Odes to the State of Michigan

Petosky Stones

Lake Michigan Shorelines

That Wild Great Lake:

Lines Written on Lake Michigan

The lake was smooth that dawn and like a pool
Of liquid glass or diamond: so profound

Was its tranquility, its quiet sound

Was soft as silk and sacred, sweet and cool.

I miss the echoes of those rolling waves

All rushing to the ancient sandy shore.

I find I cannot sleep well anymore

And peace of mind is what its whisper saves.

Not like those storms that roared in thunder forth

Some months before, when, hurling to the shore

Some sailboats, wrecked, can never venture more

Upon the lake from West to East to North.

In winter blizzards some Northeasters blow

From the Atlantic way into the west,

Till frigid surf has finally found its rest

In glittering icicles and ice-sheathed snow.

That length of long sea ice unto the sand

Which melts so slowly when the winds of spring

Return to waken all the blossoming,

Returning songbirds to their summer land.

Alas, I miss the lake and all its moods !

I miss the sound that moves my aching heart !

I miss the sight inspiring all my art !

That wild Great Lake and all that it includes !

Michigan's Common Loon

On the Pulse of Morning

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words

Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.

Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers—desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,
Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours—your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, and into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope—
Good morning.

"On the Pulse of Morning" from ON THE PULSE OF MORNING by Maya Angelou, copyright © 1993 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

A Great Blue Heron Fishing

Boundary Waters

by Douglas Brown

The man rested his paddle carefully next to the bundle. My favorite time of day. Dusk. The light was soft, The water still as lakeside glass, insects skimming over touching, laying down a perfect parabola and then touching again. He still felt her kiss and touch on cheek and hand. He smiled at the bundle. Everything I need and more. Sometime back a ways, paddling easy in a light chop, he had forgotten to worry about it. What did doctors know. Resting, he had taken a cookie from the bundle and ate it, looking at each bite before. Dusk left him and the canoe went on, paddle easy, paddle strong, paddle easy, paddle strong. Surely, he had crossed it by now. And surely who gives a- His sudden laughter startled a Great Blue Heron. It flew up, its wings a miracle. The man let the canoe drift and looked to the beautiful darkening sky. He took another cookie from the bundle. I am ready. I am ready.

Northern Coastline of Isle Royale

“My History at Isle Royale” adds a complication:

          I use walking sticks now, step slowly

          from rock to rock, find my footing

          among the roots.

Our guide is older now, his route a bit more precarious. There is “no need for nostalgia here” and both urgency and peace in his memories and observations. In “When the Eagle Came to Her Nest,” he remembers “the hesitation in the air // as she spread her wings…// as added pressure / in my chest.” I feel it, too.

There is joy in bushwhacking, a counting of jays, awe at the stars, knowledge of public spots and secret trails, respect for creatures at rest or carrying on with their lives, and through it all a sense of what would be lost if we don’t “let them be left” here, mostly undisturbed by human beings, and compassion as well for those humans, their “cities beginning to die as their water tables fall.”

There’s a big picture in this small book. As Taylor sums it up in “Twenty-First Century Wild,” “I’m not sure if my focus has narrowed or if I’m finally thinking about the whole world!”

On this little island, with gulls calling, dragonflies swooping, eagles diving, wild iris blooming, life thriving in sun or in fog, the speaker of these poems can live hushed and amazed, apart from the screens, the stresses, the woes of civilization, glad and briefly apart from the sad truth:

          Here alone in all this space

          I cannot believe our world is dying.

Maybe, if we pay attention the way these poems do, our world can live again.

PROSE LINK

Dramatic Lighthouses

"The Lighthouse Keeper Wonders"

 

by Edgar Guest

 

The light I've tended for forty years

is now to be run by a set of gears,

the keeper said, and it isn't nice

to be put ashore by a mere device.

Now, fair or foul the winds that blow

or smooth or rough the sea below,

It is all the same. The ships at night

will run to an automatic light.

 

The clock and gear which truly turn

Are timed and set so the light shall burn.

But, did ever an automatic thing

set plants about in early spring?

And did ever a bit of wire and gear

A cry for help in the darkness hear?

Or welcome callers, and show them through

The lighthouse rooms, as I used to do?

 

"Tis not malice these things I say,

All men must bow to the newer way.

But it's strange for a lighthouse man like me

After forty years on shore to be.

And I wonder now--will the grass stay green?

Will the brass stay bright and the windows clean?

And will ever that automatic thing

Plant marigolds in early spring?

Upper Michigan's Black Night Skies

How the Milky Way was Made

by Natalie Diaz

My river was once unseparated. Was Colorado. Red-

fast flood. Able to take

       anything it could wet—in a wild rush—

                                 all the way to Mexico.

Now it is shattered by fifteen dams
over one-thousand four-hundred and fifty miles,

pipes and pumps filling
swimming pools and sprinklers

      in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

To save our fish, we lifted them from our skeletoned river beds,
loosed them in our heavens, set them aster —

      ‘Achii ‘ahan, Mojave salmon,

                                Colorado pikeminnow—

Up there they glide, gilled with stars.
You see them now—

      god-large, gold-green sides,

                                moon-white belly and breast—

making their great speeded way across the darkest hours,
rippling the sapphired sky-water into a galaxy road.

The blurred wake they drag as they make their path
through the night sky is called

      ‘Achii ‘ahan nyuunye—

                                our words for Milky Way.

Coyote too is up there, crouched in the moon,
after his failed attempt to leap it, fishing net wet

      and empty, slung over his back—

                                a prisoner blue and dreaming

of unzipping the salmon’s silked skins with his teeth.
O, the weakness of any mouth

      as it gives itself away to the universe

                                of a sweet-milk body.

Just as my own mouth is dreamed to thirst
the long desire-ways, the hundred-thousand light year roads

      of your throat and thighs.

Personal Update - A Life Reconstructed

In 1903 Edvard Munch held an exhibition at the newly refurbished Kunsthandlung P. H. Beyer & Sohn in Leipzig, where Munch had been allocated the gallery’s skylit room. Eighteen paintings, inlaid in a light textile frame, were presented as a frieze in the room. Running as a horizontal band high up on three walls, the frieze essentially became a part of the room as a whole. The article therefore proposes to consider the exhibition as spatial art and examine it in light of the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. The documentation of the exhibition is a unique source for understanding Munch’s “Frieze of Life” and its spatial representation, even as the paintings highlight the role of the exhibition room at the turn of the twentieth century. The exhibition room played an instrumental role in how Munch developed his art.

Alan Sorrell: A Life Reconstructed

Personal Update:

A Life Reconstructed

With apologies, I have been sick most of the summer dealing with a surgical infection from eight years ago. At the end of last summer of 2022, I was dealing with a newly opened abscess on my foot which I managed until May of this year when a surgeon opened up the foot to clean it out and sent me home to let the newly opened gash heal.

However, the surgery failed and necessitated a second surgery weeks later resulting in the addition of a wound pump for the rest of the summer... this time with thrice weekly nursing visits to the home. But again, the open would wouldn't heal despite the care. In fact it got worse.

At which point, after eight years of sloughing it out, it was time to remove the infected foot-and-ankle titanium prosthetic which held my foot together. One I broken in my early teens attempting to stop my fall over the edge of a cliff I had intentionally and poorly navigated. And upon the same limb which I had played physical sports until my early fifties when needing a total knee replacement.

This hopeful prosthetic was removed a week ago, cleaned of gunk, and cemented in place with a time-released antibiotic. Since there was now extra skin all was bound up without the miserable wound pump I had come to detest. Nine days have past in morbid pain from loss of device, crutching around on tired arms, and awaiting removal of cast some nine days out. Thankfully, we found a couple knee scooters which helped immeasurably giving relief to my aching body and spirit.

Once this surgery heals there will be a minimum of two more surgeries until there is no longer any infection and the foot can be fused to the ankle without addition of any more mechanical devices. If unsuccessful then there might be a future holding an amputation with the addition of a fully mechanical half-limb and incumbrances to come. Hopefully not. But it is why I waited so long before finally allowing the doctors to remove the original prosthesis.

Tomorrow I speak once again to infectious services to determine if a picc line through the arteries to the heart will be necessary or not. I expect it will require a month or more of antibiotic infusions which I will manage along with a nursing visit once a week to change out the port placed into my arm. But I am no stranger to this practice either as my first wounds eight years ago were far, far worse... being quite long and wide, travelling up-and-down several parts of my leg. It is the main reason I will not "suffer" a second internal prosthetic; the other being that 35% of these second surgeries fail in infections again.

At that time I found myself slipping into despair, if not depression, as I looked into a black pit badding me step forward one more step. The pain was overwhelming. The worse being the first three months - though the next five months thereafter were no picnic either. And then there was the constant severed nerve pain which lasted 4.5 years. It required a steely will beginning with refusing to step forward into an oblivion I might not come out... though I remember blackness to seem a fathomless comfort to the septic fevers rolling through my body.

Anyway, I've been taking these past summer months to catch up with life. Find a little time for introspection. And to rest from writing, which task I've done regularly since the fall of 2009 upon retirement. A retirement I've not only filled with poetry and writing on the cutting edge of a new theology - which I've placed on my other website - but to leave my job and volunteer church ministries to work within my community.

During these past retirement years I held committee and board positions on City, County, and College panels; became a certified Master Naturalist through MSU's extension program (including a 100 hours of community service); and joined over two dozen environmental organizations working, planting, burning, strategizing, creating, and building a living ecology in West Michigan with others who bore the same passion and veracity as myself.

In so doing, we have created the foundations necessary for empowering regional green infrastructures and green business practices to our part of West Michigan across local and state levels and all parts in-between. I could never have done this while working or raising a family. After 30+ years in technology and lay ministries I finally laid all aside and took the time to participate in creating healthy sustainability practices for habitat and clean water projects.

Over the last fifteen years I worked, volunteered, learned, and gave input across a number of ecological areas. Many of them politically unwanted but expediently necessary knowing the climate change coming upon us in the decades ahead. In these tasks I have greatly enjoyed being a part of community seeking to aide strangers via innumerable opportunities and probabilities. It was fun. And it gave to me the experience, perspective, and depth I needed to write of social contracts and personal enlightenments.

Now lately, one I get pass these remaining hard monts, I hope to continue working on both websites to leave with my family, friends, and interested readers helpful ways in which we might think about our personal value to one another and the greater good we might attempt for humanity. I see no reason not to thrive during these times of pandemic, socio-political upheaval, failure of religious institutions. At no time should we give in to adversity, perversity, calamity, bleakness, or short-sightedness. But at all times we are to give ourselves to diversity, modality, veracity, and tonality in the trying years ahead. It's what get's me up in the morning to create, destroy, rebuild, and envision communities of life.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

September 5, 2023

* * * * * * *

We will always rebuild

(a poem for the grieving)

by Jeanette LeBlanc

You are here.
You are here.

Even though everything smells like love and loss and burning.
Start with this.

You are here and it hurts.
It hurts because of all you’ve lost.
Your heart is a 3am siren, driving through that sucker punch bruise of a night sky.
Never a sign of anything good.

Here, nothing feels good.
Now you’ve begun.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy.
There is not enough air in the room.
The quilt on your bed is eight hundred pounds of weight keeping you from movement.
There is no going back

There is never any going back.
Now you’re getting somewhere.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon.
He is listening but does nothing.
There is nothing he can do.

You are on your knees in the grass,
clutching handfuls of earth.
This is progress.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon and there is nobody else to hear you
It is the darkest night you’ve ever lived through
You’ve lived through.
You’ve lived.

Do you hear me?
You live.
You make it.
You survive.

There is a faint tinge of light on the horizon and you made it.
Now we’re finally moving forward

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon and there is nobody else to hear you and there is a grief wail building inside of you.
Through the earth, through your toes,
Your legs, your belly, your chest and lungs,
The reach of your arms, your curled fists.
Your neck
Your jaw
Your face
The top of your head.

Have you ever seen a building implode?
Yes. This is you.
Now you know you have begun the work of healing.

You are here and it hurts and the world feels impossibly heavy and you are shouting bargains at the moon and there is nobody else to hear you and there is a grief wail building inside of you and you crumbling.
The ground shakes as her own broken pieces slide rough against each other.
There is a red earth landslide and everything is tumbling into the sea.
On the ocean, a wall of water rushes toward land.
Disaster cannot be prevented, only survived or not.
The earth knows well the pain of things that cannot be fixed.

