Love’s Merchant MacBeth

MacBeth is hard to be deemed lovable, and if he is a merchant of sorts, he is one of lives—kill kill kill. On that positive note:

MacBeth is quite riveting. I admit—I do love the tragedies. They are rough and saddening and I do not always love or pity the tragic hero right away or completely, but as always, Shakespeare questions an angle, an aspect of humanity. Frankly, I was waiting for MacBeth to impress me, and I was impatient with the fated fool. But he does it, somewhere in his plotting and his wife’s ranting, he runs out a discourse infused with morality and questioning.

Love’s Labour’s Lost . . . hmm, the women have the power in this comedy, and I do enjoy that. Perhaps it was the version I chose (edited by Jonathon Bate and Eric Rasmussen), somehow I think not, but this is quite the bawdy play. My guess is the Folger Shakespeare Library version would have much less explication of the sexual innuendoes in its side notes, but none the less, some of them are quite obvious. Dirty sex jokes aside, Shakespeare took a direct blow at convention and sappy sonneteers as the men are instructed that it takes more than weepy antics to capture the trust of a woman and prove love true.

The Merchant of Venice is again, a very different comedy. This is why I love Shakespeare—although there are repeated themes and events, and although he seemed to lack an imagination for names, each play is separate somehow, and owns a piece of the audience. The villain, Shylock, is difficult to despise. He is not an Iago or an Edmund, whispering plans to the audience intimately; he is not a Claudio, marked by fratricide or a Polonius, nosy and obnoxious. Although all these villains have frighteningly human characteristics, they are less than deserving of pity and fail to redeem themselves, with perhaps the exception of Edmund. Shylock, though, is not only aware of his dislike for Antonio but it is  a reasonable dislike. It is Antonio who seems to be without excuse for his behavior—Antonio’s hatred of Shylock is similar to Iago’s dislike of Othello: “I hate the Moor.” Shylock asks for respect, to not be treated as a dog, reasoning that there is no difference between a Jew and a Christian outside of belief—the two are human and equal. This is why I love Shakespeare!! His audience, late 16^th and early 17^th century England, would have been with the “heroes,” highly anti-Semitic, yet it is Shylock, the Jew, who is given the voice of reason, even if only for a moment.

Next . . . I am not sure—perhaps Romeo and Juliet, simply because I have not read it, but for sure at least a couple of live plays. Shakespeare Santa Cruz is putting on Othello and Love’s Labour’s Lost, for which I am thrilled!! 

Bored, Bummed, and Begging for “Biscuits”

Last night, I finally slept well. In fact, I slept in until 9 (yes, that is sleeping in). And I was quite thankful for it—home-oriented days can be unbearably long, and I had just cut out an entire two hours with sleep! As usual, I lounged my way through the morning: tea, slow-brewing Irish oats, and poetry. Although I was not particularly interested in changing out of my PJs or ready for the duel with my hair, I even forced myself to take a bath and wash my hair. Lunch came and went, and I really had not done much of anything. The Count of Monte Cristo? I tried. About fifteen pages. I kept crutching into the kitchen and toying with the idea of making something, then skulking out.  It is not as though I need the chocolate and butter or am doing anything to counter the buthighs they create (or the floatation devices betwixt aforesaid anatomical structure and the shoulders). But I wasn’t doing anything . . . so I did! I baked: Maple Biscotti and Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal Cookies.

The latter indulgence is oh so typical of me; the previous, the mixing of “American” (maple) and Italiano (biscotti), is not so typical. At least, not in baking. Why maple? Isn’t maple a seasonal flavor? Seasonal—uh, I do not know, food is food and I work with what I have. My mom had made Oatmeal Maple Scones and there was left over glaze; so I figured I could make “candied” biscotti, just drizzle the stuff over the top. Maple biscotti would not typically be my first choice, but I dislike wasting perfectly good food (i.e. watching the frosting turn into an amoeba in the fridge) and it did turn out quite well. 

The Tropes of Tea

Good Earth Tea is, well, quite tasty. It is very much like “Chai”: black tea and spices. And, like most quality, packaged teas, comes with a quote on the attached string and label. But the most recent quote, or more precisely, Chinese Proverb, made my day:

“Kissing is like drinking salted water: you drink and your thirst increases.”

