But, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are just a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open.
(Robert A. Heinlein, The Door Into Summer. New York: Doubleday, 1957.)
Of course the idea of ending up a hermit in a cave, even sleeping with one eye open, has its attractions: namely, 100% control over your life and emotions, and the certainty that others cannot hurt you. But as Heinlein points out, that’s no way to live. Love hurts. Does loneliness hurt more? It’s a conundrum. I honestly don’t know. I guess I’ll keep you posted.
edit: Since this post’s original appearance, I’ve been reclassified as a Leo by … the sometimes-I-tune-in Zodiac powers that be? Not actually sure whom. Fellow fabulously-damaged Virgin Panda tried to explain it to me over soosh bombasticos last week but she is much, much better at understanding this stuff than I am.
This post originally appeared on February 7, 2010 at 9:14 a.m., so practically one year ago. Synchronicity in Yesterday’s News!
Romance, science, and zodiac quackery in Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is A Woman (Godard, 1961).
Virgo is a hard worker, a neglected mother, a quotidian task master, and a selfless martyr. Virgo is also a reality TV train wreck, a drunken psychopath, and a self-abusing anorexic. Virgo is analytical on a good day. Virgo is self-critical, self-loathing, self-deprecating, self-flagellating, and self-defeating on a bad day.
The Virgin, contrary to what her title may suggest, is the resident cock gobbler of the zodiac — never a topper, always a bottom. If you’re looking for a woman who will abuse herself, party like it’s Greek harvest time and she’s drunk on mead, please you sexually without so much as a nod to her own hungry genitalia, and perform all the humiliating duties you’ve assigned to her as wife and mother, look no further than the drunken Virgin of the zodiac.
And yes, more often than not, this naughty little maiden is getting crunked at the club or downing daiquiris at the Mommy and Me block party, an attempt to drown to death the echoes of self-loathing that usually prevent her from embodying the female charm and charisma she labors to possess.
The Virgo vibratory pattern is restrictive, effective, judgmental, exact, helpful, and neurotic. Virgos are a lot of things, socially charismatic not being one of them.
Usually, when I meet a Virgo, my natural reaction is, ‘this person must have Aspergers.’ They fixate on minutiae like Rainman [and] have more clicks and ticks than a malfunctioning android attempting to process human emotion.
Virgos rule the house of diet, perfectionism, and nourishment. Just glance at a list of famous Virgos and you’ll find more self-flagellating, adulthood suppressing skeletors than you can shake a stick at: Amy Winehouse, Rachel Zoe, Nicole Ritchie, Karl Lagerfeld, Twiggy, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, Peggy Guggenheim, etc.
[personally adding Anne Bancroft, Evan Rachel Wood, Lauren Bacall, Ricki Lake, Greta Garbo, and Rose McGowan to that list].
Yes, that is pretty much the way of it.
Virgo is the embodiment of human turmoil.
Insightful and amusing zodiac sign analysis by Carly, whose blog “Do you think I’m smart? Astrology and other Ass Munchery” is right here on the wordpress. Usually I say that I don’t believe in all that large astrological nonsense, but I have to admit that’s the first one I’ve ever read that was right on. Maybe I just needed to read all the horrible things I already know about myself confirmed, instead of the butt-licking backhanded compliments in most horoscopes, in order to start giving it some credence.
Final thought.
How to Spot a Virgo Woman:
They have an eating disorder.
They give rigorous handies.
They have acid reflux.
They’ll do “anything for my man.”
They want your love, but don’t deserve it.
(more, if you’re into that — she is very clever and scathingly funny)
I did a stupid thing and decided to skip The Tommyknockers. Instead, I read L.A. Confidential, then Red Harvest, then some subpar book from Jeffery Deaver that was a bit afield from what I usually expect of him.
Image via thegunnshow right here on the wordpress. Girls Like a Boy Who Reads. My cover looks exactly like that but I do not look exactly like him. Check the blog out.
