my question is--even in Berkeley: where does a decent, law-abiding citizen find *weaving* hemp at 9 o'clock at night?

having followd Stephanie's movie columns since her youthful days with the Pacific Sun--i can hardly remember another unmitigatedly positive review of a movie in those three decades. i have to assume it must be a good movie...

hmmm--so where was she when Kissinger arrived thru the underground entrance to plead his case for the Shah. perhaps Jimmy might've avoided a whole lotta problems if she had been a national security advisor...

i can only add my voice to the chorus of "Get a lawyer!"

if you can afford to buy two houses, you can leverage the money for a lawyer.

you also have certain emotional problems yourself that need some professional help, because you have let this situation become this problematic. you too are either passive-agressive or have some fear, or have some lack of self-esteem or whatever it may be that permits you to be victimized in this manner.

if you are still legally married and have custody problems seeing your own child within the framework of that legal marriage now, you have done something very wrong in this divorce process--and it can only get worse afterwards.

stop beng victimized, and whining about it. you have rights, and if you just give up your power, you have only yourself to blame.

you have to think of your daughter's welfare and your relationship with her, as well as all the other financial problems that might arise [see the other letters]. just to hurriedly finish this off after all this time shows part of your lack of foresight and intuition.

moreover, dealing with your clear hint about your present legal wife's molestation/abuse issues is part of this process, too. it will remain your problem as long as your daughter is going to be around a situation where that issue has not been properly resolved between your present legal wife and her father.

as the old business maxim goes, buying the cheapest thing ends being the most expensive. i say if your smart enough to leverage buying homes, your smart enough to leverage a divorce lawyer. and just like for that house, car or stove, shop around and compare! quit hiding your head in the sand.

what is not so smart is not havng enough clarity to see your own emotional issues which are keeping you from acting with clarity, intelligence and expedition in this situation.

to reiterate: you not only need a lawyer, i sense you also need some some profounder professional psychological/psychiatric help than than a mere mediator.

asking for help here was a wise first step.

well, like it or not, all of Jesusland is Iran-like to us left coasties who dont accept the teachings of the Ayatollah Bush and his republican christian fundamentalist Mullahs. --sorry.

i rather like Barra's honesty about the his sense of secrecy over Nabokov and being able to find friends sharing a secret gnosis in a repressive society and time. for me it was the discovery at my pubescence of Lawrence of Arabia's army memoirs and their homosexual expose. i still remember the disapproving looks as i stayed in the back of the store reading this little gem; i certainly didnt dare buy it. moreover, this was in Manhattan Beach, right on the left coast strand, hardly a repressive town especially by late 50's standards.

the discovery of sexuality, especailly nonstandard sexual fantasies is a difficulty anew for each generation. --and may remain a life-long difficulty in each generation. talking about this book is a perfect example.

what i also see is a certain gen-Xer lack of perspective. those who came upon this gem as pubescents and teen-agers in the 50's & 60's had many of Barra's issues only even more difficult. the relationship between Justine, Stroy of O and Lolita as a cultural filiation excapes him, even tho other secret cultural riddles he finds pleasing. it also seem to escape most.

i am not pleased to see him dump Camus and others just because they try to express ideas artistically. just plain wrong.

for me, what i remember most about Lolita is the fact that he's dumped for someone younger in the end. Giraudoux [or was it Anouilh?] wrote about the same theme his Song of Solomon--which i also read at about the same time. being now at the age to have been dumped enough times for a younger male by a younger female--i can appreciate this bitter-sweet universal truth of human male sexual mortality in a higher artistic sense. one had better, or one just becomes a ridiculous old fool--another lesson of Lolita.

another thing i find about talking this book and many works of great art that are sexual is the public pudicity concering the fact that it might actually be a turn-on. everyone pretends that no, they dont have a sexual arousal and always denigrate such in almost vicotrian terms and using artsy-fartsy terminology to hide that truth, pretending that its only the higher cultural values that they're interested in. back then as teenager, i also remember reading Nietzsche, who castigated this sort of pretence before works of sexual art in [i believe it was] The Geneology of Morals.

in the same vein, Lolita can be described as simply "romping good fun" as well as all the other things that everyone says about it. that is what i believe makes a Great Work {capital G, capital W...}: everyone sees in it and draws from it what they need, and that happens anew everytime it is contemplated anew.