Confessions of the Flesh

Persephone's Solstice Carol

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 06:34:08 GMT

Once upon a time, the Gorgon Medusa was preparing for the Yuletide celebrations in the grand cave she shared with her sisters, Stheno and Euryale, far beneath great Mount Olympus. They were hosting the yearly party for the dread deities who could not smile at their followers (lest they lose their reputations), and the miscellaneous strange oddities that the Titans had thrown upon the world without knowing quite what to make of them. The Graeae were already making a menace of themselves in the kitchens, much to Euryale's dismay, and the Furies were furiously helping Stheno put up the last of the decorations for the holiday.

Thus, Medusa was alone, sensuously sliding her hands over the snakes that crowned her dreaded skull. Away her fingers carried the skins of ecdysis, which sounds like a sort of Greek god all in itself but is actually a word that simply means moulting. Every Winter Solstice, the serpents atop the Gorgon's heads were born anew and their skins were offered to the goddess Athena in the hopes that, this year, she might rediscover mercy. But Medusa had stopped expecting it.

With newly cleared nostrils, the serpents at the rear hissed as the door opened and closed so softly that Medusa might not have heard it. If anyone had "eyes on the back of her head," it was she. (And Argus, of course.)

"You'd best not be Perseus," the Gorgon intoned. "Trying to cut off the hostess' head on Solstice is rather cold."

"It is I," said Persephone, gently and fearfully, lest her husband hear where she had gone while he stood in the front hall, waiting.

"Ah, Queen of the Dead and the Underworld," Medusa replied, as was expected when you have a queen at your side. "What may I do for you this evening? I assume Hades has not sent you to do his bidding."

"Nay, Lady," Persephone whispered desperately, "it is I who come as your suppliant, begging: help me to escape this gathering of immortal outcasts and divine miscreants so that I may return to my mother for the first Winter Solstice in many ages. Each occasion in this dark season has seen me far from her gaze and her laughter, and my husband will not let me step anywhere if he must follow after."

Medusa, with eyebrow raised, drew still and listened to the serpents say as they will: "Sssurely the Maiden knowsss that freedom mussst come at dear cossst."

"Truly," said she. "Few know as well as me. For every hour of your indulgence, I will give you an hour of pleasure with Adonis as a Yuletide gift – with my compliments."

"But I am not the only one you must assuage. The serpents will be the main conspirators in this cause."

"What would the serpents have of the Queen of the Dead?" asked Persephone in fear of her growing debt.

"Only that you accept to your shouldersss for all time the body of the ssserpent that must die ssso that you and Demeter will be sssatisfied," the serpents said.

"Very well," the maiden responded. "A deal, then." And she looked into the many serpentine eyes.

"Move to the next room and stay out of sight. I will call to your husband, and take care of him right. You will have until sunrise and not a moment more, so keep track of the time, or he will come down on you full sore." With this, Medusa turned to the door and bellowed for the King of the Underworld in a way he could not ignore.

When in his finest robes the ruler of death arrived, Medusa slithered up to him at once and began a railing few could abide. "How could you arrive so very early, Hades, when we are not ready to receive such a worthy guest and his glamorous bride? Do you think it is easy for us to look presentable? We have so little on our side."

A serpent flew out and caught the king on his porcelain hand, biting deep, and injecting enough venom to kill many an ordinary man. Hades hissed and the snake fell dead, but the deed was done. Rocking to and fro, Hades collapsed, and Persephone had won.

"Bless you, Medusa!" Persephone cried. "I will not soon forget your kindness this night!"

"Go on," the Gorgon shooed, unused to grace or pride. "And remember your words should he take this out on your hide."

Away up the long and hidden stairways she flew, until she came to her mother's garden, covered in unseasonable dew. Demeter stood staring over the plain and was too overjoyed to call her child's name.

"I dared not believe what my heart told me," the mother of the seasons said instead. But the very land belied her, as earth erupted in greenery that should not have been in sight.

"We have only a short time, but I am home for the night," Persephone said in a rush.

"Ah, but then we will know a little of what it is like for the mortals – and they get by all right," smiled Demeter, taking her beloved daughter under an arm.

"Even they do better, Mother, when they are together with their loved ones this evening. Allow me to tell you the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, while we gather the Yuletide seedlings."

And the dread goddess Persephone was as good as her word, enjoying every glowing moment until there were no more. Then, down the way she crept until she found her husband sleeping sound and alone on Medusa's couch. Hades awoke with his head in her lap, feeling for all the world like he had just taken a nap.

"My poor dear," she said with genuine warmth. "You looked so worn that we dared not wake you one moment before Morpheus withdrew of his own accord. Merry Christmas, my love."

His dim brows knit together over his pale face. "I still don't see what all the bother about that upstart is about," he said. "He did arrive so late."

"Of course," Persephone said indulgently. "But not without the bidding of Moros, our very own god of fate."

"Yes, well…let's see if Medusa will be willing to cook us some Christmas snake."

Merry Christmas from Mount Olympus, everyone!

100% All Natural Organic Unmodified Human

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:21:09 GMT

Yesterday morning I woke up thinking that the all-natural movement's got it wrong. We sleep on spring mattresses instead of straw, command rain to fall whenever we want a shower, and travel astride metallic beasts. We've been marinated in chemicals of various kinds for well over fifty years. People will cry for genetically modified vittles but they would cry harder if they had to give up that morning shower.

Those forefathers who lived so naturally in the past - died sooner. Because it doesn't matter how natural your lifestyle is when you're not being fed, when you're living with more exposure to the elements, and when you're working so hard each day that you can't even enjoy the night. Changes to those three elements alone have expanded our lifespans. Add in advanced medical care, and now we have more people living to see ninety, even in the chemical stew of smog, high fructose corn syrup, and Bisphenol A that is our country.

So take your vitamins with your breakfast cereal, but don't pretend they're natural. You're getting many times more nutrients than your forefathers, and your body is probably not able to use half of it.

Eat vegetables that haven't been coated in pesticides - God knows how we've fucked up with things like pesticides in the past - but don't smugly think we'll fuck up pesticides forever.

By all means, treat yourself well, but don't forget for a moment the modern world which allows you to do so so very easily.

To Paris or not to Paris?

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:23:44 GMT

Achievement, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.
-- Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary

Today, I unceremoniously replaced the display of my degrees with a lovely black and white view of Paris. I needed the poster display I'd hung my A.A., B.A., and M.A. in (along with a few of my honors certificates) and I didn't feel bad about putting the vaunted papers aside. If anything, it made me consciously aware of the antipathy I've developed toward those symbols of my education - an antipathy I never expected to feel.

But then, there are so many things in the last few years that I never expected to feel.

Accepting my A.A. was a glorious occasion. Robed in red, I felt a sense of pride not only from the living but from the dead. My mother said she felt my grandmother's presence strongly that day; she's rarely talked like that before or since. What's more, I felt that spritely older woman's presence fussing happily with my sleeves and hair. It wasn't just the sun beaming down on me.

