Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 225

"It is, frankly, a long way from Jesus."

Where am I? I'm home yet today was ... yes, mild and sunny. Mild means one degree celsius - no one is wearing tank tops and shorts - but I did have to get a lighter coat out of the closet. Thank you, gods of weather.

I had intended to get up and work this morning - ha. Not with Christmas just around the corner and I not in a frenzy yet. So it was frenzy time. Had to find an Xmas tree, a real tree in a pot. Went to the corner store, none, where there'd been scores before I went away. Wayson came over and I commandeered his car to drive around to the other stores in the 'hood - none. Lesson: do not leave buying your tree in a pot till Dec. 21.

While I had his car, however, I picked up lots of wine, beer and Prosecco from the liquor store and a 17 pound turkey from Mark the butcher, who gave me a lovely hug and a gift for my decades of patronage. What would I do without Wayson's wheels?

I went back later on foot to get more groceries from No Frills, and there, on Spruce Street, lying in front of someone's house - I kid you not - was a Christmas tree. Abandoned, on December 21. I looked around to be sure - maybe someone had just thrown it down before putting it on their car? No. It was desolate and alone. So I took it home, went back to the hardware store to buy a base, set it up. Admired my handiwork - it's actually more or less straight. Unlike many of my friends. Ha!

Then continued to No Frills to buy groceries for the big meal while the weather was good. Then listened to podcasts while wrapping.

So - the lights are on the tree, though the main decorating is to do with Eli on Xmas Eve. Almost everything - and believe me, it's a bunch of books and second-hand scrips and scraps, the main gifts are winter coats and a bit of money - is wrapped. Most of the groceries are bought. Christmas is MOVING RIGHT ALONG at 308.

RIP dear Joe Cocker, who took one song and flew to the moon.

Here's an excerpt from British writer Nell Frizzell, in the Guardian, with her funny and sour British take on Xmas. I'm thinking of you, Chris.

Christmas is the stick with which millions of us beat ourselves into brandy-soaked agony for being poor, single, childless, lonely, or simply bad at being jolly. It’s one thing to be single, skint and surrounded by dysfunctional relatives, but it’s quite another when the entire capitalist world is telling you that this is the most magical time of the year. We seem to have lost the script to a pantomime we never even believed in. We have ruined Christmas, without even trying.Last year the TUC published a study that showed the average British adult borrowed £685 over the festive period, grinding them into a debt that would take until June to pay off. If that adult earned the minimum wage, it would take them an entire year to drag themselves out of Christmas debt – just to do it all over again. And yet adverts, pop songs, window displays and shop shelves scream out that we should be buying ourselves into an orgy of goodwill and glamour – that Christmas has no value unless you’ve paid for it.It is because of this wild fury of expected expense that you will find yourself, panic-stricken, standing under a soul-sucking white light, gently sweating to Slade, holding four ugly brass candlesticks, a spotty teapot and some bath salts in the hope that someone, somewhere, will want them as a present. It is, frankly, a long way from Jesus.If, like 7% of those recently polled by the BBC, you will be spending Christmas alone, then the burden can feel even heavier. Everything from washing powder to chicken nuggets is sold on the promise of yuletide love, affection and romance from about 27 September onwards. Yet it takes a stout heart and strong backbone to stare down Christmas single-handedly. And if, like mine, your family are a long way from the Bisto advert, then getting in the Christmas spirit can feel like a lost cause.Of course, there is a solution. Stop giving presents, stop watching television, stop comparing yourself to adverts, and actually spend it with people you like. Some of the happiest Christmases I have ever known have been surrounded by a group of generous, thoughtful, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, half-Jewish, Scrabble-playing, dog-walking, potato-roasting friends. People who willingly set up three separate screens on the dining room table just so my 96-year-old grandmother could watch the Queen’s speech, on repeat, from every available angle.This year, however, I am opting out altogether. I shan’t be driving home for Christmas. I have no tree, have wrapped no presents, will eat no turkey and mull no wine. Instead, I shall go for a run, listen to the headlines, eat a baked potato and watch a western with my mother. On Christmas Eve I plan to volunteer at the Hackney care leavers’ Christmas dinner, but the day itself is as blank as a fresh fall of snow. I can’t wait.

