Tuesday 3 June 2014

The Dolores O'Riordan Diet

The Machinist
Brad Anderson
Paramount
2004

Review by Rory A.A. Hinton

The Machinist



















Brad Anderson's The Machinist is a cinematic commentary on the Kafka-nightmare, with The Castle doing indirect duty as the narrative vehicle. After several viewings the subtlety of the symbolism can't be missed. Then again, maybe I am idiot enough not to have picked up on this on first viewing. Yes, Dostoyevsky makes an appearance, along with Christian Bale who, to prepare for this role, stuck to the Dolores O'Riorden diet: coffee and cigarettes. Is guilt overrated? Watch the film and find out. Then watch it again.

Sources
Brad Anderson. The Machinist. Paramount. 2004.
Franz Kafka. The Castle. Wordsworth Classics. 2009.
Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Idiot. Penguin Classic. 2004.
The Cranberries. To The Faithful Departed. Island. 1996.

Thursday 1 May 2014

Faster Thrill Pussycat

by Rory A.A. Hinton

Faster



















Isolation is the indispensable component of my happiness. When I have guests in my home I feel strangely estranged. I keep my entertaining down to a minimum. Above the front door of Plato’s Academy was a sign that read: “Let No One Enter Here Who Is Ignorant Of Geometry.” If I had a sign above my front door it would lack the last five words. I have nothing against the grammar of space. What I am against is the violation of my isolation. I can happily work a room when I want to. Isolation does not imply misanthropy. I am just a person who has figured out how I want to live.
     People have asked me if I was lonely living on my own. I have told them I am not. I have said that I am alone, but not lonely. They told me that I definitely needed a pet. This told me that they did not understand the distinction between alone and lonely. I have told them that I don’t want a pet. They thought I was cold and callous. I am warm and comforting, at least when I choose to be. I just felt that having a pet would be twos-a-crowd for me. 
     My warmth and comfort are freely given to those I love. And I love my kids. I would do anything for them: from reluctantly creating a FB profile because they wanted me to be socially mediated (G+ for me), to the point of agreeing to look after a cat. That is what I call fatherly love. Lucky for me they are wise beyond their years. 
     At first Levi kept to himself. Most days he would stay under my bed. That was fine with me. I left him alone. Giving him his space made him brave. He began to stick his head out from under my bed skirt. Just his head. He slowly looked around. He would see me looking at him looking. He would disappear under my bed again. 
     Cats need nourishment. I always make sure he has enough food to eat and water to drink. Cats need to be clean. I always change the litter for him. At first it felt like I was babysitting. I had no emotional connection to this animal. But he began to catch my attention, and create my attachment. 
     The first thing I noticed was his independence. I knew cats did things their way. But what endeared him to me at first was his style. It was stylish of him to seek his own isolation under my bed. He found his own place. It was stylish of him to break that isolation every so often with a black skirt. How fashionable of him. And it was stylish of him to pull off being alone, but not lonely. He is intensely present, yet independently absent. It was like a feline version of hiding in plain view. Then it hit me. Levi and I had something in common. He has a life to lead. So do I. Together we live in interdependent isolation.
     Levi has a routine to wake me up in the morning. He sits near the foot of my bed and meows until I lift up my head. When I lay my head down on the pillow again he runs into the sun-room. He jumps up on my black leather chair and starts scratching the glass window on my bedroom sliding door. After he does that he jumps up on my bed, walks slowly up to my face, and then gently touches his closed mouth on my lips. That is my cue to get up and make him breakfast. I fill his water dish and give him Friskies, but not before I give him a treat in the kitchen. When he has had his fill he gives me a satisfied meow and walks away. 
     He is intelligent enough to know what he wants. And I am kind enough to give it to him. He is smart enough to know he needs me, and trusting enough to bite the hand that feeds him. Our morning routine lasted a long time. Now he does something different. The other morning I was in bed with my eyes closed. I felt a tickle near my ear. I heard him gently meowing in my ear. Levi is learning about the practical benefits of aural fixations.

Thrill


















    
     I was in my study writing. I had not seen Levi for hours. I heard a strange noise coming from the bathroom. I had my phone in my hand (who doesn't?) and got up to see what it was. I walked into the bathroom. That he stayed still on the toilet paper he had nicely unrolled, while I took his picture, indicates his penchant for posing. After I took the picture he galloped frantically out of the bathroom. Curiosity thrills this fast pussycat. After the cat left I turned around and looked down the hall that leads to my bedroom. Follow the white rolled road. 

Pussycat


















         
     It has taken me many months to realize just how loving it is having Levi here. And the love comes through the combination of his independence, his intelligence, and his curiosity. He will pounce on a paper clip and toss it around with his paws. Then he will run off as quickly as he pounced, digging his claws into my carpet with each stride. He bounces off walls trying to capture a beam of light. He lunges at birds that fly by my sun-room window. In the midst of this frenetic activity he stops on a dime and grooms himself with precision. Then he is off running again like a madman around and around my condo, stopping every so often to chase his tail. He hides inconspicuously, and jumps out at me unexpectedly as I walk by his hiding places. The space under my bed is one of them. Looking back I can see that he was obviously doing reconnaissance work during his first few days here, preparing for future attacks. So much for seeking isolation because he was shy. He was establishing his strategic independence by being coy.
     He quietly walks up to me, jumps on my lap, settles himself in by gently pushing my thighs with his two front paws, and rubs his head against my chest as he prepares for his cat nap. This might be his instinctive way of establishing his territoriality. No matter. He affirms me. 
     ADD is an instance of order without predictability. At least this is how my brain processes information. I know there is an order at work in making sense of the onslaught of so much information vying for my attention. And yet there is no predicting what I will focus on next. This is why I have so many projects on the go. ADD is the unpredictability. OCD is the order. Levi is the living embodiment of both for me. How warm. How comforting.

