Escape

“Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

During my early to mid-teenage years I loved to read novels, or see films, about prisoners of war in Germany or Japan during World War II, and their attempts to escape. A book by Paul Brickhill, Boldness Be My Friend began my fandom of such stories, I think. I'd scour the library for similar tales, and found several.

I've wondered why I had this penchant for prisoner of war escape stories. My conclusion has been that, back in my teen years, I was feeling "imprisoned" by school and home strictures and wanted to escape myself. Or...perhaps I just enjoyed reading about the way human nature adapts, sometimes never gives up - no matter what.

Over the years I've loved, read/seen (more than once) versions of A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute; The Great Escape; Stalag whatever; The Naked Island (that was a grizzly one if I recall correctly); Papillon (1973 version) and others whose titles I now don't recall.

At the weekend I noticed that Turner Movie Channel was showing "King Rat" on Saturday afternoon.

King Rat is a 1965 World War II film directed by Bryan Forbes, starring George Segal and James Fox. They play Corporal King and Marlowe, respectively, two World War II prisoners of war in a squalid camp near Singapore. Among the supporting cast are John Mills and Tom Courtenay. The film was adapted from James Clavell's novel King Rat (1962), which in turn is partly based on Clavell's experiences as a POW at Changi Prison during the Second World War.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/king_rat

We decided to give the movie a whirl. It's an excellent, excellent film - should be much better known! There's a lot more to it than a straightforward POW movie. Escaping isn't an issue in this tale; escape would be virtually impossible due to the geographical situation of the Changi prison camp. The film examines the varied attitudes of individuals to the camp's horrendous circumstances; different psychological ways of dealing with what has to be dealt with. Acting is first class throughout, and many familiar faces (especially familiar to British viewers) pop up frequently.

James Clavell's book is now on my "to read" list - once I get through Winston Graham's 12 Poldark novels of which I'm currently in the midst. 1945 Changi, Singapore will offer quite a culture shock after so many tales of 18th century Cornwall, England!

Music Monday - Stars Being Born - and Re-born

A Star Is Born has been re-made yet again. The 2018 version stars Lady Ga-Ga and Bradley Cooper. I usually feel distinctly cynical about re-makes, they can often be vehicles for the sole purpose of depositing more dosh into the pockets of film industry magnates. This story though, more than most, does lend itself to being re-done - adjusted to fit the current generation's musical tastes and the way the entertainment industry is perceived and experienced.

A Star is Born has a long history. It didn't, as I had suspected, originate as a novel, but began as a 1937 American Technicolor romantic drama film (not a musical) produced by David O. Selznick, directed by William A. Wellman from a script by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker, and her husband Alan Campbell. Nice to see Dorothy Parker's name there! The original film had themes picked up, polished and expanded upon, from a 1932 film What Price Hollywood?

A Star is Born has been re-born three times since 1937, when it starred Janet Gaynor and Frederic March. Each re-make does carry the flavour of its time: the 1954 version starred Judy Garland and James Mason; in the 1976 version Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson led the cast, and in 2018 Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper take the starring roles.



I've seen the 1954 and 1976 versions, though not the original. One reviewer of all three films considered the original to be the best of the lot, mainly due to its superior dialogue and writing.





As it's Music Monday, let's re-listen to a song from the 1976 film, enjoy the sound of Streisand and the sight of Kristofferson - young again !






The new version of this story will be on release in October, we shall see how it measures up, in due course.

Saturday & Sundry Favourite Actors

Couldn't think what to write about this weekend. Apropos of absolutely nothing then, sundry personal thoughts on actors in film and TV dramas.

These actors remain in my A-list whatever they do - I'll happily watch them in anything and everything:

Paul Giamatti

David Strathairn

Matthew McConaughey

Damian Lewis

Simon Baker

No diversity in my list, so far - all male (sorry!) and all white. But there's Danny Glover too - he was great in "Lonesome Dove" - my favourite character in fact - but he, unfortunately, was cast in Lethal Weapon movies with Mel Gibson, which I didn't enjoy. He has starred in some super roles since though.








