Signs

...ridiculous, the waste, sad time, stretching before and after.
-Eliot, The Wasteland.

There is a line in the (excellent) book version of Out of Africa to the effect that when we cry out to the universe for a sign, one will appear, some symbol that we can seem and find meaning in, even if it's private and for the viewer only. I can't entirely unpack what follows for you, but come with.

Coincidence or not, it's funny how the random pop culture ephemera around us can sometimes align and form brief constellations of meaning at key times in our lives.

Most of last week, I was run off my feet, exhausted and tired, and stuck by things wistful and melancholy, and well, then at last on Saturday the leviathan broke through the ice. But it was odd to see nonetheless.

Thursday night I was struck - really struck - by how sombre the new Indiana Jones movie is. Silly and frothy and fun, yes, but there is a note throughout the film of sadness, of mourning for lost friends and family, both dead and alive. It hangs lightly on Ford's shoulders, but still: if we live long enough, we all get old, even Indiana Jones. And being a survivor means that you survive what others don't.

To my mind, it makes it a strong picture, superior to Last Crusade, which was fun and exaltant, but also a bit Jokey, a father/son adventure with Connery and Ford veering ever so slightly into hammy fun. Glorious, yes, triumphant, yes, but nowhere near as rich as what the older Ford, Spielberg, and Lucas and their cast of ringers manage with Crystal Skull. I saw it Thursday, with E-Man and H, E-Man still wearing his original fedora from when we were all teenagers, lining up to see the first one. Impossible to see it and not think of time passing, moving on. When the line is given, at the end,

"So much of life is wasted, waiting"

it was hard. And then I rushed across town to let Dad in the apartment on his way through town. Thoughts swirling, old and tired, both of us. Slept about 2AM.

Friday night, then, after a long day of getting up at 630AM for breakfast with Dad before he took off upcountry for another shutdown, perhaps his last or at least one of his last, then working 9 hours, picking up that fucking eBay package, gaming, and stopping by the office at midnight to check for news from or a chat with Wryette, as I had done religiously every night for a year, almost all in vain in the last three months. There I found this served up on Boing Boing, and found it hypnotic and strangely heartbreaking.



It's a song mashed up from tiny audiobits of Alice in Wonderland, and it's perhaps the Rave-iest thing I have ever seen. Alice has always been sad and a little disturbing to me, an incarnation of primal childhood terrors and the lost world that all adults dimly recall. (Those pansies terrify me, somehow) All children's stories are stories of loss for an adult, and particularly this adult. I cannot think of playmates and telling stories without thinking of the playmates and listeners who I will never see again, and something of this struck me at a very early age. Today, writing, it comes to me - I watched Wryette play with Alice in Kingdom Hearts, and would read to her sometimes from a dozen books. Never occuring to me that any of them might be a final time. I will pack up her children's collection for her future children sometime next week. It will be hard.

I was hoping to see and review Prince Caspian this week, but I'm not sure I will now. Lewis is steeped in that sense of childhood's transience, of the preciousness of time, of meeting someone for an instant and knowing that if you somehow ever meet them again, it will be as best of friends, forever. There is a scene in Dawn Treader to that effect which is more powerful than a hundred Milton stanzas. For all we ever have is an instant, and we can never keep anyone at our side when their story calls them away. What is heaven but the place where we never say goodbye? Who could argue with the appeal of that vision. Wouldn't it be lovely.

So no, I am not entirely sure I can deal with Narnia this week, even if it's only in the company of the bland young Caspian.

And so on Saturday, after the call, I went out as previously planned with jedischooldropout to see Crystal Skull again, but now with the primary goal of occupying the front part of my brain, and found that almost final line was not so much revelation but coda.

So much wasted, waiting.

Monday awaits.