Living Dead In The Mayonnaise Jar

So rare it is that we remember a dream from 25 years ago.

So vividly, that is.

I was 5.

The menacing older boys were more skeletons than children. Their eyes bulged like some kind of living dead. They wailed and contorted in the white muck of a large mayonnaise jar. If you stuck your hand in the jar, it sucked you in.

With them.

They called you. You had no choice. You plunged your hand in. You couldn't leave. You became them.

My Dad sold mayonnaise.

---




Man shot three times on Plowden Road

"Columbia police responded to a shooting in a parking lot on Plowden Road at 9:55 p.m. Thursday.

According to the incident report, the suspect asked the victim for drugs. When the victim responded that he didn’t have any and turned to walk away, the man pulled out a silver pistol, took the victim’s wallet and shot him three times.

A witness saw the man flee in a burgundy vehicle."

---

I was 3 when I almost died.

I remember. Not like they say you remember being so small in some suspect, abstract way, but the kind of lucid, inevitable remembering, if only for means of future survival.

I remember the tornado that ripped through and shifted the foundation of our flimsy home. The orange, crackling sky. The attacking atmosphere. My Dad wearing a thin cowboy hat.

I remember falling out of the car at 45 mph onto the roadside. I landed onto a sand patch. I remember looking into some stranger's bathroom mirror, scratched and bleeding, and my Mom telling me to stop crying, because I wasn't really hurt that bad.

I remember my Grandma's big green bed spinning. Then, lying in the back of a car, on the verge of unconsciousness, not knowing where I was going but knowing I was going somewhere fast and desperately. I was, apparently, supposed to die at the hospital as I faded in and out of consciousness and my back stiffened from days of battling meningicoccal spinal meningitis.

Later, after the meningitis, Mom would demand a first-floor apartment in the government projects -- Columbia Gardens, on Plowden Road -- so I wouldn't have to climb the stairs.




The window air-conditioners sagged and labored, dripping with condensation. Weeds grew from the spaces between the sidewalks. The wooden staircases were splintered, unpainted and unprotected from the elements. The hallway mailbox -- labeled 19-F -- was broken open, abandoned for a mailbox complex in plainer view.

A guy got stabbed, I heard. The girl in that apartment over there got "raked," a horrible vision, as I imagined it, of some poor girl's face being scraped with a metal garden tool.

After a weekend away, Mom and I walked in the door to a semi-circle of spent matches on the floor. I heard the air rush into her lungs. Someone had stolen the stereo. A guy a few doors down.

We walked around the neighborhood after midnight during the summers between elementary school. A man in the shadows asked me and my friend if we wanted to buy cocaine. We told my stepdad. He and the maintenance man rushed out the door and hunted him. The guy ran around the corner and they followed after him. A gunshot rang out. The guy dropped. The cops came. Lucky he shot skyward.

Junior had white, crusty, oozing impetigo because his mom never bathed him. I got it on my earlobe. We all got it.

Aaron and I walked down to the Magic Market to buy comic books for 60 cents.




My first was "Alpha Flight" #1. That Canadian superhero team with the surly French-Canadian twins who could fly fast. One of them was schizophrenic, the other stuggling to come out of the closet.

We watched "G.I. Joe" and "He-Man" and "Transformers" every afternoon. Aaron lived upstairs. That always seemed so much more ... safe.

We set off smoke bombs and shined flashlights into the smoke to mimic lightsabers.

His mom's car was riddled with bullet holes from a BB gun. He didn't know why her car.

We "patrolled" on our bikes like "CHiPs," side by side, protecting the neighborhood. We couldn't stop somebody from cutting the chain and stealing my bike from the back porch.

I got beat down on the bus on the way to S. Kilbourne Elementary School on Halloween morning.

We jumped on dirty mattresses laid outside the dumpsters. Sometimes we crawled inside the dumpsters to see what we could find. They always had a smell of rotten fruit and rusted iron.




The runoff drain was like an exotic river. We splashed in the green algae. We rubbed our fingers over the metal of the train track, smooth as glass. Older boys stole the track ties and oversized nails and built a clubhouse. They were gods. A clubhouse that couldn't be torn down.