He spells it Jeffery and not Jeffrey, but that is not today’s issue. Also I am mad at him for getting tired of his Lincoln Rhyme characters (you may remember their portrayals by Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie in the film adaptation of The Bone Collector) and moving to this boring woman in Monterey as his new detective, but there was a preview in the back for a new Lincoln Rhyme so he is sort-of back in my good graces. Jury is out: he better not do anything stupid like kill off Lincoln or his hot redheaded girlfriend Amelia. That is still not today’s issue.
Today’s issue is that I skipped The Tommyknockers which I always read over the Fourth of July in order for maximum synchronicity and a karmically blessed Summer, and I thought I’d try something different and not be a slave to superstition, but I think I got a little overly cocky. Right away bad things started happening.
And it’s obviously all because I did not read The Tommyknockers and the blame for this situation can be laid only at the door of that fact and has nothing to do with my own behaviors and weaknesses. (eye roll)
Now instead I’ve read the Gentleman’s generous loan of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and I’m about to make a date with Milo for us to simultaneously begin Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
Pictures come from Une femme est une femme and allthatsinteresting on the tumblr.
This entry was posted in its original form October 4, 2009 at 3:30 pm. This was less than a week before Paolo and Miss D’s wedding. They have a wonderful relationship and a good marriage, and I want to point that out because I feel I’ve come off as down on the marriage thing lately. It is my own shit and observations and nothing to do with the good people who make a beautiful thing work.
Ah, then, I must have it all backward; do I, Anna Karina?
This is how antisocial I am, and this is the price I pay: just a bit ago, I called Thai House on Tully (best. I am sorry, best. — no, stop talking. best.) to see if they were open, and when someone picked up the phone, I simply hung up, because I felt my question had been adequately answered by the mere fact of a voice on the other end. Are there people at Thai House working? Yes, I deduced. And did not bother to speak, just hit “end.” That’s right, I wordlessly disconnected a call with the business I was planning to patronize purely for the purpose of limiting my level of interaction with other people.
I enjoy this restaurant and bear its employees nothing but good will, but did my actions remotely reflect this? No. I admit they did not.
So then. THEN. I go to Thai House, my mind teeming with satay and moo yang daydreams, and, as I likely deserved, it wound up they are closed until 4:30. Whoever answered the phone would probably happily have told me that, had I not hung up to avoid talking to a fellow human being.
I deserve the wait. To make up for what I’d done, when Gorgeous George hopped on to the yahoo chat and asked me to look over a recent draft of his toast for Paolo and Miss D’s wedding, I suggested that he join me at Thai House later. It is good to have a reason to comb your hair and act human. It’s important to do these things and not hole up in my cave. I’m sure of it. Otherwise I will fall out of practice at being talked to and I will lose whatever magic I might still have, and then how will I ever interact again, as I am striving to do because I have good reasons?
Correction notice: On 3/14/10, I implied that I controlled the events of my life. I regret this error. Correction — I do not control the events of my life.
Pierrot le fou (Godard, 1965).
Even at all. I don’t control them and I absolutely cannot predict them.
Things are going badly for the o.g.b.d. with his split, and I think it is taking its toll because he said some unusual things to me that came from left field for me. But this is a terribly difficult time for him and I understand that everything must be examined through that filter, because it is just simply one of the most difficult times of your life to be newly separated from your spouse. I went through the same things.
Une femme est une femme (Godard, 1961).
I am not going to let him struggle alone. I have this opportunity to be there for him, and I am just going to be as understanding as I can be and take as much time as is needed to help him through this. He’s my kiddo’s father and we’re a team.
Pierrot le fou (Godard, 1965).
I had a good time with him at the movie yesterday, but I think he has a lot going on right now and it’s difficult for him to work through. Some financial stuff, too, the end result of some ugly back-and-forth with his wife which was really terrible to be present for his finding out about because there was literally nothing I could do to help; ditto his sorrow at seeing less of his son, which has to be horrible. He calls him “Mr. Cheeks.” I really pray that he and his wife can work things out because I can tell it’s killing him not to get to spend as much time with his son as he was accustomed to.
