Graffiti 108

Happiness is not a constant. It's a process. A system of ups and downs, of balance. There is no light without dark. No happiness without sadness. No joy without regret.

"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity." -Carl Jung

"We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person." -W. Somerset Maugham

"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking." -Marcus Aurelius

Tisher Looks West

Tisher boarded the plane. Destination: his place of birth- Napa Valley California. He strapped in and rolled his eyes at the anxiety of the other passengers and the nervous patter of the flight attendants. As the plane began to speed and shake along the run way he day dreamed.

It was always the same fantasy. An engine exploding, the plane veering suddenly at take off, a crash, an explosion, screams and keening. Smoke and blood and void.

He flew into the west...going home, a place he never thought he'd return to...trapped in the wrong century of iBooks and juice cleanses. Andrew Tisher: intellectual and American primitive shot into the setting sun, racing time and memory.

As the plane leveled out and the captain droned the ineffectual itinerary his mind wondered. Would the kiss of the western sun be as gentle? The blue calm of the Pacific as forgiving? The grape vine wrapped hills like milk filled breasts be as comforting? He did not know. Home. The word had lost its meaning. The unknown was where he sped and where he thrived.

He dreamt of dark halls crisscrossed with spiders webs. Of haggard witches knitting and spinning and cutting and clipping. Of hairy things in corners with sucking teeth. Of shadow and mold and dankness.

Claire, his seat mate, jostled him awake with an elbow reaching for her complimentary Fanta. She didn't excuse herself or apologize. Trash, he thought. He ordered two cups of ice and crushed them one by one between his back molars. Enjoying the sharp vividness of the sound in his muffled ears. The biting cold on his sleepy tongue. Claire interrupted his pleasure.

"I've never been west of Kansas." She was strikingly fit, 45ish he guessed, in a slick somewhat dated business suit. He noticed a tan line on the ring finger of her left hand but no ring. She exuded a desperation he found appealing and a sense of unfulfilled sexual desire which was common to divorcees. He briefly imagined screwing her in the air plane bathroom but the thought of the smell- sanitary and base- quickly dissipated any arousal.

"That's tragic." he sighed closing his eyes in hopes Claire would take the hint.

As the plane landed he wished the landing gear would fail. He imagined being the sole survivor of a pointless catastrophic accident. An idiotic massacre which would cause Boeing's stocks to plummet.

His mother was waiting for him at the baggage claim. She was getting older. Still spry and sharp but aging. Slowing down.

On the ride home they spoke little. Tisher filled the silence with a list of things he was doing knowing that's what she wanted to hear. She wanted to hear he was busy, that his time was taken up, he wasn't going to burden her with how he was actually feeling. Feelings were something they seldom spoke of.

They got home late and went to bed after sharing a stack of carrot sticks with fat free ranch dressing.

He trudged up the stairs to his room knowing and fearing that it hadn't changed. It hadn't. His bookshelves were lined with his former heroes: Proust, Sartre, Gogol. And his twin bed was freshly made, he grimaced.

He undressed and got under the covers, his feet hanging a good six inches off the end. He looked up at the glowing stars that peppered his ceiling, his father had spent a weekend when Tisher was twelve making an exact replica of the summer night sky.

Tisher lightly traced Cepheus while his eyes closed. And welcomed the dark.

'The World's End' & 'The Act Of Killing' Reviews

The World's End is third installment from Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, a sci-fi buddy comedy. The film opens on Gary, Simon Pegg, at an AA meeting recount the best night of his life a 12 bar bar-crawl he did when he was 18 which ended at the tenth bar. He decides to get his childhood friends back together to go back to their hometown and do it again this time to completion.

The first half of the film focus on the five one-time friends, who they were and who they are now as adults. Gary is the only one who hasn't changed and the comedy comes from a real place of maturity and honesty showing what becoming an adult is like. We get a sense of the group of friends, their past personalities and present, and what Gary did to alienated all of them slowly. It becomes more and more clear as time passes Gary's alcoholism is the motivating factor behind their reunion. The film still has the characteristic Pegg-Wright style, quick cuts, quicker dialogue, and piercing whit but The World's End unlike Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead feels more grown up.

At the half way point the friends discover their hometown has been taken over by robots and the film delves into action and chase but never loses the characters and relationships it has taken time to set up. The portrayal from all the friends are exceptional balancing comedy, realism, and truth about getting older. Nick Frost especially puts in an amazing nuanced performance strikingly different from anything he's done before.

The films in the Cornetto Trilogy are all entertaining and hilarious. The World's End finishes it off with just as many laughs with a surprising amount of depth.