Across the train tracks, across the green toxic river, across the airport runway just beyond the fence of our backyard, the lights of Williams-Brice Stadium illuminated the sky. This is where the University of South Carolina Gamecocks played football.

The stadium lights always looked like some kind of roller coaster. You could hear the occasional roar. That's where "our team" played. The lights were a beacon signifying that something greater was happening just over the horizon.

---

I would graduate from that university. I would scream with primal abandon and angry love inside that stadium, with the occasional glances to the place from where I would wonder what went on inside this gladiatorial colisseum.

Every time I go, I pass by my home. It is both a shortcut and a neverending attempt to make sense of the world and all its chaos.

The buildings are decayed, hollowed out, air conditioners sagging through taped windows and disheveled blinds. Somehow they're not much different than they were when I left them at age 11 and didn't look back until I had a child of my own.

A rusty pole sticks out of the ground in the backyard. There used to be a basketball goal attached to that pole. Grass has grown where the court made of dirt used to be.




The eyes of the children have a blankness to them. A resignation. A wary distrust of a strange visitor.

Plowden Road. Columbia Gardens. Apartment 19-F.

A melancholy jewel, a cursed diamond.

It is no longer home.

I'm sorry you got shot, man.

Ach Ees, Daiy

For only a short time do we live in a world truly of our own creation. Not just living in that world, but unconscious of our insulated reality.

Unspoiled. Young. Speechless yet speaking.

We who have mastered the necessary tools of communication hear words we don't understand.

Are they even words?

Does it matter?

This is the language of a human being yet to comprehend the concept of words. A language saturated with vowels grounded by deliberate, harsh consonants.

Because we do not understand it doesn't dismiss its relevance as a language all its own.

We struggle to comprehend because we are limited by convention.

But he is not. Every invented word has its useful meaning, irregardless of the expectations imposed on him.

One day, order and compromise will prune out invention. His unique world -- and his unique language -- will be lost. He will struggle, like us, to commune once again with it.

Until then, he speaks the tongue of a world with its own laws.

There are none.

Anyway

Every now and then, there comes a time when it's best if we don't share ourselves.

Best that we don't express ideas, because doing so means that we are adding yet another layer to the persona that we create for each, distinct person we try to gain a new understanding with.

There are only so many people we can be.

We lose ourselves this way. This explaining. This ruse of self-awareness.

"Anyway." "It's complicated." "Let's talk about it later." "I don't know."

True words of wisdom.

Revenge of the Greek Tragedy

(Warning: This is a "Star Wars" meditation -- which means it's incredibly long, maddeningly specific and doggedly dedicated to blind faith in the mythology of the epic series).

So, 28 years and it all comes down to this.




The six-part epic is finally complete, and what have we learned?

That the original three movies were far more campy, breezy and, ultimately, more entertaining? That the prequels were less so, but dazzled with special effects and gratuituous appearances and tie-ins? That George Lucas has made a lot of money? That there are more plot holes than holes in a noodle sifter?

To each his own. "Star Wars" is one of those pop culture phenomenons that elicit passion -- whether love or hate. But lost in comparisons and expectations and endless speculation on why bad guys use red lightsabers and the good guys get two choices ... is what simply is.

The original three movies -- "Episode IV -- A New Hope," "Episode V -- Empire Strikes Back" and "Episode VI -- Return of the Jedi" -- are what they are. They tell the story of Luke Skywalker and how he comes to terms with his father, how he redeems him.

Yet blinded by the special effects and the general air of disappointment of the prequels -- "Episode I -- The Phantom Menace," "Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" and, now, "Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" -- is a profound revelation for any who take the myth of "Star Wars" seriously and see more than cool lightsaber duels and exotic creatures.

(An aside: Those who reject the prequels out of hand are typically those grown-up children who don't realize that it's not the movies' fault that returning wholly to childhood is impossible; the young ones seem to connect with the newer ones, but their voices are not yet loud enough to be heard).

These newer movies are what they are. Can't we enjoy them separately? Why is there the need to rank them?

It seems like a collector's mentality. An oversimplification.

