Make a Move

Tuesday February 13th

Two weeks left.  Have another small batch ready to move to Lore's or Kris'.  A few of my boxes are packed but still open as I use things in them.  Down to my 'last-minute-box' and clothes.  Trying to coordinate help getting some stuff to my other sister's place where my two-week hiatus will be.  Everyone's got small cars and are busy, and I've got three larger pieces to move - plus me.  I need my niece Kat's help more than she can be here for, as she is in the middle of moving as well.  Lore has her own obstacles.  I have to hope I can get Scott to give me a few afternoons as he gets off work.  We're heading out tomorrow, anyway, to see if a few shops will have any interest in some of my stuff.  I could use the money. 

BTW, if you, reader, have not seen Three Billboards I highly recommend it.  It's sharp wit and keenly felt humanity leaven a dark observance of anger.  Movie's got a humanist streak a mile wide. 
Dreamt this morning that while I was fighting to breach the wall between Dana and me, one of her exes made a move and she chose him instead.

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Jesus.  The latest mass shooting, the high school in Florida.  I don't have the words.  18th mass shooting this year?  : (   Seeing those students in shock and grief is heartbreaking. 

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Saw the footage of the United fight where the engine fell apart midflight.  I'll be on a United.  At least it won't be over the ocean.

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Oh - I'm being stupid about the masonite.  It's too cold in here for the enamel paints to cure, so I can't start the painting I want now anyway.  Still working to finish the small biker skull for John and I practically have to bake it in the oven with each coat of paint on the helmet.  And I would rather not take the paints to Kathy's, so that's that:  wait for NY before 'Mina'.  That will prevent me rushing the thing, so I guess that's good.  I can sketch out what I want, do the prep work, play with the flow. 

Last night I dreamt - and it was just a dream, no question - that I was preparing to send a package to Dana.  Next to the shipping address I drew a triangle and then wondered why that was what I drew...inside it I began to draw a simple image of her but as I went along it was neither as simple nor as small as I'd intended.  I think the triangle was a suggestion that I was either casting a spell or warding one off by doing her portrait.

With Lore coming over Sunday, I'll try to use her phone again to get online unless I get to the library sooner.   Need to see if Kris left a message through FB, haven't heard from him in a week and I've around a week and a half left.  If I'm there long enough I want to see if I find a pose for 'Mina' I like and the right clothes even if I don't follow anything too distinctly. 

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"It's a mental health issue, not a gun issue."  These are NOT mutually exclusive.  Hello??  Wake the fuck up.  It is NOT a slippery fucking slope.  You're not going to lose the right to own guns.  There IS such a thing as reasonable gun restrictions, and yes they WILL hinder these tragedies even if they won't stop all of them.  Mental health issues are only part of the problem.  You don't solve it by relying on only part of the solution.  Do something.  You're not a dog, stop letting the NRA be your Pavlov.

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Friday, Feb. 16th.

Something I saw last night, something from half a century ago I think (I can't remember what program it was) had someone opining that the media should make a conscious effort to report the heroes and the comforters, the people who bring help.  There's too much focus on the negative, he thought.  The world needs to be given hope, he argued.  The reason I think this was an older program was because I thought that I always hear the same thing today, have heard it all my life.  Thing is, I don't think the media needs to make an effort at this because it's already there if you open your eyes to it.  I've been seeing it for years, and telling people to look for it every time there's a catastrophe or an atrocity or act of inhumanity, every time you see the worst in humanity you also see humanity respond with its best - open arms, open hearts, comforting, rescuing, standing or marching defiant against allowing fellow human beings to be abandoned or abused.  It's no different anywhere in he world.  The response is not an equal one, either, empathy and love overwhelm the cause of loss or offense.  The news media cover it as a matter of course without having to manufacture it, and its there beneath whatever spin the more political of them try to give it.  It's simply there.  It's our nature.   You saw it in Florida among the community, the kids, the parents and teachers...battered as their hearts were, they didn't curl up individually closed off but reached out to and for each other.  You saw it in every golden flame of their vigil.  That is who we are.

(oof)

February 7th, took some time to watch the next Dracula film I hadn't reviewed yet.  I had watched it back around the time I fell away from doing movie reviews, and I had an angle then that's harder to perceive now as the impression was stronger when it was fresh.  Too bad I hadn't written it up at the time.   1968, British TV adaptation featuring Denholm Elliott.  Pretty decent, too, in spite of its limitations it was quite daring.  Brazen, you could say. 

Reviews take a while to compose.  How long has it been? I'd like to do one or two, and maybe another Kolchak.  Will if I have time.  Still no screencap capacity but I have snapped a few shots from the TV screen, which will be overly contrasty and lose some detail.  (edit: this method sucks.  Will have to find a better way.  I've done the next Hammer film too, now, written the review but need better shots.)

I will definitely hold off on 'Mina and the Moon'.  Once I get to New York I'll get the largest masonite board that will fit Jesseca's car and get some materials.  Maybe enamel, as I like what I was doing there, maybe acrylic instead, but definitely crayons to use under the paint.   I can almost see the image, and some of the clothing.  Casual, warm, long sleeves, maybe a dress and boots (as I recall from scanning her FB page).  I have a horde of enamels and acrylics many of which are still good, but it's too much to pack them.  I'll just have to build up a reserve from scratch again...expensive, but there it is.  I won't be painting the character Mina, just borrowing the name. 

I don't have to lose my paints until the last minute, and I wonder if I can manage a portrait in the days I have left here.  Time is an obstacle.  I would like to do something colorful, otherwise I might as well just do a drawing - and I've got one that needs the attention already.  Three, really, that I want to finish and spray with fixative before they ship.

Dreams have all been...eh.  Few that are terrible, but none that have held the slightest pleasure or happiness.  I had one in which I was talking to mom.  I suddenly realized with tremendous joy and relief, mom is still alive after all!  And then I woke up.  Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.  Really could use a good dream.  Something with some human warmth would be welcome, some tenderness.  A moment of love. 

Haven't heard from Jesseca in too long, I hope she's okay. 

Have to see how much money I can afford to spend.  Need more packing tape and I really want to hit Five Guys, but then they have those in New York.  Foodcarts, OTOH...I had noodles with chicken, onions, peppers, carrots, and broccoli in Thai peanut sauce, and it's a local vendor at Cartlandia, a 20 minute nwalk from here and cost less than I'd spend at 5 Guys.  And there's Rimsky Korsakoffee house, still need to go there.  Did DeNicola's with Scott.  I found a great place for used DVDs, wish I'd known about it sooner!  I'd have loved a shopping spree there, they'd have some harder-to-find itles to fill out some of my collections. 

Ugh.  Valentine's Day is in a week.  Excuse my mixing the holidays, but Bah!  Humbug!

Damn.  Watching the news of the snowstorm in New York.  Really wanna hear from Jesseca.  It's been too long.

*********
I had a dream wherein I was watching a movie with really juvenile humor, just lowest-common denominator bathroom humor and maybe some racist jokes.  Someone thought the jokes were mine.  Hafta admit I'm not good at telling jokes, and I'm not big on that type either.  So, ummm, I'll fess up to the worst joke that's all mine:  What would you call a Pharaoh passing gas?  A toot uncommon.
Kill me now.  It's okay.

When I post this, I will also post my new movie review at Sinister Simian. 
*********

Three Weeks

I will be forced to leave this house in about three weeks.  Something outside the usual is bothering me. 

Karla is in no hurry to take mom's urn to the cemetery, so she has it on a shelf next to a hummingbird feeder.  She says the number of birds coming to it has increased.  Also, her cat leaps up and sits next to it and watches the birds.

On my first night in mom's room (I moved into it so that what was my room can be repainted) I sat in mom's chair.  It's a little uncomfortable at the small of the back.  Mom always had a cushion she used there.  I didn't have it, and really felt its absence.  At the end of the evening I plopped some clothes on the chair, turned off the TV, and went to bed.  The next day I discovered that mom's cushion was precisely placed where it ought to be.  That's a neat trick if I did it to myself via the pile of clothes I casually plunked down. 

After the second night in mom's room I got up to set the locks on the front door so anyone who showed up could get in (undoing the deadbolt and screen door).  I found the chain had been drawn across.  I have been out of the habit of using that chain for several years now. 

Am I gaslighting myself?

Jesseca and I share a lot of vids about the (so-called) supernatural.  Given the lore on ghosts, I hate the idea of mom being here and tied to the house.  Owning this house was her proudest achievement.  If she's here then I dare not let myself think I'm going to be leaving her alone in it.  Maybe she's not tied to it, and maybe I'm subconsciously playing tricks on myself.  Maybe she's watching birds.

(sudden mental image of a bird sitting on a perch and someone in gym clothes anxiously waiting beneath to catch it:  birdspotting)

This is the third morning.  No new odd occurrences noticed.

*********
January 30th, nearly 11 PM.  Watching a movie about authors and wondering how much of Dana I have invented.  If I was so far from the mark she could and should have said so.  If not then I am the only one who really knows her, the only one who loves her complete for everything she is. 

If I were a writer of fiction the Dana I imagine is someone I would invent. 

*********

February 2nd,  1 AM.

Will you marry me, Dana?

I've been wanting to ask you that for 34 years. 

Dana, promise me that you will sort out the problem, find your cure, whatever it is that keeps you from talking to me, and then write to me.   You promise me that.  Anything less is beneath you.  I deserve that promise.  Step up, Cooper.  I'm not giving up on you, don't you fucking give up either.  You're not the horrible person you want so desperately to think you are.  You're nowhere close to it.

I'm still trying to work that painting in  my head.  It needs flow and movement.  I was thinking forward stride, maybe reaching a hand out but that's not what's missing...the elements need interaction, it's too static and there's a space that is left dead.  I was thinking a little while ago that I've never seen you dance and I very much want to.  How do you look when you dance?  Mind, I never would have gone dancing with you anyway, I have no rhythm...but it's something I wish you'd let me share.

*********

I've spent almost fifty years in this house, I should have been allowed to spend my last few weeks in it in peace.  That's not happening.  Dammit, I still have a major drawing I need to finish, these people have to let me work on it.

*********

I may never be able to look at Dana's FB page.  It's like...I should be able to be happy knowing she's doing well, but I already know she will be.  She's a survivor.  It hurts to see her happy and know I'm not welcome to share in it.  I'm not invited to the party.  She's happy because I'm not there.  I can't look at that, I can't see that smile.  It's like being spat on.  Of course I know that's not her intention, she deserves to be happy.  But that's how it feels from here. 

*********

February 4th.  Had to have an estate sale Friday and Saturday.  Sold a few things but not enough.  Suppose we'll have to try it again in a week or two.  A couple of my model buildups sold.  Trying today to change gears again back from that.

There's a matched pair of portraits I may  do someday.  Not in the spirit for it now.  From a dream, late Nineties or early Oughts.  In the dream someone had graffitoed a brick wall with large portraits of Dana and me.  Mine had the top of my head removed just above the browline and capped with a brass lid to an incense decanter.  The lid was tipped up to reveal the inside of my head:  it was filled with brain-sized pupil, iris, and cornea gazing upward out of the skull.  Dana's portrait had two sets of eyes, one above the other, as if she were two beings or personalities in one body.  What I would like most to do is to obtain two large sheets of plastic and cover them with sculpted bricks (putty or plastic sheet cutouts I would texture) and paint the portraits over those in enamels and/or acrylics.  An alternative would be to do the same with paper and heavy cardstock and use crayons.  That latter would be easier and cheaper but the effect would be a mimicry of what I want.  I've always avoided self-portraits but I like the details of the inner eye and incense lid.  Also, that brick wall is tragically apt.

With sheet styrene I keep running into the same problem, warping.  The styrene reacts badly to the chemicals in the very glues and putties  designed specifically for them.  I've done any number of really nice pieces that were useless within three days.    My brother John showed me a bottle of what he calls 'sprue glue', a DIY putty made by melting bits of styrene in a bottle of MEK-type liquid glue (methyl ethyl ketone, works by capillary action) .  The resulting paste was much more fluid than I expected, I'd heard about this long ago but had imagined it as a sticky mess.  He says there's been no warpage, the assumption being that styrene can't react badly to styrene.  So now I'd like to try this stuff out.  I hope there's a hobby store I can get to in Oswego.

The Man in the Moon

I found the old man.  (Well, damn, the site won't load the video...)

Diane Schwartz had been in the puppetry department of YMA the year I met her.  Her parents pulled her away from the last day early, but no one told me.  I spent the rest of the day looking for her to tell her I'd fallen in love with her or at least get her contact info, give her mine.  I was still searching even after the flag ceremony, as everyone was leaving, until almost no one left and it was after dark before someone finally let me know.

