Monday, March 27, 2006

The Many Voices of Margaret Atwood

She's coming to Penn! She's coming to Penn!


THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 2006
5:00 P.M., 17 LOGAN HALL

Jane S. Pollack Memorial Lecture in Women's Studies

MARGARET ATWOOD, Acclaimed author of many books of fiction, including A
Handmaid's Tale


"An Evening with Margaret Atwood on the Penelopiad"




Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing
by Margaret Atwood


The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it's all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything's for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can't. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape's been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.
Speaking of which, it's the smiling
tires me out the most.
This, and the pretence
that I can't hear them.
And I can't, because I'm after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don't let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I'll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That's what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They'd like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.


From Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood.



This Is a Photograph of Me
by Margaret Atwood


It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)


From The Circle Game by Margaret Atwood.

Friday, March 24, 2006

The Long Road to Ithaca

Seductive sirens, monstrous whirlpools, a series of troublesome suitors, and men turning into swine -- mere fiction? I kid you not. I’m beat, weary and exhausted. I just want to find the time to sink lightly and effortlessly into the warm, comforting mattress of a king-sized bed. Sweet blissful tranquility I say. At last -- at least -- the worst part of it is over. It’s been a long week.

It all started when I emailed Elizabeth about going to Cornell for the weekend. She said it was fine. I’ve always wanted to see the campus and she’s always wanted visitors (at a beautiful Ivy League campus in the middle of nowhere, who could blame her?). I’m prepped and all ready to go. Ithaca is beautiful I’ve heard, and I just took the mother of all midterms from hell. (Escaping from the work of that class has been like avoiding the wrath of Poseidon on the high seas). Then, half-way there, after three hours of traveling from Philadelphia, she sends me a message that she’s overbooked with work. I can’t go. I’m stuck in Jersey City.

I try to make the most of it and spend the entire weekend at my parent’s house. To celebrate and show off the bounty of my new job, I get my dad a Reduced-Calorie Diabetic Cookbook. He hasn’t been able to eat decently in months, and so I make a marvelous (and I must say, completely experimental) salmon dish with a cauliflower calorie-alternative side dish; and an eggplant, tomato, and parmesan entrée to boot. He loves it. My mom buys tons of Filipino food for my brother and I, and as usual, I only eat half of it before I’m stuffed. The next day, I go to New York to haggle with merchants over computer prices and features. I don’t find a good deal and go back home empty-handed. Admitting defeat, I call my brother on the way back and ask him if he wants me to bring back burgers and fries.

The next day, the Gods have their revenge. My throat is burning, my mind is spinning, and my innards are retching from all the bad mojo. The next day is a mystery to me, shrouded in a misty haze of anti-diarrheals and painkillers. I do remember one vision. The Great Vortex: head leaning over a swirling whirlpool, watching my food and innards spinning round and round in a partially-digested mass before I flush. Terrible. Just terrible. I’ve gone from a man to a retching, puking pig at the mercy of a witch.

I take Monday off from work. I take Tuesday off too. I start to feel better by the afternoon, but my mother won’t let me go. My dad cites keeping me for “observation” purposes. I miss my one Engineering class. I have a presentation in seven days and my group meets without me. It’s a mutiny. I’m pissed. I go to the corner store with my dad and smuggle in a mango by the cash register. My mother takes it away, telling me I’m not well enough to eat exotic fruit. I’m forced to sustain myself on a diet of stale crackers and soda, held captive for what seems like an eternity on the small island of Ogygia (or fine, Jersey City).

I finally break free on Wednesday, after seeing a doctor and invoking the supreme authority of her opinion. My father wishes me well and anoints my head with healing oil (which he believes can cure anything from headaches to hemorrhoids). I leave and the wind is high and I set full sail on my makeshift raft. I cross the Hudson River to get to the jeweled isle of Manhattan. There, my efforts are rewarded: I search several electronic boutique stores and find a merchant willing to sell me a laptop with all the features I need at an attractive price. I pay immediately and leave the store with a spanking new laptop (well, new in the theoretical sense, as technically it’s parts have been remanufactured from corporate computer stock). I visit the Great Oracle and have him install a new operating system and productivity software on my computer. Then I make a few modifications myself, and the Golden Bow is good to go.

I return to Philadelphia for a mere two days of work, and the week is already over, but the weekend has finally arrived! I give the laptop one final checkup and stick a big red bow on it before boarding my train.

I unboard the train and Mike and his mom are there to pick me up like a beggar (but a king in disguise? -- well, who knows?). His mom stuffs me full with more fresh fish from the sea and disappears. Mike shows me his huge, huge 30-gallon fish tank and gets distracted and starts talking to people online. All distractions aside, I get him away from the computer, the cell phone, and anything that has remotely to do with a weather station. We sit on the sofa in the living room alone. Then I bring over the gift and unzip the case, and tell him to look at the present I got for him. He opens it, looks at me, and gives me a big hug.

It seems like I never did make it to Ithaca after all, but sometimes, the pleasant reality of things can serve just as well.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

"Bohemia, Bohemia is a fallacy in your head. This is Calcutta. Bohemia is dead."

LAST HOUR. Walking home through the streets laden with newspaper, the electric heat of neon signs, and the remains of broken glass bottles, the sound of sirens pierces through the night air like a razor. I arrive at my doorstep, reach into my pocket for the key, and open the door. Flopping into bed, eyes melting into … heavy-lidded sleep … into … walls melting … yellow candle wax dripping drip drip.