Your pain cannot be fixed.
There is no shortcut through this.
This knowledge is the key to everything that will come next.
There is more to come.

Sometimes healing looks like falling apart.
Sometimes falling apart is the path to what can be built.
Sometimes, we go through the darkest nights and there is nobody but the moon to hear.
He always listens.
Now you listen.

There is not enough air in the room but you are breathing.
There is nobody here but you are held.
You have broken and the world is breaking and we will always rebuild.

Do you hear me, love?
We will always rebuild.

- Jeanette LeBlanc

R.E. Slater - What Am I Made For?

What Am I Made For?

by R.E. Slater

        These are the little lives

                                            our once lives

                           which are becoming meaningful

        as we imagine meaning

                                        seeking our meaning

                                                                against those who won't

                                                or can't

                            give it to us

    giving us false meaning

                                                harming meaning

                                                                                        demeaning meaning

                suffocating meaning

                                        we are drowning

                                                    are learning to fight the currents

        overwhelming us

                                                        overcoming us

                                                                                                refusing to give up

                                                    because of who we are

                        and what we can do

                                                                                        sometimes feebly

                                                perhaps in anger

        refusing the lies we are told

                                                                    about ourselves

                                                        and the rot which

                                        comes with those lies

    childhood is hard

                    growing up is confusing

                                                           our ideas

                                                                    my ideas

                                                                            never die

                                                    unless we let them

                                they are the bastions

            we have lived within

                                                        which must come down

                        so that we become the persons

                                                                                                who we must become

                                                                            are becoming

                                                striving to make our worlds better

                                        as we can

                where we can

                                                                    just by being me

RE Slater

August 26, 2023

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

* * * * * * *

Leaving Childhood

by R.E. Slater

At some point a child will leave their "Age of Innocence" and enter a their own "World of Reality"; most likely this transition will be marked by sadness and pain, grief and sorrow, spurred forward by a deeper realization of the kind of world that they are finally coming to see for what it is.

It is the first of many moments of existential crisis. When thinking back I remember many... some felt the earth move underneath both my feet and soul. Others when watching mom work so hard or dad being exhausted in his youth trying to keep up with the demands of his mom, family, and several jobs. Or my own when seeing the world through the eyes of my brothers. 

Childhood by-and-by teaches young children ways to grow-up under ofttimes less-than-ideal circumstances. For some, they come to realize that the only "stable thing" they might depend upon is their own approach to difficulty when not ignoring those moments while searching for more reasonable responses to what can seem as personally harming or upsetting events.

For those children like myself who grew up in moderately dysfunctional families we learn to manage such moments when practicing various outcomes. Perhaps anger, indifference, steeled emotional barriers to dim the poisoned darts piercing our souls; or, bring joy to significant others via performance in studies, sports, chores, obedience, etc. Each action an exploration to the onion-like layers lying across our little beings struggling to survive and understand over the long years of shaming, guilt, manipulation, gut-wrenching labelling and demeaning, from our peers and older adults of all kinds.

Sometimes children manage to overcome that which strives to overcome our little souls. And at other times we simply cannot and grow up to burying ourselves in a bottle, or drugs, addictions, or anger. Some refuse to submit by trying to find a way out, or in. To find people who might show us better attitudes and behaviours for approaching life's many challenges. Perhaps through brief moments of serenity, in nature, in afamily home, in mentored situations, etcetera... where we might re-gather ourselves to try again... perhaps this time more successfully than last time.

As caring parents with deep pasts as these we may try to spare our little ones these "awakening" moments for as long as we can... some by easing their children into it through wide readings across a variety of childhood books, perspectival nursery rhymes, thoughtful songs, or a mosaic of life-experiences as best we can undertake them.

Other parents, having fewer choices or opportunities living in the harsher climes and realities can not. There, bitterness, regret, anger, guilt, and a host of life-changing emotions cruelly come into our children's lives to which we are helpless to protect, shield, or explain. Here, we seek shelter in the arms of others stronger than ourselves wherein our children might find respite and better ways to surmount daily challenges.

