Author: The Arts Are Life

I am a writer and musician. Lover of music, movies, books, art, and nature.

Los tesoros del corazon

(escrito en el 15 de deciembre 2020)

Los tesoros de la corazón 

Son brillantes 

Tengo un tesoro azul 

Que me dice “eres hermosa, eres simpatica, eres excelente.”

Cuando entono Nam-myoho-renge-kyo

El tesoro de mi vida resplende como una luz brillante

Dinero es bueno 

Y necesitas vivir con dinero

Pero los tesoros de la corazón 

Son las riquezas ciertas

Necesito hacer mi revolución humana 

Para compartir mis tesoros de mi corazón 

Mi felicidad

Mi agradecimiento

Mi amistad por la humanidad

Con otros. 

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo es un tesoro 

Y este tesoro es mi vida. 

The Crawfish Boil

It was the summer of 2008 and we were celebrating the campaign of Barack Obama in our Southern town. It was 12 o’ clock and my family and I were visiting a family friend who invited us to her crawfish boil. As a huge fan of seafood I couldn’t wait. My mom put on her pearl necklace and her bright yellow summer dress. I love my mother; she is so pretty, with her strawberry blonde hair in waves and her full lips. Dad was so lucky he married her.

“You ready?” she asked me.

I nodded. Mariana, my sister, wouldn’t be coming because she was at a friend’s house.

We walked down the block. Mrs. Weathers, the family friend, didn’t live too far away, only five minutes down the block. Even from down the block I could smell the Cajun spices and the barbeque. It tantalized my taste-buds and my olfactory senses.

Mrs. Weathers came out and I saw she was heavily pregnant. Her bump swelled under her turquoise maternity summer dress, and she wore these beautiful white-rimmed sunglasses. She put the sunglasses atop her head, and walked over to us.

“Hiiiii!!!!” she squealed as she and my mom hugged.

My mom let go after five minutes and she introduced me.

“This is Kayla,” she said, nodding for me to shake Mrs. Weathers’ hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I nodded, staring at her bump.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Kayla!” she gushed in her Southern drawl. “Please dig in! We’ve just started cooking the burgers.”

A tall tanned gentleman with wavy black hair and a wide toothy grin turned to us as he grilled juicy hamburgers. A table piled high with steaming crawfish, corn on the cob dripping with butter, and a bowl of creamy potato salad called to me.

“Help yourself!” he laughed as he saw my hungry expression, his eyes darting to the table.

“Thank you,” I said shyly, becoming more aware of my manners.

Mom handed me a plate, and I piled it high with food. She leaned over to me, and whispered “Save some for others. You don’t want people to think you are greedy.”

I sighed.

“Yes, Mom.”

I have always been a little overweight and I understand my mom was trying to help me lose some pounds, but I couldn’t help feeling self-conscious. I went over to Mrs. Weathers.

“Excuse me, ma’am, do you know where the drinks are?”

“Oh!” she laughed. “Come on with me, I can show you!” She motioned for me to come into the kitchen. On the linoleum floor sat a cooler full of perspiring cans of soda taking a bath in a melted pool of ice. I kneeled down and picked up a chilly can of Seven-Up.

“So do you work?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am, I work at Chili’s part-time.”

“Please, hon, call me Stacy!” she guffawed. “‘Mrs. Weathers’ or ‘ma’am’ makes me feel so doggone old.”

I tried to force a grin. Calling her anything other than her last name or a polite Southern title felt awkward.

“How is the school year going?”

“It’s ok. Algebra is challenging but my teacher is nice.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mrs. Rizzolo.”

“Oh!” she clapped her hands excitedly. “She and I are good friends. Her and her daughter live across the street from us. She had the flu though, so she couldn’t make it to the barbeque today. Poor thing, bless her heart. I called her to see if she was coming, and she had just finished puking in the toilet..”

I nearly gagged on my 7Up.

“Oh, sorry, that was a bit TMI.”

“It’s ok,” I coughed.

“Oh!” she laughed, putting her hands on her round stomach. “That was an elbow.”

I knew she was talking about the unborn baby.

“May I touch it?” I asked.

“Yes, of course!” she smiled. I placed my hand on her belly, and felt a sharp jab against my hand. It felt weird, like an alien was inside her.

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s rather uncomfortable at times, especially when I am sleeping. She kicks more after I eat ice cream, for some weird reason. That’s one of my cravings, by the way. The other day I had a whole tub of Ben n’ Jerry’s by myself. I felt so bad,” she laughed. “But you get used to it. If you’re wondering it’s a girl,” she winked. “Todd and I just found out this week when I went for my ultrasound.”

“What will you name her?” I asked.

“We haven’t decided yet. Maybe Elizabeth or Caitlyn.”

After a few moments, I didn’t feel anything. I took my hand away from her stomach.

“Sorry, I didn’t know if it was uncomfortable for you to have me touch your stomach.”

“Oh, no, darling! You don’t have to apologize at ALL!” she laughed. She placed a hand gently on my shoulder. “But I appreciate you asking. Your mother clearly brought you up with good manners.”

Good manners or not, I still felt like a perv.

We went back out, Mrs. Weathers cradling her bump as we walked. Mom was sitting with Mr. and Mrs. Rose, who wore Barack Obama “Yes We Can” buttons on their T-shirts. They sat around the table with half-finished plates of potato salad. A few flies danced around the mounds of greasy chicken bones and crawfish skeletons with shredded skin.

Mom turned to me.

“Where were you?”

“Oh…”

“Don’t worry, Sherri! I was just showing Kayla where the drinks were.”

Mom nodded.

Mr. Rose checked his watch.

“I am so sorry, Sherri and Stacy, but we gotta head to pick up our son from baseball practice.” Mr. and Mrs. Rose got up from their chairs, and embraced my mom in huge hugs. Then they went over to Mrs. Weathers and gave her hugs, too.

“Congratulations, Stacy!”

Mrs. Weathers beamed.

“Thank you so much, John! Patricia, thank you both for coming. Tell Little Earnest good luck for me.”

“We will!” they waved and trudged towards their silver minivan parked outside on the side street.

I went over to the table, which was running out of food.

“Oh, I saved your plate,” Mr. Weathers came over to me. “I saw you put it down and didn’t want it to get cold.”

I gently took it from him. That was really sweet of him.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Haha, please, call me Todd.”

I nodded. I went over to a table and sat with Stephanie and Rachel, two of my classmates in Mr. Brian’s English class. They sat and coolly watched a young blonde man standing and talking to 95-year old Mr. Paterson.

“Jesus, he is so fucking hot.” Stephanie licks her lips, and sips her Diet Coke. “I would totally tap that.”

“Is that Jesse? I thought he was dating Erica Brien,” Rachel said, turning to Stephanie.

Stephanie shrugs, then smirks.

“I heard they were breaking up. Apparently, Erica slept with Ricky on the basketball team and everyone found out all over social media…”

She lolls her head over to mine and giggles.

I continued to listen to them as they shared their fantasies about fucking Jesse. I really had nothing else to do and nowhere to be. Clara hadn’t scheduled me for any shifts today. I grabbed one of the crawfish from my plate. It was lukewarm, but I bit into the spicy flesh of that tiny crustacean and my mouth lit on millions of fires. I hurriedly spooned some potato salad in my mouth. I felt embarrassed, but Rachel and Stephanie weren’t really paying attention to me. They were probably too busy checking out Jesse’s Instagram to care.

