I confess it. I have gotten totally hooked on the tv show The Mentalist.
Why? Well, quite honestly, it's Simon Baker as Patrick Jayne. I've already confessed that I'm a sucker for a curly haired, baby-faced blond. Add in a dose of snarkiness and I'm caught. And I think Baker is phenomenal at silently conveying emotion without being melodramatic and over the top. His character's struggles with composure in the face pain and anger and inner turmoil are beautifully subtle and real. Love the supporting cast, especially Tim Kang, who plays Cho.
But I'm hit with that moral dilemna of the shifting social paradigm again. Because Jayne is a man whose life is consumed with finding and KILLING the man who murdered his wife and daughter: his nemesis, a serial killer named Red John. It is all he lives for. He will do anything, say anything to accomplish it.
In order to meet this goal, this ex-psychic con-man got himself connected as a consultant with the California Bureau of Investigation (I don't know if any such agency really exists, I know there are similar kinds of police in other states). And in helping the CBI solve cases (at least the ones he's interested in) he uses trickery and manipulation to uncover murderers or to get them to confess to their deeds. In one show he is kidnapped by the daughter of a man he put in prison because he used her without her knowledge to trap her father. She is the "villain", torturing him and planning to kill him -- yet when she accuses him of using and manipulating people for his own ends without thinking about how much pain he's inflicting on them, you realize she's absolutely right. Often he uses cruel tactics to eliminate people from suspicion. I think the model for his character is the mythical figure of Kokopelli.
I guess my point is that despite being smart, cute and likeable, Jayne is at best amoral and often immoral. In one episode he did force someone who had killed a not completely innocent man, incidentally in a larger scheme, to recognize that the man had been a person and that the killer should feel remorse. Yet he himself expresses no remorse when he has killed someone he wrongly thought was Red John, nor is he particularly moved by the grief or pain of many other survivors (though in most cases he is softer with parents who have lost children).
I get it. Life is messy, answers are not easy, sometimes the wrong and the right are hard to distinguish. We are meant to like Jayne: but he is manipulative, and sometimes abusive. He is disengaged, avoiding emotional entanglement with people because he fears they will be hurt (and obviously, he's protecting himself - you wonder which is the stronger motivator for this character). There is a growing attachment between him and the team leader, Theresa Lisbon, who is in many ways Jayne's moral opposite. I suppose the hook is this: Is he irredeemably broken? Can the love of his teammates heal him? We've already been led to understand that killing Red John will not do that for him nor will it satisfy him.
I like that the "bad guys" on this show are, for the most part, real people, the kind you might meet in your everyday life. They don't wear labels that say "Monster" (as Wednesday Adams has pointed out, psychopathic murderers look just like everybody else). But Jayne isn't such a good guy himself, and he doesn't seem to grow morally. He is dismissive of any kind of spiritual anchor, and frankly, is not the kind of guy you'd want your daughter to date. And I worry that these are the kind of men - and it is mostly men- who are held up as heroes in popular culture.
Friday, September 28, 2012
What Happens to What has Been?
I don't usually write what I call "real" poetry -- it's too hard to get all those feet to work out and to get the right meter and then to get things to rhyme on top of it. And even if you manage all that it often comes out sing-songy and a bit ridiculous. I have GREAT respect for poets who write good poetry!
But every now and then I'm hit by a series of images that suggest what I think is "blank verse" (yes, the English Major must confess, she's not even sure what the rules of that genre are). The first three lines below were the last part of a conversation I was dreaming when I woke up this morning, and since they did not evaporate as most of my dreams do, I decided to follow them where they took me. FWIW.
What happens to what has been?
Should it be discarded like yesterday's newspaper,
fit only for containing vegetable peelings
or absorbing the grease left in the pan?
Is it the unbreakable mold
of all our tomorrows,
binding us to a destiny
begun before we knew
we had the possibility of choice?
Or is it fodder for the day, our daily bread
providing us with nourishing experience,
offering wisdom that opens the possibilities
of paths we never knew existed?
What should happen to what has been?
But every now and then I'm hit by a series of images that suggest what I think is "blank verse" (yes, the English Major must confess, she's not even sure what the rules of that genre are). The first three lines below were the last part of a conversation I was dreaming when I woke up this morning, and since they did not evaporate as most of my dreams do, I decided to follow them where they took me. FWIW.
What happens to what has been?
Should it be discarded like yesterday's newspaper,
fit only for containing vegetable peelings
or absorbing the grease left in the pan?
Is it the unbreakable mold
of all our tomorrows,
binding us to a destiny
begun before we knew
we had the possibility of choice?
Or is it fodder for the day, our daily bread
providing us with nourishing experience,
offering wisdom that opens the possibilities
of paths we never knew existed?
What should happen to what has been?
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Who Remembers the Maine?
Maybe you remember the Alamo (if you're old enough to have watched Fess Parker as Davy Crockett or you live in Texas). But the Maine was not even a blip on my academic radar. I did hear about it somewhere along the way -- the Maine was a ship that was blown up, which started a war -- I think it was the Spanish who blew up an American ship in Cuba and that's what started the Spanish American War. The only thing I know about THAT war is Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill.
Americans seem to relish the history of when we have been wronged and using those wrongs to justify any number of actions of retaliation. Remember the Alamo. Remember the Maine. Remember 9/11.
It is on September 11 I write this. I do remember still. I remember watching the second plane hit the tower, the chaos and fear as reports came in from Washington DC and then from Pennsylvania. I remember the confusion as we tried to make sense of these seemingly unrelated events, too catastrophic to be coincidence, too full of hatred to be conceivable.
