tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633Sat, 05 Oct 2024 02:03:04 +0000Slangvideo games'Big Al'ChinaCoca ColaPony BoyPow-WowThe Smackdownlanguagestirring the potBryant ParkCDPCity IslandEventsNew York CityOscarsPlayStationRecipesRocket ListThe CDPTobagoTrinidadbridgesgardeningmoviespatriotismprestigesnowstormwalkingweedsyogaobservations and personal essayshttp://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)Blogger119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-3395204551922978371Thu, 12 Apr 2018 03:08:00 +00002018-04-11T23:09:12.457-04:00 It was seven years ago that my friend Daniela and I participated in a "renku" - a string of haiku composed by each of us alternately in a sort of response to the one which went before. We used Twitter as the interface and ended all of our tweets with the hash tag #renku in an attempt to 'file' them in sequence.We had decided to go eighteen rounds, and that we did over the course of nine months.http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2018/04/haiku-moments-postcards-from-two-lives.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-6857903115049653883Fri, 11 Jul 2014 15:00:00 +00002014-07-16T12:58:20.029-04:00 When the words of others find resonance somewhere inside us - they tend to stick. These words don't have to be accurate or true, they just have to find some kind of agreement with a belief we already hold, or be ones that we are willing to consider or accept. For me, many of these little nuggets have come from teachers. They are usually short phrases - sometimes a challenge, sometimes a http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2011/09/not-so-casual-observations.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-9001446677139811902Thu, 03 Apr 2014 15:50:00 +00002014-04-03T12:05:25.440-04:00 We all think our lives are important. We live them like they are, like we are... and who can blame us? Every one is the only game in his own lonely town. But when that game falls apart, when that game seems to be a losing proposition, when the fun has gone out of it - then what? What happens when everything we pile on - the trick hats and fake mustaches - can't change things, or http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2014/04/pluck.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-5345653488639002337Mon, 24 Mar 2014 01:19:00 +00002014-03-25T14:41:22.846-04:00 One of Allstate's insurance commercials features the character Mayhem. Mayhem is an impish creature who wreaks Havoc, which happens somewhere on the fuzzy border of Malicious and Accidental. The premise of the ad is that Allstate can protect you, if not from Mayhem, at least from loss or deprivation resulting from its activity - wouldn't that be nice? My husband does not http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2014/03/managing-mayhem.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-1677694707509548985Thu, 13 Mar 2014 02:28:00 +00002014-07-18T12:33:29.828-04:00 Finishing things has never been our strong suit. I would say that unless things have a definite completion date beyond our control - such as an Ebay auction, a discount coupon or a pregnancy, we can find a way to drag them out. I say 'our' because I am not sure whether this is individual or group behavior. A few years ago we decided that the retractable awning on the back patio needed to be http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2014/03/getting-job-done.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-2329447496009612195Fri, 03 Jan 2014 23:19:00 +00002014-03-24T13:38:06.079-04:00 Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed! A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches. Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold. http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2014/01/winter-trees-by-william-carlos-williams.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-7228502290428658766Sun, 17 Mar 2013 13:42:00 +00002013-03-17T10:51:59.576-04:00 . I just renewed my membership to the New York Botanical Garden and stopped by for the first day of the 2013 Orchid Show. It was a cool, rainy Saturday - which meant that the crowds stayed away and I was able to indulge my ongoing fantasy that the Garden is actually my own private Idaho. Spring is poised on its haunches and soon everything will be 'fathered forth' in a flurry of cellular http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/03/nybg-orchid-show-2013.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-721176445484009964Sun, 03 Mar 2013 03:25:00 +00002013-03-02T22:25:00.975-05:00 Fairy-tale Logic Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks: Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat, Cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat, Select the prince from a row of identical masks, Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote, Or learn the phone directory by rote. Always it’s impossible what someone asks— You have to fight http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/03/fairy-tale-logic-fairy-tales-are-full.