Movie Review: C’mon, C’mon

So I first heard of this movie because I am subscribed to the A24 films email list, and when they come out with a new movie they share a trailer in the email. I came across this trailer for C’mon, C’mon, and it was so heartfelt that I wanted to watch it. Thankfully, I found it at the library a couple of days ago and checked it out. The film is shot in black and white, similar to Frances Ha, another film that was also shot in black and white. Also, I love the new Lionsgate Films theme song (it’s a random and small detail, but I have started getting into film music and after watching all these movies to write these reviews I have started falling in love with theme music.). I love the old one too, but I also love this one.

The movie opens in Detroit, Michigan, and a man named Johnny is interviewing young people about their lives and what they think about social issues and the future. Some of the kids talk about how they are worried about climate change, others worry about loneliness. One of the youth they interview talks about how people make all these assumptions about Detroit but she tells them that they have never lived in the city, and she has lived there her entire life. Some kids talk about how they are anxious about the future, some are hopeful. Johnny is also taking care of his aging mother with his sister, Viv, and both of them argue about the challenges of taking care of her. Viv is married to Paul, who recently got a new position with the San Francisco Symphony and moved to Oakland, but is finding the transition challenging. Viv is left to take care of their son, Jesse, who is sensitive and is, like so many other youth, trying to make sense of the world. Johnny visits Viv and Jesse and spends time with them, and Viv has Johnny watch Jesse while she is taking care of Paul. Over the course of the film, Johnny and Jesse strike up a beautiful and profound friendship.

One of the main themes of the film is the connections between children and adults. Johnny’s work involves interviewing kids about serious issues and getting them to think about what they envision for the future, to give them a platform to have their voices heard. At the same time, he is also navigating his relationship with Jesse, who isn’t as open at first to talking about his feelings with Johnny. Jesse ends up interviewing Johnny about his life. In one scene, Johnny is reading The Wizard of Oz to Jesse to put him to sleep, and Jesse interrupts him by asking why he isn’t married. Johnny pauses, wondering whether he should tell Jesse, but he tells him what happened in a way that Jesse will understand. Jesse also develops a deep friendship with Johnny, especially because they are not around Viv so Johnny allows Jesse to behave in ways Viv probably wouldn’t want him to. When Johnny takes Jesse to a restaurant with Roxanne and Fernando, the people who conduct the interviews with him, Jesse tries eating his ice cream before he finishes his dinner but Johnny tells him to eat his dinner before eating dessert. Jesse stays up late at night because he has had a lot of sugar from the ice cream, and gets upset with Johnny for letting him eat the ice cream since his mom wouldn’t let him have all that sugar. When they are in the convenience store, Jesse finds a toothbrush that lights up and sings, but Johnny tells him he cannot have it. Jesse ends up getting lost in the store and Johnny freaks out because he doesn’t know where he is, and asks everyone in the store where Jesse is. Jesse finally runs into him with the singing toothbrush and busts up laughing and making fun of Johnny, and Johnny raises his voice at him, telling him to stop, but Jesse yells at him right back. When Johnny calls Viv, she tells him that she hates it when Jesse doesn’t do what she says, and when she finds out Johnny let him have ice cream and that Jesse is overstimulated, she tells him she loves Jesse even when does things that annoy her, such as talking about random stuff all the time. I think I related a lot to this because I was a teacher at a daycare and honestly I wasn’t that great of a teacher. My first day I thought, Oh these kids are so cute, and I loved reading books to them, but I had such a hard time controlling the class. When kids would get into fights over toys or a kid would randomly start lashing out at me, I wouldn’t tell them to stop. I often let the more experienced teachers step in because I feared making the kids cry if I yelled at them or told them to stop hitting each other or doing things they weren’t supposed to. I’m sure that I shouldn’t let that one experience prevent me from pursuing a teaching career or being a substitute teacher if I ever need another job, especially because it was a long time ago, but what that experience taught me is that teachers deserve all the respect. Looking back, I probably would have read up on books related to teaching and interacting with toddlers just so I knew how to handle certain situations with more calm.

The interviews also take place in other cities: Los Angeles, New York City, and New Orleans. Jesse and Viv live in Los Angeles, and when Johnny is visiting them in Los Angeles, he shows Jesse his recording equipment and has Jesse wear it and test it out while they are walking along the beach. When they are sitting on the sand, Johnny asks Jesse if he has been to New York City, and Jesse tells him he hasn’t been before. Johnny says he should come with him to help him record his interviews, and Jesse agrees. However, when Johnny tells Viv that he invited Jesse to New York City, Viv is upset because Johnny should have gotten her permission before asking Jesse to come since she is his mom. When they are in New York, Johnny, Roxanne and Fern interview children of immigrant families, and they discuss many different topics: climate change, loneliness, vulnerability, bias and discrimination and isolation. One of the interviews that was really powerful was one of the kids saying that when he expressed to his parents that he felt like crying sometimes, they tell him he shouldn’t cry and that he needs to be strong. After reading Brene Brown’s books on shame resilience and vulnerability, I have been getting really interested in the subject of vulnerability, especially when dealing with my own emotional health and learning to communicate my feelings better.

There is one scene that also conveys the power of vulnerability. When Johnny and Jesse are in New Orleans, Viv calls Johnny and tells him that her husband, Paul, is recovering after being taken to a mental health facility for treatment and that Jesse can come home. When Johnny tries to put Jesse on the phone, Jesse listens as Viv tells him she is bringing him home, but then he tells Johnny he is done talking to his mom and runs off. He is upset because he has had to watch his father’s nervous breakdowns for so long and his mom not knowing how to deal with them, and after spending time with Johnny and feeling free, he doesn’t want to come back to his family. When Johnny catches up with him, he tells Jesse it is fine to not feel fine, but Jesse tells him to leave him alone and that he is fine. Jesse reiterates that it is okay to not feel okay, but Jesse yells that he is fine. Finally Johnny yells at him and tells him that it is okay to scream and feel angry, and Jesse finally gives in and yells that he is not fine. He and Johnny both kick and stomp the ground angrily, and then Jesse feels better. Johnny tells Jesse that he is better at communicating his feelings than he was before.

I really like this film because it reminds me of how important it is to give young people a chance to speak out on social issues and give them a voice. When I was younger I watched a commercial that the Ad Council did on global warming, and one of the commercials featured various kids saying “Tick, tick, tick” over and over while talking about the effects of climate change. It gave me goosebumps. There was another commercial where an older gentleman is standing on a train track and there is a train coming and he says that some say the irreversible consequences of global warming are far into the future, but that in thirty years it won’t affect him, and when he steps aside there is a young girl standing in front of the train as it approaches her. (we don’t see her get hit, but she just looks into the camera with this pained expression like “You adults failed us.”) I also thought about Greta Thunberg and so many other young people who are fighting against climate change, and about the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida protesting gun violence. I read a lot of philosophy by a writer and philosopher named Daisaku Ikeda and in his writings he talks about raising successors, or young people to promote a society based on respect for the dignity of each person’s life, which is what my Buddhist practice is based on. In our monthly publication, Living Buddhism, there is an article about fostering successors, and in our organization we have a group for elementary, middle and high school-aged youth called the Future Division. We encourage the youth to use their Buddhist practice of chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, studying the writings of Daisaku Ikeda and The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, and participating in SGI activities so they can bring forth the potential to overcome challenges in their daily lives and become happy. I feel like whenever I encourage the youth in my organization, I become happier and gain greater hope for the future. When I was watching the film, I kept thinking about the Future Division in our Buddhist organization.

Also, Johnny’s project of interviewing the youth reminded me of when we had a festival called 50,000 Lions of Justice, and to promote the festival they had promo videos where passerby in different cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Chicago were asked about something courageous they did and social issues they thought were most important. Watching these videos gave me hope for the future and empowered me to overcome my apathy and anxiety about the future. This is one of the videos I really loved:

TV show synopsis: Bridgerton, Season 1, episode 1

Last week I started watching the hit series Bridgerton. I had heard so many great things about the show, and so I wanted to watch it. Honestly it reminded me a lot of Hamilton because many of the characters are people of color. I really loved seeing how a lot of the people in the show were people of color because so far in a lot of the British period dramas I have seen most of the main characters are white. In this episode we meet the main and supporting characters and the different families and the women in the families are introduced. The young women are taken to meet Queen Charlotte (played by Golda Rosheuvel) and must win her approval. Daphne Bridgerton wins the Queen’s approval when she curtsies without fainting, unlike the previous girl who fell when she curtsied to the Queen. We meet the Duke of Hastings (Rege-Jean Page) and his father recently died, and Lady Danbury encourages him to go to the party that evening even though he is indifferent and doesn’t really care. Everyone is at this party in the evening and Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) escorts his sister, Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor), around the party and she finds herself meeting many men who are interested in her, especially after winning the Queen’s approval. One of the guys who expresses interest in marrying her is a man named Nigel, who kind of reminded me of Chester in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. For those who haven’t seen the show, in season 2 there is a guy who keeps following Susie Myerson around the Catskills resort, saying they have a lot in common even though Susie isn’t interested in him. He keeps saying to her “criss cross” to express interest in her, and she tries to avoid him repeatedly throughout the episodes in the Catskills. Daphne isn’t interested in Nigel; instead she is interested in the Duke of Hastings. The Duke has an indifferent air toward the festivities and he knows Anthony really well. Anthony is concerned because Daphne is getting so much attention from all these men. Marina Crane is another beautiful young woman who gets attention from many suitors; there are three young women in the drawing room who are sitting around and their mom is talking about their marriage prospects and they finally meet Marina and they realize they have competition. Nigel meets with Daphne and continues to express interest in marrying her but she is not interested. Anthony is dating a young opera singer named Siena and they spend evenings having passionate sex, but after dinner his mom tells him he needs to stop messing around and settle down with someone, so Anthony, while he and the girl are having sex, tells her he can’t see her again.

When in the garden, Daphne walks away from the festivities and Nigel catches up with her and continues to pursue her. She says no but he doesn’t listen and when he tries to force himself on her, she punches him out. The Duke of Hastings sees this and continues to feign indifference. Daphne is about to leave but the Duke says they should pretend they are in love (I think they are actually in love) so people can think she has accepted a suitor and is no longer available. Marina wakes up to find her bedsheet is gone. One of the lady’s maids takes it to the woman in charge of the household and she finds out Marina had sex and ended up pregnant since she hasn’t bled in a month. She kicks her out of the house and when Marina shouts at her that she doesn’t know what it’s like to go through this kind of suffering, the lady slaps her.

One thing I really love about this show is the colorful dresses and outfits. I watched Downton Abbey and the outfits they wear are more drab and dull because it is the 1900s and there were more neutral colors. I also really like it because Claudia Jessie, who plays Eloise Bridgerton in Bridgerton, is an SGI member in the UK. As an SGI member myself I found this encouraging. Another thing I loved about the show was the string quartet pieces they play. The show takes place in the 19th century but it’s cool how the pieces they play are pop pieces like Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next,” Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You,” and “bad guy” by Billie Eilish. It gives the show its uniqueness because when I see period dramas they all feature classical music.

In episode 2 we see a woman giving birth and when the baby is born, everyone is relieved that it’s a boy, but then the mother dies shortly after giving birth and Lady Danbury mourns her death. Later on we see the Duke of Hastings flash back to memories of his childhood. During his childhood his dad wanted nothing to do with him because his mom died after giving birth to him and also because he has a speech impediment and the father thinks that his son’s speech impediment makes him unworthy and useless to society. Lady Danbury tells the Duke that she is going to educate him and bring him up so he can develop more confidence in his speaking ability and become successful in society later on. The Duke goes into his dad’s office later on to show him how he has overcome his speech impediment, especially because the dad continues to neglect him and he speaks but then he starts stuttering, and then the dad once again thinks his son is a lost cause. Which is painful because he was young and facing that trauma of losing his mom and not gaining his father’s approval continued to affect his self-worth even as an adult. When Anthony, Nigel and the Duke are at another ball, Anthony is talking with Nigel about Daphne marrying him, and Nigel continues to insist that he is the perfect suitor to marry Daphne, but the Duke overhears this and says that Nigel attempted to assault Daphne and deserved to be punched by her. At first Anthony tells the Duke to mind his own business, and Daphne, while dancing with another potential suitor (the Duke and her are in love, but he doesn’t want to get married. That is what he promises his father when his father is on his deathbed), sees this exchange, but then Anthony realizes that the Duke is telling the truth and tells Nigel to stay the hell away from Daphne. When the Duke is in an alleyway, Nigel follows him and tells him off for sharing about him attacking Daphne, and the Duke tells him that Daphne doesn’t need him. Nigel brings up the Duke’s childhood in a negative way, and that provokes the Duke to punch him several times in the face (in a couple of episodes we see the Duke sparring with another guy in the boxing ring, and I thought, Damn I would not mess with this guy, even for a million dollars.) Even after getting his revenge on Nigel, the Duke is still remembering his painful childhood.

Meanwhile, Eloise is in the drawing room with Daphne, and Daphne is playing music on the pianoforte. Eloise is reading a book and trying to concentrate, so she tells Daphne to play somewhere else. Daphne says she can go outside, and Eloise tries to argue with her. After getting irritated, Eloise finally lets Daphne play her music, as long as she gives the composition a title. Penelope repeatedly goes to the mail-person to see if Marina’s lover is writing to her from Spain. Marina is confined to her room because Penelope’s mom, Portia, is ashamed of Marina’s pregnancy, especially because she is having the baby out of wedlock. She takes Marina to the low-income part of London, the neighborhood out of a Charles Dickens novel, and shows her this community because she thinks Marina will end up in poverty like them. Marina tells her that is nonsense, but Portia tries to knock common sense into Marina and tells her that the guy she loves will leave her for someone else. Marina insists that he loves her, but Portia asks her if he has written back since he had left for Spain, and this fucks up Marina badly. Portia finally one auspicious day gets a letter from Marina’s boo from Spain, and they read it but Marina is crushed because the letter reads that the boo doesn’t want anything to do with her after finding out she is having their baby. We then see that Portia and her lady’s maid forged the original letter from the guy and passed it off as a real letter.

