Dreamings November 29th Edition

I’m in the back of a long, wood paneled classroom. Everyone is sitting at desks except me. I am riding a bike, tracing a small infinity symbol, a ∞, over and over again. The professor has white hair and glasses and droopy eyes. He looks vaguely like the colonel from Kentucky Fried Chicken.

He is pointing to a picture on the short end of the classroom. The picture is from behind a building, it looks vaguely like the Empire State Building. The view is looking downwards. It looks like it was taken from a helicopter. The building is in the foreground and it is full of people thrusting their heads out of their apartment windows. The people are smiling and waving. Behind the building there is a gigantic city, I can see people walking around. It looks almost like a magic eye poster, the city is moving, vibrating. The building is swaying with joy.

I’m looking at this picture and flipping my neck around every few seconds because I’m still doing ∞ loops with my bike.

And then I realize it’s not a picture or a poster. It’s a window, a portal. And it’s happening in real time. The people are laughing and talking with one another. There is a ticker tape parade. The birds and mice are singing and dancing around like in Cinderella.

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The portal blurs a little and then refocuses.

The building bursts into flames…

I whip my head around after a turn……

The people are flinging themselves out of their windows, and stabbing their neighbors……

I whip my head around again…….

Behind and beneath the building, a desert opens up and envelopes the city below. Some building remain, but it is mostly a ghost town. There is blood everywhere.

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The professor approaches me quickly- I imagine he saw the expression on my face- and throws a pair of small, wire spectacles on my face. The window goes back to the euphoric scene I saw before. I rip the glasses off and stop my bike. I alternate between taking the glasses off and putting them on. The joy and the armageddon alternate.

One one loop of the infinity, I take off charging towards the front of the classroom. I ride my bike through the picture. And fall.

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I hit the ground hard but still upright on the bike. My butt is bruised from the the fall, but everything is together. I cruise down my block in San Diego. It is nighttime and the lights are shimmering. My bike gleams in the dark, it is sparkling blue with spots of gold and silver.

I ride up my driveway and see the old willow tree arching over the roof. It’s branches hang low and loose over the entryway and the willow looks as if it is delicately embracing the house. The tree is trying to offer some protection, but looks silly doing so. I picture a hunched, elderly man with a walker desperately shielding an infant from an unknown assailant. The willow is scared as it places itself between attacker and the infant.

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I knock on the door, expecting my mother to be there. Instead, she opens the door.

She is excited, but nervous, to see me. She looks around furtively and asks why I didn’t call. I seem to reflexively respond to her without opening my mouth. She can read my thoughts and I am powerless to stop her. I try to slam the door to my brain shut, but she forces her way in. She pokes around and knows exactly what I know.

Her fiancee emerges from the darkness of my old house and wraps her with his tanned, cabled arms. With his arm around her stomach and his breath in her ear, I remember when I used to be attached to that arm. I remember when I used to be that breath.

She looks about and waits for my question, despite knowing what I will ask even before I do.

I ask to come in and sit down for a while.

My kitchen and dining room look exactly how I remember them. Light bounces off the wood floors and off of my grandfather’s treasured clock he received for excellence as a professor at Boston University. The faded LP cases are there, and the purple and green dining room chair upholstery stares me in the face. The table is infested with termites, brittle, decaying. I used to eat breakfast there everyday before school, reading the sports section of the San Diego Union Tribune.

She is sitting on the couch with her companion. My couch. They are cuddling together, watching a parade out of the windows. There are elephants in my backyard and frightening clowns. They seem to be endlessly circling my swimming pool. Every know and then, it appears some member of the parade, an animal trainer or a fourth-chair clarinet player, gets pushed into the pool and is immediately eaten by sharks. The swimming pool has lost it’s chlorine-tinted hue and is a pit of tar and blood. The sharks periodically thrash about. Every time a parade member is pushed in, it boils and overflows onto the deck.
She and her lover invite me to lay down on the loveseat, next to the couch. They are stroking one another’s thighs and amorously kissing. I recline and position my gaze away from their affections, but every once in a while, one of them loudly moans. I lay there for a long time. All the while, I can feel her- as she is making out with her lover- inside my thoughts. She knows I am thinking about her. I am overcome with jealousy, yet I remain on the loveseat next to them.

The doorbell rings and beautiful women are in the entryway. They are wearing revealing costumes. There is a policewoman in a short skirt, a devil in a low-cut dress, a ghost in a see-through top. I realize it is Halloween.

They invite me to go with them, and I look back to Her. She indicates that I can find the candy next to the door, then quickly nuzzles her face in her partners neck.

I slowly grab the box, and find that is full of square pieces of foil-wrapped objects each about the size of a photo album. Each piece of candy weighs an immense amount. I can pick them up, but I quickly lose my grip. The foil glimmers as I struggle to lift each one and the costumed women laugh scornfully. They quickly withdraw their offer for me to accompany them.

I am unable to lift the large candies long enough to give any to the trick-or-treaters. They are frustrated and back away, thanking me for my efforts.

The enamored lovers hardly notice as I walk back unsuccessfully towards the couches.

The doorbell rings again, and She looks at me to get the door. More trick-or-treaters appear, and they are all once again beautiful women. A different group. Their same offer to escort them is extended and I decline once more. Again, I cannot lift the heavy, laptop-shaped candies. I look back for some offer of assistance from the pair on the couch, but find none available.

This scene repeats dozens of times throughout the night.

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And then, as I’m laying down, another portal opens up. My bike reappears and I ride through the picture. I look back at Her as I plunge over the edge. I fall silently, the air is cool and dry. There is a smell of dew and honeysuckle in the air. Trees rush by as I look up at Her face quizzically peering over edge at my plummeting figure. Her face is the last thing I see before I wake up.

And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace:  when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
   generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
   education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

From The Unknown Citizen -W.H. Auden

Not today

There are some days that I don’t feel like writing about anything introspective.

I suppose that’s a good thing. If I was inside my own head all the time, I would probably get pretty claustrophobic. If I’m permanently under storm clouds it’s nice to step out once in a while and remember what it feels like not to be soaked all the time. It’s like I’ve flown to Arizona for the weekend to get a break from the gray, rainy days of my home in Seattle.

The catch, is to keep writing even when I don’t feel so introverted. When the dead tree limbs of crippling anxiety crowd the healthy branches of my brain (Braintree! I love MA town names!) I am asphyxiated. Writing in the blog is like stripping all those decaying offshoots and sending then through the industrial size wood chipper parked out on the curb in front of my house, err…body.

But, without practicing, I feel as if the the chipper is simply a tool for clearing away all the dead things. It isn’t constructive at all. It just creates a big pile of dead wood that may be used for potpourri or to cover the driveways of other people’s houses.

As an aside, picture my negative chewed up thoughts as air fresheners in other people’s houses, er……bodies. Weird. Is this like a one man’s meat may be another man’s poison type of thing?
Anyway, back to practicing. I need to practice to get “better” or “experienced” in my writing. However, this draws in a whole other line of questions involving nature versus nuture including: “Can someone ‘become’ a better writer through practice?” and “Is there a point in your life where you simply have to play the cards you’ve accumulated through your ‘formative’ years?” This final question may be related the point in Synecdoche where Caden absolves his directorial chair and becomes an extra in his own play, taking orders and living out his life under the direction of someone else. He’s stopped creating and learning and doing, he’s simply running out the clock. He’s the old dog that can’t learn new any new tricks.

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(I am looking at The Onion for a while, I’ll be back in a sec)

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And we’re back. And going into the break, we were trying to tease out what writing practicing actually is. Perhaps it is the act of forming sentences? Of trying on different phrases and getting to use them comfortably? Is it really this simple? It sounds almost like trying on a few denim jackets until you get one that fits (As another aside, I never had a jean jacket and I desperately want one even though they look ridiculous in any state above the Mason-Dixon line).

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Maybe it’s endeavoring to place new and exciting words in these balky, attempted sentences. Like having a selection of brand new Ferrari’s to steal off the dealer’s lot, one at a time.

Note: this may backfire when you use a word who’s meaning you only peripherally know. For instance, when you use a word like ‘jejune’ to describe your own writing ( this actually happened in a recent IM conversation) only to figure it is in fact the opposite of what you thought it meant is much like throwing your legs over the door of the convertible, giddily landing behind the wheel, and realizing you have no idea how to drive stick.

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Or perhaps it’s not any of these. Perhaps it’s cramming as many awkward metaphors into a single blog posting like stuffing a sleeping bag in…….ah, forget it.

Recommend

Synecdoche, NY.

Go see it. Now.

I can’t get into it too much at the moment, but to put it mildly, the gears begin to turn after seeing a movie like this. It’s art that forces the viewer to either interact with it or -if the viewer is unreceptive-to be seriously uncomfortable the entire time.

And that’s what I enjoyed the most. The non-linear, absurdist, slightly discomforting ideas that the film injects into your brain.

It’s far from perfect and far from genius, but it shakes you from your daily routine, it both elevates and insults that daily routine enough, that you can’t help but be grandiose and awed and humble and envious and full of ‘what if’s’.

I suppose that’s also what I enjoyed about the movie. The ability of the film to turn a burning glare on the real possibility that we are missing the important events in our own lives. We are paralyzed by fear and indecision and obligation. We make things more complicated and overthink them and thus regret is born. And then we reflect on regret we perhaps miss more important events. We try to learn from all the failures and learn from the mistakes but while we’re doing all this learning, we’re forgetting to pay attention to what happens in real time. We’ll always be one step too slow or a minute too late and then we die thinking that it should have been different. But it won’t be. The sooner we learn this the wiser we are, but once we learn that Godot really isn’t coming, our play will be over. So, does wise equal death?

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We have been conditioned since birth to think of our lives as stories. There is a beginning. middle. and end to our stories, but there are also long crippling moments of indecision. But in the tales we are used to hearing and modeling ourselves after, there are no murky lulls, there are no mundane moments. Someone is watching those players dance across the stage at all time and by virtue of this very fact there is meaning and purpose.

