“Salutations are greetings. When I say salutations, it's just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning. Actually, it's a silly expression, and I am surprised that I used it at all.”
– Charlotte, Charlotte’s Web.
A friendly and aristocratic spider, a shy and grateful pig, and their strange, tender attempt to understand each other – this was how, as a nine-year old, and for the very first time, a book got me within its pages and refused to let go.
In the thirteen years since then, there have been many other moments: The bowing of the Aes Sedai to Rand al’Thor in Lord Of Chaos, Lucy’s forgiving caress of Maggie in The Mill On The Floss, Dumbledore’s speech to the Hogwarts students at the end of Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, Jane’s frantic fleeing from Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre, and the long instant during which Jonathan and Bobby realize that they are in love in A Home At The End Of The World, among others. What is striking about these moments is not only that they are entire worlds within a few lines, but also that they try to capture somethings that cannot ever be caught, feelings so pure and complicated, so personal and universal, all at the same time, that they defy names, and can only be hinted at obliquely. It is not only about power, forgiveness, a world endangered, betrayal, and love. All of these moments contain all of these things, and many others also: loss, nobility, loyalty, and more. But all of these moments share in addition one of the most essential and painful truths about living: the terrifying and poignant realization that things are not what they were, and can never be again. All of these moments are about the same thing: A spider saying “Salutations!”, and then, a few seconds later, after a tiny and yet momentous shift, “Actually, it’s a silly expression, and I am surprised that I used it at all.”
I would like to say that in the course of this semester I have experienced such a moment again, but I have not. This is probably because I have read the books only as assigned, and not on my own terms yet. It is also possibly because, to paraphrase Thomas Hardy, the book to love has not yet coincided with the hour of loving; it was not until two years after being taught The Mill On The Floss that I felt, and not just appreciated, what it meant. But in the process of re-examining which of this semester’s texts have left the deepest impression on me, and which the shallowest, I was surprised at the conclusions that I came to.
I expected Hamlet, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, any of the Sophocles or Euripides tragedies, or Prometheus Bound to move me the most upon rereading. It is not only that there is a lost lyrical poetry in the language of the past, an inherent richness, texture, structure, and rigor that I’ve always liked ever since my high school teacher prefaced his introduction of Shakespeare with Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “I will put Chaos into fourteen lines”. It is also that the capricious and intractable nature of love, the delirium inextricable from passion, the unshakeable bonds of independence, and the simple feeling, as Fyodor Dostoevsky said, that “it’s sometimes… very pleasant to break something”, are things that I struggle with.
But it was not these texts that touched a sensitive nerve. It was Endgame, a play that I initially abhorred for its obtuseness. The feminist theme of Fefu And Her Friends I did not care for, and the artificiality and relative ‘insanity’ of life espoused by both Fefu and The Day Room I had already made some measure of peace with. But after rereading Endgame as mankind’s losing battle with loss, I feel that it encompasses all the other troubles within its portrayal of the impossibility in trying to escape not only death, but also life itself.
What can you do? Things change. Everyone has to pass through the golden gates of childhood, and see them close forever. It isn’t just the final death that scares me; all the small deaths along the way frighten me too. When I reread all the essays that I have written, save Rosmersholm, they read like a litany of eulogies, one for innocence lost, another for possibilities of potential destroyed, another for the submission to the tyranny of insufficient words, and another for the innermost fear, the most unbearable and therefore comical, that some crucial part of me may already be dead. The ability to find pleasure in the buying of a ten-cent sweet, for example.
I don’t think all change is bad, although that is possibly because I cannot afford to. But I do wonder whether change is at its core an effort to return to a state of wonder, where everything is what it is for the first time. I appreciate Endgame not only because it addresses the inevitability of all these deaths leading up to the big final one, but also because it emphasizes the possibility of triumphing over those deaths through storytelling. I don’t think storytelling is only a means of distraction. I think its most essential purpose is to bring what might be dead or deadened back to fullest life again. A story is to life what “salutations!” is to “hello” – a fancy roundabout way to strike at a truth that cannot be struck at any other way, and needs to be struck at, in order to remind us and make us feel that it exists in its purest form., even if we can’t quite name it. Even though Endgame did not contain a moment of wonder for me, it reminded me that all those previous moments wrenched something within me not only because they showed things as they were and could never be again, but also because I got to re-experience things exactly as they were, even if only for a few seconds, before the feeling of loss encroached. I may not be able to feel those moments in the exact same way again, but each of them brought me back to when I was nine, blissfully wondrous, attuned to the complicated sharpness of every feeling, and fully alive. I can only think that the immortality of storytelling must in part be this, which is why we continue to tell them, silly expressions though they might be sometimes, and surprised though we might be at our telling them.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Screenplay: Cookie/s
INT. REBECCA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
AVA WILLIAMS (2), a cherubic girl small for her age, stares up at a square clock on a dresser.
The square clock shows 7.59, as the second hand TICKS. The minute and hour hands DISSOLVE as the time nears eight. Each second hand tick becomes louder.
GLOVED CARTOON HANDS HOLDING DRUMSTICKS sprout from the clock’s sides. A SMALL TOY DRUM appears. The clock DRUMROLLS.
The second hand hits 12.
Ava turns and runs. As she runs across the room FIREWORKS explode everywhere, and a few TOYS lying around stir and secretly wink at each other.
Ava stops. She slowly and properly walks up to REBECCA WILLIAMS (29), an attractive woman sitting at a dresser, dressed in an elegant gown and applying make-up.
Ava looks up at the grown-up as
STREAMS OF COLORFUL CLOTH appear and fly around Rebecca’s body, wrapping her up like the way a kid would wrap a Christmas present.
THE POWDER PUFF in her hand becomes A LARGE CIRCULAR STAMP, which she uses to stamp her face again and again.
Rebecca puts down the stamp and picks up her LIPSTICK, which becomes A CRAYON. Rebecca colors inside the lines of her lips as
A HAND appears, and tugs at her elaborate skirt.
AVA
…Mommy?
A face like a drawing not yet finished turns to Ava.
REBECCA
Is it eight already?
Rebecca puts down the crayon and leans down, her weird face inches from Ava’s. She scratches Ava’s cheek affectionately.
REBBECA
(continuing)
Let’s go get your cookie.
The face withdraws. Rebecca stands and walks towards the door, a giant walking away. Ava runs and passes Rebecca.
INT. HALLWAY – NIGHT
Ava appears first, running down half the hallway before she realizes Rebecca is missing.
Rebecca appears, walking very very very slowly.
Ava runs back to Rebecca and tugs at her to make her go faster.
After a few steps, Rebecca bends and whooshes Ava up in her arms, hugging Ava to her body. Ava looks over Rebecca’s shoulder. The ground suddenly looks very far away.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
Rebecca enters and walks across rows of drawers at one side of the kitchen. Ava sees the sneaky drawers open a little and close again, all behind Rebecca’s back.
Rebecca stops at the stove on the other side of the kitchen, and sets Ava down.
Ava shakes a finger at the drawers as one of Rebecca’s legs taps behind her. A cupboard CLOSES. Ava turns to see –
A COOKIE JAR in Rebecca’s hands. Rebecca takes the lid off and GOLDEN LIGHT bursts forth. She holds the cookie jar down in front of Ava, who looks into it to see –
COOKIES, COOKIES, AND MORE COOKIES, ALL SHINY AND GLOWING.
REBECCA
Just one.
Ava takes a glowing cookie, her face mesmerized by its light, and runs off to the other door in the kitchen.
REBECCA
(continuing)
Ava?
Ava stops and turns around.
AVA
Thank you, Mommy.
REBECCA
Remember, it’s a privilege, not a right.
Ava nods and runs out the other door into –
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT (continuous)
She zips past a DINNER TABLE WITH TALL CHAIRS, and then a SMALL KIDS’ TABLE AND CHAIR next to it, towards a COUCH in front of the TV. She flops onto the couch.
Ava inspects the glowing cookie carefully. When she lowers the cookie,
BUDDY (3), a boy with long silky locks, stares at her.
Ava and Buddy look at each other, Ava on the couch and Buddy kneeling on the floor, hunched forward and leaning on his closed fists.
Ava shakes her head. Buddy half-rises and puts his fists on her lap. She holds the cookie far away from him, and points with her other hand for him to go away.
Buddy lays his head on her lap, sad. His head slides onto the couch as Ava stands and walks to a corner of the living room. She looks down to see –
A DOG BOWL, INSCRIBED WITH THE WORD ‘BUDDY’, AND FILLED WITH MAGGOTY GRISTLE.
Ava turns to look at Buddy, now curled up on the floor. She looks down at her cookie again. She looks at Buddy. Cookie. Buddy. She SIGHS, and walks towards Buddy.
INT. REBECCA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Rebecca, her face completely colored, spritzes a LARGE CAN at her neck as Ava walks up to her. FLOWER PETALS burst from the nozzle. Ava tugs at Rebecca as she puts the can down.
Ava looks very small as she speaks.
AVA
Mommy?
REBECCA
Mmmhmm?
AVA
Cookie.
REBECCA
You already had one, Ava. You know the rule.
AVA
Bubby take cookie.
Rebecca looks at Ava briefly, and then reaches down and lifts her up, setting her on the dresser. Ava looks around curiously; there are PAINT BOTTLES, CRAYONS, and PLAYING BLOCKS WITH FUNNY NAMES.
REBECCA
Did you give Buddy your cookie?
AVA
Uh-huh.
REBECCA
Yes, Ava. Not uh-huh.
AVA
Yes, Mommy.
REBECCA
Ava, if you decide to give Buddy your cookie, then you can’t come and ask Mommy for another one. Because then I’m the one who’s giving Buddy the cookie, not you. Do you understand that?
Ava’s eyes are big. She nods, but only because she knows she’s supposed to.
REBECCA
(continuing)
When you grow up, and you want to give someone a cookie, you have to remember that if you want another cookie, you’ll have to earn it yourself. No-one is going to give you another cookie for free. Okay? You have to earn it yourself.
Mother and daughter look at each other. A door CLOSES in the distance. Rebecca sets Ava down.
REBECCA
(continuing)
Mommy and Daddy are going out tonight. Mrs. McCluskey will be here, okay?
MICHAEL
Ava? Becky?
REBECCA
Now go say hi to Daddy.
Ava nods, and runs through –
INT. HALLWAY – NIGHT (continuous)
Into –
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT (continuous)
Ava runs towards a tired-looking clown removing BIG SHOES. This is MICHAEL WILLIAMS (35). He smiles and sweeps Ava up, walking towards Rebecca’s bedroom.
MICHAEL
How’s my tiger tonight?
Ava grabs Michael’s free hand and pretends to bite his fingers.
MICHAEL
(continuing)
Has Mommy finished painting her face?
Ava nods. They pass by the kitchen door.
AVA
Daddy. Cookie.
Michael stops.
MICHAEL
Didn’t Mommy already give you one?
AVA
…No.
Michael looks surprised. He turns and walks into –
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT (continuous)
Michael goes to the shelf and opens it, taking out the cookie jar with his free hand and setting it on the stove.
REBECCA
Michael?
Rebecca enters just as Michael takes the lid off. The colors on her face darken scarily.
REBECCA
(continuing)
Michael Edward Williams. What exactly do you think you’re doing?
Rebecca’s lips keep moving as she walks towards Michael, but her voice deepens to a GROWL, like the monsters’ on the cartoon network. Her face darkens into blacks and reds.
Michael SQUEAKS as he tries to explain. Eventually he raises both hands in surrender, dropping Ava.
Far below the big grown-ups, Ava watches the cookie jar on the stove become smaller and smaller. Then –
A doorbell RINGS. Michael and Rebecca stop arguing.
REBECCA
(continuing)
That’s Mrs. McCluskey.
Rebecca leaves. Michael stares at Ava. His clown suit slowly disappears, revealing A FORMAL SUIT.
He turns, and keeps the cookie jar. He shakes his head at Ava, and leaves.
Ava stares at the shelf as Buddy joins her. GOLDEN LIGHT seeps out from the cracks.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Rebecca and Michael are talking with MRS. MCCLUSKEY (75), an old lady with a WALKING STICK, near the open front door. Ava peeks from the hallway.
REBECCA
…not allowed to have any more cookies –
Mrs. McCluskey is nodding as Rebecca suddenly turns her head in Ava’s direction. Ava quickly hides.
REBECCA
(continuing)
Ava, come and say hello to Mrs. McCluskey.
Ava appears from around the corner, hands clasped behind her back, the very picture of a nice little girl. She takes a few steps forwards, but stops.
REBECCA
(continuing)
Come on, now.
Ava rubs her THUMBS together nervously behind her back, as the big people loom in front like giants. Rebecca’s eyes narrow.
Mrs. McCluskey lays a reassuring hand on Rebecca’s arm, and then walks towards Ava’s small figure, smiling pleasantly.
Mrs. McCluskey transforms with each step.
She hunches. Her formless dress shrivels into a witch’s outfit, nails lengthen into claws, bumps appear all over her, teeth become crooked and yellow, and her hair bursts loose from the hairnet into a shaggy mess. The walking stick twists into A GNARLY STAFF WITH CARVED SKULLS. This is WITCH MCCLUSKEY (75).
Witch McCluskey stops before Ava, and bends down. The two face each other, Witch McCluskey still smiling pleasantly, and Ava trying not to shake.
Witch McCluskey extends A CLAW, and scratches Ava’s cheek.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
My sweet…
Ava YELPS and runs to Michael, clinging onto his leg. Witch McCluskey stands and turns around.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
Sweetie?
Ava tries to get her father to understand, but she doesn’t have the words to make him understand.
MICHAEL
It’s okay, tiger, it’s okay.
REBECCA
Ava, please. Mrs. McCluskey, I’m sorry, but we really have to leave. Could you…
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
I surely could. Don’t you worry one bit, Mrs. Williams.
Witch McCluskey’s smile widens horrifyingly as she gets nearer to Ava, and plucks her from Michael’s feet. Ava is too terrified to struggle.
Michael nods awkwardly.
MICHAEL
I’ll go start the car.
Michael leaves. Rebecca smiles apologetically.
REBECCA
Ava’s… playful, but it’s been a while since Mr. Williams and I had some time to ourselves, so if it’s not an emergency…
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
Don’t you worry, my dear.
Rebecca nods, and cradles Ava’s face tenderly, before leaving.
Framed by the open front door, Ava reaches out a desperate hand. Witch McCluskey’s smile grows impossibly larger, as she folds Ava’s outstretched hand back to her chest with one hand, and with her other shuts the door.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
Alone at last. Now we can have some fun, you and I.
Witch McCluskey takes Ava away.
The TV in the living room BLARES as a criminal procedural drama unfolds.
Witch McCluskey and Ava sit on the couch side by side. Witch McCluskey, the reflections from the TV shifting on her face like a spell, leans towards Ava.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
Ooooh. That is one naughty young lady who is about to be punished.
Ava looks confused and scared. She sneaks a look at Buddy, who is curled up in the corner.
Buddy smiles sympathetically, and then, with the air of telling a secret, lifts up one leg a bit.
Ava looks confused for a moment, and then gets it. She turns to the entranced Witch McCluskey, and tugs the latter’s sleeve.
AVA
Pee pee.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
You need to go to the toilet? Can’t you wait for a little while more?
Ava shakes her head.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
Well… do you know how to use the potty by yourself?
Ava nods, her head bobbing up and down.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
All right then. Come back quickly.
Ava grins at Buddy, and runs off.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
Ava stares at the cupboard that still seeps golden light. She knows she can’t reach it. She looks around, and the TALL CHAIR in the dining room catches her eye.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Ava looks at the chair and puts a finger to her lips, looking meaningfully at the back of Witch McCluskey’s head poking up from the couch in the background.
The KIDS’ CHAIR rocks, trying to get Ava’s attention, but Ava wags a finger at it to stay put.
Ava grabs one leg of the tall chair, and pulls as quickly and as quietly as she can. The chair stubbornly tilts in the other direction as she drags it into –
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
Ava positions the chair in front of the stove. She shakes her head at the chair for being bad, like her daddy did earlier at her.
Ava tries to climb onto the chair, but discovers that she’s too short.
Grabbing one leg of the chair, Ava lifts, trying to put it on its side.
It works, at first, but the chair soon weighs too much on the opposite side. Ava struggles, and then is forced to let go.
The chair starts to topple over.
Ava tries to catch the leg in the air, her body arched forwards and upwards with the effort, but her fingers just miss the leg.
The chair hits the ground with an explosive CRASH.
Ava stares at the chair, and then at the faraway cupboard.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
Ava?
Ava turns to see –
Witch McCluskey standing in the doorway, leaning on her staff, fearsome and mad. The SKULLS on her staff smile evilly.
Witch McCluskey walks to the cupboard and opens it.
She sees the cookie jar. She looks inside, and looks at Ava suspiciously.
Then, on purpose, she puts the cookie jar on the highest shelf in the cupboard.
Ava watches Witch McCluskey right the chair, and bring it back to the dining table.
Then Witch McCluskey returns, staring down at her.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
You, young lady, are in a lot of trouble.
INT. AVA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Witch McCluskey enters with Ava towed behind her.
Her skirt drags across the floor as TOYS everywhere cower in fear.
Witch McCluskey whisks Ava up, and puts her into a CRIB.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
Naughty little girls have to be punished.
Witch McCluskey looks at Ava, and reaches for her. Ava flinches, and then Witch McCluskey’s hand goes upwards instead to the hanging BABY MONITOR, which she switches on.
She gives Ava one last disapproving look, before sweeping out of the dark room, closing the door behind her.
Ava looks out from behind the WOODEN BARS of the crib, as it turns into a METAL CELL.
She stands and presses her face to the bars, arms outreached to the toys, who shrink back fearfully in their places.
AVA
Help.
The toys all shake their heads. Ava looks around in despair, shakes the bars, and then, defeated, sits in the crib. She looks around one last time, for a long moment.
A METAL BAR glimmers back into wood.
Ava reaches out a frightened hand to touch it.
The crib turns, slowly, back into wood. One by one, the toys drift back into lifelessness.
She realizes that she is the only one in the room – and might always have been.
Ava looks at the wooden bars, and the lifeless toys, and the creatures in the wallpaper that do not run, laugh, and cry.
She lies down, eyes wide and sad.
She begins to cry in this room that gleams only with dead light.
And then, very quietly at first, a SCRATCHING SOUND at the door.
Ava wipes her eyes, and sits up. The sound GROWS.
AVA
Bubby?
A small WOOF.
AVA
(continuing)
Bubby!
Ava grabs the bars and shakes them as they turn back into metal. The WOOFS are joined by sounds of a FIST PAWING AT THE DOOR. She looks around frantically, and sees the baby monitor. WOOF.
She smiles, and wipes the tear streaks off.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Witch McCluskey is enjoying her criminal procedural drama when –
A PIERCING SCREAM, that only a child of two can scream, explodes from the baby monitor beside her on the couch.
Witch McCluskey looks very annoyed. The scream stops. She looks relieved for about a second, before –
A DEEP BREATH, followed by another PIERCING SCREAM.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
Aurrgh!
