Andrew Culver’s Weblog

 Clarissa Estes, in her book “Women Who Run With the Wolves”, discusses the importance of the “wild woman” character as she appears in myth and folklore in various cultures. She is called variously the “woman who lives at the edge of the world” or the “woman who lives at the end of time.” (9) The female ghost, wandering on the road, seems to be a quintessential embodiment of this archetype. According to Estes, the wild woman is “both friend and mother to all those who have lost their way, all those who need a learning, all those who have a riddle to solve, all those out in the forest or the desert wandering and searching.” (9) She points out that the wild woman is an archetype representing an undomesticated female force of nature, and that she “engenders every important facet of womanliness.” (9)

This “wild woman” character is one of utmost importance to women, who need the archetype to attain full womanhood. “Without her, women are without ears to hear her soultalk or to register the chiming of their own inner rhythms. Without her, women’s inner eyes are closed by some shadowy hand, and large parts of their days are spent in a semi-paralyzing ennui or else wishful thinking.” (9) This wild woman, a symbol of nature, is shown to be a force of vitality to women, and a kind of social empowerment. While this analysis is undoubtedly helpful to women, it ignores the complex role these archetypes play in the minds of men. For the male psyche the wild woman represents a dangerous distraction from his role as husband and father.

In our first tale, “The White Woman” (see appendix), a tale is told of a mountain in Pennsylvania where the locals know not to pick up hitchhikers. However, truck drivers passing through who don’t know the local legend don’t think twice before picking up a woman dressed in white waiting for a ride. When they get to the bottom of the mountain the woman disappears. Apparently the woman died while searching for her son, who had disappeared on the mountain long ago. She wanders the mountain for eternity, never giving up the search. Ominously the teller ends the story with the sentence “And she still looks for him every night.” The mother’s love is eternal.

The fact that a truck driver, the symbol of a grown man, is usually the person who picks her up, carries weight. We associate truck drivers with a class of men that are about as manly as you can get in our culture, and yet as lonely as one can imagine. They are carriers of goods across hundreds and hundreds of miles of terrain, driving with little sleep and little companionship, far from their families, if they have them. But this story reveals hidden needs of even the “manliest” of men. If we look at the characters as elements of one family dynamic it becomes obvious what this story means for men. The dead mother is the truck driver’s own mother, and the lost child is the child he once was. The fact that the white woman is forever searching for her lost son touches on a sense of guilt all men have about their mothers – we had to leave them, the first woman we ever loved, the woman who gave us life. All boys at some time must leave their mothers in order to choose a mate. The biological necessity of this act doesn’t assuage the guilt that lays dormant in men’s minds even into adulthood. Beneath this guilt is the fear of the passage of time, the knowledge of aging, and the mystery of separated identities. The dead child, lost in the mountain, is not the same person as the trucker, but his ghost is always somewhere deep within the trucker. How much of the boy survives, and how much is dead? And will we ever forgive ourselves for leaving our mothers? These are the questions raised by the encounter of the trucker with the white woman.

In “Lavender,” we are told of a poor, sexually promiscuous girl in a small farming community named Melissa. She goes to a church social, apparently for the town’s upper class, and is given a lavender dress as an act of charity. She is seen around town wearing nothing but the dress from that point on. One winter night she freezes to death because all she is wearing is the dress. If we stop here, we already have plenty of implicit messages for young girls: don’t venture outside of your social class; wear modest clothing; don’t go around at night alone with few clothes on; be wary of accepting charity. A feminist critic could get pages worth of implications from this cautionary tale of a young woman who didn’t follow society’s rules. But the tale goes on – years later some college students pick her up and offer her their jacket to give some warmth. The girl wants a ride to the dance, so they all go together. After the dance they drive the girl home, and go back several days later to get the jacket. The old woman who lives there says, to their horror, that the girl has been dead for ten years. When they go to her gravestone they find the jacket lying on the ground.

The girl’s transgressions have an obvious message for girls to stay in their social class, and to refrain from being promiscuous. But more interesting is what she means to the college students who pick her up. These young men are apparently out looking for a good time, and she is available, scantily dressed and helpless on the highway. What she represents for these young men struggling to find an adult sexual identity is the power of sexual attraction and the distrust men feel towards their own sexual impulses. The fear of impregnating a woman, the fear of a sexually transmitted disease, and more deeply, the knowledge of death is what Melissa embodies to men. This takes us back to the Adam and Eve story and to the identification of sex with the procreation urge, which only exists because we are mortal. Here, sex and death are irrevocably connected.

