Halloween means spooking you out and, just as much, the end of October. I'm spooked out about bills to break, calls to make, and tops of lakes. Top of Lake. "Top of the Lake." That's a series for you. Sundance Channel. Mini-series. Seven episodes. It'll spook you out. It'll screw up yr world. Halloween. Marathon it. Not a demand, not a request, but a counsel: If you like your television, you'll probably like it.
I'll go into why you'll probably enjoy it as I did (at least if you're reading the dramatic places I go here at Pearls), but let's start with the basics: Seven episodes, about six hours, five great leads. Four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves. And an amazing performance by Elisabeth Moss (aka Zoey Bartlet from "The West Wing" and Peggy from "Mad Men") both centering and de-centering the emotional universe.
The town of Lake Top (in New Zealand, apparently) is a character unto itself much in the same way the town of Twin Peaks is (there's a brief, amusing reference to "Blue Velvet"). And the plot is remarkably similar to Lynch's nation-capturing narrative in "Twin Peaks", even down to choice of musical themes and closing credit design. Cabin lodges, treacherous pasts, mysterious underbellies everywhere, intrigue, personality, pariahs, patriarchs, and a vague feeling that the town itself has a will, a circular nature, and a guiding force all its own. Probably the biggest similarity between the two series is the eerie, deadly locales. Just as "Peaks" had a deadly, mysterious forest like Hawthorne might have envisioned, "Top of the Lake" has all around it beautiful forests, summits, and of course, that ominous and fatally cold lake. The lake, which is treacherous to cross, gives the viewer a feeling of being trapped and smothered by the town itself - that there can be no hope or salvation for any of the characters because death is just one broken promise or tip of the kayak away.
Which brings us to the detective leads and their respective missions. For all the similarities, make no mistake, "Top of the Lake" is its own entity from "Twin Peaks", feeling sort of like a younger sibling. Young Tui Mitcham, played wonderfully by Jacqueline Joe, is the center of the vast, subsuming tragedy of "Top of the Lake". You see, Tui is 12 years old and, very early, goes into the (as we later understand it) fatal lake to drown herself. We find that she wasn't depressed or mentally incapacitated: She was pregnant. And Moss's detective Robin Griffin is a Lake Top native that had left the town long ago that has come home to visit her ailing mother. And Robin just happens to specialize in sexual assault cases involving children. Naturally, Robin is summoned and, like Dale Cooper, navigates the unforgiving town through the lens of the tragedy. Tui's rape and pregnancy turns out to be an even bigger deal because Tui's father Matt - wealthy, mean, and rugged - emerges as a central antagonist to Robin and possible suspect in Tui's rape. And Matt apparently has huge influence over the townspeople.
As I see it, the key to the series, among many others, is that, unlike Laura Palmer, Tui is alive. Laura Palmer's death was a central, undeniable tragedy that led Cooper to her friends, family, and the darker forces of Twin Peaks. But ultimately, however interesting Laura might have been, we only get first- and second-hand accounts, and Laura Palmer seems more like a riff to spark conversation than a character unto herself. But Tui is alive and precocious and complicated, and lends a beating heart to the tragedy of the town and works as someone that Robin and the viewer can see and actively relate to. As Robin becomes more and more entwined with the other characters, Jane Campion and Gerald Lee's scripts allow Robin's compassion for Tui to go from innocuous sympathy to a darkly personal connection quickly and deliciously, escalating the emotional stakes and lending a feeling of original sin to the series and giving Moss's reappearance in the town the importance of a dark avenger. Tui's confusion and her complicated lot - having a birth that might kill her and a rapist that might have begotten her - go from sad-but-true observations to formal, primal judgments about the nature of humanity, even as the police station Robin works at won't prosecute anyone.
Tui is emotionally well-composed and deeply pained, someone that refuses to be an outright victim nor an outright innocent (she certainly has confidence holding a gun and riding a horse), but the show still allows her to be a kid and to engage with friends and adults naturally. In a lot of ways, Tui is the most emotionally well-composed person in the series, and the show goes to great lengths to demonstrate that learning your history in a town of tragedy does more harm than good. Tui is canny and recognizes some of the exploitation of her town, but she hasn't quite internalized it. She's still a scared little girl without the life experience to gain full understanding of how deeply the treachery of the town runs. G.H., spiritual leader of an unstructured woman's shelter on the outskirts of town, preaches about the wisdom of the body and the importance of forgetting your thoughts and "who you think you are", referring to Robin's stream of thoughts as a "river of shit". And, as Robin descends into the various histories of the town (including her own), we see the wisdom in all of this and see all the people of the world scarred by their own deeds, by their family's deeds, and by their own poisonous thoughts, all of which prevent them from achieving peace. The locale of the woman's shelter is called "Paradise" but the people of Lake Top can't long enjoy it.