When my B.A. came round, I was ecstatic. Not only had I reached another plateau, but I saw that there was more to do. I missed the rehearsal for the Bachelor's candidates due to a crazed man on a freeway overpass but I arrived just in time to see the jubilant Master's candidates all but dance their way to the stage. They were covered in flowers and other bright bits, surrounded by family that dressed for the rehearsal the way they would for the real thing. I knew on that day that I would pursue my M.A. The doubt that existed before melted away.

I enjoyed a great deal of my education. I have felt an instant and natural sense of belonging in few places: libraries, bookstores, and museums, mostly. But from the first time I set foot on a college campus of any kind, I felt like the pathways through higher education were already worn with my footsteps. When I was twelve years old, I received a scholarship to attend a summer writing class at UCLA. It was by far the largest school I had ever seen and I quickly sensed it had a different air and make than other places. It was its own world. I drifted through it like an enchanted tourist who had found a new home.

And for the better part of a decade, higher education was my home. It was my job, my passion, and my primary interest. School was the focal point of my whole life; I kept no friend or man who would interfere with my education. When paper writing time came around, everything else was set aside - social engagements, household chores, even sex, if need be. And it was so natural an arrangement that I didn't realize how deeply it wore on me.

I stopped reading for pleasure, except in a few instances. I loved the advanced ideas I was learning, but I came to loathe the research that only brought a preponderance of evidence, never conclusions. Producing papers felt like a kind of mental childbirth. My early papers were bouncing bundles of joy and wonder, but after a time, I could feel the nutrients being sapped out of my very bones. I wanted it over with, and eventually, I was unable to stop and enjoy the results. I had my eyes on the next paper, the next class, the next hurdle.

I thought I would be in class forever. Part of me was soothed and comforted by that thought, despite the increased difficulty. I knew what was expected of me and how to succeed. I didn't know what to expect, entirely, from leaving school. Graduating didn't bring a sense of closure or fulfillment. Being home for some time off didn't make me feel content. If anything, all of the things I'd sacrificed and put off haunted me. I tried to wave the specters of my own discontent away; I told myself that they didn't signify anything but being overworked.

By the time my Master's degree arrived, I didn't even want to look at it. Everyone else, however, had made it clear that it was a really big deal. My friends talked to me differently. My mom insisted that I show at least my last degree off at home. I threw it up with my other degrees in a poster display I already had lying around but was never content with the look of it.

My degrees are cheap reminders of an expensive and expansive undertaking. They indicate that I succeeded at what I was good at all along: words, persistence, sacrifice and all. They prove that I had the requisite doses of Shakespeare and major critics, and that I learned to maneuver through the labyrinthine demands of the counselors and financial aid. They hint at how my thoughts have changed. They give you the idea that I can think.

But they don't show the most important things. You will learn more about what really matters to me from the pictures I share and the books on my shelves, from the art I adore and the cities I long to visit. Paris. You will learn more about me from the black and white view of Paris that now hangs in my bedroom where my degrees used to reside.

My degrees and I are displaced symbols in search of new meanings to make sense of the old ones. In that, I have found a new pity for them, and perhaps a new place.

A Broken Bulb

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:32:06 GMT

I was wondering why it was so dim in the bathroom earlier today, and maybe yesterday. One of the new-fangled light bulbs that you put in a few years ago, when we phased out the old ones, apparently died. I hadn't even noticed it went out except for a mild sense that something in the bathroom had shifted. I've been too busy to think about it. When you first chose them, I remember how I hated and complained about their harsh white glow. Now the memory of your hands on them makes me loathe to disturb them any further.

I thought they were supposed to last seven or more years.

I thought we were supposed to last more than seven years.

God damn me anyway.

Monkeysphere

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:48:24 GMT

If history has taught us anything, it's that our perception of the world is all in the editing.

Many of my students, family, and friends watch the news and believe that things are getting worse - but I don't. I remember the same stories repeated through history: wars in the Middle East, slavery in ancient Greece, and "trigger-happy" duelers in England. (Did you know that with the introduction of pistols, duelers walked away with less injuries?)

We are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

But we have been very careful to preserve our sins in the historical record, like a serial killer gathering trophies, so we can stroke them again and again and remember the depths of depravity to which we can sink. The Holocaust pictures, the news footage, the endless updates prove that the world is the worst it’s ever been - and, in a strange way, we seem to take some pride from that.

Sure, our ancestors didn't have the mechanical luxuries we do, but they also didn't have the bomb or sarin gas or airports through which to spread the swine flu. Our predecessors feared things like possession and spirits, but we get to fear cancer and spree shootings instead. In former ages, we didn't get to see or hear much about the serial killers silently stalking the streets of society. Now, we get so much evidence that we feel qualified to play jury. We're suffering just as much as previous humans but we know more - and knowing is its own punishment.

We know what our parents didn't: that our French fries will clog our hearts, that our cigarettes will rot our lungs, and that our one night stands will mark us with HIV or HPV as sure as God's mark on Cain. We know the fruit is poison and that we shall surely die, but we also know about the id and the hierarchy of needs, and we know we have to feed the greedy baseness upon which our temple is built. And we live to see ourselves waste away, and we know.

Surely we must be the worst sinners history has to offer to live in times of plenty and still suffer so much. Like Tantalus in the water, right up to his fucking neck.

We give ourselves the blue prize ribbon on the award shelf for our era in human history. Like the prizefighter clutching the golden belt while he sweats and bleeds his youth away, we've earned the Big Bad Wolf Award over just about every major historical figure save for Hitler, or perhaps Stalin, and that makes us the baddest monkeys on this mudball. Ever.

So we post the numbers of our kills and our dead. We scream of child murder and mutilation from every headline. We follow hungrily every celebrity with some disease their money and beauty can't fix. We, in essence, fling our feces for the audience. We relegate kindness and bloodless victories to lesser pages and groan about how there's never any good news anymore. Our right hand does not see what our left hand is doing.

Few things are as selective as the blindness that has nothing to do with the abilities of the eyes. And few things are as selective as the camera frame, showing only one view of life as though it was the only view in the world. A picture is worth a thousand words, but no picture tells the whole story, which is just the way we like it.

If we tell ourselves that we are killing the world enough times, will that make us important enough to be able to do it? If we continue to recoil from the murder and mayhem, will that make us better than the murderers we simultaneously admire?

If Julius Caesar'd had a gun, what would the empire have been?

If we leave enough of a paper trail in the historical record, we might just write our names as large as Ozymandias in the sands of time. Never mind that we'll seem every bit as desperate as he to our progeny. We are the only ones who remain alive to bleed. We are the only ones conscious at this moment to suffer and scream. We are the only monkeys who matter.

