Beneath desert skies

Immediately when you arrive in the Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns; and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air...  A strange, and by no means pleasant, process of reintegration begins inside you, and you have the choice of fighting against it, and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it takes its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when he came.
--Paul Bowles 

As an antidote, perhaps, to the rains of England through which I've just finished hiking, my nephew Doug and I will visit Morocco in October.  It's a country that's always fascinated me, probably ever since I first watched Casablanca -- a film shot entirely in the Warner Bros. studios, with the exception of one scene shot at the Van Nuys airport!  The magic of the silver screen.

The trip is sponsored by the same "adventure company" that guided Pascal and me to 18,000 feet in Nepal last October, but this "adventure" will be somewhat less strenuous.  We will fly into Marrakesh about three days before the tour begins and drive to the coastal city of Essaouira, originally a seventeenth century Portuguese fortress.  So exotic and unknown a destination that (to me) it seems odd that Jimi Hendrix hung out there in his early days!

The tour proper begins back in Marrakesh, an eleventh century Moorish city. We then drive into and over the High Atlas mountains and down into the Sahara. We will stay overnight at various villages along the way, as we plunge deeper and deeper into the sea of sand and rock.  The central feature of the trip will be four days traversing a bit of the Sahara atop spiteful camels, staring up at the swirling stars at night.  Remember Lawrence of Arabia?  Remember that scene where he dressed up as an Arab for the first time, strutting back and forth in front of a mirror, swirling his robes about him?  You know that floor-length mirror in my guest bedroom?   Well, never mind.  You get the idea.  So, yeah. I daydream.  And I'll be riding camelback for four days.  Or, as the itinerary tactfully puts it, we can alternately walk and ride, depending on our feelings about the experience. And, as the itinerary also tactfully puts it:

[The camels'] saddles are cushioned with traditional blankets to make our safari a comfortable experience over the magical seas of orange dunes and contrasting spaces of shiny black volcanic rock.

Okaaaaaay!  It sounds very cool in theory.  I'll let you know how it works out on the ground, as it were. 

The trip ends up in Fez (or Fès), a medieval city with a large, ancient native quarter, or medina. Its medina is the sort of place in which I like to imagine (romanticist that I am) that I could end up losing my way, unable to find my way out, forced to spend my remaining days living hand to mouth in a native hovel, cadging dirhams (or euros) from tourists to pay for my couscous, and attempting each day to write the great novel that will earn me enough in a cash advance to pay my airfare back to America.

That American writer, Paul Bowles, after all, ended up spending most of his years in Tangier, and actually finished up his great existential novel, The Sheltering Sky (which I read a couple of weeks ago while hiking in England!) in Fez.

The sky hides the night behind it and shelters the people beneath from the horror that lies above.

Maybe so.  Maybe not.  But the trackless dunes beneath the desert sky should be an excellent place to test Bowles's scary epigram. 

And Morocco has plenty of desert.

Iolanthe

When in that House M.P.'s divide,
If they’ve a brain and cerebellum, too,
They’ve got to leave that brain outside,
And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to.
But then the prospect of a lot
Of dull M. P.’s in close proximity,
All thinking for themselves, is what
No man can face with equanimity.

In an election year -- especially in this election year -- what could be more enjoyable than a musical about a young man, half-human and half-fairy, being sent to Parliament where he becomes head of both opposing parties and passes a bill requiring that members of the  House of Lords be selected by competitive examination, rather than by noble birth?  Especially since this musical comedy dates back to 1882, and, as we know, things have only grown worse in the interval?

Yes, it's July and time once again for the annual production of the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society.  This year, the production is Iolanthe, an operetta dear to my own heart since it was the first G&S show I ever saw live, back when I was a college freshman.

As I've said in past years, if you've seen one G&S show, in a sense you've seen them all.  But Iolanthe does have some interesting twists of plot, what with the fairies and all. 

Iolanthe, a luscious young female fairy (they all are luscious -- they never grow old, don't you know) married a human.  Although a capital offense, the Queen of the Fairies commuted the sentence to a permanent ban from fairydom.  In the fullness of time, Iolanthe brought forth a halfling son, Strephon, a radiant and unbearably cheerful young twit who, as the story commences, is 25 years old.  He, a shepherd by profession,  has fallen in love with a Bo Peep of a wife who, as an orphan, is a ward of Chancery. 

As all of us British Constitutional Law nerds know, the Lord Chancellor -- in whose hands Phyllis's matrimonial future lies -- sits (or did until 2005) on the wool sack,  presiding over the House of Lords.  Unfortunately, all of the Lords, including the Chancellor himself, have their own connubial designs on Bo Peep (I mean Phyllis).

The Law is the true embodiment
Of everything that's excellent.
It has no kind of fault or flaw,
And I, my Lords, embody the Law.
The constitutional guardian I
Of pretty young Wards in Chancery,
All very agreeable girls — and none
Are over the age of twenty-one.
A pleasant occupation for
A rather susceptible Chancellor!

Complications ensue, as they are wont to do in these little plays, complications that include Iolanthe's return to fairydom and the Lords' incurring the wrath of the Fairy Queen.  Her Fairy Majesty, fortunately controlling a rotten borough or two, sends Strephon to Parliament armed with a spell requiring all other M.P.s to obey his commands.  To the horror of the Lords, his bill to require members of the Upper House to possess intelligence is rushed through its second reading.

Strephon’s a Member of Parliament!
Carries ev'ry Bill he chooses.
To his measures all assent –
Showing that fairies have their uses.
Whigs and Tories
Dim their glories,
Giving an ear to all his stories –
Lords and Commons are both in the blues!
Strephon makes them shake in their shoes!

More complications.  The Lord Chancellor (played by local talk radio host Dave Ross, who always scoops up these most juicy roles) grants a request from himself to marry Phyllis himself.

Lord Chancellor. Victory! Victory! Success has crowned my efforts, and I may consider myself engaged to Phyllis! At first I wouldn’t hear of it – it was out of the question. But I took heart. I pointed out to myself that I was no stranger to myself; that, in point of fact, I had been personally acquainted with myself for some years. This had its effect. I admitted that I had watched my professional advancement with considerable interest, and I handsomely added that I yielded to no one in admiration for my private and professional virtues. This was a great point gained. I then endeavoured to work upon my feelings. Conceive my joy when I distinctly perceived a tear glistening in my own eye! Eventually, after a severe struggle with myself, I reluctantly – most reluctantly – consented.

