| You can never go home again... |
[Dec. 4th, 2009|04:49 pm] |
As the season moves on, I try and deal with my SAD as best I can. This year is probably better than ever, but there are still some spells here and there. There were three massive blows in a week that might have crippled me for a long time, but luckily, Reiki has really proven itself beyond what I thought possible.
Still, after a massive fight I had with a friend last weekend (which has since been forgiven), followed by being sick all week (I am getting better), and then a former classmate posted pictures of my old home town.
"How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. You can never go home again," spoke James Agee in his 1956 novel, "A Death in the Family." I have to be honest, I am not pleased when I see McLean. I only see McLean once every few years, and the changes seem to try and further erase my mother, which makes no logical sense at first. Unlike a lot of small towns in America which always seem to be frozen in time either through distance or the fact they are slowly dying, McLean is still a thriving upper-middle-class haven. It morphs and changes. The old town is erased, and the new generic structures cover the memories with diffusing lines and manicured lawns. I tried to see my childhood home through Goggle street view, but it doesn't go up my street. Instead, I looked at a corner that was my bus stop from kindergarten through 4th grade. One house had barely changed. Another looked about the same, but they changed some of the landscaping. But the house in front of our stop... looked like an entirely different home.
It wouldn't surprise me if they had knocked down the 2-story suburban chunk that used to be on that property and put in the new, 2-columned mansion that sits there now. Maybe they just redid the entire front to look slightly more modern, and less 50s rambler. I remember that corner had a GIGANTIC willow tree that covered half the plot. It rose 3-4 stories into the air and came down like a sheet of beaded curtains. The firework of foliage was so dense, grass had trouble growing in the shade, and their lawn was always mix of scrub and willow leaf litter. The long, rope-like branches dropped on the house in places, and us kids would swing from the new growth over the sidewalk where our bus stopped for us until we tore off almost anything within hand's reach. It took a summer to regrow.
There was a stop sign there where Pat Carlton (who lived across the street) drew funny faces. Those faces were still there years after we graduated high school; their faded cartoon eyes the only thing still visible after a decade and a half of weather. I bet that stop sign has been replaced. The tree is gone, which disoriented me for a bit. As you drove down Rupert toward the north, when you crossed South Ridge, the giant dark green pompom dominated the intersection like a mountain of the Old South. Now it's just a flat lawn with a small landscape accent of mulch surrounded by rocks. A few unobtrusive pine trees dare to poke out from the memories, obscuring the lines of a giant root system that probably took a week to fully remove. Maybe the willow tree died. Or maybe the owners didn't want to be in the shade anymore. Or wanted a lawn that didn't resemble the leaf litter of a bamboo forest.
I used Street view again to go down the main drag of Chain Bridge road. Much had changed. There was a lot of abandoned places I didn't expect.
Anyway, it makes me sad. |
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| The biggest misdiagnosis |
[Oct. 13th, 2009|04:50 pm] |
When I was 18, I had a doctor that was pretty bad. He was a really old guy, and was my mom's doctor after my pediatrician had to explain to her, "Your boy is 15. I usually don't see anyone past age 12. Find a grown up doctor, ma'am." So I saw her doctor. This guy moved like he was afraid he'd fall at any moment. Mostly bald with a little bit of white hair accenting his age spots on his skull, he spoke like he was very, very tired. I didn't like him because he was one of the two doctors that had prescribed what I considered "virtually unlimited tranquilizers" for my mother, which she used when she drank. By age 12 or 13, I realized my mother was a drug addict as well as an alcoholic. I always found her pill bottles lying about when she was passed out with his name on them.
( A story of living moments away from death ) |
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| 25 years ago... |
[Apr. 27th, 2009|02:42 am] |
This August marks 25 years since a rather memorable day in my life.
I was a sophomore at McLean High School in the fall of 1984, and a new member of the McLean High School Science Fiction and Fantasy Club. This club had a fine tradition with roots that went back to 1974 when the Literary Club renamed itself because they almost exclusively read science fiction and fantasy. Later on, this was to be challenged when a real literary club tried to edge in on our funding, but because they were 2 people and we were about 30, they always lost.
One of the first "sponsored field trips" our group did was to see the newly released film, "Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension." We all dressed up in funny thrift store clothing and descended upon Springfield Mall, one of the theaters still showing it. Back then, as it is now, Springfield Mall was a little low class and run down (from about 1989-1999 they tried to change all that, but now I heard it's so badly off, the county is stepping in to revitalize the place). It was a favorite hangout with punks and goths, mostly because the Pizza Delight was so cheap (they were later shut down when they were found to be among several hubs for an East Coast cocaine-distribution ring, and the front for their money laundering). I was wearing some pretty obnoxious stuff, including a cape I had worn for
Back then, the mall was dark and pebbly. The movie theaters were run down and a little skeevish. I was approached by a punk who said her boyfriend liked my costume and wanted me to have a cookie, and my friend ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) stevonwolf and I tried to discern whether the cookie had been laced with something.
