That time we went to Italy part something

The streets in Bologna are lined with porticoes, a last vestige of an old Catholic ceremony, wherein the statue of the Virgin Mary was carried from the center of the city up to a cathedral outside of town. The arcade, as its called, large stone walkways that cover both sides of the sidewalk of the main drag, were designed to help keep the relic of the Virgin out of the rain. Now the arcades provide shade and protection from those same elements for shoppers at upscale clothing stores and boutiques. Nothing has changed.

          At some point we get off the first bus and change to another bus. I can tell you that if you don’t know a bus line or a map of public transit, the decision seems completely random and you trust it implicitly. If someone in a major city says, “We get off here,” and you find yourself looking out the window at a field full of ice, with a few ravens flying overhead and circling the carcass of a bull, you still get off. It’s kind of like being a prisoner. For the record, I feel this way all the time due to my poor sense of direction, and it’s enough to make me doubt the existence of free will.

          Does free will exist anyway? Is it important if it does? You can now find scientists who will argue that we are merely a product of our synapses and neurons, that we are not in fact driving these bodies that we’re in. I’m curious what it says about us that no matter how much things change, religious, scientific, secular, we’ll always be wondering just why the fuck we do the things that we do.

          We’re talking about religion, which will be a common and uncomfortable topic during our stay. My new brother-in-law is a rabid anti-Catholic, interested in maybe starting a church someday, and my brother is a fairly recent Catholic convert who briefly considered joining a monastery. I, on the other hand, have moved away from my Episcopalian roots, to Evangelical churches, Orthodoxy, back to Evangelical churches, Methodists etc. I’m always looking for a home, but I can never seem to find one. I’m a religious mutt. I’m restless in nearly everything and enjoy it most when everyone gets along.

          One of the first things you notice in any big city are the pigeons—their ubiquitous iridescent heads bobbing beneath benches, darting into pools of water or stupidly marching with their red eyes as people eat on benches and watch them waddle about. The other thing that you notice are the public works. We drive by a large fountain, Neptune being paid homage to by several mermaids. It’s good to be Neptune. I think of telling someone, but we’re on the way to dinner, and I’m about as tired as I can remember being.

Thank God we’re having pizza. Pizza was invented in Italy, along with art, sex, and men with beautiful wavy hair. I don’t want you to spend your time reading this over and think that I learned nothing after having flown halfway across the world. Dear reader, my sister cut the pizza with scissors. Have you ever cut pizza with scissors? It’s a delight. And it’s somewhere between the Sistine Chapel and Bernin’s work in Saint Peter’s Basilica in terms of revelation. The pizza falls away like it was born to it.

          The evening is warm, and the windows are open. The interior windows open out into a small courtyard where women are hanging their clothes from the sill and occasionally calling to each other like extras from a movie. Most of the windows have flower boxes, which are nearly ubiquitous here, and the sort of aesthetic pleasantry that may be indicative of the closer living quarters but also indicative of a finer taste than your typical house in America. It’s hard to tell. I remember talking to my sister about living in Italy, listening to her talk to her husband in Italian, translating or complaining, or calling us a couple of dumb fucks. Who knew. Mostly. it sounded like they were arguing. Everything in Italian sounds like an argument, “Should we throw them out? Maybe. My brother once chased me with a kitchen knife.” Lord knows.

          Mostly, my sister talked about the roaches. Here is the thing about having roaches and guests. You kind of have to mention them, don’t you? That’s not the kind of thing that you hide from someone. “Oh, shit. You saw a roach? I can’t believe it. It’s the first one, ever? Oh, you’re saying you saw twenty and one of them had a suitcase with our address listed on it. Huh, that’s strange. What are the chances?”  

That time we went to Italy

 The flight from Madrid to Bologna feels short. The Spanish countryside is a series of squares, verdant or the color of fool’s gold. In the distance, are mountains and as the plane begins to leave it behind, it’s hard not to think of the beauty we are leaving behind, the places we aren’t going and may never see again. I told somebody years later about the countryside around Madrid, and they confirmed that it was nothing special, just little plots of land outside a city, but of course they’d been there, which changes everything. The places we haven’t been always carry a mythic kind of romance to them, see: versions of heaven.

          I resist the temptation to spend the two hour flight hitting the button overhead to ask for blankets, a pillow, some coffee, and someone to hold my hand during take-off, and sift through the guide books we’ve purchased to make sense of the place we are going, as if referring to a map, or plotting out which cathedral to see will make it anymore my place. I am forever unmoored from anyplace I travel, and yet I see the appeal of maps, of plotting. I see the appeal of setting sail across the open sea in search of India, though before that, and I’ll admit this is strange to think of, someone had to sail out into the ocean not knowing if they’d find anything at all. Can you imagine setting sail with no destination?

          Of course I’m horrible with maps and planning. I don’t really understand them and have the sense of direction of a young Christopher Columbus. To India! I can’t fold them up after I’ve used them either. It’s always some kind of eighteen step process that leaves me baffled and the map in tatters. “Just fold it around the creases,” my partner says, ignoring the fact that the creases are all exactly the same and that the map is not designed to fold back up, no, that’s the trick of them, they’re designed to be open, revealing everything. Leaving a map open as opposed to putting back in its folded state is an act of freedom, or so I tell myself. “Here, you fold this damn thing.”

          When we land in Bologna all the flight attendants stand at the front of the plane to wish us well. I can’t tell if they mean it or not, but we’re both happy to get off the flight and stop feeling so bad about being so pale and unPenelope Cruz like. We were stopping in Bologna first to stay with my sister, who traveled to Italy to teach English and wound up marrying an Italian. I missed their wedding because I was in my first week of graduate school, and I thought it was important that I be there. Mind you, I got an MFA in creative writing. In retrospect, it is both a deep regret of not fulfilling a familial obligation, especially to a sister who I hold very dear to my heart, and I could have spent a few days in Italy drinking wine, which is pretty much like getting an MFA, but in a prettier place, and cheaper. But, as they say, hindsight is 20-70. Anyone who says that it’s 20-20 is kidding themselves. You can’t really believe we wouldn’t fu-k up those other decisions as well, do you?

In Bologna we head down to baggage claim and greeted by my sister and her Italian husband, Davide. He gives us both quick hug and hefts our largest piece of luggage on his back and scampers off to catch the bus. He has the energy of a young adult buck, and he almost starts skipping while we’re walking towards the stop. I have the energy level of a three toed sloth and can frequently be found either telling people that I’m tired or watching other people do things that make me tired. The pace that he’s set, even though he has the largest bag, is damn near untenable. But we’ve just met, so I hurry along dutifully pulling a bag out into the hot Italian streets.

          We’re taking a bus back to their place because that’s the sort of thing that you do in Italy, take public transit from the airport. I grew up in a small college town in Northern CA where public transit was pretty much for the alcoholics, and so I’m partially worried that my new brother-in-law might be an alcoholic and partially worried that everyone in Italy must be poor.

           The bus ride from the airport was packed. My partner and I sat in our seats with our backpacks still attached because lord knows those are an absolute terror to put on. I planned on wearing it for the entire two week vacation, including to dinners, but I was eventually talked into taking it off on the bus. We’d carefully measured out the weight of the backpack to make sure it was under fifty pounds to avoid extra airline fees. Of course, for the duration of this piece, I want you to know that when I say, we, I mean my partner. If traveling was left up to me I’d have showed up at the airport on the day of my flight with a small duffle bag and have tried to talk my way onto the plane since I would have forgotten that I needed a passport. 

