Hello, friends! I hope you are all staying warm during wintertime. If not, I have the perfect diary entry to kickstart your heart. So, go pour yourself some hot chocolate, take a seat in your easy chair, and prepare to be wowed. For this life is all about spreading happiness; and you, my dear readers, have blessed me so much, by simply being here and looking at my words, that I’d like to allow you yourselves, for a change, to experience the receiving end of the luck bestower. Now accept my heartfelt thanks for your continued support, and Merry Christmas to all!
Dearest diary,
Last night, my sister sent me the following text:
OMG!!!!!!! Did you know what David Lynch died?
And, immediately after, she sent this second brief text:
That*
Note the asterisk: techies employ this symbol to indicate that the accompanying word is meant to replace a typo in the preceding message. So my job was now to figure out which of the words in the initial text was incorrect. I therefore prayed to Freud; and he attempted to call me three times, with tragic results, until I finally responded: “Here am I.” Whereupon he answered my prayer as follows, and his voice was like the noise of a spaceship moving upon the face of many waters:
I have studied your sibling’s text message; here is the interpretation of the thing. It is a hidden wish-fulfillment. What her unconscious mind intended to write, before encountering the censor, was: “OMG!!!!!! Did you know what David Lynch That?”
So that’s how I found out what David Lynch That.
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Now I’ll tell you about my recent readings. I’m still working thru The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I couldn’t be more pleased with a book. So, every day, I start out with one of their stories. Then I read a few poems of André Breton, from his earlier volumes. (I’m just telling you my current daily habit.) After Breton, I go to Max Jacob – I read both in translation. Then the King James Bible. And lastly some poems from D.H. Lawrence.
I’m also still reading the journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I just finished volume two of ten, in the set that was edited by his son Edward. Yesterday I printed out volume three (I can’t find an affordable copy in book form, so I’m printing the whole set on my home computer from scans available free online), and when I picked up the finished ream, the edge of the stack gave me a severe paper-cut, right on the web of my hand, between my thumb and pointer finger. It bled and bled.
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For those readers who would like to know in advance what shall happen in the rest of this entry, here is a preview:
Suburban life on the Midwestern frontier has been good for the Ray family, though they’ve had their share of hardship. Doug, the man of the house, died from a premature softening of the brain, leaving his homemaker spouse, Rita, to take over as figurehead. But just as Rita tries to sell the family farm, trouble erupts: Midwestern-size trouble. For Bryan, the idiot of the family, while pushing snow around with his broken shovel, unearths a trove of dark secrets that his parents had buried. While accusations fly, confidences spill and tempers flare, Rita learns that nothing on the frontier is simple, and that some problems can only find their solution at the smoking end of a gun.
That’s not really what the rest of this entry is about – I just plagiarized a blurb from the cover of the case of the disc of one of the movies that I recently watched, and changed the names and some of the subject matter. It was easier and more fun to do this than to tell the truth.
Since the aforesaid film was about Texas, I shifted its location to Minnesota. I’m intentionally refraining from mentioning its title, because I didn’t think it was good. I believe that one should trumpet from the rooftops the names of artworks that one feels passionate about; and, if one is not moved by an artwork, one should hold one’s peace. I don’t believe we serve humanity by complaining about what we dislike.
But I also recently saw a movie that I admired – actually, many movies that I admired: for we’re still following the career of Ingmar Bergman. In this case, there’s too many to list. Some of his earliest work is uneven, but still I often am so enchanted by a swath or section of a work that I can’t help but make a copy of what I see. Let me give you a lengthy example: Below is an excerpt from the English subtitles of a 1947 Swedish film that Bergman adapted from a play by Martin Söderhjelm called Skepp till Indialand – if it doesn’t immediately interest you, just slap yourself until you begin to enjoy it:
[A man and woman travel by boat to a small windmill.]
HE: I come up here sometimes
SHE: Do you sit here on your own?
HE: No, I don’t.
SHE: Who do you bring?
HE: I imagine someone I can talk to about my thoughts and my dreams.
SHE: What do you want most of all?
HE: To be rid of my hump.
SHE: It’s not a hump. You’re just round-shouldered.