Former favourites, who in my opinion were spoiled by the direction the industry has sent them:

Bruce Willis -compare Moonlighting to Die Hard and similar violent movies.

James Spader - compare Stargate (which he said he did only for the money, but it's one of my favourites) also his great performances in Boston Legal to ultra violent The Blacklist

Two newer (to me) faces I've started follow: Joel Kinnaman - I first saw him in "The Killing" TV series, and was impressed, then I sniffed him out in a variety of other roles - all very different- he's an excellent actor - one who doesn't simply "play himself" in every role.










And Jeffrey Dean Morgan (as he was in The Good Wife and a few other series). Sadly he has already moved off in the wrong direction for me, with his role in The Walking Dead.










Why don't I have female favourites? I'm not sure. I admire Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, am always happy to see Sarah Lancashire in any role - they are all British. Sometimes the tones of American female actors' voices irritate my ear - that might have a bearing on the dearth of 'em in this list. But let's finish with three of the best of British:

Music Monday ~ Remembering Mistral

I notice that actor Stacy Keach has a birthday coming up soon - born 2 June, 1941. Whenever I think of this actor one role amongst his many springs immediately to my mind, and it's not Mike Hammer (as shown left) but: Mistral from the 1980s TV mini series Mistral's Daughter, an adaptation of a novel by Judith Krantz. This doesn't seem to be one of the best-remembered mini-series generally, but it was one I particularly enjoyed. True, it is a bit chick-flicky, but it's good quality chick-flickiness with added depth. As I recall Mr Keach was required to wear a rusty-red wig in early scenes, it did his complexion no favours at all, but that didn't detract from the good story.

The mini-series' theme song was sung by Nana Mouscouri - remember her, lady of the horn-rimmed spectacles?

It's Music Monday so, here it is... Only Love



Happy birthday on 2nd June, Mr Keach!

Saturday & Sundry Astrological Expectations

Finely drawn characters in books and movies sometimes tempt me to surmise on their astrology. It's a fun way to exercise and strengthen the astrological muscle. Off the top of my head I recall writing posts in that vein about characters from Gone With the Wind; Little Women; A Tale of Two Cities; maybe others too.

Gone with the Wind Zodiacal Connection
Little Women
A Tale of Two Cities: Sydney Carton.

We watched the 2012 film version of Dickens' novel Great Expectations (via Netflix) this week, and it had me pondering on predominant signs and planets for one or two of the novel's main characters. There have been numerous films, mini-series, stage versions of the novel, I've seen a couple of different ones. The 2012 film packs a lot into 2hrs 8 mins, this is a nice version, but David Lean's film from 1946 still lurks in memory, which must mean that the old one had made a very deep impression.

Anyway...on to the characters' characters, astrologically speaking:

Pip ~ Though he's the tale's leading character he comes across as a tad colourless at times, when compared with the rest of the bunch. One telling characteristic of his was his early eagerness to "become a gentleman", to get away from his humble beginnings in a blacksmith's family. Sun in Leo perhaps? Yet Pip wasn't really yer typically bright Leo go-getter, not at first anyway. Leo Moon might be a better fit, with Sun in Pisces - he was always a bit of a romantic dreamer. His stroke of luck, in being able to follow his dreams, funded by an initially anonymous benefactor smells of Jupiter - in first house perhaps, or at mid-heaven.

“The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.”

―"Pip" in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations

Estella ~ In childhood and beyond she was evilly manipulated by Miss Havisham, taught to grow up cold, uncaring, completely without empathy or appreciation of love, so that she would wreak pain on men: Miss Havisham's twisted method of revenge. Difficult one this. Estella would doubtless have become a quite different person altogether had she grown up away from Miss Haversham's influence, and within an average family environment. She didn't crumble though, so must have been, astrologically, made of fairly sturdy stuff. Taurus I'll guess, for either Sun or Moon, or even for both. She was beautiful, Taurus is ruled by Venus, though is still one of the sturdiest of signs.

