about "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave"

Dracula, dying alone, gasping, clawing at the skies, clawing at the cross behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Hammer released "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave" in 1968. I saw it when I was a little kid. This ending made an impression.

about this Thanksgiving

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving. I like the turkey in a bag, the mashed potatoes, green beans, pie and whipped cream, and the Cowboys. I am looking forward to eating and watching the game together. It never matters to me if the game is exciting or if the turkey is juicy. I just want to smell the food cooking in the house and know that you are right there.

 

(posts) a poem

"Tinnitus"
    —Robert Wrigley

The loneliness of a rank of six public
pay phones moves me today almost to tears,
and I wonder, dropping in my quarters,
if you will allow this odd nostalgic

impulse toward anachronism
to go through. That is, if you will answer
this morning’s call from an unknown number,
or let it, by the cold mechanism

of that which is called caller ID,
be rerouted to what is known as voice mail.
And then, on hearing your unreal voice, if I will,
nevertheless, tell you that it’s me.

But no, I hang up, and from the pay phone
on the far right I call the one one slot left,
and from the third, call the next one left,
and from the fifth, call the sixth and final phone,

creating as I do a carillon
of overlapping, almost identical rings,
disturbing the many students studying
in this building, where no one’s home.

As I leave, I dial you on my cell phone,
and you answer, asking if I’ve just called,
saying the number was strange, that you’d called
back but heard only a busy-signal’s drone.

Ah, love, let us be true to one another
in almost every way, I also do not say.
I’m at the door now, this cold and snowy day,
thinking of the old high ways one lover

once spoke to another, over wires,
when a call could be a complete surprise.
Still you ask, what is that strange bell noise?
And I answer, just the ringing in my ears.

about wearing out in the empty Providence airport

Unbothered runways press out to a deafened, mud-washed fringe of trees. Most people drive here. And away. Inside, neutral pop plays over the PA and suppresses mood. An unattended bag, a wilting plant in public space. How many rough mornings have there been at the Hampton Inn & Suites Providence Airport? Say goodbye to me and Massachusetts' shrunken head.

something passing

Here, stashed behind a woodpile, miles from the Capitol, loneliness surfaced at first in moments. The times waiting linger like an anchor. The feeling that one should engage more with the world takes root. But, why, when doing so always ends the same?

about a dream that sticks with me

One Sunday morning I was sleeping late and dreamed of lying in bed with X. Lying there, dressed in sleepwear, comfortable in each other's presence, talking. Not about anything in particular—just current events, passing thoughts, and so on. For a moment, my feeling wandered from intimacy to romance, but that feeling passed and I relaxed again. In real life, I would go out of my way to avoid her. And yet, what a treat was this Sunday morning spent together. I wondered later how I could dream something so in conflict with my better judgment. The reason is probably as simple as loneliness. There are few people further away from me than X, so her being so close meant that everyone else was that much closer.

about "A Christmas Memory" by Truman Capote

In this short piece by Truman Capote, a seven-year-old narrator lovingly remembers the last Christmas he shared with his intellectually disabled, elderly distant cousin. That season, the pair followed their tradition of making fruitcake and giving gifts. Capote's unadorned writing colors the events with innocence.

In the years following that Christmas, the boy goes away to school and his cousin succumbs to old age and dementia. In the wonderfully sentimental passage below, Capote masterfully captures the heartbreak one feels when a loved one passes:

Life separates us. Those who Know Best decide that I belong in a military school. And so follows a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons, grim reveille-ridden summer camps. I have a new home too. But it doesn't count. Home is where my friend is, and there I never go.

And there she remains, puttering around the kitchen. Alone with Queenie. Then alone. ("Buddy dear," she writes in her wild hard-to-read script, "yesterday Jim Macy's horse kicked Queenie bad. Be thankful she didn't feel much. I wrapped her in a Fine Linen sheet and rode her in the buggy down to Simpson's pasture where she can be with all her Bones...."). For a few Novembers she continues to bake her fruitcakes single-handed; not as many, but some: and, of course, she always sends me "the best of the batch." Also, in every letter she encloses a dime wadded in toilet paper: "See a picture show and write me the story." But gradually in her letters she tends to confuse me with her other friend, the Buddy who died in the 1880's; more and more, thirteenths are not the only days she stays in bed: a morning arrives in November, a leafless birdless coming of winter morning, when she cannot rouse herself to exclaim: "Oh my, it's fruitcake weather!"

And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.

Note: "A Christmas Memory" was published in 1956.
 