When we went to the movie, I was floored by it. It was so insane, so unique, so darkly humorous, and spoke to us on some level I am sure this generation's anime fans would understand. But we didn't have anime (well, some of us did, but it was very hard to come by back then). It was about aliens, but never took itslef very seriously. Peter Weller always seemed to be one wink away from a smirk to the lens. John Lithgow completely poured himself into his part, proving there are no small parts, just small actors. He ENJOYED his part. Ellen Barkin was way hot, with unbelievable legs, and Jeff Goldblum played himself which he's still doing to this day. It looked like a fan-run production, dripping with camp, and afterwards we all agreed it was the best low budget move we had ever seen.
I had felt bad because earlier in the year, at the Worldcon in Baltimore (Constellation), I had turned down the mass amounts of freebies on the freebie table relating to this film. I didn't know sometimes those freebies pay off. I have since learned my lesson.
But this was my first outing with what would later before "my people," a.k.a fandom, and this film will always be cemented in my heart as the beginning of something truly great. |
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| Random story from my (mother's) youth |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|10:14 pm] |
My mother used to tell stories about growing up in the Swedish slums of Chicago.
My mother was the 5th child after 4 stillborns, and thus was very precious to her parents. Yet, she was a little hyper and annoying at times. One of the things she remembered was during those World War II days was when they used to collect rags, scrap iron, and rubber for the war effort. My mother was never sure about where they actually went, but at age 5, she ran around when the "rag man" came by, screaming "RAGS AN' IRON!!!!" at the top of her lungs, just like the rag man did.
Her father was in the construction/demolition business, and sometimes he'd bring home stuff he'd find in buildings they were demolishing. This is how they ended up with a Tiffany lamp, for instance. But they were still very poor when she was growing up, and one of the stories about her father centered around this glass tabletop he had for the coffee table. Oh, how he loved this thing. To him, it was the symbol of the house's elegance. My mother didn't have a separate room growing up; she slept in the living room (when I was growing up, she said this misery made her determined I would have my own bedroom no matter where we lived). So she got the brunt of the warning and scolding about the glass top.
"DO NOT SCRATCH THE GLASS TOP!!!" she'd hear.
"DO NOT PUT YOUR FEET ON THE GLASS TOP!!" he'd warn.
And when he was cleaning this glass top, he'd take it off the table, and carefully wipe it down with cleaner until it was almost invisible. All the while he'd yell at anyone, his wife, my mother, not to step on the glass top while he was cleaning it. "Heaven forbid... any one of you...!" Then he would clean the wood table underneath, and ever so gently, he carefully put the large, fragile glass top back. I don't know how many years he did this, but the BIG ISSUE in the apartment they lived in was that glass top. It became a center of angst for my young mother.
One day, my grandfather was cleaning the glass top as he usually did. On this particular day, he was very angry and made a very big deal about my mother running around the house while he cleaned it. He warned that she would step on the top while he was cleaning it, and go stay in the kitchen while he cleaned. He got so worked up about it, at some point, there came a resounding *CCRACK* from inside the living room.
My grandfather stood there, looking down at his own foot, surrounded by a spiderweb of cracks. He had stepped on the glass top.
My mother told me this story over and over as I was growing up. I know I kind of surrounded this mini fable with a little embellishment, but I wanted to emphasize how my mother's eyes lit up with glee when she told it to me. It is almost not a story at all, and I am not sure what moral tale one could spin from this, except perhaps a weak sort of karma. "Don't yell at people or you'll do the thing you yelled at them about that they hadn't done..." or something. But this story was important to my mother.
And I wanted to plant this seed in all my readers, so she's not forgotten. |
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| Trying to align my punk roots |
[Mar. 15th, 2009|03:16 pm] |
I haven't written much of a blog entry in a while. It's mostly been Twitter feeds. Sorry about that, but I haven't had time to write very much except for my fiction, which is kinda going nowhere. I also have about 3 blog entries that all started to meander and didn't seem to go anywhere. Here's a snippet from a post that was supposed to be about fandom:
For instance, when I saw the movie, "Sixteen Candles," there's a scene where an incredibly wild party happens. I didn't realize this was a humorous exaggeration until a few years ago when it was pointed out to me that "parties like this don't happen in real life." Uh, yes they did. This was far more the classic McLean style party (at least among the guys) because many of my "peers" had lots of money, lived in big houses, and were given a lot of free reign as far as getting away with being popular. Remember the movie, "Valley Girl?" Yep. Those parties, too. When I hung out with a goth or punk crowd, sometimes we'd crash these parties. It's hard to call it crashing since the parties were so out of hand, we were barely even noticed. Most of the times we crashed, it was to pick up booze and interact with the dealers that knew just where to be at what time. But as a hanger-on, I declined the liquor and weed for food. Really, among my goth friends, I was the guy who always snatched the free candy and soda at these parties. How sad is that?
