So here's the drill. You have probably been referred here by either a member of the Transylvania Community Engagement Through The Arts Class. This is the portion of our blog where we invite you fine folks to contribute by submitting a This I Believe essay which will then be considered for publication in our annual book of essays. The essays should be organized around a belief that is central to the way you live. They should be kept at around 300 to 500 words so that we see the essential components of your belief. A narrative essay is the most common type because it allows the writer to explain their beliefs with examples specific to them. Submit your essays at anytime and thanks so much for your participation!
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Dima's Class
The "This I Believe" essays from Dima's class can be found in the comments attached to this post.
I believe in grandmas. I would believe in grandpas too but I only had the pleasure of meeting one of mine, grand D we called him, and I was still a child when he died - too short of a time to fully understand grandpas.
I would visit granny in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky the normal amount that one would visit a grandma. Every year I took on a new feeling about going there. At first it was heaven, there is a creek to play in, swimming holes, mountains to climb into, even a mule to ride. The people there had funny ways of saying things. Lunch was called dinner and dinner was supper. Britches became pants and you had to wear them to avoid the chiggers, all things foreign to my “city” upbringing only 3 hours west.
In my middle and high school days, visits to granny’s house became slightly more boring. There was no AOL instant messenger, no movie theatre, no cell phone service, no boys to flirt with whom I wasn’t kin to and the taste of the well water started to bother me.
Then in college I started visiting my grandmother by myself or with the company of only my sisters. Then granny’s phrases became something I wanted to write down, her apple pie making and quilting knowledge became skills I wanted to acquire. I started really listening to the stories she told about the way things were. My own knowledge of the history of the area became alive in the same mountains and creek I had visited all those years.
I started to understand the way my mother had raised us how she did, sending her children to private schools when she attended a one-room schoolhouse near the mouth of the holler she was raised in. I started to understand why she would, to this day, correct our grammatical speech errors and not allow us to ever say the word “ain’t.” What I don’t think she expected out of her children is how much we would appreciate the way of life she had spent time placing behind her.
Grandmas help to humanize your parents and better understand the paths that led them to what kind of people they are and in turn, have directed you to become. Grandmas hold answers to questions that they don’t even know have been asked.
I believe in making time for yourself each day. Since being in college I have realized how important it is to take a break from a busy schedule and allow yourself a chance to breathe. It seems like its an easy thing to do on paper, but it was quite challenging for me to conquer. I have always been the type of person who will put others before me, including my schoolwork (studying, writing papers, etc) I would get so stressed out dealing with these other things that it became difficult for me to find something that I enjoyed doing each day. Finally I felt like taking control of my daily stresses and overwhelming feelings and channel them into something more productive. I decided to start immediately in that moment, just stop whatever I was doing, stand up and walk away. I started blocking ten minutes out from my afternoon, where I would sit and do something that required no thought what so ever. For example, I would watch television and find a show I enjoyed, download music, go on a drive, or call a friend. After doing this for a few days I started extending my time and actually embraced my “me” time. I am now able to sit in silence and feel at peace, I feel more relaxed and calm, making it a lot easier to get through each day and resolve things in my daily life. My “me” time has even affected people in my life, like my family and friends, which is great because we find things that we all like to do, and do them together.
