No Understanding for Old Men

I rewatched No Country For Old Men and remembered all the confusion the movie caused two years ago. I wanted to write an explanation for those who "don't get it", but I've completely forgotten what I had to say. So I'm going on a tangent and maybe I’ll hit something.

Expect spoilers.

The Coen Brothers aren't inclined to explain the symbolism in their movies, which is why sometimes they confuse an audience. By the end of Barton Fink, Burn After Reading, Fargo and especially No Country, a lot of folks asked, what was the point of watching that?

You're not gonna find an explanation from the directors, but luckily No Country was their first adaption, so we can look to the book.

Wait, Cormac McCarthy is nearly as reclusive and ambiguous as the late J.D. Salinger. Oh well, you can read the book anyway and have a much closer guess.

It helps to note that the main character is Sheriff Bell, not Llewellyn Moss (played by Josh Brolin, the guy who dies in the middle). Here is a man caught in a vast wasteland overflowing with unspeakable violence and according to him, it didn't use to be this way. Now everything he ever understood is in chaos.

Still, the story centers around Moss, who stole $2 million dollars and let greed ruin his life. Everyone he knows or cares about is dead by the end of the film. It’s kind of a metaphor, so don’t look at it straight on.

Moss has the ultimate showdown with Anton Chigurh, more than once. This is because, really, Anton Chigurh represents the Grim Reaper. Anton, dressed in all black, carries an unusual weapon made for killing cattle instead of a scythe because in 1980 Americans reaped a much different crop. With few exceptions, anyone who meets or "sees" Anton meets a violent and untimely demise. One minor character asks, "Are you gonna shoot me?"

"That depends," Anton replies. "Do you see me?"

He says this with a wide, sadistic grin. He enjoys killing because he has nothing to lose. And undoubtedly, few people have met the Grim Reaper and lived to tell the tale (except for Bill and Ted).

Then there's his weird coin flipping habit, made to prove that death is all chance, but in every way it's inevitable. Everyone, from Moss to Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) to Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) deeply fears Anton (or should). He's the ultimate, formidable enemy and no one can stop him. They can only accept his existence.

Bell deals with Anton differently than everyone else, who get their heads blown off. He quits his job, finally “outmatched” by his environment. On his first day, Bell has nothing to do but sit quietly, muse over depressing dreams and wait for death to come anyway.

Somehow the ending is the most hated part of the film, but Bell's dream is the whole point of the movie. He describes it as his father traveling far ahead, starting a fire and keeping the cold, surrounding darkness warm. That's what death means to Bell -- being taken out of disastrous circumstances and into warmth with long lost relatives.

Only Carla Jean, Moss's wife, understands and doesn't completely fear Anton (Death). When she is confronted by Anton in the end, she calls him out on his insane nature. But arguing with Death doesn't get her far. It is only implied that she dies, but that implication is best. Here, she accepted her fate and fought for her life, if only using words. Out of all the characters in the film/book, she made her life the most meaningful.

But it all ends. Blah blah blah. The point of watching No Country for Old Men is to remind yourself that the world is violent, cold and dark and one day, it'll catch up to you. So it asks you, how do you face the callous cattle killing of Anton?

If you look at No Country for Old Men (even the title is directed at Sheriff Bell) this way, maybe you’ll appreciate the film a lot more. I suggest you rent it again and see if the message rings a little more true.

Outside Forces

October 23, 2009
2:10 a.m.

Lately, I feel so many outside forces attempting to disarm me of my dreams.
But now, in this moment, I have one that fights for me -- ironically, insomnia.
Insomnia is what gives me my hope.
All a concoction of too much alcohol and caffeine.
Maybe a few nightmares.
I adore my nightmares, but they're generally stressful dreams that wouldn't transfer to others.
Running from the cops. Trying to solve all my problems in an afternoon. Insects devouring me.
Maybe those would translate, maybe they wouldn't.

I want to write something about a lactose intolerant kid who is hiding from the zombies in a deep freezer. Oh, God, that's got to be the worst zombie scenario ever. Nothing but ice cream to eat, nothing but cold, no light, no windows and no way out. I mean, the poor kid could have picked a latrine to hide in instead. That'd be preferable. And when the power goes out, when all that ice starts to freeze and the meat starts to smell, God, that will be the worst.

Nixon had his coma.
Dracula had his funeral.
I too, must rest once in a while.

My mentality is a beehive that never sleeps.
Awake, my thoughts never find a home.
I can write it down, as Kafka did, and as he said, it loses meaning.
But sometimes it gains a new meaning.