(posts) "Golden" by My Morning Jacket

My Morning Jacket
  -Golden

Watchin' a stretch of road, miles of light explode
Driftin' off a thing I'd never done before

Watchin' a crowd roll in, out go the lights it begins
A feelin' in my bones I never felt before

People always told me
that bars are dark and lonely
And talk is often cheap and filled with air

Sure sometimes they thrill me
but nothin' could ever chill me
Like the way they make the time just disappear

Feelin' you are here again, hot on my skin again
Feelin good, a thing I'd never known before

What does it mean to feel millions of dreams come real
A feelin' in my soul I'd never felt before

And you always told me
no matter how long it holds me
If it falls apart or makes us millionaires

You'll be right here forever
we'll go through this thing together
And on Heaven's golden shore we'll lay our heads


Note: from the "Late Show With David Letterman"

"Good Friend" by Plants and Animals

"Good Friend"
  by Plants and Animals

I wanna give, I wanna give,
I want to give everything up for grabs.
I wanna say, I wanna say,
I wanna say all the little things.
I wanna make, I wanna make,
I wanna make all of the good times.
I want to shake, I want to shake, I want to shake,
I want to shake your hand.

But what I really want to do is dance.
I wanna dance. I wanna dance. I wanna dance. I wanna dance.
I wanna dance. I wanna dance. I wanna dance. I wanna dance.
I wanna dance. I wanna dance.

I wanna feel, I wanna feel,
I want to feel lake water.
I wanna think, I wanna think, I wanna think,
Oh, man, I want to think something fine.
I wanna take, I wanna take,
I want to such a long long time.
I wanna wake, I wanna wake,
I want to wake up and see your shoes in the stairwell.

It takes a good friend to say you've got your head up your ass.
It takes a good friend to meet you in the park in the dark.
It takes an enemy to help you get out of bed.
It takes your lover to leave you, to feel loneliness.

I wanna dance. I wanna dance. I wanna dance. I wanna dance.
I wanna dance. I wanna dance. I wanna dance. I wanna dance.
I wanna dance. I wanna dance.

I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you to sew a button on my shirt.
I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you to come home.
I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you to help us out.
I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you only to love me for my black eyes.

It takes a good friend to say you've got your head up your ass.
It takes a good friend to meet you in the park in the dark.
It takes and enemy to help you get out of bed.
It takes your lover to leave you, to feel loneliness.

I don't believe it

About "Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone" by Eric Klinenberg

Klinenberg wants us to know this is a big deal--"the most significant demographic shift since the Baby Boom—the sharp increase in the number of people who live alone". And the volume and proliferation of these people, annoyingly called "singletons" here, has never happened before. The book attributes the shift to four eco/techno/socio-cultural developments: (1) women's lib, (2) conveniences of technology, (3) longer lifespans, and, the biggest factor, (4) increased urbanization.

Klinenberg's revelation is that, rather than worry about this increased atomization making a nation of shut-in brats, we should see this as a neutral or even ultimately positive thing because these singletons are healthy, happy, and engaged. Indeed one of the book's big goals is to dispel myths and assumptions about people who choose to be alone. In support the book rallies scores of miniature profiles of singletons, quoting and amassing their differing and converging impressions and reasons. These mini bios also try and humanize the subject, to make flesh and blood out of a growing mass of loners.

The book's message is inherently anti-climactic: Hey, this is happening but it's OK (as long as we govern accordingly). I guess this is why I found the book so dull.

About a so-so book review in "The New Yorker"

"The Disconnect" gives a sloppy discussion while reviewing Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone by Eric Klinenberg. First the writer hazards that "Few things are less welcome today than protracted solitude". Whoa--what about people with kids they can't afford, or medical bills from ailing children and spouses? Wrecked and loveless marriages, and stifling alimony and child support payments? Or even smaller, more subtle miseries, like silent, nightly dinners with children you can't relate to, who hate and resent you? Are those things more welcome than protracted solitude? What about never being alone? How is that liked?

Next, the article poses the question: "as a rule, do people live alone because they want to or because they have to?" Subsequent passages suggest aloneness is usually a choice: (1) "Things changed when she made the decision to buy an apartment, committing to a future alone." (2) "Some people remain single out of a disinclination to settle." But the idea that aloneness is a a choice is casually abandoned in the next section, wherein the piece's most interesting part is revealed:

In a landmark study, “Bowling Alone” (2000), the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam noted a puzzling three-decade decline in what he called “social capital”: the networks of support and reciprocity that bind people together and help things get done collectively. His work considered the waning of everything from P.T.A. enrollment to dinner parties and card games, but the core of his argument was declining civic participation. Between 1973 and 1994, the number of people who held a leadership role in any local organization fell by more than half. Newspaper readership among people under thirty-five dropped during a similar period, as did voting rates. Why? Putnam pointed to cultural shifts among the post-Second World War generation; the privatization of leisure (for example, TV); and, to a smaller extent, the growth of a commuting culture and the time constraints of two-career, or single-parent, family life. “Older strands of social connection were being abraded—even destroyed—by technological and economic and social change,” he wrote.

