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Jaws, Cinematic and Beyond

07 Friday Jul 2017

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When we were young, sometimes mom and dad would let us watch TV in their bedroom. Perhaps there was a show on the TV in the living room that we were not allowed to see… or maybe it was some night the babysitter had the remote control so me and brother would invade mom and dad’s room and watch the tube.  One night I recall watching “Jaws” in their room and I was shocked by the things I saw. Sheltered, I’d never seen anything like that, and I’m sure Mom would never approve, but there it was in all its toothy, briny glory.  Funny, I never had shark nightmares then or now. Only Godzilla remains my subconscious nemesis.

I’ve watched Jaws so many times I can’t count over the years, either for the pleasure of dialogue or some background noise. Rarely do I watch the movie these days with eyes fully focused on the screen, surveying and drinking in the landscape.   Last night was a game changer.  The Virginia Aquarium and theater is 20 minutes away (as the GPS crow flies), and I left an hour before the movie. I mean, who needs an hour to get 20 miles? However, I forgot the daily congestion on the interstate. With some dodging and deep breaths I found a nice parking place, got my ticket and discovered the movie had only started 3 minutes ago instead of 15.  I was lucky.

The screen is enormous, the sound overpowering. I wished to have a seat center, rear, but I didn’t get there soon enough to have that choice. I wound up kind of center and a chair in the aisle.  It took me a while to get used to the enormity of sound and vision. I brought my knitted poncho because I knew I’d be so cold in there, and I used it to hide behind the flesh-rending scenes. (I’ve danced that dance before, and I don’t need to dance that scene anymore.)  Sometimes the sound was too loud, so I had to close off my ears.   The screen was bigger than our house. Chief Brody’s fingernail was the size of a soccer ball.

On this enormous screen I saw things I hadn’t before and felt grateful and blessed as a writer to see them. Why didn’t I notice the blood on Quint’s hands as he interrogated Hooper? I knew that Spielberg provided the voice of the Coast Guard at one point but never actually heard him, recognized him until last night.  Quint’s fisherman chair was beaten and worn in ways I never noticed.  Robert Shaw removed a tooth, put it in an envelope and never put it back.  The audience was quiet for this movie. No cellphones went off, no babies cried. I wonder if we were all here for the same, tense reason, wanting to fill the same need–nostalgia, bigger than life? I wonder how many came just to hear Mr. Shaw deliver his soliloquy, that soliloquy, equal only to Hamlet?

I heard some young people in the parking lot who said they’d never seen the movie before. I wanted to ask them all kinds of questions, but did not approach because I was afraid my enthusiasm and need for answers might make me look like a crazy person.  I wanted to know why they came, what did they think of it, do they believe great whites are vengeful, and so on. Instead, I drove home into a sky filled with a thrilling fight in my south, Thor smiting his foes in the clouds.  I headed “west” on the interstate towards home and the sky ahead was filled with high, building clouds and flashes of lightning that could make one believe the gods are at war, but there was no sound and no rain. As I drove with windows down, a fighter jet came low across the road as I fought to keep my hair out of my eyes with my left hand, maneuvering lane to lane with my right on a homeward trajectory.

As I drove, I secretly wrote the thing about this movie and a certain moment, wondering where it will lead and hoping it will go.  I won’t tell you here, because it’s still in progress.  I watched a movie, enormous in story and physicality. I drove home on dark roads watching a storm flash orange in blue clouds.  I am blessed, again.

Rumble and Learn

30 Tuesday May 2017

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Overcast for one and a half days.  Overcast is gentler on the body than full skin exposed to a Memorial Day sun, but I needed to stay inside.  Aunt Flo scheduled me for some couch time, and when Aunt Flo speaks I obey.

This morning I awoke with an unsteady purpose, mostly just wanting to get through this hour to the next, because that’s all I can do, but a neighbor called and asked for help.  I am blessed because she asked me and blessed because I could answer.  I hope she will take measures to be prepared for the next time, but only she can answer that.

I came home and answered a text to conversation.  Another friend who is in need. I am grateful to be able to be present for them.  I am determined to live my life with boundaries but not in solitude like a prisoner, and that means I am here to hear, so I heard, and she is okay.

Overcast.  The rain has come harder, the sound and feel that I love.  I opened my door so I could feel and hear it.  I see my disgraced neighbor at the office working on moving out. I am sad for him because he reminds me of my son: smart, young, and in party mode.  I want the best for him because young people make bad choices, and the mother of me sympathizes, but at the same time I want them to tighten up and make better choices, as if I am so perfect.   I see them as I see my son.  I see the lease that I read (and I mean read, all the way, like a dork because who the hell reads their lease entirely but me??), the same one they signed, and I know the realtor has rights, even though young man was just being a boy, like my own son. Where does it end?

