November 2009 Archives
Lots of folks observed Thanksgiving by publicly being thankful for a variety of things, and since that seems like a sanity–supporting thing I wanted to do so as well, for obvious reasons.
Friends and family first, of course.
Just being alive. And maybe not so of course. Never mind their circumstances, or whether they're generally upbeat or gloomy—how many people do you know who are consciously, explicitly grateful to have had the human experience inflicted on them? I've met people who are rich, who have other gifts, who are wise, who seem to get their desires fulfilled, who live well and happily, but I've never met anyone of whom I could say, "There—that person, the one right over there, that person is leading an easy life." Not once ever. When I was a kid, I didn't really understand why Shakespeare said that "to be or not to be" was a big important question. I figured that unless you were so miserable that you wanted to commit suicide, the answer was "to be," without a doubt. Now I see what Bill S. was talking about. Is it better, is it really better, to be a human being than it is to be a tree or a rock or nothing? How many people ask that question, or have the wherewithal to answer it honestly? I wonder. But yeah, I'm thankful to be here at the party.
There's lots of little things I'm thankful for after the big ones, of course. The other day it was foggy, and it turned the little town into a surreal dreamscape. Snow, too, is something that I'm grateful for. Color. Light. That the cat lived when he might have died. Hope and ambition. And the way Grey Poupon mustard tastes about as good as the imported kind, but doesn't cost quite as much. Big things and little things, and lots of both.
David Brooks had a pretty good column the other day about one's other education, the kind that you get from music and such—emotional education, he called it. I had been thinking lately along similar lines, but more about how all the wonderful artists whose work you experience in your life help you hear and see and so forth much better than you might have otherwise. Vermeer comes to mind—you see enough of his paintings, and you'll start to notice a certain lovely, magical kind of light in a room. He's long dead, of course, but his work can help your own life be richer—you'll be walking through the dining room one winter afternoon and just notice the way the light falls on everything, and it'll be still and luminous and special. "Like a Vermeer," you might say to yourself. Then there are all the photographers whose work demonstrates that you can be walking just anywhere—by the pond in the park, say—and see the clouds reflected in the water, and the wind making parallel lines in it, and a sprig of water plant tying it all together. Even those artists in Lascaux—you look at those vivid animal images and think about these people like us, but desperate to survive and faced with the need to take rocks and spears and try to kill beasts that were well equipped to flee or kill the hunters. It makes it a little easier to enter that cave dweller's mind, the next time you see a horse or a cow or a buffalo in a misty field.
I'm thankful for that kind of thing all the time, actually, but it was Thanksgiving the other day and I wanted to make sure I put that on my list. If the United States as a society made a bit more of an effort to appreciate this patrimony—maybe taught the arts in schools more seriously, for instance—I'd be grateful for that too.
Last and by no means least—I'm quite thankful for the people who stop by and see what I feel like chatting about. The numbers hit a record last month and we're not doing badly as November winds down, either. Thanks! I mean it.
Friends and family first, of course.
Just being alive. And maybe not so of course. Never mind their circumstances, or whether they're generally upbeat or gloomy—how many people do you know who are consciously, explicitly grateful to have had the human experience inflicted on them? I've met people who are rich, who have other gifts, who are wise, who seem to get their desires fulfilled, who live well and happily, but I've never met anyone of whom I could say, "There—that person, the one right over there, that person is leading an easy life." Not once ever. When I was a kid, I didn't really understand why Shakespeare said that "to be or not to be" was a big important question. I figured that unless you were so miserable that you wanted to commit suicide, the answer was "to be," without a doubt. Now I see what Bill S. was talking about. Is it better, is it really better, to be a human being than it is to be a tree or a rock or nothing? How many people ask that question, or have the wherewithal to answer it honestly? I wonder. But yeah, I'm thankful to be here at the party.
There's lots of little things I'm thankful for after the big ones, of course. The other day it was foggy, and it turned the little town into a surreal dreamscape. Snow, too, is something that I'm grateful for. Color. Light. That the cat lived when he might have died. Hope and ambition. And the way Grey Poupon mustard tastes about as good as the imported kind, but doesn't cost quite as much. Big things and little things, and lots of both.
