He has promised that he will not leave the country, that he will fight to remain in power “to the last drop of blood.”
The last drop of his blood: This man ends like Ceaușescu, dead against a wall.
This is what he has done to his country; this is what he has done to himself.
Photo: AP
Zombies give me nightmares.
Actually, scratch that: zombies onscreen give me nightmares. I read and enjoyed Max Brooks’s World War Z and have sketched out a short ‘story’ (basically, a fake journal article on zombies) and nary a blip in dreamworld.
But put a zombie where I can see it? Shudder.
I don’t know why. I mean, in 28 Days Later—which jolted me out of my sleep for a week after, and then sent me lurching awake a full six months after viewing—what shocked was not the zombies (and really, not zombies, but rage-virused monsters) but the people. That military commander? The thought that one would become the rape-thing to a bunch of despairing soldiers?
Jesus, at least the monsters were just hungry, not evil.
And in the new show The Walking Dead, again, the forewarning that the problem will be with the people, not the zed-heads.
That’s what set this post off—the premiere to The Walking Dead. I watched it early yesterday evening on Hulu, figuring that gave me enough time before bedtime for me to forget it, but: no.
It wasn’t that scary, honestly, certainly not in comparison to 28 Days Later. And afterward, I thought, Eh. Too soap-opery, too predictable, too somber, not scary enough. And the lead? Okay, so he needs to wear his sheriff’s outfit to keep himself in line, but is he really this innocent?
Dumb, actually. Or maybe not dumb, but not thinking. He needs gas, all those cars on the road, and he leaves the road to walk some ways to a gas station, which—surprise!—is out of gas.
He never heard of a siphon?
Then he ditches the car in favor of a horse, because, let’s face it, nothing makes more sense than leaving behind a steel-and-glass contained space (with storage!) for a pretty pretty equine bit of zombie bait.
Maybe if it all moved faster, carried some of the jangle that good B-movies like 28 Days Later or even the nausea-inducing Cloverfield managed to convey, I could enjoy rather than pick apart the predictability.
But nightmares for the boring? No thanks.
~~~~~
I should add that I enjoyed Shaun of the Dead, and that since it’s been so long since I’ve seen any of George Romero’s movies, I can’t remember if those gave me nightmares.
Anyway, it’s not just zombies. The Ring creeped me out, and I vowed never to camp in Maryland after The Blair Witch Project. Oh, and I recently made the mistake of watching the mediocre Event Horizon before bed—not a good idea.
I’m not generally a scary- or horror-movie aficionado, and have little patience for spatter movies, but I do enjoy a well-crafted bit of unease. (Okay, enjoy may be the wrong word; appreciate, perhaps?) The Others wasn’t scary, and even a bit somnolent, but I liked its meditative vibe.
The Sixth Sense and Signs? No.
I don’t recall any nightmares following The Road, but, then again, I don’t know that that would count as a horror film. It’s full of horror, true, but perhaps one reason my response was dulled was because I knew nothing would get better. The hope or possibility of escape or reprieve was gone, as with it the altertness that one holds on behalf of the characters. It was the end, that’s all, and I was sad for the characters, that’s all.
I had nuclear nightmares as a teenager, but as I had been experiencing those prior to seeing The Day After or Testament, I blame the miasma rather than the movies.
No, my worst nightmares when young were unrelated to anything I saw on t.v. or at the movie theatre—likely because my parents didn’t let me watch scary flicks. I’d already demonstrated the, ah, ability to scare myself shriekingly awake (Over vents. Don’t ask.), so I’d guess that they thought ‘Why tune her up even more?’
Still, there was that one episode of The Outer Limits, wherein the woman tried to vacuum up something in the corner. . . .
That probably set me off, too.
~~~~~
Still, I’m not eight and I don’t believe in zombies. In fact, I consider nuclear or environmental or even cosmic apocalypse, however unlike in my lifetime, still more likely than a zombiepocalypse. So why the scare at the latter and not the former?