My own awakenings consisted of a series of childhood moments and events which I have attempted to remember and characterise through my poems and writings, in various church ministries, participation in community civil actions, environmental groups, or in snowmobiling, sports, hunting, and for a time, parenting... (actually, parenting never stops; it's a life-long blessing which is as difficult as it is fun)

At one point in my childhood - I do not know when - I remember attending to the gravesides of innumerable loved ones and unknown relatives - that at some point it had become a normalized event much like going to church.

At first I didn't understand, and then later, it seemed like every-other-week-or-month we were back at the family plots as my grandpa and grandma's loved ones passed away one-by-one until finally they did themselves. Upon my grandma's death it effectively closed the final pages of a very long and heavy tome recounting our earlier farming pioneers and their descendents over a 150 year period. The morning of grandma's death felt like the closing of an era never to be recovered again.

These loved ones and named stranger all were dutifully remembered by my aged grandma whose farmhouse was next to our own home. She daily rehearsed to my little attenuating ears the long assemblages of my relatives and their relatives over the eons. Which explained the many graveside funerals of my blooded heritage as they lived-and-died in their flesh-and-blood legacies.

This kind of bloodline retelling of my "homesteading" descendents might be more fully described through the beloved author, Wendell Berry's, own childhood legacies to which he has dutifully remembered and reflected upon through a number of autobiographical portraits of his own descendents as children who grew up to pick up the traces of their moms and dads cares and burdens.

And thus it is with the Barbie movie played and directed by Margot Robbie along with a host of talented actors. I came to the film not knowing what to expect and left saddened and wizened by the heavy weight children must everywhere bear as we parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, friends, and neighbors, try each-in-our-own-way to ease their "existential burden" as best we can by our own caretake of those little lives who come to us for a time where we might lead by relationship, example, and wisdom.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

August 26, 2023

* * * * * * *

"Coming of Age" Movies

The Wiz of Oz

Where the Wild Things Are

Finding Neverland

My Girl

Stand By Me

Home Alone

Or even Castaway (when a grown up adult suddenly finds himself terribly alone).

* * * * * * *

“Hi, my name is Billie, and I’m going to play a song that I made up with this guitar,” the singer says as the video begins, which shows footage from Billie Eilish's childhood interspersed with footage of sold-out shows from around the globe in the last year.

Billie Eilish - What Was I Made For?

(Live from Lollapalooza Chicago 2023)

Lyrics

I used to float, now I just fall down
I used to know but I'm not sure now
What I was made for
What was I made for?

Takin' a drive, I was an ideal
Looked so alive, turns out I'm not real
Just something you paid for
What was I made for?

'Cause I, I
I don't know how to feel
But I wanna try
I don't know how to feel
But someday, I might
Someday, I might

When did it end? All the enjoyment
I'm sad again, don't tell my boyfriend
It's not what he's made for
What was I made for?

'Cause I, 'cause I
I don't know how to feel
But I wanna try
I don't know how to feel
But someday I might
Someday I might

Think I forgot how to be happy
Something I'm not, but something I can be
Something I wait for
Something I'm made for
Something I'm made for

Billie Eilish - What Was I Made For?

(Official Music Video)

* * * * * * *

Barbie Ending Explained:

The End of Barbie Was Inevitable

https://www.ign.com/articles/barbie-movie-post-credits-scene-ending-explained-margot-robbie

BY LEANNE BUTKOVIC

POSTED: JUL 28, 2023 5:44 PM

It’s time for a Barbiesplainer. Plus, are there any post-credits scenes in the Margot Robbie movie?

Let's make this simple: Do you want to know if there’s a post-credits scene in Barbie? We’ll tell you right here: There are no post-credits or mid-credits scenes in the film.

That said, the credits do feature a fun tribute of sorts to the history of the Barbie doll, so you might want to stick around for that!

Full spoilers for Barbie follow...

Why Barbie Has Always Been More Than Just A Toy

10:19

Barbie Ending Explained

By the near-end of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, Barbie (Margot Robbie) has gone flat-footed; traversed land, sea, the great outdoors, and outer space — to the real world and back; been arrested twice; dismantled Ken’s (Ryan Gosling) cowboy patriarchy and restored the idyllic matriarchy of Barbieland. And still, she’s left staring back into the internal void of self-doubt, feeling unworthy, ugly, and unfulfilled. Welcome to sentience, Barbie.