See It.

The Act Of Killing is a documentary that follows former death squad leader Anwar Congo and some of his friends as they write, stage, and film reenactments that describe and convey their most horrific deeds and their feelings about them.

It is easy to diagnose the flaws of the film and there are only three. 1. The director Joshua Oppenheimer opens with an introduction from himself in the studio urging people to stay for the who film, it undercuts and slows down the incredibly complex, disturbing, and evocative film that follows. 2. Much of the film is shot with iPhone quality cameras, at points the poor film resolution takes away from whats being filmed. 3. A lot of time is spent on Anwar and his friends creating and filming these scenes that they've come up with but we only see parts of the what may be the intended finished product.

What makes the film so compelling is much more difficult to describe. The film goes after a broader more global truth about humanity. These men we see aren't monsters, its too easy and not accurate to view them or categorize them as such. We see, we discover that they are people, that although not likable, some despicable, they are human beings. The focus is on Anwar and as the film progresses we see his charm. We see the struggle he has with his past. We see his contradictory nature regarding the things he's done and the status he has. As much as Oppenheimer uses Anwar to discover something about killing and murder Anwar uses the camera to discover these same things about himself.

There is no judgement in the film. No excuses or explanations are made but neither are these deaths avoided. We get a direct and unflinching portrait of the act of killing.

Don't Miss It.

Pooka

On the way to The Night Shift tonight I realized I needed gas. At the same moment I saw a young woman driving a late 90's Honda Civic. She was slightly hunched over the steering wheel and her long light brown hair was almost brushing it, her face hidden. The image of the woman and the thought of gas brought something up from the past and I momentarily lost the present.

Before I had my licence my high school girlfriend would always drive us around. She had a white two door SUV with the licence plate "Pooka". Whenever we would stop for gas she would religiously, almost ritualistically, open her glove compartment and turn off her phone. If I had my phone on me she would not get out of the car until I had turned mine off as well. After a while it started to irritate and eventually enrage me. I'd sit in the car fuming because of the minute or two she would take to turn off her phone.

She did it because her mom told her to. Her mom had read some article about a cell phone exploding at a gas station or maybe even an article about that being something that could happen. At 16 she didn't rock the boat, never rebelled, got along great with her parents. Me at 15 could not understand her attitude and was constantly exasperated when she refused to stay out past curfew or lie about where she was going. Her obeying her mother in the minutiae of turning off her phone while at the gas station became an emblem for me of her obedience. I frequently instigated arguments about it, needling her until she would engage.

I came back to the present gradually. Stunned by the vividness of the memory. Part of me wishes I could go back and do it all over again. Not to relive my youth or the glories of my past.

To put things right.

Trapped

This morning
I found myself trapped.
In my own apartment.
Inadvertent house arrest.
Thumb lock broken.
An unturnable knob.
The only exit
out a window
through the air
to the packed
earth
below.

Or
the systematic
dismantling
of a door with
unskilled hands,
stripped screws,
and the sweat of consternation.

Graffiti 107

A coaxing message from Death.

"Too weird to live, too rare to die!" -Hunter S. Thompson

"It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love." -Graham Greene

My Oldest Friend

Adam and I met when we were 15 in Mrs. Hoover's geometry class. We became fast friends and spent hours together driving around in my mother's Oldsmobile Achieva. He'd always egg me on and a game developed where whenever Sabotage by the Beastie Boys came on we had to get to wherever we were going before the song was over. We TP'd together, road scooters through piles of flaming leaves, shot each other with paint ball guns, played tackle football and soccer together, and learned to dance from our substantially more graceful dates at school dances together.

When I went to college Adam would come visit every month or so to hang out, party, and go to the movies. When I moved back to Rockford in 2008 we'd play ping-pong and go to the movies almost every weekend. We've been on four road trips together to the east and to the west. He's been a constant, warm, comforting, stalwart presence in my life for fourteen years. I was there shortly after his wonderful son Eli was born who is now approaching his third birthday.

Last summer when I was in rough shape Adam sat me down and gave me a talking to I very much needed. He told me he and Beanpole were worried about me, they felt bad they couldn't be there for me more, they loved me. He advised me to give anti-depressants a try, an avenue of assistance I had previously rejected, and I did. He reached out and it set me on the road to getting help and getting better.

I try to go back to Rockford once a month. To see Adam and his burgeoning family, to be a part of it's growth and to stick in his children's memories. Today Adam made breakfast and we watched Free Willy.

Little Eli loved it. At one point he said softly "I love Willy."