The Diamond Island

Finally getting a handle on the mess from the wave of water. Sorting it out psychologically has been exhausting. The last week has been a crashing surf on my head as I head into June. It looks to be such a busy month as I meet obligations, run errands, and struggle to stay current on the chores that keep me somewhat sane.

Been looking over the things my Bad Ronald leaves on my nightstand to read. One day he leaves a rough sketch of a mermaid dwelling contentedly in the burned out ruins of a shipwreck, surrounded by treasure. And bones. She sleeps happily, colored in such a fashion as to be clearly supernatural.

My friend Xtine shared with me a dream about the magical Melusine many months back. I didn’t know what to make of her dream then, but now I find myself looking up anything I can find on the internets on this magical being. Sensor readings, come to me!

Many tales tell of the blessings bestowed upon human beings in their interactions with supernatural beings, and the loss of those blessings when the human breaks some taboo. Human weakness always puts a fly in the soup it seems, and you don’t get a second chance to make it right.

There are also tales of the “happily ever after” variety, where faith is kept and both live on in harmony. The tale of Melusine isn’t one of those. But I don’t think myths and legends are static things, they change as people change.

Perhaps the mermaid is a vehicle for the energies of the unconscious, a means for us to interact with the unknown. Vehicle seems too impersonal even though there’s an impersonal element to these beings.

See, there’s this huge loch in the backyard of this here haunted house. And on really rainy days the waves wash close to the foundations of the house. The beastie that lives in the loch (are they even separate elements?) has been known to do all sorts of mischief. And here I am with a handful of clues and a calling to investigate.

Okay mermaid, it’s on. Ready or not, here I come.

Just the other day, as I was going through piles of papers from the past, I came across my high school geology notebook. I spent a lot of time doodling pictures in that class. Most of those doodles were sketches of my bored subconscious mind wishing it were somewhere else. Fun to revisit, but ultimately not worth saving.

However, on one page I found a lot of doodles of my favorite X-Men characters at the time. In particular Rogue and Wolverine. But it was Rogue I most enjoyed drawing, and seeing my old enthusiasm for her rekindled a few memories from when I was really into mainstream comic books.

For those not in the know, The Uncanny X-Men comic book I’m talking about tells the continuing story of a band of superheroes that are mutants. That is, they were born with their powers because they belong to a new species of human beings emerging in the modern era. They are hated, feared, and misunderstood by normal humans and superheroes because of this.

Many of the stories have to do with the X-Men struggling against persecution and prejudice. They are “good guys” who use their powers to stop “bad guys”, but because of their bad image, they often end up with no thanks or even blame for the crimes they stop. They work for the acceptance of mutants in general society, but it’s a hard struggle.

My cousin collected the comics, which is how I was exposed to their stories when I was a kid. But it wasn’t until I ran into the cover of X-Men #182 that I was hooked, and started to collect comics seriously.

X-Men #182 is focused on Rogue. The cover shows her standing over a wounded comrade, standing firm against a hail of automatic gunfire from some unknown foe.

What struck me was how determined she looked. She was dressed in some sort of tres-chic punk outfit, and had a white stripe painted through the middle of her hair. The image she presented was one of confidence and individuality. I had to buy the comic and find out what was going on! From there I started collecting back issues to find out what Rogue’s story was.

Rogue’s mutant power is the ability to absorb another person abilities. When she touches them with her bare skin, the person goes into a coma for an amount of time equal to a multiple of the time she touched them. While the person is in a coma, Rogue is able to access that person’s memories (useful for finding out secrets), skills (she can suddenly pilot a plane), and most of all—their superpowers.

Rogue can “absorb” more than one person at a time. She can’t absorb the power of heroes who are energy beings, or extreme physical differences (e.g., wings or a tail). Robots are immune to her power.

She was originally a villain. Her adoptive mother was Mystique, the shape-changing leader of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The Brotherhood was a group opposed to the ideals of the X-Men. They believed the only way mutants could be safe was to rule over normal human beings.

Rogue was just a snotty, arrogant teenager at the start. Her power made her useful in a fight. She could absorb one superhero, then work at absorbing several others. In one fight, she absorbed most of the Avengers and took on Thor!

It was around that time she discovered a serious drawback to her power. If she touched someone for too long the transfer became permanent. The victim’s mind would be wiped clean and Rogue would retain the victim’s personality within her own psyche as a separate personality. This made it impossible for all but the most powerful telepathic mutants to read her mind.

