i've seen what i chose and i've seen what i need
When I was eleven and under, I had a laptop. It was this big bulky thing that all I used for was word processing. I carried it with me whenever I traveled, on plane flights from Texas to Sacramento to see my dad, even though lumbering that anvil around will play a part in me most assuredly going Quasimodo when I'm old. It was the most ridiculously shaped thing, even absurdly huge and dated in its time since my stepdad had got it used, but I was Stephen King when I typed on it. I had no inhibition or second-guessing to my writing then because I had no sexual desire and consequently no repression. I knew enough of life and the world to think I knew it all and had no qualms that I was extending myself to perspectives I had no grasp of or that I should be doing research or interviews or anything. I wrote murder mysteries mostly, some science fiction, one a coming-of-age story in the Depression era inspired by my grandmother, all with plucky protagonists. As for writers, Agatha Christie was my biggest inspiration. I always wrote them as the beginnings of novels because I needed the epic feeling, the inspiration of a beginning of something enormous, but I rarely followed through, only on two occasions I think did I finish the novels. Those two, my mom took to Kinko's and had bound and made lots of color copies. In fourth grade I went to a convention in my school district where we exchanged our stories and the boy who got mine was so enthusiastic about the cover and breadth of my book. Then the teacher asked him to trade mine with the odd boy out and he didn't want to and slowly handed it over. The rest of my writings stayed on that atrocious laptop and are gone forever.
Now I almost can't write any stories at all.
My mom will keep bitching about my dad till her dying day even though she divorced him twenty years ago. When mentioning how out of touch with emotions he is, she curiously, awkwardly brought up that she wrote a poem about her brother-in-law Steve's passing from brain cancer, and my dad said with his furrow, "It's pretty depressing." And the poem was titled "I Was Certain." In fact it was published. Which she pretended to say under her breath while scurrying off to retrieve a copy of the book. When she came back with the book I recognized the publisher instantly; it was a vanity press affiliated with the website poetry.com. She pretended that she was asking if she should give a copy of the book to my aunt in memory of her husband who died ten years ago and was replaced a year or two later with a new man; she mentioned feigning defense that the publisher gave her a whole box of copies (that she didn't mention she paid for), but she didn't know if Carla my aunt would even care to revisit those feelings anymore. But it wasn't about any of that; she was seeking my approval, and because she was, I didn't want to give it to her and muttered quickly, "Yeah it's good, you should give it to her." I never would have imagined that my mom would have felt the need for my approval for anything, and now that she does I want to stomp on her.
At least she stopped her drunken projections onto me of her insecurities, making bizarre claims that I judge her interior design work as shallow when apparently I think she should've developed her art and expressed herself but I don't understand how much she had to sacrifice when she left my father and had to support herself and me, only ten months old at the time, and with an art major this career was--you got the gist a long way back. Because she subconsciously projects the arc of a drama onto her life, she thinks we have lived, learned, and mended fences these last couple days together even though I haven't actually changed at all. And even though to me she made me out to be the most vile son on God's green earth this past week, to my stepfather she spoke fondly of my taking her to the MOCA Geffen exhibit and Narnia at El Capitan and the Getty.
Today we saw Brokeback Mountain and the theatre was brimming with middle-aged gay men, one of whom stood next to me in the popcorn line for a moment and stared then forced an, "Oh! I'm sorry..." trailing off as he realized he made absolutely no sense; my mom stood on my other side. Then one gay man in front of us cried the whole fucking movie, it was pretty funny. My mom and stepdad are such frustrating homebodies that all we've done during my five-day stay in Denver is go out twice to see King Kong and Brokeback Mountain, so there's been a lot of time for ultimately useless introspection.
I had a long thing about Urban Outfitters that would go between here and below but I don't feel like writing it and it repeats the same points above anyway.
Then tonight my mom wanted to watch something else and doesn't really like Bjork but I was insistent that we watch Dancer in the Dark as I hadn't seen it in five years, knowing it's one of my favorite films and knowing how it makes me feel. We sat symmetrically with the Vanilla-Skyish TV in center. We both cried ceaselessly the last hour of it, just the like the gay man at Brokeback. Lars von Trier will never make a better film because he is a cynical, sadistic misanthrope, and while that can be interesting by himself, this film stands as a battle between him and a courageous artist of the most sincere heart and she wins and he lets her. My mom thanked her for making her watch it. I don't think she likes Bjork any more than before but she got to see the ultimate mother-as-martyr that she wants to be, even in the most deliberately contrived circumstances.
Now I almost can't write any stories at all.
My mom will keep bitching about my dad till her dying day even though she divorced him twenty years ago. When mentioning how out of touch with emotions he is, she curiously, awkwardly brought up that she wrote a poem about her brother-in-law Steve's passing from brain cancer, and my dad said with his furrow, "It's pretty depressing." And the poem was titled "I Was Certain." In fact it was published. Which she pretended to say under her breath while scurrying off to retrieve a copy of the book. When she came back with the book I recognized the publisher instantly; it was a vanity press affiliated with the website poetry.com. She pretended that she was asking if she should give a copy of the book to my aunt in memory of her husband who died ten years ago and was replaced a year or two later with a new man; she mentioned feigning defense that the publisher gave her a whole box of copies (that she didn't mention she paid for), but she didn't know if Carla my aunt would even care to revisit those feelings anymore. But it wasn't about any of that; she was seeking my approval, and because she was, I didn't want to give it to her and muttered quickly, "Yeah it's good, you should give it to her." I never would have imagined that my mom would have felt the need for my approval for anything, and now that she does I want to stomp on her.
At least she stopped her drunken projections onto me of her insecurities, making bizarre claims that I judge her interior design work as shallow when apparently I think she should've developed her art and expressed herself but I don't understand how much she had to sacrifice when she left my father and had to support herself and me, only ten months old at the time, and with an art major this career was--you got the gist a long way back. Because she subconsciously projects the arc of a drama onto her life, she thinks we have lived, learned, and mended fences these last couple days together even though I haven't actually changed at all. And even though to me she made me out to be the most vile son on God's green earth this past week, to my stepfather she spoke fondly of my taking her to the MOCA Geffen exhibit and Narnia at El Capitan and the Getty.
Today we saw Brokeback Mountain and the theatre was brimming with middle-aged gay men, one of whom stood next to me in the popcorn line for a moment and stared then forced an, "Oh! I'm sorry..." trailing off as he realized he made absolutely no sense; my mom stood on my other side. Then one gay man in front of us cried the whole fucking movie, it was pretty funny. My mom and stepdad are such frustrating homebodies that all we've done during my five-day stay in Denver is go out twice to see King Kong and Brokeback Mountain, so there's been a lot of time for ultimately useless introspection.
I had a long thing about Urban Outfitters that would go between here and below but I don't feel like writing it and it repeats the same points above anyway.
Then tonight my mom wanted to watch something else and doesn't really like Bjork but I was insistent that we watch Dancer in the Dark as I hadn't seen it in five years, knowing it's one of my favorite films and knowing how it makes me feel. We sat symmetrically with the Vanilla-Skyish TV in center. We both cried ceaselessly the last hour of it, just the like the gay man at Brokeback. Lars von Trier will never make a better film because he is a cynical, sadistic misanthrope, and while that can be interesting by himself, this film stands as a battle between him and a courageous artist of the most sincere heart and she wins and he lets her. My mom thanked her for making her watch it. I don't think she likes Bjork any more than before but she got to see the ultimate mother-as-martyr that she wants to be, even in the most deliberately contrived circumstances.