I still think his wife will come around, I don’t believe people can sustain bad feelings forever, especially not someone who seems as essentially nice as her. I think she may have deleted me as an imaginary friend on the myspace, but if I worried what happened on social networking sites, I’d never have any peace. Those aren’t real gestures, not with any deep meaning or permanence. I still can’t see this going so badly forever. I mean, it is almost impossible, isn’t it? Look what happened between me and him, for example. We did hurtful things to one another, said unspeakable things to each other (I finally got to apologize for calling him “human garbage,” which has literally haunted my heart for years, and I’m so happy about that) but in the end we have made it up and now things are great.
Une femme est une femme (Godard, 1961).
Well, pretty great, that is. Some weirdness. There are some things I don’t understand, but I will figure them out. All that all is almost as an aside. Yesterday’s news and mainly things I’m filing away to think about so I can give them their proper due consideration at a better time and with an open mind and untroubled heart.
Grandma at Panda Eraser’s hair show last Friday.
What’s bad today is that my grandmother is having a Bad Day. It started at 3:00 a.m. when I startled awake to find her bent over me, shaking me by the shoulder while she clenched and unclenched her other hand. “E—,” she said urgently, “I’m flat broke. I can’t think where my checkbook’s got to but I don’t know how to get home! Am I going to fly? You have to call them. I don’t want them to know I don’t have any money. [never did figure out if ‘them’ was the airline or her bank or what] You’ll arrange it, won’t you?” I calmed her down and told her of course, got water for her and lead her back to her room.
From “Pulp,” by Neil Krug.
Then it just repeated about two to three times an hour ’til I finally woke my mother and said, “Your turn.” I was feeling drained and uneasy about some of the events of the day before and I just needed to rest. I feel selfish, looking back on it, but I was at a breaking point. It had repeated itself, the conversation, to the point of exhaustion. Both of us were near tears and I figured the perspective of someone better-rested (ie: my mother) might put a fresh and more positive spin on things.
But the whole thing just set the stage for the day. It’s a pacey and fearful kind of day. Things are preying on her mind today, over and over. She can’t relax, and she keeps cyclically freaking out and confiding the same fears again and again. There’s nothing I can say or do that comforts her for more than twenty minutes at a time. It’s heartbreaking. I think the trigger was that fuckall hellpit altar of commerce the mall, which if I had been around, I might’ve tried to intervene, but I wasn’t, I was out with the o.g.b.d. My mother reported to me that yesterday while I was gone, they’d taken my grandmother to the mall to pose for pictures with my kidlet (I’d approved this mission), but then afterward they actually drug my grandmother around that godawful anthill of capitalism, and not surprisingly she hated it.
Valley of the Dolls (Robson, 1967.)
She did not like the number of people in weekend crowds one bit: it understandably scared and confused her to have that much crap coursing all around her. Mom said she also didn’t like how large the stores were and kept asking why they were so big.
Delicatessen (Caro, Jeunet, 1991).
I’ve taken Dorothy to the mall several times and we’ve been just fine walking around just after it opens of a weekday morning, stopping and getting lemonade, and mainly using it as a very large indoor track with window displays, but in all honesty I’m not fond of visiting the mall for its intended purpose with my mother anymore than my grandmother was. My mother likes to shop, which I hate. She has to look at every single thing, the minutiae of which bores and vaguely frightens me. I skim at best, if I even enter a shop at all rather than simply scan their storefront as I walk past. The marathon philosophy with which my mother takes herself to the mall is some kind of crazy, gritty, kamikaze combination of let’s-pretend-we’re-so-girly phony ego trip and a chillingly toneless, flinty determination to get a bargain no matter what the physical or emotional price.
Natalie Wood in what I believe is a still from the underrated noir Daddy Issues extravaganza A Cry In the Night (Tuttle, 1956), in which very young Natalie plays Elizabeth, the daughter of an overprotective and repressive police captain who is kidnapped from her makeout session with her boyfriend by dangerous young voyeur Raymond Burr. Out of the frying pan, in to the fire, kiddo.
Both of those qualities freak me out to no end, like actually boggle my mind and scare me. It becomes a nightmare, with me feeling more and more hemmed in by the crowds and infuriated by the abundance of meaningless shit all around to buy, buy, buy — all the advertisements, the people dressed identically so you start to feel like you cannot even tell which are the mannequins. Ugh. It starts making me want to burn the whole place down. That’s not hyperbole: I literally want to watch it all burn.
