Just love reading Jon Carroll's column (http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/carroll/), and thought I'd put out a few words about part of what he discusses this morning: men's underwear.
For the gentleman who's not content to wallow about in pair of boxers, the lines he discusses just might be for you. One in particular stood out to me - Equmen. Not only are their products designed to assist men achieve a pleasing shape (that would probably sound entirely too femmey), Equmen uses SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY to deliver to its wearers increased HEALTH and ENERGY.
In their own words from their website (www.equmen.com):
* * * * * * * * *
Discover the ultimate in comfort and fit with EQUMEN PRECISION UNDERWEAR. Engineered compression fabrics and ergonomic design optimise health and well-being, street to sport. With HELIX-MAPPING TECHNOLOGY:
• Precision-Fit Pouch: Double-ventilated pouch provides ultra-comfortable support.
• Streamlines & Defines: Body-defining, second skin fit. Added stretch enhances shape retention.
• Controls Temperature: Targeted mesh, moisture-wicking fabric and anti-microbial properties ensure all-day comfort.
* * * * * * * * *
"Added stretch enhances shape retention"? Is that even meaningful? Leaving the whole can of worms about what's involved with "shape retention" to the side, to my ear, "added stretch" does not cohere with retaining shape, but with the opposite instead.
"Anti-microbial properties ensure all-day comfort." ?. I. ..... I. .... I admit it: I don't know what to say. But here comes the shitstorm from my brain all the same. Microbial properties in men's underwear typically leads to discomfort? Is that why they scratch themselves so much? Is this product description implying that all the men I know are all calmly going about their days with microbes running amuck in their junk due to unhygienic underwear?
And another product: the undershirt, again in their own words:
* * * * * * * * *
Be at your best with the EQUMEN CORE PRECISION UNDERSHIRT.
Engineered compression fabrics and ergonomic design optimise health and well-being, street to sport. HELIX-MAPPING TECHNOLOGY builds in physiotherapy techniques to:
• Improve Posture: Gently pull the shoulders back to enable optimal alignment. Proper postural alignment is known to facilitate oxygen-flow for enhanced energy.
• Help Reduce Back Pain: By correcting posture and supporting the core, allows the muscles to exert less effort in supporting the weight of the body, thereby relieving pain in the back.
• Visibly Streamline: Second skin fit and targeted compression visibly slims for a more tailored look.
• Control Temperature: Targeted mesh, moisture-wicking fabric and anti-microbial properties ensure you stay dry and comfortable all-day.
• Enhance Circulation: Helps to support healthy blood flow, oxygen and nutrient delivery.
• Support Muscle Recovery: Assists recovery through direct compression and improved muscle oxygenation.
* * * * * * * * *
Improved oxygenation, enhanced energy. And again with the anti-microbes. I guess if your partner isn't wearing these products, you'd better hose him down with a can of Lysol before you get close and personal next time!
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
The Greek Trek: Santorini & Mykonos (final installment)
Yes, another note about Greece: but even if you read no further, I hope that this message gets taken away if nothing else does: (1) if you haven’t before, go to the Greek islands; (2) give yourself ample time to do an urban detox, and keep your plans open-ended so you don’t feel you’re operating under a deadline, and (3) go with friends, and perhaps even friends of theirs, and enjoy the opportunity to widen and deepen your relationships.
I’m really going to make this the last bit I write about Greece, as I fear anyone who’s kind enough to put their eyes to my words might be getting weary of hearing about it. The other island we spent a fair bit of time on was Santorini. We didn’t know how long we were going to stay, so we reserved a room for just 2 nights in case we fancied ferrying off someplace else. But it ended up we stayed there almost all the rest of our trip, and I think we all wished we could have stayed longer (and lucky Reeve got to actually make that wish come true by scoring an apartment on the cheap for a month! - but I’ve discussed that good fortune elsewhere).
Since Jake, G and I had, through Bernie’s help, made our hotel reservations in advance, we were able to steer calmly through the crowd of people at the dock hawking their lodgings as we exited the ferry from Amorgos. But we did take up the offer from a car rental place to get our own ride (25 euros/day) instead of relying on shuttle buses or our feet, as we had been doing previously. After Bernie and Elizabeth were taxied away by “grandpa” to their apartment, we all loaded into the rental car along with Reeve – who hadn’t made any lodging arrangements at all, but was playing it by ear – drove up the ribboney-windey road from the port over to Kamari, to the Hotel Poseidon and the esteemable Elena who set us all up.
The Poseidon was on the humble side – a room with a bed and just enough room to stow our bags – but it was totally all good. Everything was neat and clean, and, I mean, we were right there on the beach for a little more than 30 euros a night - no problems! And with both the car and the hotel, the same kind of accommodating attitude we had experienced on Amorgos was present here. Think you want the car/room for 2 days, but you’re not sure? No problem – just call and we’ll make it work. No reservations at all? No problem, we can make it work.
The beachfront strip where the Poseidon was located was about, what, a half-mile long? And it was wall-to-wall restaurants, hotels, bars, and convenience stores. I admit at first I thought – especially after the small-village quietness of Amorgos – that this place would feel touristey-over-the-top. But maybe because we were there before the big swell of tourist season, it didn’t turn out to feel that way at all, at least not in Kamari, and at least not for me (but I don’t think I’m alone in having had that sensation). Our first night we ate at the restaurant associated with the Poseidon – the waiter told us about the grilled fresh fish special of the day and said he could show us the fish they’d cook and I said “sure, why not?” And out he came with a platterful of big-assed fish that made us all go “ooOOOOoo!” and so we ordered four servings of that. And something else, I don’t remember what. And the waiter recommended us to get several carafes of wine, since it would take a while for the fish to cook. And they were good. The wine, and the fish. It was all awesome. In fact, everywhere we ate – in a small village, on the strip, in the bigger town of Fira – the food was consistently top-notch. Their special version of fried cheese. Stuffed squid. Grilled fish. Souvlaki. I had one happy tummy in Santorini.
Santorini is part of what’s left of an old volcano which is, actually, still active (you can take a ferry out to where there are hot springs near the center of the crater). And we toured around the island to see Fira (which was beautiful, but all the blingey touristey shops started making my skin itch after a while), and Oia (also beautiful, and the official destination place where people go to watch the sunset. I did hear somewhere, though, that of course anywhere on the western side of the island is a good place to see the sunset, but what makes it special to go to Oia, is that so many people show up there for it.). Visited some wineries.
But best of all, really, was the laid-backness of the time spent with good company. Reeve set up an unofficial office space in the Oxygen bar just down the strip from our hotel, which also sort of became the destination place in the later hours as well – our home away from home, away from home. Comfy couches, pretty cool music. So although we didn’t make plans on sticking together like glue, it was effortless to find one another in case you wanted to have a drink and a causal chat. If we weren’t on a day trip somewhere, then we’d be at the hotel or by the hotel’s pool, and if not that, then at the Oxygen bar. And in short time, the folks working there got to know your preferences. “Ah, it’s you lot – large Alphas all around, right?” And then of course was the very lovely dinner prepared for us all by Bernie and Elizabeth, on the evening of the fabulous sunset and an enthusiastic bout of mosquito-killing.
I know I posted status updates about doing yoga on the beach, so skip this and the next paragraph if yoga bores you because I just want to give a few more words about how cool that was. The shops and tourists along the strip don’t seem to wake up until 9 at the earliest, so if you’re up with the sun (as I tend to be), then going out and feeling like you have the whole area to yourself, all quiet and calm, is inspiring. Well, there was one place open: Hook’s bar, the owner of which (and his small dog) I think I’d surprise when I’d walk in at 6:30 in desperate search for a cup of coffee. I don’t know what exactly it was he served me – I’d ask for filter coffee, but it tasted like a cross between greek coffee and espresso – but it hit the spot. And then, by our hotel, there was a wooden walkway that went from the strip out toward the water. Which was good for furling the old mat upon (yes, I was geeky enough to pack my yoga mat with me on the trip), because the beach is rocky, not sandy, with a serious slope. And to be there, right alongside the sea, and feel the breath move itself in phase with the waves, and it being so quiet that you could hear the rocks on the shoreline softly rattling together like a kind of percussion instrument when a wave moved out – it was sublime.
Another joyous moment was when Bernie had agreed to do a little morning yoga with me and I managed to wake up a little on the late side (probably enabled by staying out a little on the late side the night before). By the time I was up and at ‘em, the beachfront was already in motion with delivery mopeds and folks out for their morning jog or their morning bask in the sunshine. So after I drove over to Bernie’s I suggested that since his place was in such a quieter area, whether we might try and find a suitable space along the water where he was. We walked to the shore and found a concrete dock that went out into the water, a great place to set up mat. For whatever reason, as we were doing our thing, I was keeping my eyes closed for the most part, maybe to tune into the breath, and the sounds of the water; I dunno: it just felt right. But there was one moment when I opened my eyes, and looked out to the water that was undulating and sparkling and had the most curious sensation that what was moving was us, through the water, rather than the water moving around us. You know, kind of like how it can feel when you’re watching snow fall, and you can get the sensation that you’re moving up rather than the snow’s moving down. That was very interesting.
All in all, the time on Santorini was blissful, and I’m so grateful to have friends whose company was a large part of why that time was so special. Jake, Bernie, Elizabeth, and Reeve: you all rock.