( I try and think of the goth and punk crowd I briefly hung around with, and the memories are blurred and confused. ) |
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| How I got in trouble in second grade #14 |
[Mar. 5th, 2009|12:57 pm] |
I was always a big reader back when bookworm was an insult. By second grade, I had read the book, "Jaws," which I will admit I bought because it had a cool shark on the cover. By the time I had finished it, the Spielberg movie based on the book had been released. Naturally, during my book report, the teacher was very skeptical whether I had read the book versus just seeing the movie. So she asked me to open to some random page, read it aloud, and then explain the passage in my own words.
In a moment of cruel fate (for me or the teacher, I am not sure which), the passage I flipped to was where Hendricks had found the half-eaten body of the missing girl. The moment of my book report went something like this:
Teacher: Mr. Larson... that's an awfully big book for you to read.
Me: Uh huh.
Teacher: [looking at me sternly] Are you sure you didn't watch the movie instead?
Me: No, ma'am. It was rated R. My mother was scared to watch it because she heard it might scare her from every swimming in the ocean again, and she likes the ocean.
Teacher: Uh huh. Well, that is a book for adult readers.
Me: It was in the science fiction rack at the library.
Teacher: Okay, so you said you can read and understand this book?
Me: Yes.
Teacher: ... really...?
Me: Yes ma'am.
Teacher: Okay, do this for me. Pick a random page and read it aloud to the class. Then explain what you just read in your own words.
Me: Okay. [flips to book, starts reading blindly] "Suddenly he stopped. For a few seconds he stared, frozen rigid. He fumbled in his pants pocket for his whistle, put it to his lips, and tried to blow; instead he vomited, staggered back, and fell to his knees." See, this guy was from a search party looking for the missing girl. In the beginning of the book, they said that the girl had been eaten while skinny dipping, which means to swim naked.
Teacher: Er...
Me: "Snarled within the clump of weed was a woman's head, sill attached to the shoulders, part of an arm, and about a third of her trunk. The mass of tattered flesh was a mottled blue gray, and as Hendricks spilled his guts to the ground into the sand, he thought--"
Class of sheltered second graders: [gasp]!
Teacher: Okay, that's enough.
Me: "... he thought -- and the thought made him retch again -- that the woman's remaining breast looked as flat as a flower pressed in a memory book."
Class: [giggles at the word "breast"]
Teacher: MISTER LARSON!
Me: That passage means that he only found the top half of the girl because the shark ate the lower half.
Teacher: I GET it, PLEASE sit DOWN!
Me: And she was a mottled blue due to rotting on the beach. Her flat breast was probably due to loss of blood or guts. Hendricks is vomiting because the sight of only half a body made him sick.
Teacher: I AM CALLING YOUR PARENTS!
She did, and my mother got a big kick out of it. I did not get in any more trouble and my teacher didn't doubt my reading skills anymore. |
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| 22 years ago today... |
[Jan. 10th, 2009|07:56 pm] |
My mother took her life. I am not sure when, but the paramedics told me probably early morning around 6am. I was fairly alone through the whole thing, and it was only because of friends I survived at all.
Normally, I get through this day without much mishap. Sometimes I even forget it until days later. But today, it came at me from out of the blue. When I try and trace the brain threads activated by this, it was due to a recent memory about the movie, "Xanadu," hearing about Anya's mom is trying to do a book about her brother, and someone who visited today brought her teenage daughter, and I had no idea they were mother and daughter until the last moment. Not sure how they are related.
So I am playing ELO's, "Don't Walk Away," and crying because I am a sap.
I really wish I had a grave to go to or something. My mother would have been 70 this year. I know that her death gave me a kind of freedom that would not have been possible, and one of the few suicides that seemed like it helped more than fucked over loved ones. I also know her drinking and tranquilizer abuse had damaged her mentally, and I was taking care of her more and more, so if she was still alive today, she would probably be in a nursing home. And in theory, I'll get to see her again when my time to pass comes. I *know* of all this, folks.
I still miss her. So sue me.