David Brooks had a pretty good column the other day about one's other education, the kind that you get from music and such—emotional education, he called it. I had been thinking lately along similar lines, but more about how all the wonderful artists whose work you experience in your life help you hear and see and so forth much better than you might have otherwise. Vermeer comes to mind—you see enough of his paintings, and you'll start to notice a certain lovely, magical kind of light in a room. He's long dead, of course, but his work can help your own life be richer—you'll be walking through the dining room one winter afternoon and just notice the way the light falls on everything, and it'll be still and luminous and special. "Like a Vermeer," you might say to yourself. Then there are all the photographers whose work demonstrates that you can be walking just anywhere—by the pond in the park, say—and see the clouds reflected in the water, and the wind making parallel lines in it, and a sprig of water plant tying it all together. Even those artists in Lascaux—you look at those vivid animal images and think about these people like us, but desperate to survive and faced with the need to take rocks and spears and try to kill beasts that were well equipped to flee or kill the hunters. It makes it a little easier to enter that cave dweller's mind, the next time you see a horse or a cow or a buffalo in a misty field.
I'm thankful for that kind of thing all the time, actually, but it was Thanksgiving the other day and I wanted to make sure I put that on my list. If the United States as a society made a bit more of an effort to appreciate this patrimony—maybe taught the arts in schools more seriously, for instance—I'd be grateful for that too.
Last and by no means least—I'm quite thankful for the people who stop by and see what I feel like chatting about. The numbers hit a record last month and we're not doing badly as November winds down, either. Thanks! I mean it.
Blog spammers. Honestly, guys, one of my daily chores is denying the
posting of comments such as this: "Greetings, Thanks for article.
Everytime like to read you." All I can do is ban the senders, but they
don't use fixed IP addresses so it doesn't really make a difference.
And they're sent from outside the United States. Have them blown up by
missiles from Predator drones? I don't think that's necessarily the
answer to everything but I would certainly consider its judicious use
in this case. My only other option is to close off the comments and I
just may do that. We'll see.
To update the blog with Technorati I have to put this weird bit of code in so shhhh...
5XSR6J7BKWZB
Also, the swallows fly high at midnight. Repeat, the swallows fly high at midnight. That is all.
5XSR6J7BKWZB
Also, the swallows fly high at midnight. Repeat, the swallows fly high at midnight. That is all.
The sky is a cheap show, if you pay attention, and often a pretty good one. Yesterday around dusk I was talking to a neighbor out in the alley and scanning the skies, because the day before I'd seen Jupiter with my naked eye in the daytime. And sure enough, there it was, a pinprick of bright light about 10 degrees left of the moon.
I wasn't able to get both the moon and Jupiter in the camera frame, but with a 6x telephoto I got recently I was able to get a pretty fair image of the moon itself. There's just something about the night sky—the moon, planets, stars, all that. Like islands in a sea so wide and deep your mind can't comprehend it. Even this curmudgeonly agnostic can feel a sense of wonder and awe at that. And I feel a strange sense of peace, too, the way people feel calmer at the beach. But beach houses cost gobs of money. I can walk out into my alley for free, any time I want.
I wasn't able to get both the moon and Jupiter in the camera frame, but with a 6x telephoto I got recently I was able to get a pretty fair image of the moon itself. There's just something about the night sky—the moon, planets, stars, all that. Like islands in a sea so wide and deep your mind can't comprehend it. Even this curmudgeonly agnostic can feel a sense of wonder and awe at that. And I feel a strange sense of peace, too, the way people feel calmer at the beach. But beach houses cost gobs of money. I can walk out into my alley for free, any time I want.
I'm thinking of "meteoric rise" at the moment. I defy anyone to show me an example of a meteor that ever rose even a little.
Well, I apologize for not posting for eight days, but the last time I did I complained about vapid media stuff, so maybe it's appropriate that if people feel like they don't have anything especially interesting to say then they shouldn't say anything.
But I've been working, and in the course of doing one story I ended up at a reception after an event, and there was a wide patio with a fire pit at the western end of the home where it was held. I was on an upper level at one point, talking with a woman who had a table set up to display a book she'd done about a nearby village and a church that had stood there for a long time. Someone else strolled up and mentioned that someone she had known was buried there. The author recognized the name, paged through the book, and held it out. There it was, a picture of the gravestone, with a little girl standing next to it, tracing the letters of the name with a small pink finger.
