industry.  He or she might come from Missouri, the heartland of America, pass through Harvard in three years and voila!  (He might even parlez a little francais!)  One day this poet takes a high rollers position with Lloyd’s Bank of London!   It could happen.  Has it happened?   Now, I’m seriously confused.

 

Peace–

At a Dave Matthews Band Concert in 2007

MFA Land is a place where we refine our tastes. Here we talk Alice Munro and the Writer at the Desk. We like Bon Iver, Micro Brews and making disparaging comments about hipsters despite the pair of skinny jeans hanging up in our closet, the Sasquatch tickets we’re waiting to order and the American Apparel email updates we receive every other week. We use words like Kafkaesque, Sestina, and Media en Res far too often, and to us, the outside world is so fucking cliche.

I’m not here to argue that there’s something aesthetically pleasing about St. Vincent’s new album, or that Murakami is a fucking genius. However, I do think that higher learning in some way demands we give up old pleasures, or at least hide them from the light of world where no one can see them. It’s why during a break in classes you have a copy of “The Gunslinger” tucked inside of “In Our Time,” why the songs you once loved in the 1990′s have long since been deleted from your itunes library. In academia, maybe as a defense mechanism we bury these little, embarrassing pieces of ourselves and replace them with a sort of uniform grad school sensibility.

In talking to Sam Edmonds at the bar, who told me his guilty pleasure was listening to the Gin Blossoms (Sorry Sam, I love you), hearing an interview where Edward P. Jones admitted to watching Judge Judy religiously, or in driving with my girlfriend who listens to trashy dance music with the volume turned up high, these moments gave me the strength to come forward with some of my hidden pleasures.

Below I’ve included a full list of embarrassing music, television, movies and life decisions that don’t entirely cohere with high-brow sensibilities but that I very much love. What are some of your hidden pleasures?

1. I’ve seen the Dave Matthews Band in concert. Twice.

2. I know every word to the Nora Jones album, Come Away with Me, The Weepies, Say I am you, as well as several albums by Jack Johnson, John Mayer, and Trapt. That one hurt a little to write.

3. I love the movie Juno. Damn you all for hating it. It’s quirky and I like that and even though the dialogue isn’t realistic, I don’t care. It’s pithy and wonderful. As is the movie Garden State.

4. And I kind’ve like Zach Braff. He’s sensitive.

5. Also, anything that has anything to with zombies. Forever.

6. Sitcoms are an art form. How I Met Your Mother especially. Life is Seinfeld, and M*A*S*H* and a corner bar where everyone knows your name.

7. Hot Pockets count as a complete meal, they’re delicious and comforting. They feel like a microwaved version of home.

8. Stephen King is a decent writer. The Dark Tower Series, Salem’s Lot and Carrie were damn fine books.

9. It’s ok to cry when you read Calvin and Hobbes. And laugh. And hug the book to your chest while you’re in a blanket fort reading under a flashlight. It’s ok.

10. I drink protein shakes. The mixture I use is called Amplified Wheybolic Extreme 60. I wish I made that up.

11. Simulation war video games are a great stress reliever. Even when you throw your controller against a wall because a trash-talking 13 year -old playing under the call name Bi3ber4eva69 has shot you repeatedly in the face.

12. I’m in 9th place out of 12 in my fantasy football league. That’s all that needs to be said.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Disappointing, MJ.

  It’s really not funny, though. Seibel Newsom frames the movie in a personal way—she has a daughter, and she wants better than a world where female politicians are called Mrs. instead of by their earned title, where Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ankles are more important than her ideas on foreign policy, and where a photo of Michele Bachmann eating a corn dog or making “crazy eyes” is national news.  I want this, too.  I cried, in fact, because my oldest child right now is a little girl who is confident in her intelligence, her kindness, and her equality.  Right now, she believes she is both beautiful and smart, both kind and capable.  I never felt this way as a child, that I can remember, and it feels like one of my biggest successes as a parent that all of my kids seem to.  I fear the time is coming, though, those years when girls turn from confident happy people into virtual strangers who obsess about their looks and appearance, forgetting all that made them proud to be themselves as children. 