In the face of such a disastrous potential marriage by her daughter, Iolanthe abandons her inclinations toward secrecy and confesses to her daughter -- and to the astonished Lord Chancellor -- that the Chancellor himself was the man whom she had married yea these many years ago.  The Lord Chancellor could hardly marry his own daughter.

Nor did he wish to, now that he had his fair Iolanthe back again, aged not a whit over a quarter century.  Immediately, all the fairies and all the Lords wish to be married off together.  The fact that such a marriage is a capital offense under fairy law is overcome by the sort of adroit legal maneuvering one would expect from a Lord Chancellor, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Damn!  Who would want to waste an evening watching The Dark Knight Rises when he has meaty fare like Iolanthe at his disposal.  Guess there's just no accounting for tastes.

Tonight's is the final night's performance at the Bagley Wright -- see it if you have a chance. And watch for next July's Gilbert & Sullivan production.

Chiroptophobia

Now I have no objection in principle to taking a simple story of adventure, hyping it up with pop psychological analysis and dark metaphorical portent, and creating a complex artistic endeavor worthy of being subjected to the full battery of tools available to critical analysis.  Richard Wagner proved that such an elevation could work quite nicely, transforming simple heroic tales told by Germanic warriors as they sat around a campfire into the heavy-breathing Sturm und Drang of an opera like Götterdämmerung.

But Batman?  I have just finished reading the New Yorker's review of The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan's third part of his ponderous Batman trilogy.  The review cleverly (and rather snarkily) mocks the seriousness of the entire enterprise, notes the uncoolness of both Bruce Wayne and his Batman alias, laments Batman's frustrating (to the reviewer) asexuality, and remarks on the absence of any real political relevance of the movie to today's political world.  What we have left, according to the review, is cool gadgets: the Bat-Pod and "the Bat" (a sort of airplane).  The review observes of the director:

We go to his films to gasp, not to yearn or pity or weep, except over the paucity of our own automobiles.

I haven't seen the latest Dark Knight, nor do I intend to.  (I did see Batman Begins, the first of the series.)  I can't analyze the movie, therefore, but I have some thoughts about the entire endeavor.

Batman was my favorite comic hero as a kid.  He didn't leap tall buildings in a single bound, he didn't achieve super powers by exclaiming, "Shazam!", he didn't fly like a hawk, or have magic bullet-repellent bracelets and lariat, or possess a power ring and power lantern.  He was just an ordinary guy -- an ordinary hyper-rich guy, admittedly -- who was fed up with lawlessness in Gotham City and had the money and determination to do something about it.   Luckily, his mansion rested astride a large cave (the Bat Cave, of course), whence he and his sidekick Robin jumped into the Batcar and shot out into the night in response to Commissioner Gordon's Bat Signal.  That was pretty much it.

(And no -- no decent all-American kid ever questioned Bruce Wayne's relationship with young Dick Grayson.  That was left to decadent literary critics of the day.  What could seem more normal to us than that a hero should be accompanied by a young sidekick?  A Tonto to his Lone Ranger, a Lucky to his Hopalong Cassidy?)

We knew the general lines of the back story -- that Bruce had witnessed the murder of his parents, and had vowed a revenge on criminals -- albeit a revenge taken within the law and tempered with justice.  That was all we needed to know.  We didn't worry about Bruce Wayne's psychological profile, his presentation of symptoms codified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, his complicated relationship with his butler Alfred, his obsession with bats.  Batman was not acting out some obsessive-compulsive disorder resulting from childhood trauma.  As American kids, we had a simple trust in free will, untainted by Calvinist intellectualism.  Good people chose to be good; bad guys chose to be bad.  Batman was good.  Commissioner Gordon, although at times obtuse, was good.  The Joker, the Penguin -- they were evil -- although fascinating, like Milton's Satan -- and fully deserved whatever blows to the jaw (and their egos) came their way in the course of each episode.

The stories of Batman and Robin were no folk tales arising out of a nation's childhood. They were simple commercial kid's stories arising out of the need to make a buck (or a dime) during America's 1930's. Batman should have been left to those murky drawings of DC Comics, not transformed into a cinematic blockbuster superhero, encased in a rubber batsuit worthy of some S&M cult.  If the age-old struggle between the noble Caped Crusader and DC Comics's peculiar agents of Evil seems too old-fashioned and naïve for today's audiences, then let's leave Batman (and the now-neglected Robin) to those piles of old comic books still stored in the attic.  The original Batman premise was too simple and straightforward a base on which to build a trilogy of multi-million dollar epics (the estimated cost of the current movie being $250 million).

Next it will be "Goldilocks: Porridge Too Hot! -- A Modern Tale of Blonde Aryan Lust and Familial Ursine Rivalry, Deep in the Dense Forests of Northern Europe." Bah! I'm going up to the attic to dig out my old comics.

Astray in the Langdales

Near Stake Pass
(in decent weather!)

The UK public has already endured the wettest April for over a century and the wettest June since records began and more bad weather is forecast. However, it seems this has merely spurred people to invest in waterproof jackets and trousers, determined to get outdoors to enjoy the British "summer" no matter what it takes.

--PR Newswire (7-16-12)

As Maya and I neared the end of our second day of hiking, we felt pleased.  Despite the dire forecasts of daily rain, we had encountered at most an occasional sprinkle.  Twenty-nine miles of hiking already lay behind us -- through farm lands, along the forested lakeshore of five-mile Coniston Water, circling the park-like Tarn Hows, crossing over the picturesque stone arch of Skelway Bridge, and following generally flat trails through ever-narrowing valleys into the mountainous realm of the Langdales.  We were tempted to laugh at the weatherman.

As we approached the ancient inn of Old Dungeon Ghyll, however, the skies darkened, the first drops fell, and before we could reach the shelter of the inn -- our stop for the night -- we were soaked to the skin. 