For a movie that works within a fever dream of internal logic — “just feel it,” the ghost of Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), tells Barbie-as-audience-proxy in the second-to-last scene — Barbie is grounded in humanism (and, yes, unapologetic feminism) that was inevitably leading to the choice Barbie is given at the end of the film the second she asked if anyone else had thoughts about dying during the co-ed rager in the first 10 minutes.

Barbie Movie Character Posters

In the conclusion, Barbie and Ruth have a heart-to-heart in the same empty James Turrell-esque set (Barbieland’s collective unconscious, if you will) where the Kens staged “I’m Just Ken.” It’s their grand reunion after Barbie escapes Mattel HQ and the dimwitted horde of all-male execs, headed by Will Ferrell, who chased her into the liminal space of a hallway. Opening a door to a sun-lit kitchen, she finds Ruth sitting serenely at the table. (“There’s a rumor that her ghost lives on the 17th floor,” whispers Ferrell toward the end of the film. Notably, Handler died in 2002 at 85.) After her adventure, feeling unsure about who she is anymore, Barbie is presented with the options of staying in Barbieland or entering the real world as a human, with all their flaws, anxieties, and cellulite.

For Robbie’s “Stereotypical Barbie,” the first of the Barbies named after Handler’s own daughter Barbara, it’s like a creation meeting their benevolent god and asking why they were ever born. Ruth appeals to Barbie with her personal story, including passing mentions of her double mastectomy and tax evasion — both of which are true to life. Handler had breast cancer in the ’70s and was indicted with four other Mattel execs for manipulating sales records to influence the company’s stock prices between 1971-1973.

Though this is certainly a “wait, what?” moment, it wouldn’t serve the film’s story to try and explain it further. The point is, as Ruth says, that living as a human, and especially a woman, is a messy, complicated affair, doubling down on the Cognitive Dissonance of Modern Women monologue America Ferrera’s executive assistant Gloria gives the Barbies to break the spell of Ken. (It’s worth mentioning the greatness of that whole sequence of baiting Kens to mansplain Photoshop, The Godfather, Stephen Malkmus, etc., leading to an acoustic guitar circle of Kens singing Kendom’s on-the-nose national anthem, Matchbox Twenty’s 1996 rock radio hit “Push,” on the beach. How do the Barbies and Kens know these cultural references? Just don’t think about it.)

After spending so much of the movie fretting over the fact that she had never wanted anything to change, Barbie has seen and experienced too much to ever accept life as she knew it, a never-ending string of the best day ever. Even Ken, after reading about dudes and horses and war and “brewski beers,” has learned something new about himself and the world he lives in: The patriarchy stinks and his identity is more than just following around Barbie like a puppy. “Maybe it’s Barbie, and it’s Ken,” Robbie tells Gosling right before he goes down the Barbie Dream House’s pink circular slide shouting in self-enlightenment, “Ken is meeeee!”

Barbie’s existential crisis was instigated by the fact that Gloria, Barbie’s owner, has been going through her own struggles as her daughter Sasha grows up. She copes by drawing Depression Barbie — which manifests into an ad for a doll that scrolls Instagram for seven hours a day and continuously rewatches BBC’s Pride and Prejudice — and Irrepressible Thoughts of Death Barbie. This has forever altered Barbie’s brain chemistry, but all she needs is the confidence boost from Ruth to take the leap forward into a new life where, yeah, she’ll probably still be catcalled, feel bad sometimes, get cellulite, and eventually die. But it’ll all be because of her own decisions, and there will also be the small joys to be found outside of a once-pristine existence.

She’s realized that not every day we spend alive is amazing, not every night is girls’ night. It’s full of mundane tasks and appointments, like going to the gynecologist, as Barbie does in the last scene — which is another leap of logic in itself. Earlier in the film, Barbie says that neither she nor Ken have genitals. Does a doll choosing to become human suddenly grant her a digestive and reproductive system? Can the ghost of a doll inventor even do that? Once again, it’s best not to think about it too much. At the end of the day, it’s a surrealist extended toy commercial. Just feel it.

Why The Original Barbie Movie Idea Never Would Have Worked

8:55