A few quibbles I could make, but won't: Shocking revelation after shocking revelation come crashing down as the series progresses. Romantic engagements and dozens of plot twists lend the show a soap-opera feel. Without the darkly comic interludes of Lynch's wondrous imagination, the soap opera can feel heavy-handed and emotionally manipulative in an unearned way. Still, thematically, I had absolutely no problems with these things, and want to make an argument for this stuff as a strength. See, the "Dexter" writers weren't even allowed to kill their main character in the final season. "Homeland" seems to have had similar problems (so egregious that it caused me to write an 3000-word blog post). The potential for spin-offs and various beatings-of-dead-horses have long trumped actual resolution and actual character development. Network executives would seemingly drive a car off a cliff than acknowledge that the car's strength was its ability to transport us somewhere beautiful and clever, not to go forward for the sake of momentum.
And in a seven-episode mini-series with no apparent opening for prequel or sequel (you could do it, but all indications are this was a one-off thing), there are no episodes where you have to fixate on restoring continuity from cast defections or explosive season finales. There are no episodes where you try out a character for half a season, kill them off, and start again. No, this is a show that is small enough to stand as a self-contained literary statement, and big enough to make the big leaps of characterization that shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad have recently excelled at. In short, this is a place you can go along any path you want to. You can have elaborate, ham-fisted plots. You can have instant romances. You can hint at directions and never go there again, without forcing yourself into continuity traps or accusations of missing focus. You can have intrigue that turns out to be for nothing, and you can have unremarkable avenues that turn out to be central later on. You are, in a sense, in a writer's paradise (no pun intended). Characters can vary wildly from episode to episode, so long as you make it plausible. And you never have to worry about preserving a romantic interest or a villain or a hero. "Top of the Lake" is allowed to be as wildly entertaining and deep and spiritual and pathos-filled as it damn pleases and it never - even to the final moment - descends into inorganic plotting. The result is a natural series, filled with complex, wonderful characters, thoughtful writing, beautiful cinematography, and - what a concept! - a beginning, middle, and end. I liked it, and I think you just might too.
October 30, 2013
October 20, 2013
It's a Metaphor
Imagine you're on the beach level of a video game. You can't leave the beach, you can't go out to sea too far, and anytime you stretch the limits you find some explicit or implicit barrier prevents you from going far in any direction. It doesn't matter whether it's an invisible wall, an "endless", treadmill illusion, or simply strategic rock formations - you're trapped, and you're going to die unless and until you achieve some objective as-yet unknown to you.
And then you see someone else. "Finally, someone that will be able to help me!" you think. You start to talk with them and find that they're in the same predicament that you're in. After awhile you notice several other people. Everyone is trying to escape, and obviously it would be better if you all worked together.
So you start to work together and you all quickly discover that the nature of the beach level is to constrain you totally in this square of existence, and that it's exquisitely effective at that task. So then everyone starts bickering about where in the rock formations to dig, where to dive, where to test the infinite wall's height. You have a theory about a rock or two, and you get involved with the bickering.
And you go away for a few days to think. Hunger and thirst are apparently not going to happen to you, so you have some time to think, in a distant corner of the beach level. You think and you think. You get some promising ideas about an escape. And, most of all, you start to watch your companions more closely.
Every couple of hours they switch to a new place to dig and a new set of things to bicker about. "We should be looking for a key!" "No, we should be looking for a raft!" You seem intrigued and ask all of them if they have any basis for these statements. Every single one of them say that they just woke up here randomly, as you did. They are just as clueless as you. And yet they have such confidence in their theories about where to dig.
After awhile they've exhausted every spot and done a multitude of things every which way, and go randomly from place to place. They talk about which spots are overrated and which spots are underrated: that is, as possible means of escape. They talk about which spots are important to the larger narrative of leaving. They talk about which spots they must visit before they die. They talk about how great it is to just enjoy crags of cliffs that no one else in the level has ever experienced. Just to sit there and be the only person that has ever sat there. They mark out their favorite spots to chisel away at ironically, knowing it's futile. They mark out their favorite shallow spots to wade and the deepest spots that they can reach. The taller people brag about the depths they're capable of standing in. The more athletic brag about the roughness of waves they can endure and still tread water. A few people laugh at anyone that even goes into the water because being wet isn't any fun at all. Much more fun to soak up the perfectly comfortable and unchallenging sun.
You saw all of this and wanted to scream. But you're not there anymore. You went to the center of the level, examined it, and found a little glitch in the sand in the form of a gap. It was obvious if you paid attention to where you were and walked around without any pretensions or preconceptions. Whoever'd developed the video game'd also developed some signals pointing to that point if you were looking for them. The sky and the earth and the sea all converged on this point. It was a heart-shaped gap and you didn't think twice. You jumped in and escaped forever.
And for all intents and purposes you won: But you weren't out of the woods, yet. You landed at a computer in the real world and saw some think-pieces and music criticism. You got sucked in and stayed at the computer for hours, reading and getting angrier about all the supposed "trends" of our modern culture, as dictated for you by self-appointed gatekeepers and "experts". It made you goddamn sick. It took quite a while for you to center yourself and find that heart-shaped gap again, but once you did, you felt happy again. And then you got something to eat, because boy were you hungry!
And then you see someone else. "Finally, someone that will be able to help me!" you think. You start to talk with them and find that they're in the same predicament that you're in. After awhile you notice several other people. Everyone is trying to escape, and obviously it would be better if you all worked together.