The following day -- the third of the hike -- was  supposed to be a more relaxed seven miles -- over a pass and down a valley into the hamlet of Stonethwaite.  That morning, the skies remained dark, but the night's rain had ceased and we began hiking optimistically.  The first mile took us from the inn to the closed end of the Mickleden valley.  The trail then became much rougher, and we began a steep climb over switchbacks to Stake Pass.  Stake Pass, according to the guidebook, is only 1,400 feet in elevation.  But its setting is bare and desolate, reminiscent of photographs I've seen of northern Alaska, or of some of the New Zealand terrain used as the setting for Lord of the Rings.  Rain began to fall, and visibility was obscured by mist.

We were experiencing for the first time the High Fells of England. 

The path remained clear and distinct, and so I led us forward without much serious reference to the guidebook.  We continued climbing, often quite steeply, but the guide had mentioned that the pass was not a sharp divide but continued for some distance as a rising plateau.  We overtook and passed well-outfitted groups of teenaged climbers, burdened by heavy packs, chugging wetly up the trail with varying degrees of self-confidence and enthusiasm.  Maya and I, carrying only daypacks, were talking and enjoying the scenery.  Then we encountered an older group, less buoyant in expression, coming down the trail.  It occurred to me that we had been hiking quite a distance from our first contact with Stake Pass -- hiking steadily uphill.

Finally, at a wind shelter on a flat rocky plateau, we stopped and talked to a group of obviously experienced climbers.  They had turned back, they said.  The weather ahead was too threatening.  Too threatening for what, I asked myself? Too threatening for a simple descent to Stonethwaite?  I asked them to show me on a map exactly where we were.  Yikes!  We had been ascending the trail to Scafell Pike, the highest peak in England -- just 3,209 feet in elevation, but in the context of its surroundings, and on a wet  and misty day, certainly a more ambitious climb than we had contemplated.

Further review of guidebook and maps revealed that we should have followed a trail branching off to the north at Stake Pass.  We returned to the pass -- a rather large plateau, as the guidebook described -- and spent perhaps an hour or so in the rain, following various promising trails, none of which ended up going anywhere that made sense.  We never did locate the correct path.  As I sit now -- dry and warm in my study, coffee in hand, perusing contour maps -- I still find it impossible to locate the point where our trail -- clearly a major route -- turned off from the Scafell trail.  And yet -- obviously -- hundreds of hikers every year follow the Cumbria Way trail from Dungeon Ghyll to Stonethwaite, apparently with no difficulty.

I do suggest that a clear Cumbria Way signpost or marker at Stake Pass would be well worth the minor expense.

Considering the lateness of the day and the nature of the weather, I finally made an executive decision to retreat.  We hiked back downhill to Dungeon Ghyll. Our baggage had, of course, been sent ahead to our next night's lodging. I called a taxi, and paid £90 for a 50-minute drive from Dungeon Ghyll to Stonethwaite -- seven miles by trail, but a long, circuitous drive through Keswick by highway.  A defeat of sorts, but the sort of defeat that presents its own amusing and instructive aspects. In retrospect, at least.

Our adventure on Stake Pass gave me a proper respect for both the High Fells and English weather.  The Langdales, through which we were ineptly navigating, are only one portion of the High Fells of the Lake District.  We were to pass through another portion (past Skiddaw House) on Day Five.  And yet -- as that distinguished geographer Bill Bryson points out¹ -- the entire Lake District (fells, dales, becks, gills, tarns, waters, pastures, forests, and all) could be dropped comfortably into the geographical area occupied by Minneapolis-St. Paul. 

It's not the size of your country that matters.  It's what you have within it, and what you do with it.  The English need make no apologies to other, larger countries for the scenic beauty and recreational opportunities it offers in its Lake District.

Their weather this July, on the other hand, has been a disgrace!
--------------------------------------------------
¹Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island (Harper Perennial 2001) at 254.

Walking in the rain

Cries of complaint from many readers have been pouring into the Northwest Corner's editorial offices -- well, one cry from one reader -- regarding the diminishing quantity of posts over the past few weeks.  (We'll skim over any complaints about diminishing quality, complaints perhaps becoming more frenetic following my contemplation of living out my life as a Laird.)   I like to think of this slowdown as quantitative easing, but that term doesn't seem popular either.

And it will only get worse.  I leave within the hour for nearly two weeks in England where -- as mentioned in an earlier post -- I will hike the Cumbria Way with my niece.  This trail runs 70 miles from Ulverston to Carlisle. 

It seems to be a typical summer in Britain, especially in the west.  I've been following the weather in Ulverston, and it seems to have been raining daily for the past month, with the ten-day forecast showing more of the same.  Most of the rain is forecast as "showers," a flexible term that can mean most anything.  But I have to say that in my prior years of British hiking I can recall only one day when it rained all day.  Generally, the rain comes and goes, and actually goes more than it comes.

So I'm off, and the Northwest Corner is in abeyance for a couple of weeks.  I'll come back a damper, but more energetic, writer.

I'd make a rum laird, an odd eigg

Isle of Rùm, taken
last summer from Maillag

I crave a title.  What kind of title, you may ask?  Mayor of Seattle?  King of Siam?  Emperor of China?

No.  No, the title that's captured my fancy is "Laird of Muck."

Last summer, after completing my West Highlands hike in Scotland, I took the train from Fort William to the little coastal port of Maillag, just for a day's visit.  From Maillag, I looked across the water to a number of islands making up a portion of the Inner Hebrides -- to the giant Isle of Skye, but also to the smaller islands of Rùm and Eigg (it occurred to me, as it must have occurred to many others, that these isles were the fixings for a delicious eiggnog).  The islands looked somewhat bleak, but tantalizing.  I only wished I had time to take one of the small ferries across the straits -- an exploration saved for perhaps a later date.

What I didn't see, however -- because it was obscured behind the misty shores of Eigg -- was the Isle of Muck.

I knew nothing of Muck, or of its owner, the Laird of Muck, until I opened this month's issue of National Geographic Traveler.  There I found a nicely illustrated article by an adventuresome  young Kansan, a writer who took the time to explore the Inner Hebrides -- even as I would love to do -- but who also seems to have had the connections (or the chutzpah) to spend a day hanging out with the Laird himself -- a fellow named Lawrence MacEwan, a proprietor who raises sheep on his small island. (His wife manages a group of vacation cottages; his daughter runs the lairdom's only hotel.)  The island is a family venture, as you can see, one handed down from laird to laird, from time immemorial. (Which in this case, means since 1896.)

