Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Thoughts on Richard Kelly's "Donnie Darko" (2001)

Donnie seems to be stuck in a place that can't stop moving and yet simultaneously feels deserted. Wherever his "mellow" American suburban town is doesn't matter; he is experiencing, as his psychotherapist says, a "detachment from reality stemming from his inability to cope with the forces in the world that he perceives to be threatening". I'm not sure it would make a difference if he were in any other place.

Donnie suffers from the daylight hallucinations of a paranoid schizophrenic (in some cases symptoms emerge as auditory hallucinations, or both). In his visual hallucinations, he sees a giant bunny. Rather, someone dressed in a bunny suit who appears to him in dreams, while he sleepwalks, or when alone. The bunny speaks in slow, sedated speech, a speaking tinged with robotic tones. This bunny gives him a random amount of time before the "world will end": 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. Donnie tries to fathom this timeline as the film progresses, wondering what it could mean, what he should do, and what death ultimately might represent.

The basic storyline is split, much like a schizophrenic's episode might occur in their mind; the simultaneous happening of two elements, concepts, ideas that do not seem to be able to merge into one out of a contradiction in reason. In the film, there is a crash, but the crash happens in two different ways. The first crash goes straight through Donnie's house harming no one, and the entire family (including Donnie's mom, dad, and two sisters) is forced to sleep in a hotel for a while as their house is being investigated and repaired. The second crash happens at the end and kills Donnie, but saves another's timeline (the timeline of life) - one in which his girlfriend (Gretchen) isn't killed (run over) by a speeding car. One of my favorite lines in the film is when Donnie's talking to his Dad after the crash and letting him know that the FBI doesn't want the family to tell anyone what actually happened. The thing is, no one actually knows what happened, hence:

"So we're not supposed to tell anyone, but nobody knows."

The two storylines weave and intersect like an intricate tapestry, meeting somewhere in the middle. Decidedly, the storyline's beginning and end are two separate threads, aiming ahead towards each other and meeting at a point in the middle, a strange kind of profound depth that chronological storytelling misses, making this film quite unique and powerful (some other films may have done this, Pulp Fiction maybe, or Arrival, but Donnie Darko does it in such a way that is relevant to adolescence, coming-of-age, American suburban life, and the '80s). The metaphor of the wobbly, bubbly, translucent energy tube coming out of Donnie's chest, leading him here or there in certain parts of the film, reminds the audience of how Kelly's storyline is working - instead of a story "walking" on a flat 2-dimensional level (think of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs) the story instead moves 3-dimensionally, inward and outward instead of across. How Donnie's heart-chakra/aura (if that is what it is. That's what it seems like to me) moves from inside of him to outside of him, appearing as that holographic, watery tube of energy. This is kind of how Kelly's storytelling is moving, if not cinematographically, then conceptually. This is especially fascinating because there are levels of metaphysics here in the dialogue, then again in Donnie's inner world, then again in the actual plot. However, there is a simple problem that remains, if anyone should decide to solve the mystery of time presented (which I won't, not in this piece at least): the problem of cause and effect.

What I'm interested in is Donnie's character - his special take on reality. He cares deeply about his family, yet it seems as if he feels like he is the last one, like the only one remaining in a place full of the kinetic and potential energy of future plans (his older sister partying with boys and going to Harvard, his younger sister in a popular dance group and worried about other things, even his mother and his father's somewhat humdrum life of bourgeois drama). And Donnie is the nucleus of the place without asking for it or wanting to be. He sees outsiders, like Cherita (a minority in the spotlight of this film, sticking out from the crowd of puffy-haired girls, "well-adjusted" and accent-free teens) and Gretchen, the new girl in town who is ostracized for her mysterious, and violent, background, and just for being sensitive and authentic (for whatever reason a cause of jealousy and disrespect).

Donnie also points out people's bullshit when he can. The motivational speaker whose house he burns down: that man is the film's symbol of heartless, meaningless capitalist garbage, also a pedophile. Or the physical education teacher, who tries to feed to the class the ideology that life is a scale balanced by two emotions: love and fear. It's as if Donnie is frustrated with all the ideologies or thought systems being fed into the social structure of his neighborhood, and being schizophrenic is just the thing that pushes him over the edge to go ahead and punish that world for its lies. He sets the motivational speaker's house on fire. He floods the school. This ties into the story his English teacher assigns, The Destructors by Graham Greene:


Donnie comments on the book: "...the fact that they burn the money is ironic. They just wanna see what happens when they turn the world apart and wanna change things."