 Miss Havisham & Pip by Marcus Stone

Miss Havisham ~ Bitter and twisted by her experience of being jilted, turned eccentric and determined to have revenge on men by grooming a young Estella to grow up cold-hearted, unable to feel any emotion. She had stopped all the clocks in her mansion, still wore her wedding gown and lived among her wedding decor many years after the event. Saturn (restriction) Scorpio (dark, obsessive), Uranus (eccentricity). How about Sun in Cancer (Cancer = known to withdraw when in danger of hurt) with Saturn close-by, Scorpio rising, Uranus in first house?

Joe Gargery ~ Pip's relative and father figure. Down-to-earth, simple, patient, generous and good-natured, hard-working blacksmith. Loved, as he would often say, "to have a lark". Capricorn Sun, Mercury in Sagittarius, perhaps.

Magwitch ~ The convict who became Pip's benefactor, after having made a fortune in Australia. Mixture of Scorpio and Sagittarius is the best I can come up with for him. His eternal gratitude to Pip, for a comparatively small amount of help when in dire need, was so profound that Magwitch must have possessed unusual depths of feeling, despite a hardened criminal background.

Warning: Rabbit hole! ~ 11-22-63, Time Travel, George Wallace, Donald Trump, et al. - & Al!

The weekend found me rolling down one of those easily stumbled into internet rabbit-holes.
(NOTE: As the post is longer than normal, with numerous links, it'll remain on top for a couple of days.)

It all started after having watched DVDs of the TV miniseries based on Stephen King's novel 11-22-63. I read and much enjoyed the novel some time ago, was keen to see how the film version stood up, so acquired the 2xDVD set. It stands up reasonably well, in fact, though some detail had to be omitted due to time constraints, even though the mini-series is 450 minutes long. Some elements, including an extra character, have been added in order to better fit the new format. The bones of the story remain easily recognisable, especially in its final turns.

Teeny-tiny nutshell of storyline: Time: the present. A single strand time portal to a certain date in October 1960 is discovered in a Maine diner. Someone decides to use it to try to stop the killing of JFK in 1963 by exiting present, remaining in past for 3 years +, changing past, then returning, having been away from present for only 2 minutes.

In case a passing reader might not want the full story "spoiled", don't read the links above. All I'll say here is that, after the mini-series ended, I was left with a question. "Why was George Wallace so bad?" I was strongly advised by husband to Google for information. This I did. Wiki has it all, also worthy of perusal, an NPR article by Debbie Elliott: Is Donald Trump a Modern-Day George Wallace?

“Sometimes life coughs up coincidences no writer of fiction would dare copy.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63

Fork in rabbit-hole led to: George Wallace's natal chart, HERE. First glance indicates this is the chart of an unbalanced type, with awkward potential! I notice that Wallace had Moon conjunct Regulus. Regulus is what I've always thought to be the catalyst beneath Donald Trump's surprising success. I note that Wallace's time of birth at Astrodatabank, though given "A" rating is based "from memory". I suspect the time could be a bit off at 26.6 Cancer - early Leo rising would be a far better fit - this from my own experience of living with Cancer on the ascendant! Wallace had no Air in his natal chart - that's an important difference between his chart and Trump's.

A blog post at Ohio Astrology next slowed my rabbit-hole descent:
A Fire Moon in the Crowd. The blogger's take on rabble-rousers' astrology is intriguing - do take a look! Wallace is included there, along with Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

At this point, a random "George Wallace" link led me down yet another rabbit-hole fork, to a forum (a few do still manage to exist in this Facebook-heavy world). This forum is, I discovered, a newer version of an old-established forum taken down by its creator fairly recently, perhaps due to net fights or bad feeling surfacing, and lack of a moderator. The new forum :
Generational Theory Forum: The Fourth Turning Forum: A message board discussing generations and the Strauss Howe generational theory.

I gathered that Neil Howe, co-author of that door-stopper of a book "Generations" as well as a later volume, The Fourth Turning, once participated in the forum, as I think did the author of Horoscope for the New Millennium, E. Alan Meece (both books sit on my bookshelf). The forum offers a few good reads, though some exchanges tend to fall into the the tl;dr (too long, did not read) category, when debates arise.

