Meg Sefton's Blog, page 41

Queen at War – a late Sunday afternoon of 19 Crimes and the Documentary Queen at War

The Siren

Sunset Swim by ClaraDon, flickr

I want to recommend the haunting movie “The Siren,” written and directed by Perry Blackshear. It is visually beautiful but also relatively quiet which I always find refreshing, especially in a horror movie. The protagonist is mute as a result of a near drowning as a child. He vacations at a lake alone. Another man searches the waters for the mythological creature he is convinced killed his lover. There is a nice twist at the end and it made me think, as I grieve loss this holiday season: There is darkness and chaos in each of us as well as love, goodness, and light.

Holiday blues

Color lights make an atmosphere by Niko Hörkkö, flickr

How are you this holiday? I’ll have to admit, I am struggling. Things are not as bad for me and my family as they could be. Yet, I feel as if the hardship of the last decade or so has been magnified by an international health crisis and a wild political scene which will hopefully not become more malignant.

I had to say goodbye to my son today. He is going over to his father’s. Then in a few days he will be traveling to spend some time off with friends before starting his final semester. The empty nest syndrome has struck once again, this time quite hard. I do sort of feel like whatever problems and issues I’ve had have become magnified with the pandemic: my single status post-divorce, struggles with health issues, struggles with my dog’s health issues, memories which can be hard to revisit, regrets, financial challenges, the deaths of family members.

For about five days this holiday, I enjoyed a flurry of cooking and cleaning and wrapping. I enjoyed the mom thing, the one role I have performed for a great deal of my adult life, besides being a writer which has always been secondary, ancillary. It’s like I’ve been in a bit of a denial because in a big way for me, being a mom in almost all the ways I’ve known it is just about over. I still don’t feel I’ve dealt with it completely or maybe my anxieties regarding coronavirus concerns keep me from processing other aspects of my life.

How is it Christmas can sometimes take you down to the studs? This Christmas feels especially challenging. I know I am not alone. And I know college kids are having their own struggles to contend with, some of them really difficult. In trying to flee that nest – a healthy pursuit – opportunities that have felt solid are shifting as if built on sand.

Sometimes the words Jesus spoke come back to me in times like these: “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Peace,

Meg

Christmas with Perchta

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

I found myself alone on the streets this year on Christmas Eve, alone that is except for the company of my dog. I had cheated on my husband and upon the discovery of my indiscretion, he changed the locks to our home and shut down my access to funds. My family was also angry – my parents and siblings – deeply religious all and furious, believing me damned. They refused entry into their homes. I didn’t have money for a hotel or even a tank of gas to drive to the beach. I set up camp in a stand of trees behind a garage apartment I used to rent as an office. I knew how to hide, for homeless people used to hide there. When I was working in the apartment I would make brownies in the tiny efficiency kitchen, package them, and throw them down from balcony and into the woods, down on top of their blankets and luggage. I hoped they would find them and at least have enough calories to sustain them overnight. And now I was among their number.

I had enough gas to get to this spot and enough to make it back to the house on Christmas to beg for forgiveness and hopefully, re-secure a place with a roof and shelter, a fire in winter. I had brought a big plaid flannel blanket given me by my late Granny, a tarp to secure to trees for a roof, my sleeping bag, a pillow, a small doggie bed, a mix of nuts and chocolate, a jug of water, pain pills, several bottles of wine I bought on sale, cigarettes. I lived in a mild climate, though it could get cold in winter. There would likely be other homeless seeking shelter around me. I might have to buy peace or my life with extra provisions. I established camp in the undergrowth of an ancient twisted oak and its smaller brethren – scrub oak – as well as palms, pine trees, low hanging Spanish moss. Except for the rumble of cars over brick streets, it was quiet in this little patch of woods. I set up the tarp to be as unobtrusive as possible and sat underneath it on my sleeping bag, my dusty little dog curled up on her bed. An acorn fell on the tarp, startling me, but I felt I would be alright and knew it was wise to at least camp in a familiar area. That choice had a calming effect.

