Work at home Friday and waiting on my dryer to be delivered and installed, which is quite lovely and exciting. Huzzah! I am probably going to be getting caught up on laundry all day once it arrives. There’s something zen about folding clothes, seriously. I do have to move some things around, but I have some time yet to enjoy my coffee and type this before they get here. I am really excited about my new dryer–but the one I am really looking forward to is the new refrigerator. The window period is 8:45 to 10:45, and if I remember correctly, once they are here they’ll be in and out in twenty minutes, tops.
It is sad how forward I am looking to doing some laundry.
I was tired again yesterday when I got off work, which is really par for the course this week. My body had that “relaxed-you-should-still-be-in-bed” feeling all day, and it was also a slower day without as many clients. The day just seemed to drag on endlessly, and then I came home to terrible exhaustion. I did start watching a documentary about Caril Fugate, The Twelfth Victim, which is interesting and i am looking forward to watching the rest. (I also love how one of the examples of the ‘simpler times’ which ended with whatever horrific true crime the show is about, they will always, always say “why, people never bothered to lock their doors!”) Was Caril a hostage or a participant? She was barely fourteen, and Starkweather was about four or five years older than she was; is it so hard to believe that she wasn’t a co-conspirator? But I need to watch the rest of the documentary to get a better idea of the facts of the case.
I am awake much earlier than I wanted to be; I had set the alarm for seven but woke up around five thirty, as usual, and finally gave up and got up around six thirty. I’ve cleaned off the bottom shelf in the laundry room and will probably need to take the shelf down entirely. I have to go outside and make sure the dryer will fit along the narrow footpath alongside the house and move things (garbage bins, planters) that might wind up being in the way. I may even have to roll the bins all the way back here to our little courtyard. I feel rested and well and relaxed this morning; last night, I must confess, was a little rougher than others have been this week, but Paul came home last night before I went to bed so I got to spend some time with him, which is rare and lovely when it happens this time of year. I do feel a bit of mental fatigue though; my emotions are still all over the place and I am still not entirely sure how I am supposed to be feeling, and what normal is in this situation; but I’ve also never been normal my entire life so why am I worried about it now? But today I am hoping, as I said, to get some cleaning and organizing around the house done today around and after my work-at-home duties, of which there are quite a few. The lack of a dryer, which has absolutely nothing to do with whether the apartment can be cleaned up or not, has made me feel off about the entire apartment ever since it broke; unsettled somehow, if that makes any kind of bizarre sense. But am I simply blaming that unsettled feeling on the dryer, when it’s actually part of the post-funeral grief still surfacing every now and then? Heavy heaving sigh. But I am looking forward to getting a lot done this weekend. I want to get the car washed and of course, as always, I have to make groceries at some point and pick up the mail (probably tomorrow, along with washing the car). I also need to drop books off at the library sale tomorrow, so I’ll need to be packing up some books today as well.
I also want to finish reading Cheryl’s book, which is quite marvelous and I’ve been itching to get back at it, irritated at being so tired when I get home from work that I can’t focus on reading it. I’ll make some time for it after I finish working today, and maybe I can get it finished tomorrow morning with my coffee.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. I need to get some stuff picked up and put away and of course go move things off the narrow walkway alongside the house. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you later.
It’s gray outside this morning, and right now the trees and the crepe myrtles are swaying in a strong wind. It must have rained at some point during the night because the sidewalk looks wet, but I’m not sure. We’re supposed to experience tropical storm conditions, and it looks as though that won’t be until later this evening; we’ll see how that turns out though. Our syringe program may be short-staffed today so I am probably going to go into the office to help out–the storm may not reach us until around five thirty and I should be able to get home by then (am I crazy? The jury, as always, remains out on that one).
I’ve been sleeping really well lately–stress reduction has occurred on many different levels over the past week. My back and shoulders feel relaxed and not knotted anymore–I hadn’t noticed how much of my stress was being carried there until it wasn’t there anymore–and maybe I am going to be able to start focusing with laser intensity again. I miss that, frankly; the ability to focus all my brain and creativity and intelligence (such as it is) on one particular thing and get it finished; I think I may even go back to being able to keep all the plates spinning again–stop that crazy talk, Greg!–so we shall see. As I said, some things that have been weighing heavily on my mind–and knotting my shoulders–have wrapped up now and if i can finally manage to get myself organized, look out world.
Do keep Lake Charles and western Louisiana/eastern Texas in your thoughts, Constant Reader, as they are going to get hammered again tonight.
Yesterday as I made condom packs I queued up Terence Malick’s debut film as part of the Cynical 70’s Film Festival, Badlands,which starred a very young Martin Sheen and an even younger Sissy Spacek playing a version of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril (in the movie they are Kit and Holly); as they embark on their killing spree–although in the movie it’s South Dakota and Montana, as opposed to the Nebraska and Wyoming in reality. It is set in the 1950’s, which is also when Starkweather went on his spree (makes you think about how everyone remembers the 1950’s as this idyllic time; what I call Leave it to Beaver Syndrome), and the performances are stellar. The movie is narrated by Spacek’s Holly, in an almost unemotional monotone that captures the spirit of the movie itself. The movie doesn’t explain why Kit decided to start killing people, or why Holly chose to go with him, other than they fell in love and her father–the first victim–disapproved. (It’s also very weird seeing President Bartlet on a shooting spree, really.) Both are terrific in their roles, and the movie is visually stunning, really hammering home the isolation of the countryside in those rural states and their vast emptiness–and literally, how on the great plains or in the badlands there is no one to hear you scream. It made me think also of In Cold Blood; and of course, gave me some story ideas.