The White Woman reminds men of their origins and the painful transition from the role of son to the role of man and husband. While this story is essentially one of the past, and its anxieties are centered around guilt and nostalgia, the “Lavender” story is one of the future and the anxieties of finding a mate. The lesson for men is not to fall for the amoral, helpless and promiscuous girls, because they are, in a way, doomed for their transgressions. The lesson is also for a man not to go beneath his social group. The young men who pick up Melissa are college students who have no business dealing with a poor farming girl.

If we look at what these two women’s spirits have been doomed to do for eternity we have an even more accurate assessment of what they represent to men. The white woman is forever searching for her lost son, and Melissa is wandering the highway, looking for a ride to the dance. The former image carries the weight of motherly love and sacrifice, while the latter image is reminiscent of a prostitute, walking the cold streets at night wearing a skimpy dress. Both of these images signify treachery for a man, in that they are comforting or seductive distractions from what he must do: find a wife and beget children. The mother is forever begging the man to return to the child-mother relationship and the prostitute wants a quick, anonymous sexual encounter. Men have both of these desires innate in their personalities, but must constantly resist them in order to be a father and a husband.

While these two stories involve the well-known motif of the lost hitchhiker, they are different in their regional details and their implications for men. Whether the stories survived because of their morally proscriptive qualities or because they reflect an inherent neurosis in the male psyche may be debated, but it is likely that the stories contain both elements. These tales show that the kinds of stories that survive in our culture are ones that answer our deepest questions, embody our deepest fears, or warn us against disaster. The question of what a man must do in his life is constantly posed to men in our changing society, and these kinds of tales serve to affirm some of our most basic values.

Ainsworth, Catherine Harris. “Folktales of America, Vol. 1.” Buffalo: The Clyde Press.

1980.

Estes, Clarissa Pinkola, “Women Who Run With Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild

Woman.” New York: Ballantine Books. 1992.

I dreamt that I was standing in a field again. But this time there were people coming from all around, dragging their sleeping feet to the green where something was expected of us. And there was a feeling of terror – if I didn’t obey something would happen. And the weirdest thing about the dream was this voice whispering in my ear, the same voice from the other nights. It said “Pentheus” over and over. “Remember Pentheus.”

I walked to work with my mask on because of the pollution. I had to pass the fertility center, the ones the government set up. The population had gotten so low that the government was giving rewards to people who had children. But as I passed the computer centers and the internet shops I laughed a little to myself. Didn’t they see? The problem was right here in front of us. Who would bring children into this world, the way things are? I’m just as selfish as the rest of them, I don’t want kids. Not with this economy – the food shortages, the gas shortages, and definitely not with my internet obligations. Who had the time anymore? Who even went on a date anymore? And where would you send a kid to school? Most of the old schools were empty warehouses now. I could fill up a phone book with the reasons not to have them.

Work was okay but everyone was talking about something over in Gates Park that was supposed to happen. I heard some talk in the lunch room, but I said I had an online conference I was supposed to do at home. Rich told me I had to go, it was kind of a mandatory thing. Since he was my boss, and he had this crazy look on his face, I said I’d do it. I hate going along with all his after-work get-togethers. But one weird thing I saw was that all the women in the office were looking a little…I guess “wild” is the word. Lustful, maybe. I’m ashamed I have to search for the right word to describe it. That’s the world we live in though. It’s the digital age. The computer age. Desire is something you read about in history books.

After work I was walking to the park with Peter from the IT department. What a wet blanket. He was complaining the whole way, said he had to be home for an internet thing. I told him, “Hey – maybe something fun will happen. What’s this all about anyway?”

“Some jerk-off is having a big party in the park.”

“Well, that couldn’t hurt, right?”

He looked at me with this nervous fear I’ll never forget. It was a look of dread.

“It’s mandatory.”

“What the hell do you mean, mandatory?”

He got up close to me and whispered.

“Just do what this guy says, or…you’ll end up with some problems.”

“What problems? Who is this guy?”

“He says he’s from the Lydian something…he’s a psychopath. He’ll mess you up if you don’t obey. Trust me.”

And then the weirdest thing – I noticed a goat was following us. Walking along right behind us. Like it was listening to us. Pretty soon we got to the park and the goat was gone. I thought I was hallucinating. And then I looked at the field and stopped dead in my tracks. I could not believe what I was seeing. There were hundreds of women dancing in circles, in this insane ecstatic celebration. And they were ripping their clothes off.

“I just want to get out of here,” Peter said next to me. “Well, come on, let’s go.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the front, to pour the wine. Just listen to him, and don’t make any problems.”

I followed him up beyond the women to a stage where giant casks were set up. Wine poured forth into wine glasses, and men were set up in lines to pass the wine to the dancing women. Drums were playing somewhere, loud and tribal. A voice boomed from everywhere.

