Wordsworth poems; The Thief of Bagdad (1924); Evergreens’ build-your-own salad.
I’m All Lost in The…
What I’m obsessing over THIS week.
Week #14.
1) Last week, I tagged the intro essay to Penguin’s William Wordsworth collection as one of my obsessions. This week I’m off into the poetry.
The reverent Pastoralism and the early 19th Century Dr. Suess rhyming (And Johnny’s in a merry tune,/the owlets hoot, the owlets curr,/And Johnny’s lips they burr, burr, burr,/And on he goes beneath the moon) are not my thing. But as an academic exercise—I’m reading Wordsworth as part of my self-induced 19th-Century-Poets-Seminar—these poems are delicious.
They’re also revelatory. The collection is arranged chronologically, and I’m still in the first third of the book, but so far, Wordsworth’s attraction to ghosts and ghost stories (“We are Seven,” “The Thorn”); his belief in the cosmic connection between human beings and nature (“The Tables Turned,” “Lines Written in Early Spring,” “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”); and most of all, his joy in synthesizing the past, present, and future (“Old Man Travelling,” “The Ruined Cottage”) are giving me a newfound philosophical sense of holistic calm. The past isn’t defined, the present isn’t defining, and the future doesn’t bring verdicts. Per this collection’s intro essay by Wordsworth scholar Stephen Gill, I’m calling this realization the “Wordsworth Continuum!”
“When these wild ecstasies shall be matured/Into sober pleasure, when thy mind/Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,/Thy memory be as a dwelling-place/For all sweet sounds and harmonies..” Wordsworth writes in Tinern Abbey (1798).
2) Released in 1924, Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Bagdad is a 100-year-old Hollywood film.
A special effects marvel in its own time (flying carpets, winged steeds, crystal-ball visions, demonic monsters that would make Sigourney Weaver shiver) and an acrobatic spectacle of athletic stunts (shirtless Fairbanks leaping over walls and off balconies with his trusty magical rope), The Thief of Bagdad remains eye-catching and entertaining in Twenty Twenty-Four.
The movie’s arresting visual charm has plenty to do with the $20-million-in-today’s-dollars sets too: lush palace interiors, bustling street scenes, fiery mountain crags, and swaying underwater sequences.
It must be said: The layers of racism in this 1920’s Hollywood movie are evident. Why for example is the princess of Baghdad white? And the dastardly Mongol prince and his nefarious informant—played by his scheming Asian ally Anna May Wong (who, by the way, steals the show in this, her breakout role as “the Mongol Slave”)—feed off white tropes of eyebrow-arched Asian villainy. To make it even grosser, all these racist clichés take place within a condescending Western narrative of magical Baghdad. As modern reviewer, Darragh O’Donoghue pointedly quipped in a Senses of Cinema review, Fairbanks’ adventures settle into “orientalist drag.”
O’Donoghue correctly calls The Thief of Bagdad “a great, but flawed film.” The “great” part is definitely wrapped up in the artistic set design and action-packed plot.
But for me the beauty here is in how the movie conjures a rhapsody of city energy: The magnificent replicas of city infrastructure and architecture featuring sweeping palace garden plazas above, and thriving noisy street bazaars below; the nod-and-wink urban diversity (one of the princess’ royal suitors is played by a woman, Mathilde Comont, disguised in a mustache); and the playful homo-eroticism (there are lots of close ups of Fairbanks’ tush and the guardsman’s, Sam Baker’s, buff torso and giant sword).
And I’m always sucker for an urchin-chic plot about a fancy-free pickpocket; in one Charlie Chaplin-worthy move, balletic and incorrigible Ahmed (Fairbanks) robs unsuspecting worshippers during afternoon prayers.
This city medley turns The Thief of Bagdad into a boisterous silent film that captures the urban energy of its source material, One Thousand and One Nights. (The screenplay was written by Afghani-American pulp fiction writer Achmed Abdulla.)
Historian Ben Wilson’s must-read 2020 history of cities, Metropolis, identifies Medieval Baghdad as the world’s first great international city. And The Thief of Bagdad makes the glamorous cinematic case for this theory as Baghdad’s princess (played by fainting flapper waif Julanne Johnston) draws regal suitors from India, Persia, Mongolia, and Baghdad itself (in the guise of Fairbanks’ own Little Tramp character). All against a backdrop of geopolitics, high culture, and thrilling street life.
I watched it on Amazon Prime.
3) Other obsessions are brewing this week, including Fremont Coffee Company, a cozy bohemian maze-of-nooks-coffee-shop built into a fixer-upper cottage on Fremont’s main drag; I’ve found myself tucked away there twice in the past week. I’m also enamored with Shibuya HiFi, a new Ballard nightclub I went to on Tuesday evening. They curate vinyl LP audiophile parties in an acoustically smart, private backroom (shoes off) for the first 25 people who reserve spots; I’ve now bought tickets for this upcoming Saturday night’s session, a revue of 1960s and 1970s Ska/Reggae/Dub tracks recorded by the influential Kingston label, Studio One. I’m guessing Shibuya HiFi will make my list next week. Additionally, I’m stuck on Christian-Marxist Elizabeth Gaskell’s Victorian novel, Mary Barton, which I’ve been reading and savoring for a month now; it made this list two weeks ago when I was deep in the throes of the pensive drama. Well, I finished it last night. It turned into a bit of a TV show in the last batch of heavy-handed chapters, but it remained, on balance, a literary and gripping deliberation on industrial era capitalism.
Having noted all these contenders, I feel compelled to give the third slot on this week’s list to something I left off last week’s rundown: local salad chain, Evergreens .
Sure, Evergreens has all the charm of a Starbucks, complete with: a plastic seat setting; assembly-line service, scooped from cafeteria style bins (complimentary, corporate laboratory bread added); a high school employee feng shui; and a loud logo that looks suspiciously like, well, the Starbucks logo.
But unlike all these fast food trappings, Evergreens, with its vast assortment of fresh veggies and greens, gives an often-frustrated vegan the unmatched eating-out opportunity to take control.
I gleefully graze down the production line improvising a different version of the “build-your-own” every time. You pay by item, so, with vegan eyes like mine, it can get pricey choosing from a long list of healthy and tasty options: black beans, celery, cucumbers, fire roasted corn, grape tomatoes, green onions, house pickles, jalapeños, mirin shiitake mushrooms, pickled red onion, red bell pepper, roasted brussels sprouts, roasted cauliflower, roasted sweet potato, shredded carrots, and zucchini.
I usually top my horde of veggies with sunflower seeds (they’ve also got cashews, garlic croutons, crispy onions, tortilla chips, BBQ sauce, black pepper, chermoula, hot sauce, fresh lemon, and tajin) plus I ask for a “heavy” serving of dressing; you can choose from cilantro lime, dijon balsamic, caesar, Greek yogurt, peppercorn ranch, and red wine vini.
I put it all on a base of spinach, romaine lettuce, and warmed quinoa. Also available: argula, kale, mixed greens, and jasmine rice. There’s cheese, fruit, and protein (such as tofu) choices too.
Sealed in a big plastic bowl, I shake it up, and then sit down to my masterpiece.