Everything worth fighting for.
The spoken introduction to the film ‘American Beauty’.
"My name is Lester Burnum.
This is my neighbourhood.
This is my street.
This is my life. I'm 42 years old.
In less than a year, I'll be dead.
Of course, I don't know that yet, and in a way, I'm dead already.
Look at me, jerking off in the shower.
This will be the highpoint of my day.
It's all down hill from here.
That's my wife, Caroline.
See the way the handle on those pruning shears matches her gardening clogs? That's not an accident.
That's our next door neighbour Jim, and that's his lover, Jim.
Man, I get exhausted just watching her.
She wasn't always like this.
She used to be happy.
We used to be happy.
My daughter Jane.
Only child.
Jane is a pretty typical teenager.
Angry, insecure and confused.
I wish I could tell her that's all going to pass,
but I don't want to lie to her.
Both my wife and daughter think I'm this gigantic loser,
and they're right.
I have lost something.
I'm not exactly sure what it is,
but I know I didn't always feel so, sedated.
But you know what? It's never too late to get it back".
Dear sports, I’ve started editing out all the superfluous periods of my life. No, really. I've got it down to a good paragraph that I could have achieved over well, er five years max! Yep, deleted all the fiascos, the ill advised and way off the map detours, the procrastination, the dogged determination to succeed which is the most vital step toward utter failure, the incompetence, the naïve cluelessness, the pointless behaviour and the no need to have known parade of people, and not all of them related.
In short, what happens to many people due to the dearth of useful role models and the appalling lack of instructions that never seem to arrive in the same container as one is delivered in. I’ll never forget what my Mother said to me when I was born, “How did you get in there?”
Quick as a flash I said to the Doctor “Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”
My Mother was a charming woman in her stylish combat boots and briar pipe… To tell you the truth, I have zero interest in all the dangerous shams and evil in life that I natter on about all the bleeding time. Like the Clintons, Leftardism, University, Islam, the MSM or the Gestapo. As Captain Hawkeye Pearce said “If war is such a good investment, what happened to my 100,000 shares of Gestapo?” Or as Tim Page stated “It’s a groovy war and the only one we’ve got”. In fact, the current World War IV as Norman Podhoretz has correctly called the "long struggle against Islamofascism", is the one we should meditate on now.
“All failure is a lack of concentration”. Bruce Lee. And we will fail, sports unless we er, focus.
Mathias, in the classic science cheese film 'The Omega Man': “My brethren, our task is nearly complete. He was the last of those who brought the punishment to us. We have cleansed and purged his world. Now we must build…”
Neville: “Build coffins. That’s all you’ll need”.
But no, if I had my way, my focus would be on things like living in a beach shack among the dunes and having languid afternoon bongo and Stratocaster parties, attended by my son and a honey coloured, easy going island girl from the mainland of Japan called my wife. And discussing beautifully crafted melodies, perfect books and baking fruit pies, the filling spilling casually onto a smooth warm stomach and removed by a laughing mouth.
Neville: “At it again, I see? What will it be tonight? Museum of Science? Some library? Poor miserable bastards”.
Not for me the repellent sturm und drang of the monumental boredom and hidea of PC Left Liberalism, Communism and Socialism, Islamism and it’s derivatives. Nope, what for? That’s if I could press a button and it’d all disappear, like the bad dream and parasitical affliction to no good end that they all are. Of course, as they all converge, that’s precisely what will happen, eventually.
Taylor: “It’s Doomsday. The end of the world. Help me!”
Dr. Zaius: “You want me to help you?! Man is evil…capable of nothing but destruction!”
Taylor: “You bloody bastard. Damn you all to Hell”.
But then, that’s not the way it is. Reality is if anything, relentless, eh? And when you least expect it, something ordinary happens. An epiphany for me, is often a sudden and overwhelming reminder of the reality all around us that we take for granted but er, often miss out on. Every moment that I amazingly manage to experience. “Life is more fragile than a single drop of water trembling on the end of a leaf”. Ah, tomorrow I get together with some of Australia’s Conservative bloggers and writers. There’s enough of us to fill at least two mini buses, I think. Yes, I’m looking forward to it, sports.
Taylor: “There is just one reality left; we are here and it is now. You get a hold of that and hang on to it or you might as well be dead”.
Yes, “…we were talking, about the space between us all of illusion, and those who never glimpse the truth, until it’s far too late, and they pass away. Are you one of them?” Within you without you. The Beatles.
Instead of the rumbling darkness that indeed exists, I'd prefer to spend all my time humourously and in worthwhile conversation, digging espresso coffee, John Legend, the Goon Show, Angie Stone doing R&B, Postman Pat, Alicia Keys, motorbikes, Marshall amplifiers, Marvin Gaye, chocolate milk shakes, nudity, dune buggies, Japan, Aretha Franklin, New York, the state of Montana, and sampled dance grooves.
Neville: “That’s where I live. That’s where I used to live. That’s where I’m gonna live and not Mathias, nor his family, nor any other son of a bitch is gonna make me leave”.
I like screaming thunder storms and howling, chugging and grinding end of the world guitar feedback, liquid arpeggios, syncopated rhythms, soul, the funk, making pasta by hand and putting ground pepper on fresh tomatoes, the Western Canon, Steve McQueen and Jesus. Why would I want to think about Islamist freaks and mediocre minded Leftoids who have exactly nothing to offer me but their stupid ignorance, big lies, brainwashed souls and death? But I do think about them… Because I value all the other things, kids.
Taylor: “Do you have any guns?”
Cornelius: “Of course. The best. But we won’t need them”.
Taylor: “Glad to hear it. But I want them anyway”.
It is as they say a cathartic, even a prolonged if subdued moment of epiphany, as I sit on our balcony overlooking the city, with a trusty cup of tea concentrating my mind. With a cup of tea, I can rule my own little world, however cheap it may be. Hey, it’s not so cheap that my brother was made in Hong Kong or anything. Nope, we’re doing pretty fine, but ah, time keeps on slipping into the future…and what kind of future, I can imagine.
Mathias: “One creature, caught. Caught in a place he cannot stir from in the dark, alone, outnumbered hundreds to one, nothing to live for but his memories, nothing to live with but his gadgets, his cars, his guns, gimmicks... and yet the whole family can't bring him down from that, that...”
Zachary: “Honky paradise, brother?”
Mathias: “Forget the old ways, brother, all the old hatreds”.
But enough about Obama and Pastor Wright. What Mark Steyn, Norman Podhoretz, Jonah Goldberg, David Horowitz and many others have empirically shown in their writing will come to be and in fact already is. We are after all, merely ticking the calendar off to our er, destiny. Except for the little detail that in its full bloom, what is coming will be far more terrible than I think I can imagine. We mistake our beautiful and fragile humanity as more permanent than any cool examination may reveal it to be. Our current state is a “…small bright light in the otherwise dark tunnel of history”.
And for all this and precisely this, I get a supreme satisfaction from looking directly into the abyss without falling and describing what I see. Away from the void of the pit, I see the illuminated and eternal truth and human value of family, friendship and a society based on trust and reason. I see all the tools for absolute victory or the flaws for complete defeat. I believe in the former completely. The alternative is not any alternative at all.
Mathias: “See, none of it was real. It was illusion; your art, your science, it was all a nightmare. Now it’s done. Finished”.
Neville: “Lisa!”
Lisa: “Robert you’re evil. I…I…I’m part of the family Robert. I’m sorry. The Family, Robert”.
1 comment:
RIP Chuck.. A good innings.
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