And When the Sky was Opened

A very old woman ran into me at the market today, slammed me in the butt with her cart. She started to cry, and her daughter (about my age) swooped in to rescue her... and I realized that she was what we used to call 'senile'. I guess the acceptable term is now Alzheimer's, that catch-all diagnosis for when the mind goes. I patted her, assured her it was okay. But I was alarmed, because in her distress, I could see myself and what awaits us all.

Buddha told us to meditate on death, and I have.

I once realized the abject terror in the old Twilight Zone episode, "And When the Sky Was Opened" -- was based on the fact that it mirrored our own experience and terror of death. In the show (written by Rod Serling and adapted from a short story by fantasy-genius Richard Matheson), three men come back from a flight into space, and begin to disappear, one by one. The title of Matheson's original story was, fittingly, Disappearing Act.

On the day of their return, the newspaper headline reads "Three Spacemen Return from Crash: All Alive" and then, after a strange chain of events, there are only two. But... there have always been two. The newspaper headline has changed, and now announces: Two Spacemen have returned. It is as if the third astronaut never existed. The two astronauts remaining start to panic, as everyone around them insists, no, there were only two of them, not three. Never three.

At the end, it is James Hutton (father of Timothy) who is the last astronaut left, looking for his suddenly-missing friend, the second astronaut. He then sees the newspaper headline, which now says only ONE astronaut has returned. The expression on his face has remained with me all of my life, ever since seeing this particular Twilight Zone episode as a child. And when I Googled the image, there it was (see above). Obviously, I wasn't the only one.

He knows he is next.

And the show ends with an empty room. None of them have returned from the flight. The camera pans to where their aircraft was. It is gone, too.

My grandmother died in 2004 and my mother died in 2006; it was when my mother died that I realized, I was up next. Maybe not for awhile, one hopes, but up nonetheless. It was no longer a far-away thing that happened to the old people... I was now the old people.

And so it was today, when I saw the old woman in the store, crying and confused. I saw that it was not simply her confusion that made her cry, although it was that, too... it was that she was afraid. I saw James Hutton all over her face. And then, I saw myself.

As I comforted her, I hoped someone would do the same for me.

~*~

Speaking of which, a sweet voice of my childhood is gone. Let us take a moment to remember Scott McKenzie, who recorded John Phillips' folkie-pop hippie anthem, "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)".

I remember being in San Francisco, hearing the song and feeling oddly displaced, because of course the San Francisco I had moved to was not the one in the song, although it had always inspired me. I had moved to Kool and The Gang era San Francisco, the end of the disco era. I remember falling asleep under an open window and starry sky in Oakland and hearing it there too, thinking how odd it was that the song had helped make San Francisco too expensive for people like me to live in. For this reason, it made me sad to hear it, one of the first feelings of aging that I ever remember experiencing.

I came home from the market, and my experience of the woman running into me and weeping, to hear that McKenzie had passed.

It was the perfect ending to a day I had started with an extended meditation on death.

~*~

San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair) - Scott McKenzie



In this video of McKenzie performing the song at the Monterey Pop Festival, you see Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Mama Cass... again, the perfect ending to my daily meditation...

Bright lights, dark room

I am currently watching Dennis Hopper playing a neo-nazi on an old Twilight Zone episode. Very strange.

I heard this hypnotic old song from Speak and Spell the other night. (I have it on vinyl and therefore have not heard it in eons, since I have nothing to play it on.) Now I can't stop hearing: I.. take.. pictures... photographic... pictures... in my head, over and over, as well as the words of today's blog post title. Bright Lights. Dark Room.

Sharing the dreaded earworm!

Depeche Mode - Photographic



Although I usually agree with Eminem that "don't nobody listen to techno"--I always made exceptions for Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk. I also confess to an enduring love of Dirty Vegas's "Days go by"--something I would not ordinarily admit if I were not watching an ancient Twilight Zone episode.

Bad girls

Anne Francis has died. (Thanks to Barbara on Facebook for alerting me to this cultural milestone!)

Many of us baby-boomer girls remember her as HONEY WEST, private eye with a pet ocelot, who could beat up men with her superior karate abilities. We never missed her! I even had the Honey West doll, if you can believe it. (Luckily, she wore Barbie-issue clothes.)

There was no other woman on 60s television who came close, actually allowed to kick men's asses, until Batgirl and Barbara Stanwyck (on THE BIG VALLEY; she didn't blink an eye when she drew her gun on evil interlopers). [NOTE: Beware, annoying 60s violin-laden TV music at the link.]

Sci-fi fans will certainly remember Anne Francis from the great 50s cult movie FORBIDDEN PLANET (with Leslie Nielsen), where she swims naked (on another planet, of course, where the rules were different). She was also the star of the famous Twilight Zone episode titled THE AFTER HOURS (where the PR-photo is from). In THE AFTER HOURS, she plays a department-store mannequin come to life, who has forgotten that she is a mannequin. Creepy and melancholy, all at once, as the Rod Serling-written episodes tended to be.

Few of us children who saw that particular Twilight Zone, could ever pass a store-mannequin again without thinking of it.

Do they come to life at the end of the day?

