I'm Keanu Reeves in "The Matrix": no mouth

Reading: John Fowles, The Magus

Moving: nothing yet today; it's 9:30

Listening: Scarlatti

Watching: "Manhattan" and "Erin Brockovich" last night.

18 February 2001: Possession

When I asked who Charles de Lint is and why I should care, Melissa said he'd written some good short stories and sent me a book. She's so thoughtful. And a card and a postcard advertising the release of The Amber Spyglass. And Dora sent a card of two polar looking for all the world like they're sharing a good belly laugh. Many of my friends are invisible, so I especially like tangible proof of their existence.

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Remember how I just said I didn't want to see "Erin Brockovich"?

Yesterday when we went for a neighborhood stroll and wound up at Starbucks eating chocolate cake, one of the topics of conversation was RDC's Meat Craving. This is a periodic tumble from our mostly, or we like to think mostly, seldom-higher-than-fish diet. When it strikes, we respect it. The chocolate cake, consumed at 3:30, satisfied him enough, however, that he didn't want to go either to the Chop House--whose kitchen's mistake five years ago taught me that I like my meat not much more cooked than I like my sashimi--or to Cadillac Ranch where another quartersection of cow originated or anywhere else. He didn't even want to cook (or, for me, warm up) anything at home.

So we decided to buy a couple of movies and some groceries and come tamely home. To spare Blake trauma, we didn't go into the house, just left our coffee cups--freebies for being Amazon's minions--on the porch and nipped into the car.

We drove on a Red Day.

Yes, we drove on a Red Day, but also for the first time since last Sunday (and for the same purpose), which allowed the sun enough time to do what I passed several grumpy people doing as I walked to work through the snow this week: clean the car.

RDC lives in some kind of fantasy world wherein Circuit City has a good selection of DVDs. We picked out "Manhattan," one of RDC's favorite movies, and "Amadeus." With DVDs, we, or at least I, am in a quandary. I don't like buying a movie that I haven't seen, that I don't know if I'll want to watch repeatedly. So we didn't get "Topsy-Turvy." And of "Manhattan," he said, "You hate Woody Allen." I realized that yes, but it's one of his favorite movies and I want to see it because of that. He also said, "But I don't want to watch 'Amadeus' tonight," whereupon I advised him that each of us was getting a movie we knew we individually liked, so shut up and deal.

I also pointed out that I am such a nicer person than he because he never wants to see any of my fave movies. I swear he would bleed from the eyes if he ever watched "Breakfast Club" from start to finish, and when I was sick and watching "Pride and Prejudice," he wondered if the typesetters had run out of capital Ms and Ds for Mr. Darcy as Thoreau's had run out of capital Is for his favorite subject. And RDC has still never seen "Gone with the Wind" (not my favorite but my sister's) all the way through, claiming that he's seen the "I don't know nothing about birthing babies" bit and that's enough.

We left the store with the driver of Cassidy's twin green Impreza, next to which we had parked so the two cars could keep each other company. We all agreed that we loved our cars and got into them, at which point I remembered that when we'd done our taxes earlier this week, we'd taken all the paperwork out of the glovebox hoping to find documentation about the property tax on the car in order to deduct it. That paperwork was still by the front door. I also didn't have my wallet, because while I brought my own cup to Starbucks I had not brought my own money.

No license. No registration. Also I was wearing prescription sunglasses, for the walk, and didn't have plain spectacles with me, and it was after 4:00. But it's not December anymore and sunset wouldn't be until well after 5:00 so I didn't fret. Too much.

We bought OJ and oranges so I wouldn't get scurvy and seafood-stuffed salmon which, despite sea lions getting killed for poaching in Canadian salmon farms which they do because the seas are empty and because, for them, it's like shooting fish in a barrel, I don't feel as guilty about as I do about meat. In the checkout line I remembered that by the front door along with the registration lay the canvas shopping bags.

We drove on a Red Day, without license or registration, and used plastic bags to bring home salmon. But we made it home without interference from authorities either legal or ethical.