Muck is just about the largest sized dominion over which I could competently reign.  Two and a half square miles.  Population, 30.  Major (and only) town, Port Mòr.  As laird, I would daily manage my herd of sheep, trying to stay one mental step ahead of them.  Grass for grazing grows well on the Isle of Muck; no shortage of rain, you know.  There'd be lots of squishing around in the muck, ha ha ha!

But my estate -- my lairdom -- would consist of more than sheep and hotels and muck.  I would also rule over a resident seal population, and be on at least speaking terms with porpoises in the surrounding waters.  In short, this island has virtually everything that a laird could ask for. Including privacy and lots of silence.  Except when the occasional writer dropped in to see what it was all about.

As my friends, of course, you my readers would always be welcome to visit.  How to address me?  Well might you ask. According to Wikipedia, a "Laird" occupies a spot between an Esquire and a Baron.  As an American lawyer, I'm supposedly already an Esquire (or at least an Esq.), so becoming a laird would be one step up the social heirarchy.  Many of my countrymen would argue that, as an attorney, my esteem in the public eye is so low to begin with that -- while a lairdom might be just one step upward -- it would be a hell of a long step upward.  But to return to the question of address:  I would become "The Much Honoured Rainier96."    (Don't forget that "u" in "Honoured.")  My eldest son -- the heir apparent (primogeniture, you know -- look it up) -- would add "Yr." ("the younger") to the end of his name. Until that fateful day, of course, when he himself became the laird.  

Sure, it'll be wet.  It's the Hebrides, after all.  But I'm from Seattle, right?  Better a wet laird than a wet esquire.  And as Dean Monro commented so perceptively about the island in 1549:

Be ane haffe myle of sea to this ile, lyes ane ile of twa myle lang, callit in Erische Ellannaneche, that is the Swynes ile, and very fertill and fruitful of cornes and grassing for all store, and verey guid for fishing, inhabit and manurit, a good falcon nest in it. It perteynis to the Bishope of the iles, with ane guid heighland haven in it, the entrey quherof is at the west cheik.

Amen to that, I say.  I now plan to become Laird of Muck in my own right, and in the historically correct manner -- by conquest.  I'm off to the nearest ship's chandler to outfit my vessel.  As soon as I secure a vessel. 

Light it and run!

Fireworks and daylight saving time.  When I was a boy, those were the two big local option issues that voters regularly confronted.  Some years, adjoining towns -- like where I lived -- had summer clocks an hour apart.  And fireworks were a perennial problem. 

Some years, my town allowed everything, or at least winked its eye at their sale and use.  Other years, fireworks were strictly prohibited.  Several years, sales were strictly prohibited in my county, but wide open in the next county to the west.  My brother and I would bike fifteen miles or so to the county line, a line marked by the joyous sight of red, white and blue fireworks stands, clustered -- like casinos at the Nevada state line --  awaiting our business.

The daylight saving time issue was solved years ago, with uniform time enforced first in the state and ultimately nationwide (excepting ever-dissident Arizona).  But regulation of the sale of fireworks in Washington is as balkanized now as ever.  Sale and use are forbidden in the bigger cities, but every county, city and town is free to permit their sale and use, and many do.  And the Indian reservations -- from huge county-sized tracts like those of the Yakimas, to tiny micro-reservations of a few acres each in Western Washington -- are a law unto themselves (and they can sell firecrackers, rockets, and other delights otherwise forbidden by state law).

In other words, no matter where you live, it's easy to reach an area where fireworks are sold.  And no one's apt to toss you in jail if you set them off, especially on the Fourth itself. 

The usual newspaper headlines have already started to appear -- the same ones we read and despised as kids .  "Officials Warn About Illegal Fireworks," reads today's Seattle Times.  "Injuries already starting."

As I try, without much success, to explain to libertarian friends, I see most of life in shades of gray.  I don't oppose governmental attempts to keep people from inadvertantly killing and maiming themselves.  Seat belt laws and bicycle helmet laws do not appall me.  They do not impress me as being "governmental use of force and violence against citizens," simply because the government has the power to enforce them.  On the other hand, I share the libertarian impulse that we should be allowed to be wild and crazy at times, despite the risk.  Thus, I'd be seriously upset if the National Park Service banned the climbing of Mount Rainier, justifying the prohibition by the predictably frequent deaths of climbers and rescuers.

Fireworks falls in that gray area between those two poles.  No, I wouldn't want my child or other relative to blow off his fingers or lose his hearing because of misuse or misperformance of a firecracker.  From my own youth, I know that fuses do sometimes burn faster than expected, with painful results.   And I realize that parental prohibitions may not be sufficient to prevent kids from getting their hands on fireworks -- my great childhood memories of evading parental desires have not faded all that much.

On the other hand, personal use of fireworks is a traditional form of celebration.  Not only an American tradition on the Fourth, but among the Chinese and their American descendants at Chinese New Year, and among other national groups.  We have to weigh the occasional accidental injury from use of fireworks against the fun and sense of tradition that inhere in their use, keeping in mind that the problem exists for only a two or three day period each year.

Everyone does his own weighing of pros and cons.  Mine comes down on the side of allowing pretty much wide-open sales and use of fireworks, within the five-day maximum time period permitted by Washington state law (when not prohibited or further limited by local authorities).  Many thoughtful and respected citizens obviously feel differently, including the writer for the Times.

I just remember the thrill of visiting the fireworks stand and staring agog at the immense variety of explosive and incendiary devices awaiting my purchase, the fun of lighting a fuse and jumping backward before the damn things went off in my face, the disgustingly militaristic delight in blowing up my toy jeeps and tanks. 

Even as a presumably cautious adult, I can't now deprive today's kids of all that excitement and fun; I couldn't now hypocritically join the once-despised (albeit socially responsible) chorus of exhortations that beg us to keep the Fourth "Safe and Sane."

Happy Fourth of July!

Small miracles

I joined a surprisingly large audience last night to watch the Japanese film I Wish.  "Surprisingly" large, because the film is in Japanese with English subtitles, stars a somewhat withdrawn and gloomy 12-year-old hero, has the sketchiest of plots, and ends in disappointment of the boy's original hopes (although with an ending that is nevertheless upbeat).