Sliding Doors parenting version

Before she falls asleep Sadie asks to hear the song "Pillow Talk," over and over. Her face is carved from porcelain, and she cradles a small blanket to her face and stares out the window, softly mouthing the words to the song as she drifts into a peaceful sleep. When she awakes, she asks to hear it a few more times. The song is fast becoming the sound track to this long drive up the Eastern seaboard. At times, her brother is dancing in the seat next to her, clapping his hands in time with the song. I'm snapping my fingers and Stephanie is even getting the lyrics right, which is a minor type of miracle in and of itself. Once, when we think he's fallen asleep, we hear a noise that sounds like muffled clapping, and we see him in the backseat, keeping time with the music, using his chunky little legs as drums. When the song concludes, he says, "Yay...car" Because he's always talking about cars.

As songs go, you could do a lot worse than listening to this roughly 17 times in a day.



Another Day:

It was sweet when she fell asleep to it in the morning. By the third time we heard the song, it occurs to us that it's not a love song but about a couple breaking up. A man or woman lying in bed thinking of someone else. A song as old as time. And here we thought it sounded so cute. By the afternoon it doesn't matter how sweet the song is. I just want her to sleep. I don't want to listen to the song again. I don't want to listen to anything that she's asking for, dammit. I just want them to sleep. I want a moment to finish the story we've just been listening to from the New Yorker about sadness, and death, and humor. I want to do something like a normal adult, like the normal adult that I once was. What I don't want to do is queue up this song for the 900th time.

Cars

After eleven hours in the car he still greets me with a smile. His face has been smudged with peanut butter and jelly, and his round little belly is covered in the crumbs from dinner, which he generously sheds on my shirt. "The car," he says, because that's pretty much what he always says, "pointing at a car near us."

At the Panera bread we stop in a small garden out front and after he points at the cars I ask him where the flowers are. He turns around and walks straight towards the roses. I didn't know he knew what I was saying. We teach them to smell them. He bends down at the waist, makes a quick sniffing noise like a dog and then pulls away laughing. We're not sure if the roses and pansies and strip of green grass are beautiful, or if we've just been in the car for ten hours, but she's sitting among the flowers with a smile on her face that would melt your heart. Everything about her is so dynamic. Her face is the sort of barometer that country music singers write songs about. Right now, it's set to serene.

Another Day:

Could he find something less ubiquitous to be interested in? After eleven hours I pull him out of the car, and he points to a car and says, "The car." It's fine, really, but I'm ready for him to be out of this phase. For a while we thought car might stand for a number of things, but really, car just stands for car. It's his preference to wander out into traffic and point them out to you as if he hadn't noticed that you'd just taken him from a car that you were driving. He's adorable, but sometimes I wish he'd talk about something else. Just once, I'd like him to say, "Books," or, "Persuasive Essays," but I suppose I'll spend the next few months saying, "Yes, I see the car," and quietly lowering my IQ.

Surviving

At the end of the day we've made up the entire eastern seaboard, started a sound track for our trip, danced, laughed, and eaten a lot of Goldfish. Not the real kind. The children were better than I thought they'd be, especially considering the iPad movies weren't working, and we had to rely on good old fashioned things like etch a sketch's and books and stickers to pass the time. Little Ian was a trooper, sneaking in a quick nap before spending the next ten hours clapping or cackling to himself. He's either very good-natured or very simple minded. Either way, I'll take it.

Surviving.

How many years will go by like this?  How many hours do you have to give over to talking about princesses and songs and explaining the meaning of words like agreement? Is it possible that I'll ever have an intelligent conversation again? By the time my children are old enough to have one I'll have forgotten everything that once made me interesting. 

We're going to Maine/Parenting

The morning is suffused with light. Of late, I wake up before six, and check the clock to make sure that I'm up way too early. I'm rarely disappointed. I don't know if it's the light, or that my body has decided that it is imperative that I pee at 5:50 every morning. Either way, I'm before the kids and annoyed as hell about it.

I go back to bed and try and sleep on my stomach with my neck to the side. I used to sleep that way all the time, but I kept having weird spasms in my neck that were so painful that I'd hardly be able to breathe. So I only treat myself during naps or during those forty five minutes to an hour before I'm expected to be awake. I don't sleep all that well. I am half-trying to sleep and half castigating myself for not sleeping. Shit! If I don't get to sleep in ten minutes I'll only have 5:45 minutes of sleep last night.

I mainly do math problems when I wake up early in the morning. I spend minutes, even half hours just calculating how much sleep I'm currently not getting. Sometimes I look at the alarm clock to confirm that I'm frittering away even more time than I thought. If I fall asleep, I tend to drool, and I sleep for ten minutes or so, at which point I wake up and check the alarm clock to see how long I've slept. Shit! Only fifteen minutes. This means I'll have only slept 6.45 hours last night.

I obsess over my sleep in the mornings. As if it will make any difference, calculating these hours of "lost" sleep. As if it was something that put down like a pair of keys that Ian wandered off with instead of something volitional. Fifteen minutes later I hear Sadie walk into the room. She's talking about wearing a dress, or how she's slept, and somehow she's sneaked into bed when I've gone to the bathroom, and she's taking up so much room that I nearly fall off the bed in trying to avoid her, which she aids by kicking her legs out. Kids are forever doing things like this, getting back at you in petty ways for not always responding to their whims. And though it's frustrating, feeling as though they don't appreciate you, at times, I get her back as well, telling her that there are no more cookies or peaches if she's bothering me about them. And she'll bother you about them. She'll bother you about them until you feel as though you'll probably end up pulling your hair out or turning into an insane person. But I don't do those things. I just raise my voice to a timber that says, "Why are you always effing with me?" and say, "Sadie! The cookies are all gone. You can't have another cookie. Make another choice."

The other day she spent a good chunk of the morning eating small bits of play dough and lying about it. It's annoying, but I can understand. Eventually I make my way back into bed and pretend to sleep while she alternatively kicks my legs or pats my back roughly saying, "wake up dada." The other day she asked my why I always try to go to sleep when she asks me to do something. It's because I'm always tired and because many of the things that a child asks you to do are kind of boring for an adult. In fact, I don't often particularly want to play at eating a picnic or build with blocks. In fact, what I want to do is to independently read books, or garden, or read interesting things on the internet. In fact, the things that I'm most interested in are adult activities.

But the thing about parenting is that you do wind up playing at a few games of picnic, or shoving cars along the ground for upwards of forty five minutes, which is not the sort of thing that you'd spend your time doing, but you're doing it because you're bored, or because you want the kids to leave you alone, or because you're temporarily enjoying this rather mundane activity because you're doing it with your children who are also capable of fits of loveliness that will nearly break your heart. But a large part of parenting is standing around half-bored, watching them do the sorts of things that they probably want to do. Though, to be honest, they are often bored as well and don't get to do half as many things as they want. Ian would just wander out into the street and point at cars all afternoon if we let him. We don't.