Striking is the fact that this is exactly what the bullies and assholes of the high school do at the very end. With masks on, they find Gretchen and Donnie in a hidden cellar, grab them and try to attack them. These bullies, in fact, are pissed that Donnie always gets away with everything (such as flooding the school), and everything is immediately blamed at them instead. Sure, they are probably accountable for a lot of awful things that might've happened (including the potential harassment of Gretchen early on) but that doesn't stop them from being angry at Donnie for getting away with certain things, including axing the head of the school's stone mascot. But, ultimately, Donnie's revenge is purer, more meaningful, and isn't just an "acting out". Donnie is literally sick, empty, alone, doing things buried deep in his unconscious mind. Donnie's world is on pause as everyone else goes on unthinkingly. Donnie's world is almost at a stop and all he can do is observe, heavy-headed, with vague and almost impossible attempts at grasping rhyme and reason.

His physics teacher is a person Donnie tries to reach out to as a way or putting some pieces together. This fails, as his teacher is fundamentally stuck to empiricism and objectivity. While the English teacher is another trustworthy person, she herself is dealing with issues within the administration and within herself (see the cartoon bunny scene in which she unconvincely asks Donnie to consider Deux Ex Machina. Gretchen's simpler response is much more convincing).

Donnie does, however, find solace in an old crazy woman - Roberta Sparrow - someone who has lived in the town for many years. She's known as Grandma Death. His physics teacher provides Donnie with her book The Philosophy of Time Travel. 

"I'm seeing stuff, like a lot of really messed up stuff. And the stuff in there is describing what I'm seeing. It can't just be a coincidence."


The fact that Donnie can now recognize his world in another's work is key. Paradoxically, it is Grandma Death who tells Donnie that "every creature on earth dies alone", yet it is Grandma Death's book that makes Donnie feel less alone. Could it be that Grandma Death told him what he needed to hear to scare the bejeezus out of him and get him to thinking of possible ways to die otherwise? Who knows? Tell me.

Donnie Darko is truly a masterpiece and one of my favorite films ever. I'm glad I got this out and was able to write about it. I've seen the film too many times to count, and I think I'm going to put it away for a little while now until I think it is the right occasion to view it again. Interestingly, this last viewing was the most aggravating viewing. Every other time I've watched it I've been suspended by disbelief, enthralled, melancholy in an oddly nostalgic way. This viewing was like a purging, a goodbye to those chapters of my life reflected in the form of cinema: namely, traditional academia and school in general. Maybe I'll look back again, but for now, I'm ready to move forward, onward into the present.

Note: I had to watch this on YouTube, so the film was missing some key scenes. To see the best version, see the Director's Cut. I've a beautiful edition of it here at home:



- F

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Poem No. 13: Inclination

Fiercer would be
those parched yet
growing greens
between cement slabs
on ancient rooftops
and the modern walls...

Settlement is talked
of as a colonial enterprise
and it's looked down upon.
But it's not inherently bad;
what would be wrong with
halting that seething commerce
simply by staying put? No one
knows how to stop moving,
even when they're sitting down.
To stay in a house and let
its structure haunt you until
you feel it in your bones.

There are creatures
who are called to move,
move, move. I mean
not to discourage it. Just
to say I am not one of them,
not at this time, not now.
I want to settle, as oil settles
at the top of water, as sand
shifts and settles at the bottom
of the ocean, occasional
currents, stirrings, motions
until the same restful finality.
Silt to sediment, deposited to
be broken down, ever finer.

Oh! But it's wise to know when to move. When you see a scene no longer needing assistance, or an incapability to rectify your place in a scene. Once, in a poorer part of the world, I stopped in my tracks in the middle of a back road alleyway. I could not fathom what I was seeing when I was seeing it: a massive host of black flies buzzing, loudly, on the ground, like a black hole. Finally my eyes penetrated them. They were eating, feeding on a dead dog on its side, no longer able to be recognized as a dog but for its bony legs, ears, doggish shape. I stared, my heart caught in my throat. I couldn't speak, not really, for a few days. Places like that where people forget to stop, look, and notice the tragedy hidden in plain sight... places like that ensure that perhaps there is reason to move, move, move...