I remember the soul-ripping horror of watching a body fall to the earth, someone who had jumped from one of the towers, realizing with horror that I was actually watching someone die. As I watched the Twin Towers crumble, I remembered (and still do) the day I stood on the observation deck and had a drink at the Top of the Towers, remembered how far down the earth was from that spot.
Several months later I learned that my brother had been scheduled for a meeting at the Trade Center that morning, but that it had been moved uptown at the last minute. I remember how that bit of information hit me in the solar plexus and literally knocked the air out of me when I heard it, even at that distance of time. I remember scanning the newspapers to see if I knew any of the victims -- it was entirely possible given where I grew up and the kinds of jobs many of high school classmates assumed. I remember that a woman in my church had a daughter who was critically burned at the Pentagon. It had been her first day on a new Air Force assignment and her office was one that was directly impacted by the crash. She survived by diving under a desk and was pulled out from under the debris.
I remember.
Today I am choosing to remember by engaging in a time of prayer and remembrance for the victims of the terrorist attacks, both those who died and those who live with the physical and psychic scars of that day. I am choosing to focus on forgiving someone for a personal hurt, because practicing forgiveness frees us from other people's ability to control us through pain. Forgiveness is not saying, "It's okay." It's saying, "I will not let my fear of you, my anger at you, my distrust of you rule my life. I am moving on." I am choosing to remember by making a financial contribution to a group that focuses on peacemaking. And I encourage you to do something along those lines as well.
Because if we only remember how we were hurt we wallow in fear, rage and distrust and we can never move on. If we only remember so that we can justify our own acts of violence we add to the circle of destruction and hostility. Our remembering should contribute to our healing. We do not show our true strength, or what Lincoln called the "angels of our better nature" when we do unto others as they have done unto us.
Every so often you see an old movie or tv show that gives you a skyline view or a bird's eye view of New York, and you see the towers and you get a jolt of remembrance. Oddly enough, I remember when the towers first went up, how people complained about how they ruined the New York skyline, about how ugly they were. People tried to prevent them from getting built. Now people want to remember the towers and talk about how their absence scars the city. But they are remembering the wrong things.
Remember the courage of the first responders. Remember the compassion of those who opened up stores and places of worship and apartments to provide shelter. Remember that moment of heartbreak when your only thought was "All those people", not "All those people like me." Remember the people from around the world who responded with sympathy and generosity, some of them offering help from resources far smaller than what any of us have.
In truth, we remember because we experienced it. It changed us. But I hope that my grandson remembers 9/11 the way I remember the Maine. As something that happened a long time ago but that has no power to hurt him or threaten him, because we used it to make his world better. I want to remember 9/11 in such a way that he doesn't have to.
Americans seem to relish the history of when we have been wronged and using those wrongs to justify any number of actions of retaliation. Remember the Alamo. Remember the Maine. Remember 9/11.
It is on September 11 I write this. I do remember still. I remember watching the second plane hit the tower, the chaos and fear as reports came in from Washington DC and then from Pennsylvania. I remember the confusion as we tried to make sense of these seemingly unrelated events, too catastrophic to be coincidence, too full of hatred to be conceivable.
I remember the soul-ripping horror of watching a body fall to the earth, someone who had jumped from one of the towers, realizing with horror that I was actually watching someone die. As I watched the Twin Towers crumble, I remembered (and still do) the day I stood on the observation deck and had a drink at the Top of the Towers, remembered how far down the earth was from that spot.
Several months later I learned that my brother had been scheduled for a meeting at the Trade Center that morning, but that it had been moved uptown at the last minute. I remember how that bit of information hit me in the solar plexus and literally knocked the air out of me when I heard it, even at that distance of time. I remember scanning the newspapers to see if I knew any of the victims -- it was entirely possible given where I grew up and the kinds of jobs many of high school classmates assumed. I remember that a woman in my church had a daughter who was critically burned at the Pentagon. It had been her first day on a new Air Force assignment and her office was one that was directly impacted by the crash. She survived by diving under a desk and was pulled out from under the debris.
I remember.
Today I am choosing to remember by engaging in a time of prayer and remembrance for the victims of the terrorist attacks, both those who died and those who live with the physical and psychic scars of that day. I am choosing to focus on forgiving someone for a personal hurt, because practicing forgiveness frees us from other people's ability to control us through pain. Forgiveness is not saying, "It's okay." It's saying, "I will not let my fear of you, my anger at you, my distrust of you rule my life. I am moving on." I am choosing to remember by making a financial contribution to a group that focuses on peacemaking. And I encourage you to do something along those lines as well.
Because if we only remember how we were hurt we wallow in fear, rage and distrust and we can never move on. If we only remember so that we can justify our own acts of violence we add to the circle of destruction and hostility. Our remembering should contribute to our healing. We do not show our true strength, or what Lincoln called the "angels of our better nature" when we do unto others as they have done unto us.
Every so often you see an old movie or tv show that gives you a skyline view or a bird's eye view of New York, and you see the towers and you get a jolt of remembrance. Oddly enough, I remember when the towers first went up, how people complained about how they ruined the New York skyline, about how ugly they were. People tried to prevent them from getting built. Now people want to remember the towers and talk about how their absence scars the city. But they are remembering the wrong things.
Remember the courage of the first responders. Remember the compassion of those who opened up stores and places of worship and apartments to provide shelter. Remember that moment of heartbreak when your only thought was "All those people", not "All those people like me." Remember the people from around the world who responded with sympathy and generosity, some of them offering help from resources far smaller than what any of us have.
In truth, we remember because we experienced it. It changed us. But I hope that my grandson remembers 9/11 the way I remember the Maine. As something that happened a long time ago but that has no power to hurt him or threaten him, because we used it to make his world better. I want to remember 9/11 in such a way that he doesn't have to.
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