It was one of those great photos where there's a tremendous tension; there it was, life and death. The author said she'd been there taking pictures and this little girl just walked up to the gravestone and the moment came together. These things are called "grab shots," because they usually only last long enough for you to get the camera up to your eye and shoot.
As we were talking, a guy was down below messing with the fire pit, putting on more wood, and the new wood must have been damp, because suddenly the whole lower level was filled with smoke. The guy himself was swathed in smoke like a wizard making a dramatic entrance, and with the light of the setting sun behind him he was silhouetted in this fun, mysterious way. I happened to have my own camera on the table, and I picked it up with one hand, thumbing it on, got it to my eye and shot three frames. And sure enough, a puff of breeze came along, the smoke dissipated, and the moment was gone.
The woman looked at me and grinned, her eyes gleaming avidly. "I like that," she said. "The way the light was on the top of his head." I liked her a lot in that moment. They say hunters have a sense of fraternity when they're out in the field, and I think it was something like that. You train your eye and your reflexes, stay alert, and react when you need to—with a camera if you have one, or if not, at least by noticing and appreciating what you're seeing. It's a nice habit to be in yourself, and I appreciate it in others too. So anyway, hello again! It's breakfast time and I'm hungry so bye for now.
But I've been working, and in the course of doing one story I ended up at a reception after an event, and there was a wide patio with a fire pit at the western end of the home where it was held. I was on an upper level at one point, talking with a woman who had a table set up to display a book she'd done about a nearby village and a church that had stood there for a long time. Someone else strolled up and mentioned that someone she had known was buried there. The author recognized the name, paged through the book, and held it out. There it was, a picture of the gravestone, with a little girl standing next to it, tracing the letters of the name with a small pink finger.
It was one of those great photos where there's a tremendous tension; there it was, life and death. The author said she'd been there taking pictures and this little girl just walked up to the gravestone and the moment came together. These things are called "grab shots," because they usually only last long enough for you to get the camera up to your eye and shoot.
As we were talking, a guy was down below messing with the fire pit, putting on more wood, and the new wood must have been damp, because suddenly the whole lower level was filled with smoke. The guy himself was swathed in smoke like a wizard making a dramatic entrance, and with the light of the setting sun behind him he was silhouetted in this fun, mysterious way. I happened to have my own camera on the table, and I picked it up with one hand, thumbing it on, got it to my eye and shot three frames. And sure enough, a puff of breeze came along, the smoke dissipated, and the moment was gone.
The woman looked at me and grinned, her eyes gleaming avidly. "I like that," she said. "The way the light was on the top of his head." I liked her a lot in that moment. They say hunters have a sense of fraternity when they're out in the field, and I think it was something like that. You train your eye and your reflexes, stay alert, and react when you need to—with a camera if you have one, or if not, at least by noticing and appreciating what you're seeing. It's a nice habit to be in yourself, and I appreciate it in others too. So anyway, hello again! It's breakfast time and I'm hungry so bye for now.
Just to avoid doing something constructive, I clicked on CNN, and what do I see? "Breaking News: Fort Hood Suspect Charged With Murder." See, the thing is, if you shoot a bunch of people and 13 of them die and you're apprehended and identified and so forth, it's highly likely that you'll be charged with murder at some point. This is a dog-bites-man thing, really.
Another headline: "Britney Spears' Twitter account hacked." This allowed the hacker to send prank tweets to the eleventy-kajillion people undoubtedly following Britney for reasons you'd have to ask them about. The article itself said that such things occur frequently, and it's happened to Ms. Spears before. In other words, there's no real info here and not much tainment either.
And Carrie Prejean got mad about something Larry King was asking her and took her microphone off. That's a CNN story too. Is absolutely anything involving mass murderers or blonde people news today, for some reason? I'm very confused.
Another headline: "Britney Spears' Twitter account hacked." This allowed the hacker to send prank tweets to the eleventy-kajillion people undoubtedly following Britney for reasons you'd have to ask them about. The article itself said that such things occur frequently, and it's happened to Ms. Spears before. In other words, there's no real info here and not much tainment either.
And Carrie Prejean got mad about something Larry King was asking her and took her microphone off. That's a CNN story too. Is absolutely anything involving mass murderers or blonde people news today, for some reason? I'm very confused.