What do I do in those most humbling of moments that no one is watching? Is there meaning to what is inside my head even though no one else knows what I am thinking? Perhaps there are those that can comprehend bits and pieces, but to understand the entire thing? If I can’t convince anyone to take stock of the whole shebang, does it matter at all? I can present myself in a hundred different easily digestible ways. Pre-packed, processed, inspected bits of me to be categorized, filed, and stored somewhere. But no one (or many) can make out the entire canvas, just fractions of the whole, and this makes the portrait meaningless.

In the end, Caden Cotard finally realizes this. The one person that had the best chance at seeing entire picture was there and he was frozen with doubt, letting her slip almost completely away.

Note: there are far more aspects to this film, I just thought I’d sleepily free-write for a while on a Monday morning.

In my fantasy world

I would never be ill and I would never have to burn my sick days recovering from my virus-induced coughing fits by sleeping for 12 hours.

Instead, I’d use the sick days for grand adventures. Whilst on these adventures ideas would accumulate in my head in an orderly fashion, like lemmings waiting in line. The lemming ideas would jump off the cliffs of my fingers or my tongue spilling out straight into my blog, or my paper, or my conversations.

That’s how sick days are in my fantasy world.

Urge to try fading, urge to kill rising

My cottage cheese brings all the boys to the yard.

visual

via patrickmoberg

Redux

“It’s just like after September 11. Back then no one wanted to be seen as not patriotic, and now no one wants to be seen as not doing all they can to save the financial system,” said Lee A. Sheppard, a tax attorney who is a contributing editor at the trade publication Tax Analysts. “We’re left now with congressional Democrats that have spines like overcooked spaghetti. So who is going to stop the Treasury secretary from doing whatever he wants?”

Killing time again

I wonder if there is a day you wake up and realize there is more behind you than in front of you. I wonder if you do anything different that day. I could, in fact, have already reached that moment.

Do you become serene? Do your eyes glass over with acceptance? Do you stumble around with that realization for a few days like a bad hangover? Perhaps it’s like indigestion, your stomach simmers for a while, but eventually the boil dies down to a manageable level. Perhaps it’s like getting fat, it hurts to look in the mirror for a while but eventually you get used to it.

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I ask because I’m a believer in punctuated equilibrium. I believe that large changes happen very fast and there are long periods of stillness.

I sometimes imagine myself on a movie screen. I’m watching myself type, right now, in real time. I’m hoping just by virtue of the fact that someone is watching- even if it’s just me- a rapid series of events will unfold and appear and cascade and snowball. It lends an air of significance to everything I’m doing.

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It’s more significant if someone is watching me try to erase the two-month old blue and red marker from my whiteboard. It’s suddenly meaningful and comical and exasperatingly funny that I’m haggling with my credit card company over a charge at a restaurant/dance club named “Hot Lead and Cold Feet”.

The name isn’t funny but because someone is watching it’s worth a chortle. How embarrassing not to have laughed at something that could possibly be amusing. So, to review, I’m fake laughing at something not really very funny while on the phone with a bank teller because I picture myself nervously watch the scene on some sort of movie screen. The scene of me talking with this man from Wachovia, shouting into the receiver like a 90 year old woman with hearing aids.

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Maybe when I stop having these odd moments of watching myself is when I know I’m on the downslope. That’s when I know I am flailing around, plummeting clumsily down.

Or perhaps, I will just watch myself sink. And that show really scares me.

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I sure do spend a lot of time waiting for this to happen don’t I?

Gets me off

I am aroused by the use of arcane, misunderstood rules of procedure in governance. So is Ezra Klein.

Boycott of Marriot Hotels and the State of Utah

With the sweetness of an Obama election comes the news that my home state of California narrowly passed the terribly intolerant Proposition 8.

Via AmericaBlog (an excellent left-leaning source of news and commentary) thankfully, there are legal challenges to its passage.

Post-mortem, it appears that pro-Prop 8 (anti-gay) groups were much better funded and took this issue much more seriously than the anti-8 groups.

It seems that no one believed California, the state of Cesar Chavez, and legalized marijuana, and a white minority, and the free speech movement, and the laid back devil-may-care attitude would actually vote against homosexual marriage. Whoops.

Mormons, Orange county evangelicals, and religious minorities produced massive amounts of literature to GOTV for Prop 8.

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So, as these court challenges are pending, and future efforts to right this wrong simmer, there is a call to boycott everything Utah as the Church of LDS was a monstrous (and I mean it in every sense of the word) donor to the anti-gay effort. The Mormon owned Marriot Hotels should be number 1 on that list. The boycott would be ala the Cracker Barrel boycotts of the early 90’s. Cracker Barrel’s ridiculous employment policy stipulated the firing openly gay workers on site. The boycott exerted significant public and economic pressure on the restaurant chain to find a way to a slightly less discriminatory set of rules.

I love this idea and think economic boycotts are underutilized. I’ll hopefully be updating more with this as it progresses. AmericaBlog, DailyKos, and others have lots more.