Episode Synopsis: Downton Abbey, Season 1 episode 4

The episode opens up with Mr. Bates, Anna and Gwen walking through the fairgrounds at Downton, and talking about the upcoming fair. Anna sees Mary and asks her how she is doing, and Mary tells her she is still grappling with the death of Mr. Pamuk. Anna tries to tell her it is going to be okay, but Mary is still grieving over his death and doesn’t think she will ever move on. Cora, Mary’s mother, is having tea with Violet Crawley, her mother-in-law, and they are talking about Mary inheriting the estate. They talk about how Mary is grieving over Mr. Pamuk’s death, and Violet tells Cora that the real issue is Mary getting married to Matthew because she is the firstborn so there is more pressure on her to get married. However, Mary doesn’t want to marry Matthew because he comes to Downton thinking he doesn’t need to live the family’s aristocratic lifestyle and takes pride in being middle-class. Meanwhile, Lord Grantham meets Tom Branson, the new chauffer, who is from Ireland. He compliments Lord Grantham’s library and Lord Grantham tells Tom he is welcome to borrow any of the books, and asks Tom what books he likes. Tom says he loves history and politics, and Lord Grantham is quietly suspicious of this because he hasn’t met anyone on the staff who has explicitly expressed their interest in politics. Mr. Molesley is serving Isobel and Matthew tea, when Isobel finds that Mr. Molesley’s hands have a really bad rash all over them. She examines them and determines it is a skin condition called erysipelas, and insists that she take him to the doctor to get his hands checked out. Matthew is embarrassed and insists Molesley’s case isn’t that extreme, but Isobel is happy because she gets to put all of her extensive training as a doctor to use, so she insists that she treat Molesley’s condition.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Anna is coughing and sneezing and Mrs. Patmore, who is running a tight ship, tells her she needs to get out of the kitchen. Anna asks if they can go to the fair tonight and suggests Daisy needs to especially go because she has been thinking a lot about the death of Mr. Pamuk. Daisy can’t tell anyone that she saw Anna, Mary, and Cora carry Mr. Pamuk’s body down the corridor, though. The Dowager Countess visits Matthew to ask about him inheriting the estate, and it’s funny because she is not used to swivel chairs and she is startled when she finds out she is sitting down in a swivel chair. Mrs. Hughes tells O’Brien she needs to stay behind and watch the other girls because Anna, the head lady’s maid, has a cold, but Mrs. O’Brien complains and tells Mrs. Hughes she is not a slave and refuses to do so. Mr. Bates, Thomas Barrow, and William are all in the dining quarters downstairs talking about the fair, and William talks about how he is going to ask Daisy out to the fair, and Thomas snidely puts him down and tells him he doesn’t have a chance. Mr. Bates tells him to leave William alone, but when Daisy comes by and William is about to ask her if she wants to come to the fair that evening, Thomas interrupts him and asks Daisy to the fair, sabotaging William’s chance at asking Daisy out. William is crushed, and Mr. Bates calls Thomas out on what he did. Thomas acts like he is indifferent and continues to smoke his cigarette. Tom drives Cora, Sybil and Edith around, and overhears them talking about dresses. Sybil says she really likes the new fashions for women (this is around the time of the suffragette movement.) Because Tom is interested in women’s rights he takes an interest in Sybil for being interested in politics. He tells her that he overheard their conversation and hands her some pamphlets about women’s rights, telling her that he is a socialist and is going to quit his job as chauffer one day because he is interested in politics.

In the evening everyone goes to the fair (except for Carson) and Mrs. Hughes reunites with Joe Burns, who she fell in love with a long time ago. They catch up on life, and he tells her that he married someone but she died three years earlier and his kids are grown up. They play a game at the fair and when he wins, he gives her a toy he won so she can have something to remember him by. He asks her about her life and she tells him she is planning on staying at Downton Abbey even when she retires. He asks her what will happen if the estate is sold, and she tells him that there are a number of other catastrophes that could happen to the estate (a plague, a war, etc. After watching the entire series and seeing how Downton went through World War II and the 1918 flu epidemic, I just thought, Wow yeah everything she said happened and Downton was still intact.) Joe proposes to her and tells her to think carefully about her decision so that she doesn’t make the wrong decision in a hurry. When Mrs. Hughes comes back everyone sees her smiling and they speculate about her finding a new man, and Thomas makes some snide comment about it and Daisy, who is in love with Thomas, follows along with his joking. Mr. Bates tells Daisy that she shouldn’t make that kind of joke just because Thomas is making the joke because she’s usually a nice person and doesn’t gossip or backstab people like Thomas and Mrs. O’Brien do. Earlier, Mrs. O’Brien is complaining because she has to stay behind and work while everyone else gets to go to the fair, and because she is so bitter, she tells Tom Branson that the chauffers have their own place to eat on the estate and that he shouldn’t eat with them, and Mr. Bates tells her to lay off Tom since he’s a new employee and is still getting used to everything. Tom asks Mr. Bates what he is doing, and Mr. Bates tells him he is sorting Lord Grantham’s collars. Tom jokes that he should be doing something less time-wasting than sorting collars, and Mr. Bates, who has a good sense of humor, laughs it off and Mrs. O’Brien, who is always up to something, frowns suspiciously at him, like, “You shouldn’t trust this guy too much. He’s a troublemaker.” Mr. Bates asks where Anna is, and Mrs. O’Brien tells him she has a cold and is upstairs in her room. He goes upstairs and brings Anna dinner (earlier, when he got fired from his job and was alone crying in his room, Anna brought him dinner) and they are deeply in love with each other at that moment.

William is playing the piano alone in the staff dining room, and Mrs. Hughes finds him playing by himself because he is still sad about Daisy rejecting him for Thomas. She tells him she wants to hear him play, but he says it’s fine, and that he is going back to work. Mrs. Hughes saw earlier that Thomas was picking on William for having his buttons undone on his vest and Daisy didn’t stick up for William, so she tells William to not let Thomas get to him because Thomas is jealous that everyone likes William more than they like him, but William tells Mrs. Hughes that not everyone likes him, implying Daisy. Mrs. Hughes knows who he is talking about and tells him that in that case, Daisy is a foolish girl who doesn’t deserve William. Later on, in the kitchen, Daisy is telling Mrs. Patmore how cute Thomas is. Earlier, she told him she had a crush on Thomas and Mrs. Patmore is surprised that Daisy is interested in him. She tells Daisy that Thomas is not the guy for her, and when Daisy asks her why she tries to tell her that Thomas isn’t actually interested in women and was just pretending to be interested in Daisy so he could make William feel like a loser. Earlier, Mr. Bates went over to William’s room to check in on him, and William, without turning to see who it was, tells Mr. Bates to leave him alone. Mr. Bates closes his door and finds Thomas coming out into the hall having overheard what happened, and tells Mr. Bates that William never stood a chance. Mr. Bates grabs him by the collar and tells him to keep away from Daisy and to stop bullying William, but Thomas just smirks and says Mr. Bates’s threat doesn’t scare him.

When Mrs. O’Brien is doing Sybil’s hair, Gwen comes in to ask her about something, and Sybil sends Mrs. O’Brien away (Mrs. O’Brien loves to eavesdrop on people’s conversations so she can gossip with Thomas, so she is not pleased with this request but leaves.) Gwen shows her that she got an offer for an interview; the previous episode Gwen told everyone she was taking typewriting classes to become a secretary and leave the service industry, and Sybil and Anna were the only ones who supported her decision to leave. Sybil helped her apply for the job and sent in a letter of reference for Gwen, and Gwen is super overjoyed about this, but later on, when she is alone in the kitchen Gwen gets another letter and is downcast when she finds out they cancelled her interview and went with someone else. Sybil is so excited for Gwen’s interview and has her look at interview outfits, but Gwen cries and tells her about the cancellation and insists she is never going to become a secretary. Sybil, however, never gives up on Gwen and tells her that she just needs to keep going after her dream and to not get discouraged just because she didn’t make it the first time.

Mary is talking with her father, Lord Grantham, about inheriting the estate. He tells her that he is a custodian so he cannot actually buy the estate himself; he is just taking care of it for the sake of the people before him who lived at Downton. And he can’t take Cora’s money out of the state or else Lord Grantham would have to sell Downton Abbey, and that wouldn’t be fair for Matthew because he even though he would be the heir in title, he wouldn’t have any money to pay for Downton. Mary tells her father she isn’t going to marry Matthew because she is stubborn and won’t marry a man just because her family picked him for her. Meanwhile, Isobel picks up some tinctures for Mr. Molesley’s erysipelas and gets him to take them. At first the nurse is insistent that Isobel shouldn’t just pick out these remedies herself and that Molesley should see Dr. Clarkson about it, she refuses.When they go to Dr. Clarkson and the Dowager Countess, Isobel insists that Mr. Molesley’s erysipelas cleared up thanks to the tinctures she picked out for him. However, the Dowager Countess looks at Mr. Molesley’s hands and asks him how his dad is doing, and Mr. Molesley tells her he has been helping his dad out in the garden and has been trimming his rue hedge. The Dowager Countess explains that Mr. Molesley’s rash was a rue allergy, not erysipelas, and tells Isobel that while they appreciate her services, that she should leave it to the professionals (aka Dr. Clarkson and the Dowager Countess) to figure out stuff like this, and she smugly smiles to herself as she gets up to leave before Isobel can say anything.

