| Welcome to Fabula's Journal! |
[14 Oct 2016|12:54pm] |
This is a friends-locked journal, containing occasional blather (punctuated by long silence) about my own writing, other people's writing, writing I might get to one day, writing other people might get to one day, writing I have read about somewhere, and, upon occasion, actual writing. To see any of the above, please comment below so I can add you to my friends-list.
Things to note: Please understand, I will probably not add a blank journal, the journal of anyone under eighteen, or a journal with little to no userinfo.
A note to fic translators: Please consider all non-original writing as being in the public domain, and thus you may translate anything you wish into any language you please without asking me or even notifying me. It would be kind of you to keep my name attached somewhere, but seriously, what am I gonna do, call my lawyers? The internets is for fun, so go have some. (Touch the original stuff, however, and I will actually call those lawyers. Hang on, I bet LJ has some ads for cheesy copyright lawyers right over here in this annoying sidebar.)
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| one more HBP review. |
[02 Aug 2009|07:14pm] |
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I can make this short and sweet: I thought this was an extraordinarily bad film. Or maybe that’s too kind – maybe it would be more accurate to say this film was just bad in all the ordinary ways films are bad. I went with no crystal-clear memories of the book other than general plot outlines in my head, so this is not a post about faulting a film for lack of fidelity to a book. I’m sure there are lots of posts out there dissecting and discussing that aspect much more articulately than I could. My point is, I went totally prepared to take the film on its own merits, with little or no reference to the book, right?
( Yeah, my mistake. )
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| movie review |
[19 Jul 2009|10:43am] |
(No, not THAT movie.)
I just finished watching a film that's about ten years old, Trembling Before G-d. It's an independent documentary film about the lives and struggles of gay and lesbian Orthodox and Hasidic Jews -- not a large-budget production, which possibly explains why they couldn't afford the extra vowel.
I found myself wondering if the film would be any different if it had been made today and not ten years ago. Have any of the cultural shifts and progress trickled through to the Orthodox and Hasidic communities when it comes to dealing with their gay sons and daughters and nephews and nieces and grandchildren and congregants? As the non-Orthodox Jewish community becomes more accepting, and as society at large becomes more matter-of-fact about gayness, does this have any effect on the Orthodox and Hasidic community, or has that simply strengthened their intransigence? I'd be curious to know more.
Also, there was one part where I had to fast forward in distaste. One of the most interesting individuals the film followed was a middle-aged Orthodox gay man who, in his youth, had gone through all sorts of (painfully literal) contortions in order to "change," to not be gay any longer. He had gone through interminable counseling, humiliating aversive rituals -- all sorts of really damaging stuff. But he seemed, in many ways, the film's most appealing, balanced, and articulate individual. Anyway, they had him fly back to meet with the rabbi that he first came out to as a young man, and who had first counseled him to seek therapy and a "cure." And all the while, he's talking about how kind this rabbi is, how gentle and understanding, how he's got sweet eyes, and when we meet him, you can really see it, too -- here is a gentle and kind older man. So I was appalled at the impulse to stand there with a camera and have the guy say, yeah, you remember that advice you gave me, IT SUCKED. I couldn't watch, and it seemed to me a violation of two very important Jewish principles: a) you never embarrass or publicly humiliate anyone, and b) you are grateful to any teachers you ever had, even if most of what they taught you was wrong and only one tiny kernel of it was true. There's a saying about being grateful to someone who taught you even the smallest letter of the aleph-bet. Even if you later realize that your teacher was wrong, or that you have "moved beyond" your teacher, you find something to be grateful for.
It was a film about intense personal suffering, but part of me rebels at it. It's easy to assume, watching films like this, that gayness is all about suffering, and there's a delicate psychological line there -- if gays suffer so much, a viewer might think, then maybe it means they should be suffering, that suffering is somehow an ontological part of gay existence. It's a bit like if you constructed your whole notion of Judaism from Schindler's List. Making endless films about Jewish suffering leads to the idea that Jewishness is all about suffering, which leads to the whole notion of divinely ordained, punitive Jewish suffering, which leads to, which leads to. So it's a thing: how do you document and bear witness to the oppression of a minority without letting consciousness of oppression dominate an outsider's understanding of minority identity? How do you lead outsiders into the secret treasury of joy that characterizes that experience?
So, I dunno. Any readers out there want to share their perceptions of the intersection of Jewishness and gayness?
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| HURRAY! |
[25 May 2009|10:57am] |
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This is just a "share the joy" kind of post, because I felt like, well, sharing the joy!
Those of you who know me and have dealt with my constant where-the-hell-did-I-put-thatness will appreciate the squee of this. About four years ago, my laptop crashed, spectacularly. (I adore Macs, but they do this to me with distressing regularity. Although, I have a Toshiba laptop now, and it's developed a chronic cough and rheumy eyes, so come to think of it, it may not be a computer problem at all.) Anyway, I GOT IT ALL BACK!!!
