Very hard to watch: a transformation comes undone

In researching and digging around to find an update for David Smith, the 650 lb. Virgin of TLC fame, I found a whole bunch of videos for something called Reshape the Nation. None of them are more recent than 2009. I think Chris Powell and David started this fitness business in partnership, but it became extremely awkward when he began to regain the weight.

This is one of the worst, when someone seems to have told them to goof around more and be "loose". The first 99 "State of the Nation" videos are a bit scary: Chris Powell does all the talking, and he seems to come from the Jack LaLanne School of Predatory Sales Aggression. David kind of sits beside him silently, looking either bored, glazed, or medicated, sometimes almost schizophrenic in his lack of affect.

In my last piece I quoted that autobiographical passage in which he described his horrific plan to commit suicide in a plastic swimming pool full of gasoline. You don't escape fantasies of self-immolation by losing a whole bunch of weight. Meantime, Powell  assumed the role of David's personal saviour, eventually bagging the trophy of his own show and dumping David unceremoniously by the side of the road.

The Earth Day one, well, what can I say? He's reading off a card, obviously, and looking fat, his face blown up, those sexy cheekbones buried. Personally I think he has shown some real guts in posting his current stats on two different sites:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Elmore-Smith/207608272410?v=info

http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/David630lbs/more.php?section=progress

I sense a coverup here, probably instigated by Powell. If you've made your name and landed your own show by succeeding in "transforming" someone, well, if that person "un-transforms", it's just embarrassing and makes you both look like failures.

But here is an opportunity that is not being taken. David Smith represents the vast majority of people who experience massive regain after major weight loss, but it's being dumped on his own head. The pressure to keep up his "transformed" image has obviously been crushing, but no one is acknowledging that or helping him carry it. 

I get this pervasive sense of shame hanging over the whole thing, but David has put the truth out there, I think courageously. The YouTube comments are weird: people keep saying he looks great, not acknowledging the obvious regain, as if they either don't want to see it or literally CAN'T see it, the elephant in the living room, so to speak.

I hope this guy will be OK. Enormous changes in weight will eventually take their toll. This is not to mention the huge amount of skin that was removed: I don't even want to go there, do you?

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

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http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
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State of the Nation - Operation Earth Day

Thin? Fat? GOOD!

I don't know what got me going on this subject today: frustration over my own endless shape-shifting, the fact that my body or spirit can't quite decide what I should weigh so I veer incessantly back and forth between thin-clothes and fat-clothes? Or something like that. And I do confess I watch those weight loss "reality" shows, most recently Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition with that smarmily obnoxious cheerleader of fitness, Chris Powell.

It seems there's been a long history of flesh-creeping fitness guys, from Jack LaLanne onward. We won't even get into Richard Simmons, a being so strange we wonder if he's the same species as the rest of us.  But we're hooked on extreme weight loss stories, for sure.

A few years back there was a very bizarre reality show about an obesity clinic - damned if I remember the name of it, but what sticks in my mind was the fact that there were no rules in this place at all. Patients could, and did, order pizza delivered to their rooms (not even having to get up to pay for it) at any time of the day or night.

Hardly anyone lost weight, and no one kept it off. The patients spent most of their time whining about how crappy the food was (and such small portions!). It's true, the meals looked wretched, limp and colorless, like they had been put through the deflavorizing machine. One man stood out, a real whiner among whiners: he had become famous years ago for losing a tremendous amount of weight under Richard Simmons' squealy guidance. Over several years, all the weight came back again, and then some. There was an excruciating scene where Simmons came back to visit his "friend" and badgered and nagged him about what he should be doing to lose the weight. When Simmons left, the man felt completely abandoned and full of rage.

Why do I link all this to Chris Powell? The obnoxious, musclebound, smarmy-voiced, sometimes stampy-footed and petulant gym lizard who almost literally whips massively obese people into submission on his show? Well, he wouldn't have a show at all without one particular person. This was one David Smith, a young man completely immobilized in flesh and so sucked dry of hope that he looked almost catatonic.  What happened was, somehow or other Our Lady of the Fat Guys must've intervened and called Chris over.

A very strange relationship ensued. These two guys, well. . . they seemed to have an unnaturally close relationship. Lived together, trained together, ate together, and constantly slapped each other on the back with face-hidden-in-the-neck, soulful hugs.

