“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” ― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Orpheus lamenting the loss (for the second time) of Euridice.
Today was one of the most difficult days of my life, but I can’t (won’t) write about that here – it’s not really my story. So I’ll write about a movie.
First, my favorite book is a yellowing big hardback, chockablock with wonderful hand-drawn illustrations by Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire’s called, simply, Book of Greek Myths. I’ve had it since 3rd grade. The inscription on the title page reads:
Book Week Contest 1964 First Prize (Boys) 3A William Chance West Point Elementary School West Point, New York Mrs. Mark Carrigan, Librarian Nov. 6, 1964 (Book donated by 1963-64 P.T.A.)
I remember they had a contest, they showed us drawings and asked us which classic book they came from. I was by far the best read 3rd grader (though I had skipped the previous year and was by far the youngest) and won fairly easily. I loved that book then and still do.
One of the most well-known and often-redone myths is that of Orpheus and Euridice. In short, Orpheus goes to the underworld to retrieve his deceased and beloved wife and his singing is so beautiful they say he can take her back as long as he doesn’t look at her until they reach the surface. Unfortunately, after most of a long journey his faith falters and he turns to check if she is there… and he loses her forever.
OK, another thing I am overly fascinated with is the Criterion Channel’s 24/7 feature. In case you don’t know what to watch, tune in, they run movies continuously, 24/7. Given the channels esoteric and diverse selection – you really never know what you are going to get.
In a fit of tossing and turning insomnia late late the other night, I turned on the channel and caught a striking bit of gorgeous black and white film (with even more gorgeous people on it) – French – very odd… surreal. I wanted to watch the whole thing, so I checked and it was Orpheus (Orphée) a 1950 film by Jean Cocteau. This evening, I sat down and watched it.
Very good, very weird. The scenes in The Zone were filmed in a bombed out chapel and were especially arresting. The movie moves smoothly back and forth from the real world to Hades, using mirrors as gateways. They used a pool of mercury as a practical effect – I had seen that before – but the rest of the movie was new to me and I enjoyed it very much. I especially like the surreal elements and effects.
Not surprisingly, the plot varies a lot from the myth. My only criticism is the ending – I won’t spoil it – but it was updated for ’50’s audience tastes.
“Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness–powerless and shame-filled–to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless.
—-Michel Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island
Long quote there…. I clipped this out of the book I finished last night (my clip actually goes on longer). It struck a nerve . Unfortunately, this is exactly how I feel right now.
Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, New Orleans
In 2002 (reblogged in 2011) I wrote about a question that always bugs me – “Is reading a waste of time?”. I still don’t know… I think it is, there is so much actual stuff to do, but everybody tells me that reading is important, maybe more important that actually accomplishing something.
Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.
Michel Houellebecq
At any rate, waste or not, I am trying to increase my reading – both in terms of quantity and quality. As a part of that, I stayed up too late last night and finished The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq.
It was an interesting read – sort of a Science Fiction/Dystopian/Erotic/Very French tale, told in first person from the point of view of a nihilistic artist that falls in with a doomsday cult and also from the point of view of a clone of himself, thousands of years in the future.
I now have read a handful of Houellebecq and have enjoyed them enough to continue on to a few more. They are bleak and sexy, intelligent and violent, and resonate with me more than they should… more than I’d like to admit.
I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush.
Werner Herzog
Found by a photobooth,
Molly’s At the Market, French Quarter, New Orleans
For Christmas… I ask my friends and family for Amazon gift cards – at my age, the stuff I want (my lifelong quota of tchotchke and cute gifts is long overfilled)tends to the expensive side – far greater than the generosity of one person towards me. This way, I can accumulate them and add my February birthday haul to reach my consumerist goal. For example, I saved up and bought a decent camera a few years ago.
One unanticipated benefit of this – if you call a few minutes of amusement a benefit – is the time I spend looking through Amazon, deciding what to get. It’s kinda fun.
This year, I settled on a decent pair of binoculars. I have always had a soft spot for these. When I was a small child, my father brought back a pair of Soviet Military binoculars from Korea (how did he get them? I have no idea. The case had bullets holes in it). I loved those things… They lasted for decades but are now lost… Something had gone wrong, maybe a prism had come loose, and how do you fix something like that? No Russian optics repair shop down on the corner.
They were big and had the traditional porro prism arrangement. Yes,I did research on the various ways binoculars can be designed. Because of that, I was at first leaning toward a porro prism binocular – like this one. But nowadays the preferred arangement of glass seems to be the more compact roof prism. So after some (a lot, really) of research, adding and removing from my wish list – I arrived at the Vortex Crossfire. These are entry level, but quality scopes from a popular brand. Plus, they seem to come with a nice case.
They are now winding their way to Richardson from some unknown binocular warehouse somewhere. I’m surprisingly excited.
So, if you had, let’s say, somewhere between one and two hundred bucks in Amazon gift cards (not a lot of money, but enough for something) what would you buy. Fun to think about… but not to obsess over.
Bill Chance 