Really? I would not know—although I have drunk immeasurable amounts of ocean water, I have yet to experience the tenor. How far can this be taken? Too much ocean water can make one sick, especially when the rivers are tainted (but hey—I’m still fine, and I drank gallons of Zayante and Bean water!!) that inject the salt water . . . kissing can cause mono and no doubt all sorts of other nasty infections . . . hmmm. But I have yet to get sick on account of the ocean, if anything, it is healing—so is kissing healing? Ha. This is too much fun. I might have to readdress this post when Mr. First Good Buddy stumbles into my life or I trip into his . . .

El Tercer Día

Hmm. What is there to report on the wonders of surgery?? How long some types of anesthesia last is quite impressive (perhaps disturbing); as of today I can feel my toes.  The lack of sanitation: I have no interest in a bath. (Surprise, surprise . . . especially for those of you who have lived within close proximity . . . Annie, shower?? Nah!)

Lessons Learned by the Gimpy:

Humility                      Yeah, so this one is hard. People have gushed about my humility in the past, but it is increasingly obvious how much I lack. I want to take care of myself, but that is very hard to do one footed without falling over. All of a sudden, I am very dependent, and there is nothing to do but allow myself to be helped. Despite our independence-obsessed American heritage, help is a very good thing.

Patience                       Monopods can only do so much at a time and only with x amount of speed (about .000001 mph), and that is okay.

Guts                            I get to inject myself with this fun stuff called Lovenox. It is supposed to prevent blood clots. Shots are not terribly frightening for someone who underwent years of allergy shots, but it is a wee different when I am sticking myself.

Manners                      Manners matter. Duh. When almost completely dependent, the opportunities to mind my manners multiply, or become more obvious. Whichever the case, please and thank you are necessary.

Rest                             Ahh! Rest?! Yup, I have dramatically downsized my lifestyle. I had toast and coffee this morning and read poetry for half an hour before moving on to brewing my steel-cut oats. I napped several times yesterday and watched two movies—yeah, those recorded dealios that I avoid like algebra. Reading Love’s Labour’s Lost is waiting until the Political Science class has finished. I am quite sure I will go entirely nuts sometime in the near future, but I am doing my best to embrace the rest and postpone losing my marbles.

Tasty Oats

Alright--I am a sucker for oats. New Leaf sells this mix of barley flakes, oats, and I don't quite remember what else, but about a 1/3 cup of that, plus some steel-cut oats, quinoa, rice, dried currants, and wheat germ dumped into hot-hot-hot milk and soaked overnight equals a fabulous breakfast:

I chopped up some frozen cranberries to throw in with some frozen blueberries and heated it up with another splash of milk and/or water and topped it with granola . . . so it looks weird, but, mmm, scrumptious! No matter what el señor Ben Jonson has to say about oats--grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people--I will continue to eat them.

Stoves, Suds, and Smiles

This morning was one of those mornings . . . one that, for whatever reason, everything seemed amusing or pleasurable. Let me rewind.

This last weekend was nutsy: to have surgery or not to have surgery? For those who do not know, the navicular bone and cartilage in my right foot is weird and quite painful, as I discovered in the midst of training for a 25K run in late March. For that and a variety of other trivial reasons, I have been ridiculously cynical of late. Perhaps I was looking for the positive to counteract my moodiness.

Home cooking and baking. Okay, so it helps living at home and mooching off the padres cooking supplies, not so discretely hinting at purchases, volunteering to forge the way through the grocery stores . . . Nonetheless, soaking beans to make hummus, concocting spice combinations for fish, watching steam rocket from the combination of toasted steel-cut oats and buttermilk, the smell of fresh pugliese bread, experimenting with granola . . . there is a simple joy in kitchen creations.

Made by hand . . . and cleaned. Cleaning can be the horror of baking and cooking. An elaborate pizza with homemade dough, various cheeses, tomatoes, spinach, skillet cooked mushrooms and onions, fresh basil, and another with pesto and chicken, and the random brie and pear pizza . . . all are delicious, but the precariously stacked dishes are daunting. But the truth of the matter? I do enjoy the dishes. Steaming hot water and suds, a fresh wash cloth, and the consistent scouring and scrubbing is incredibly calming. And the end product—a drain-tray full of sparkling clean dishes—is so satisfying. The dishes are not always as cute as I have made them out to be; they can be the source of much frustration, the last straw, or simply a general nuisance. But for whatever reason this morning, I looked at the dishes dripping dry and the dirty blender and smiled.