But the end of this newest era is the redefinition of what all "Star Wars" movies are all about: the story of Anakin Skywalker. It adds depth to Darth Vader's redemption. It shows that Luke redeems his father -- but, so too, does Anakin redeem himself by accepting the love of his son, a love he rejected from his wife in her last, desperate attempt to convince him to give up his power.

This story of Anakin changes the dynamic of how we relate to the Darth Vader we've grown up with over the course of a generation.

A little slave boy from the ghetto, disillusioned with authority because authority is indifferent, except to preserve its authority. It's not hard to see why he has no love of a system of government bickering endlessly while countless suffer in slavery. The weight of the world is thrust upon his shoulders at age 10. "You are The Chosen One; you will bring balance to The Force," blah, blah, blah." Jedi code for "you have an enormous amount of power, and we have no idea how to control it or what it will mean to us and our power."

He's ripped from his mother. He has no father, other than the senator/emperor who acts as a father figure. Obi-Wan is more of a brother (in "Sith" ... "you were like a brother to me"), a big brother trying to raise a little brother. Anakin is both looked to for hope and feared for his unpredictability.

Or, more precisely, his penchant to use his power to achieve personal goals, goals that are based in goodness but ultimately lead to a path of megalomania.

He is, in essence, bipolar in a sense that is of God-like proportions.

We see him become a young man desperate for the affection and security of a woman, so he marries young and rashly -- to another who has grown up too fast. Anakin and Padme simply want to isolate themselves, create their own world, but their lives are fated otherwise.

Anakin is deftly manipulated by what could be the most-evil villain in cinema (at least Hannibal Lector was straight up about wanting to eat your liver). The evil here is made clear: powerlust, empire.

But the recipe for Anakin's downfall is far more sophisticated.

The Jedi have become so entrenched in their "code" that they are arrogant and blind to the possibility of failure ("if our archives don't show it, it doesn't exist"). Even as Count Dooku lays out to Obi-Wan how a dark Sith lord has overtaken the senate, he refuses to believe it. In fact, most of the Jedis are overconfident enough to believe that they will figure it all out by sheer erudite contemplation. By their own power.

Yoda laments this new trend of arrogance in Jedi.

How are they any different than when Anakin puts all his faith in his personal ability to control the future? Like Anakin says before Obi-Wan slices him into a quadraplegic, steaming heap: "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil."

Qui-Gonn Jinn -- perhaps the least arrogant of all the Jedi; and the most malleable to change -- tells Anakin as a boy "your focus determines your reality." It's all a matter of point view.

No one cares to free slaves. The government, mired in bureaucracy, cares little about fixing any problems, only maintaining status quo. Anakin's told he has potential to be more powerful than any other Jedi. Why not try to bring order to the entire galaxy? How is he to believe that's not what his destiny is?

What does Anakin in is fear. Fear to lose what he loves. A lack of faith and a misguided assumption that he can singlehandedly defeat death. In fact, that is the ultimate bait the emperor uses; to save his wife from death at childbirth he must become a Sith and explore powers the Jedi would never explore.

It doesn't help in all of this confusion that the Jedi leaders, particularly Mace Windu, relegate Anakin to the ranks of outsider. Outsiders looking for comfort will find it ... somewhere. There is no sense among them that Anakin is a special case, one that deserves a fluid approach to understand the newness he brings. He is believed to be the one to bring balance to The Force, and the Jedi are myopic enough to believe it can only be accomplished from their philosophical point of view.

What does that mean, bring balance to the force? It sounds heady, and it really is never clear. It sounds reasonable, though, that amid an environment of the arrogance and indifference of those in power, Anakin is tasked with showing an entire galaxy what it means to suffer. Beyond abstract rumination. It is inevitable, really. He can't realize what he is -- he can't find faith -- without exploring both sides of the ultimate truth (yin and yang, order and chaos, dark side and light side, Coke vs. Pepsi).

In this way, as he is redeemed through his son when he realizes the pure truth of a yielding love (that his son is willing to die for him even though he's done nothing to deserve it), Anakin completes the entire journey ... and brings a sense of balance to what it means to be a Jedi. A correction not unlike a stock bubble burst. Painful but necessary.

It is a new understanding of the nature of power and where true power resides.

Yoda speaks of it. Of letting go.