So you start to work together and you all quickly discover that the nature of the beach level is to constrain you totally in this square of existence, and that it's exquisitely effective at that task. So then everyone starts bickering about where in the rock formations to dig, where to dive, where to test the infinite wall's height. You have a theory about a rock or two, and you get involved with the bickering.
And you go away for a few days to think. Hunger and thirst are apparently not going to happen to you, so you have some time to think, in a distant corner of the beach level. You think and you think. You get some promising ideas about an escape. And, most of all, you start to watch your companions more closely.
Every couple of hours they switch to a new place to dig and a new set of things to bicker about. "We should be looking for a key!" "No, we should be looking for a raft!" You seem intrigued and ask all of them if they have any basis for these statements. Every single one of them say that they just woke up here randomly, as you did. They are just as clueless as you. And yet they have such confidence in their theories about where to dig.
After awhile they've exhausted every spot and done a multitude of things every which way, and go randomly from place to place. They talk about which spots are overrated and which spots are underrated: that is, as possible means of escape. They talk about which spots are important to the larger narrative of leaving. They talk about which spots they must visit before they die. They talk about how great it is to just enjoy crags of cliffs that no one else in the level has ever experienced. Just to sit there and be the only person that has ever sat there. They mark out their favorite spots to chisel away at ironically, knowing it's futile. They mark out their favorite shallow spots to wade and the deepest spots that they can reach. The taller people brag about the depths they're capable of standing in. The more athletic brag about the roughness of waves they can endure and still tread water. A few people laugh at anyone that even goes into the water because being wet isn't any fun at all. Much more fun to soak up the perfectly comfortable and unchallenging sun.
You saw all of this and wanted to scream. But you're not there anymore. You went to the center of the level, examined it, and found a little glitch in the sand in the form of a gap. It was obvious if you paid attention to where you were and walked around without any pretensions or preconceptions. Whoever'd developed the video game'd also developed some signals pointing to that point if you were looking for them. The sky and the earth and the sea all converged on this point. It was a heart-shaped gap and you didn't think twice. You jumped in and escaped forever.
And for all intents and purposes you won: But you weren't out of the woods, yet. You landed at a computer in the real world and saw some think-pieces and music criticism. You got sucked in and stayed at the computer for hours, reading and getting angrier about all the supposed "trends" of our modern culture, as dictated for you by self-appointed gatekeepers and "experts". It made you goddamn sick. It took quite a while for you to center yourself and find that heart-shaped gap again, but once you did, you felt happy again. And then you got something to eat, because boy were you hungry!
October 16, 2013
The Worst Is Yet To Come
I feel awful. I wrote a satirical piece yesterday, a satirical piece of the sort that used to move me - that used to energize me. Normally, this is the kind of feeling you get when you write a potentially great piece that never gets off the ground or never overcomes its limitations. In other words, a failure when you can taste success. But instead I feel awful precisely because I succeeded.
I wrote that piece close to perfectly, and I don't usually feel that way about something I've written. As much as anyone can, I wrote (I think) a perfect deconstruction of everything wrong with Phil Mushnick's Adrian Peterson column. I took Mushnick's rambling, disjointed Gordian knot of a monologue that started with "r" and ended in "-acism" and I followed the logical strands and untied the knot until what was left was a strangling single thread of hateful, racist expression. It was almost too easy. I ate the click-bait and bent the hook with sharper teeth. I demolished every word of it. I took a pernicious element of our society and I exposed it. I did right by art and conscience. I did everything I was supposed to.
And I feel awful. I suddenly feel that - as in The Usual Suspects - I nabbed a petty phantom while a much more sinister evil just walked right out my door, unimpeded. Everything I thought I'd accomplished with that piece turned out to be meaningless, simplistic, and ultimately not worth the effort by reader or writer. Phil Mushnick is an awful writer that wrote an awful column. And no one that clicked my link thought otherwise beforehand, and no one that clicked my link thought otherwise afterward. It was a fun piece to write, but what it successfully critiqued was trivial. I wrote the easiest piece in the world and felt satisfied about doing it competently.
After all, what's really up is that there are these horrible incentives to write hateful drivel. And why is that? Well, you don't have far to look: Finding civility among commenters on a big-market, major news/sports website is almost impossible. I've come to expect explicit racism and laughably coded racism everywhere. I've come to expect "fire the author" comments by self-righteous commenters looking to make a name for themselves. I've come to expect ramblings by people that are willing to take 2 minutes to comment and not more than a second to read. I've come to expect condescending drivel ("You can't even understand the most basic..."), trolling by troglodytes, and an ugly confirmation about every terrible impulse I've ever read about. The worst is yet to come, if you give it long enough.
And when that's your audience? When the human race - in all its mind-numbing need for attention and tearing-down-of-others - is your audience? Then Phil Mushnick is your writer. "You get Hoynes," President Bartlet famously said to God. God could've answered, "You get Phil Mushnick." You get the New York Post. You get click-bait, think-pieces without thought, tabloids, mindless entertainment, substanceless counter-intuitive ideas, instant takes, simplistic analysis, and, overall, you get specious nonsense.