Another DEEP BREATH, and another PIERCING SCREAM, as Witch McCluskey gets up.
INT. AVA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
The door slams open, revealing Witch McCluskey, with Buddy beside her, winking, both fists on the ground.
Buddy secretly lifts up one fist, to reveal under it a FRAGMENT OF GLOWING COOKIE that he saved from earlier. He quickly covers it again and nods at Ava.
Ava smiles.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
I will call your mother and tell her that you’re being very naughty.
AVA
Play toys.
Witch McCluskey looks at her suspiciously.
AVA
(continuing)
Play toys.
INT. DINING ROOM AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Annoyed, Witch McCluskey watches both the criminal procedural drama and, in the corner, Ava. A CORDLESS PHONE lies beside her on the couch.
Ava plays with her toys innocently, Buddy by her side.
Buddy suddenly bites a TOY and runs off with it. Ava SQUEALS and runs after him.
Witch McCluskey grips the cordless phone tightly for a long moment, and then eventually releases it.
She picks up the TV REMOTE CONTROL, turns up the volume, and then gets up and goes after Ava.
INT. HALLWAY – NIGHT
As SOUNDS OF POLICE GOING AFTER A RUNAWAY SUSPECT play –
Buddy, with a toy in his mouth, running gleefully.
Behind him, Ava, grinning, chasing at top speed.
Behind her, Witch McCluskey, determinedly PUFFING, walking as quickly as she can, the skulls on the staff wincing with every stab of the staff on the ground.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
As SOUNDS OF THE POLICE GOING AFTER A RUNAWAY SUSPECT play –
The open doorway to the hallway is empty.
Buddy runs past the doorway along the hallway to the living room, a DIFFERENT TOY in his mouth.
Ava zips by, GIGGLING.
A few seconds later, Witch McCluskey hobbles quickly by.
The doorway is empty again.
Buddy zooms past from the direction of the living room, a DIFFERENT TOY in his mouth.
Ava follows, SQUEALING.
A longer wait than before, before Witch McCluskey hobbles more slowly by, clearly tiring.
Buddy, to the living room.
Ava.
A wait, and then, from somewhere in the hallway near Rebecca’s room –
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
I’ll. I’ll. I’ll just. Wait. Here.
Buddy appears in the hallway, framed by the doorway, looking towards the direction of Rebecca’s room.
Ava appears beside him, looking in the same direction.
Ava takes a small sideways step towards the door to the kitchen.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
No…
Ava takes another step, halfway through the door.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
Ava…
Ava GIGGLES and runs into the kitchen, Buddy following. They disappear from view as they head for the stove.
COP
Damn it! We lost him!
A few seconds later, Witch McCluskey enters the kitchen, breathing heavily. She pauses as soon as she enters, to catch her breath, and to point an unsteady finger.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
You… You…
Ava appears, followed by Buddy. Ava grabs Witch McCluskey’s finger, and shakes it.
AVA
TV?
Witch McCluskey breathes, and glares.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Witch McCluskey and Ava watch a TV SHOW together, Buddy lying on the couch beside Ava, his head on her lap.
Witch McCluskey’s eyes keep fluttering close.
They eventually close, and do not open. She begins to SNORE.
Ava looks at Buddy, and they grin at each other.
Ava looks at Witch McCluskey. Witch McCluskey transforms back into Mrs. McCluskey.
Ava turns to Buddy.
AVA
(whispers)
Just like Mommy.
Ava puts a finger on her lips, and the two quietly sneak off towards the kitchen.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
Ava, with Buddy beside her, looks up at the cupboard that still leaks golden light.
She looks around.
She catches the ROWS OF DRAWERS just as they close completely.
Ava has a good idea.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
As Mrs. McCluskey SNORES peacefully on the couch –
Ava appears in the background from the kitchen door, and drags the tall chair, who is still not helping, into the kitchen.
She reappears, Buddy following this time, and drags another tall chair, who is no more helpful.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
A LOOSE BRIDGE of chairs connects the drawers on one side of the kitchen to the stove on the other. Ava stands behind it, near the drawers. She turns to the drawers and
OPENS the third drawer from the chairs on the bottom row. It is empty.
Ava steps into the drawer carefully, and opens the drawer diagonally above it, forming another step towards the bridge. It is filled with PLATES.
Ava looks at Buddy, who is waiting patiently on the ground. He smiles at her.
Ava hands the plates one by one down to Buddy, who bites them and puts them gently on the ground.
She steps into the now empty drawer, and opens the next one. Immediately an ARMY OF FORKS, KNIVES, AND SPOONS stands up, pointing their sharp bits at Ava.
The formation of cutlery shines dangerously. Ava smiles down at them as her hand secretly creeps up on them from the side.
A FORK hops a little, and swivels to meet her hand, angling itself for a good stab if the hand dares to come any closer.
The hand withdraws.
Ava folds her arms angrily, stuck.
A small WOOF, followed by a soft GROWL.
Ava and the cutlery turn to Buddy.
Half of the cutlery turns back to watch Ava, while the other half hops over to the railing of the drawer, leaning over to get a better look at Buddy.
Buddy GROWLS, and makes SNAPPING sounds. Then he smiles and takes a step closer to the cutlery.
They hop a step backwards.
They turn to face Ava, who now smiles.
Ava hands the cutlery down to Buddy, who lays them on the more and more messy floor.
Ava climbs onto the last step, and gets from there onto the first chair.
She looks at Buddy and smiles excitedly. Buddy nods.
The floor looks very very far below.
Ava takes a DEEP BREATH and EXHALES, and stretches both arms outwards to balance as she crosses a little wobblily over to the next chair.
Ava crosses the entire bridge.
She climbs on top of the stove.
She opens the cupboard.
She can’t reach the cookie jar on the top shelf. Ava tiptoes and reaches as high as she can reach, but her hands just barely brush the shelf.
She stops trying, and thinks.
An idea hits her.
She goes to the edge of the stove.
AVA
Bubby!
Buddy looks at her expectantly.
Ava gestures for Buddy to join her.
Buddy climbs the drawers and crosses the bridge.
Ava helps Buddy onto the stove.
Buddy semi-lifts Ava, who grabs the cookie jar.
Ava puts the cookie jar down in between them. They look at each other excitedly, as the plates and cutlery on the ground look on at their triumph.
Ava slowly takes off the lid. Golden light bursts forth.
Ava and Buddy smile at each other, very excited.
Ava takes a GLOWING COOKIE out, and gives it to Buddy, who bites it happily.
She watches Buddy chew it.
Then, Ava reaches into the cookie jar.
But she pauses. She looks down at her hand in the jar, and suddenly she’s not so sure.
She looks at Buddy, who smiles at her, nodding at her to take a cookie for herself.
Still the hand doesn’t move.
The plates and cutlery lean forward, waiting.
Ava slowly takes her hand out…
Her hand is empty.
Buddy tries to reach into the cookie jar to get a cookie for her, but Ava takes his fist and puts it away from the jar, shaking her head.
AVA
(grown-up-like)
No. One cookie only. I give you.
She puts the lid back on. Buddy looks at her. Ava looks unsurely self-satisfied, like she knows she’s done something important and good, but she’s not quite sure what it is exactly and why. But it still makes her feel important and good.
Ava smiles at Buddy, and ruffles his hair. Then she smiles again as an idea hits her.
She sweeps the CRUMBS from Buddy’s cookie into her other hand.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Crumbs, on Mrs. McCluskey’s blouse. Mrs. McCluskey, Ava, and Buddy are napping, Ava curled up on the couch with a hand on Buddy’s body as if in mid-stroke.
A door OPENS.
REBECCA
Mrs. McCluskey? Ava?
Mrs. McCluskey stirs, and shakes her head rapidly to wake up.
She gets up and goes to meet Rebecca and Michael.
Ava’s eyes flutter open, as does Buddy’s.
REBECCA
Mrs. McCluskey! Really.
MRS. MCCLUSKEY
I can assure you, Mrs. Williams…
Ava and Buddy smile sleepily at each other, slowly at first, and then with gigantic grins.
AVA WILLIAMS (2), a cherubic girl small for her age, stares up at a square clock on a dresser.
The square clock shows 7.59, as the second hand TICKS. The minute and hour hands DISSOLVE as the time nears eight. Each second hand tick becomes louder.
GLOVED CARTOON HANDS HOLDING DRUMSTICKS sprout from the clock’s sides. A SMALL TOY DRUM appears. The clock DRUMROLLS.
The second hand hits 12.
Ava turns and runs. As she runs across the room FIREWORKS explode everywhere, and a few TOYS lying around stir and secretly wink at each other.
Ava stops. She slowly and properly walks up to REBECCA WILLIAMS (29), an attractive woman sitting at a dresser, dressed in an elegant gown and applying make-up.
Ava looks up at the grown-up as
STREAMS OF COLORFUL CLOTH appear and fly around Rebecca’s body, wrapping her up like the way a kid would wrap a Christmas present.
THE POWDER PUFF in her hand becomes A LARGE CIRCULAR STAMP, which she uses to stamp her face again and again.
Rebecca puts down the stamp and picks up her LIPSTICK, which becomes A CRAYON. Rebecca colors inside the lines of her lips as
A HAND appears, and tugs at her elaborate skirt.
AVA
…Mommy?
A face like a drawing not yet finished turns to Ava.
REBECCA
Is it eight already?
Rebecca puts down the crayon and leans down, her weird face inches from Ava’s. She scratches Ava’s cheek affectionately.
REBBECA
(continuing)
Let’s go get your cookie.
The face withdraws. Rebecca stands and walks towards the door, a giant walking away. Ava runs and passes Rebecca.
INT. HALLWAY – NIGHT
Ava appears first, running down half the hallway before she realizes Rebecca is missing.
Rebecca appears, walking very very very slowly.
Ava runs back to Rebecca and tugs at her to make her go faster.
After a few steps, Rebecca bends and whooshes Ava up in her arms, hugging Ava to her body. Ava looks over Rebecca’s shoulder. The ground suddenly looks very far away.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
Rebecca enters and walks across rows of drawers at one side of the kitchen. Ava sees the sneaky drawers open a little and close again, all behind Rebecca’s back.
Rebecca stops at the stove on the other side of the kitchen, and sets Ava down.
Ava shakes a finger at the drawers as one of Rebecca’s legs taps behind her. A cupboard CLOSES. Ava turns to see –
A COOKIE JAR in Rebecca’s hands. Rebecca takes the lid off and GOLDEN LIGHT bursts forth. She holds the cookie jar down in front of Ava, who looks into it to see –
COOKIES, COOKIES, AND MORE COOKIES, ALL SHINY AND GLOWING.
REBECCA
Just one.
Ava takes a glowing cookie, her face mesmerized by its light, and runs off to the other door in the kitchen.
REBECCA
(continuing)
Ava?
Ava stops and turns around.
AVA
Thank you, Mommy.
REBECCA
Remember, it’s a privilege, not a right.
Ava nods and runs out the other door into –
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT (continuous)
She zips past a DINNER TABLE WITH TALL CHAIRS, and then a SMALL KIDS’ TABLE AND CHAIR next to it, towards a COUCH in front of the TV. She flops onto the couch.
Ava inspects the glowing cookie carefully. When she lowers the cookie,
BUDDY (3), a boy with long silky locks, stares at her.
Ava and Buddy look at each other, Ava on the couch and Buddy kneeling on the floor, hunched forward and leaning on his closed fists.
Ava shakes her head. Buddy half-rises and puts his fists on her lap. She holds the cookie far away from him, and points with her other hand for him to go away.
Buddy lays his head on her lap, sad. His head slides onto the couch as Ava stands and walks to a corner of the living room. She looks down to see –
A DOG BOWL, INSCRIBED WITH THE WORD ‘BUDDY’, AND FILLED WITH MAGGOTY GRISTLE.
Ava turns to look at Buddy, now curled up on the floor. She looks down at her cookie again. She looks at Buddy. Cookie. Buddy. She SIGHS, and walks towards Buddy.
INT. REBECCA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Rebecca, her face completely colored, spritzes a LARGE CAN at her neck as Ava walks up to her. FLOWER PETALS burst from the nozzle. Ava tugs at Rebecca as she puts the can down.
Ava looks very small as she speaks.
AVA
Mommy?
REBECCA
Mmmhmm?
AVA
Cookie.
REBECCA
You already had one, Ava. You know the rule.
AVA
Bubby take cookie.
Rebecca looks at Ava briefly, and then reaches down and lifts her up, setting her on the dresser. Ava looks around curiously; there are PAINT BOTTLES, CRAYONS, and PLAYING BLOCKS WITH FUNNY NAMES.
REBECCA
Did you give Buddy your cookie?
AVA
Uh-huh.
REBECCA
Yes, Ava. Not uh-huh.
AVA
Yes, Mommy.
REBECCA
Ava, if you decide to give Buddy your cookie, then you can’t come and ask Mommy for another one. Because then I’m the one who’s giving Buddy the cookie, not you. Do you understand that?
Ava’s eyes are big. She nods, but only because she knows she’s supposed to.
REBECCA
(continuing)
When you grow up, and you want to give someone a cookie, you have to remember that if you want another cookie, you’ll have to earn it yourself. No-one is going to give you another cookie for free. Okay? You have to earn it yourself.
Mother and daughter look at each other. A door CLOSES in the distance. Rebecca sets Ava down.
REBECCA
(continuing)
Mommy and Daddy are going out tonight. Mrs. McCluskey will be here, okay?
MICHAEL
Ava? Becky?
REBECCA
Now go say hi to Daddy.
Ava nods, and runs through –
INT. HALLWAY – NIGHT (continuous)
Into –
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT (continuous)
Ava runs towards a tired-looking clown removing BIG SHOES. This is MICHAEL WILLIAMS (35). He smiles and sweeps Ava up, walking towards Rebecca’s bedroom.
MICHAEL
How’s my tiger tonight?
Ava grabs Michael’s free hand and pretends to bite his fingers.
MICHAEL
(continuing)
Has Mommy finished painting her face?
Ava nods. They pass by the kitchen door.
AVA
Daddy. Cookie.
Michael stops.
MICHAEL
Didn’t Mommy already give you one?
AVA
…No.
Michael looks surprised. He turns and walks into –
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT (continuous)
Michael goes to the shelf and opens it, taking out the cookie jar with his free hand and setting it on the stove.
REBECCA
Michael?
Rebecca enters just as Michael takes the lid off. The colors on her face darken scarily.
REBECCA
(continuing)
Michael Edward Williams. What exactly do you think you’re doing?
Rebecca’s lips keep moving as she walks towards Michael, but her voice deepens to a GROWL, like the monsters’ on the cartoon network. Her face darkens into blacks and reds.
Michael SQUEAKS as he tries to explain. Eventually he raises both hands in surrender, dropping Ava.
Far below the big grown-ups, Ava watches the cookie jar on the stove become smaller and smaller. Then –
A doorbell RINGS. Michael and Rebecca stop arguing.
REBECCA
(continuing)
That’s Mrs. McCluskey.
Rebecca leaves. Michael stares at Ava. His clown suit slowly disappears, revealing A FORMAL SUIT.
He turns, and keeps the cookie jar. He shakes his head at Ava, and leaves.
Ava stares at the shelf as Buddy joins her. GOLDEN LIGHT seeps out from the cracks.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Rebecca and Michael are talking with MRS. MCCLUSKEY (75), an old lady with a WALKING STICK, near the open front door. Ava peeks from the hallway.
REBECCA
…not allowed to have any more cookies –
Mrs. McCluskey is nodding as Rebecca suddenly turns her head in Ava’s direction. Ava quickly hides.
REBECCA
(continuing)
Ava, come and say hello to Mrs. McCluskey.
Ava appears from around the corner, hands clasped behind her back, the very picture of a nice little girl. She takes a few steps forwards, but stops.
REBECCA
(continuing)
Come on, now.
Ava rubs her THUMBS together nervously behind her back, as the big people loom in front like giants. Rebecca’s eyes narrow.
Mrs. McCluskey lays a reassuring hand on Rebecca’s arm, and then walks towards Ava’s small figure, smiling pleasantly.
Mrs. McCluskey transforms with each step.
She hunches. Her formless dress shrivels into a witch’s outfit, nails lengthen into claws, bumps appear all over her, teeth become crooked and yellow, and her hair bursts loose from the hairnet into a shaggy mess. The walking stick twists into A GNARLY STAFF WITH CARVED SKULLS. This is WITCH MCCLUSKEY (75).
Witch McCluskey stops before Ava, and bends down. The two face each other, Witch McCluskey still smiling pleasantly, and Ava trying not to shake.
Witch McCluskey extends A CLAW, and scratches Ava’s cheek.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
My sweet…
Ava YELPS and runs to Michael, clinging onto his leg. Witch McCluskey stands and turns around.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
Sweetie?
Ava tries to get her father to understand, but she doesn’t have the words to make him understand.
MICHAEL
It’s okay, tiger, it’s okay.
REBECCA
Ava, please. Mrs. McCluskey, I’m sorry, but we really have to leave. Could you…
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
I surely could. Don’t you worry one bit, Mrs. Williams.
Witch McCluskey’s smile widens horrifyingly as she gets nearer to Ava, and plucks her from Michael’s feet. Ava is too terrified to struggle.
Michael nods awkwardly.
MICHAEL
I’ll go start the car.
Michael leaves. Rebecca smiles apologetically.
REBECCA
Ava’s… playful, but it’s been a while since Mr. Williams and I had some time to ourselves, so if it’s not an emergency…
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
Don’t you worry, my dear.
Rebecca nods, and cradles Ava’s face tenderly, before leaving.
Framed by the open front door, Ava reaches out a desperate hand. Witch McCluskey’s smile grows impossibly larger, as she folds Ava’s outstretched hand back to her chest with one hand, and with her other shuts the door.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
Alone at last. Now we can have some fun, you and I.
Witch McCluskey takes Ava away.
The TV in the living room BLARES as a criminal procedural drama unfolds.
Witch McCluskey and Ava sit on the couch side by side. Witch McCluskey, the reflections from the TV shifting on her face like a spell, leans towards Ava.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
Ooooh. That is one naughty young lady who is about to be punished.
Ava looks confused and scared. She sneaks a look at Buddy, who is curled up in the corner.
Buddy smiles sympathetically, and then, with the air of telling a secret, lifts up one leg a bit.
Ava looks confused for a moment, and then gets it. She turns to the entranced Witch McCluskey, and tugs the latter’s sleeve.
AVA
Pee pee.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
You need to go to the toilet? Can’t you wait for a little while more?
Ava shakes her head.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
Well… do you know how to use the potty by yourself?
Ava nods, her head bobbing up and down.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
All right then. Come back quickly.
Ava grins at Buddy, and runs off.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
Ava stares at the cupboard that still seeps golden light. She knows she can’t reach it. She looks around, and the TALL CHAIR in the dining room catches her eye.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Ava looks at the chair and puts a finger to her lips, looking meaningfully at the back of Witch McCluskey’s head poking up from the couch in the background.