As dusk neared, I laid down on the sleeping bag and covered myself with Granny’s red plaid wool blanket. How devastated she would have been been to learn of my indiscretion, my sin. And how sad she would have been to learn of her granddaughter sleeping in the woods, disgraced, away from the warm shelter of her husband’s home. When we stayed with her at Christmas as children, she would gather us around her chair by the fire and open the dark picture pages that told a story of the twelfth night and Frau Perchta, a haggard old witch with a long pointed nose, sharp teeth, devouring eyes, a hunched form, claws for hands. Frau Perchta scoured the world to check on children: Were they spoiled little brats lazy with their chores? Or did they help mother and father? Were they polite and kind and good? Or were they the worst children in the world – mean, disobedient, shameful? There were pages where Frau Perchta enters the house to inspect the children’s rooms as well as the children themselves, to ask the parents questions. Then there was a horrible page, a page containing a picture of Frau Perchta gripping a child with one of her large claws and scooping out his insides with the other, the poor child’s face and limbs black with death, x’s for eyes while his good siblings watched with large saucer eyes, tearful and afraid. Then Perchta stuffs the bodies of the bad children with garbage – leftovers from Christmas feast, carcasses and bones of dead animals, ripped packaging from presents. She sets the bad, stuffed children up near the Christmas tree and they dully look at their surrounding with unseeing, button eyes. On the next page, good children – rosy cheeked and smiling – hug Perchta, and she embraces them in her thin, frail arms draped with rags. She gives them gifts and candy.

A baby pine tree was brushing the top of my tarp. Shadows danced and played overhead. The sorrow of my grief for what I had done, whom I had hurt, and a new feeling inside – a burning self-hatred – overtook me. I felt myself slipping into sleep despite my resolve to stay alert through the night, to protect my turf should the need arise.

I later awoke in the night to the sound of my dog barking frantically. There was something scratching insistently on the tarp, something sharper than pine needles, something alive and moving, a creature or person. A flickering candle revealed a silhouette: A woman with a hunched back, long dripping hair, sharp protruding face, ragged clothes. She set down a huge sack which rattled along the ground and then there was an overpowering smell of rotting carcasses, decaying flesh.

I fled but my dog was captured by something that crushed and hurt her for she cried out in pain and fear. I cried and yelled for her as I ran but I knew she was gone. I fled to the home of my husband, hopeful for shelter. I apologized profusely on the threshold, begging, pleading, crying but I was not granted entry. Instead I was given forty dollars and told not to return.

The night was dark and strange. There was chaos and shooting in the place I managed to afford. I barricaded the door with the bed and slept on the floor of the bathroom.

There is always a plan for those who stray: a dirty, seedy, dark underbelly life. So listen my children: Stay on the side of light. Do not neglect your duties. And God grant you and your children health, happiness, and peace this holiday season and all Christmases to come.

Christmas Demon

Photo by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash

This was the year of my Christmas goblin. A girlfriend told me about hers the year before and I had distanced myself from her, believing her to be insane. But my goblin happened to me in the same way it happened to her and so now I am ashamed to say I must learn to cope with the memory of what happened without the sympathetic sisterhood of a fellow victim.

At night, five days before the Eve of Christmas, my goblin sat on my chest, my chest which had been ripped apart by cancer. I was asleep and I awoke in the dark to a growing pressure on my chest and stomach. It was like a crushing, suffocating medieval torture or punishment by the addition of stones. In the flicker of the candlelight of my room – for I always kept a long lasting flame alight through the winter – I beheld the demon’s tongue flicking in and out of his grinning face, his whipping forked shiny tail, his black eyes which were mirrors reflecting the flame of the candle and revealing an internal desolation. His naked baboon shaped bottom was greasy and slid on my chest and he had to keep righting himself on his perch though my chest was lumpy and bumpy as broken rocks in a quarry and would have held just about anything being that it was no longer the smooth cushioned breast of my youth.