The next year I switched from art to puppetry in hopes of spending more time with Diane, but she wasn't there.  That year the puppetry department staged Peter and the Wolf.  I made sure I got the part of the old man, specifically because I wanted to do the puppet.   Turned out that I was pretty good as a puppeteer as well, really comfortable performing even in the contorted positions it required, interacting with the other performers.  You don't just hit your marks and wiggle the damn thing if someone is speaking the role, you channel the mood and the character into the puppet.  I got an audible intake of breath out of the audience when the old man intro'd.  Mr. Biggs, Franklin's drama instructor, approached me after the show and suggested that I take up drama when school returned.

*********

My time is running out more swiftly as the date to be moved out approaches.  It's moving much too fast.  My niece has promised many times that I can stay with her until the date of my flight, and now it sounds like she wants to back out.  She can't, I need that space for two weeks.  She's also supposed to be my ride to the airport, though I do have a backup for that.

Still no dreams or dreamlets of Dana as of the 23rd.  Still have clothes and art supplies to pack.  I hope I haven't got too much already boxed, everything is kinda jumbled together - the most important with the less...wondering when to pack off my art table with Kris T., thinking my TV and stereo can go with it.  It'll be a wait but I'd have them.  Mostly I need the TV now for weather reports (when the antenna picks up a signal).  It's nice to watch a movie in the evening but I could read or try something creative instead.  Hard to get enthused over starting anything if I may have to abandon it undone.

I had a sudden worry, and sure enough - I can't find my birth certificate along with the papers mom kept.  They're not all here, like the medical files.  I do have a copy, but not the original.  This is upsetting.  I'll have to ask Karla if it's with the stuff she kept.  I know it was here somewhere.

*********

My room is no longer my room.  It's almost one on the morning, Saturday 27th. My room is empty now to be painted and have a little work done on it, so I;m in mom's room as of tonight.  That's going to feel weird.  Don't know if I'll be able to sleep - oh, right, melatonin, I'd better take some.

Okay, the image that started with the man in the moon has almost come together, I think, and I have a name for the painting.  I want to do it on a large masonite board in crayon and enamel.  Since I only have a small masonite board I may do a test run in only crayon on a large tablet and then do the real thing in N.Y.   At least that way I wouldn't have to worry about packing it.  It won't have the depth of color or the smooth texture I want but may be worth doing as a test run anyway.   I  still don't know the clothes for Dana except she'll be dressed in white but as it is a nighttime setting will be pretty mostly in blue.  Not sure of her skin color, as I want her hair to be bright copper, which doesn't match.  But then, remind myself, no need to be realistic.  The field she stands in won't be.  Not do I have to strive for a strict likeness.  The only problem is the exact color of her hair...I really do not want to look at her FB page (it just makes me feel worse and even more removed from her)  and may have to go from impression.  Lore sent me a bag of chocolates while I had the flu, and I should have kept one of the foils.  They were the exact blue I want the sky.  For that matter I'd love to attempt this image with transparent paints over foil.  Let this serve as a reminder to self, start looking for colors of foil once I reach Oswego.

Pthalo Blue Birthday

Friday, January 19th.
It's my birthday today.  right now it's a little after eight in the morning.  Yesterday was a good day, today I didn't want to get out of bed.  I slept all night, unusual, had dreams that were unremarkable.   Woke up knowing the reconciliation with Dana won't happen.  It's the only thing I was living for, I've waited thirty years for it, and she's walked away again.  There will be no winning her attention for another try, this was it.  I want to go back to bed and sleep until the day is over.  Actually, I don't want to wake up.  I would like to die in my sleep.  I just get up day after day.   There's no sense to it.

John wanted me moved into mom's room by now but Karla needs the room as she had to come into town for eye surgery.  Obviously she can't leave until she can see to drive safely again.  I'm going as fast as I can boxing my stuff, but now I am supposed to 409 the kitchen as well.  Last time it was the bathroom.  Before that it was 'move it somewhere else 'cuz it can't be where it is' after which the reasoning for it would fall through.  I fully expect to get yelled at and lectured again by somebody.  Some of my stuff can't be packed up yet, I still use it day to day.

***********

Jesseca has a posse of friends in New York, though she says she doesn't see them often outside of pagan functions.  Figure I'll meet them, and I wonder if a romantic spark will emerge anywhere.  I hope so only because I'm so tired of being alone.  Problem is, my feelings for Dana always got in the way before and they still aren't changing now...well, I'm not entering a post-Dana era, I've already been in it all these years.  It just didn't function that way.  I couldn't see past the promise of visions or my misplaced faith in her as a friend.  And my love for her refuses to leave me be.