Sometimes we forget things to retain sanity. To remember everything - every touch, every taste, every moment gone to waste - is to go mad. To remember nothing, on the other hand, is also to be thought mad, just in a different vein. And sometimes we tell ourselves stories to keep shame and regret and responsibility at bay.

If we cannot be the best, then we can at least be the worst. And in that, nothing has changed.

Some people see exposes and scandals and think, "This must truly be the worst to which we can sink."

I watch the same stories and see Thyestes, Philomela, and Andromache carried off into slavery - and I pity our ancestors as I pray our descendants will pity us. Because without genuine sympathy, we will never see that we are all monkeys in the same cage, fighting the same weaknesses and acting on the same desires, unable to grow beyond the frame we've made for ourselves. Until we widen our perspective not just into the future (because we must save the earth for the children!) but also into the past, we'll continue saying the present is the best and worst that has ever been without the slightest clue as to how to appreciate what that means.

A scrap of a dream

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:41:27 GMT

This morning, just before I woke, I dreamt I was trying on clothes in some kind of store. I was talking with the salesman, who was fussing over me a bit and not really listening. He put something over my head that reminds me of the kind of clothes the Three Musketeers wear, but a bit looser, and definitely meant for a man.

I said something that started with a 'p' - I think I said I was a pilgrim, or that I was passing through.

"I'm just looking for some shelter," I said, and the words caught in my throat at the end. I don't remember if there was a storm outside but I know those words became a plea, and that they went far beyond the scene. I woke up sobbing.

The Sermon of English 101

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:50:38 GMT

Sometimes I feel like St. Patricia, preaching the gospel of academic writing to the unsure masses.

Yea verily, the thesis is a strong and mighty force that guides your paper from the beginning to its righteous end. It is complete and perfect unto itself: it has a beginning, which involves the topic at hand; it has a middle, which tells the reader your stand or interpretation; and it must tell the audience the reasons you reached your conclusion. The thesis is honed in the fires of logic and knowledge, and with it you may defend your thoughts against all who would stand against you.

And yea, the thesis shall beget your paragraphs and topic sentences, each in turn. Your paragraphs shall be as brothers joined in a common cause, and dedicated to holding up their father. Every paragraph shall have a topic sentence to act as a guide through the rough seas. All paragraphs will go out from the thesis and return to the thesis, explaining one major claim a piece; to have more than one is to invite chaos. Into each paragraph you shall weave what you think and what others think to form a strong fabric of argument. Even you can persuade the masses, even you can call the words of the elders to your aid. As I have shown you, so shall you do.

And you shall never steal from your elders, lest you invoke the wrath of all who value truth. You may covet your elder's gifts and blessings, but you cannot lay claim to them as your own. You must use aid wisely, only as it is needed, so as not to draw too much from the well. You must make obeisance to your elders for their wisdom, before and after you draw upon it, and in so doing, others will know you as wise.

For although you feel unworthy, know that wise thoughts and deeds reside in you. With them, you may build many mansions, each with gloriously appointed rooms. People will want to visit you and praise what you have made. The early works of your hands will be rough and crude, but with care, they will improve beyond all measure. You will look back on your follies and laugh, and begin again. But the sweat of your brow will be a righteous sweat, and the fruit of your labors will taste twice as sweet when your work is done.

For only by the sweat of your brow will you pass English 101 into the realms beyond. Only by your own toil can you enter the kingdom of greater academia. I can but give you the rules of MLA to write by; it is up to you to compose something worth reading.

If only I could give plagiarizers the academic equivalent of 10 Hail Marys and 10 Our Fathers and be done with it. But even punishment loses its edge if the petitioner refuses to seek help, correct their ways, and have faith in their own abilities.

Armistice Day, according to Kurt Vonnegut

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:05:31 GMT

"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is."

-- Preface, Breakfast of Champions

Armistice Day it is, Mr. Vonnegut. The world is too much with us to throw away sacred things.

A Last Sunday

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:51:48 GMT

It's Sunday morning, and Edie is dead. I knew that she eventually would be, given that her 80th birthday just passed, but it seemed as far away as ever. As an old spitfire, she knew how to plummet toward oblivion and bounce back up like Joe Palooka doll. (When was the last time we made one of those? If I asked my students what a Joe Palooka doll was, would any of them know, or would they have to reach for Google? That's okay. Edie would know.) She managed all kinds of trouble with general aplomb, moving from hospital to home for the last few years with such alacrity that it was difficult to keep up.

She wanted to be home with her things, and her teddy bears, and her freedom. There were a number of reasons that my heart went out to her and that we considered her family, and her insistence on self-reliance, though difficult, was one of them. I understood, finally and more than ever, why the elderly often insist on doing everything for themselves, even when they can't anymore. When you spend a lifetime of being able to do the largest and smallest things, not just for yourself but for others, you cannot bear to be anything but competent. You want and need control of your life. It is a fearful thing to be put in the hands of others. Edie feared convalescent homes because being in one would mean she would likely never walk free again.

And for a while, Edie was very open about her fear of death. She would insist on every hospital bed that she wanted to live and my heart went out to her for that. When my mom called to tell me the news just a little while ago, she said that Edie reminded her of a character in a movie called I Want to Live! In it, a woman is fighting not to be killed in the gas chamber. She is sent back and forth, even being strapped in before being recalled (or at least, that's as I recall; I saw it as a young teen). The journey is terrifying each time, and her relief is tinged with the knowledge that it'll happen again.

Edie took things marvelously well. She stayed on top of her doctors, insisting that she be treated with respect as well as proficiency. It wasn't easy for people to pull things past her, either, and she didn't brook much bullshit. But she also didn't brook too much bullshit from herself. Edie set all her affairs in order while she had her health to do it, and once the paperwork was signed, she seemed to set aside a lot of her dread. She had good friends to act as executors, and good friends like my mother to visit her often.

Edie had no living blood relatives left, having outlived her husband and children. Just recently, we learned new things about her life that she probably hadn't told many souls, and I marveled at her strength. I don't know how people get up sometimes, knowing what they know, and seeing what they've seen - but we do. She did.

Edie loved to cook. Oh, she had a taste for sweet things: cookies and cakes and soda pop. Yes, yes, she had diabetes, but damn could that woman bake! She also loved teddy bears, which was just a sweet tooth in another vein. She collected many of them, and spent her last days deciding which to give to specific friends. She loved my mom like family and treated her as such, which was enough to win me over. Whoever does good by my mother has my friendship by proxy. But Edie also loved me and talked about me like a granddaughter. She told doctors and friends about how I finished school. She bragged about my being a *professor* now, and always asked after me, and was always happy to hear from me. Edie's late daughter was also named Patricia.

My mom said she could tell how much Edie loved her friends and appreciated them. She had gifts from friends all over her house, and took care of them. She didn't want any service or to-do, so her remaining friends won't be able to take care of her in return. But mourning is its own service and tears are their own show of affection. And best still, is integration. She's definitely a part of me and my story, and a part of the dearly departed whom I strive to make proud.