Pierrot le fou (Godard, 1965).
Gar. Positive straw at which I’m grasping: I guess I may not control the events of my life but I can at least control my reactions. Staying as positive and peaceful as possible so that I don’t get overemotional and fuck things up. That’s what I’ll focus on for today.
The warmth of your love
is like the warmth of the sun
and this will be our year
took a long time to come
I haven’t been writing much lately, not because I have nothing to say, but because I have had too much to say, and too little free time in which to say it. But thankfully I’ve had the chance to talk things over with good friends both in person and on the telephone this week, and that’s released a tremendous amount of pressure.
Don’t let go of my hand
now darkness has gone
And this will be our year
took a long time to come
Besides the counsel of Miss D, which is always uplifting, I also got to hang out with Panda Eraser, Mr. Kite, and the Mister earlier this week. Lady K called several times and I also got to talk to the o.g.b.d., who was again surprisingly encouraging, kind, and thoughtful. They all really helped me clarify the things that were on my mindgrapes and squeeze some goodness out of them.
And I won’t forget
the way you held me up when I was down
and I won’t forget the way you said,
“Darling, I love you,”
You gave me faith to go on
My grandmother has been staying with us. It was a move that was supposed to be a brief visit but is now most likely going to be as permanent as possible. While her physical health is still great, her mental decline is staggering. She had always had a sharp tongue, a quick mind; if I had ever dreaded her visits or had negative feelings about her in the past, it was because we had equal minds and could clash over things (especially her daughter, my mother, of whom I was defensive and felt she was too critical). That mercurial and impish figure of my youth is gone. My grandmother now is a million miles from the Dorothy that I thought would be living with me. I am so glad she’s here, and that I’m able to have with her even those few minutes of a time where she has drifted “in,” but the pain of the remainder of her waking hours, her confusion and fear, her redundancy and pacing, is sometimes breathtaking.
Now we’re there
and we’ve only just begun
This will be our year
took a long time to come
What I am now fearing even more than the pressure of her moments of anxiety and loss now is when a physical declination in her health sets in; when I and, when she’s free, my mother are no longer adequately equipped to provide for her physically. I hate to picture her completely unaware of her surroundings, somewhere where no one knows her. I know places like that are full of loving and compassionate people, but what scares me is the times when Grandma has enough on the ball to know that she is in an unfamiliar place, and expresses fear and the sense of being lost.
The warmth of your smile
smile for me, little one
and this will be our year
took a long time to come
She told me several days ago when I came in to get her ready in the morning that she’d woke from a nightmare and been up for several hours, reading, to settle her nerves. “Bethy,” she said, “I dreamt I flew home and I didn’t know a single soul that was in my house. It didn’t look like my house. Other people lived there, people that I had never seen. It was all completely strange to me.” She said the worst part was that then she woke up here, and she thought her dream had come true until she saw a picture of my daughter and I on her nightstand and remembered she was here for what she thinks is a visit. (Given her nightmare, I suspect part of her knows this visit could be permanent.) She concluded by saying, “I don’t mind telling you — I’ve never been so frightened in my life.”
That’s what I’m scared of. That’s why I feel like no matter how hard it is, or how hard it continues to get, I can’t let her go.
You don’t have to worry
All your worried days are gone
this will be our year
took a long time to come
And that’s why I value so greatly all the kind ears of my friendohs right now. I am so lucky to have a support system to whom I can slip away and bitch and moan and noise my anxieties. Whether it’s over sushi, pints, the phone, or wherever, thank god for them. I had thought last year was going to be the most challenging of my life, but this year is shaping up to build on the growing I did then (to put a positive spin on it, rather than say, “this year sucks too”).
And I won’t forget
the way you held me up when I was down
and I won’t forget the way you said,
“Darling, I love you”
You gave me faith to go on
One of the things I’ve been doing to keep Grandma from getting agitated and restless during the day, which is when she paces the house and starts to worry about her money, her belongings, how she is going to get a plane ticket home, etc, is I’ve begun taking her on little day trips and out to stores and such. Even to just window shop, because a) to be brutally frank she does not know the difference whether we buy something or not, and b) it is not as if either of us is made of money and she is happy to people watch.