“Him,” it said. The women rushed over to Peter and grabbed him, screaming, and dragged him to a pit where they threw him in with some other men and women, along with a bunch of cops. Wine was streaming down the faces of the dancing women. I saw Marilyn from accounting. She had an animal look in her eyes and purple stained lips.

“Start pouring,” someone said, and nudged me. I got in line and got up to the front, where I was handed a huge goblet. I grabbed the lever on the cask and poured a big cup. The other guys were giving their cups to the women, who started gathering around the pit.

After they were done with the people in the pit I had to drink a lot of wine to quench the horror. The wine mingled with the blood in the pit, and the women were washing off their blood in fountains. Then he arose onstage, a towering figure with a demonic smile.

“They thought they could disobey me.” His voice was so loud, it was almost coming from inside my head.

A cheer came from the hordes of naked women.

“I have returned. You must drink of my wine. And you must dance your joyous ritual. And we will destroy those who mock us. Now go to your places.”

It was turning into an orgy. I drank, because I had to. He knew who disobeyed him. Couples were pairing off and going into the woods around Gates field. I ended up with some woman I didn’t recognize and it was all like a state of hypnosis. I was being moved by something more powerful. I left the park at three in the morning, with the sight of that man in my head – the sight of him laughing with joy. My feet were numb from dancing and my head was dizzy with wine.

Something ancient had returned. Something terrifying and beautiful.

Alfonso told me not to kill nobody. But when we were standing there in the donut shop the guy behind the counter was looking at me like he didn’t take me seriously. I can’t stand that. I can’t stand that. I was holding a gun, a gun. A man who doesn’t take a gun seriously is an idiot. I told him to put the money in the bag. He was looking at me funny and doing it slowly, and Alfonso was outside giving me dirty looks. We had two other places to go to that day. So I just got so mad that I shot him in the stomach. He just stood there for a second and looked confused and then he fell. And I took the bag and went outside. Me and Alfonso was driving away. He’s all, “I told you not to kill nobody,” and I’m all “He made me mad,” and he’s like, “You and your temper.” He knew it was best to drop the subject because of how mad I get. I’m just tired of nobody taking me seriously. Like I said, I can’t stand it. People laughed at me my whole life. Well, they ain’t gonna laugh when I’m holdin’ a gun in their freakin’ face.

So we were looking for the freeway when we heard the sirens. I told him we should try to rob another place before the police start chasing us. He told me no, that’s stupid, we should try to lose them. So we went on the freeway and pretty soon there were a couple of them behind us. I leaned out the window, ‘cause Alf was driving, and shot at them. The car behind us swerved and crashed on the freeway, so I think I hit the cop. Damn, I shot two folks. I don’t even know what I was thinking, it was kinda the heat of the moment. Alfonso kept yelling at me for shooting people but he knew he was in the same trouble as me.

I told him to get off downtown by the train-yards, we could lose ‘em. We drove around these empty warehouses by the tracks and they just kept on us, real hard and fast. They was probably mad I shot one of their boys. So Alfonso starts to talking about he wants to give up. Hell no, is what I said. He started to cry and everything. So we kinda lost them for a minute, and we were in this alleyway. He stopped the car and said he was givin’ up. I looked at him and I couldn’t believe it. I think I almost started to cry right then. He promised me we’d do this. We were in it together. And he was giving up the whole dream. I almost shot him. But instead I took the money and ran towards the train tracks. There was a train coming by and I was getting on it.

Just then the police came around the corner, screeching and wailing, and Alfonso was standing with his hands up. I ran like a mad dog to the train as they were shooting at me. I didn’t feel anything, so I assumed I wasn’t hit, so I just kept running. I felt this light feeling as I got near the train, like all my earthly troubles was over. Like the weight of this world was off of me, and I was home free. I ran up to the train and jumped into an empty car as it slowed down. I even kept the bag of money. I looked out at the police taking Alfonso into custody. The train just kept goin’. I walked through this door at the end of the compartment. I had the funniest feeling walking in there, because everyone was in their seats, not moving or anything. They all looked kind of pale and grey. So I sat down in an empty seat and started to count my money. God, I was so happy, just counting it over and over. I had almost five hundred bucks from the donut shop and the old lady we robbed, plus the thousand from the video rental place. I was so exhausted I fell asleep. The rocking of the train was so nice.

When I woke up it was so hot. The first thing I noticed was the train descending, like we was going down into the core of the earth. And then I noticed my wound. My stomach was ripped wide open. I thought damn, I guess I been shot. But I didn’t feel no pain. I looked around, and some other people had some pretty bad cuts and gunshots too. The thing that clued me in was the fire. And the workers on both sides, like people in a chain gang by the freeway. Then I knew where I was. And I knew I was never coming back.

