=================================================

Location: Work.
Listening: "The Valley Road" by Bruce Hornsby.

Lazy weekend, of sorts. Friday night, we went up into LA for dinner and PS2 with Dan and Shanti and ended up wiling away several hours with them and Austin (fresh from a partner's box at the Laker game). Dinner was "Texas Barbecue" at a local hole-in-the-wall and it wasn't bad at all, although it did make me yearn for home.

Saturday was my running errands early and then lazing about the house while Peter played Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Later in the afternoon, we watched Midnight In The Garden of Good And Evil with Sapphire and tonics. I enjoyed the film as much as I remembered, but it, too, made me yearn for home. I'm beginning to suspect that I've been away for too long, yet the drive to return is more a drive to sit on my grandmother's porch in the middle of the summer, watching rickety trucks roll over red dirt on their way to town. It's more a drive to be out of California and back in the humid, grown-over, almost stifling environment that is the South in summertime. Most days I successfully ignore it, but when it does appear, I realize that it's grown exponentially since the last sighting. Eventually, it will have to be addressed.

Easter was quiet--more Romance of the Three Kingdoms for Peter, more reading and snoozing on the sofa for me--and dinner was yummy. Peter broiled some beef tenderloin, which he served with buttered asparagus, and we settled in to watch Ran.

Ran, as a concept, has haunted me for some time. While living in Houston, I ended up watching Heaven And Earth (the Japanese film--not the American Vietnam flick with Tommy Lee Jones), and became very fond of it. However, whenever I mentioned this fondness to anyone, the automatic response on their part was to sniff. "Oh, well, you've never seen Ran.". This happened so often that I eventually developed something of a grudge against Ran and managed to avoid seeing it until last night. I finally consented to do so mainly because I've recently developed an interest in pre-1600 feudal Japan (as a result of poking around the SCA) and wanted to get a better idea of the visual scope of it (plus the fact that Peter apparently enjoyed it so much that he bought the CD to play on his computer--I felt I needed to give it a chance).

Simply put, I enjoyed the film--a great deal. While I've never been much of a King Lear enthusiast (I tend to prefer Richard III and Hamlet for Shakespearean tragedy), I loved Kurosawa's interpretation (although I kept trying to figure out who Kaede was in the original. I found out later that she was inserted into the story by the screenwriter and does not have a Shakespearean parallel). The costuming was, as far as my limited knowledge (consisting of a few weeks of reading about medieval Japanese attire) goes, authentic. The battle scenes (particularly the scene that was shot in one take--the siege of the Second Castle by Taro and Jiro that culminates in the burning of said castle and the deaths of Hidetoro's concubines and guard) were gracefully executed. The script verged on melodrama on several occasions, but managed to pull back just in time in most of those instances. All in all, it was the kind of war film that I like--ambitiously choreographed, panoramically shot, and adequately brutal (I tend to loathe films that gloss over battle scenes)--and the story itself managed to hold me throughout the 3+ hours (I actually ended up feeling very dissatisfied at the end of the film--I somehow felt that it should have been longer). Definitely gave me some ideas for my research on female Samurai in the Heian/Tokugawa periods. Gave me some excellent inspiration for my persona's mon (personal insignia) as well (which I may end up using even if I don't ever get involved with the SCA--I keep waffling on the issue of actually joining).

Other things on my mind besides feudal Japan are:

• Revising my resume.

  The consulting firm contact that Peter worked with on the Nicaragua project has expressed an interest in my resume. While I've been revising it for other leads as well, I need to just go to it and get it done within the next two days. I find myself hoping that I can pass muster once again in the Great Job Hunt.

• Creative work.

  Peter has expressed a desire to collect several of his pieces, edit them, and start prepping them for submission. I'll be helping him with this project, and am planning on doing some collecting and prepping of my own in the process. It occurs to me that, somewhere along the line, I forgot that I'm a writer working in the corporate world to pay the bills. I've allowed the problems with my work to overshadow everything else in my daily life, and it has to end. I have to get back on track--creatively and otherwise--and I need to keep supporting Peter in his work as well. A perspective shift is desperately needed.

• Stress relief.

  Still working on de-stressing. Made some progress over the weekend when I was able to lounge on the sofa with a book and not fret about anything for a while. Today, back at work, my back muscles are tightening again, and I'm trying to shake it off. I'm sick of dealing with it, frankly, and have gotten to the point of considering acupuncture (especially after reading about Kenny's experience). We'll see how I fare on my own, though, before I end up a pin cushion.

• Reading.

  I have bags of books that I've purchased recently that I haven't gotten around to reading yet. To give you a bit of an idea, currently at home I have:

  Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh.
  Wind Bell: Teachings From The San Francisco Zen Center, 1968-2001, Michael Wenger.
  Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Shunryu Suzuki.
  New & Selected Essays, Denise Levertov.
  Poems 1960-1967, Denise Levertov.
  The Middle Ages, someone I don't recall.
  Dragon Lady: The Life And Legend Of The Last Empress of China , Sterling Seagrave.
  Loba, Diane DiPrima.
  The Fellowship Of The Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien.
  Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk (Peter's, actually)
  Recent Developments In Psychoanalysis, Morris Eagle.

  And that's really just the tip of an iceberg that's been growing steadily for several years. I have a nasty habit of buying books and then waiting months or even years to read them. I'm not sure why this, as a habit, bothers me, but it does. So I started on New & Selected Essays by Denise Levertov this weekend--and was so intrigued by her critical examinations of William Carlos Williams' poems that I now want to run out and stockpile his books as well. It's never-ending.

Meanwhile, conflict in the Middle East flared again over the weekend, and drew my attention back to matters of international law. I'll likely comment on the situation at length at some point in the near future, but, as my views are wildly unpopular, and I have work to do, it will have to wait until I can better express my stance. For the moment, I'll simply say that the United Nations has come to a point where it must act, or find itself unable to do so in myriad future incidents. I'll be watching with interest.