Tonight, I’m taking her to a vintage-through-the-present hair show at Panda’s cosmetology school, and she seems to be looking forward to that, because she keeps asking me when it is; if they will be videotaped or live models; and whether we have the tickets already. (“7:00 pm,” “live,” and essentially “yes.”) So that’s hopefully going to go well!
Now we’re there
and we’ve only just begun
and this will be our year
took a long time to come
This Sunday, after church, the o.g.b.d. is taking kidlet and I to lunch, and then much later in the day he and I are going to what is probably the last theater in America showing Sherlock Holmes right now. I’m looking forward to seeing it one last time before it leaves theaters. He had expressed interest in it last week after surprising me by suggesting we catch a movie sometime together when my mother was free, to give me a break from caring for my grandmother and have a fun night out, but he said that he was pretty sure it was no longer showing in our area. So he was super-pumped and surprised when I talked to him today to confirm our lunch plans with kidlet and told him that I’d found a nearby second-run theater that was still showing it through this weekend. The way Robert Downey, Jr. plays Sherlock as very herky-jerky, pugilistic, intense, and accidentally brutally honest really, really, really reminds me of the o.g.b.d.; I wonder if he will notice it, himself. I’m not going to say anything and we’ll see if he brings it up first.
Anna Karina with Jean-Claud Brialy.
Yeah, we only just begun
yeah, this will be our year
took a long time to come.
I had talked with Panda about how I am persona non grata with all the women in his life, and, just by talking about it, I started feeling less horrible about it. As Panda pointed out, even if I don’t understand it and it hurts me, the bottom line is I can’t change someone else’s mind, and I’ve done my best. And we agreed, as I had done last weekend with the LBC and Miss D before the drag races, that probably his wife will come around, and she is only acting this way because she is still hurting from whatever chain of events lead to their split (I have not felt it was polite to pry into any specifics about that). I pray that will be the case, but it’s good to know all my girlfriends agree on this, too. So I’m hoping to have the opportunity to talk to him about these revelations, because I really feel like we are in this cool new place where we are a simple team again, in our queer and broken way.
All in all, I’ve had time to adjust to these new turns of events and I think I am going to pull through. And thank god for it.
Just came from lunch with the o.g.b.d. No repeat of the well-understandable bottle thing of the last visit. I told you it would work out! Kidlet took ill halfway through our mutual lunchtime and demanded to be taken home. While swinging the o.g.b.d. back home after dropping her past the house, the o.g.b.d and I stopped off for “a coffee,” which is a trite phrase that in this case means “a pint.” (Now you are speaking our language.)
We came clean about a lot of sadness through which we’ve both been paddling, essentially rudderless, and, I think at any rate, ultimately the topics upon which we touched in our rambling but wonderfully amicable chat basically agreed with the age-old saying that is one of the ones I have always loved best. “Seek the headwaters of the river of pain.”
I think that we discovered that for both of us we are for one other indeedy some of the chief of those there ol’ headwaters. And we are forgiving each other first, ourselves second, and figuring the godforsaken rapids of the fallout out together, in the best and most platonic of ways. Absent of the prospect of sex and the agony of romantic entanglement, it turned out we had all manner of wisdom and laughs to offer one another. It was an amazing talk. I have great hopes for the future. Thanks for the vibes!
I’m packing now and gearing up to scootch down to C-town to have a gal night with Miss D and the LBC (I travel armed with Mean Girls, Josie and the Pussycats, and Anchorman — my go-to feel-good flicks) and then in the a.m. we are driving to Famoso for the last day of the drag races to ring in Gorgeous George’s 30th with Geo, Paolo, and the Gentleman.
I am feeling really upbeat and positive about the future. Always room for another friend in the circle, even in the most unlikely of circumstances. I am really excited to welcome someone back in to my life that I cared deeply about. So thanks again, and catch you on the flip!