Phil Mushnick isn't the problem: No, literally every one and everything, myself included, are the problem. See, I'm not gonna speak for you, but I know I have this impulse to grind my teeth and delight in a hateful column or comment. I have an urge to leave that self-righteous paragraph. I have that rage of survival and existence within me. I have that urge to hate an easy answer instead of finding a hard answer. I have jealousy, envy, social signalling, prejudices, fear, and rage. If I read a hateful thing, I'll identify with who is attacking or who is being attacked, instead of finding universal compassion for both and using rationality to find my way through. If I read a mawkish thing, I'll instinctively mentally attack the author as naive. If I read a partisan thing, I will take sides.
I'm the problem. I allow Phil Mushnick to exist. No, not the easy "Well you clicked him so you're lining his pockets!" answer. No, I mean, the hateful anti-intellectualism, the rage I feel, the mindless envy of other writers (like I really want the Post's resident racist hack job, anyway), and the self-centeredness of my own perspective.... all of the essence of who I am feeds into this animal impulse of humanity that, writ large, leads to editors saying "This is what people want." Leads to politicians saying "This is what people want" of their most diabolical and vacuous plans. Leads to the miracle of aggregate demand saying, "Fuck it, this is as good as the market wants, and this is as good as the market is going to get." I get Hoynes, and I deserve him.
Instead, I need to find productive outlets for my worst impulses. Every hateful thought must become a beautiful creation. Every drop of rage must feed a torrential mercy that I must bring to the world through the things I will build. The outrage that Phil Mushnick peddled in his column is timeless. It's time to fight that hideous outrage with an indifferent and larger structure; built from the same bricks, but infinitely more accommodating.
I wrote that piece close to perfectly, and I don't usually feel that way about something I've written. As much as anyone can, I wrote (I think) a perfect deconstruction of everything wrong with Phil Mushnick's Adrian Peterson column. I took Mushnick's rambling, disjointed Gordian knot of a monologue that started with "r" and ended in "-acism" and I followed the logical strands and untied the knot until what was left was a strangling single thread of hateful, racist expression. It was almost too easy. I ate the click-bait and bent the hook with sharper teeth. I demolished every word of it. I took a pernicious element of our society and I exposed it. I did right by art and conscience. I did everything I was supposed to.
And I feel awful. I suddenly feel that - as in The Usual Suspects - I nabbed a petty phantom while a much more sinister evil just walked right out my door, unimpeded. Everything I thought I'd accomplished with that piece turned out to be meaningless, simplistic, and ultimately not worth the effort by reader or writer. Phil Mushnick is an awful writer that wrote an awful column. And no one that clicked my link thought otherwise beforehand, and no one that clicked my link thought otherwise afterward. It was a fun piece to write, but what it successfully critiqued was trivial. I wrote the easiest piece in the world and felt satisfied about doing it competently.
After all, what's really up is that there are these horrible incentives to write hateful drivel. And why is that? Well, you don't have far to look: Finding civility among commenters on a big-market, major news/sports website is almost impossible. I've come to expect explicit racism and laughably coded racism everywhere. I've come to expect "fire the author" comments by self-righteous commenters looking to make a name for themselves. I've come to expect ramblings by people that are willing to take 2 minutes to comment and not more than a second to read. I've come to expect condescending drivel ("You can't even understand the most basic..."), trolling by troglodytes, and an ugly confirmation about every terrible impulse I've ever read about. The worst is yet to come, if you give it long enough.
And when that's your audience? When the human race - in all its mind-numbing need for attention and tearing-down-of-others - is your audience? Then Phil Mushnick is your writer. "You get Hoynes," President Bartlet famously said to God. God could've answered, "You get Phil Mushnick." You get the New York Post. You get click-bait, think-pieces without thought, tabloids, mindless entertainment, substanceless counter-intuitive ideas, instant takes, simplistic analysis, and, overall, you get specious nonsense.
Phil Mushnick isn't the problem: No, literally every one and everything, myself included, are the problem. See, I'm not gonna speak for you, but I know I have this impulse to grind my teeth and delight in a hateful column or comment. I have an urge to leave that self-righteous paragraph. I have that rage of survival and existence within me. I have that urge to hate an easy answer instead of finding a hard answer. I have jealousy, envy, social signalling, prejudices, fear, and rage. If I read a hateful thing, I'll identify with who is attacking or who is being attacked, instead of finding universal compassion for both and using rationality to find my way through. If I read a mawkish thing, I'll instinctively mentally attack the author as naive. If I read a partisan thing, I will take sides.
I'm the problem. I allow Phil Mushnick to exist. No, not the easy "Well you clicked him so you're lining his pockets!" answer. No, I mean, the hateful anti-intellectualism, the rage I feel, the mindless envy of other writers (like I really want the Post's resident racist hack job, anyway), and the self-centeredness of my own perspective.... all of the essence of who I am feeds into this animal impulse of humanity that, writ large, leads to editors saying "This is what people want." Leads to politicians saying "This is what people want" of their most diabolical and vacuous plans. Leads to the miracle of aggregate demand saying, "Fuck it, this is as good as the market wants, and this is as good as the market is going to get." I get Hoynes, and I deserve him.