The KIDS’ CHAIR rocks, trying to get Ava’s attention, but Ava wags a finger at it to stay put.
Ava grabs one leg of the tall chair, and pulls as quickly and as quietly as she can. The chair stubbornly tilts in the other direction as she drags it into –
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
Ava positions the chair in front of the stove. She shakes her head at the chair for being bad, like her daddy did earlier at her.
Ava tries to climb onto the chair, but discovers that she’s too short.
Grabbing one leg of the chair, Ava lifts, trying to put it on its side.
It works, at first, but the chair soon weighs too much on the opposite side. Ava struggles, and then is forced to let go.
The chair starts to topple over.
Ava tries to catch the leg in the air, her body arched forwards and upwards with the effort, but her fingers just miss the leg.
The chair hits the ground with an explosive CRASH.
Ava stares at the chair, and then at the faraway cupboard.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
Ava?
Ava turns to see –
Witch McCluskey standing in the doorway, leaning on her staff, fearsome and mad. The SKULLS on her staff smile evilly.
Witch McCluskey walks to the cupboard and opens it.
She sees the cookie jar. She looks inside, and looks at Ava suspiciously.
Then, on purpose, she puts the cookie jar on the highest shelf in the cupboard.
Ava watches Witch McCluskey right the chair, and bring it back to the dining table.
Then Witch McCluskey returns, staring down at her.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
You, young lady, are in a lot of trouble.
INT. AVA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Witch McCluskey enters with Ava towed behind her.
Her skirt drags across the floor as TOYS everywhere cower in fear.
Witch McCluskey whisks Ava up, and puts her into a CRIB.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
Naughty little girls have to be punished.
Witch McCluskey looks at Ava, and reaches for her. Ava flinches, and then Witch McCluskey’s hand goes upwards instead to the hanging BABY MONITOR, which she switches on.
She gives Ava one last disapproving look, before sweeping out of the dark room, closing the door behind her.
Ava looks out from behind the WOODEN BARS of the crib, as it turns into a METAL CELL.
She stands and presses her face to the bars, arms outreached to the toys, who shrink back fearfully in their places.
AVA
Help.
The toys all shake their heads. Ava looks around in despair, shakes the bars, and then, defeated, sits in the crib. She looks around one last time, for a long moment.
A METAL BAR glimmers back into wood.
Ava reaches out a frightened hand to touch it.
The crib turns, slowly, back into wood. One by one, the toys drift back into lifelessness.
She realizes that she is the only one in the room – and might always have been.
Ava looks at the wooden bars, and the lifeless toys, and the creatures in the wallpaper that do not run, laugh, and cry.
She lies down, eyes wide and sad.
She begins to cry in this room that gleams only with dead light.
And then, very quietly at first, a SCRATCHING SOUND at the door.
Ava wipes her eyes, and sits up. The sound GROWS.
AVA
Bubby?
A small WOOF.
AVA
(continuing)
Bubby!
Ava grabs the bars and shakes them as they turn back into metal. The WOOFS are joined by sounds of a FIST PAWING AT THE DOOR. She looks around frantically, and sees the baby monitor. WOOF.
She smiles, and wipes the tear streaks off.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Witch McCluskey is enjoying her criminal procedural drama when –
A PIERCING SCREAM, that only a child of two can scream, explodes from the baby monitor beside her on the couch.
Witch McCluskey looks very annoyed. The scream stops. She looks relieved for about a second, before –
A DEEP BREATH, followed by another PIERCING SCREAM.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
Aurrgh!
Another DEEP BREATH, and another PIERCING SCREAM, as Witch McCluskey gets up.
INT. AVA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
The door slams open, revealing Witch McCluskey, with Buddy beside her, winking, both fists on the ground.
Buddy secretly lifts up one fist, to reveal under it a FRAGMENT OF GLOWING COOKIE that he saved from earlier. He quickly covers it again and nods at Ava.
Ava smiles.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
I will call your mother and tell her that you’re being very naughty.
AVA
Play toys.
Witch McCluskey looks at her suspiciously.
AVA
(continuing)
Play toys.
INT. DINING ROOM AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Annoyed, Witch McCluskey watches both the criminal procedural drama and, in the corner, Ava. A CORDLESS PHONE lies beside her on the couch.
Ava plays with her toys innocently, Buddy by her side.
Buddy suddenly bites a TOY and runs off with it. Ava SQUEALS and runs after him.
Witch McCluskey grips the cordless phone tightly for a long moment, and then eventually releases it.
She picks up the TV REMOTE CONTROL, turns up the volume, and then gets up and goes after Ava.
INT. HALLWAY – NIGHT
As SOUNDS OF POLICE GOING AFTER A RUNAWAY SUSPECT play –
Buddy, with a toy in his mouth, running gleefully.
Behind him, Ava, grinning, chasing at top speed.
Behind her, Witch McCluskey, determinedly PUFFING, walking as quickly as she can, the skulls on the staff wincing with every stab of the staff on the ground.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
As SOUNDS OF THE POLICE GOING AFTER A RUNAWAY SUSPECT play –
The open doorway to the hallway is empty.
Buddy runs past the doorway along the hallway to the living room, a DIFFERENT TOY in his mouth.
Ava zips by, GIGGLING.
A few seconds later, Witch McCluskey hobbles quickly by.
The doorway is empty again.
Buddy zooms past from the direction of the living room, a DIFFERENT TOY in his mouth.
Ava follows, SQUEALING.
A longer wait than before, before Witch McCluskey hobbles more slowly by, clearly tiring.
Buddy, to the living room.
Ava.
A wait, and then, from somewhere in the hallway near Rebecca’s room –
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
I’ll. I’ll. I’ll just. Wait. Here.
Buddy appears in the hallway, framed by the doorway, looking towards the direction of Rebecca’s room.
Ava appears beside him, looking in the same direction.
Ava takes a small sideways step towards the door to the kitchen.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
No…
Ava takes another step, halfway through the door.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
(continuing)
Ava…
Ava GIGGLES and runs into the kitchen, Buddy following. They disappear from view as they head for the stove.
COP
Damn it! We lost him!
A few seconds later, Witch McCluskey enters the kitchen, breathing heavily. She pauses as soon as she enters, to catch her breath, and to point an unsteady finger.
WITCH MCCLUSKEY
You… You…
Ava appears, followed by Buddy. Ava grabs Witch McCluskey’s finger, and shakes it.
AVA
TV?
Witch McCluskey breathes, and glares.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Witch McCluskey and Ava watch a TV SHOW together, Buddy lying on the couch beside Ava, his head on her lap.
Witch McCluskey’s eyes keep fluttering close.
They eventually close, and do not open. She begins to SNORE.
Ava looks at Buddy, and they grin at each other.
Ava looks at Witch McCluskey. Witch McCluskey transforms back into Mrs. McCluskey.
Ava turns to Buddy.
AVA
(whispers)
Just like Mommy.
Ava puts a finger on her lips, and the two quietly sneak off towards the kitchen.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
Ava, with Buddy beside her, looks up at the cupboard that still leaks golden light.
She looks around.
She catches the ROWS OF DRAWERS just as they close completely.
Ava has a good idea.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
As Mrs. McCluskey SNORES peacefully on the couch –
Ava appears in the background from the kitchen door, and drags the tall chair, who is still not helping, into the kitchen.
She reappears, Buddy following this time, and drags another tall chair, who is no more helpful.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
A LOOSE BRIDGE of chairs connects the drawers on one side of the kitchen to the stove on the other. Ava stands behind it, near the drawers. She turns to the drawers and
OPENS the third drawer from the chairs on the bottom row. It is empty.
Ava steps into the drawer carefully, and opens the drawer diagonally above it, forming another step towards the bridge. It is filled with PLATES.
Ava looks at Buddy, who is waiting patiently on the ground. He smiles at her.
Ava hands the plates one by one down to Buddy, who bites them and puts them gently on the ground.
She steps into the now empty drawer, and opens the next one. Immediately an ARMY OF FORKS, KNIVES, AND SPOONS stands up, pointing their sharp bits at Ava.
The formation of cutlery shines dangerously. Ava smiles down at them as her hand secretly creeps up on them from the side.
A FORK hops a little, and swivels to meet her hand, angling itself for a good stab if the hand dares to come any closer.
The hand withdraws.
Ava folds her arms angrily, stuck.
A small WOOF, followed by a soft GROWL.
Ava and the cutlery turn to Buddy.
Half of the cutlery turns back to watch Ava, while the other half hops over to the railing of the drawer, leaning over to get a better look at Buddy.
Buddy GROWLS, and makes SNAPPING sounds. Then he smiles and takes a step closer to the cutlery.
They hop a step backwards.
They turn to face Ava, who now smiles.
Ava hands the cutlery down to Buddy, who lays them on the more and more messy floor.
Ava climbs onto the last step, and gets from there onto the first chair.
She looks at Buddy and smiles excitedly. Buddy nods.
The floor looks very very far below.
Ava takes a DEEP BREATH and EXHALES, and stretches both arms outwards to balance as she crosses a little wobblily over to the next chair.
Ava crosses the entire bridge.
She climbs on top of the stove.
She opens the cupboard.
She can’t reach the cookie jar on the top shelf. Ava tiptoes and reaches as high as she can reach, but her hands just barely brush the shelf.
She stops trying, and thinks.
An idea hits her.
She goes to the edge of the stove.
AVA
Bubby!
Buddy looks at her expectantly.
Ava gestures for Buddy to join her.
Buddy climbs the drawers and crosses the bridge.
Ava helps Buddy onto the stove.
Buddy semi-lifts Ava, who grabs the cookie jar.
Ava puts the cookie jar down in between them. They look at each other excitedly, as the plates and cutlery on the ground look on at their triumph.
Ava slowly takes off the lid. Golden light bursts forth.
Ava and Buddy smile at each other, very excited.
Ava takes a GLOWING COOKIE out, and gives it to Buddy, who bites it happily.
She watches Buddy chew it.
Then, Ava reaches into the cookie jar.
But she pauses. She looks down at her hand in the jar, and suddenly she’s not so sure.
She looks at Buddy, who smiles at her, nodding at her to take a cookie for herself.
Still the hand doesn’t move.
The plates and cutlery lean forward, waiting.
Ava slowly takes her hand out…
Her hand is empty.
Buddy tries to reach into the cookie jar to get a cookie for her, but Ava takes his fist and puts it away from the jar, shaking her head.
AVA
(grown-up-like)
No. One cookie only. I give you.
She puts the lid back on. Buddy looks at her. Ava looks unsurely self-satisfied, like she knows she’s done something important and good, but she’s not quite sure what it is exactly and why. But it still makes her feel important and good.
Ava smiles at Buddy, and ruffles his hair. Then she smiles again as an idea hits her.
She sweeps the CRUMBS from Buddy’s cookie into her other hand.
INT. DINING AND LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Crumbs, on Mrs. McCluskey’s blouse. Mrs. McCluskey, Ava, and Buddy are napping, Ava curled up on the couch with a hand on Buddy’s body as if in mid-stroke.
A door OPENS.
REBECCA
Mrs. McCluskey? Ava?
Mrs. McCluskey stirs, and shakes her head rapidly to wake up.
She gets up and goes to meet Rebecca and Michael.
Ava’s eyes flutter open, as does Buddy’s.
REBECCA
Mrs. McCluskey! Really.
MRS. MCCLUSKEY
I can assure you, Mrs. Williams…
Ava and Buddy smile sleepily at each other, slowly at first, and then with gigantic grins.
Story: Dreammaking
A Polaroid, taken of a dead man. It is held between the first phalanx of a thumb, and the second phalanxes of index and middle fingers, of a left hand. The blood is firebrick in color, the hair chocolate brown, the shirt royal-blue, and the ground is tiled in white and alice-blue, flecked with black.
The contrast between the sharp colors disappears, slowly. Delineated lines blur. An unfocussed sepia tone encroaches from the sides, masking and merging with each brightening color. The fingers shake, jerking from the fulcrum of the wrist. The Polaroid flaps.
The colors continue to illuminate with a soft glow, shading into light reddish-browns, dark reddish-browns, and the spectrum of reddish-browns in between. The fingers shake, jerking from the fulcrum of the wrist. The Polaroid flaps.
The reddish-brown pigments whiten. The Polaroid blanks, and blackens into negative.
The fingers pass the Polaroid into the right hand, which slots it into the thin emitting rectangle of the Polaroid camera. A flash. The dead man’s killer takes a picture. His face is streaked in lines of blood as he hooks the camera on his belt, under his suit jacket.
Blood flows up a wall. A bullet shell casing. A blood-spattered pair of spectacles. The dead man, waist-up. The gun flies from the ground into his killer’s right hand. He bends down. He aims. The shell casing rolls. The dead man’s glasses attach themselves to his head as the blood on the walls unattach themselves and zip into his head. The shell casing enters the chamber of the gun. A brief flash. A yell, interrupted, as the dead man, dead no more, turns his head.
Black out.
These are the facts. But what do they mean?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene emphasizing cause and effect. Each effect is presented, and then, through the reversal of time in the scene, its cause is revealed. There is a Polaroid of a dead man. The Polaroid comes from the Polaroid camera. The Polaroid camera belongs to the dead man’s killer. The dead man’s killer murders because his victim yells. Each consequence regresses to its genesis, which is in turn the consequence of another previous genesis.
The link of causality from oblivion to origin, traced in the opening scene’s time reversal, is further explored through the unique narrative structure of “Memento”, consisting of two alternating narrative strands, one in color and another in black-and-white. While the black-and-white sequence occurs chronologically forwards, the color sequence occurs chronologically backwards, and therefore the meaning of each color scene becomes dependent on its proceeding predecessor. In the opening scene, Leonard Shelby completes his revenge by killing Teddy, the corrupt cop responsible for the vicious robbery that left his wife Catherine dead and himself unable to make or hold onto new memories. In the next color scene, Leonard lures Teddy to the place where he will pay for his crime. Because each color scene (except for the opening scene) shows Leonard acting to achieve his desired result, and at the same time is itself the result of previous choices, a question is necessarily posed: How much are our decisions shaped by what we want, and how much is it informed by what we were? In what ways are our futures predetermined by our inevitable existence as relics of our histories?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene exploring the nature of redemption. Leonard’s retributive justice redresses the wrongs of the past by attacking their cause, and the fading of the Polaroid thus symbolizes the process of ‘wiping the slate clean’ on two levels. The clearly defined colors and lines of the Polaroid, an exact replication of Leonard’s revenge killing, blur into the sepia tones of the past, and then gradually vanish into literally negative existence. On one hand, the act of vigilantism enables Leonard to metaphorically erase Teddy, and Teddy’s horrific bearing on his life. On the other, the dissolution of the Polaroid itself represents Leonard’s redemption from taking the law into his own hands.
But the exact moment in which Leonard makes the decision that will eventually result in Teddy’s death is in the final scene of the film, where the two narrative strands come together, black-and-white blending into color. It is then that we understand that the black-and-white sequence takes place in its entirety before the color sequence, and is the latter’s cause. It is also then that we realize the film is really about Leonard’s choices regarding Teddy, and how those choices, made during the black-and-white past, result in the color present, and eventually in Teddy’s death. The opening scene then is only an encapsulation – Leonard’s true redemption requires the regression of the color sequence to the decisive instant between black-and-white past and color present in which Leonard has to decide whether to make his momentous decision. This is the significance of the reverse chronology reaching forwards, but into the past, and the significance of the two differently colored sequences’ point of collision: If our decisions are at least partly decided by our pasts, how much are our actions to determine our futures really our attempts to figuratively change those pasts? If you decide to ace a test, how much are you driven by the prospect of success, and how much are you compelled by the specter of another test already failed? Is it even possible to understand the competing claims of yesterday and tomorrow?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene about limited knowledge. A man has been killed. His killer has taken a Polaroid. The cause of death is a bullet to the head. The gun was fired because the victim yelled. But just as crucial information might be forthcoming, the scene ends, cutting to the darkness of ignorance.
In the next scene we discover Leonard and Teddy’s names, and the ostensible reason Leonard is killing Teddy. We are no longer as in the dark as before. But as the color sequence progresses the reason of revenge becomes more and more debatable and complicated. It is not only a simple case of revenge. Even if Teddy destroyed Leonard’s life, Leonard is being manipulated by a woman with her own agenda. Natalie is making use of his anterograde amnesia to wreak her own vengeance on Teddy, the dirty cop her drug dealing boyfriend Jimmy Grantz went to meet before he mysteriously disappeared. But while each color scene changes the meaning of all the ones before it, each revelation is forgotten as soon as Leonard’s mind resets at the end of the scene. He is therefore left to deal with the consequences of his actions even as he no longer remembers the causes that begot them. The equal-length editing of the color scenes thus underlines the regular failure of our memories, even as they change us.
But the limitations of knowledge do not only arise from forgetfulness. Perfect knowledge entails not only perfect remembrance of history, but also the perfect understanding of the far-reaching consequences of history. The black-and-white sequence, concerning Leonard’s telephone conversation with an unheard someone, chronologically precedes and causes the color sequence, but filmically alternates with it. But because we do not understand this connection until the two meld together at the very end, we cannot appreciate the significance of the black-and-white past even as it creates the color present. The editing choice of alternating the sequences thus exacerbates the problem of memory: We forget, and even when we remember we cannot completely grasp the ramifications of those remembrances, even as they affect us. In Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization And Its Discontents”, for example, Freud illustrates how “the unduly lenient and indulgent father” might paradoxically and unknowingly create a suicidal child (93), a theme also explored in Nicholas Ray’s 1955 film “Rebel Without A Cause”, through its half-aware protagonist Jim Stark. Imperfect knowledge has many repercussions, and this is only one of them.
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene repeated. The Polaroid taken of Teddy is angled forty-five degrees to the right, and held in Leonard’s left hand, between the first phalanx of the thumb, and the second phalanxes of the index and middle fingers. The Polaroid takes up roughly half of the screen, and the composition is frozen until the instant the Polaroid begins to discolor.
The final scene of “Memento” begins in black-and-white. Leonard’s telephone rings again, and we learn that he has been talking to a cop – Teddy. Teddy has information on the robber that killed Catherine and caused his condition. Teddy, in fact, can arrange a meeting with this robber, a drug dealer by the name of Jimmy Grantz. Just as Natalie maneuvers Leonard to her own ends in the color present, so did Teddy manipulate Leonard to his own ends in the black-and-white past.
Leonard predictably kills Jimmy Grantz. A Polaroid is taken of Grantz, by Leonard. The Polaroid taken of Grantz is angled forty-five degrees to the right, and held in Leonard’s left hand, between the first phalanx of the thumb, and the second phalanxes of the index and middle fingers. The Polaroid takes up roughly half of the screen, and the composition is frozen until the instant the Polaroid begins to colorize. It is at this moment that black-and-white bleeds into color.