Okay, this is getting a little long, but I know I don’t have much to say about Mykonos, and to be complete I’ll put in a few words: serious tourist destination of the Carnival cruiseline monstrosity sort. To be fair, we were there less than 24 hours, but I think it’s not unfair to suggest that if you go, get off the ferry at Mykonos-town and get yourself elsewhere. The town is curious, a true maze of sidewalk-sized “streets” most of which have no name (it seemed to take forever to find our wee little rooming house), full of people, mopeds, and even the occasional car (the laws of physics somehow must not hold there). But, I mean, where other places have true tiled streets, Mykonos-town often has something down for streetwork and then wide, white painted strips that mimic where the mortar would be if there were tiles. You know? It just sort of exuded a sense of artificiality. And then, I think because so many of the visitors are just passing through for a day, there feels to be a real break in connection with the locals. Maybe because of the nature of the visitors, price points for drinks and food was up over what we had been having on Amorgos and Santorini. Mykonos-town also has a reputation for being a “party” place, and while not everyone on the streets was 20 years old, there are an awful lot of pectoral young men in surfer shorts and girls with salon-streaked straightened hair, gigantic sunglasses and giganter handbags, bored expressions and the kind of nonchalant tan that speaks of having the leisure to lay in the sun in such a way as to get all parts of the body exposed evenly. Just not my kind of place.
And then it was back to Athens! Back to the grit and the graffiti. G used some of his hotel points to score us a room at a Hilton, and walking into the lobby took my breath away – it was so huge! Or maybe it wasn’t so huge, but after several days of holing up in wee little hotels, it sure felt weird. As did the long walk to the room, and the room itself having space for 4 people in the bathroom (where before there would be barely room for one), and there was even a couch in the sleeping space, in addition to a bed. Crazy – it was all so BIG! But whereas before, your portion for a huge dinner and several drinks cost you 25 euros, we were in a place where a single glass of wine cost 9. And the food, though plentiful, was not nearly as good. I missed the islands immediately. And I still do. I can’t wait to go back.
I’m really going to make this the last bit I write about Greece, as I fear anyone who’s kind enough to put their eyes to my words might be getting weary of hearing about it. The other island we spent a fair bit of time on was Santorini. We didn’t know how long we were going to stay, so we reserved a room for just 2 nights in case we fancied ferrying off someplace else. But it ended up we stayed there almost all the rest of our trip, and I think we all wished we could have stayed longer (and lucky Reeve got to actually make that wish come true by scoring an apartment on the cheap for a month! - but I’ve discussed that good fortune elsewhere).
Since Jake, G and I had, through Bernie’s help, made our hotel reservations in advance, we were able to steer calmly through the crowd of people at the dock hawking their lodgings as we exited the ferry from Amorgos. But we did take up the offer from a car rental place to get our own ride (25 euros/day) instead of relying on shuttle buses or our feet, as we had been doing previously. After Bernie and Elizabeth were taxied away by “grandpa” to their apartment, we all loaded into the rental car along with Reeve – who hadn’t made any lodging arrangements at all, but was playing it by ear – drove up the ribboney-windey road from the port over to Kamari, to the Hotel Poseidon and the esteemable Elena who set us all up.
The Poseidon was on the humble side – a room with a bed and just enough room to stow our bags – but it was totally all good. Everything was neat and clean, and, I mean, we were right there on the beach for a little more than 30 euros a night - no problems! And with both the car and the hotel, the same kind of accommodating attitude we had experienced on Amorgos was present here. Think you want the car/room for 2 days, but you’re not sure? No problem – just call and we’ll make it work. No reservations at all? No problem, we can make it work.
The beachfront strip where the Poseidon was located was about, what, a half-mile long? And it was wall-to-wall restaurants, hotels, bars, and convenience stores. I admit at first I thought – especially after the small-village quietness of Amorgos – that this place would feel touristey-over-the-top. But maybe because we were there before the big swell of tourist season, it didn’t turn out to feel that way at all, at least not in Kamari, and at least not for me (but I don’t think I’m alone in having had that sensation). Our first night we ate at the restaurant associated with the Poseidon – the waiter told us about the grilled fresh fish special of the day and said he could show us the fish they’d cook and I said “sure, why not?” And out he came with a platterful of big-assed fish that made us all go “ooOOOOoo!” and so we ordered four servings of that. And something else, I don’t remember what. And the waiter recommended us to get several carafes of wine, since it would take a while for the fish to cook. And they were good. The wine, and the fish. It was all awesome. In fact, everywhere we ate – in a small village, on the strip, in the bigger town of Fira – the food was consistently top-notch. Their special version of fried cheese. Stuffed squid. Grilled fish. Souvlaki. I had one happy tummy in Santorini.
Santorini is part of what’s left of an old volcano which is, actually, still active (you can take a ferry out to where there are hot springs near the center of the crater). And we toured around the island to see Fira (which was beautiful, but all the blingey touristey shops started making my skin itch after a while), and Oia (also beautiful, and the official destination place where people go to watch the sunset. I did hear somewhere, though, that of course anywhere on the western side of the island is a good place to see the sunset, but what makes it special to go to Oia, is that so many people show up there for it.). Visited some wineries.
But best of all, really, was the laid-backness of the time spent with good company. Reeve set up an unofficial office space in the Oxygen bar just down the strip from our hotel, which also sort of became the destination place in the later hours as well – our home away from home, away from home. Comfy couches, pretty cool music. So although we didn’t make plans on sticking together like glue, it was effortless to find one another in case you wanted to have a drink and a causal chat. If we weren’t on a day trip somewhere, then we’d be at the hotel or by the hotel’s pool, and if not that, then at the Oxygen bar. And in short time, the folks working there got to know your preferences. “Ah, it’s you lot – large Alphas all around, right?” And then of course was the very lovely dinner prepared for us all by Bernie and Elizabeth, on the evening of the fabulous sunset and an enthusiastic bout of mosquito-killing.
I know I posted status updates about doing yoga on the beach, so skip this and the next paragraph if yoga bores you because I just want to give a few more words about how cool that was. The shops and tourists along the strip don’t seem to wake up until 9 at the earliest, so if you’re up with the sun (as I tend to be), then going out and feeling like you have the whole area to yourself, all quiet and calm, is inspiring. Well, there was one place open: Hook’s bar, the owner of which (and his small dog) I think I’d surprise when I’d walk in at 6:30 in desperate search for a cup of coffee. I don’t know what exactly it was he served me – I’d ask for filter coffee, but it tasted like a cross between greek coffee and espresso – but it hit the spot. And then, by our hotel, there was a wooden walkway that went from the strip out toward the water. Which was good for furling the old mat upon (yes, I was geeky enough to pack my yoga mat with me on the trip), because the beach is rocky, not sandy, with a serious slope. And to be there, right alongside the sea, and feel the breath move itself in phase with the waves, and it being so quiet that you could hear the rocks on the shoreline softly rattling together like a kind of percussion instrument when a wave moved out – it was sublime.
Another joyous moment was when Bernie had agreed to do a little morning yoga with me and I managed to wake up a little on the late side (probably enabled by staying out a little on the late side the night before). By the time I was up and at ‘em, the beachfront was already in motion with delivery mopeds and folks out for their morning jog or their morning bask in the sunshine. So after I drove over to Bernie’s I suggested that since his place was in such a quieter area, whether we might try and find a suitable space along the water where he was. We walked to the shore and found a concrete dock that went out into the water, a great place to set up mat. For whatever reason, as we were doing our thing, I was keeping my eyes closed for the most part, maybe to tune into the breath, and the sounds of the water; I dunno: it just felt right. But there was one moment when I opened my eyes, and looked out to the water that was undulating and sparkling and had the most curious sensation that what was moving was us, through the water, rather than the water moving around us. You know, kind of like how it can feel when you’re watching snow fall, and you can get the sensation that you’re moving up rather than the snow’s moving down. That was very interesting.
All in all, the time on Santorini was blissful, and I’m so grateful to have friends whose company was a large part of why that time was so special. Jake, Bernie, Elizabeth, and Reeve: you all rock.
Okay, this is getting a little long, but I know I don’t have much to say about Mykonos, and to be complete I’ll put in a few words: serious tourist destination of the Carnival cruiseline monstrosity sort. To be fair, we were there less than 24 hours, but I think it’s not unfair to suggest that if you go, get off the ferry at Mykonos-town and get yourself elsewhere. The town is curious, a true maze of sidewalk-sized “streets” most of which have no name (it seemed to take forever to find our wee little rooming house), full of people, mopeds, and even the occasional car (the laws of physics somehow must not hold there). But, I mean, where other places have true tiled streets, Mykonos-town often has something down for streetwork and then wide, white painted strips that mimic where the mortar would be if there were tiles. You know? It just sort of exuded a sense of artificiality. And then, I think because so many of the visitors are just passing through for a day, there feels to be a real break in connection with the locals. Maybe because of the nature of the visitors, price points for drinks and food was up over what we had been having on Amorgos and Santorini. Mykonos-town also has a reputation for being a “party” place, and while not everyone on the streets was 20 years old, there are an awful lot of pectoral young men in surfer shorts and girls with salon-streaked straightened hair, gigantic sunglasses and giganter handbags, bored expressions and the kind of nonchalant tan that speaks of having the leisure to lay in the sun in such a way as to get all parts of the body exposed evenly. Just not my kind of place.