Maybe because I don’t consider it likely at all, and thus don’t have the rational responses to the truly fantastical (the undead) that I do to the merely improbable.
Maybe there’s something about the uncanniness of the zombie: to be dead, but still restless, ravenous, recognizably human but demonstrably not.
Or maybe because I just keep watching these @#$!!$% zombie movies too close to bed. . . .
Everyone dies, and everyone was dying.
It was the end of the world, gently. People were falling over and dying, everyone, and everyone knew their own ends were soon, and instead of hysteria and rioting we were going out restaurants and laughing on our barstools and everyone was well-lit (as in the lighting was good but maybe also a little drunk) and in a really good mood.
A bit of melancholy, but mostly a resigned good cheer.
At one point I felt the heaviness in my chest and I crept behind a plywood wall and lay on shaded grass next to a wooden bench and thought Okay, this is it, and the only thing that felt wrong was that I was all alone. We were all dying and it seemed we should die together.
I wasn’t afraid or angry or anything but accepting; it was not a bad feeling.
But then I started to write and I thought, Well, wait a minute, let me try to write before I die, so I got up and was writing on the wall and then on boards and then I thought I need another marker. I got on a bus to take me to a place to get that marker and the bus started careening all over the place and everyone was laughing and I realized that this was a crash bus (it had specific name which I can’t remember) and I had to get off. Not yet, I said, not yet. So when we passed a patch of grass I launched myself off the bus and landed and rolled and when I looked up the people on the bus were laughing and giving me the thumbs up and saying Way to go, Radio.
Radio? I was confused and thought that maybe that had something to do with something I said on the radio. I didn’t know anyone had heard.
Was I afraid to die, was that why I left the bus? I was more worried about the crashing, the injury, than death. Still, I wanted to write.
I ended up in a lab run by the guy who played Michael on LA Law and his young assistant and I said I needed markers and the assistant gave me a small marker which didn’t work and Michael said No, no, she needs a real marker and he gave me a couple and I started writing then and there on whatever wood I could find.
I knew I wouldn’t finish but I thought There has to be a record, someone has to write something down before we’re all gone. Michael and the assistant and the other people in the lab were all working on why we were all dying and they were all smiling, gentle and resigned and still working.
Is this how it is? Wouldn’t there be violence and mayhem and denial and wouldn’t we do anything wreck anything to get away from our end? But no it was like a charmed party nearing its end which we didn’t want to leave but knew the evening had finally come to a close.
So I was back to writing in block letters because it was a thick marker and my penmanship is terrible and I wanted to make sure you could read it and I wondered if other people were writing. I hope other people remembered to write about our end.
And then my chest got heavier and heavier and then I woke up.
I don’t believe in life after death.
There is life, here, in this world, and death both is and signals the end of life.
Now, is there something else, after life? That, I don’t know.
If there is something else, it doesn’t seem that it would conform to notions of Christian or Muslim heaven; those seem so earth-bound, so reflective of what we already have here, only someone’s version of better. (A multitude of virgins or streets paved with gold? Really?) If there would be something else, wouldn’t it be. . . something else?
Backing up: I think of life as bounded by this earth, but I’m fudging on the whole existence thing, that is, we exist in life, here, and if our existence continues, then it would be in some other way.
Furthermore, that there could be something else doesn’t mean it’s supernatural. I don’t believe in the supernatural; I think everything—everything—is natural, and that that which is called ‘supernatural’ is simply something for which we lack understanding.
(And woo? Woo is a cover, a con: obfuscation masquerading as understanding.)
This isn’t rank materialism. I also don’t believe the (natural or social) sciences are sufficient to make sense of all worldly—universal—phenomenon; I’m not arguing that understanding necessitates a reduction of all things to the latest brand of physics. It’s simply that, if there is nothing beyond nature, then we’ll need new ways of understanding—new sciences—to make sense of that which current scientific methods cannot.
Does this tend toward a Theory of Everything? Perhaps, but since TOE is conceptualized in contemporary terms, it may be inadequate to describe all that there is.
And ‘is’ itself may be—hell, already is—called into question, along with ‘all’ and ‘that’.
