December’s poems

I conclude this year’s poem series

With poems from the Opies

(pp. 19–25)

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Masculine, Feminine, Neuter,

I went for a ride on my scooter,

I bumped into the Queen

And said, Sorry old bean

I forgot to toot-toot on my tooter.

∙∙∙

A bug and a flea

Went out to sea

Upon a reel of cotton;

The flea was drowned

But the bug was found

Biting a lady’s bottom.

∙∙∙

Adam and Eve in the garden

Studying the beauty of nature;

The devil jumped out of a Brussel sprout

And hit Eve in the eye with a tater.

∙∙∙

Julius Caesar,

The Roman geezer,

Squashed his wife with a lemon squeezer.

∙∙∙

The sausage is a cunning bird

With feathers long and wavy;

It swims about the frying pan

And makes its nest in gravy.

∙∙∙

The elephant is a pretty bird,

It flits from bough to bough.

It builds its nest in a rhubarb tree

And whistles like a cow.

∙∙∙

As I was going to school one day to learn my A.B.C.,

I fell into a washing tub and sailed the ocean sea.

There came by a Chinaman who said I was a spy

And if I did not talk to him he’d poke me in the eye.

He tied me to a cabbage stalk

And cut my head with a knife and fork,

I grew so fat that I could not walk

And joined the Chinese army.

The captain’s name was Bango,

Bango was his name,

And he played upon his whiskers

Till the clouds rolled by.

∙∙∙

’Twas in the month of Liverpool

In the city of July,

The snow was raining heavily,

The streets were very dry.

The flowers were sweetly singing,

The birds were in full bloom,

As I went down the cellar

To sweep an upstairs room.

∙∙∙

I went to the pictures tomorrow

I took a front seat at the back,

I fell from the pit to the gallery

And broke a front bone in my back.

A lady she gave me some chocolate,

I ate it and gave it her back.

I phoned for a taxi and walked it,

And that’s why I never came back.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

I learned years ago with Samuel, this track is brilliant for getting babies to sleep.

Some remarks upon the recent occasion of my birthday

I thank those who, via Facebook, wished me well upon my birthday, which also is Guy Fawkes Day (or Bonfire Night) and therefore easy to remember.

I especially thank my cousin Andrew for posting a video of our childhood. It received many “likes” and comments. It shows the now-demolished house in Esmeraldas where my family used to live.

I rebuke the as-yet unidentified person who noticed Facebook’s announcement of my birthday and decided to “unfriend” me.

However, I thank those who sent cards and money. I used the money to buy a book about modern art, which was on sale at Barnes & Noble. It appears to be the sort of book that presents each artist and movement in its best light.

I hope to also buy this new book about C.S. Lewis’s philosophy.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I haven’t yet checked today’s electoral results. I might comment on them in the future.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It occurs to me that From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, published in 1967, is an urbanized retelling of Walkabout (1959): hence, its fountain-bath episode.

Walkabout (the book)

It’s been cold and very snowy, and I’m sick. This is what comes of walking outside without a coat.

Happily, tomorrow is the semester’s last day, and the stream of tutees has pretty well dried out. I sit at my work table and read. One book I’ve finished is Walkabout, the classic Outback story by James Vance Marshall. In tone, it’s very different from the movie that was made after it.

Spoiler alert!

In the novel, the death of the “bush” boy is less bleak than it is in the movie. The white girl looks at the “bush” boy with terror because he’s naked. The “bush” boy infers from her terror that he’s going to be visited by the spirit of death. Then he catches a cold from the white boy. Coupled with auto-suggestion, this is enough to kill the “bush” boy.

The white girl feels remorse and allows the “bush” boy to die with his head upon her lap. In death, then, the “bush” boy is comforted.

Still, it isn’t what one would wish to read while suffering from a cold.

End of spoiler.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin & I took Jasper to his annual veterinary check-up. He weighed 14 lbs., approximately 133% of his ideal weight. Karin & I have reduced both kitties’ rations. We’re also policing Jasper so that he doesn’t steal food from Ziva.