 There’s a sorry and unacceptable lack of female politicians in America, and it’s not hard to see why the field is a difficult one for women.  And when our children do not see female politicians, they get the idea that women can’t run a town or lead a state or a country.  When our children see female anchors in low-cut blouses and male anchors in suits and ties, they get the idea that what the female anchor wears is as important as what she says.   And when our children see pop stars more famous for their boobs and butts than for their singing…well, you get the point.  How discouraging!   As Jennifer Pozner (author of Reality Bites Back) says in the film, “The fact that the media are so derogatory to the most powerful women in the country, what does it say about the media’s ability to take any woman in America seriously?” 

But it’s not just the big things.  It’s not just idiotic Rush Limbaugh jokes about PMS and sexist magazine covers, even from supposed progressive groups or people.  It’s the little things that matter.   And when our own city’s police chief is described by the Spokane Police Guild president as too emotional to make the right decision, that’s a little thing that matters. 

This article at The F Word highlights some of the ways Miss Representation could have done more, and I agree that it could have been more inclusive in terms of subsets of women, including more women of color, considering ableism and class.  I think a film can always do more, and I agree that a lot of the film confirmed what I already knew, though I was still shocked by the sheer statistics. John Boehner as Speaker of the House garnered FIVE magazine covers righty off, while Nancy Pelosi came in at the much smaller number of ZERO after four years in office.  The US ranks 90^thIN THE WORLD for women in legislative positions.  This year, 2011, is the first year since 1979 when women have not gained Congress seats. 65% of women have eating disorders.  Now, I did a quick search and I did find Pelosi on a cover, one where we’re invited to fill in the blank  to describe her.  The only surprising thing about this terrible cover is that they forgot to put “bitchy” and “uppity” in the choices.

This is how the media used to see women in politics...

So no, women in the media don’t have it better now than twenty or thirty years ago, not much at all.  Which is not to say that there’s nothing us men and women can do about it.  There’s plenty.  As Jane Fonda noted, “Media creates consciousness, and if what gets put out there that creates our consciousness is determined by men, we’re not going to make any progress.”  So let’s make progress.  There’s a great hashtag on Twitter right now , #notbuyingit, where you can post sexist gift ideas.  (and speaking of Twitter, if you’re not sure women have it any harder than men in the public sphere, check out #mencallmethings).  Let’s call our brothers and sisters out for sexist jokes.  Let’s all stop using “rape” to mean anything other than sexual assault.   And, most importantly, let’s do this in all instances, not just when the offenders are on the other side of an issue.  I’m quite liberal, but I unliked a progressive blogger because she made a tacky comment about Mariah Carey’s weight.  It’s no secret that women can be sexist, so let’s call that shit out too.  Something has to change if we want young women to continue to enter the political force, to believe that they can make a difference, to believe that they matter. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

I first saw Spoil as part of the Banff Mountain Film Festival, which was here in Spokane a couple weeks ago. It tells the story of the efforts undertaken by a coalition of conservation groups to prevent Canada from building an oil pipeline from Alberta through the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia. To gain exposure for this issue, these groups hired a team of wildlife photographers to come to the Great Bear Rainforest, take pictures of all the beautiful stuff out there, and then use those photos to convince anyone who sees them that the region in worth protecting. One of the photographers takes on the mission of photographing black bears, or, more specifically, white black bears – bears with a recessive gene that gives them white fur, who are only found in that tiny pocket of British Columbia. The bears are elusive, and the photographer spends much of his time on film sounding frustrated, and a little obsessed.

Before I turned the video on in class, I gave my students a worksheet to fill out. Questions on it asked them to identify things like the film’s purpose, key claims,  intended audience, and rhetorical tools used. I assumed most of them would say something along the lines of “Canada should not build the oil pipeline” when asked what central argument is being made.

But watching it yesterday for the second time around, I realized it wasn’t the argument for conservation that I found so compelling. It was the argument for art – photography, specifically – as the most effective vehicle for political change. I know this isn’t a new idea. I mean, a picture’s worth a thousand words, blah blah blah. Still, I love that the tension in this film isn’t whether or not the pipeline will be built. It’s about whether or not a Canadian photographer is going to get a good picture of a bear.

Which One Is You?

