THE NOT SO BIG SLEEP

I was about to post last night on the topic of sleep since the brain surgery, about how as I've already mentioned, I've been sleeping much better than pre-op leading me to conclude that the growth in my brain had something to do with my constantly waking up several times in the usual night.

But the day got away from me and other things intruded to keep me from writing that post. And then I woke up at 2AM this morning thinking about one of these things, bothered by the problems in the life of a loved one, and ended up not getting back to sleep until 6AM with the alarm set for an hour later.

So, I guess what I conclude from that is that I can't make any conclusions about my sleeping patterns just yet.

PS: Had a great discussion with a fellow brain surgery survivor today about our various symptoms and recovery and progress and etc. Totally fascinating for me, to see some similarities in the struggles we've had in recovering from the brain intrusion and some distinctions in the ways they're manifested.

For instance she has no trouble with writing, but when speaking does the kinds of things that occur when I'm writing (substituting a word that starts with the same sound—"hijacker" for "hitchhiker" etc. But similar levels of clarity and gratitude and realizing what's important and rearranging priorities, etc. But also how surprised people are at how "good" or "normal" we look and seem. I suspect that's mostly because unliked operations (that's an error I'll leave uncorrected since it's so interesting, of course I meant "unliked"—unbelievable, I did it again, which often happens) in which any other part of the body is opened up, especially anywhere on the torso, opening up the skull doesn't interfere with almost anything (like for instance having an operation around your abdomen would involve all kinds of organs and muscle and tendons etc. which would take much longer to heal etc.). So sometimes it's almost like folks want you to be as okay as you appear to be and don't understand that you've changed, at least for now, in ways no other operation would cause, because how our minds work is about who we are, much more so than how our shoulder works or our appendix or some internal organ, even the heart, though the impact of heart operations can be life changing and even personality changing, but not thought process changing, if you see what I mean.

LISTS

One of the things I did most obsessively before the brain surgery was make lists. As anyone knows who has read this blog before the surgery, or for that matter most of my books.

The ways I made them varied, but the most common were alphabet lists, because that made them easy to remember, at least for me, The other most common way was to make trinity lists. Being raised Irish Catholic, there were a lot of trinities in my youth, from the shamrock and Jesus, Mary and Joseph to The Holy Trinity themselves.

But I've been unable to finish any list making that comes to mind, or remember later even the partial attempts I have made. So one of these days I'm going to just make a list in a post, not one that's in my head when I'm falling asleep or taking a walk in the park or etc.

I've been compulsively making lists since I could write, so it's been a very strange hiatus for me. I have the urge, but I just can't remember not just the names of whatever comes to mind to write a list of, but the whole point (or even pointlessness) of the thing. My mind just drifts into other subjects and ways of thinking about things.

As usual, I find this pretty fascinating, since it's my mind, and the change is so drastic and there's nothing I can, or want for that matter, to do about it except observe it as it happens and think about the mysteries of the brain and the ways it works and organizes thoughts. Hmmmm.

THE LOVELY BONES

I'm still feeling little desire to watch anything unpleasant or too complicated. But I got this on DVD and after running out of all the other DVDs I've been sent by studios for this awards season voting, I decided if I was going to vote for any awards, I should see as much as I can and here this was.

I can say that Saoirse Ronan, the young actress who first impressed me in ATONEMENT, deserves an Oscar nomination for the lead role in this flick. And I'll be surprised if Stanley Tucci doesn't get nominated for his portrayal of "the banality of evil"—but...

The movie itself—based on the novel a lot of people recommended to me but I never read—is a failure to my mind. Maybe it's the brain surgery recovery that's influencing my perspective, but the attempt to marry the other worldly special effects that are supposed to represent some other dimension between life and death, or between death and some kind of everlasting after life, just didn't work for me.

They worked visually at times—in an almost Disney smash Yellow Submarine kind of way (I may have meant "slash" but I like what my post-op brain came up with there better)—but not as ballast to the deeply disturbing "realities" of this fictional story more-or-less based on too real if sensational stories we've read or heard about periodically since they became seemingly (but I suspect not statistically) more common since the missing-child-on-the-milk-carton era began in the 1970s.

But this flick felt so exploitative to me I wanted to turn it off and was glad when it was over. And so much besides the attempt to make the story palatable with the "'tween heaven and earth" special effects didn't work for me, like Mark Wahlberg as the supposedly loving father.

Who decided to cast him in the role of an accountant whose obsessive hobby is ships in a bottle? Wahlbeg has proven himself to be a more than competent actor in a lot of movies, but whether fairly or not the roles that work best for him are the tough street characters, whether heroes or villains, not confused bereft accountants.

It doesn't work, nor do many plot points that make no sense. Wahlberg's character transfers his obsessiveness to the hunt for the predator but he ignores the odd behaving single middle-aged man who lives across the street in this suburban neighborhood of young families and who happens to obsessively make little girl doll houses and little girl doll house furniture etc. and hasn't lived there that long, it turns out, and whose past any obsessive could easily research even before google to discover missing landladies etc.