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-8272827195978462189Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:25:00 +00002013-02-27T22:38:31.049-05:00 As I make my way home from a weekend trip, it seems likely that I will catch the Academy Awards telecast only in part or not at all. Spring has come to the south and in moving north I am also traveling back in seasonal time. I could travel north to south repeatedly and slip into and out of spring many times before the east coast is of one mind about it. Movies can do something like that to http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/02/reflecting-on-movies.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-7342752052677073871Sat, 23 Feb 2013 01:42:00 +00002013-02-22T20:42:01.952-05:00A highly educated paralyzed man living with the help of an iron lung seeks the services of a sex therapist and a priest, the details of which are documented in The Sessions. Cheryl Cohen-Greene (played by a taut-faced Helen Hunt) is the sexual surrogate who helps Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) have his first sexual experience. Helen Hunt approaches her role with unselfsconscious directness. http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-sessions-and-master.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-1991450444191528855Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:10:00 +00002013-02-09T23:00:29.392-05:00   I'm almost through the long list of movies I wanted to see before the February 24th Oscars. All that's left to be seen of the Best Picture nominations are: Les Miserables, Zero Dark Thirty and  Amour. Of the other movies I wanted to see, only The Master, Hyde Park on Hudson, and the documentaries remain, which brings me to Searching for Sugar Man.  This http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/02/searching-for-sugar-man-and-five-broken.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-6381800801325170396Thu, 07 Feb 2013 02:03:00 +00002013-02-14T20:58:16.302-05:00None of it was expected - not Zac Efron as a lovesick negro sympathizer (this was the sixties), not John Cusack as a murderous gator hunter with S&M predilections, and certainly not Matthew McConaughey as a closeted homosexual with a preference for black lovers and a poor radar for dangerous situations. Neither did I expect Nicole Kidman as a Monroe-like waif with a dark side, who bit off http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/02/hold-presses-itsthe-paperboy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-378713982547432747Tue, 29 Jan 2013 02:26:00 +00002013-01-28T21:29:46.699-05:00These two movies were films within films, begging the question whether any film could ever be true fiction or artifice, intersecting as it does with the real lives of real people - the actors who bring characters to life.  Hitchcock tells the story of Alfred Hitchcock's life during the filming of the movie 'Psycho', and is particularly interesting for what it reveals about the lives of &nbsphttp://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/01/hitchcock-and-argo.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-3075996295820400651Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:54:00 +00002013-01-21T19:54:26.712-05:00I didn't plan on seeing Django Unchained but there it was, actually a nominee for best picture, so in the interest of balanced reporting I had to suck it up. Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave emancipated at gunpoint by  German bounty hunter Dr. Schultz, (Christoph Waltz) who seeks his assistance in capturing a few notorious heads, (those on the shoulders of the three Brittle Brothers) for http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/01/silver-linings-playbook-and-django.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-7536138433374285021Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:46:00 +00002013-01-18T13:49:33.398-05:00 The thing about movies staffed with actors in their golden years is that the subtext of age invades every aspect of the movie -which almost forces the movie to be about that age in a way that movies cast with youth are not. I didn't plan to see Hope Springs, but there I was watching an impossibly wrinkled Tommy Lee Jones and a visibly older Meryl Streep going through the motions of http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/01/hope-springs-and-best-exotic-marigold.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-7703254727911066633Sat, 12 Jan 2013 20:40:00 +00002013-01-20T22:14:44.132-05:00It's probably telling that I've already triple dipped into the Life of Pi. From the very first scene -those strutting pink flamingos against the backdrop of a sepia painted wall with the gauzy overlay of the sublime voice of Bombay Jayashri - I knew this would be a special movie. It was beautiful to watch - expanses of sky and water in a breathtaking array of colors and textures. People were http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/01/life-of-pi-and-salmon-fishing-in-yemen.