Dystopia Redux and the Ghosts of Christamases Past
The other day Grace Davis sent the following video around to a bunch of us--she did it inadvertently, but I see it more as an early Christmas present from someone who had no idea that's what she was giving me....
Then, yesterday, the dvd of Blade Runner: The Final Cut was released
And I am facing many, many ghosts of Christmases past...
It's hard to explain, really. Most people's lives have continuity--sure, they lose friends, but not lives. I've lost lives, pretty much. There are pictures to remind me of friends, of what I looked like back then--but not enough pictures.
Besides, what's the value of pictures anyway, if we are sharing them only with ourselves--and all those people are gone, gone gone...?
Many of my memories are of experiences, the experiences captured in music and films...
The memories are of my young husband, sitting by my side in a theater in NYC as we watched an absolutely gorgeous 70mm print of Blade Runner....
Of dancing in a niteclub in New Brunswick, with a good friend who I thought I loved because we both liked to dance...
When there was so much life to be lived....
I don't feel like I'm really living these days. Yeah, there's a modicum of excitement, and the re-discovering of a self that I lost while creating a professional gaze that is someone I couldn't have imagined in that time before all this High Technology.
But I lost a lot more than Me when I lost those people who were part of the Me I was becoming....
Who got squashed out of fear of being alone...
Then again, maybe it's that Real Life is slow to unfold--no big adventures in one hour where the earth shakes and everything changes....and maybe things are changing right now, without my full knowledge.
Small seismic tremors that eventually shift everything...
I was never gifted with much patience. Comes from my Dad, who also was an impatient type. I can't account for it. Maybe it's that I don't like surprises--quick! get to the end so I can know whether it's good or bad, if they get the killer or the lovers live happily ever after....
Now, that's a strange concept--that Happily Ever After thing. I think when I cut the ties to people who loved me as my first ex did, it was to try to create some sort of ending to a period of my life. Move forward, create another chapter.
But life isn't like books. You never really "close" chapters of your life--the memories linger like the faint aroma of strong coffee, or of pungent lillies in a hotel lobby on a hot summer afternoon...
Life isn't neat like a novel or a movie either. It's messy. Story lines trail off, reconstitute later....
It takes a lot to kill off a plotline--to cut people out of our lives For Ever, For Good. Trust me. I know a lot about this...
I'm finding I can't do that any more--which is making ending my relationship awfully difficult, even though I know it's going nowhere, and in some respects contributes to my feeling alone quite often. Not that he's an awful person--quite the contrary....
It's just that we don't really share the things that make up who we are (I could've said what makes Me--but that would be giving him short shrift.) He's a mountain guy--a winter sports guy--a hiking guy. And I'm a city girl, in love with movies and museums and the beauty of architecture and ideas. For as much as we care about what happens to the other person, I think we're both sacrificing too much of ourselves to make our relationship work over the long haul....
Some days, it looks like my parents' miserable marriage of convenience. Even though we're not hostile to each other, we're not sharing with each other.
So, I am haunted by these Ghosts of Christmases Past that lurk behind these dystopian images that populated the pop culture milieu of my youth. Because within those images are memories of my life. A life of High Drama--but also of laughter and love. And I think about how I'd like to be as transparent as these celluloid ghosts, where I, too, could turn sideways and disappear.
But that ain't going to happen. I can't disappear.
To make a change in my life is going to take a great deal of courage--not just courage for me but for another person. It's going to take reassuring him, as much as myself, that I'm not going to trail off...sail into the sunset...slam the book shut because I've hit the ending. Because I don't think it's an ending like in the past. Rather it's maybe opening up a new book, where the relationships are different. Not dead, just different.....
And it has to be different because I can't disappear and don't want to talk any more, with regret and longing, about the people and relationships I walked away from because I wanted to shut that part of my life, turn away from it, run away from it, out of fear of becoming someone that, when I think about it, I never could become...
that is, unless I made the same mistakes...and allowed myself some kind of living death life of convenience....
no, I really *can't* do that...