“So do you want to go to Spaceland?”

 Josh came in my room and laughed. I looked up from my bed.

“So that’s a no?” he asked.

I was lying on the bed with one arm hanging off, touching the ground. I couldn’t move.

“Your stomach still hurts?”

“It’s bad. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

A few hours later Josh got back from the club and I was lying on the couch, sweating and breathing heavily with agony. The feeling was of something terribly wrong in the stomach, a sharp and relentless pain.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know,” I panted. “It’s bad.”

“You probably need some Mylanta. And a Sprite.”

“Yeah, I took some Pepto-Bismol awhile ago.”

“I think Mylanta is a different thing. Because when I had your problem awhile ago, I took some Mylanta and it worked. And the next day I had a chili burger and chili fries and, well, it turned out I was just badly constipated. The chili actually did the trick.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll go get you some Mylanta.”

He returned with the Mylanta and it soothed a little bit of the pain. I laid down and tried to sleep and Josh went to bed. Sometime at around four in the morning the pain became unbelievable, a burning, twisting force within me that would not give me a moment of peace. I knocked on Josh’s door.

“I think I need to go to the emergency room.”

We drove down Sunset Boulevard in the pre-dawn light to Kaiser. I hobbled into the front room of the ER while Josh parked. It was strangely empty. A woman took my temperature and my blood pressure and my Kaiser card. Minutes later I was inside the ER, a crowded, chaotic series of hallways and rooms, and I was lying in a hospital bed in the hall.

“I am going to give you a morphine drip,” said a nurse approaching, carrying an IV. Soon the IV was in my arm and the world dissolved. The sounds of the ER – chatting Filipino nurses, talkative homeless patients, constant beeping- became echoes in a dreamland. I fell into a wonderful sleep while the pain in my stomach remained in a steady throb. Soon Josh’s face was swimming in the haze above me.

“Are you alive?” his voice reverberated in the half-consciousness.

“Oh, yeah…they gave me a morphine drip. It’s awesome.”

“Well, I think I’m going to go home. There’s some weird people in the waiting room. Just call me when you need to be picked up.”

“Okay,” I said, and went back to sleep.

Soon I was a awake and an Indian doctor was asking me questions, prodding around my stomach.

“You probably have appendicitis,” he said in perfect English. “I’ll have you go through the CAT scan to do some x-rays.”

Soon I was out of the hallway and in a room of my own. A patient outside had a lot to say and I sat and listened with nothing else to do.

“Yeah, I don’t have a place to stay usually, but right now I stay over on Edgemont, with my friend, right down the street. He be letting me stay there when my asthma gets bad.”

“You know where I am on Wednesday nights, right?” asked a young doctor.

“You be somewhere else on Wednesdays?”

“Yeah, on Pico, at the clinic. Anytime you stop there I can get you the asthma medicine.”

“Oh, really? ‘Cause that’s all I need, is the Flonase thing. You know, that’s the only thing I be coming in here for, just when my asthma gets bad…”

While this went on a huge Jewish man with a yarmulke was outside my room in a cot, attended by a nurse.

“Your leg is very bad, okay? If you stay at this weight the weight on your ankle is going to get worse. Do you smoke or drink?”

“Yes, both.”

“I don’t like that. You can’t do either. Both are very bad right now. And who are you, sir?”

“I am his friend,” said an old man in a thick Yiddish accent. “I am a doctor as well, I am a surgeon. I come to see he get good care, but now I see I have nothing to worry about! I am very impressed! The care is excellent here!”

While the nurse and the old man bickered about his proper care I texted my lovely girlfriend and said I was in the ER because my stomach got worse.

Soon they wheeled me through well-lit, maze-like hallways and down an elevator to go through the x-ray machine. After that I was back upstairs and a smooth, fast-talking black surgeon came to talk to me.

“Okay, Andrew, it looks like you have appendicitis. We’ll be taking out your appendix, okay? Hopefully soon. I’ll come by later with my boss and some other surgeons to talk to you.”

“Okay,” I said. Well, that’s good to know. A simple procedure. I texted Elizabeth again. “I have appendicitis. They’re doing surgery to take it out.” I texted Josh so he would know he didn’t have to pick me up that day. Then my cell phone ran out of battery and I was stranded in the hospital with an IV in my arm. I wondered if Elizabeth would be able to find me before the surgery. As the hours wore on, I realized that the hospital was a strange place, with an inescapable sense of loneliness and camaraderie.

The nurse came by to give me the paperwork and consent forms to sign, and I waited some more. I had no idea what time it was or what it looked like outside. Sometime that evening the surgeons came by. An older white man, the boss, felt my stomach and reiterated the need to take out the appendix, and that it would be done that night.