I did some laundry, cleaned the family room, and wrote yesterday's entry while RDC made supper. I also watched what sprang to mind as one of my favorite scenes in "Amadeus": when Mozart effortlessly revises Salieri's "dashed-off" little march of welcome into several complex and beautiful variations. After supper, I made popcorn while RDC shut down our respective Macs and cued "Manhattan."

I had braced myself for Woody Allen and perhaps because of that he seemed less the short whiny New Yorker here than he does in "Annie Hall" or "Mighty Aphrodite." Mariel Hemingway with her hair back looked so much like the WWI-era photographs of her grandfather. And Meryl Streep, whom I have been years forgiving for "Kramer vs. Kramer," was just stunning as a young woman. I don't think of her as younger than she was in "Out of Africa." And that that was over, and I had survived and even liked it, and I began channel-hopping. But before that, I have a question.

Haitch, didn't you tell me that Christopher Walken plays someone's younger brother in "Manhattan"? I realize 1979 is too late for him to be a bratty adolescent younger brother, but I had that idea somehow. When "Pinky and the Brain" spoofed Winnie-the-Pooh and Pooh was Brain and Piglet was Pinky and Tigger was Mick Jagger ("The wonderful thing about Jagger/ is that I'm so old") and Eeyore was Al Gore, Christopher Robin was Christopher Walken, and I thought you said that the speech he gave was from "Manhattan." Whatever. Maybe it's another Woody Allen. Maybe I'm insane.

Anyway, then I channel-hopped, and "Erin Brockovich" had just begun on a movie channel, so I figured what the hell and watched it. She's a slutty skid--she had better sartorial taste as a streetwalker in "Pretty Woman"--and that's why I didn't particularly care to see it, but she's good and I liked it. I also developed--

This is where I detour to say that in "Manhattan," Woody Allen's friend says that over the years he's had a couple of minor affairs, and RDC and I got all doe-eyed. Where did I read, or he read, a statistic about how many marriages are betrayed with infidelity? A couple of weeks ago in Vancouver, a female coworker or friend of coworker remarked that RDC's wearing his wedding ring on business travel is "a good sign." (This was the night before I tugged it off his finger in the emergency room.) For us there is no minor affair--I learned my lesson very well--and one of the things that makes me happiest, despite his disliking "The Breakfast Club," is the certainty we have in each other. Goop out.

--a small case of Instant Lust for the boyfriend and asked RDC--whose attention the movie had, unsurprisingly, failed to hold and who was surfing from a laptop--to look up the character on imdb. The name, Aaron Eckhart, meant nothing to me, and I asked the fatal question of the evening:

"What else has he been in?"

My husband read from the list: "'Possession,' 2001."

This is where I fail entirely to capture and represent the Reaction of Lisa. If you hadn't read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, then the movie might be good. I liked the movie and then I read the book. I liked "Out of Africa" and then I read the book. Both are good but they have nothing in common. "The English Patient" sucked, both as a movie and as a representation of the book. Like "Unbearable Lightness of Being," a movie of Possession has no chance to represent the ideas and the literary vigor of the novel. As in "Lightness," the story will be reduced to sex.

Which is how my Instantaneous Ephemeral Lust for Aaron Eckhart came into play. "Who does he play? Fergus? Fergus is blond. Euan?"

"Roland Michell."

This movie was going to be a lot easier to resist with Mr. Charred to a Crisp English Patient, Unconvincing as Passionate Earthy Heathcliff, Totally Unsuitable for the Rol(e)and, Ralph Fiennes. It was 11:15, and for over an hour Blake had been napping on various parts of our anatomy. No more. I thrashed out of my movie-watching blanket. "Is Gwyneth Paltrow still going to be Maud?"

"Yep."

"You know I have that thing for her. Who's playing Randolph Ash?"

"Jeremy Northam."

Maybe RDC's blanket statement that I am the last person on earth who should take amphetamines is true. Overcome, I collapsed into, then burst from, the mushroomy chair, with a shriek torn from my throat in the sure knowledge that I am going to see this movie and hate myself for doing so. Jeremy Northam as Randolph Ash. How perfect. I went tingly. "And Christabel LaMotte?"

"Jennifer E--how do you say this, E h l e? Who are these people?" He watched me pacing in some amusement while Blake was obviously perturbed at my unhingèdness.

