Luco, Desperate, Now Sleeps in the Closet

I feel I am too tired to speak. Too exhausted. Too old. 

So I hide in this closet. Away from les chiens dangereux. Les chiens terribles. Monstrueux. Le chiens que je déteste...

Is it true though? Do I hate these dogs. Apparently a construct not worthy of a question mark, but regardless, hate is perhaps too strong a word.

Does their incessant barking drive needles into my forehead? Yes. Does their smell churn my stomach and dizzy my brain? Yes. Does the sight of them frolicking together Outside send paroxysms of  jealousy through me? Yes.

And that, reader, is perhaps the thing. The basement, if you will, of my ill will.

Its foundation.

Brian Spears in a poem titled "Florida" from his book of poetry A Witness in Exile writes: 
"We cannot build
retaining walls to hold back
the sea - ocean percolates
through our limestone bedrock
and will drown us all one day.
Mangroves will survive,
sawgrass: that which salt cannot
desiccate. All else collapses,
but not yet. For now we build
bubbles; flipping is in our blood.
Land pulled from the swamp;
land the sea will soon reclaim."

I find my weary, sodden, dopey, recalcitrant mind fixated on this idea of my peninsula, my own entire prison, enveloped by water, overtaken, consumed by salt and by sea air and by les poissons.

Do the dogs think of this? Is it shuffling inside them as they play? And if not, do I covet them their ignorance?

Their affection for each other?

Because here I lie. Hiding in a closet. Some of that which the salt will desiccate, but then, I suppose that is the point of everything.

That we are dissoluble, ultimately. Ashes to ashes and all of that which you already know. A fragment of a melody stuck spinning in your inner ear.

We are so brief as to be invisible. And our own lives so full of gravity; as though you are the sun, reader, as I circle you, and we chortle, or we fill with anguish, or we love, but we nonethelsss circle, circle, circle. 

 

And those horrible dogs, they do this together. And they are satisfied to never wonder where Florida may move. How it might sink. How my heart breaks to see them embrace, doggish, in the Outside, halcyon fields of flowers and lizards; perfect in their pure happiness (and I am not one to believe in "purity" or "perfection," but one only has to watch them - the complicated geometry of their bones and muscles working as they dance together in the dirt); Hyperion's own daughter and son; and I am from their union and their joy kept, a cat in a closet, trapped in the closet.

Or I slouch into the prison. Glance around me. Fall asleep. Watch the prison guard. Read. Fall asleep. Gaze out every window. Dream. Imagine Florida just a tip of rock jutting from the water. Eat - each pellet of food exactly the same in taste, texture, size. Fall asleep.

Dream my prison guard staring into my eyes, finding something like a soul (I do not believe in souls); dream her understanding; dream her riotous; the dogs insects balanced on stick legs wrapped in paper, shipped off somewhere; dream my own blood a surging tide, my heart the moon balancing all of gravity, my center the center of everything - more than heat, more than fire, more than all-everything, and this: an admission of guilt, and then the caress of forgiveness; my mother's eyes on me. Ocean waves licking my feet.

And I wake alone.

 

 Because I am always-already alone.

Luco & Melancholia

Did you see Lars von Trier's movie Antichrist? If not, and if you have a strong constitution, it is a worthy endeavor to view this film. However, it is, well, bleak (and that is a determination of "bleak" coming from me). Some critics have accused von Trier of being misogynistic due to aspects of plot and characterization in Antichrist. After viewing it, I had to agree. Well, and I mean, did you see Dogville? Breaking the Waves? Women do not often fare well in von Trier films. They do not often thrive.

As a feline feminist (it is my hope that the preciousness of that title does not take away from the seriousness of what I am about to say), I have struggled with my own ambivalence regarding von Trier; I have both deeply loved and deeply hated his work. Melanchola, his new movie, pushed me up on the gradient nearer "love."

Melancholia is also centered around women, but it leaves me with a sense of von Trier's delicate misanthropy (as opposed to misogyny - what I mean is, at least in Melancholia both women and men act badly and are punished). That is to say, he seems to be in possession of a hatred of humanity (and really all life) that also acknowledges moments of tenderness. "I hate you so much sometimes" will be followed by a scene of sisters holding hands.

I do not know how familiar you are with this movie, but it is at its heart an end-of-the-world film. It is humorous to me because the prison guard and her husband have been watching the Nova series "The Fabric of the Cosmos." This series is about space and time and spacetime and the universe. In short, it makes a happy bedfellow to Melancholia.

Why, you ask, do I lay them down together in the same queen sized bed, gently tucking in a feather comforter around them before climbing up and sleeping in between their legs?

Because both deal with possibilities. Grapple with what it means to be alive. The skewed ways in which we see ourselves; the skewed ways we see the world around us.

The episode of "The Fabric of the Cosmos" we watched last night was called "The Illusion of Time." The host, Brian Greene, posits that theoretically all time exists at once - there is no real separation between past, present, and future; they all happen concurrently. We see life like an "arrow of time" - as progressing forever forward - perhaps due to the nature of entropy. We see ourselves and our world moving always from order to disorder.

And Greene suggests time travel possible. This fills me with an immeasurable amount of wonder, but I will save my ode to time travel for another entry (allow me, quickly, to note that I believe time travel to be one of the most romantic and intriguing ideas ever).

This idea of time fits into the movie Melancholia in many ways, the most relevant of which seems to me to be the way we perceive time as we experience trauma.

The world seems to slow. We become aware of everything around us. The click of the air conditioner, the  tapping of a coworker's keyboard, the dim music suddenly discernible as a car tumbles by our street.

And Melancholia seems to suggest that different people deal with death/disaster/disappointment (if you'll excuse the alliteration), in different ways, some better equipped to cope with loss than others. It even seems to argue that a depressed person is best fit to contend with tragedy. A depressed person will not lie to herself. She understands life inherently meaningless. 

She already wishes herself erased. Dreams expanses of void.

What does it mean for me that Lars von Trier arguably proves with his movie that the depressed creature is the best suited to life and to death?

It means I am the champion, my friend.