Qui-Gonn speaks of it. Of living each moment with the ultimate will of what is, in eastern philosophical terms, The Way. It's Qui-Gonn who ultimately learns how to use The Force to commune with the living world (and, for all those who wonder why Jedi didn't disappear in the prequels ... well, there you have it).

Obi-Wan is far too self-centered. But he learns. Yoda tells him to learn of this so-called Living Force as he spends his middle-aged years in exhile watching over Luke on Tatooine. He ultimately allows Vader to kill him. A true change of course to the conventional wisdom of what it means to be a Jedi. Self sacrificial in the true -- not abstract -- sense.

Pushed to the verge of extinction tends to make you rethink your beliefs.

Anakin kills children. Truly disturbing and quite a striking transformation. The entire lead to his turning into Darth Vader is disturbing. It almost doesn't fit. Darth Vader was evil those years ago, yes; but was he that evil?

Perhaps it's a matter of point of view. Padme says before she dies, "There is still good in him."

Apparently, that turned out to be true, but damn after this if it isn't hard to believe.

The nuts and bolts: "Revenge of the Sith" never slows down. If you're looking for light in all the darkness, this is Obi-Wan's movie, he is the epitome of the hero everyone wants to be; R2D2 adds to his irresistible appeal; Chewbacca makes an appearance and that's always good; Yoda battling the emperor is epic; Mace Windu doesn't go out like a punk; the betrayal of the Jedi is stunning; the opening space battle doesn't quite measure up with the majestic simplicity of the Millenium Falcon manuevering past imperial star destroyers, but it's quite incredible.

Everything comes back to Anakin, and by extension because of what is most important to him, Padme.

His turn is tragic. The crowd at the midnight showing -- arguably the most-fervent of fans -- was stunned. They cheered each preview of summer action movies. They sold themselves out in the portions of the movie meant to capture the campy essence of "Star Wars," even in the face of permeating darkness.

But when the credits cut and the music signaled the end, a smattering of hands clapping cast a strange pall. The movie wasn't anti-climactic. It was almost too climactic; almost too much to bear.

Fans expected to leave and tell friends of how "awesome" the movie was. In many ways, it was "awesome." But the tragedy, the hopelessness, the inevitability of it all, left us all wanting to sit in our seats, cut the credits short and start up the whimsical movie that began it all in 1977.

It's less the case that we will forever see Darth Vader in a different light. Rather, his son will forever be cast against such despair ... and we find new appreciation for a frustratingly optimistic Luke Skywalker whining about the space adventures he's missing.

Oh, Sith! It's Over!

Upon us, the end of an era is.




The end of Darth Vader pimping a "Limited Edition Lava Berry Explosion" box of Pop Tarts.

The end of commemorative Yoda Burger King glasses we used to drink the cherry Kool-Aid from once we returned home from watching "Return of the Jedi" at the theater where "Flashdance" played on the screen next door.

The end of collecting UPC codes off the boxes of Crispix to earn the free R2D2 cereal bowl in the mail.

The end of setting off the smoke bomb and waving a flashlight through it like a lightsaber, knowing that one day someone would think of a way to make a real lightsaber.

On the eve of the one-minute-after-midnight premiere of "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," we mourn the loss of a cultural touchstone that defined the zeitgeist of a generation.

Once the music crescendoes and we see the faded-blue text read "Directed by George Lucas," it will be over. A generation's worth of faith that a new "Star Wars" experience is always just over the horizon, where the two suns of Tatooine set across the desert landscape.

Excitement intertwined with anxiety. We almost can't go.

Television series are on the way, we're told. So is a re-release of all six "Star Wars" movies in 3-D.

They won't suffice. There is an emptiness in the various novels, comics and endless internet deconstructions of the "Star Wars" mythos that offer the illusion of a new "Star Wars" experience.

But there will be none. The unexplored "Star Wars" experience is over.

Once the last print is pulled off the last theater reel, may The Force allow it to simply, bloodlessly disappear like an honorably fallen Jedi, only to be seen in idealized, all's-well-that-ends-well spirit form.

On second thought, no, don't do that. Re-release them every other summer, with one line in each movie changed or one special effect superimposed so that the freaks will find justification to dress up, camp outside the theater and make us all believe that we can be children again.