How is a Kinesis like a bicycle?

It's been a busy few days, and I've made a real dent in the unpacking. To the point where I am typing this entry on my Kinesis, sitting in a proper chair, at an actual desk, looking at my cinema display. For the first time since June. (I never really got unpacked at the place I moved in July, at first because I was waiting for various work around the apartment to be done, and then because I knew I'd be moving to this place. So in a sense I've felt like I was camping out for four months.)

Rather like riding my bike the other day, typing on the Kinesis is a little wobbly, but it's all coming back to me quickly. (For those of you not familiar with them, Kinesis recommends you not use any other keyboard your first two weeks with one of theirs, or you'll never properly adapt to it. That was certainly my experience.) I've had a lot of ideas, both fiction and non-fiction, floating around the past several months but haven't wanted to sit and write for extended periods on a laptop keyboard. Now maybe I'll make progress with some of them. Stay tuned.

The one piece of bad news is that I somehow seriously aggravated my planter fasciitis over the weekend. I just finished eight weeks of physical therapy for it, and had thought it was under control, but it's been hurting like hell all day. Since being able to walk comfortably is kind of critical to any progress on my health, this is actually even more annoying than it is painful. Unfortunately it seems to be one of those areas where medicine is more art than science — but I've asked for a referral to an orthopedist anyway. Fortunately the aircast I was given for it back in May or so was too ungainly to pack in a box when I moved, so it was fairly easy to find. I've been wearing it for the past few hours or so; it keeps me from putting much strain on it when I hobble around the house, which in turn reduces the pain. But, damn, I really don't need this. I suppose the silver lining in that is that perhaps I can spend tomorrow keeping my leg immobile and catching up on my writing.

Movie 2: Princess Bride

This has to be at least the fifth time I"ve watched Princess Bride, a movie I find simply delightful. A satire of Medieval fantasy that is itself a great medieval fantasy; a movie that is fun for children of all ages. I recommend it wholeheartedly. And if by some miracle you are one of those people who has never seen it, for heaven's sake don't read my second paragraph.

( Second paragraph. )

Movie 3: To Kill a Mockingbird

In high-school, my friends and I were fond of saying American culture is an oxymoron. I am now well aware that America has produced its share of world-class artists in many fields: Mark Twain, Duke Ellington, Frank Capra to name just three no-one would argue against. But the disdain for American culture we felt is not uncommon among young American intellectuals. It is a remarkably stupid and ignorant position, one I was fortunate enough to begin to outgrow during my freshman year in college, when I read Emily Dickinson But during those years when I was reading most voraciously, I read almost none of my own country's great writers. So when kareila showed me To Kill a Mockingbird a few years ago, the title was the only thing about it that was familiar. I found it deeply moving, and immediately went out and bought both the DVD and the book, which I promptly read and adored. That was about four years ago.

This weekend I watched the DVD for the first time since Jen showed it to me. I found it tremendously difficult to watch. Partly it was just my aversion to suspense: it's a movie I would find easier to watch with company. And partly because now I know how it comes out: ( Spoilers behind the cut. )

But mostly I think I found it so hard to watch because the first time I saw it, the racism of the old South was far less concrete to me than it is now. Last spring I spent a week in Birmingham, visiting kareila and alierak (and Will, who to the best of my knowledge doesn't have an LJ yet). We spent an afternoon at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute,* which is across the street from the 16^th Street Baptist Church, where four little girls were blown up in 1963. I spent much of that afternoon fighting back tears, not always successfully. I saw Martin Luther King's jail cell. I saw a burned-out bus. I heard the voices of people asking only to be treated with basic human dignity — and the hateful, twisted voices of their tormentors. I saw some things that were very hard to look at. And I was deeply, deeply ashamed — because the people who did those awful things looked like me.

The institutional racism of the America of just a few years before my birth shifted, that afternoon, from being something I knew about from history books to something I knew about with my gut.

And that knowledge, more than anything else, is what makes To Kill a Mockingbird hard for me to look at now. I think it is a brilliant movie; one of those rare cases where the film does the book justice. I will gladly watch it again — in the company of good friends, especially if one of them has not seen it. But I will never watch it alone again.

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* The Civil Rights Institute has a web site, but it entirely fails to convey any real sense of the place. Still, for an extremely superficial view of what we saw that day, take the virtual tour starting here.