Every last file I thought was lost forever. A friend of ours swooped in a few years ago and took it to a Mac hospital in her city for me, and they fixed it, and she came into town this weekend and brought it with her, AND ALL MY STUFF IS THERE! Short stories that I can now send out that I had been too disheartened to try to rewrite, fanfic I thought I would never see original copies of again, in-progress fanfic I had given up on -- oh, this delicious West Wing story I've been hankering for for years! Because this world needs more Leo McGarry/Lord John Marbury, about a decade after everyone stopped caring, but the point is, IT'S THERE! IT'S THERE!
I feel whole as a writer again, literally.
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| how Nazis are pricks, part ????? |
[21 May 2009|12:38pm] |
This may be the most unabashedly phallic political poster I have ever seen.
I'm just. . . agape. I have been sifting through an assload of Nazi images because of a writing project I'm working on, this one just made me guffaw. Because look, it even has a glans! with giant-tumescent-balls swastika! and people streaming to it like a hairy happy trail of deluded morons, come to worship the cock!
Okay, sorry. It's just that I've been buried in image after horrific image, and it finally just feels good to LAUGH at the fucking fuckers, ya know? Umberto Eco was right; it's not rebellion that is the enemy of authority, but laughter.
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| So, in the tradition of Tom Sawyer and that picket fence. |
[04 May 2009|09:56pm] |
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Dear Flist At Large:
There are things I need to know about, in a writerly sort of way. By which I mean, I need to know enough to sound like I know what I'm talking (writing) about, without actually having to do any bone-cracking legwork. That's what you are for, mighty flist! And then, of course, the flist knows all. So I'm betting there are oodles of you out there who know tons about any of the following.
Oh, I know! Think of this like a fest, see? *puts things in words the fen will understand* See, the deal is, you grab a prompt, and then you write about it, yes? You can even grab more than one!!1!!
Okay, go:
1) Berlin from 1935 - 1945. Intimate familiarity with period street maps a plus.
2) Polio. Both acute infection and post-polio syndrome.
3) Charcoal drawings. Can they be dated? If handed a random charcoal sketch, how could you estimate when/where it might have been done? Would you rely more on the kind of paper used, or the particular brand/kind of charcoal?
4) The precise chronology of the escalating persecution and final deportation of Berlin's Jews. Most helpful would be a timeline spread over a period of months and years. Bonus points for annotation and references.
4) Freebie. Anything else you think I ought to know about but clearly don't, and this is your chance to tell me.
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| Adventures in Judaism, part II |
[13 Apr 2009|09:20pm] |
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Some memories of this past week's seders, cobbled together.
We went to the home of some dear friends for first night seder, and for our kids, it was Disney World. "Wow," my eldest breathed, as I took them out into the back yard to work off a little energy before showtime. "Their house backs right up to a ballpark!"
"Um, no it doesn't," I had to explain. "That's their baseball diamond." I thought 'eyes like saucers' was a figure of speech until I saw hers. And then the littlest Rasinet streaked off to go roll in the dirt of the diamond. In her Pesach dress, like some poorly trained Labradoodle on top of a dead squirrel.
( Well, things could have been worse. )
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| davening bunny |
[12 Apr 2009|06:39pm] |
Exhibit B in My Family's Interfaith Strangeness. This one, I did not arrange; Rasinet La Jeune was responsible for this particular still life, while my back was turned.
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| Matzah peeps! |
[11 Apr 2009|09:43pm] |
Welcome to my family. This pretty much says it all.
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| Adventures in Judaism, Part One |
[06 Apr 2009|08:38pm] |
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I’ve been pretty mum – okay, entirely mum – on LJ about Things Religious in my life. I’m breaking that silence now, for those who are interested, so consider this installment one in my “Adventures in Judaism” series. For those of you who generally come here to read my other writing and posting, feel free to click on by; I’m trusting you to filter yourself out if you want. All religion posts will remain unlocked, so there's no need to friend this journal to read those.
So this past Shabbat I got to visit a piece of American Jewish history: Boston’s Havurat Shalom. What was it like? Well, the best way I can describe it is this: ( Mea Shearim meets Woodstock. )
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| Numb3rs fic |
[05 Mar 2009|05:07pm] |
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Fannish writing, yay! I'm having such fun! I'm in love with Numb3rs, and I'm showing all the early warning signs: ignoring actual worthwhile activities in favor of glazing out in front of more episodes; red-rimmed eyes from late-night fic reading; an uncontrollable twitch whenever I hear the words "Don" or "Charlie." (Those of you who know my family know this last is a problem.)
I've even gotten over wondering why Dr. Fleischmann is wandering around LA wearing a shoulder holster and a badge. (Moment of silence for Cicely, please. Okay, moment of silence over, pop in another episode already.) Anyway, this is two smaller pieces, just about 1100 words total. There is a much much longer piece I am finishing that should be available for posting in the next few days. You should think of the following vignettes as first/second season compliant, though truthfully, they could probably wedge anywhere.
Short Fic, nothing explicit
Don/Charlie implied
( Seeing Alan )
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