Instead, I need to find productive outlets for my worst impulses. Every hateful thought must become a beautiful creation. Every drop of rage must feed a torrential mercy that I must bring to the world through the things I will build. The outrage that Phil Mushnick peddled in his column is timeless. It's time to fight that hideous outrage with an indifferent and larger structure; built from the same bricks, but infinitely more accommodating.
October 15, 2013
Phil Mushnick Comes Clean [SATIRE, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, FICTION]
THIS IS SATIRE AND FICTION - Read the disclaimer first
DISCLAIMER AND UPDATE (4:59 PM, 10/16): The following is a work of satire and fiction. It is satirical in tone and intent and perspective. Phil Mushnick did not actually write this piece, which is a satirical synthesis of what he's saying. My piece uses literal quotes from Mushnick's column liberally. To repeat, the following piece is not actually Phil Mushnick talking, but a satirical interpretation of his column from the New York Post. The copyright footer has been removed and this disclaimer has been added to the bottom as well.
I don't apologize to anyone for the following column, but I do *sincerely* apologize to Mushnick himself and anyone else for any misinterpretation on the question of whether this is satire and any ensuant pain. It's my job as a writer to be clearer and, on that count, I failed. That means earnestly owning the misinterpretations I cause through my writing, even though no misinterpretation was intended. Words have power and I clearly failed to honor that power. Thank you.
Hi, everyone! I'm Phil Mushnick, columnist over at the New York Post. I'm actually writing this from the hospital! I wrote this column about Adrian Peterson and it got a lot of hits! The hospital staff accidentally gave me sodium thiopental - the so-called "Truth Serum" - so while they resolve that I'm gonna write a follow-up to that column, because hits are the most important part of my paycheck and hence my life, to the exclusion of basic ethics! Anyway, I'm a straight-shooter, so I'll admit it: I left some things out of that piece. Politics, editorial guidance, whatever you want to call it. But my friend Alex from Pearls of Mystery was gracious enough to accept this major columnist's minor addendum to his own piece. Thanks, Alex! Right now I feel like nothing can stop this stream of opinions. So without further ado, it's:
Counterpoint: Being a great player does make Peterson a great guy... to write a column about!
October 14, 2013
Dreamer
We ate mushrooms that night. Good ones, tasty ones, like morels and truffles, the kind you used to pay a lot for - all because cultivating them in the garden was so easy. And we sauteed them in butter until the mushrooms were just melting in our mouths. God, it was nice. That night I felt pretty sick when I went to sleep. Warm, feverish, whatever. I figured I must have had a bad mushroom or two, because the taste of one of them just had a mold to it you'd never try to cultivate. Pretty gross. I didn't tell mom, though, because there were worse things out there than getting sick for a night. She'd worry too much.
Anyway, I had a pretty good night's sleep, all considering, and the next night we had carrots. Had a nice creamy soup with all sorts of herbs, and carrots and beans. Great, substantive food. Felt good, and mom chilled the soup so it soothed my aching throat. I stopped feeling feverish, and coughing was the only extant part of my sickness. But I didn't have a great night of sleep.
Anyway, I had a pretty good night's sleep, all considering, and the next night we had carrots. Had a nice creamy soup with all sorts of herbs, and carrots and beans. Great, substantive food. Felt good, and mom chilled the soup so it soothed my aching throat. I stopped feeling feverish, and coughing was the only extant part of my sickness. But I didn't have a great night of sleep.
October 12, 2013
I'm Done Justifying Myself
I'm done justifying my blog posts with explanations, statements of purpose, and purely self-analytical observations. Justifying my posts before or after writing them tends to create an overly-personal feel, tends to create a split focus in the reader ("What is he writing?" vs. "Why did he write this?"), and lengthens posts that could stand more editing than anything else.
Granted, I like the personal feel of this blog. But personal reflections that only talk about my "craft" tend to be reflexive and difficult to relate to. I like self-expression and the exhilaration thereof. But - as much as this blog stands as gigantic evidence to the contrary - I like tight, economical writing. I like writing that gets where it should and doesn't demand too much of the reader. And justification gets in the way of that.
You don't need the constant justifications and neither do I. I'm plenty imaginative; development in craft for me means culling those things that neither writer nor reader needs.
So it's done. I made the decision, now live with my decision. Thank you for your time.
Granted, I like the personal feel of this blog. But personal reflections that only talk about my "craft" tend to be reflexive and difficult to relate to. I like self-expression and the exhilaration thereof. But - as much as this blog stands as gigantic evidence to the contrary - I like tight, economical writing. I like writing that gets where it should and doesn't demand too much of the reader. And justification gets in the way of that.
You don't need the constant justifications and neither do I. I'm plenty imaginative; development in craft for me means culling those things that neither writer nor reader needs.
So it's done. I made the decision, now live with my decision. Thank you for your time.