She ambushed Ms. Marvel as part of a plot to “power up” in an attack on the Avengers to free the Brotherhood’s members who had been captured. She needed the powers of Ms. Marvel for a long time so she held on to her victim for a while, making the transfer permanent (but she would find that out later).

Ms. Marvel’s real name was Carol Danvers, and she was an old friend of the X-Men. In those days the Avengers and the X-Men were on-again off-again allies. Carol was a kind of superwoman character. She could fly, had super strength (could bench press fifty tons), was invulnerable to normal harm, and she had a seventh sense that warned her of danger, allowing her to dodge attacks. Looks like that seventh sense didn’t work so well this time.

While Carol Danvers became a Jane Doe at the local hospital ward, Rogue at first reveled in her new stolen powers. But soon the Carol Danvers personality started taking control of Rogue whenever she was exhausted or daydreaming. Rogue began to lose her mind, finding herself living two lives.

Worse, she found herself losing control of her absorption power. The slightest skin-to-skin contact would trigger a transfer, and the risk of another permanent transfer seemed to have increased. She no longer had the willpower to assert her own wishes against Carol with additional victims in her head.

Her adoptive mother Mystique couldn’t do anything for her, and her Brotherhood buddies were not the empathic type. So she turned to the X-Men for help. This was a controversial move for the X-Men and a real test of their ideals. Could they take in an enemy, someone who had tried to kill them and had essentially murdered one of their friends by robbing her of her very identity?

Rogue was allowed to join the X-Men, but she wasn’t trusted. Carol Danvers (who had been hanging out with the X-Men as part of her recovery) decided to sever her ties with her old friends over the decision. Worse, since they were now harboring a criminal mutant their already poor image took a hit.

Despite all that, Rogue put her life on the line for her new companions. She proved herself again and again until her teammates began to reluctantly trust her. When she started to lose it again with her personality battle, the leader of the X-Men gave her the strength to trust her own power again. Rogue discovered remorse for what she’d done as a villain and for the first time began to allow herself to feel.

All this came back to me, looking at my doodles. A complicated character with a tough cross to bear, cool powers, and awesome outfits. She changed my conception of what a superhero could be and how much you could develop a character over time.

I flash back to the good scenes:

• Rogue standing in front of Mariko (a normal person), taking heavy laser fire for her because of kind words, sacrificing her life to save someone she would have let die a month earlier. Eliciting sympathy from Wolverine who swore he’d cut her to pieces, letting her absorb his super healing power so she doesn’t die.
• Rogue and Storm talking to each other about Rogue’s recent suicidal leanings. Rogue confessing that the first time her powers manifested was when she was making out with a boy in her bedroom. The terror it made her feel. And Storm, who had once fought Rogue with every ounce of her being in a scuffle at the Pentagon, offering her bare hand in trust to Rogue to show her she could control her power.
• Rogue standing on the bridge where she stole Ms. Marvel’s powers, reliving the awful moment of tossing Carol’s comatose body into the river below with a bellow of victory, and breaking down in tears at how wrong she had been. Realizing she’ll have to live with her shame for the rest of her life.
• Rogue being the last of her teammates standing in the face of the indestructible, unstoppable mutant-hunting robot Nimrod. Her teammate Shadowcat touching Rogue’s cheek just before she passes out to tell her how to beat Nimrod. Rogue absorbing all the X-Men at once, and using their combined powers to beat Nimrod to a standstill and force the robot to flee. Damn that was phat!

Hearts for Rogue, all the way.

I heard that a certain awesome auntie of mine is 60 today.  Congratulations on making it to the 60 mark.  That’s something to brag about.  K and I didn’t hear the news until this weekend, so you’ll be getting a late special surprise from us.  The image should give you a clue of what to expect.  And if you need another clue, it’ll be done in a style similar to this.

Hope you have a great birthday Duke.  You’re a super duper aunt to the max.

05-22-09 ETA: All done!  Will be sending soon Dukey.

Managed to see Star Trek 11 this weekend.  Cost for two online generated tickets, a large bag of popcorn, a large drink and some Swedish fish came to about 35 bucks.  K and I arrived half an hour early.  Got the two seats in the back next to the handicapped zone, so we avoided any droids behind us or to the side.  Luckily, the people in front didn’t jerk their seats or block our view.  For a roll of the dice fleecing, not bad.  So far, so good.

Hate for the commericals.  They have a “movie channel” they play on the screen which is just irrelevant advertisements for stuff I’ll never buy and music videos for vapid product I’ll never put on my iPod.  Just a lot of noise and distraction, to keep you sedated until the film starts.  Honestly, could theaters make going out to the movies any less a fun experience?

The previews of Transformers, Terminator: Salvation and GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra all looked the same to me:  Explosions, Guns and Infantile Action Heroes screaming at the camera for you to care about the same old “us versus them” plots that have pretty much taken over Hollywood, the forbidden palace capital of the country.  It’s all about the hidden enemy, the ‘they’re robots so they don’t feel” enemy, and the unlimited toys for evil enemy.  But it’s all about the ENEMY.

That’s what this movie is about too.  The big enemy that is so much bigger than us that only good old American Earth know-how can defeat it.  Visions of the future?  Explorations of consciousness?  What are you, some kind of hippie?  This is gunboat diplomacy and the Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century.  Starfleet is made up of cannon fodder and incompetents who couldn’t run today’s society, let alone whatever advanced civilization might exist several hundred years from now.

Most importantly, there’s nothing fresh or “rebooted” about this movie.  The only thing that’s new are the actors.  The movie recycles every cliche from every other Star Trek movie ever made.  This is now the fourth movie where the crew save the earth (1, 4, 8 before it), and the fourth one involving time travel (4, 7 and 8).  There’s a reason why Galaxyquest’s mock of the franchise rings true:  We’ve seen it all before, many many times.

The story barely makes sense even as a mindless action flick.  The technobabble and pseudo-science gloves are way off.  God help you if you actually reflect on the dysfunctional elements.  Seriously, this story could have been any number of throw-away episodes from Star Trek: Voyager, it’s so nonsensical.  Didn’t anybody read this script?  Wasn’t this movie supposed to be more accessible to non-Trekkies?

The action and special effects are average.  As a chaser, I watched Galaxyquest and marveled at how much better it was—and it’s mocking Star Trek!  The screen isn’t cluttered with noise, it’s clear to see who is firing at whom and what the results are.  There’s closure in each scene.  Even something as ridiculous as Captain Jason Nesmith being chased by a living boulder has more fun in it than Captain Kirk being chased by a big red gooey alien.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more Star Trek 11 is the parody of itself that Galaxyquest suggests Star Trek has become.  You have the science officer hating the captain until they learn to work together.  There’s the wacky high-jinks of Scotty in the pipes just as there is the obstacle of the chompers in Galaxyquest.  The Romulon bad guy’s ship basically just fires lots of missiles like the bad guy Sarris in Galaxyquest.  The transporter has to be touch-screened like a video game to lock-on to moving targets, just like the joystick-operated digitizer in Galaxyquest.

It’s derivative of every other Star Trek movie or show ever made.  There are no new ideas at all.  Star Trek is dead, Jim.

I finally watched the science fiction movie Children of Men.  The critical acclaim for the film made me suspicious.  What I heard of the plot—Cynical Man transports Divine Child to safety—didn’t sound like much.  Now that I’ve seen it, I think the movie was an overrated and over hyped, undeveloped bore.

To expand on the premise a bit, the entire world for whatever reason has stopped having babies.  The world population is growing older but no new children are being born.  This is a good foundation for a sound premise.  Unfortunately, after the movie establishes this world, there’s no further exploration of the characters that inhabit it.

The movie takes place in a future Great Britain that looks a lot like now.  There’s this dude, this generic streetwise everyman who walks in every circle (rich, poor, military, subversive, you name it he’s in touch with everybody), who finds himself the escort of a woman who is miraculously pregnant.  His job is to deliver (get it?  humor ahr ahr!) the woman to some nebulous science team on a ship somewhere off the coast, presumably so they can solve the infertility problem.  Meanwhile, a generic evuhl terrorist group is trying to get their hands on her, to use her for their own political purposes.

I admit I’m biased against the atmosphere of this movie.  Dark realism has run it’s course, and nothing new is being done to expand on the possibilities of this outlook.  I’m also inclined to thumb down at chase movies that rely on false tension to generate urgency.  The compelling idea (world dying off because the kids aren’t all right) is just a front to manipulate emotions.

Problem #1:  If Having Babies Is A Good Thing, Prove It By Addressing Premise
The movie never explores the idea behind the world it creates.  It immediately plays on the popular assumption that population decline equals social chaos, and that population growth equals progress.  A more mature and developed movie would present a representative view and let the viewer decide for themselves.

For example, the riots and hysteria in the world are one possibility.  But what about resignation and acceptance?  It doesn’t follow that if the entire world is out of kid points, everyone is going to descend into anarchy.  There’s a scene where everyone is crying over the death of the youngest person in the world (the last known person to be born), and I’m like—dude, you people have had twenty years to come to terms with reality.  Why are you even interested?  This didn’t happen overnight.

