the happiest wedding dance ever!

found here

I've Got a Crush On: the movie Parenthood

Grandma: You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster.

Gil: Oh?
Grandma: Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride!
Gil: What a great story.
Grandma: I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn't like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.

This movie became an instant classic to me the moment I saw it as a teenager. Years later, at 35 years old, it still remains a top ten favorite of mine, a movie worth revisiting yearly. The first time I saw Parenthood it represented a dream to me: that someone from a fucked up place could make a family able to love one another and thrive. Who best to represent childhood pain with a friendly face than Steve Martin and this movie family of his: the Buckman's? One of my favorite, most beloved faces in Hollywood, Steve Martin is true genius. His gifts are prodigious- the turns simple lines into heartwarming moments of human connection or struggle without souring into a character of himself; a true achievement for a man who primarily plays men who are caricatures of one kind or another, representing a 'type' but pulled from type and made into something unique and entirely entertaining.

In Parenthood Martin was partnered brilliantly with Mary Steenburgen as husband and wife of three children, the oldest who suffers from some kind of anxiety disorder that leads to the hilarious argument in the Principal's office about why their son is so nervous, ending with Gil accusing his wife of smoking pot 'like a chimney' in college. The sweet and steady love between the two- even though obviously stressed throughout the movie- was addictive to me. That is what I wanted. A life like anyone had- one that could and would get messy, complicated and stressful- with a partner to walk through it with, in it with me, for better or worse.

Parenthood extends beyond Gil's immediate family to include a cast of beautifully, hilariously executed characters: Gil's emotionally stunted father, long suffering mother and black sheep brother ( played touchingly by the great F. Murray Abraham from another of my favorite movies, Amadeus ) who brings home a 'surprise' son he named...Cool. There are two other sisters and their extended families and dramas that are included in the movie's plot, and all work together seamlessly in set pieces that are instant classics. There is the Keanu Reeves character who famously says '... they even make you get a license to fish! but any butt reamin' asshole can be a father. ' Joaquin Phoenix ( ' Leaf ' at the time ) plays the deeply troubled son of Gil's sister, with a haunted, intelligent intensity that is a clear foreshadowing of the young man ahead. There is the scene where the lights go out on a large family dinner and someone brings out a vibrator saying ' I found a flashlight! ' to find it buzzing away as the lights go back on. A child asks ' What IS that?' and a crafty adult answers ' An electric ear-cleaner ' to which Grandma remarks ' Oh my that's large!'

The sway between the enormous love of family and the reality of the depth of wounding we can do to one another, and how that is or is not passed on to our children - this is the beating heart of this movie, layered in sweet and laugh out loud scenes of family life.

See it!
( the opening scene alone makes me tear up and laugh, a good indicator
for the entire rest of the movie- or just my neurotic emotional state )

how to make a baby

How to Make a Baby from Cassidy Curtis on Vimeo.

this is the house that love built

This pregnant woman

snuck up on this painting man

after they had slept on this way too small bed

while waiting for the drying of half the room of this little girl

who is a sister to this Jujitsu obsessed boy

who is a brother to this gone-away to Sea Camp boy.

for like ever

way too expensive for me at $60 but a girl can look !!

sent by proxy

sludge
heavy footed slogging
through the front yard.
after this discussion, my feet
sink into the grass as if made
of anchors; i am thrown overboard
to ballast this household with my ankles
bound, drawn down to the ocean
floor with my mouth like a live eel,
working electricity.

darkness
spills like squid ink across my retina,
there is nothing to see but the
phosphorescence of some adaptive
creature; i cannot glow, no matter
how tightly i squeeze my eyes:
there is no getting used to this.

long iron links sway upward.
land dwellers hold court in the ship;
i can hear echoes of your chatter
like sonic booms in the deep.

sand paper skin snatches match lit
heat across my face, something
has come close to biting me in half
and i am sitting with my shackled
hands and feet, holding the boat
in place. the sand snaps like pirrahna,
a thousand hot bites of red plum flesh
rubbed to pinkish sap of sting.

