Synecdoche, New York

I saw the above recently.
One reviewer found and finds the film so depressing he always needs to drink after viewing it though I suspect he needs a drink regularly and not just after Kaufman movies. I didn’t find Synedoche, NY depressing, sobbed at the end the first time which was quite lovely because it sneaks up on you and though there’s no sneaking up on you the second time there is the awareness of why it would set your tear ducts to pour.


Whereas Synecdoche depresses some viewers I found it life affirming because we’re all building a city with our cast of characters, recasting the role of this person or that, denying that this or that person are even on scene with us. Sometimes walling up years; maybe because we’ve already seen everything that vignette has to offer or maybe because we just don’t want to see it again and would rather forget some rooms because we ourselves weren’t truly there.
Yet another player plays the role of someone we’re reminded of, some loss or gain in and as an aspect of someone so pinnacle we’ll recast them again and again for shoes left unfilled waiting to be tripped over, risen above or slipped right into like fuzzy slippers...and sometimes too, quite oddly one drops suddenly from somewhere and then are shoes begin dropping from every which where.


The past and present and future are always onstage together. If we could rewrite, if we could just see it clearly as it was, see precisely where we were or are or am could we do it better this time, next time; are we truer now?

In a Kaufman’s reality there’s that memory of you, how you coded yourself and decoded someone else, each always a bit off the mark, not realizing, not knowing but feeling surely you have a clue- except for where you don’t and the mystery isn’t who died or how they died but how did you arrive at this very moment? And who is this that I’ve cast just as much as they’ve cast themselves to be right here right now?


And then, there you are again- same scene, same characters?

Well not entirely the same because you’re not really you anymore, your cells have died away and been replaced and died away and been replaced and then of course there is the matter of time. Time, the illusion made real in wrinkles, and coughs and that first liver spot? Or is it a mole I’ll need to watch and measure?


As with every meaningless and grave decision we make we seldom know which is which. “Millions and millions of strings” all attached to other strings of choices and decisions- each, be they grave or meaningless are tied to the invisible strings of others. We don’t see our choices when we’re making them, not really. But upon review we find a Sam in the background watching us watch ourselves, taking notes as we sleep through conversations we’ll have some day but seldom do.
Meanwhile, life writes more and more and more.


I look in my memory and knowing me I know the moment happened. And knowing me I most certainly brushed it off? Was too afraid or unsure to ask?

The moment surely happened when one of those strings, one of those insignificant decisions was decided in a request I didn’t make. So right now, this minute I am Caden Cotard and I’ve decided to go back, way back, back to that day, that split second. I couldn’t direct someone to build a set for that moment because I don’t know precisely where it happened. I can’t find what the weather was like, or what you or I were wearing. Or what I might have said instead or where I stood or sat or laid when the thought surely flitted across my brain. I can’t find the moment but I know it happened. I didn’t log it maybe because I didn‘t register it as important? but then again maybe because I did.


Line:
Could/May I call you Henry instead?

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Recent Read(ing/s)

Recognizing Emotions
Telling Lies
Why We Love
Contact
Marcelo in the Real World
The Seven Lessons Of Chaos

fail-(safe/soft) 1

- On schaven.org havensc.org someone had once commented they'd be happy to read about how J got his start in business: J got his start in business with a check from a dead woman.

-Loan contract and check drafted by the probate attorney of record in Louisville, Ky for The Estate of M. Martha Alford.

- Approximately two years later a restraining order was issued against J in Charleston, SC after he was tried in absentia for a crime originating in the Colombia area violating both federal/FCC and SC state statutes.

- Another Ttwo years later, an old customer from West Colombia showed up at Starbucks giving me a heads up: J knows where you live.


- Three years after his conviction I presume J lawfully had his SC record expunge. At the time of his conviction and the subsequent issuance of a restraining order he told more than one person he would be doing precisely that.

- Ten years later following a TBI and amnesia I posted a question on schaven.org in 2008 regarding “the mysterious J…” “I’d be happy to read” was the comment that sat there for nearly a year from an unknown author. In relationship to all of this - perhaps its just a coincidence, perhaps not.
But before all that I used to use a phrase I picked up from Darcy Meadows at CofC "Cool Beans".



schaven.org as a site has since disappeared over the last two weeks prior to which the "happy to read comment" being deleted and replaced for a short time by a comment from some who identified himself as "patrick" (or perhaps more aptly pa/trick) "...he was like an older brother to me".


Following those alterations, and schaven.orgs seeming disappearance, I had posed a question about classes on "woman hood" at I(man(u(el(le) church in Louisville KY in regards to the language adopted in the early to mid 1990's. Language which prompted former President Jimmy Carter to leave the denomination because of the core philosophy of male superiority domination over women edorsed by the Southern Baptist's Council, an arm of which J had found himself a happy home while he was allegedly still in SC. Having known J I wondered what his chosen church would offer his wife should the copy I read have been a quick courtship followed by an ambush style proposal. That's how I had read J's copy, having gotten to know him much more than I would have and did prefer.


After posing the question/s regarding language and core philosophy of "womanhood" I received a reply via email, perhaps coincidentally, from Mrs. J.


Perhaps not all coincidentally.

"I'd be happy to read..." Failsafe 1-10 are/will be the reply- should he decied to make good on an old promise- well obviously I've decided to leave a trail.


Supposedly J is a changed man- in which anything I could truly state would and could only be points on which to testify to that change.But so far, so far its looking like the same old J to which I'd say: if "dead puppies" are still what you think about during sex- you might to talk with someone about that. Ron Fullerton perhaps as such associations are kinda' twisted.
See that's what I always liked about Henry, he liked women.


Liking sex and liking women aren't the same thing.