Sitting Beulah

So I'm sitting here yet again with my lovely fiancee in our favorite bar in Portland, Beulahland. We just had dinner and called our folks to tidy up schedules for the wedding coming up in a month. In a month, I just said. Say that again three times. Oaf. Take me out back behind the alligator pen and whip me. But as the event gets closer, I think over and over to myself that it's coming, that I should be really nervous, that boots should be shaking. But there isn't any of that. Well, there's a bit of nervousness, admittedly. But it's so low key as to be without consequence. I'm feeling so in love with my lady and she's in love with me that I feel distanced from all of the traditional stresses of weddings. We have done this thing the only way we know how: DIY, low-budget, friendly. It's a great thing to be in love.

My friend Josh, in these kinds of moods, would talk about how he has married the most beautiful woman alive. I feel the same way.

Transformers....

Rock the house. No, really, I say that admitting to burning an effigy of Michael Bay after Armageddon came out. A truly horrible movie that I heard was pitched as "Dirty Dozen go to space." And Ben Affleck...is a bad actor. Get over him. Ew. But Transformers is amazing in many different ways. Actually, it's also not very good in certain ways. But there's something compelling about the movie that transcends all the nationalistic images of efficient armed forces (I've never seen planes in the air in response to emergency as fast) and goofy over-the-shoulder shots of gooey-eyed adolescents lusting after each other. The main thing that makes this so enjoyable are the Transformers themselves. In any good sci-fi movie, which this is, that places technology--and usually alien, completely unknown to human technology--at such a central position in the narrative, the movie succeeds in drawing you in to the plight of the machines. And I don't mean the silly evocation of pathos in a dying robot's eye-lights. I mean we're drawn into the relationship between man and machine, the interaction of organic and inorganic, the tete-a-tete dance between two very different kinds of life. And I say this knowing that the main mechanism by which this works is to make these machines as human as possible.These robots talk. They walk upright. They are shaped humanoid. But the thing that separates the machines from the men is that they preserve a kind of above-the-fold heroism usually reserved for gods, monsters and evil geniuses. The good robots, of course, have the will to preserve a long-forgotten way of life. The bad robots possess a will to power to colonize and destroy in the process. Here is where the central struggle takes place--over the battlefield of noble intentions. The good robots are protectors, recognizing the humanity of humans, whom they choose to defend. The good robots take the shape of popular cars and trucks (in the movie, all GMC products, I think), and this is interesting because they are aligned with capitalism, with the American Dream, with buying shit to make yourself feel good. An interesting move. The bad robots are saddled with the ambitions of empire-making. There is a sense that they can't help themselves, that they are compelled by inner demons (tiny robotic demons, no doubt) to take over worlds and appropriate the technology for their own good.

(Of course, the interesting thing here is when one considers the United States' own not-so-subtle gestures toward empire and how that dovetails with the negative connotation built into robots, stormtroopers, and other evil colonizing forces in the movie universe. It's kind of an elaborate game of reverse psychology--viewers are convinced that the spectacle of movie colonization must be much worse than reality.)

Anyway, the bad robots talk in lower octaves. They have single-minded motivations of retaining an object that promises a huge payoff of more conquering. Also interesting are the shapes these "evil" robots take. They take the shape of a police car, a tank, a multi-purpose army truck called "bonecrusher" and a super fast jet. It's interesting that these are the shapes the bad guys choose to take, especially considering that throughout the movie, the armed forces, the FBI, the government and the police, to a lesser extent, are positioned as highly efficient and effective organs of national defense.

Ok, that's enough intellectualizing. Don't see the movie for plot. Don't see the movie for good acting (though the teenage lead is quite good). It's a fun ride and has all the things a blockbuster should have: big explosions, cursory plot, romantic entanglements, dropped characters, a simple battle between good and evil.

Oh la la. I can't wait to see Live Free or Die Harder. Boom.

Nothing to do with July 4th

First: Thanks to my great friend Mary for commenting on the blog. She's not even in country and she's spending time on the 'net. She said something in response to one of my posts that I liked. She said that she was looking around a table of people she's made friends with in Spain, where she's taking a class, and thought that it was really cool that she got to meet with all of the disparate personalities and get to know them in the short time they spent together. And that made her think of being in a place where there are nurturing and spiritual people around her. I had to agree with her in that sense, the sense that it's really important to have a cadre of friends and associates around you to uphold and support you in times good and bad. There is the rub, really: finding that place, ferreting out those folks who are best for you.

I've at least found one person in the world I would rather be with than anyone else. I'm going to marry her in about a month. Ay!