Soon after Grantz’s death, Teddy arrives. Leonard, who does not remember Teddy, threatens to kill Teddy, who in turns reveals not only that Leonard has acted as Teddy’s personal “killing machine” for quite a while, but also that Catherine did not die in the robbery. The story that Leonard tells in the black-and-white sequence, of a man named Sammy Jenkis who suffered from the same condition, is in fact his own story. Catherine died from an insulin overdose after instructing Leonard to inject her again and again, determined to prove that Leonard’s condition was irreversible, or that he could snap out of it if her life was at stake.
The revelation shatters Leonard. The fateful decision to execute Jimmy escalated into Teddy’s confession, escalates into Leonard’s fateful decision to forget it, escalates into Natalie’s convincing of Leonard that Teddy is his wife’s killer, and results, finally, in the fateful decision to execute Teddy. The parallel exploitations engineered first by Teddy and then Natalie culminates in the parallel compositions of the shots of Jimmy and Teddy’s Polaroid-ed deaths, enabled by knowledge imperfect and deliberately forgotten. The black-and-white of Jimmy’s death is repeated in Teddy’s color death, which will fade into black-and-white and be repeated in another victim’s color death, in an endless cycle.
This, then, is the true horror that attends ignorance of the past – the Sisyphean torture of repetition. The semi-conscious struggle for redemption from and revenge on our pasts that is not even remembered when achieved. Philosopher and poet George Santayana comments in his book “The Life Of Reason” that we “who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Not only this – we do not even recognize that we are condemned.
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene about the struggle to remember. Leonard holds onto the Polaroid he has taken of Teddy. It is an eternal reminder of Teddy’s death, and therefore of the satiety of his vengeance.
By their very nature Polaroids are repositories of history. “Facts,” Leonard tells Natalie, “that you can rely on, that tell you who you are.” Throughout “Memento” Leonard collects Polaroids – Polaroids of his lodging, Polaroids of the people he meets, Polaroids of the places he needs to go to and has been to. His Polaroids represent the systematic perfection of memory, a system that, through the provision of knowledge, ‘cures’ the condition he is afflicted with.
In this context of symbolism Leonard’s quest for knowledge is only one variation of a theme that stretches back to the ancient Greeks. The plague decreed by the gods and suffered by the citizens of Thebes in Sophocles’ “Oedipus The King” is no different from the curse on Leonard – both stem from unsolved murders, and result, through blind revenge, in unjustified deaths. The citizens’ solution, as is Leonard’s, as is ours, lies therefore in acquiring knowledge of the past. If Leonard can hold onto the Polaroid of Teddy’s death, he can undo the cycle he is trapped in. If he can remember the achieving of his revenge, he no longer needs to repeat it. If we can remember the wrongs of our pasts perfectly, and understand how they affect us perfectly, and remember our avenging of those wrongs perfectly, then we are no longer doomed. We can move on. Only when knowledge of what to move on from is at hand, then, can we truly begin to move on. But is this not a paradox?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene about the struggle to forget. Leonard holds onto the Polaroid he has taken of Teddy. It is an eternal reminder of Teddy’s death, and therefore of the satiety of his vengeance, and therefore of the crime Teddy committed. And therefore it must be destroyed.
By their very nature Polaroids are repositories of history. Throughout “Memento” Leonard collects Polaroids – Polaroids of his lodging, Polaroids of the people he meets, Polaroids of the places he needs to go to and has been to. His Polaroids represent the systematic perfection of memory. But there is also one more invisible Polaroid that underpins the entire film – the Polaroid of Catherine near death that torments Leonard every time his mind resets. Ignorance traps us in repetition, but perfect memory traps us too, forcing us to eternally relive a moment. Leonard’s unendurable pain finds voice in Tiresias the prophet, who in “Oedipus The King” cries out “How terrible – to see the truth / when the truth is only pain to him who sees!” (176).
This, then, is the paradox of memory. Only when knowledge of what to move on from is at hand, can we begin to move on. But if knowledge of what to move on from is at hand, then it is impossible to move on. If moving forward necessarily requires knowledge of what we have left behind, do we not necessarily still carry what we have left behind with us? And yet if true respite can only come from complete forgetfulness, do we not expose ourselves to at least the possibility of repetition without realization? It is therefore only possible to exist meaningfully between total ignorance and perfect memory. But this inherently results in the alteration of reality.
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene of reality, simultaneously distorted and true. A man has been killed. Another man did the killing. And yet by the end of the scene, the man killed is no longer killed. The other man who did the killing has no longer done the killing. Which is true? Is the beginning of the scene the uncommitted projection of the end, or is the end of the scene the wishful thinking of the beginning?
The deliberate ambiguity of the opening scene reflects the shifting ‘realities’ of the entire film. If Leonard did kill Teddy, and the end of the scene is Leonard allowing himself to ‘let go’ of revenge, then Catherine’s death is remembered, but the grief that spurs revenge already ameliorated, even if nominally remembered. If Leonard did not kill Teddy, and the beginning of the scene is Leonard allowing himself to ‘achieve’ revenge, then Catherine’s death is remembered, but the grief partially forgotten, and Teddy’s ‘death’ completely deluded. Just as “Memento” can only fit into a specific film genre, such as film noir, with the ignorance of certain aspects that don’t match, so can Leonard’s ‘reality’ only stand if he ignores facts that don’t fit. And as it is with Leonard’s understanding of his situation, so it is with our understanding of Leonard’s situation. If we accept Leonard as a victim of anterograde amnesia, then we must explain his curious ability to instantly remember his condition and his purpose when his mind resets. If we accept that conditioned memory is possible, then we must explain his inability to condition himself to remember the exact truth of the past, whatever that may be, or even to remember that he has already achieved vengeance. Whichever choice we make, explanations have to be provided for the unexplainable, and therefore the extent of Leonard’s victimization and culpability depends entirely on the context of our judgment. The facts of his actions remain the same, but the context determines where he belongs in the spectrum between pawn and arbiter.
The opening scene is a scene of many possibilities. It can be a scene emphasizing cause and effect. It can be a scene exploring the nature of redemption. It can be a scene about limited knowledge. It can be a scene repeated. It can be a scene about the struggle to remember. It can be a scene about the struggle to forget. It can be a scene of reality, simultaneously distorted and true.
The facts remain the same for all of these scenes. A Polaroid, taken of a dead man. Fact. The blood is firebrick in color, the hair chocolate brown, the shirt royal-blue, and the ground is tiled in white and alice-blue, flecked with black. Fact. The dead man’s killer takes a picture. Fact. A bullet shell casing. Fact. A brief flash. Fact. A yell, interrupted. Fact.
But while these facts remain the same for all of the scenes, each scene requires the application of a different angle to those facts. Narrative structure. Color. Editing. Composition. Symbolism. Context. The whole film itself, through the camera that tracks only Leonard or what Leonard is looking at, is an angle – Leonard’s. The whole effect of the film itself, through our individual understanding of it, is an angle – our own. In the same way that Leonard imposes his delusions onto the world and his past as reality, so do we impose our delusions onto the world and our pasts as reality, only we call them instinct, or phobia, or conditioning – different names serving the same purpose, which is to allow us to process our history, and the world, in a way that enables our continued survival. The solution to the paradox of memory therefore lies in un-reality, where the selectivity and the subjectivity of facts both past and present can be crafted into a tenable existence.
This, then, is the real paradox of living that results from the paradox of memory. If, as philosopher Immanuel Kant argued in his 1781 “Critique Of Pure Reason”, information is inevitably adapted by our minds’ internal structures so that we may understand it, then we are all living in our own heads, and real and un-real, delusion and actuality, therefore become meaningless terms, since we cannot tell the difference. As a global society, then, all values such as ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ – even ‘truth’ itself – also become mere social contracts, ephemeral as the blinking of an eye.
“I have to believe that the world doesn’t disappear when I close my eyes,” Leonard says poignantly. But it does. “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so,” Hamlet says (51). This is also true. But we have to think, if we are to exist. We have to give meanings to meaningless facts, if we are to make sense of them. We have to sign social contracts, if the world is not to spiral out of control. We have to, in essence, make our lives mementos – facts, selected from thought, supplied with meaning, representing a common bond between two people. It is the only way the world doesn’t disappear, even if it is an impossible dream.
_______________________________
WORKS CITED
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique Of Pure Reason. 1929.
Memento. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Guy Pearce, Carrie Ann Moss, and Joe Pantoliano. I Remember Productions LLC. 2000.
Rebel Without A Cause. Dir. Nicholas Ray. Perf. James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo. Warner Bros. Production. 1955.
Santayana, George. The Life Of Reason. 2005.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. A. R. Braunmuller. The Pelican Shakespeare. 2001. 51.
Sophocles. “Oedipus The King”. The Three Theban Plays. Trans. Robert Fagles. Penguin Books. 1984. 176.
The contrast between the sharp colors disappears, slowly. Delineated lines blur. An unfocussed sepia tone encroaches from the sides, masking and merging with each brightening color. The fingers shake, jerking from the fulcrum of the wrist. The Polaroid flaps.
The colors continue to illuminate with a soft glow, shading into light reddish-browns, dark reddish-browns, and the spectrum of reddish-browns in between. The fingers shake, jerking from the fulcrum of the wrist. The Polaroid flaps.
The reddish-brown pigments whiten. The Polaroid blanks, and blackens into negative.
The fingers pass the Polaroid into the right hand, which slots it into the thin emitting rectangle of the Polaroid camera. A flash. The dead man’s killer takes a picture. His face is streaked in lines of blood as he hooks the camera on his belt, under his suit jacket.
Blood flows up a wall. A bullet shell casing. A blood-spattered pair of spectacles. The dead man, waist-up. The gun flies from the ground into his killer’s right hand. He bends down. He aims. The shell casing rolls. The dead man’s glasses attach themselves to his head as the blood on the walls unattach themselves and zip into his head. The shell casing enters the chamber of the gun. A brief flash. A yell, interrupted, as the dead man, dead no more, turns his head.
Black out.
These are the facts. But what do they mean?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene emphasizing cause and effect. Each effect is presented, and then, through the reversal of time in the scene, its cause is revealed. There is a Polaroid of a dead man. The Polaroid comes from the Polaroid camera. The Polaroid camera belongs to the dead man’s killer. The dead man’s killer murders because his victim yells. Each consequence regresses to its genesis, which is in turn the consequence of another previous genesis.
The link of causality from oblivion to origin, traced in the opening scene’s time reversal, is further explored through the unique narrative structure of “Memento”, consisting of two alternating narrative strands, one in color and another in black-and-white. While the black-and-white sequence occurs chronologically forwards, the color sequence occurs chronologically backwards, and therefore the meaning of each color scene becomes dependent on its proceeding predecessor. In the opening scene, Leonard Shelby completes his revenge by killing Teddy, the corrupt cop responsible for the vicious robbery that left his wife Catherine dead and himself unable to make or hold onto new memories. In the next color scene, Leonard lures Teddy to the place where he will pay for his crime. Because each color scene (except for the opening scene) shows Leonard acting to achieve his desired result, and at the same time is itself the result of previous choices, a question is necessarily posed: How much are our decisions shaped by what we want, and how much is it informed by what we were? In what ways are our futures predetermined by our inevitable existence as relics of our histories?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene exploring the nature of redemption. Leonard’s retributive justice redresses the wrongs of the past by attacking their cause, and the fading of the Polaroid thus symbolizes the process of ‘wiping the slate clean’ on two levels. The clearly defined colors and lines of the Polaroid, an exact replication of Leonard’s revenge killing, blur into the sepia tones of the past, and then gradually vanish into literally negative existence. On one hand, the act of vigilantism enables Leonard to metaphorically erase Teddy, and Teddy’s horrific bearing on his life. On the other, the dissolution of the Polaroid itself represents Leonard’s redemption from taking the law into his own hands.
But the exact moment in which Leonard makes the decision that will eventually result in Teddy’s death is in the final scene of the film, where the two narrative strands come together, black-and-white blending into color. It is then that we understand that the black-and-white sequence takes place in its entirety before the color sequence, and is the latter’s cause. It is also then that we realize the film is really about Leonard’s choices regarding Teddy, and how those choices, made during the black-and-white past, result in the color present, and eventually in Teddy’s death. The opening scene then is only an encapsulation – Leonard’s true redemption requires the regression of the color sequence to the decisive instant between black-and-white past and color present in which Leonard has to decide whether to make his momentous decision. This is the significance of the reverse chronology reaching forwards, but into the past, and the significance of the two differently colored sequences’ point of collision: If our decisions are at least partly decided by our pasts, how much are our actions to determine our futures really our attempts to figuratively change those pasts? If you decide to ace a test, how much are you driven by the prospect of success, and how much are you compelled by the specter of another test already failed? Is it even possible to understand the competing claims of yesterday and tomorrow?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene about limited knowledge. A man has been killed. His killer has taken a Polaroid. The cause of death is a bullet to the head. The gun was fired because the victim yelled. But just as crucial information might be forthcoming, the scene ends, cutting to the darkness of ignorance.
In the next scene we discover Leonard and Teddy’s names, and the ostensible reason Leonard is killing Teddy. We are no longer as in the dark as before. But as the color sequence progresses the reason of revenge becomes more and more debatable and complicated. It is not only a simple case of revenge. Even if Teddy destroyed Leonard’s life, Leonard is being manipulated by a woman with her own agenda. Natalie is making use of his anterograde amnesia to wreak her own vengeance on Teddy, the dirty cop her drug dealing boyfriend Jimmy Grantz went to meet before he mysteriously disappeared. But while each color scene changes the meaning of all the ones before it, each revelation is forgotten as soon as Leonard’s mind resets at the end of the scene. He is therefore left to deal with the consequences of his actions even as he no longer remembers the causes that begot them. The equal-length editing of the color scenes thus underlines the regular failure of our memories, even as they change us.
But the limitations of knowledge do not only arise from forgetfulness. Perfect knowledge entails not only perfect remembrance of history, but also the perfect understanding of the far-reaching consequences of history. The black-and-white sequence, concerning Leonard’s telephone conversation with an unheard someone, chronologically precedes and causes the color sequence, but filmically alternates with it. But because we do not understand this connection until the two meld together at the very end, we cannot appreciate the significance of the black-and-white past even as it creates the color present. The editing choice of alternating the sequences thus exacerbates the problem of memory: We forget, and even when we remember we cannot completely grasp the ramifications of those remembrances, even as they affect us. In Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization And Its Discontents”, for example, Freud illustrates how “the unduly lenient and indulgent father” might paradoxically and unknowingly create a suicidal child (93), a theme also explored in Nicholas Ray’s 1955 film “Rebel Without A Cause”, through its half-aware protagonist Jim Stark. Imperfect knowledge has many repercussions, and this is only one of them.
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene repeated. The Polaroid taken of Teddy is angled forty-five degrees to the right, and held in Leonard’s left hand, between the first phalanx of the thumb, and the second phalanxes of the index and middle fingers. The Polaroid takes up roughly half of the screen, and the composition is frozen until the instant the Polaroid begins to discolor.
The final scene of “Memento” begins in black-and-white. Leonard’s telephone rings again, and we learn that he has been talking to a cop – Teddy. Teddy has information on the robber that killed Catherine and caused his condition. Teddy, in fact, can arrange a meeting with this robber, a drug dealer by the name of Jimmy Grantz. Just as Natalie maneuvers Leonard to her own ends in the color present, so did Teddy manipulate Leonard to his own ends in the black-and-white past.
Leonard predictably kills Jimmy Grantz. A Polaroid is taken of Grantz, by Leonard. The Polaroid taken of Grantz is angled forty-five degrees to the right, and held in Leonard’s left hand, between the first phalanx of the thumb, and the second phalanxes of the index and middle fingers. The Polaroid takes up roughly half of the screen, and the composition is frozen until the instant the Polaroid begins to colorize. It is at this moment that black-and-white bleeds into color.
Soon after Grantz’s death, Teddy arrives. Leonard, who does not remember Teddy, threatens to kill Teddy, who in turns reveals not only that Leonard has acted as Teddy’s personal “killing machine” for quite a while, but also that Catherine did not die in the robbery. The story that Leonard tells in the black-and-white sequence, of a man named Sammy Jenkis who suffered from the same condition, is in fact his own story. Catherine died from an insulin overdose after instructing Leonard to inject her again and again, determined to prove that Leonard’s condition was irreversible, or that he could snap out of it if her life was at stake.
The revelation shatters Leonard. The fateful decision to execute Jimmy escalated into Teddy’s confession, escalates into Leonard’s fateful decision to forget it, escalates into Natalie’s convincing of Leonard that Teddy is his wife’s killer, and results, finally, in the fateful decision to execute Teddy. The parallel exploitations engineered first by Teddy and then Natalie culminates in the parallel compositions of the shots of Jimmy and Teddy’s Polaroid-ed deaths, enabled by knowledge imperfect and deliberately forgotten. The black-and-white of Jimmy’s death is repeated in Teddy’s color death, which will fade into black-and-white and be repeated in another victim’s color death, in an endless cycle.
This, then, is the true horror that attends ignorance of the past – the Sisyphean torture of repetition. The semi-conscious struggle for redemption from and revenge on our pasts that is not even remembered when achieved. Philosopher and poet George Santayana comments in his book “The Life Of Reason” that we “who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Not only this – we do not even recognize that we are condemned.
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene about the struggle to remember. Leonard holds onto the Polaroid he has taken of Teddy. It is an eternal reminder of Teddy’s death, and therefore of the satiety of his vengeance.
By their very nature Polaroids are repositories of history. “Facts,” Leonard tells Natalie, “that you can rely on, that tell you who you are.” Throughout “Memento” Leonard collects Polaroids – Polaroids of his lodging, Polaroids of the people he meets, Polaroids of the places he needs to go to and has been to. His Polaroids represent the systematic perfection of memory, a system that, through the provision of knowledge, ‘cures’ the condition he is afflicted with.
In this context of symbolism Leonard’s quest for knowledge is only one variation of a theme that stretches back to the ancient Greeks. The plague decreed by the gods and suffered by the citizens of Thebes in Sophocles’ “Oedipus The King” is no different from the curse on Leonard – both stem from unsolved murders, and result, through blind revenge, in unjustified deaths. The citizens’ solution, as is Leonard’s, as is ours, lies therefore in acquiring knowledge of the past. If Leonard can hold onto the Polaroid of Teddy’s death, he can undo the cycle he is trapped in. If he can remember the achieving of his revenge, he no longer needs to repeat it. If we can remember the wrongs of our pasts perfectly, and understand how they affect us perfectly, and remember our avenging of those wrongs perfectly, then we are no longer doomed. We can move on. Only when knowledge of what to move on from is at hand, then, can we truly begin to move on. But is this not a paradox?
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene about the struggle to forget. Leonard holds onto the Polaroid he has taken of Teddy. It is an eternal reminder of Teddy’s death, and therefore of the satiety of his vengeance, and therefore of the crime Teddy committed. And therefore it must be destroyed.
