This is the first Halloween in something like a decade in which I’ve not watched The Crow on Devil’s Night and The Rocky Horror Picture Show on All Hallows Eve itself. What with my double-gimpédness and various other responsibilities, I had to forgo the pleasure.

I did, however, get to hand out candy for the first time in about a decade as well. I estimated fairly well, based on the number of goblins that my neighbor had last year. I have perhaps 20 Kit Kats left. It was fun to sit out on the porch and encourage the littlest ones to say “Trick or Treat” and give the older kids without costumes shit for not having costumes. I made paper cranes for the adults, and it was good to pass the time folding in between groups of goblins. The mothers were all tickled to get them.

The Pumpkin Tide

I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea.

–Richard Brautigan, 1968

I carved on Sunday with some friends. Last minute planning resulted in a lack of pumpkin, but carving watermelons was just as fun, and ultimately more effective on display, when carved and lit appropriately. Still my favorite holiday, even as the flavor changes with age.

Even with my wisdom teeth extracted, in addition to all of the other current injuries, it all still hurts less than one dislocated kneecap. However, it is hard to do most anything without the use of my dominant arm. It is pretty much like I only have one arm, period. It is hard to wash my hands, put on deodorant, wash dishes, tie shoelaces, button or zip up a coat, type, and wipe.

Eating is actually easy, or was until I got chipmunked in my mouth. I’m deft with left-handed utensilry. I ended up getting my hydrocodone Rx filled, because the tooth throbbing was so ridiculous. [Apparently no special character exists for the prescription symbol]. I only have a $5 copay for generic prescriptions which is sweet. I did have to drop 20% of the cost of my extraction though. Buying a Mac is going to have to be put off for a couple of months.

WWII Pinups

Jazz history in one photograph.

It is starting to get cold enough that I am anticipating the end of bike-ride-to-work season. I was surprised this morning to feel a pang of regret over this. The early morning exercise, concentration and surprises [like the groundhog across from the VTR] helped me be a better worker.

That was written yesterday. There is a unique savor to self-inflicted irony. I went ass-over-teakettle last night on my way to a meeting about crime in Tremont. I was mugged by the sidewalk but it only took my dignity. The damage report is a scraped left palm, abraded left cheek, busted chin, broken left toe and broken right elbow. That’s what I get for riding down the sidewalk too fast, and using my front brake too much. If I get my wisdom teeth out tomorrow I’ll look like I belong to a fight club.

I’ve always wanted to learn how to do more shit southpaw anyway.

You can make six paper cranes out of one letter-sized sheet of paper. The two smallest ones would make perfect earrings.

The conundrum is that the language to describe the ineffable splendors and possibilities of our lives takes time to master, takes a certain unhurried engagement with the tasks of description, assessment, critique, and conversation; that to speak this slow language you must slow down, and to slow down you must have some inkling of what you will gain by doing so. It’s not an elite language; nomadic and remote tribal peoples are now quite good at picking and choosing from development’s cascade of new toys, and so are some of the cash-poor, culture-rich people in places like Louisiana. Poetry is good training in speaking it, and skepticism is helpful in rejecting the four horsemen of this apocalypse, but they both require a mind that likes to roam around and the time in which to do it.

Ultimately, I believe that slowness is an act of resistance, not because slowness is a good in itself but because of all that it makes room for, the things that don’t get measured and can’t be bought.

- Rebecca Solnit

I think I really only have one pet peeve; people who complain about a part of their life but do nothing to fix that problem or improve upon it. Drives me batty.

On my wet, windy walk to work this morning, a broken umbrella flapped on the sidewalk like a dying bird.

Lamb says somewhere that if, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but “A’s part in C,” while C loses not only A but “A’s part in B.” In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves.

- C.S. Lewis The Four Loves

This weekend I dropped a few grand on hardwood flooring. Yikes. I looked into buying the sustainable bamboo stuff, but it was twice as expensive as engineered hardwood. I have been painting with Sherwin-Williams’ Harmony paint though. It has no VOC and is anti-microbial in addition. I’m halfway done painting another room as well. I need to get all this wrapped up before having the flooring installed. The wood apparently needs a few weeks to settle in to the house anyway.

I also installed a new dimmer today. Got lucky with the circuit breaker and the first guess was the correct one. The house sure is wired strangely. There are a couple of places where one light switch has to be on for another one to work, definitely old school, and definitely in need of repair. I was heartened to see a ground wire present in the dimmer socket though, so perhaps replacing the electrical sockets throughout the house to have grounds won’t be too bad. It will be nice to have part of a home to just relax around in for a change. I’ve gotten used to living in a construction zone.

I’ve been feeling a distinct lack of trust in my life lately. Usually I’m fine in my independence, but sometimes I need someone I feel comfortable talking to. It is a weird sort of loneliness, as if everyone who knows me is content with their own perceptions of who I am, uninterested in anything other than casual understanding. I feel like I’m on no one’s priority list. I wish I felt comfortable talking to someone, but even when I talk to my mom I feel like she has no confidence in my abilities and no desire to accept that I’m not the person she has always wanted me to be. She will read this and, as usual, think that I’m painting her in bad light instead of realizing that I feel this way because, though I love her, talking to her causes me stress and that I haven’t felt comfortable telling her what is close to my heart since junior high. She will feel attacked instead of wondering why, whenever I talk to her, the only thing I hear is disapproval. My uncle Collier gave me some frank and excellent advice about this while fishing in Canada one year, which is one reason why those trips are so special to me.

I’ve been trying to help people out with their problems, small and large, quite a bit lately. I get the idea that other people need my help more than I need theirs. So on the rare occasions when people ask me if I need anything, I feel obligated to say no. I don’t want to bother them with my uncertainties and fears. This is a problem I’ve always had. I don’t like appearing weak or vulnerable. This comes across as aloofness or arrogance to many people and prevents me from becoming close enough to tell and trust someone with the things I need help with.

I think my fear of trusting was born from three different sources.

1. My father: finding out that he cheated on my mother, seeing his violent, hate-filled and hurt side to the point where jumping out of a car was a viable and best solution. That was much worse than his normal casual indifference and manipulative disapproval.
2. My mother: In junior high, sharing with her the initials of a girl I had a crush on, and her asking around and finding out who it was. I was mortified that other people, strangers, knew who I had a crush on. Also, when she put my dog Rosie to sleep without telling me. Coupled with her disapproval, I’ve not felt secure talking to her about anything remotely personal since then.
3. My roommate: Pretty much the only friend I had in the class of 2003, he hooked up with a teammate he knew I had a crush on when I went home for my mother’s 50th birthday and proceeded to blatantly fool around with her in our room for the rest of the school year.

Writing that last part made me realize that the whole reason I started this weblog was to place my trust issues in a place external to me where they can be examined and [most likely] forgotten about for a time. I might be creating my own internal informational cascade. Lately I’ve been doing my best at being completely open and honest about my insecurities with one person, but it is very scary because, even though I’ve been doing so, I still don’t know if I can trust them.

I expect that I’ll get a few comments saying “You can talk to me, man.” but that will be the same mechanism as when someone talks about how they need a hug and someone immediately offers one. Some of the authenticity of the offer is lost. Of course, the previous is also just me preemptively saying that I don’t need any help. A cleft stick of my own devising, and the only way out is to just go ahead and trust.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #39: Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter.

While this is another Seijun Suzuki gangster film, it is vastly different from Branded to Kill on just about every point. Most notable is the use of bright swathes of single colors in different scenes; the same set might be yellow, then fuchsia, then white at different points in the film, and the color often changes in response to actions from the characters. The film is less gritty and psychologically compelling than Branded to Kill, with more of a 1960s pop-culture vibe, complete with its own mawkish pop ballad that various characters sing throughout the film. Despite this much more lighthearted tone, there is still significant tension surrounding the main character’s role in a complicated gang war.

This film is a good data point for making an argument that Yakuza films are just updated samurai flicks. The main character, Tetsuya, is the equivalent of a ronin, except that while he thinks he’s left his gang, he’s still being used by it as a lightning rod to undermine other gangs in places outside of Tokyo. This is fairly superficial to the main focus of the film, which is Tetsuya’s process of self-actualization, but the twain meet in the final shootout. The film’s excellence is due to how stimulating each scene is, due in large part to the aforementioned color schema, and fleshed out with the constant plot twists, musical interludes, stylized battles and preternatural abilities of the various gunmen in the film.

The complications of the plot are revealed in snippets much like manga or anime, the rapid changes and reversals are confusing, but slowly congeal into an emotional tenor that reflects Tetsuya’s growing cognizance and disgust with his status as a pawn of the crime lord he looked to as a father-figure. It gets a bit confusing at times, there is another assassin, who looks a bit like Tetsuya, named Tetsuzo [both of them are called Tetsu at various times in the subtitles] which made me think that there was a weird multiple personality subtext going on. This film’s place in the Criterion Collection fits a specific niche of Japanese filmmaking that is usually overlooked. It is easy to see how Suzuki drove his studio’s batshitinsane, his stylized creations are awesome, but a definite trend away from the sure-shots that studios usually like best.

• Criterion Essay by Manohla Dargis
• The Criterion Contraption Review
• KFCC Review
• Deep Focus Review
• Love HK Film Review

Waterhobo

I’ve finally started painting, I have to have three rooms completely painted by November because I’m getting flooring put in then. My life has been topsy-turvy of late, very busy and alternating between ridiculously stressful and ridiculously chill. I think it is going to take another few weeks before I know for sure where I’m heading for good.

I got a parking ticket in Cleveland Heights the other night. The violation was for parking in a no parking zone between 3am and 6am. The sign right above my car says, quite blatantly, no parking between 3:30pm and 6:30pm. I called up Cleveland Heights and they said that there is probably a sign at the beginning of the street or upon entering the city that states the no parking ordinance. I’m pretty sure that’s a load of bullshit, but I’m going to go check out Mayfield Road to make sure. Then I’ll contest it. It is only a $10 ticket, but Cleveland Heights has the sort of reputation for this kind of abuse of power, that it is certainly probable that they would “accidentally” make out a ticket and figure the unlucky person will just suck it up and upchuck the 10-spot. Good thing I’m stubborn. If they’re going to waste my time, I’m happy to waste theirs. Besides, what kind of sense does it make to disallow parking between 3am and 6am, it only makes sense if you think the prime time to ticket people is when they’re the likeliest to be asleep.

My new recurring nightmare places me in something like an Egyptian tomb, at least in terms of decoration and danger, and the low ceilings, dim light, and definite sense of tons of weight overhead. I’m part of a team exploring this place for its treasures and dangers. There are many rooms, each with its own particular trap and the doors to the room are of the secret passageway revolving sort. In the first room each team member becomes fascinated with one trivial aspect to the exclusion of all others. This is bad as the chances of survival for one person alone [me] are virtually nil. I try to rescue them but the door to each room closes after a certain time so I have to leave or be caught. I go to another room, intending to rescue the other folks eventually, where some sort of demon critter tries to overwhelm me, I escape from here as well. Now all the rooms are opening and releasing their critters who are after me. I run back to the original room where I’m cornered. I’m trying to keep all these dudes at bay and manage to creak open the original door and yell for my teammates. Right before I’m overwhelmed they show up to be slaughtered but allow me time to attempt escape. I don’t make it, but always wake up before getting sacked.

I’m pretty sure this is just the 2.0 version of my old nightmare [mentioned in passing here] which is pretty obviously about abandonment, trust and being frightened about independence and my ability to cope with things. I know when I have the dream that I’ve had it before, but instead of lucid dreaming my way out of it, I just try to beat my subconscious at its own game.

The only downside to having a second generation iPod Shuffle is that the damn thing is so tiny you can lose it fairly easily. I can’t find mine. I remember getting into my car last night and taking it out of the ashtray, but I don’t remember where I put it. I searched for awhile but no dice thusfar. The Stupid™ attacked when, for a brief moment, I thought about asking Google “Where is my iPod?”

I’ve officially been online too long.

Found! Apparently I stored the iPod in what was obviously the most appropriate place at the time, the toe of my left running shoe. Thanks Google!