The Dig of a Lifetime

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:05:36 GMT

I wonder if real-world excavation sites are anything like spring cleaning (notwithstanding the fact that it's autumn). First, you decide on a place to start - a closet, a drawer, a crypt, a mound. Today, I started in a drawer that was only half full at any given time with bric-a-brac instead of clothes. You clear the early debris: bits and bobs, clothes that no longer fit, the first layers of sediment. Then your task expands to nearby sites, in my case, other drawers and closets and finally the rest of the room. And then, as you dig, the piles start to form. There are things that can be thrown out, things that need to be reshuffled, and things that appear to have come from some other place.

Occasionally, you strike gold. Maybe it's a sweater you loved but packed away for the summer. Or maybe it's something that looks like trash but is something you treasure, like shards of sea shells taken from a lovely beach trip, or a movie ticket stub so worn away that only the title of the film remains visible in ghostly ink. Joe Dirt wasn't a film I'd planned to see, let alone to like, but it was the film Nathan and I chose to hide behind in our earliest attempts to be alone in the dark. That waxy gray ticket might as well have been a holy writ for the reverence I felt when I held it, and it might as well have been a strip of thousand year old parchment for the delicate way I moved it to another location.

You sneeze in the dust until, when you blow your nose, your mucus is tinged with dirt. You push the hair out of your eyes and feel a light sweat as you haul boxes and push through to remote corners. When you finally break for lunch, you feel truly satisfied with the day's work.

It's never done, of course. There are always new layers or hidden places to explore. There are things you forgot you had or things you forgot you lost. It's like a journey to the subconscious, spring cleaning. And as days pass into history you know it'll never be finished. Even after you die, your things will wing their way into new homes, or they'll lie buried in dust until someone unearths them again, or they'll be the shards of civilization that future archaeologists find. No one will remember that that doll or book or painting belonged to you, but you'll have left your own faint, ephemeral impression on its being.

Like a ghost, you will haunt the clothes you wore in joy and the things you pressed to you in sorrow. If you try, you can feel the resonance build even now. Some won't pay attention to your mark, just as some don't pay attention to the living. But others will sense it and be proud in the same vague way we are proud of the smallest bits and bobs in museums. It's not just that they're evidence of earlier times or of human ingenuity. It's that they mattered to someone, once - just as we mattered to someone, once.

Our possessions are like motes of dust that cling to us for a time - sometimes for many years, other times for months or days - before spinning outward toward another source. At the end of our lives, there is a beautiful explosion of pieces, as dust in a shaft of sunlight will swirl in a breeze. All dust is precious, in that all beautiful things are precious; we value those things that make our lives pleasant. But it is the fact that we were ever here, that we were ever at the heart of our own solar sphere of connections, that makes archaeology so worthwhile.

Like literature, and mathematics, and science, and just about every other avenue of study you can name, archaeology helps us to trace the patterns of existence. But spring cleaning reminds us of the personal relevance of each piece of an unending puzzle. This is what I wore on our first date. This is my grandmother's painting. This is the desk on which I was changed as an infant. (This is, not coincidentally, why stealing is such a terrible thing. You have no idea of the relevance of even the most trivial thing to its owner. Value isn't just in money, and loss is not just a matter of monetary expense.)

Spring cleaning reminds us to make our trash someone else's treasure. I never get done without at least one bag of things to pass on, donate, or sell.

And most importantly, spring cleaning bids us make room for the future while honoring the past. New pictures, new clothing, new gifts and new miscellanea that will speak their memories only to me - for the first time in some time, I am happily waiting for new memories to take shape.

Sound and Silence

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:06:34 GMT

These words floated back to me today on a wave of free association, apropos of nothing, and slapped me in the face with all of my own suffering.

Now being without you
Takes a lot of getting used to
Should learn to live with it
But I don't want to
Being without you
Is all a big mistake
Instead of getting easier
It's the hardest thing to take
-- Chicago, Hard Habit to Break

The rest of the song doesn't apply, but it doesn't have to.

I used to wish that I was a poet, but maybe I should've wanted to be a songwriter. They're the poets that are remembered the most and with surprising fidelity. Maybe the music makes all the difference. Other poets are just spinning words out into silence.

I think I stopped writing poetry because I found a well of silence in me that went deeper than my well of words. So deep, in fact, that I have learned to fear the bottom that I have no desire to find. I think it might have always been there, waiting behind those moments that went beyond my abilities to explain. I glimpsed its existence in a certain murderous pair of eyes, and in my father, and in my grandmother's prayers. I felt it behind swells of love and despair. The silence brushed me like a moth's wing when I lost my early faith and swarmed like angry bees with all of the questions that plagued me. I lived in it during the darkest times of my childhood and, not coincidentally, during the bleakest moments of the last year or so.

No words I ever conceived got near to the silence that dwells in our lives like the downturn of a heartbeat - a silhouette to the din of existence, thrown into relief only in those moments of intense darkness and light.

The silence filled my mind, drowning things I thought I knew and obscuring images I relied upon. It filled my mouth so that I couldn't speak or breathe, which for me are something of the same thing.

And this silence, like death, is something I have done my best to deal with. I have had breakfast with it in my house, alone in front of the computer. I have met it in my bed. It still feels like a mistake, the decline, the breakup, the U-Haul carrying away my boyfriend and my cats and half of my life. A horrible mistake that I don't know how to solve.

I have given all of the words I know how to give, and all of the suffering, all of the love, all of the blood through which I've tried to make amends. Maybe the next step involves embracing that silence.

A Green Christmas?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:45:33 GMT

I assume my grandparents gave me toys as gifts when I was very young. I have pictures, anyway, with mounds of offerings to the tiny goddess that was me. Some of them had to have been from Grandpa and Grandma, since at that age, I spoke the language of toys quite fluently. (I hated baby dolls my whole life; I never knew what to do with them or why they would be fun. But I loved me some Barbie dolls, if only because they became tiny avatars for my stories and adventures. Shipwrecked, divorced, separated at birth - my Barbies were never dull. But I digress.)

After a while (and I'm not sure when), my grandmother started giving me money for my birthday and Christmas. She was so cute about it - like a little elf, she would tip-toe up to me with a smile and press a roll of bills into my hand. I always hugged her and thanked her because she was speaking to me in a language I had come to understand. I knew my grandparents didn't make much but my grandma never failed to give me the means to buy something I liked for myself. It didn't matter how much or how little she gave; it really was the thought that counted. I could add her money to other Christmas gifts if I wanted something a bit more expensive, anyway. (When you're the child of a single parent, you learn to save pretty early.) And my grandmother never assumed she would know what I wanted, so I never got something from her that ended up in the back of a closet, or in a trip back to the store. I knew that each of those green bills came straight from her simple, loving heart.

