Really?

A nice lunch in the city with my pal Stacey, months worth of catch up--and then home to answer emails when...a great scrabbling in the bedroom. Two pets were with me; and my cat Rosie, the one absent from the room at the time, is quite regal--would never scrabble! So I went to look. Well, it was one of those woodland creatures who is about as wide-eyed and adorable as anyone could imagine or want, but WILD. Did not want to be where it was. Wanted to jump out the window, but that would have hurt, at best. I didn't open the window.

Instead...I spent 2 1/2 hours trying to catch it. That is 150 minutes. I did finally with great cunning manage to trap it, but it wrestled free. It was so so so strong. I was super patient for about 145 minutes, talking in a low voice, cooing, singing back to its chirps, and then felt like tres Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs. Get out my house, buddy! NOW! I tried a different tack, and he followed my lead and left. So I am having a glass of wine as I clean up all the scat all over everything. My bedroom looks as though I was burgled, and murdered, too. But I am alive, and so is the creature.

Why is it for the last 25 years 90% of my life has been about cleaning up excrement? Is that right? Was it meant to be this way, or have I not been planning well enough?

The groundhog had strength you wouldn't believe. I think it could have killed me, fo sho. I routinely get chipmunk bites while saving them from my pets; the teeth go clear through my fingers. Ho hum. But this guy could have done a lot more damage.

How did he get in the bedroom? I don't have a screen door. Why don't I have a screen door? Because my house is too old to hold one up. Why is my house so old? Because I had no idea what I was doing, and bought for charm. But why did he come in?

Bounty

The Marlon Brando version of Mutiny on The Bounty came out in 1962. It was a three hour movie with an intermission in the middle, a long dramatic telling of the famous story of the mutiny aboard the HMS Bounty caused by the sadistic cruelty of Captain Bligh (played in this film by Trevor Howard.) The film was well along in a line of others made on this topic. The historical event has had a perennial allure; the dramatic mutiny at sea, Captain's Bligh's success at returning to England, and the subsequent settling of Pitcairn Island by the mutineers who created their own tropical paradise. 

I was a small girl when this film opened. It comes with a painful memory of my separated parents both buying tickets to take my brother and me to see it--one night apart. I swore my brother not to tell my father, thinking we'd just sit through it twice, but the truth managed to slip out. We went, but when it became clear we'd already seen it, we left at Intermission. I was completely heartbroken, afraid my father was disappointed. I don't know how he felt about it, really. In any case, the movie is enmeshed with my memory of him, and has a power over me like no other film. My father looked very much like Marlon Brando, and when I sat next to him in the theater, I kept looking back and forth between the two. As a result, I wrote a series of poems at a later date of being a girl disguised as a cabin boy on the voyage, and living on the island.

The islands--the glancing version of them portrayed in the film had the most indelible effect. I have never been to Polynesia, but part of me lives there at all times. I once told my grandfather I wanted to move there and he said "People who live in hot climates never amount to anything." I guess this affected me, too, because here I am in a cold spring, trying to amount to something. I still want to go there, but probably never will.

I know the film by heart, every line. I have watched it twice in the last two days as I went through all the papers piled up in my office. It is a wonderful piece of writing, apparently accomplished by six people. The mutiny is thrilling; Fletcher Christian, as a gentleman, simply can't take it anymore! Bligh, in his latest bit of horror, has decided that if the men want a sip of water, they must climb up to the yardarm, fetch a ladle, bring it down and drink one, only one, ladle full, and then carry it back up. A seaman is dying from drinking sea water. Fletcher decides to give him a sip of fresh water.
Bligh: "You'll give no one water without my permission. Take that ladle below."
Fletcher: "Yes, Sir." But he gives the water to the delirious seaman anyway.
Bligh kicks it out of his hand and Fletcher backhands Bligh onto the deck!
Fletcher: "You bloody bastard! You'll not put your foot on me again."
Bligh laughs. "Thank you. Thank you. I've been puzzling for a means to take the strut out of you, you posturing snob...." Bligh says Fletcher will be confined until a court martial can be convened in Jamaica.
Flecther grabs a sword from one of the men and announces, "Ship's company, I'm taking command of this ship!"
Bligh countermands him. Fletcher stabs Bligh through the arm! Yikes!
The mutiny proceeds. Lots of fisticuffs. The mutineers arm themselves. Bligh and Fletcher are staring at each other like big cats.
Bligh says to Mr. Brown, the botanist: "You, too, Brown? You join these swine?"
Brown: "A man like yourself Sir leaves me no choice."
The men want to kill Bligh, but Fletcher won't let them. "There will be no more killing aboard this ship and that includes Captain Bligh."
Bligh: "If that's an attempt to earn clemency I spit on it!"
Fletcher: "You remarkable pig. You can thank whatever pig god you pray to that you haven't quite turned me into a murderer."
The captain's followers are put in the long boat.
Fletcher: "As you know Tafoa is due west forty leagues. You have your compass, and this book is sufficient for its purpose. The sextant is my own so you know it to be a good one. Now Mr. William Bligh..."
Bligh: "Quite polite and formal of you. Playing the gentleman again, you bloody traitor?"
A bit more action among the seamen as everyone settles into their respective camps.
Here are the final parting words between Bligh and Fletcher.
Bligh (to the mutineers): "Has your murderous friend told you what to expect, or is he going to keep you in the dark? Now hear the truth. The King's navy will not rest until every mutineer is captured and executed. Wherever you go, wherever you hide, a thousand ships will search you out."
Fletcher: "Will you step into the boat, or will you be thrown in, Mr. Bligh?"
Bligh: "I'm not leaving you, Mr. Christian. Not ever. Got to the dirtiest little corner in the world and I'll be there right behind you with a rope in my hands."
Fletcher seems as if he is going to flog Bligh with the cat 'o nine tails, but he decides against it, and drapes it over Bligh's shoulder instead. "Take your flag with you." (Meaning the whip. Snap!)
Bligh pulls it off and wraps it up, and tosses it onto the deck. "I don't need a flag, Mr. Christian. Unlike you, I still have a country. What a big price to pay for a little show of temper."