I decided to make it a Sissy Spacek double feature and queued up Carrie next–it was also a cynical 70’s movie, after all; and while it can hardly be termed a teen movie, it was about high school, after all, and the only adults in the film are supporting characters–Miss Collins the gym teacher; the principal; and of course, the piece de resistance, Margaret White–and everyone else is theoretically a teenager/high school student. I’ve not rewatched Carrie in years, and I’d forgotten what a great film it is; it’s one of the best (if not the best) Stephen King adaptations ever made–I might even go so far as to say it may be one of those rare instances when the film is better than the book. (And as a big King fan, I am quite aware of what blasphemy I just uttered.) Both book and film might be the first time bullying was addressed so strongly, and an argument can even be made that Carrie is one of two Stephen King novels that could be classified as young adult novels (Christine is the other one). Reading Carrie was a revelation to me as a teenager; it was the first time I’d ever read anything in fiction that depicted high school as I knew it that closely; most books and films at the time that did so were completely unrealistic. I had found junior and senior high school to be jungles of cruelty and viciousness with a rigid caste system; it was the first time I’d ever read anything centering the poor kid whom nobody likes, everyone picks on or mocks, and did it with sympathy. It was the first time I saw high school girls depicted as “mean girls”–it later became a trope–and the book was also the first time I ever saw in fiction anyone try to explain the weird, visceral group reaction to a figure who is more to be pitied than hated. (The book was also the first time I realized that we all love an underdog story–is there anything more popular in American popular culture than rooting for the underdog–while in real life the majority of us all will kick the underdog in the ribs or stand by and do or say nothing when they are being abused; King got that, as well as the shame decent people feel about doing nothing later) The movie is incredibly well done; there’s more gratuitous female nudity than perhaps necessary but it doesn’t feel exploitative; the locker room scene that opens the book features female nudity but it would be unrealistic to not show some–and later, we see Spacek’s nude body when she bathes and washes the blood off herself. It’s also very well-cast: Betty Buckley is terrific as the gym teacher who goes from irritated with poor Carrie until she realizes the girl has no idea what her period is; Amy Irving as Sue Snell, the decent girl who participates in the taunting but later feels remorse–a difficult role to be believable in, but she manages it; Nancy Allen is perfectly cast as spoiled hateful bitch Chris Hargensen; and of course John Travolta, playing against type as Chris’ low-life drop-out boyfriend and co-conspirator, which was really a brave move on his part–he was a star already and a teen idol from Welcome Back Kotter, and making his screen debut as a dirtbag thug was a risk (and his next film was Saturday Night Fever); but the movie truly belongs to Sissy Spacek, who is perfect as Carrie, and Piper Laurie as her mother, Jesus-freak Margaret White. Watching them again, I can’t help but feel that each deserved to win Oscars (they lost to Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight, both in Network). The use of music in the movie is perfect, and the whole movie seems to be shot with this weird, slightly blurry, out of focus dreamlike style, like the camera was coated in vaseline or covered in gauze. And the clothes and hairstyles! The prom tuxedos with the ruffled shirts and in bizarre color choices! The feathered hair and the gym shorts pulled up so high they barely covered the girls’ asses! William Katt as Tommy Ross, the nice guy who takes Carrie to the prom! Even a young Edie McClurg as one of the teenaged girls, I think the character name was Frieda? As I rewatched the movie, I couldn’t help but think how King subverted the trope of the underdog story by making Carrie so sympathetic to the viewer, and then of course she blossoms at the prom with her make-up and her hair out of her face, in the beautiful dress she made herself, escorted by the most popular boy in the school, and elected Prom Queen–only to have it all come crashing down around her.
The movie differed from the book in several important ways, too–in the book, they do all laugh when Carrie is coated with the pig’s blood; the election for King and Queen isn’t rigged in the book; and in the book Carrie wreaks havoc and destroys the entire town on her walk home. The book also–a stylistic choice I may have questioned as an editor–made it very clear almost from the very beginning that Carrie’s story has a terrible ending, by intercutting the chapters with clips from news reports, books, etc. talking about the Black Prom–the reader just doesn’t know what happens at it, and whatever we may have been expecting, it certainly wasn’t the extreme it turned out to be–and my sympathies were entirely with Carrie, all the way to the very end.
I may need to reread Carrie.
It’s been such a fucked-up year that I forgot that I usually spend October reading horror novels, to celebrate the Halloween season. So maybe tonight, after I get home and the storm rages around us, maybe I’ll take Carrie down from the shelf and give it a reread.
And on that note, tis back to the spice mines. Stay safe, everyone, and I will catch you later.
Queer and Loathing in America 