“Your appendix is extremely inflamed. That’s what is causing the pain you’re experiencing. We’re gonna try to get you on the board sometime in the next few hours, okay? So just sit tight, we’re going to get this out of you and you won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

“Sounds good!”

I waited some more.

A nurse came in and told me there was a phone call from my mom. What? How did she know I was here? I went to the phone outside my room and picked it up. It was Elizabeth, and she had tracked me down as I figured she would. Thank God. I told her where the ER was, across from the Scientology center on Sunset. Then I waited for her to come. After several hours she arrived at my bed and we shared some of those intimate moments that you just don’t have with your buddies.

A Filipino nurse came in.

“Okay, they’re ready for you,” she said, and instructed me to take off my clothes and put on my OR scrubs. I felt an attack of nervousness. They were really going to cut open my stomach and take something out of me.

They wheeled me away and directed Elizabeth to the waiting room. They wheeled me down countless hallways until I ended up in the surgery wing. It looked like a laboratory where strange creatures were created by mad scientists. I was in the surgery room, lying on a narrow cot.

A black orderly pointed me towards a man at my left.

“This man is going to make sure you don’t feel nothin’ while this is going on.”

“Hi,” I said as he put a needle into my IV. A mask was placed over my nose and mouth.

“Breathe deeply,” he said, and I did. Very soon all was dark, and I was aware of nothing.

“Yeah, Michael Phelps can swim like a motherfucker.”

“Hell yeah.”

“I don’t be watching the basketball, because it’s always a blowout.”

“Kobe just be crushin’ ‘em.”

“Yeah, that shit is boring, dude. I can’t watch that. But you know, I be watching the female volleyball, I be watching everything. Gymnastics, diving, you name it. It’s all good to me.”

“Yeah, it’s all pretty good.”

“He’s awake. Hey man, you wakin’ up. Just relax, everything was okay.”

“How did it go?”

“Good.”

“Where’s my appendix?”

I was completely disoriented.

“It’s gone. Just sleep. They gonna take you to a waiting room.”

My head was swimming in a half-conscious stupor. An orderly came and wheeled me down several more hallways where I waited, sleeping, for about an hour. I wondered where Elizabeth was and when I could see her. When I woke up to the sound of Filipino nurses gossiping about a co-worker, I was wheeled to an elevator where I ended up in a room of my own. Elizabeth walked in and sat next to me. She looked at the big bandage on my stomach.

“It went well,” I said, my eyes drooping. I was very sore and very relaxed.

“I have to take a picture of you,” she said. “This is so cute.”

She got her camera out and snapped the picture.

“Are you making a face?”

“No, what do you mean?”

“Your eyes are barely open! Here, let me take another picture.”

“Was that good?”

“Are you sure you’re not making a face? You have this goofy smile.”

“No, I’m really tired right now.”

We spent some moments together and she left, with instructions for me to call her when I woke up. She would come straight to the hospital and skip work.

I spent the whole next day at the hospital with Elizabeth, taking Vicodin and peeing with a catheter. My whole body was incapacitated and nothing would work right. It took me the whole day to learn to walk again. Eventually they sent me home with thirty vicodin. I rode in the late afternoon sun in Elizabeth’s car, staring sleepily out the window at the rush hour traffic. I called my parents to tell them what had happened. They were relieved I was alive. I received an outraged call from my sister who couldn’t believe I hadn’t called my family sooner. It wasn’t that big of a deal, I said. I knew I wouldn’t die.

When I landed I saw Whistler in his office. He was in bad shape alright, hunched over his desk, coughing. He was lucky I got there in time. Once I got the oxygen tank on him he relaxed and started to talk.

“We gotta get off this planet. We gotta leave, let’s go.”

“You know I didn’t come all the way from the head ship to take you like this. They want answers, Whistler.”

“Oh God, this whole thing was a waste…”

“What happened here?”

“Ohh…” He grabbed his stomach.

“Where are the thousand employees, why are the mines abandoned? You know how much money they’re losing on this whole thing. Now you radioed the ship and said to send someone quick, the whole operation was done for.”

“They’re all done for, they’re done…leave them.”

“Where are they, Whistler?”

He was hungry and homesick but I told him we weren’t going anywhere until I got some answers. Jesus, he looked like he’d aged ten years in the six months since I saw him. This mine was supposed to be open by now, sending huge uranium and plutonium cargoes back to the ship.

We walked slowly down the hill towards the mines. He was limping like an old man.

“They found something…it’s like a network.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Are they alive?”

“Barely. No. Well, yes, I suppose.”

“Jesus, man! Answers!”

“Okay…I’ll show you…”

He started limping down towards the lower mine, where I’d parked my craft.

