Lucky

 

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Now that I have an inconvenient medical condition, I think about what I did to cause it. I smoked for fourteen years, knowing that it was a terrible thing for me, knowing that Dad died of lung cancer, as did several of his brothers and sisters. I think about eating badly, and exposure to all kinds of pesticides and chemicals and god knows what over the years.

Also, being superstitious, I think about all the taboos I’ve broken: all the salt I’ve spilled without throwing a few grains over my shoulder, all the ladders I’ve walked under.

Mostly I think guiltily of all the people I've been unpleasant to, or actually hurt, either accidentally or on purpose. (Of course I have. You have too. But we’re talking about me, not you.)

But I have had very much happiness in this life – more than I deserve, really. Partner is largely responsible for much of that. But I was lucky to grow up in a place that was as beautiful as Washington state; lucky to go to a funky Catholic-liberal college like Gonzaga in the crazy 1970s; lucky that my first city was Spokane, an easy-to-navigate place that wasn’t at all threatening; lucky to get into Brown for grad school (though I threw it over after a year); lucky to find my way to Providence, my dear dowdy hometown for thirty-five years now; lucky to get into the Peace Corps, and meet all kinds of interesting people, American and Moroccan and British and Tunisian, some of whom still keep in touch with me; lucky after that to work at Brown University, in a job that has mostly been very good for me, and to work alongside people whom I have grown to love and respect.

And then there’s Partner.

I cannot even tell you what he means to me. We met in 1995, and I knew as soon as I saw him that I probably loved him. Does that sound silly? He tells me that he felt the same way, and I respect him too much to tell him that I have a hard time believing that anyone could ever love me at first sight. At any rate, we were living together within a few years. We moved to our present residence in 2002 – a nice little apartment, just right for the two of us. I’ve grown to love Partner’s family – his two sisters and their families – and I think of them and love them as my family, just as I feel about my own family back in Washington.

Partner and I have grown older together. We’ve traveled together. We’ve been angry with each other, and reconciled. We’ve been sick, and taken care of each other. We shop for groceries together, and go to work together in the morning.

I’d be lost without him.

To paraphrase Frank Herbert: My life has been mostly (undeservedly) sweet. But Partner has been the sweetest thing in it.

No matter what happens from here on, I consider myself very lucky.

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David Lynch's "Dune"

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Yesterday morning Apollonia greeted me with: “Ah!  Third-level Guild Navigator!  Have you just folded space from Ix?”

 

 

I smiled serenely.  “Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam!” I said.  “Did you bring your little box of pain?”

 

 

And then we both cackled demonically.

 

 

Now, if you know what the above gibberish means, I give you a gold star.  You are probably laughing too.

 

 

For the rest of you:

 

 

There’s this movie called “Dune,” based on the classic science-fiction novel of the same name by Frank Herbert.  The movie came out in 1984, and it starred about a hundred people.  It’s set in outer space in the far future.  It was directed by David Lynch (of “Twin Peaks” and “Blue Velvet”).  It is one of the most (you should pardon the expression) unearthly movies ever made.  I first saw it projected on a bedsheet behind the Marine Corps House in Tunis in 1985, under the North African stars, and it made a walloping impression on me, and not a day passes that I don’t think of some odd image or line of dialogue from it.

 

 

So what’s so great about it?

 

 

-        Its dialogue.  Spacey, elliptical, almost coded.  It’s as if you’re overhearing a conversation in something that’s almost but not quite English. 

-        Its costumes.  They're a melange (sorry!) of everything from Victorian ballroom attire to Bedouin robes to something resembling 1960s Carnaby Street style, not to mention all kinds of desert-planet sportswear.

-        Its non-reliance on special effects.  The special effects here aren’t much more elaborate than the ones you see in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” made almost twenty years before.  All of the strangeness comes from the sets, and the dialogue, and the costumes, and the acting.  Brad Dourif gives instructions to a group of killers, making odd swooping hand-gestures as he speaks: are the gestures meaningful?  People float through the air, laughing manically: is this normal?  Anyway, you can be absolutely certain that you’re not watching “Gold Diggers of 1933.”

 

 

Apollonia tells me that she has seen a much longer cut on BBC America.  This makes sense: the movie as released, long as it was, was choppy and confusing (which, strangely, adds to its charm.)  (I just read online that David Lynch hates the longer cut and has disowned it.  Naturally.)

 

 

So what is it about this movie that makes it so fascinating? 

 

 

It is a pure ballet of surreal images and ideas, graceful and very sure of itself

 

 

It is alternately violent and serene, and sometimes even funny.

 

 

It has extended scenes in which people ride giant worms.

 

 

And it features Sting in a Speedo with wings (see above photo).

 

 

How can you not rush right out and see it?

 

 

And, kids: tell ‘em the Kwisatz Haderach sent you.

 

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