Mary finds out that they are going to let Matthew inherit the title to the estate because he is the heir and she leaves the drawing room, and goes to her bedroom because she is angry. Cora comes to her room and finds Mary crying alone in her room, and asks what is wrong. Mary tells her that all everyone ever talks about it Matthew inheriting the estate, and she doesn’t get a say in it. Cora tells her that she wouldn’t have been able to stand up for Mary because of the estate rules, and Mary tells her that Cora doesn’t care about her feelings, and that everything is ruined and that after her affair with Pamuk her reputation is ruined. Mary is still trying to deal with the death of Mr. Pamuk, who she loved very much, and is overwhelmed because her family doesn’t seem to care about her decisions or think she can make her own decisions about the estate. Earlier, when they are walking on the fairgrounds, Matthew and Mary are talking, and Mary apologizes to Matthew for criticizing him being middle-class, and he asks her more about what she does. She tells him that she envies him having a regular 9-5 job because mostly her and her sisters help out with charities and other events but mostly spend their time at home until they find a husband, and she finds this life quite dull.

Mr. Hughes is in her office, thinking about Mr. Burns’ marriage proposal. Carson comes in and she has him sit down so she can tell him what happened. She tells Carson that before coming to Downton, she had fallen in love with Mr. Burns because he was a farmer and she was a farmer’s daughter from Argyll, so they had a deep connection. But after that they never saw each other, and he married someone but she died three years earlier, and they found each other at the fair and he proposed, but she turned down the proposal. Carson listens and then Anna comes in telling Mrs. Hughes to come because there is chaos in the kitchen and Mrs. Patmore needs Mrs. Hughes’s help. Before leaving, Carson asks Mrs. Hughes if she is considering leaving Downton, and she jokes “where would I find the time?”

The episode ends with Edith, Mary, the Dowager Countess, Lord Grantham and Cora in the drawing room. Sybil is trying on her new outfit and Anna is helping her try it on. When she finally goes into the drawing room, she is wearing a fashionable headband and these beautiful blue bloomers. Her family is aghast, particularly Lord Grantham because they normally wear dresses, but Tom Branson is looking through the window at her and is smitten. Earlier in one of the sisters’ rooms, Edith and Sybil are talking and Sybil says how confining corsets are and that she wishes women wouldn’t need to wear them all the time. I remember the first time I heard about bloomers was when I read a book as a kid called You Forgot Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer!, which illustrates how Amelia Bloomer reformed dresses with the invention of bloomers. The closest thing I had to bloomers growing up was skorts, which was a combination of shorts and a skirt. I guess if you were worried about the guys seeing your panties during gym class, you could wear skorts and not worry because there were shorts underneath the skirt.

Sleeping in Class

I admit it: in college I slept during my classes. A lot. Like, pretty much every day. One time it almost cost me a scholarship. It was my sophomore year and I had started drinking tea in the mornings, specifically the Sweet Dreams tea from Bigelow. I was quite anxious and this was of course before I knew that you need to see a counselor for anxiety, but to calm my nerves without medication I decided to drink this tea, not knowing that there was a reason this particular flavor of tea was called Sweet Dreams. Why? Because it was sleep inducing of course! I found myself walking happily into my music history class, saying good morning to the professor and my hips bumping against the desk as I jauntily sat down, ready to learn about some Western composers. I started off giddily taking notes. I am SUCH a good student, I thought, so accomplished and smart. Look at me taking these notes. Now I have something to study when I get home. Midway through I felt my hand get heavy, then the professor’s words started sounding a little more muffled, and before I knew it I was knocked out. The last time I was this knocked out was when I got my wisdom teeth taken out and they gave me anesthetic and I woke up looking like a chipmunk with gauze stuffed in my mouth (that was a good day, though, because I got to miss school and eat soy pudding and read Oliver Twist all day.) When I woke up, I saw the professor walking around, and he had papers in his hand. I saw the paper fly towards me through the air and it landed at my feet. When I blearily opened my eyes, he was handing everyone else their paper. Okaayyyy, I thought. This kept happening though. I would drink the tea for breakfast with my Grape Nuts, then head to class, take notes, fall asleep in the middle, then the professor would throw the worksheet at me. I kept thinking that he hated me because I was Black, but as I chanted about it and reflected, I realized it was because I was sleeping in his class and that was very rude. Sleeping in class sent the message, “I know all this shit. Don’t lecture me, man. Your lecture really isn’t that important to me.” But back then, I felt so justified in sleeping. Like, I can’t help it! Right….. Not surprisingly, when I emailed the professor later on about writing me a recommendation letter for a grant I was applying for, he said that while he was happy to write the recommendation he wasn’t happy I was sleeping in class. He offered some helpful suggestions for staying awake, but I have a hard time listening to people because my huge old 20 year old ego kept rearing its ugly old head and telling me, “It’s not your fault!” However, this was my responsibility. Thankfully I got over it and started paying more attention in class, but that sleeping in class moment kind of scarred me for life. I’m pretty sure I stopped drinking sleepy time tea after that.

This didn’t just happen in this one class though; it happened in a lot of my classes. The main culprit besides the damn tea, however, was just that I got really shit sleep. I would study until the wee hours, and somehow expect myself to magically be a chipper person in the morning. What started with a tank full of gas ended up being a car running on past empty. I would take copious notes and somehow expect to stay awake, but because I was sleep deprived I also started to eat a lot more out of stress. I would pile on these big portions of food (the vegan hot dogs were my favorite) and eat as much as I could, then toss the rest in the compost pails (thankfully they composted all this food waste.) Then I would take notes, and because I was so sleepy from all that food (I looked it up. It is called post-prandial somnolence) I would nod off while my classmates would alternate between listening to the lecture attentively and poking me awake (or giggling, if they were so inclined. It was quite humorous though looking back, because I was the only one who was stupid enough to sleep in class.) Most of my professors didn’t say anything, but one of the professors told me I needed coffee. It was weird though, because I was one big ball of energy in these classes. I always raised my hand to contribute because I felt I just needed to get all my thoughts out, so why not blurt them out while the rest of the students shyly raised their hands to get a word in edge-wise? Then I would furiously take notes, then because I got burned out, I would fall asleep, then the professor started talking louder, probably to wake me up, and then I would sleepily wake up and realize the class was over.

I am glad I stopped sleeping during the classes by junior year because honestly, I missed out on a lot of cool discussions when I slept in class. And when material was going to be covered on an exam, well, guess what? I missed that material and important information because I was asleep. It’s no wonder that I would get so upset in those classes when I would give presentations and people would sleep through them. I think as I chanted, I reflected on my own sleeping in class behavior and later realized I didn’t want to continue this habit come junior year. Also a lot of other crazy shit happened in junior year, like mental illness, so I ended up cutting out the sleeping-in-class nonsense by that time. And thankfully, I enjoyed my class discussions more when I was awake and had started taking better care of myself. That’s the other thing. I was burned out. I wasn’t really taking care of my emotional or mental health at the time, or even really my physical health at the time. Self-care felt like an erratic thing I did when I was on holiday breaks or had long stretches of time when I was doing nothing. My Buddhist practice was my form of self-care at the time thankfully, and it helped me get through a lot of this stressful stuff during my first two years of undergrad. Honestly I think this is partly why I was so fearful about going to graduate school because I was worried I would repeat the same patterns of not taking care of myself, sleeping in class, not getting rest. Honestly, I learned a lot from my first year roommate. She went to bed early, and I wound up staying up until 2 am in the morning reading an essay by Hume and breaking down and crying because of my perfectionistic habit of striving for success and hard work at the very real cost of my mental health. I mean, I can’t complain. I ended up with good grades in my classes, and that was a decade ago, so why worry about the past? But I love to write, and wanted a story to share that was somehow light-hearted and goofy, and this story always makes me laugh because sleeping in class because I was exhausted felt so justified at the time, but looking back it was silly and I can look back on that and laugh about it, while when I was going through the actual sleeping in class I suffered.