What the movie does have going for it, however, as amply displayed in the trailers that have been playing in recent weeks, is a wonderful cast of Japanese kids filled with the effervescence of pre-teen youth.  If we had seen the film in 1945, we might have felt even greater ambiguity about our bombing of Hiroshima.  On the other hand,  maybe not.  In 1945, Japanese kids probably didn't act like a bunch of unusually well-mannered (but mischievous) American kids, set down in a small town locale where only the signage seemed definitely foreign.

The film was apparently commissioned by Japanese Railways as publicity for a new bullet train service.  The railroad got more, I'm sure, than they bargained for.  Our hero, Koichi, is the child of divorced parents -- a status less familiar in Japan than in America.  He lives with his mother and grandparents, while his slightly younger brother Ryu lives in a distant town with their rock musician father.  Ryu -- extroverted, funny and bubbly in personality -- tends to steal the show from his more stolid brother.  (The two actors are brothers in real life, as well.) The boys stay in daily wistful contact by cell phone.

The plot centers on a rumor that Koichi has heard, a claim that if you stand beside the point where two bullet trains pass from opposite directions, the force field created will make your wishes come true.  Koichi's wish is for the St. Helens-like volcano that looms over the new town where he lives with his mother to erupt, causing the town to be evacuated and his family thus somehow to be reunited. 

Koichi recruits his two best schoolfriends to join him in a journey to the midpoint on the new bullet train route, the point where the trains coming from either direction will meet.  Ryu, with friends of his own from their father's town, meets them at the midpoint.  Most of the film treads predictable ground, watching adventurous kids who sneak away from their homes and attempt to make it on their own in adult society.  What's different about this film, perhaps, is the warmth and caring that Japanese society unexpectedly offers these wandering children.

Each kid brings to the midpoint his or her own wish, a wish that's written down on a signboard to be waved at the passing trains.  Most poignant is the boy who carries his dead dog in a backpack, hoping for its resuscitation.  This film isn't a fantasy, however, and the wishes aren't granted.  Not granted, at least, in the ways expected.

At the last moment, Koichi declines to make his own wish.  Since leaving home, he has realized the death and destruction that a volcano eruption would cause.  Sober and thoughtful child that he is, he decides to embrace the overall welfare of "the world," rather than sacrifice it  to his own selfish needs.

The name of the film in Japan was Kiseki (translated as "the miracle").  The Japanese title is apt on several levels, and the film itself -- although slow in its pacing -- is a something of a miracle itself in today's commercial film market.

All is vanity

Woody in high school

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare.
The lone and level sands stretch far away. --Shelley

I haven't yet seen Woody Allen's latest film, To Rome with Love, but I'm sure I soon will.  Any movie that combines Woody Allen, Jesse Eisenberg, and the City of Rome -- all in one bright, shimmering film -- can't be a movie that's gone too far wrong. 

Reviews of the film have revived the term "Ozymandias melancholia," which Woody Allen apparently coined in his movie Stardust Memories.  As far as I'm concerned, if the new movie actually is a reflection on "Ozymandias melancholia" -- well, that's just the frosting on the cake.

I'm a guy who can't look at a painting, or read a book, or gaze at a ruin, without thinking -- they're all dead now.  Once they were alive and curious, amazed at the dead people who had lived before them.  Just  as I am now.  And now they aren't.

I recall how, as a college freshman, I read Herodotus for the first time and learned how he had stood in awe before the Egyptian pyramids, marveling at the ancient civilization that had created such great works.  Herodotus was writing in about 450 B.C. The Great Pyramid would already have been two thousand years old when Herodotus's eyes first fell upon it.  Among my reactions, even as a callow 18-year-old, was melancholy at the passage of time, and at the utter vanity of any man's heroic efforts to ensure an immortal reputation among future generations.  Ozymandias melancholy. 

Woody Allen has been quoted as saying that he doesn't really care whether his films live forever.  He's more interested that he himself live forever.  It's a nice quip, but probably not true.  No one writes and directs seventy films in a 76-year (to date) lifetime simply -- as he claims -- to keep from thinking about death.  Somewhere deep inside, there lurks a hankering after a cinematic legacy that will long survive him.

But not forever, of course.  As Woody notes, even our Sun's days are numbered.  In the long run, to amend Keynes's aphorism, we're not only all dead.  We're also all forgotten.

Lake District ramble

Head up the gill on a metalled track to the ruins of Carrock Mine.  Wolfram, a rare heavy metal, was once dug here.  ...  Follow the beck up the gill, a lovely climb, even though the path is indistinct and boggy in places.

I leave for England just three weeks from today, and I've been previewing the course of my 70-mile route as it wends its way through the Lake District.  The guide book I've been provided is written in English.  No doubt about that.  It just isn't written in American English.  We'd be more apt to say:

Head up the ravine on a roughly paved road to the abandoned Carrock Mine.  Tungsten was once mined here. ...  Follow the creek up the ravine, a beautiful climb even though the path is indistinct and marshy in places.

Actually, the guide book is easy enough to decipher, once I look up the definition of a few unfamiliar words.  The more peculiar aspect of the hike, compared with American hikes, at least Western American hikes, is the minute nature of the instructions -- noting virtually every farm to be passed, style to be climbed over, and "kissing gate" to be navigated.  And, as I discovered in my two earlier hikes, these instructions are absolutely necessary to guide the hiker through the rather complicated terrain, most of it occupied by towns, residential areas, farmland, and dedicated parkland.

Here at home, we are more familiar with simpler instructions in our hiking guides, ones that may read:

Hike 3.7 miles to a fork in the trail.  Take the left fork.  In another 1.7 miles you arrive at the lake. Best areas to pitch your tent are along the eastern shoreline.

So, hiking in Britain is a different experience. But what is lost in grandiose scale and wide open spaces is gained in the beauty and variety of the intricate details of the landscape, and in the aura cast by centuries of history.

Maya (my teenaged niece) and I will not be pitching our tent beside the lake (although we expect to see plenty of lakes). We will be staying at pre-booked accommodations that emphasize the "English" rather than the rugged outdoors aspects of the trip. Photos sent as part of our pre-trip packet portray a number of substantial (but not palatial) houses, each of which typically looks as though it could nicely serve as the Bennet house in Pride and Prejudice.