“You know what kind of shit I’ll be in if I go back there with nothing but a crazy old man?” He wasn’t listening but I went on anyway. “They lost millions developing this place and they’re pissed. Okay? And you’re raving about some goddamn network. What am I doing here? Why did I get this assignment? This is two weeks out of my schedule that I’ll have to make up for back on the ship. I’m following some lunatic around…”

When we got to the mine there was a glowing red light emanating from deep within.

“It must’ve been left here from whoever lived on this planet before,” he said, hobbling down the steep incline. “It’s not like anything I’ve seen before. Hold on.”

I held on to the railing as we descended on steps deeper into the crimson.

After a few flights of stairs, he stopped, panting, on a walkway.

“There. It’s down there.”

It was a sea of little pods, or vessels, of little wombs, almost. Thousands of them, on the ground floor. Inside of the greenish cells the miners were all entombed, moving slightly. Little electric flashes criss-crossed and zig-zagged between the countless cells, as if exchanging information.

“It’s some communication network,” he said. “But they’ve stopped eating, they’ve stopped working, they won’t come out. I took a few of them out but they were all glazed over. Brain-dead. I looked down in the other mine and there were the same things, but some other creatures were inside. They’re not alive. Whatever this network is, it killed the last species.”

“Or they killed themselves.”

“Yes. Let’s get out of here,” he said for the tenth time.

“How the hell am I supposed to explain this to the head ship?”

“Just tell them what it is.”

“But what is it? What are they communicating with?”

“Each other.”

“That’s all?”

“It’s a complex system of communication and information exchange,” he coughed. “It’s highly addictive. That’s all I know.”

I stared at the cells and the electric charges zapping between them. What a waste. I got Whistler back to the ship right before he collapsed.

“The air is no good on this planet,” he said, coughing. “The environment is not good for life.”

“Who used to live here?”

“I don’t know, some of the guys thought it was Earth.”

“Earth? Come on. That’s where humans live. I can’t believe that. All the broadcasts from Earth show a planet with rivers and oceans and forests.”

“Those reports could be millions of years old. We don’t even know where Earth is.”

“But all the stories I heard about Earth growing up make it seem like a paradise.”

“Well, I don’t know, that’s just what some of the rumors were. You know how the guys like to talk.”

And then he passed out. I lifted off and soon we were rising through space, headed back to the home ship. They would not be happy about this.

I told Richards not to make them so smart. Oh Jesus, a lot of blood. It got me right in the artery. He wanted the growth hormones. He wanted. I told Richards. Told him. How many were there? Jesus, we only made two. Must’ve been five in the yard. And one in the lab. What’s that noise? Oh Christ, the shadow. Must be seven feet tall. Those beasts. What were we thinking? Won’t see me in here. God, this is funny. I’m hiding in the conference room. Where we planned the whole thing. God, Richards must’ve bled to death. Oh Christ, his hands and his feet…why did they take the hands, the feet. Was he still alive? No, he was dead. Couldn’t have been alive. Oh, that’s it. It is right outside the door. He wanted the hormones. He insisted. He wanted. Is it looking at me? Is it looking? Is it looking? I don’t want to die don’t want to die, not here, I’m not supposed to die here, no get out get out get out help me I don’t want to-

Note: My mom told me to make this list.

Tony Bennett – What a talent. What charm!

Juan Garcia Esquivel – His music is playful, elegant, danceable, creative, and endlessly zany.

Los Angeles History – Endless source of fascination. It is a city that has had countless personalities -Old West outpost, lawless frontier town, film industry boomtown, bread basket of the world, crowded modern megalopolis, perverse mirror of a fractured modern America, source of modern-day mythology (Mulholland-Prometheus; movie stars-Greek Gods). A city that will interest me constantly in its endless rebirths and reincarnations.

Carrots

Walt Whitman – I have sometimes thought that I wouldn’t mind being in prison if I had a copy of Leaves of Grass. One feels that one has never completely seen all that Whitman has to offer. There is always more between the lines, more left unsaid.

Watching Chinatown – It is a perfect movie, and tells a story that cannot be forgotten. Every time I watch it there is something new and interesting to be meditated upon.

Celery

Buster Keaton – The Great Stone-Face. As Roger Ebert puts it, it’s not that Keaton doesn’t care if we like him, it’s that he is too proud to ask for love. He faces every obstacle with a calm determination, no matter how absurd or chaotic the situation. This is in contrast to the hammy Chaplin, who is constantly asking us to feel sorry for his poor tramp.

Avocados

Black people on the bus – I could listen to their conversations forever and never cease to be entertained. People who have never ridden the bus in LA will not understand this.

