Dear Wonderful Folks,
If you’re not feeling wonderful, or feeling like you are wonderful to others, can you do something to change that? Like, buy someone a kitten or something? (Make sure the kitten doesn’t have fleas and ticks and has had all her shots and whatnot.)
Buying someone a kitten would make you wonderful for a little while, in someone’s world.
I want to share that I am now writing movie reviews for my local co-op, Weavers Way. The focus? Food. Movies about food or sharing meals.
This August, I wrote about Burnt (2015). Burnt, directed by John Wells (who also did The Company Men) stars Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller. In it, Cooper plays Adam Jones, a chef who is trying to get back on his feet after some drug problems and some fiery acts that made people dislike him. He’s a really great chef, but he has a bad temper. Maybe all chefs do? Maybe that fire inside is what it takes to succeed?
Please read if you want to know more about Burnt in this month’s The Shuttle here (page 8).
I really loved the film.
I have been thinking about the mechanics of stories, of how each story has its own motor that it runs on. An underlying philosophy and belief system. When I read someone’s story, I can feel the underpinnings—the ground of the story. It is as though a story has its own life, and I am tapping into the chakras of it, even though the story is not a person. Still, it lives, does it not?
I am reading the book Parade by English writer Rachel Cusk, and if you like to read, please get thee to a Rachel Cusk novel.
I can’t tell you much about what happens in any of the previous books, though I read them and loved them. I can just tell you about the experience of reading her work. It is an intimate experience. You feel, as a reader, as though there is a veil that has been lifted, and you are inside the mind and spirit and heart of the presence talking to you. I can explain Cusk’s work in no other way than that it lets you in, allows you to feel the stranger as yourself. I love the way it experiments. In the narration through Parade, we feel like the hummingbird, skipping from person to person. I would compare that feeling to the film Ghostlight by Tatyana Yassukovich, which was the winner of the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival. This film went from one actress to another, capturing her interior world.
So readers, if you know of a film where there is the making of food, the nurturing of agriculture, or meals shared that seem significant to the story, please let me know! I am highlighting one of these films every month in The Shuttle, and I will share the links to the articles here as well. (If there is a Philadelphia connection in the film, even better!)
Ciao!
Cheerio!
Have a blessed day,
Ms. Wonderful
Do you think young women may be the spark we need for a new earth? I do!