And then it was back to Athens! Back to the grit and the graffiti. G used some of his hotel points to score us a room at a Hilton, and walking into the lobby took my breath away – it was so huge! Or maybe it wasn’t so huge, but after several days of holing up in wee little hotels, it sure felt weird. As did the long walk to the room, and the room itself having space for 4 people in the bathroom (where before there would be barely room for one), and there was even a couch in the sleeping space, in addition to a bed. Crazy – it was all so BIG! But whereas before, your portion for a huge dinner and several drinks cost you 25 euros, we were in a place where a single glass of wine cost 9. And the food, though plentiful, was not nearly as good. I missed the islands immediately. And I still do. I can’t wait to go back.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
The Greek Trek: Amorgos
As I wrote last time, I headed off to the islands without any particular expectations. To my pleasant surprise it was there, for me, that the real enjoyment of this trip was found.
We visited 3 islands: Amorgos (which shows up on the map but doesn’t get any coverage in the Fodor’s guide) where the wedding was, Santorini, and a very brief pitstop on Mykonos. I sat down this morning ready to write a page about all 3, but now as I’m in the process of winding down about just one, I see that this entry will need to talk about one island only, and this is but a small fraction of what was great about being there.
Amorgos was simply charming. It’s not a major tourist destination, so although there are hotels and places for getting postcards and stuff, it was at bottom very friendly and quiet. It was there that I began to be struck by the natural light and the colors of the environment. The buildings were all bright white with, usually, brilliantly blue trim. The landscape was generally rocky and the indigenous (?) plant life scrubby, in a way that looked more minimalistically beautiful than desolate. And there were these rocky terraces all over the island that at first we thought protected what little of a place to farm out a person could get. But there were so many terraces, and so little plant life, I began to wonder if they were more for just to dampen the effects of erosion generally. On the banana-van ride to the opposite side of the island to catch our ferry to Santorini, I remember amidst all the goats seeing a small family working on one, and felt in the moment that those terraces represented the work of countless generations of families sorting out rocks and putting in their contribution to the terraces that lace the hillsides.
Also worth noting is the smell of the air. It might have taken Joanna’s pointing it out to me to expedite my own observation, but in the fair bit of walking I did, I did notice that the air was positively suffused with a savory scent of herbs growing all around. It was absolutely delicious. Also, and it’s kind of hard to describe, there was this interesting sort of sweet smell. I don’t know what it was – maybe from the grapes growing on the island? It smelled a little like honey? It was hard to pin down. The closest thing I have to compare it to, when encountering that sweetness, was how it feels if you’re swimming in Hawaii in the warm water, and you run across a tendril of a cold current that just touches you and then moves on. The sweet smell was like that – I’d catch it in the air, like walking through it, and go “oh, yum!” But if I’d back up and try to find it again, it was gone. It was something one had to catch in the moment and enjoy it while it lasted and hope for it to come across again; it wasn’t something to be pinned down and immobilized.
The closest to capturing it I found is in a local beverage called, I think in English, raki (how the eta gets transliterated does not seem to be strictly rule-governed, so far as I can tell). The folks running our hotel, bless them, were still awake when we arrived after midnight, and greeted us with little shotglasses of the drink and explained its tie to the herbs and honey and grapes of the island. And afterward, when I realized that raki tastes like how Amorgos smells, I had to buy a couple of bottles to bring home. In fact, that’s all (besides memories and photos) that I brought back from the islands.
Another special thing about being on Amorgos – besides Anders and Michelle’s wedding of course, which was beautiful and tear-inducing (but deserves a voicing more poetic than what I can conjure up), and wound up with a fantastic party dancing to Indian music and a 5 a.m. jump in the pool (that I regretfully missed) – was after the relaxing atmosphere enabled me to shed off the frenetic buzz that can accumulate from everyday urban life. And that was getting to sit around with new people, or people met before but not really known, without anything in particular to do or anywhere in particular to go, and get to know them better. That was pure and simply awesome, and is what rendered the mass exodus the day after the wedding bittersweet, for I would have sure been happy to have it continue with the folks who left for a few days more. Another time!
But anyway, here are some examples of how the hotel staff helped make the experience all the more achievable and enjoyable. One afternoon, some of Michelle’s family had brought food over with them from India – rice, spices, chutneys, pickles. And the hotel was quite okay with them moving into the kitchen there to prepare lunch; in fact, I think they even offered up to cook the meal themselves after a little instruction, and then served it up for everyone. I came in on the late side to that event, so I might not be right in all the details. But the food sure was delish! Pickled lemons: very interesting! And I was flattered to hear, when I asked for seconds, Michelle’s uncle say that I was definitely ready for a visit to India. To be sure, I’ve been more than ready for a while. Knuckling down and making it happen is another story, of course, but I hope to see that day come soon.
Another example comes from the day there was a thunderstorm on Amorgos. First, it was awesome that there >was< a thunderstorm. I LOVE thunderstorms, and it was a glorious indulgence to laze in bed with the patio doors open and listen to the thunder rolling outside. (Lazing in bed was also good because the night before was the rehearsal dinner, with, as one might expect, a fair amount of drinkage.)
There had been planned for that day a ferry ride to Santorini and a picnic there. But with the weather, and then stories of a test-ferry-run by some of the party guests to Santorini and back leading to stomach upset in persons usually quite seaworthy, the trip was cancelled. But it was all good – the picnic was moved indoors to the hotel where there were plenty of chairs and couches, a pool table and a wide-screen TV. By the time I finally made my way over, it was so nice to see folks sitting around, playing card games, lounging together chatting, sharing pictures, playing pool. And consuming the food and wine and beer that had been bought for taking out to the picnic. No one on the staff blinked about providing plates and glasses, and cleaning up after us, or balked when a crew went out to buy more supplies and brought it in. It was one of those moments where I thought, “nope, definitely not in the U.S. anymore.” Because I couldn’t imagine a U.S. hotel with a full bar and restaurant not getting snippety about that. But on Amorgos, the attitude was like, “if this is what makes you happy, then we’ll support you in making it happen – no worries.”
We visited 3 islands: Amorgos (which shows up on the map but doesn’t get any coverage in the Fodor’s guide) where the wedding was, Santorini, and a very brief pitstop on Mykonos. I sat down this morning ready to write a page about all 3, but now as I’m in the process of winding down about just one, I see that this entry will need to talk about one island only, and this is but a small fraction of what was great about being there.
Amorgos was simply charming. It’s not a major tourist destination, so although there are hotels and places for getting postcards and stuff, it was at bottom very friendly and quiet. It was there that I began to be struck by the natural light and the colors of the environment. The buildings were all bright white with, usually, brilliantly blue trim. The landscape was generally rocky and the indigenous (?) plant life scrubby, in a way that looked more minimalistically beautiful than desolate. And there were these rocky terraces all over the island that at first we thought protected what little of a place to farm out a person could get. But there were so many terraces, and so little plant life, I began to wonder if they were more for just to dampen the effects of erosion generally. On the banana-van ride to the opposite side of the island to catch our ferry to Santorini, I remember amidst all the goats seeing a small family working on one, and felt in the moment that those terraces represented the work of countless generations of families sorting out rocks and putting in their contribution to the terraces that lace the hillsides.
Also worth noting is the smell of the air. It might have taken Joanna’s pointing it out to me to expedite my own observation, but in the fair bit of walking I did, I did notice that the air was positively suffused with a savory scent of herbs growing all around. It was absolutely delicious. Also, and it’s kind of hard to describe, there was this interesting sort of sweet smell. I don’t know what it was – maybe from the grapes growing on the island? It smelled a little like honey? It was hard to pin down. The closest thing I have to compare it to, when encountering that sweetness, was how it feels if you’re swimming in Hawaii in the warm water, and you run across a tendril of a cold current that just touches you and then moves on. The sweet smell was like that – I’d catch it in the air, like walking through it, and go “oh, yum!” But if I’d back up and try to find it again, it was gone. It was something one had to catch in the moment and enjoy it while it lasted and hope for it to come across again; it wasn’t something to be pinned down and immobilized.
The closest to capturing it I found is in a local beverage called, I think in English, raki (how the eta gets transliterated does not seem to be strictly rule-governed, so far as I can tell). The folks running our hotel, bless them, were still awake when we arrived after midnight, and greeted us with little shotglasses of the drink and explained its tie to the herbs and honey and grapes of the island. And afterward, when I realized that raki tastes like how Amorgos smells, I had to buy a couple of bottles to bring home. In fact, that’s all (besides memories and photos) that I brought back from the islands.
Another special thing about being on Amorgos – besides Anders and Michelle’s wedding of course, which was beautiful and tear-inducing (but deserves a voicing more poetic than what I can conjure up), and wound up with a fantastic party dancing to Indian music and a 5 a.m. jump in the pool (that I regretfully missed) – was after the relaxing atmosphere enabled me to shed off the frenetic buzz that can accumulate from everyday urban life. And that was getting to sit around with new people, or people met before but not really known, without anything in particular to do or anywhere in particular to go, and get to know them better. That was pure and simply awesome, and is what rendered the mass exodus the day after the wedding bittersweet, for I would have sure been happy to have it continue with the folks who left for a few days more. Another time!
