Finding Your Life Purpose by Eckhart Tolle (DVD)

Movie Review by Zinta Aistars



Studio: TOP RECORDS
DVD Release Date: September 30, 2008
Run Time: 90 minutes
Director and Actor: Eckhart Tolle
Price: $19.95



When the friend who sent me this DVD as a gift wanted to know what did I think of it, he knew I would tell the truth. My truth: I wanted to slap this simpering, snickering, snuffing little man NOW. As he spoke about life being in the now, and that the future is now, and that even if we were capable of time travel, the moment we arrive in that other time would be NOW, well, I simply wanted to slap him silly. In this moment. Now.

And really, I don't think I am so utterly intolerant. But all those odd little noises he makes. Oh. The little burps in the back of his throat as he sips from his water glass, now, and the seemingly involuntary (and maybe they are) little snufflings and simperings, the way he would laugh without laughing, as if it were such a dirty joke that our laughter must be politely suppressed ... oh, what an annoying being. In my now. That I would rather have in the past. The other and previous now.

All right, all right, so I get what he is saying. But it is not exactly an earth-shattering revelation, is it? That if we are always thinking of tomorrow, where we wish to be, all the changes we might desire, how we would improve on now if only, if only ... then we miss this moment, now. Got that. And on the other end of that time spectrum, if we are forever wallowing in our past, those golden days long gone, hind sight tainting them to a more golden hue than they ever were when they were NOW, and longing for some impossible return or revision, again, we miss this moment, NOW. Which may just be the most golden moment yet. Got that.

Yet isn't there great wisdom to be found in a bit of introspection? The learning of lessons, result of past mistakes, would be that. And shouldn't we have a few goals in mind down the road, some focus on which to train our eye, that we might actually be able to begin building, now, for that now to come?

Seems to me, the magic word here is not NOW. It is more like, BALANCE. Not overly staring over our shoulder lest we bump into some wall; not overly gazing toward the horizon, because it could be a very different horizon by the time we get there. It's all in the balance, not the extreme.

Not much of a water drinker, anyway. Put that water glass down, Eckhart, before you spill it ... in the future. Yeah, and Oprah? Missed on this one. My gifting pal? Still. Now. A pal who knows I tell the truth. As I know it. In this very moment. Could change tomorrow.

Borderline by Nevada Barr (Anna Pigeon series)

Book Review by Zinta Aistars

Hardcover: 399 pages
Publisher: Putnam Adult, 2009
Price: $25.95
ISBN-10: 0399155694
ISBN-13: 978-0399155697



Tucked away on a wilderness retreat for a weekend, cozied up in a rocking chair by the fireplace, I opened the cover of the review copy I had received of Nevada Barr’s newest novel in the Anna Pigeon series, Borderline. One of the best things about receiving review copies of books in the mail, frequently unrequested, is that I end up reading books I would never consider on a bookstore wander. This would be one of those. The cover illustration is a little too cheesy for me (rushing river rapids between high blue cliffs), a series of any kind is a bit of a turnoff (note to series authors: get over it and move on to your next character), and a detective story by any measure (beyond cliché) would have had me at a quick trot past this one. But retreats are a time for escapism from our usual reality, so I cracked open the cover to read.

From the book jacket I learned that Anna Pigeon, the park ranger of this now 15-book series, is apparently quite a popular read. You don’t reach 15 without fans. Must be something to this, I thought. Either sheep mentality, or, one would hope, something of value. And, admittedly, I was finding curb appeal here. Anna is no gumshoe. She is, after all, a park ranger, and my wilderness-loving self warmed to the idea of each book having a backdrop of a national park rather than the cops-and-robbers’ inner city. I am also interested in strong female characters, as much of my dislike for detective novels is that too many are based on Bogie-like womanizers, forever saving (and subsequently “doing”) “damsels in distress.” Look, there wouldn’t be so many damsels in distress if there were fewer womanizers wandering the landscape. I was ready to give Anna a chance.

