Bulletproof

Remember when you were bulletproof? For me it was years ago--a much shorter version of myself. I commanded my bike every day after school, riding it in full standing position, letting the wheels spin unhindered down steep riverside hills. The soundtrack in my 10-year-old head, Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive," only helped to continue the myth. We lived just miles past Appleton's southernmost developments, where the road turned from concrete to gravel. Dirt that originated under future subdivisions floated in the air and turned the green grass fields just enough of a brown to fit the music--to fit the rider, the badass in bifocals and tube socks.

In these years before I began to analyze, I would sail around all the avenues of south Appleton--Telulah, Calumet, Taft, Carpenter, Roeland, Meadow Grove, Kernan, Gladys, Sylvan, Oneida, Lawe Street hill, College Avenue--solo or with a pack of others also fearless. Even when the necessary brain development began to take hold--thinking about what I should and shouldn't do, weighing consequences, wearing a watch--the urge of flight remained.

Perhaps your unstoppability began at the base of a mountain, playing basketball until the sun turned its top orange-pink. Perhaps you were king of your own mountain on the playground on a Saturday, when you held your own recess. Maybe you fled across a rocky ranch of dirt, building calluses on your feet, soaking them in mud puddles to cool them off.

Wherever you were, however the air smelled on those nights, however the fields felt on your outstretched hands, whatever shapes the clouds took up above, let yourself go back. Let yourself feel the power of fearlessness. It is this force that will create every moment of beauty in your life. Like the one you experience right now my friend....


LV Ray Peak, 04.04.09

Shelter

Sleep beneath a mountain,
and dream of trains and blizzards.
Your traveling companion
will wake you when it's time.

You will see your tent
you've assembled inside this
log cabin, next to a lamp
and a satellite tv.

You'll laugh at your absurdity
of fear--that you needed to
construct one shelter inside of
another. You'll open the
refrigerator and grab what's inside.















I step down onto the asphalt and it is cool in the light evening wind that has picked up tempo. I feel the wind on my bare feet, in my hair, on the crest of my forehead, and on the undersides of my arms. The night looks like day now, sun still high in the air as seven o'clock approaches. Students of mine are playing basketball in the street behind me and to my left, carving out any free space to be kids amongst the snow berms and concrete buildings that still rise above their heads.

I turn to the right, down the slow artery of road that slopes down toward Passage Canal, toward another artery of a more liquid sort, the one that leads to the heart of this ecosystem, Prince William Sound. My hands are in my pockets at first and then they are out, at my side lightly bouncing from front to back. This movement takes place completely on its own, just as the pendulum needs no help once it has been set in motion. As I draw closer to the water, I see Reinaldo Arenas in my thoughts, the persecuted Cuban poet of the 20th century whose biopic Before Night Falls I watched last night. Reinaldo, or rather Javier Bardem in his portrayal, walks on a sidewalk as well, in a shirt similar to mine, surrounded by a hustle and bustle, by women laying with their backs over hoods of cars. It looks warm where he is. It's cool here, and I notice little noise.

When I was living in Eau Claire back in my early 20's I would think of similar movements while walking home with a bag of groceries cradled loosely in one hand--paper, never plastic. I would walk out of Kerm's Grocery with a sack of some produce, chips and salsa, probably a package of Oreo's too. The rectangular bottom of the bag would give just enough in its corners to rest between my arm and ribcage without moving. It would wedge just right and my hand would be free of grasping anything. And although I'm embarrassed to admit it today, I thought of this as the "money" way of walking down the street with a bag of groceries. I told some of my fellow cooks at the "Cam" restaurant about this once. Totally dorky, and so totally me. It just feels good to move the right way.

I near a "t" intersection and turn left. The rail yards stand directly between me and the ocean now. I could take the pedestrian tunnel underneath them, but tonight I feel like staying in full view of the sky. I step around the edges of the last remnants of snow to be melting in the street. A white pickup truck pulls onto the road up ahead, turning towards me. I wave in a style I have adapted over the years, a quick flick of the wrist, two or three fingers out. If you drive a truck and are driving through a rural Alaskan town your hand just seems to do this automatically. Strangely, this is the exact same wave my mom uses as she executes her Buddhist Wisconsin got-my-shit-together smile-beaming walk through life.

