n. -- the use of euphemistic language to avoid the untoward magical effects that might by caused by the use of plain language.
Oh, golly! Yes! Don't stop! Oh, golly! Oh my golly!
Yep--that definitely takes the magic out of it. I am sorry for debasing this stupendous word. But I just had to.
*I seem to remember that I've used the word before, from another source. But you can never have too much cledonism.
As noted, instead of writing, for the months of September and October (and apparently August, as I look at the date of the draft), I have been marinating my brain in Perry Mason reruns. Well, “marinating” has something sharp about it—maybe it’s more appropriate to say gently simmering over many days—with resulting softening. (Like pot roast, a limp and characterless glop. Or maybe that was just my mom’s.)
Anyway.
When I was a child, I was fascinated by Perry Mason. And really, really, really wanted to watch it. But I was also a timid child. That amazing opening noir crescendo, which was thrilling, was also frightening. The two shocking, blaring notes that ended the intro, when Perry Mason looked up and straight at me, were too much. I had to snap off the TV at once. If you’ve ever run out of the room when the Wicked Witch of the West appears on the roof, you know.
Slightly older, I overcome that fear and watched reruns voraciously. And now, here he is on Amazon Prime.
This show may have seemed thrilling once, but now the only frightening or even suspenseful part is that music (still brilliant). The rest is the very opposite of my first experience—silly, charming, nepenthe to the overwrought brain. And they are very funny, though unintentionally—the “humorous” vignettes with which each show ends are in fact very lame. Very. But…
First, there is how stylized the series is. The formula cannot change; the action unfolds strict as a sonnet. There is a silent-film/kabuki quality about it all, from the heavy eye makeup and lipstick (on the men) to the outrageously faked punches—a good five inches between fist and face, and the awkward falling or flinching of a man who clearly hasn’t been hit and doesn’t know quite which direction to go. There’s not even a token attempt to use a camera angle to hide that gap—it’s intended to represent a punch, not to fool the viewer. Other shows of that period might be the same. But I’ll do no research. It pleases me to think that Perry Mason episodes are unique in this low-rent way.
Did men still wear bathrobes over a shirt and tie when in deshabille? They do in Perry Mason. Do mean wear overcoats and dress shoes when they go to a hunting lodge for the weekend? Perry Mason does. Do you put on a natty little yachting cap when you step into a motorboat? Perry Mason does. Do you order milk with your ham on rye? I can’t go there.
Back to low-rent. Really, they could improve the special effects without spending a bundle: The elevator doors open, but the floor continues without a break. Would it cost them to draw a line? There are a lot of shootings, but they’re very stingy (as in none at all) with blood. Someone gets murdered with a poker, and the two-inch wound has clearly been drawn on with a Sharpie (black-and-white is very useful for such things). Props show up from episode to episode—my favorite being a set of primitive masks that migrate from shabby apartments to upscale living rooms. (These would be weird even once.)
And the guns, my god. Everyone’s got a pistol in the glove compartment (cars are often convertibles for even easier access) or lying on the desk. People lend them to their friends as casually as novels. I think it took until the middle of the second series, and that’s over 40 episodes (I told you I’ve been a little obsessive) before the first exotic aberration (poison) appeared.
There are some ethnic surprises. If there are Mexicans involved (this is after all Southern Cal), they are really Mexican. And they speak Spanish to each other. Unlike the Greek man, who is pulled straight from a pantomime, has a heavy fake Italian accent, a suspicious moustache, and might as well be wearing clown shoes. Most bizarrely, there is one episode in which the paterfamilias of a white family is played by an actor who is clearly African American. No one seems to find this strange. His bio notes naively or worse that, career-wise, he played white characters because his skin was so light.
The most fascinating thing, though, is the time-lapse effect created by bingeing on so many episodes in so little time. Cars stretch out, fenders flare. Bras (or is that breasts?) start out aggressive little cones (slightly larger for the bad girls) under the tightest of dresses (those girdles must have been something), and then subside under weirdly inelegant, lumpy suits. Perry’s shoulder pads grow to enormous size, then shrink, then grow again (according to the dictates of his waistline, not fashion). Paul’s loosening up a little under the chin.
If I had to choose one word: sweet.
Now, in the declining years of the show (early sixties, I think), the cars are deflating again, women’s hair looks rather like a snail fastened by a headband. Psychological motives (tedious, very unconvincing) are being introduced. Maybe this is just the producers’ way of letting me down gently before the series draws to its close.
Before yesterday, the last I wrote was on September 25--which is to say, it's been a lot longer than that since I sent anything, but I tried to write that day and decided I'd rather watch Perry Mason. Yep--that's what I've been doing for the past two months--watching Perry Mason (all seasons on Amazon Prime).