By their very nature Polaroids are repositories of history. Throughout “Memento” Leonard collects Polaroids – Polaroids of his lodging, Polaroids of the people he meets, Polaroids of the places he needs to go to and has been to. His Polaroids represent the systematic perfection of memory. But there is also one more invisible Polaroid that underpins the entire film – the Polaroid of Catherine near death that torments Leonard every time his mind resets. Ignorance traps us in repetition, but perfect memory traps us too, forcing us to eternally relive a moment. Leonard’s unendurable pain finds voice in Tiresias the prophet, who in “Oedipus The King” cries out “How terrible – to see the truth / when the truth is only pain to him who sees!” (176).
This, then, is the paradox of memory. Only when knowledge of what to move on from is at hand, can we begin to move on. But if knowledge of what to move on from is at hand, then it is impossible to move on. If moving forward necessarily requires knowledge of what we have left behind, do we not necessarily still carry what we have left behind with us? And yet if true respite can only come from complete forgetfulness, do we not expose ourselves to at least the possibility of repetition without realization? It is therefore only possible to exist meaningfully between total ignorance and perfect memory. But this inherently results in the alteration of reality.
The opening scene of “Memento” is a scene of reality, simultaneously distorted and true. A man has been killed. Another man did the killing. And yet by the end of the scene, the man killed is no longer killed. The other man who did the killing has no longer done the killing. Which is true? Is the beginning of the scene the uncommitted projection of the end, or is the end of the scene the wishful thinking of the beginning?
The deliberate ambiguity of the opening scene reflects the shifting ‘realities’ of the entire film. If Leonard did kill Teddy, and the end of the scene is Leonard allowing himself to ‘let go’ of revenge, then Catherine’s death is remembered, but the grief that spurs revenge already ameliorated, even if nominally remembered. If Leonard did not kill Teddy, and the beginning of the scene is Leonard allowing himself to ‘achieve’ revenge, then Catherine’s death is remembered, but the grief partially forgotten, and Teddy’s ‘death’ completely deluded. Just as “Memento” can only fit into a specific film genre, such as film noir, with the ignorance of certain aspects that don’t match, so can Leonard’s ‘reality’ only stand if he ignores facts that don’t fit. And as it is with Leonard’s understanding of his situation, so it is with our understanding of Leonard’s situation. If we accept Leonard as a victim of anterograde amnesia, then we must explain his curious ability to instantly remember his condition and his purpose when his mind resets. If we accept that conditioned memory is possible, then we must explain his inability to condition himself to remember the exact truth of the past, whatever that may be, or even to remember that he has already achieved vengeance. Whichever choice we make, explanations have to be provided for the unexplainable, and therefore the extent of Leonard’s victimization and culpability depends entirely on the context of our judgment. The facts of his actions remain the same, but the context determines where he belongs in the spectrum between pawn and arbiter.
The opening scene is a scene of many possibilities. It can be a scene emphasizing cause and effect. It can be a scene exploring the nature of redemption. It can be a scene about limited knowledge. It can be a scene repeated. It can be a scene about the struggle to remember. It can be a scene about the struggle to forget. It can be a scene of reality, simultaneously distorted and true.
The facts remain the same for all of these scenes. A Polaroid, taken of a dead man. Fact. The blood is firebrick in color, the hair chocolate brown, the shirt royal-blue, and the ground is tiled in white and alice-blue, flecked with black. Fact. The dead man’s killer takes a picture. Fact. A bullet shell casing. Fact. A brief flash. Fact. A yell, interrupted. Fact.
But while these facts remain the same for all of the scenes, each scene requires the application of a different angle to those facts. Narrative structure. Color. Editing. Composition. Symbolism. Context. The whole film itself, through the camera that tracks only Leonard or what Leonard is looking at, is an angle – Leonard’s. The whole effect of the film itself, through our individual understanding of it, is an angle – our own. In the same way that Leonard imposes his delusions onto the world and his past as reality, so do we impose our delusions onto the world and our pasts as reality, only we call them instinct, or phobia, or conditioning – different names serving the same purpose, which is to allow us to process our history, and the world, in a way that enables our continued survival. The solution to the paradox of memory therefore lies in un-reality, where the selectivity and the subjectivity of facts both past and present can be crafted into a tenable existence.
This, then, is the real paradox of living that results from the paradox of memory. If, as philosopher Immanuel Kant argued in his 1781 “Critique Of Pure Reason”, information is inevitably adapted by our minds’ internal structures so that we may understand it, then we are all living in our own heads, and real and un-real, delusion and actuality, therefore become meaningless terms, since we cannot tell the difference. As a global society, then, all values such as ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ – even ‘truth’ itself – also become mere social contracts, ephemeral as the blinking of an eye.
“I have to believe that the world doesn’t disappear when I close my eyes,” Leonard says poignantly. But it does. “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so,” Hamlet says (51). This is also true. But we have to think, if we are to exist. We have to give meanings to meaningless facts, if we are to make sense of them. We have to sign social contracts, if the world is not to spiral out of control. We have to, in essence, make our lives mementos – facts, selected from thought, supplied with meaning, representing a common bond between two people. It is the only way the world doesn’t disappear, even if it is an impossible dream.
_______________________________
WORKS CITED
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique Of Pure Reason. 1929.
Memento. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Guy Pearce, Carrie Ann Moss, and Joe Pantoliano. I Remember Productions LLC. 2000.
Rebel Without A Cause. Dir. Nicholas Ray. Perf. James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo. Warner Bros. Production. 1955.
Santayana, George. The Life Of Reason. 2005.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. A. R. Braunmuller. The Pelican Shakespeare. 2001. 51.
Sophocles. “Oedipus The King”. The Three Theban Plays. Trans. Robert Fagles. Penguin Books. 1984. 176.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Play: Real Dolls
The scene is a kitchen, with a table flanked by three chairs, one each to its left and right, and one behind the table. EVIE, female, late 20s, is sitting in the left chair, her handbag on the floor beside the chair. CORA, female, mid 20s, is sitting in the center. Evie’s hands are folded, and she looks angry, looking at Cora every once in a while. Cora remains completely motionless, with a plastic smile on her face. After a moment, ALLAN, male, mid 20s, enters, and sees Evie with Cora.
EVIE
Oh. You’re finally back. You should introduce me to your new friend –
ALLAN
I can explain –
EVIE
No. I don’t want you to explain.
ALLAN
You don’t?
EVIE
I want you to throw her – it – and any other (struggles to find the word) friends she might have out. I want you to get rid of any thing and everything that’s got to do with that.
Allan sits down on the right chair. The two stare at each other, with Cora in between.
ALLAN
No.
EVIE
No?
ALLAN
No. Throw her away? Get rid of her? Do you have any idea how much money I paid for her? I paid 6,500 –
EVIE
Six thousand five hundred dollars? Allan, are you insane?
ALLAN
Who are you to tell me how to spend my money? (inspired) Who are you to go snooping around in my closet?
EVIE
That’s not the point –
ALLAN
That is the point. It’s my closet, and it’s my money, and you have no right to tell me what to do with it. I bought her with my money, and if I want to buy another ten more of her that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Evie gets up.
EVIE
I don’t have to take this shit from you.
Evie crosses over to the right to leave the room, while talking.
EVIE (CONT’D)
You can call me after she’s (catches herself, frustrated) – it’s – gone.
ALLAN
You’re leaving because of a doll?
Evie stops right at the exit, and turns back to Allan. Allan turns to look at her.
ALLAN (CONT’D)
You’re jealous of her. Is she making you feel… uncomfortable? Does she make you feel… inadequate?
EVIE
You’re fucking a doll, Allan. I don’t think you should be calling anyone inadequate.
ALLAN
Hey, I’m not the one freaking out over this. (mimicking) “I’ll try anything. You buy it, I’ll try it.” I guess we know now who’s not that open-minded after all.
Allan turns his back to her, knowing that he’s got her. She struggles for a moment, and then walks back slowly to the left chair, sitting down. Allan smiles.
EVIE
You’re sick, Allan.
ALLAN
I’m not the one who’s got 89 dildos hidden under her bed, Eve. (at her look) Yeah, I counted. What, you think you’re the only one who gets to sneak around in other people’s bedrooms?
EVIE
A dildo isn’t – it’s not the same thing –
ALLAN
A dildo is a dead, plastic penis, Eve. You just haven’t gotten around to the whole body yet –
EVIE
What’s – that – got that I haven’t? God knows I’m game for more things than most women are – what else do you want from me? I’ve got bones, I just can’t bend myself into some positions –
ALLAN
It’s not about you, Eve. I just – I just have some needs –
EVIE
Then go out and buy a fucking watermelon! Or a plantain! Or a –
ALLAN
Fruit doesn’t do it for all of us, Eve. Just because you keep a bowl of abnormally large bananas in your room doesn’t mean I can just go out and buy –
EVIE
But why did you have to go and buy something like that? It’s – it’s wrong, Allan. There are just some lines that you don’t cross! There’s got to be some kind of boundary – I mean, look at her! She’s not just some – inflatable doll –
Evie gets up and goes to pull Cora’s chair so Cora is facing her. Evie bends down and touches Cora’s face, and then her upper arm. She looks at Allan.
EVIE (CONT’D)
She looks and feels just like a human being, Allan. Don’t you see how wrong –
ALLAN
I bought her because she looks and feels like a human being, Eve –
EVIE
But she’s not. I am. Aren’t I enough for you –
Allan gets up violently, his chair thrown back. He stares at Evie.
ALLAN
Yes, Eve. You’re enough. You’re more than enough, and that’s the whole fucking problem! Sometimes there’s so much of you that I don’t know where I am anymore.
Allan walks to the other side of Cora and lays his hands on Cora’s shoulders. Evie stares at the both of them, who are now facing her.
ALLAN (CONT’D)
I don’t hate you. I don’t even dislike you, as much as you annoy me sometimes. I love you, and I think I’ll never love anyone as much I love you. But – don’t you see – sometimes I don’t want a relationship, I don’t even want a hooker – I just want to sleep beside or hold someone, to have some sort of – contact – without feeling like there’s another person there, with all of her baggage. Don’t you understand that?
Evie stares at him, and begins shaking her head slowly.
EVIE
(still shaking her head) No. I don’t. I don’t understand any of this. I’ve done lots of crazy shit in my life, but this is sick, Allan. You’re sick. You need help. You’ve gone too far. We’ve done – and we can continue to do – lots of crazy things, things that you can’t even begin to imagine, but this can’t be one of them. I can’t do this. You can’t do this – not this.
ALLAN
This is who I am, Eve. She’s part of who I am. I can put her back in the closet if you want, but I can’t get rid of her. Even if you can’t understand that, even if you don’t want to see her anymore, you have to know that she’s always going to be here. You have to know that.
Allan looks at Evie. Evie stares at him and Cora. A moment pauses.
EVIE
I can – I can just – go.
Allan looks at her for a moment, and then, defeated, goes back to his chair and sits down. He looks at her.
ALLAN
Then go. You’re not afraid of Cora, Evie. You just don’t know who you are anymore – and I can’t help you with that.
Evie stares at Allan, and then abruptly she goes to get her bag. She looks at Allan for a moment more, and then she crosses to the right to leave. As she passes Allan, he grabs her arm. She stops to look down at him.
ALLAN
You’re never going to find somebody who doesn’t have a doll in his closet, Eve. If you leave now…
Evie stares down at Allan a moment more, and then she wrenches her arm from him and runs away. Allan doesn’t even look back when she leaves. A door slams. Allan smiles sadly, and looks at Cora, who is still where Evie left her.
ALLAN
You wanna watch some TV with me?
EVIE
Oh. You’re finally back. You should introduce me to your new friend –
ALLAN
I can explain –
EVIE
No. I don’t want you to explain.
ALLAN
You don’t?
EVIE
I want you to throw her – it – and any other (struggles to find the word) friends she might have out. I want you to get rid of any thing and everything that’s got to do with that.
Allan sits down on the right chair. The two stare at each other, with Cora in between.
ALLAN
No.
EVIE
No?
ALLAN
No. Throw her away? Get rid of her? Do you have any idea how much money I paid for her? I paid 6,500 –
EVIE
Six thousand five hundred dollars? Allan, are you insane?
ALLAN
Who are you to tell me how to spend my money? (inspired) Who are you to go snooping around in my closet?
EVIE
That’s not the point –
ALLAN
That is the point. It’s my closet, and it’s my money, and you have no right to tell me what to do with it. I bought her with my money, and if I want to buy another ten more of her that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Evie gets up.
EVIE
I don’t have to take this shit from you.
Evie crosses over to the right to leave the room, while talking.
EVIE (CONT’D)
You can call me after she’s (catches herself, frustrated) – it’s – gone.
ALLAN
You’re leaving because of a doll?
Evie stops right at the exit, and turns back to Allan. Allan turns to look at her.
ALLAN (CONT’D)
You’re jealous of her. Is she making you feel… uncomfortable? Does she make you feel… inadequate?
EVIE
You’re fucking a doll, Allan. I don’t think you should be calling anyone inadequate.
ALLAN
Hey, I’m not the one freaking out over this. (mimicking) “I’ll try anything. You buy it, I’ll try it.” I guess we know now who’s not that open-minded after all.
Allan turns his back to her, knowing that he’s got her. She struggles for a moment, and then walks back slowly to the left chair, sitting down. Allan smiles.
EVIE
You’re sick, Allan.
ALLAN
I’m not the one who’s got 89 dildos hidden under her bed, Eve. (at her look) Yeah, I counted. What, you think you’re the only one who gets to sneak around in other people’s bedrooms?
EVIE
A dildo isn’t – it’s not the same thing –
ALLAN
A dildo is a dead, plastic penis, Eve. You just haven’t gotten around to the whole body yet –
EVIE
What’s – that – got that I haven’t? God knows I’m game for more things than most women are – what else do you want from me? I’ve got bones, I just can’t bend myself into some positions –
ALLAN
It’s not about you, Eve. I just – I just have some needs –
EVIE
Then go out and buy a fucking watermelon! Or a plantain! Or a –
ALLAN
Fruit doesn’t do it for all of us, Eve. Just because you keep a bowl of abnormally large bananas in your room doesn’t mean I can just go out and buy –
EVIE
But why did you have to go and buy something like that? It’s – it’s wrong, Allan. There are just some lines that you don’t cross! There’s got to be some kind of boundary – I mean, look at her! She’s not just some – inflatable doll –
Evie gets up and goes to pull Cora’s chair so Cora is facing her. Evie bends down and touches Cora’s face, and then her upper arm. She looks at Allan.
EVIE (CONT’D)
She looks and feels just like a human being, Allan. Don’t you see how wrong –
ALLAN
I bought her because she looks and feels like a human being, Eve –
EVIE
But she’s not. I am. Aren’t I enough for you –
Allan gets up violently, his chair thrown back. He stares at Evie.
ALLAN
Yes, Eve. You’re enough. You’re more than enough, and that’s the whole fucking problem! Sometimes there’s so much of you that I don’t know where I am anymore.
Allan walks to the other side of Cora and lays his hands on Cora’s shoulders. Evie stares at the both of them, who are now facing her.
ALLAN (CONT’D)
I don’t hate you. I don’t even dislike you, as much as you annoy me sometimes. I love you, and I think I’ll never love anyone as much I love you. But – don’t you see – sometimes I don’t want a relationship, I don’t even want a hooker – I just want to sleep beside or hold someone, to have some sort of – contact – without feeling like there’s another person there, with all of her baggage. Don’t you understand that?
Evie stares at him, and begins shaking her head slowly.
EVIE
(still shaking her head) No. I don’t. I don’t understand any of this. I’ve done lots of crazy shit in my life, but this is sick, Allan. You’re sick. You need help. You’ve gone too far. We’ve done – and we can continue to do – lots of crazy things, things that you can’t even begin to imagine, but this can’t be one of them. I can’t do this. You can’t do this – not this.
ALLAN
This is who I am, Eve. She’s part of who I am. I can put her back in the closet if you want, but I can’t get rid of her. Even if you can’t understand that, even if you don’t want to see her anymore, you have to know that she’s always going to be here. You have to know that.
Allan looks at Evie. Evie stares at him and Cora. A moment pauses.
EVIE
I can – I can just – go.
Allan looks at her for a moment, and then, defeated, goes back to his chair and sits down. He looks at her.
ALLAN
Then go. You’re not afraid of Cora, Evie. You just don’t know who you are anymore – and I can’t help you with that.
Evie stares at Allan, and then abruptly she goes to get her bag. She looks at Allan for a moment more, and then she crosses to the right to leave. As she passes Allan, he grabs her arm. She stops to look down at him.
ALLAN
You’re never going to find somebody who doesn’t have a doll in his closet, Eve. If you leave now…
Evie stares down at Allan a moment more, and then she wrenches her arm from him and runs away. Allan doesn’t even look back when she leaves. A door slams. Allan smiles sadly, and looks at Cora, who is still where Evie left her.
ALLAN
You wanna watch some TV with me?
Story: Easy Questions
Just a few easy questions. All right. Name? Yinghao. Spelled Y-I-N-G? H-A-O. Sex, male; age? Twenty and four days… five hours, six minutes…. and thirty-one seconds. Address. 25 Butterfly Avenue. Along Geylang Road, is that right? The one and only. 25. Postal code, 432051. Okay then. Do you need my identification card? Just the number. 8263124. And the letter. S. Got it. Anything else? Blood type. Of course; O. Universal donor. That’s right. But not universal receiver. How unlucky for me.
All right then; do you know James? Yes, I do. How long have you known him? Is that on there? No, not really. I’ve known him for a pretty long time. Be specific; when did you guys first meet? Two years ago. Month? August? Date? I didn’t circle it on a calendar. So would you say you know him quite well? No, I wouldn’t say that. Why not? Because I know I don’t really know him all that well. Would you say the two of you were friends, then? Well, kind of. Kind of what? Kind of friends? Acquaintances, then. No, not acquaintances. So somewhere between friends and acquaintances? Yes, I guess you could say that. Are you closer to friend or acquaintance? I really couldn’t say, and anyway that doesn’t depend on me alone, now, does it? So we’ll say you always remember his birthday, but never quite know what to get for him. Yes, exactly, thank you; that’s kind of exactly how I feel. I’ve been there. I think everyone has.
So, do you love him? What? Was I unclear? I’m not quite sure why that would be any of your business. It’s a yes or no question; I don’t care what the answer is. Then why are you asking? Because he asked me to. He wouldn’t do that. Well, you don’t really know him all that well, do you? Why would he ask you to do that? Because you said you did. I said I did? Love him. When? Four days ago; you were happy and you were drunk. I did? He says you did. No. Well, you did; do you? I don’t know. How can you not know? I might be. Might be. It’s hard to tell what’s fact and what’s fiction when you’re drunk. But you’re not drunk now. How do you know? Might be. Are you going to tell him that? I guess. Don’t. Why not? Because. It’s an honest answer, at least. Oh god; did he…? Yep. Shit; so I’m the reason he’s in here? Appears so. That was stupid. So is drinking when you have something you don’t want to say. Silly guy. Not anymore silly than you are. If I did say it, I didn’t say it on purpose. I know. I wasn’t out to get him; I’m not his enemy. You’re not his friend. It’s not that simple. I know it’s not. What are you, doctor and counselor? Same thing; so what are you, enemy, acquaintance, friend, blood donor… crush? Same thing. I can’t tell him that. Why not? I’ll just tell him that you said you love him… again. I was drunk! You haven’t given me an answer! I don’t have one!