He spoke of his love for me, his long admiration. The unnaturally low, atonal sound of his voice was like that emitted from a voice scrambler. As he spoke, his tail stroked my leg and stomach and my own stomach clenched, wary of what he may be preparing to do. His words were a kind of flat mocking of what I had hoped to hear from some future love, words of some future boyfriend or husband. He said I was a deep person, special and sensitive. He said I would make the perfect wife. He said he wanted to move in with me. He said we would be together forever. His hooved hands brushed back my hair, his warm fetid breath filled the air. He said he had only come just now, had only felt welcome to do so, because my dog had died and she was delicious. He had eaten her! My dog had been ill for a long time. And yet she had been alive when I went to bed. He had either killed her or he had not emerged until he knew she was dead, until he knew he could proceed undeterred! My heart broke and the goblin ground himself more firmly down on my chest as if he could apply greater pressure by his will. He smiled at my squirming, at my attempt to draw deeper breath, at my tears.

“You can save your own life by carrying me around your stupid little town. I get to ride on your back and you can’t say a word.”

And so, off we went. I could not even release his hold long enough to change into my clothes or bend over to pull on shoes. We went out into the night though my tropical climate was mild and the pandemic meant it was quiet. Still, the demon demanded roller coaster rides at the deserted theme parks, demanded I make for him churros and turkey legs at the concession stands, demanded entry into alligator parks and whale and dolphin tanks. He accomplished break ins and operation of equipment through his magic demon powers he said, mockingly, though most of the time I was too hunched over from his weight on my back to observe how he was operating. My feet began to bleed. More more! he screamed into my ear, whipping me with his tail which was sharp enough to tear flesh.

At the first light of dawn, I suddenly felt no load on my back, no cloud of rotting breath surrounding my head like a dank nimbus. In fact I was light enough to feel as if I was floating. The air smelled sweet. My dog barked at me when I returned home. She was alive! He had lied! Or she had been returned to life when I had fulfilled what he wanted from me.

I called my girlfriend who had spoken to me of her nightmare last Christmas. I wanted to tell her about my experience. Her husband, whom I had known since childhood, told me she had died alone and on the street some months ago, addicted to coke, mumbling about demons.

Friday jazz

“Kingdom of Silence”

Saudi horse by edward musiak, flickr

Tonight I watched “Kingdom of Silence,” a documentary about Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian journalist who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Instanbul in 2018. It contextualized his life against an analysis of Middle East politics and our involvement in the area as well as the events of 9/11 and the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

Though Jamal Khashoggi advocated freedom of speech, not overthrow, his voice, even from the auspices of American newspapers, would not be tolerated by his government. It is a devastating documentary but well worth watching, a must-see.

During a hiatus from my MFA, I co-lead a group on a discussion board called “Shelfari.” In our group “fiction effect” we discussed books, conducted interviews of authors, explored topics having to do with writing and literature. It was soon after Arab spring that we had an uptick of involvement from participants in the Middle East, participants who were experiencing limited access to the internet due to censorship and government controls. It was so painful to hear that many were scared to participate for long and were putting themselves in danger to do so. They highly recommended the book “We are Iran.” Watching this documentary tonight reminds me to re-order my copy. In these pages are voices of the Persian blogs.

When I was a girl, my family was given a trip to Egypt and Israel. Egypt was an incredible country. The people were so beautiful and welcomed us so warmly. When things changed there after the Arab spring, it hurt my heart.

The documentary may also be upsetting regarding America’s prioritizing oil over human life. Maybe one day the words and life of journalists like Jamal Khashoggi as well as his friends and the voices and lives of who call out to be heard will act as change agents in this part of the world and we can all once again enjoy greater fellowship as well as mutual support.