DREAM: hours pass and the ticking of the clock continues, beating like a death march into my solitary brain, craving want of more release out. I out. Want out. Want more out out. Find. Voice. Own. No. Someone, something else. Want. Want to be Led. Led. Dead like Lead. More. There is a woman, muse or siren. She extends her hand and calls to me. I (sweetly, coquettishly), mother of all things, promise you

reasons,
answers,
immortality
The works.
Here is the door.

An escape
from all the poverty,
the uncertainty,
and even,
the unmentionable of all things
(family).

I wake.

I opened a book.

Enchanted

by the soft, melodic tunes,
dances of dark-haired gypsies
patchwork clothes and hand-crafted instruments,
writers smoking inside cafes,
Parisians drinking absinthe,
and painters on the local street corners panning sun-swept scenes with their hands,

the vision was
PURE HEAVEN.

I searched for her like a Romantic on the high seas, sniffing out music like blood on a hunt, turning musty old pages, raiding forgotten libraries. I went down on all fours, upturning rocks, searching for signs of intelligent life.

and found
the words:

VACANT. NO LOITERING. KEEP OUT.

Whole cities, decimated from abuse, or not abuse so much as neglect

Like Lucy Gray,
Or Solitude.

The life gone out, snuffed out like a case of DDT, gone elsewhere. There’s going to be one long Silent Spring in America. Childhood dreams and cold regimes just don’t make for very interesting themes.

I hit Alphabet City like an amnesiac on a binge. Craving, the direst, rabidest hunger of all things: MEMORY. Help! My name is Icarus and I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. I was thirsty and I drunk the waters of Lethe, and now I can’t remember a DAMNED THING.

Where have all the FUCKING ARTISTS gone? Where the IDEALISM? Where the stronghold of our dignity, our vanity, and wit? I’ve been led by faeries and spriggin gnomes on a wild-goose chase, chasing shamrocks, shadows and illusions! …as if it were some,

some fantasy,
or an aforementioned vagary,
to fill a post-modern vacancy?

Echo: I’ll tell you where they’ve gone.
(Resigned to universities).

Point. (Don’t hide your shame. Just nod and smile. They won’t know).
Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.
--It’s so young and blissful to be naïve.
--Or so blissful and naïve to be young.
--Or want to be so.

Forego the foregoing. Suck it up and be useful. Forego. FOR EGO.
To be or not to be: the aristocrat, the capitalist, the work-for-pay anthroposophist. Thinking: Think as you like, but act like others. Be the black sheep, but wear white,

and be dazzling.

--Come smile now.
--(Why are the talented so depressed?)
--I’ve given too much life to gold and glitter.
--Why give a care?
--Life is only temporary.

Too much spirit, too much of that good immortal soul.
I’m still burning in that impenitent flame of longing, you see.
Too young to give up on the dream.
Too old to absolve myself of the responsibility of life.

Come all ye wise men.
Follow that star. Dance with me.
Let us remake this city.
Our image is as divine as any.
Shake off this mortal coil.
And when the night is through,
Let us go forth, singing.


Friday, March 03, 2006

On Being Whole

Today I saw a cancer patient for my job -- a nice, grizzled, grandmotherly old woman with light hair and a tired face. She was sitting in the testing room waiting for me. Some of her lower jaw had been removed for oral cancer, and we had to put a towel on her chest to catch the dripping from her mouth. She was one of the kindest people I ever met. I gave her sample after sample to try to measure her responses, and she would kindly ask questions, laugh, and make conversation in between tests. During a break she asked me if I cooked my own meals, and she told me that she used to be a lunch lady at an elementary school.

I couldn’t help but be reminded then of my days back in public school, when my teachers would spell words out on the board and recite times tables to the class. One of our teachers loved reading the story of Amazing Grace, and would gather the class sitting on the floor around her to listen. At lunchtime, the lunch ladies would come in hauling huge carts with food trays, because the cafeteria was too small for every class to have their lunchtime in it. No one minded though. It was more fun to eat in class. When the day was over, the lunch ladies would say goodbye to everyone and haul out the garbage bags.

I didn’t tell her this, but it was clear from the short conversation we had that she liked doing her job. She had four sons that she liked to cook and make things for, and she had grandchildren now.

In the end, it seemed that she had come to terms with her cancer and was living normally. Despite having her jaw removed, she had a sense of humor and still loved to eat chicken. I saw her out and went to cleaning out my solution bottles. I looked in the mirror and felt briefly for my jaw. It was oddly comforting to feel the hard bone beneath, thinking to myself how nice it is to be whole.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

I took it upon myself...

In celebration of Ash Wednesday, I took it upon myself to go to the gym. After all, is there a better way to celebrate the intelligent designer than by perfecting his intelligent design? Right after work, I headed to the studio rooms and joined a kickboxing class, right next to pilates and salsa. To my pleasant surprise, the kickboxing class was much better than expected. Our instructor was a peppy athletic girl with cheerleader in her voice. She taught us how to punch and kick, and all this while swinging to the beat of pop-rock and dance music. While executing my jabs, hooks, and roundhouses; I was listening to dance remixes of Madonna and Cher! Where else can I combine fighting with club music? It’s like clubbing, but without the prima donnas and the drama queens. To top it off, no one seemed to catch on to me. I chatted with the instructor after the class, and to persuade me to buy a full membership, she mentioned being able to check out girls while working out. I was flattered. I gathered my things and hit the weight room. I may never look at working-out the same way again.