A comedy about war-torn Nazi Germany.
I'm helping an artistic wealthy Jewish family hide their treasured collection of ... giant toothbrushes as Nazis plan to invade and pillage their rural mansion. As we wind our way through the palatial abode, room after opulent room unfolds. The wife of the family is hidden from view until the very last room . She is finally found sitting in a chair reading poetry next to the most gorgeous Bosendorfer that has ever been crafted. This thing practically has elephantine halos hanging from it. It takes up almost the whole parlor. She complains she hasn't been playing or writing lately, black clouds covering her inspiration. Her husband assures me that she's a wonderful pianist, but seems a bit uninterested in motivating her at the moment, what with the purge going on.
We bury a giant toothbrush in the woods, only to look back on the house to see that the Naziees have arrived. What's more, the lady of the house has haphazardly buried her own prized giant toothbrush, whose head is sticking up out of the otherwise pristine garden mulch.
We reenter the house in hopes of saving her, or the toothbrushes?
I'm sitting at the kitchen counter with one of the daughters as the Nazi soldiers arrive, looking at a yellowing biography of Sergei Rachmaninoff, his dreamy visage winking at us out of the black & white photograph. The Nazis overhear me babbling to the child about the genius of Rach and the beauty of music, and decide that we can live. We hold our breath until they miraculously leave the premises. Then we flee, leaving the wife behind to mope.
We fight our way through the darkening forest and eventually make it to the sea. Swimming without any lifejackets or flotation device at all, swimming for our lives, I know it cannot last. We've all managed to keep our heads above water, but it's dark and the sea is getting choppy. Just as I'm about to give up hope, a woman's head, about the size of a stretch Humveee, pops up out of the water. Waves splash open to reveal down to her shoulders. Is she a colossal statue?
She stops the frantic storm for a moment to reveal herself, standing ten stories tall. Without a word, but a smile, she fetches for us a boat from the bottom of the ocean.
We sail with grateful hearts through a treacherous night of storming, to awake floating down a mountainous stream. It leads right onto a road of some sort. I leave the others behind to investigate. The mountain sits next to a bustling town. I'm spat out into the courtyard of a Greek apartment building; old women sewing in their laps and throwing scraps to their dogs. Next down the road is a market with fruits and everyone speaking Spanish. Trying to locate myself in the world, I figure we could have made it to Spain, but it's highly unlikely. Suddenly, with a shock of disappointment, I read on a little placard: Welcome to Reading, PA.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Funeral, Family, and 2 essential Yogasanas
Without announcing the act of death, my mother informs me that today is my grand mother's funeral. All immediate family members are rounded up for a time in our old town in Ohio and I am to drive the coffin around in the back of my car, which, quite frankly, creeps me out.
It dawns on me that none of this is appropriate and that I must return to the house to get directions and dutifully herd the family where we need to be. My mother's directions are to a chapel outside of Philly, and the route is designated in a mixture of alien symbols of various colors (like an ailing ink cartridge) and poetic meanderings such as "the toll man takes his little toll", wobbly smiley faces and the like. I contend that these directions will simply not do. I get on the computer to find the address, and am pleased to find that the chapel is a lovely place with golden statues of the Virgin Mary and a red velvet backdrop. (David Lynch meets Holy Roman, with a dash of old Italian mini-cathedral)
Before leaving, Dave and I take side by side bubble baths in the living room with my family but a shower liner away. It's kind of disturbing to have them so close, but we really needed to relax.
I'm not ready to accept my grandmother's death. In fact, I'm not even sure that it's happened since no one is talking about it. To make sure, I go to her house - the old one in Lynchburg. She is sitting at her dining room table with the leaves dropped down, an exquisite set of lady's vanity utensils laid before. She appears to be writing checks.
I immediately see that she has passed, and this is her spirit, and that now is the time to tell her what I often tell her, the most important thing to say to someone that you love with your whole being. I am filled to the brim with a feeling suddenly - a radiant love, a spiritual force that envelops us. At this moment, there is nothing but love pouring forth from me and being returned by her. Her gooey brown eyes are bigger than normal, they reassure me that my speechlessness is forgiven. I say it anyway, crying joyfully.... "I love you so much, so much." She half chides me for being so sentimental and talks to me for a while. I don't remember what she said, too busy taking in the grace of her earthly personality, which I will miss so dearly. I try to respond at some point and she disappears.
---------------------------------------
At the chapel, the coffin is laid out. She appears to be sitting straight up. No, it's someone else.
How could they have gotten the time wrong? How terrible! At least the chapel is everything the website promised. Bodies are shuffled, coffins are wheeled about. During the changeover, I get lost in the annals of the backrooms and basement, the green carpeted stairs that lead down to the beauty salons of the dead. I see inept funeral interns tossing around body boards and playing bumper cars with caskets.
Finally, it's her turn. I'm sitting with the family. Justin has spontaneously taken a yoga pose on the floor to celebrate teh funeral in his own way. He has extended his arms into child's pose, and separated his arms into segments at the forearm, wrist and finger bones, cut vertically into cross sections.
Various things start to annoy me. There's so much noise, and people are just scattered everywhere throughout the chapel like a cafe! I am so upset, I take a particularly noisy little girl out of the room to shake her, turn her upside down and give her a talking to. Actually, no, I think I'm just entertaining her - her body is long and narrow like a doll's. I return her and she's quieter after that, but many people are still being rude and I go through the crowd giving dirty stares.
On the way back to my seat, I see Dave's set up a virtual airstrip of power adapters for playing music. I totally forgot we were supposed to play! It's the last thing I feel like doing really, so I bail, which disappoints him a little. He wanders off, and a strange thing happens.
The woman in the casket from before reappears, balancing on long lengs that don't bend. She's going through the chapel, bumping every person on the head with a wooden cross to bless them. This is an excellent technique for crowd control, I think. She scratches the top of my head affectionately with her postmortem french manicured claws.
My grandmother appears to be peaceful in her casket. The preacher begins to deliver his sermon, pauses a bit for the body to noisily relieve itself of its last gasses and air, continues extolling the virtues of this magnificent lady. She shifts around a bit in the coffin, makes a few faces, then settles into savasana, a soft smile on her face. How nice, we all agree.
It dawns on me that none of this is appropriate and that I must return to the house to get directions and dutifully herd the family where we need to be. My mother's directions are to a chapel outside of Philly, and the route is designated in a mixture of alien symbols of various colors (like an ailing ink cartridge) and poetic meanderings such as "the toll man takes his little toll", wobbly smiley faces and the like. I contend that these directions will simply not do. I get on the computer to find the address, and am pleased to find that the chapel is a lovely place with golden statues of the Virgin Mary and a red velvet backdrop. (David Lynch meets Holy Roman, with a dash of old Italian mini-cathedral)
Before leaving, Dave and I take side by side bubble baths in the living room with my family but a shower liner away. It's kind of disturbing to have them so close, but we really needed to relax.
I'm not ready to accept my grandmother's death. In fact, I'm not even sure that it's happened since no one is talking about it. To make sure, I go to her house - the old one in Lynchburg. She is sitting at her dining room table with the leaves dropped down, an exquisite set of lady's vanity utensils laid before. She appears to be writing checks.
I immediately see that she has passed, and this is her spirit, and that now is the time to tell her what I often tell her, the most important thing to say to someone that you love with your whole being. I am filled to the brim with a feeling suddenly - a radiant love, a spiritual force that envelops us. At this moment, there is nothing but love pouring forth from me and being returned by her. Her gooey brown eyes are bigger than normal, they reassure me that my speechlessness is forgiven. I say it anyway, crying joyfully.... "I love you so much, so much." She half chides me for being so sentimental and talks to me for a while. I don't remember what she said, too busy taking in the grace of her earthly personality, which I will miss so dearly. I try to respond at some point and she disappears.
---------------------------------------
At the chapel, the coffin is laid out. She appears to be sitting straight up. No, it's someone else.
How could they have gotten the time wrong? How terrible! At least the chapel is everything the website promised. Bodies are shuffled, coffins are wheeled about. During the changeover, I get lost in the annals of the backrooms and basement, the green carpeted stairs that lead down to the beauty salons of the dead. I see inept funeral interns tossing around body boards and playing bumper cars with caskets.
Finally, it's her turn. I'm sitting with the family. Justin has spontaneously taken a yoga pose on the floor to celebrate teh funeral in his own way. He has extended his arms into child's pose, and separated his arms into segments at the forearm, wrist and finger bones, cut vertically into cross sections.
Various things start to annoy me. There's so much noise, and people are just scattered everywhere throughout the chapel like a cafe! I am so upset, I take a particularly noisy little girl out of the room to shake her, turn her upside down and give her a talking to. Actually, no, I think I'm just entertaining her - her body is long and narrow like a doll's. I return her and she's quieter after that, but many people are still being rude and I go through the crowd giving dirty stares.
On the way back to my seat, I see Dave's set up a virtual airstrip of power adapters for playing music. I totally forgot we were supposed to play! It's the last thing I feel like doing really, so I bail, which disappoints him a little. He wanders off, and a strange thing happens.
The woman in the casket from before reappears, balancing on long lengs that don't bend. She's going through the chapel, bumping every person on the head with a wooden cross to bless them. This is an excellent technique for crowd control, I think. She scratches the top of my head affectionately with her postmortem french manicured claws.
My grandmother appears to be peaceful in her casket. The preacher begins to deliver his sermon, pauses a bit for the body to noisily relieve itself of its last gasses and air, continues extolling the virtues of this magnificent lady. She shifts around a bit in the coffin, makes a few faces, then settles into savasana, a soft smile on her face. How nice, we all agree.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Time: Before the Current Era, Pre-Biblical in fact, Pre-Historical.....
The Earth has fallen off its orbit, making a wide elliptical shape that takes it further from the sun than it ever should be in certain seasons. The Earth has given up half of itself to sharp tall mountains of icy blue and black for this season, and everything living there is dim and struggling to survive.
I live in a town on the outskirts of the dim land, with many other people who go about in loincloths. There is a giant in our town whose name is Alex. He's a bit off but not exactly slow, maybe he's just "different" and we all treat him as such in our minds. Everyone's obsessed with getting fire for their homes...
We must take a trip to meet up with the head of the human community. This trip is very far away, so we take a prehistoric vehicle, not altogether so different from my honda. Arriving at the human capital, I first notice that a percentage of the people are wearing big black capes that hide their entire body and even the face. When we stop the "car" (it's made of stone), some agents pull Alex from the car and immediately throw one of these black robes onto him, saying, "He has the disease! He has it!"
This was how they marked the people who were going to die from the great human plague. We were not supposed to touch them. Anyone who was seen touching them also got a black robe. I thought of the many times I'd shaken his hand or embraced him ina friendly way, and then worried for my community back home. Would we all perish in this dark world before the sun came back to us??
The Earth has fallen off its orbit, making a wide elliptical shape that takes it further from the sun than it ever should be in certain seasons. The Earth has given up half of itself to sharp tall mountains of icy blue and black for this season, and everything living there is dim and struggling to survive.
I live in a town on the outskirts of the dim land, with many other people who go about in loincloths. There is a giant in our town whose name is Alex. He's a bit off but not exactly slow, maybe he's just "different" and we all treat him as such in our minds. Everyone's obsessed with getting fire for their homes...
We must take a trip to meet up with the head of the human community. This trip is very far away, so we take a prehistoric vehicle, not altogether so different from my honda. Arriving at the human capital, I first notice that a percentage of the people are wearing big black capes that hide their entire body and even the face. When we stop the "car" (it's made of stone), some agents pull Alex from the car and immediately throw one of these black robes onto him, saying, "He has the disease! He has it!"
This was how they marked the people who were going to die from the great human plague. We were not supposed to touch them. Anyone who was seen touching them also got a black robe. I thought of the many times I'd shaken his hand or embraced him ina friendly way, and then worried for my community back home. Would we all perish in this dark world before the sun came back to us??
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