Guest Blog: Aurellian Springs 13 miles

Editor's Note: I have played least in sight here lately because I'm in a very busy period at work, so I was delighted when Kamela sent me this very interesting piece of grot to add to my collection.

Hello from Halifax!

Many road signs near my town point to a location called Aurellian Springs. Each sign has the mileage. For example, “Aurellian Springs 13 miles →.”

Based on all the signs, I figured that Aurellian Springs had much to offer. So I drove over there early on a Saturday morning.

Imagine my surprise when I beheld a country crossroads with a decaying tin-roofed general store, an elementary school, and nothing else but a stop sign.

Disappointed? Not me! As I explored the area, I found beautiful, rolling, deep green pastures with many hardwood shade trees, well-fed cows good enough to show at the State Fair, and barns that looked like they could pass muster in the horse country of Maryland. I also saw well-appointed modest homes. The friendly people waved and smiled.

Aurellian Springs: evermore a Golden place in my memory.

But I have to wonder: do the residents know how their locality got its name? Nope -- or at least they did not share this information with a stranger.

Of course, the name “Aurellian” or “Aurelian” appears on some rare headstones from the 19th century. I have seen them in the Notre Dame cemetery in Montreal. Furthermore, the phrase “aurellian gape” appears in Joyce’s inscrutable Finnegans Wake. Finally, in his Meditations, Roman Emperor Aurelius embraced the beauty of old age despite the ineluctable atrophy of the mind. But what do these three pieces of GROT have in common other than possible roots for the name “Aurellian Springs?”

First, Emperor Aurelius had reason to see beauty in the wasting of his mental faculties. His wife, Faustina, plotted to kill the aging Emperor and to replace him with her son. She took many lovers, including Cassius, whom she persuaded to overthrow her husband on his death bed. Aurelius did not die, Cassius forfeited his life as the price for a failed coup, and Aurelius forgave Faustina. Obviously, Aurelius not only wrote but also lived as a Stoic.

Second, “aurellian gape” may refer to the Emperor’s metaphor for old age: the beauty of a ripe fig that gapes open. (This hypothesis works as well as anything when interpreting Joyce’s book.)

Third, people at the turn of the 19th century may have named their sons “Aurelius” (and their daughters “Aurelia”) for the Emperor). After all, this period saw neo-classical architecture, empire dresses, and Latin studies.

Thus, “Aurellian” goes back to Rome by way of an inscrutable book and empire dresses. I wonder if the residents of Aurellian Springs care. I certainly hope it: “Aurelii” means “the golden.”

Morality Police

I am fat, and as I have expressed in earlier posts I have spent a lifetime coming to peace with my girth. I was a fat kid, and like a lot of fat kids, I was ridiculed by other children. Today, adults are figuring out new ways to torture fat kids. See Sandy Szwarc's Junkfood Science blog today, in which she reports reader's feedback to recent AMA clinical guidelines for fat kids.

Guest Review: Pan's Labyrinth

Editor's Note: When I received this compelling review of Pan's Labyrinth from my sister, Donna, in an e-mail, I couldn't resist adding it to my blog. I love the idea of occasionally having guest writers. Mike is my sister's husband.

I don't know if either one of you have seen Pan's Labyrinth, but Mike and I rented the DVD and it was so good. It is a Spanish movie directed by the Mexican director, Guillermo del Toro. The movie is subtitled, but like the Chinese movie"Crouching Tigers, Hidden Dragons", it did not take away from it. Actually, it made the movie richer to see the actors speak in their native tongue. The movie is also known as El Laberinto del Fauno.

The story is a mixture of fantasy and hard reality. It takes place in Northern Spain after the Spanish Civil War when Franco's Nationalists came into power. It is a combination of brutal and cruel violence and beautiful fantasy. All of this seen from the perspective of an 11 year-old-girl.

If you have not seen it, I must let you know that parts of the movie are sensitive and beautiful and parts are graphically violent and emotionally gut wrenching. The movie, however, keeps you mesmerized. I have not been that affected by a movie in a long time. You should have seen Mike and I crying, and Mike does not cry easily.

The acting is superb. There is only one American actor who played the dual role of the faun and the pale man.

The movie won an Oscar for best foreign film this year and received a 22 minute ovation at the Cannes film festival. As difficult as the movie could be at times, I loved it. It will definitely go on my favorite movie list.

This same director is known in the US for directing "Hellboy", which you may or may not have seen or liked. He also made, what he referred to as a "sister movie" several years ago (juxtaposing the supernatural against reality) called "The Devil's Backbone" also in Spain and also about the Spanish Civil war, which we rented and also liked. Pan's Labyrinth, however, is a masterpiece. I wished I had seen it on the big screen.