Right now for instance I'm downloading the movie Frozen and several songs by an old English actress, Vivien Leigh, who has musical versions of the Beatrix Potter stories. I'm purchasing these things with "my" iTunes gift card, and it's rather obvious why I put the my in quotes as I wouldn't spend money on either of these things of my own volition, bu I sometimes can be caught singing, rather poorly, portions of Peter Rabbit, and I've been asked by Sadie to stop singing "For the First time in Forever," from Frozen on the grounds that the movie apparently doesn't have any men in it. It does, but apparently not the version in her head.

This is all in preparation for a family trip up to Maine. It's the kind of thing where people keep asking if I'm excited, and I'm not really all that excited, but I'm beginning to feel as though I should be. I have a hard time keeping in touch with people. I tend to be stranded where I am, incapable of the useful sorts of wishing and gratitude that should probably accompany something like a trip to Maine. This is not to say that I won't have a good time when I get there. I probably will, though it's more complicated than that. Vacations now take on a life of there own, entirely separate from what I might want to do with my time. I'm a poor collectivist, capable of espousing it in name only. The truth of the matter is that I'm selfish and like to do the things that I want to do, and when I don't get to do them I throw fits, or complain, mostly to my wife about how we're not doing precisely the thing that I want to be doing, which may have some good reason or it may just be something I thought of an hour ago that is suddenly now essential to my being. I am impatient.

I had a school project due this evening on which I expended the least amount of effort possible within reason for a graduate student. Things like school projects, mornings, cereal, exercise, talking about exercise, the weather, the color of our bowls make me bored. I could say I felt bad about expending the minimal effort, but my roots are only slightly Puritanical. So though I feel a bit bad, my overriding feeling is that I did the right thing by not doing my best. I feel somehow as though I've conserved some mental and physical energy. Which is stupid, because I haven't saved that energy for anything useful. If anything is capital "U" useful, which is debatable.

The project was for a class about teaching Reading and Writing. I was reflecting on the project before class, thinking about how teaching might be fun because it's just a bunch of people hanging on every word you say. Except they really aren't. Especially in high school. They are looking for a thousand other things to listen to besides you, which I do too. I have times in the day when I'm staring directly at someone talking to me, particularly in a group context, and I'm not hearing a word they are saying, but I'm capable of nodding my head and sometimes I'll tune back in, but whatever I'm thinking of, usually people and relationships, is of far more interest to me than paying attention.

The point is: we're driving ten hours tomorrow, And a friend of mine was asking if the drive would be picturesque, but here is one of the crappy things about adult life--I'm always the one who drives, which means I barely glimpse sunsets and rainbows and beautiful rock formations because I'm busy driving the car. And don't get me wrong, I don't want anyone else driving the car because I trust myself more than anyone, but I'd also like to be in the passenger seat reflecting on the flight pattern of birds. I think I tend to be funny because it puts people at ease, but I'd be an effing liar if I said I was excited about the prospect of driving ten hours with two very small children in the back seat. I'm not dreading it either, because many worse things have and will happen to me in my life. I'm just not particularly looking forward to it. Sue me.

Review: The Fault in our Stars

I cried fourteen times during the movie. Most of the tears were of the mist variety, though it’s hard to say because I wear contacts, which have a tendency to dry out my eyes. I never exceeded a total of two tears, one from each eye. My right eye was much sadder than the left, and often produced a tear that spilled down my cheek until I wiped it away with the pointer finger of my right hand.

                Going in, I had planned on crying. I was looking forward to crying. I won’t explain why because I’m not sure that I had any particular reason other than that I knew the movie was intended to make me cry, and that I wasn’t going to resist that. I was going to row out of the theater on a river of tears.

                It’s fortunate then that the movie, The Fault in Our Stars, is actually good. Though by good I suppose I mean something like very well-acted. Certainly there were roles that were miscast or underdeveloped. Hazel’s father’s hair was too puffy and long, leaving him looking far more like the dad from an ABC family special than the father of a cancer patient. Shouldn’t he have shaved his head in solidarity? His lines were weak and weakly delivered, but I’m digressing from the main point of the movie, which is that it was good.

                Was the lead a bit too charming? Perhaps. I haven’t read the book, and I don’t know how the character of Augustus Waters was supposed to come off, but he comes off in the movie as too self-assured by half. He’s charming, and he knows he’s charming, and one of the biggest exhales I had in the movie is when his friend eulogized him by beginning, “He was a cocky bastard.” For indeed, he is way too self-assured for an 18 year old, though the actor, Ansel Elgort, plays it so convincingly that it’s tough to not fall for him a bit. And it’s clear that it would be nearly impossible not to fall for him as a 17 year old girl, expertly played by Shailene Woodley. (And yes, we’d all cut the bit with the cigarette and the metaphor. It was too much).

                The point is, either you find their love story captivating from the beginning, or you kind of want to punch Gus in the face just to wipe the smug and handsome look on his face. Except, he has cancer and is missing a leg, and the girl he’s falling in love with has cancer, and is not sure how soon she’ll die.

                I had a friend tell me that she stopped reading the book because the kids sounded too pretentious. “Who’s a philosopher at 17?” I suspect that death makes mini-philosophers out of all of us. And I imagine that having a possible or ensuing end date would cause most of us to reflect poignantly, intelligently, and angrily at the cosmos. Because, in a way, wtf cosmos?

                I’ve digressed again, but I can’t come up with seventeen different ways of saying that these two actors so deeply inhabited the characters, brought them to life that you start to feel real shitty about their impending deaths. And suddenly every slow song or revelation about moving on, or not letting go, is not a movie cliché, though of course it paradoxically is, but an occasion for tears, because, wtf cosmos? Why did you create this movie if other than to make me weep?

                The central conceit of Gus’ character is that he wants to do something spectacular in the world rather than just live and die in an ordinary life. If the lesson that Hazel tries to teach him is cliché, live in the now, love those closest to you, this is spectacular you idiot, it’s because the lesson and the sentiment are pretty common for human beings. Why am I here? To do something great! It’s an illusion, and like most illusions, it doesn’t really bring much happiness.

                The central conceit of the movie, teenage love as some sort of bulwark against the encroaching cancer, is pretty spot on. Because nothing else makes you feel so damn unique and special as being and falling in love. With good reason, one other soul in the universe has chosen you out of the billions of other souls, or minds or bodies or whatever and decided that you are special. It’s really one of the few times in life that it feels genuinely special to be you, which is pretty much a great juxtaposition to the cancer narrative, which is simultaneously implying that it’s pretty terrible to be you. To hold these two opposing ideas together makes for a good narrative.

                I think I’ve covered far fewer plot points than I do in a typical review and that’s not really an accident. The movie made me feel intensely that these two people had fallen in love with one another and then it made me feel intensely that they were in the midst of dying. It turns out that that’s the sort of thing that pulls the tears right out of you. It’s been a while since I felt two characters that intensely connect in a film. Even if some of the particulars were imperfect, the two leads were so damn close to perfect that if you weren’t weeping during the movie you were just kind of being an ahole, someone who doesn’t cry at movies, or life. In less you’re a stoic, (which is all well and good. I read a passage from Plutarch called, Consolation to his Wife, which implores her not to mourn the death of their toddler son, but to think fondly on all of the wonderful time that they had together with him as a blessing), which is fine. If you aren’t, I hope you brought tissues.