nothing reaches me here.
time stretches across the dark heft
of liquid and against every inch of
my body; i feel the patience of
death breathing open mouthed and
dark around my form. i am
engulfed in the mouth of that whale.

i breathe salt, my skin bubbles with
pustulence. seaweed lashes detach
and ride away in the smooth humming;
teeth give way and coral grows from the
gut of gum; a slick fish flickers in the
dim light of my eye. small scales
run over each other like waves on shore,
disappearing human markings with each
shiny silver curve.

some primordial slimed beast
attaches to my back, the barnacles
find knobby joints to suck, and
i find my nipples aglow with the
green illusion of light. a mermaid
tail smacks my face; i have
become lost to the land of make believe.

no one can hear me here; my mouth
opens, fills with the belly of ocean,
i vomit the scat and chum and the rest
fills my body like a balloon; i pop
as a blowfish and find myself useless
as anchor.

floating
to the calling surface, the
flap of sun on wave front, the sketching
of salt against boat side, the skittering
vocals of gulls, i imagine you will
pull me in, and this will all be over.

seaweed
hair against your chest,
naked and stripped of scale,
you will open my mouth and
hold me as i wretch and heave
and tremble in fury, and i will
never let you send me proxy again

weighing in for what you cannot hold on to.

maggie may ethridge old poem, undated

Lola Moon, Summer 2010

cake on the lips, wind in the hair, world in her eyes

You're So Vain, You Probably Think This Post Is About You

Don't you?

Having revealed myself as a jealous insane woman of a certain age, I mentioned sadly to Mr. Curry, my mouth full of Subway, I'm really vain, honey. He looked at me and laughed, said his tag line to me- You are occasionally ridiculous. Of course he knows I'm vain. This is the same man that listened to me debate out loud whether or not another baby was really worth the possibility of ruining my incredible luck with pregnancy so far: no stretch marks, no sagging skin or breasts, no cave like vagina, no constant urine drip, no irascible fat. It wasn't a true inner debate, but the worries, the resistance was real.

Well. I am the kind that isn't vain until I am not in control over my body and face ( which really is all the time, but don't tell me ). I work out, lift weights, eat healthy organic foods to my heart's content and crappy processed food in moderation, wear a bra almost 24-7 ( please no lectures on breast cancer risk- I am sure the four years of nursing and lifetime of eating healthy and exercising will balance ) wear head to toe day to day sunblock and take good care of my skin. With these efforts, I go through my days mostly unthinking of my face and body, only the calm awareness of gratitude I have for a healthy body. Until something happens. Something like a cannon ball being inserted into my abdomen and two times the normal fluid levels swell up my face and body and an inability to exercise as I'm used to leaves me feeling haggard and frumpy and weighing more than I have in my entire life. I didn't weigh this much at 9 months pregnant with Lola. I started out this time older and fatter. Also, married, happier and stable, but try selling that consolation prize to my ass.

Pregnant sex has just rounded that corner from incredibly hot and constant to slightly ridiculous. I mean come ON. I'm normally an extremely passionate, sexually driven person, even now in my thirties, and so is Mr. Curry, it's part of our thing, what makes our marriage tick even when the tock is off. But how can I take my own passions seriously when my stomach bounces against his abdomen like a water balloon about to burst? When he tickles me in the wrong place and I worry about peeing on him? When my breasts have funny crumbly stuff on the nipples? When...hey! Did you stop reading just now? I don't blame you. And just proves my point. Sex is already kind of ridiculous, it's fumbly mumbly bumpy humpy grunting noise making fun fun stuff that leaves you as helpless and vulnerable and prickly as a wet cat. There are moments of graceful sensuality, but there is a reason sex is not shown as is in porno; who wants to watch a middle age man's face turn beet red and make a noise like a balloon with the air slowly leaking out?

