Precious as comedy

I've just come from watching "Precious" in West Philly, in a full house that was 90% black. Interesting audience responses, so different from my own. For the first half of the film, the theater was raucous, as folks talked among themselves and laughed at people, situations and lines they could (I imagine) relate to. But the second half played very differently, as the horror and triumph of Precious became clear. The audience seemed held spellbound; at least, there was no noise, none. Afterwards, I heard three 20+ black women debating the emotional realism of the film. I was too stunned to get that kind of distance.

If you haven't yet, go see it.

Poetry helps me through my normal existential angst, connects me to others in a deep way, and gets the brain neurons associating in some unfamiliar ways. The more difficult the poem, the better it helps me to be fully in the moment, so I was delighted but not surprised to hear Karen Armstrong (check out the November 8th podcast of Speaking of Faith on NPR) say that theology is poetry.

Last Wednesday, our little group of poetry buffs took a close look at Elizabeth Bishop's "In the Waiting Room." If you haven't read it in a while, please do so online before reading Bishop's prose version, below:

After New Year's, Aunt Jenny had to go to the dentist, and asked me to go with her. She left me in the waiting room, and gave me a copy of the National Geographic to look at. It was still getting dark early, and the room had grown very dark. There was a big yellow lamp in one corner, a table with magazines, and an overhead chandelier of sorts. There were others waiting, two men and a plump middle-aged lady, all bundled up. I looked at the magazine cover--I could read most of the words--shiny, glazed, yellow and white. The black letters said: February 1918. A feeling of absolute and utter desolation came over me. I felt---myself. In a few days it would be my seventh birthday. I felt I, I, I, and looked at the three strangers in panic. I was one of them too, inside my scabby body and wheezing lungs. "You're in for it, now," something said. How had I got tricked into such a false position? I would be like that woman opposite who smiled at me so falsely every once in a while. The awful sensation passed, then it came back again. "You are you," something said. "How strange you are, inside looking out. You are not Beppo, or the chestnut tree, or Emma, you are you and you are going to be you forever." It was like coasting downhill, this thought, only much worse, and it quickly smashed into a tree. Why was I a human being? --1961, from The Collected Prose

My question for you is, do any of you remember when you discovered that you were you, or that you were human?

say what? a whole year has passed?

And here the Phillies are in the World Series again, though this time seems tougher. The Yanks possess an arrogance that Philadephians match with an inferiority complex of our own, all the more reason for the team to stay tough!

Obama? Presidents have less power than people seem to think. Some days, I wish that Hillary had won. Most days, though, I admire the courage he shows in not reacting too quickly. It takes a real man to take the time to think before acting.

Stay tuned: I'd love to reflect on poems I'm reading, on the rise in urban anxiety (is there more crime or only more anxiety about it?), on getting older (does anyone even mention the intermittent terror of it?).