But anyway, here are some examples of how the hotel staff helped make the experience all the more achievable and enjoyable. One afternoon, some of Michelle’s family had brought food over with them from India – rice, spices, chutneys, pickles. And the hotel was quite okay with them moving into the kitchen there to prepare lunch; in fact, I think they even offered up to cook the meal themselves after a little instruction, and then served it up for everyone. I came in on the late side to that event, so I might not be right in all the details. But the food sure was delish! Pickled lemons: very interesting! And I was flattered to hear, when I asked for seconds, Michelle’s uncle say that I was definitely ready for a visit to India. To be sure, I’ve been more than ready for a while. Knuckling down and making it happen is another story, of course, but I hope to see that day come soon.
Another example comes from the day there was a thunderstorm on Amorgos. First, it was awesome that there >was< a thunderstorm. I LOVE thunderstorms, and it was a glorious indulgence to laze in bed with the patio doors open and listen to the thunder rolling outside. (Lazing in bed was also good because the night before was the rehearsal dinner, with, as one might expect, a fair amount of drinkage.)
There had been planned for that day a ferry ride to Santorini and a picnic there. But with the weather, and then stories of a test-ferry-run by some of the party guests to Santorini and back leading to stomach upset in persons usually quite seaworthy, the trip was cancelled. But it was all good – the picnic was moved indoors to the hotel where there were plenty of chairs and couches, a pool table and a wide-screen TV. By the time I finally made my way over, it was so nice to see folks sitting around, playing card games, lounging together chatting, sharing pictures, playing pool. And consuming the food and wine and beer that had been bought for taking out to the picnic. No one on the staff blinked about providing plates and glasses, and cleaning up after us, or balked when a crew went out to buy more supplies and brought it in. It was one of those moments where I thought, “nope, definitely not in the U.S. anymore.” Because I couldn’t imagine a U.S. hotel with a full bar and restaurant not getting snippety about that. But on Amorgos, the attitude was like, “if this is what makes you happy, then we’ll support you in making it happen – no worries.”
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
The Greek Trek: Athens
Just a few more bloggedey notes about Greece, and then I’ll move on. Last time I wrote about random tidbits, but here’s the way the trip went more generally. First we spent 2-3 days in Athens (which at the onset I thought I’d appreciate most) and then went islands-ward (about which I was absent of expectations altogether). For the islands, we wound up spending several days on Amorgos, then several days on Santorini, and then one quick day on Mykonos before heading back to overnight in Athens before our 6 a.m. flight back home. Today I’ll just stick to a couple of observations about Athens.
Athens, at least in the downtown area, was pretty gritty, run-down with ubiquitous graffiti tagging, and relatively expensive. The ancient sites were, don’t get me wrong, very cool. But I think in my imagination I was hoping to feel something of the soul of the old philosophers and other thinkers as I traipsed around the old agora, but I didn’t pick up on anything of that at all. For my two cents, and deriving from what I’ve got in my experiential vault, for more of that “wow” factor of feeling the past alive in the present, a place like Rome really gets that vibe going on.
Maybe that’s why I enjoyed the acropolis museum so much. The museum is built atop a partially excavated ancient ruin. You can see it all open around the suspended walkway/entryway. The floors on the ground level have clear glass panes so that as you walk through the sleek, modern structure you have a view downward straight into the past. So to my mind at least, it conjured up a sense of the present rising up from the past.
Besides the ground-floor design, what also took my breath away was the third floor Parthenon exhibit. As you ascend the stairs, there are big pane-glass windows that give a view straight out to the old Parthenon itself. And the third floor is a reconstruction of the artwork at the top of the Parthenon done to scale, some parts being from the original structure, and others (mostly others) being a plaster-of-paris remake, all set within contemporary brushed-steel looking settings. The plaster remakes looked pretty rough, and I’m guessing that was deliberate although the artistic point was kinda lost on me. All the same, it was really beautifully done. And it was on that floor that we were texted a photo of Maria and Teemu’s newborn baby boy, which made it all even more special still: present mixing with the past, and present meeting with the future. Pretty cool.
What also had Athens as a rocking experience was when we went to the temple of Zeus and ran into 3 of our friends – Jake, Elizabeth and Bernie – there. Of course, they were in Athens, as we were, en route to the wedding. But still. Athens is a big place and it felt somewhat miraculous that we managed to run into each other so serendipitously. That opened up the way for an afternoon and evening of great fun and wine sampling and, of all things, dinner at a quasi-Polynesian restaurant (hey, why not? We figured there’d be plenty of time for eating feta later on).
My imagination didn’t seriously begin to stir until we started ferrying about to the islands. In the evening the water was calm and purplish-blue, and all about were all these islands dotting the water. The crescent moon as it set was a brilliant orange. The part of my heart that loves to wander could well imagine what a thrill it would be to have been an ancient greek traveller, and how ready the area presents itself to encouraging a person to extend the length of one’s leash to his or her homeland by sailing incrementally from island to island. And the islands I’ll talk more about later.
Athens, at least in the downtown area, was pretty gritty, run-down with ubiquitous graffiti tagging, and relatively expensive. The ancient sites were, don’t get me wrong, very cool. But I think in my imagination I was hoping to feel something of the soul of the old philosophers and other thinkers as I traipsed around the old agora, but I didn’t pick up on anything of that at all. For my two cents, and deriving from what I’ve got in my experiential vault, for more of that “wow” factor of feeling the past alive in the present, a place like Rome really gets that vibe going on.
Maybe that’s why I enjoyed the acropolis museum so much. The museum is built atop a partially excavated ancient ruin. You can see it all open around the suspended walkway/entryway. The floors on the ground level have clear glass panes so that as you walk through the sleek, modern structure you have a view downward straight into the past. So to my mind at least, it conjured up a sense of the present rising up from the past.
Besides the ground-floor design, what also took my breath away was the third floor Parthenon exhibit. As you ascend the stairs, there are big pane-glass windows that give a view straight out to the old Parthenon itself. And the third floor is a reconstruction of the artwork at the top of the Parthenon done to scale, some parts being from the original structure, and others (mostly others) being a plaster-of-paris remake, all set within contemporary brushed-steel looking settings. The plaster remakes looked pretty rough, and I’m guessing that was deliberate although the artistic point was kinda lost on me. All the same, it was really beautifully done. And it was on that floor that we were texted a photo of Maria and Teemu’s newborn baby boy, which made it all even more special still: present mixing with the past, and present meeting with the future. Pretty cool.
What also had Athens as a rocking experience was when we went to the temple of Zeus and ran into 3 of our friends – Jake, Elizabeth and Bernie – there. Of course, they were in Athens, as we were, en route to the wedding. But still. Athens is a big place and it felt somewhat miraculous that we managed to run into each other so serendipitously. That opened up the way for an afternoon and evening of great fun and wine sampling and, of all things, dinner at a quasi-Polynesian restaurant (hey, why not? We figured there’d be plenty of time for eating feta later on).
My imagination didn’t seriously begin to stir until we started ferrying about to the islands. In the evening the water was calm and purplish-blue, and all about were all these islands dotting the water. The crescent moon as it set was a brilliant orange. The part of my heart that loves to wander could well imagine what a thrill it would be to have been an ancient greek traveller, and how ready the area presents itself to encouraging a person to extend the length of one’s leash to his or her homeland by sailing incrementally from island to island. And the islands I’ll talk more about later.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Don't flush the toilet paper! Tidbits from Greece
So yay, I’m back, and I also think I’m ready to be back. Projects to finish, others to continue, and hopefully good things soon to start. But before the shine of Greece starts to dull in my memory, I thought I’d share a few verbal snapshots of bullet points I journaled on the ferry ride from the islands (the Cyclades) back to the Hellenic mainland.
* Seriously, don’t flush the toilet paper. It took me several days before that sunk in. Everywhere on the islands are signs about not putting paper in the toilets. I took that in the sense one sees here in the U.S. about not flushing things like paper towels or diapers or other clog-inducing materials. But after a while I was chatting with some friends about it, and it became clear that no, you shouldn’t even be flushing the toilet paper; that you put in the trash. The old pipes just aren’t built for it, apparently. Oh, and in more primitive places, the public bathrooms you find will probably contain what I call “squatty-toilets” – holes in the floor with two little platform thingies to put your feet on while you do your business. So, you know, just be prepared!
* “Turn right at the church” – or any directional heading that’s indexed to a church – is not helpful in Greece. I don’t think I remember the numbers exactly right, but it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that on Amorgos, for instance, they have a population on the order of 3,000 and over 600 churches. Also, concerning churches, watch yourself. I love to check out old churches for the architecture, the art, the sense of peace they contain. But one of our companions was hit on by a priest inside one of them. Can’t lower your guard around those fellows in the robes anywhere, it seems.
* The towns of Fira and Oia, on the island of Santorini, look as though they are built into the side of a cliff. But Santorini is actually part of what remains of an old vocano that exploded, and the towns lie within the inside of the caldera.