I want a little sugar
in my bowl
I want a little sweetness
down in my soul
I could stand some lovin’
Oh so bad
I feel so funny and I feel so sad
I want a little steam
on my clothes
Maybe I can fix things up
so they’ll go
What’s the matter, Daddy,
Come on, save my soul
I need some sugar in my bowl
I ain’t foolin’
I want some sugar in my bowl
You been acting different
I’ve been told
Soothe me
I want some sugar in my bowl
I want some steam
on my clothes
Maybe I can fix things up so they’ll go
What’s the matter, Daddy,
Come on save my soul
I want some sugar in my bowl
I ain’t foolin’
I want some sugar – yeah – in my bowl.
A few weeks ago, the o.g. babydaddy treated me and the kidlet to lunch at the Soosh Gardino. He and his wife are mysteriously on the outs this month, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’ve been trying to be neutral and supportive. They’re not living together any more, though, so I’m not sure what to make of it all.
I drafted her a friendly and supportive Valentine’s card and left it at a place where I knew she had a gig that night; a few days later she wrote me thanking me but then added some surprising stuff about “needing time as newlyweds.”
This was confusing to me because I had just talked to kidlet’s father the day prior and he said in no uncertain terms that he would only take her back to avoid living with his mother … then the next day he phoned and I asked if they had patched things up and he said sort of, but not really, then the following week he said they had certainly not, and were still living apart, so like I said, I am just staying out of it. Because I truly don’t know what’s going on.
I wish there was a way for me to wave a magic wand or wish on some special star and make things perfect for both of us, but I don’t have those kinds of means at my disposal, and I have never been much of a great shakes at relationship stuff.
Apparently neither has the o.g.b.d., for which I can vouch at least during our time together lo five years ago, and also because he asked me abruptly on our way to the Gardino, “Can I ask you something? It’s bad.” He is in the habit of blurting things out so I wasn’t as surprised as I would’ve been with someone normal. I said okay and he asked me, “What happened? With your marriage?”
My stomach lurched but as my kidlet’s father and knowing he wants to support her and be able to be a sounding board for her anxieties and dreams just the same as I do, so why would I not arm him with all information possible in order for him to succeed?, I felt like he deserved a specific reply and not my usual shrug or head shake. I answered as best I could without going in to too many details, but as directly as possible because the o.g.b.d. has a lot of tics and one of them is a strong dislike of roundabout bush-beating. I’ve always thought that was a fair bugaboo and done my best to respect it. I wound down my short explanation as we pulled in to the lot of the Soosh Gardino by saying:
Woman as banquet.
“You know how it is.” (he does) “Growing up, people like us don’t plan on someone loving us, because that means letting them know us. I thought I could let someone in and it didn’t work out. For right now, I’m just not interested even at all in trusting another person, not like that. The jury is out for me on the human race.” He made a tsking sound and started to shake his head, and I held up my hand and said, “Just for now. We’ll see. But maybe I was right, all those years; maybe I am supposed to just be alone.”
Still from Pierre le fou.
I had just parked and killed the engine so I was able to look him in the eye when he suddenly grabbed my hand. He said urgently, “No. Beth — don’t say that.” This is not a story about how I got back together with the o.g.b.d., or how there is still some unwritten chapter about us. I just realized that might be inferred.
That’s not at all the way of it. You don’t know him — everything he does is spontaneous, overemotional, and urgent. He can’t even brush his teeth without doing it slightly “off” like he is coming down off of heroin or flashing his eyes around like Rudolph Valentino. He’s an intense guy, that o.g.b.d. It was one of the things that attracted me so strongly to him when we were together: he is not like other people. He’s more vibrant. Like other people are watercolor and he is painted in oils.
Rudolph Valentino smoking a cigarette with probably much greater restraint than the o.g.b.d. might — less wild gesticulation and hair pulling — but the eyes are the same.
What this story is about is this: You are pretty low when your recently-split, moving-back-in-with-his-mother, hated-you-for-years ex feels sorry for you. I thought, “Wow. Maybe we are moving in to a new phase of our lives where he will be a good friend and confidante to me. That would be pretty unexpected and neat!”
