'
The sermon for Saturday, Mar. 02, 2002 is: the time machine 11:50 p.m. So somehow I became calm enough to watch TV. Actually to be precise I was in that state of comedown when everything will make me cry-- I remember when Princess and I saw "Breaking The Waves" after doing bad, bad things for five or six days without sleep; and we wept and wept and wept all throughout the movie, we turned to one another in the dark and held onto one another as ballast against all the tortures that god von trier had arrayed against that poor woman. This is a bad example -- "Breaking The Waves" is an experience, a cinematic auto da f�, not substantially altered if experienced under the influence of substances -- so let me also tell you that I sat down and watched "Titanic" and thought that film was genius. I could swear that the first few scenes, opening on a murky world filled with shards of dinnerware and porcelain masks, were subtly enhanced by a soundtrack of whispery voices muttering in Arabic. Oh, beautiful. I invite you to submit yourself to the "Titanic" experience again, and listen to the silence of the turning sea. It would help if you would take some of my drugs, though.... So anyway, where was I? Oh, I was watching TV. I was watching the movie "Frequency." Now the plot synopsis, baldly stated -- "This guy gets his dead father on his ham radio" -- and its cast, Dennis Quaid (once upon a time Mr Meg Ryan; once upon a time Martin Short's catamite) and Jim Cazaviel (his Wings-Of-Desire-"I renounced Heaven for Hollywood stardom" last name notwithstanding, I think he's best known as Sensitive Stalker Guy from J. Lo's most recent Warhol/Morrissey experiment, ummmmm what was the name of that again? "Angel Eyes"?) did not exactly inspire confidence. Well, I must admit once again that drugs made the ordeal not only worthwhile but a purely religious experience. For there is a part in the movie -- it lasts so briefly, but while it's there, a spark of mysterious vivacity burns throughout the mise en scene -- when the characters slowly get their heads around the realization that they have somehow been granted what every heart and soul has longed for, in some form or another, throughout time immemorial: the main character realizes, "I can reach back in time and I can repair its fatal fault. I can go back in time and redeem myself. I can go back in time and save my dead." Suddenly it seems terribly appropriate to quote Neutral Milk Hotel lyrics of-a-sudden, perhaps here:
It would be far more appropriate, don't you think? to quote "Oh Comely":
Jim Cavaziel diverts his father's original death in "Frequency" (weird scene: having been told by his 30-years-soi distant son that "following his instincts" gets him killed in a fire, Dennis Quaid goes against his instincts and instead effortlessly slides down some magical corkscrew support beam amidst Cecil B. Demille hellfire; here, where the film threatened to become an hommage to the MGM musical, is where my fascination with the movie ended) and I went outside into the afternoon to smoke a cigarette. I looked at the sunlight that filled the air, thick and expectant, and thought about how beautiful this same light may have seemed to Anne Frank, walking with Margot to Montessori, or to Thomas Merton, wiping the perspiration off his brow and reaching toward his air conditioner; to Jesus Christ and Lao Tzu and John Maynard Keynes and Sappho; how beautiful this same light might have seemed, would seem, to my greatgrandfather whom I know nothing of but lived so I could come into being, or to my greatgrandchildren, of whom necessarily I will know nothing except hopefully this same quality of light. And right then I became terribly afraid of death; but before I could go on in this richly threnodic vein, the phone rang and I picked it up. It was Larsen. He wants to start a "Current Affairs and Debate Club" -- you see, ever since September 11 he's become overly concerned with politics and national policy and whatnot, things I lament that should not be the bother of poets and aesthetes like us in endless whiny sonnets of lamentation, all without effect or affect. "People are interested in this club!" Larsen said. "Some guys say we should go to PBS and see if we can get a panel show." I pointed out that his members would belong to the "CAD Club," which I thought awfully funny since I laughed a long time. He didn't laugh a long time. He must've been on different drugs. On retrospect he must've been on some amazingly fucked-up drugs, because who the hell else would start calling people up on a Saturday and ask them, "Would you like to join my Current Affairs and Debate Club?" out of the blue? "Yes, I will like to join your club and get a t-shirt advertising my membership," I told Larsen. "I find your views intriguing and your argument persuasive. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter." "Yeah, yeah," Larsen said resignedly. Apparently he thought my tone was patronizing. "So. What you doing. See any movies?" "Ever heard of the movie 'Frequency'? 'Cuz---" and this is the part that you, sweet Diary, walked in on, so I won't go through all that dull detail another time. I went through my whole rhapsodic spiel about the enormity of lost time, its neighbourhoods and suburbs of the dead, all related to me somehow through some mystical quincunx of blood, light, air, memory and guilt, most probably made by the Catholic Church. And I asked Larsen, "So if you had a time machine, would you go back in time? I mean, if you could use it to, you know... save someone, would you?" "I wouldn't know what to do," Larsen said. "Like, say we tried to save Anne Frank. (Of course.) Like, say we dial our wayback machine to Amsterdam 1942---" "I see where you're going with this," I said quickly. "--and, boop! boop! boop! Hey look! Amsterdam 1942! Okay," Larsen said. "Now what do we do?" "'We should've studied some Dutch.'" "'Or German at least!'" "'I'm hungry. Did we pack food?'" "'Which way do we go now? Where exactly are we?'" "'What fucking street is this!? Where's my fucking cigarettes!?" "Cheap bastard, I told you to get the deluxe rental with GPS, you got us the crummy econo-time machine!'" "You see where I'm going with this," Larsen said. "We fuck shit up trying to do a one-day roadtrip. We get fucked up trying to get to the movies on time. Johnny, just put your time machine away and stick to current events." We stuck to current events, talking blithely about Israel and Palestine and the shadow government and the Republican grab for power and other stuff which I talked quite brilliant piffle, if I daresay so. And Larsen hung up, after saying he would consider my suggestion of an alternate name for his league of mighty thinkers, "The Very Special People Club," leaving me alone with the sunlight. Somehow it had gotten cold, and the light, though abundant as before, seemed distant: more lost. And then it occurred to me: me and Jeff Magnum and you, all of us, we torment ourselves with the possibility that perhaps we could turn the wrinkle in time and, somehow, impossibly, save them... we occupy our thoughts with themes of salvation and redemption because, innately, we know we can't.
 
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