Imbolc

Crackin' cold, a bright full moon and scudding clouds tearing away to reveal her face. (photo credit: Brett Wilson)
OK, the excuse is work, work, work, and then when I do get home, there are chores, phone calls, and finally escape in the form of net conversations and video. Another four episodes of LOST is consumed voraciously. Slow down love, you’ll find out what happens, believe me!

Meanwhile, I receive two films from Netflix that both have “not for the squeamish” on the envelope. From Hell,from the twisted mind of Alan Moore gives us Johnny Depp as the inspector on the trail of Jack the Ripper. It is artful and incredibly gory, a fascinating explanation of JTR that implicates the monarchy. It is visualized in this incredible grand comic book style, reminiscent of V4V, with lots of swirling London fog in bricky alleyways.
Here are the lives of colorful whores in their dire little lives, always thrust up against the sleazy danger of lusting men. Moore’s JTR is the royal surgeon gone mad, and for some reason he must carve up the feminine in order to celebrate/investigate/destroy it. brrrr. Why do men hate women for their goddess power with such raging ferocity? JTR says “I have given birth to the 20th Century.” And why must this necessitate eviscerating women? **puzzled look**Same old shit, boys. You really aught to have someone look at that.

“Not-for-the-squeamish #2” was Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. I am drawn to it by the music, which Bohemian Weasel used in her VTV “Vequiem for a Dream

That music, relentless, building, ancient and modern, dream nightmarish, is part Chronos quintet, part Clint Mansell, an electronic composer, and it is gripping, unforgettable, and used for the V story it beautifully underscores the building fate, the dominos stacked, the inevitable doom, the terrible grace, the grandeur, the grief.

The FILM is about drug addicts on Coney Island. It begins twisted and funny, bur all come to a very bad end, as the nightmare spirals to its conclusion. I am haunted by this film, then horrified, then I can't look away as it gets worse than I could have imagined, without straining to much credulity.

After a few days of contemplation, during which I finally succumb to purchasing the soundtrack, I finally realize: Dammit! They were all doomed from the get-go, and it is a sick tragedy with no redemption, and he made me laugh, when it is not at all funny, and there but for the grace of god go I, for I had such schemes in my youth, but was protected by some angelic forces from the real vortex of drugs, in spite of my best efforts.

So meanwhile, I hear a marvelous show on Utopia/Dystopia and that gets me chewing on these ideas even more.

Why do I love these dystopian tales so much? Children of Men still haunts me, vividly, viscerally. V of course is my beloved archetype-story-hero-love. The world has gone to hell, the beauty is destroyed or buried in ignorance and greed and waste. There is no hope. But a hero, or a group of heroes, sees a better way, believes unaccountably in Something, takes on the Goliath, throws himself on the pyre and triumphs in some way.

Even American Beauty is this story: life is a dreadful caricature of what looked like happiness, all gone wrong. Kevin Spacey sees through the veil, pursues his grail, and by seeing others on this quest for truth, his daughter, her friends, by coming face to face with is muse and seeing her for what she is, he regains his own soul, he transcends, awakens, breaks the frozen pane that keeps us from living fully. The tale feels redemptive and liberating even as his mortal blood pools across the kitchen table, a senseless death by a dreadfully conflicted homophobe.

So this is how the story goes: The world has all gone wrong. It's hopeless. But Someone sees. Someone believes, and against all odds he or she keeps reaching, searching, questing. And she saves the world, and sees the truth, and rises above the filth, and makes it all worthwhile.