* The natural light and the colors. It’s cliché to say that words can’t do it justice, but it’s true, and that won’t stop me from trying anyway. The water is like the purest, clearest kind of sapphire blue. In the early morning sunlight, it sparkles as though it’s covered in diamonds. But when the sunlight is muted, it looks like a slate-grey, and when a boat’s propellers churn it up, it turns turquoise. The islands respond to the sunlight beautifully, too. Sometimes they stand out almost bright white; when the light is more indirect, they look more peachish or pinkish, and again, against the background of the water, the effect is transportive. Sometimes the water looked covered by low-lying fog, so that the islands and boats out there looked for all the world as though they are floating in mid-air. It is entirely possible to have a fantastic time holed up somewhere with a drink and a view to the ocean, and simply watch the way the view changes as the sunlight moves. Oh, and for sure the most awesome sunset I’ve ever seen was on Santorini. We were having dinner at Bernie and Elizabeth’s place, and I walked outside at one point, and when I Iooked up, I was positively fucking stopped dead in my tracks. The entire sky – and we were on the east side of the island – looked like it was on fire, it was so full of reds, oranges, yellows and pinks. As the sun continued to set, the colors shifted to pinks, blues and purples. And that’s to say nothing of how the colors were picked up in the water, and on the islands around. I can understand why, as I heard it, people on the west side of the island all gather just to watch the sunset, and applaud. I think those colors are the same that woke me up the first morning on Santorini, when the light coming into the window was all pink and red. And now I have a new appreciation for Homer’s expression “rosy-fingered dawn.”
* On the islands, although the tap water is eminently drinkable, it tastes salty.
* Every building looks to have solar water heaters.
* Santorini: the land of weensey roads, gigantic tour buses and small cars. I don’t know how many times I sucked in my breath involuntarily, as though doing so would make us narrower.
* Combination stop/yield signs. Never saw those before.
* Even straight-up stop signs seem to function as suggestions, and everyday road rules look to be optional. In my imaginary world, we visitors were rented bumper-cars rather than regular cars, especially since it’s not as though a person can get much speed up due to the windiness of the roads, or the good chances of getting caught behind a slow-moving ATV or moped.
* Interesting lack of road names and street signs on the islands. Generally, figuring out how to get from point A to point B means “travel in the direction of the mountain” or “follow the pointers to Pyrgos”.
* If you like orange juice, make sure to order it freshly squeezed. Otherwise, it’s like water with an orange waved over top of it.
* But on the up side: Greek yogurt + honey = YUMM! Also, I had anticipated I’d tire quickly of a diet dominated by lamb and feta cheese, but that turned out to be not an issue at all. Did I ever eat good out there, and especially on the islands! Lots of fantastically-prepared fresh fish. Awesome non-Greek salads (although of course Greek salad is quite good, too). Suvlaki. Seriously, I woke up one morning with my head on my arm, after about 10 days out, and my skin smelled faintly of oregano; that was pretty cool!
* The staff on the islands, particularly on Amorgos and Santorini, seriously rocked. It took no time to relax there in their good hands, and start to feel something like a local, rather than an outsider. They just made life so easy! Decide you want to stay at a hotel for an extra day, without prior arrangement? No problem. Decide to cut your visit a day short? No problem. For Bernie and Elizabeth, who rented an apartment not close to us, they were afforded free rides to and from where the rest of us were staying by the people who ran the property they stayed at. Happiest of all was that, after several days on Santorini, all of us were vocalizing how much we wished we could stay another few weeks. One of our crew, whose work enables him to work from wherever he’s got an internet connection, started looking around for the possibility of renting an apartment for a month there. And by word of mouth and a couple carefully-placed questions, he wound up with a furnished apartment there along the beachfront in Kamari for a month, for something like 230 euros! How terrific is that?
* On the practical side, if you’d like to do an impromptu trip like ours, some pointers. A taxi ride in Athens at night costs 50 euros extra, so plan accordingly. The high tourist season hits later in June/July/August, when it’s also quite a bit warmer – and it was warm already when we were there (although the water was a little chilly). So I think it would probably be more pleasant in late May, and also makes it easier to make less-well-planned-out travel decisions when the locale is not packed with visitors. And when it’s not packed, that makes it easy to do something like show up on an island without lodging decisions being made because at the dock there are plenty of people there waiting who run facilities and can hook you up straight away. And on the islands, the good things of life – the wine, the food, places to see, places to chill – are very, very affordable.
* Seriously, don’t flush the toilet paper. It took me several days before that sunk in. Everywhere on the islands are signs about not putting paper in the toilets. I took that in the sense one sees here in the U.S. about not flushing things like paper towels or diapers or other clog-inducing materials. But after a while I was chatting with some friends about it, and it became clear that no, you shouldn’t even be flushing the toilet paper; that you put in the trash. The old pipes just aren’t built for it, apparently. Oh, and in more primitive places, the public bathrooms you find will probably contain what I call “squatty-toilets” – holes in the floor with two little platform thingies to put your feet on while you do your business. So, you know, just be prepared!
* “Turn right at the church” – or any directional heading that’s indexed to a church – is not helpful in Greece. I don’t think I remember the numbers exactly right, but it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that on Amorgos, for instance, they have a population on the order of 3,000 and over 600 churches. Also, concerning churches, watch yourself. I love to check out old churches for the architecture, the art, the sense of peace they contain. But one of our companions was hit on by a priest inside one of them. Can’t lower your guard around those fellows in the robes anywhere, it seems.
* The towns of Fira and Oia, on the island of Santorini, look as though they are built into the side of a cliff. But Santorini is actually part of what remains of an old vocano that exploded, and the towns lie within the inside of the caldera.
* The natural light and the colors. It’s cliché to say that words can’t do it justice, but it’s true, and that won’t stop me from trying anyway. The water is like the purest, clearest kind of sapphire blue. In the early morning sunlight, it sparkles as though it’s covered in diamonds. But when the sunlight is muted, it looks like a slate-grey, and when a boat’s propellers churn it up, it turns turquoise. The islands respond to the sunlight beautifully, too. Sometimes they stand out almost bright white; when the light is more indirect, they look more peachish or pinkish, and again, against the background of the water, the effect is transportive. Sometimes the water looked covered by low-lying fog, so that the islands and boats out there looked for all the world as though they are floating in mid-air. It is entirely possible to have a fantastic time holed up somewhere with a drink and a view to the ocean, and simply watch the way the view changes as the sunlight moves. Oh, and for sure the most awesome sunset I’ve ever seen was on Santorini. We were having dinner at Bernie and Elizabeth’s place, and I walked outside at one point, and when I Iooked up, I was positively fucking stopped dead in my tracks. The entire sky – and we were on the east side of the island – looked like it was on fire, it was so full of reds, oranges, yellows and pinks. As the sun continued to set, the colors shifted to pinks, blues and purples. And that’s to say nothing of how the colors were picked up in the water, and on the islands around. I can understand why, as I heard it, people on the west side of the island all gather just to watch the sunset, and applaud. I think those colors are the same that woke me up the first morning on Santorini, when the light coming into the window was all pink and red. And now I have a new appreciation for Homer’s expression “rosy-fingered dawn.”
* On the islands, although the tap water is eminently drinkable, it tastes salty.
* Every building looks to have solar water heaters.
* Santorini: the land of weensey roads, gigantic tour buses and small cars. I don’t know how many times I sucked in my breath involuntarily, as though doing so would make us narrower.
* Combination stop/yield signs. Never saw those before.
* Even straight-up stop signs seem to function as suggestions, and everyday road rules look to be optional. In my imaginary world, we visitors were rented bumper-cars rather than regular cars, especially since it’s not as though a person can get much speed up due to the windiness of the roads, or the good chances of getting caught behind a slow-moving ATV or moped.
* Interesting lack of road names and street signs on the islands. Generally, figuring out how to get from point A to point B means “travel in the direction of the mountain” or “follow the pointers to Pyrgos”.
* If you like orange juice, make sure to order it freshly squeezed. Otherwise, it’s like water with an orange waved over top of it.
* But on the up side: Greek yogurt + honey = YUMM! Also, I had anticipated I’d tire quickly of a diet dominated by lamb and feta cheese, but that turned out to be not an issue at all. Did I ever eat good out there, and especially on the islands! Lots of fantastically-prepared fresh fish. Awesome non-Greek salads (although of course Greek salad is quite good, too). Suvlaki. Seriously, I woke up one morning with my head on my arm, after about 10 days out, and my skin smelled faintly of oregano; that was pretty cool!
* The staff on the islands, particularly on Amorgos and Santorini, seriously rocked. It took no time to relax there in their good hands, and start to feel something like a local, rather than an outsider. They just made life so easy! Decide you want to stay at a hotel for an extra day, without prior arrangement? No problem. Decide to cut your visit a day short? No problem. For Bernie and Elizabeth, who rented an apartment not close to us, they were afforded free rides to and from where the rest of us were staying by the people who ran the property they stayed at. Happiest of all was that, after several days on Santorini, all of us were vocalizing how much we wished we could stay another few weeks. One of our crew, whose work enables him to work from wherever he’s got an internet connection, started looking around for the possibility of renting an apartment for a month there. And by word of mouth and a couple carefully-placed questions, he wound up with a furnished apartment there along the beachfront in Kamari for a month, for something like 230 euros! How terrific is that?