I completed a variety of errands yesterday and rewarded myself with a pint of hard cider at a pub in town. They had CNN going with the sound off, and it emerged there'd been a shooting incident at Fort Hood. But even with the sound off, I could see that Wolf Blitzer and everyone else at CNN simply had no idea what was going on, no information to impart. They had satellite photos of Texas they kept zooming down on, as if they could zoom down far enough so that the state and county and everything would widen out so far that eventually we could see into the shooter's mind. Wolf kept walking back and forth, the camera kept cutting to pictures of the Fort Hood gate and people standing in front of buildings with microphones and all kinds of things and it was just absurd. All they knew was that people had been shot, and nobody knew why really. But they couldn't just say that, because it's their business to pretend to know what's going on, so they just kept showing the satellite photos over and over again.
I'm in the news business myself, see, and have been for a couple of decades, so this matters to me.
If you ask me how to learn more about the world we live in, how to get reliable information, I'm probably going to sigh, let my shoulders sag, and tell you that the cable news and network news people basically don't have anything to tell you. They don't care about knowing stuff, and don't have budgets to send reporters out if they did. The newspapers, to their great and ongoing credit, are still working their stories. (During the afternoon and evening, the Times' Lede blog was the best source of information on the Fort Hood story.) When you get down to it, on any given subject, there are people who have their ears to the ground and know what's going on. If you care about the subject, scan the available sources until you find those people. Best I can tell you.
But there's one person who's (in my humble opinion) the dean of American journalists, and that's James Fallows. In the coming hours and days we'll hear a lot of fatuous opinions and a lot of perfunctory stuff—I hear secondhand, for instance, that Larry King asked a general, "Is it safe to assume that the gunman had some serious mental problems?” Yeah, Larry, that's a safe assumption. Fallows was able to cut through all this clutter and say the one meaningful thing: There's no meaning to this or any other random atrocity. We want to learn a lesson from it, but there's no lesson to learn. Some guy was under stress, and he freaked out, and he did it in a destructive way. We'll hear bits and pieces about Nidal Malik Hasan over the next few days—CNN has footage of him in a convenience store, as if that could possibly shed any light on this—but none of it will tell you anything worth knowing. Trust me on this, folks. Most people are good, decent human beings, and you can count on them to do the right thing, and help each other. But sometimes people just go off the rails. You think you know them, but then you bump up against the cold fact that in the wrong place at the wrong time, anyone really, really is capable of anything. And it doesn't mean anything. Turn off the cable TV and just hug the people you care about, if it bothers you, and pet your pets. And stay alert. It's a beautiful but often dangerous world. I wish the latter weren't true, but it is. Sorry about that.
I'm in the news business myself, see, and have been for a couple of decades, so this matters to me.
If you ask me how to learn more about the world we live in, how to get reliable information, I'm probably going to sigh, let my shoulders sag, and tell you that the cable news and network news people basically don't have anything to tell you. They don't care about knowing stuff, and don't have budgets to send reporters out if they did. The newspapers, to their great and ongoing credit, are still working their stories. (During the afternoon and evening, the Times' Lede blog was the best source of information on the Fort Hood story.) When you get down to it, on any given subject, there are people who have their ears to the ground and know what's going on. If you care about the subject, scan the available sources until you find those people. Best I can tell you.
But there's one person who's (in my humble opinion) the dean of American journalists, and that's James Fallows. In the coming hours and days we'll hear a lot of fatuous opinions and a lot of perfunctory stuff—I hear secondhand, for instance, that Larry King asked a general, "Is it safe to assume that the gunman had some serious mental problems?” Yeah, Larry, that's a safe assumption. Fallows was able to cut through all this clutter and say the one meaningful thing: There's no meaning to this or any other random atrocity. We want to learn a lesson from it, but there's no lesson to learn. Some guy was under stress, and he freaked out, and he did it in a destructive way. We'll hear bits and pieces about Nidal Malik Hasan over the next few days—CNN has footage of him in a convenience store, as if that could possibly shed any light on this—but none of it will tell you anything worth knowing. Trust me on this, folks. Most people are good, decent human beings, and you can count on them to do the right thing, and help each other. But sometimes people just go off the rails. You think you know them, but then you bump up against the cold fact that in the wrong place at the wrong time, anyone really, really is capable of anything. And it doesn't mean anything. Turn off the cable TV and just hug the people you care about, if it bothers you, and pet your pets. And stay alert. It's a beautiful but often dangerous world. I wish the latter weren't true, but it is. Sorry about that.