I've got my reasons. Just this one last time (and I mean it, because I'm getting rather tired of myself, myself), I will bring up the EVENT. I was pretty much lost to anxiety all September, as though at the end of the month, on the anniversary of my operation, I would have to go through it all again. This time knowing what was going to happen.
Months and months and months ago, I was turning in my head how to turn random surreal moments into writing: Nurses fussing over me, and when they saw I was awake, telling me how lovely my skin was and wasn't I lucky (nice, but...?????). Being ferried in a mobile heart unit to the hospital where I'd be operated on, with six attendants (not bad, princess!), and not knowing whom to stare at more: the clearly on-the-spectrum tech doing a robot-voice play-by-play of the protocols she was following, or the tech who was clearly not a tech at all but the Village People's Ambulance Guy (OMG--and I say this not with lust in my heart, but just OMG). And the nurse who attended me the night before the operation, who had been a minor league ballplayer and had a captive audience. That moment when I realized, "I'm fucking dying here, and yet somehow I'm being forced to talk about the lineup of the '69 Orioles." Dante never thought of that one.
I suppose I never got to that subject matter because it was not possible to do the complete breezy thing as though it was, um, breezy. So. This past September was full of those memories of waking up not to absurdity but to fear. When the anaesthesia wore off too early and I woke up flailing with a tube down my throat, drowning, trying to write, Helen Keller-like, into a nurse's hand that I needed Nick, being held down and yelled at that I would hurt myself, but who cares about hurting yourself when you're drowning? Or begging for my prescription Klonopin before they took out the central line (taking out the heart line the day before had caused an insane electrical shock, so I was terrified); finally, finally getting the pill, but they had a schedule--so them taking the water away to hold me down and yank the line out (resulting in both the flashbacks AND the Dr. Evil pulse in my throat).
And thus Perry Mason (more on him later). But September went and October 5 went, and nothing happened, and I've just been sleepy. Good and bad, it seems settled now. On October 5th, the platonic ideal of a fall day, I drove down to Purgatory Chasm in Middletown and sat on the rocks, looking over the sea toward Africa.
So. I can get on with the writing now. I don't think I'm very good at the less breezy. But it had to be done.
PS--I actually can recite by heart the lineup of the '69 Orioles.
n. -- divination by means of melted wax.
Well, golly, it's been so long, i don't know where to start. It seems safe to start slow, though. How about another fabulous, arbitrary, batshit way people try to grab sense out of the fog?
It was about an hour and a half ago that I started this, and have been writing busily the whole time. I mean it. But it's been stowed for future emails--or maybe not. Something in the nature of letting the water run until it's no longer that weird rust color.
n. — like an earthworm.
Apropos of “On the Domestic Front” of September 3. Biomimetic worms have a lot of uses, by the way, as in being table to thread through brain blood vessels to clear up clots. This factoid comes from Nick. And clearing blocked pipes and investigating piles of rubble. This factoid comes from Nick’s brother, who shares the gene of Never. Stopping. Thinking. for one goddam moment.
Which leads me to “On the Domestic Front, Part III.”
OK, to start, a bit of personal information, in case you don’t know this already. I’m anxious. Not about anything specific right now, but just always.
So. During a rather rough episode, Nick bought me a weighted blanket. It’s supposed to make anxious people feel safer and calmer. (Probably supposed to make your spouse feel safer and calmer as well.) And I will say, it works. You pull it over you and immediately feel somehow soothed. However, a few moments under its minky soft (their words) covering, there’s a kind of sauna effect, though by no means as hearty-healthy. In summer, this means about 2 seconds of calm followed by panicked fighting your way out again (once it’s in place, it turns hostile and puts up resistance). In cooler weather, minky soft covering slithers the blanket slowly but determinedly, like a giant slug, off your person. Attempts to pull it back into place meet with hostile resistance in reverse, require waking up for a wrestling match. This inevitably results in severe cricking of trigger finger (right hand) or shoulder pain (left arm). My eventual rejection of this object may seem ungrateful, but it is really a matter of survival.
Nick understands. Recently, he has suggested making a better mousetrap by sewing washers together, like chain mail. These will be far cooler, he surmises, and less likely to slip and slide. Yes, I point out, but they’ll be even heavier than the minky soft giant slug. But Nick assures me that they won’t be. Because he’s done. the. calculations. Never. Stopping. Thinking. For one goddam moment.
I’ll try not to revisit this theme, unless a real cracker comes up. That means I won’t be sharing with you his theory of gravity.
Re: previous post—Don’t misunderstand me. It’s not a complaint. It’s a love letter.