The forum had no focus on George Wallace, I'd landed there due to a single mention of Wallace in a post on the forum by an astrologer. I think this link should go to the thread in question. Forum member "Eric the Green" (E. Alan Meece perchance?) had done extensive research into the natal charts of USA presidents and candidates, historically, allocating a scoring system based on various astrological factors (which I've yet to find detailed). Explanation of his system perhaps existed on the original forum now defunct. George Wallace appeared in a list:
1968: Richard Nixon 17-6*, Hubert Humphrey 11-4**, George Wallace 2-6 J (+ Mars rising)
Didn't convey much to me, but I found a few interesting items while rolling around the forum generally - having fallen down this rabbit-hole, may as well take full advantage of surroundings!

Back on surface ground, what conclusion, if any?

Having been thoroughly disoriented after reading of 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th Turnings I'd almost forgotten about George Wallace! He certainly does appear to have had things in common with Donald Trump. He drew on similar popular feelings of disenchantment with the establishment, and fears of "the other": African Americans in Wallace's time, Muslims and/or Mexicans in 2016.

SPOILER (don't read if looking forward to reading or seeing 11-22-63).
When the time traveller of Stephen King's novel returns to the present after spending 3 (or 5) years in the early 1960s, managing to prevent the assassination of JFK, he finds, to his horror, a very different city (and world) awaits him. He's told that JFK was president for 2 terms, then George Wallace was elected. During intervening years the city had been laid waste through bombing, the population left homeless, starving. We're not told detail in the mini-series, but the novel has it all, and it's pretty darn scary! The sight of what had happened was enough to propel our time travelling character back to 1960 once more, to reverse all that he had wrought.

Time itself had tried, again and again, to warn him that the past should not, could not be changed. The past had "pushed back" against change, made his task difficult, near to impossible, yet he had persevered, determined to carry out the important mission his old friend, Al of the diner, had set for him, and with the best possible intentions.

“The past is obdurate.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63

Thoughts: why would a guy like Wallace have been elected after 2 terms of JFK? The novel has an explanation. Basically, though Republicans were determined to reverse things. Do we have something akin to that now?

The novel and film are pure fiction, of course.

“History doesn't repeat itself, but it harmonizes, and what it usually makes is the devil's music.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63

“For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don't we all secretly know this? It's a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dream-clock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63

That was one messy rabbit-hole!

Arty Farty Friday ~ Julian Schnabel

Although the name did ring a distant bell in my head, I really knew nothing about artist and film maker Julian Schnabel before beginning this post. Schnabel's heyday seems to have been during the 1980s. As well as for his artwork, he's known for the films he has directed: Before Night Falls, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the latter was nominated for four Academy Awards. Schnabel insists he is a painter first and foremost though. His artwork includes a series of "plate paintings", large-scale and set on broken ceramic plates. "Painting is like breathing to me. It’s what I do all the time. Every day I make art, whether it is painting, writing or making a movie". See Wikipedia.

Schnabel's signature works contain an underlying edge of brutality, while remaining suffused with compositional energy. Schnabel claims that he's aiming at an emotional state, a state that people can literally walk into and be engulfed.

A reputation for making brash pronouncements about his importance to the art world - I'm the closest thing to Picasso that you'll see in this fucking life - engendered contempt from both colleagues and the viewing public.

It isn't possible, from posting small images here to get a proper idea of Schnabel's paintings, which are all quite huge. This page at Arts Observer shows a few of his paintings in slightly bigger format than I can; and see the artist's own website. Alternatively, Google Image shows many examples, with access to enlargements.

In 1987 Kristine McKenna, in the LA times article - Julian Schnabel - Artist as Bad Boy began:

Around 1980 the art world became much more corporate and big-business tactics began to be used, and Julian was blamed for a lot of that. But he really did open things up for other artists. "

.......The only thing everyone agrees on when it comes to Julian Schnabel is that it's essential to have an opinion about him. An audacious young painter who skyrocketed to stardom in the early '80s, Schnabel reintroduced the grand, romantic gesture to an art world starving on a diet of '70s Minimalism, and grateful collectors ravenous for high drama feasted at his table. The fact that Schnabel was a flamboyant bon vivant who carried himself more like a pop star than a painter made him an attractive piece of work to the press, which anointed him as the first certifiable art star of the decade.

