Playing the Age Card

                                                            The Quiltmaker, by Wini Smart

 

I'm changing my life. At the age of 83,  I've put together a bunch of stories and articles I've saved in a file cabinet for years--and published the collection under the title Travelin' Light, which is the name of one of the stories. The book has gone on sale on amazon and the reviews surprised me. Readers saw what I hadn't--that the stories all reflected a point of view.

Obviously it was my own point of view. The stories looked back on a life that had been lived by a woman who came of age as the Feminist Wave of the early 1960s was just beginning to happen. The protagonist was navigating her way against the wall of power of men in business to carve out a place where she could speak. She wrote constantly; she aspired to be an actress, she did what she could in the world of journalism to stake out a place where she could be on a par with men. The stories are not polemic; they combine humor with a special mission of self-discovery--against a backdrop of political and personal transformation.

The response to the book from men in their sixties and seventies was a big surprise to me. Their reviews on amazon pointed out that I was letting them in on the way women think. I hadn't tried to do that. I was only working toward telling stories based on memories of my own life, and revising those memories in order to understand them better myself.

I rewrote the rewrites and revised the revisions from notes I had taken over the years. I decided to record the opus as an audiobook--and that was another surprise! My training and experience as an actor made  reading my stories more vivid to me that writing them had.

And the world of audiobooks is a different world than the world of books. People who don't read books do listen to audiobooks. They need a certain kind of voice and delivery, and, knowing the stories as well as I do makes my voice the right one. It was challenging and enlightening to read into a microphone, and the result is pretty fantastic. I have a web page now, with places to click to order the book or the hear a sample of the audiobook, and a lot of pictures of me and links to other books. The pictures are necessary because I have a brand--the brand is "83-year-old female who's lived an exciting life and has a lot to say to you." 

To get your attention, I'm playing the age card.

Revising Memories

 

My stories lived in cartons, filing cabinets, closets--wherever I might store them in my travels. I've written compulsively for years, never knowing quite why or thinking what might become of my literary efforts. I had self-published a novel and a couple of books of memoirs of my hometown, and a little over a year ago I wrote a long story about my first year in college, not attempting a personal memoir; however, that was what it came out to be, with a few changes of names and revisions of situations. It was not quite enough to stand on its own as a novella, so I added some of the stories that had languished in my files over the years. With the participation of some of my friends I was able to cobble together a collection that had a surprising coherence and garnered praise from my friends who read it.  I called the whole venture "revised memories," and entitled the collection Travelin' Light which was the title of one of the stories. 

It's always a delight when readers praise your work, but I'd have to say my biggest surprise was the unanimous kudos I received from male friends who found something in my stories I didn't realize I had put there. Rex Anderson, a really manly man who is a first-rate writer as well wrote: "I was given a brave look inside a woman’s mind and a glimpse of what it was like to know that the epoch she is drawing from.

"The persona gradually revealed between those covers is of a shy, self-conscious, and sensitive soul attempting to wring worth and glean meaning out of the experiences she was given, a much more tentative personality than the self-assured woman I see on Facebook or I remember from life."Another dear man wrote that he found my stories "enchanting."  And Richard Bey, a former television celebrity and actor, wrote , "Although the stories are imbued with a feminist understanding of women thwarted in the 1950s, no story hits the reader over the head with it. Except possibly the first one which struck me as to self-pitying and obvious. My guess is it’s probably the one that is closest to home for you--still, it’s well written with a fleshed out character. For some reason, the student who wants to grow up to be like her teacher, and that grumpy man eating the hambone are images that still stick with me. On the other hand, the story about the liaison in Paris is a nice travelogue, but adds nothing to the better, deeper story that precedes it." And I got this yesterday from Scott Isenberg, a Facebook friend who was hesitant even to read the book in fear it would be disappointing, 

"Bravo. Well-done. I liked all the stories, and several, 'The Opening Curtain' and 'Breaking the Guitar/Four Days in a Diary'—I thought were superb. 'Breaking the Guitar' was just perfect structurally, jumping back and forth in time, broadening then narrowing then broadening again so that, in the end, the story the reader’s been told is not quite a saga but considerably more than an anecdote—the Goldilocks sweet spot.