Caridad (met online) wasn't wanting a romantic connection, and she pulled away when I started to talk seriously with her.  I think she mistook me needing someone to confide in as me falling for her.  I could have, though.  At first she hooked up with me because she thought I was gay and that turned her on.  I liked her, every now and then I wonder how she's doing, what's up with her.  I hope everything's good for her.

There's the post title, btw.  One of Cari's old screen names incorporated pthalo blue. 

Huh.  I think Cari lived in New York.  No, I'm not jonesing for Caridad.  I'm wondering who might be out there, and whether I can get past Dana enough to give anyone a fair chance this time.  It's not like I haven't been in love with two women at the same time before.  Never been a practicing poly, though, hadn't been introduced to the concept.

***********

One of my nieces may be able to get me a computer with a disc drive.  With that I could get screencaps again and thus resume reviewing movies.  There are movies I am hesitating over because I don't want Dana thinking I chose them to send her pointed messages.  They're just movies I wanna review.  So when I start again I might pick something safe and innoccuous.  Hope not, it's timid...and she's gone (note to self, fucking reminder, she's gone).

Oof.  I had some started and lost them when the last computer died.   Lost images I was working with too.  Have to find out what might have been saved to flash drive.

***********

Six-thirty in the morning, Saturday 20th, hoping to fall asleep again.  I fully believe Dana has turned her back and gone.   I have to stop making excuses for her, stop finding reasons to give her the benefit of the doubt.

She sent me something in the mid-Nineties...at least, I think that was her.  It was in response to a letter I'd sent.   I'd accidentally stumbled across her again and had an address to reach her through so  I sent a trial balloon.  Would she talk to me?  I think it was Dana who replied, her handwriting was on the envelope.  What came back was...interpretable, I guess, but it looked to me like the biggest 'go fuck yourself' I've ever had.  In essence the message was that I was less than nothing to her, that she would treat me like any other total stranger.  I was devastated and sent her back the pictures she'd given me years earlier and wrote out how hurt I was on the back of one of the programs for 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' at Franklin. 

The time it would take for that to reach her passed, and then I had a dream of her backstage at Franklin after a play.  She was sobbing, inconsolable - just like I was - the look on her face as she gazed at me broke my heart and made me feel so ashamed.

So, first of all, was that just a dream - was it even her I had tried to correspond with?  Will I ever know?  Only she knows.  If it was her, and if that dream was psychic (it had felt immediate like the ones that turned out psychic, "one of those") then did I misunderstand her intention?  Had she meant it as a tentative step toward talking to me, and didn't guess how I would see it?  It didn't look like a step forward, it looked like an insult - but was I wrong, was she trying?  It haunts me.  I still want so much to say I'm sorry (I did say it then) if that's what really happened.  So tired of all the guessing and the dreams, torn up by not knowing.  If it's all in my head she should tell me.  Hell, if it's all in my head what reason could she have not to?  Her silence re-enforces that I must have been right about all along.

If that was her, then yes, I do know a number of other things that she needs to hear are okay.  But I'd have to be talking with her privately to do that.  See, she blocks me from her life = she "protects" herself from the very things that would heal this wound for her, so I too am blocked from ever healing. 

This is not thirty years ago.  Things have changed for her, and I've finally managed to change how she understands me now.  Her reasons back then are not whatever her reasons are now.  She sees more clearly, she must.  But it hasn't changed her mind and I'm still damned.

***********

Nice.  Just got told by my brother's wife that I have done nothing to help.  Like hell I haven't.  And if everyone had stopped giving me conflicting instructions every half a week my stuff would be done by now instead of me having had to move it around for no damn reason when I could have been sorting it.

Fights breaking out again about who's taking what, I'm trying to stay out of it.   I hope no one was expecting me to lie if someone asks me where a piece went, I'll tell 'em without their commentary - not my battle.  That's where tensions are now, people turning hostile and being unnecessarily rude and unreasonable to each other.  Would help if more people were doing the work, or if we had more money to cover it.

***********

I got my Bailey's Irish Cream!  Looking forward to trying to relax this evening.  It was mom's favorite drink and one of mine.  Once I get to New York, then I'll get some Kahlua. 