October 9, 2013
Treading Water
The pool is only about six feet deep, so you have to keep treading. It's alright. The edge is only eight or nine feet away in every direction. A good work-out, treading water is. You get the sense that that's why you went into the pool, to work out those arms and legs. There's a comfortable feeling being only a foot from the bottom, knowing that you can take a quick break under the water if you want to. And so every few minutes you sink like a stone, occasionally daring to open your eyes underwater. The water isn't chlorinated and yet it feels somehow clean. You open your eyes underwater and it doesn't sting or even itch. Music overhead is playing, You recognize the aria, "Erbarme Dich," from St. Matthew's Passion. What a nice song. You remember finding it.
You only wonder how you got here. Seems like you just woke up in this little pool. So maybe you're dreaming. But then, why this pleasant fatigue upon the muscles? After ten or fifteen minutes you've reached a nice feeling all over. Treading is a continuous challenge, but it's not too aerobically demanding, nor is it too demanding on the muscles. Just a solid return. Return. That's the word your mind produces, and it feels somehow right.
Anyway, after a while you start to get a little tired. So you keep treading water and, like many ending a stationary workout, you keep your treading going in rhythm, planning to tread all the way to the edge of the pool for the last few seconds.
And then, before you reach the edge, you're swept back into the middle again by a current of water.
You only wonder how you got here. Seems like you just woke up in this little pool. So maybe you're dreaming. But then, why this pleasant fatigue upon the muscles? After ten or fifteen minutes you've reached a nice feeling all over. Treading is a continuous challenge, but it's not too aerobically demanding, nor is it too demanding on the muscles. Just a solid return. Return. That's the word your mind produces, and it feels somehow right.
Anyway, after a while you start to get a little tired. So you keep treading water and, like many ending a stationary workout, you keep your treading going in rhythm, planning to tread all the way to the edge of the pool for the last few seconds.
And then, before you reach the edge, you're swept back into the middle again by a current of water.
October 7, 2013
The Man Made of Marshmallows 2: Thanatopsis
This is the thrilling conclusion to the saga of Mr. Marsh Mallow, introduced here.
The man made of marshmallows had a terrible morphia habit he said from all the pain administered him but also from having no choice in the matter. Whatever overseer'd placed him (and'd administered him the condition of life presaging such pain) here'd also placed morphine inconsistently about the kitchen otherwise bare of cupboards, all the better to encourage a habit of morphia in Mr. Mallow.
Never a lethal dose, of course, and always in oddly-shaped grottos of the kitchen counters, grottos fully-formed during a occasional nightmarish siesta by the man made of marshmallows. And he'd wake up always in unbearable pain and after a few occasions had learned the drill: Placing his arm or leg or finger into the perfectly-molded-to-that-specific-limb-or-extremity grotto (for nothing else would fit), the man made of marshmallows would wait for the hypodermic, could only wait as the morphia was plunged subcutaneously.
And then the morphia's relief, of course. And then and then, the psychotic absence as it wore off (symptom: marshmallow fists pounding the lone table in the man's lone room), and the return of pain, and the painful, lasting impressions of the thick needles promising eternal fissures in the mallow. The fissure could never be quite healed by simply squeezing the skin together and spitting on it, a fact you at home could readily verify with a toothpick and an ordinary pack of jumbo marshmallows. And spit-and-squeeze is about the only medical technology the Midwest nightmare-kitchen actually has when you can hardly move and each movement will in the long game cost you food and your only food is your own tissue.
A short note: The overseer would sometimes rig the needle so that, shortly after hypodermic injection, the injection would leave the tip of the needle in the marshmallow tissue, leaving countless fragments of needle around bones and veins and occasionally sticking out through the marshmallow flesh. The needles left in this manner would hurt always fiercely with trauma and occasionally threaten (but unmercifully, never quite destroy) circulation to extremities. And eventually the needle-pain would blend in with the organ-pain and the skin-pain and the living-pain and the tooth-pain and the hunger-pain and it would blend together in a dull pain that throbbed with his still-human heart, and he would forget about where the needles were lodged, that is until the man made of marshmallows would get an uncomfortable accidental chomp of a needle once every 50 meals or so of his self-cannibalizing diet.
One day, after six months of morphia, the overseer stopped the administration of opiods abruptly, and withdrawal soon set in. It's a good thing so little of the bones had not been displaced in Mr. Mallow, or the kitchen would have suffered far more from his withdrawal than to have its every surface from floor to ceiling be covered in the sticky residue of marshmallow seeking purchase and escape and, in the end, only morphia. The withdrawal almost killed Mr. Mallow, and certainly if not his body, then his spirit. The overseer had stepped into the room for a moment to intervene against death. And Mr. Mallow had seen the overseer, but only for a moment. It was enough. Knife's-edge feet, scarcely humanoid. Mr. Mallow mentally described eye contact with the overseer as being first impossible, as eyes didn't even begin to describe it, but second that looking into his... face... was exactly like looking into space from the round window of a doomed shuttle, the death sentence of seeing vast infinity right in front of you punctuated only once by merciful panes to affirm place and purpose and structure. The room, already dimly-lit and smoky, seemed to darken slightly to accommodate the overseer.