                A friend of mine shared piece with me from The Atlantic that interrogates the very idea of being ashamed at crying. It’s worth a look if you’re the type of person who enjoys a good discussion of grief and shame and culture. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/whats-wrong-with-sentimentality/360355/.

                I should tell you now that when I walked out of the theater I reflected on how good it had been to cry. It’s strange how we coast through life, until a good cry, or a phone call, temporarily wakes us up, grounds us in the moment—makes the smooth edge of the escalator sliding through our fingers feel palpable, you notice a certain graininess to it that isn’t so much gross, but a reminder that we are sharing these experiences in our lives, that our lives are meaningful, if brief. It's nice to feel the warmth of the sun, or the mist of a soft rain. It is good, I suppose I'm saying, to be alive.

That time we went to Italy: On pretty Spanish flight attendants, aesthetics and casually waiting to get our bags in Italy

 There are some positive features of waiting to fly out of Madrid beyond the endless ham sandwiches. After five hours of watching the flight board change we finally saw a sign that we would be leaving in an hour, what had brought about this unprecedented breakthrough? We’ll never know, because the only thing more difficult than having your flight status explained to you in an American airport is having your flight status reported to you in a foreign city. For all I knew the airport staffer was saying something like:

Staffer: I’m sorry. (Followed by a foreign language) Wooly mammoths have been unfrozen and temporarily taken over the flight you were supposed to be on.

Me: So it leaves when?

Staffer: I’m sorry. The mammoths are not particularly good at flying, so they are off course right now. I suppose it’s to be expected.

Me: Will ham sandwiches be served on the plane?

          The positive feature of waiting five hours at the Madrid airport for some Byzantine strike related to drama to resolve itself is that all of the union gains that have been made over the past fifty years or so when it comes to flight attendants fly right out the window and the entire flight is staffed by a fleet of women who basically look like various incarnations of Penelope Cruz. This is the sort of observation that you are allowed to make exactly once to your partner, who is polite enough to nod and note that they are all quite pretty. When you mention it again, waiting at maximum about two minutes, you get a dirty look, and a reminder that you are not traveling with any of them to Italy. Though halfway through the flight she’ll lean over and marvel, “They are all gorgeous,” to which I respond, “Yeah, these are great arm rests.”

         

          Aesthetics are strange. I don’t know if I was the first person to be surprised that beauty is still beauty even after you’re hitched. I don’t know why I thought that it would be any different, as if the mere fact of having seen the Rockies would have suddenly made every other mountain range a meh experience. Aesthetics and beauty are slippery concepts though, conditional things, based upon things like race, class, and culture. And yet, we are all products, whether we like it or not, of the time that we live in, and are thus pretty much subject to the aesthetics of our cultural milieu.

          What’s strange is that the realization that we are products of our cultural prejudices rarely does anything substantive to change our perspectives. Humans are curiously obstinate creatures, content; No; fiercely comforted, by our own rather narrow understanding of the world. A view which has usually been informed by a perversely small number of people and ideas, though ours nonetheless. And so, as in many adult trials and musing, we come to an understanding with our deficiencies without really confronting them. As you probably know confronting our own shortcomings would leave us all rather short of breath and out of time to do anything but wallow in our own self-loathing. For instance, look at the persistence of the modern Republican party, which insists that its roots are down home and often by extension, Christian, and yet fail to acknowledge that the only two commandments that Christ lays claim to are loving the Lord and loving your neighbor as yourself. To live in such a contradiction seems ridiculous, and yet, religious or not, we are all bathed, suffused, and sustained in such contradictions.

          This is an unusually salient argument given the context of this particular flight, which was not only populated by a bevy of Penelope Cruz’s but also the most beautiful, aesthetically mind you, couple we have ever seen. The most beautiful couple I’ve ever seen in actuality are an elderly couple in Canada that I experienced through S’s stories. They have been married for decades and are apparently very much still in love and prepared for their impending journey into the unknown of death. Part of what makes them a perfect couple is their incorporeality. Nothing spoils a good fantasy like flesh.

          I don’t know what to make of our shortcomings in this way: identifying virtues with external beauty, a fact, unlike generosity, humility, and kindness, which people have very little control over. It is troubling, as many things: natural disasters, absence of Old Testament style miracles, what everyone did with those frilly skirts that were so popular in 2003, are troubling.

          I suppose the best that a person can do, if they are unable to overcome societal pulls, is to speculate then upon the nature of beauty. And I can confess to you that S and I felt this particular couple to be the most beautiful iteration of couple that I had and have ever seen. In retrospect, what I believe made them so aesthetically immaculate was their Europeaness. And what I mean in this case is a certain carelessness that accompanied their attractiveness, which was something akin to honey in a bee’s hive. No people should rightly look as unstudied and gorgeous as they did.

          The man, who was, in my humble opinion, perhaps slightly more perfect than the girl, was wearing a pair of slim jeans and a belt, loosely fastened, along with a tight knit long sleeved shirt. Perhaps it was grey. The woman, skinny, olive skinned with her hair down, leaned against him slightly as they waited for their bags. Perhaps it was their very unfamiliarity, which made them so alluring. Though I think that it is not entirely true: what made them so immaculate was the fact that they were not trying to look like Greek, nay, Roman Gods, and thus embodied them more completely.

          It’s hard to catch an American girl unstudied in her beauty. I walked by a woman today, perfectly wonderful, and studied in it, dressed to the nines, looking in all ways like the very picture of an attractive woman. Except, the effort was so palpable, the make up just so, that the whole affect was somehow lessened. The same is true of men, often young, who look so fresh faced and spun out of the nearest gym with firm biceps and Crest smiles so white that you can see your own reflection in them. Though you suspect somehow that they are seeing themselves in the reflection in your eyes, in each case, the aesthetics are lessened by their obvious attempt at beauty. I’ve no idea why this lessens the impact. It’s not  as though I judge Brunelleschi’s doors or Michelangelo’s Pieta as trifles because they make a clear attempt at achieving a kind of perfection.

          In reality, perhaps this particular prejudice is rooted in my discomfort with the aesthetics of beauty, which I’ve enumerated above. Since it’s nothing that anyone has done much to deserve, it seems rather gauche to pretend it’s anything other than it is: a random collection of atoms, body parts and shading that is pleasing for a particular moment or decade in time. Thus, to be nonchalant, unprepossessed, is in some way to embody the very essence of aesthetic beauty. Look at what a wondrous accident I am.

          The couple then was a perfect Bernini like representation of form, in part because they were so casual in it. S and I, as I noted before, not two totally unpleasing forms ourselves, identified them as the most pleasing configuration of atoms that we’d ever seen in such close proximity, though I suspect our words were not so quasi-scientific. She leaned into him, and he supported her casually, waiting like the rest of us for their bags to arrive. They arrived near the beginning, and he swung his bag over his shoulder, and she pulled her suitcase behind her, leaving our lives forever, the most pleasing representation of the human form that I suppose I’ll ever see. 

A day: Conversations and showering, softball, and I miss all of you

In the morning, we played catch with a tennis ball and raced cars across the floor. After I pushed the car across the floor he'd run on his fat little legs to get it, bring it back to me, and plop himself down in my lap as if to say, this is where I belong.

There are only so many times you can watch a car careen into a wall.