I just noticed that the moon was rising over the rooftops to the east, shining through the bare tree branches. And next to me, the cat was washing his face.
First, I have no idea who ought to be running Kashmir. But I do wonder about people who say that God wants them to kill other people. I especially wonder if God really feels that way when something like this happens.
I was practicing the piano, thinking about breakfast, and it struck me that I have pretty much forgotten, over the decades, how to eat a soft-boiled egg. I fear the soft-boiled egg may have gone the way of the finger bowl.
Well, the sun rises this morning on a household with eggs and mushrooms in the refrigerator and not one functioning non-stick frying pan anywhere. Over the weekend I tried to have one last whirl with one that was still sort of nonsticking and it stuck badly. I hacked the omelet out of the pan like a geologist freeing some mineral specimen from the surrounding schist. And I looked back over a misspent life.
I got interested in food as a callow stripling. I wanted food like I got in nice restaurants and in travels in Europe, but I didn't want to pay restaurant bills or plane tickets so often, so I got cookbooks and learned the rudiments. Working at a regional "lifestyle" magazine helped, since thinking about food was part of the gig. And I remember looking at fancy frying pans from well-known French companies—solid, heavy affairs, with long handles and a lifetime guarantee. They cost like a hundred bucks 20 years ago, and to a person who has always mistakenly considered himself sensible that seemed like too much money to pay. A lifetime guarantee! What does that even mean? It's good for, like, ever, right? I had to chuckle—I could see myself as a little old man tottering into the fancy-dancy kitchenware store, waving a pan that, after the passage of many decades, had finally worn out like the wonderful one-horse shay.
Well, I'm a good bit older now and I've gone through any number of second-rate frying pans. They last two, three, four years and they're no good any more. Of course, of course I've spent more than a hundred bucks on all these pans. And today or soon I have to go back to Wal-Mart. I bought their cheapest non-stick the other day as a stop-gap while I researched more serious options. And the damn thing wasn't flat. You can put it on the counter, push the handle, and it will revolve on its base. It also revolved on my flat glass range and when I tried to use it only the one spot got hot. It burned that spot instantly. Another ruined omelet.
Now I have to go and argue with some sullen Wal-Mart service desk person about getting my eleven dollars back because they sold me useless junk and, like an idiot, I bought it. I'm not quite a little old man yet but I'm old enough to know better. And if I had foreseen this twenty years ago, I'd have bought the fancy pan and been done with it. I'd be having an omelet right now. Instead I'm having to go to Wal-Mart. I don't see anything to chuckle about at all, Younger Self! Thanks for nothin'! Idiot.
I got interested in food as a callow stripling. I wanted food like I got in nice restaurants and in travels in Europe, but I didn't want to pay restaurant bills or plane tickets so often, so I got cookbooks and learned the rudiments. Working at a regional "lifestyle" magazine helped, since thinking about food was part of the gig. And I remember looking at fancy frying pans from well-known French companies—solid, heavy affairs, with long handles and a lifetime guarantee. They cost like a hundred bucks 20 years ago, and to a person who has always mistakenly considered himself sensible that seemed like too much money to pay. A lifetime guarantee! What does that even mean? It's good for, like, ever, right? I had to chuckle—I could see myself as a little old man tottering into the fancy-dancy kitchenware store, waving a pan that, after the passage of many decades, had finally worn out like the wonderful one-horse shay.
Well, I'm a good bit older now and I've gone through any number of second-rate frying pans. They last two, three, four years and they're no good any more. Of course, of course I've spent more than a hundred bucks on all these pans. And today or soon I have to go back to Wal-Mart. I bought their cheapest non-stick the other day as a stop-gap while I researched more serious options. And the damn thing wasn't flat. You can put it on the counter, push the handle, and it will revolve on its base. It also revolved on my flat glass range and when I tried to use it only the one spot got hot. It burned that spot instantly. Another ruined omelet.
Now I have to go and argue with some sullen Wal-Mart service desk person about getting my eleven dollars back because they sold me useless junk and, like an idiot, I bought it. I'm not quite a little old man yet but I'm old enough to know better. And if I had foreseen this twenty years ago, I'd have bought the fancy pan and been done with it. I'd be having an omelet right now. Instead I'm having to go to Wal-Mart. I don't see anything to chuckle about at all, Younger Self! Thanks for nothin'! Idiot.