A seaside home sighs for occupation again.
Sheets cover the furniture, boards over the windows.
How the home lies in disrepair, exactly as revisited memories.

Nothing important hasn't been done.
Nothing important won't be done.
When God turns off the light, everything will be in its right place.
I hope that for myself.
Like a cup, taken from the cupboard, drank from, rinsed and replaced.
I would come from the earth and be placed back beneath the ground.
Like a seed.
I too, must rest once in a while.

Strange Graves

photo by Squared

She calls me after work, carrying an orange juice box full of flowers and she says, let's go to the cemetery.

I'm reluctant. I'm slightly hungover, at the very least tired, not amused by anything. I'm overcast, like the sky.

Trudging through puddles, accumulations of soggy pine needles and dead leaves, fall feels omnipresent. Inescapable drudgery.

We place brilliantly-dyed flowers, the stems hacked off, onto any graves that look lonely. Neon green, canary yellow, periwinkle and opal white. Fake colors.

I'm ignoring any new or military graves, looking for the markers placed in Citizen's Cemetery that are for normal people, people so long dead they never knew what electricity was or chemical warfare or strip malls or nuclear holocaust or ATM's or any of this. Doesn't their pain, centuries old, long buried, seem more justified than this? Even if it's forgotten?

I yearned for causes of death, some kind of excuse, but there were none. My thoughts couldn't connect.

I searched for the graves of children, babies with the same birth and death date. I found pairs, two brothers who died before they were my age. Those tombstones for married couples, the one side already etched deep with dates, the other, empty . . . patiently waiting. Over one such couple's grave, I kissed her, long and hard.

She was crying. It was hard, raw. It could be us soon. But maybe that's just selfish thinking.

And there's a picture of our feet, the box, the tomb.

We gave the remainder of the flowers to a man bringing his kids to the cemetery.

I Don't Have Time

This is the fifth blog I wanted to write about how I don't have enough time, but I don't really have time to explain why.

This is the second blog I wanted to write about the chaotic details of my early and current journalism life, but I don't think it will interest you.
Conflicts about talking to stuck-up celebrities and deadlines and story changes aren't the kind of stories that make the movies.

More important than grabbing your attention is that I don't even have the time to do it.
I have started writing in my journal again, but it's keeping me up an extra hour each night.
I'm getting insomnia, but it's worth it just to write for myself and just to reflect for once.
To pause.

I still don't have the time to write anything else but school, newspaper and my novel.
I got a great idea for a short story last night, when I was trying to drift off, but I can't find the time to write it.

It's about a guy named Edward Abbey. Doesn't that name ring nicely?
He's balding prematurely and he wears thick glasses and he lives at home on disability checks.
His only companion is his grey tabby cat, Clyde.
The story opens on a depressing winter morning. Edward Abbey is munching on soggy cereal and talking to Clyde.
A pistol is on the table, fully loaded and menacing-looking.
His is thinking about lonely things, like his dead mother and other sad stuff. He doesn't have any friends.
He is considering suicide.
He goes on the internet and dials-up (yeah, it's the present but he still has dial-up. Isn't that depressing?) and finds a website that allows you to tip the cops off to drug dealers. It's so very interesting because it's completely anonymous and such a ratfink thing to do.

I got the idea for this when browsing "how much is an eightball of cocaine" and how much it costs. Ironically, I stumbled upon the info on a cop website based in Michigan that actually allows you to snitch on drug users and dealers.
I looked up some Michigan politicians and sent in tips that they were sniffing coke. I'm causing chaos in a state I don't live in. It's funny.

Here is the link so you can do it yourself:
http://www.huntteam.net/AnonymousTip.htm

Anyway, Edward Abbey is so lonely and so bored and so depressed that he decides to submit his own name. He types in "Edward Abbey sells drugs to school kids" and his address and his full name and his height (5'3''), his eyecolor (grey), his weight (213 lbs. [he weighs himself to be accurate]) and finally his birthdate (Dec. 1. 1973).

The next morning, Edward Abbey notices an ivory white van sitting outside his house. He checks periodically and it's always there. It has Michigan plates, (cuz Edward Abbey lives in Michigan) and Edward Abbey realizes that he is being watched. He excitedly pours himself another bowl of soggy cereal and tells all this to Clyde. He feels like a celebrity.

The van is there for a week and then it disappears and this depresses Edward Abbey so he logs on again and rats on himself again. He says, "Edward Abbey has a drug den in his home." The next morning the van is there and Edward goes to the grocery store and the van follows him. As he shops, he notices that a shady young man is following him. This guy pushes a shopping cart and occasionally loads in random objects, but they're not things a man like him would buy. This is a clue the guy is shady because a normal man does not have tampons and saurkraut and Good Housekeeping in his cart.