Anyway, thank you for reading and have a safe holiday season.

Something fun I did yesterday: reading for fun

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

(I have no idea why the text in this paragraph is so frigging tiny. It just happened. Hopefully you can still read it.)

Yesterday what I did for fun was read a book for pleasure. I usually try to make time to read for fun, especially since I spend a lot of time at home. Even when I get busy, I want to make sure I reserve some time to read for fun. When I was working as a barista, I often found myself feeling exhausted after work shifts and when I would get home I would collapse on my bed and crack open my novel and just read. Immediately the stress would leave my body and I would feel better. Even if I have a successful music career I want to be able to make time to read for fun. Not only do I love recommending books to people, but also reading helps me understand what it means to be a human in the world. No one is free from problems, and so whenever I read about a character dealing with some problem I feel I can empathize with them some way even if I can’t directly relate to the problem or haven’t gone through the suffering the character has. I mostly read fiction but lately I have been incorporating nonfiction.

Yesterday I started reading Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love. In the book she talks about the ups and downs of being a writer and what it takes to navigate those ups and downs. I’m really glad I read this book because it helped me put success in a healthier perspective. Gilbert talks about how you don’t need to quit your day job to pursue your art or craft, and debunks the Tortured Artist stereotype. I love how she touched on the latter because I have struggled with perfectionism in my cello practice sessions and it made it hard for me to take feedback well because I thought every mistake I made while playing was a failure, and so when my teachers would give me feedback I would resort to all-or-nothing thinking, such as “They think my playing is bad” or “I’m not cut out to be a musician.” It got to the point when I would be so fearful of making a mistake that I would play small when the passage called for a more expressive feeling or needed to be loud. I think I remember when I was in my senior year of high school and we were rehearsing this piece by composer Jean Sibelius called Finlandia, and there is a part where the cellos play fff, which is the loudest sound you can produce on the cello (basically it’s forte on steroids.) I took this marking quite literally and pressed so hard on the bow and the minute I ground the bow across the string, I heard a snap and saw that all the bow hair had snapped off of my bow because I pressed so hard. I can’t remember whether I had an extra bow in my cello case or not. All I can remember was freaking out internally, wondering how I would live down this embarrassment in the middle of a rehearsal, especially because the concert was the next day and we didn’t have long to rehearse the music. I don’t remember whether the bow ever got repaired or not, but I ended up getting a new bow in time for the concert but being more careful to not press too hard on the string. I think this event stayed so embedded in my conscience that throughout college I kept thinking if I played fortissimo or even forte I would relive that same bow-hair-snapping nightmare I lived through that fated rehearsal night. My teachers always had to tell me to play louder and I wouldn’t listen to them because I was always fearful of breaking my bow.

But I digress from the subject at hand. But yes, yesterday I read for fun and it was amazing. I also read Please Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson this week and it was also a really good book. I haven’t listened to the 2 Dope Queens podcast yet and this is my first time reading one of Phoebe’s books but I love her writing! And I love all of the cultural references she makes; I found myself rolling around in laughter until my ribs hurt, but she also discusses serious topics as well that really made me sit and reflect, such as the social stigma around 4C hairstyles and the topic of hair in the Black community, as well as the challenges of quarantining in 2020 and the trauma of George Floyd’s murder. It kind of reminded me of another book I read by a comedian and actress named Retta from Parks and Recreation; I read her memoir So Close to Being the Sh*t Y’all Don’t Even Know, and like with Phoebe’s book it tickled my ribs but also was so real and raw and beautiful. As someone with an aspiring creative career, both of these books encouraged me to keep making art and living my life.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season!

Movie Review: The Iron Lady

In season 4 of The Crown, Queen Elizabeth II (played by Olivia Colman) gets a new prime minister. At first she is excited because the new prime minister is a woman, but the new PM, Margaret Thatcher (played by Gillian Anderson) ends up being one of the toughest PMs Elizabeth has had to work with. She starts a war in the Falkland Islands and doesn’t do much to address the high unemployment rates around England. She also fires her entire cabinet of men even after she told Elizabeth she preferred men in Parliament because she thought women were weak. In one episode of the season, an unemployed man breaks into Buckingham Palace because he tries to contact Queen Elizabeth about badly people are suffering from joblessness during the costly war that Margaret had everyone enter into, but with little success. Queen Elizabeth is terrified when he breaks in, but he tells her he just wants to tell her how fucked up the situation is under Margaret Thatcher. Earlier in the episode, he is standing in a long line of unemployed citizens and is struggling to pay his bills, and not only that but his wife leaves him for another man and takes the kids with her. He has a lot to be pissed off about, and he tries to contact the government to see if they can do anything about it, but with little success. When Queen Elizabeth gets to know him more, she realizes that the unemployment situation really is bad but because she spends a lot of time in Buckingham Palace she isn’t really out with the public and so she can’t really know what goes on unless she reads the newspaper or watches the news on TV. Before the police take him out of Buckingham Palace, he tells Elizabeth that Margaret Thatcher is coming for her job next if she isn’t careful. As the season goes on, it is clear that Queen Elizabeth and Margaret don’t see eye-to-eye on many issues, namely the Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom and sanctions against South Africa during apartheid. However, when Margaret resigns, Queen Elizabeth, after much thought, gives her a medal for her long years of service as prime minister. I studied about Margaret Thatcher in world history class but of course, after a while I forgot all my history knowledge, so it was helpful to watch The Crown because even though it’s a fictionalized account of the monarchy it still gives some good insight.

I had been meaning to see The Iron Lady for a while, mainly because I loved Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada (if you haven’t seen it she plays a demanding fashion magazine editor named Miranda Priestly who makes the life of her assistant a living hell). The Crown episodes with Margaret Thatcher mainly cover her work with the Queen, but not so much about her childhood or her past experiences. In The Iron Lady, we see Margaret Thatcher before she became prime minister. Before she married Denis Thatcher, she was Margaret Roberts, a young woman who was bullied in school for not being wealthy like the other girls but falls in love with conservatism. She meets Denis, an intellectual young man with and and they fall in love. The film mainly shows how she grapples with Denis’s death after she is no longer prime minister. One thing that interested me about this movie was that they show how Margaret Thatcher’s inflection changed when she became prime minister. Her representatives practiced with her how she was supposed to speak to the public, and she had to learn how to enunciate things more aggressively. They also show how she got her hairstyle. In the movie, she is reflecting on her past time as prime minister and what she learned along the way. She experiences hallucinations in which Denis appears to her as the voice of conscience. It’s interesting because in The Crown, Olivia Colman plays the Queen but in The Iron Lady she played Thatcher’s daughter Carol. Also Phoebe Waller-Bridge is in the movie as well (she is from a show I love called Fleabag.)