* On the practical side, if you’d like to do an impromptu trip like ours, some pointers. A taxi ride in Athens at night costs 50 euros extra, so plan accordingly. The high tourist season hits later in June/July/August, when it’s also quite a bit warmer – and it was warm already when we were there (although the water was a little chilly). So I think it would probably be more pleasant in late May, and also makes it easier to make less-well-planned-out travel decisions when the locale is not packed with visitors. And when it’s not packed, that makes it easy to do something like show up on an island without lodging decisions being made because at the dock there are plenty of people there waiting who run facilities and can hook you up straight away. And on the islands, the good things of life – the wine, the food, places to see, places to chill – are very, very affordable.
Monday, May 10, 2010
"Return of the King": why it doesn't suck
All rightie, the other evening there was an eminently enjoyable conversation about the LOTR movies containing focused "Return of the King"-bashing. I quietly puzzled to myself, and maybe a little out loud, about why when I get to the third part of that trilogy, I am not similarly so repelled I have to hit the "stop" 'button and go do something else.
I speculated that it's because I'm probably watching it as I'm winding up a marathon run of the whole series and by that point, I'm so sucked in that the excruciating badness floats right past me.
Alternatively, or maybe additionally, I never started into the whole textbook lore of Middle Earth until long after the movies came out, incongruous as that might sound (I imagine I would seem rather a stereotypical LOTR geek from way back when - I mean, I seem to >myself< that I would be, but it just didn't happen that way somehow.). And even then, I might have gone my whole life without reading the books except for I started doing faire and learned quickly that I'd catch a lot more references and jokes if I had bookish knowledge, so off I went to read them up. Anyway, this all goes to the point that I don't approach the movies, even now after having read the books several times, holding the books as a kind of standard.
And finally, I at least like to think I'm coming, in my appreciation of film as an art form, to keep my evaluation of film separate from that of books upon which films are based, so that (I aspire) I can enjoy the film as a thing on its own terms, even (or in spite of) where the film diverges from a book that I like very much.
Okay, all those caveats aside, to return to "Return of the King." This exercise started as the creation of a list of my favorite bad parts, and I took to starting this film first, so that I wouldn't be lulled into a sense of complacency by the first two in the trilogy. And I've got little in the way of expectations because I haven't read the books in a rather long time now.
First note of surprise: Soon after starting, I had to start a second list = things I really >like< about "Return of the King." I just can't help it, dammit, but there is to my mind some pretty awesome shit in this film and I think that might help me be a little more forgiving about places where the dialogue or action or storyline gets vapid. And I'll start with those good things.
1. Gollum. Andy Serkis friggin' rocks it.
2. Shelob. I'm not even arachnophobic, but yeggghhh!
3. Merry isn't stupid enough to mistake Eowyn for a small man. Applause for that small bit of storyline change.
4. Mind-blowing "big-atures"
5. Trebuchets
6. David Wenham as Faramir. Putting aside how he was directed to channel the character or whatever, that man's a cool drink of water. Yowsa.
7. Denathor's cracking up. I know it can come across as a little over-the-top, but I look at it thusly: the character losing his mind is effectively the frigging king, situated in a such a way as to enable his looniness, not contain it. Why shouldn't such a fellow be over the top? I'm happy to be taken there and I enjoy the theatrics, and it makes it all the more satisfying when Gandalf clubs him with his staff later.
8. Although there isn't as much singing as is in the books - and that's a good thing! - there >is< singing (and this positive evaluation holds for the entire series). Not so much that it even remotely threatens to turn the movies into a musical. But on one hand I like the hint of the idea that singing was something >done< in the course of everyday life, and not just something listened to. On another hand, sort of film-ically speaking, I like the approach of having music embedded in in the performance, and not only in a disembodied soundtrack playing over top of the movie.
9. The message of how love and friendship can enable a person to find the courage to stand up in the face of danger is rather moving, and here of course the film is consistent with the books.
10. Eowyn's kicking serious ass in the Minis Tirith battle scene.
11. Gandalf's talk with Pippin about death is also touching, to me.
12. That the dotty-sounding woman (in the book) in the House of Healing was left out. Honestly, JRR, you test a girl's patience sometimes.
13. The "mouth" of Sauron.
14. The reluctance and struggle Aragorn-in-the-film went through before he was ready to take up being king. I somehow always felt it a bit off-putting in the books how Aragorn was always running around from book 1 going "I am Aragorn son of whoever, heir to the throne of Gondor" or whatever. I like how the movie portrayed the character with more humility.
15. Although at about point #13 I was distracted by the arrival of beer and banjo, if memory serves correctly the film departed from the book in how Gollum met his demise at the end. I'm too lazy to go dig out my book and check, but I >think< in the book Gollum slipped during his celebratory dance after getting the ring and fell, whereas in the film Gollum fell following a struggle with Frodo for the ring. I think I have some vague memory of reading the book and thinking "that's it? after all the scheming and planning and struggling, he slips and falls: the end?" - like JRR just kinda gave up. If this is all on-base, then I think the film's working of Gollum's fall is more believable. And if memory serves me wrongly, then just forget point #15!
Now, all these points I like being made, I'll turn to the parts that make me scratch my head:
1. Arwyn's turning mortal. Sorry, it's just not explained very well in the storyline of the film. It seems to be all tied up with her staying there in Middle Earth, but why should that be? Obviously other elves stayed - her dad, the elves who worked to remake the sword - were they all facing a death sentence? Or is mortality something one can simply choose, sort of like Tabitha wrinkling her nose and then: ta dah!? And if that's the case, then why can't a person simply choose back the other way later? But no, then it seems tied up with the growth of evilness in Mordor - as Sauron's power grows, Arwyn's hold on life lessens. Well, which one is it?
Note: I >know< there's an explanation in the literature, but that's not my point. I think: would it have changed any of the dramatic tension to not have Arwyn having to choose between love+mortality versus staying with her own people+immortality? And good god, what is it - recalling my thoughts about a genre of country songs that pair the pursuit of love with imminent death - that choosing the course of love commits a person to pursuing a course towards death, too? Is this some kind of weird guy thing? Honestly! In short, to my mind the tension could have been maintained just fine by leaving the whole mortality issue for Arwyn out.
Okay, I'll leave that alone now.
2. The beacons between Gondor and Rohan. Maybe the movie-makers simply had so much cool footage of mountain tops it was a shame not to use it, so they plugged most of it in here. But I can't get out of my head that Gandalf told Pippin it was a 3-day ride between the two realms, where that interspace was apparently massively populated by stratospherically-high mountains. Every time I watch that music-swelling beacon-lighting bit, I can't help but think it seems that the two realms must be on opposite sides of the globe.
3. Where did the people of Minis Tirith get all the flowers to toss at the men riding off to battle? It doesn't look exactly spring-ish, and Minis Tirith looks to be entirely composed of stone without a hint of green.
4. That Frodo seems, apropos of nothing, to be able to speak elvish (when he hold up the light of Elendil (?) to scare off Shelob). Without that bit of information given to me in the books, I'd think in terms of the movie alone that Frodo had gone aphasic.
5. Denathor's managing to run all aflame for so long before falling to his death.
6. That while Eowyn looks to be an eminently kick-ass-can-do woman, at apparently a single glance abandons her crush on Aragorn and falls for Faramir. I think they left that bit out of the theatrical version, and that's a good thing.
I speculated that it's because I'm probably watching it as I'm winding up a marathon run of the whole series and by that point, I'm so sucked in that the excruciating badness floats right past me.
Alternatively, or maybe additionally, I never started into the whole textbook lore of Middle Earth until long after the movies came out, incongruous as that might sound (I imagine I would seem rather a stereotypical LOTR geek from way back when - I mean, I seem to >myself< that I would be, but it just didn't happen that way somehow.). And even then, I might have gone my whole life without reading the books except for I started doing faire and learned quickly that I'd catch a lot more references and jokes if I had bookish knowledge, so off I went to read them up. Anyway, this all goes to the point that I don't approach the movies, even now after having read the books several times, holding the books as a kind of standard.
And finally, I at least like to think I'm coming, in my appreciation of film as an art form, to keep my evaluation of film separate from that of books upon which films are based, so that (I aspire) I can enjoy the film as a thing on its own terms, even (or in spite of) where the film diverges from a book that I like very much.
Okay, all those caveats aside, to return to "Return of the King." This exercise started as the creation of a list of my favorite bad parts, and I took to starting this film first, so that I wouldn't be lulled into a sense of complacency by the first two in the trilogy. And I've got little in the way of expectations because I haven't read the books in a rather long time now.
First note of surprise: Soon after starting, I had to start a second list = things I really >like< about "Return of the King." I just can't help it, dammit, but there is to my mind some pretty awesome shit in this film and I think that might help me be a little more forgiving about places where the dialogue or action or storyline gets vapid. And I'll start with those good things.
1. Gollum. Andy Serkis friggin' rocks it.
2. Shelob. I'm not even arachnophobic, but yeggghhh!
3. Merry isn't stupid enough to mistake Eowyn for a small man. Applause for that small bit of storyline change.
4. Mind-blowing "big-atures"
5. Trebuchets
6. David Wenham as Faramir. Putting aside how he was directed to channel the character or whatever, that man's a cool drink of water. Yowsa.
