Miscellaneous

Nor’easter

I awaken early to a fierce late January Nor’easter swirling about the cottage. It is simply magnificent, the winds howling, the sky opaque. Every tree and rock, every snowy owl and coyote knows we’re locked into it here on Cape Cod, on planet Earth, land of first light.

I awaken John, here in the midst of moving from California to Somerville where his son, daughter-in-law and grandsons live and where his low-income apartment will presumably be available by late spring.

Time for a morning ride I declare, moving quickly, wanting to be the first tire tracks in the newly fallen snow, every moment pristine, every path portending birth and renewal.

On the ride to the beach in the jeep we stop for two black coffees and free donut centers for Tofu. We drop the tire pressure to 8psi. We ride out onto the snow-covered sand track South thru the dunes toward Chatham, the wind so high the dog’s eyes are partially frozen closed as she runs with absolute abandon, loving being out in the smells and the wildly excited air.

We can see where previous high tides have cut thru the dunes from the Atlantic side rushing across a few hundred yards of brush and low lying dune gulley, creating temporary tidal rivers running into the tide aroused waters of Little Pleasant Bay to the west. The classic Nauset barrier beach being pounded by surf and stone, by winds and tides, by fragile shell and gravitational forces engorged on a blood rich moon.

By the time we reach the third of seven access cuts thru the dunes and drive down the narrow track to the beach there is no beach, the oncoming tide having swallowed huge chunks of dune wall, reconfiguring the shore lines, depositing timbers, Christmas trees, root systems dislodged after the sawyer man’s cut into crazy impassable barriers, the waves already seeking the road and the jeep’s tires, highest tide an hour away, and me, not without a little anxiety headed in reverse post haste and quickly headed back North into the face of the storm when we see the first waves coming over the road and the sandy gullies and depressions filing.

About 3 miles out from the trailhead there is already a small lake where the road had been, the wipers are barely wiping, the defroster is laughing hysterically, and me, believing that seconds matter, guns the jeep straight into the water, instantly festive showers of mud and sand flying up onto the windshield and roof, completely obscuring my view and me, going what I hope is straight and high enuf above the water line not to challenge my spark plugs, am amazed at the depth of the water over the running boards and amazed we are thru.

I believe any further delay, exploration, or frolic and detour and you’d be reading about the two men lost in the storm, lost in the winds and the surf, close to the very spot where the Montclair went down, herself with only two survivors, in March,1927.

Django Unchained – Written and Directed by Q. Tarantino – starring Jamie Foxx –

Django Unchained was to my mind sure to become a “standard,” a “classic” of American/Hollywood movie making. And although I appear to have been wrong, and even if Spike Lee has problems with it of a political/moral nature, that’s fine and changes nothing in my opinion about what Tarantino has accomplished in this movie about the brutality of slavery and Tarantino’s “revenge”/rescue fantasy the plot is built upon. As Tarantino himself said, his intention in making the movie – at least in part – was to do a movie that dealt “with America’s horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they’re genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it’s ashamed of it, and other countries don’t really deal with because they don’t feel they have the right to.”
And slavery is absolutely the “central character” of the movie, the subject of the movie, and the movie’s primary focus, even more so than the Django character, as mythologized and glorified as he is. And the brutality of the slavery depicted is immensely raw, painful, embarrassing, sickening, although neither over stated or over dramatized, IMO. The characters and the plot are very “stylized,” which permits a certain depiction of brutality that might not be bearable in another, more “realistic” style. And any objection to use of the word ‘nigger’ is really a red herring in a period piece set two years before the civil war. The acting is amazing … as is the writing, the directing, and the music. Plus it is a good western … and think how hard a good western would be to make these days. (Witness “The Lone Ranger.”).
Maybe the excessive bloodshed in Django is gratuitous, but the entire presentation is a self-mocking charade that goes on to rip your guts out, notwithstanding extremely violent classic gun fights showing more blood and bullets exploding flesh than anyone needs or can openly bear. And some of the scenes of the torture and degradation of the slaves were so – i want to say “inhumane,” but it is regrettably all too human – beyond any currently “civilized” human’s ability to take in on a soul level. And the cruelty in ways was even worse than the violence, the rapes, the whipping, the branding, the torture … horrible … but precisely part of the greatness of Tarantino’s courage. And to my knowledge no one has ever shown this range of slave characters in one Hollywood epic, including slave bad guys, also awesomely courageous to depict. and, especially, of course, because white people are currently generally enjoined from depicting Black Americans in a negative way … other than as gangsters … or druggies … or poor … or uppity … but so much has and is changing, notwithstanding how very much more still must – and will – change, particularly perceptually, corporately, and environmentally.
The historical depiction of slave reality reminded me that the healing work is not over, even with a Black president, a fact we can genuinely be proud of as a nation – especially given where we were 50 and 150 years ago … but the healing work is not over. There were decades when i could not take a shower, not once, without my thinking of the Nazi holocaust of WWII, and that was “just” six million people over the course of a decade … the African holocaust lasted over 300 years and caused over 100 million African deaths before the slave ships reached the “new world” and has impacted African American mental, political, spiritual, and economic well being in stressful ways we cannot begin to fathom, but must bear witness to the consequences of, ever since.
Even Mother Africa herself is still traumatized, brutalized, and exploited, as she has been for more than 500 years. Indeed, for me, it is always the health and good humor of the survivors that amazes me … how can they be as healthy as they are – look at many of our surviving indigenous native brothers and sisters, or the Palestinians, who in my experience manifest a mind blowing dignity, good will, and willingness to forgive – as seems true among our brothers and sisters in the African diaspora.
So, while I don’t think anyone who is upset by graphic visual depictions of violence should view Django, you will miss phenomenal acting, great scenery and visual presentations, and music, all quite wonderfully over the top in a “camp” sort of way. And besides which, there is Samuel L. Jackson, and Django, who says famously, “The D is silent.”.