And thus a TV phenomenon was born: 650 lb. Virgin. This was a blow-by-blow account (don't read too much into that) of David's spectacular transformation from a man shipwrecked in his own body to a, hey, not-bad-looking-sort-of guy, a guy who now got emails from real babes and who only weighed something over 200 pounds.

I can't go into it all, it would take all night, but the point I am working up to is, David Smith is shown right at the beginning of Extreme Makeover: but only for a second. I hadn't heard anything about Smith in ages, so I tried to find some updated information about  his life, two years or so after the massive and very public weight loss that made him a reality TV star.

Woops. There was nothing.

I had heard murmurings about him "gaining back 30 pounds". But nothing to hold on to. A former personal web site was "down", with a nice sign saying it had "stepped out" for a while.

Then I found it: a tiny notation on his Facebook page that seemed to speak volumes.

"I went from 650 lbs. to 229 lbs. to 455 lbs. . .My quality of life right now is deplorable. I feel I have let down many people. . . I can blame my weight gain on many factors, but in the end I am still 455 lbs. and I need to do something about it. Wish me luck, but all I need is to prepare and conquer and be a role model again."

One can hear the weariness, the crushing sadness in this man who had such a heavy load to carry in terms of people's expectations. One web site described David's triumph as "the epitome of the great American Success Story. For a nation in midst of struggles, confusion, and a loss of identity, the story of David Smith inspires us to be better than we are! It all just goes to show that changing our ways as well as our words can lead to a better future."

Jesus, who in hell could ever live up to that??!

I once read the statistic that 95% of people who lose weight gain it back, and then some. This applies equally to those who have lost massive amounts, whipped on by opportunistic parasites like Chris Powell who has somehow, mysteriously, we don't know how, but somehow-or-other, lost touch with David Smith.

No more back-slapping, carb-obsessing, and wiping each other's sweat off the gym equipment. The guy has abandoned ship. Meantime, he's got his own show now! Who needs David Smith when every week he can roll a new behemoth onstage and begin to badger and scream at them until they shape up. I wonder if anyone realizes that Chris Powell has become a reality TV superstar in his own right by climbing on his former colleague's back. Without David Smith, he'd still be leading aerobics classes in a high school gym.

I don't really want to get into the jaw-dropping extremes Powell goes to, including some really dangerous stunts like forcing a hugely obese woman to put on a 75-pound fireman's outfit and climb about 300 stairs in a cement tower on a day when the temperature was 104 degrees Fahrenheit. When she collapses halfway up, Powell lets her take the uniform off before she finishes the job.

I don't know, it's all this transformation stuff. This myth of one, two, three, you're different, a different person in fact, with none of the sludge of your old personality adhering to you to slow you down. You're a whole new man or woman. Reborn! And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

What's that? Do I hear singing?: "The hills are alive with the sound of bullshit."

The fact that David Smith has had a massive regain is not surprising, nor is the fact that he seems to have gone underground. I am surprised he was that candid on his Facebook page. I can only imagine the loneliness and shame that must be following him around, particularly since he has become so recognizable, such a celebrity. God help him if he has gone back to hiding in the house again: anything but that. Though on one site he says he has a girl friend, she "grocery shops for me, helps me write out my meal plans and frequently preps food for me. We also work out together on a regular basis." Sounds like a substitute for Chris Powell (or Mom).

People change, yes, they do, but some core of them remains the same. Emotionally broken people do not become whole by suppressing the symptoms of their anguish. When I first saw David Smith on the 650 lb. Virgin show, he told a horrifying story of how he had reached the very bottom of his endurance and decided to commit suicide. This is a transcript from one of the many web sites touting David as a sort of Second Coming of weight reduction.

"My social disorder got a hundred times worse. I could not go out in public without feeling like the elephant man. When I went out in public everybody stared, pointed, made comments to each other, and even laughed behind my back. Sometimes, they even laughed in my face. I felt ashamed every time I stepped outside my door, just like the shame I felt when I was molested. I felt anger for people, like I felt anger for my abusive friend. I hated you all. I felt that everybody thought of me as a joke, that I was put on this earth to entertain you all. My soul was in agony every time I would try to sleep I could hear it moan. My heart was turning evil and I was going insane. I started talking to myself because I had no one to talk to. I could go a week and only speak once or twice to a family member.