There are a lot of compelling arguments for how living standards increase as population declines.  Where are the scenes of nature reclaiming depopulated centers?  The decline in pollution?  The movie shows the world through muddy filters of heightened gloom and doom, but I don’t buy it.

And you can’t tell me there wouldn’t be a tremendous increase in naughty activity, just to plumb the depths of whether this infertility thing is real or not.  As the population of people under 30 slowly disappears, wouldn’t those who have failed to accept the situation be trying desperate measures (like mass love-ins, but no, can’t show anything that might make hippies look good)—anything to try and compensate for their psychological denial?

Nowhere in the movie was it ever mentioned that everyone’s libido had vanished, along with their fertility.  There should have been some serious signs of overcompensation here, people.

The huge amounts of soldiers fighting insurgents (what are these insurgents fighting for?) strikes me as fake.  Dude, every person you kill is NOT being replaced.  Warfare, if it can even still be waged at this point, would have had to have changed in ways we can hardly imagine.  Wars fought over access to resources and markets—dude resources are becoming LESS scarce.  Your market base is evaporating.

I could go on.  The best part of the movie is the first ten minutes where we just watch what the world is like, and the things that go on.  Once the plot gets under way, the movie is effectively over.

In other words, if the loss of fertility is a bad thing, test that premise.  Show us ways in which this miracle of life, so central to who we are, changes us when it is taken away.  This world didn’t look any different than today, so there’s no impact.  Dude, take a moral stance—”we have to deserve to survive by self-sacrifice”, “we take beautiful things for granted because of our corruption.”  Or just take a disinterested one—”life on this planet can end on a dime and just as quickly come back.”

Throw us a bone here.  Because otherwise the chase means nothing.

Problem #2:  The Chase Doesn’t Mean Anything Without Stakes
Since we have no sense of what the world is really like other than “bad news” (hey, kinda like…now!), the urgency of keeping the plot-coupon…I mean, the objectified baby carrier safe is unclear.  There’s nothing positive about the dark world of the movie.  The characters that occupy it are all cynical, desperate, jaded or disconnected.  The most upbeat character is a bitter hippy played by Michael Caine.  Yes!  Yet another failed idealist archetype to remind us, the public, that the sixties were a failure and hope is dead.  Go back to sleep.

I don’t see how the mysterious ship of scientists are anything to get excited about.  We know nothing about them other than a vague hope that they might be working on a way to return fertility to humanity.  Because you know, no matter how bleak things get, faith in technology and the scientists who create it will always pull us through.  For all I know, the mysterious scientists are the ones who created this world crisis, and the protagonist has just delivered to them the last test subject they need to make the crisis irrevocable.

Or maybe they just need to regularly get their hands on subjects who have developed immunity so they can reconfigure the cause of the infertility.  Kind of like the flu vaccine every year.  There certainly is no shortage of people who think they have to destroy the world in order to save it.  Drax from Moonraker comes immediately to mind, with his “improved upon sterility” globes.

Wouldn’t that be a great revelation at the end of the film?  “Thanks mister.  Now we can ensure that humanity is destroyed/kept under control.  Muah ha ha ha!”  But that would mean taking a stand, like “don’t trust scientists.”  Can’t do that!

The woman carrying the child doesn’t have any agency of her own.  I never get any idea of what kind of person she is.  She’s there to be moved around and act scared while the protagonist overcomes obstacles.

The protagonist doesn’t have any personality either.  Other than a noncommittal everyman with street smarts, one wonders why he is risking his life at all.  There’s no dark secret he has to overcome by accomplishing this task.  He has no character trait of fundamental decency that comes out when the chips are down.  He acts dispassionately no matter what the situation is.  When he dies at the end, after having accomplished his mission, you have no idea who he is or why he did what he did.

The evuhl terrorist group makes no sense to me.  Their plan to leverage the pregnant woman into political power strikes me as absolutely bizarre.  I’m not even sure I understand what the evuhl terrorists stand for.  What motivates them to promote their self-interest over that of the community?  They’re just super-violent and crazy.  Okay, no stereotypes there!

The government is completely a side show here, by the way.  A large, powerful organization with all kinds of reasons to want to control the situation—no they don’t have any surveillance on the evuhl terrorists even though a declining population should make the job easier.  The authorities are too busy being punked by bushwhacking or sending in the marines to blow up neighborhoods to be a participant.