Steve says, Kiss my ...

winter solstice, home

Home home beloved home. The flight was painless, the city not that cold and even sunny. My tenant Carol left me homemade tomato soup in the fridge and had been to the library to get a book I'd ordered that came in: Steven Pinker's "The Sense of Style: the thinking person's guide to writing in the 21st century." That should keep me busy. Friends John and Sylvie left a big box of the most divine Christmas baking on the deck, some of which is in my stomach right now. There were Christmas cards in the mail, and just now, I got to listen to the podcast of friend and student Mary-Jane McPhee, who wrote a magnificent story for our Thursday writing group and this morning read it on CBC's the Sunday Edition. Here's the website - her essay is off to the right. It's a beauty, and beautifully read too. Proud of you, MJ.

Florida - palm trees, beach, pool, birds, colour, soft moist air - seems already like a dream. Wait - my hands are an unusual pale caramel colour. And soon I'll read what I wrote down there and see if it's any good. That's the real test.

And now - Christmas! Ye Gods. I have to get a tree.

The Night - EssaySunday, December 21, 2014 | Categories: Features | 0Share Catastrophes have to be good for something. Sometimes they are wake up calls. Sometimes they rearrange borders. And sometimes they bring people together in surprising ways.
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Have I got a piece of Florida for you!

This is what I saw through the living room window at 7.30 this morning.

Readers, this condo is for sale - but at the moment, it's empty and available - if you are a friend of mine. A two-bedroom condo overlooking the water on beautiful Anna Maria Island, fully furnished with bedding, towels, all kitchenware, beach stuff - swimming pool and hot tub on one side, endless white sand beach (free shells!) on the other. You see dawn on one side, and on the other, if you go across the street at around 6, you see the sun drop below the Gulf of Mexico. Direct flights from Toronto to Sarasota, a 20 minute drive from the airport.

Heaven.

Let me know.

more about Birdman

I should fill you in about Birdman since I know you value my opinion in all things. Particularly politics, I know you agree with me completely about that, dear reader - but also occasionally film. This one is the weirdest jumble of things. It's apparently famous for its long tracking shots, though those don't matter to me. I did appreciate its extreme originality of story, script, acting - many things make it worth seeing. It's never dull.

But it purports to be about the theatre, a Hollywood star producing and starring in a Broadway show, and it's so far off base with that, it drove me mad. In what show could you replace a lead role the day before previews and not even rehearse? What big New York actor would drink real gin and try to have real sex during a sex scene on stage during a preview? What theatre would allow an ex-wife of the star backstage in the middle of the second act on a Broadway opening night - and what star, on that same night, would loll around chatting amiably? Go and wait for your @#$# cue, I was screaming.

And what is it about Latin Americans and magic realism? Why do they all think they can fly and move things with their minds? Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Inarritu, the director of this movie, the same. Crazy stuff. Why can't the rest of us do those things?

Perhaps now you're anxious to see it. It won't be a waste of your time, though you might dislike it and like it in equal measure, as I did.

And now that I have given you my invaluable critique, I'm going to bed.

Bird land.

My last day amidst the pelicans and palm trees - back home tomorrow to grey and minus four. It has been a great week. I saw the accountant and the real estate agent and talked twice to the lawyer. Helped load twelve boxes of records that have been stored under the stairs here for many years into Cousin David's car - my Uncle Edgar's collection of baroque masterpieces that Mum couldn't bear to let go but never listened to. Now David has them and is doing research to figure out how to store and play them.