After lunch, we went to a park and it turned out he’d been drinking sub rosa from a fifth of whiskey all day. I was kind of bummed that I’d thought we’d been doing so well and it might have not really been heartfelt on his half. Quelle surprise, I guess. I will never learn, it seems. I don’t want to sound pathetic, I just felt pretty stupid for thinking someone gave a crap about me.
I found this out when he took a hit out of the bottle in his pocket. In front of a bunch of kids. I said, “Um, no thanks, dude.” He said, “Oh, I know. I wasn’t offering. You’re driving.” He had me there: I was indeed driving. And it was a visit we were both in charge of. And he’d literally split from his wife the day before. And the day before happened to be Valentine’s. So I’m not going to judge or flip out unless it happens again. “Everybody gets one,” right, Spider-man on Family Guy?
The point is: Yep. Probably meant to be alone. At least for a good long while.
It’s lonely to want some sugar in the bowl, sure, but the trouble is it’s tough to tell the sugar from the rat poison. Better safe than sorry.
Romance, science, and zodiac quackery in Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is A Woman (Godard, 1961).
Virgo is a hard worker, a neglected mother, a quotidian task master, and a selfless martyr. Virgo is also a reality TV train wreck, a drunken psychopath, and a self-abusing anorexic. Virgo is analytical on a good day. Virgo is self-critical, self-loathing, self-deprecating, self-flagellating, and self-defeating on a bad day.
The Virgin, contrary to what her title may suggest, is the resident cock gobbler of the zodiac — never a topper, always a bottom. If you’re looking for a woman who will abuse herself, party like it’s Greek harvest time and she’s drunk on mead, please you sexually without so much as a nod to her own hungry genitalia, and perform all the humiliating duties you’ve assigned to her as wife and mother, look no further than the drunken Virgin of the zodiac.
And yes, more often than not, this naughty little maiden is getting crunked at the club or downing daiquiris at the Mommy and Me block party, an attempt to drown to death the echoes of self-loathing that usually prevent her from embodying the female charm and charisma she labors to possess.
The Virgo vibratory pattern is restrictive, effective, judgmental, exact, helpful, and neurotic. Virgos are a lot of things, socially charismatic not being one of them.
Usually, when I meet a Virgo, my natural reaction is, ‘this person must have Aspergers.’ They fixate on minutiae like Rainman [and] have more clicks and ticks than a malfunctioning android attempting to process human emotion.
Virgos rule the house of diet, perfectionism, and nourishment. Just glance at a list of famous Virgos and you’ll find more self-flagellating, adulthood suppressing skeletors than you can shake a stick at: Amy Winehouse, Rachel Zoe, Nicole Ritchie, Karl Lagerfeld, Twiggy, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, Peggy Guggenheim, etc.
[personally adding Anne Bancroft, Evan Rachel Wood, Lauren Bacall, Ricki Lake, Greta Garbo, and Rose McGowan to that list].
Yes, that is pretty much the way of it.
Virgo is the embodiment of human turmoil.
Insightful and amusing zodiac sign analysis by Carly, whose blog “Do you think I’m smart? Astrology and other Ass Munchery” is right here on the wordpress. Usually I say that I don’t believe in all that large astrological nonsense, but I have to admit that’s the first one I’ve ever read that was right on. Maybe I just needed to read all the horrible things I already know about myself confirmed, instead of the butt-licking backhanded compliments in most horoscopes, in order to start giving it some credence.
Final thought.
How to Spot a Virgo Woman:
They have an eating disorder.
They give rigorous handies.
They have acid reflux.
They’ll do “anything for my man.”
They want your love, but don’t deserve it.
(more, if you’re into that — she is very clever and scathingly funny)
Almost directly after I published that last post, the doorbell rang and my sick ass hobbled to answer it. It was a man from the Hart Floral Service with the following delivery.
In my embittered and estranged face, am I right? Just all up in it. Look at that. Dag.
Anna Karina as Angela in Jean-Luc Godard’s first color film, Une femme est une femme (A Woman Is A Woman), released in 1961.