*Sigh* It’s late and I”m not making sense.
I’m wondering about death because a little over a week ago Bean died and a little over a year ago Chelsea died. I don’t think they’re in pet heaven or regular heaven or whatever. I don’t know if they’ve gone some place after death, if their existence continues, or what relationship that existence has to any worldly one. Maybe there’s nothing, maybe there’s something. I know they’re not with me.
But I would like to think, that if there is something, that they neither forget nor are constrained by life. This existence on earth, this life, is powerful, and if there is something else, I’d like to think it offers us more without taking away what we already were. Perhaps there is no full understanding on this earth, no way for us to comprehend all there is; perhaps life is to get us started, but it’s not enough, not enough for us to know.
I don’t know this, of course. And maybe this is it, and this life which is not enough is it. Perhaps this life is enough.
My methods are insufficient to determine one way or the other.
Bean loved to do two things, eat, and:
Sleep
And sleep some more
She slept on the floor, on rugs, in chairs, on tables, on my desk, in my closet, and, of course, in bed:
Whaddya mean, move?
As Chelsea and Bean got older, I set a low chest near the bed to make it easier for them to get up and down. In one apartment, however, I didn’t have room for the chest, so set this stool next to the bed, instead:
Chelsea would step lightly up, but Bean never quite mastered that. Instead, she’d climb partly on to the lower step, then stick her paw into the notch on top and haul herself up and over; made me smile every time. Shoulda gotten a shot of that.
When I had a proper kitchen set-up—i.e., a table and chairs—Bean liked to jump into the chair. She then expected me to tip it back and rub her belly. She’d squeak and squeak until I’d stop, then look at me like ‘You’re stopping? Is there a problem?’
Even without the tip-and-rub, however, she liked to reign from the chair.
This became a point of contention between her and Jasper, as he, too, liked to loll on the chair. Bean would chase him off if he dared slip on to her perch, but at some point this past winter, she ceded the spot to him. It was a concession both sad and inevitable.
Still, she never gave in fully to Jasper, never let him get too familiar. Tolerance, however, she could do.
Early detente
I did see them sleeping together—actually touching—once or twice, but Jasper could never get the hang of how to hang without chomping on Bean. And then he wondered why she wanted nothing to do with him.
Chelsea was the same way, initially, with Bean, although because they were much closer in age, they had more time together to learn how to live together.
Unfathomable in the early years, constant later on
Chelsea, as I may have mentioned, was a marvelous jumper, able to leap from the floor to the top of five-foot bookshelves with little more preparation than a look and a butt-wriggle. This was how she most often escaped the Bean-kitten, as the young Bean had neither the strength nor, frankly, the chops, to follow her.
But oh, how Bean tried. One night, when my roommate P. and I were sitting on the couch, Bean chased Chelsea down the hall and into the living room. Chelsea skipped on to the nearby desk, then hopped on to the bookshelves.
Bean, determined to follow, didn’t bother first scrawling up the couch to get to the desk (a board slung across two file cabinets), and instead tried to conquer the desk in one leap.
She managed to get half her tiny body up, but her back didn’t quite make it. She bicycled her back legs, to no avail, and her front half slowly slid back off, until all that remained on top were her paws, the claws dug into the plywood.
She hung there for a moment, her little body swinging, before she finally let go.
Bean never attained the grace so natural to Chelsea, but she had her own dignity.
And she was sweet and lovable, who pipped and squeaked and purred and purred and purred.
Bean was a good cat. I don’t know if there’s anything after life in this world, but if there is, I hope she and Chelsea are together.
They were good cats.
If there is something else, I hope they’re happy.
My beautiful Bean is gone.
Beanalea 1994-2010
Her name was inspired by a Jane Siberry song, ‘Everything Reminds Me of My Dog’: She has a line about Old folks remind me of my dog/My dog reminds old folks of their dogs (Barfy, Ruffo, Beanhead). . . . Bean! That’s it.