What this all boils down to is nothing to base the stakes on.  Yes, if the pregnant woman is captured “bad stuff” happens.  I get that.  But what does the protagonist stand to lose or gain?  The evuhl terrorists?  How am I supposed to care what happens to this world and its characters when I don’t know who they are?

The film overcomes this through the now tried-and-true method of false urgency.  “Here come enemies!  Run!”   Must get plot coupon from point A to point B or bad stuff will happen.  Because bad stuff must not happen!  Even though bad stuff happening in world now!

Time to watch Attack of the Giant Crabs again, with it’s flimsy pseudo-science and stock victim characters.  At least I know what’s at stake.

05-07-09 ETA:  I’ve had a chance to get a sense of how the film differs from the book.  Suffice to say the book does more to explore the possibilities of the world that is presented, some of which I find compelling.  There are the Omega gangs, bands of last-generation youths burning themselves out in reckless violence.  Despotism arises as a requirement to keep the apathetic population organized enough to continue running society.  Nature is overrunning large areas of the countryside as it grows back with a vengeance.

None of these interesting ideas appear in the film at all.

I did some short-attention span searching for the director’s intent.  This interview proved very telling to me.  The infertility isn’t a premise at all—it’s a metaphor for a fading sense of hope.  The film isn’t about the future at all!  It’s a call for transformative action.  In other words, a polemic (that’s art lingo for trying to impart a message through persuasion).

My favorite quote is when the director says “Cinema is a hostage of narrative.”  I cracked up when I read that, especially since he claims to dislike exposition.  Well, what are you left with if you can neither tell (exposition) or show (narrative) a story?!

This explains why the marketing for the film was way off base.  I remember the angle that was promoted—a science fiction movie where the world has become infertile.  The infertility was sold as a “shock” (that’s science fiction lingo for the futuristic thing that makes that world what it is—for example, the shock for Blade Runner would be androids).  As if that shock were meant to be taken as a literal truth in the world of the film.

If we filter out the disappointment as a result of being falsely marketed to, I still think this movie blows.  Playing with metaphors instead of “as if” to render fun through a polemic means you are more dependent on storytelling to make your point.  And our director has already abandoned storytelling as a technique!  This really screams at me to be played off as a fictional documentary, as This Is Spinal Tap was done (which is played “as if” it’s a real documentary).  But that requires you to take the material seriously “as if”, which isn’t done.  This is a metaphor, remember?  The baby is a torch, not the baby is like a torch.

I was going to go on about how the film would have benefited by fixing the characters and the setting to equal situation, but since the director didn’t want to tell a story that’s not useful.  We are to watch this film and then take action to make this world a better place.

First of all, I really dislike the common belief that places guilt for the state of the world on the shoulders of the apathetic masses.  It’s casting blame without acknowledging one’s own responsibility.  And I mean responsibility for those things one truly is responsible for.  For example, there’s a reason why people are apathetic—huge sums of money are paid to keep people that way.  Through propaganda in the more civilized countries and at the end of a heavy club in the less civilized countries.

Another reason people are apathetic is because the world is in the grip of psychological processes that are not wholly understood and may not be controllable to any significant degree.  Attempts to direct the collective impulse against natural tendencies often turn inhuman.  History is full of examples of political vanguards who turned popular movements into destructive eruptions of madness for their own gain.  Like it or not, apathy is a part of the human condition and it pays to face that.

This is not to suggest that one is blameless.  None of us stands outside the collective shadow.  If free will exists, it must be extremely small and therefore all the more imperative that we use it where applicable.  We do share in the guilt for this mixed up chicken world.  It’s just that suggesting  we the viewers are responsible for the lack of hope in the world is a simplistic and largely unconscious view.

I mean, funk dat!  Hopelessness is a natural reaction when things are bad, and make no mistake it’s a nightmare wasteland here on planet earth.  Yeah, sacrifice of one’s life for the new life is what pays the bills at the end of the day.  But who the hell in their right mind wants to do that?  We have a world of children in the bodies of adults, how are you going to help them grow up?  Because there are a lot of bad eggs among those children.  Darth Vader is REAL.  There are real BAD GUYS out there who will jack you, and you ain’t got no extra lives or saved games to fall back on in this life.  Depression and fear are a human experience.

So, how do I make this movie better.  This director wants some metaphors, then let’s dial it up to eleven mutha-scratcher!