Turns out cough syrup bums me out. Like I’m walking underwater past all the things I normally try not to think too much about. Good thing I’m not one of those funky religions where that’s my only outlet for getting a buzz on. But I will not get beat down. I’m too old for emo folklore (but never too old for drinking and pretentious film school shenanigans, not ever). As soon as I’m well, I’m going to find resurrection at the bottom of a bottle or two of Pacifico with the friendohs, and I am sure things will be looking brighter then.
“In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and ‘get’ everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don’t understand each atom of the potato!” (Interview with David Sherritt, The Christian Science Monitor, 8/3/94)
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. (Critique called “What Is Cinema?” for Les Amis du Cinéma , 10/1/52, a work which advanced the auteur theory but also kind of ripped off Bazin, which is weird cause Bazin would’ve read it and was a big influence on Godard but this was done contemporaneously of Bazin himself working on something titled this, about this, so maybe the quote is misattributed? … or maybe there is more to it than I know with my tiny ken of French movie guys, maybe it was a done thing to borrow titles from one another, or perhaps it was a continuation of a dialogue they were already having both in person and via publications, or, finally, it could even have been an “understood” question which anyone might use as the title of a book or article … I am probably over-reading it.)
Hands down my favorite picture of Anna Karina
Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion. (“Defense and Illustration of Classical Construction,” Cahiers du Cinéma, 9/15/52)
Cover or liner art for her album, a collaboration with the dread Serge G
The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea. (“Strangers on a Train,” Cahiers du Cinéma 3/10/52 — Godard wrote extensively and insightfully in his early career about the movies of Hitchcock, one of my favorite and I think misunderstood directors; I’ll try to share some good nuggets from time to time)
Anna cahorts about topless as Anne in 1968’s The Magus, also starring Anthony Quinn (Zorba the Greek), Michael Caine, and Candace Bergen (Murphy Brown) — no one seems to like this movie but me. That’s okay, because I like it a lot.
Ah, then, I must have it all backward; do I, Anna Karina?
This is how antisocial I am, and this is the price I pay: just a bit ago, I called Thai House on Tully (best. I am sorry, best. — no, stop talking. best.) to see if they were open, and when someone picked up the phone, I simply hung up, because I felt my question had been adequately answered by the mere fact of a voice on the other end. Are there people at Thai House working? Yes, I deduced. And did not bother to speak, just hit “end.” That’s right, I wordlessly disconnected a call with the business I was planning to patronize purely for the purpose of limiting my level of interaction with other people. I enjoy this restaurant and bear its employees nothing but good will, but did my actions remotely reflect this? No. I admit they did not.
So then. THEN. I go to Thai House, my mind teeming with satay and moo yang daydreams, and, as I likely deserved, it wound up they are closed until 4:30. Whoever answered the phone would probably happily have told me that, had I not hung up to avoid talking to a fellow human being.
I deserve the wait. To make up for what I’d done, when Gorgeous George hopped on to the yahoo chat and asked me to look over a recent draft of his toast for Paolo and Miss D’s wedding, I suggested that he join me at Thai House later. It is good to have a reason to comb your hair and act human. It’s important to do these things and not hole up in my cave. I’m sure of it. Otherwise I will fall out of practice at being talked to and I will lose whatever magic I might still have, and then how will I ever interact again, as I am striving to do because I have good reasons?
The only thing more attractive to a man than demonstrating for him your lax gag reflex is doing so with a negative pregnancy test. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Love it.
Anna Karina as Angéla with Jean-Claude Brialy as Émile in Une femme est une femme, 1961, directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
A naughty cabaret dancer/singer—one of these days I will track down a scene on youtube and put it up here, she does this one in a sailor outfit that is hilarious—wants a baby (cause you know us women), but her boyfriend is not going for it, so she decides to hook it up with his friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who is always claiming to be in love with her, and sort-of hijinks ensue. It’s actually very witty and offbeat, and it has some fun music in it, too.
Alfred: Answer yes, and I owe you 100₣. Answer no, and you owe me 100₣, okay?
Bar Owner: Okay.
Alfred: Okay. Here’s the question: Can you loan me 100₣?
The Thought Experiment 