I was busy working on a Game of Thrones Quiz. I am often busy.

When I'm on the computer, and he's in the a certain mood, he'll cry every time I sit down. He'll walk over and tug on the edge of my shirt or shorts as if to say, "Hey, get the fu-k over here." Though he's usually much sweeter than that.

When I carry him by the strawberries he points at them and says, "No, No." I had to tell him that he can't pick them anymore because his mother's afraid they're full of mercury and lead. I'd have brought in new soil, but I've always preferred being lazy. The strawberries taste like delicious and sweet pieces of dirt.

I'm hoping that his nap lasts for hours. It doesn't. When I first hear him, I pretend like I can't, or that maybe it's some other baby who's broken into our house and is making noise in his room. What a strange thing for another child to do.

I don't like showers. I take showers about 340 days a year. I like baths with bubbles. I like turning on the fan in the bathroom, sinking into the water and feeling gloriously alone. I don't feel alone in the shower. Usually one of them comes by and pulls aside the curtain to say hello. "I need privacy," I say, to the little faces peeking in the shower. I'm an extrovert who likes to be left alone, except when I don't, then I miss everyone and everything like crazy.

When he says, the car, which is his favorite thing, his voice is almost guttural. When he says, Night, night, his voice sounds like that of an angel. Before nap, he said, Night, night, and then started crying when he knew I was leaving. Tears are non-sequiturs.

Chances are that if I've known you for more than a week or so, at one point I've missed you. I miss everyone.

Before leaving I say goodbye. He cries for a minute and then says, bye, bye.

The radio is playing songs with great beats, and I'm thankful for the hot twenty minute drive. I love car dancing in the heat of the day. Sometimes, it feels so damn good to be alone. I love people.

The afternoon feels disjointed.   I found myself not wanting to make any effort. It's such an effort to know and be known, constantly dressing and undressing depending upon the interlocutor. Sometimes, you just want to wear effing pajamas all day. You don't want to say, "how was your weekend?" You want to say, "Some days are shitty. Have you ever read that book about Alexander? That kid is a prick, but he's got it right. Some days are shitty." But you never say that. Instead you talk of the cakes or the pictures or the other things that pass the time until we move on into other rooms, with other voices.


I talk to a college student for a while who says that most of life is full of repetition and boredom. I know that I'm supposed to jump in at that point and tell her of all the beautiful things that are yet to come. Instead, I hand her a cart of books and agree. "Same shi- different day." We talk in bits and pieces for a little while longer. I'm walking back and forth amongst the fiction section, looking at all the novels and pieces of writing that have been published, doing that stupid thing that everyone does where you compare yourself to others and find yourself lacking. "Life is boring, and I"m managing to not do much with it," I say, or could have said, or said something like. I think the sum of the conversation was disappointment.


We played a poor game of softball. "Hey, at least we're having fun," a co-worker said.
M: This isn't fun.

It's strange to care about employee softball, and not particularly laudable. By the third inning I'm stalking around like a cat in a cage. Oftentimes, not just with softball, I intend to not care about things. However, I'll find myself thinking about them, caring about them against my will, and I'll say to myself, brain: stop being so effing silly to which I rarely receive a reply. My brain likes being silly and doesn't want to be asked to stop.

Someone I work with stopped by the desk and asked if it smelled like someone had peed in the back. No really, she said, it smells just like urine.

M: That's coming from the clothes and shoes that I just played softball in. It's a sauna outside. Also I peed back there.

For a while I sit and tell some friends how life is always imperfect in every way you can think of.

F: You might just be in a bad mood.
M: I am moody.

On the way home I tell a friend that I want to disturb the universe. She says something along the lines of aiming a little lower, which is sound advice. Still though, certain days I feel like I should at least send away to have a star named after me. That way, after I'm gone, people will still be able to look through my paperwork and realize I was stupid enough to try and buy the stars. 

Game of Thrones: The Children

For the better part of four seasons, whether you realized it or not, this show has been presided over by two patriarchs, Ned Stark and Tywin Lannister. And now they are both dead, which means we'll get to see a 

referendum on parenting styles, (Thank you GOT for giving us the wonderful scene of a son killing his father on Father's Day) though I suppose Tyrion has already delivered an arrow or two that suggests Tywin may have made an error or two in his past. 

From his opening scene, skinning a deer while upbraiding his oldest son and telling him that it was time to become a man, Tywin has been the force running the Seven Kingdoms. I suppose I should have seen this coming, (like I did the inevitable Hound vs. Brienne fight) particularly when Tywin said that the gold in the mines had dried up and when his daughter told him that all of her children were a product of incest. Things suddenly stopped looking bright. And yet, up until the moment that Tyrion actually fired, it was hard to believe that you could kill Tywin; you just listened to his next set of instructions. 

Charles Dance has been wonderful as Tywin Lannister, and his acting will be missed. He instilled Twyin with a quiet calm, an intelligent, yet demanding villainy that made the show and the Lannister family the most interesting people to watch on the show. Perhaps though, Tyrion did him a favor, killing him on the privy before he had to watch the downfall of everything he had tried to build. Stannis is riding around in the north and the people of Dorne will probably not be too happy with the melon head made of Oberyn. It's conceivable that he died at the just the right time. 

If the first three seasons were about the downfall of the Stark house, and it was, at least according to the show runners, then the fourth season was about the quick slide of the Lannisters as well. First Joffrey, then the gold mines, then the incest playing out, and now the death of Tywin. What it means for the show on the whole is that a lot of the chess board is now open. 

Another way to describe this episode is to say: shit! A hell of a lot just happened. I'm tempted to say, perhaps fairly, that they back loaded this season unnecessarily. This episode, combined with the last, felt like the beginning of a great movie trilogy as opposed to the winding up of a fourth season of a television show. And that is much to the show's credit. It's very rare that a show feels like it's gaining momentum as it reaches its midpoint. That's no guarantee that it won't bog down faster than Dany in the city of Mereen, but at this point the show is firmly going strong. 

In brief, though I was initially annoyed to be back up North with emo Jon Snow the plot changed quickly. If not for spoily book readers, I'd have had no idea that Stannis was behind the charge at Mance's camp. That said, I was happy that Mance got to say that he'd like his people to shelter behind the walls as opposed to take them. It seems like another opportunity was missed for people to come together as opposed to killing each other, and it wasn't quite taken. I was excited to see Stannis do something besides look dour, and I assume he'll keep heading north. 

Though Jon Snow has long been the least interesting of the Stark children, at least in terms of real action, this episode presented a turn for his character that is hopeful. Jon actually showed some agency, saying to Tormund, "I have no king." And yet, he's retained many of the solid qualities that made Ned Stark beloved such as honor and executing a harsh deed by your own hand as opposed to contracting it out. (Side note: we're not actually sure if he's Ned's child. He could just as well be a foster child,  Dornish prince, a Baratheon or the first dark-haired Taergaryn for all we know. I'm guessing by the eyes the red woman made at him that he's got some claim on nobility, even if it's just Ned's). This actually makes his arc the easiest to root for as Sansa 2.0 is with Petry, Arya is developing a bit of cold-heartedness, Theon is Reek and Bran is well: a dragon rider? 

As for Stannis, I'm not too hopeful that he's going to win a war against the white walkers, but at least he's doing something, (besides Melisandre) for once. 