7. Denathor's cracking up. I know it can come across as a little over-the-top, but I look at it thusly: the character losing his mind is effectively the frigging king, situated in a such a way as to enable his looniness, not contain it. Why shouldn't such a fellow be over the top? I'm happy to be taken there and I enjoy the theatrics, and it makes it all the more satisfying when Gandalf clubs him with his staff later.
8. Although there isn't as much singing as is in the books - and that's a good thing! - there >is< singing (and this positive evaluation holds for the entire series). Not so much that it even remotely threatens to turn the movies into a musical. But on one hand I like the hint of the idea that singing was something >done< in the course of everyday life, and not just something listened to. On another hand, sort of film-ically speaking, I like the approach of having music embedded in in the performance, and not only in a disembodied soundtrack playing over top of the movie.
9. The message of how love and friendship can enable a person to find the courage to stand up in the face of danger is rather moving, and here of course the film is consistent with the books.
10. Eowyn's kicking serious ass in the Minis Tirith battle scene.
11. Gandalf's talk with Pippin about death is also touching, to me.
12. That the dotty-sounding woman (in the book) in the House of Healing was left out. Honestly, JRR, you test a girl's patience sometimes.
13. The "mouth" of Sauron.
14. The reluctance and struggle Aragorn-in-the-film went through before he was ready to take up being king. I somehow always felt it a bit off-putting in the books how Aragorn was always running around from book 1 going "I am Aragorn son of whoever, heir to the throne of Gondor" or whatever. I like how the movie portrayed the character with more humility.
15. Although at about point #13 I was distracted by the arrival of beer and banjo, if memory serves correctly the film departed from the book in how Gollum met his demise at the end. I'm too lazy to go dig out my book and check, but I >think< in the book Gollum slipped during his celebratory dance after getting the ring and fell, whereas in the film Gollum fell following a struggle with Frodo for the ring. I think I have some vague memory of reading the book and thinking "that's it? after all the scheming and planning and struggling, he slips and falls: the end?" - like JRR just kinda gave up. If this is all on-base, then I think the film's working of Gollum's fall is more believable. And if memory serves me wrongly, then just forget point #15!
Now, all these points I like being made, I'll turn to the parts that make me scratch my head:
1. Arwyn's turning mortal. Sorry, it's just not explained very well in the storyline of the film. It seems to be all tied up with her staying there in Middle Earth, but why should that be? Obviously other elves stayed - her dad, the elves who worked to remake the sword - were they all facing a death sentence? Or is mortality something one can simply choose, sort of like Tabitha wrinkling her nose and then: ta dah!? And if that's the case, then why can't a person simply choose back the other way later? But no, then it seems tied up with the growth of evilness in Mordor - as Sauron's power grows, Arwyn's hold on life lessens. Well, which one is it?
Note: I >know< there's an explanation in the literature, but that's not my point. I think: would it have changed any of the dramatic tension to not have Arwyn having to choose between love+mortality versus staying with her own people+immortality? And good god, what is it - recalling my thoughts about a genre of country songs that pair the pursuit of love with imminent death - that choosing the course of love commits a person to pursuing a course towards death, too? Is this some kind of weird guy thing? Honestly! In short, to my mind the tension could have been maintained just fine by leaving the whole mortality issue for Arwyn out.
Okay, I'll leave that alone now.
2. The beacons between Gondor and Rohan. Maybe the movie-makers simply had so much cool footage of mountain tops it was a shame not to use it, so they plugged most of it in here. But I can't get out of my head that Gandalf told Pippin it was a 3-day ride between the two realms, where that interspace was apparently massively populated by stratospherically-high mountains. Every time I watch that music-swelling beacon-lighting bit, I can't help but think it seems that the two realms must be on opposite sides of the globe.
3. Where did the people of Minis Tirith get all the flowers to toss at the men riding off to battle? It doesn't look exactly spring-ish, and Minis Tirith looks to be entirely composed of stone without a hint of green.
4. That Frodo seems, apropos of nothing, to be able to speak elvish (when he hold up the light of Elendil (?) to scare off Shelob). Without that bit of information given to me in the books, I'd think in terms of the movie alone that Frodo had gone aphasic.
5. Denathor's managing to run all aflame for so long before falling to his death.
6. That while Eowyn looks to be an eminently kick-ass-can-do woman, at apparently a single glance abandons her crush on Aragorn and falls for Faramir. I think they left that bit out of the theatrical version, and that's a good thing.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
What's it like to go on a yoga retreat? Recollections from last weekend.
I suppose at the outset that the kind of experience one gets at a yoga retreat has a lot to do with the sort of retreat it is. That is to say, I imagine that the vibe at Land of Medicine Buddha in Soquel is different than the vibe at Wanderlust out at Lake Tahoe. The former was a small group for a yoga and meditation weekend at a Tibetan Buddhist center; the latter looks like it is a large scale-yoga-cum-burning man-cum-live music fest. I hope it turns out that I can attend both, but at bottom I'd just point out that there are yoga retreats, and there are yoga retreats, and I don't pretend that any observations I have from last weekend hold across the board.
In the time leading up to going to Soquel, I wasn't sure what to expect, never having gone to such an event before. I think I'm far enough along in practice to feel like I'm good for more after an hour or hour and a half class, but in signing up for a whole weekend, was I facing going at it for something like 6 hours straight? I was excited to go, but I can't deny I was a little bit apprehensive about it, too!
That being said, the first thing I have to comment on is to applaud Julianne's teaching style. She's just friggin' amazing. She's a very gentle teacher, but don't let that gentleness fool you. It might not seem that she's encouraging you to push much, and for the whole weekend there wasn't any moment that I was sweating bullets or aggressively challenging my "edge," and there weren't any 6-hour sessions. But I knew on Monday morning when I woke up that I'd have to bail on my regular Monday evening class because it felt like every muscle in my body was wrung out.
So if there weren't any 6-hour sessions, then how did it go? The pace was pretty mellow, and part of what added to that mellowness was Julianne's insistence that all of the program was optional: that we should listen to our bodies and our minds and be present for what we were ready to do, and take time off when that was right, too. So, for instance, although there was by all accounts a fantastic little music event Saturday evening under the stars in the meadow, my body was definitely telling me to sleep, so off to bed I went at 7:30 and I slept for nearly 11 hours straight, not even noticing when the 2 girls I was sharing a room with returned during the night. How awesome is that?
Another thing that I think was spectacular was the pacing and organization. On organization, for instance, the last afternoon's yoga session was spent doing partner work. Not PARTNER-partner, but work with a partner to help get into a stretch better than one can on one's own. I think, theoretically speaking, it would have been conceivable to do partner work the first evening there. But doing it last instead, after we had all had a weekend to get to know each other and feel more comfortable around each other contributed to making the whole environment more friendly and relaxing, and that made it possible to get more of a benefit from that sort of practice. As another for instance, one of the things I was really looking forward to doing was yoga outdoors. And, again theoretically, it's conceivable that we could have all schlepped out to the meadow Friday afternoon for a go at it. But we had a Friday evening yoga session first, then another one on Saturday morning before going out to the meadow Saturday afternoon, and I think that was a really good thing. It gave us a chance to get the psychological muck of our workaday lives out and start embracing the calm of the surrounding environment. Gave us a couple sessions of revisiting the motions in the controlled environment of the Pine Room's studio. That was all key to practicing outdoors, because I sure learned that all the pretty pictures aside, doing yoga outside is more challenging than it looks. We were in a grassy meadow, but the ground was still uneven and it took extra focus to do even fairly uncomplicated things. So if we had gone outdoors straight out, I don't think I'd have gotten as much benefit from it.
The pacing was also fantastic. Sure, over the course of the weekend we did a fair bit of yoga, but it was broken up into sessions in the mornings, afternoons and evenings and interspersed with different sorts of quiet or meditative time. Maybe it would be a sitting meditation in the Pine Room. Or maybe it would be a silent walking meditation out in the woods. Or a moment of lying down under the trees and just taking in all the surrounding beauty. I have read that traditionally speaking, the yoga that we all associate with in what one does when one goes to class is actually intended as a technique for preparing the body for meditation. But we don't often meditate in class, or if we do, it's not for very long. Here I got to experience, for the first time really, just how profoundly present one can feel in taking a meditation after yoga - of really and truly feeling the past and future fall away and being settled and content here and now. That was crazy awesome.
And speaking of the present beauty, there was certainly the beauty of being out in the redwoods. But being at the Center there was incredibly amazing. There was no cell phone reception there. No phones in the rooms. No TVs. No computers. No traffic. Outside the studio, on the site, everyone - the Buddhist monks and nuns, the other visitors or employees - were soft-spoken and friendly. In the evenings, you could hear chanting emanating from the temple. You could hear the birds sing. I swear you could hear the dust fall. Sometimes you'd hear chimes ringing out there, somewhere. It was so calm and peaceful there.
And friendly and supportive. The food that was served was just the bomb; I swear I ate three servings at every meal. Even the bread! (I'm not a big bread eater, generally speaking.) The staff were all so kind. In the cafeteria area you could get tea or coffee or water or fruit any time you wanted, and it wasn't uncommon to fall into conversation with someone else there, and have little get-togethers on the couches. I really liked, too, how there was a designated "quiet" table - it has a sign on it that said it was a space for people who didn't want to talk and for others to respect their desire for silence.