I went to The Muppets this weekend and it is clever, funny, creative, charming, and entertaining. But on the way to the film, my friends and I were trying to determine which Muppet each of us most resembled, and that is when I realized how few of them are female.

I’ve never been a Muppets fan, though I’ve sometimes wished I were. My favorite actresses and characters are generally women. I’m not proud of this fact. It seems a little superficial. I’ve noticed, however, that many men seem to suffer from a similar affliction, preferring male characters and actors. Books and movies in which women are prominent are often pegged as chic lit and chic flicks.

I suppose it’s a little late to revamp the Muppets characters. But what if you could, who might you add?

Or, what sex changes might you suggest? Would traits need to change along with sex? And what does sex for a Muppet mean, anyway? Is it determined by more than voice?

1. She has lived a mechanical existence, without love. Something happened to her in a field. In a supermarket. On a mound. Something like an epiphany, which led to logorrhea. Her mouth is not her own. Imagine! A slice of “Not I” by Samuel Beckett.

2. Don’t eat that apple, Milton.

A parable by Yunus Emre:

I climbed into the plum tree
and ate the grapes I found there.
The owner of the garden called to me,
“Why are you eating my walnuts?”

3. Someone shouts at Nasrudin sitting on a river bank, “How do I get across?”
“You are across,” he replies.

4. A koan: What did your face look like before you were born?

5. A word from William James:
Transient — the experience is temporary; the individual soon returns to a “normal” frame of mind.
Ineffable — the experience cannot be adequately put into words.
Noetic — the individual feels that she has learned something valuable from the experience.
Passive — the experience happens to the individual, largely without conscious control. Although there are activities, such as meditation, that can make religious experience more likely, it is not something that can be turned on and off at will.

6. A conversation with Siri:
“What’s the meaning of life?”
–”42.”
–”Life: a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings. I guess that includes me.”
–”I give up.”
–”That’s easy…It’s a philosophical question concerning the purpose and significance of life or existence in general.”
–”All evidence to date suggest it’s chocolate.”
–”To think about questions like this.”
–”Life: the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.”
–”A movie.”
–”I find it odd that you would ask this of an inanimate object.”
–”Try to be nice to people. Avoid eating fat. Read a good book every now and then. Get some walking in. And try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”
–”I don’t know. But I think there’s an app for that.”
–”I can’t answer that now, but give me some time to write a very long play in which nothing happens.”

That said, I was kind of offended for a second when I heard that it already had been made into a movie. Ten years before I was born, in fact. All the good stuff happened before I got to it. And sometimes books can feel so integral to your own inner world that you forget you don’t own those images and that the fact someone has reinterpreted them for all to see is not the same thing as ruining your childlike fantasies. Or something.

But then I figured those 1970s Polish filmmakers probably knew what they were doing when it came to Bruno Schulz.

And I was right. The film, “Sanatorium pod Klepsydra,” directed by Wojciech Has, seems to join “Street of Crocodiles,” and “The Hourglass Sanatorium” by following the protagonist Jozef through his town/fantasies. Though Jozef is meant to be a child, at least in “Street of Crocodiles,” in the film he is played by a wide-eyed, sort-of-young man. In the abstract, this might have not worked for me, except that it lent a sense of memory and displacement to the film, which are intrinsic dimensions of Schulz’s writing.

I had forgotten about the humor in Schulz’s work somehow. Maybe that’s just because I prioritized the aesthetic or the *depth* in my experience of it. But the film plays up the playful, funny, sexual, satirical and ridiculous in a way that actually makes me want to read the text again to see if I can experience it better. That and the fact that the movie is visually precise to the world of the book.

If Bruno Schulz succeeded in producing writing like landscapes (as I always remember Gertrude Stein describing her writing) for the reader to explore in her own way, then the film version of “Sanatorium pod Klepsydra” has lived up to that element. It’s the type of movie you could keep going on a loop as you made your way around the house cooking or making lists or walking in your sleep. Jozef’s mother chants to him: “under those closed eyelids/pass the images/of distant lands.”

And I like the feeling I get from this, that there are worlds playing out for us even when we are at our most still, that they blend with our landscapes and become part of them.