Elsewhere in the North, Bran finished his thankfully truncated journey to the tree of all hope where he met the three eyed raven that's been bothering him since season 1 episode 2. Were the CGI skeletons kind of terrible? Yes. Was the death of the kid from Love Actually kind of a non-thing because we didn't get to know him well, sure? Is anyone else a little less excited about little girls who fire bomb skeletons than about Lannisters who can't help but in fight and bed their sisters, sure? But at least something is happening to Bran, which is a plus. And I'm not sure what Gandalf the tree means when he says that Bran is going to fly, but I think we all hope that it's a dragon and that he's not turned into a three-eyed raven. 

As a set piece, the North now seems like it will take a more prominent and magical role. It's up to the show runners to keep the same degree of interest and insight into characters and relationships, which, up until now, has been what has made King's Landing feel so vital. 

Just south of the wall, Arya's storyline came to its inevitable moment of change. Ever since Brienne announced that she was going north it's been pretty clear that Brienne and the Hound would end up in a sword fight. (Toots own horn for predicting it a few episodes back...gets sad because I liked the Hound). The sword, and fist fight comes to a brutal end, with the Hound plunging down the side of a cliff to his near death. Arya takes the opportunity to hide away from her captors, which, side note, why didn't they at least take her horse when they went looking for her? 

Though Arya has long been the Stark child that's easiest to root for: she's young, not stupid, and not a male, her arc has had her bear witness to most of the terrible moments to befall her family. She'd be dead if it weren't for the Hound, and though she's long promised to kill him I was rooting for it not to happen. (The actual death scene, or torture scene between the Hound and Arya is one of the times where the externality of a television show falls far short of the interiority of a good novel. It's unclear whether she took the wine and didn't kill him because she's cold-hearted, or because she couldn't bring herself to kill him. As it is, it appears that she did it to make it worse. However, if that's the case then she's instantly become less likeable and more reminiscent of a killer than of someone seeking justice or vengeance. If she couldn't bring herself to do it because she knows that he protected her, well then....

Down in King's Landing Cersei is trying to revive Sir Gregor with the help of the guy who helped saved Jaime, but who is also the most likely to create Frankenstein. He even goes so far as to say, "It may change him a little," which I suppose is supposed to sound ominous, except that Sir Gregor is already a murderous bastard, so I'm not entirely sure how a change would make him worse. Personally, I'm hoping he gets into musical theater. 

From there, she walks in to tell her father that she will not be obeying him, revealing another chink in the Lannister armor, and confessing her incestual relationship with Jaime. Nothing gets her more excited than being terrible, so she goes off and beds Jaime on a hard wooden table. Can someone please get these people a down comforter? As it is, though Jaime is clearly on a more positive character arc, it's clear that Cersei still holds his sword in her sway. 

In Mereen, Dany sits imperiously listening to petitioners. Oh, except, now she's hearing from people who want to be sold back into slavery. So much for the freedom arc. To put the final nail in the coffin, a petitioner shows up with the bones of his three year old daughter, killed by her largest dragon, Drogon. Dany considers her options before chaining up her two remaining dragons like dogs, and, in case you missed it, the breaker of chains is now reapplying chains. Her children are now her captives, and it's probably time she left Mereen or just let her dragons fly around terrorizing everyone because simply ruling isn't all that fun. Luckily fire doesn't burn her, because I was afraid her two little dragons were going to try and make a beautiful S'more out of her when she walked out. 

We finally head south for Tyrion's escape, engineered by Jaime and Varys. Unfortunately, for Twyin and Shae, Tyrion takes a slight detour into a murderous rage before departing. Shae's motivations, like Arya's earlier, are a bit unclear. Was she always a whore for only money? Did she turn on Tyrion when he turned her away? As it is, she's lying in Tywin's bed and calling him "My Lion." This does not further endear her to Tyrion who strangles her before picking up a crossbow. The change is not subtle, as the camera shows Tyrion's face shifting into darkness before he fires a couple of crossbow bolts into his father. (Happy Father's Day). One of the fine moments in the episode is Varys hearing the bells toll and immediately boarding the ship with Tyrion, realizing that his fortunes have changed without anyone having to tell him. He, like Tyrion, is a survivor. 

And so as we head into the fifth season, the board has been cleared again. I assume we'll head south with Tyrion and Varys, and to Bravos with Arya. I realize that these moves have provided problems for book readers and Martin, who realize that at some point the world needs to contract as opposed to expand. And yet, as I said before, it's rather impressive for a show to have so many interesting plot lines and characters that are still building in momentum after four seasons. It's that feeling of momentum that's palpable when the camera pans to Arya on the deck of a ship bound for Bravos, and I realized that it's the first time since she left King's Landing in episode 1 that she hasn't been someone's captive or charge. She's headed towards something unknown, somewhere out across the glittering sea is something hopeful. A journey which runs in parallel to the viewer, who, with so many chess pieces scattered across the board, is now sitting at home too, watching the same glittering sea, wondering what will come next. 

The Quiz

Game of Thrones: The Watchers on the Wall

The amount that it costs to make big budget movies is really quite astounding. You hear sums like 178 million dollars, the cost it took to produce Edge of Tomorrow, and it barely registers. They've actually done studies on this, at some point it really is just a collection of numbers since we have no way of accurately conceptualizing such vast quantities. Somehow, some way, largely by opening and racking up ticket sales overseas, these movies make their money back. And because they've long made their money back movies have reigned supreme over television when it comes to staging the bold and beautiful battle scenes that we've come to remember.

It's why television shows have long lagged behind. We have five senses, but the one we prefer to all the others is visual. Our brains devote much more attention to our visual cortex because we rely on it so much. The battle at Blackwater Bay, which was the penultimate episode in season 2, stated to challenge the notion that the big and cinematic could not make its way to television. And yes, there were still many episodes of Robb Stark walking around a battlefield that had already been taken, or Dany coming to a battle with her dragons elsewhere, even Game of Thrones has its limits. It appears that the majority of this season's budget was being saved up for the fight at the wall, and it appears, in most ways, that it was money well-spent.

The battle for the wall surpassed the battle at Blackwater Bay in scope and execution. It lasted long enough for S to tap out, saying that she didn't just want to watch people hack each other apart for 45 more minutes. A week after watching Oberyn have his head turned into an overripe pumpkin, the violence felt almost sanitized, despite its onslaught. We're accustomed to big movies having large fight scenes and lots of deaths. Cinematically, the scene was excellent. The battle at the lower wall juxtaposed with that at the great wall made for very good television that was handled quite well. The stunt actor briefly playing Tormund Giantsbane even redeemed him a bit by rolling around on the floor during his boss fight with Sir Alliser.

One of the most successful element of Thrones is its character building. And one of the most interesting parts then of the assault on the wall was finding myself partially rooting for Ygritte, who had shown mercy more than once. I can't remember the last time I felt pulled in two directions quite so acutely where the stakes, you know, death and destruction, seemed real. Besides which, the people North of the wall are currently hemmed in between an army of White Walkers and an ice wall. From that vantage point it's hard to root for the Night's Watch without feeling as though you're condemning some pretty good people, cannibalism aside, to zombie land.

