Roasted barley flour

It turns out to be incredibly peaceful to stand at the stove and roast barley flour in a hot hot hot pan. And while I wasn't roasting it just for me me me, but for the other seven members of soup swap, it turned out to be a lovely, calm activity. And since this week's mide (middah) is, in fact, Calmness, it was a joy to discover calmness in an unlikely, but then in retrospect likely, place.

The Contenders

We have fancy DirectTV, which I mostly hate, but I discovered that they're playing lots of current Oscar-nominated films, and so I watched Joseph Gordan Levitt and Bruce Willis in Looper. Potential spoiler alert, ok? OK? Did you hear me? Spoiler alert?

One of the things I liked about this film is that it is set in the future, but to them it's the present and they think a lot about their future, because in their present time travel hasn't been invented but in the future it has been, and people from the future come and affect people in the present.

Another thing I like, potentially more, (SPOILER ALERT) is that it's a film that recognizes that cycles of violence must be broken, and does something about it.

But maybe the thing I like best is that this is the time of year that I try to see as many Oscar-nominated and Independent Spirit Award-nominated films as possible, and here, so far, is my list:

argo
skyfall
silver lining playbook
beasts of the southern wild
perks of being a wallflower
lincoln
moonrise kingdom
cloud atlas
hope springs
les mis
pitch perfect
this is 40
the hobbit
take this waltz
late quartet
the sessions
looper

And here are the ones I have yet to see, and with the exception of django unchained, I hope to see most of them, even the ones I don't really want to see, like the best exotic marigold hotel. And I'm hoping that my friends in film unions will invite me over to watch screeners! (hint)

the master
quartet
zero dark thirty
life of pi
amour
flight
django unchained
hitchcock
the impossible
anna karenina
promised land
the best exotic marigold hotel
arbitrage
hyde park on hudson
rust and bone
smashed
the deep blue sea
the guilt trip
killing them softly
compliance
the paperboy
on the road
seven psychopaths
dark knight rises

Swings and pidgeons and pidgeons and swings. Oh yeah, and threads

I made it to the Ann Hamilton exhibit before it closed! After work Friday, I made it over to the East side for about an hour.

And ......

The Art of Hearing Loss

I finally saw Tribes. A play about a man who grew up deaf in a hearing family. But not just any hearing family. An enmeshed family of opinionated artists who never really slowed down enough to notice that just because he (the deaf son) adapted to living with them, doesn't mean that they've adapted to live with him.

He grew up reading lips, and never learning sign. He meets a young woman who great up hearing in a family with deaf parents, and she has known sign her whole life. She inherited a genetic hearing loss, and is rapidly losing her hearing.  It's a play about belonging, identity, language, community, limitations, and just a tad (a lot) of defensiveness, all around.

It's a stunning play and a fantastic production.  And it brought up a lot of feelings for me. I was born with a genetic hearing loss. If you know me, you either know that or you don't, because I hear a lot, and I read lips. But I miss a lot too.  Some of my friends are more bold about pointing that out, and others are more baffled. If you want my attention and you're trying to get it from behind me (this happens at my office a lot) you might wonder why I don't turn around when you call my name. If you hear my phone ring but I don't move, you might wonder why I'm ignoring it. If I look at you with a bit of a blank look (that David is good at catching) you might think I'm a little thick, or that you just said something banal, but it's more likely that I am in the process of guessing what rhymes with the words I thought I heard. And if you see that I am just really freaking frustrated, you might think I have a short fuse, just imagine what it is like to tell people again and again that they need to speak louder, sometimes within the span of 5 minutes, sometimes even 1 minute, and for them to not shift their voice modulation one bit. Yep, I have a short fuse.

(Wasn't this supposed to be a post about joy? I did find joy -- in the incredible artistry of the play and entire production. I truly did. And also in the serendipity of what I realized while in the play.)

As it turned out, without even thinking about it, I bought tickets to this play the day before my annual hearing test and meeting with the ear doctor, which I'll be going to today.  I have a genetic hearing loss called Waardenburg Syndrome, which includes my silver streak and premature gray hair on its genetic chain. (When I was diagnosed, my doctor reassured me that I didn't have the cognitive problems that can go along with it.) Anyhow, I think it was a great move to see the play before the doctor's visit, because the play called attention to how being deaf (or going deaf) is not actually very quiet. It's actually quite loud. This made my hyper aware of the constant tones and swishy sounds inside my head (which I think I am better off NOT thinking about too much.) But I am going today to a new doctor—one who comes highly recommended—and I am grateful for the heightened awareness as I head in to talk with him.

The Last Waltz

While the movie itself was dark and moody and veering on depressed, the experience of waking up early but rested, and nestling in bed and watching a Sarah Polley film, and STILL making it to work by 9 AM, was truly wonderful.

Let the good times roll

I started one of those jars that people were posting on Facebook. A big empty jar, to fill throughout the year with little pieces of paper on which I've written good things that happened. And then when I get into one of my pathetic funks and think that good things never happen, I can look in the jar for a reality check. (I hope it's the reality check I'm counting on....)

The first note I put in it was that I had spent several hours all by myself in a room that is going to be my office/creative room, sitting on the floor, going through old papers and letters and poems I'd saved and notebooks I'd written in and clips of art I thought were lovely. I was looking for one specific paper (that I never found) and I encountered so much more. I don't have a lot of acquired stuff—I have a fairly sparse aesthetic—but I do have these things, these mementos, these tangibles from my life that I don't have a great memory for, these flirtations, these heartbreaks, these trips to the hospital with my parents, these notes from 5-year-olds who are now 16, this collection of trading cards (First Ladies of the United States, Beat Characters, Great Rabbies, Les As du Musette, and my favorite deck, painted years ago by my friend Cyndi: Ordinary People.

So yes, I started one of those jars.

Bergdorf Goodman windows

Last day of the year and I finally made it to see this year's Busby Berkeley-inspired windows! I missed seeing it together with Ariel and Karen, both of whom I had plans to see them with, but I was very very happy to go. Damn, they're beautiful. And also, damn, did he made great movies!