I think the first thing we need is what this whole planet needs a lot more of:  Compassion.  That means “to suffer with”, and it’s the lesson of the savior that we seem not to have learned even when it was the focus of the now-passed Age of Pisces.  This whole movie reeks of unsympathetic people who are unsympathetic to one another.  Yeah, it’s a mystery how hope survives and its beautiful when a person who appears out for himself suddenly shows a side of humanity.  That’s why we cheer for Han Solo when he rescues Luke in the Death Star Trench.

Make the character Theo compassionate.  Make him elicit our compassion.  When Baby Diego’s death is announced, don’t have him stoically walk out the door—have him break down in tears while the crowd look on blankly (the crowd is apathetic, see?!  But not him!).  Then, when the place he was just in blows up, have him break down and collapse on the pavement (his compassion is what saved him, get it!?).

When he bleeds out on the boat, don’t have him sit there and mumble to Kee.  Have him confess all his sins and fears to her.  “I hope I did the right thing.  Maybe these scientists are going to treat you like a lab rat.  Maybe this was all for nothing and we’ll die out anyway.  I did a lot of selfish things in my life.  But at least I know what love is now, what I’d do for other people.  I didn’t know that before.  Good luck kid, and if you make it out alive, say a prayer for me, ’cause I don’t know nothing.”  In the world of the metaphor “this is a good way for a man to die” is keeping it real, hard core.

The second thing we need is an affirmation of the human spirit.  In a world obsessed with blame and sin, we forget original innocence.  Human beings are naturally good.  It’s a fundamental hardware requirement.  Yes, in the western view we’re expelled from paradise and thus apart from nature.  This is a useful wisdom to know, but let’s not exaggerate our share of the truth.  People are good and want good things.  To truly call them apathetic and hopeless you have to also call them decent people.  That’s the pain of being alive.

So yeah, you can have bad guys doing bad doo-doo.  But have Kee change people around her just by virtue of who she is.  If she’s a metaphor then damn it Jim, treat her like one!  Xtine is right, to call her worthy, because she is!  Just by virtue of what she has become.

When the Fishes are discussing their plans to murder Kee’s midwife and her protector Theo, have at least one strong, capable Fish refuse outright.  Either by vocally opposing the plan and walking out (maybe starting a gunfight which allows Theo a more believable escape) or abandoning the Fishes without a word and joining Theo later—sacrificing their lives if need be to allow Theo to get out of a jam.

Or maybe even living (gasp!  that’s so not dark realism!).  Most everyone in the film dies a violent death.  What if the people who try to harm Kee all die violent deaths, but the people who protect her either live, or die heroically both knowing that they are serving something greater than themselves.

The fixer who tries to take the baby in the immigrant camp.  What if when he sees the mother and it becomes real to him, he instead says “No, anyone else I’d take advantage of.  Not this.  I’ll help you guys.”  Unexpected help from what look like cynical or desperate people, exploiters turning human because Kee is “the torch that will light a new world fire and bring us light and warmth.”  How awesome is that?

Then, all of a sudden, you see how people are connected and can act against the dark dreary world of the film.  Their acts stand out MORE because of the sad colors and gritty realism.  In fact if you establish all throughout the movie that Kee’s existence galvanizes people into a movement for hope, it makes the crazy scene near the end with the crying baby more believable.  This world is so messed up, that something so primal and elemental as a mother with child becomes a carrier for for all the projected hopes of the world.  That’s raw fuel for the metaphor, man!

And this I think is the director’s fatal flaw.  A lack of compassion and optimism for humanity in his own psyche.  There’s a cynic (and you can’t be a cynic without having once been a romantic) in the film crying out for someone to save him.  Sorry dude, the viewer can’t carry that cross for you.  You have to find sympathy for others and hope for the future in your own heart.  Until you find that you won’t be able to share with us how it’s done.  You do the work by going inside and taking care of your own soul first, which always, always through miracles and magic, ends up being for us all.

As I head into the apogee of my life, things become clear that were not clear before.  I’m thinking about how I’ve been trying to prepare for my life ahead of me.  Now I’m meditating on how to prepare for my death ahead of me.

Mind you, barring accidents or violence I ought to make it to the next round.  I might be acting premature considering how medical science and circumstance might conspire to extend my span.  But I think it’s a healthy pursuit to consider my mid-life transformation and what it means.

In other words, it is perfectly right and good to think about what I am going to leave behind and how I might best leave things for those who will come after me.  There is a tarot card from the Medieval Scapini deck, the Six of Cups I believe, where various versions of old age are considered for the viewer.