Episodes Synopsis: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

This week I re-watched a series I really enjoy called The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. If you haven’t seen the show yet it takes place in New York City in the 1950s and it’s about a young Jewish woman named Miriam “Midge” Maisel who seems to have the perfect typical American middle-class life. She has two kids, Ethan and Esther, and a loving husband named Joel. She goes to his comedy club night because he is doing stand-up but his jokes end up falling flat. She initially just came to support and bring her prized brisket in its Pyrex container, and tries to initiate conversation with Susie Myerson, the manager of the Gaslight coffee house where Joel does standup, but Susie isn’t interested. Unfortunately, Midge finds out on the night of Yom Kippur that Joel cheated on her with his secretary, Penny Pann, and she gets drunk and goes to the coffee house and does a standup bit about Joel’s affair. Susie is impressed with Midge and it changes her impression of her because she at first thinks Midge is just this annoying chatty housewife who brought a brisket. She becomes Midge’s manager and helps her navigate a career in comedy. Midge gets a day job at a department store called B. Altman to support her comedy career and at the same time is trying to please her family and move on from Joel after his affair, and she is also keeping her comedy career a secret from her family because she knows they wouldn’t approve of her doing a career in stand-up.

In Season 2, Miriam and her family go on vacation to Steiner Mountain Resort in the Catskills. Susie goes with Miriam and fits in with the camp volunteers, carrying a plunger she has named Pamela and touring the Catskills grounds. Meanwhile, Joel is still thinking of Midge but his dad, Moishe, encourages him to look for other girls during their time in the Catskills but he doesn’t seem to find any girl that could really top Midge. He meets a girl at the bowling alley who has a smart wit like him, and they connect. Miriam gets a call from B. Altman asking if she can come in to work a shift because someone called in sick and another quit, so while at the beauty salon in the Catskills she tells Rose, her mother, she needs to go back to work but doesn’t have a ride. One of the women getting her hair done tells Miriam that her son, Benjamin Ettenberg, can give her a ride back since he is planning on returning back to New York City for work (he is a doctor) and also doesn’t enjoy his trip to the Catskills much. Miriam gets a ride from Benjamin, and at first there is no evident chemistry, and compared to Miriam, Benjamin seems introverted. Earlier on in the episode, Miriam and her friends are participating in a game of Simon Says and then linger near the table of refreshments and gossip. Benjamin walks past them and the girls check him out, wondering why he just walked past them instead of flirting with them. When Miriam and Benjamin are driving in the car on the way back to the city Benjamin turns on the news and Miriam is bored, but when he turns it off she starts improvising a comedic take on the news and he can’t help but crack a smile. When they make it back he asks her out and they go on a date and afterwards they go to the diner where Susie and Midge regularly meet to discuss standup gigs and other career-related matters. Benjamin doesn’t know anyone at the diner but Midge knows everyone since her and Susie go there frequently, and it’s where they network with a lot of professionals who work in show business. Midge is extremely nervous at first to tell him she is a comic, but then she tells him and he doesn’t mind.

Midge gets a call from Susie telling her that she got a gig at the Concord, which is a venue at the Steiner Resort. When Susie introduces Midge to the venue manager, he is angry because Midge doesn’t look like the girl that Susie had sent him a picture of and told about, and he refuses to let Midge take the stage. Midge goes on anyway, and ends up talking about a lot of sexual stuff in her standup, but she ends up finding her dad, Abe, sitting in the audience, looking appalled. Midge gets nervous, and when she gets nervous she doesn’t end her set, she keeps going and talks about her parents’ sex life. Everyone else laughs, but Abe is clearly embarrassed. When she goes backstage, Midge is shaken and feels horrible about what she did, even when she gets all this applause and Susie and the venue manager praise Midge for her standup. Abe finds her backstage and tells her she is coming with him and they are going home.

Abe also has another problem to deal with as well. He gets a call from Bell Labs at Columbia University, where he teaches as a professor, that he is going to embark on a research project that he really wanted to work on. He brings his son Noah with him, and all of the faculty meet Noah and talk about how they have heard a lot about him, but then he meets one of the faculty members and the faculty member tells him Abe can no longer be part of the project. Abe asks him why and the member takes him and Noah into a secret surveillance room, and the faculty tell Abe he is suspended from the team because Noah is involved in a top-secret project with the U.S. government. When he asks Noah about the project, Noah says he cannot share information about the project. Abe is of course quite frustrated: he finds out his son works for the CIA and he finds out his daughter does standup as a career. After the night at the Concord, Abe tells Miriam that she cannot tell Rose, her mother, about her standup career until he says she can. He also feels like he no longer recognizes the little girl Midge used to be when they went to the Catskills as a family together. But Midge assures him that everything she shared that night at the Concord was all hers, all authentically hers.

In the episode “Look She Made a Hat” Miriam and her family are back in New York City and are observing Yom Kippur. Susie calls Midge and tells her she booked a gig for her on the same evening as her family’s Yom Kippur dinner. Susie tells Midge she needs to come for the gig, no excuses, and so Midge has to figure out how to break it to her family that evening that she is a comic and has a gig that evening. Earlier, when they were in the Catskills, she told Joel about Abe coming to her standup at the Concord and he listened empathetically to her and was supportive, but after seeing her with Benjamin while everyone was out on the lawn stargazing, he becomes jealous. During the Yom Kippur service at their synagogue, Miriam’s parents (Abe and Rose) struggle to keep the peace with Joel’s parents (Moishe and Shirley) because neither of them get along well with each other, and during the service they argue back and forth with each other. While this is going on Astrid, Noah’s wife, is getting absorbed in the service and passionately singing along with the rabbi. Astrid converted to Judaism when she married Noah and makes earnest efforts to learn about Judaism. In season 1, her and Noah come back from Israel and she brings back gefilte fish and a mezuzah and Rose, while pretending to love the fish, has Zelda secretly throw it in the trash, and when Midge sees the mezuzah and is impressed by its size, Astrid thinks she got the wrong size. Astrid is worried that Noah will leave her but Midge assures her Noah loves her just as she is. When they are at Steiner Resort, Astrid is fasting because she observes Tisha B’Av, an annual Jewish day of mourning, and doesn’t eat anything at breakfast. Moishe, Shirley, Abe, Rose, Midge, Noah and Joel all come to the table where Astrid is with big plates of food in hand and they ask Astrid why she wasn’t at Polynesian night the night before. Astrid becomes more and more agitated with the family because she is the only one out of all of them observing Tisha B’Av and no one else seems to care about this day. After Rose finds out about Noah’s secret activity with the government, she tries to get some details about it from Astrid. She finds Astrid reading from scripture with the rabbi in a little quiet room, and Astrid is super excited that Rose is joining her to study scripture with her, but Rose pretends to read the scripture while asking Astrid about Noah’s work with the government.

During the Yom Kippur dinner, which also marks one year since Joel and Midge separated, chaos ensues as Midge tries to tell her family she is a comic. Earlier in the day, Rose is at the meat market picking up meat cuts for the Yom Kippur dinner and Midge meets her there and Rose tells her they got Rabbi Krinsky to come to the dinner, and they are so excited. Zelda, the Weissman’s housekeeper, goes through all the trouble to prepare a huge dinner for them and giving strict orders to the other housekeepers in the kitchen. Ethan complains he had too much chocolate during the Yom Kippur service and isn’t hungry, and Zelda tells her how growing up in Poland, kids worked, they didn’t get to eat all this food she is preparing for them. Midge tells Zelda and the other housekeepers to hold off on bringing the food in, and so they repeatedly have to bring out the food and they bring it back to the kitchen. Everyone at the table complains that they are hungry and want to eat, but Midge keeps talking and beating around the bush and the family is distracted with other things before they finally tell her to just say what she needs to say, and she tells them she is a comic. Rabbi Krinsky comes to the Weissmans’ house but after hearing the family argue about Midge’s comedy career for the next five minutes, he says he has another commitment and then leaves. I was thinking, Dang, and they were so excited about getting the rabbi to come. But by this time, the family is so focused on grilling Midge about her comedy career (and her relationship with Benjamin) that they aren’t even thinking of the rabbi. After the chaos dies down, Astrid announces she is pregnant.

