Monday Movie: Juno

Juno is a lovely film, not least because its central, deeply cynical character, who spouts biting humor every few lines, is so believably played by a youthful heroine with a naturally understated naive exuberance. Ellen Page, who plays Juno, adds much to her character by effortlessly exuding the confidence of a know-it-all teenager, without a trace of pretentiousness. Despite flaunting a maturity that is clearly well beyond her years, Page's screen presence not only makes the character credible, but also romanticizes the late teens, arguably the worst years in anyone's growth.

The film takes stereotyped characters that seem perfectly believable and complexifies them as the film plays -- the pregnant teenager, the husband who wants to be a rock star, the wife who wants nothing more than to be a mother, and the boring parents of the teenager. In doing so, it shows that each of these characters is far more than the sum of their parts, making them much more convincingly real, and giving the audience more to grapple with as we get to know them.

Though I singled out Ellen Page's performance, the real genius in this film is the casting and acting because every single character in this film unfolded so credibly, and was played so spectacularly, that by the end of the film, there is a clear sense that life is both deeply complex and far more than anything any of us ever bargained for. All we can do is take a cue from our heroine -- laugh at where we are, act like we knew what we were doing all along, and figure out what to do next.

How do YOU write?

I learned how to write a little better from the Mad Hatter, who painstakingly edited the paper I presented recently. This big presentation can be blamed for keeping me from updating here. Mad hatter and I worked together on it for hours and hours, and his help made it far better than it would have been otherwise.

I noticed that he likes to write in bits and blurbs, with a lot of …’s for all the gaps, before and after each bit and blurb. I’ve always been a full-sentence-at-a-time kind of girl, but I see the virtue of the blurb writing now. He gets down every little piece of thought that way, and then you can always delete it, or change it, but everything is down on the page one way or the other.

Its really making me wonder WHY I write the way I do. Its not as though I began writing in the age of the typewriter, but I feel like I really do write in sentences. The thoughts pop out for me in sentence-sized pieces for me. I wonder if this is something that I have just become accustomed to or if this is something permanent. Do we think in sentences? It seems doubtful, really. What about you? Are you a blurb writer? Do you think you might be thinking in sentences?

what I am meditating on

I had no idea there was all this research out there on meditation and its effects on the brain! I saw this talk today, which is over a year old now, but it is news to me. I find it fascinating that meditation provides us with a means to control our base level of "happiness." Matthieu Ricard describes the differences between the brains of longtime meditators and a control group, showing that random fluctuations in the mood of longtime meditators remain within a smaller range. Ricard describe longtime meditators' greater overall satisfaction in their lives as an ongoing baseline below the level at which things fluctuate. He tried to describe this satisfaction or happiness as an intangible quality that he tries to give his audience an idea of by showing pictures of the faces of some of his Tibetan teachers. Anyone who has been to a talk by the Dalai Lama, or been around this type of great leader will have experienced this intangible quality, and instantly know what he is talking about. Ricard has all kinds of colorful charts and data to back up his claims, and I thought it was great to hear all the rational reasons for meditation spelled out by a scientist who meditates!

Maybe this struck more of a chord with me because I've become increasingly dissatisfied with psychotherapy over the years, wondering if it hasn't just magnified my neurotic tendencies by making me focus on what I am feeling. This video made me question the value of psychotherapy as useful treatment for any emotional issues, because in this framework it can only have very limited value, if any at all!

This is an hour long video, and I enjoyed the whole thing, but I was most impacted by the last 25 minutes of it, which is the more scientific part of the talk.

Six word Memoir

Ecogeofemme tagged me for this meme. I’ve taken far too long to respond, but this week has been a bit crazy:

Here are the instructions:1. Write your own six word memoir 2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like 3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere 4. Tag five more blogs with links 5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play

Doctor, not the kind that helps

I tag Repressed Librarian, Bloglily, Joe, Flossie and Brightstar