My second day

It's the end of my second day at PICA. A little tired, but that's good. Now the question is what to blog about? I promised (largely to myself) that I would blog everyday for a week. I missed yesterday, but I posted twice on Sunday, so I'm counting it. So for today...I worked out last night and this morning before work. The gym culture is so interesting to me. I go to 24 Hour Fitness and it's actually a little on the awful side. Like McDonald's or Target or any of a number of other chains, it's built for volume. There are lines and lines of exercise equipment, lines of people stairstepping or ellipticalling or treadmilling. Everyone doing the same thing, with minor variations. And besides aerobic machines, there are five acres of free weights and anaerobic machines. And mirrors all around, floor to ceiling mirrors that actually make you look really good while you're working out. Then when you go home, one look at your old crappy bedroom mirror and you are thinking about the next time you can go to the gym. Everything is built to inspire you to come back and that desire is based on dissatisfaction. The dissatisfaction with your self, with your present. There is always the possibility of the future implicit in gyms. You enter the gym slightly pudgy or slackly muscled, and you run a half hour and tone your arms and legs with weights--and then, after a period of time involved in a regimented workout schedule, you suddenly realize you've lost a few pounds or made that thigh quad stand out. Yet even then it's not enough; you come back and you come back, you subscribe to a series of magazines and watch television shows that reinforce the desire to be something better than what you are right now. So you're left to continue with the gym, with the supplements, with the bi-weekly yoga and the vegetables.

As I'm writing this, I realize that there's something missing here. I've described an ideal situation--and the thing is, gyms are built around an expectation of the ideal. What makes gyms sort of palatable is that only a small percentage of people actually get sucked into the "bigger, faster, stronger" thing where they end up a health nut and doing pilates twenty hours a week. Most people are fallable to a great degree; they don't come regularly, they don't eat healthily for very long periods of time, they essentially fall off the wagon of an addiction most people aren't really addicted to, at least physically. The addiction is psychological, to the ideal of a perfect body, a non-polluted physiology, a clear mind.

One might go on and on about culturally-mediated behaviors, etc. One might agree with a thesis that stated that going to the gym is something arbitrated by the bombardment of information that surrounds us. But beyond the sweat towels and dirty socks, if we make the leap to all the other retail chains that are around, there might be something to be said about how they operate in terms of creating desire. It's a bit like holding the carrot in front of the donkey. There's always a rider on the donkey, the person or thing who is controlling the movement, the direction of the donkey's attention. At the risk of calling everyone donkeys, including myself, there it is. I think there needs to be an ongoing conversation about how we consume. Of course there is a kind of metaphysics of consumerism going on in our culture right now. Adbusters is the first that comes to mind. Michael Moore is another, in his Awful Truth days. And living in Portland, I see evidence of awareness of capitalistic manipulation everywhere. Yet despite this awareness, I think we've decided to live with it rather than change the intentions of the donkey. For better or for worse, eventually there will be a moment when we must face how we get and consume our goods. Until then, I ride the elliptical machine and watch The Colbert Report; I buy my clothes at Banana Republic but recycle all of the extant paper in my house; I love summer blockbusters and I learn about global warming from a movie. There are trade-offs everywhere.

Pics of Taya, my love

These are from a trip Taya and I took to Lewiston, Idaho, my hometown, at the end of March. It was really fun, and we got to see my family and my new nephew again. These pics are of us goofing around in one of my favorite places on earth, the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers, which come together at the foot of the city.

It's a little strange...

So Taya and I are getting married in less than two months. We're ready; we have lots to do, but the details aren't too hard to manage right now. In a month, maybe we'll be tearing our hair out. But now, not too bad. The strangest thing is thinking about how things might change after the wedding. We've been together for five years, so I don't think that the structure of our relationship will change too much, at least in any significant way. I don't find myself nervous about how we will act differently toward each other; we have pretty much ironed out all the big issues between us. The marriage certificate is, in my view, only a surface formality of commitment. It's only a piece of paper, really, a piece of paper issued by the state that sanctions our union. Blah, blah, truth. But the real thing that I am looking forward to is the deepening of my feelings for Taya--which are already at a point where I think of "us" in a kind of metaphysical togetherness kind of way. But there are the little details that I look forward to: using the words "husband" and "wife," making long term plans for house and babies, thinking about the future in a way that includes not only me and Taya and our careers, but also leaving a space for dreaming and creativity. I think that the biggest thing that will change is that a kind of potentiality will open up--a space that allows for our own, individual potential, but also for a kind of shared potential. A space in which we can play with ideas about the future, discard the ones that seem unlikely or unrealistic, and develop the plans that seem right.

We went out with our friends Tod and Jen last night. They are great and fun and models, in a way, for us. They've been married for...how long?...seven years? eight? And they have developed a really cool and admirable life for themselves; they have two awesome kids, a house, a couple of yuppie cars. They have all the trappings of success and a solid middle-class life. But they've also retained a sense of fun and spontaneity and youthfulness--as well as a compassion for other people that I find refreshing. Plus, Todd is the only one I know, besides my friend Lisa, who can keep up with me as regards knowledge of pop culture. So kudos to T & Jen.

One final thought about the changes after the wedding issue: One sits in a coffee shop and blogs about a single relationship. Then you look up, pause, look around at all the people sitting and standing about. You think about all the varied emotions and characteristics that connect the pairs and groups of people together. Every relationship is an idiosyncratic thing, and these connected entities walk around all day, with each other and alone. But you see these people in the coffee shop, and in the present moment, every one of these people have traveled through much different psychological landscapes to arrive together. How did they all get together? you think. But that's not the point. The point is that relationships evolve over time and it's important to remember that change is good and healthy and needed, you think.