HE: No . . . I’ve noticed something.
SHE: What’s that?
HE: Your eyes. They look sad.
SHE: Do they?
HE: It makes me wonder why you’re sad.
SHE: I don’t know. Maybe because I was born into misery. Both my own and that of others.
HE: You musn’t give up. I never will.
SHE: I know you won’t. But I’m a bit lazy and indifferent. You’re not like that at all.
HE: I’ll free myself of all my problems. You just have to make your mind up.
SHE: I never make my mind up.
Are you intrigued? Which character do you relate to more? I side with the guy with the hump, and with the gal with sad eyes. Here, let me fast-forward a little, to this other part that I like – it’s from the same scene . . .
HE: Where did you work before the variety show?
SHE: I was poor. So poor that I decided to do something about it, in my own way.
HE: Which way is that?
SHE: What do you think?
HE: Does that pay well?
SHE: It sure does. But it hardens you. You stop caring about others.
HE: I still believe that there is something which is good and true.
SHE: You do? Well, you’ll see. . . . Look at me. I’m quite attractive. But I have nothing, I am nothing, I know nothing. Imagine being a rich man, seeing me and thinking, “I want that girl!” Imagine asking me, “How much, miss?” And me answering, “A nice job. A good salary, not too much work. A fur coat, and a dog for my drawing room floor.”
HE: That’s disgusting!
SHE: You can say that; you’re not that man. I consider that agreement to be right and honorable, and it suits my style.
[He turns away and moves to leave. She grabs him and turns him back to face her.]
SHE: You think I’m no better than a regular whore, admit it! You want to slap me: just do it!
HE: You don’t care what I think.
[There is a long pause, as she looks at him steadfastly.]
SHE: I do care what you think. . . . You’re the first person to be nice to me without wanting anything back. . . . If I could fall in love with anyone, I’d fall in love with you.
HE: You don’t realize what you’re saying. You’re crazy.
SHE: I’m completely mad. Aren’t people allowed to be mad sometimes?
HE: I’ve always been alone. Nobody has ever cared about me.
SHE: People shouldn’t be alone. . . . You need someone to take care of. You need someone to love. Otherwise, you might as well be dead.
[They sink gently to the floor and kiss.]
That’s all I wanted to share from that. I have no comment. I’ll just let them remain on the floor, kissing.
Now, to fill out the lower part of this entry, I’ll just put several disconnected thoughts; and then one more quotation, right at the end.
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God has never spoken to anyone, nor has God ever been seen by anyone. What’s funny about this is that it means the entire history of religion is exactly the opposite of what it claims to be: it is a great rolling snowball of lies about God. For that reason, I love it.
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We navigate this world like worms in earth. The elements pass through us: we drink them in and micturate them out. We encounter nutriment and leave behind waste. Thus we are ruiners. Compare that to the purifying worm: what enters is dirt, and what exits is enriched soil.
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All our conspiracy theories are boringly true, and there is nothing new under the sun. Your private government’s officials will release the documents concerning your president’s assassination, only after the entire populace has, through independent research, already intuited the truth. This way, the revelation will elicit not a gasp but a collective yawn.
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If I only could gain some weight; then I think I could like life. I wish I could put on more than 400 pounds. I’m not joking: it would be wonderful to have so much matter associated with my person. Then I could go outdoors during winter and not be too cold. I could use the spray handle on the garden hose to wash my red sportscar, and people would respect me.
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Well, those are all the tidings that are fit to report. See: I told you that I would exhaust my stockpile of filler material before this entry’s spool was done spinning. Now, to grace the remaining space, I’ll share another quotation from that same O’Casey play that I cited in an earlier entry, The Shadow of a Gunman, so that we can end on a positive note – for I admire this character very much:
The door opens and MINNIE POWELL enters with an easy confidence one would not expect her to possess from her gentle way of knocking. She is a girl of 23, but the fact of being forced to earn her living, and to take care of herself, on account of her parents’ early death, has given her a force and an assurance beyond her years. She has lost the sense of fear (she does not know this), and, consequently, she is at ease in all places and before all persons . . .
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