Past experience tells me that at each house we will be met at the door by a pleasant, elderly woman who will greet us and show us to our rooms. In the background will be a gentleman, rarely introduced but presumed to be her husband, who, when occasionally encountered, will smile shyly at us and mumble greetings.

After a good night's sleep, we will wander down to the small dining room and be served -- by the same woman, maybe or maybe not assisted by her husband -- an "English breakfast." At first glance, this will appear roughly identical to an American breakfast -- ham, eggs, and toast, with tea or coffee. Closer attention -- and perhaps some questioning -- reveals that the "ham" is what the English call bacon. Also on the plate will be what appear to be enlarged link sausages -- do not attempt to eat these loathsome, mushy items, at least not your first morning, not before vigorous hiking has had a chance to generate indiscriminate hunger. (These sausages may grow on you with time, but probably not.) Then there are stewed tomatoes (piping hot), mushrooms, potatoes in any of a number of various forms, and baked beans. And other oddities, depending on the owners' taste. The toast is just toast, but the English seem to have a horror of hot toast -- it is served in a rack designed to cool it down to room temperature as quickly as possible.

As hikers, we quickly grow used to the English breakfast -- look forward to it, really -- and depend on it for a high percentage of the day's calories. (It's included in the room rate.)

Our first night in a B&B will be in Ulverson, at the southern end of the Cumbria Way. After that, we overnight at Coniston, Old Dungeon Ghyll, Stonethwaite, Keswick, Whelpo, and -- ending up in the north, back to an urban environment -- in the county town of Carlisle. Just typing these place names is enough to make me long to head out for the airport immediately. Our hiking will cover a variety of scenic terrains -- farmland, lakeside walks, and climbs among crags over the high fells.

My camera will be at the ready. Photos and a trip summary will be presented on my return.

Kindling above the clouds

Kindles and iPads -- the bane of a flight attendant's existence.  So reports today's New York Times.

FAA regulations require that all electronic devices be turned off  below ten thousand feet, while taking off and landing.  But "petulant" passengers leave them on and "surreptitiously" continue reading.  "We're not policemen," the head of the flight attendants union laments.

There's no evidence that operation of these devices actually interferes with navigation.  It's just a rule.

You know what?  I'm not bothered.  As reported a couple of days ago ("Abandoned on the prairie," q.v.), I was deeply engrossed in a lengthy and absorbing novel on my flights to and from Oakland last week.  But when asked to turn off electronic devices, I did so without complaint and without petulance. 

Today's planes -- especially 737s -- climb very swiftly past 10,000 feet.  During that short time, I watched the airport building whiz by as we took off.  I picked out landmarks below.  I "surreptitiously" gave my neighbors a once over, observing their peculiarities.  I glanced at the in-flight magazine, studying the route map to find more interesting, more remote places I wished I were heading.  I noted once again, with satisfaction,  how all planes have "No Smoking" symbols above each seat -- symbols that are now perpetually lighted, symbols will never again blink off,  granting addicted passengers permission to share their cigarette smoke with their neighbors.

Before I knew it, the double chime rang, and I returned to my novel.  For maybe ten minutes, my reading had been interrupted.  I had been forced to amuse myself.  I had been required to be aware of myself and my surroundings, rather than lost in the more exotic world about which I'd been reading.  I had been forced to sit quietly and think my own thoughts.

Even if this ten-minute hiatus in my action-packed day was scientifically unnecessary, was it a bad thing?  People pay good money to attend retreats, places where they can be silent and clear their minds and focus on their lives.  Monks willingly spend entire lifetimes in such activities.  We were granted ten minutes, free of charge -- courtesy of the FAA.  Heck, sometimes those ten minutes are so much gosh-darn fun that I put my book or Kindle aside and spend the entire two-hour flight engaged in such non-activity -- staring blankly out the window at the clouds and landscape below.

 Call me simple-minded.  But some of those "petulant" travelers might try a little simple-mindedness now and then, and ease off on their blood pressure.

Abandoned on the prairie

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into ... their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald

My tastes in books are peculiar and inconsistent.  I don't generally read "best sellers," including those blockbusters that appear on the front page of the New York Times book section.  Not out of some misplaced form of snobbishness, but simply because they rarely sound that interesting or connected to anything that makes sense in my own life.

But when I read last Sunday's front page review of Richard Ford's Canada, and then re-read the review, I decided to squander 13 bucks and download the book onto Kindle.  I've spent the days since then traveling to, relaxing in, and returning from visits with relatives in Sonoma.  But when I wasn't visiting, I was engrossed in Canada, which I finished shortly after returning home last night.

I'm not going to review the novel.  I'm not going to compete with the New York Times reviewer, or with a large number of other competent literary writers for other periodicals.  But I owe it to you  -- after having told you how strongly the book gripped my attention -- to give some idea, from my personal perspective, of the reasons for its attraction.

The story is narrated in the first person by Dell Parsons.  He is a 60-year-old high school teacher, but the events he describes occurred in 1960, when he and his twin sister Berner were 15.  Dell, as narrator, pieces his narrative together from his own memories, from an extensive journal that his mother kept, and from newspaper accounts.  The result is a book that reads like a richly detailed memoir -- a memory of events that really happened -- not like a novel. 

In the first half of the book, Dell and his sister live with their parents in Great Falls, Montana, their family's last stop in the course of a peripatetic life, moving from air base to air base.  Their father, an extroverted former USAF officer, is now desperately seeking a new career path.  His mother, an extremely introverted fifth grade teacher, has frustrated ambitions to be a writer and poet.  Each parent lives in his or her own world, a world that has little contact with Great Falls and its indifferent, if not hostile, residents.  Dell's sister is angry, depressed, restless -- an adolescent.  Dell is quiet, studious, detached -- and appears closer to 12 in age, emotionally, than to 15.

Incidentally, the book is one of the great American debunkings of the supposed joys of growing up in a small town.  The Great Falls chamber of commerce should sue.