I wish I had known her as an adult. Like one more day, at some sober point maybe in the mid 1970s, I could go back in time, show her photos of a grandson she never saw, introduce her to a wife I am so grateful to have married, tell her about the relatives in Sweden, ask questions about my family I have always wanted to know. I wanted to let her know I turned out okay, and actually fairly successful and social. I wish some of you could have met her. A few of my readers have. A very few remember her not as the neighborhood drunk, but knew her as children themselves. Just. one. more. day.
Sadly, many of these mental exercises still end in how I would have to tell her what happened and how I ended up this way, and I don't know how I could avoid it. This is the "time travel is not as great as you think it is" training of being a science fiction writer. You want to be all smiles and warm thoughts, but then how could I not be tempted to tell her, "Your husband is FAR more an asshole than even you or I thought at the time. You want to know how your funeral went? Sit down, because this is going to hurt." If one of you got visited by a grown child of yours at age 40, wouldn't you be curious about the sobbing? Or why your kid had to go BACK in time to introduce some of the people important in their life like a wife and son? You wouldn't have to be Dr. Fucking Who to figure out something very bad happened. I doubt an hour would go by before that became the elephant in the room, and the smell of peanuts and manure would be overpowering to the point of tears.
I guess part of me wishes I'd hallucinate and see her ghost and have some kind of closure. But in some odd way, the fact I *don't* see her ghost kind of validates the fact none of the other weird psychic shit I encounter almost daily is made up. I figure because if any of it was some strange subconscious projection to be "special" or whatever, seeing and communicating my mother's ghost would be top of my list. Those that have lost a parent or loved one know what I am talking about.
Anyway, to Gladys "Mama" Larson, I miss you. Many times I have missed you far too much to be reasonable, I am sure. Why 22 years is some magic number of years, who knows. I bet some astrologer or numerologist could whip something up. Double 11s, something.
Today is hard. |
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| For posterity: The Tale of Don Gato |
[Jan. 8th, 2009|08:32 am] |
We used to sing this in music class in elementary school. It was one of my favorite songs, and oft-requested by most of the students at Lewinsville. At an early age, it taught me about love, heartbreak, and what a solar plexus was:
( O Senor Don Gato was a cat... ) |
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| Stupid memories... |
[Jan. 1st, 2009|05:20 pm] |
While I try not to post a whole lot about my father anymore (in part, because why should he get all the glory and fame just by being a sociopathic ass?), I felt the need to write about him because... well, this rather TMI-like vision comes to my head:
A few of my readers are asthmatic like I am, and would relate to this well. But to those of you who are not, try and remember the last time you really had a bad chest cold: preferably the kind you had to take antibiotics for. You know how sometimes the mucous (which my friend Brad unpleasantly, yet accurately, calls "lung butter") comes up in such huge volumes, the only way to get rid of it is to spit it out? Like you can't do the "snort and swallow" anymore, but you discretely spit it out in a tissue, pretending to blow your nose, or maybe "hock a loogie" on the ground if you're from a cheaper finishing school.
That's exactly why I post about my dad in my blog.
( Sometimes memories and angst about him boil up ) |
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| The Star Wars Christmas Special |
[Dec. 23rd, 2008|08:53 pm] |
Like many of my generation, I saw it live in 1977, and in the early 1990s, I was one of the people on Usenet purporting it did really happen at one time, no it wasn't our imagination. Not many of us could recall much except for the Wookie family, a Boba Fett cartoon, and some musical acts. There was one certainty I could remember:
Even at age 9, I realized this was a terrible, terrible show.
A few years ago, I saw some clips on Youtube, and eventually got a copy from the Gnutella network. It was then, watching a show so terrible it made my eyes hurt, I realized that I cannot watch this show from beginning to end. I simply cannot stomach it. Recently, I got a copy with Rifftrax (please donate) synced with it. I... I couldn't make it past Luke Skywalker and his massive pancake makeup.
This show is not "so bad it's funny." I can't make up my mind why it doesn't make it to "Plan Nine from Outer Space" status. Maybe it's so far into the camp it's shot past camp into the lake. Or maybe it's not camp enough. I can't make up my mind it's so bad it can't be funny or not bad enough to be funny. It's a combination of the terrible writing, bad editing, horrible acting, and misplaced variety acts that made an aggregate that simply cannot coalesce into any definable form. It's part Rocky Horror, part Sonny and Cher Show, and part Family Circus humor with a Star Wars front that barely passes as anything relevant. The sci-fi influences are almost peppered on like some unwanted spice to an already dismal stew. There simply cannot be enough pot in the world to make this show watchable.
It was then I realized, "The Star Wars Christmas Special" is the video equivalent of "The Eye of Argon." |
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