I always liked the figure that acted as a Santa Claus and gave presents to the community.  I think that would be a decent way to go out, dispensing presents.  I think a certain amount of the Krampus would be involved in that.  I’m not 100% good, nor do I think seeking to be perfectly good is a healthy goal.

Hexe tosses that all out the window for a moment and gives me a super duper deluxe present for my birthday.  She totally does a random and throws me for a loop.  Back when I was carrying a pass from my Mirage, I never figured I’d actually get to hold a physical manifestation.  But there you are, front and back.

This isn’t the first time something in my dreams or visions has appeared in real life.  But I have to say, this is the most intense version of events to date.  I hadn’t considered the pass having two sides, a light and a dark (moon) side.  The fact that it does makes this all the more meaningful.

Let me state for the record that Hexe knows the DEAL, and ain’t fooling around.  People might say yeah sure Paul, ha-ha ovens, and all that.  She does collage nonsense and weird artistic whatever, who cares?  I read a derailed train of thought from people making statements about what artists like Xtine do for a living.  It’s a familiar, if automated dodge to the need to construct meaning.  These people don’t know how serious this interplay is!

It is not a joke.  Unless the joke is on you!  Hope your insurance is paid up.

For me, wrapped as it is in an envelope of triple strength caring, I’m reeling from the transformational revealing.  I look at the genius clues in my hand and put a palm to my chin.  The great living spirit is shining behind someone’s work as a multi-faceted and unusual vision of what’s what.

I mean, that pass, which was just a fancy in the imagination.  Here it is, in physical form like the Imperial Seal of the Empress smack dab on the bloody forehead of a disbelieving retainer too late figuring out what time it is.

Hexe couldn’t have touched me in a kore personal place.  See the misspelling I made?  Right into me, where I hide my personal space.  If the shoe fits, I place it on my Pisces feet and walk the dancy ka-boom.

My Aquarian friend holds a mirror up to me.  See that face?  In the oven I’m cooked, silly walking in a coil of serpentine ways back and back, marking and re-marking walls until I put the shards together.

I still have Hexe’s picture of the numinous tree, which I am meditating on, and trying to form a clue inventory on.

Meanwhile, the pass has become real, and there are messages rising up from the depths towards me.  Hexe’s strange and unexpected knowledge from her magic microscope slime their way into my pond, my circle with the weird unexpectedness of a total surprise.

The other day she asked if she had surprised me, and like a dope I thought she meant just now.  So I said no.  But maybe I ought to have just said yes, because I’m still surprised!

My friends are so cool.

Today, March 17th, is my 40th birthday.  It is also the anniversary of my folks.  Check out these two.  Thanks for hooking them up, BK!

Crazy dream time again.  Wandering through the streets of my haunted house existence and spending time with alter-ego manifestations of my friends.  In this case, the detached observer who wanders in and out of scenes like a fool with no ties to one thing or the other.

I wake up to the sound of those popping Droll Dumplings.  Just about ready to serve I imagine.  K and I are just about ready to watch Crocodile Dundee.  She hasn’t seen it yet.  What better tasty treat than a bowl of properly cooked droll dumpling popcorn?  Whoo and hoo, its movie time in the Honeycomb Hindout and there’s munchies galore!

The phone rings again, and I can tell this is going to be one of those random encounter calls.  Whoa, total surprise from the depths.  It’s my old time cousin from the way back machine days, trying to put the clues on his puzzle board together.  Can I lend him a hand?  Sure can!  The memory banks are loaded to the gills with relevant material.

I can’t help but think something significant has happened again.

If miracle #1 gets me back in touch with who I was, and miracle #2 gets me back in touch with the time before I was what I was, then what if a third miracle returns me to the feeling of the time before that?  My cousin and I walked in states of consciousness that belong to the deepest parts of my known being.

I’m going back in time and seeing things that I had never imagined I would witness.  All the way back to the beforelife?  The arrow is pointing in a direction I refuse to ignore now.  Just have to pull back on the bow.

My cousin talks about a time in a spooky haunted house I was living in with my folks at one time.  He came to visit.  I’d forgotten it, but when he describes it to me, the memory comes back to me like lightning.  An isolated farmhouse, wind blowing and trees scratching at the walls of the house.  The tingle of scary ghosts devouring all sense of space in the room you’re sleeping in.

There are all sorts of things I remember being scared to death about during that time as a young pouchling.  The Blue Meanies of Yellow Submarine, for example.  My cousin had a Blue Meanie jacket and he wasn’t scared at all.  Me, though, my folks’ cardboard cutout they got from a movie theater, well that kept me from sleep many a night.