The politics of the Night's Watch were not my favorite part of this season. Nor is the story that has taken place up north. As I said a couple of weeks ago, the real heat of the story is in King's Landing. So I'd be remiss if I didn't note that I wasn't as invested in the characters in this episode. It doesn't help that Kit Harrington's Jon Snow adaptation is meh at best, (besides his hair, which has been everything we could have hoped for and more right from the first episode)  particularly when it's clear that he and Dany are the prototypical heroes of this grand narrative. Despite that, Sir Alliser briefly showing some leadership skills, even if it was after calling Jon a twat and telling him he wished he was dead, was a nice moment of redemption. It's the rounded nature of characters, good and bad, I'm looking at you Ramsey Snow, which makes them fascinating. Having Sir Alliser be someone to inspire and lead was a nice touch, and I think the show would have benefited from providing a bit more nuance with his character earlier on.

This episode also spent a good deal of time worrying over the fate of Gilly and Sam. Specifically, if Sam would live long enough to have sex with Gilly. This is the sort of thing that keeps all of us up at night, even Maester Aemon, who remembers that a number of women used to throw themselves at him when he was the heir to the throne, delivering the great line about Sam being able to imagine giants and walkers but not an old man having once been young and in love before snuffing out the candle and leaving the two of them in the dark.

Another victim of the Ramsey Snow narrative was that of Ygritte, a wildling with a heart of, well, not quite gold, but not stone either. However, after disappearing for a few episodes she arrives back at the foot of the wall ready to punish Jon Snow. The sight of her sending an arrow through Pip, a gentle-hearted soul, was both a reminder of her ruthlessness, and again that the scene unfolding was multi-faceted. You weren't quite rooting for the Night's Watch without some heavy reservations. Ygritte eventually dies, after the Magnar vs. Jon Snow boss battle that ends when Jon applies a golden spike to the Magnar's beautiful bald head. And there is Ygritte, not wanting to kill Jon, but struggling with it at the same time, until she is nailed by an arrow by the very child who's father she killed a few episodes prior. If you don't remember this particular fact, it seems less trenchant, but it's one of the rare times when the revenge killing actually happened by the right person. Of course, this leaves Jon to hold Ygritte in his arms, (first ever GOT slow motion scene) while the scenes of battle whirl on around him.

The battle at the wall was nearly as spectacular. Certainly, smaller than what we've seen in many movies, though full of just as many excited extras who get to pound their shields before taking a flaming arrow to the chest. The two giants and there mastadon rolled through the snow with all the wild abandon of CGI monsters on ice before reaching their untimely demise at the hands of a giant arrow and that Night's watchmen with a nice beard who looks like my friend Todd. Sorry buddy, but you went out with a bang. In the category of, really? The guys who spent the whole episode and hours climbing were wiped free by a giant ice scythe. I mean, what's the point of climbing all day if they have a giant ice scythe. Maybe we should storm the gate again?

 The only failing of the episode, if it's fair to call it a failing, is that the characters aren't as engaging or memorable as people we've met in the south. I can't fault the episode because it covers a major plot point with wicked and interesting detail. Does Mance make it past the wall? Well, if my Jon Snow narrative arc is correct, Mance will be dead by the end of next week's episode and Jon will be leading a few noble wildlings down south to wreak some havoc in the Bolton's north, but we'll see.

A day

In the morning I take out the trash in the freezing rain. The neighbors dog barks at me from behind a small chain link fence. If I had a way to threaten him, I would. We do not know when the garbage goes out. Some weeks I just leave the cans in the back alley so that they will be taken. This morning I watched them take away the garbage. The dog didn't even bother them. 
Trash day is Wednesdays. Dogs and I don't get along. 

Sometimes when I'm at work I forget what day it is. I end sentences with prepositions. I misplace commas. I begin reading short stories and then stop reading, right in the middle, because they are so good. Sometimes I lie to myself about why I stop reading short stories. 

When it's cold outside I think people have a tendency to walk faster. Yesterday I saw two girls wearing skirts for no earthly reason at all. It's too damn cold to look cute. When the rain is freezing I have tendency to miss CA. I tend to miss things until I have them at hand. 

Our mattress is firm and fluffy both. We both slept like rocks but not for eternity. Presumably rocks sleep for eternity. Perhaps I should throw a rock at the neighbor's dog. Perhaps I should always put an apostrophe when I'm dealing with the possessive. 

The snow felt for what felt like days. A few squirrels burrowed into the blanket looking for acorns. 
"We need a cat," she said. 
"We'll feed him squirrels and roaches," I answered. 

I can't tell the difference between Tuesday and Wednesday. They seem eerily reminiscent of one another. Sartre said some interesting things that occasionally make you want to quit work. 

"Although circumstances may limit individuals (facticity), they cannot force persons as radically free beings to follow one course over another. For this reason, individuals choose in anguish: they know that they must make a choice, and that it will have consequences. For Sartre, to claim that one amongst many conscious possibilities takes undeniable precedence (for instance, "I cannot risk my life, because I must support my family") is to assume the role of an object in the world, merely at the mercy of circumstance—a being-in-itself that is only its own facticity."

"The more we use machines in our daily lives the more we come to resemble them." 
"I disagree." 
"You can't disagree. That's just the way it is." 
"I don't have to like it." 

I do not know where they take our trash in the morning. None of the men are smoking cigarettes. This shouldn't strike me as odd, but does. The dog growls from behind the chain link fence. You have nothing to fear but fear itself. I am not afraid of the dog per se. I am afraid of the dog attacking me. I am afraid of dying. Epicurus thought that this fear was at the root of all our unhappiness. Epicurus died. But did he do so unhappily? 

The trash truck disappears back down the street. Our green trash can lies on its side, spilling bits of water from its concave roof onto the already muddy ground. It is time to start another day.

Game of Thrones

Since GOT first aired there have been two groups of people, the book readers and the show watchers, though occasionally the twain shall meet, when some person who watches the shows gets the ill-advised idea that in order to keep up fidelity with the work, they must read the books. Don't worry. You don't need too. However, this eye-popping episode was one of the book reader's episodes. There is nothing quite so annoying as talking to a book reader about this show. They'll smile at you with knowing eyes, and say, "just wait and see," as if they had lovingly constructed all of the scenes themselves instead of reading them a bit before you, which is what has actually happened. Despite that, I understand them completely. There is an intense delight, particularly in narrative, in watching something unfold and experiencing it anew through someone else's "eyes." Perhaps it is this reliving that parents get to do through children, which makes knowing so appealing, or perhaps it's that so much of our real lives are unknown, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. Either way, can you believe that guy's head exploded?

Readers of the books knew from the first introduction of Oberyn Martell, stabbing, whore-loving, Oberyn Martell, that he would wind up as a bloody mess on the floors of King's Landing like so many before. For the rest of us, he became the hero of the fourth season. Certainly the reality that a sexual libertarian hell-bent on shedding blood became the best character of the fourth season has something to say with the profound impact of the nihilistic GOT universe (what about rats and Walder Frey) as well as the fine job that Pedro Pascal did in channeling his inner Domingo Montoya.

It's interesting then to consider where things lie, besides Oberyn's head, which is in more pieces than Humpty Dumpty's, after the battle at the Red Keep. We've had a few heroes in GOT, so let's review:

Season 1 Eddard Stark: Strips the Mountain of his knighthood and calls Tywin to court to answer for his crimes.
Result: Winds up beheaded.