Experimenting, trying out a generic bread pudding recipe.  I always told mom to try it with a flavored bread like pumpkin but she wasn't sold on the idea.  So I'm trying it now with banana nut bread.  Aroma from the oven is nice.  (...)  Came out maybe too dry at the edges but has a good flavor.  Really do need to try it with pumpkin bread someday.

Booked

I stopped by Goodwill looking for a paperback to take on the flight.  A collection of erotica enticed me, but I put it back.  Maybe if it's still there next time I pass by.  Instead I ended up with Joseph Heller's Catch-22, which I've always been interested in reading.  Never saw the movie. 

Here's a conundrum in gender bias worth considering: I have never been much drawn to erotic fiction written by men for the same reason that I am not drawn to men themselves.  On the other hand, my favorite author of erotica is Pat Califia, a trans author.  Now that he is no longer a she, should it make a difference?  I don't think it changes my response to the work...does that mean I still see the work as issuing from a female mind?  That might be a slight to Mr. Califia. I wish to be mindful of this.   Gender range is  real.  I do think it a mistake to be entirely blind to gender, however, much the same as the argument about being colorblind versus - uh, I don't think there's a short phrase for it, but inclusive and loving of ethnicity.  It's the difference between celebrating diversity and denying it.  I've always been big on individualism.
(I had begun to type 'gender fluidity', but the vocabulary is wrong.  Wrong concept.  I don't mean to say that gender is morphic day to day for most of us (it certainly can be), rather that we exist not poles apart but along a scale.  Like orientation, there's a range we fall upon, each somewhere else.)
I've been missing the news - the Me Too movement has spread to China!  And now Hollywood has something called Time's Up.  Sweet, I was hoping it would be critical mass this time... now if only the public writ large would stop fooling itself that this doesn't apply to the Orange Stain on our democracy, that impervious disgrace.

***********

My birthday is on Friday.  I can't remember whether I set Facebook not to notify anyone.   Thursday night Scott and I will go take in a movie.   It's meant to be a rainy evening - perfect, I love a rainy night.  Wonder if I'll get that bottle of Bailey's.

***********

If I'm not talking about Dana, I don't have much to say lately.  It's enough dealing with depression and my dubious, frightening future, trying not to be overwhelmed.  Like I've said before, I am trying to keep all feelings submerged, and my attentions aren't being engaged with anything all that interesting.    No time for art, no dreams worth attention, little news intake, and severely curtailed contact with friends.  I hope when all this settles I can get back to movie reviews.  I could opine about spirituality, though I'm not much inspired to at the mo'.  Or I could go on about these meatballs that refuse to stay warm fresh out of the oven.


(Oh, shit, this flu is almost over but the cough is still worse.  The sore throat is gone today.  I haven't greyed out while coughing in  a long time but I have begun to again.  Eerie sensation. slowly coming back to one's senses while the room orbits gyroscopically.  You can make out sound but not its import, nor remember what you might have been doing.)

No point anticipating what the plane trip will be like.  I hope to just enjoy the flight itself and not think at all about what I am leaving behind.  I'll be flying economy but I do have window seats for both legs of the journey and not over the wings.  Flying by night is a cost-saving measure, but it's more because I'm a night person and always wanted to: I hope to see cities at night, and sunrise from the sky.  I wonder what a nighttime city looks like from that vantage through rain.   Y'know, I was afraid of flying before I went to New York almost nine years ago but it turned out mostly very relaxing.

***********

And then, I also don't know what else to say about Dana either.  Wednesday morning, had a dream about her, but she wasn't in it.  Wasn't anything new or that I didn't know already.  Guess my dreams are on Winter hiatus, I'm getting reruns.

The one this morning took a strange turn at the end.   It was a gathering of people from school, someone who I knew a little (in the form of John Goodman) was peddling photos of a corpse with its head removed, a close-up of a neck so you could make out the grisly detail.  I thought spreading these pictures a sick thing to do but he thought I was just 'virtue signalling'.  "Think for yourself", he objected.  I know there are a few people who love horror films who love that kind of real-life shock material, but the assumption that all horror fans do is a prejudice not borne out by reality.  Okay...morbid curiosity is human nature, no judgementalism there.  Respect for the dead is an issue, though, as is profiting off the dead. 