There's a lot of that, including a devoted mother who abandons her living children to go live in the sun in California and work on a farm leaving these kids to deal with the grieving obsessive confused, maybe losing his mind father, and an over-the-top alcoholic nicotine fiend character played by Susan Sarandon who's supposed to be the maternal grandmother? Was the novel this bad? Or is it just the limitations of my brain-op recovery that make this all seem so ridiculously contrived to milk every element of this greeting card version of horror and despair?

Anyway, I hope Ronan gets some awards for her role, because without it I would have pulled an Elvis or a Jerry lee Lewis and shot the TV I was watching this on. If I owned a gun and if I wasn't quite aware that I could just turn it off. Which maybe I should have, but I was hoping that somehow the ending would justify all the inconsistencies and miscasting etc. I was being put through. It only made them worse.

EAST OF WEST LA

This new book—subtitled SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEVIN MCCOLLISTER—is one of my favorite works of art from the year just past, or the entire decade for that matter.

Kevin is a friend, I admit, but he is also a wonderful poet I discovered back in L.A. in the 1980s and spent the next two decades trying to get someone to publish his work. His poems come from the walks he's been taking since he moved to L.A. but around parts of L.A. rarely seen in the media—making them basically unknown to the general public. He describes things he sees on his walks or people he encounters and sometimes the thoughts and feelings he has while on these walks.

The clear language and direct honesty of his observations gives his poetry an immediacy and intimacy, as well as what the critics sometimes used to cite my poetry for—""rawness"—but coupled with a self-awareness and intellect that made me often describe him as a more insightful and intellectually curious Bukowski.

After years of having his poems rejected plus the general decline in the publishing of anything not connected to the academy and/or mass culture—despite the growing number of fans his readings, and my and other poets' enthusiasm for his work, inspired—he decided to buy a camera and take that on his walks around the unheralded neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

And then, he started a blog, first called JIMSONWEED and later changed to EAST OF WEST LA, the subtitle of which is "I'm photographing L.A.—all of it"—which consists of photos he takes that are as singular, and as much a combination of that "rawness" plus sensitivity, as his poetry is and with the same kind of power. Now and then he writes something about the people and objects and places he photographs, but most of the time the photos just stand for themselves.

One of the poets who became interested in Kevin's poetry is Brooks Roddan, who considered doing a book of Kevin's poems. But when he discovered the blog he changed his mind and talked Kevin into this book of selected photos.

It's a relatively small book—only 60 pages and the page size is surprisingly small for an art book, a little under 6x8. But it has that unique-art-object feeling that so many of my favorite books have. I can't recommend it highly enough.

To see Kevin's artistry when it comes to his photos just go to the link to his blog on the right, EAST OF WEST LA, and check out anything. Then order the book where it says at the top of his blog. To see the artistry of his poetry you'll have to wait a little longer I guess.

[PS: I think this is the first book I've posted on since the brain surgery. Not surprising it's an art book of photographs since I haven't gotten back into books of only prose yet. I've always dug art books, photographs and reproductions of paintings or photos of sculptures etc. but I've also recently been contemplating buying a few books that would be called "graphic" non-fiction, i.e. drawings or cartoons telling with not too many words real stories, a post-op change in taste.]

[PPS: Here's a link to an article from yesterday's L. A. Times about EAST OF WEST LA]

HAPPY NEW YEAR PS

Thought I'd add to my earlier post that I don't mean to be glib about my recovery vs. others' suffering. I know I'm a lucky man and that others aren't so lucky and in no way did I or do I mean to diminish the difficulties of anyone's pain, of any kind. May anyone who is in any kind of deep pain at this moment find the peace of acceptance and love in their hearts to help them through it.

As for me, [seven weeks after brain surgery this first day of the new year] just wanted to share a photo I finally figured out how to take on my computer several days ago. Seeing the result made me wonder why they haven't made these computer photo-booth thingees work so that the image comes out correctly instead of mirror reversed. (That's the canvas back of one of those movie set elevated chairs from the only time I was given my own named chair on a TV show (that flopped—BERRENGERS) and yes, that's a little soul patch my youngest talked me into cultivating after the operation. I'm growing fond of it.)



[PS: My oldest son, Miles, sent me the flipped version of this photo, so it can be done if you know how (though I still think the computer with all its other bells and whistles should do it automatically), so here's that version. Now the thing I notice that doesn't match reality is how distorted the scale is—my hands look larger than they are and the movie chair back name thing looks much smaller etc. than real life here in my little alcove I call my office.]

HAPPY NEW YEAR QUOTE

And why shouldn't we all be happy today—we're alive aren't we? I know there's terribly sad and complicated circumstances in most of our lives on some level, and that for some of us, or some of those we love, 2010 may be their last year. And I know that suffering and deep disappointment can twist the heart into hazardous shapes that sometimes feel impossible to untangle.