An outspoken man of provocative opinions, Schnabel titillated the press with his stormy relationships, and his feuds--with dealers Mary Boone and Leo Castelli, and artists Robert Longo, Eric Fischl and David Salle, among others--are well documented. Schnabel resisted, for example, being included in a 1985 Calendar article on young New York artists because, he said, he didn't want to be "corralled with the other jerks."

And ended:

However, for every critical dissection of Schnabel's work, there are reams of outraged prose attacking his personal style. In wading through the volumes that have been written about him, one is struck by the fact that people object to Schnabel not so much for his work but because he somehow violates the mysterious code of behavior that governs the art world. Dozens of lesser artists are allowed to crank out mediocre product in peace, but when it comes to Schnabel, the umpire invariably cries "Foul!"

Ingrid Sischy 's piece in a 2008 issue of Vanity Fair, The Artist in Residence tells of Schnabel's
home, Palazzo Chupi:

...a Pompeii-red palazzo, atop an early-20th-century factory building on the western edge of Greenwich Village. ............
The artist Julian Schnabel is famous—too famous—for possessing such a big ego that he thinks he can do anything....... a stop-you-in-your-tracks work of architecture he’s just now finishing up in Greenwich Village. Plunked smack on top of the early-20th-century factory building where the artist has long lived and worked on far West 11th Street is a Pompeii-red palazzo, stuccoed on the outside, with five huge residences, plus a studio for Schnabel, some serious exhibition space, and a swimming pool fit for Citizen Kane. The place looks as if it began life in Venice on the Grand Canal, somehow floated up the Hudson River, moored on the West Side Highway, then hoisted itself atop its three-story “pedestal.” The building even has a fanciful name, announced on its front: Palazzo Chupi, after the nickname of Schnabel’s Spanish wife, Olatz.
"I do what I want and I guess that makes some people nervous," says the 36-year-old artist during a conversation at his cavernous Manhattan studio.

Adding to the air of eccentricity Schnabel enjoys, he wears pyjamas as daywear.

ASTROLOGY

Born on 26 October 1951 in Brooklyn, New York - no time of birth is known, chart is set for noon.

 Hat-tip for photograph  HERE

I wouldn't immediately see this as the natal chart of an out-and-out eccentric - Schnabel isn't one of those anyway. True eccentrics don't know they are being eccentric, Schnabel knows exactly what he's doing when he acts in ways that are not "mainstream", even for those in his arty farty circles.

The Scorpio/Virgo mix, which makes up a large part of his personality, isn't as contrasting as one might at first suspect. The intensity and passion of Scorpio Sun/Mercury can sit fairly easily with Moon/Mars/Venus in Virgo's demands to organise, work hard, seek perfection.

The undercurrent of non-mainstream in Schnabel's nature comes, I believe, from Uranus, the planet of eccentricity in Cancer, situated in sextile to his Virgo cluster, and in trine to Mercury in Scorpio.

Jupiter, planet of excess and expansiveness, out on its own in Aries, seems to form a "handle" or "funnel" for the main grouping of his natal planets, as well as sitting in opposition to Saturn, planet of restriction and structure. Schnabel's large-scale artwork smells of Jupiter to me! The Jupiter-Saturn opposition adds a little something to that non-mainstream undercurrent already mentioned - it's a symbolic tug-of-war between opposite traits: expansiveness and restriction.

Labyrinthe

This week we watched a DVD of Parts 1 and 2 of the TV miniseries, Labyrinth, an adaptation of a well-received 2005 novel, same title, by Kate Mosse. The miniseries was shown on the CW channel in the US earlier this year, in Canada, Europe, UK and elsewhere in 2012/13.

I had somehow picked up the idea that time travel was involved in the tale, so was eager to see the TV film version. I was wrong about time travel, there wasn't any - or not in the way I'd expected. The tale alternates between 13th century Carcassonne, a fortified town in Languedoc, in the southern part of France, and modern day Carcassonne.

As the presentation begins we're given some information about Carcassonne, and the Cathars

.....a goosebump arose during the following shot (no image available), when a word that has haunted this blog recently - "genocide" is mentioned. I was not expecting that!