Cash is cash in my family. It's something that people work hard for, so it's never to be pooh-poohed, particularly when given as a gift. It doesn't even need a greeting card, although cards can be nice, too. You know those folks who've been raised to think that cash is a tacky or unimaginative gift? Yeah, they didn't come from my neck of the woods.

Since time is moving so swiftly, I can't help but look forward to December and since my work status for the Winter intercession is nebulous, I can't help but think on gifts. The people in my life have done a lot for me, and not just this year. I had been hoping that this extra class would leave a bit of extra cash for the holidays so I could spend more, but now it looks like that extra cash is going to need to be squirreled away.

I'm going to be more careful between now and the holidays. I'm going to start cooking at home again and resisting the urge to eat out. That should shave some extra green into my Christmas account - but it might also mean people will be getting raw green bills from me come mid-December. But at least if you've been keeping up with my schedule at all, you'll know I'll have worked hard for them!

Graduation/funeral

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:10:11 GMT

Last night I dreamt that I was graduating from Cal State L.A., in a setting that was supposed to represent the school but was the weird mish-mash of dreams. Only the graduate candidates and their families were in attendance; it was a much smaller gathering than the one I actually had last year. The ceremony was indoors, in a space that was a somber blend of lecture hall and church. It even had the raised side pulpit that you have to step up into. I remember that most of the people were in black, but not the way that you typically associate with graduation - not black robes, but black clothes, like at a funeral. And people were invited to get up and share their memories, as they would be when celebrating the dead.

I got up and started talking. What I delivered something between a valedictorian address and a eulogy. My eyes were reddening. I think I had a tissue I was twisting in my hands. I wanted to lament it outright: "What am I supposed to do when all of this is gone? What am I supposed to *be*?" and I got close, but then the microphone cut out on me. The staff was shooing me off the stage so they could wrap up the service. The other people up there with me moved like they thought I should be allowed to finish, but no one was going to rock the boat. I was so choked up with tears that I couldn't be heard without the mic.

I remember it so well because, when I woke up, I found it a fitting symbolic interpretation of how I felt last year. I should have been thrilled at my Master's ceremony, but instead, I was suffering from such an identity crisis that I didn't even know it was a crisis at first. And since I didn't realize that I was wrestling subconsciously with questions like "What am I supposed to *be*?" I didn't know how to talk about any of it for some time.

Of course, I should have remembered the scene from Fight Club, when Tyler and the Narrator are talking about their dad:

Tyler Durden: My dad never went to college, so it was real important that I go.
Narrator: Sounds familiar.
Tyler Durden: So I graduate, I call him up long distance, I say "Dad, now what?" He says, "Get a job."
Narrator: Same here.
Tyler Durden: Now I'm 25, make my yearly call again. I say Dad, "Now what?" He says, "I don't know, get married."
Narrator: I can't get married, I'm a 30 year old boy.

Went to college. Got a job. And plenty of times I too feel like a 30 year old child. No matter how much I seem to grow and develop, there is so much I do not know and am not prepared for - and that, friends and neighbors, is life. It's one of the things my parents couldn't find the words to tell me.

When you're very young, people's expectations tell you what you should be. Even if you react against them, they help to define you. You spend the bulk of your time in school learning basics that are supposed to help you grasp the world for the rest of your life. At home, you spend time dealing with chores and family rules that are supposed to teach you how to live with others.

What they should be teaching you is how to think and move and deal with life when parts of it are taken away from you. Or how to fake it till you make it, when you're unprepared. Or how to be happy in all the little things, since they will make up the majority of what most of us will have.

Math is useful, and language is helpful (and what is language but another kind of math, a rendering of symbols meant to express the complex movements of life - add a child, subtract a spouse, multiply your obligations, divide a house?), but the situations of every day are far less abstract. In fact, they're often too immediate, and we react instinctually when we should be thinking.

I think about the faces of my elders when I was a child. Those women who gathered with my mother over coffee and lamented the troubles with children and men. Those men lingering over cigarettes and beer. I see in their eyes a knowledge of life they did not see fit to teach me: that the bulk of life is not dramatic, that dealing even with loved ones is hard work, that you only know yourself as far as your next fuck-up. That you can find things to pity in the villains of your youth and things to abhor in the staunchest of your saints. Sometimes I wonder why they didn't warn me about this loss of faith, or the gaining of strange new perceptions, or the uselessness of grudges.

It's not that they didn't know. Perhaps they didn't know how to tell me, or they worried about sharing such things with a little girl. But some idea, some warning might have sufficed.

"You will grow up someday. The things you depended on as a child may or may not be with you, and people will start to look to you for answers - and the only ones you'll have will be the ones you find yourself. And even they might turn into questions after a while. Things might change in the blink of an eye and you will have to find a way to cope. And most of the time, you will.

"Your elders were handed the same empty playbook for life that you were and it's easy to see mistakes in retrospect. Whether you come out ahead of your parents or not, you will rack up your own errors and wage your own battles with the person in the mirror. The most you can hope for is to love and laugh as much as you can before heading on to yet another mystery that your parents have no more of an answer for than you do."

When college ended, the pursuit I had given my life to for many years was over. Thoroughly exhausted, I barely felt myself cross the finish line. What to do when the race was done? What to call myself when I was no longer a student? Did I really think I could teach when it felt like I could barely comprehend? With everything before me, I had no idea where to begin. Is it any wonder I faltered?

Will it be any wonder when I try to pass this on to someone, someday?

"In a world made for blunders, forgive. You may not forget, but you will never be as high up on the horse as you'd like, so forgive."

You always hurt the one you love

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:25:28 GMT

You know the only word for it is "mistake," what you've done. Because you didn't mean to betray. There was no malice. There was just...tailspin.

You say you're sorry again though he isn't here to hear, though it won't fix anything. But you're listening to your own broken voice again. Not just broken like a record repeating, but broken like a woman's wailing. There's no way to keep it in, the sadness or the sincerity, so strong it wrings your soul in your chest. Like a recurring condition, you know this bout will pass, but for the moment it seems to stretch into eternity.

You feel your hands clasp in front of you in a form as old as any - prayer. You look up to your grandparents' picture. You want to snatch it down, clutch it to you like a beloved child that's been lost and found in a shopping mall.

Don't you ever, ever go away again.

And then it strikes you again that if they really do continue to exist, if they're somewhere watching...

I'm so sorry, Grandma. I'm so sorry for disappointing you. I tried but I'm not the woman you were.

But we've had this discussion before, yes? Tornado season, striking and retreating without reliable rhythm. We rebuild only to have to do it again. (And if anyone could forgive, it would be Grandma.)

It's not like the past was perfect. You're not so naive as to believe that. No matter where you sit, there's some part of you that always feels empty. But then that fits with your current theory: that such emptiness is a part of the human condition, a symptom of being a work in progress and one piece of a larger whole. We have periods of contentment and then realize a new empty space waiting to be filled.

You would much rather be empty with someone than be empty alone. And in that way,you are like so many others you've looked down upon and judged for their choices. You crave the closeness that heals while you figure things out. You're like an old cop without your trusty partner to watch your back in a world that seems to require teamwork.

But then it's always easier to understand others when you're the one being judged.

You know you were wrong. You're serving your sentence and striving to learn as much as you can, striving to make amends for your mistakes. You don't know how to make this whole mess into a positive just yet, but you're trying. Even at a moment like this, you're trying. Because you have to. Because there really isn't any other choice.

You know no cigarette will fix this. Not even a clove. You'll wake up tomorrow in the same bed, but hopefully you'll be a little different as a person. A little more loving, a little more understanding, a little bit at a time.

Maybe you've got more of Grandma's good points than you think. Maybe her great kindness and love came through a lot of suffering and work. Not innate, not predestined, but ingrained. And worth it.

A Dose of Sin Keeps the Doctor at Bay

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:58:11 GMT

There is no way for anyone else to save me from myself and there never has been. No parent, no church, no law or lover can do it for me, particularly when they try. The eternal lament of the parent is that they can't keep their children from making their mistakes. They have to have faith that their kids will choose differently, when facing the same options.

It can happen, I tell you. I am living proof. But I am also living proof that some grooves are scratched too deeply into the record - I ended up doing things I thought I would never do, being like my parents in small insidious ways. (Not the worst ways, please God. Let me be myself in the worst ways.)

What no one seems to want to say, like it's some shameful secret, is that being an adult isn't just about making the best decisions. It's also about learning to handle your weaknesses and vices wisely, so you can acknowledge your nature without bankrupting your life. We were never meant to simply sow and reap only the good. We are in denial about the need to destroy as well as build, and so it gets blown out of all proportion.

You want to understand addiction in this country, this sick and twisted country that tosses in the grip of a fever dream of its own lost brilliance? It's not just about knowing the consequences and doing it anyway. "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." It's about not knowing how to handle being naked. It's about trying desperately to cover up your lack of social skills, or your lack of real friends, or your lack of a million other things that everyone else also feels they lack. It's about not knowing how to handle your own internal empty space. You break your life by not knowing how to stop giving in. You break other people's lives by denying you have a problem.

Of course you don't have a problem. You're a responsible adult. Except that responsible adults need to learn how and when to be irresponsible. It's not that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. It's that all obligation and no indulgence is anathema to the lusting, cussing, needing, feeding of human nature. Sin is like iodine in your diet. You need a little to get along.

Sin is like REM sleep. Without the release, you go mad by degrees.

(Sin is like masturbation. You can do it alone, but there's nothing like having company.)

We deny our urges to transgress, to tear down, and to overuse even as we fill them to overflowing. It's okay if we're not noticed, or maybe if we have an alibi. We stuff ourselves but we've taken the flavor right out of our mouths, and then we wonder why we eat more. When you punish yourself for every little bite, it won't necessarily make you stop.

But a little bit of masochism is a life lesson for another day...

He's Like the Wind Through My Dreams

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:57:29 GMT

It was 1987, and I was a girl.

Sometimes it feels like it's still 1987 somewhere, and I'm still a girl falling in love with Patrick Swayze, like every other female I knew. Young or old, it didn't seem to matter - the man could move. He had a grace that was hard to match; most men had no chance, and most women envied his flow and charm. And why not? He had more charisma in one finger than many of us feel in our entire bodies.

I remember watching his body before I could want it in a sexual way. It was a symbol I could only partially decipher, but it was a symbol I loved because it was so free - and I wasn't. 1987 was one of the darkest years of my life, a year when I was trapped on all sides, like an animal cornered by a pack that's closing in. I watched him the way a zoo creature might admire a ballet dancer springing on the other side of its cage (and Patrick was a ballet dancer, always). I watched him with my heart in my eyes and a hunger in my heart. Someday that hunger would have a name.

In a way, Patrick Swayze represented everything the men around me were supposed to be but never were; he was brave, true, strong, and fair. From what I heard over the years, he wasn't those things just on screen. He really was Prince Charming. And he charmed me, or maybe he imprinted himself deeply on me during those terrible formative years.

Patrick Swayze made everyone want to dance. And we did dance, we danced like fools, my old friends and I. We danced like no one was watching, we danced like we had everything to be happy about (and in those moments, we did) and we dreamed. Perhaps that is the most important part. Patrick Swayze breathed and touched and twirled and swiveled his way through the landscapes of our minds, where he wasn't just a simple daydream. He was the embodiment of all that we wanted: talent, determination, loyalty, and love. A lot to live up to.

It is his lasting legacy that he did live up to those dreams, and in return, he will remain at his best in the depths of our collective subconscious. He will dance forever with us in our memories and dreams, which are where the best parts of our lives are stored. For me, it's the least I can offer a man who gave me a reason to dance when I needed it most.

The Things I Miss

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:08:05 GMT

I miss finding notes in your handwriting around the house.
I miss tripping over your shoes.
I miss kisses in the morning when I'm not even half-awake.
I miss cooking for you.
I miss watching a movie and talking about it for hours.
I miss holding you.
I miss walking with you in the cool of the evening.
I miss seeing you (every day).
I miss the scent of you in the closets and in the bathroom after the ritual application of aftershave.
I miss feeling as though I had never seriously hurt you. Annoyed, yes. Wounded? No.
I miss all of this and more, so much.
Still.

An Undated Musing

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:00:33 GMT

I found this, undated, in a notebook I carried around for a while:

"Saw an old couple cross the street today. She took his arm to guide him like a schoolteacher taking a child's hand - stronger, the one in charge. And I thought, 'The future is all around us.' In the elderly, losing teeth and counting pills, walking with a shuffle or a limp or a cane. So better drink up today. Toss back an extra. Eat what you want. Fuck while you can. Because we know what the future will look like."

Inglourious Basterds

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:33:01 GMT

Inglourious Basterds is not history, nor is it meant to be historically accurate. Inglourious Basterds uses history as a setting and a story with which we are all too familiar, and it twists it in a way many of us have thought of, if only for a moment. The old hypothetical question about going back in time and choosing to kill Hitler before his recorded end - Tarantino's taking on that question, and anyone familiar with his work knows what the answer is going to be.

Inglourious Basterds is not a horrendously violent or gory film, however - at least not by the standards of the group I went with. We were expecting a lot more killing and blood, and I don't think it would have bothered us if there had been more. After a lifetime of hearing about the Holocaust - people digging their own graves, starvation, rape, experimentation, lampshades of human skin - true revenge fantasies necessarily get dark quickly. Other reviewers might be cringing in horror, but not this one. Even in a Tarantino movie, Hitler and his top men get off lightly.

But that's because this film is about Tarantino at play in the sandbox of the past. Sometimes that means that characters go on a bit long or details that could be cut are left in. But just when I found myself growing impatient with a scene, I would see what Tarantino was trying to do and I was able to marvel at it. And don't get me wrong, I don't like all of Tarantino's films and I can be quite impatient. I wanted to kill those bitches in Death Proof so that the movie could actually get somewhere. But I didn't feel that sort of frustration at Inglourious Basterds.

Rather, the audience seemed to take it in the spirit of fun, and I concurred with them. Tarantino plays with villains and heroes, making some absolute and others gray. He plays with history through wonderful sets and costumes and allowing things that absolutely did not happen. He plays with the power of film both inside the script and outside of it.

While I don't believe that Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino's masterpiece, it is enjoyable - but it demands to be met on its own terms, and that is something that some viewers will not be able to do. It is not simply a revenge fantasy or an alternate history or an homage to Westerns. It is not trying to be a drama or a comedy. It is exactly what it's trying to be, as difficult as that may be to accept. And Inglourious Basterds doesn't give a damn if people demand that it be serious because it references some of the most grave events in recent history.

Morpheus' Tears

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:35:20 GMT

Can crying in your dreams give you the catharsis you need in the waking world?

I dreamt of my second mother for the first time in a while and after a while I seemed to understand that she was dead. Instead of understanding that she was dead in the waking world, which I did in a near-lucid dream years ago, I understood she was dead in the dreaming reality I was in. She was watching over us kids as always. I got to sit down with her and talk while she was organizing something in a bedroom. At one point, I saw her with her hair in those cute golden pigtails she'd sometimes do. At the end of the dream, we were at a concert, and she was up on stage in colored lights. She looked different then; another woman's image was meant to represent her. She looked out at me and disappeared slowly, and I heard the disappointment in my own voice when I called out, "No!"

I woke up knowing I'd cried a good bit in my dream. It's weird, but I kind of feel better for it.

I still miss Gayle and want to make her proud of me.

Years go by and that doesn't change.

Behind an Iron Door

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:06:50 GMT

I have a certain pathetic urge right now to be immune to other people's power to hurt me, either on purpose or by accident. The only way I can figure how to do that is to disconnect from others, one heart string at a time.

I wonder what it would be like to be in that place where you don't take anyone's words to heart. Insult or invitation, deceit or dedication, nothing causes that ache or that anger. I wonder what it feels like when you don't hold people to any obligations because you really don't care if they carry through. You don't need others for anything. When they do something nice, it's truly a surprise. Imagine not looking forward to anyone's call or email or visit because they don't matter and such things don't bring major upswellings of joy.

Part of me really wants to be in that place. Part of me murmurs that perhaps I am obsessive and smothering; perhaps people hear from me too much, perhaps I bully them into providing me company.

But another part of me knows I'm not being fair and reacts with horror to the idea of not caring. I want to care. And I want people in my life who want me to care. Ties can bind without smothering, and I value bonds of love and friendship. Surely there are others out there who feel the same way.

A Word on Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:21:49 GMT

Forest Lawn Cemetery sprawls across a prominent hill in Glendale, California, my home town. It is a swath of lovely green on a map, as Google will easily show you, but the experience of the place isn't to be found on the internet. Behind elegant brick walls and tall black gates, the entryway has a complex of quaint buildings to the right and a park to the left. The park has no graves, just a few scattered statues, and for many years it had a serene lake with a fountain that sent streams cascading into the air year round. There were a number of trees and bushes clustering near the lake, and there was usually a section of beautiful wild green fenced off far to the left.

A little ways up the hillside, the grave markers start discreetly making up organized rows that climb as far as the eye can see. Steep grades keep you from seeing how large Forest Lawn actually is; it is a driver's cemetery and requires a car to truly explore, unless you're in for quite a workout. Far to the right, through a narrow alleyway, is a section with bona fide tombstones, grave art, and upright grave markers. I believe some mausoleums are there, too. In the back of my mind, I've always felt that cemeteries should have prominent gravestones, and while most graves have small markers, Forest Lawn does not disappoint. A good deal of art is scattered throughout, including stately reproductions of Michaelangelo. There is a museum housing awe-inspiring, gigantic renditions of the Crucifixion and Resurrection in paint. Another museum is housed in a white building that crowns the whole cemetery (and, indeed, crowns Glendale). From its height, a cross glows nightly. Forest Lawn is the reason that Glendale has more dead bodies in it than living ones, and such has been the case for many years.

I was aware of the cemetery from as far back as I can remember. It is a landmark of my life. After my parents divorced, my mom would take me to the park there so I could watch the swans and feed the ducks (or, in some cases, be chased by them). It's always been a key location for pictures in Glendale; I have pictures of myself there from a very early age, and wedding parties have done photos there for decades, as far as I'm aware. My mom took me to browse the museums. During fine spring and summer days, my mom and I would pick up burgers and tacquitos from Gold Star, a local dive a couple blocks away, and we'd head to the cemetery to eat. It never occurred to me to be creeped out by the dead so close by; it was too beautiful and peaceful for that.

When I was five years old, my mother and I moved to a location in Eagle Rock that looked directly on the back end of Forest Lawn. Some of my worst years were spent in that place, staring across to the cemetery and feeling haunted in my own life. One of my mother's best friends died around the time we moved in and the proximity of the cemetery made my mother's pain worse. She said she cried and watched Forest Lawn and thought of Maxine in her coffin, out in the rain (for which I believe the service was delayed). But once that passed, the cemetery was ours again, and we held no ill will against it.

During my early teenage years, some of my first kisses and gropings took place behind the screens of green near the lake. It was a place for golden afternoons and hours spent without caring about the clock. I remember carving my initials into a tree, though I don't know if that tree is still there. I found out much later that my mother and her brothers had done pretty much the same sort of thing when they were teens and on their early dates.

Inevitably, I started to attend funerals at Forest Lawn. Some of my very first were there. I believe the first time I attended a funeral for someone I hadn't known was at Forest Lawn. I know the first time I got to set foot into the picturesque churches was when an acquaintance from high school died in a freak accident. It was a very odd gathering. Many of us had gone to school together and it didn't seem possible we were burying one of our own. I remember Pete looking vaguely uncomfortable in his fine dark clothes. I remember Julius in his coffin. But I have never dreaded going back and many people have been married in Forest Lawn's churches, which are reproductions of various churches in England.

I knew I'd let my long-time boyfriend into the earliest parts of my life when I took him to Forest Lawn. I'll never forget that day, and I don't believe he will, either.

A number of famous individuals are buried at Forest Lawn Glendale, though good luck finding their locations. Many are older stars like Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, George Burns & Gracie Allen, Sammy Davis Jr., Walt Disney, and Nat King Cole. With some help from the internet, you can get directions to some of the grave sites, though some are in private nooks. I got used to the idea of these faces from childhood being buried down the way, and soon, Michael Jackson will be among them. This seems like a natural choice. Michael Jackson was an intensely private man who tried to shield much of his life from the mob; the staff at Forest Lawn will see to it that he rests in peace.