Vise

4″ Scout vise made in U.S.A. by Darron Birgenheier, flickr

There was a radiating pain that traveled from the right side of her neck and shoulder to her fingertips. A breast and thyroid cancer survivor, it terrified her. Months before, a couple of months before the outbreak of the pandemic, she declared her own freedom from a drug that would have prevented relapse. The drug had hobbled her and she was tired of feeling old in midlife, of making excuses for her immobility, of being embarrassed because she did not look old enough to be moving that way. It had been worse than chemotherapy, especially because no one had told her this would happen. People rang a bell on their chemo ward last day of treatment, people sang and clapped. There were no more bells for this interminable, solitary journey. She would have had to stay on the drug for five years. Although she had grown her hair back, she was moving like she was one hundred and if she was moving, she was in pain.

Now there was this new thing she couldn’t face, this new pain she couldn’t pay for. A nurse for her oncologist had said over the phone it sounded like muscular pain and so she went to a chiropractor. He was able to get her to the point of mobility but he also pressed on the radiated flesh of her right side in a way that broke her down again though not completely. And she couldn’t afford him after a while. And she was avoiding doctors again like she did when her right breast flared with cancer, but now it felt like there was a valid reason: the pandemic.

The pain almost kept her mentally alive some days, she was on a routine of over the counter meds and CBD oil. Every several hours, there was something new to take. Every few weeks, she researched and dug for help. Her fear could be killed with an occasional television series streaming binge or a belt of alcohol, a glass of wine, just enough to keep her going until the next day.

She couldn’t find a job. She had plenty of education, but much less job experience. There was pressure now in her family that she find a job. When she was married and later when she had a son, no one wanted her to do anything but keep a house. Even writing was discouraged. Now that she was middle aged with no work experience, almost zero, as well as juggling pain and anxiety, family could only seem to be happy when they thought she might work.

She was the husk of a used body, the kind you might throw onto a pile of other used bodies on the outskirts of a city, bodies whose sole function might be fuel in the burning or at least nurture for the soil for they were useless otherwise by society’s standards. She was so angry some days she thought she might already be producing fuel but really it was just a bit of noxious gas, dissipating and aimless. The desire she felt to go toward a direction was often thwarted by anxiety, either that or its seeming opposite – despondency.

She was able to see the tops of a tall stand of pines from her apartment window. It reminded her or her girlhood in South Carolina. How beautiful was the wind through a pine forest, its swishing like the sifting of dry grain, the needles glistening in the sun. One day she may lie at their feet and fall asleep and not get up. If she cannot afford the rent increase in a pandemic, if the pain gets worse, if she is squeezed by despair or hunger. She would never have advocated giving up, having fought so hard during years of suicidal ideation, divorce, cancer, diabetes. And yet how many pressures add up to the end? She knew this is one thing that perhaps she had never put seriously to herself until now. Pandemics, she was finding out, may turn out to be the final pressure vise.

But she was pretty sure that even if homeless and ill in her sunny climate, she would not give up. She could see herself as the crazy singing patron who came into the public library thirty years ago and sang her reference requests or the coupon lady with tons of flyers cutting and cutting all day at one of the tables.

She had been a librarian at the time, a time before her marriage. Such patrons and other lost souls, many of them homeless, many of them unwashed and mentally ill, were legendary among the staff. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t stop living by her own hand, no matter what. Even if no one would claim her, even if she could barely claim herself, she imagined would go on, she imagined she would sing and sing and sing, alone and to trees, to her aged dog, to the dirty streets, to God.

White Reindeer

Photo by Ira Ostafiichuk on Unsplash

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say some streaming services are being positively unpatriotic this Christmas season of the worst American tragedy of recent memory. Even during the Great Depression, average movie ticket prices fell, perhaps to entice a segment of the population who had to shift their priorities because, well, survival.

Many Americans have ways to stream movies in their homes, many even pay the base price for these services, not to mention the cable/internet bills and/or data charges. Oh yeah, and the cost of devices and their upkeep though unfortunately there are many Americans who do not have these devices. Yet now as 3,000 die each day, services like Amazon, which has amassed quite a few holiday movies to stream from other services such as Netflix, will charge you your dwindling pennies on top of the rate you pay for streaming.