I tore "Emma" from the shelf and flourished Gwyneth Paltrow's perfect (though not perfect for Emma Woodhouse) face at him. "In this version, Gwyneth Paltrow marries Jeremy Northam." I hurled "Pride and Prejudice" down. "Jennifer Ehle plays Elizabeth Bennet. The only way this movie would be more irresistibly heinous is if Rupert Everett were in it."

"Who's Rupert Everett?"

"He was Christopher Marlowe in 'Shakespeare in Love.'" I sighed. "And he and Jeremy Northam were in 'An Ideal Husband' together. You know, if your definition of 'ideal' allows for being gay, which Everett is and Oscar Wilde, and Kit Marlowe for all I know, were."

Eventually I subsided. It's easy for me not to see "All the Pretty Horses" because I love Cormac McCarthy a lot more than I lust Matt Damon (not at all). RDC, more considerate than I, has never told me of a movie crush, but last night I got him to confess to Penelope Cruz, who was in a Spanish movie we both liked, "Open Your Eyes," and who is now Alejandra in "All the Pretty Horses" and whatshername in "Captain Corelli's Mandolin," another movie I wouldn't go to.

"Which they had to call 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' for the same reason They called 'The Madness of King George' 'The Madness of King George' instead of 'The Madness of King George III,' I fretted tangentially.

"Why was that?" RDC asked.

"Because they figured the hoi polloi would think it was like 'Nightmare on Elm Street 3' or 'Alien Cubed' and they'd missed the first two installments....and Rupert Everett was in 'Madness' too, speaking of." I was six-degreesing furiously, still enraged at myself for wanting to see "Possession." I managed not to blurt the bit about "My Best Friend's Wedding," which I don't publicly confess to having seen. By this time we were brushing our teeth.

"Who was he in 'Madness'?"

"The regent. Hugh Laurie's character in Blackadder III." All connection to the outside world was disconnected so I couldn't ask him who would play James Blackadder. "Not Rowan Atkinson, anyway," I muttered.

"Angels and Insects" was hardly Morpho Eugenia, again being a good story reduced to sex, but it was a good movie. I shall think of that and hope for the best. Sigh. Except that Possession shall soon be sold with a movie still on the cover instead of Burne-Jones's "The Beguiling of Merlin." Sigh.

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I think Walk Two Moons is the best Newbery since Dicey's Song in 1983--which I'm allowed to say even despite The Hero and the Crown in 1985 because I didn't read the latter when it was released--and has been rivaled since by The View from Saturday and Holes. Because, of the five of them, Holes is one I'm sure RDC would like, and because in her card Dora mentioned another YA book "starting with H" and it took me more than a split second (but less than ten minutes) for Holes to occur to me, I read the first five chapters to RDC last night. This served to calm me from my outrage about "Possession" and will ameliorate RDC's sad and pathetic near-total first-hand knowledge of children's lit.

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It's Sunday morning and I have scribbled all this before breakfast. Weather reports indicate 30-50 mph gales with snow in Rocky Mountain National Park, so we're opting out of snowshoeing with No Kidding. Woe est moi. RDC knew he couldn't pole with his left arm, but with that weather he knew he had no way of keeping it warm either.

"You could use a dog," I suggested, one of our usual in-jokes, a reference to the Jack London story "To Build a Fire" in which, to do so, a man intends to warm his frozen and bloodless hands in his freshly-killed dog. Think of Han warming Luke in "Empire Strikes Back" with that tusked kangaroo critter. Actually it's one of RDC's usual allusions, because of my Canine Mortality sensitivity. My suggestion was a preëmptive strike.

"That might be heavy," returned RDC, considering. Then he remembered "Manhattan," in which Diane Keaton's character has a dachshund. "A dachshund would be great, though. Good size. Good shape: you could put your whole forearm in." I was eating cereal and dropped my spoon. "Mostly you think of opening a dog this way--" he gestured lengthwise, a belly slice, "but a dachshund sliced at the short end...."

"To Build a Fire" doesn't actually have Canine Mortality, fear not. This being Jack London, the dog smells death on the man, abandons him to his certain death, and runs off to join a socialist collective.