Actually, I >really< dug that because there was at least one time for certain I considered sitting there, not because I didn't dig anyone's company, as though that were an undesirable thing. It was more like I felt a lot of processing going on - not like I was consciously focussing on it, but I could kind of feel it ka-chunking along in the background and I just sorta wanted to be quiet and be present to that happening without getting distracted.
BUT everyone was so friendly and nice, and I really enjoyed talking with them! Here I'll speak particularly about the group I did the retreat with. It was really a terrific bunch of people. As I heard one person put it, there weren't any yoga-snobs there. Everybody was warm and welcoming and supportive and accepting, and that made the space we created all the more one where you could just >be<, without excuses, or explanations, or worries. There was such great power in that!
One of the more fabulous experiences of that was Saturday evening when Julianne was teaching us a technique for getting into the "wheel" pose - a backbend, on other words. Remember doing them when you were like 8 years old? Tried one lately?
There were some folks who had trouble with it and maybe some who thought they just couldn't do it at all. And in teaching a variation on the pose, I suspect that the original intent was to have just a few people try it out, to sort of demo the technique. I was one of the first 2 or 3 who tried it, and I'll probably going to sound all "woo-woo" (as Julianne would put it) to describe how it felt, but I'll go there anyway.
Mind, now, in the process of doing warm-ups for my martial arts class we always take a couple of wheels (if one can), so I'm not a stranger to going up on my hands and feet. But when I went into wheel there, in that place, in the space of a fraction of a second it felt like I had firecrackers going off all along my spine and then felt something like a crazy burst of energy busting out of my chest up to the sky. To make what might sound corny, cornier still, if I had to visualize the feeling, I think of "the weapon" kicking in at the end of the movie "The Fifth Element." So call me what you will, there's no denying it was one of the most powerful or profound sensations of energy I've ever felt, so there you have it.
After I was done, I turned to the friend who had come to the retreat with me and said "you have GOT to try this!" and where before, she told me later, she had been all "uh-uh, no way, not happening for me," she braved up and decided to give it a try, and successfully did a wheel, too. And by this point, if what had been intended was to do a few demos, it morphed into EVERYONE taking a turn while everyone else applauded and cheered and it was just a really beautiful thing, and that couldn't have happened without everyone in the group being as kind and supportive as they were.
So that's a few snippets of what it's like to go on a yoga retreat. If you like the practice, and have the time and curiosity, I definitely recommend taking the opportunity if it comes your way!
In the time leading up to going to Soquel, I wasn't sure what to expect, never having gone to such an event before. I think I'm far enough along in practice to feel like I'm good for more after an hour or hour and a half class, but in signing up for a whole weekend, was I facing going at it for something like 6 hours straight? I was excited to go, but I can't deny I was a little bit apprehensive about it, too!
That being said, the first thing I have to comment on is to applaud Julianne's teaching style. She's just friggin' amazing. She's a very gentle teacher, but don't let that gentleness fool you. It might not seem that she's encouraging you to push much, and for the whole weekend there wasn't any moment that I was sweating bullets or aggressively challenging my "edge," and there weren't any 6-hour sessions. But I knew on Monday morning when I woke up that I'd have to bail on my regular Monday evening class because it felt like every muscle in my body was wrung out.
So if there weren't any 6-hour sessions, then how did it go? The pace was pretty mellow, and part of what added to that mellowness was Julianne's insistence that all of the program was optional: that we should listen to our bodies and our minds and be present for what we were ready to do, and take time off when that was right, too. So, for instance, although there was by all accounts a fantastic little music event Saturday evening under the stars in the meadow, my body was definitely telling me to sleep, so off to bed I went at 7:30 and I slept for nearly 11 hours straight, not even noticing when the 2 girls I was sharing a room with returned during the night. How awesome is that?
Another thing that I think was spectacular was the pacing and organization. On organization, for instance, the last afternoon's yoga session was spent doing partner work. Not PARTNER-partner, but work with a partner to help get into a stretch better than one can on one's own. I think, theoretically speaking, it would have been conceivable to do partner work the first evening there. But doing it last instead, after we had all had a weekend to get to know each other and feel more comfortable around each other contributed to making the whole environment more friendly and relaxing, and that made it possible to get more of a benefit from that sort of practice. As another for instance, one of the things I was really looking forward to doing was yoga outdoors. And, again theoretically, it's conceivable that we could have all schlepped out to the meadow Friday afternoon for a go at it. But we had a Friday evening yoga session first, then another one on Saturday morning before going out to the meadow Saturday afternoon, and I think that was a really good thing. It gave us a chance to get the psychological muck of our workaday lives out and start embracing the calm of the surrounding environment. Gave us a couple sessions of revisiting the motions in the controlled environment of the Pine Room's studio. That was all key to practicing outdoors, because I sure learned that all the pretty pictures aside, doing yoga outside is more challenging than it looks. We were in a grassy meadow, but the ground was still uneven and it took extra focus to do even fairly uncomplicated things. So if we had gone outdoors straight out, I don't think I'd have gotten as much benefit from it.
The pacing was also fantastic. Sure, over the course of the weekend we did a fair bit of yoga, but it was broken up into sessions in the mornings, afternoons and evenings and interspersed with different sorts of quiet or meditative time. Maybe it would be a sitting meditation in the Pine Room. Or maybe it would be a silent walking meditation out in the woods. Or a moment of lying down under the trees and just taking in all the surrounding beauty. I have read that traditionally speaking, the yoga that we all associate with in what one does when one goes to class is actually intended as a technique for preparing the body for meditation. But we don't often meditate in class, or if we do, it's not for very long. Here I got to experience, for the first time really, just how profoundly present one can feel in taking a meditation after yoga - of really and truly feeling the past and future fall away and being settled and content here and now. That was crazy awesome.
And speaking of the present beauty, there was certainly the beauty of being out in the redwoods. But being at the Center there was incredibly amazing. There was no cell phone reception there. No phones in the rooms. No TVs. No computers. No traffic. Outside the studio, on the site, everyone - the Buddhist monks and nuns, the other visitors or employees - were soft-spoken and friendly. In the evenings, you could hear chanting emanating from the temple. You could hear the birds sing. I swear you could hear the dust fall. Sometimes you'd hear chimes ringing out there, somewhere. It was so calm and peaceful there.
And friendly and supportive. The food that was served was just the bomb; I swear I ate three servings at every meal. Even the bread! (I'm not a big bread eater, generally speaking.) The staff were all so kind. In the cafeteria area you could get tea or coffee or water or fruit any time you wanted, and it wasn't uncommon to fall into conversation with someone else there, and have little get-togethers on the couches. I really liked, too, how there was a designated "quiet" table - it has a sign on it that said it was a space for people who didn't want to talk and for others to respect their desire for silence.
Actually, I >really< dug that because there was at least one time for certain I considered sitting there, not because I didn't dig anyone's company, as though that were an undesirable thing. It was more like I felt a lot of processing going on - not like I was consciously focussing on it, but I could kind of feel it ka-chunking along in the background and I just sorta wanted to be quiet and be present to that happening without getting distracted.
BUT everyone was so friendly and nice, and I really enjoyed talking with them! Here I'll speak particularly about the group I did the retreat with. It was really a terrific bunch of people. As I heard one person put it, there weren't any yoga-snobs there. Everybody was warm and welcoming and supportive and accepting, and that made the space we created all the more one where you could just >be<, without excuses, or explanations, or worries. There was such great power in that!
One of the more fabulous experiences of that was Saturday evening when Julianne was teaching us a technique for getting into the "wheel" pose - a backbend, on other words. Remember doing them when you were like 8 years old? Tried one lately?
There were some folks who had trouble with it and maybe some who thought they just couldn't do it at all. And in teaching a variation on the pose, I suspect that the original intent was to have just a few people try it out, to sort of demo the technique. I was one of the first 2 or 3 who tried it, and I'll probably going to sound all "woo-woo" (as Julianne would put it) to describe how it felt, but I'll go there anyway.
Mind, now, in the process of doing warm-ups for my martial arts class we always take a couple of wheels (if one can), so I'm not a stranger to going up on my hands and feet. But when I went into wheel there, in that place, in the space of a fraction of a second it felt like I had firecrackers going off all along my spine and then felt something like a crazy burst of energy busting out of my chest up to the sky. To make what might sound corny, cornier still, if I had to visualize the feeling, I think of "the weapon" kicking in at the end of the movie "The Fifth Element." So call me what you will, there's no denying it was one of the most powerful or profound sensations of energy I've ever felt, so there you have it.
After I was done, I turned to the friend who had come to the retreat with me and said "you have GOT to try this!" and where before, she told me later, she had been all "uh-uh, no way, not happening for me," she braved up and decided to give it a try, and successfully did a wheel, too. And by this point, if what had been intended was to do a few demos, it morphed into EVERYONE taking a turn while everyone else applauded and cheered and it was just a really beautiful thing, and that couldn't have happened without everyone in the group being as kind and supportive as they were.
So that's a few snippets of what it's like to go on a yoga retreat. If you like the practice, and have the time and curiosity, I definitely recommend taking the opportunity if it comes your way!
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