I couldn’t go on living anymore, so I felt that suicide was my only option. This is where my social disorder kept me from killing myself. At this point in my life I couldn’t even step outside in my backyard until it was dark out. I was so afraid of being made funof, I thought that if I did kill myself, maybe the police and mortuary people would make fun of my body. I didn’t want to be a joke in death as I was in life. I postponed it until I came up with a way to kill myself and not leave a body. I thought of many ways to end it but, I picked fire. It was a perfect plan. I would buy a plastic swimming pool and some gasoline. My death would be painful because that is what I thought I deserved. I even picked a spot on the map - a dry lake bed called the Painted Rock Reservoir. I wanted to be as far away as possible from my home because I didn’t want my ghost to haunt my house...I had already haunted it for twenty years. Instead, I wanted to haunt the desert. When I lit myself on fire as planned, maybe my screams could be heard in the city, maybe my screams would let me be free from my pain, maybe I would be like a phoenix and be reborn in my flames and ashes."

This was one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. It would trivialize this kind of horrific emotional pain to blame it on the humiliation of being too fat (even THAT much too fat). I think this howl of rage and abandonment has its roots in the extreme trauma of sexual violation, which I know from personal experience can be completely soul-destroying. And it doesn't go away, just as your self doesn't: everywhere you go, there you are. It's the essential human dilemma, the burden we all must carry no matter what size we are.

People heal, they change, they go on to live, to experience new things. But humans evolved to remember. We carry hurts within us, and they make us do things we don't understand, like eat gargantuan amounts of food and become afraid to leave the house.

But my point (and hey, were you thinking there wasn't one?) is that society grabs on to bodily transformation as a quick fix and a great myth to latch on to. We love "triumphs" and "conquests", not the daily, daily, daily grind of maintaining a fundamental, extremely difficult change of lifestyle. But we need heroes, mythic figures who have slain the dragon once and for all. David Smith didn't just lose a whole bunch of weight: people were saying he would somehow turn the entire country around.

This is such collossal bullshit that I think in a funny sort of way, it was healthy of him to take some of that weight back on-board. Maybe he's saying - it's just possible, I think - hey, people - assholes! - I'm more than some TLC freak or minion of Chris Powell and his evil cheerleading squad. I am ME, and I'm me whether I weigh 200 or 300 or 400 or 500 or 9,000 pounds. I am me whether I am thinner than a transparent stringbean, or fatter than a supernova. I am me whether I fall off the wagon or get back on the wagon, or blow up the wagon with dynamite.

Before he lost all that weight, David Smith was a ticking time bomb ready to detonate, to literally explode into flames. And he's still that way, and will be until he can get at some of the buried horror in his past and begin to approach it with a flame-retardant suit on, along with the guidance of someone who can lead him through his emotional wilderness into some sort of authentic breakthrough in personal identity.

And you know what?  It won't be Chris Powell.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

A song of lost causes

I heard this song on an ad for St. Jude's Children's Hospital (St. Jude being the patron saint of lost causes). Nearly unbearable to watch, full of images of small children being treated for cancer. This is so otherworldly it takes me right out of myself. Just exquisite, and heartbreaking.

My little four-year-old granddaughter Lauren has Type 1 diabetes - the serious kind - and was just diagnosed with celiac disease, which means she cannot tolerate gluten in her diet. That means the tight restrictions on what she can and cannot eat have become even tighter. Fortunately she is a sunny child with a great appetite and a willingness to try just about anything.

Yesterday she had to be taken in to the doctor's (again) for a scary infection that just seemed to come out of nowhere. It was an abscess on her abdomen that had to be drained with a long needle, with no anaesthetic. The doctor said Lauren was a lot braver than a grown man who had just had the same procedure. When he told Lauren "he was so scared he peed the bed", she laughed with her usual delighted abandon.

But oh, WHY? I know it is a futile question. Why can't I take this diabetes and celiac and whatever else these kids must endure on myself and just handle them as an adult must handle them? I do not want one iota of pleasure and excitement taken from Lauren's childhood because she has two chronic illnesses that NO ONE should have to live with, let alone a flaxen-haired, laughing little girl who loves nothing better than to run around the yard with sticks.

I  don't get it, but there is so much I don't get: how people can be so cheerful, so immune to the horrors that just seem to be escalating in the world. Don't tell me they're just being reported more often, because that is NOT it. There's something happening here, as the song says, more ominous than I can even describe.

Yeats envisioned the Second Coming of Christ with an apocalyptic vision of complete nihilistic destruction: "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned. . ." I wonder if things are starting to fall apart: the environment is beginning to hit back, unleashing floods, droughts, wild storms, tsunamis and tornados that weather experts say begin with the upsetting of nature's delicate balance by human beings' insistence on relentlessly pouring toxic crap into the air and water just so they can get around in comfort. Like the Ray Bradbury story about the guy stepping on the butterfly, all it takes is one flicked domino to bring the whole thing down.

Aside from the climate's Biblical catastrophes, there are other things, things I can't even bring myself to write about, and "little" things such as the fact that half the population has become too damn fat, waddling around and wondering why their health is declining. They drive everywhere, park as close to the mall as possible so they don't have to walk more than a few steps, sit all day eating crap, then wonder why they're fat: "it must be genetic".

I saw a great cartoon once: a couple stands in a department store. The woman says, "The exercise equipment is on the other side of the store." He replies, "Oh, let's skip it then." No one sees the irony in this sort of thinking.

I hate it, hate to think I'm bequeathing such a damaged world and such an unhealthy population to my four precious little grandkids, but this is the sort of world they will inherit (except, of course, much worse). In general terms, I guess I haven't done so well. I haven't done anything significant, at least, but with one shining exception.

It often seems like all I can do is love those kids unconditionally, to reflect back to them how wonderful they are without having to jump through any hoops, pass any tests or even do anything at all. I had a cold mother who pretty much ignored me, though she lavishly favored my older brother.

The opposite of love isn't hate: it's indifference. And I experienced it, and it left a hole in my soul. The psychologists would probably relegate me to the trash bin, too damaged to ever really love another person (unless, of course, I learn to "love myself", to which I'd reply, "Why?").

Something has been boiling around in my head like a storm front, and it will take one of several forms if I ever allow myself to write it. I suffered appalling damage at the hands of one particular family member, and it's not who you'd think. I need to tell this story, but I don't know when or how. Another one is a possible idea for a novel that deals with some of the excruciating ordeals my family went through because of my brother's schizophrenia. But this is pretty dark stuff, isn't it? Isn't life meant to be celebrated, aren't we supposed to pin ribbons on every tragedy and insist that "everything happens for a reason"?

It could be, it could be. If the environment really does fall apart, if this rise of casual evil isn't just in my imagination, then yes, it will happen for a reason. And the reason will be us.

Grandma's Revenge: unlock that bathroom, you bastards!

Toilet closure puts lid on long weekend fun

Well, they could've come up with a title that is less tee-hee. But at least they ran this, and only 2 days after it happened! We'll see if this changes anything. I can envision buck-passing even as I read it: someone is inevitably going to go after me for MY insensitivity and lack of awareness of the "real" issues (i.e., the right of park staff to goof off on a holiday Monday and not have to go through the agony of unlocking a door). It'll be a while 'til I take the kids to that park again, and I'll likely have to scout it out first to see if they can get changed and pee in privacy. A pretty disgusting situation.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

On the Waterfront: it's a crucifixion

OK, this time I wasn't really going to watch it. It just came on Turner Classics (supposedly: though I knew it was coming on) while I was knitting or working on something else, so I thought I'd just have it on in the background for old time's sake.


For old time's sake. . . The first time I saw On the Waterfront, I was 13 years old and sleeping downstairs in the den on the pullout bed. This was a rare treat because my Mum knew I'd spend most of the night watching monster movies on TV. But this time it was different.


I fell not deeply, but profoundly in love with this movie and everything and everyone in it. It is the most nearly perfect thing I have ever seen. Brando's performance as a shuffling, inarticulate dock worker, a washed-up prize fighter whose one chance at glory was stolen from him, slowly gains focus and fire until, by the end, he is a blazing hero, battered and bruised but still able to walk: to lead his brothers back to work, demonstrating the only real integrity they have ever seen.

This is the very definition of "walking the walk", and powerful beyond measure. All this, and Leonard Bernstein's melancholy, majestic score, so married to the material that they are inseparable.

Every performer, from Rod Steiger to Eva Marie Saint to Lee J. Cobb, and even to bit-players like Fred Gwynne (and Martin Balsam! Blink and you'll miss him) are at the top of their form, doing a little better than they know how. The "cab scene" is the best-known, even with those ludicrous hand-cut venetian blinds in the back window (since the rear-projecting machine was lost or broken or something: this was a low-budget film, like Psycho, lean and spare, so that not a thing was wasted, particularly not the energies of those brilliant actors).

Terry's brother Charlie the Gent is guiding his brother into a trap: either take a cushy, nothing job on the waterfront and keep your mouth shut, or. . . get out of the cab at 437 River Street, a place you emerge from feet-first. When Charlie pulls a gun on his brother, Brando gives the now-classic reaction that is so totally unexpected, even shocking.

The script just says, "Wow, Charlie." Instead of shock, fear, disgust, dismay, what he registers is. . . disappointment. And pity. He gently pushes the gun away, shaking his head, for the first time seeing his brother as he is, completely poisoned by evil. All the crusted layers of a lifetime of denial have fallen down at once.


Wow.

This video clip is a favorite scene of mine, in which legendary character actor Karl Malden (whom I never saw give a bad performance) plays Father Barry, a sheltered waterfront priest who steps out of the sanctuary and into the fire. Any man who even thinks of informing on Johnny Friendly and the mob is immediately killed, and when Kayo Dugan dies under a crushing load of crates full of Irish whiskey, Father Barry delivers a eulogy that would peel the skin off the most hardened criminal.

There is not a false second in this speech: it is hair-raising, and, as always, as has happened every time I've seen this, every time for maybe 15 or 20 times, or maybe more, I cried. I cried because his character has managed to utter that which I cannot utter, or even clarify in my mind. It is so far down in me I didn't think it could even be felt, let alone expressed. 

I too have had to step out of a church that was once a womb, then slowly became a tomb. Father Barry smokes cigarettes like a tough guy, orders beer in saloons, and even decks Terry when he basically tells the Father to fuck off. It's a dizzying performance. Watch it: you'll see.

Damn, damn, damned BUREAUCRACY!

I'm going to call this "the bureaucracy of the pisspot":  in which ordinary citizens are deprived of the right to pee by the idiocy of some unholy ordinance that says city employees don't have to get out of bed on a holiday Monday.

It went like this. Today happened to be the first real day of summer we've had: more lovely and more temperate, as the poets say, than anything I've seen in many a month. It was the August long weekend, the Monday, the sweet spot, the lobster tail, the - oh, you get it, the best goddamn day in the whole summer!
So my husband and I were getting together with my son and his wife and their two flaxen-haired daughters, Erica (6) and Lauren (4). We were headed to one of our favorite places, a spray park with a playground and a pool. Nanny was looking forward to running through a solid wall of water that comes from every direction and has the same effect as shock treatment, except on your body.

And all was great as we were unpacking our picnic, and the girls were peeling their clothes off to reveal the little pink matching Hello Kitty swimsuits underneath. They were just getting nicely wet, when we noticed something kind of funny. There were hardly any people in the park.

It was odd.  A gorgeous day. A holiday Monday. A spray park, slides, swings, teeter-totters, the works. But as it turned out, one vital element was missing.

"Nanny, I have to pee." So I dutifully took Lauren's hand and took her to the washroom, grabbed the door handle and:

How do I describe the desolate, unyielding, hopeless feeling of a locked door? And just after that, the sinking realization that we wouldn't be staying at Sun Valley Spray Park for very long.

The children were not allowed to pee. Then I noticed the change rooms were locked, too. And the pool. The web site said the park was "open every day from the end of June 'til Labour Day, seven days a week". Was this the eighth day or something, or did Port Coquitlam Town Council in their infinite wisdom decide that parks should close up facilities tight on a holiday in case anyone is thinking of having a good time?

In any case, we scrambled around to try to make this work. The girls still had a shot at some fun in the spray park, though they couldn't get away with that surreptitious pee-in-the-pool trick. But we also watched a very sad parade of Moms and little kids going around the corner, having the same dreadful experience as we did, then coming around again looking - what? Anxious, angry, or worse?

Little kids (or grandmas and grandpas, for that matter) can't go very long without stopping for a pee, or something else. Boys have it a bit easier (unless it's #2 - sorry if I'm being too graphic, but human beings do have bodies, don't they?), but they still have to expose very tender parts of themselves, and girls just have an awful time of it, pee going everywhere unless they're stripped bare. And a little girl nude in a public park is just not a good idea.

But some fucking bureaucracy decided it was too much work to have someone drive over to the park with a key and save the day for dozens of Moms and Dads and their kids. People were leaving, and I knew why. Kids were wailing, either from having to hold it in too long or to cut their fun short after so much anticipation. There were groups of women standing around talking, not looking happy, and others on cell phones, basically trying to come up with a Plan B to salvage a ruined day. Their children's glorious time at the spray park had been destroyed by a locked door.

But hey, we don't need to pee, do we? How silly! And embarrassing. Or even funny, the subject of coy jokes (pee at the spray park, hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!) So why make such a big deal out of it? (This is people with no kids.) But then there's the little matter of the change rooms, also locked, so kids had to change out of their wet clothes in front of everyone, and even the wading pool which was padlocked. On a holiday Monday! On the finest day of the year.

Silly me: I thought holidays equalled recreation and frolic and good times, as the sappy Port Coquitlam web site claimed (while lying about the hours of operation, or at least not warning us that we had to keep our legs crossed all day on August 1). We made the best of it, we stayed as long as was practical, we made some effort to shield the girls while they tried to go in the bushes, but it wasn't comfortable, wasn't comfortable at all. No one wants to squat in the dirt with some adult standing like a sentry.

We went back to our place and had a lot more fun running around with sticks in the back yard, though admittedly it wasn't as wet. But this experience left a bad taste in my mouth. It was just so - I can't quite find the right words for what it was.

Stupid. Insensitive. Impractical. Unrealistic. Petty. Mean. Oblivious (to the needs of parents and kids). Hypocritical (in view of the glowing, self-congratulatory web site). And just - some sort of power thing, you know? Here I have the power to keep you locked out, to steal your good time, even as I tell you how great this facility is. There should've been a big sign on the bathroom door saying KEEP OUT, or, more appropriately, GO AWAY!


http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Blessed, but depressed

(This started out as a journal entry, then I started to get engrossed in it and decided to cut 'n' paste and see where it took me. In a pretty cynical direction, as it turned out. Some day I will try to write about the profound spiritual experience I had in 2005 that changed everything for me, forever. But not today.)

Oh well. We had today “off”, but as usual it flew past. It just goes. That’s OK, maybe even good. But I yearn, I yearn. I’ve been yearning for a very long time now. I remember the times before I was published at all, I mean in novel form, when I just thought I was going to die, I wanted it so much and it seemed so far away. Then somehow, it happened twice, but now I seem to be farther back than I was before the first one. I keep bouncing back and forth: some part of me that wants to keep me from suicide insists I have a chance. Then the other side, gloom, just comes in and crushes me.

I try to pray, but I seem to have lost the knack, or else I just don’t believe in it any more. I don’t see what it does. It doesn’t change anything. If you’re asking “God” to give you what you want, it’s pretty ludicrous. "Mother, may I?" Also, what if you get two opposing sides praying for different things? Does the more holy side win, the more worthy side? The Christian rather than the Muslim? What a bunch of horseshit!

So why pray, and what does it mean? Does it mean anything at all, or is it just “wish upon a star”, or “favour me, God, because I’m worthy, besides I want this and you’d better give it to me or I’ll stop believing in you”? Can we change the laws of the universe just by saying, “Now I lay me down to sleep”, or “Our Father”? Can we bend reality to our own will? And if that’s not what it’s about, then what IS it about? Isn’t it about changing reality? And can anyone actually do that by muttering certain magic words, or squinching their eyes up real hard?

I guess there is another form of this, the one that always appealed to me the most, which I'd call the Saint Francis method: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. It's kind of like Gandhi's exhortation to be the change you want to see in the world. But how realistic is this? How many "instruments of peace" do you know? I've known one in my entire lifetime, my grandmother, who was love, and never once uttered the word or even demonstrated it in any tangible way.

I don't know, I think I got myself involved in a very deep case of religious poisoning. I know any number of people (and believe me, I'm tired of these bloody gasbags, but they have no idea how obnoxious they are) who insist that "I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious." So what does "spiritual" mean then? That they squinch up their eyes and try to bend reality to what they want more effectively than their neighbor, whom they supposedly love "as themselves"? Does it mean they are more caring (usually not)? More sensitive? I think I know three sensitive people, and that's in 57 years. Very bad. I think in many cases it's lucky rabbit's foot stuff: I'm protected, I'm special, God will never give me any more than I can handle, and besides, everything happens for a reason.

Where is the evidence? There isn't any. Suicide happens every day, so God does give many people more than they can handle. Many things happen for a reason, but not everything, surely not everything. Anyone who has borne witness to the appalling tragedy of someone losing a child surely can't adhere to that facile truism.

But we have to give thanks to the Lord. Give thanks, no matter how appalling our reality is. Why? Sometimes life is atrocious, hideous beyond words, but we're always supposed to be grateful. Oh, and forgive! Forgive our enemies, and everyone who has ever hurt us. That means if someone ruptured your hymen when you were three, you're supposed to forgive. Oh, you'll feel so much better when you do!

I wonder sometimes, what happens when everything falls apart. Everything at once, I mean. When you lose your longtime community due to profound alienation, when you lose your health and four of your friends (to death, I mean), and many more due to circumstances that are uncontrollable. The whole universe turns into a flaming molten ball and slowly turns inside-out. When you crawl out of the wreckage, everything looks different.

That's because everything is different.

The old hymns are wheezy and boring, unbearably stultifying. Your old church is a spiritual disaster area, so you try again: not once, not even twice, but three times, with three different churches. No one seems particularly friendly, and when you try to sit down the old lady in the pew puts her hand on the seat beside her, shakes her head and says, "No. My family sits there."

No. Don't come in, not in here. Who are you?

You're not one of us. You don't know the ropes. You don't know the words to say. You don't know the responsive refrain. You don't know the hymns. You don't know the gospels. You don' t have anyone to talk to after church. You aren't on any committees. You don't bake for the bake sales, you don't count the money after church. You don't do anything but sit there with an odd look on your face. Like you're not happy. Like you might even cry. What is wrong with you? You are different. Stay out, stay out, you are a threat to our practice of acceptance and unconditional love!

It seems, it really does seem like an "I'm-in-and-you're-not" thing. We all band together every Sunday to be stuck to each other like glue and feel better for a while while we keep reality out. We send a few old socks to the poor. Things like that. Jesus would spit on that. Jesus would be on the Downtown Eastside RIGHT NOW,  just talking with people, maybe making the sign of the cross on their foreheads or hugging them.

Handing out clean needles? I don't think so. I think he might put his hand out and say, "Why don't you give me those." To lighten the burden, so to speak. Or at least, that's what he said.

He didn't aid and abet. He healed. Didn't he?

I don't know what Jesus was like, I don't even know if there was a Jesus, and if there was, I know he wasn't much like the Gospel version of him, and NOTHING like the interpretations that have been layered over him for centuries like so much poisonous muck.

I don't know why people give their lives over to him, but then, there are plenty of UFO sites on the internet, aren't there? "Look at all the people who have followed Christ over the centuries," a minister once said to me, trying to convince me that Christianity's validity could be confirmed by sheer numbers.
 
I don't live by numbers. I don't live by "everyone's doing it, so it must be good", because it can all too quickly lead to yet another soul-numbing statement: "I was only following orders."

And in God's name, where is the grace in that?

Corgi Tetherball

News Flash: two corgis escape Buckingham Palace for sudden-death tetherball faceoff, with Kate in hot pursuit!

Phaedra: this should clear up the confusion!

Phaedra (mythology)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaIn Greek mythology, Phaedra (Phaidra) is the daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë, wife of Theseus and the mother of Demophon of Athens and Acamas. Phaedra's name derives from the Greek word φαιδρός (phaidros), which meant "bright". Though married to Theseus, Phaedra fell in love with Hippolytus, Theseus' son born by either Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, or Antiope, her sister. Euripides placed this story twice on the Athenian stage, of which one version survives. According to some sources, Hippolytus had spurned Aphrodite to remain a steadfast and virginal devotee of Artemis, and Aphrodite made Phaedra fall in love with him as a punishment.[1] He rejected her. In one version, Phaedra's nurse told Hippolytus of her love, and he swore he would not reveal her as a source of information. In revenge, Phaedra wrote Theseus a letter that claimed Hippolytus raped her. Theseus believed her and cursed Hippolytus with one of the three curses he had received from Poseidon.[2] As a result, Hippolytus' horses were frightened by a sea monster and dragged their rider to his death. Alternatively, after Phaedra told Theseus that Hippolytus had raped her, Theseus killed his son and Phaedra committed suicide out of guilt for she had not intended for Hippolytus to die. Artemis later told Theseus the truth. In a third version, Phaedra simply told Theseus this and did not kill herself; Dionysus sent a wild bull which terrified Hippolytus' horses.

(That better? I thought so.)

Awful then, awful now

I don't know if it's brain damage from smoking too much nutmeg or what, but some poisoned synapse of my brain just released this from the dark dungeon of memory. It was one of those things I hoped I had only imagined, or just had a horrible dream about. When I found this video, I groaned with agonized delight: it was even worse than I thought! They'd done a video for this song in 1967, the music sounding sort of like a cross between a spaghetti Western and Romper Room.

Here's this guy talking about wanting to be straight (and hey, wouldn't Tony Perkins have done a good job here?), "straight" in the sense of being a non-druggy I guess, and rambling on about this mystical chick called Phaedra penetrating the great fortress of his heart, or something. He's on a horse, for Christ's sake, rambling around on beaches being Remote but Sensitive, a kind of dollar-store Neil Diamond (or Neil Zirconia?).

Then Nancy Sinatra, yes, THE Nancy Sinatra, the same Nancy Sinatra whose boots are made for walking, the same Nancy Sinatra who spent all that time in Shu-Shu-Shuuuh, Shu-Shu-Shuuuh, Shu-Shu-Shu-Shu-Shu-Shuuuh Sugartown, is here telling us about flo-o-o-o-owers, flo-o-o-o-o-wers e-e-e-e-e-ev'ry-whe-e-e-e-e-errrrre, how you can lo-o-o-o-k at them but do not touch, etc. etc. And in case we forget, she repeatedly tells us that Phaedra is her name.

So who's this Phaedra? I was just looking for clips of a movie by that name starring Tony Perkins and Melina Mercouri, one of the many films where he is paired with a man-eating monster. I guess I have to go get all mythical here and go on Wikipedia and see if this Phaedra stuff has any real Significance to it.
But until then, don't enjoy this video, it's too excruciating. But do appreciate the fact that it's a definite front-runner for the worst song ever written.

Bessie Smith My Kitchen Man

In the Great Kitchen/Handy Man Sweepstakes, who comes out on top? I think it's Bessie. Great as Ethel Waters is (and I saw her on Turner Classics last night in one of the very first movie musicals, singing Am I Blue), she's just a bit too much of a lady, with a dry, ironic delivery that removes her from the naughty/earthy subject matter.  Bessie is more of a force of nature, delivering the outrageously suggestive lyrics ("love the way he warms my chops") without a trace of apology.

I confess I haven't paid enough attention to Ethel Waters up until now: I only remember her wobbly late performances, a la Mahalia Jackson, when she had pretty much lost the vibrant, almost bell-like tone that made her singing so amazing. When she first came on the screen in this incomprehensible mess of a movie (called, un-originally, On with the Show), I had no idea who she was because she wasn't even listed in the credits, in spite of her two solo numbers. She even made the ludicrous ballad Birmingham Bertha seem credible, with a superb male quartet behind her.

I was surprised to see how many black performers were in this thing, providing its only really inspired moments. There was no discernable plot: it seemed like watered-down Showboat mixed in with some sort of hokey ghost story. At one point a whole lot of girl dancers came out in riding costumes and rode broomstick horses all around the stage, then all of a sudden real horses plunged out of the scenery, throwing one rider (on purpose, or not?). Calling Busby Berkeley! We need you.