Benjamin and Midge go to an art show because Benjamin loves collecting art. Midge goes into a little room where there are a few paintings on the wall that haven’t been sold yet because no one cared enough about them, and there is a woman at the desk in the room knitting. Midge asks her about the paintings and the woman tells her no one has sold them yet, so she is free to take one. Midge takes the painting and her and Benjamin go to a bar to hang out. They meet Declan Howell, a reclusive artist who refuses to sell any of his paintings. Benjamin fangirls because he is a huge fan of Declan Howell. He is super intoxicated on the night they meet him and when the bartender cuts him off at six drinks because he is intoxicated, Declan stands up and recites a Shakespearean sonnet, fumbling through the lines (when I first saw this episode, I thought he was going to vomit so that’s why I closed my eyes. But he doesn’t.) Everyone applauds and Midge and Benjamin go up to Declan. Midge introduces Benjamin to Declan, but Declan doesn’t really care and is only focused on how hot Midge is and the painting she found at the art gallery. They talk and Declan opens up and lets Benjamin come to his studio only if he brings Midge. Benjamin is very reluctant to have Midge go because he is worried Declan might sexually harass her, but Midge tells him she has dealt with a lot of sexual harassment working as a comic. She lets him go with her anyway and they share a sweet kiss before he lets her up to his apartment. They go to Declan Howell’s studio, and they find his studio is a mess and there are bottles of alcohol everywhere. Declan comes out to see them and he has bloody cuts and bruises on his body, and when Benjamin tells him he can treat the cuts because he is a doctor, Declan refuses to let him. When Benjamin asks if he can buy any of his paintings, Declan refuses to sell any of them to him. Midge suggests that she can get Declan to let Benjamin buy his paintings and that she will take care of it, but he refuses to let her be alone with Declan, especially because Declan is intoxicated and has been also checking out Midge. Midge silently reminds him that she has dealt with men harassing her before and that she can handle this. Benjamin gives in and lets Midge talk with Declan. After talking with him, Declan lets Midge into the back of his studio to see his best painting. I was sad to not see the actual work, but realized it would have defeated the purpose of the plot because Declan didn’t want anyone to look at his work. Midge is in awe of this painting and can’t move because she is mesmerized by its beauty. Declan tells her he used to have a family but gave all that up to dedicate himself to his artwork, and his pain and suffering went into this work.

I am not sure when season 5 is coming out so I have been watching the reruns. After finishing The Crown, I was emotionally exhausted, so I needed some comic relief (Mrs. Maisel is a show about a comedian. Pun totally intended.)

Movie Review: Biutiful

A few days ago I watched this incredible film called Biutiful. It came out in 2010 and was directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. I had seen some of his other films, like Birdman and Babel, so I was sort of familiar with his style of directing. But I hadn’t watched his movies in a long time, so seeing Biutiful felt like a new cinematic experience for me. Also I loved the trailers (I rented the DVD from the library and the films were all from Lionsgate Films, such as Rabbit Hole and Winter’s Bone, which I want to see. I really love drama films and these are drama films. There was also a movie starring Will Ferrell called Everything Must Go that I want to watch at some point.)

Honestly this film was a tough one to watch, mainly because of how it deals with the reality of death. The film takes place in Barcelona, Spain, and the main character, Uxbal (played by Javier Bardem) is struggling to survive financially and with the separation from his wife, Marambra, he has to provide for his two kids. However, he also has to face the fact that he is dying of cancer and doesn’t have long to live. The movie shows how his cancer diagnosis affects him psychologically, mentally, physically and emotionally. The movie opens with a scene where Uxbal is talking with a young woman while they sleep about the story of his wedding ring and the young woman asks if she can try it on. Then we find Uxbal in the snowy woods and there is a dead owl in the snow. A young man smoking a cigarette comes up to Uxbal and they start talking. The scene ends and Uxbal is back to reality, in the doctor’s office, when he finds out that he has been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and doesn’t have many months to live.

This film was quite powerful. It reminded me a lot of Babel, one of Inarritu’s other films. If you haven’t seen Babel, it takes place in four different narratives. It follows the lives of different individuals whose lives are deeply interconnected in some way. In Morocco, an American couple named Richard and Susan are riding on a caravan and two young boys shoot a rifle and accidentally hit Susan, injuring her in the shoulder. While this is going on, Susan and Ricard’s nanny, Amelia, is taking care of their kids, Debbie and Mike, but also doesn’t want to miss her son’s wedding, which is being held in Mexico. Amelia asks Richard if she can go, but he tells her she needs to stay with the kids while he takes care of Susan after her injury. Santiago, a relation of Amelia, takes her and the kids to Mexico anyway, and they go to the wedding and have a great time, but then Santiago decides to drive them back to the States while he is intoxicated, even when people tell him that might not be the safest thing. He refuses to listen, and drives them back across the U.S.-Mexico border. Unfortunately, the border guards stop them and ask for identification, but they don’t have any, and when Santiago tries to reason with them, the guards gets aggressive and Santiago drives off but leaves Amelia, Debbie and Mike alone in the desert to fend for themselves. After spending a scary amount of time surviving in the heat of the desert, they finally get help but then Amelia is taken to U.S. customs and they tell her because she is undocumented she will be deported. Another story in Babel takes place in Japan, where a young woman named Chieko struggles with her adolescence. Chieko is deaf and struggles to get people to empathize with her situation, and her mother passed away and she is dealing with the trauma of loss. She wants to have a boyfriend but doesn’t get the validation she wants from the men she meets, and it causes her a lot of deep suffering. Throughout the film, I saw the different ways in which each character’s suffering was interconnected, which kind of resonated with the Buddhist term dependent origination because dependent origination believes that nothing exists in isolation, and everything is connected.

There is a particularly poignant and disturbing scene in Biutiful. When Uxbal goes into a night club/strip club he sees a few dancers who, instead of having human faces, have breasts for heads (I wasn’t sure if the dancers were actually wearing papier-mache breast heads or if Uxbal was actually hallucinating that there heads were breasts.) Uxbal goes to the club and ends up hanging out with Tito and his friends, and they snort cocaine together. One of the women asks Uxbal what is going on with him, and he tells her he is dying of cancer. At first she ponders this but because she just wants to have a good time she goes back to partying. I think this scene showed me that Uxbal is just trying to make the most of his remaining years of life because he doesn’t have long to live, and even when what he does is harmful (e.g. snorting cocaine) he has lost hope for living since his illness is terminal. I read this chapter in a book called The Wisdom for Creating Happiness and Peace by Daisaku Ikeda called “Facing Illness” and he talks about how illness is a manifestation of the devil king of the sixth heaven because it saps our will to live, or our life force. However, when we chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, we can regain our life force and use the suffering from illness as an opportunity to deepen our faith and Buddhist practice. We can also use our experiences dealing with illness as a chance to encourage others dealing with illness and other sufferings. And even when people die from illness, we can still chant for the deceased person’s absolute happiness. In Buddhism, while we of course need to take care of our health, we also view illness as one of the four sufferings, which are birth, aging, sickness and death. Even if one is successful or wealthy, no one can escape these sufferings. However, when we chant, we can have the life condition of Buddhahood to transform these sufferings into a chance to develop an even deeper state of life and appreciation for life.

I’m still processing the film but overall it was very deep and Javier Bardem and the other actors gave powerful performances.

Biutiful. 2010. In Spanish with English subtitles. Rated R for disturbing images, language, some sexual content, nudity and drug use.