The cool and sharp Anna, independent to the bone, found favor with me in the first few pages. Independent, sure, but she also knew how to be soft for that one special man—her husband, Paul. Her vulnerability showed in a recent diagnosis of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), an after-effect of the novel preceding this one … a story about a killing in which Anna had been involved (without regret) on Isle Royale in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Anna and her husband head south to Texas for a much-needed rest, planning on rafting the rapids of the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park. Also on the raft trip are four teenagers and the raft guide.

To no one’s surprise but maybe Anna’s, the trip is far from soothing. Instead, we are quickly pulled into another mystery, replete with half-drowned bodies and illegal border crossings, a corrupt politician and her philandering husband, a sassy and savvy journalist sniffing out a good story, snipers on mountaintops and falling dead bodies, suspect security guards, whiny teens, a sacred cow, and even a C-section performed with a pocketknife on a drowned corpse. Rapids, indeed. Yet among all this chilling, fast-paced, page-turning stuff, I also found snippets of delicious humor that had me laugh out loud, or else simply snicker in female comrade recognition.

“Paul kissed her gently. He was the best kisser of any man she had ever met. Most men thought they were good kissers, just like they all thought they were good drivers. Most were wrong on both counts.”

And I thought I was the only one with that observation, ha!

Barr could also slip in a political statement while addressing border laws and drug wars:

“America no longer wanted anybody to give her their tired, their poor, and their huddled masses made people’s blood run cold.”

Or the occasional jibe at religious views: “Should there be a heaven it would probably have a border patrol that put Homeland Security to shame.”

Mostly, Barr just did what she apparently does best: she kept me turning pages, putting another log on the fire, turning more pages, then reading late into the night. I like this Anna. I get the way her mind works and how her nerves settle. And I enjoyed, rather than the damsel-chasing for which this genre is known, having a warm, caring marriage as the backdrop for our heroine. Goodness, Paul even touches her on occasion simply to show love, with no demand for the night to end in more. What a guy. He gets that his wife mostly just needs him to be there. There is plenty of passion and mutual physical admiration, but placed strategically to tell us more about the characters than for cheap and gratuitous thrills. Nice.

The mystery is solved satisfactorily, if not exactly with unpredictable results. Anna’s devotion to the orphan child she saves from the river turns very quickly to the aloofness of a woman who is not maternally inclined—too suddenly not to be a bit jarring. Overall, Barr has a snappy, sharp style, not particularly literary, but with moments of wit and sparks of humor; she knows what she is doing with this genre. The main character is engaging enough that the reader quickly and easily grows fond, and so, to my own surprise, I added a couple more Barr books on my wish list. Anna Pigeon is the kind of main character women readers enjoy: the right and realistic mix of strength, intellect, softness, introspection, independence, with an ability to lean on, and be leaned upon by, one trustworthy man.

In Love With Jerzy Kosinski by Agate Nesaule

Book Review by Zinta Aistars




Hardcover: 218 pages
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009
Price: $24.95
ISBN-10: 0299231305
ISBN-13: 978-0299231309


Whatever the form of abuse, wounds take a long time to heal, if ever they do, and the scars remain forever. The work of novelist Agate Nesaule often handles the theme of abuse and its long-term repercussions. In her acclaimed first book, Woman in Amber, Nesaule examines her own experiences of living through World War II and losing her home, Latvia, then becoming an immigrant—a stranger in a new land (the United States), coping with exile.

All wars are the epitome of abuse, but for women, this abuse extends to deeper levels yet, as women historically have been viewed as a kind of “prize” in war—too often, even by their own countrymen. War in all its chaos unleashes the predator in Man, no holds barred, and women as war bounty up for grabs. And so, long after the war has ended, it continues in its aftereffects, leaving women as the walking wounded, susceptible to other forms of abuse—domestic, for instance.