Edward Abbey realizes he is being watched and he is ecstatic about the attention. He looks in his cart and realizes that he has the same old gross cereal and cat food and some hemmerhoid lotion. He decides that he needs to impress the shady character browsing the same aisles but picking up Tabasco sauce and kid-sized toothbrushes. So Edward puts the cereal back and buys a nice, big steak. He buys A1 steak sauce and a set of steak knives and potatoes and chicken stuffing and carrots. He blows half his disability check on this and the cashier flirts with him. Edward has never felt so good.

But then, in the parking lot, he realizes the shady guy and the ivory white van won't follow him much longer unless he has some real evidence against himself. So he pushes his cart of groceries past his car and down an alley and finds a homeless man.

He tells the man, got any cocaine? And the homeless guy laughs and says sure. And Edward Abbey asks how much it'll cost and the homeless guy says $200. Edward gives him the other half of his disability check and takes the eightball of cocaine and stuffs it in his pocket. Down the alley, he notices the shady guy duck back. Good. He was watched.

And Edward pushes his cart back down the alley and gets into his car and goes home. The white van follows him. Edward cooks his meal and talks to Clyde and Clyde purrs. Edward burns half the meal, but sets it on the table anyway. He removes the pistol, which is still sitting there and he looks at it and feels foolish that he ever felt suicidal. This is the best day of his life. It's like he has guests. He replaces the pistol with the eightball.

Then he sits down and eats and watches TV. When he turns to the six o clock news, he notices his mug on TV. He beams! He's famous! Maybe like Andy Warhol once said, he's only famous for fifteen minutes, but that's still something. He turns up the volume and listens to the anchor talk and talk and talk about . . . HIM! Edward is crying tears of joy. He eats his steak and his stuffing and his mashed potatoes and they're mostly burned, but it's the best meal he's ever had.

Then he hears a million sirens and the cops pull up and the police copters and the news copters are buzzing overhead, louder than a hurricane and he hears a cop scream through a megaphone, "Edward Abbey, come out with your hands on your head!"

This is Edward's big moment. He doesn't know what to do, so instead of panicking, he packs up the leftovers from his meal and puts them in Tupperware and labels them and puts them in the freezer. Clyde is freaking out and clawing up furniture. Edward is crying again, but not tears of joy.

The cops yell at him again. "We know you're in their!" Edward realizes his mistake. He realizes this is the end. That he can't go to prison. He was already living in a jailcell his entire life. He's already had his last meal. He's already on death row.

So Edward takes Clyde into the bedroom and he brings the pistol. I know, this is horrifying, I thought, but it has to happen. It just HAS to. It makes the story anti-climatic if poor, depressing Edward doesn't destroy some outside part of himself. So he does. He points the barrel at Clyde and pulls the trigger.

The cops hear the shot and start firing. Edward is safe, however. He goes to the front door and he opens it and he shoots and that's the end. The scene ends with only the silohette of Edward passing through the door and the extreme brightness of all the spotlights trained on him. Trained on HIM. And we watch Edward crumple to his knees.

And that's the whole story I thought of last night. I know it starts out depressing and ends depressing, but maybe that's okay because our main character learns something, he grows and he steps outside himself a little bit. Only he did it the wrong way, and maybe this serves as a moral for you; don't blame yourself. Instead, free yourself.

And maybe you think it's an excellent storyline despite many of the obvious faults. Maybe it's just like one of those movies. Maybe it's perfect idea. Maybe you're telling me, "why don't you have time to write that? You have to!" Well, maybe I just did.

Day Fifty Three: Soothsayer

Cutter, the reporter that left, is a curse to the paper, but a blessing to me. The other reporters have to pick up his slack but that means I get to do stories no one else has time for.

Today I spent my shift writing a feature story on the blueberry economy of New Hampshire. As boring as it was to write, I loved every moment. I had to make a dozen phone calls and quickly got used to calling strangers. The finished product probably blows, is probably worse than the most hideous of my feature stories, but I don't care. I liked the feeling so much. I wasn't just typing up press releases, like I have been.

I was so excited I made myself some coffee and poured in chocolate sprinkles and a maraschino cherry. It tasted amazing, especially that cherry which stews in the coffee and absorbs all the creamer and sugar and chocolate. Best taste ever.

I've become friends with everyone in the office, I make jokes and I love it. Vickie Guay, who sits behind me, is such a pleasure to work with. She has a great sense of humor and often makes me laugh. She was a great help on the blueberry coverage.