The naked prey

He doesn’t enjoy taking his medicine or having his teeth brushed, but, on the whole, Jasper seems less frantic than a week ago. One good sign is that he’s accepting his stricter diet. (The vet insisted we trim away some of his 13 lbs.) He begs less piteously over our meals – unless, that is, we’re having tuna or chicken.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Last night, Karin & I watched Cornel Wilde’s opus from 1965. I’d seen it in the summer of 2000, late one night on AMC, after a grueling McDonald’s shift.

Here is the summary from AllMovie:

In the bush country of South Africa in the late 19th century … [a] hunting party are captured by … tribesmen and grotesquely tortured to death. The only white man spared is safari-guide Cornel Wilde. … Stripping him naked and giving him a knife to defend himself, [the tribesmen] set Wilde free in the jungle, in preparation of hunting him down like a lion. … The rest of this thrill-a-minute film follows Wilde into the underbrush in his desperate, resourceful flight for life. Cornel Wilde’s The Naked Prey was filmed entirely on location under circumstances nearly as dangerous as the plight of its protagonist.

Roger Ebert makes scathing criticisms, all of them just. I find the movie interesting for comparative reasons.

Jean-Luc Godard famously said: “In order to criticize a movie, you have to make another movie.” I wonder if Nicolas Roeg had The Naked Prey in mind when he made Walkabout (1971). Roeg seems to have appropriated the most striking features of the earlier movie.

Both movies are lushly colored. Both are about wandering on foot through untamed land.

There are frequent digressions from the main story to show “nature red in tooth and claw.” When the protagonists sleep, creatures crawl and slither near them. Vegetation is photographed so as to resemble the human body.

Still, Roeg performs some critical reversals.

There is the theme of black and white people together in nature. In Wilde’s story, they fight; in Roeg’s, they cooperate. The failure of that cooperation is far more ironic, far bitterer, than anything in The Naked Prey.

There are scenes of hunting in which animals are really killed. Wilde has his hunter-actors throw their spears, and then he cuts to show the speared animals collapsing. Roeg casts an authentic hunter who, in one take, chases down his prey and spears it.

And then there is the titular nudity. Both movies show some natives naked. Wilde’s look like they’re from National Geographic; Roeg’s look … indecent. When Wilde’s protagonist is made to disrobe, the foliage preserves his modesty. When Roeg’s protagonists are naked … wow.

I could go on. In Wilde’s movie, the key figures are adults. In Roeg’s, they aren’t yet fully grown: in their Edenic setting, they have all the more innocence to lose.

Wilde’s characters travel across the screen from left to right. In Walkabout, the traveling is mostly opposite: perverse, confused. In Wilde’s movie, civilization, when it appears, is a haven. In Roeg’s, it’s as unwelcoming as nature.

So: Walkabout is much, much better. But The Naked Prey is watchable. Its ingredients are distinctive and exquisite, if not so compellingly arranged. There haven’t been many other movies like it, before or since.

Little Ziva surely enjoyed it: she perched on her hind legs, her face in front of the TV.

Roger Ebert, R.I.P.

Since 2000, when I moved to the U.S., I’ve read more words by Roger Ebert than by anyone else. Much of what he wrote is online, gratis. Just yesterday I was reading some of his reviews from the 1970s and ’80s.

He wasn’t the first movie critic whom I read extensively — that was Pauline Kael, who was more ruthless and precise. Ebert was more prolific and more humane. He was glad to review stuff that was unambitious, and, more important, he appreciated what was morally interesting about a lot of that stuff. (Example: Blue Crush.) In general, he judged the unambitious stuff more insightfully than he judged the ambitious stuff.

Not that he didn’t appreciate the ambitious stuff. His “Great Movies” series was useful to me when I was beginning to learn about ambitious movies. Some of those reviews explain subtext. (Examples: The Big Heat … Walkabout.) Others recount production history. (Example: Beat the Devil (a not-so-ambitious movie).)

He wrote warmhearted profiles of some great actors: Robert Mitchum … John Wayne.

Near the end, when he could no longer speak, he wrote some lovely personal reflections. Two of my favorites happen to be about not drinking and not eating: abstinence by prudential necessity and by incapacity. Doing without the drink and the food wasn’t so difficult for Ebert. What he really missed was the companionship.