Equilibria © copyright 2006 by Lillian Carrero
Traditional
mythologies extol the heroic deeds of fallacy—fallacy, because there are no
heroes. We, (and I speak in generic global terms—we) have aspired to, and have obtained no heroes. We don’t want
them, or speaking strictly for myself, I don’t want them. The larger than …
well, whatever, there is something however about the characters and the
stories. Those wonderful grandiose stories that offer up no vicarious thrill
but sometimes evoke a smile or some other, often equally embarrassing emotional
response. The stories that time lapse seasonally, and live forever.
Me, I live in a world that
doesn’t exist. Endless days melt together in which I’ve yet to alter my attire,
and more often than not I am completely unmotivated to bathe. Just over the
next horizon there are the infinite arrays of psychotropic happy pills. I don’t
want them. I don’t deny they have a place, but they have no place with me. I
get through the day-to-day … redundancies of monotonous routines deeply rooted
in the realm of reality. I get that … reality bites. It sucks.
To suck - creating the
potential vacuum.
Nothing. I’m back to
nothing.
In lieu of the happy pill
there is always chocolate, which in turn betrays me by increasing exponentially
the mass and density of my ass.
I digress, going off on a
tangent stained with my own personal stench of desperation as my mantra
reverberates, and veils me, echoing within my being, “This … is not … my life!”
Reality bites. The maggot
munching, voting, firing, morons and the minute hoarding Warhol’s strangers
have found no way to entice me. Set me aside. Do not number me in statistical
computations among those. I wasn’t one of them, I was among the others, and we numbered few. I was there when two
ensouled undead remembered the ploys they had used to cause carnage and holding
hands on the precipice to the burial chambers of the old ones they fought the good fight. In the comfort of my own home
I sat there as the displaced astronaut confronted his Sebacean tormentor. He cried; and I, who can no longer break (not
enough pieces), did bend. Thank you Ben
Brower et al.
The ancient Greeks in
their haste to elucidate on heroic deeds may have omitted some details, but I
know for a fact that the last High Guard
captain is Hercules, and that a Warrior Princess walked among them.
Long before every cell
phone had an earpiece, solitary walkers rambling vociferously to no visible
someone were talking to Al. As it turns out THE Kirk was Sam’s
predecessor and in hindsight his successor.
As for putting a bunch of
early post pubescent in a house together, that gave me all the excuse I needed
to cancel cable. I was always so far removed from that genre of teenage angst,
in years (pre-menopausal here) and in memory, as depicted in moving images that
they evoked no empathy in me, (except for Pacey,
and Logan we’ll keep them out of
this) unless it was the Chosen One. She, who was born to each generation as
its protector with good fashion sense, you go girl. And I followed her often
maligned and slightly wicked counterpart as the dead called out to her, “help me.”
When she confronted her evil
leaper I said, “yea!”
Acne not an issue, the
teenage girl, escorting the dead to their afterlife, definitely at her best,
there’s my Georgie girl. Further I
gotta’ say that those dormant pods that slumbered in area 51 for 40 years, yea,
them too.
And well we must, give the
man his props. Kudos to Quentin; he who understood that one hero that was set
aside from all others by disguising himself as a man. Christopher Reeves once
actually made me look, up in the sky, but
to watch the boy and his nemesis become friends, or to see the man marry his
reporter, for that we need the mythos of episodic story arcs.
Me, I subsist in empty
shades of gray, repetition folding tesseracts into today, yesterday, and yes,
tomorrow. I live in a world that doesn’t exist. Cobwebs thrive in those corners
I use to purposely meticulously police. Let me stop now and drench my
desperation in the symbol of contempt that I relish as my very own. I light a
cigarette. I smoke. No happy pill there.
But sometimes I watch those stories, the modern day mythologies forgotten by
syndication lost by the cheap inexpensive (redundancy) thrill of make believe
reality. Reality? —Bile in my mouth. Reality, those deformed hybrid of talk
show and game show that pawn themselves off with the prefix misnomer “reality,”
they are all the rage. And yes, I rage.
I want the fad to gather the particle remnants of age in some distant
wasteland. If not fade away, let it sit besides those stories I dearly miss.
So, this is what happened.
There was always, and I’m not alone here, a place made special by Gene
Roddenberry, and accolades to Peter David who understood that special place and
first made me like Riker. (Don’t you just love my run-on/long-winded sentences? I, personally, find them very stylistic, in a
megalomaniacal sort of way.)
“Step away from the mirror.” Please ignore the inner monologue; its soul’s purpose is
to remind me of me. Did I mention megalomaniacal. (In case you haven’t noticed
I’m off on an unrelated tangent, maintaining a pseudo flow of conversation, as
if I hadn’t already switched the subject.)
I must say that it wasn’t
the world’s first, but it was that world first. Warp came before starburst,
slipstream, hyper speed or hard burn, this I know. When the toy collector
added to his collection, declaring, “I win!” I understood the measure of a man. When the guardian spit out the Captain and his crew (once again it was
Peter who truly captured that moment; all slave
girls are green) I was there. When some young aspiring writer knocked on Jake’s door, I held my breath and
waited. But mostly I waited for the captain who made an outlaw her first officer
to look at him. I remembered them trapped together where he said beautifully
written words to her … words that tasted like something imagined once upon a
time. Once upon a time … words that
propel themselves to the singular conclusion that completes the thought …
Veering off to some other
galactic somewhere, perpetual smiles teasing the corners of my mouth, here we
have the pilot who married the soldier, the brother who would sacrifice not
just his life, but his lifestyle, secrets in every corner, and there is the Captain who has reverted to dipping
pigtails in inkwells, and has nothing nice to say to the working woman Companion who rents a shuttle in his
ship. He who lost the war, abandoned
at the battle, but never lost his dignity. Those things unspoken in their eyes
say once upon a time.
Little bits of alliances
in circumstances that allows me to fall (endless cavity … dropping freely …
choice) in love with love. This
intangible illusion of what cannot be anything other than the waning
authenticity of that which also prefixes itself with reality. Reality bites. Those assorted spectacles of
paternity test, slapping, punching, and spitting to entertain. And me, my knees
hurt, and sometimes my back goes out, and sometimes in lieu of the glasses I
really should get, I use a magnifying glass, and echo a sentiment expressed in
modulating tones by Garbo.
Honestly, if I want
exaggerated melodrama I choose Marlena, from
that moment when she looked at a photograph and believed that the pawn was Roman and not Stefano.
Who then turned out to actually be John
Black, but not really … that’s another storyline. Yea, I choose Marlena. And I choose to forever
remember that Kayla loves Steve and those moments are forever immortalized
brilliantly to perfection by Mary Beth and Stephen. Bo is never Hopeless, and Jack is forever dying for Jen.
And I truly believe that for
a brief shinning moment GH created
magic with the Four Musketeers, and
that one-day they’ll let their Genie
out of the bottle.
Exaggerated? Maybe? Or
just maybe something really special did happen at Collinwood House once before and then again.
To witness lives suspended
forever in that moment when death is imminent, love elusive at best, fading
fast, and the child of the plateau stood
in the center of a powerful nexus, and the stories were over—Mythology gone,
but not forgotten.
And please do number me
with that group who remembers the investigators of phenomenal events working
with the single mother former cop with the bullet lodged in the back of her
skull. The brothers eluding the law or the brothers prowling the night, the reporter fighting monsters then and now, Vincent loving Katherine, the unofficial psychic at the D.A.’s office, or the mass return of abductees, and you can count me in.
Long before Starbuck became coffee, or a girl for
that matter, I was there, I’m there again. Genetic mutations or genetic tampering manifesting bar codes, crevices in government agencies dedicated to Rambaldi, or to the truth (and a special nod to the solitary trio whose cannon of
choice was the printed word), bewitching sisters
(we miss you Shannen, but you gotta’ love the brothers Halliwell), or what is not quite the Gate of God, but the fifth nonetheless, or even rodent
munching unwelcome guest without green cards held at bay by a reporter (who
really was the best Petruchio ever) and a doctor, I’m still there. (Long winded
and windbag, there is a difference—still megalomaniacal.)
Leave the duct tape behind, put on some military
garb and you’ve got my attention, spin me off to the Lost City and you’re still holding my attention. In this I’ll even
include the man who lives that one improbable day spread out over seasons, or his past contemporary who lives in
today, yesterday, and yes, tomorrow, and that geeky would-be teenybopper
heartthrob who now roams the gradation in the absence of color. He, who is
mostly responsible for my second look (a really long look) at the genre I had
previously ignored in film, when he leaned over Neve Campbell and told her his
favorite scary movie, I watched, and haven’t stopped watching.
Must I add that I too
watched that everlasting Scotsman, and yes the guy with no surname (pursued by
the woman with no given name) who feigns anyone he wants to be. And you can
saddle up my horse, and take me out to the black hills, or remember, like I do,
the vampire with a badge seeking redemption, and that space family with the
unscrupulous doctor, or that would be super sleuth named after a type writer,
and the detective who named him, and the iconic dysfunctional family for when
you want someone whacked, and there
is that island who’s no ones fantasy.
A doctor, a soldier, a con man, a fugitive—bring on the Indian chief—I’m still
there. Grissom isn’t really gruesome and Potus
needs Leo and the move to the Sunset
Strip made me yearn to follow. As
the corner boys of Baltimore died, I
listened and waited for the apocalyptic metallic
endoskeletons of tomorrow to come for the mother who protected her son. Had
the practitioners of emergency
medicine been as readily available to her, as they are to me, then she could
have rested peacefully. And David Bowie
sang about a red planet and I didn’t care if it had a British accent or an
American accent, I was there.
And I must, because I
must, mention those easily forgotten nuances of television and film; those guys
who hit that mark and passed a thousand and one (still counting). Those faces
that blend into nothingness and add just that much more texture, Richard Lynch,
Jimmy Smits, David Morse, Esai Morales and everybody’s any body William
Fichtner.
And though I must confess
my detachment to the performers as I find myself wading through my very own
day-to-day; I could not mourn you Mark Frankel, you were a stranger, but I remember
the Prince who ruled the masquerade, and held the clans together. Embraced.
Immortalized. A decade like a drop, are here and gone. I archive every moment
of my own life, but they exist only in me.
When I am interred every moment goes with me, every touch, every breath,
every taste, every day of all my days. All of these go with me leaving some
reminders, but the essence crawls into nothingness with me. I’m back to
nothing. I don’t console myself with life after death, reincarnation, and any
assorted belief that would comfort me to cruelty. Fade to black.
All those stories left
unsaid, all those endless possibilities, what
ifs and else worlds unexplored …
ends and endless. The looks, that turns to touch and the ones that almost
(still falling here). Stories fade, as they are wont to do, heroes stand their
ground facing insurmountable odds and we imagine unnumbered scenarios of
triumph and slaughter, Joss et al. understood what William Goldman had
eloquently written (the good parts—look
it up). Me, I want to see everything that creates its own universe in a
mythological scope, and does not endeavor to mimic reality (still the refuse of
nothing) or even address reality outside of the element of its own mythology.
Reality bites and that prefix misnomer can hold no appeal for me. There really
is nothing like aspects of the natural world delineated in half-truths or
fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment