It Takes Two to Tango

Blind panic, infinite rage.  Perhaps a touch of defiance.

A bee has somehow gotten itself stranded on its back.  Its writhes and twitches, buzzing angrily all the while.  To itself, or maybe the whole world.  Whoever knew the mind of a bee?

As its rocking movements carries it to and fro, its wings and fine yellow hairs catch the sun until it flops back into the shadows of the palm tree.  The glint of light is like the wink of candles in clean windows.

A movement-a lizard-rustles among the leaves.  It darts closer, then closer, and ever closer to the frantic bee.  Cocking its reptilian head to and fro, it edges forward.  It leans forward, watching the bee's progress in complete stillness.  Its little snout nudges the flicking abdomen.

Bee somehow manages to launch himself 3 feet away from Lizard, although he is still on his back, funnily enough.  Poor Bee, I think- Lizard is on the verge of a very tasty supper.  And it seems that way, for Lizard dashes over and I can see the his tiny tongue flicker out, quick as a snake's.  Bee is doomed to a very neat death.

The two, masked in shadows, continue their deadly dance.

When next I turn to watch their duel, Bee is alone.  His movements are slower, heavier, without the force they had.  Where is Lizard? 

Ah-there he is, sunning himself out by the primroses.  He is sprawled on his belly, his long skinny tail twitching like a contented kitten.  Cunning-he knows Bee is his.  He need only wait for fatigue to take him. 

So I turn back to my work, delighting in the sunshine across my bared shoulders.  I am fighting a war of my own: a war with Calculus.  And like Bee, I  have zero chances of winning. ( Haha, hopefully not)

When I look again over my shoulder, Lizard has vanished.  Astonished, I look about but there is no sign of him, not in the rustling leaves, nor the sunny patio.  Lizard is gone.  A moment later, Bee is gone too, and a long skinny tail disappears amongst the brush.

The Girl With a Pearl Earring, A Review

These past two days I've been walking around with scarves covering my hair, and pearls in my ears, listening to baroque music, and reading up on the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic.  Why?

Because I saw Girl With a Pearl Earring, and it has literally changed my life. This hasn't happened since The Godfather.  I kid you not, I have watched GWAPE three times in two days, not including obsessive Googling and Youtube-ing.  It's even more fascinating to me, because I studied all this last year, in AP Euro and in humanities.  Vermeer was one of my favorites-I liked him even better than Rembrandt and almost as much as Nattier.

I thought I'd like to share my thoughts on it (by "share my thoughts" I mean "dispel the obsession").  I am no movie critic, however, so this will all be strictly from a layman's perspective; I shan't try for any brilliant piece of analysis or judgement. 

Basically, its based on the fictionalized life of Johannes Vermeer, the creator of the famous Dutch painting, Girl With a Pearl Earring.  You know, the one of the light-skinned girl with parted ruby lips and large, wideset eyes.  She is wearing, naturally, heavy pearl earrings and a blue and yellow scarf wrapped demurely about her head, which turns to face the viewer.  It is although she asks "yes? Did you call?", for although she looks at you, her shoulders are facing away-it is as though we have interrupted her.

Girl With a Pearl Earring, by Johannes Vermeer, 1665

That's the girl, Griet-quiet, unrefined, with clear, intelligent eyes and a high forehead.  She is the focus of the story, this mysterious woman-child.  The movie begins in her home, and we are led through the halls until we come upon the kitchen, where Griet is silently cutting and arranging vegetables.  It is with exquisite grace that our Griet slices carrot, beetroot, onion, and arranges them carefully in a bowl.  She is called by her mother to her father's side, up the rickety stairs, where she grasps the old man's hands.  Her father, we deduce, was formerly a painter.  Until, that is, by some tragedy, he had lost his sight and now poor Griet must work as a maid in the house of Johannes Vermeer.

She does so, and befriends an initially stern Tanake, head of the Vermeer household, and meets her mistress, the wonderfully vain and jealous Catharina Vermeer, Madame her mother, and the Vermeer children.  Johannes himself is still an enigma, a mysterious figure we know only from the voice that floats through the door.

We catch our first glimpse of Johannes at Catharina's bedside, after the birth of his son.  We can see that he is tall and slender, with brown hair that falls to his shoulders, but we must wait until the feast to meet him.  That feast celebrates both the birth of his son and the unveiling of his latest work, a commission by Pieter Van Ruijven.  We had met Van merely minutes before, when Griet was sent with a note informing the mustachioed patron of the painting's completion.  The feast was a success, in more ways than one.  Johannes, we notice, is a handsome man and, like Griet, very quiet.  Catharina, fashionably pale, with lips of vermillion, sits by Van Ruijven's side, fawning.

Gradually, we fall into the patterns of life here; scrubbing, cooking, shopping at the market...

Good lord, I have forgotten Pieter, the butcher's apprentice? Assistant? Anyhow he works with a butcher and he is smitten with our Griet just as soon as those piercing blue eyes fall on her.

There, I suppose that's enough background.  As you have probably guessed, there is a love triangle of sorts between Pieter, Griet, and Johannes.  But it's not what you think.  It's hard to say if Griet really loves either of the two, and Pieter is the only one whose love we can be sure about.