If A Woman in Amber revealed to the reader the emotional and psychological devastation of war and exile for a woman, then Nesaule’s new novel, In Love with Jerzy Kosinski, delves deeper into the psychology of a woman in her life after war. The opening scenes in both books resemble each other, only whereas A Woman in Amber opened on a bedroom scene in which an older couple has made love in true companionship and intimacy, leading to pillow talk of unfolding memories … In Love with Jerzy Kosinski opens on a bedroom scene in which Anna Duja is faking orgasm to please (or appease) her abusive husband. She goes through the motions, makes the obligatory sweet moans, assures her man how “great” he is in bed. He doesn’t have a clue. His ego eats it all up, while she has learned to protect herself in fakery, preserving her own peace. Women, after all, have been taught in a man’s world that she is here to serve, here to please, and should he ever stray—it is her fault.

And so the scene unfolds upon a life of wearing masks in self-protection, even while it is the mask, paradoxically, that holds Anna back from true healing and connection with others. Dishonesty of any kind, even when in self-protection, can never lead to any good. Certainly not to a good relationship. Stanley, Anna’s husband, is portrayed as the typical abusive husband. He is no wife-beater; his abuse comes in more subtle forms—hints of humiliation (she won’t leave if he keeps her feeling unworthy), control over car keys (he maintains control over her ability to move freely), schedules (his needs always come first), friends the couple keeps (his), patronizing insults that eat away at Anna’s self-esteem (his control depends on her submission). It is precisely this type of emotional abuse that can be most poisonous, because outsiders see only a polite and caring, even charming, if somewhat overbearing Stanley. Her friends tell her how lucky she is.

Anna lives in a world of lies, and because she comes from an abusive past, not only the war, but also a father (the original role model for all men) whom she could never please, she allows the degradation to continue while going out of her way to preserve and protect the public image of Stanley as a “great guy.” Anna is the classic enabler. She has connected her own self identity to his. If people knew how Stanley really treated her, in her mind, it was not his shame, not his failure, but hers. Anna represses her feelings in whatever way she can, to survive, but those feelings emerge in other ways, as in, for example, obsessive compulsive housecleaning. It is as if she could clean up the mess that her life has become, but for all the cleanliness and order on the outside, the dirt and chaos on the inside of this relationship cannot be swept away.

Dignity is so important to a man, Anna reminds herself. She does all that she can to suppress her own dignity while protecting the dignity of her man. She sweeps away his copies of Playboy, ignores the evidence of an escalating problem, even as she finds her husband is posting single ads and personals (he waves this away as mere flirtation and tells her she is being “too sensitive”). When for all her efforts, he cheats on her anyway, more than once, she blames herself. She is “not enough.” Even so, her plans to leave Stanley begin to take shape, tugging her away, then back again, tossed about by doubt and guilt.

“How could she go back like that to certain humiliation? …Did she fear or love the man who tormented her, or did guilt and pity keep her chained to him? Why did she not pull herself together and start taking care of herself?”(p. 61)

Meeting other women with similar refugee-immigrant backgrounds, Anna recognizes herself in their “exile eyes.” These are women are exquisitely polite and kind, even flirtatious with the men around them, as if to prove that life is nothing more than a fun game. Their giggles mask their fear and pain.

“They all had exile eyes: eyes that had lost everything and seen the unspeakable but were determined nevertheless to keep looking, eyes that remained wary and disillusioned even during shy smiles and suppressed giggles. Anna had seen those eyes before: in photographs of Latvian women and men who survived Siberia, and on TV as Rwandan girls were being questioned by a journalist. A Hmong woman passing on a Greyhound bus, the Chilean woman doctor who used to clean Marge’s house, and Anna’s father—they all had eyes like that.” (pg. 73)

Ironically, it takes the attention of another man to help Anna ultimately break free from her abusive husband. While being around Stanley had always made her feel “not enough,” even ugly, being around the attractive Andrejs wakes Anna up to the lies she’s been told, the lies she had accepted as truth. The way he looks at her, the way he treats her, the way he romances her, all work a small miracle on the beaten psyche of the battered woman, until she too sees: she is an attractive woman with much to offer.