Gail, who sits in front of me, is pretty ballsy. She calls the mayor of some town and swears like a sailor at him, in a joking way. Gail has a voice like someone chewing gum and different syllables pop and snap, and I can't listen to her without amusement. She also reads Hunter S. Thompson, which surprises me and also doesn't.

She shared Hells Angels with Geoff, a kid with greasy blond hair and a sense of humor that instantly reminds me of Beck and my old friend Waid. Geoff was the one that covered the stolen snake story two weeks ago.

But then there is the Soothsayer. She is an old police scanner who sits in the corner and we get every single bit of chaos that is happening in this state. Sometimes, she has a sense of humor but today, she is a harbinger of doom and decay. Today, she tells the story of a man who was working under his car, when the jack slipped out and crushed him. Crushed his ribcage and possibly his heart.

Gail perked up at the news and said the address aloud. "That's just around the corner. Alright, who's going?" Someone, probably an editor said, "Take the rookie." Gail looked at me and said, "No. You do not want to go." She says, "You'll have to do this kind of traumatic work eventually. Put it off as long as possible."

Geoff ended up covering the story and took pictures on his digital camera. He was told to get back and was nearly arrested but got the scoop. The victim was dead on arrival and still, staring at those images didn't phase me as much as my sick fascination with the story itself.

Tomorrow it will be front page news.

Things You Can Ponder

SEX
DEATH
GAMES
INFINITY
MARRIAGE
PARTIES
WORK
RELIGION
FOOD
CHILDREN
GHOSTS
NOTHING

ALL OF THE ABOVE:

Mateo Falcone

Today is September 11th, may we never forget. To reflect on the tragedy of life, I took a walk through a graveyard, something I have never done before. As I walked, I took a few pictures, read the headstones, and looked around for anyone who may get mad at me for being there. I only saw one other person the whole trip. She didn't bother me. The cemetery was quiet, relaxing and refreshing.

Around the point when I meandered into the "Veteran's Section" I started to feel sick with stupidity.

I often joke around with the concept of death, but this was no laughing matter. I looked all around me, at all the bright, fake, plastic flowers and thought to myself, "what is this? Some kind of garden party?". I could not stop thinking, "six feet below me is a box of wasted meat".

Perhaps I am too cynical. Ha, perhaps. But maybe I just see through the triviality of it all. Why all this pretending and ritual?
I read a headstone from 1859 that said "Gone, but not forgotten". I seriously doubt anyone remembers this person, because anyone who would is buried a few feet from him.
This really doesn't make sense to put blocks of stone over fertilizer. The body should not be buried, it should be recycled. For one reason only: the body DOES NOT matter. It's the soul, the heart, the mind. Those are the essential portions of a human being. If those don't last forever, than good riddance to the person who misused their potential.

The greatest example of this is Jesus Christ. If he really was the Messiah, and the body really mattered, he could have lived on Earth forever, instead of "going to prepare a house for you". But he didn't. Because it doesn't matter. His spirit lives on in us. His wisdom is passed down. His heart is practiced. . . sometimes.

Essentially death doesn't even matter anymore. It used to, 2000 years ago. And that's how old and stupid and primitive funerals and burying people and all that shit is.

Let me be clear: I don't think death itself is trivial. Just how you handle it afterward. And the only reason death is even slightly important is because it is consequentially irreversible. There's nothing to fear about it and never a solid, good reason to commit murder. Not even in self defense. I believe if you kill someone in self defense, it's the same as stealing to keep from starving. Excusable, justified maybe, but still not right.

There is nothing very poetic or majestic about the graves I saw today. Nothing honorable or memorable. From what I read, the most important thing any of those people did in their lifetimes was exist and die. They didn't write books or save children or do anything great.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they did. But then their legacy would not be found in the graveyard anyway. So then it's redundant and trivial.

The most majestic thing I saw in the graveyard today was a falcon. I've never seen one before. They are incredible, vicious birds of prey. My heart skipped a beat when it flew down in front of me. I knew it was only in the graveyard to hunt the mice that lived here. The ones that dug deep underground and ate the worms in the soil. The worms and maggots that burrowed through the soft wood and velvet cushion, deep into the cold, grey flesh of that meat.

Even in a place filled with death and serenity, there is life and chaos and war.

My point of this is: DON'T BURY ME. I do not want to become another stone in a sea of stones. First, donate my organs to someone who will need them, then cremate me or sell my body to science. The point of this blog is: You should do the same. Let go of ancient empty rituals and forget about being remembered. If you can't do that through your influence, you can't do it through the ground.