Peas

Taco Trucks – In LA these trucks provide the best Mexican food available. The meat is always juicy, tender and full of flavor, and the sauces are spicy, herby and pungent.

Vito’s Pizza on La Cienega – I don’t know what is better- the pizza or Vito himself, who is a large Italian guy from New York and talks so loudly that you can always hear his stories no matter where you are in the restaurant. The pizza is like a work of art. You get the feeling that he spends a lot of time making each pizza.

Potatoes

Walking up Robertson Boulevard and seeing paparazzi outside the Ivy, waiting for stars to show up – This is always an entertaining and bizarre thing to witness.

Casablanca – Another perfect movie that withstands countless watchings. The story, which is perfectly crafted, and the acting, which is rendered with subtlty and humanity, provide new things to think about each time I watch it.

Robert Frost’s poem “Directive.”- This poem is a difficult yet rewarding work, and probably the best thing he ever wrote. It is at once a challenge and a warning to his readers, as well as a generous offer of salvation.

Peas

Raymond Chandler – I want to live in his Los Angeles, a mysterious, misty and dangerous place that probably never really existed. Menace and strange beauty coexist effortlessly in his books. The thing that amazes me is that Chandler probably invented this mythical modern metropolis out of his own imagination, before retiring to La Jolla to live out the rest of his life. Maybe he couldn’t take the fact that the LA he had invented was so different than the one he was actually living in.

Bore, verb: to weary by being dull, uninteresting, or monotonous.

from Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th Edition

The Olympics.

Willa Cather.

Wrestling.

Reading comments on YouTube.

Every job I’ve ever had.

Furniture stores.

Hearing about people I knew in high school, and what they’re up to now.

Any film student’s opinion of any movie.

Bob Dylan.

MySpace.

Family Guy.

People who love Bob Dylan.

High profile lawsuits.

The word “ostensibly.” It is overused, mostly by columnists and bloggers who want to sound smart.

Theories that Shakespeare was really someone else.

Sports News.

Facebook.

Listening to My Sharona.

Feminist interpretations of classic literature.

America’s Got Talent.

Telling people what I’ve been up to lately.

“Graphic novels.” (You are an adult. Put down the comic book.)

Every nightclub I’ve ever been to.

Almost every bar I’ve ever been to.

Anime.

Large apartment complexes.

Unremarkable architecture.

Steve Jobs.

News of the mortgage crisis.

Oprah.

Chef Gordon Ramsay and his tantrums.

Those stupid Manga books. Why do they have to be backwards?

Improv comedy.

Anything relating to Batman.

Looking for parking.

The latest Apple product.

Celebrity impersonations.

Here is what you will need for the recipe:

Sausages (I like the selection at Trader Joe’s. The other day I got some that were made with four cheeses and wine. They were absolutely delicious. I will let you decide what particular sausage to use.)

Vegetables (I used asparagus, carrots and peas. Again, I will let you decide what your favorite vegetables are. Use your imagination.)

Rice

Butter

Lemons

Dill

Garlic

Paprika

Directions:

1. First you will need to cook the sausages because for some reason they take forever to cook. I would put two  sausages in a pan with some olive oil, cover them and put the heat on low.

2. Begin to make the sauce. I would put two entire sticks of butter in a pot and heat until it liquifies. Meanwhile squeeze your fresh lemon juice. You are not going to need very much lemon for the recipe, but again I will let you decide exactly how much to put into the sauce. Start with a little fresh-squeezed lemon juice and stir. Then do a taste test.

3. Add some garlic to the sauce. Be very liberal with the garlic. It will only make it better. Add dill and paprika to taste.

4. Cook the rice. I use a professional rice-cooker because it’s just too hard to cook on the stove.

5. Chop your asparagus and carrots into bite-size pieces and put them in the sauce with the peas to simmer.

6. When the sausage is done chop it into bite-sized pieces.

7. When everything is done add it all together. Really drench the rice in sauce. Let the rice soak it up.

8. Enjoy. I would suggest a white wine to go with the dish.

From Antony and Cleopatra

Antony:

I have fled myself, and have instructed cowards

To run and show their shoulders. Friends, be gone.

I have myself resolved upon a course

Which has no need of you. Be gone.

My treasure’s in the harbor. Take it. O,

I followed that I blush to look upon.

My very hairs do mutiny, for the white

Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them

For fear and doting. Friends, be gone; you shall

Have letters from me to some friends that will

Sweep your way for you. Pray you, look not sad,

Nor make replies of loathness; take the hint

Which my despair proclaims. Let that be left

Which leaves itself. To the seaside straightway!

I will possess you of that ship and treasure.

Leave me, I pray, a little: pray you now,

Nay, do so; for indeed I have lost command,

Therefore I pray you. I’ll see you by and by.

Antony and Cleopatra,

3.11, lines 8-24

 This speech, delivered by Antony to his attendants, centers around the idea that Anthony is not himself anymore. After Antony has disastrously retreated from battle, following Cleopatra’s ships, he begs to be deserted and realizes he is a mere shell of his former glory.

The passage begins with a beautiful paradox, “I have fled myself,” which pleases the ear with consonance and assonance, repeating the “f”, “l”, and “e” sounds while startling the reader with Antony’s understanding of his fallen greatness. By fleeing battle he has fled the very essence of his own character. Antony is battle. He starts his speech off with this awareness.

This idea is echoed later in the line “Let that be left/ Which leaves itself,” which encapsulates Antony’s state of mind. It pleases the ear with assonance and alliteration in the repetition of the “e” and the “l” sounds. This poetic elegance, as well as the poignant paradox of “leaves itself” highlight Antony’s dignity in the face of defeat. This line also uses polyptoton to underline the central theme of leaving. The two words, left and leaves, force the reader (or listener) to meditate on the different ways Antony is leaving and being left. We know he has left his legendary status as a warrior behind him through his love for Cleopatra. We also know he has been left behind by the changing Roman world. He is a relic of the old Roman Republic, which will soon become the Roman Empire under the helm of Octavius Caesar.

But Antony knows he isn’t just a victim – he has caused his own downfall. In the first line Antony describes what he has fled, and instructs his followers to flee him in turn. But this begs the question of what he has fled towards, which he answers cryptically with the line “O,/ I followed that I blush to look upon.” We know this is Cleopatra, and his shame turns to a giant outburst of rage when he confronts her later. This is Antony’s realization of his own errors, highlighted by the juxtaposition of the verbs fled and followed. What he has followed (love) makes him embarrassed. How could a legendary Roman warrior be ruined by a woman?

This shame causes Antony to repeat his plea to be abandoned with the line “Leave me, I pray, a little: pray you now,” which begins with a forceful trochee before reverting to the steady iambic meter. The inverted iamb of “Leave me” causes us to listen to the word being emphasized, which in this case is leave, the dominant theme in the passage. When we scan the line we see that pray is stressed twice, while me and I are both unstressed. This emphasizes Antony’s deteriorating sense of self, and suggests that all he has left are his prayers.

But for all his loss, Antony still possesses a diminishing status as a leader. This is why he plays with the word “command” in the penultimate line. “For indeed I have lost command,” he says, signifying both military command and personal command. The very purpose of his speech is to beg his attendants to abandon him, so in one sense he is giving up his military command. But we know this is a very personal speech that serves to indicate his interior state, so “command” can be taken another way. In the sense that Antony and Cleopatra both play the roles of themselves throughout this play, Antony has lost command of the role of Antony the legendary Roman warrior. His love for Cleopatra, who he blushes to look upon, has caused him to lose command of himself.

Antony’s syntax is abrupt and informal, showing a decaying sense of identity. The presence of short, declarative sentences shows Antony’s sense of authority even in defeat. Commands like “Friends, be gone” and “Be gone” and “Take it” are indications of his impatience. If he is going to be defeated, he may as well get it over with. He alternates between end-stopped lines to indicate a sense of finality, and enjambment which shows there is an abundance of personality still left in Antony. “Let that be left/ Which leaves itself. To the seaside straightway!” This combines an overflowing of the plea to be left onto the next line, with a final alliterative command to go to the seaside straightway, where they will find his ship and treasure. This end-stopped line conveys the end of something grand.

Antony uses his hair as a metaphor for his conflicting emotions. “My very hairs do mutiny, for the white/ Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them/ For fear and doting.” This personification uses the image of hair to embody an inner conflict. His white hair is used to represent age and cautiousness, while his brown hair represents the warrior he once was. These two conflicting elements underscore the aging Antony, the shadow of his former glory. The simple fact that he has white hair indicates that he is past his prime and he sadly realizes this.

Antony uses repetition, with characteristic theatricality, to simultaneously draw attention to himself and drive people away. Though he repeats the phrase “Be gone” three times to his attendants, he keeps talking, holding their attention, knowing they do not want to leave him. His repetition of the word “pray” four times, while imploring his attendants to “look not sad,” and “take the hint which my despair proclaims,” signifies a desire to at least get some dramatic value out of his destruction. His ability to play the “role” of Antony, however, is fading as he grasps for an identity. Cleopatra never breaks character the way Antony does, over the course of acts three and four, as he narrates his own decline. We never hear her private thoughts, but we are granted access to Antony’s interior world through many soliloquies. Because of this he is not the mystery that Cleopatra is. Shakespeare allows us to see the inner life of a larger-than-life character as he self-destructs spectacularly.