3:46 p.m. - 2007-04-16
I Don't Like Mondays
My life is a good one, and I am thankful.
Sure, Saturday was shitty. But after I wrote my whiny little entry--and I think it's okay to whine sometimes, just don't do it too much--I talked to St. Caroline on the phone, who read my entry and clowned me, which I needed. She remains the funniest person I know, and she had me nearly falling off the couch laughing at shit. Most of it was stuff that only made sense in the flow of the conversation, but it is also stuff that we feel would make good short films. Like "Don Knotts Joins the Knesset." It makes no sense, and that's why we love it. And I can tell her to shut the fuck up when she says things like "Maybe the Comic Book Dude is just shy!" and she doesn't care.
And although, even after she made me feel a lot better, I still let myself sink back into feeling sad, I watched Stranger Than Fiction and felt better. It was wonderful. I actually love Will Ferrell in just about everything he does, and it was nice to see him low key. Then Maggie Gyllenhaal's anarchist baker was so spot on (reminding me of my friends here that I love so much), and Emma Thompson's blocked writer was so wonderfully performed (reminding me of one my favorite professors; I need to write a movie about Berkeley just so Emma Thompson can play Kevis Goodman), and the soundtrack was so fantastic, and the ending was about how comfort can be found in the littlest things, like Bavarian sugar cookies (I so, so want one right now--thank God I'm in a coffee shop . . . hang on . . . okay, white chocolate macademia, just as good if not better). So I took my comfort in the thought of Thora, who Maggie Gyllenhaal even SOUNDED like, giving me a massage and then, when I offered to pay, saying "Don't insult me," giving me a kiss and telling me she loved me. And I took comfort in really, really good movies, where a young anarchist hears an accountant playing her favorite song and knows that sometimes, magic happens.
The next day I took comfort in the fact that CBS (which stands for Comic Book Schmuck) called me while I was on the phone, so I could let it go to voicemail and not have to bitch him out the moment I talked to him. I got work done. And I listened to Liz Phair's album Whitechocolatespaceeg, which I had finally dug out from under the passenger seat of my car (oh, and my Dad bought me a car wash, another wonderful thing to take comfort in). This was, like Ani's Carengie Hall Concert CD that was magically delivered to me, another album that helped me figure out that I wanted to come home, and album that helped me deal with The Boy in California. I actually gave him this album for Christmas right before I left, so that he could listen to "Polyester Bride" and think of me, just the way that I listen to it and think of him. I no longer want to flap my wings and fly away from here, as I did in California; in fact, when I got a fortune cookie this week that said I'd soon move to a wonderful new city, I was pissed about it. I'm happy here. All that let me call CBS so that we could meet up that evening. We were going to meet at a coffee shop.
We wound up meeting at his house.
This was weird. On the one hand, it meant that we could just have sex. On the other, it meant that not doing so would be noteworthy, if not portentous. As is, we didn't. I wanted to when I saw his action figure collection, some of which had had made himself--what can I say, nerdiness gets me hot--but it became clear that he wasn't that into me, and truth be told I wasn't that into him, even though his DVD and video collection included Shakespeare films, Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, Hayao Miyazaki classics, a few idiosyncratic faves like Impromptu, Lion in Winter, and Strictly Ballroom, and, yes, a collection of Tori videos. I kept thinking of the line from a Jenny Lewis song: "When you're kissing someone that's too much like you it's like kissing on a mirror." By the time I got back into the car and started blasting Liz Phair again, I was thinking to myself "Thank God that's out of the way!"
Things are far from perfect. I've still got no romantic prospects on the horizon, and that phone call has caused me to backslide into wishing on stars for the love of a certain boy in Berkeley (I once again turn to Mallrats: "What can I say? I love the retard."). I am way behind on the show I'm working on. I need to get all kinds of my shit together, but I'm writing in this diary instead.
But I'm alive.
There is a point in Stranger Than Fiction when Dustin Hoffman, playing and English professor, quotes Italo Calvino's observation that at the heart of every story is the mask of comedy or tragedy, the continuity of life and the end of life. A story is either one or the other. On the one hand, of course, it has something to do with events. If I get hit by a car on my way back to the parking lot, that's a tragedy. But it doesn't necessarily. Part of us dies every second, and parts of us keep going as new things appear, whether it's cells or aspects of ourselves. Tell the story of Notorious RRZ: English Professor and my life might be a tragedy. Tell the story of Notorious RRZ: Experimental Theatre Warrior Princess and it might, hopefully, knock on wood, be a comedy.
But then some crazy fuck shoots a whole bunch of people, and things are pretty fucking clear.
It's a Monday, the day before taxes are due, and Tori's cover of "I Don't Like Mondays" has been playing in my head. It's the one about the school shooting. They used it on The West Wing on the school shooting episode. The lines from the chorus run over and over again, "Tell me why. I don't like Mondays. I wanna shoot shoot shoot the whole day down down down, shoot 'em all down." I think about the Neil Gaiman story that accompanies the song. The police officer who Tori "plays" or "inhabits" in the song climbs into bed, into her husbands arms, worried that the job is making her into someone she doesn't recognize. She finds comfort, of a kind.
I don't know anyone at Virginia Tech. I doubt anyone who reads this (all three of you) know anyone there. I'd have to follow a good few degrees of separation to find someone. So all I can say is that I remember, on days like today, to be thankful for what I've got. Friends to make me laugh at the things that break my heart. Good coffee and good cookies. Music to listen to in the car.
I think about Emma Goldman and the anarchists of her time, all of whom stood against the punishment of violent crime by the state. They felt that every violent act is the result of a long process that we can never know, a process of violence and economic oppression that leads someone to the conclusion that a problem can be solved through more violence. They never even prosecuted those who hurt them. One of them, Voltairine De Cleyre, saw criminals as like the drops of water that spray out of the ocean when the waves crash into the shore. You never know which ones will strike the rock and which will return to the sea. When you can never know what drove someone to an act, how can you claim to be able to mete out punishment?
I don't entirely agree; I think that bureaucratized punishment prevents a lot of violence even if it also perpetrates it. But I do know that what Mo'Nique said when she performed in front of a group of women in prison is true: we are all one bad decision away from jail. We are all a few Mondays away from breaking, whether breaking means taking the lives of others or merely taking our own.
There was a person posting on various Tori websites recently, a very bitter, angry man who spouted horrible, misogynistic rants. An internet troll, apparently. Some people confronted him, others ignored him. I sent emails to a couple of people who said things, because the apparent plague that internet trolls visit on groups is to erode trust. There was one in particular who offered compassion to the guy, and I wrote her and told her she was lovely to do so. She said it made her day.
I don't know, and I will never know, what little currents and eddies caused this man to break, to crash against the rocks and take innocent people with him. All I know is that if it wasn't for the people that I love, I'd crash against the rocks myself. I am grateful to them. I am grateful to you for reading. And if we all keep our eyes open, and try to do little things to give comfort, to keep one another from crashing, then maybe there'll be a few more comedies to look forward to, and a few less reasons to hate Mondays.