Then, yesterday, the dvd of Blade Runner: The Final Cut was released
And I am facing many, many ghosts of Christmases past...
It's hard to explain, really. Most people's lives have continuity--sure, they lose friends, but not lives. I've lost lives, pretty much. There are pictures to remind me of friends, of what I looked like back then--but not enough pictures.
Besides, what's the value of pictures anyway, if we are sharing them only with ourselves--and all those people are gone, gone gone...?
Many of my memories are of experiences, the experiences captured in music and films...
The memories are of my young husband, sitting by my side in a theater in NYC as we watched an absolutely gorgeous 70mm print of Blade Runner....
Of dancing in a niteclub in New Brunswick, with a good friend who I thought I loved because we both liked to dance...
When there was so much life to be lived....
I don't feel like I'm really living these days. Yeah, there's a modicum of excitement, and the re-discovering of a self that I lost while creating a professional gaze that is someone I couldn't have imagined in that time before all this High Technology.
But I lost a lot more than Me when I lost those people who were part of the Me I was becoming....
Who got squashed out of fear of being alone...
Then again, maybe it's that Real Life is slow to unfold--no big adventures in one hour where the earth shakes and everything changes....and maybe things are changing right now, without my full knowledge.
Small seismic tremors that eventually shift everything...
I was never gifted with much patience. Comes from my Dad, who also was an impatient type. I can't account for it. Maybe it's that I don't like surprises--quick! get to the end so I can know whether it's good or bad, if they get the killer or the lovers live happily ever after....
Now, that's a strange concept--that Happily Ever After thing. I think when I cut the ties to people who loved me as my first ex did, it was to try to create some sort of ending to a period of my life. Move forward, create another chapter.
But life isn't like books. You never really "close" chapters of your life--the memories linger like the faint aroma of strong coffee, or of pungent lillies in a hotel lobby on a hot summer afternoon...
Life isn't neat like a novel or a movie either. It's messy. Story lines trail off, reconstitute later....
It takes a lot to kill off a plotline--to cut people out of our lives For Ever, For Good. Trust me. I know a lot about this...
I'm finding I can't do that any more--which is making ending my relationship awfully difficult, even though I know it's going nowhere, and in some respects contributes to my feeling alone quite often. Not that he's an awful person--quite the contrary....
It's just that we don't really share the things that make up who we are (I could've said what makes Me--but that would be giving him short shrift.) He's a mountain guy--a winter sports guy--a hiking guy. And I'm a city girl, in love with movies and museums and the beauty of architecture and ideas. For as much as we care about what happens to the other person, I think we're both sacrificing too much of ourselves to make our relationship work over the long haul....
Some days, it looks like my parents' miserable marriage of convenience. Even though we're not hostile to each other, we're not sharing with each other.
So, I am haunted by these Ghosts of Christmases Past that lurk behind these dystopian images that populated the pop culture milieu of my youth. Because within those images are memories of my life. A life of High Drama--but also of laughter and love. And I think about how I'd like to be as transparent as these celluloid ghosts, where I, too, could turn sideways and disappear.
But that ain't going to happen. I can't disappear.
To make a change in my life is going to take a great deal of courage--not just courage for me but for another person. It's going to take reassuring him, as much as myself, that I'm not going to trail off...sail into the sunset...slam the book shut because I've hit the ending. Because I don't think it's an ending like in the past. Rather it's maybe opening up a new book, where the relationships are different. Not dead, just different.....
And it has to be different because I can't disappear and don't want to talk any more, with regret and longing, about the people and relationships I walked away from because I wanted to shut that part of my life, turn away from it, run away from it, out of fear of becoming someone that, when I think about it, I never could become...
that is, unless I made the same mistakes...and allowed myself some kind of living death life of convenience....
no, I really *can't* do that...
posted by Tish Grier at 10:15 AM
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