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

An Alternative Shopping List (to avoid corporate monopolizing)

Abercrombie & Fitch
women and men's clothing

BeautyCounter

safe, "clean", toxic-free and ethical beauty products

Botanical Interests
high quality seeds and garden products

Bright Endeavors (Made in Chicago)
soy candles made by young moms in Chicago

The Captured Harvest (Illinois)
goat milk soap from Colona, Illinois

The Creatress
natural magic for the mind-body-soul

Dark Matter
coffee (Chicago)

Deluxe Tattoo Chicago

tattoos

Deschampsia: Wildcrafts & Distillations
nature based self-care

Diptych
beauty and skincare boutique and perfumery (candles and colognes)

essential oils

Earth Based Body: Fierce Self-Care
eco bath and body

Elemis
luxury skincare

Evan Healy: The Skin Breathes
organic skincare products and natural skincare

The Flowerchild Bruja
any and all magical supplies

Fur
personal hygiene

Georganics 
natural and eco-friendly oral care

G.M. Collin
high quality skincare

handmade from Madrid

Hippie Panther Apothecary
all natural ingredients from Mother Nature

JuJu Bae
ancestral readings, distance reiki, podcast, and other goodies

Juniper Ridge 
essential oils, wild-harvested fragrance, incense, soap

L'Occitane
natural beauty products

Lune Innate
Esoteric Teaching and Healing Arts

Lush
fresh, homemade cosmetics

Made With A Mission
artisan based bath and beauty products, all natural

Makers of Waxed Goods
well-crafted, premium candles

Mineral Fusion
natural, ethical beauty products
 
crystals and apothecary

 Naked Bee 

bath and body with all the good stuff


Orenda Tribe
Soulfully reimagined vintage and upcycled textiles. Indigenous owned.

Nature's Gleaming Clean (Illinois)
all-natural jewelry cleaning products(based in IL)

Nicolet Candle (Made in Chicago)
candles and soap (premium scents and essential oils)

Paddywax
artisan fragrance (candles, essential oils, diffusers, bath)

Peter Pauper Press
stationary, journals, calendars, gifts

Pretty Litter
health monitoring and gentle cat litter

Pursued By Bear
wine and coffee

Quimby's 
books

Rare Essence Aromatherapy
artisan crafted, 100% pure aromatherapy (body care, perfumes, candles, essential oil, etc)

Renee's Garden
heirloom and gourmet vegetable, garden, and herb seeds

Roots
clothing, casual and workout, for men and women

Sage Crystals: Healing Crystals & Gemstones
reiki infused crystals, gemstones, grid boards, more

Shoyeido: Life With Fragrance 
incense, cones, palo santo, and accessories

Slumerican
swag, clothes, whiskey

Soap Distillery (Chicago)
soaps, scrubs, oils, etc. made in Chicago

Songlines By Jewel
handmade jewelry

Tentree
women's organic clothing: eco-friendly and organically crafted

Triloka
sage and incense

We Are HAH
women's sustainable fashion brand, ethically sourced clothing

tea and coffee

Zoya 
natural nail polish and nail care treatments

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Happy Mother's Day To All Who Nurture

Happy Mother’s Day To All Who Nurture

When I was little, my mom and I saved a sick bird. I don’t remember where we found the bird, but I do remember us looking at a bird on the pavement somewhere. We crouched down to see what the matter was since the bird seemed stuck and unable to fly. If my memory isn’t failing me, one wing appeared to be broken. I felt sad and nervous at the declining health of this fragile animal, which very well could’ve been a pigeon. Seeing this, my mom had the idea to perhaps “help it”. So we gathered some supplies from home: a metal cage that used to be a parakeet’s cage, a tiny water bowl, and some grains. We put this all in a corner of the garage, gently placing the bird inside. Each morning, we quietly crept into the garage taking peeks into the cage, refilling the water bowl. The bird was kept alive, becoming more energetic each time we visited. Finally, we took the cage outside, opened the hatch, and the bird flew away. 
Though my mom has done incredible deeds for me and for others, this memory has been coming back to me in recent years. For a complicated world, it seems such a simple, genuine act. That she took in something so helpless and seemingly inconsequential to revive it with the little means that we had – in terms of knowledge and supplies – taught me that hope in even the smallest doses of kindness really does matter. 
For Mother’s Day this year, I’m honoring and celebrating all those who nurture us and the world we live in. Let’s shower our nurturers with hugs, kisses, love, and our presence. 

Looking for a good Mother’s Day read? I recommend Marcia Gay Harden’s The Seasons Of My Mother: A Memoir of Love, Family, and Flowers (2018) and Sarah Knott’s Mother Is A Verb: An Unconventional History (2019)

My mother and I, September 5th of last year:


- F

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Poem No. 12: Mute

Last year, one apartment in a building of over one hundred apartments burned, flames reaching every which way and thick black smoke rising. I watched from my window, two parking lots across from the building. I saw the fire spread from one room to the next, escalating. I watched the firemen drive up, fumble with the equipment, and finally, after hours, put out the fire. 