I write this as a little weather comes in.  What a gentle thunder, a tender dark, something that will move east and the neighbors will fall out for sunset in damp sand. That was no storm, just a rumble.  We are all living in degrees.  What I want for my country more than anything is to accept that we are all of and in degrees, and we must compromise.  Compromise. It’s the only world we have. Some days precipitate comes and it’s a mist, sometimes it’s a little rain, sometimes it’s a prelude to tornadic activity, but it leaves us all, prepared, just in case.  The sand remains damp and my neighbors remain.

What the hell does a pile of twenty-something strangers who might be called upon to put their boots on a land far away to uphold decency, if not democracy and die matter to me, a woman who lives in relative safety matter if they drink hard and play their music hard and puke hard have to do with compromise mean?  I spoke to them, I hugged them– strangers– and only wished, as a mother of a young person, they would have pulled it together and pulled it back.  Living here by the ocean is a paradise anyone would pray for… and they blew it.   Yeah, foolish me, but I can hope can’t I?  I fear for the young persons who will deploy soon just as I care about those who wear blue and show up to a domestic, or those who came to fight a fire when the wind was against them, the coldest night of the year fighting a fire that nature seemingly didn’t want them to win, three days after I moved in.    We honor those who serve, but I expect them to behave decently.  I honor service, but I also recognize rules, the same ones the rest of us have to follow. And I can’t beat compliance into them.  I can only hope the best for them.

Honor.  And fight for peace, so we no longer have to quarrel over monuments.

 

 

Lightning Pounds Willoughby

28 Friday Apr 2017

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Weather and I have had a contentious relationship since I was a kid ranging from Godzilla/Tornado nightmares brought on by the usual suspects to blizzards that ruined birthdays and snowstorms that activated my asthma. I had a thunderstorm phobia for a very long time, but it lessened after I had been outside in them, my tender parts exposed to lash of the lightning, deafening thunder, but … it didn’t kill me.  It was time to let go of the terror.

I remember Mom Mom showing me the dryer lid, cratered and black like the mare of the moon, courtesy of ball lightning.  I remember one vicious storm when my son was a baby, still bottle feeding, its intensity was singular.  I sat in the middle of the living room, holding him, watching the lightning blind the world. One stroke was so bright and powerful I thought for sure it hit a tree outside, but no. Everything was okay. I recall a thunderstorm in Tennessee whose presence could only be the Stone Giants from Tolkiens’ Hobbit. There could be no other explanation for the gashing and cracking that would surely send our cabin into the ravine.

Living here on the Chesapeake bay I have learned that there are no buffers between us and the weather. No big buildings, no hills, trees or mountains to buffer the fury of the lightning and accompanying thunder. There were only a couple of mouthy lightning storms last year, so I learned how to deal with it: sleep on the couch with a light on.   Yesterday I heard we were going to get some rain around 4AM, okay, no biggie, but there was no severe weather predicted.   Right around 5:30 a thunderstorm rolled in. I could hear it through all the windows I keep open now that the temperature is mild. I watched the sky flash with heat lightning and didn’t think much of it, heard a thunder rumble, but I got up, got dressed, and went outside to survey anyway.  And then the real shit started.

I sat at the table near my windows and watched the lightning vary from silent flashing somersaults, cloud bling, to a little more aggressive light and a thunder reply.  Then the lightning decided to take victims, spears of anger, random, or not random, striking or not striking but blinding and angry nonetheless.  Thunder, lightning’s handmaid, tore everything, followed instantly or sometimes with a respectful pause. (No one steals lightning’s thunder, are you kidding?)  I stood in my bedroom doorway and watched the lightning seek ground for victims, all our ears in these buildings alert, at attention, and changing our morning routines because no one can sleep through this.  The wind became strong and the rain followed, but this is nothing.  This activity was more dangerous than a hurricane, and I managed through a hurricane which is a lot of heavy wind and drenching rain, but not lightning that’s stalking blinded, deafened victims.  I stood in a doorway away from the windows, phone in my pocket, because this was a fight club like I’d never seen before, and even my neighbors who’ve lived  here a decade said the same:  Sounds like somebody’s bombing the naval base.  I made my peace with god because I felt like this one was going to tear off the top of us, and that is saying something.  The storm was a procession of M80s in front of of us, on top of us, behind us, unannounced, blinding, and paving the way for a ripping thunder that claws its way from sky down below the foundations of this building, the floor shaking beneath my feet.  And it takes so long for the worst to pass.  One last grenade and it’s done. Wasn’t it? Then the birds started to tweet, the usual suspects at this half-dark time of morning, giving absolutely no f*cks that their tree was on the death star radar. Yeah.  Figures.  One last M80, like a final eff-you to the area, and all that was left was rain.