Offerings such as “It’s a Wonderful Life” is an American favorites available on Amazon “for free,” meaning of course for those who pay for Prime. And you can watch another American classic “White Christmas” if you’re a Netflix subscriber. While not quite the uber classic status of these offerings, the raucous “Home for the Holidays” with Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. is offered to Prime members “free” and the newer even bawdier classic “Bad Moms Christmas” is on Netflix, adding to the Christmas “free” punch, providing a little spike to ease the pain.

But let’s say your kids love the classics, old and newish – such as Casper, Flinstones, Looney Tunes, Elf, Frozen, Nightmare before Christmas, Muppets, Mickey, Rudolf, etc. Pay, pay, pay, pay! My child is no longer in my home but I can only imagine if we were back at that stage during a time such as this.

So Amazon is a business, ok? Ok, yeah I get it, yaddity yah. And yes, it often helps many people with a great delivery service and in many ways saves us money and helps make our lives easier, and in times during the pandemic, safer. Yet could this not be a time to help us just a tad with holiday entertainment? Maybe, maybe?

I am probably just bitter because I have been denied Netflix’s previously “free” access to the completely darkly comedic “White Reindeer” starring the brilliant Anna Margaret Hollyman. (Netflix no longer provides this lovely.) If you like dark comedy, you will love this. If you are a woman and are not sure about dark comedy, yes, you will most certainly love this. Now I will have to pay to watch it on Amazon. And if you have an appreciation for the darkly bizarre, the horror “Don’t Leave Home,”also starring Anna Margaret Hollyman, is a previous Netflix offering which may now be streamed on Prime Video at cost.

Nothing is “free.” I am always trying to slough off my services because of the squeeze but there is no denying that streaming is much cheaper than going to the theater and of course much safer right now. Though in relatively safer times, a once a month theater trip was almost always in the budget! So worth it!

Thank you for letting me rant and this has been a sweeping survey so no doubt I have left off speeches about other beloved holiday entertainments. If you have some extra scratch and definitely some adult time, you might want to check out Anna Margaret Hollyman. No kiddies should view her aforementioned movies, send them off to bed. But before imbibing, read some reviews of her movies first. Lol. I don’t want to get the blame for an ill fitting movie purchase.

Also, you can stream all of Hulu’s own original movies with a 30 day trial! Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus! If you wisely go for it, let me highly recommend the new Hulu Christmas original “Happiest Season.” I watched it yesterday. Tears. I predict: New all-time classic.

I am also really enjoying Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” series and am a huge Elizabeth Moss fan. I am relatively new to Hulu but definitely find it a great service, a wonderful new alternative. I am chilled by the series version of “The Handmaid’s Tale” because so many political aspects portrayed in this dystopia have come to fruition. And the quelling of rights and freedoms with military force is something I hadn’t anticipated witnessing in my lifetime when I initially read Margaret Atwood’s amazing classic as a college English major over thirty years ago. And of course the attempted “coup” to overthrow our recent election could have been an element of that dystopian vision. The current refusal of many of the GOP to acknowledge the outcome of our election signifies a dangerous tipping point of authoritarian rule in our once shared democracy. It is a truly applicable Holiday Horror of the grandest, truest magnitude.

Again, my rants.

Yet this is how I see it: With hope we hold onto our freedoms and whatever health we have managed to save. We nurture our children, pets, love relationships, parents, siblings with tenderness. We ease our minds before the flickering fires of our televisions.

And we pray for the sun.

Beautiful Judy

Does this kill you like it does me? The beauty of her voice and the poignancy of the words, it’s almost too much. Heartbreaking.

Christmas has always been both beautiful and devastating for my family. My brother died before Christmas Eve years ago and that has always colored the way my family has experienced all holidays. And years before he died, we were in Israel for Christmas, in the fields where the shepherds would have been tending their flocks around the place Jesus was born. My brother was old enough to share in memories of our experiences of both Israel and Egypt.

And now, with the coronvirus disaster, this song devastates just as thoroughly. Will there be a place where we will all be together? No matter what has happened to us? I do believe this is true.

Please, be well tonight.

Sincerely,

Meg