The film begins in present-day France. A young woman, Dr. Alice Tanner, is visiting Carcassonne to deal with a bequest to her from an aunt who had lived in the town. During the vacation Alice had volunteered to work on a local archeological dig. She finds a rusty piece of ancient jewellery among the rubble; then, some minor earth tremors seem to disorient her. She, unwisely, wanders into a nearby hidden cave, discovers three skeletons, and and a ring carrying a labyrinth design. On the wall of the cave she finds inscribed the words "PAS à PAS" (step by step). Stunned, she leaves the cave only to run into a vision of fires surrounding the area, women in strange clothing all running into the flames, one woman holding aloft what appears to be a book.

That was just for hors d'oeuvre, the credits now appear.

I don't remember the order in which events unfold, but enough to say that there's some very dodgy and dangerous business going on in both present day, and 1209 Carcassonne. It's all because of that yawn-inducing element, popular in so many books and films: The Holy Grail! Even the Monty Pythons had a go at The Grail, long ago!

Alice Tanner, it turns out, has some ancestral connection to a young herbalist and healer, a noblewoman who lived in 1209 Carcassonne, her name: Alais. Alais had an evil sister, Oriane (there's always an evil sister isn't there?) Alice continues to experience flashes of visions of events from 1209. The story proceeds very slowly, as we try to untangle hints dropped, not very casually, here and there. The Holy Grail, it seems, in this story anyway, isn't a chalice but a set of three books of very ancient secrets: Book of Words, Book of Numbers and Book of Potions, kept safe throughout many centuries by three guardians. However, by the end of the film we've also been told, by an extremely long-lived and wise Audric Baillard (John Hurt's character), that The Grail isn't the books at all. So....all premises kind of collapsed in a heap, and left us utterly confused.

I didn't hate the film, but thought it could have been done better. I felt no enthusiasm to read the novel. I remarked to husband that, if the film had been made maybe thirty years or so ago, it'd have likely been a much better representation of the story told by the novel - but that'd be an impossibility - the novel hadn't been written then! I got the feeling that the 1209 scenes, beautifully scenic and dramatic as most were, fell down somewhat when it came to representation of the 1209 characters, and general tone of the dialogue in those scenes. It seemed, to me, as though sensibilities hadn't shifted much from 1209 to 2014.

I'll not say more about plot detail, other than that the story did encourage me to search around for further information on the Cathars, whose beliefs were at the heart of all the troubles involved in the Labyrinthe's theme.

Cathars were extremely unpopular with the Pope of 1209, and with the Roman Catholic church in general - so unpopular that the Pope initiated a crusade to wipe out the whole culture (another example of genocide). Not only did Cathar beliefs undermine Roman Catholic doctrines, the Cathars refused to pay tithes to the RC church - and that was enough to get the Pope hoppin' mad -because as we know, it was, and is, always about the money - and the control.

For any passing reader interested, here's a link to a set of information pages on Cathars and related subjects. I've borrowed the first few paras:

Catharism and the Cathars of the Languedoc

Did this peace-loving Gnostic Christian sect hold important secrets before they were exterminated by the Roman Catholic Church, its Crusaders and its Inquisitors ?

The Cathars were a religious group who appeared in Europe in the eleventh century, their beliefs something of a mystery. Records from the Roman Church mention them under various names and in various places, occasionally throwing light on basic beliefs The Roman Church debated with itself whether they were Christian heretics or whether they were not Christians at all. In the Languedoc, famous at the time for its high culture, tolerance and liberalism, Catharism took root and gained more and more adherents during the twelfth century. By the early thirteenth century it was probably the majority religion in the area, supported by the nobility as well as the common people. This was too much for the Roman Church, some of whose own priests had become Cathars. Worst of all, Cathars refused to pay their tithes.