Last week, one apartment in a building of over one hundred apartments burned, flames reaching every which way but mostly thick black smoke. I watched from the ground below, on the sidewalk in front of the building. I saw the fire emerge from the windows, dragon-like, orange tongue licking the air, fumes escaping, dark and blind, making the neighborhood smell foul. I heard the firetrucks come, walked away, and never saw the fire put out, knowing it would take hours.

That first time, I shed tears. The second time, I was reminded of something like stolen rage; the all-consuming fire of the one who must witness their pain manifest in another, rage becoming something one can no longer act upon, the rage that becomes dumb and stuck, like you said, but even farther, the fire that keeps mounting, against its' will, catching and catching, waiting for water. 

The water comes too late, the air already toxic with the things never meant to be burned, things no longer. Still, it ends, leaving its scorch marks on the surface. Or if those go, there's still the smell that soaks into everything and never disappears. Boarded up windows, shattered glass, until something bright and new and hideous takes it place, leaving a sense of the place where those rare clairvoyants will walk and know something's wrong. We can only hope they try to fix it. 

I don't know if anyone died. Would it make a difference whether one house was set on fire and the other was an accident? Which story would be more tragic? Or if one inhabitant was a brilliant scientist and the other a gun-wielding gang member? And I really don't know if there's a difference between the event of history and the smaller events that trivialize our feeble days. 

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Magnolias for Days

On late afternoon and evening walks, I continuously become surprised by the plants and animals that catch my attention. It's as if every time I step out for walk, day after day after week after year after decades, a new flourishing has begun and the natural world, perhaps due to its lately acknowledged precariousness, becomes more fragrant, more vivid, more textured. Despite this, accessing this wilderness makes me feel the poignancy of life, especially as this place emerges, struggling, right between the cracks: the divisions and partitioning of a different landscape: that of mis-matched houses, fresh cement and older, broken cement, brightly painted shiny cars or else smashed, plastic toys, stray and blind cats and their counterparts, looking out, recently groomed and curious, the dogs sniveling and mean, stuck with uncaring owners, or else wonderfully mild, tamed, friendly.

I've begun to really notice the magnolia trees in our neighborhood. There are so many of them, and though I've seen them before, I never fully appreciated their beauty. They have a light yet distinct sweet scent. They carry graceful strength, clearly seen as their branches rise up, hardy and pliant, blossoming, uprooted and splayed out each spring. It's tempting to chide them for showing off, but this is no work of their own, they reply. 

Magnolias stand on front lawns and are found within backyards. They take root along sidewalks, branches hovering over the place where people walk and jog, hovering over the streets as cars rush by spouting gas and loud music, releasing pot and pointless conversation into the air, all mixing. 


Many of them are North American natives (others can be found in South America, the Himalayas, and East Asia). The magnolias we have here at the edge of Chicago are hybrids of two Asian magnolias (at least that's my hypothesis, drawing from information I've gathered from the World Book Encyclopedia online as well as the Encyclopedia Britannica online). The hybrid, called the saucer magnolia, has light - dark pink flowers. 



Much of this past April and so far all of May (save for one day) has been gloomy with a whitish grey pallor blanketing the high sky, the sun only coming out in glimpses. Magnolias somehow know it's time to emerge, so they do, as if deeply embedded in their genetic code, without caring if a new plague has come, not worrying about the hazardous elements threatening its existence. If anything, they're the best example of blind faith I've witnessed thus far. Still though, once released, some petals turn sour, fading into a deadened soft brownish burn, a slow decay noting changes, the added harms to a habitat geographically in place yet so much changed, the rapidity of cold to warm, the moody air. 



I wonder if they might retreat and never return. Where will they go off to? Will they wait it out? Reconstruct themselves from the inside out? Will they disappear and leave ashes for us to create a new language from? Will they linger in limbo, become a zombie plant of doom? I bet they'll return, same as always, unchanging in all iterations, scorched by the sun or fully perfect in their incomprehensible belief in the reasonable unknown, its sensory upbringing. 



To pay homage to these seemingly uninterested biological beings of form, color, shadow, texture, growth is to say that the fact of being here, present, in life - however long, however short - is nothing short of a miracle, incomprehensible and hellish as it may seem. To embrace that impossibility before it is vanquished. 

- F 

Pigeons

Either they ate too much junk - spilled popcorn and Cheetos spilled over the abandoned alleyways - or instead consumed some sort of poison a...