View from the Couch

Persephone KC McAuley - Sept. 2007 The ground heaved – Great mounds of earth and rock rose up before her. She made her way through the rough terrain, Gingerly stepping here and there. The mud sucked at her ankles and held her fast. A mighty chasm yawned before her and up from the darkness He rose. His chariot of twisted roots and hardened clay flew high above her. Sinuous vines wrapped around her and lifted her up. Up beside him. Where he pulled her to him and kissed her with his sour mouth. Down into the abyss they dove. And blackness surrounded her. A thousand hands were on her. A thousand mouths devoured her. A thousand cries to Zeus she wept. Hades slept. At last. Slowly she slipped the vines from her body. Slowly she forced the hands away. Inch by painful inch she climbed. Up. Up – was light. Up – was home. Up – was all she knew. With measured pace and careful step the darkness fell away. Encased in mud She stood upon the edge of the abyss And spat ...

I've had a hard time composing my thoughts about this movie, separating what it is as a movie from what it did to me emotionally. I give up. I can appreciate the love and compassion that Sean Penn had for Alexander Supertramp. It's evident in the care he took in making this film. The scenery is beautiful. The supporting cast of characters that Alex meets along the way are note perfect. I can appreciate the desire Christopher (Alex's real name) had to escape the world, figure the meaning of life, get away from all the artifice and pretense and the complication of emotional relationships. But when William Hurt, playing Alex's father, collapsed into the middle of the street sobbing because he doesn't know where his son is or what has happened to him - all I could think of was how selfish Chris was being. We all have our selfish moments. We all have days, weeks, months even when what we want is all that matters and we will walk over anyone, especially those we lo...

I tried something new tonight. I was looking for a way to meet new people and do something I enjoy and am pretty good at. I went to a pub quiz. I knew there would be things I would know for certain - like - What is Ophelia's relationship to Polonius? Things that I might know or could make a good guess at - like - In what movie do the Beatles sing If I Fell... ? And things I wouldn't know no matter how my brain tried - like - What is the lowest weight class in boxing? My first clue that this wasn't my night? The pub quiz was in a gay bar. No problem for me. I was the prettiest woman in the bar. In fact I was the only woman in the bar - even once the quiz started. Next clue - the teams were all set and the group I was supposed to be meeting wasn't showing up. So I signed up to be my own team. I had my glass of Johnny Walker Red - I'd paid my 3.00. And there wasn't any reason to head out into the cold, rainy night and go back home. Beside, I wanted to ...

There were four of us there - all women, all alone. They were perhaps lured by the prospect of Brad Pitt's blue eyes and sculpted abs. They were sadly disappointed. I was there to see what Jim Beaver called Ingmar Bergman's western. I was not. What I saw and loved was a poem. An elegy to loss. A loss of innocence, loyalty, heroes, trust, brothers, and life itself. We Americans love our Westerns. We love the romance of a cowboy riding alone for miles and miles. As I once said to a dear friend of mine, Cowboys don't have families. At least that's what we like to tell ourselves. But the truth is much harder to face. The west was brutal, lonely, unbending. Trust in another wasn't given, it had to be earned. And even then it was a tenuous trust and could be broken at any moment. Loyalty was a precious commodity. Families were fragile. And heroes weren't always the good guys. Jesse James was a hero to many. Penny westerns and newspaper accounts of his expl...

I have a secret. I've kept this secret for years - for most of my life actually. I've kept it because I feared misunderstanding, misinterpretation, punishment, retribution. So I've kept my secret and not let it into the light. You see - I am a woman who loves...something that nice women don't love. Something nice girls don't do - or at least they don't admit to. My secret is not something isolated in one particular part of me, but is wholly integrated into everything I do. Everything I see, taste, touch, smell, hear is part of this secret, this power in me, this energy. I've struggled with my secret for so long, suffered so many bad experiences and tried to make myself fit into someone else's vision of what kind of woman I should be. I've finally realized that trying to shape myself into these other visions has meant denying the very thing that I love about...sex. I've been denying my own powerful, passionate, sexual, sensual self. When ...

This is the writing that led me to my name for the blog...the balcony is an online community of movie lovers that I have belonged to for many years now. I wrote this in August 2006 while recovering from surgery. Thanks, kat Due to a series of circumstances that I just won't go into here, I have spent much of the past month in hospital beds, my own bed, and finally my couch . While much of the time has been spent in a medicated haze, I have had the opportunity to view a great many movies. Not new ones, due to the lack of a Netflix subscription and/or willing souls to make a video store run for me, but whatever I could find on the pay-per- view , HBO, Showtime, Turner Classics and my own library. It has given me an amazing opportunity to rediscover some of my favorites and to make some conclusions about movies in general - at least as they apply to those of us here in the balcony. I don't presume to understand the general public's movie decisions in the least. B...

(From June 2007) My therapist said it was time. He said I was ready. Over a year of soul-searching, breakdown then build-up sessions, and he said I was ready to date. Ready to meet someone and perhaps find a partner who would be willing to walk by my side on this path I seem to be on. I 'd identified my strengths and weakness. I 'd examined my past relationships and determined what my expectations and losses and joys had been in each. I 'd learned what I needed and wanted from a relationship and, more importantly, I 'd learned how to articulate it. Not just say it in a couple of pat phrases, but to truly articulate it. This is where I am, this is what I 've lacked for most of my life, this is what I expect, need, want. These are my deal breakers. This is who I am at this point in time. That is who I was, who I pretended to be, who I assumed others needed me to be. But today - this is me. Fabulous, funny, strong, sexy, sensual, talente...

Borrowed this from Bridgete's Blog - Living, Learning and Loving the Law. http://bridgetem.blogspot.com/ Here are some questions for the "out of high school" group... What bill do you hate paying the most? Rent. I love my place but I do wish I was building some equity with my monthly outpouring of cash. Where's the best place to eat a romantic dinner? There are so many great restaurant's in Portland, I have a hard time with this one. But I guess my very favorite is right in my own little apartment, candles and music and great wine. Makes the transition to other activity so much easier... Last time you puked from drinking? I was 20 and leaving a man I was very much in love with to go to college. I still think of him holding my hair back while I puked in his bathroom - how lovingly he took care of me that night and didn't take me home until I was relatively sober so as not to create havoc with my mother. I...

My friends have been asking me to do this for some time now. They promised that if I started a blog, they would read it. We shall see... So AJ, Brett, Nancy, Cindy, and all the rest of you - I don't promise I'll write every day. But I promise that when I have something I feel is important to say, whether it's about me or life or movies or my fabulous daughter, I will say it here. To start with, I'll post some of my past writings. Get them out there in the world and see what happens. From there, who knows? Here's hoping that you have a wonderful holiday and I'll be back soon.