Innocent III, called a formal crusade, appointing a series of leaders, to head his holy army. There followed over forty years of war against the indigenous population. During this period, some 600,000 men women and children were massacred; the Counts of Toulouse, their vassals were dispossessed and humiliated, and their lands annexed to France. Educated and tolerant rulers were replaced by relative barbarians; the Dominican Order was founded and the Inquisition, was established to wipe out the last vestiges of resistance; persecutions of Jews and other minorities were initiated; the height culture of the Troubadours was lost; lay learning was discouraged; tithes were enforced; the Languedoc started its economic decline, and the language of the area, Occitan started its descent from one of the foremost languages in Europe to a regional dialect.

At the end of the extirpation of the Cathars, the Church had convincing proof that a sustained campaign of genocide can work. It also had the precedent of an internal Crusade within Christendom, and the machinery of the first police state. This crusade was one of the greatest disasters ever to befall Europe. Catharism is often said to have been completely eradicated by the end of the fourteenth century. Yet there are more than a few vestiges even today, apart from the enduring memory of their martyrdom and the ruins of the famous castles. There are even people claiming to be modern Cathars.

Always Too Late

Over the weekend we watched a couple of very different films, different but with an oddly similar factor involved, a factor which could also be applied to our real life situation in 2014.

The two films: from 2011, Margin Call (on DVD); and from this year, shown on HBO on Sunday night, The Normal Heart.

Margin Call is set in a Wall Street investment bank, on the cusp of the 2007/8 financial crisis; The Normal Heart is set in the gay community of early 1980s New York City, when a crisis has arisen with a then unidentified disease killing off, at an alarming rate, a specific group of people: gay men; the film deals with the rise of HIV-AIDS, and founding of an advocacy group. It's a heart-rending story, difficult to watch at times.

On the surface of it "crisis" seems to be the only common denominator. Something extra occurred to me as I watched The Normal Heart on Sunday, remembering dialogue from Margin Call, seen a couple of evenings before. Time and again in Margin Call, as word spread up the investment bank's hierarchical ladder, the person on the next higher rung would say exactly what his colleagues on previous rungs of the ladder had said to the lowly employee who had stumbled across something darkly sinister in the statistics: "Explain this situation to me purely in layman's terms", or "Tell me exactly as you would explain it to a child, you know I don't understand this stuff". Gob-smacking! (I know the film is a work of fiction, but I suspect there is basis in real life). Even more gob-smacking was when another employee stated that, on several occasions, earlier warnings of something going wrong had been passed up the line, but all these had been routinely ignored.

In The Normal Heart (adapted from a play by Larry Kramer, partly autobiographical), warnings of a disastrous outcome to an unidentified plague were being ignored by those on high, ignorance was being spread, not a single person in a position of power would do anything to help finance proper research. They didn't understand, they didn't want to understand. Even some of the gay men objected to the one person who began fighting very hard for their cause.

What people in both films saw as their entitled way of life, pleasures, level of income, place in the world, was not going to be made available for change under any circumstances. Examples of people in the top layers of finance or governance not being of sufficient caliber to understand and act immediately on these extremely serious situations, and not having enough moral core to care, even though dire warnings were being passed to them.....And then it was too late.

Ring any bells? C-c-c-c-c-climate change?

Rambles on Boundaries and the Edge

Having recently watched both film versions (1944 and 1984) of Somerset Maugham's novel The Razor's Edge, I thought about writing a post on either the films' theme ("finding oneself" and/or the meaning of life) or the relative quality of each film version. The novel's and films' title comes from a verse in the Katha-Upanishad. (The Upanishads are a collection of Vedic texts), and is translated as: "the sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard."

The Razor's Edge tells the story of an American guy traumatised by experiences in World War I. Back home after the war, he renounces the materialism around him to seek transcendent meaning in his life. Culmination of his search takes him to a monastery high in the mountains of India. I haven't read the novel, but from what I can gather it seems both films omit much detail of the main character's travels and adventures, as well as the way life is proceeding, in his absence, for the circle of friends he left behind. (Photographs: Tyrone Power in the leading role in the 1944 film version; Bill Murray took the lead in the 1984 version).

 Feast Before Altar of Terminus  (Castiglione 1642)

However, when I noticed that tomorrow, 23 February, was the date of yet another Roman festival, Terminalia, in honour of their god Terminus, an oblique detour from my original intentions opened up.

