1 post tagged “mind eraser”
If you could, which film would you un-watch or which book would you un-read?
Submitted by Kate.
I would un-watch LoveStory. Kevin Bacon would have been a better choice. Why? Because he was the ultimate playboy batchlor and one can tell by the twinkle in his eye that he would be a lot of fun...well...maybe not with me. And, Ryan just isn't believable with Jennifer and to have their names tied together...well...just doesn't seem right somehow. Was Ryan and Jen together during some of the early Shirley Jane Temple skits...not 1932...1952? Or, was that Paulie Pix goes to New York...the scene of dozens of kid actors "cloudbusting" as Sinead would have put it. Ryan and his two brothers, Gary Bugsy, possibly not John Douglas, Pat Boone??? I wouldn't undo the Shirley skits because it is important to remember although I would rather not. I didn't remember them for the longest time until recently. It has taken me forever to keep my hands off my ears when I think of the skits...well...not the skits themselves but the court cases and false charges of nudity, debauchery, child prostitution and someone died.
The book I would un-read. Part of me wants to say the Bible because if I hadn't read the Bible I would not have gone to Montreal and if I hadn't gone to Montreal to study French, I would not have been beaten, and if I hadn't been beaten I wouldn't have composed songs to take to LA and if I hadn't composed songs, I wouldn't have been ended up hating all actors, etc, etc, etc. Well, not all actors but quite a few are really nasty, horrible. people. It's like they live in this imaginary world and they are the MOST IMPORTANT person in the world and they don't get it. Tomorrow the script writers will all run off to Canada, they won't be doing any more movies and they won't have enough money for rent and taxes and they won't have anymore fans and they won't be the most important person any more. That is what William Holden once said. He had helped "a lot of actors to get parts" and boy afterwards, "they wouldn't even give a nod of the head or a wave". He was not important. That is why he didn't want to hug me. "I am afraid it would ruin our relationship and you will go running back to your mother." Smart man!
I am very angry with God right now and I go around in circles trying to explain and unexplain things in my mind. "If this had not happened, if this had not happened." But, I am lost without my Bible. It is like a soother that a baby sucks on or the tip of a blanket. And, exactly at the time that I decide that I am not going to say prayers anymore I get a dreadful nightmare and wake up screaming "Jehovah" and hold tightly onto my Bible. So, I am not going to win the argument.
I would un-read Apollo 13....67...or 85 or whenever even if Lee Grant was featured briefly in it. The old gal with the "look what they've done to my husband" and "all we wanted was to give people jobs so they could have food to eat" and in Hollywood that goes right over the heads. Why? Because they are looking in the mirrors at their flashy rings and picture perfect clothes. I like hand-me-downs. A woman by the name of Mrs. Kronenberg gave me a trunk full of her clothes when she died. I use to go to her apartment to read the Bible to her. She was in her eighties and from a generation that would rather read the Bible than go to a movie. She was from a generation like Johnny Hoover that thought they should leave their clothes behind for the less fortunate. Hoover left his clothes to a blackman that did the gardening for him and other odd jobs. Blacks were not allowed to go into town nor into shops but they were allowed to inherit from the dead. During the making of the movie In the Heat of the Night rowdies went around in the streets one night beating up blacks and doing all sorts of nasty things. I was hiding under a bed in a hotel with Erich Seigel. We never did get along but under the bed. And, why were these white Christians bleeding people? Because someone associated with the movie had purchased new clothes for the blacks playing in the movie. "You are embarrassing us!" was the answer by some who witnessed the shiny new shoes but the outfits were just tops and shorts of the cheapest type. "And why is that pray tell?" "Because blacks are suppose to buy from us the second hand clothes after we have paid for the second hand clothes." What like blacks are suppose to wear the rags and the patches?
I'm losing my happy hour or maybe I should make a nice drink but I have had a lot of lemonade to day and I guess it shows now doesn't it?
Virginia Smith, a local JW, in the Blenheim area surveyed the clothing that had been stuck into bags from Mrs. Rosenberg. They were so old remnants from the early twenties. Why she must have kept them for forty years the year of her death being 1969. "Why don't you just throw them into the garbage?" It was true people don't keep things like this that are so outdated but the dresses were still in good shape. Virginia left the room and I sat for a while hugging them. And dreaming about 1920 and the era of the depression. Lemonade must give me nightmares and dreams of the wildest sort. But, when I see Sally Field whisking around in Places of the Heart I smile and think of Mrs. Rosenberg and thank her for her lovely gift. I get so few gifts. It comes from not celebrating birthdays and Christmas a fact that is pushed up into my nostrils now and then. Like, at Zellers in London. "I can't celebrate a day that forces people to attach religious value to it...that would be idolatry. I am not against Christmas in itself but one cannot bring reindeer and bunnies into Jehovah's way of worship." I don't tell them that Moses had a big party on his birthday after he gave a rather long speech saying "I am 120 years old today." I just say "I cannot" for whatever reason but I don't put down people who give gifts at Christmas or on birthdays. I wish everyone sent a black person a Christmas gift or a birthday gift...I really do...that might be Christmas in itself.
I regret Star Wars. And, I regret Sin City. I regret Budda in The King and I. I regret competing with Jehovah with silly speeches and thoughts. After all, HE is a jealous God. And, I don't think that Dances with Wolves, green eyed gal should have done a naked scene unless she was being blackmailed then it would make sense to do a naked scene. It would take the fear away from blackmail. The book of Revelations says that "he who carries on a lie" will not be in Heaven and I have told so many fictitious lies in storytelling because it is fun to make believe. Maybe not deliberately but if one pretends that someone else is me and I am not her then that too is a lie is it not?
I don't want to unread a book. I would prefer to redo a sentence or two. I don't read dirty books so I can't place them on a list. I started June Wigle's Lady Chatallie's Lover but quit after the first chapter or two. June read romance novels. I dreamt romance novels. June took up fencing and I practiced as her partner but I dreamt fencing with pirates.
I have come to a conclusion that is not quite conclusive that I don't belong in Heaven. I don't belong on the earth. I don't belong on K-Pax. I don't belong anywhere. I can't unread K-Pax because everyone has a type of K-Pax escape valve but then...people become such religious zealots and lost somewhere in their quest to know God that they might have been encouraged to go in the opposite direction and start wearing Star Trek buttons and alien ears hoping to meet God some day that it makes a person want to hide behind a couch.
I should be able to find a book to unread. This is ridiculous. I should unread all the books I have read. I watch movies and I cringe, "was that actor really killed in that scene?"
For example, in the movie Eastern Promises, the fight seems real and I ask myself, "did the cameraman go into the bathhouse and catch this fight on reel then produce the movie as an afterthought to remember something". And, I spend countless hours trying to remember what year exactly Eastern Promises was made in, that being, that the "Auntie" was also in the British movie North and South and I thought she was an unroyal cousin to the royals on the Queen Mother's side. Questions? Questions? Questions? The movie should be remade with Sam Shepherd and just hint at the violence. But, movies are such good tools as memory books if one is looking for a name of a car plate or person isn't it?
I should be able to say, all books and to God, "I really don't know you" even though Elsie Wigle thought that every Christian should write the law of the book as required by God for all Kings BY HAND. I have read the Bible and I have written it by hand and I don't know HIM at all.