"I was quite taken by the title story as well. So much is said with so few words. This story seems to subscribe to Hemingway’s iceberg theory, which is not a bad compliment. Lots of nicely-turned phrases and passages. Clever without their cleverness drawing attention to itself. Examples: 'Spending her days at a keyboard lining up words to tell a city what she thought it needed to know.' And: 'All the years I’d known her she had that thick, straight brown hair and big eyes the blue green color of the Gulf when you get to Florida.' And: 'A piece of my mind or yours?' she said. Homer shrugged. 'You know what I mean,' he said. 'You know just what I mean.' 'Pretty much,' she said. She did not always know what he meant, but it felt good that he always seemed to think she did.

"By the way, 'A Better Life,' although a bit of a departure from the other stories, was a nice stylistic contrast to the other stories, which were either from the point-of-view of a young girl or of an urban sophisticate. In a “Better Life” you execute the story in a way that reminded me of Flannery O’Connor, which I have to think was an influence, and you do it in a way that I believe Flannery would have approved of."

High praise from unexpected places. I'm feeling good today. By sharing my own long-buried inner thoughts I have have exposed some members of the opposite sex to at least one woman's way of thinking. 

Morning Again

 

Hall Groat II, "Nocturnal Eggs"

 

Tuesday, the United States underwent an historic mid-term election. I had just had a COVID 19 second booster shot, had tripped and fallen flat on the concrete, sprained a thumb and perhaps re-broken a wrist that had healed from a similar fall a year and a half before. But I voted. I spent a day in pain from the injuries and in a minor state of despair for my country and my life as it is diminished in power through age and the normal processes of personal infirmity and loss. 

I am about Joe Biden's age. I watched him thrash about as a young senator--hopeful, bright, and a bit brash--and had not thought much of him until he emerged as a first-rate vice president to Barack Obama, whom I admired more than any man I had seen as president in my lifetime. I didn't worship Obama, but his style, composure, and grace under pressure, had given me hope after years of seeing lesser men in the role of leader of the free world. Joe and Barack were an affable,competent team who worked well together and seemed to enjoy each other's company. The hate engendered against them baffled me, but by the time they left office the propaganda machine had ginned up a section of the electorate I never knew anything about, Party faithfuls who would buy any obnoxious myth if it was repeated often enough. The very things I admired about President Obama were the attributes they despised, a cool head in spite of a hostile environment, a superior intellect and wit, and a patriotic vision for the country and promise of hope for the world. 

I wished that Biden had been the man to succeed him in office, but, through a few unanticipated twists of fate, he was not.  Through the four years of the Trump presidency and the years following, I was mostly quarantined and suffered a low-level depression. Raised in the post-WWII period when we were taught our country was great, I thought we were the envy of the world. All that was shattered as I grew older and  I saw friends die of the effects of COVID, and others become indoctrinated into what would have to be identified as a cult based on propaganda and deliberate distortions by political entities hungry for power and lacking in character. Just coping with the day-to-day events of life was exhausting, as if there were a cloud over us all. I really thought the mid-term election of 2022 might be the last straw of humanity as I knew it, if it was after all the "red tsunami" the polls had predicted. Those last days from the election until all the votes were counted seemed to portend doom for those of us who had expected better.

Then I woke up the day after election and learned that the red tsunami had not happened. Some excellent people had actually won and only a handful of cult members were going to take their place in offices around the country. They would do what they could to thwart the programs President Biden has managed to pass, but even Biden himself, who had become downtrodden and seemed hopeless in his speeches--no matter how bright and brilliant his words and actions had been in the mere two years he was in office--was bouyed and optimistic again.

The pains in my injured wrist have subsided. The sprained thumb is almost operable again. The sun is out. A few weeks ago I completed having surgery on my eyes for cataracts, and my vision is clear and brighter than it has been for years. I am working on revising my new book and thinking of myself as a writer again. And there is this strange feeling, like a distant memory, which overtakes my days. I think we used to call it joy.

And a Book Is Born

I've spent a lot of years writing--stories, articles, news releases, program notes, journal entries, blog posts, notes, ideas for fiction. Some I got paid for--but when it came to books, publishers were not interested so I blossomed as a self-published writer. For a couple of years, an idea was hatching within me to incorporate an essay "What I Really Want From Life" that I had gotten great response from as a college freshman, into a larger story of what my whole life was like in those days. 