If you have not seen it, rent it. If you have seen it, let me know how you felt about the movie.

Donna

Bed Bug

On Memorial Day I decided that I wanted to see a scary movie. It had been quite a while since I had seen one, and I enjoy the Sci Fi/Horror movie genre. I’m not a fan of chainsaw-massacre-type flicks. My favorites are haunted house films such as The Haunting with Julie Harris, really good monster films such as Alien, or deadly virus films such as The Andromeda Strain. Although good films in the Sci Fi/Horror genre are hard to come by, I’m always willing to give a scary movie a chance.

So on Memorial Day, I decided to go see Bug. The trailer on TV had caught my eye. I saw it starred Ashley Judd and appeared to be about a bug invasion of some kind. I like Judd; I like scary bugs (Them made in 1954 is one of the great ones!). I also had a vague memory of Bug receiving very good reviews.

I entered the theater with a feeling that this movie was going to be good. I sat back in my cushioned seat and watched with a handful of others the movie open with the camera zooming down on top of the Rustic Motel — an isolated, run-down motor court on a barren Oklahoma highway. There in Room 7 we meet Agnes, Judd’s character, who is being made nervous and edgy by the harassment of a silent phone caller. Each time the phone rings, Agnes shouts her fear into the phone, and we learn she is afraid of someone who just “got out.” That someone turns out to be her abusive, recently paroled ex-husband, Jerry (Harry Connick, Jr.).

But, before we have a chance to see Jerry in the flesh, we get to meet Peter (Michael Shannon), a shy, somewhat odd drifter, introduced to Agnes by her lesbian friend and fellow waitress, R.C. (Lynn Collins). R.C. picks up drifter Peter at the local bar and brings him to Room 7 to meet Agnes. They all party together with alcohol and drugs.

To make a long story short, boy Peter meets girl Agnes, boy spends the night on girl’s floor, boy leaves to get breakfast for girl, boy interrupts ex-husband beating girl, boy gently gets girl to reveal her tragic secret, boy sleeps with girl, boy finds an aphid in their bed.

Ah, here’s our first critter. Surely the monster swarm will follow. Unfortunately for me, right after the first sighting it becomes apparent that there will be no monster swarm of “aphids” or any other kind of bug in the tradition of monster flicks. Peter is just flat out mad, and he spends the rest of the movie drawing emotionally fragile Agnes into his madness, from first persuading Agnes that there really are aphids in her bed to convincing her that he is AWOL from the military because the government implanted him with insect egg sacs transmitting locater signals. Afraid of losing him, Agnes isolates herself in a foiled wrapped room (foil interrupts the signals) to protect him from capture. R.C. makes a valiant effort to rescue Agnes, and even wife-beater Jerry tries to free her but is too late. By then Peter and Agnes are locked in a bloody dance of delusion and paranoia, from cutting flesh and extracting teeth to much, much worse. At the climax of the movie, both characters, drenched in blood, are frenzied with their shared delusion of insect infestation. The movie closes with Peter and Agnes ending their affliction in a less bloody but equally brutal fashion.

Bug is listed as a horror movie, and I’ve read it described as a psychological thriller with subtle twists. It is more a psychological study than a horror film or even thriller, although it certainly is bloody in the horror tradition. While Judd and Shannon give intense performances as characters mutually feeding their delusions, there are no surprises in the film — no subtlety. With the “appearance” of the first aphid, we know that Peter is mad, and we know that Judd will soon be joining him. As I sat through the film, I never once questioned Peter’s insanity. In the Vampire’s Kiss with Nicholas Cage, we find ourselves wondering whether Cage is really a vampire or merely an insane young man thinking he is a vampire. I never doubted that Peter and Agnes were nuts, and I didn’t particularly enjoy watching their predictable descent.

For me a horror film must scare, thrill, or at the very least surprise you. A lot of blood does not make a horror film. When some fellow audience members snickered at Judd during a climactic monologue, I knew I wasn’t the only one with different expectations.

Very Pretty Eyes

Liz heaved her weight out of the desk chair, feeling that deep pain in her right knee again, feeling the stiff ache in her lower back. But she hauled herself up anyway and lumbered to the mirror hanging over the credenza on the far wall. She looked at her hair, then she looked at her eyes, then she looked at her nose, her mouth—all in isolation. She never looked lower if she could help it. She pulled the Sassy Pink lipstick tube out of her pocket, broke it open, twisted it up, and meticulously reformed her mouth. She shifted her gaze back to her eyes and carefully wiped the smudge of mascara away from under her lower left lid. Elizabeth Taylor eyes. That was what her mama used to tell her when she was little. Her mama would smile, hold her chin, and say, “You have eyes just like Elizabeth Taylor, honey. Violet eyes just like Elizabeth Taylor.”