Season 2 Tyrion: Smacks Geoffrey around a bit and saves King's Landing.

Result: Winds up stripped of his powers and now is on the chopping block.

Season 3 Robb Stark: Rides towards King's Landing to take back what is rightfully his from the Lannisters.

Result: Winds up with a wolf head sewed to his corpse.

Season 4 Oberyn Martell: Enters King's Landing to exact revenge on the Lannisters.

Result: Kills the Mountain and winds up with his head on the buffet table for the Magnar.



As you can see, the arc of history is long, but it tends toward justice. Well, just remember that it's very slow. As a show watcher, it's disappointing to lose someone as vibrant as Oberyn. He was as close to charming as we're going to get in season four of GOT when all the heroes are compromised or headless. As a side note, I found his battle scene to be satisfying to watch, which is kind of rare for this show, which tends towards hacking about madly. (A particularly egregious bit this week, if you're watching closely enough, involves Tormund jump swording an extra from the village who appears to pretty much run into his sword. I'm fairly certain I used the same move in my backyard at age seven). The same could be said for the dancing master in Season 1. I think this show could use a little more Bravos and a little more Dorne.

The pleasure of the show, and by extension the books, is that you don't actually know what's going to happen. I was near certain that Oberyn would win because he was fighting for Tyrion. And yet, in the back of my mind, I reminded myself that pretty much everyone is expendable thus far in GOT, especially if they appear to have a redeeming quality or two. However, what made this scene particularly egregious, and very good in an otherwise meh episode, was the weight of justice that Oberyn's words and fighting seemed to bring. He was so much quicker, so much more passionate. No quietly writing letters, here was  man on a mission. And that's why it was sickening and saddening to watch him turn into the judge from Toon town. And we wanted him to get justice. He did, just not quite in the way he wanted.

As usual, much of the episode that takes place in the North is not as interesting, and I must add that this episode was not aided much by the direction of Alex Graves who insists on shooting characters in extreme close ups that wind up with me contemplating how their pores are doing as opposed to focusing on what they're saying. The result of extreme close ups is I think intended to create more drams, but it verges instead on melodrama.

Up North it turns out that sending Gilly and mini-Craster off to live in a whorehouse with marauding cannibals wasn't the best idea. Who would have thought it? Sam is new to this dating thing, but you'd have to think even he should have known better. Besides Tormund's uh, fighting skill, the scene once again depicts a softer side of Ygritte, leaving us to wonder what will become of her and Jon Snow. We check in briefly with Jon, so he can once again confirm that Mance has a large army, which will probably be difficult to defeat. (Note: with the frequent trips to the brothel the Brother's engage in, the Night's Watch is seeming like it would have been much more up Tyrion's alley then we were lead to believe in season 1).

Across the narrow sea Dany spends some quality time speculating with Missandei about the exact nature of the Unsullied's unsullied reputation after Missandrei catches Grey Worm paying a little more attention to her than your typical eunuch. Grey Worm confesses his love by saying that even the castration was worth it to have the chance to meet Missandie, which is a great line, but somebody should probably sit him down and explain that if he gets the chance to travel back in time there are plenty of fish in the sea.

The other big plot changer is the ouster of Sir Jorah, who we learned a couple of episodes ago had been spying on behalf of Varys. We learn this via another Tywin letter and an extreme close up of Sir Jorha's forehead. In the impending scene, Daenrys, sends Sir Jorah away for spying with all the imperiousness that she has. Emilia Clarke has one register for Daenrys, which is imperious, which is unfortunate as the scene of her betrayal had the potential to be even more powerful. H

owever, Dany looking away from someone while casting them out isn't exactly out of the ordinary given how she's been played, so the scene, though not flat, didn't hit as hard as it should have.And I'm not sure if her sending him away was an act of mercy or not. Her story has been one long line of betrayal. The interesting part is what happens to Sir Jorah. He's a free agent in the GOT universe, and I've no earthly clue where he's riding off too after losing Dany on GOT and Mary on Downton Abbey, presumably off to court a young woman on a new show who will eventually cast him aside for a younger man.

The fun trials and travails of Reek and Ramsay, brothers at arms continued on, with the promise of more baths to come. I hope the extended cut involves loving bubble baths for years to come. In the meantime, Ramsay is busy using Reek to help convince Iron Born to surrender, (note: don't turn your back on the Iron Born after a nice speech or you're likely to get axed or shoveled in the head, face them) so they can be flayed alive. And all of us viewers finally got what we wanted, Ramsay earning his birth right in the family. Now, I'm not sure what happened to the promise of redemptive fire raining down on these traitors, but apparently George R.R. Martin didn't read his own memo. Roose Bolton, Warden of the North...who is about to have 100,000 wildlings to tend to.

The second most pleasing scene of the episode, somewhat surprisingly, took place in the Vale. Lord Petyr, after swallowing some gravel, is trying to worm his way into being warden for Rob Arryn, but he has to sneak past the tiny detail that he murdered his ex-wife, and he needs someone to do it. Who better than the best liar King's Landing ever knew? Sansa Stark finally proves herself able, all be it to save a murderous guy who is somewhat responsible for her family's downfall, because Starks! But still, who wasn't a little thrilled to watch her eyes connect with Petyr's after she's saved him? Even if we spent most of the scene directly in her face. One shot that was nicely executed, probably because it wasn't so damn close, was the arrival of Sansa 2.0 on the scene, descending the stairs like a woman of means and understanding. It was thrilling, even if it is to please her father's betrayer.

Arya and the Hound complete their overly long trek only to discover that Lysa is dead. Please tell me the Hound gets some treatment for that bite. I don't want Arya killing him. Besides which, having played the long game for two seasons, it's probably time for her to get to Bravos for some assassin training or the show is going to end before she's able to use any of it. I wonder if this has occurred to Mr. Martin, or whether she'll just be setting sail when the last book ends.

Stark count:

Rikon-Having fun somewhere with Shaggy Dog and Osha. I miss Osha. Can we retroactively cut back on some torture scenes and some Night's Watch scenes to get more of her.

Arya-Turning into an assassin who loves to kill people.

Sansa-Sansa 2.0. The wicked witch of the North.

Brandon-Traveling around in the body of Hodor crushing skulls like he's Gregor Clegane.

Robb-Dead

Theon-Reek.

Jon Snow-Still with beautiful hair.

And we have one last close up scene with Jaime and Tyrion in which they discuss beetles. Why are they discussing beetles? To pass the time before death? To figure out some internal logic to a world that doesn't actually retain any? We never get a proper answer, and perhaps, like a good Borges story, that is the answer. And now that Tyrion is to be executed it seems that it will be up to Jaime to find a way to save him.

All in all, despite my desire to withhold judgment on individual episodes because they are always part of a larger scheme, I found this episode to be exciting despite itself. The scenes with Sansa and the Red Viper were perhaps enough to redeem it, but the extreme close ups, and fascination with the plot of Ramsay, which could have been cut by 2/3 and Night's Watchmen standing around with nice beards feel like misfires. Hindsight would tell you that, as in any GOT season, some stories are left untold due to time constraints, but it's hard not to imagine towards the end of a season, what might have been.