He and I have spent more time together than we ever have before. There's a picture of us taken in Chinatown in NYC in about 1961 - I ten or eleven, he six year older, the youngest and quietest of my father's Uncle Bill's three sons. We've connected on rare occasions through the years, but what a gift that he took his retirement in Bradenton. Last night we went to see Birdman, an excellent if wild and crazy film, a must for theatre people, and then had a small seafood dinner overlooking the water, watching a white egret stalking about on the deck of a boat. We're having dinner on the beach again tonight. I haven't been nearly as alone here as I usually am.

And yet I've been alone a lot and still haven't done as much work as I'd like. A huge editing job, barely begun, the stacks of New Yorkers still not finished. Where does the time go? My indulgence was reading the NYT every day - that took an hour. Walking on the beach. But every morning, I did go down to sit by the pool and write longhand and then transcribe on the computer. The new memoir is now nearly 15,000 words long. That's a victory.

Thanks to the neighbours who lent me their wifi, making this visit infinitely easier than previous ones, when I had to drive to the local donut shop to access the internet. And the weather - just warm enough that I could enjoy the pool, not so warm that others wanted to. Oh the blessed silence down there. And that long long white sand beach. The first blast of freezing Canadian air will be tough.

I honour my mother, yet again, for her choice to winter in this unpretentious, quiet, lovely place, and my father and uncle who made that financially possible for her and Auntie Do. Thank you, all of you, I am forever grateful for the time spent here, for the pelicans and palm trees. And now, I and my brown arms and my new collection of tiny shells and my 15,000 words are going home. Love, Beth

Colbert's epic goodbye

Epic send-off to Stephen Colbert yesterday night, demonstrating what a good show can and does - very occasionally - do: make us part of a kind of warm and intelligent family. Colbert, like Jon Stewart, feels like a really good friend. I've never watched Johnny Carson or Letterman or those other late night guys Americans are addicted to - who wants an hour of clever, cynical banter as you go to bed? But Stewart and Colbert are different because they CARE passionately about the world, and from the same angle I do, at a time when the voices on the right, the Republicans and their mouthpiece Fox "News," are not just wrong-headed but criminally petty, blind and selfish.

Colbert is a joyful man, that's what so rare about him and why he could get away with playing a blowhard egotist for so long. We sensed the joy right through the absurdities he was spouting. And to see the depth of his friendship with Jon Stewart, two wealthy, successful men at the top of their game, hugely important in the American media panorama, dealing with each other with brotherly love ... am I getting carried away here? I don't think so, if you've ever seen them together.

So we knew Jon surely would appear last night, and sure enough, he did. At the very end - after Colbert had vanquished Death - yes, typically over the top - Stephen began to sing We'll Meet Again and I thought, Oh God, surely not, how sentimental. Then a door opened and Jon Stewart appeared to a roar of approval, and the two linked arms and continued to sing. Wait - isn't that Randy Newman playing the piano for them?

And then they all appeared, celebs pouring in, all kinds, from all ends of the political and entertainment spectrum strewn about the stage singing, musicians, actors, politicians, writers, Muppets - Big Bird, my almost-friend Carol Spinney in costume with his giant orange feet! It was marvellous. Henry Kissinger! The failed politician Elliot Spitzer, unashamedly singing. A shot of someone singing on a spaceship. A panorama of faces, there to pay tribute to the king of truthiness.

I hope this next project works for you, Stephen. You'll do it without the cynicism others have found necessary for the job. Thank you for your commitment, your courage, sense of humour and giant joyful heart, your own invaluable kind of truth.

It was nearly impossible to get all of them, but here are some of the famous faces we spotted: Jeff Daniels, Sam Waterston, Keith Olbermann, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, Ken Burns, Howard Stern, Cory Booker, Bryan Cranston, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Charlie Rose, Tim Meadows, the Cookie Monster, James Franco, Toby Keith, Big Bird, Andy Cohen, Christiane Amanpour, David Gregory, Randy Newman, Willie Nelson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Mandy Patinkin, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Cyndi Lauper, Andrew Sullivan, Ric Ocasek,  Michael Stipe, Kareem Abdul Jabar, Barry Manilow, Bill DeBlasio, Jeff Tweedy, Patrick Stewart, Stone Phillips, Arianna Huffington, Alan Alda, George Lucas, Alexai Lalas, Henry Kissinger, Elijah Wood, Mike Huckabee, Bob Costas, Nate Silver, Dan Savage, Thomas Friedman, Matt Taibbi, Mark Cuban and Paul Krugman.
There were many more, plus those not in studio: members of Pussy Riot; Vince Gilligan; and then Bill Clinton wishing Colbert well. 