Terminus, Roman god and protector of boundary markers; his name was the Latin word for such a marker, in our world the milestone is the boundary marker's descendant. Sacrifices were performed to sanctify each boundary stone, landowners celebrated "Terminalia" in Terminus' honor each year on February 23, which was also their last day of the Roman year. The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill was thought to have been built over a shrine to Terminus, and he was occasionally identified as an aspect of Jupiter under the name "Jupiter Terminalis". I've already rattled on about Terminus, by the way, in an old post HERE. (Wikipedia HERE and HERE)


It might not seem so at first glance, but there is a loose link between The Razor's Edge and Terminus, Roman god of boundaries: knife-edge/razor's edge = an extremely narrow boundary.

So.. a ramble around the general topic of boundaries.

First thought was along the lines that all boundaries are man-made, defined by the power-hungry for purposes of profit and control. That's not accurate, of course, nature has her boundaries. Most basic of these: earth's continents are constantly moving due to motions of the tectonic plates, the border between two tectonic plates is called a boundary. All the tectonic plates are constantly moving — very slowly — around the planet, but in many different directions. Some are moving toward each other, some are moving apart, and some are sliding past each other. Because of these differences, tectonic plate boundaries are grouped into three main types......For more see HERE.

Astrologers define boundaries relevant to their profession. "Out-of-bounds planets" are any that have a declination greater than 23 degrees 27’. The declination is the angular distance of a planet north or south of the celestial equator. Out-of-Bounds simply means “outside of the boundary of the ecliptic”. Because of the tilt of the earth’s axis, the sun appears to stay within 23 degrees 27’ north of the equator and 23 degrees 27’ south of the equator. Anything “outside” of that is considered “out-of-bounds”.
More HERE.


Back to the original and more visible earthly boundaries.

An ancient custom of "beating the bounds" is still carried out in parts of England and Wales. Members of a community walk the boundaries of their parish, usually led by the parish priest and church officials. Purpose of this exercise, historically, was to share knowledge of where the boundaries lay, and to pray for protection and blessings for the lands. In the past, knowledge of the limits of each parish needed to be handed down so that such matters as liability to contribute to the repair of the church, and the right to be buried within the churchyard were not disputed. The custom dates from Anglo-Saxon times, it's thought that it may have been derived from the Roman Terminalia, a festival celebrated on February 22 in honour of Terminus, the god of landmarks, to whom cakes and wine were offered, sports and dancing taking place at the boundaries. More HERE.

Combined thoughts of boundaries and English history brings to mind the enclosures of common and waste land on which parishioners had always been free to graze their stock. The enclosure laws sought to enclose common land and reduce and rearrange the long strips of land previously used for growing crops. From the late 16th century onward such change became common, often amid much protest. Under the open field system, several landowners had strips in each large field, probably arranged originally to give everyone a fair share of good and bad land. At enclosure, land was re-apportioned between the various landowners, in general putting land together and swapping it around, so that larger closes were formed within the larger fields to replace the smaller field strips. Wealthy inhabitants were likely to find the changes advantageous, but many of the smallholders and cottagers who had relied on common grazing were forced to move to towns and cities to find work. Enclosure made agriculture more efficient but at huge cost to many living in rural communities. See HERE.

Finally, while I cringe at the very thought of a dog ever being chained, there's this quote from an unfinished novel The Pale King, by David Foster Wallace (born 21 February 1962) . The novel was left unfinished because the author committed suicide in 2008 defining the boundary to his own life. The idea in this sad quotation puts acceptance of boundaries in a rather different light.

 Hat-tip to Wolfer Magic

What he'd do, he'd never go out to the length of the chain. He'd never even get out to where the chain got tight. Even if the mailman pulled up, or a salesman. Out of dignity, this dog pretended like he chose this one area to stay in that just happened to be inside the length of the chain. Nothing outside of that area right there interested him. He just had zero interest. So he never noticed the chain. He didn't hate it. The chain. He just up and made it not relevant. maybe he wasn't pretending--maybe he really up and chose that little circle for his own world. He had a power to him. All of his life on that chain..