That last sentence is key, where the emphasis should fall on economic changes--changes so huge we can only begin to appreciate them. For starters, economic changes now mean people move around more, spend less time in one city or neighborhood, work several, maybe dozens of jobs in their lifetimes rather than one or two, and that unions have been dissolved, and on and on: all this, just for starters, is related to economic change. But this significant nugget, contained in a single paragraph, goes painfully unexplored by the author, who sums up the aforementioned study, saying, "Putnam, in other words, saw public institutions as a casualty of the same forces of individuation driving modern aloneness."

So now the rise in aloneness is driven by larger forces, and is no longer a choice. The original question, do people live alone because they want to or because they have to?, is now sort-of rhetorical. From here the article briefly, un-insightfully discusses online social interaction, confusing the original topic, aloneness, with something else--loneliness. But then the author pretty much dismisses the entire conversation by saying, "The truth is that lonely people at home typically contact friends, loiter in bookstores, work in cafés, take on roommates, open OKCupid profiles, or dance Tecktonik at a rave."

Oh, ok. Then what the hell are we talking about?

Something on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

I previously wrote on two short Carson McCullers stories that depict love as a lost cause. Her most cited and celebrated work, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, zooms in on the lost. Loneliness reverberates through these pages as we  follow a modest cast of characters who harbor passions that stir and agitate them. Each character is doomed by their ill-fit connection to this world, seemingly unable to relate to it and to others. Isolated, they turn their thoughts and feelings over and over again in their minds before finding an outlet in a polite deaf-mute whose soft smile and modest nods of approval disguise his own pain.

Stealing moments alone with the deaf-mute, each character imagines they've finally found someone in the world who understands them without realizing that that someone actually does not. It may be the sole blessing in their miserable lives that they don't realize this, but even that delicate respite is stolen when the deaf-mute commits suicide. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter moves ploddingly at times but the characters are well drawn and the sorrowful tones resonate without deafening us to the sounds of tiny bubbles bursting.

Something on short stories by Carson McCullers

The drifter's wisdom imparted in Carson McCullers' short story "A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud." tells us that love don't come easy. Having first failed at love, this drifter concludes that to be successful he must take baby steps, first feeling love for a tree, a rock, then a cloud--objects seemingly less complicated, less sacred and dangerous than his love's final destination, the woman that got away. He claims his approach is a science. His conclusion indicates that he believes he is not the problem. No, love itself is the problem and, moreover, the beloved is tricky and must be approached with caution. If his conclusion holds true, does this make love impossible for all men? Only the aged can hope for true love. It's a guaranteed tragedy at best.

A similar message is driven home in McCullers "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe". Here she tells of misguided, unrequited love. The three primary characters are defined by a lack of love--either a lack of love given or returned--so much so that they are ultimately victimized by love, turned tragic characters doomed to love an impossibility while drenched in loneliness and soft brutality. The love we can call healthy escapes McCullers' universe.

Broken Flowers

In the film "Broken Flowers", Bill Murray plays Don Johnston. I'd guess that Murray's motivation when he plays Don is that he has no motivation at all. The woman leaving him in the film's opening describes Don as an over-the-hill Don Juan, but what's so Don Juan about him, we can't tell. Rather than impassioned and hungry, this aging man is listless and indifferent.

The stoical plot of "Broken Flowers" begins when an anonymous letter informs Don that he has a 19 year-old son who may be looking for him. This revelation leads Don's amateur sleuth neighbor to map out a quest to identify the mother. So Don reluctantly accepts this mission. On his road trip, Don reunites briefly with four women who may have sent the letter. They are his unknowing suspects; Don is their detached inquisitor. These women all respond differently: The first with familiar affection, the next with frigid nervousness, another with distanced suspicion, and the last with outward aggression. None of these encounters leads Don to identify the mother. But once back again in his home town, Don spots a young man loitering first at the bus station, then outside the diner where Don lunches. Don approaches the stranger for an impromptu sit down which ends with Don embarrassing himself and frightening off the apparently wrong young man. It may be that Don never chose to be a confirmed bachelor. It may be that he never chose anything at all. He simply stopped developing but kept being. When the film ends, we can wonder if Don has been stirred again, or we might think this fruitless search has only affirmed his negation. But wait--a strange happening just before the credits only deepens the uncertainty.

Other interpretations: (1) The amateur sleuth neighbor represents the seeker; he is one who searches for Truth. Don is the skeptic, a slightly cynical denier of Truth. But, when Don is faced with the possibility of Truth he reaches out to take hold of it, wanting. But what does it mean that Truth evades him? (2) Another interpretation (my preference): The amateur sleuth neighbor represents the person compelled to exercise power, to subject the world to his gaze and prescribe truths, thereby creating knowledge he uses as he wishes. Don neither wishes to exercise power and refuses to have power exercised on him. When he takes up the quest for power and knowledge, he finds nothing but a stretch of time that is uninterpretable and not to be used for the purposes of meaning, knowledge, and power.

"Broken Flowers" is a good film, if a little flat in its pacing. Bill Murray, of course, awards even this static character with soul.