Whatever the case, the dosage of morphia had returned, and, today, Mr. Mallow took his newly-reinstituted dosage with almost indifference - the tolerance at this point made it almost useless for pain. Now his tissue receives a broken-off needle-tip nearly every dose, and it's a surprise when he doesn't. He gets a thought in his head he's never gotten before - that there was nothing left to break any more in him; even his sanity is inconsistent, finding purchase only in moments brief and spare of pain like this.
Mr. Mallow realizes that there's nothing left to break and that all the overseer knows is breaking. So putting the pieces together, Mr Mallow figures time is, at least he hopes, in short supply.
Yes. Mr. Mallow hears his own still-human vocal chords producing this still-human word "Yes." in his own still-human head. But he also knows it's not from him, because he can think elsewise and hear it at the same time, and he's never inflected "Yes." quite like that. A foreign thought from within his head, but not normative, which Mr. Mallow could at least respect. No brainwashing, just the facts, man. His voice continued.
Yes. One more day left, Mr. Mallow.
Mr. Mallow stands at great effort and puts his long-nibbled hands into his jeans-pockets and looks down at the ensemble with its red flannel button-down T-shirt, sort of stocky like John Goodman, though it's a gut he didn't used to have, a gut completely composed of sheets of marshmallows, within and without him. He puts his hands in his back pockets, surveys his kitchen, and smiles in a way that is real, for the first time since he'd wound up in this kitchen.
He carefully chose the words in his next thought. Any chance you could get here sooner?
At once the barren refrigerator twelve feet away started to hum, like it was processing a lot of crunchy ice. As a cruel touch the overseer had always kept pictures of homework and to-do lists on the face of the refrigerator, knowing that all he'd left the man made of marshmallows to do was to suffer. But the magnets and the papers started to slide down the refrigerator, finally falling completely. Then they started to slide slightly towards Mr. Mallow. They slid faster and faster by degrees and he started to notice little irregularities with respect to random metal objects in the room. It dawned on Mr. Mallow that the refrigerator had a gigantic electromagnet in its belly, and its only purpose had ever been as a magnet.
Sure. His voice responds in his head. A thousand needles, having been embedded over the last few months, start to move through Mr. Mallow in unpleasant ways, and he knows what's coming. Instead of waiting, he plunges himself towards the refrigerator to hasten demise. Through his human organs come and go needles of various malicious sizes. And the man made of marshmallows is finally consummated in a hail of needle-bullets moving away from him along two opposite vectors. And, with one final flail, he serves himself up a small chunk of arm with that marshmallow flavor that Mr. Mallow - despite it all - had actually come to relish.
The man made of marshmallows had a terrible morphia habit he said from all the pain administered him but also from having no choice in the matter. Whatever overseer'd placed him (and'd administered him the condition of life presaging such pain) here'd also placed morphine inconsistently about the kitchen otherwise bare of cupboards, all the better to encourage a habit of morphia in Mr. Mallow.
Never a lethal dose, of course, and always in oddly-shaped grottos of the kitchen counters, grottos fully-formed during a occasional nightmarish siesta by the man made of marshmallows. And he'd wake up always in unbearable pain and after a few occasions had learned the drill: Placing his arm or leg or finger into the perfectly-molded-to-that-specific-limb-or-extremity grotto (for nothing else would fit), the man made of marshmallows would wait for the hypodermic, could only wait as the morphia was plunged subcutaneously.
And then the morphia's relief, of course. And then and then, the psychotic absence as it wore off (symptom: marshmallow fists pounding the lone table in the man's lone room), and the return of pain, and the painful, lasting impressions of the thick needles promising eternal fissures in the mallow. The fissure could never be quite healed by simply squeezing the skin together and spitting on it, a fact you at home could readily verify with a toothpick and an ordinary pack of jumbo marshmallows. And spit-and-squeeze is about the only medical technology the Midwest nightmare-kitchen actually has when you can hardly move and each movement will in the long game cost you food and your only food is your own tissue.
A short note: The overseer would sometimes rig the needle so that, shortly after hypodermic injection, the injection would leave the tip of the needle in the marshmallow tissue, leaving countless fragments of needle around bones and veins and occasionally sticking out through the marshmallow flesh. The needles left in this manner would hurt always fiercely with trauma and occasionally threaten (but unmercifully, never quite destroy) circulation to extremities. And eventually the needle-pain would blend in with the organ-pain and the skin-pain and the living-pain and the tooth-pain and the hunger-pain and it would blend together in a dull pain that throbbed with his still-human heart, and he would forget about where the needles were lodged, that is until the man made of marshmallows would get an uncomfortable accidental chomp of a needle once every 50 meals or so of his self-cannibalizing diet.
One day, after six months of morphia, the overseer stopped the administration of opiods abruptly, and withdrawal soon set in. It's a good thing so little of the bones had not been displaced in Mr. Mallow, or the kitchen would have suffered far more from his withdrawal than to have its every surface from floor to ceiling be covered in the sticky residue of marshmallow seeking purchase and escape and, in the end, only morphia. The withdrawal almost killed Mr. Mallow, and certainly if not his body, then his spirit. The overseer had stepped into the room for a moment to intervene against death. And Mr. Mallow had seen the overseer, but only for a moment. It was enough. Knife's-edge feet, scarcely humanoid. Mr. Mallow mentally described eye contact with the overseer as being first impossible, as eyes didn't even begin to describe it, but second that looking into his... face... was exactly like looking into space from the round window of a doomed shuttle, the death sentence of seeing vast infinity right in front of you punctuated only once by merciful panes to affirm place and purpose and structure. The room, already dimly-lit and smoky, seemed to darken slightly to accommodate the overseer.