Granola. Yes, my dear Michiganders, Midwesterners, Southerners, and New Englanders, this is soo California. Yogurt and granola. But my little made-at-SLV ceramic bowl with Trader Joe’s non-fat vanilla yogurt, my homemade granola with its latest twist, and local strawberries (maybe not Gizdich, but still pretty darn good) was a lovely sight, a fabulous meal, and a reminder of the itty-bitty, perhaps silly things that make life wonderful.

The “Feminist” Movement and likely some Ignorant Ranting

You’ve read the title—you’ve been warned.

Maybe I do not know what constitutes feminism (this is entirely possibly), but the direction some women are headed in the name of feminism seems counterproductive.

Spring of 2009, in one of my English classes at the junior college, we had a substitute who had no interest in what we were doing in class, but rather sharing her infinite knowledge with us, the uninformed youth. She told us how who vs. whom is stupid to try to figure out, it doesn’t matter, because it has been taken out of textbooks and the worthlessness of semicolons . . . okay, so that preamble may have set my spikes against anything else she had to say, but nonetheless her vast storage of information on prostitution stuck with me.

Feminism, she preached, has shifted gears—we are in the third wave of the feminist movement. She continued to inform us of the great injustice women are fighting to regain control of their bodies, not just via abortion, but the right to self-employ as a prostitute.

As if her rant against the importance of grammar had not confused and frustrated me enough . . .

Correct me if I’m wrong—this is backward. Women fighting for rights once upon a Susan B. Anthony and in relation to the themes of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter were originally fighting for existence as people. Then rights and votes. Women were possessions, commodities. Every man has got to have one. Marriage=poof, gone existence. Muchísmo has taken place between then and now by the women of the feminist movement, and I am eternally grateful.

My problem with prostitution is not solely built on moral grounds—if someone wants to sleep around, no one is stopping him or her; our government does not (yet) regulate all personal choices—but on this woman’s equation of feminist liberty found in selling one’s body. Selling, I do understand, is a biased verb-choice. Opening was this professor’s verb, “giving women the option to open their body as a beautiful, legitimate choice of profession;” something like that. Alrighty. But the body then, again, becomes a commodity. Part of business. Which brings to mind You’ve Got Mail:

           

It’s not personal; it’s business.             [Later] It wasn’t . . . personal.

What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn’t personal to you. But it was personal to me. It’s personal to a lot of people. And what’s so wrong with being personal, anyway? . . . Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal.

American business, from what I have observed, is decreasingly personal. Which is terrible! But it is a rant for a different day. Prostitution is not personal . . . or is it? The body is very much personal, despite how many divested parts may be found on billboards, and Americans are generally ashamed of sexuality. (My hypothesis for the excess amount of sex everywhere one looks is the product of our immature reaction to this “shame source” and if not that, the unashamed percentage’s attempts to shock the public into realizing and accepting that sex happens; it is not a dirty little joke.)

If I compare renting out sex to renting out a car, keeping both as little people owned personal businesses (the Mom and Pop type businesses), I am still running into issues. Excuse the assumptions in the prostitution department. Both the car and the body lose value the more “mileage” they get. Or maybe the more experience a prostitute has, the more s/he can charge—I really do not know. Cars are insured. People can be, and if there came to be a National Union of Prostitutes (maybe one exists), I’m sure they would have their bodies insured also. But a car can be fixed and replaced. A body cannot, beyond a certain point. Insurance will not eradicate all STDs. If it were kept personal, wouldn’t that just tear the people involved to pieces? Or if it is not personal, is it really possible for a person to remove him or herself from his/her body? Why are there not neuter pronouns in English?

Really, the issue becomes making the body, a person, a commodity again. Something to be sold, rented, leased, something disposable. What, then, is the difference between a person and piece of fruit or a radio? There are sexist aspects of society that could and ought to be challenged in the name of feminism—frankly, I want nothing to do with war, but it is sexist to only recruit males in certain areas and even more sexist that if the draft were reinstated, it currently does not apply to women. If we want a level playing field, we had better buck up and play level; it is conceivable. If people want to promote prostitution as a freeing the self from the confines of conventionality, fine. 

But please, do not call it feminism.