Dell's father, after a number of shady enterprises, ends up owing some money to some unsympathetic and possibly dangerous local Indians.  In order to repay the debt, he decides to commit the perfect crime, robbing a North Dakota bank of $2,500 and then fading into the supposed anonymity of the open West.  It takes but a matter of days for him to be arrested, together with his wife who drove the get-away car.  Both go to prison, his sister runs off to California, and Dell -- alone and friendless -- is taken by his mother's sympathetic acquaintance across the border to a small town in Saskatchewan to avoid "internment" in a Montana state orphanage.

Thus ends the first half of this 462-page novel.  Until this point, I had been puzzled by the book's title.

In Part Two, in Canada, Dell ends up in an isolated, miniscule, Saskatchewan prairie town, working at a rustic hotel that provides lodging for wild goose hunters, a hotel that's owned by an enigmatic, vaguely sinister, Gatsby-esque former Harvard student.  The plot thickens. The owner has a past and problems of his own. Dell gains experience and takes a few first steps toward self-confidence, murders are committed, and the boy finds new reasons to ponder the workings of the human heart. A friendly woman helps Dell slip out of town and head off to Winnipeg, where he once more -- and with relief -- picks up his high school education.

The book ends with a short "Part Three," an epilogue that pulls together some of the story's strings and brings Dell's life up to the present.  Dell, now a Canadian and a school teacher in Ontario, has a final meeting with his dying sister -- a woman who, after running away from home, has led an eventful, unstructured, meaningless, and unhappy life.  She is relieved to learn -- at the end -- that her twin's life, at least, has been happy.  Dell wonders to himself whether it actually has been.

 So much for the plot.  The plot is absorbing, despite (partly because of?) the narrator's habit of constantly warning his reader of future events as he reminisces.  We thus know of major plot developments before we reach them in the story -- we're just not sure how we'll get there.

The book is less about the plot, however, than about Dell's perception of the world and his "education" -- regardless of whether we feel it to be useful or functional education -- as he gains experience.  Dell, as a boy, is a seeker after knowledge, even if indifferently educated through no fault of his own, and his introversion inclines him to seek understanding of the strange universe in which he has been raised and in which he finds himself.  As a more sophisticated 60-year-old man, through whom his teenaged self speaks to us, Dell's quest for understanding continues.

Why did his father, seemingly a normal human being, turn to crime as the only solution to a rather small financial problem?  Why did his mother -- who strongly opposed the robbery, and who had little respect for her husband -- assist her husband, dooming herself to prison and suicide?  Why did his parents show so little concern for the problems facing their children, both before and after they had formulated their plans for the robbery?  The questions seem unanswerable to Dell; he can only speculate.

[B]ecause very few people do rob banks, it only makes sense that the few who do it are destined for it, no matter what they believe about themselves or how they were raised. I find it impossible not to think this way, because the sense of tragedy would otherwise be overpowering to me. Though it's an odd thing to believe about your parents -- that all along they've been the kind of people criminals come from. It's like a miracle in reverse.

It is ruminations like these that render Canada more than simply a tale of growing up with wacko parents in Montana. They convert the somewhat melodramatic plot into something darkly philosophical, something almost Dostoevskian.

Dell recalls the look in his father's eyes shortly before the robbery, a new look, the look perhaps of the man -- a criminal --that he had always been, but that was only now finally coming to light.

I've seen this phenomenon in the faces of other men -- homeless men, men sprawled on the pavement ... -- I've seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.  It's a theory of destiny and character I don't like or want to believe in.  But it's there in me like a hard understory.  I don't, in fact, ever see such a ruined man without saying silently to myself:  There's my father.  My father is that man.  I used to know him.

Canada is a beautifully written book, told in a cadenced English that is both formal and, at times, slightly ungrammatical.  Or perhaps, more accurately, idiosyncratically grammatical.  Like a combination of the speech patterns of the educated English teacher who describes and analyzes the formative events of his life, and the young boy, articulate but still feeling his way, through whom the narrator speaks.

In its telling and in its conclusion, Dell's story is a somewhat hopeful story, somewhat hopeful and a bit optimistic in the same sense as David Copperfield relates a horrific tale that is somewhat hopeful and a bit optimistic.  And yet we are left disturbed by the ease with which lives, both young and not so young, can be ruined or crippled by one simple, careless decision, a decision not carefully thought through at the time, and at the difficulty we all have in reconstructing our own pasts, and in understanding the people and events that have made us the individuals we are today.

Hollywood in Seattle

Those of you who have stuck with me since 2009 may remember that year as the summer when a movie was filmed, in part, in and around my house. 

I was evicted from my house for 17 days; joined the neighbors in watching as much as possible of the filming; examined with awe and loathing what the set directors did to the interior and exterior of my house; met and shook hands with actors Tobey Maguire and Laura Linney; chatted at some length with the very approachable director/writer Jacob Estes; and even served as an extra, down at the King County Building Department office, standing in line behind Maguire as his character waited to get a building permit. 

In sum, for a couple of weeks I had a chance to consider myself part, in some tiny degree, of what Angelenos call "the industry."

After the filming, the movie (The Details) seemed to languish in the bowels of Hollywood.  But it was shown at the Sundance film festival in January 2011, where it was picked up by The Weinstein Company (formerly Miramax).  It's now scheduled for nationwide release on September 7.

But here in Seattle, we didn't have to wait for autumn.  The Details was shown last night, one showing only, at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF).  I, of course, went to see it -- largely, but not entirely, to see how my house would appear up there on the silver screen.

The movie, a "dark comedy," involves a young doctor who, with his wife, buys a house in Seattle and runs into immediate conflict with the local raccoons; tangles with a friend over a one-shot affair with the friend's wife; and is harassed by a crazy woman next door, the epitome of the neighbor from hell, whom he unwillingly makes happily pregnant and accidentally causes to be assassinated.  I had read the script while the movie was being shot, and it was fascinating to see how the movie on the screen  reflected, and did not reflect, my expectations. 

Estes took questions from the audience following the show.  He noted that, following Sundance, he had re-edited the film and re-shot a few scenes in other cities, primarily to make the plot flow more intelligibly.  I was disappointed that at least one of the craziest scenes in the script -- a dream sequence involving a house filled with racoons -- had been toned down a bit (a racoon does not flush the toilet after using it in the film!), and was over more quickly than I would have predicted from the detailed descriptions in the script.