Not all horror fans are gorehounds.  In filmmaking, gore is a tool rather than an end.  The goal is the impact it has and the effect on the tone of the movie.  It can be useful, and it can also be detrimental.  John Carpenter's Halloween works, IMO, because it recalls a common fear from our collective recall of our more innocent days:  we were all babysat once, or were sitters, and many of us had that night where our fears ran away with themselves - was that someone looking in the window?  'Halloween' has no gore in it, it is almost entirely bloodless.  It's my belief that graphic violence would have destroyed the impact of that film by shattering that child-memory quality and the movie would not be hailed as a classic today if it had.  By contrast, would Un Chien Andalou be a celebrated film today had it not contained a handful of gory images?  I'm not dismissing the artistry of that film, rather pointing out the impact and effectiveness of the content.  It is intentionally a jarring movie.  If you've seen it, it's hard to see that shot of a thin cloud scudding across the moon without wincing.

Besides, what you're seeing in horror films isn't real.  I can't watch real-life surgical procedures.

Innocence...damn, there's a loaded topic.  People get hung up on that one, torturing themselves that they have somehow become 'impure'.  I don't think innocence is what we make it out to be.  Children sometimes say and do the ugliest things out of innocence precisely because they have not yet explored empathy.  It is by experience that we learn. 

Adam and Eve were innocent.  I once witnessed a conversation about that legend that began as a premise for blame that fell along gender lines.  Whose fault was 'The Fall of Mankind', the man or the woman?  Someone noted that I was remaining silent.  I wanted to say that if you approach the parable as one of blame, then there were two others present - Lucifer and God.  I don't think it is a tale of blame, though, rather the opposite.  It's an obvious parable about adolescence.  Adam and Eve were children.  If you leave children in a room with one particular toy in the center, specified by the command never to touch it, what do you think is going to happen sooner or later?   Turning pubescent (the apple) is not a choice but an inevitability.  You don't blame children for growing up - viewing the whole human race as inherently guilty is perverse, and I think unjustly contemptuous.   'Original Sin' has been a destructive doctrine.

The larger point, though, is the adult's penchant for romanticizing childhood as paradise.  We're being dishonest with ourselves.  We look back and see the lack of adult worries and strife in our own histories and imagine all children lead lives of blissful ignorance and joy.  It's not so.  We forget what it was like to be children ourselves, struggling with things that threatened us or challenged us.  We forget what it was to learn.  The Book of Genesis could only have been written by an adult.

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(Thursday)
Last post I mentioned the first time I saw Dana smoking, and just now had an odd dream in which I took a giant prop joint away from an SNL sketch in some protest of something, ruined the sketch. I dunno, not sure what I was supposed to be protesting - pot, I suppose.  Sometimes dreams have me acting out of character - I never can wrestle control back, lucid dreaming has always eluded me.  Once I dreamt that I was a white cop, star of a '60s TV show, beating a black guy because he was black.  I couldn't break out of the dream's script...and the guy himself just said, yeah, he knew I was racist - but he was talking about me the dreamer, not the character I was forced to play, as if the dream were some kind of test.  The dream felt pre-scripted and I was locked into acting out what had been written for me.

I dunno, I feel like I should elucidate a little, the smoking comment did sound oddly puritan.  I think my reaction to seeing Dana smoking itself may have had a puritan note, it's just that I'd never seen Dana herself smoke before and...eh, it's not so much that she was smoking but that it was HER smoking, if you take what I mean.  Somehow I had had an impression of Dana as very conservative (I'm not). It seemed out of character and oddly jarring.  Never bothered me with anyone else, just Dana.  Now,  Lori Hamilton... Lori used to chainsmoke, and strangely it's one of the things I miss about her - talking with her for hours wreathed in a cloud of smoke. It was part of the mood of being with her.  I don't smoke but I've certainly been around it.   It's not a morals thing, just never developed a taste for it.  My father used to smoke pipes, mom hated it so as a young child it bothered me he'd insist on risking his health though everyone begged him to stop.  Still, some tobaccos have a rich, sweet aroma.  Can't say I hated that.  Burn a lot of incense, me.  That reaction to seeing Dana with a cigarette, that was a singular experience.  Never had another like it.

I want to say that most people aren't Left or Right, but everyone I know really is.  We've become so rabidly partisan.

Huh.  Following stream-of-consciousness, it reminds me of something else.  Jealousy.  I've experienced that exactly once in my life and fucking hated it.  Definitely something to be mindful of.   I was so in love with K., and she was seeing a guy with a fucking swastika in his locker...

