2008-06-01

As the temperature soared close to 90 F, Mick and I went to church together, a rarity for us. He joined me so that Fr. Joe could bless us on the occasion of our 21st anniversary.

We came home to enjoy lunch and our first of three movies, The Flock, starring Richard Gere and Claire Danes. It was a seamy story of the shadow world of sex offenders and sexually oriented mutilation and murder. Gere and Danes were excellent, Gere playing an antihero with relish and Danes enabling and supporting his characterization with generosity and integrity. The screenplay, on the other hand, was muddy and lurched about amidst its lurid images.

The film brought into stark relief the diminished distance between law enforcement officers and the criminals they hunt. This theme has been played many times before, but in this day of repeated instances of police brutality, the point is worth making again.

Over popcorn we watched our second feature, King of California, starring Michael Douglas as a mentally unstable father who talks his daughter, ably played by Evan Rachel Wood, into searching for gold under the concrete floor of Costco. It was a slight film, unpretentious and engaging, with charming performances by Douglas and Wood.

After a break, we enjoyed supper with our third film of the day, Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth, starring Tim Roth as a 70-year-old professor of philology – the study of language - who gets struck by lightning and grows young again and Alexandra Maria Lara as the woman he loves, another lightning-struck changeling who begins speaking in tongues which are progressively more ancient and unknown. He is torn between allowing her to continue to regress into the proto-language where our words all began, which is killing her by stages, and allowing her to live.

Coppola is in typical form. He is a mature and skillful director who can marshal a vast and sophisticated array of cinematic effects deftly. On the other hand, he asks his characters to overplay their emotions, making things too obvious in his zeal for melodrama.

It was a movie well worth watching, with soaring production values, a wonderful sense of color and an appealing sound track. And the film raised good questions about the nature of human beings, and then played on those questions with virtuoso pacing. Had it not been for the self-indulgence of Coppola and a shaky ending, it would have been a first-rate film. As it was, it slipped into a comfortable second-rate status. The filming on Malta was absolutely beautiful.

During our afternoon break, I found that Steve M had sent his comments to Chapter 12 of 101! I processed them and now have a final rough draft of this book, ready for me to read through! Whee! When Gary comes in on Tuesday, I will have him combine all of the chapters and other parts of the book into one document for the read-through.

I also heard from Frank D, who most kindly equipped me with the name of the editor at Hampton Roads to whom I should send the manuscript of The Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues. It turns out to be Bob F, who coincidentally was the man who, in the 1980s, saw the value of The Law of One. This is a signal blessing. It is very likely he will accept our manuscript! I shall write him the first thing on Monday morning.

Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.