Menu
When I can't sleep, which is often, I read, or I read about books I haven't read yet or I order things online that remind me of a childhood I did not like. A blanket with a 70s floral pattern in avocado green that matches a suitcase I bought at a Salvation Army for 25 cents. Well actually my then boyfriend bought it. I was 17 and obsessed with anything from the 60s or 70s. I never had money then and used to walk to work at a McDonald's about 3 miles, in Maine, in the winter. The suitcase is long gone and so is the high school boyfriend and just like my childhood, the teenage memories with the boyfriend are not happy. How disturbing the mind is that one can reminisce over a pattern, or a taste, to hold on to the past and have roots where there are none.
Anyway, I recently discovered that David Duchovny writes novels and apparently has for awhile. Every year I devoutly watch all 218 episodes of The X-Files. I have watched Californication mainly because it was somewhat based on Bukowski and Duchovny's own troubled history as a sex addict. I prefer geeking out with Fox Mulder, though, and did not want to tarnish my memories of sitting in front of the television when I was 15 and imagining a world where I could find answers to the unknown. When I was really young I wanted to be a farmer because I loved animals and big red barns. Then when I was still a child but a little bit older I wanted to own a coffee shop where all the waiters and waitresses wore coffee cup hats and pink aprons. I was obsessed with Twin Peaks at the time and I think it had to with the constant references to cherry pie and good coffee. Then I wanted to be a writer, write stories about escaping to other worlds. I could see that there had to be something beneath everything or above everything; that where I was at wasn't it. There are glimpses in everyday life that I regret missing. I can remember them but they are grey when they should be in color. Sometimes it was fear, or sadness, or just looking down at my feet when I was walking instead of looking up and around. But then again, when you look down you can find snails, and four leaf clovers, and rocks shaped like hearts. This was supposed to be a book review for David Duchovny's Miss Subways and it was a great book. It reminded me how small one can make their world, how we can sleepwalk through living and need a push to wake up and imagine something better. I remember going to this play with my grandparents. It used to be well known but probably isn't anymore because no one wants to know anything anymore, especially pain and loss. The play was Our Town and it's about someone who dies. A girl who is quite young. In the production I saw, the performers were all sitting in metal folding chairs staring straight ahead in either Victorian Era or some other period costumes from the 1800s. A girl has just died and she is confused and all the others are there to guide her. They tell her she is allowed to go back and revisit a memory before she moves on and they warn her not to pick a big memory. Obviously it is a lot more eloquent then I am describing. She thinks it through and she picks one of her childhood birthdays. The others fall silent and we are transported back to her memory. At first it is wonderful but then she realizes she sees everything differently. Instead of just her own experience, she sees omnisciently and she also sees every small detail that was more important about that day. It is heartbreaking. It was some local high school production and I was weeping in the audience as if I had died myself. I plan on reading the rest of David Duchovny's novels and everything else except for appliance manuals. I plan on trying to remember the small things because in the end the big things are distracting.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMichelle Tinklepaugh Archives
April 2023
Categories |