Griet's sensitivity and natural intelligence and artistic potential endear her to the quiet artist.  They are kindred spirits.  She grows fascinated with his world-painting, musing, composing.  It is difficult to tell, however, if this translates into a fascination with Johannes the man, as opposed to Johannes the painter.  With Johannes it is much easier-she is his intellectual equal, and her yearns for her on an intellectual level.  She alone understands his work, his passion, and though those, perhaps she understands him.  It's not quite lust, and neither have allowed any sort of love to truly grow between them.  Probably because of the strict hierarchy of their day, and because of their respective honor codes, as well as that damn Catharina.

Just kidding.  I love her-she is so perfectly irritating.  She is petulant, sensuous, and empty-headed.  Whoever played her deserves all the praise in the world.

But you can see that however impressed Griet is with Johannes, called Jon (Yahn), he is equally so with her.  He called for her to fetch him some pigments from the apothecary, and she stands as the man measure them for her, smiling to herself, completely rapt.  They talk, and share the pleasure of art, but rarely touch.  This makes every brush of fingers, every look, so, so intimate.  It is not a forbidden love, but a hushed, unspoken desire.

But of course, things get even more complicated without Pieter.  Van Ruijven wants her.  He wants her to sit with him in his next commission for Jon.  Master Ruijven had caused an uproar some years earlier, when he requested that another of Johannes' maids sit with him: he bedded her, and she bore his child.  The very idea enrages Johannes so that when Van asks for Griet, he bolts upright, pushing back his chair with a furious scrape.  This can hardly fail to escape the notice of Catharina and her mother, who had long been aware of his growing absorbtion with the out lovely Griet.

A compromise is reached: Johannes will paint a "merry scene" with Van Ruijven, and one of Griet.  But, as Madame insists, Catharina must. not. know.

Johannes examines her face, and his face, formerly cold and reserved, is warm.  His eyes are tender, and his lips tremble as he instructs her.  Later, he asks her to fold back her white cap that hides her hair from the world.  Some Dutch girls do not show their hair until marriage.  But it is not enough; too much of her face is still hidden, so, naturally, Jon asks her to remove it.  Our Griet refuses.  Jon sends her to the storeroom to swap her cap for a blue and yellow bit of cloth.  We watch as Griet unties the crisp white bonnet and unwinds her coppery hair (she says earlier to Pieter that it is brown, but lez be real).  We are not alone in our observation, for the camera cuts to the door, where Johannes stands, half hidden by the door frame.  His eyes burn, and his face is unhappy.  

Griet's hair falls in curls around her face, softening her cheekbones and her sharp chin.  As she turns, her breath catches-she has seen Johannes at last.  Slowly, she raises her eyes and they lock gazes.  For a moment. Then he turns away and walks off, heels clacking.

Sexual tension at an all time high.

Let's skip to the scene when she pierces her ears.  She was reluctant to wear Catharina's pearls, to say the least, but Madame and Johannes insisted. 

"You do it" she says, and Jon takes the needle from her wordlessly and holds it in a candle flame.  Then, cloth in hand, he steps to her side and kneels down next to her.  Resting a hand on one shoulder and steadying the other on the other, he plunges the needle through her earlobe.  Griet's body tenses and she gasps, frowning, as a ruby droplet forms and falls.  Jon wipes it, and then, in the same motion, rubs away her tear with his thumb.  His thumb, as though of its own accord, caresses her check, her lower lip.  She turns to look at him.  It would be so easy, then, for one to seduce the other, or for any sort of forbidden loving to happen.  We expect it.  We know it will happen.

Only it doesnt.  It's strictly business.  The painting is finished in due course and Catharina, naturally, finds out.  That was unpleasant.

This is getting too long.  I'll revisit this another day, when I am less emotionally drained.

FIRE FIRE FIRE

School let out early today, and so we trudged out of our air-conditioned classrooms into the dry heat.  We San Diegans don't often encounter weather like this.  In fact, the last time I remember this kind of scorching wind was back when we had those fires, years back. 

I walked home, unaccompanied by my friend, who left to meet her mom at Albertsons. 

I like this heat, this desert parch.  I like the harsh sun and drying wind.  But I do not like smoke, nor the wail of sirens.  I can no longer see the former, due to the positioning of my house, but above the restless sway of palm trees, the screech of tires and the scream of sirens are ever present. 

I have seen smoke a hundred thousand times before, but it seems like I have never before been confronted like this.  They said that the fire was far away, and the wind was blowing away from us, but that's not the way it seemed.  If you tilted your head back, way back, the smoke made clouds in the cloudless sky.  But if you followed the trail of clouds back, they turned angry.  They turned blackish and ugly.  What surprised me most was the speed that the smoke moved.  No sooner had it churned out than it was out, blackening the sky like charcol on paper.  You always hear of smoke being described as great, billowing columns, but I tell you now that this was like a production line, only instead of cars or toasters, the factory turned out clouds. 

Strange, isn't it? 

This weather is definitely fire-friendly.  Yet although this fire has appeared to spiral out of control, although it has released tons of ash and carbon dioxide into our dirtied and wearied heavens (by which I mean the ozone), although thousands-if not millions-of dollars of property have been damaged or lost, although people's homes have been stripped of memory and reduced to charred bits, I cannot find myself regretting this incessant, intolerable, heat.

There is, unmistakeably, something nostalgic about this.  What exactly I can't say-the memory has been lost and all that it left for me was a wisp, a tendril, a mood.  I don't know what.  I feel floral curtains waving, and iced tea, collecting water droplets in crystal glasses.  Perhaps it is something I have read, a long time ago.

To all that live in my area: stay safe. and hydrated. 

As for, me...well, let's just say I'm signing off now, to pack an overnight bag.