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-778160952958090712Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:53:00 +00002013-01-20T21:58:46.769-05:00Things are looking up - I hit upon not one, but two good movies. I watched Rust and Bone in French without the benefit of subtitles - and it's a testament to the acting that I didn't need them. In fact, I found myself wishing that the music soundtrack was in French as well. Marion Cotillard is enthralling. She seems to come away clean from every role she plays, and goes into each new http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/01/rust-and-bone-and-beasts-of-southern.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-406559875542805998Sat, 05 Jan 2013 02:31:00 +00002013-01-06T21:51:00.377-05:00No other Bond but this one (Daniel Craig's) could have traced his path forward into the world from an ancestral home like Skyfall. It was a bit of a stretch even for him, but no other Bond was dark enough to pull off such a grim origin, and frankly none of them left enough of the character on the screen to warrant that close of a look. The past three Bond movies have a continuity that the others http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/01/skyfall-and-moonrise-kingdom.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-4756192121037319163Thu, 03 Jan 2013 02:37:00 +00002013-01-02T21:42:03.420-05:00Here we are again, another new year, and I am getting ready to run my annual movie marathon.In the meantime, I discovered two BBC Masterpiece Series ( Downton Abbey and Sherlock) which have helped make my 90 minute commute (each way) more bearable. As usual, the awards movie 'short list' is pretty long - twenty-six at last count - many of which I will not see, however it is with a http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2013/01/showtime.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-5841247919790229120Sun, 23 Dec 2012 00:01:00 +00002012-12-23T07:57:24.661-05:00 It's safe to say that there are a lot of people in the world, but only relatively few celebrities, stars, experts, people of rank, royalty, status, or outstanding ability in their chosen field. Many of us harbor a wish to be special, important (even those of us who already are so to a wider audience than our immediate families). However, underneath this is something even more fundamental than http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2012/12/if-tree-falls-in-forest.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-8594693275698594752Sat, 01 Dec 2012 21:48:00 +00002012-12-22T17:11:28.064-05:00                           I often marvel at the present moment, representing (as it does) both the culmination and the continuation of all known history: a cord tease-able into millions of threads of perspective - as many as there are people to experience them... and maybe then some.  As terrible as it can http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-possible.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-9009713522559307104Wed, 21 Nov 2012 02:00:00 +00002012-11-22T09:32:21.285-05:00 "Let there be", and there it was - man drew a breath, woman drew a rib, for "it was not good for him to be alone", or without a receptacle for his guilt which required a flood (and later, blood) to wash away; or a loaded boat so many by so many cubits to buoy the remnant two by two to the top of a mount - a dove-borne Covenant, the drowned earth below  rainbowed. &http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2010/09/second-fall.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-382031128293879166Sat, 10 Nov 2012 05:21:00 +00002012-11-10T08:51:35.637-05:00 Anger can be an interesting emotion - if you have the ability to pull back from it. I don't always - but recently I had the singular pleasure of feeling anger turn from hot to cold. There was an actual physical sensation of coolness inside my body, a feeling of spaciousness and  unflinching power that was strange and heady. This 'anger' felt good. Why? Because it wasn't at http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2012/11/crossing-back-to-kansas.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-2849463195020305336Sun, 28 Oct 2012 01:18:00 +00002012-10-27T21:38:19.838-04:00 I have not posted on this blog for several months now. I have not kept my daily journal either. When life gets really intense, I've found that writing about it can prolong the experience and slow the process of moving on. And when life gets really great, writing about it feels confining. So, writing about pain intensifies pain and writing about happiness fails to recapture the essencehttp://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-write.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2862590225572839633.post-874143556833077309Sun, 15 Jul 2012 01:31:00 +00002012-07-15T11:10:51.058-04:00 This year I went seed crazy. There isn't as much satisfaction in buying plants when you can embark on the adventure of raising seedlings. This year's big experiment was lettuce. I planted a few seeds in my basement ( in April) and was surprised at how quickly they germinated. The 'few' seeds made a fluffy row of seedlings in the center of my planter box - I marveled that every single one http://fourseasfoursuns.blogspot.com/2012/07/lettuce-pray.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Lorraine Robain)1