I believe in Thursdays. Technically my weekend symptoms usually kick in on Wednesday evenings, but dollar beers and mixed drinks are only a tease unless your able to get to class the next day by ten in the morning. Wednesday isn't typically a bar night, but a thirty rack of bud diesel with three of my closest friends is usually enough to get me over the hump. When my alarm goes off around nine on Thursday morning I'm definitely going to hit snooze three, maybe even four times because it is Thursday after all and the only thing I'm obligated to do is go to class. Around one o'clock class is over, I'm still a little hazy because one thirty rack turned into two and three friends turned into ten, but who really cares because after all it's Thursday. My haziness is cured after I stuff my face with a chicken burrito from Chipotle. Chipotle being one of two places that I like to eat at in this town. When I get back home I usually bust through my front door stomping and chanting weekend over and over again just to remind my four roommates that I'm officially free while they will continue to suffer for a few more hours. There's definitely countless productive things I should be doing with my afternoon but its hard to really care when you have the next three days and three nights off, so I decide smoke a bowl and walk to Speedway to reward my precious Thursday with a Snickers ice cream treat. Upon my return I take over the garbage dump we used to call a living room only twenty four hours earlier. Now it'll only be a few hours of watching television while Facebooking at the same time until those kids that always come over show up. For dinner my roommates will insist on going to Mellow Mushroom which I guess is pretty good even though Chipotle is right across the street. After dinner my roommate Bert usually has field day on his parent's American Express card at Wildcat Liquors. The boozing continues on Maxwelton Ct. and Thursday is official for everybody. A twenty minute debate will soon occur over which bar we should go to even I know we'll probably end up at TwoKeys for ten dollars all you can drink. I really don't want to go to TwoKeys, but I know I'm definitely getting hammered and with three days and two nights remaining I know I can afford it. I miss arts professions the next morning because I drank way too many bottom shelf bourbon and sprites and there's not a chance in hell I'm getting up before noon. By two o'clock I'm awakened by my roommate obnoxiously honking his horn in the driveway, curiously I stumble down stairs into the living room only to find a fresh keg for our friends half birthday party. Since I cannot remember anything from the night before and a red solo cup now rests in my hands I have no recollection of Thursday and I officially believe in Fridays.
My eyes are drooping. I am continuing to work because I must. I must finish that which I started, but honestly, this is not what I wish I were doing. I wish I were making love to my pillow, lying with my blankets, in ecstasy under my covers. Unconscious. Dead to the world. In a deep slumber that no one dare wake me from. Unfortunately, and ironically, this is but a dream.
The unattainable is that which I know will come eventually. I will inevitably close the laptop and give in to that which I want most, but for now, I trudge on. What holds me to my current task? Is it a deadline or some higher power which keeps me typing, clicking, scanning and glued to my Vaio?
Unfortunately not. Unfortunately my vice which keeps me far away from the dreaming of sweet dreams is a digital demon that I chose to take onto my taskbar. An application as horrific as a car wreck. It both opens doors to fantastic new sites which would otherwise not be discovered and steals the souls of those whom take part in its nighttime ritual. It innocently looks on as it sucks its victims of their better judgment. It hits home with personalized choices that appeal to the senses in ways the viewer never thought possible. It is the pixilated version of a best friend, and when the sun goes down and we are left to our own intentions, it keeps us company.
It makes it seem like there is an end. Like there is a reason. A job to be done. An end to the web of sites and information that we search like zombies for answers.
I am not a person of many profound convictions. There are very few things I believe relentlessly. Perhaps this weakness of integrity or perhaps this is just the nature of being a diplomatic person. One thing I faithfully believe in is gratitude. I am not speaking of a kind of casual gratitude; thankful for some one opening the door or gratefulness for every single kindness that occurs every single day. I am talking about the kind of gratitude that one feels for the ridiculousness and the simplicity of our own existences. It is the most profound form of gratitude. Oftentimes you can only experience this phenomenon in retrospect. It is the kind of gratitude that my grandmother often wrote about about.
Kary Marsh was my grandmother. She was born into a typical post depression era family: Six Children; no money; farmers. When she was young she aspired to be a great writer. Although she never became a professional, she wrote many letters throughout her life. They were beautifully crafted letters; elegant both in language and in script. The letters she wrote are still cherished by everybody who was lucky enough to receive one. This is a letter she wrote two years before she passed away. It is one of my very favorites. In it you can find the kind of gratitude that I believe in.
Dawn and I have some strange conversations when we travel together in her car. Recently she remarked that she would like to experience some specific events in her life again with the same thrill she had at the time. Mind you Dawn declares she does not remember the day she was born, but recalls clearly the day before. I asked her which happenings would she like to experience for the very first time. She replied that she would like to take her fist plunge from a diving board; she would like to bite into and eat her first French croissant; she would like her first roller coaster ride and she would like to have Danny’s first kiss again.
What would I like to experience again for the first time? Seeing the film Laura. Remember the Back to the Future film with Michael J. Fox. I believe he goes back to the time when his parents are teenagers and lives this era. So I’m inviting you back to the future with me...