BACK OFF BOOGALOO!

My cousin was scared of that house and its eerie inhabitants.  I got into the excitement of his fear as we stayed awake at night talking like crazy, but I also remember thinking cool, there’s ghosts out there and I like them.  The spooks and the specters, the ghosts and the goblins.  I’ve been walking this haunted house at least since the day I was born, and before that?  I can hardly fathom.

I hold the images of these memories in my mind and wait to see what happens.

Then, it occurs to me, what about the ghosts around me that scare people or make them nervous?  Have I been freaking people out or making them uncomfortable by not being responsible for my own specters?  I sense a windy monster at the window looking at me, rattling chains and blowing moans with perhaps a bit too much glee.  Now, needless to say not everyone is scared of this Missus Mooty Mire wind-breaking goblin thingee (Hexe would just blow her into the oven, and Xtine would sit her down for hard core tea and biscuits, for example).  But it’s a matter of being responsible for the sake of those who don’t have script immunity.

I walk into my room, and a friend of Mother Mary’s is there.  She’s vacuuming my room and cleaning up, which I find really embarrassing.  Nobody should have to clean my room, that’s so improper!  She smiles and says she has full authority to do this, so I stand there and fume as she finishes up.  I ask her what on earth she’s doing here and she says, “Just passing through and making sure we were ready.”  She kisses me on the cheek and for a moment a flower grows there.

I wake up and ponder the significance of this strange dream.  I’m thinking this friend of Mother Mary’s must be a quality within myself that is clearing out the crud.  How many people must quest for the chance to meet their soul in dreams and receive a blessing!  I contemplate what we must be preparing for.  Ready for what?

Time to go searching under the baseboards.  A lyric from a song I’ve been listening to a lot lately has been running in my mind.  Listen for the things you haven’t heard. My friend Xtine has been calling me “listener”, which is a title I couldn’t claim for myself even if I recognized and understood it as being true.  You really do need other people to call you on your crap, both good and bad.

Pisces modesty holds me back sometimes.  Maybe that Aquarian scrutiny of my friends Hexe and Alexi, with a touch of that raw, firey spirit of my Aries friend Xtine will give me the strength and the wisdom to look in the mirror long enough to do something that matters.

“Do without doing, and the doing gets done.”  There’s that crazy rune message again.  I keep thinking I have to do something.  Twelve years ago, a wise person I knew said, “People don’t need to do anything Paul, they shouldn’t have to do anything.  They’re already together.”  I thought she was nuts, nuts, nuts at the time.  She said, “Your best friend will call and you know you’ll come back to him.”

I thought she was full of it at the time.  Except for that weird crawly feeling at the back of my spine that told me I didn’t know squatle-dee-doo.

I mean, one miracle’s enough, right?  If you lose the best part of you and it is restored to you, when you thought it was gone forever — well hey I don’t know squatle-dee-doo, but I’d say that’s a pretty good day.

Xtine always said there’s a bonus round.  Hell, she IS a bonus round.

Stuff happens without us knowing the how and the why.  Dogs and cats, living together without warning, that sort of thing.  I was super fortunate to meet and know a best friend forever in this life.  I might forget the fun of playtime that reaches the height of consciousness in this life, but can any of that be undone?

I dunno, but it can be made into a living hell while you’re still alive.  You can be ground into the dirt and lose everything, and know it as long as you’re alive.  The glory of living at a high level of existence can be taken away from you at any time.

I never accepted that.  If it was granted, and taken away I screamed and raged until I didn’t know my own name.  I just didn’t know the cycle of being lost and returning, of finding and losing.  Someone was trying to make a point, that I just didn’t get it.  It wasn’t one thing or the other, it was both.

Part of me the last few months had been saying the other thing, but I wasn’t hearing it.  “This is how it goes down.”  Yeah, but how could it go down like that?  It makes no sense!  “Because it will.  You don’t know squatle-dee-doo, remember?”  I couldn’t hear what my instincts were saying.  Yeah, I think they’re right, but I haven’t a clue how it could happen.  I know nothing.  I got beat down, remember?

“You aren’t beat down anymore.  Answer the call.”

The phone was ringing, so I picked up.  Somebody wanted to talk.  I never thought in a year and a day they would.  But my wise friend was right.  All of a sudden I realized I was okay, and I could see clearly now.  A piece of my soul restored, as mysteriously as it had been removed.  How does that happen?  A bonus miracle, just in case I missed the importance of the first.  Judgment Day dude, you are waking up.  As many miracles as you need.