In one of those letters Dana wrote in '88, she expressed a concern that I should understand a point about her fellow residents at the time.  I didn't get why she thought it needed saying, so her comment stood out.  It came up again in dreams a few weeks ago as if it still bothers her.  In case she might see this, I wanted to reassure her:  I get it.  It wouldn't matter to me anyway, but I respect that it matters to her.

Costly Baggage

I have my ticket to New York, as of this past Wednesday.  Overnight, leaving March 13th.  Arriving Syracuse Wednesday morning.  Will be in this house until the end of February.

One of those long-ago dreams of Dana and I reconciling had us on the road:  all my stuff packed into the back of a moving van, she and I in the cab headed from Portland to her home in California.  Her father was driving.  We had a younger boy with us, in the dream he was a younger brother to Dana.  I don't know if she has children in real life.   We had just gotten married hours earlier.  I wanted that with everything I am. 

But I'm going to New York. 

In the last post here, I mentioned having recently had two dreams of Dana showing me the past*.  They were virtually the same dream - the very same events yet very different in tone.  One was a matter of fulfillment and the other very businesslike.  I think I get it, but not that I could explain here.  I really want to address those dreams, but I don't see any way that I can.  Both were about something I know she feels self-conscious about and I think it's a subject she still feels upset over, at least when it comes to approaching me and trusting me with her story.  I think it's a block for her, something she wants out of the way but can't bring herself to broach.  It's of such a personal nature that I can as yet see no way to allay her concerns in any way that is oblique enough to do publicly.  I am sure I had those dreams (UCA) because she is afraid of...ummm...whether or not I can perceive the truth behind them.  I don't know how to tell her not to worry.  I could if I could still message her privately.  Damn, I don't know if even she would grasp what I'm referring to if she were reading this!  It's very specific, something she alluded to in a letter once.

Dana has one thing to be ashamed of, and only one: the hateful way she's treated me. And if it's a block, then she doesn't even have that to apologize for.   Nothing else ever needed explaining or forgiving.  How many ways are there left for me to say that?   If this is a choice Dana is making, no excuse or reason will ever be forgivable.  I think I deserve to know so that I can get on with my life and start hating her.  I have a right to know if she really is the soulless bitch who would make that choice.



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It's a leap of faith, Dana, yours to make.  What's it worth to you?  To not be afraid of facing me anymore, to have me as a friend, to know I understand you, accepting everything, and always backing you?  Peace between us?  Does it hold any worth to you at all?  You keep telling me 'no' with your silence,  should I believe that?

You're a mystery.  You were afraid our friendship would end so you threw it away.  Now you're afraid to tell me things you know I already know.   

I'm not a godamn Boy Scout, Dana.  I can deal with more than you know, empathize with far more than you think - if I'm given the chance. I know a little more than I have been able to say here.  Your life has not been so alien to me as you insist.  Would I have fought this hard for you all this time to quail now??   I swear, sometimes it's as if you're afraid I'll actually get it and be sympathetic, like that's what scares you most.

I love you, Dana.  I respect you, and I admire you.  I cherish you.  You move me to be visible, seen where it would be easier to fade away unremembered by the rest of the world.  I'm emboldened by you, baffled by you, broken by you.  I've stories to tell about you - the first time I saw you smoking a cigarette and feeling jealous at an offhand comment by Sebastian, auditioning with you or the first time I saw you in a play.  I remember you rejecting the part of Kitty and wanting to play Mary L., it cost you a part in that one...I've wondered about that, and admired your resolve.  I remember you chasing Riga Farzana who grabbed a sketch and ran,  and the year-long war between my group of friends and yours in Collins' homeroom at Kellogg (I remember you standing before me, mad as hell and frustrated that no one would take you seriously)...but I've told all  these stories multiple times and grown weary of repeating them.  Then there are years of dreams and shadows, hints, hopes that died, wishing I could talk with you about all of it and what it meant to you.   Give me a new chapter to explore.  I long to know the rest.  I miss you badly.  And above all, past the longing and the hurt, the anger, the nostalgia and the desire to share your present...simply and finally, I love you.

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*That's an assumption not based on much, that the dream scenes were from past occasions.  If they're from the present, that's perfectly okay.  I'm asking Dana to have more faith in me than she could have in '88.  I've done my best to earn it.  She knows who I am now and what my values are, if she's read my movie reviews and so on.