About 15 years ago I wrote a story, "Creative Writing," and took it to the local writing coach in the Alabama town I lived in for advice. It was a story about a young woman who would like to write fiction but is blocked by a minor trauma she suffered when she showed her work to the wrong person. Submitting a story to a writing coach in Alabama may sound like a small thing, but this particular coach, Sonny Brewer, was widely respected and worked with an assortment of people I thought of as "real writers," and he knew the business pretty well,  having written and published a good bit of fiction himself. I knew him to be knowledgeable as well as kind, so I trusted him to be fair and as positive as he could about my story. He was generous in praise for the story and told me it reminded him of the short stories of Joyce Carol Oates. Hers was a name I'd heard but I hadn't read her work. I knew her to be a real writer, so I was flattered and went straight to the library to check out a book of her short stories. My thought was, "If I could write like that.." but crises intervened in my life at that time and my creative urge was again thwarted. I put the story in a file which I carted around for another ten years without another thought.

Fast forward to 2021, by which time I had aged considerably and was less daunted by being humiliated for being inferior. I wanted to start writing again, so I enrolled in an online class in short story writing conducted by--you guessed it--Joyce Carol Oates. I started working on that story based on my freshman year in college and the essay "What I Really Want From Life." I invited Will Nixon, a local friend who had been teaching creative writing at Bennington College--and who had taken Oates' online class to join me for coffee and discuss writing.  Together we read several books of short stories by Oates, Elmore Leonard, and others. Over coffee and pastries, we discussed what Oates was teaching us. I rewrote the story about the college freshman which became "The Opening Curtain" until I was rather pleased with it and Will pronounced it acceptable. The story was about 30 pages long by then--too short to stand alone and not long enough even to be a novella.

The idea came to me to make a book out of it anyway, by compiling it with some of my best short stories, which had been languishing in a file cabinet for years. Joyce Carol Oates urged her writing class to hold on to every attempt they make at writing, revisit, and rework them as many times as it took to have it say what you wanted it to say in the first place. I had a trove of fits and starts but didn't know what I was keeping them for until I saw that suggestion. I pulled out a few stories and essays and worked on each to make them better. I consider "The Opening Curtain" to be the flagship of the book, but I must mention "Travelin' Light," which gave the book its title. One of my best friends in life died suddenly in 1997 at the age of 57 and I had been so devastated I did all I knew to do--I started writing what I felt was her story as a novel and wrote all I could, which was about 50 pages. I also hacked out a poem for her. I looked over those pages and decided there was at least a short story of a kind there, and added both the story and the poem to my book. As of November 30, 2022, I have corrected the first edition which had a few typos still, added a paragraph or two to clarify a weak spot in "The Opening Curtain," Added an "Introduction," and had my designer clean up some space problems in the text. It is now listed on Amazon as "Second Edition." and will be available as an eBook by the end of the first week in December.

The pieces weave together and serve as glimpses of the inner life of a woman who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, navigating the best life she could on terms she herself laid out. Its author is listed as Mary Lois Timbes, who manages to inhabit and put her name on the best things in my life. It's a little book--an easy read--and at this point it could use all the reviews and other support my blog readers might offer. I hope Travelin' Light interests you! https://www.amazon.com/Travelin-Light-Stories-Revised-Memories/dp/0985773340/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2X7PW162QKB4T&keywords=travelin%27+light+by+mary+lois+timbes&qid=1661696124&s=books&sprefix=Travelin%27%2Cstripbooks%2C81&sr=1-1 .

A Male Sex Worker at His Best

 

Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

 

    It's rare indeed that a movie delves into the sexual fantasies of a menopausal woman, particularly one who has committed to a bland sex life throughout her marriage and waits until her husband is safely dead to try to discover what all the fuss was about. As Nancy Stokes, retired Sex Ed teacher at a conservative Roman Catholic girls' school, the versatile and astonishing Emma Thompson reveals her considerable chops as an actress and pushes the boundaries of the long-ignored longings of women. In Daryl McCormack, as the smooth, biracial male prostitute, she has met her match as a performer and as the character he is portraying.    