Imagine you are 14 years old. you have lived in the Sylvan Dell community since you were 5. It’s the house where you were born, but you moved to Nicholas Co. before you had any memory, returned as most tenant farmers did in those days to another rental property in Harrison County before moving back to the house of your birth. This house was up the hollar on my Grandfather Palmer’s land. My world was very small- Marshall’s Store and Buena Vista School were the limits. I had never been to Lexington or Oddville or Berry-- To Carlisle once or twice and to Cynthiana no more tan four times in my fourteen years, We did not have electricity, no radio, no phone, no car. These were days of the depression and our life would not have been very different if there had been no depression - The lifestyle was much like our forbearers had chosen.
In the spring of 1944 my dad rented a farm on Pedro Lane and life took on some broader horizons- new neighbors; larger house.
Reading had always provided an escape for me. The library at Buena Vista did offer some books, magazines and newspapers. It was in one of the magazines where I read the advertisements for recently released movies. Here I saw that Laura was the new picture to see. I just had to see it.
This strip of time when adolescence is giving way to young adult-the teen years- are trying times. Minor things become of major importance (like seeing a certain movie) If put on a graph the highs of these years would bounce off the top and the pits of despair would not make the first bar. The between times in today’s phrase would be BOOOORRRing.
Then how was I going to get to see this picture. We had no car but we did have Old Blue, a bicycle. I by some unremembered way had about .35 in coin. Mother, bless her, went to the field on this sunny March morning to ask my dad if he could spare some change so Bess could go with me. This took a lot of daring on our part. We rode the bicycle into Cynthiana-about 5 miles- and left it lying in someone’s yard. Riding the bicycle downtown might be hazardous and were would we park it? Cynthiana was a ghost town at 11a.m. - Bess and I walked around the block and around the block until the lights came on the marquee at bout 1p.m. We had not checked in our reading the times of the showings. We were the first to arrive.
I had been here once before when I was taken by my first grade teacher to see a picture show. I was 7 then and was not told what a picture show was. The first and second graders rode the school bus to town and I saw pictures of a girl running and running. In later years I did find out that the girl was Jane Withers, child star and later Josephine the plumber on T.V ads.
This was glamour and high living to me. It was overwhelming to sit in this dark theater with the thick carpeting on the aisle, a scroll like design wall paper with a sheen from the long half cylindrical lamps glowing on the wall. It seems velvet curtains covered the screen (and no doubt wads of chewing gum clung to the underside of those seats which went up and down).
Then it happened! I was no longer in this world. I was completely mesmerized. I was somewhere in the beautifully decorated apartment with Laura’s Portrait. I loathed clifton Webb. He was too dapper, too prissy and fastidious and too impressed with his own intellect. Vincent Price had a nice voice, but he was a playboy and not an admirable character. Laura was beautiful, apparently well paid for her advertising skills, groomed and dressed elegantly. Dana Andrews, ah, he was handsome and shrewd. A bit foolish maybe since he fell in love with the portrait of Laura when he though she was a dead woman. You remember the movie, don’t you? But Dana (Mark McPherson) figured out just what had happened and rescued the beauteous Laura, just in the nick of time. He did get one brief kiss from Laura and in those days nothing more was needed to satisfy this girl that true romance would follow. How innocent we were.
Bess and I came out of the theater to face reality again. Just above the theater was a McIllvain and Walsh drug store. In the window current issues of magazines were displayed... One had the picture of the glamorous Gene Tierney. If I had this magazine I knew I could study and style my hair like her and pucker my lips into that sultry pout. So one dime went for this magazine. We wanted to put a final cap to our day, so we went to Dixie, the teenage hangout. When the waitress, a schoolmate of ours, asked for our order we felt a dish of ice cream would be more sophisticated than a cone. Trouble was the dishes cost .20 where the cones would have only cost a dime. We only had .17 left in pennies. With a great deal of embarrassment I told her that she would need to take the ice cream back. She declined and told us to eat it. It certainly lost some of its flavor.
Then Bess and I returned to our bicycle and rode home in the chill of the March afternoon.