For any and all in that kind of mental or emotional or psychological or physical pain, I offer sincere sympathy. But for myself, unable to do anything more than eat and carry on a limited kind of discourse only a few weeks ago due to my traumatized brain, and now with most of my motor and cognitive capacities restored, I think of these simple lines from Walt Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS that I've quoted before and probably will again:

"(It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy,
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.)"

PUBLIC ENEMIES

This Johnny Depp movie seemed to come and go, but I never felt the urge to see it. I finally got to see it on DVD and now know why. There are a lot of terrific actors in it, and not just the leads. But the direction and writing are a little less than terrific at times.

It's like the movie can't make up it's mind whether to be BONNIE & CLYDE or ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. There are bits where the soundtrack's lively and almost light and joyful, ala B&C moving the action and the images along like an upbeat song.

Then there's long drawn out scenes where it seems to take every character three or ten times as long to say their lines than it would you or I in real life, or for that matter, screen actors back in the 1930s, the era of The Great Depression that the movie's set in. And we know we're supposed to be taking these slow scenes more seriously because the music underlying them is either incredibly epic, to the point of almost parodying what old Italian-influenced epics used to sound like, or it's Billie Holiday singing on a recording she made after the 1930s.

But why worry about veracity in a film that has John Dillinger (Depp) as the most wanted man in the USA—Public Enemy Number One—get out of his car with a gun in his hand and walk half way across the middle of a street in the midst of dozens of cops holding machine guns and pause while another one of those drawn out scenes is drawn out some more before he turns and walks back to his car and gets in with all these cops and citizens not noticing an armed non-cop who happens to be the most famous and sought criminal of his day etc.

But there's so many great actors in this flick that I still enjoyed watching it and was just sorry that some of them didn't have bigger parts. There are the obvious ones like Stephen Lang, long one of my favorites and he does a great job, ending up with the last words in the flick.

And of course Depp is always fun to watch work even when the writing and direction don't work so well.

And his co-stars Christian Bale and Marion Cottilard are also fun to watch, though their acting styles are almost exact opposites. Bale being best as the stoic handsome man-of-few words. In scenes where he plays that in this film his work is fun to watch. In other scenes where he's trying to maintain a good old boy accent or a 1930s G-man straight shooter posture, he's almost unintentionally funny.

Cottilard on the other hand plays her mob moll character with a lot more range, but because of the direction and writing, in some scenes she seems like a bright new discovery (even though most of us remember her from her awe inspiring Oscar winning role in LA VIE EN ROSE as Edith Piaf) and in others like she's in the wrong movie, at least to me.

But there are many smaller roles in this attempt at an epic, some that work and some that don't (the actor playing Baby Face Nelson is so over the top I thought I was back in O BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME? only in that movie it works because it's intentional, in PUBLIC ENEMIES it doesn't because it isn't).

I'd like to just mention three undersung film actors who don't work nearly enough, and all of whom I consider friends even though I haven't seen most of them in years.

James Russo—who blew me away the first time I saw him act (before I met him) in the debut run of the stage play EXTREMITIES—has an almost wordless part at the beginning of PUBLIC ENEMIES as an older convict who helps in a breakout but is shot and literally slips away from the other escapees.

Don Harvey's another terrific stage actor who I did a small film with a long time ago and who I first noticed as an actor before I met him in the film CASUALTIES OF WAR. In PUBLIC ENEMIES he has only one small scene with Depp and Cottilard as an anonymous customer trying to get his coat at a nightclub hatcheck stand. But he plays it totally realistically.

And John Michael Bolger, an actor I've known well for years. He has a relatively big part in PUBLIC ENEMIES, in terms of all the character actors. He plays a crooked Chicago detective who persuades "the woman in red"—as we knew her as kids from the legend we grew up with—to give Dillinger up to the cops in the famous scene at the Biograph. Only in PUBLIC ENEMIES she's the woman in orange and white. Bolger plays his scenes so authentically you wish he had a bigger part.

Man, a gangster flick with those three actors in the leads—Russo, Harvey and Bolger—now that I'd pay some money to see. As it is, I had to be satisfied with watching a too-long attempt to recreate a 'thirties gangster flick without a 'thirties feel for the times and the movies of those times.

PS: As for my post-brain surgery progress, well watching this complicated flick was a milestone for me, though the rhythms of it may have seemed even more uneven due to my still recovering to some extent. And I drove my car today for the first time in a few days but my brain wasn't functioning entirely the way it used to. When I got in and started it the radio was on. I had my friend Sue with me and it was too much stimuli so I turned the radio off. Only I pushed the wrong button (I drive a Prius which is run by buttons) and turned the car off instead, missing the radio button by many inches (and the starter is a big round one the size of a half dollar, while the radio one is a slim little rectangle, not easy to mistake them, which I didn't, my mind just confused what I intended). So, life goes on, interestingly and carefully and joyfully and mildly confusingly.