I confess the block I live on didn't do much of a job this Halloween. It was drizzly, the World Series this year involves the local Mudville Nine, and with one thing and another I only bought candy, and didn't get around to making a jack-'o-lantern. And nobody else on the block did either. The young women down the street put out a bowl of candy because they weren't home. Nobody else but me gave out candy personally. So when one woman surveyed the block and said "Where's the Halloween spirit?" I didn't have a ready answer.
But I was certainly in the Halloween spirit that morning. I got up early, made coffee, sat in my darkened living room with the cat and watched the 1963 version of The Haunting on my laptop. I'd seen it once before, when I was just a kid, and remembered this one scene very vividly. If you're not familiar with the movie or the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House, the basic plot is the investigation of a possibly haunted house by an anthropology professor, a relative of the house's owner, and two other people who've been involved with paranormal incidents. One, a mousy woman named Eleanor, has experienced a poltergeist and may have the ability to move things with her mind. Mostly she's lonely, and wants to belong somewhere. The other paranormal person is psychic. She's a wonderful character, alternately friendly and mean. She has a certain adolescent resentment of pretense, and she's capable of lashing out at any moment, and it makes sense—she knows what everyone is thinking, and thus humanity doesn't impress her much.
One thing I didn't pick up on when I was a kid is that the character, who's named Theo, is obviously a lesbian. She stands too close to Eleanor when they first meet, purring with overfriendliness. This happens on a couple of occasions, and in one scene she paints the mousy woman's toenails for her and plies her with brandy, both things Eleanor has never experienced before. "By the time I'm through with you, you'll be a different person," Theo says. Eleanor acts oblivious to the come-ons, but she's really not: In a tense moment, when Theo accuses Eleanor of falling for the handsome, kindly Dr. Markway, Eleanor lashes out herself, calling Theo "unnatural" and "one of nature's mistakes." This being 1963, what's being stated obviously also has an escape clause—Eleanor could be talking about the psychic abilities. But Theo becomes nervously defensive, although she's been quite open about the mind-reading. I was fascinated with this—it's as though the characters in the film are mouthing the words "She's a lesbian!" to the audience behind their hands so the censors won't hear. Theo is played by a young Claire Bloom, and she's a hipster, with clothes by Mary Quant. And what's really interesting is that Shirley Jackson got annoyed with a British critic who said Theo from the book was a lesbian—Jackson insisted she merely meant to portray her as a generally ambiguous person. So the film folks deliberately put the subplot in. It just seemed cool to me—it was 1963, but this character is there, part of the landscape, living her life and it's mostly treated as an unremarkable thing.
The story is ambiguous in a fun way generally, with great black and white photography, excellent acting, and some genuinely creepy moments. And the scariness is mostly in the atmosphere. Stephen King says that if body parts aren't bouncing off gore-spattered walls, you're dealing with "terror," not "horror," but I don't think anyone else would make that distinction. To me, it's just smart, economical storytelling.
Anyway, at one point the group is downstairs in the parlor, and the poltergeist starts up, making a hammering sound that echoes eerily through the house. And what I remember from the first time is that the anthropologist Dr. Markway, although naturally apprehensive and rattled, nevertheless listens to it with a rapt, almost avid fascination. This is what he came to find, of course. But when I first saw the film it was the scariest thing of all. You know that thing that most of us don't really want to know? He wanted to know it, he really did. I regarded his desire to know what lies beyond with a twinge of pious horror (or terror, if you insist, Stephen) the way the Puritans regarded having ants in your pants. It seemed like much too big a risk to run. It's funny—it's just a fleeting moment in the film, but it obviously left a huge impression on me.
And while I was watching it the other morning, with the living room lights on to push away the blackness outside, the cat crouched, stalking something. I followed his gaze and saw a centipede several inches long emerge from behind a chair. It happens that centipedes totally creep me out, the foul little mechanistic soulless horrors, and they bite people and cats and other mammals and I hate them. I grabbed the nearest blunt instrument, pushed the cat roughly away, and started slamming away at the horrible little beast. It took eight or ten whacks before I really got the damn thing. Brrr!