Col - bear!

I thought it was Friday. But it turns out it's Thursday. I still have two more days here before I leave on Sunday. Score.

Though I miss home.

One advantage of being here: Stephen Colbert. It's his last show tonight; I've been watching all week, and today Comedy is running his shows non-stop. I didn't watch him much - his right-wing persona, though brilliant - really brilliant - was noisy and grating, and 11.30 was just too late. But now the TV is on and I'm watching. He just interviewed Maurice Sendak in character - hilarious. How he gets away with being such an asshole is a study in performance art.

Today I met another tenant here, said hello as I swam in the pool and she sunbathed beside it, the only two people there. We began to chat. She was from New York, owns here and rents out, and I talked about trying to sell our place. I confided that the politics of Florida horrified me and told her about the bumper sticker I saw a few days ago, "Guns don't kill people, abortions kill people."
"As a left-wing Canadian, I find that so hard to understand!" I said, assuming that someone from NYC is a kindred spirit.

She stopped talking. That was it, fini, no more conversation. I was reminded again, people here take their politics seriously, and it's best not to bring it up. DON'T BRING IT UP. Especially abortion.

I spent an hour today reading the New York Times. Now that is one fine newspaper. But I still have miles of New Yorkers to go before I sleep.

"Rosewater"

There is sadness for me here - this is the last place, except in my heart, where my mother is tangible. I cherish the cookie tin marked "Sewing" in her writing, filled with thread and needles; her collections - string, scotch tape, recipes, in the storage closet, bags of Xmas decorations; her pretty pots of dried flowers. I cherish them but I won't bring them home. When this place is sold, there's nowhere left that my mother actually lived, except in my heart.

But that's okay, the way things should be.

It was cloudy today, so I didn't walk on the beach or swim, I worked. I'm reading a fascinating book, "Into the woods: how stories work and why we tell them," by British screen and television writer John Yorke. It's about the five act structure of stories and the mirroring technique - that stories are about a journey IN and then a journey back OUT, replaying, backwards, the way the tale started. It's fascinating - very technical, and though more about screenwriting than memoir, in some ways applicable. A story is a story.

Then I wrote a few pages of my own memoir and it's just clumsy narration with no technique or mirroring or structure at all - and then this happened, and then this. But now I know - get a first draft down and see what's there. Then make it better. Over and over. (And spend years perfecting it and getting it into print and then sell 74 copies - been there, done that. But that's okay. It may not be the way things should be, but it's the way things are. Onward.)

Went this afternoon to see "Rosewater" with Cousin David, who told me he has not been inside a movie theatre since 2003. He enjoyed the experience and so did I - it's a fine film. Only Jon Stewart could make us laugh, in a scene between a civil service torturer and his victim, at a mention of the salacious pleasures of New Jersey.

The film is a humane plea for sanity, freedom and humour. In a world where 132 Pakistani schoolchildren are slaughtered by extremists, however, it now seems a bit muted.

shopping in Texas

I very rarely say this, but I was disappointed in Jon Stewart last night. The whole show was weak, and his interview with Macca was just - choppy, silly, odd. Something didn't work. I wonder why.

However, cousin David and I are going to see "Rosewater" this afternoon in any case. A cloudy morning, which was great as I sat inside and worked. But now it's sunny and I will not like being in a cinema. Get that face in the sun - I feel I have to absorb enough Vitamin D to keep me alive for the next six months.

Which I do.

Here's another reflection on the crazy people who live in this country - well, in certain parts of this country: