I will pass it by today, but what a web author Laura George weaves of the sordid history of the Catholic Church! She outlines the entire Albigensian, Knights Templar, Holy Grail, Merovingian, Black Madonna, Priory of Sion, House of David/Jesus's child tale referred to in Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code" which I thought was an hysterical string of paranoia, but apparently not, at least according to the author. It is a fascinating story, damning the Catholic Church in the process, and the Albigensian massacres were genuine. Perhaps for tomorrow, if I can catch my breath.
For now, though, a meditation on the movie "Nebraska" which I watched on the VCR this weekend as the thunderstorms rolled in. It is a remarkably small movie, with little ambition. Meant to tug at the heartstrings, it did not, at least mine. Yet it had a point to make about how we hurt our lives and the lives of others through small acts of selfishness and the larger act of allowing ourselves to be swallowed up by the devastating demands of the ego.
Starring Bruce Dern as an unsympathetic drunk / retiree, we first find him walking along a highway in Billings, Montana (in black and white - the entire movie is black and white, for the purpose of underscoring the bleakness of life in the Heartland), where he explains to a paternalistic state trooper that he is "going to Nebraska to claim my 1 million dollar prize." He has gotten a magazine subscription add that promises him that he is a WINNER! in big print, while adding in small "if your number matches the winning prize number." We quickly gather by his grubby house and his unsympathetic family that he is a loser who is now stumbling over the line of fantasy to make something of himself - to win a big award. He insists against all reason that he will go to Omaha to get his prize no matter what, and so our journey begins, as his unsuccessful but nice-guy son travel under gray skies through a sparse early spring landscape. At one point, Dern (I forget his stage name) falls while drunk and has to spend the day in a hospital - on a Friday, which means they will not make it to Omaha before the weekend. As his son has a job, it is concluded that they will only stop by Dern's hometown a few hours away for an impromptu family reunion. The get-together is spectacularly boring, as apparently is all of Nebraska - boring and lacking in hope. When Dern lets out the fantasy that he has one a million bucks, suddenly family and an old associate become very interested in collecting money they feel he owes them. It gets ugly, and it is here where we are to find sympathy for Dern. We discover that he is a very sensitive, simple and generous man who has always been taken advantage of. He has been at the bottom of the social pyramid all his life, and all he wants is for ONCE to be looked up to as a winner. We also find that those looking to collect from him really owe him and have used him shamelessly. When they learn the real nature of his "prize" he again becomes the goat to everyone in town. In the end, his son helps him rectify this to his satisfaction, but what I found most interesting was the bleakness - not of the landscape, but of the people. They seemed to live in spite of themselves, only because the alternative was death. There were no interesting conversations, no allusions to the landscape or greater meaning or even existential despair. They did live in despair, but it was locked inside themselves, whittling away at any dreams they once may have garnered from action and adventure stories. No, they were Nebraskan, and like the landscape, they would live out flat, colorless lives and finally become part of the earth, the great expanse filled with life-giving corn, almost with a sigh of relief.
We moved to Wisconsin farm country 15 years ago, and at first I was impressed - almost awed - by the openness of the sky. By winter, I was crushed by the dead fields and endless wind and cold. The landscape (or so it seemed) then succeeded in causing a slow-moving depression which lasted for a few years or a little more - it is hard to tell exactly when a subtle energy such as that begins or ends. And then things lightened up. Nothing else changed but perspective - winter became a time for firewood and skiing and other recreations, and the other seasons were greeted for their low-key beauty. In my book "Dream Weaver," I refer to Wisconsin as the homely girl next door - the one you always came back to. This is true in my case, and I have come to appreciate her charms. With such a bleak winter, never is spring and summer more appreciated. And fall - although it lacks the colors and grand views of my native New England, the weather manages to balance in the perfect range for anywhere from a few weeks to almost two months. It has become a good place, and few are the people I know here who are locked in random despair. There is always hope, mobility and finally, a lakeside with barbecue and beer (or snowmobiles and ice fishing).
Wisconsin is not Nebraska, for better or worse and perhaps for the better, but it is not a hopping place and not a place of spectacular beauty. Is Nebraska really a land filled with dead-enders? In the movie, there is a scene at the old homestead as well as at the family burial plot where whippoorwills call from the cotton woods and the wind pushes great white clouds through the ocean-like sky. Beautiful in its stark fashion. Might not the people be like this also? This is not the Depression era dust bowl, but a land where no one is starving and everyone seems to have enough to buy a beer (or several) and a used pick-up (if the movie is at all accurate). If the people are dead inside, it is not the fault of the land or extreme poverty. Rather it is their perceived need to be somewhere else, to be doing something SPECIAL- as if any but a few of us can ever do or be anything special. In my dark days in Wisconsin, I found that it was frustration that kept me imprisoned - I was not where I wanted to be or doing what I wanted to do. Through luck or persistence or whatever, I learned to do something else and to see the land as the special place it is - as are all natural settings. While there is little in the way of classic scenic wonder about, this isn't an uninspired place, either, for the land grows and greens and shivers under storms and bakes under sun all for me to see. It is, when I am fully awake, a blessing.
What then of the movie people of Nebraska? I feel I am crowing about my luck, and need to pull back. A bleakness of spirit may find me again, but I hope I will remember that, if it is not from some internally-caused chemical imbalance, it is from myself- that is, from self-expectations that have not been met; that is, from the special-ness that I am demanding for my destiny that is really not special, anymore than is any one else's. But that is special, too, for in one moment and another, the wind and the clouds and the whippoorwills move and sing only for me.
And so the movie was greater than it wished to be, in spite of itself. Dern remained an old fool, unable to live without the external recognition that he was special, although he did gain the sympathy of his son. If he could only have looked beyond the bitterness of others and grasped the openness of the sky! As if that is easy for any of us, but so the movie tells me to do, in its bleak tale of frustrated ego on the edge of the infinite plains. FK
For now, though, a meditation on the movie "Nebraska" which I watched on the VCR this weekend as the thunderstorms rolled in. It is a remarkably small movie, with little ambition. Meant to tug at the heartstrings, it did not, at least mine. Yet it had a point to make about how we hurt our lives and the lives of others through small acts of selfishness and the larger act of allowing ourselves to be swallowed up by the devastating demands of the ego.
Starring Bruce Dern as an unsympathetic drunk / retiree, we first find him walking along a highway in Billings, Montana (in black and white - the entire movie is black and white, for the purpose of underscoring the bleakness of life in the Heartland), where he explains to a paternalistic state trooper that he is "going to Nebraska to claim my 1 million dollar prize." He has gotten a magazine subscription add that promises him that he is a WINNER! in big print, while adding in small "if your number matches the winning prize number." We quickly gather by his grubby house and his unsympathetic family that he is a loser who is now stumbling over the line of fantasy to make something of himself - to win a big award. He insists against all reason that he will go to Omaha to get his prize no matter what, and so our journey begins, as his unsuccessful but nice-guy son travel under gray skies through a sparse early spring landscape. At one point, Dern (I forget his stage name) falls while drunk and has to spend the day in a hospital - on a Friday, which means they will not make it to Omaha before the weekend. As his son has a job, it is concluded that they will only stop by Dern's hometown a few hours away for an impromptu family reunion. The get-together is spectacularly boring, as apparently is all of Nebraska - boring and lacking in hope. When Dern lets out the fantasy that he has one a million bucks, suddenly family and an old associate become very interested in collecting money they feel he owes them. It gets ugly, and it is here where we are to find sympathy for Dern. We discover that he is a very sensitive, simple and generous man who has always been taken advantage of. He has been at the bottom of the social pyramid all his life, and all he wants is for ONCE to be looked up to as a winner. We also find that those looking to collect from him really owe him and have used him shamelessly. When they learn the real nature of his "prize" he again becomes the goat to everyone in town. In the end, his son helps him rectify this to his satisfaction, but what I found most interesting was the bleakness - not of the landscape, but of the people. They seemed to live in spite of themselves, only because the alternative was death. There were no interesting conversations, no allusions to the landscape or greater meaning or even existential despair. They did live in despair, but it was locked inside themselves, whittling away at any dreams they once may have garnered from action and adventure stories. No, they were Nebraskan, and like the landscape, they would live out flat, colorless lives and finally become part of the earth, the great expanse filled with life-giving corn, almost with a sigh of relief.
We moved to Wisconsin farm country 15 years ago, and at first I was impressed - almost awed - by the openness of the sky. By winter, I was crushed by the dead fields and endless wind and cold. The landscape (or so it seemed) then succeeded in causing a slow-moving depression which lasted for a few years or a little more - it is hard to tell exactly when a subtle energy such as that begins or ends. And then things lightened up. Nothing else changed but perspective - winter became a time for firewood and skiing and other recreations, and the other seasons were greeted for their low-key beauty. In my book "Dream Weaver," I refer to Wisconsin as the homely girl next door - the one you always came back to. This is true in my case, and I have come to appreciate her charms. With such a bleak winter, never is spring and summer more appreciated. And fall - although it lacks the colors and grand views of my native New England, the weather manages to balance in the perfect range for anywhere from a few weeks to almost two months. It has become a good place, and few are the people I know here who are locked in random despair. There is always hope, mobility and finally, a lakeside with barbecue and beer (or snowmobiles and ice fishing).
Wisconsin is not Nebraska, for better or worse and perhaps for the better, but it is not a hopping place and not a place of spectacular beauty. Is Nebraska really a land filled with dead-enders? In the movie, there is a scene at the old homestead as well as at the family burial plot where whippoorwills call from the cotton woods and the wind pushes great white clouds through the ocean-like sky. Beautiful in its stark fashion. Might not the people be like this also? This is not the Depression era dust bowl, but a land where no one is starving and everyone seems to have enough to buy a beer (or several) and a used pick-up (if the movie is at all accurate). If the people are dead inside, it is not the fault of the land or extreme poverty. Rather it is their perceived need to be somewhere else, to be doing something SPECIAL- as if any but a few of us can ever do or be anything special. In my dark days in Wisconsin, I found that it was frustration that kept me imprisoned - I was not where I wanted to be or doing what I wanted to do. Through luck or persistence or whatever, I learned to do something else and to see the land as the special place it is - as are all natural settings. While there is little in the way of classic scenic wonder about, this isn't an uninspired place, either, for the land grows and greens and shivers under storms and bakes under sun all for me to see. It is, when I am fully awake, a blessing.
What then of the movie people of Nebraska? I feel I am crowing about my luck, and need to pull back. A bleakness of spirit may find me again, but I hope I will remember that, if it is not from some internally-caused chemical imbalance, it is from myself- that is, from self-expectations that have not been met; that is, from the special-ness that I am demanding for my destiny that is really not special, anymore than is any one else's. But that is special, too, for in one moment and another, the wind and the clouds and the whippoorwills move and sing only for me.
And so the movie was greater than it wished to be, in spite of itself. Dern remained an old fool, unable to live without the external recognition that he was special, although he did gain the sympathy of his son. If he could only have looked beyond the bitterness of others and grasped the openness of the sky! As if that is easy for any of us, but so the movie tells me to do, in its bleak tale of frustrated ego on the edge of the infinite plains. FK
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