    The promotion of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande seems to suggest it is something of a romantic comedy, which is definitely isn't. There are awkward laughs, yes, and two interesting, flawed people working their way from what might be considered flirtation through insights for both, but it is neither lightweight nor amusing, except for certain moments. Thompson starts out like a fluttery, conflicted virgin, wrestling her lifelong concepts about sex being dirty but pleasurable for some, and definitely resisting the notion that in order to experience what she says she wants, she must surrender all the baggage she brought to the party. As her partner, Daryl McCormack is preternaturally patient, kind, and somewhat bemused by the challenge of awakening his new client. I went from being attracted to him and embarrassed for her to half-hoping he might break through her psychological coldness and provide her with the experience she was asking for.

    I felt it was a rather long road getting there. We see Nancy awaken to his physical attraction when he takes his shirt off for her, and we see how difficult it is for her to allow that attraction to take her anywhere. We listen to the banter between them, and see that she finds more than his body appealing. He is always professional and we admire his work ethic, such as it is. She crosses a line that almost breaks both of them, yet we are given an interesting twist-ending that leaves us with a lot of food for thought. 

    I thought it was a little strange that one of Nancy's early questions to Leo is "Are you Irish?" and that his answer is simply yes. McCormack's Irishness is hardly something that one notices first. Also, I was a bit bothered that as a sex worker he was not adept at the kind of paraphernalia mandatory with menopausal women--that she was going to have sex was known from the first scene but it is treated as if she were a nubile 18-year-old perfectly moist for any encounter. I know it was a fairy tale, but it had the pretense of being realistic, so I'll just state here that it would have made more sense if a frame or two had dealt with the elephant in the room. It is true that a woman in her sixties can enjoy sex--but she needs a boost from a few simple over-the-counter items. The film presents elder sex as pretty much the same as full-on hormone-rich sex of people in their reproductive prime. It isn't. It can be good, but it is different--no big deal, of course, but why ignore the fact? I also was shocked when Leo asked her outright if she's had an orgasm. No woman wants to answer that one and as experienced a pro as he is, he wouldn't ask.

    The movie is streaming on hulu. I recommend it. I know it would be educational for men, but I think this one could be a real eye-opener for women. It's about feelings, but not the feelings we are accustomed to seeing onscreen. And it introduces an exciting young actor at the outset of his career, surely capable of rising to major stardom.

A Woman Is the Center of the Multiverse

 

                                            Stephanie Hsu, Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan

 Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is a domestic drama-comedy that will knock your socks off even if you're not wearing socks. Be prepared to surrender before you enter.

We meet a struggling immigrant Chinese family trying to run a mega laundromat, with a hapless husband/father waving divorce papers around in order to get his wife's attention. Once you get the drift of the plot, you are swept up in a reality you couldn't anticipate. It turns out the frustrated wife and mother (Michelle Yeoh) is the center of the multiverse, governed (I think) by a team from the megaverse who need to force her to change her world once and for all. First she must face her own superpowers and confront her inner conflicts and own her magic.

To call this movie unique is such an understatement that it defies its own definition. Even to call it a movie is an understatement. It is an experience. Okay, it's done with camera tricks, Kung Fu, and the pushing of magic buttons, but each flash of insight challenges and entertains the audience. In the process, the aforementioned hapless husband Waymond is transformed into a messenger from the megaverse--and a Jackie Chan martial arts master--and Evelyn, the wife, gets flashes from her past comparable to those entertained by Ebenezer Scrooge in the fable from another universe. Their daughter Joy is transformed into some kind of Hollywood spirit guide who has all the answers (beginning with "Nothing matters.") but doesn't seem to like the questions. There is Evelyn's haunting quest ("Where is my Joy?") and a score of bizarre family members and peripheral characters following each other around with weapons of mass destruction, and the constant refrain of Evelyn's magnificence from awards ceremonies and performances. 

I never said it was going to be easy, but the trip is full of laughs and wonder. I began to wish I could remember where my old evening gowns were. I began to fall in love with Waymond, who we saw in full potential as a confident millionaire as well as his default position of lost loser. Jamie Lee Curtis has a great time as the most vulnerable villain in recent memory. Through it all I was surrounded in the live theater (and I recommend you see it in a theater, surrounded by live people) who gasped, chortled, and laughed spontaneously as the scenes unfolded before us all. There were moments when the movie tried to conclude and we all felt, "Okay, that's enough," and then picked up again to give us yet another twenty minutes, almost ad infinitum. But there was an exhilaration about it all. I came away having found my joy!

 

 

A Man Who Slaps

Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Chris Rock

 

 It was a night to celebrate--Hollywood was geared to party, and inaugurate a time of rare inclusion--more first-rate films about subjects not handled before, more diversity in casting, more openness, no masks, a spirit of optimism was in the air. The event was founded as a way to build business for the movies, back in the last century, at a time when the country was facing economic hardships and the motion picture industry itself needed a boost. Over the years, the Academy Awards ceremonies have done just that--made Hollywood happy about itself, and made moviegoers feel like going to the movies. Recent years the awards and the ceremony itself have been less successful at both goals.

But Sunday night started off happily. Comedians ribbed the actors; the actors, in their designer clothes, laughed gamely and awaited the announcement of their own moments to shine.

Until they didn't. Chris Rock, an affable insult comic of the very mild, tongue-in-cheek variety, saw two of his favorite targets in the audience--Will Smith and  his beautiful wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Both movie stars and old acquaintances of his. Jada was sporting a new look--a shiny shaved head, which on her admittedly looked very good. "Jada?" Rock said, on the stage, on national and international television. "I look forward to GI Jane 2!" Jada and Will both chuckled slightly and awaited a change of subject. But Jada's smile faded fast and she rolled her eyes heavenward and her face went serious. Will was still smiling when he caught that slight shadow on his wife's face. 

Here's where accounts of the evening differ. Almost everybody--and don't forget the world was watching--saw Will Smith bound from his seat and stride down the stage to face Chris Rock. Rock saw it too, and thought Will was going to make a joke until he saw the fury in Smith's face. Suddenly Will Smith slapped Chris Rock with some force, and a befuddled Rock looked a little scared and totally confused.  He announced to the audience, "Will Smith just slapped the shit outta me!"

When he got back to his seat, Chris Rock said, "Dude, it was a GI JANE joke!" and Will Smith, now seated, yelled at the stage, "Leave my wife's name outcha fucking mouth! I spell it phonetically, because that's the way he pronounced it. Then, in case somebody might have missed it the first time, he yelled the same line again.

All this would suggest that Rock had said something equally profane about Jada Pinkett Smith. Or that she was a fragile flower reduced to tears at the mere suggestion that somebody had noticed she had a bald head. The fact that she had shaved her head as a condition called alopecia was causing her to lose hair was something she had given details about on a podcast she manages. Whether or not Chris Rock knew about this has not yet been addressed, but the fact that she carries the bald pate with grace and elegance cannot be denied by anyone, especially not a comedian looking for someone to lob softballs at. Will Smith was enraged far beyond the provocation, and people who don't like his wife suggest somehow she put him up  to the macho display to defend her honor. It cast a pall over the room and the heretofore happy audience went silent. Will Smith was sweating and weeping, and several high-potency friends like Denzel Washington and Bradley Cooper rushed to his side to try to help him calm down. Chris Rock maintained as much composure as he could muster and continued with his introduction to the next Oscar winner, but it must be said that after that moment the air had drained from the balloon of optimism and joy. 

Will Smith was asked to leave the building but refused. He wanted to get the Oscar he was sure would be his, and so he did. His acceptance speech was embarrassing. Here was a man in crisis and it was hard to sympathize as he talked about God's plan for him and his love for so many people. He was still crying. He apologized to the Academy but not to Chris Rock. It was a low point for this gifted actor and a devastating awards ceremony for everybody. 

If I could rewrite what happened after the slap, the scenario would be this: Will Smith is escorted off the premises, after whispering to Jada "Honey, if I win the Oscar, accept it for me and apologize to everybody.." Later, he is announced as the winner of Best Actor, and Jada takes the stage. She says, "I am accepting this for my husband, who is not here..." (Uncomfortable laughter in the audience.) "Before he left Will asked me to thank you all and everybody who made this moment possible...and apologize to the  Academy for the scene he caused at this prestigious event..." long applause from a relieved crowd. "And I want to apologize to Chris from myself and my husband for our inability to take a joke."  

If only.