So excuse ME if I'm not completely enlightened when a sleek cat like dark skinned girl with a beautiful bubble butt in short shorts swings her flexing thighs in front of my husband's face while I sit, swollen and freckle faced and makeup less, in a shirt riding slightly up my large belly and pants that are airy and comfortable makes me a little crazy with jealousy. It's not having anything to do with Mr. Curry. As the amazingly articulate and gentlemanly Scott from The Kardashian's reassures his insecure wife who just had a baby, Honey you know I try to stick it to you all the time. Mr. Curry has loved me since we were teenagers, waited for me for ten years to love him back, and lusted after me enough in this marriage alone to fill ten harems with happy women. He looks at me with lust daily, and whatever he sees in my face, it's not the same older but still me everyone else sees- he sees me, just like he always has. The compliments, the attention, to look in his eyes could be more than enough for another pregnant woman.

Well. I am occasionally, slightly ridiculous.

I also attribute my fierce protectiveness of my health and that horrible word that makes women sound like breeding horses, up-keep, to the years and years behind and ahead of us with Mr. Curry unable to keep his hands off me. So sometimes, if that attentiveness slides into the crazy jealous insecurities of a woman possessed. ( I think possessed is a fair word for the state of pregnancy, when another life literally lives inside of you ) then who can blame me?

I'm single handedly protecting the sacred union of marriage!!! *

What about Mr. Curry? I heard you asking. What up-keep is he responsible for? Are you a feminist damnit, or what!? I'll tell you my what. My what is that like many women writers I've known; first of all there is how he looks at me with those eyes, there is the intelligence, the hands, the strength and integrity of spirit ( is his soul straight? oh that is hot ), does he really like women ( so many men, it turns out, don't actually really like women- maybe they just like you, but Mr. Curry likes women- just me the best ) the curve of his ass ( ok this is just looks, but I really never liked a flat ass ) hygiene, ( not too much- I once had a boyfriend who brushed his teeth four times a day and his hair more than I did, but not too little, either ) smell ( Mr. Curry's armpits are sex and home) and then the regulars, humor, adventure, family. And then, the upkeep: What I need from Mr. Curry are his devotions to me as a woman in the singular, quirky ways I need them, to not get really overweight, ( I have to admit this would be hard for me ) to keep up his hygiene, to never linger too long in his looks to a beautiful woman, ( which he could care about 5% is I do the same to a man ) to brag on me the way he always has, and a bunch of other small trivialities that make up the enormous puzzle of a long marriage. We meet each other's needs not because we demand that they be the same, but that they both be valued.

Actually I have no idea what Mr. Curry needs from me to stay in lust. I have a feeling it simply involves keeping potato chip crumbs out of my stomach folds and washing my face. My demands are on myself and I certainly ask for more from Mr. Curry than he asks from me.

Why this last week alone I've requested he stop spitting in front of me, pluck his nosehairs, trim his facial hair and stop wearing so much deodorant! I think on Wednesday he asked me to stop wearing thongs because if I get another infection and we can't have sex he's going to lose it.

* Did I mention I'm vain?

Inception -Movie Review *warning, some spoilers*

In third grade, I stood on the hot San Diego playground of my elementary school, feet planted on the blacktop, suddenly acutely and astonishingly aware of the hundreds of small bodies that teemed around me; aware of their lives, their fragility, and two things occured to me at once: all of these children will one day be dead- and- no one can prove to me that this is real. Inception is a movie hand crafted for the neurotic and expansive inner life of people like me, who never stop wondering at the strangeness of life and reality itself.

As the now famous David asked in his video: Is this real life? ...and Queen continued: Or is this fantasy?

This movie tells the story of Leo Decaprio's character Dom Cobb, a man seemingly without any roots but his children that have been somehow- we aren't told at first- kept from him in the US while he floats in expat hell working his magicks around the globe. Those magicks, we learn after an intense and what feels immediately dreamlike opening sequence, are the science of invading and controlling a person's dreams. Dreamlike? No, we realize, this is the stuff of dreams. The opening scene is taking place in what is in fact a dream, complex and bizarre as dreams are, with layers of memory and the actual bodies of the dreamer and dream-invaders all layered in the scene, coming forth one from the other in a perfect bloom and retract dance that engages the audience completely.

