Synecdoche, Bedtime

Mostly relating to the fact that I've done something to my foot that I'm not quite sure - and that an old friend of mine I met near the horses today told me you're just going to want to stay off it (it ain't broken, son).... I've been on a movie marathon. The last of which was Synecdoche, New York.

This film is all over the place. It is mainly based on two things - first, that art (in general) can somehow mirror life and second, a man can face the myriad of things that can build into himself or build around himself to destroy him. It is a kind of arrogance that comes mostly from assuming time travels in a straight line. The opening scene of a clock confirms this. And then, almost as if we're watching dailies - the scenes unfold one after another. A daughter that becames fully tattooed at age four seems to echo a sort of hidden fear - a symbol of the inflammation that spreads across the last part of our life when we can no longer contain the joy of life into things noble and end up talking about the color of our bowel movement - and of course - the color of needles stuck into the skin. A feeble attempt to try to control who we are by controlling what surrounds us.

The way that Synecdoche succeeds is by drawing it out. It would have been a story about a guy who just couldn't get it up - were it not for the fact that the dick goes limp across twenty years. I find it pornographic that a woman strips and askes for sex as if it were a pepsi. There are not one, but ... don't hold me to this.. four funeral scenes in this film. Sex and death are powerful topics. Synecdoche seems to finally say that Hollywood can't deal with them anymore. I agree.

But fortunately for my daughter and son the last few scenes stripped out much of the sex (always a complication for little ones) and left them with priests shaking their fist at the sky and wondering what life is all about. Not a bad exercise for a little kid to go through every now and then. I caught my son running by from his now-nightly excursions into craisglist to try to find a new trampoline, and he , my daughter and I watched the final scenes.

Yesterday (the last elements of his special day) I bought him a story that he wanted to read about a gun (an old musket from the revolutionary war). He had it in his bed, and somehow it dropped somewhere so while we were looking for it, I played with the kittens - that are now sleeping under his bed. I laughed a little and decided secretly I will name one of the kittens Sybil Vane. Just because it's bad luck in the Jewish faith to name someone after someone alive. I know thats what my lawyer brother did to me - if you didn't catch him naming his son after my grandfather. Lawyers are a rare breed. They're like college professors. They deserve the very best in Vodun. And , of course, worming medication.

Not finding the book. It was time for a bedtime story. My son said it has to begin in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It must be told from the perspective of a Cucumber. He must travel to Mexico. And then, from there to Iraq. He must travel to the +end+ of Mexico and then back, and meet a girl there who will sell ice cream. Ok. Got it. Oh yeah, and there's a message in her purse. He has to read it.