Chelsea had been driving my roommate and me crazy with her constant talk, so I thought another cat might help chill her out. I was in Minneapolis at the time, a couple of houses down from friends, and they went with me to the Humane Society to get a kitten.
We saw one group of kittens, then went into another room (the sick cat room, it turns out) for more. I had the name; I needed the cat to fit.
J., the driver, held up a long-haired black-and-white kitten and said ‘Get her! Get her!’ I didn’t want a long-hair, however, and demurred. (I did coerce convince J. to get that kitty herself; ‘Entropy’, she was named. Aptly.)
And then I found my Bean—full name, Beanalea—and took her home. She lived with Chelsea and me in three apartments in Minneapolis, one in Montreal, one in Somerville, and five in Brooklyn. She didn’t particularly like travelling, but she always settled in once we had, in fact, settled in.
Bean, Beanalea, Bean-goddammit (for a brief period when she was around 6 months), Binkins, Polar Bean, Lima Bean, Navy Bean, Gah-bahnzo Bean. . . she was my Bean.
My beautiful Bean.
It’s almost time.
She’s been fading, fading, for months; I wasn’t sure she’d make it this long. But we are nearing the end.
I see her hunched-up walk and my breath catches in my throat. I scoop her up and hold her against my chest and tuck my chin into her fur and whisper No, not yet! I’m not ready.
And I set her back down and she walks fine and it’s clear that she’s not ready yet, either.
But it’s coming, and when she’s ready I’ll have to be, too.
Even if I’m not.
My beautiful Bean. . . !
Chelsea. It’s a year to the day.
1991-2009
The mourning has not gone well. I’ve grieved, and not. I’ve handled it, and not.
I can think of her without tears, but only rarely; because of this, I only rarely think of her.
She does help me with Bean, in trying to do better in recognizing and responding to her needs. I’m patient with Bean in a way I was not always with Chelsea.
I couldn’t see that she was dying, couldn’t see her.
I still can’t, in so many ways.
My sweet Chelsea still has something more to teach me. Perhaps by next year, I can finally let her rest.
I know, Dixie Carter played Julia Sugarbaker, she wasn’t actually Julia Sugarbaker, but she did such fine damned job of it, the real difficulty is in finding which clip to play.
So I’ll offer a couple.
Crazy southerners:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3KQgulBzh0&feature=related
Involuntary sequestration:
And sorry for the crappy quality, but this bit (near end of vid) of testifyin’—from 1987—is worth it:
Much better than another ‘No comment’.
Tuesday update: Sorry for posting a naked poem—Wordpress was all wonky last night.
Anyway.
I have, of late, become preoccupied with the medieval period in Europe history, or, more accurately, with the intellectual history of that long moment of transition between medieval times and modernity.
The ‘whys’ of a such a preoccupation I’ll save for another post. But given my current backward glance, a poem from that moment seemed appropriate.
John Donne is not, strictly speaking, a medieval poet: He was writing at the turn of and into the 17th century, a time which might be pegged as ‘early modern.’ But he fits into that long moment of transition during which old certainties about the place of God in nature were crumbling under the onslaught of observation and a kind of deistic theorizing.
Three centuries later Yeats noted that ‘the center cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’, but the intellectual revolutions of the 17th century were in many ways far more unsettling than the political revolutions of the 20th: How was man to know who he was if his God were pushed into the recesses of the heavens, and mere mechanism replaced divinity and grace?
The section, below, from Donne’s elegy for a friend’s young daughter allows us entry into that disorienting new world—the world we now take for granted as our own. Reason and science and deduction will lead us forward, it was argued then (and now)—nevermind the past.
In mourning this young girl, however, Donne shows that a world without a past is a world without meaning; to take things apart may yield a new kind of knowledge, but it may also leave us dismantled.
from An Anatomy of the World
And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The sun is lost, and the earth, and no-man’s wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world’s spent,
When in the planets and the firmament
They seek so many new; they see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
All just supply, and all relation:
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got
To be a phoenix, and that there can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he.
This is the world’s condition now, . . .
AbsurdBeats 