She was wonderful, and beautiful. Goodbye Anne.

~*~

And... speaking of mannequins (yes, that was mean)... she hasn't even taken office yet, but governor-in-waiting Nikki Haley has put us all on notice that she intends to make sure nobody in South Carolina will have government-supported health care... isn't that a comfort? She has appointed one Tony Keck, to go after poor, sick and disabled people with gusto:

Nearly 2.3 million residents covered by private insurers would face lifetime limits on their coverage.

New insurance plans no longer would be required to cover preventive services, such as mammograms and flu shots

As if the state wasn't poor enough.

On the plus side (see, I'm not mean all the time), Haley has appointed Lynne Rogers to head South Carolina's Department of Probation, Pardon and Parole Services.:

She is the first African-American named by Haley to lead an agency.

At the same time Haley announced Rogers’ selection, the governor-elect unveiled a plan to merge the missions of Department of Corrections, the Department of Juvenile Justice and the Department of Probation, Pardon and Parole Services.

Such a coalition will create efficiency in incarceration-related issues to save taxpayers millions, Haley said.

Haley said she will support a proposal of Rep. Bakari Sellers, D-Bamberg, to make the probation agency a division of Corrections. She has promised to seek consolidation of some agencies.

According to non-stop Tea Party Movement/talk radio propaganda, South Carolinians are gonna save SO MUCH MONEY after Haley takes office, we will be virtually rolling in dough.

Oh yeah.

I can't wait.

~*~

Beep beep! Uh-huh!

Bad Girls - Donna Summer (1979)

Why I love Colin Wilcox

Watched a bit of the Twilight Zone marathon yesterday on the SciFi network, waiting for my favorite "Number 12 looks just like you"--which never gets shown, or at least, I invariably miss it every time. (On YouTube, I discover a band has named itself that, which is pretty neat!)

Ironically, me and Mr Daisy were also watching DVDs of MAD MEN, also set in the early 60s, which mentioned the beautiful model of the era, Suzy Parker, who plays Number 12. (The original story was by Charles Beaumont, titled "The Beautiful People"--also a song title by Marilyn Manson--and I've always wondered if he read the story.)

The story is about an "unattractive" girl in the year 2000 (!) who refuses to have "the operation"--which will make her look like everyone else. Doesn't she want to look like everyone else? What the hell is wrong with her?

She gets a choice of Number 12 or Number 8, the popular models of the day, and why doesn't she want to be one of them? Look how pretty they are. But Marilyn (interesting first name, considering the time-period) isn't having it. "Being like everybody is the same as being nobody!" she protests. They send her to shrinks and hospitals, since she is obviously insane.

I won't tell you the ending, but this being the Twilight Zone, I'll bet you know it already. The final wind-up by the chain-smoking (even on TV, good God) Rod Serling:

Portrait of a young lady in love--with herself. Improbable? Perhaps. But in an age of plastic surgery, body building and an infinity of cosmetics, let us hesitate to say impossible. These and other strange blessings may be waiting in the future--which after all, is the Twilight Zone.

Oh, holy shit! The future is here! How did that happen? (As Michael Stipe once warbled, the insurgency began and you missed it.)

The completely amazing Colin Wilcox, who plays Marilyn, is just great. Which leads me to her most fabulous role of all time, and what we can learn from it.

~*~

At about 10-12 seconds into this very short clip, check out the expression on Colin Wilcox's face, as she embodies Mayella Ewell. Really something else--giving me infinite respect for what actors do. One expression, just one, and she seals it.

When I first saw it, it made my blood run cold, even as a child. I didn't know what I was seeing. But the scene has held me riveted from the first time I saw it, until now, watching it again and again. I realize, it has a message for women, for feminists... and it is possibly the greatest white-trash moment ever delivered on screen. (Wilcox, not surprisingly, was originally from North Carolina.)

Until this moment in To Kill A Mockingbird, the audience has felt pity for possible rape/violence-victim Mayella, daughter of an abusive alcoholic. We know what's going on. But then, Harper Lee surprises us... this won't be a story where the wrong-doer is apprehended in the courtroom, ala Erle Stanley Gardner. Mayella suddenly squints, fully of steely resolve. She is white, goddammit, and that is what she is really saying: Are you going to be white, and stand with me as white, or aren't you? Suddenly, we are frightened of Mayella: "Your ma'am-in, and your Miss Mayellas don't come to nothin, Mr Finch!" She has decided to exercise the only power she has, and that is the power of a young white woman, trash or not. She can say that this black man raped her, and what are you MEN going to do about it?

When people are powerless, this is what happens. They learn to seize what they have, and use it as a bludgeon, as it has been used against them. Remember, this is a rape trial... Mayella knows what power is.

The whole clip is only 46 seconds, but check out that squint, when Mayella makes the decision. And remember, it comes down to that: the moment cannot be undone.

~*~

Unfortunately the embedding for this clip is gone, like, as of last night. Yeesh! But you can watch it on YouTube, linked here.

And, sorry about that. As I wrote HERE, this aggravates the hell out of me and I wish I knew why it happens. The embedding for other clips from the movie, is still intact. ((((sigh)))