Look. This is stupid. Make up your mind. Pick a word and stick to it.
You look. What do you want me to say? You want me to say that, yes, I love him? But I don’t! I mean, I do love him, but it’s not love love. It’s not I’ll-give-you-a-kidney-if-both-of-yours-fail – I mean, I don’t know if that’s what it is. So I don’t want you to go tell him that I love him when I don’t even know whether I like him, which I don’t, not really – maybe sometimes. It’s – we’re a lot more complicated than that, and I don’t want you to go and reduce it to one stupid word. I don’t want you to go and reduce me to one stupid word. Or even two stupid words. Or three. Or four. Just – just don’t say anything at all. Can’t you do that?
You can’t live your life without using words.
…I know.
All right then; do you know James? Yes, I do. How long have you known him? Is that on there? No, not really. I’ve known him for a pretty long time. Be specific; when did you guys first meet? Two years ago. Month? August? Date? I didn’t circle it on a calendar. So would you say you know him quite well? No, I wouldn’t say that. Why not? Because I know I don’t really know him all that well. Would you say the two of you were friends, then? Well, kind of. Kind of what? Kind of friends? Acquaintances, then. No, not acquaintances. So somewhere between friends and acquaintances? Yes, I guess you could say that. Are you closer to friend or acquaintance? I really couldn’t say, and anyway that doesn’t depend on me alone, now, does it? So we’ll say you always remember his birthday, but never quite know what to get for him. Yes, exactly, thank you; that’s kind of exactly how I feel. I’ve been there. I think everyone has.
So, do you love him? What? Was I unclear? I’m not quite sure why that would be any of your business. It’s a yes or no question; I don’t care what the answer is. Then why are you asking? Because he asked me to. He wouldn’t do that. Well, you don’t really know him all that well, do you? Why would he ask you to do that? Because you said you did. I said I did? Love him. When? Four days ago; you were happy and you were drunk. I did? He says you did. No. Well, you did; do you? I don’t know. How can you not know? I might be. Might be. It’s hard to tell what’s fact and what’s fiction when you’re drunk. But you’re not drunk now. How do you know? Might be. Are you going to tell him that? I guess. Don’t. Why not? Because. It’s an honest answer, at least. Oh god; did he…? Yep. Shit; so I’m the reason he’s in here? Appears so. That was stupid. So is drinking when you have something you don’t want to say. Silly guy. Not anymore silly than you are. If I did say it, I didn’t say it on purpose. I know. I wasn’t out to get him; I’m not his enemy. You’re not his friend. It’s not that simple. I know it’s not. What are you, doctor and counselor? Same thing; so what are you, enemy, acquaintance, friend, blood donor… crush? Same thing. I can’t tell him that. Why not? I’ll just tell him that you said you love him… again. I was drunk! You haven’t given me an answer! I don’t have one!
Look. This is stupid. Make up your mind. Pick a word and stick to it.
You look. What do you want me to say? You want me to say that, yes, I love him? But I don’t! I mean, I do love him, but it’s not love love. It’s not I’ll-give-you-a-kidney-if-both-of-yours-fail – I mean, I don’t know if that’s what it is. So I don’t want you to go tell him that I love him when I don’t even know whether I like him, which I don’t, not really – maybe sometimes. It’s – we’re a lot more complicated than that, and I don’t want you to go and reduce it to one stupid word. I don’t want you to go and reduce me to one stupid word. Or even two stupid words. Or three. Or four. Just – just don’t say anything at all. Can’t you do that?
You can’t live your life without using words.
…I know.
Story: Curiosity
I used to be curious because I was not popular. If physical ineptness and social awkwardness were going to set me apart, then I was going to set myself apart and above on a pedestal of knowledge. If two bullies were going to chase me around the school after class, pin me down, and spit on my face, then I was going to wipe the spit off, go home, ace the next test, and smile savagely when they failed. If I could not ever master the art of kicking a stupid ball between two posts, then I was going to do everything I could to gain entrance to a place where that ability had no meaning.
It worked, too, for a time. In my early high school years, curiosity added muscle to my skinny frame, and inches to my diminutive height. I was bigger than I was, and I could not be hurt, because I was curious, and curious people live to inherit the earth when all others are gone. In my later high school years, I discovered that this was exactly true. My friends and I were respected; it was our time to laugh at those who had taunted us, because we were the ones who were predicted to soon have any place in the world at our fingertips. Curiosity had lit up our futures in brilliant paths. This was what my friends and I discussed, sitting around our boardgames and rolling the dice that had been given to us – our futures… and then we fell into silence for a few moments, and asked each other whether we wanted more soft drinks.
It was not until I was fifteen that I finally admitted to myself that curiosity was not the cause of my isolation, but only the means by which I could explain it. It was not until Tess Durbeyfield said to Angel Clare that “there is set down in some old book somebody just like me… your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands’ and thousands’, and your coming life and doings’ll be like thousands’ and thousands’” that I finally admitted I was so lonely that an outline of a person built out of words and pictures was more accessible than an actual person. I was not curious because I was unpopular. I want to know about things, places, and people that are extensions of myself. I want to know about things, places, and people that are not extensions of myself. I am curious because I want to be popular, even if by proxy.
But curiosity is not a tool I can so lightly use for my own service. The more I learn, the more disappointed in myself and angrier I become. It seems to me that insight should not be just beyond the graspings of my mind, and yet it so often is. I find myself standing so often at the foot of a mountain, trying to peer through the clouds to see the peak I know is there. The discovery of something that thrills me is always tainted by the quiet fury that it is something I should have been able to articulate as well, and yet could not, and perhaps would never have. Curiosity leads to discovery, but discovery is also the death of possibility.
And so it is today, for me. Curiosity is a daily struggle; knowledge is such an irrevocable process, and yet I have not faith in my own conclusions, and yet confirmation if it comes is both pleasing and distasteful because it means “I am one of a long row only”. Curiosity is an impossible conundrum, and it is easier not to be curious, because certainly life becomes a lot simpler.
But how can a person not be curious when he knows he is deliberately not being curious?
It worked, too, for a time. In my early high school years, curiosity added muscle to my skinny frame, and inches to my diminutive height. I was bigger than I was, and I could not be hurt, because I was curious, and curious people live to inherit the earth when all others are gone. In my later high school years, I discovered that this was exactly true. My friends and I were respected; it was our time to laugh at those who had taunted us, because we were the ones who were predicted to soon have any place in the world at our fingertips. Curiosity had lit up our futures in brilliant paths. This was what my friends and I discussed, sitting around our boardgames and rolling the dice that had been given to us – our futures… and then we fell into silence for a few moments, and asked each other whether we wanted more soft drinks.
It was not until I was fifteen that I finally admitted to myself that curiosity was not the cause of my isolation, but only the means by which I could explain it. It was not until Tess Durbeyfield said to Angel Clare that “there is set down in some old book somebody just like me… your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands’ and thousands’, and your coming life and doings’ll be like thousands’ and thousands’” that I finally admitted I was so lonely that an outline of a person built out of words and pictures was more accessible than an actual person. I was not curious because I was unpopular. I want to know about things, places, and people that are extensions of myself. I want to know about things, places, and people that are not extensions of myself. I am curious because I want to be popular, even if by proxy.
But curiosity is not a tool I can so lightly use for my own service. The more I learn, the more disappointed in myself and angrier I become. It seems to me that insight should not be just beyond the graspings of my mind, and yet it so often is. I find myself standing so often at the foot of a mountain, trying to peer through the clouds to see the peak I know is there. The discovery of something that thrills me is always tainted by the quiet fury that it is something I should have been able to articulate as well, and yet could not, and perhaps would never have. Curiosity leads to discovery, but discovery is also the death of possibility.
And so it is today, for me. Curiosity is a daily struggle; knowledge is such an irrevocable process, and yet I have not faith in my own conclusions, and yet confirmation if it comes is both pleasing and distasteful because it means “I am one of a long row only”. Curiosity is an impossible conundrum, and it is easier not to be curious, because certainly life becomes a lot simpler.
But how can a person not be curious when he knows he is deliberately not being curious?
Monday, November 21, 2005
Story: A Eulogy For The Living
She looks at herself in the mirror. One hand holds the silk dress against her body, while the other runs down its length, feeling the black material flow under her long, pale, and slim fingers. She gazes at the dress for a while, and then her eyes shift, and she abruptly folds the dress over one arm. Turning to the closet, she pulls a hanger off the rack, and slips the straps of the dress deftly onto the wooden hooks. There is a small clink as the metallic curve of the hanger hits the stainless steel bar. The dress sways briefly, before stilling.
She stares at the dress. What am I afraid of, she asks herself. She takes a corner of the dress between two fingers, and suddenly she is possessed by a wild urge to wrench it violently, to tear it to shreds, to rip it from seam to seam. For an instant the dress’s life is imperiled. An instant, as she takes an instinctive step back from the dress. The involuntary movement of her foot startles her. I’m being silly, she tells herself. She even manages to laugh a small laugh. But her hand trembles slightly as she reaches for the hanger again.
She sits in front of her round make-up mirror. In the small circle of glass only her right eye, a fragment of cheek, and a jagged bit of nose can be seen. She lengthens her lashes, and curls them carefully. Then comes a line of eye-shadow, to be artfully blended and gradated. After both eyes are done in turn, one cheek is brushed lightly with blusher, and then the other, before she colors her lips. One feature at a time takes its place in the mirror.
At last she is ready. She stands, and flattens black silk against white body with a firm hand. Slipping on stilettos, she goes to the door. But she pauses there, unable to leave. Slowly, with many self-assurances, she goes again to the closet, and pulls the door open. The full-length mirror swings outwards. She looks at herself in the mirror, in her entirety.
It never ceases to entrance her, this final, finished, product. As always, she feels the essence of herself yielding, dissipating. The remains of herself are turning. This is a vision of loveliness. But this is not she.
She willows along the street, dreading and anticipating. Her heels staccato on concrete. Rounding the corner, she passes through a silent street, and finally comes to the traffic light. As she stands there, waiting, a sheath of onyx sparkling in the sunlight, a rumble throbs through the ground. From the distance a truck roars into focus. In the moment it flashes by her its engines are gunning, but the wolf-whistle pierces through the cacophony. The shrill peal vibrates throughout her body, its echoes skimming every nerve. But you don’t even know me, she thinks reflexively. But you don’t even know me, she thinks every single time.
But you don’t even know me. Richard Rodriguez must have also thought this. In his essay “Late Victorians” he writes of standing by the sidelines, refusing to join any block in San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day parade. She knows how he must have felt, kind of. There are times she feels driven to be Seductive, complete with her own wolf-whistle. Other times she waffles about being Coy. Once in a while Oblivious blanks her thoughts. But, in the end, she always simply stands there. Like Rodriguez, she shies away from convenient labels. At the back of her mind is always fear.
Labels are like ill-fitting dresses. They draw inappropriate amounts of attention, even to the right parts. They are not easy to remove, and no matter how briefly they are worn, marks are guaranteed to be left.
And then what will happen, she thinks. She always thinks of the next time. That truck driver might see me again, might have expectations. It is better to be a mystery, free and formless, than to be sized up in stereotypes, however close to truth they might approximate.
The red light blinks, and disappears.
As the church nears, she finds herself gradually having to weave through familiar and growing crowds. Here a voice calls out in greeting. There an arm grasps hers, and tugs her towards people she has never seen before. She finds herself modulating, accentuating, adjusting, playing up. She finds herself thinking, with a small and slightly bitter smile, not only of a truck driver, but also of a fellow New York woman who lived and died exactly 200 years ago.
As she patiently answers fretful questions, she thinks of Lily Bart, who is “subservient to Bertha’s anxious predominance”. As she listens sympathetically to an old parishioner’s complains, she thinks of Lily Bart, who is “good-naturedly watchful of Dorset’s moods”. As two young women fall in step beside her, one on each side, excitedly chattering about her new dress, she thinks of Lily Bart, who is “brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey”. She is perfect to every one. But then she remembers, vaguely. Her mind is racing ahead to how Edith Wharton ends the passage of Lily Bart’s social triumph, and she sees the indistinct words in the distance, like a glimmering warning.
I wish I could fit into that dress, one of the young women says, wistfully. With that sentence her illusion cracks. She has come to the end of the passage: she is “poised on the brink of a chasm”; her graceful foot is advancing on air.
The danger in labels is not only in the limitations of their truths. The danger is also, far more insidiously, in the possibility that one might attempt to live up to them.
In the second that she pauses in answering she sees Rodriguez in his gym, in the “merciless press of body against a standard, perfect mold”. “My club”, she thinks, her voice blending into Rodriguez’s, “I’ve even caught myself calling it.” But intense understanding gives way to intense disgust. She is no “Blakean angel, revolving in an empyrean of mirrors”.
There is no “transcendence” (337). There is only the knowledge of having succumbed to an ideal, which after all is only a nicer word for stereotype.
Really, the other woman says, her voice tinged with defiance. I’d never starve myself to fit into that dress. And just like that her illusion shatters completely.
Is it not also the danger of labels that one might attempt to shy away from them?
She links her arms with both women. Let’s go in, she says.
She does not remember the task of procuring a seat for herself being so difficult. Threading through the crowds in the church, she finally locates one, and settles down in it. All around her are fellow parishioners, and, Rodriguez still on her mind, she imagines them anew. “A lady with a plastic candy cane pinned to her lapel. A Castro clone with a red bandanna exploding from his hip pocket. A perfume-counter lady with an Hermès scarf mantled upon her left shoulder. A black man in a checkered sports coat. The pink-haired punkess with a jewel in her nose. Here, too, is the gay couple in middle age, wearing interchangeable plaid shirts and corduroy pants” (341). They are all here, in their infinite variety. And it is then that she almost begins to laugh hysterically. What a fool I am, she thinks.
How can a person escape conformity, when the world has transmuted even individualism into uniformity? Fighting a stereotype is simply another stereotype itself. Coy is a label, as is Seductive, as is Oblivious. But so is Mysterious. Life is the imposition of generalities, one or another or another. Living is only the heading at the top, under which all humanity is sub-classified.
She shifts her tailbone, like Rodriguez. Even that smallest action becomes a recurring pattern, rippling across and across and across. But what else can they do?
She joins the congregation as it trickles out of the double doors, but when she finally exits the church, she does not leave, not immediately. The multitude of milling crowds sickens her; she wants to escape people, and so she wends her way to the church garden, and finds an empty bench. She sits, and closes her eyes.
A grey and muted darkness descends upon her, here among the brightly lit greens of Grace Church. After a while, a sense of peace pervades her, peace that encroaches ever so gradually over the years of her life. Outside, the frenetic hustle of Manhattan snarls on. Inside, she can feel, slowly, the jangled pulse of her life smoothing out. She can feel herself finally shuffling off the coil of presumptions. She can feel herself becoming free and formless. She can feel herself blinking, about to disappear –
A voice speaks in the distance, and she starts. Her eyes snap open involuntarily, and she winces, momentarily struck by the glaring and competing colors of the world. She feels herself hardening into a shape; she feels identity snaking its tendrils around her, binding, –
Is this why God speaks of Knowledge as the fruit of evil? Except through death, how can a person escape the confines of Knowledge?
– and, instantaneously, she feels a rush of words bubbling to her mouth. An overwhelming need to categorize and delineate overtakes her; if she cannot die, then she has to define every particle of her being; she has to spill the essence of herself into someone’s ear.
This is why we invent words. She is reminded of Dana Perrotti’s essay, “The Fiction Of Function”. “They refuse to remain victim to the label (of Homosexual),” Perrotti writes of the gay population, “And by crafting communities within the larger gay community, their identities are redefined” (32). This is the function of words, then – the endless invention of ever-more specific words is designed to bridge the gaps between person and person. Each word, by its single and shared meaning, says in addition, This is who I am, and now you can understand me. But that is not the only function of words. By saying, Now you can understand me, we are also saying, And therefore I exist. A word that no one else understands is like a tree falling that no one hears – both are devoid of meaning.
But there is no one around. Her closed lips dam the flood of words. As she sits there, on that bench, the words die within her as another realization rises, inexorable, from deep within her core. How can she ever find the right words? How can she ever invent the right words?
Language can only be the promulgation of preconceptions. Living is conditioned to words. How can it be possible to feel what has no name? But how can it be possible to trust what has been named? A word is the point where two bridges meet, but the other ends of the bridges stretch and stretch, fading into the unfathomable darkness of feeling, disappearing…
She looks no different, sitting there on that garden bench. But something has shifted within her. She is trying desperately to grasp onto a lifetime of comfortable constructs. Everything is suddenly horrifically repulsive and false. Everything is dissolving around her. But a second passes, and everything jolts together once again. She coughs suddenly, a hacking cough that ends, and the instant of terror is over.
She stands, a little unsteadily. A shudder vibrates through her body, its tremors shaking every nerve. I don’t know me, she thinks. I don’t even know me.
Will I be conscious, every single moment, of changing, of the infinite processes by which what I can feel is accommodated to what I can think?
She wonders whether she can ever trust herself again. Perhaps this is what Rodriguez felt, she thinks. His conspicuous absence of feeling, his desire for oblivion, his “unwillingness to embrace life” (339) – perhaps they were warnings: Don’t become involved. Stay above and away.
She looks around the garden. How can one unknow what is known? She lingers a moment more, unwilling to leave. But she does leave the garden, in the end. She has to.
The room seems different to her. Sitting in front of the circular mirror, she removes her make-up, one feature at a time. When her face is clean, she slips out of the black silk dress, and goes to the bathroom. But she pauses at the door. After a moment, she goes instead to the closet. Pulling the door open, she waits for herself to swing into sight.
There she is. She looks at herself in the mirror. Stripped of her make-up, stripped of covering clothes, she is bare, exposed. This is she, underneath it all. But she cannot bear to look at herself. She feels herself still yielding, still dissipating. She reaches out a hand, entranced and fearful. She feels the remains of herself turning. But that is I. She slams the door shut.
Standing there, she trembles, but only a little, and only for a moment. She goes and picks up the black silk dress, and slips into it. Immediately she feels better. It does not matter whether the shape of the dress fits her, or whether she fits the shape of the dress, so long as the dress is there. She thinks of Rodriguez, as she calms down. You cannot possibly understand me, his absent words mean, when he recounts the actions of everyone, but not his own, as his lover César wastes to death, struck down by AIDs. You cannot possibly understand my pain, his absence shouts. But you wrote “Late Victorians”, she wanted to shout back at him once. You published it. Once she felt betrayed at his duplicity, at his simultaneous shying from and craving for words. But now she understands his terrible conflict.
The act of using words is not only to make another understand. Even if words can only be fiction, fiction itself protects us from being overwhelmed, from being swallowed by the vastness of our most inscrutable feelings. Grief, Fury, even Happiness – we use these words not only to reach others, but also to locate ourselves. Only in this way does life become manageable. And so this is the function of fiction that we allow ourselves.
The tip of Rodriguez’s pen scrawls across the page, translating something unbearable into grief. Perrotti’s fingers tap away at the keyboard, striving to make out of mere letters something more. Lily Bart dances in “The House Of Mirth”, reaching for forgetfulness.
She sits, in her black silk dress. We can only let time and habit work their magic, she thinks. We can only put on our make-ups and slip on our dresses. We can only try on one identity, after another body, after another life, hoping to understand ourselves, but leaving ourselves the caveat that, if we don’t, those shams, and not the unnameable nature of life, are why we feel ourselves alienated and alienating. But that caveat must not only be unacknowledged; it must also be unknown. Those who know the rigged game can no longer play.
For us, Rodriguez’s voice melds into Perrotti’s into Bart’s into hers, into mine, and now into yours: “Human unhappiness is evidence of our immortality” (330).
__________________________
WORKS CITED
Perrotti, Dana. “The Function Of Fiction.” Mercer Street. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II, Andrea McKenzie, and Darlene A. Forrest. New York: New York University Press, 2005. 27-33.
Rodriguez, Richard. “Late Victorians.” Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing, 2005. 330-341.
Wharton, Edith. “The House Of Mirth”. Project Gutenberg. 27 Sept. 2005.
.
She stares at the dress. What am I afraid of, she asks herself. She takes a corner of the dress between two fingers, and suddenly she is possessed by a wild urge to wrench it violently, to tear it to shreds, to rip it from seam to seam. For an instant the dress’s life is imperiled. An instant, as she takes an instinctive step back from the dress. The involuntary movement of her foot startles her. I’m being silly, she tells herself. She even manages to laugh a small laugh. But her hand trembles slightly as she reaches for the hanger again.
She sits in front of her round make-up mirror. In the small circle of glass only her right eye, a fragment of cheek, and a jagged bit of nose can be seen. She lengthens her lashes, and curls them carefully. Then comes a line of eye-shadow, to be artfully blended and gradated. After both eyes are done in turn, one cheek is brushed lightly with blusher, and then the other, before she colors her lips. One feature at a time takes its place in the mirror.
At last she is ready. She stands, and flattens black silk against white body with a firm hand. Slipping on stilettos, she goes to the door. But she pauses there, unable to leave. Slowly, with many self-assurances, she goes again to the closet, and pulls the door open. The full-length mirror swings outwards. She looks at herself in the mirror, in her entirety.
It never ceases to entrance her, this final, finished, product. As always, she feels the essence of herself yielding, dissipating. The remains of herself are turning. This is a vision of loveliness. But this is not she.
She willows along the street, dreading and anticipating. Her heels staccato on concrete. Rounding the corner, she passes through a silent street, and finally comes to the traffic light. As she stands there, waiting, a sheath of onyx sparkling in the sunlight, a rumble throbs through the ground. From the distance a truck roars into focus. In the moment it flashes by her its engines are gunning, but the wolf-whistle pierces through the cacophony. The shrill peal vibrates throughout her body, its echoes skimming every nerve. But you don’t even know me, she thinks reflexively. But you don’t even know me, she thinks every single time.
But you don’t even know me. Richard Rodriguez must have also thought this. In his essay “Late Victorians” he writes of standing by the sidelines, refusing to join any block in San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day parade. She knows how he must have felt, kind of. There are times she feels driven to be Seductive, complete with her own wolf-whistle. Other times she waffles about being Coy. Once in a while Oblivious blanks her thoughts. But, in the end, she always simply stands there. Like Rodriguez, she shies away from convenient labels. At the back of her mind is always fear.
Labels are like ill-fitting dresses. They draw inappropriate amounts of attention, even to the right parts. They are not easy to remove, and no matter how briefly they are worn, marks are guaranteed to be left.
And then what will happen, she thinks. She always thinks of the next time. That truck driver might see me again, might have expectations. It is better to be a mystery, free and formless, than to be sized up in stereotypes, however close to truth they might approximate.
The red light blinks, and disappears.
As the church nears, she finds herself gradually having to weave through familiar and growing crowds. Here a voice calls out in greeting. There an arm grasps hers, and tugs her towards people she has never seen before. She finds herself modulating, accentuating, adjusting, playing up. She finds herself thinking, with a small and slightly bitter smile, not only of a truck driver, but also of a fellow New York woman who lived and died exactly 200 years ago.
As she patiently answers fretful questions, she thinks of Lily Bart, who is “subservient to Bertha’s anxious predominance”. As she listens sympathetically to an old parishioner’s complains, she thinks of Lily Bart, who is “good-naturedly watchful of Dorset’s moods”. As two young women fall in step beside her, one on each side, excitedly chattering about her new dress, she thinks of Lily Bart, who is “brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey”. She is perfect to every one. But then she remembers, vaguely. Her mind is racing ahead to how Edith Wharton ends the passage of Lily Bart’s social triumph, and she sees the indistinct words in the distance, like a glimmering warning.
I wish I could fit into that dress, one of the young women says, wistfully. With that sentence her illusion cracks. She has come to the end of the passage: she is “poised on the brink of a chasm”; her graceful foot is advancing on air.
The danger in labels is not only in the limitations of their truths. The danger is also, far more insidiously, in the possibility that one might attempt to live up to them.
In the second that she pauses in answering she sees Rodriguez in his gym, in the “merciless press of body against a standard, perfect mold”. “My club”, she thinks, her voice blending into Rodriguez’s, “I’ve even caught myself calling it.” But intense understanding gives way to intense disgust. She is no “Blakean angel, revolving in an empyrean of mirrors”.
There is no “transcendence” (337). There is only the knowledge of having succumbed to an ideal, which after all is only a nicer word for stereotype.
Really, the other woman says, her voice tinged with defiance. I’d never starve myself to fit into that dress. And just like that her illusion shatters completely.
Is it not also the danger of labels that one might attempt to shy away from them?
She links her arms with both women. Let’s go in, she says.
She does not remember the task of procuring a seat for herself being so difficult. Threading through the crowds in the church, she finally locates one, and settles down in it. All around her are fellow parishioners, and, Rodriguez still on her mind, she imagines them anew. “A lady with a plastic candy cane pinned to her lapel. A Castro clone with a red bandanna exploding from his hip pocket. A perfume-counter lady with an Hermès scarf mantled upon her left shoulder. A black man in a checkered sports coat. The pink-haired punkess with a jewel in her nose. Here, too, is the gay couple in middle age, wearing interchangeable plaid shirts and corduroy pants” (341). They are all here, in their infinite variety. And it is then that she almost begins to laugh hysterically. What a fool I am, she thinks.
How can a person escape conformity, when the world has transmuted even individualism into uniformity? Fighting a stereotype is simply another stereotype itself. Coy is a label, as is Seductive, as is Oblivious. But so is Mysterious. Life is the imposition of generalities, one or another or another. Living is only the heading at the top, under which all humanity is sub-classified.
She shifts her tailbone, like Rodriguez. Even that smallest action becomes a recurring pattern, rippling across and across and across. But what else can they do?
She joins the congregation as it trickles out of the double doors, but when she finally exits the church, she does not leave, not immediately. The multitude of milling crowds sickens her; she wants to escape people, and so she wends her way to the church garden, and finds an empty bench. She sits, and closes her eyes.
A grey and muted darkness descends upon her, here among the brightly lit greens of Grace Church. After a while, a sense of peace pervades her, peace that encroaches ever so gradually over the years of her life. Outside, the frenetic hustle of Manhattan snarls on. Inside, she can feel, slowly, the jangled pulse of her life smoothing out. She can feel herself finally shuffling off the coil of presumptions. She can feel herself becoming free and formless. She can feel herself blinking, about to disappear –
A voice speaks in the distance, and she starts. Her eyes snap open involuntarily, and she winces, momentarily struck by the glaring and competing colors of the world. She feels herself hardening into a shape; she feels identity snaking its tendrils around her, binding, –
Is this why God speaks of Knowledge as the fruit of evil? Except through death, how can a person escape the confines of Knowledge?
– and, instantaneously, she feels a rush of words bubbling to her mouth. An overwhelming need to categorize and delineate overtakes her; if she cannot die, then she has to define every particle of her being; she has to spill the essence of herself into someone’s ear.
This is why we invent words. She is reminded of Dana Perrotti’s essay, “The Fiction Of Function”. “They refuse to remain victim to the label (of Homosexual),” Perrotti writes of the gay population, “And by crafting communities within the larger gay community, their identities are redefined” (32). This is the function of words, then – the endless invention of ever-more specific words is designed to bridge the gaps between person and person. Each word, by its single and shared meaning, says in addition, This is who I am, and now you can understand me. But that is not the only function of words. By saying, Now you can understand me, we are also saying, And therefore I exist. A word that no one else understands is like a tree falling that no one hears – both are devoid of meaning.
But there is no one around. Her closed lips dam the flood of words. As she sits there, on that bench, the words die within her as another realization rises, inexorable, from deep within her core. How can she ever find the right words? How can she ever invent the right words?
Language can only be the promulgation of preconceptions. Living is conditioned to words. How can it be possible to feel what has no name? But how can it be possible to trust what has been named? A word is the point where two bridges meet, but the other ends of the bridges stretch and stretch, fading into the unfathomable darkness of feeling, disappearing…
She looks no different, sitting there on that garden bench. But something has shifted within her. She is trying desperately to grasp onto a lifetime of comfortable constructs. Everything is suddenly horrifically repulsive and false. Everything is dissolving around her. But a second passes, and everything jolts together once again. She coughs suddenly, a hacking cough that ends, and the instant of terror is over.
She stands, a little unsteadily. A shudder vibrates through her body, its tremors shaking every nerve. I don’t know me, she thinks. I don’t even know me.
Will I be conscious, every single moment, of changing, of the infinite processes by which what I can feel is accommodated to what I can think?
She wonders whether she can ever trust herself again. Perhaps this is what Rodriguez felt, she thinks. His conspicuous absence of feeling, his desire for oblivion, his “unwillingness to embrace life” (339) – perhaps they were warnings: Don’t become involved. Stay above and away.
She looks around the garden. How can one unknow what is known? She lingers a moment more, unwilling to leave. But she does leave the garden, in the end. She has to.
The room seems different to her. Sitting in front of the circular mirror, she removes her make-up, one feature at a time. When her face is clean, she slips out of the black silk dress, and goes to the bathroom. But she pauses at the door. After a moment, she goes instead to the closet. Pulling the door open, she waits for herself to swing into sight.
There she is. She looks at herself in the mirror. Stripped of her make-up, stripped of covering clothes, she is bare, exposed. This is she, underneath it all. But she cannot bear to look at herself. She feels herself still yielding, still dissipating. She reaches out a hand, entranced and fearful. She feels the remains of herself turning. But that is I. She slams the door shut.
Standing there, she trembles, but only a little, and only for a moment. She goes and picks up the black silk dress, and slips into it. Immediately she feels better. It does not matter whether the shape of the dress fits her, or whether she fits the shape of the dress, so long as the dress is there. She thinks of Rodriguez, as she calms down. You cannot possibly understand me, his absent words mean, when he recounts the actions of everyone, but not his own, as his lover César wastes to death, struck down by AIDs. You cannot possibly understand my pain, his absence shouts. But you wrote “Late Victorians”, she wanted to shout back at him once. You published it. Once she felt betrayed at his duplicity, at his simultaneous shying from and craving for words. But now she understands his terrible conflict.
The act of using words is not only to make another understand. Even if words can only be fiction, fiction itself protects us from being overwhelmed, from being swallowed by the vastness of our most inscrutable feelings. Grief, Fury, even Happiness – we use these words not only to reach others, but also to locate ourselves. Only in this way does life become manageable. And so this is the function of fiction that we allow ourselves.
The tip of Rodriguez’s pen scrawls across the page, translating something unbearable into grief. Perrotti’s fingers tap away at the keyboard, striving to make out of mere letters something more. Lily Bart dances in “The House Of Mirth”, reaching for forgetfulness.
She sits, in her black silk dress. We can only let time and habit work their magic, she thinks. We can only put on our make-ups and slip on our dresses. We can only try on one identity, after another body, after another life, hoping to understand ourselves, but leaving ourselves the caveat that, if we don’t, those shams, and not the unnameable nature of life, are why we feel ourselves alienated and alienating. But that caveat must not only be unacknowledged; it must also be unknown. Those who know the rigged game can no longer play.
For us, Rodriguez’s voice melds into Perrotti’s into Bart’s into hers, into mine, and now into yours: “Human unhappiness is evidence of our immortality” (330).
__________________________
WORKS CITED
Perrotti, Dana. “The Function Of Fiction.” Mercer Street. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II, Andrea McKenzie, and Darlene A. Forrest. New York: New York University Press, 2005. 27-33.
Rodriguez, Richard. “Late Victorians.” Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw-Hill Custom Publishing, 2005. 330-341.
Wharton, Edith. “The House Of Mirth”. Project Gutenberg. 27 Sept. 2005.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Story: Three Cigarettes
An electronic bell tolls. The doors, open, fidget, and then slide smoothly into each other. A voice announces the next destination, and the time estimated for the journey. Five minutes. A jolt. The weird sensation of movement, when we are stationary.
Headlines blare themselves at me from a copy of the national paper, the upper corners of its sheets fluttering like eyelashes. A textbook slips from a lap, its crash accompanied by sounds (vulgarities bowdlerized and muted). A shoulder negotiates a head that is drooping and jerking and drooping.
A cigarette taps against the doors. Unlit. Held by slender fingers. A pale hand connects itself to a V’d arm. A bored face stares out into a dark tunnel, and the body itself, sheathed in black and black, staccatos to an unknown beat. He is wearing a long silver chain dulled by the yellow light. His hair is carefully disheveled, and a tuft sticks out like a middle finger directly in front of the sign that says No Drinking, No Eating, No Smoking.
The beat trips, interrupted. His head shifts –
The tip of the cigarette beats a tattoo on the glass. The toe of his shoe bumps repeatedly against the floor…
An electronic bell tolls. The doors slide open. He smiles glimmeringly at me, throws a hand up, and exits.
The doors slide shut. I think, I can write about this…
---
A flame flicks upwards, and he touches the cigarette tip to it. Beside him, I concentrate on the television and try not to interfere. His head cocks towards me, his elbow nudges me weakly, and his index finger straightens towards the screen. A pungent aroma fills the air, and he lolls his head back on the couch, coughing.
He tries to get up, and he half-falls back. I catch him, and his body tenses, but then he allows me to help him into the wheelchair. Do you want a glass of water, I say. I just want to go to the kitchen, he rasps. I reach for the cigarette, but he wrenches his arm away from me in a grotesque mockery of savageness. An instant passes, and I wheel him into the kitchen.
He gets a cup by himself. He opens the fridge door himself. I take the filled jug, pour, and replace it. The cup rests precariously in his lap as he closes the door. Then he wheels himself, cup spilling, to a corner. He stops, his back to me, his bent head haloed in smoke.
He is only my uncle. He is only a relative returning from a life made and spent in Canada. He hasn’t been here that long, and soon he will be gone. But not soon enough. Not nearly soon enough.
I leave the kitchen.
---
Her hands are on the steering wheel; she has apparently forgotten about ignition. A split second later, she is being wracked by sobs. Her eyes become artfully smeared even as her tightly wound hair remains pristine. But the meticulously built-up breakdown reaches out through the television screen, and reaches into me. It thrashes around in its search, throwing to surface all sorts of memories related and unrelated. And then it finds something to hold onto, something guttural in nature, and that something it twists and wrenches.
I cannot stop crying, as long as she is crying. It sounds like a moment awash in emotion and tears, but it is not. It is a moment of startling clarity, of intense self-pity and compassion recognized, if the two are not one and the same.
She stops, eventually, as do I, in a dissipation of feeling. She filches the half-smoked cigarette from the ashtray, and gets out of the car. Her hand twitches as she inhales, and then the cigarette disappears under a vengefully grinding heel. The screen, which completely disappeared for only a moment, is restored fully. And now there is a commercial break.
Headlines blare themselves at me from a copy of the national paper, the upper corners of its sheets fluttering like eyelashes. A textbook slips from a lap, its crash accompanied by sounds (vulgarities bowdlerized and muted). A shoulder negotiates a head that is drooping and jerking and drooping.
A cigarette taps against the doors. Unlit. Held by slender fingers. A pale hand connects itself to a V’d arm. A bored face stares out into a dark tunnel, and the body itself, sheathed in black and black, staccatos to an unknown beat. He is wearing a long silver chain dulled by the yellow light. His hair is carefully disheveled, and a tuft sticks out like a middle finger directly in front of the sign that says No Drinking, No Eating, No Smoking.
The beat trips, interrupted. His head shifts –
The tip of the cigarette beats a tattoo on the glass. The toe of his shoe bumps repeatedly against the floor…
An electronic bell tolls. The doors slide open. He smiles glimmeringly at me, throws a hand up, and exits.
The doors slide shut. I think, I can write about this…
---
A flame flicks upwards, and he touches the cigarette tip to it. Beside him, I concentrate on the television and try not to interfere. His head cocks towards me, his elbow nudges me weakly, and his index finger straightens towards the screen. A pungent aroma fills the air, and he lolls his head back on the couch, coughing.
He tries to get up, and he half-falls back. I catch him, and his body tenses, but then he allows me to help him into the wheelchair. Do you want a glass of water, I say. I just want to go to the kitchen, he rasps. I reach for the cigarette, but he wrenches his arm away from me in a grotesque mockery of savageness. An instant passes, and I wheel him into the kitchen.
He gets a cup by himself. He opens the fridge door himself. I take the filled jug, pour, and replace it. The cup rests precariously in his lap as he closes the door. Then he wheels himself, cup spilling, to a corner. He stops, his back to me, his bent head haloed in smoke.
He is only my uncle. He is only a relative returning from a life made and spent in Canada. He hasn’t been here that long, and soon he will be gone. But not soon enough. Not nearly soon enough.
I leave the kitchen.
---
Her hands are on the steering wheel; she has apparently forgotten about ignition. A split second later, she is being wracked by sobs. Her eyes become artfully smeared even as her tightly wound hair remains pristine. But the meticulously built-up breakdown reaches out through the television screen, and reaches into me. It thrashes around in its search, throwing to surface all sorts of memories related and unrelated. And then it finds something to hold onto, something guttural in nature, and that something it twists and wrenches.
I cannot stop crying, as long as she is crying. It sounds like a moment awash in emotion and tears, but it is not. It is a moment of startling clarity, of intense self-pity and compassion recognized, if the two are not one and the same.
She stops, eventually, as do I, in a dissipation of feeling. She filches the half-smoked cigarette from the ashtray, and gets out of the car. Her hand twitches as she inhales, and then the cigarette disappears under a vengefully grinding heel. The screen, which completely disappeared for only a moment, is restored fully. And now there is a commercial break.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Story: We The Divided
We are in the open, standing in a row. My sister, my mother, my father, my elder brother, my eldest brother, myself – we are facing boxed lightning. When the flash comes, we all want it to illuminate us in a frozen instant of projected truth, and so this is what each of us does: My sister takes out her powder compact and examines herself in the mirror, dusting her nose; my mother leans closer to me, and puts her arm around my shoulders; my father makes sure his shirt is tucked the same length all around his waist; my elder brother scrutinizes us because he wants this photograph of his to be display-worthy; my eldest brother simply slouches against the railing, content. As for myself – I am staring at the camera lens, willing it to burst into enveloping light.
One second passes. Another. Another. Our collective clairvoyance is being unequally eroded away; when the blinding light finally wraps us in its grip, we are caught in separate limbos between knowledge and ignorance.
My elder brother walks towards the tripod stand, shakes the Polaroid into existence, and brings it back to us. We are huddled over this piece of plastic that purports to capture truth in its precision of lines and colors, but all I see is people caught in their choreography. When I look from our preserved selves to our existing selves to our preserved selves, there is an even more jarring sense of dislocation. I take the photograph in my hand, and this is when it strikes me. This is a photograph taken together – of separation.
This is what leafing through my family album is: always an affair tinged with suspended disbelief. Most of these snapshots are fairly recent, the result of my elder brother’s initial fascination with guerrilla photography. Here is my father being shot, his face looking away, his hand instinctively raised against the assault of the camera lens. There is a simplistic inscription beside the picture. I can imagine my brother sitting at this very desk, pen poised over paper, trying to deconstruct into letters all that he sees in his image of this picture; letters that might reassemble themselves perfectly in the minds of all those who read them. But before he does that he has to first ascertain what is it exactly that he does see. And what is it that he does see? Whenever I look at this photograph I am conscious of at least three images pulling at my mind: there is the nameless other’s, a second-guessed construction of what I think I should see; there is my own, a image, shaped by my own notion of what this man is, that I do see; there is my father’s, a possible portraiture of Father Playing Chess, reproduced on film, that he wants me to see. The three images are imprisoned within this white square, superimposed on each other, and I cannot tell which of them, if any, contains truth. I can imagine my brother struggling with these mental conflicts, and then resigning himself to doubt, and finally touching pen to paper, tried, writing – “Dad at a chess game.”
This frame being taken is of most of my family: it is one more collected conflict of a changing succession. There are four of us seated around the table, and we are engaged in conversation. Questions that could draw wanted responses are advanced. Responses that could forestall more unwanted questions are implemented. Smiling, strategizing silences intersect. We are constantly rearranging, inventing, and subtracting elements of ourselves, composing and recomposing them into fluid forms. I look at my mother, my father, my sister, but even here we are far across from each other, divided by the boundaries we lay across the table. We use one misleading answer to create another misleading question, until we are surrounded by all those meaningless words that pile up into only a likeness of ourselves, by and not by our design. We are each thinking of our lives, but we are each of us externally a continually created photograph. Even if I look as closely as I can, this is what I see – inscrutable people, lonely within the borders of their knowledge, each staring at something off-screen that I can never truly see. The dinner table, as is the breakfast table, as is any other social interaction, is a shared frame in which two heads might sometimes appear, or two hands sometimes cross each other, but we can only ever glimpse flashes of each other that may or may not be false. In each of our true totalities we are always a picture, isolated and ultimately unknowable.
In his book Backwards And Forwards, writer David Ball says that a picture “falls within a common range for everyone… and yet evokes different responses from person to person” (73) – even if it were possible to eliminate the infinity of obfuscating mental images each photograph invites, the photograph is also an infinity unto itself. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche asserts in his book Beyond Good And Evil that “around most people there continually grows a mask” (29) – even each facet of the photograph’s infinity is either false or rendered unknowable due to its irreproducible essence. Knowing all of these traps mental and physical between our conceptions and their cruxes, how can we ever hope to capture truth within the limited scopes of our eyes?
How can we even try, when the images we collect for the planning of the capture keep changing?
This is from the pages of my recent history: a memory of my friends and I, fixed as a picture of the past from my mind’s continuous accumulation. We are sitting in a café. We are talking about the past; we are using all the memorial snapshots in our collective history to paste together a world. But so many of them conflict because of the different frames of our eyes, and in addition to the overlaps there are gaps, black holes where remembrance has failed. This is a fraying world, divided by a million intersecting and chaotic lines, bounded on all sides and inside by the invading black borders of forgetfulness. This is a fraying world, and this is also a world that is dead and dying.
When my friends talk now about going back to our high school, and when we forcibly drag out and unite our opposing pictures, we are at the same time aware that there is no going back, physically or mentally. We are comparing schedules, we are bending chance and purpose in our little date-books, but to what end? In the second that each of us took one last look at that school in order to fix it in the personal collections of our divided consciousnesses, it had already ceased to exist. The school still stands, but it doesn’t stand still; my school is already gone. Roland Barthes says in his essay Camera Lucida that photography is “the absolute Particular, the sovereign Contingency” (8), and that therefore “Death is the eidos of… Photograph” (19), but if every photograph and image that is carried by each person here, whether of the school or of anything else, can only be stillborn, then they must also be lies. If four people cannot make sense of a single photograph sitting right before them, what chance do the seven of us here have of deciphering a deceptive image, despite our number, because of our number, and also considering time? Consider a photograph, consider how it limits not only spatially but also temporally, and thereafter acknowledge the futility of our eyes – that most persistently clicking of knowledge-seeking cameras.
This is why when I look at my friends now, I cannot escape the instinct that even if I could somehow reduce each of them into a truthful photograph, those pictures would still be obscured by a double vision imposed by time. But worse than this is the fact that it is impossible at any given point to discern the twin outlines that constitute each of the endless permutations of each person. I think about the time I bought one of these friends a book written by his favorite author. I remember his face when he slit open the wrapping paper; the momentary flicker of confusion when he was confronted by the name of Kazuo Ishiguro is seared into my eyes, as is the immediate compensatory profusion of gladness that followed thereafter. There are assumptions that we hold about each and every photograph, assumptions that are imposed by us in the form of linear notes. But these single-sentenced labels of summation and explanation we write for ourselves, even if they are ever true, can only be held true for a period before time inevitably twists them into lies.
And yet they cannot be discarded, because without them we become devoid of the means of understanding, and the photographs themselves dissolve into meaningless scribbles and color-splashes. These assumptions, then, are necessary and knowing self-delusions, no less delusions because of our knowledge of them, and also no less necessary – they constitute the only lens through which we can even begin to view photographs. They constitute the only way we can even begin to try to remember – they constitute the only way we can even begin to try to take photographs.
This is one of the moments of my birth: a reminder preserved deliberately to celebrate its difference from its fifteen-year-old origin. I am here now with my friends and family; these disparate groups are gathered for my birthday, and they are distorted by my many cake-candles that are each bestowing confusing light. As I watch all of these people, their faces half-formed and indistinct disappear and reappear, dancing between light, shadow, and darkness. I start to notice that these people are different in light and shadow – but they are the same in darkness. What if I chose to extinguish all of these candles? I imagine myself pinching each fickle flame, one by one by one – and finally plunging the room into darkness. What, then? I would know that my family and friends are still here – but I would know something more.
Light is not always illuminating; when a candle is lit I can see, but not entirely – there are parts that will always be flickering, like two-dimensional walls of assumptions and delusions eternally wavering into new forms with the passage of time. Sight is always deceitful in the composition and preservation of the photographs it takes; no photograph is candid, because a candid photograph is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron – to see, to photograph, is always to frame, to frame is always to misinterpret, and to misinterpret is always to distance. And therefore no superficial knowledge is enlightening, because enlightening superficial knowledge is also a contradiction terms, also an oxymoron – to know is always to limit, to limit is always to falsify, and to falsify is always to distance. The only true connection that any two people can start to share, then, is in their mutual awareness that there is none.
Painters, as with all artists who seek to touch each individual uniquely, know this. I stand in front of Rene Magritte’s 1928 painting of The Lovers. A man and woman are clasped inextricably around each other under a darkling sky, two people in this desolate landscape with only each other to cling to. But they are together only because both their heads are willingly shrouded in white cloth, white cloth that melds them into one in the blackness that strips away an infinity of misrepresentations. If they were to tear off their blindfolds and see each other in the light of knowledge they would be separated in every possible way. This is why they do not even try.
I stand in this gallery, surrounded by those who knew this. Surrealism, impressionism, expressionism, even the relatively more factual representations of realism – all art is a testament to the power of transforming ignorance to intimacy. Every single painting seeks to imprint on us not just a truth hidden within their brush strokes, not just a truth unique within each of us, but a truth that is unifying in the fact of its incalculable facets. It is only when we have allowed ourselves to stop trying to understand others that we have truly understood them, because we accept that while we all live in the same world, each of us experiences the world differently. This is why when we communicate of paintings we can agree on the techniques that create them, and never truthfully on the feelings they engender. This is why truly knowledgeable men and women are silent in the face of not only great tragedies and happiness, but also small ones too. This is the secret gift of these artists to the people of today – the common knowledge that when we use words we must be aware of the eternal insufficiency of any form of language that aspires to a common truth.
Plato’s prisoners are in a cave, sitting in a row. Their backs are to the fire; it casts their shadows on the wall in a primordial photograph that is distorted by others and themselves, and is shifting as time trickles away. But they are not us. They do not know that there is nothing behind them, but we know that there is nothing between us, and this knowledge is what makes us better. This knowledge is the only thing that can transfer meaning and value to where they should belong. Not in the fruitless goal of any universal and unyielding truth, but in the knowledge of its impossibility, and therefore in the fact that despite all these conflicts we know that we are separated together.
_____________________________
WORKS CITED
Ball, David. Backwards And Forwards. Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. 73.
Barthes, Roland. “Camera Lucida.” Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw Hill Custom Publishing, 2005-2006. 8-19.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good And Evil. Dover Publications, Inc, 1997. 29.
One second passes. Another. Another. Our collective clairvoyance is being unequally eroded away; when the blinding light finally wraps us in its grip, we are caught in separate limbos between knowledge and ignorance.
My elder brother walks towards the tripod stand, shakes the Polaroid into existence, and brings it back to us. We are huddled over this piece of plastic that purports to capture truth in its precision of lines and colors, but all I see is people caught in their choreography. When I look from our preserved selves to our existing selves to our preserved selves, there is an even more jarring sense of dislocation. I take the photograph in my hand, and this is when it strikes me. This is a photograph taken together – of separation.
This is what leafing through my family album is: always an affair tinged with suspended disbelief. Most of these snapshots are fairly recent, the result of my elder brother’s initial fascination with guerrilla photography. Here is my father being shot, his face looking away, his hand instinctively raised against the assault of the camera lens. There is a simplistic inscription beside the picture. I can imagine my brother sitting at this very desk, pen poised over paper, trying to deconstruct into letters all that he sees in his image of this picture; letters that might reassemble themselves perfectly in the minds of all those who read them. But before he does that he has to first ascertain what is it exactly that he does see. And what is it that he does see? Whenever I look at this photograph I am conscious of at least three images pulling at my mind: there is the nameless other’s, a second-guessed construction of what I think I should see; there is my own, a image, shaped by my own notion of what this man is, that I do see; there is my father’s, a possible portraiture of Father Playing Chess, reproduced on film, that he wants me to see. The three images are imprisoned within this white square, superimposed on each other, and I cannot tell which of them, if any, contains truth. I can imagine my brother struggling with these mental conflicts, and then resigning himself to doubt, and finally touching pen to paper, tried, writing – “Dad at a chess game.”
This frame being taken is of most of my family: it is one more collected conflict of a changing succession. There are four of us seated around the table, and we are engaged in conversation. Questions that could draw wanted responses are advanced. Responses that could forestall more unwanted questions are implemented. Smiling, strategizing silences intersect. We are constantly rearranging, inventing, and subtracting elements of ourselves, composing and recomposing them into fluid forms. I look at my mother, my father, my sister, but even here we are far across from each other, divided by the boundaries we lay across the table. We use one misleading answer to create another misleading question, until we are surrounded by all those meaningless words that pile up into only a likeness of ourselves, by and not by our design. We are each thinking of our lives, but we are each of us externally a continually created photograph. Even if I look as closely as I can, this is what I see – inscrutable people, lonely within the borders of their knowledge, each staring at something off-screen that I can never truly see. The dinner table, as is the breakfast table, as is any other social interaction, is a shared frame in which two heads might sometimes appear, or two hands sometimes cross each other, but we can only ever glimpse flashes of each other that may or may not be false. In each of our true totalities we are always a picture, isolated and ultimately unknowable.
In his book Backwards And Forwards, writer David Ball says that a picture “falls within a common range for everyone… and yet evokes different responses from person to person” (73) – even if it were possible to eliminate the infinity of obfuscating mental images each photograph invites, the photograph is also an infinity unto itself. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche asserts in his book Beyond Good And Evil that “around most people there continually grows a mask” (29) – even each facet of the photograph’s infinity is either false or rendered unknowable due to its irreproducible essence. Knowing all of these traps mental and physical between our conceptions and their cruxes, how can we ever hope to capture truth within the limited scopes of our eyes?
How can we even try, when the images we collect for the planning of the capture keep changing?
This is from the pages of my recent history: a memory of my friends and I, fixed as a picture of the past from my mind’s continuous accumulation. We are sitting in a café. We are talking about the past; we are using all the memorial snapshots in our collective history to paste together a world. But so many of them conflict because of the different frames of our eyes, and in addition to the overlaps there are gaps, black holes where remembrance has failed. This is a fraying world, divided by a million intersecting and chaotic lines, bounded on all sides and inside by the invading black borders of forgetfulness. This is a fraying world, and this is also a world that is dead and dying.
When my friends talk now about going back to our high school, and when we forcibly drag out and unite our opposing pictures, we are at the same time aware that there is no going back, physically or mentally. We are comparing schedules, we are bending chance and purpose in our little date-books, but to what end? In the second that each of us took one last look at that school in order to fix it in the personal collections of our divided consciousnesses, it had already ceased to exist. The school still stands, but it doesn’t stand still; my school is already gone. Roland Barthes says in his essay Camera Lucida that photography is “the absolute Particular, the sovereign Contingency” (8), and that therefore “Death is the eidos of… Photograph” (19), but if every photograph and image that is carried by each person here, whether of the school or of anything else, can only be stillborn, then they must also be lies. If four people cannot make sense of a single photograph sitting right before them, what chance do the seven of us here have of deciphering a deceptive image, despite our number, because of our number, and also considering time? Consider a photograph, consider how it limits not only spatially but also temporally, and thereafter acknowledge the futility of our eyes – that most persistently clicking of knowledge-seeking cameras.
This is why when I look at my friends now, I cannot escape the instinct that even if I could somehow reduce each of them into a truthful photograph, those pictures would still be obscured by a double vision imposed by time. But worse than this is the fact that it is impossible at any given point to discern the twin outlines that constitute each of the endless permutations of each person. I think about the time I bought one of these friends a book written by his favorite author. I remember his face when he slit open the wrapping paper; the momentary flicker of confusion when he was confronted by the name of Kazuo Ishiguro is seared into my eyes, as is the immediate compensatory profusion of gladness that followed thereafter. There are assumptions that we hold about each and every photograph, assumptions that are imposed by us in the form of linear notes. But these single-sentenced labels of summation and explanation we write for ourselves, even if they are ever true, can only be held true for a period before time inevitably twists them into lies.
And yet they cannot be discarded, because without them we become devoid of the means of understanding, and the photographs themselves dissolve into meaningless scribbles and color-splashes. These assumptions, then, are necessary and knowing self-delusions, no less delusions because of our knowledge of them, and also no less necessary – they constitute the only lens through which we can even begin to view photographs. They constitute the only way we can even begin to try to remember – they constitute the only way we can even begin to try to take photographs.
This is one of the moments of my birth: a reminder preserved deliberately to celebrate its difference from its fifteen-year-old origin. I am here now with my friends and family; these disparate groups are gathered for my birthday, and they are distorted by my many cake-candles that are each bestowing confusing light. As I watch all of these people, their faces half-formed and indistinct disappear and reappear, dancing between light, shadow, and darkness. I start to notice that these people are different in light and shadow – but they are the same in darkness. What if I chose to extinguish all of these candles? I imagine myself pinching each fickle flame, one by one by one – and finally plunging the room into darkness. What, then? I would know that my family and friends are still here – but I would know something more.
Light is not always illuminating; when a candle is lit I can see, but not entirely – there are parts that will always be flickering, like two-dimensional walls of assumptions and delusions eternally wavering into new forms with the passage of time. Sight is always deceitful in the composition and preservation of the photographs it takes; no photograph is candid, because a candid photograph is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron – to see, to photograph, is always to frame, to frame is always to misinterpret, and to misinterpret is always to distance. And therefore no superficial knowledge is enlightening, because enlightening superficial knowledge is also a contradiction terms, also an oxymoron – to know is always to limit, to limit is always to falsify, and to falsify is always to distance. The only true connection that any two people can start to share, then, is in their mutual awareness that there is none.
Painters, as with all artists who seek to touch each individual uniquely, know this. I stand in front of Rene Magritte’s 1928 painting of The Lovers. A man and woman are clasped inextricably around each other under a darkling sky, two people in this desolate landscape with only each other to cling to. But they are together only because both their heads are willingly shrouded in white cloth, white cloth that melds them into one in the blackness that strips away an infinity of misrepresentations. If they were to tear off their blindfolds and see each other in the light of knowledge they would be separated in every possible way. This is why they do not even try.
I stand in this gallery, surrounded by those who knew this. Surrealism, impressionism, expressionism, even the relatively more factual representations of realism – all art is a testament to the power of transforming ignorance to intimacy. Every single painting seeks to imprint on us not just a truth hidden within their brush strokes, not just a truth unique within each of us, but a truth that is unifying in the fact of its incalculable facets. It is only when we have allowed ourselves to stop trying to understand others that we have truly understood them, because we accept that while we all live in the same world, each of us experiences the world differently. This is why when we communicate of paintings we can agree on the techniques that create them, and never truthfully on the feelings they engender. This is why truly knowledgeable men and women are silent in the face of not only great tragedies and happiness, but also small ones too. This is the secret gift of these artists to the people of today – the common knowledge that when we use words we must be aware of the eternal insufficiency of any form of language that aspires to a common truth.
Plato’s prisoners are in a cave, sitting in a row. Their backs are to the fire; it casts their shadows on the wall in a primordial photograph that is distorted by others and themselves, and is shifting as time trickles away. But they are not us. They do not know that there is nothing behind them, but we know that there is nothing between us, and this knowledge is what makes us better. This knowledge is the only thing that can transfer meaning and value to where they should belong. Not in the fruitless goal of any universal and unyielding truth, but in the knowledge of its impossibility, and therefore in the fact that despite all these conflicts we know that we are separated together.
_____________________________
WORKS CITED
Ball, David. Backwards And Forwards. Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. 73.
Barthes, Roland. “Camera Lucida.” Writing The Essay. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Randy Martin, and Pat. C. Hoy II. New York: McGraw Hill Custom Publishing, 2005-2006. 8-19.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good And Evil. Dover Publications, Inc, 1997. 29.
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