So that's where the Halloween spirit was, lady. In my living room that morning, watching a spooky film and killing large menacing arthropods in the predawn blackness. Sufficient to the day was the evil thereof! Mwa ha ha ha ha!!! And I had oodles of fun passing out candy. So it was a scary, fun day. And that's how my Halloween was.
But I was certainly in the Halloween spirit that morning. I got up early, made coffee, sat in my darkened living room with the cat and watched the 1963 version of The Haunting on my laptop. I'd seen it once before, when I was just a kid, and remembered this one scene very vividly. If you're not familiar with the movie or the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House, the basic plot is the investigation of a possibly haunted house by an anthropology professor, a relative of the house's owner, and two other people who've been involved with paranormal incidents. One, a mousy woman named Eleanor, has experienced a poltergeist and may have the ability to move things with her mind. Mostly she's lonely, and wants to belong somewhere. The other paranormal person is psychic. She's a wonderful character, alternately friendly and mean. She has a certain adolescent resentment of pretense, and she's capable of lashing out at any moment, and it makes sense—she knows what everyone is thinking, and thus humanity doesn't impress her much.
One thing I didn't pick up on when I was a kid is that the character, who's named Theo, is obviously a lesbian. She stands too close to Eleanor when they first meet, purring with overfriendliness. This happens on a couple of occasions, and in one scene she paints the mousy woman's toenails for her and plies her with brandy, both things Eleanor has never experienced before. "By the time I'm through with you, you'll be a different person," Theo says. Eleanor acts oblivious to the come-ons, but she's really not: In a tense moment, when Theo accuses Eleanor of falling for the handsome, kindly Dr. Markway, Eleanor lashes out herself, calling Theo "unnatural" and "one of nature's mistakes." This being 1963, what's being stated obviously also has an escape clause—Eleanor could be talking about the psychic abilities. But Theo becomes nervously defensive, although she's been quite open about the mind-reading. I was fascinated with this—it's as though the characters in the film are mouthing the words "She's a lesbian!" to the audience behind their hands so the censors won't hear. Theo is played by a young Claire Bloom, and she's a hipster, with clothes by Mary Quant. And what's really interesting is that Shirley Jackson got annoyed with a British critic who said Theo from the book was a lesbian—Jackson insisted she merely meant to portray her as a generally ambiguous person. So the film folks deliberately put the subplot in. It just seemed cool to me—it was 1963, but this character is there, part of the landscape, living her life and it's mostly treated as an unremarkable thing.
The story is ambiguous in a fun way generally, with great black and white photography, excellent acting, and some genuinely creepy moments. And the scariness is mostly in the atmosphere. Stephen King says that if body parts aren't bouncing off gore-spattered walls, you're dealing with "terror," not "horror," but I don't think anyone else would make that distinction. To me, it's just smart, economical storytelling.
Anyway, at one point the group is downstairs in the parlor, and the poltergeist starts up, making a hammering sound that echoes eerily through the house. And what I remember from the first time is that the anthropologist Dr. Markway, although naturally apprehensive and rattled, nevertheless listens to it with a rapt, almost avid fascination. This is what he came to find, of course. But when I first saw the film it was the scariest thing of all. You know that thing that most of us don't really want to know? He wanted to know it, he really did. I regarded his desire to know what lies beyond with a twinge of pious horror (or terror, if you insist, Stephen) the way the Puritans regarded having ants in your pants. It seemed like much too big a risk to run. It's funny—it's just a fleeting moment in the film, but it obviously left a huge impression on me.
And while I was watching it the other morning, with the living room lights on to push away the blackness outside, the cat crouched, stalking something. I followed his gaze and saw a centipede several inches long emerge from behind a chair. It happens that centipedes totally creep me out, the foul little mechanistic soulless horrors, and they bite people and cats and other mammals and I hate them. I grabbed the nearest blunt instrument, pushed the cat roughly away, and started slamming away at the horrible little beast. It took eight or ten whacks before I really got the damn thing. Brrr!
So that's where the Halloween spirit was, lady. In my living room that morning, watching a spooky film and killing large menacing arthropods in the predawn blackness. Sufficient to the day was the evil thereof! Mwa ha ha ha ha!!! And I had oodles of fun passing out candy. So it was a scary, fun day. And that's how my Halloween was.
