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Rented ‘Night of the Iguana.’ I got the plot wrong before: Shannon is tied up after trying to commit suicide by swiming ‘to China.’

Also a documentary called ‘Tennessee Williams’ South,’ which is OK, but Williams remains opaque throughout. A good overview of his work, though, with readings from select plays.

Also two Werner Herzog films: ‘The White Diamond’ and ‘The Wild Blue Yonder.’ Unwatched as yet.

Don Duncan talks about growing up in Seattle during the Depression.

Referenced here because I intuit that some of my readers will be interested.

Completely unrelated: Lego has a new thing called Lego Factory. You design a model using software, send the plan to Lego, and they send you a box filled with the requisite pieces. The toy equivalent of print-on-demand.

Do you want another 9/11?

These guys do.

In short: They’re terrorists. I’ll say it: Stu Bykofsky and John Gibson are terrorists. Recall, if you will, that Timothy McVeigh believed that by bombing the OKC federal building he would spark off the revolution he desired. These guys are saying that our country would be united if we were attacked again. Tell me: What’s the difference?

Edge people are, of course, people on the edge. They’re people who are desperate, people who might use you up if given a chance, narcissists, addicts, users, broken souls. In short: People who need to heal.

I’ve encountered more than a few, and part of what makes me me is that I have an instinct to dive right in, a bit like diving into the deep end of the swimming pool and then resurfacing with an implosive inhalation, awakened again in the light of day.

Sometimes it works out better than other times, obviously. It’s an illusion of mine that I’m the Hanna Jelkes character, from ‘Night of the Iguana,’ who gives forth exchanges like this:

T. Lawrence Shannon: I’m panicking!
Hannah Jelkes: I know that.
T. Lawrence Shannon: A man can die of panic!
Hannah Jelkes: Not when he enjoys it as much as you do, Dr. Shannon.

and my favorite:

Hannah Jelkes: I can’t stand for a person I respect to behave like a small, cruel boy.
T. Lawrence Shannon: And what do you respect in me, miss thin, standing-up, female Buddha?

Tennessee Williams could write ‘em.

Back when I first saw that movie, I identified with both the Shannon and Jelkes characters at the same time. This was the dialogue inside me. While it was still fresh in my mind, I often fantasized about being in the stage play, and tried to figure out which of these two characters I’d more like to play.

But the point here is that I sometimes tread where angels fear, and I don’t really understand this about myself. I think that I’ve been desperate and crazy and alone, and the idea of having a guide through at least some of that is very appealing, even if it’s me. I also think that when people reach the edge (as I have, though not in the sense of being a user, I don’t think), they touch something that’s actually pretty amazing: The reality of being so completely confused by crisis does something to your brain that allows you to see more, pulls you farther… At least, that’s the possibility, and of course it’s doesn’t always work that way. One might say it seldom works that way.

And I think that’s a real shame, because it’s cultural. Alcoholics wander off to AA, which isn’t simply a ‘program,’ it’s actually a subculture. Rehab groups turn into tribes. I’ve met people who talk about whole churches defined by personal crisis, composed of people who find Jesus when there’s nothing else left, and who find forgiveness in the community of the like-wounded. There’s little healing in the culture at large, other than the existence of these ghettoized subcultures; there’s Dr. Phil and Oprah and Prozac, and that’s about it.

I’m being cynical, of course, but I’m trying to make a point here: Just as our society doesn’t deal with death, and just as we don’t want to see the elderly, we also don’t want to be involved in healing. Ultimately, I think, it’s an issue with intimacy of humanity. We’re not ready to see each other (and thus, ourselves) as we really are. But that’s a bigger problem than I want to address here. Certainly one that must be approached sideways.

So it’s back to ‘Night Of The Iguana.’ Shannon is out of control; he’s drinking and acting out and, as he says, ‘spooked.’ He passes out in a hammock. Hanna Jelkes ties him into the hammock so he’s helpless. She guides him through the lizard night of fear and insecurity, and then in the morning he is (somewhat) healed and sees clearly. She can only do this by loving him, by falling in love with him in a way that’s alien to him. And he finally sees that this is what she’s doing, and he grows.

This is the basic shamanic experience. It’s what priests and pastors and ministers are supposed to do. And it’s what is completely missing in our culture at large which part of why we’re neurotic jerks.

I’m not claiming that I’m a spiritual guide while I take my ex-housemate to sort out some of his life. But it’s an ideal I hold, that it’s an obligation to cultivate that possibility.

I pick up the ex-housemate. We go to a storage place. They want $212 move-in. Dude has $80 after the deposit on a tiny, furnished apartment (so tiny, he says, that he can’t actually keep his own stuff there).

We get a storage unit at another place, this time for a $72 move-in, leaving him with $8 to his name.