This whole sequence takes about ten minutes. These dramatic lines are perfectly embodied by Brando and Trevor Howard. Something happened! These is a big scene, played out to the max. Not one possibility for conflict or character nuance is left out, for Bligh and Christian or for the many supporting characters we have come to know by this point in the film. (This scene happens slightly after the 2 hour mark.) It is difficult to stay in a big scene, not to rush. But such scenes are so so satisfying when they are given the amount of space and time that they require for a reader/viewer to respond with full emotion.

At the end of the film, Fletcher dies. My father died not much later.
Are they in paradise? I don't know.

Yearning

It is Saturday night and I am doing what I do on many Saturday nights--watching videos on YouTube. Often I stay up nearly all night doing this, if I am alone in the house. Tonight I have watched (a partial list), Freddie Mercury's entire 25 minute performance at LiveAid; Neil Young--Old Man, Helpless, Heart of Gold; Cat Stevens, How Can I Tell You; several versions of The Only Living Boy in New York; as always, Sinead's Feel So Different; Coldplay 2000 Miles; What Do All The People Know, The Monroes; Somebody I Used to Know (Glee version!); Helplessly Hoping, CSN....

This is a lonesome activity, meaning nothing to anyone. Yet I am listening for a feeling--for the one where he says, "Play me every song you love, every single one, and I will listen/watch with you, no matter how long it takes." And I say, "I want to hear all yours, too, no matter how long it takes."

image by Banksy

Killer Clothes

Recently I watched an HBO film called Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. It's about the West Memphis 3, three teenagers convicted of the murders of three eight-year-olds, and the story of their conviction, sentencing, long incarceration for murders they didn't commit. Why were they suspects? Basically, because one of the kids, Damien Echols, looked creepy. Black tee shirts, witchy drawings, cigarettes, maybe drugs...the hoodlum accoutrements. Echols was given a death sentence, and the other two life in prison, in spite of much exonerating evidence. It's best to watch the film if you want to find out what happened to them and why. I've been thinking about them ever since the news of the Trevon Martin case came through the feeds...the story of a teenager killed because he looked scary. He was wearing a hoodie.

I know lots of boys who wear hoodies and black tee shirts who have lots of assumptions made about them. Some of them are stopped by police, and arrested, for how they look. Kids wear these clothes to speak to each other, not to adults. Probably some boys want to look tough or scary. But it's up to adults to find out what they mean by their clothes before we incarcerate or kill them. How about some communication? Ask what's with the hoodie, the tatt, the all black clothes? How do you feel when you wear this stuff? Don't be surprised if the insightful kid tells you he feels safe.

Circadian Calm

My priest, the last one I had, used to say, when wrangling someone to serve on a committee, we each have the same 24 hours. My mind would cry out, but I am busy! When it did, I had made his point.

We each have the same 24 hours.

I hadn't caught up with Modernism when I wrote my first novel (in the drawer). I thought it was my idea to write in 24 hour segments. Well, it was a good idea.

I always had a sense of the day as being the big picture. Nature impressed it, I suppose. I deeply believe in dailiness, in its value. If you want depth, attend to your relationship, your book, your muscles daily. Two minutes, ten minutes, ten hours, that isn't important. It is doing something in the period of one circadian rhythm that matters.

Interruption is toxic.

I just had a week alone, at VCCA. I kept my head down and worked. I had a week of days. Each morning I woke up and lay in bed for a while, listening to the birds. I made coffee in the nearest kitchen, and wrote for a couple of hours. Then walked over to the dining room for breakfast, which I ate as silently as possible. More writing, thinking, reading. Lunch--a plate taken back to my room, not meeting anyone's eye. A break after lunch, phone a friend, go into town to Lou's Antiques, a walk at Sweetbriar. Back to the desk until dinner. Then back to the desk until my final step outside to look up at the sky, and to watch the horses in the dark.

Did you get a lot done? I wrote pages, revised pages, planned. The main thing, though, is that each day I poured from my sleeping self into my waking self completely, the way a tidepool is filled and emptied.