Unattended

Last night I saw The Darjeeling Limited. Owen Wilson stars as the eldest of three brothers who persuades his reluctant siblings to set out on a spiritual journey, by train, through India. Owen Wilson's head was bandaged throughout the movie because, we find out later, his character tried to kill himself by running his car into a hill. It was difficult to get the real Owen Wilson, who really tried to commit suicide, out of the equation. Apparently the making of the movie didn't bring the spiritual revelation that he needed in real life.

I wish Georgia and Willa and I could share a spiritual adventure. If only we were able to love each other. It seems like that would feel so good. The earthquake of Dolly's leaving buckled and ruptured our bleak but familiar family geography. Everything is gone.

I arrived at the theater early and waited on a bench directly under a gargantuan poster of John C. Reilly's naked torso and smiling face. An old woman, gripping her popcorn and drink, slumped beside me, and I wished I could take a photo of the three of us.

A middle-aged man on a double-date bought his tickets and strolled into the lobby with an empty popcorn bucket. Demanding a refill from the adolescent at concessions, he winked at his buddy and rejoined his companions. The teenagers rolled their eyes, I stood up, and later, when the movie was over and I walked toward the back exit, it felt a bit adventurous. A forgotten threshold of concrete and black paint, unattended and liminal. Neither here nor there.

Then? I stepped through, to the other side.

All the Simple Things

Maybe my youthful idealism is wearing off, but I'm seeing things in a different light lately, and in this perspective, it appears that there is nothing new under the sun.

I have fought hard against this perspective. People CAN change. We CAN make a difference. We CAN live in peace. Here's a "for instance", on a small scale: As usual, I went into the school year thinking "this year will be different! I'm gonna tweak this and that, and the students will want to learn, and my classroom will be a wonderland community of learning." It soon became obvious, however, that the same student archetypes are walking the halls, the same teachers, the same administrators... the same ME! This year is simply a variation of the past.

Taken to the macrocosm, people as a species seem pretty much the same. I don't think we're getting dumber, we've always been idiotic. We've always been destructive. We don't mind killing. And we're selfish and greedy. And there have always been those who are different.

I suppose the thing that sets us apart in 2007 is overpopulation. There are over 6 billion of us on the earth, and things are getting scarce. I don't think that's going to make us nicer.

Sometimes I think I long for collapse (Is that bad?). Let's just level this shit we've built. All the McMansions, all the fancy cars and expensive toys and clothes and bullshit that makes me better than you.

I saw Into the Wild this weekend, and I have thought about the movie a lot. Christopher McCandless rejected a sick society and yearned for something pure and good. It was hard to see him die in the end, and I couldn't help but connect his death to all the beauty that disappears around me. All the natural habitat and animals with it. All the farmland, all the simple things. The healthy earth, as we knew it.

Thursday's Child

Mondays child is fair of face,
Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesdays child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go,
Fridays child is loving and giving,
Saturdays child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

I have never liked to take naps. Strange, since I am in favor of many other forms of escape.

Dolly utilized all her persuasive charms to lure me to bed (she was most definitely in favor of naps), but as a pre-schooler I would not have it. Atop her mountainous bed, while her arms circled, hypnotic, sweet cooing, lovely song, caressing my eyebrows, softly whispering, I wiggled. Eyes wide open, I edged slowly away as Dolly drifted in and out of sleep herself, all her fairy dust squandered.

There was a little girl
With a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead
When she was good
She was very very good
But when she was bad
She was horrid

The blonde bed with matching chest of drawers, dour curtains, thin worn brown rug and sparse surroundings changed shape as I floated to the ceiling. Cracks in the plaster meandered out, toward other rooms, through the green clapboard porch that Dolly painted herself, past spiders and carcasses of honey bees, out screened windows into the world of backyard. Marigolds by the porch, planted by Dolly on her knees in a house dress, grew in time-lapse lurches and I smelled their spicy orangeness.

The sky was yellow and I walked lightly on warm green grass, with the past already behind me and little dirt paths before me, which wound through shaded backyards with perennial gardens, pools of distant sunlight and other uncharted and unknown places.

This is why, to this day, I have never liked naps.