The unit is so small that he can’t fit in his TV, so we head for the pawn shop. $35, which makes no sense at all given that you can get twice the TV at a thrift store for $20, but there it is. Except he doesn’t have a valid ID card. So I decide to pawn my TV, since I’m legal to drive. The pawn guy hands me $35. Dude owes me $30 from weeks ago.

Getting in the van, I decide to make him sweat, because I’m really sick of carting his sorry ass around. “This about covers what you owe me, doesn’t it?” He has the verbal equivalent of an epileptic seizure: “I’ll pay you fifty when I get settled, I only got eight in my pocket…” Like that. I give him the money and ask him where we’re headed next, and he’s still going on: “I had the three sixty from the deposit and now it’s all gone to the new place and the storage and…” “Yeah, I know, and where are we headed next?” “But I’ll get it to you and I had to pay for the script at the hospital and…” “Where to?” “But I really appreciate what you’re doing…”

It went on like this for a while, actually. Five or six attempts to get him to tell me where to drive him. Finally he told me to take him to the hospital, because they had re-wrapped the wound on his hand wrong. He kept on about the fifty and how appreciative he was and so on. I just wanted him out of my van.

It’s really sad that this series of entries is called ‘Alcoholism.’ Maybe I’ll change them later.

Today: I woke up, drank some coffee, did some stuff while waiting for the ex-housemate to call. He called and said he was waiting for a guy to show up to show him an apartment, which I took as a good sign.

I went out to make some more coffee, and my back went out. So by the time he called again, the large dose of ibuprophen hadn’t yet quite kicked in, and I had to cancel on him.

Today’s been a day of sitting in bed, occassionally popping more pain killers, and watching lots of Popeye cartoons. A few days back I rented the recent Popeye Vol. 1, 1933-1938 DVD set. I’ve seen such brutality today, all day long…

The ex-housemate had to drop by, though because he had left his blood pressure medication in the suitcase in the car. And that’s how it goes.

Today was move-out day for the alcoholic housemate. I offered to help him move his stuff in my van.

His plan: Move his stuff from here to his son’s, and then ‘find a place to stay’ for the night, so he could put his stuff in storage tomorrow.

Which of course means he’s planning to stay at his son’s, but can’t say it out loud.

His son figured it out, though, and while we were driving over, my van full of his stuff, he called and I could hear him yelling at his dad, telling him not to come over. At all. Which means that, rather than adopting another plan, *while driving,* he had to explain that there’s a vast emotional gulf between him and his son, and why that is, and all kinds of rationalizations and blame-shifting and stuff like that. So it was up to me.

“We could just take your stuff to storage now, because that was your plan anyway, right?” A light went on over his head. Of course! Just take it to storage *without going to his son’s!* That could work!

I went to the first storage place that was nearby. There was no way we could unload the stuff before closing, though, so obviously the stuff will stay in my van overnight. I’m the storage unit. This isn’t really a big deal, but of course far from ideal.

And then it came time to figure out where to stay. I took him to the cheapest motel I knew of, and their office was closed. Then, after much deliberation and me doing everything in my power not to offer to put him in a motel, I dropped him at a Starbucks.

He’s officially homeless. He’ll call me tomorrow and I’ll help him with the storage unit, and then we’ll part ways again.

Rule The Web.

Rule the Web contains little-known tips, hard-to-find facts, and easy-to-use techniques, including how to:

Browse recklessly, free from viruses, ads, and spyware
Turn your browser into a secure and powerful anywhere office
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Get the news so fast it’ll leave skidmarks in your inbox
Fire your broker and use the Internet to get rich
Claim your fifteen megabytes of fame with a blog or podcast

I’m giving the shout-out because I read boingboing almost daily, and I wouldn’t mind one day owning this book.

Hey, lookie! Greenwald gets it!

America is plagued by a self-anointed, highly influential, and insular so-called Foreign Policy Community which spans both political parties. They consider themselves Extremely Serious and have a whole litany of decades-old orthodoxies which one must embrace lest one be declared irresponsible, naive and unserious. Most of these orthodoxies are ossified 50-year-old relics from the Cold War, and the rest are designed to place off limits from debate the question of whether the U.S. should continue to act as an imperial force, ruling the world with its superior military power.

Most of the recent “controversies” involving Barack Obama’s foreign policy statements — including his oh-so-shocking statement that it would not make moral or political sense to use tactical nuclear weapons to bomb isolated terrorist camps as well as his willingness to attack Al Qaeda elements inside Pakistan if the Musharraf government refuses (as they did for some time) — were not “controversial” among the Establishment on the merits. They were “controversial” (and “naive” and “irresponsible”) because they breached the protocols and orthodoxies imposed by the Foreign Policy Community governing how we are allowed to talk about these issues.

One thing for which we can thank the Bush administration: They screwed it up enough that Greenwald can say these things legitimately, out in the open, without being reflexively called a conspiracy theorist.