Sources
Cat food.
Toilet paper. 

Saturday 5 April 2014

The Vow

by Rory A.A. Hinton

And Then There Were Three



















For Father Louis

"Rory picked himself up and looked down: his hands were full of gravel and blood ... things were different now and he didn't know what to do about it." (Anna Jacobs)

He was on the side of a country road, sweating. It was unseasonably hot that night. His car was parked. He left his right blinker ticking. He had tried to determine what compelled him to pull his car over as he sat in silence listening to the metronome. “Philosophy begins in wonder,” he said as he pulled back the parking break and opened the car door.
     With his head in his hands, and his hands in the dirt, he whispered his vow to the ground. He listened to the cooling pings of the hot engine beside him, and the condensation from the air-conditioner dripping onto the edge of the pavement. He was prostrate, but not religious. He thought of a picture he once saw of Thomas Merton in a book doing something similar in a monastery on a shining marble floor. He leafed through it once at a garage sale years ago when he was interested in self-improvement. 
     A car drove by as he rose to his knees. It did not stop, but it did look familiar. He squinted and tried to identify the driver. All he saw was a rounded shadow offset by the headlights of an oncoming car. As he watched the car drive away into his small town, he noticed the fenced off country lot from across the road. It was covered over by old trees, wild grass, farm equipment long since abandoned, and a broken concrete remnant that once served as a foundation. 
     He remembered the morning he heard the news that the three story farm house on that lot went up in flames. He eventually saw a picture of it in the local newspaper when the first news report was published. The least that most knew was that the oldest son of a family of five set fire to their house, killing his father and younger brother late one summer evening in August. His mother and sister were on a vacation in Northern Ireland and were not expected home for another week. Despite a police investigation, no final report detailing the motive and the method of the crime was released to the public. Everyone in town felt the agony of not knowing. There was no closure.  
     “I wonder how well my kids knew James,” he thought, as he sat beside the three of them during the memorial service in the local United Church. James was the younger brother who had caught the father’s attention, to the fatal chagrin of Charles his older brother. He looked at his kids and wondered if showing parental favouritism was a dishonest virtue or an honest vice. He did not know. He loved all three equally, in his fashion. 
     By the time of the memorial there was conjecture about the why and the how, but nothing solid. Information was gained second hand from volunteer fire fighters who fought the blaze, and from the local police who spoke off the record over dinner with friends. The three surviving members of the family said nothing.
     As the service began the oldest son was brought out in a wheel chair. He was covered in white bandages. His mother and younger sister walked behind him at a noticeable distance. They ignored him with civility. They both spoke at the service. The daughter first, then the mother. They shared words of daughterly love and maternal kindness. This was not the time for forensics. Charles was neither acknowledged nor mentioned. He sat still, mummified. 
     A neighbour woke up to the sound of a raging storm. She looked out her window and saw the house on fire that summer night. She ran across her yard in her nightgown and saw Charles standing by the side of the house, delirious. “I need to put the fire out,” he said as he held a green garden hose in his hand. By this time the house was engulfed in flames. The neighbour took the hose out of his trembling hand and threw it on the ground. She grabbed him by the shoulders and screamed at him. “Charles, what happened?! Where is your father?! Where is James?!” With Thalesian indifference Charles kept mumbling, over and over again, “Why is there nothing rather than something?”
     After the house had been watered down to its skeletal frame, the firefighters found the charred remains of James and his father sitting side by side on the floor behind a bathroom door. They were burned dead, not alive. The autopsy confirmed that they were killed before the fire was set.
     “I wanted them to be together,” Charles told the police from his hospital bed, “they were always together.” Charles informed the hospital staff that he did not want any visitors. Gossip spreads like wild fire in small towns. Soon, Charles was on everyone’s lips. What price recognition? 
     He thought of the vow he had made just moments before these memories came and went, a vow to live a life of moderate poverty, relative obscurity, physical distance, and virtual silence. It had possessed him long enough. What better place than this to exercise it, while looking across the road at a nothing that was once a something? And what better time than now, as the something that was once his happy life was slowly turning into nothing through the horror of denied betrayal? 
     “The world is a rotten place,” he thought. Best to leave it alone by being alone. Alone, yes, but never alone, not really. A man still tries to befriend his broken places. He stood beside his car and brushed the dirt off his clothes. “Philosophy may begin in wonder,” he thought, “but it does not end there. It ends here.”

Sources
Anna Jacobs. Rory's Story: A Teenager's Story Of Loss. Hinton House Publishers Ltd. March 30, 2013.