I have watched this film several times since, but can never recapture the wonder of the first viewing. The film itself was not a great one-but the losing of oneself for a brief time is a miracle that is lost with the business of continued living and aging.
I asked Bess if she remembered our excursion to the Rohds Theater and she said that she certainly did. She said she wrote the date we saw Laura in the inside of the mailbox carolyn painted for you. Perhaps it is still there.
I believe deep within all our hearts, in the very essence of this complex and elegant drum of persistence, lays the vibrating symphony of the universe. In this music of all creation lives the quintessential platonic model of God. And I believe here, within the quarks of substance and the quantum mechanics of change, resides infinitesimal green creatures, navigating through the humdrum existence of point A to point B, driving blue 1990 Chevy El Caminos wondering why a little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down.
I believe the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop is directly proportional to the DOW Jones Industrial average from three weeks prior at closing bell.
I believe trees grow upside down and all of humanity is confused.
I believe that I think therefore I am, and what I am thinking is that Gobstoppers should last longer.
I believe that Count Chocula is not actually a count at all, but a rogue Republican senator from New Mexico, gallivanting around in the Emperor’s new clothes.
I believe that the Humane Society would have fewer problems, if it would just stop raining cats and dogs.
I believe that Skeletor was a decent guy who just got a bad rap.
I believe that for every action, there is an equal and opposite CUT!
I believe that if you have three dollars, give one away, you are not a very good capitalist.
I believe that if a train leaves Boston at 3:24PM traveling East at 80 MPH, it won’t take long to fall into the Atlantic Ocean.
I believe that in whatever state something is, it can be better with more bunny rabbits.
I believe many times a day from the hive.
I believe that Muhamed Ali may float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, but root beer floats much better.
I believe that neither the chicken nor the egg came first, but the farmer.
I believe that one time I tried to taste the rainbow, but I fell out of a tree.
I believe that a well placed dinner roll can indeed put the fire out.
I believe that the Isosceles triangle is the most famous, but the triangle from Asteroids needs the right angle.
I believe that Fox news rarely reports on the Canidae Family.
I believe that the lion is a good way to utilize the couch.
This diatribe is nonsensical and absurd, but I cannot believe
I believe in diversity. No, not the institutional, statistical, static, drained of life and vitality, box-checking, life-draining, form-birthing, divisive, alienating, confusing, top-down excuse that we unleash upon ourselves to put undersized band-aids on various social ills. I am talking about the polyphony of voices that makes one humbled by the experience of being human. I am talking about opinions emerging from conversations started by folks with real opinions, who respect each other enough to call each other’s bullshit. “Diversity” which I am talking about is a-throw-a-bunch-of-ideas-in-a-soup-and-let-the-best-ones-boil-up-to-the-top kind of diversity.
At this point I can rattle off a few thinkers who have stated all of the above in a more exhaustive and nuanced ways, but honestly who cares about them in this context, this is all about me, me, me. Like for example, I was literally in a mental paralysis after 9/11, I couldn’t make art. This has NEVER happened to me. I eat, breathe and shit art. It is a selfish and vain endeavor (though, unlike my younger self, I don’t quite look at the fame component the same way) but it is one, which requires a constant conversation (with viewers, with oneself, with history). After 9/11 in America the conversation stopped, there was no diversity of opinions, it all felt like a horrible murderous scream of some dumb wounded animal and I was scared by the fundamentalism I saw around me.
I was scared by the possibility of a complete lack of diversity and horrible monocultural bog taking over my world. What is truly scary about fundamentalism is not the opinions (really, there are tons of amazing things that religious and social fundamentalists strive for) but its complete intolerance of dissent. The culture that it produces is stillborn: unable to grow or evolve. It is antithetical to any vital mode of art production (or living.) This I believe; nay feel in stomach, my throat, my eyes. Whenever I encounter this sick blindness at its full force, I just shut down.
In the end, collaboration with my friends got me back to making work fairly fast. These are my best friends, people who I disagree with openly, skipping the unnecessary editing. None of the work that we made together got finished, maybe all of us needed to go through a bit of “art therapy,” share our views and then just go our separate ways for a while. Perhaps, we just needed to be heard, each telling our own story in our way, joining together in a diverse chorus.
Natalie Baxter
ReplyDeleteI believe in grandmas. I would believe in grandpas too but I only had the pleasure of meeting one of mine, grand D we called him, and I was still a child when he died - too short of a time to fully understand grandpas.
I would visit granny in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky the normal amount that one would visit a grandma. Every year I took on a new feeling about going there. At first it was heaven, there is a creek to play in, swimming holes, mountains to climb into, even a mule to ride. The people there had funny ways of saying things. Lunch was called dinner and dinner was supper. Britches became pants and you had to wear them to avoid the chiggers, all things foreign to my “city” upbringing only 3 hours west.
In my middle and high school days, visits to granny’s house became slightly more boring. There was no AOL instant messenger, no movie theatre, no cell phone service, no boys to flirt with whom I wasn’t kin to and the taste of the well water started to bother me.
Then in college I started visiting my grandmother by myself or with the company of only my sisters. Then granny’s phrases became something I wanted to write down, her apple pie making and quilting knowledge became skills I wanted to acquire. I started really listening to the stories she told about the way things were. My own knowledge of the history of the area became alive in the same mountains and creek I had visited all those years.
I started to understand the way my mother had raised us how she did, sending her children to private schools when she attended a one-room schoolhouse near the mouth of the holler she was raised in. I started to understand why she would, to this day, correct our grammatical speech errors and not allow us to ever say the word “ain’t.” What I don’t think she expected out of her children is how much we would appreciate the way of life she had spent time placing behind her.
Grandmas help to humanize your parents and better understand the paths that led them to what kind of people they are and in turn, have directed you to become. Grandmas hold answers to questions that they don’t even know have been asked.
This is why I believe in grandmas.
Ariel Chollet
ReplyDeleteI believe in making time for yourself each day. Since being in college I have realized how important it is to take a break from a busy schedule and allow yourself a chance to breathe. It seems like its an easy thing to do on paper, but it was quite challenging for me to conquer. I have always been the type of person who will put others before me, including my schoolwork (studying, writing papers, etc) I would get so stressed out dealing with these other things that it became difficult for me to find something that I enjoyed doing each day. Finally I felt like taking control of my daily stresses and overwhelming feelings and channel them into something more productive. I decided to start immediately in that moment, just stop whatever I was doing, stand up and walk away. I started blocking ten minutes out from my afternoon, where I would sit and do something that required no thought what so ever. For example, I would watch television and find a show I enjoyed, download music, go on a drive, or call a friend. After doing this for a few days I started extending my time and actually embraced my “me” time. I am now able to sit in silence and feel at peace, I feel more relaxed and calm, making it a lot easier to get through each day and resolve things in my daily life. My “me” time has even affected people in my life, like my family and friends, which is great because we find things that we all like to do, and do them together.
Mike Ferrarell
ReplyDeleteI believe in Thursdays. Technically my weekend symptoms usually kick in on Wednesday evenings, but dollar beers and mixed drinks are only a tease unless your able to get to class the next day by ten in the morning. Wednesday isn't typically a bar night, but a thirty rack of bud diesel with three of my closest friends is usually enough to get me over the hump. When my alarm goes off around nine on Thursday morning I'm definitely going to hit snooze three, maybe even four times because it is Thursday after all and the only thing I'm obligated to do is go to class. Around one o'clock class is over, I'm still a little hazy because one thirty rack turned into two and three friends turned into ten, but who really cares because after all it's Thursday. My haziness is cured after I stuff my face with a chicken burrito from Chipotle. Chipotle being one of two places that I like to eat at in this town. When I get back home I usually bust through my front door stomping and chanting weekend over and over again just to remind my four roommates that I'm officially free while they will continue to suffer for a few more hours. There's definitely countless productive things I should be doing with my afternoon but its hard to really care when you have the next three days and three nights off, so I decide smoke a bowl and walk to Speedway to reward my precious Thursday with a Snickers ice cream treat. Upon my return I take over the garbage dump we used to call a living room only twenty four hours earlier. Now it'll only be a few hours of watching television while Facebooking at the same time until those kids that always come over show up. For dinner my roommates will insist on going to Mellow Mushroom which I guess is pretty good even though Chipotle is right across the street. After dinner my roommate Bert usually has field day on his parent's American Express card at Wildcat Liquors. The boozing continues on Maxwelton Ct. and Thursday is official for everybody. A twenty minute debate will soon occur over which bar we should go to even I know we'll probably end up at TwoKeys for ten dollars all you can drink. I really don't want to go to TwoKeys, but I know I'm definitely getting hammered and with three days and two nights remaining I know I can afford it. I miss arts professions the next morning because I drank way too many bottom shelf bourbon and sprites and there's not a chance in hell I'm getting up before noon. By two o'clock I'm awakened by my roommate obnoxiously honking his horn in the driveway, curiously I stumble down stairs into the living room only to find a fresh keg for our friends half birthday party. Since I cannot remember anything from the night before and a red solo cup now rests in my hands I have no recollection of Thursday and I officially believe in Fridays.
Caitlin O’Leary
ReplyDeleteI believe that I am tired
My eyes are drooping. I am continuing to work because I must. I must finish that which I started, but honestly, this is not what I wish I were doing. I wish I were making love to my pillow, lying with my blankets, in ecstasy under my covers. Unconscious. Dead to the world. In a deep slumber that no one dare wake me from. Unfortunately, and ironically, this is but a dream.
The unattainable is that which I know will come eventually. I will inevitably close the laptop and give in to that which I want most, but for now, I trudge on. What holds me to my current task? Is it a deadline or some higher power which keeps me typing, clicking, scanning and glued to my Vaio?
Unfortunately not. Unfortunately my vice which keeps me far away from the dreaming of sweet dreams is a digital demon that I chose to take onto my taskbar. An application as horrific as a car wreck. It both opens doors to fantastic new sites which would otherwise not be discovered and steals the souls of those whom take part in its nighttime ritual. It innocently looks on as it sucks its victims of their better judgment. It hits home with personalized choices that appeal to the senses in ways the viewer never thought possible. It is the pixilated version of a best friend, and when the sun goes down and we are left to our own intentions, it keeps us company.
It makes it seem like there is an end. Like there is a reason. A job to be done. An end to the web of sites and information that we search like zombies for answers.
I should delete my stumble.
Kary Marsh & Audrey Littlepage
ReplyDeleteI am not a person of many profound convictions. There are very few things I believe relentlessly. Perhaps this weakness of integrity or perhaps this is just the nature of being a diplomatic person. One thing I faithfully believe in is gratitude. I am not speaking of a kind of casual gratitude; thankful for some one opening the door or gratefulness for every single kindness that occurs every single day. I am talking about the kind of gratitude that one feels for the ridiculousness and the simplicity of our own existences. It is the most profound form of gratitude. Oftentimes you can only experience this phenomenon in retrospect. It is the kind of gratitude that my grandmother often wrote about about.
Kary Marsh was my grandmother. She was born into a typical post depression era family: Six Children; no money; farmers. When she was young she aspired to be a great writer. Although she never became a professional, she wrote many letters throughout her life. They were beautifully crafted letters; elegant both in language and in script. The letters she wrote are still cherished by everybody who was lucky enough to receive one. This is a letter she wrote two years before she passed away. It is one of my very favorites. In it you can find the kind of gratitude that I believe in.
Kary Marsh & Audrey Littlepage (con.)
ReplyDeleteDawn and I have some strange conversations when we travel together in her car. Recently she remarked that she would like to experience some specific events in her life again with the same thrill she had at the time. Mind you Dawn declares she does not remember the day she was born, but recalls clearly the day before. I asked her which happenings would she like to experience for the very first time. She replied that she would like to take her fist plunge from a diving board; she would like to bite into and eat her first French croissant; she would like her first roller coaster ride and she would like to have Danny’s first kiss again.
What would I like to experience again for the first time? Seeing the film Laura. Remember the Back to the Future film with Michael J. Fox. I believe he goes back to the time when his parents are teenagers and lives this era. So I’m inviting you back to the future with me...
Imagine you are 14 years old. you have lived in the Sylvan Dell community since you were 5. It’s the house where you were born, but you moved to Nicholas Co. before you had any memory, returned as most tenant farmers did in those days to another rental property in Harrison County before moving back to the house of your birth. This house was up the hollar on my Grandfather Palmer’s land. My world was very small- Marshall’s Store and Buena Vista School were the limits. I had never been to Lexington or Oddville or Berry-- To Carlisle once or twice and to Cynthiana no more tan four times in my fourteen years, We did not have electricity, no radio, no phone, no car. These were days of the depression and our life would not have been very different if there had been no depression - The lifestyle was much like our forbearers had chosen.
In the spring of 1944 my dad rented a farm on Pedro Lane and life took on some broader horizons- new neighbors; larger house.
Reading had always provided an escape for me. The library at Buena Vista did offer some books, magazines and newspapers. It was in one of the magazines where I read the advertisements for recently released movies. Here I saw that Laura was the new picture to see. I just had to see it.
This strip of time when adolescence is giving way to young adult-the teen years- are trying times. Minor things become of major importance (like seeing a certain movie) If put on a graph the highs of these years would bounce off the top and the pits of despair would not make the first bar. The between times in today’s phrase would be BOOOORRRing.
Then how was I going to get to see this picture. We had no car but we did have Old Blue, a bicycle. I by some unremembered way had about .35 in coin. Mother, bless her, went to the field on this sunny March morning to ask my dad if he could spare some change so Bess could go with me. This took a lot of daring on our part. We rode the bicycle into Cynthiana-about 5 miles- and left it lying in someone’s yard. Riding the bicycle downtown might be hazardous and were would we park it? Cynthiana was a ghost town at 11a.m. - Bess and I walked around the block and around the block until the lights came on the marquee at bout 1p.m. We had not checked in our reading the times of the showings. We were the first to arrive.
I had been here once before when I was taken by my first grade teacher to see a picture show. I was 7 then and was not told what a picture show was. The first and second graders rode the school bus to town and I saw pictures of a girl running and running. In later years I did find out that the girl was Jane Withers, child star and later Josephine the plumber on T.V ads.
Kary Marsh & Audrey Littlepage (con.)
ReplyDeleteThis was glamour and high living to me. It was overwhelming to sit in this dark theater with the thick carpeting on the aisle, a scroll like design wall paper with a sheen from the long half cylindrical lamps glowing on the wall. It seems velvet curtains covered the screen (and no doubt wads of chewing gum clung to the underside of those seats which went up and down).
Then it happened! I was no longer in this world. I was completely mesmerized. I was somewhere in the beautifully decorated apartment with Laura’s Portrait. I loathed clifton Webb. He was too dapper, too prissy and fastidious and too impressed with his own intellect. Vincent Price had a nice voice, but he was a playboy and not an admirable character. Laura was beautiful, apparently well paid for her advertising skills, groomed and dressed elegantly. Dana Andrews, ah, he was handsome and shrewd. A bit foolish maybe since he fell in love with the portrait of Laura when he though she was a dead woman. You remember the movie, don’t you? But Dana (Mark McPherson) figured out just what had happened and rescued the beauteous Laura, just in the nick of time. He did get one brief kiss from Laura and in those days nothing more was needed to satisfy this girl that true romance would follow. How innocent we were.
Bess and I came out of the theater to face reality again. Just above the theater was a McIllvain and Walsh drug store. In the window current issues of magazines were displayed... One had the picture of the glamorous Gene Tierney. If I had this magazine I knew I could study and style my hair like her and pucker my lips into that sultry pout. So one dime went for this magazine. We wanted to put a final cap to our day, so we went to Dixie, the teenage hangout. When the waitress, a schoolmate of ours, asked for our order we felt a dish of ice cream would be more sophisticated than a cone. Trouble was the dishes cost .20 where the cones would have only cost a dime. We only had .17 left in pennies. With a great deal of embarrassment I told her that she would need to take the ice cream back. She declined and told us to eat it. It certainly lost some of its flavor.
Then Bess and I returned to our bicycle and rode home in the chill of the March afternoon.
I have watched this film several times since, but can never recapture the wonder of the first viewing. The film itself was not a great one-but the losing of oneself for a brief time is a miracle that is lost with the business of continued living and aging.
I asked Bess if she remembered our excursion to the Rohds Theater and she said that she certainly did. She said she wrote the date we saw Laura in the inside of the mailbox carolyn painted for you. Perhaps it is still there.
Now are you ready to go back to 2005?
Love,
Mom (please overlook mistakes)
"Hoagland, Richard E"
ReplyDeleteI believe deep within all our hearts, in the very essence of this complex and elegant drum of persistence, lays the vibrating symphony of the universe. In this music of all creation lives the quintessential platonic model of God. And I believe here, within the quarks of substance and the quantum mechanics of change, resides infinitesimal green creatures, navigating through the humdrum existence of point A to point B, driving blue 1990 Chevy El Caminos wondering why a little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down.
I believe the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop is directly proportional to the DOW Jones Industrial average from three weeks prior at closing bell.
I believe trees grow upside down and all of humanity is confused.
I believe that I think therefore I am, and what I am thinking is that Gobstoppers should last longer.
I believe that Count Chocula is not actually a count at all, but a rogue Republican senator from New Mexico, gallivanting around in the Emperor’s new clothes.
I believe that the Humane Society would have fewer problems, if it would just stop raining cats and dogs.
I believe that Skeletor was a decent guy who just got a bad rap.
I believe that for every action, there is an equal and opposite CUT!
I believe that if you have three dollars, give one away, you are not a very good capitalist.
I believe that if a train leaves Boston at 3:24PM traveling East at 80 MPH, it won’t take long to fall into the Atlantic Ocean.
I believe that in whatever state something is, it can be better with more bunny rabbits.
I believe many times a day from the hive.
I believe that Muhamed Ali may float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, but root beer floats much better.
I believe that neither the chicken nor the egg came first, but the farmer.
I believe that one time I tried to taste the rainbow, but I fell out of a tree.
I believe that a well placed dinner roll can indeed put the fire out.
I believe that the Isosceles triangle is the most famous, but the triangle from Asteroids needs the right angle.
I believe that Fox news rarely reports on the Canidae Family.
I believe that the lion is a good way to utilize the couch.
This diatribe is nonsensical and absurd, but I cannot believe
Anonymous
ReplyDeleteI believe in diversity. No, not the institutional, statistical, static, drained of life and vitality, box-checking, life-draining, form-birthing, divisive, alienating, confusing, top-down excuse that we unleash upon ourselves to put undersized band-aids on various social ills. I am talking about the polyphony of voices that makes one humbled by the experience of being human. I am talking about opinions emerging from conversations started by folks with real opinions, who respect each other enough to call each other’s bullshit. “Diversity” which I am talking about is a-throw-a-bunch-of-ideas-in-a-soup-and-let-the-best-ones-boil-up-to-the-top kind of diversity.
At this point I can rattle off a few thinkers who have stated all of the above in a more exhaustive and nuanced ways, but honestly who cares about them in this context, this is all about me, me, me. Like for example, I was literally in a mental paralysis after 9/11, I couldn’t make art. This has NEVER happened to me. I eat, breathe and shit art. It is a selfish and vain endeavor (though, unlike my younger self, I don’t quite look at the fame component the same way) but it is one, which requires a constant conversation (with viewers, with oneself, with history). After 9/11 in America the conversation stopped, there was no diversity of opinions, it all felt like a horrible murderous scream of some dumb wounded animal and I was scared by the fundamentalism I saw around me.
I was scared by the possibility of a complete lack of diversity and horrible monocultural bog taking over my world. What is truly scary about fundamentalism is not the opinions (really, there are tons of amazing things that religious and social fundamentalists strive for) but its complete intolerance of dissent. The culture that it produces is stillborn: unable to grow or evolve. It is antithetical to any vital mode of art production (or living.) This I believe; nay feel in stomach, my throat, my eyes. Whenever I encounter this sick blindness at its full force, I just shut down.
In the end, collaboration with my friends got me back to making work fairly fast. These are my best friends, people who I disagree with openly, skipping the unnecessary editing. None of the work that we made together got finished, maybe all of us needed to go through a bit of “art therapy,” share our views and then just go our separate ways for a while. Perhaps, we just needed to be heard, each telling our own story in our way, joining together in a diverse chorus.