Alas, as is so often the case with the emotionally battered woman, she loses the ability to detect truth from lies. No one charms like the man who wishes to seduce and control. Andrejs turns out to be just another version of Stanley, and Anna finds herself in yet another cycle of abusive behavior. Anna swears to herself, she will not “lie with her words or her body again,” and when at last she recognizes that her new lover is a narcissist, initially attentive, but then increasingly cruel, she struggles yet again to loose herself. He plays mind games with her, telling her one thing one day, the opposite the next day, until she cannot tell what is real and what is imagined. In a poignant scene in a public women’s bathroom stall, she overhears two women talking and recognizes herself in their exchange. “He’s a liar,” one woman says in frustration to the other. Bipolar, dysfunctional childhood, addicted to his vices, a jerk, a bum … but the other woman in meek voice responds only that her man needs more time. Time, patience, love, these will be her cures for what ails him. Listening, Anna has an epiphany of the part she has played in this all too common scenario of domestic violence.

No one can save us from ourselves, but ourselves. Anna has looked for answers and healing in other women, but she finds the man-bashers repugnant, her own ethnic community too stuck in their own denial and bitterness, the feminists too disinterested in getting along with men at all, her women friends to be mostly guilty partners in enabling society’s mistreatment of women.

What does this all have to do with Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski? one might ask. Kosinski, a literary hero of Anna Duja’s, is the thread that weaves through this story as a kind of mascot for the damaged soul of those spit out by war. Neither dead nor fully alive, living lives of quiet agony, sometimes producing great art, imperfect and battling various vices to escape their isolation and pain—these are the children of war. The framework for Anna’s own story, Kosinski is rumored to be an abusive man if brilliant writer, and Anna remains doggedly devoted to his image as it is constructed in her mind. Deep inside her are words. She, too, wishes to write. And while much of her life she has looked to Kosinski to write the story of those damaged by war, having survived time and again her own personal war as an emotionally battered woman, she now realizes … she must tell her own story. When news reports come to light that her literary hero has committed suicide, beaten by his own demons, she suddenly realizes that she is free.

“She would have done anything for him … But even as she formed the words, she knew they were not true. She was finally beyond doing everything he or another man might demand. She would not lie for Jerzy. She would not collude with him … to uphold a false version of his childhood. She would not write his books. She would not give him her story. She would write it herself.

“She knew now she was not powerful enough to save another person … Only he could have received the miraculous grace that helped some survivors to open their hearts, to forgive, and to find peace … she knew the real reason he had killed himself: he was a child during the war; he was one of the hunted; he was one of the millions marked for death.

“He would never write the book she had wanted him to write that would explain why wartime lies continued for years afterward.”(pg. 199)

Anna will write that book herself. No one can tell her story but Anna herself. She hears rumors of her ex-lover Andrejs telling other women she was “no raving beauty” but an intelligent companion to him, eventually a disappointment. When friends ask her if she misses him, she says, honestly, no. She does on occasion miss the companionship of a man in her life. A man as he should have been, might have been. But she has now chosen her “final solitude.” Within this solitude, she plans to write her book.

“But maybe stories can help. Maybe those who have suffered more will listen to those only on the margins of the great horrors. Maybe all will be able to rest in the compassion of others. Maybe instead of clashing and competing, all the stories will weave together into a great tapestry, each thread part of an intricate, somber pattern. Maybe tenderness will prevail.” (pg. 210)

One after another, Anna has been disappointed in the men in her life—her father, her husband, her lover, and finally, even her literary idol. She will always be the child of war. She will always be a survivor.

Nesaule’s book is a heartbreaking story of women everywhere, fighting their own silent wars. Whether combat on the battlefield, or combat behind the closed doors of many homes, women suffer the wounds, and men with them, of a lack of dignity and compassion for the human condition. Her stories may seem simple enough, but they accomplish what Anna dreams about: a linking of people, both genders, in a better understanding of what we all need—forgiveness.