Cobb is the action character, we assume, the ringmaster and dynamic. Other minor characters help Cobb invade the dreams of a person by simultaneously all being hooked up to the same drug cocktail while someone in real life watches all their sleeping bodies. The mission is to find out an innermost secret that they have been hired to obtain, which in dreamland is locked in a vault or prison, representing of course the subconscious and it's desire to protect itself. In Inception, the subconscious is a leading character; a man or woman of a thousand faces showing up in dreams as hundreds of 'extras' that roam around the cities and villages of dreams. As the dream continues, the subconscious of the person dreaming slowly realizes that an invader is present, and the 'extras' begin staring at the invaders as they walk by, banging into them with a shoulder or bag, eventually attacking with the intent to kill.

Only it is not as it seems: ( making this move from a good movie to a great movie ) Cobb is the dynamic leader, but he is also in the midst of a great and terrible dream himself- an internal struggle involving his dead wife that is so painful and entrenched in his psyche that his wife begins invading the dreams that Cobb is invading, ruining his plans and his job. Cobb works with an Architect, who builds the dreams ( Ellen Page ) and Eames, a.k.a. “The Forger” (Tom Hardy) who impersonates people within the dream- an idea which resonates clearly for anyone who has had a dream and woken to realize a person in your dream was also NOT the person in your dream, at the same time. The dual nature of all representation of people in your dreams- they are themselves, filled with your projections- is a fascinating idea. There is also Arthur ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ) who is Cobb's right hand man and who is primarily concerned with organizing the timing of dropping into and out of a person's dreams, and controlling the increasingly volatile subconscious of the person being invaded.

As the movie moves forward, with it's thrilling cinematography and explanations of how to make and map dreams, the emotional life of Cobb moves forward center, and the love story between Cobb and his dead wife Mal becomes intertwined inexorably with the big dream invasion they plan: hired by a mega millionaire to invade his rival's dream and do what is thought impossible, to not only invade a person's dream, but to plant an idea in the deepest recesses of the mind. In exchange, the CEO promises Cobb a safe return back to the U.S. and his children.

In an quote from a premiere Leo Decaprio said of this film, This is an interesting movie, because I really believe people can extract what they want from this film and interpret that in a lot of different ways. I interpreted the movie very personally as it continued; his dead wife's pleas for him to join her ( in his dream ) and his eventual revelation of what happened to his wife moved me to the point of tears based on that interpretation. The meaning of a life lived on different planes of reality, when one does not or cannot differentiate between reality and fantasy spoke loudly to me as a metaphor for mental illness or damage and death- the great losses that can occur when those we love slide away from us, no matter the greatness or depth of love- into a world of their own making or simply a world we are unsure exists: after death. The excruciating pain of such losses, our inability to let go, to accept the loss in our day to day life and the consequences of that inability, is reflected in this movie beautifully between Cobb and Mal, and gives the movie it's emotional backbone and resonance. The movie beautifully utilizes repetition, shorthand and phrasing to build emotional intensity and meaning.

As Mal repeats throughout the movie in a haunting foreshadow: You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope the train will take you, But you cannot be sure. But it doesn't matter, because we'll be together. What this means when you go together to somewhere outside of reality, a place that could be drug addiction, mental illness or death -but in this movie is dreamland- is a question that weighed heavily on my mind at the end of the movie.

Ellen Page's character, Ariadne, was the only weak link in the film and not the fault of bad acting but instead because her character was created to explain the movie to the audience as it continues and becomes more complex. Because she was created to ask questions of the main character, some kind of bond was attempted to be forced between her and Cobb that never comes through as believable. She spends the movie following him saying things like Now whose subconscious are we going into? while I would have rather been confused and had questions answered in repeat viewings. The chemistry between Marilyn Cotillard and Leo Decaprio is marvelous, adult intensity, heart and mind meeting an equal- both wonderful actors.

Not only is this film visually thrilling and intellectually stimulating, it asks without answer questions rarely touched on in mainstream art: What is reality, and after we think we have an answer makes us ask again... Are you sure?