While thinking about the beautiful and complex interaction of literature and film, and while simultaneously conjuring the memory of Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book, one of our required texts this term and one of the most important meditations on the printed word ever captured in/on film, I happened to recall the work of Geoffrey Cordner. While we will not get to Greenaway for awhile I did want you to be familiar, at least, with Cordner's work before Ewan McGregor et al crowd our synapses.
I don't know where to post this, but it seems to fit in with the overall theme of the blog somehow, even if my experience is a bit, well, personal. I've written about it a bit at my blog, here.
ReplyDeleteI have become, after a six-hour surgical ordeal (which included some very fine anesthetic substances), a remanufactured human being. It feels strange to see my body and know that it has been altered in a very basic way by the creative impulses of a craftsman/artist/scientist whose goal was to free up the flows of materials within me, and who has applied a mechanical solution to a medical problem, using my body for spare parts for my body. I watch the blood pulse under the skin of my leg, in an artery which used to be a vein, and am struck dumb with wonder, not horror, at what has been done to me.
Oh yeah--I'm fine after the Femoral Popliteal Bypass.
And I think the best part of the whole thing was that I saw not one old white man in charge at Paradise Valley Hospital. My surgeon was a gay black guy, a classic egomaniac Ben Casey in black leather, and evey other medical person I encountered was caring person of color, from the Chicanas at the office to the Filipinas on the operating room floor. They are part of a new globalism of compassion I am grateful to have in my life.
I'll see you all at e725 next week, but in the meantime I'm resting and reading a lot of good stuff, and watching the Young and the Restless (my stories) everyday. Wonderful!
Jim