In fact, my reaction to the racoon scene was perhaps my general reaction to the movie as a whole.  Scenes that could be read at leisure in the script, and pictured as lasting several minutes, were over in the film almost before they could be digested.  Filming that seemed to take hours in 2009 was edited down to minutes or less in the film.  We all know that, in the filming of every movie, far more footage is shot than ever appears in your local theater.  But my contact with The Details made me really understand for the first time the "waste" of time necessary to come away with scenes that convey exactly what the director wants to say.  And sometimes, the director doesn't really decide what he wishes to say until he reaches the final editing process.

This "cutting room floor" effect hit me particularly hard.  My non-speaking part -- consisting of standing in line behind Tobey Maguire -- was part of a scene with a bored bureaucrat that must have been shot twenty times, with cameras filming from different angles each time.  I fully recognized that the scene merely presented some background and wasn't a key part of the plot development.  But it was fun, the camaraderie among the director and actors was enjoyable, and I looked forward to seeing my face on the movie screen.  But not only was I cut from the scene -- a major loss to the film, I might note -- but the building department scene lasts no more than five seconds, I'd estimate, near the very beginning of the film.  The humor of Maguire's frustration in dealing with the bureaucrat -- admittedly irrelevant to the plot -- didn't survive the cutting..

The scenes inside my house? Totally eerie. To see rooms that I occupy daily -- albeit gaudily decorated -- up there on the screen in front of the entire movie-viewing world was a weird experience. And there was my refrigerator, looking the same as always but with someone else's magnets stuck on the door! And the front door to my house, which looks a bit weird even in "real life" -- a Gothic arch with a stained glass window -- showed up in a number of scenes. The camera seemed positioned to include it frequently in the background of interior shots.

All in all, from my perspective the entire production of the film, culminating with my viewing of the final product last night, was highly enjoyable -- and educational.  People I talked with -- "normal" people who had no personal involvement with the film -- also seemed to have enjoyed it.  I recommend giving it viewing when it comes to your local theater in the fall.

Never too old

Moreover, in his old age he [Socrates] learnt to play the lyre, declaring that he saw no absurdity in learning a new accomplishment.
--Diogenes Laertius

[T]here on one of the benches sat a man who, being about forty-five with a grizzled beard, looked certainly rather old to be studying the first thing children learn. ... I  ... asked why an old man like him wanted to come to school.  He replied ... that it was much more disgraceful for an old man not to learn what could make him better, than for boys, since he had had time to know the worth of it....
--Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine

In her excellent novel of life in ancient Athens, Mary Renault fleshes out the historical account of how Socrates, as an "old man" (45?), joined a class of young children who were learning to play the lyre.

I'm not Socrates.  But I get the point.  Unlike Socrates with his lyre, I did have a chance to continue piano lessons as a teenager, when it would have come more easily.  And once past my teens, I've always felt that even a modest level of musical accomplishment on that instrument would somehow make me "better." Therefore, it would be "disgraceful" to refuse to do so, out of misplaced embarrassment. Right?

And embarrassment there will be, come Saturday, when -- for the second time in six months -- I sit at the piano and show off my "talent" at my teacher's semi-annual recital program.  I do feel like Socrates, sitting in a music class surrounded by elementary school students. Embarrassed just because of the difference in age, and embarrassed because I'm showing off accomplishments that most kids -- those, at least, at all interested themselves in piano -- would have mastered by their early teens.

But I will try to imitate Socrates's philosophical bent of mind.  Maybe my fumbling attempts will plant seeds of inspiration in the minds of my fellow pianists, showing them that you're never too old.  Perhaps a parent or two will be inspired to take up an instrument of his own, so he and child can play duets.

I will play Chopin's Nocturne in F minor, one of the easier Chopin nocturnes.  I still fumble over various portions of it, but my teacheer assures me I'll do just fine.  She reminds me that I'm not playing in front of music critics -- just parents of young pianists.  And she insists that I play with very good musicality, which she further insists is more important than technical accuracy.

Since the recital has more of an impact on her reputation as a teacher than it does on my chances of winning a scholarship to Julliard, I'll trust in her assurances.  I'll proceed to Saturday with attempted equanimity.  I've taken five-day lawsuits to trial with less preparation.  Surely, I can get through a five-minute nocturne?

Examples might be given of men who have applied themselves at an advanced period of life to an art or science of which they had no previous knowledge. Solon used to say that he learnt something new every day. Old as I am, it is only lately that I took up the study of Greek, and you will remember that Socrates learned to play the lyre when he was past middle life.

--Cicero, On Friendship and Old Age.

There you go.  Socrates again.  An inspiration to all of us who find ourselves past the first blush of youth.  I do know the worth of my piano studies.  Saturday night, I embrace you!

Buying booze

After 78 years of state socialism, the voters of Washington last November attacked the evils of government by voting to abolish the state monopoly on sales of hard liquor.  (An earlier initiative failed, but this time Costco brought out the big guns and big bucks to get it passed.)

Yesterday, the shining sun of capitalism arose in all its glory over the State of Washington.  The state has auctioned off, or is in the process of auctioning off, all of its state liquor store locations.  Over 1,600 stores have applied for liquor licenses.  My own Safeway has been crowding its floor space to make room for more shelves -- shelves resplendent with liquor bottles.

Price comparisons at Safeway for purchase of a bottle of Jack Daniels showed that it now cost about one dollar more than it did yesterday from the state.  That's with a "Safeway Club" card.  Otherwise, about five dollars more.

One Safeway shopper estimated that most bottles of liquor cost four to five dollars more.  Unlike the  state stores, private stores mark prices before addition of the state liquor tax.  The tax is not applied until you go through check-out, which makes it difficult to compare before and after prices.

Grocers said the easier access to liquor -- sitting there right next to your bread and milk -- should make up for the higher prices.  That claim assumes that easier access to liquor, and contemplation by shoppers (and their kids) of shelves and shelves of liquor bottles, is a benefit to society.  Sorry if I sound puritanical.  It's not as though I never drink.  I just never considered a visit to the conveniently located and nicely organized state stores to be a burden that I needed to escape.

"It's exciting -- just the option of being able to get liquor at my favorite Costco," said Kellie Landry, 37, of Covington.

--Today's Seattle Times.

"Exciting"?

Whatever.