As an adult, I became aware that Forest Lawn has had a reputation of ridiculousness with those from out of town. Many have criticized the park over it's the years for being too commercially minded - for being more of a theme park than a dignified place for the dead. It has named courtyards and mixes secular with religious tones. It was designed to be a pleasant place for the living. People have found fault with the art, or with the art that is more patriotic in nature (like a large statue of George Washington), or with the notion of over 70,000 people being married in a cemetery. Some talk about it like it's any other Hollywood tourist trap.

I was shocked the first time I heard such things. I had never had those thoughts or heard them from natives. And after a lifetime of enjoying Forest Lawn's finer qualities, I find most of the ridicule to be sad. Anything within X amount of miles from Hollywood risks being labeled as cheap, maudlin, and fake - the worst that Hollywood has to offer. It's what people expect, to such an extent that they fail to see the many beautiful aspects that remain.

I find it much more difficult to be afraid of death when I think of that place.

If anything, Forest Lawn is the place I would like to be interred, whole or in part. Why not? It was the stage of so many important scenes and is nestled in the town that has been my life.

Cleaning Out the Past

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:58:31 GMT

Last night, I dreamt that I returned to my first apartment on Jackson Street with my mother in tow. It was the same little studio, but it was full of stuff that I'd left behind, the way that many kids leave things behind in their old rooms when their parents own their own houses. It was a glorified storage space, waiting for me to go through it, box by box. And it was time for me to clean it out entirely.

Walking into the building, the floors and staircases were arranged strangely. Every time I've dreamt of that place, the staircases have been at crazy angles, or without handrails and leading up several stories without a way to get to floors in between. And entering my old place, the old black security door was still there.

I immediately looked around and felt a little overwhelmed by the task. What was I going to do with that extra bookcase? (And it was, not coincidentally, Nathan's bookcase, which matches mine and is with him in his new place.) I started going through the stacks and piles and finding things that made me smile wistfully. The light in the room changed from early to late afternoon, so I went to the kitchen window to watch the sun set across Glendale. Brilliant color shifts occurred, prettier than the prettiest sunset I watched from that frame.

And then my mom and I got to the bathroom. There were big round bulbs surrounding the bathroom mirror, like they have in movies, but the mirror itself was coated with dust, making my reflection look like something from an old picture. The last scene of the dream was my mother behind me, handling the bucket, I think, while I took a wet rag to the mirror. And in the background, I heard Stevie Wonder singing at Michael Jackson's funeral - "I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer," as plain as day. As I rubbed the dirt free, the color returned to the mirror and I woke up into the quiet of Monday.

The Sound's the Thing

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:58:34 GMT

The other day, while watching Nightmare on Elm Street, I caught a detail that hadn't stood out to me before. And it's not like I haven't watched the movie a thousand times since I was a kid (and it's not like I haven't noticed new details each time), but something gave me pause that wouldn't have occurred to me when it first came out. And that's because the movie sounds like the 1980s, synthesizers and all.

When the music swells as Freddie is chasing a yet another hapless teenager, it's pure 80s, and I remember when that style was the sound of reality itself. In the grocery stores, at the movies, on the radio - the same instruments and rhythms formed the backdrop of every day for my earliest decade. I don't have to suspend my disbelief much when I hear such tunes; I accept the milieu as plausible and right because I was a small part of it. I escaped my own monsters, however temporarily, through the music and movies of the 80s.

I've heard younger viewers say that 80's movies are hokey and bad (and in some cases they're certainly right), but now I wonder how much of that is due to sound. We don't always pay attention to the background music of a film because it's doing its job luring us in and giving us clues; we don't have the distance to notice. But for some folks, the music actually prevents immersion because for whatever reason, it sounds wrong. For many people, the world never resonated quite that way; occasional flicks and flashback programs on radio stations aren't enough to give the all-around experience.

How to accept a reality that grates on the ears? I'm not sure, but I know I disconnect when I hear some of the sounds of the 60s and 70s. Even if I'm able to enjoy a flick from that time, it's not always able to transport me into its world because it just doesn't square with my mental jukebox.

And now that I've done two posts about movies in one day, I think I'll call it a night in a decade that doesn't seem to have a distinctive sound - rather like the one before it.

The Suit Makes the Woman

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:17:35 GMT

A friend joined me for the first of many horror movies I watched this week, and it was one he'd only seen in bits and pieces: Hellraiser. And since I love sharing my favorites with the uninitiated, I was all excited to watch his reactions as much as the film itself - and that was when I noticed that one of the main characters continually drew him out of the movie's spell. He kept commenting on the way she looked, and I don't mean the expressions on her face. He couldn't understand how she was supposed to be a main object of desire with her carefully set, shorter red hair, her dark glasses, and her business suits and heels. Whereas I instinctively understood that she was meant to be a grown woman with an attractive remove and a sleek image because such a style was popular when I was a child.

They called it power-dressing for a reason. Women took hold of the business suit and made it their own so they would be respected, and so they could show off the latest in conspicuous consumption. (And, unlike the many trends that followed, the power suit was never intended for young girls or teenaged vixens; it was by women, for women, and it represented things only grown women could fully understand.) A whole mystique built up around these women; like a film of frost on a window pane, their haughty air of distance made them desirable and hinted that they could be cruel. They wore the uniform of authority, so they called the shots, and not just in the boardroom. Or at least that was the image as it was developed on television and in films, where characters used the suit to put men in their place.

And so it is that Julia's costume tells its own story and completes her character in Hellraiser. We meet her when her remove indicates real loneliness and when her facade has become a defense against intrusion, instead of an offensive weapon. She is clinging to the remnants of her power, but what she really wants is for control to be taken from her, and with some erotic force. So when she has the opportunity to be mastered completely by a corrupt and selfish man, the wealth and sophistication that her wardrobe represents becomes the lure for her victims. The audience understands that she will be ruthless to get what she wants when she stalks bars in crisp black skirts and seamed pantyhose, because that is part and parcel of the power suit. The men she meets understand what her clothing is meant to tell them - they follow the code to their doom, but at least they get the message.

If you can't understand why anyone would want the woman, then you miss out on a major facet of the story. My friend grew up in the 80's but missed that trend somehow. And how do you explain such a thing when a film is rolling and you just want to be entertained? I didn't bother and I got the impression he never fully submerged himself in the movie's milieu, either as a horror story or as an 80's story. He'll probably retain a lower opinion of the film because out it, without ever realizing what he missed.

Perhaps one of the reasons that many older films fall out of fashion is because they use many codes we haven't been taught and can't recognize. I felt this sort of cultural disconnection when I watched the original, Japanese version of The Ring. There were obviously major meanings that I was missing and try as I might, I wasn't able to participate in the horror being implied. An explanation might have helped a little, but would not have instilled that ingrained understanding that would have provided even more terror.