Husky - Cam

I'll let Trout take the lead on this one...
He says it all. Pretty much.

Coach Clay's Quote of the Day

"Believe it or not, I can actually draw."

- Jean Michel Basquiat -

Not Dark Yet: A Movie Review

In the last months of the twentieth century, a group of movies came out that shared a common theme of unplugging from society and waking up to a new reality.

Instinct, a mostly unnoticed film based on ideas from the great Daniel Quinn novel Ishmael, looks at the history of our civilization through the eyes of a humbled scientist and gives its characters the freedom to create a better one. American Beauty, the eventual Oscar winner for Best Picture of 1999, follows (very honestly) the results of a white-collar suburbanite's rejection of his life situation. And who could forget Keanu Reeves literally pulling the machines' tubes out of his body in The Matrix, a film that would become the Star Wars of many Generation X-ers' adult years?

Approaching my graduation from college at this time, I was ripe for influences such as these to take hold. Indeed, in August of 2000 I would board a plane at a tiny airport in Appleton, Wisconsin--the place of my upbringing--and days later arrive in a hillside village along the Yukon River in Alaska--the place of my unplugging.

A couple weeks ago, I saw a film from just slightly before this period that also explores plug-pulling and eye-opening, and you know what? Call me nostalgic for the late '90s, but I love a good story that shows a character taking charge of their life by shirking what is "safe", and Dark City (1998) just might be the best of the bunch.

The basic premise goes like this: a man (Rufus Sewell) wakes up one morning naked in a bathtub, only to find out he has a severe case of amnesia, with an added bummer: not only does he have no inkling of his identity or of any past whatsoever, but he also sees a recently slain woman on the floor. Soon enough, he manages to 1) put some clothes on and 2) find out that his name is John Murdoch. Unfortunately, he also finds out that he is a serial killer who has recently murdered six prostitutes, and is therefore being hunted by the local law enforcement (William Hurt).

As if that wasn't enough, John is also being contacted by a disturbing, odd doctor promising answers (Kiefer Sutherland), chased by eerie-looking dudes in trenchcoats, and eats vending machine Jell-O for dinner. To boot, the woman who claims to be his wife (Jennifer Connelly) informs him that she cheated on him. Talk about a guy ready to detach from society.

Of course, this is just the beginning, and it is in the unraveling of his existence that John comes to discover the true nature of Dark City. Likewise, it is in the unraveling of Dark City's existence that John comes to discover his own true nature. Along the way, we are treated to an enjoyable blend of film noir, mystery, science fiction, and philosophy. Imagine Kafka jumping into bed with Hitchcock.

The characters of Dark City are not action hero caricatures. There is courage in their actions, indeed; but only because they are in fact terribly, deathly afraid of their tormentors. The villains in trenchcoats, simply called "strangers", are Nosferatu-like creatures who both look and act more frightening than anything from The Matrix trilogy.

Alex Proyas masterfully directs characters who exist in the night. (His previous film, The Crow, could have been titled "Dark City" as well.) However, this film pays more of an homage to Saturday afternoon adventure matinees. Even the score seems like it is from the '50s.

As Murdoch, the hero who has woken up in a Kafkaesque nightmare, Sewell does just fine. William Hurt gives his detective-on-the-verge-of-cracking-the-big-case a weight and compassion rarely seen in the sci-fi genre. A pre-24 Kiefer Sutherland plays a quirkier character than I thought was in him. And Jennifer Connelly...well let's just say she had me at Labyrinth.

In the end, it's not a precise plot detail or the perfect delivering of a line that causes a film to speak to something inside us. It's the energy behind those details, the reason the story is being told in the first place. It's the connection we feel with the people in the story. Yes, I truly hope none of you have woken up to find a dead prostitute on your apartment floor, but who hasn't wondered about the mysteries of the lights in our sky, the wonders of similar lights in our minds and hearts? Who hasn't felt the urgent need to wake up from something horrible? From something horribly normal? For if we indeed have the power to defeat that which suppresses us, but instead remain in our safe sockets, who's really doing the damage?

Dark City's residents put the pieces of their mystery together, to be sure, but it's what they do with these pieces that give them true victory.