Whatever the case, the dosage of morphia had returned, and, today, Mr. Mallow took his newly-reinstituted dosage with almost indifference - the tolerance at this point made it almost useless for pain. Now his tissue receives a broken-off needle-tip nearly every dose, and it's a surprise when he doesn't. He gets a thought in his head he's never gotten before - that there was nothing left to break any more in him; even his sanity is inconsistent, finding purchase only in moments brief and spare of pain like this.
Mr. Mallow realizes that there's nothing left to break and that all the overseer knows is breaking. So putting the pieces together, Mr Mallow figures time is, at least he hopes, in short supply.
Yes. Mr. Mallow hears his own still-human vocal chords producing this still-human word "Yes." in his own still-human head. But he also knows it's not from him, because he can think elsewise and hear it at the same time, and he's never inflected "Yes." quite like that. A foreign thought from within his head, but not normative, which Mr. Mallow could at least respect. No brainwashing, just the facts, man. His voice continued.
Yes. One more day left, Mr. Mallow.
Mr. Mallow stands at great effort and puts his long-nibbled hands into his jeans-pockets and looks down at the ensemble with its red flannel button-down T-shirt, sort of stocky like John Goodman, though it's a gut he didn't used to have, a gut completely composed of sheets of marshmallows, within and without him. He puts his hands in his back pockets, surveys his kitchen, and smiles in a way that is real, for the first time since he'd wound up in this kitchen.
He carefully chose the words in his next thought. Any chance you could get here sooner?
At once the barren refrigerator twelve feet away started to hum, like it was processing a lot of crunchy ice. As a cruel touch the overseer had always kept pictures of homework and to-do lists on the face of the refrigerator, knowing that all he'd left the man made of marshmallows to do was to suffer. But the magnets and the papers started to slide down the refrigerator, finally falling completely. Then they started to slide slightly towards Mr. Mallow. They slid faster and faster by degrees and he started to notice little irregularities with respect to random metal objects in the room. It dawned on Mr. Mallow that the refrigerator had a gigantic electromagnet in its belly, and its only purpose had ever been as a magnet.
Sure. His voice responds in his head. A thousand needles, having been embedded over the last few months, start to move through Mr. Mallow in unpleasant ways, and he knows what's coming. Instead of waiting, he plunges himself towards the refrigerator to hasten demise. Through his human organs come and go needles of various malicious sizes. And the man made of marshmallows is finally consummated in a hail of needle-bullets moving away from him along two opposite vectors. And, with one final flail, he serves himself up a small chunk of arm with that marshmallow flavor that Mr. Mallow - despite it all - had actually come to relish.
October 1, 2013
Open Letter To The Aggrieved New/Prospective Viewer of Breaking Bad
Dear New/Prospective Viewer (NPV) of Breaking Bad,
I'm sorry you can't enjoy Breaking Bad the way I did. I'm sorry about the unreasonable expectations. I'm sorry about the ubiquitous memes. I'm sorry about the flooding of social media. I'm sorry about the references you are doomed not to understand. I'm sorry in terms of guilt - my small role in talking about the show relentlessly, and I'm sorry in terms of pity - you didn't bring this on yourself. I'm sorry.
But maybe I can gain a measure of justice and atonement here. After all, I've seen a large sample of people "binge-watch" the show. I've seen a whole lot of people that fell into traps of frustration, expectations, impatience, spoilers, and simple annoyance. And I've seen others that got through the show without any hitches. So... my role today will be as guide, to lightly and politely convince* you to watch Breaking Bad if you haven't. And, if you do make up your mind to watch Breaking Bad, I'd like to give you guidance on how to watch the show to maximize your enjoyment.
*With actual reasoning, of course.
So without further ado...
I'm sorry you can't enjoy Breaking Bad the way I did. I'm sorry about the unreasonable expectations. I'm sorry about the ubiquitous memes. I'm sorry about the flooding of social media. I'm sorry about the references you are doomed not to understand. I'm sorry in terms of guilt - my small role in talking about the show relentlessly, and I'm sorry in terms of pity - you didn't bring this on yourself. I'm sorry.
But maybe I can gain a measure of justice and atonement here. After all, I've seen a large sample of people "binge-watch" the show. I've seen a whole lot of people that fell into traps of frustration, expectations, impatience, spoilers, and simple annoyance. And I've seen others that got through the show without any hitches. So... my role today will be as guide, to lightly and politely convince* you to watch Breaking Bad if you haven't. And, if you do make up your mind to watch Breaking Bad, I'd like to give you guidance on how to watch the show to maximize your enjoyment.
*With actual reasoning, of course.
So without further ado...
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