Liz studied her eyes in the mirror. They were really just a nice shade of blue, but her mama loved Elizabeth Taylor. Liz did have pretty eyes, though—thickly fringed with long dark lashes.

“Very pretty eyes on mama’s very pretty little girl.”

Mama wasn’t here to tell her that, now.

Metamorphosis

I was fat kid, but a slim teenager and young adult. At 52, I've spent the majority of my life fat.

I started a journey to self-acceptance about six years ago. After a lifetime of yo-yo dieting and the accompanying depression, I was exhausted; I could no longer continue the self-abuse. I knew that regardless of whether I lost weight or not I needed to make friends with me, fat and all.

At that point, I actively worked at loving all of me. It took me quite a while to go from intellectually accepting myself to emotionally accepting myself.

The ultimate transformation took place two summers ago when I was sitting under a rock ledge in the Canyonlands of Utah. I had traveled there with friends, and I had spent my week proving that I could physically keep up with the rest of them. Finally tuckered out I let them go on another hike without me. I scrambled up a hill and sat under a ledge. I could hear and see everyone beneath me. I felt like an animal. I became so quiet, birds started landing on the bush in front of me. I was so at peace, so content. I realized then that I had been trying to prove to myself and others that this old fat lady could do anything. I was so focused on physical feats that I almost missed out on the beauty that surrounded me. I knew then that I could finally accept myself, including limitations, with genuine love.

This journey to self-acceptance is still somewhat rocky for me. For example, I wish my body could move a little better and my joints hurt a little less, but whenever I find myself falling into old patterns of thought, I remind myself of that beautiful moment.

Red, White, and Blue

I travel 25 miles to work in a large metropolitan area in North Carolina. About three miles from my workplace, I pass through a modest neighborhood of small, frame and brick homes. The houses are weathered, but the tiny yards are neat. Many decorate their porches with flowers, baskets, and traditional whatnot.

This neighborhood would be typical of many if it were not for one unusual house and its resident. Situated on a corner lot is one of the more modest homes. The white paint on the house has dulled and peeled, and the wooden frame appears fragile as if at any time it would collapse into a pile of boards.

These details, however, tend to get lost behind the unusual display in the front yard. Strung from the porch to a tree is a large white t-shirt with the words, “I love the U.S.A,” in red, white, and blue. Two to three bikes (number varies from day to day) stand in the patch of yard, each sporting a pole with a large American flag. When the weather is nice, a young, well-muscled black man rides one of the bikes up and down the sidewalk in front of his home. He handles his bike with ease and often rears back on one wheel, performing for morning drivers stopped at the corner traffic light.

We all turn our heads to watch. Some of us laugh with him and some against him. His outlandish performance is so unusual, I question his mental health and wonder if he had been a solider at one time who left a war not quite the way he entered it. Of course, perhaps he just is an extreme extrovert who loves his country and wants to make sure that every driver who passes in front of his house knows it.

Still, he is unusual, and I’ve noticed that a For Sale sign has been posted at the empty house next to his for many months.

One more voice

When I step into the world of the Internet, the cacophony of voices often overwhelms me--so many people clamoring for my attention with websites, blogs, podcasts, and videos. Sometimes I feel that there are just too many words out there. I find it hard at times to sort the good bits from the bad.

I’ve had this blog space for a number of months now, but I’ve been unable to bring myself to write a post. I just didn’t want to add my voice to the clamor. After all, what I have to say is really for my pleasure, and I shouldn’t need to make that pleasure public. Well, at least that is what I tried to tell myself. Unfortunately, I found the pull to publicize my words to a real or imagined audience rather strong.

I faced a dilemma of sorts—the need to give into a writer’s call versus the reluctance to increase the Internet volume by one more voice. Of course, the writer in me finally won. It turned out not to be much of a battle, especially when I decided to embrace the uselessness of my words.

Now, I intend to revel in that uselessness, slinging words about for the sheer joy of it, shrieking my delight.

To Grot

Main Entry: grot
Pronunciation: 'grät
Function: noun
1 : useless waste or rejected matter : rubbish
2 : something that is worthless or nonsensical
Function: verb
1: to treat something idly
2: to gleefully waste words