stepping out

"The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step out of the frame."
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"Disorientation is the loss of the East. Ask any navigator: the East is what you sail by. Lose the east and you lose your bearings, your certainties, your knowledge of what is and what may be, perhaps even your life ... But let's just suppose. What if the whole deal -- orientation, knowing where you are, and so on -- what if it's all a scam? What if all of it -- home, kinship, the whole enchilada -- is just the biggest, most truly global, and centuries-oldest piece of brainwashing? Suppose that it's only when you dare to let go that your real life begins? When you're whirling free of the mother ship, when you cut your ropes, slip your chain, step off the map, go absent without leave, scram, vamoose, whatever: suppose that it's then, and only then, that you're actually free to act! To lead the life nobody tells you how to live, or when, or why. In which nobody orders you to go forth and die for them, or for god, or comes to get you because you broke one of the rules, or because you're one of those people who are, for reasons which unfortunately you can't be given, simply not allowed. Suppose you've got to go through the feeling of being lost, into the chaos and beyond; you've got to accept the loneliness, the wild panic of losing your moorings, the vertiginous terror of the horizon spinning round and round like the edge of a coin tossed in the air.
You won't do it. Most of you won't do it. The world's head laundry is pretty good at washing brains: Don't jump off that cliff don't walk through that door don't step into that waterfall don't take that chance don't step across that line don't ruffle my sensitivities I'm warning you now don't make me mad you're doing it you're making mad. You won't have a chance you haven't got a prayer you're finished you're history you're less than nothing, you're dead to me, dead to your whole family your nation your race, everything you ought to love more than life and listen to like your master's voice and follow blindly and bow down before and worship and obey; you're dead, you hear me, forget about it, you stupid bastard, I don't even know your name."
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Can you hear in my voice that I'm angry? Good. I've been reading a book about anger. It says that anger is evidence of our idealism. Something has gone wrong, but we 'know,' in our rage, that things could be different. It shouldn't be this way.
--Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

favorites of 2006

Books:
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Barney's Version, Mordecai Richler
Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, Brady Udall
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
Ash Wednesday, Ethan Hawke

Movies:
Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus
A Very Long Engagement
Little Miss Sunshine
Capote

And two exceptional TV series, because watching them on DVD was more enjoyable than most of the movies I saw this year:
The West Wing (whole series)
Slings & Arrows (Seasons 1 and 2)