08-28-2023, 02:07 AM
Chaos Magic in a Ghostland
I was watching Incident in a Ghost Land. And it was night. Maybe back in February. Seems right. I'd watched another movie by the director, and saw that another of his movies was called this, but what enriched the desire to watch it more was Emilia Jones. So one night I watched. I paused at the store scene, the mother and daughters stop to get gas. Emilia Jones is one of the daughters, a writer of stories, horror stories, and I pause on her there looking at the cheap books on the rack in the store. How old is she? 17 maybe. But, is it her? She looks a little different. Hair darker, big framed glasses. I know she's playing a part, a role, a character. But, more, that face under those glasses, curtained by the long dark hair. Of course, that's Emilia Jones, with the good ominous initials, E. J. But, that's also Matilda. The secret angel of the supermarket. I knew that she would be here. There has always been that connection, since I first watched Locke & Key, between Emilia Jones and Matilda, why I watched that show with such enthusiasm. And here at night, alone in the cold solitude of the month of Saint Valentine, the two have merged together in my dark vision, clutching my dark heart, the only source of warmth in a solitary world. She's there, before me on my tv screen, a writer of stories, like me.
Let her stay. I paused and left off watching the movie for a few days. Better to stand out under the stars we legitimately share, or go to bed. It's late, even for movies. That kind of dark night.
A few nights later, still cold, though the climate is a trickster of moods, as late as before, I pick up where I left her. That's Matilda. That's her if I knew her. If this were a dream, I'd be invested, and this is a movie, a dream of many together, so I'm drinking and invested. Heavy. Dark, and bright is Emilia's darkness, her strangeness, sad like me, alone where she goes. Matilda's double, the kind that could know me, like in a dream.
Upstairs in the new house, the kind the hip sister never approves of; what I would be giddy over entering on this late, distant night out in the farmhouse country. A place to find old portraits on the walls, a typewriter, and my own personal Violet Baudelaire, in her lowkey way, appreciates.
But it's not long before the weremen come, appropriately pulling up nonchalantly in a van. The dog-eared serial killer days of the '70s are alive. And Emilia Jones experiences it all. . . .
Back and back into those psychotic breaks, a safe future as a successful author, living the days of wine and roses; if I was there, how could I bring her back? To what these men are doing to her, and then away. Away from all that. All this.
She is Matilda, and Emilia Jones, who I've come to love as an orphaned sister, assaulted child-bride, not by me. That large man has her. Dressed and painted up like a doll, dress and stockings and makeup and hair, by the transvestite man. A darling of browns. She is a real doll. The director has her handled this way. But Matilda's eyes are blue. Not green like Emily's. Emilia's brown eyes are as a porchlight lighting only the beauteous curves of her pale face. A doll in the hands of a large man who smells her between her legs and sniffs with grunts around her ears and neck. Maybe 15 when this was shot. I feel the guilt of love. The desire that comes with the instinct to save, protect. Emilia Jones, I have never loved you so . . . The retarded man who holds her, I feel for him, I feel the guilt he doesn't know, the fear that only confuses makes me certain and afraid. I want to hold you like that, Emilia Jones. To have Matilda through you, an actress. Through her silence, fear erupting inside, like a child who knows dangers never taught, all I want is for her to be ok. Her eyes, her aghast, petrified expression, she reminds . . . she looks like my sister, my daughter, me. I'm the entire room. The house. We're this. My guilt and fear and love and tearhot desires.
She stabs him, with what?, the silver butterfly pin in her hair?
This is not the time to lose reality. She's there in that other world again. Even in madness nothing's ever gone with the wind.
She has to wake up. The clock reflects her. A window. Her sister. Get outside, and then what, though? A stabbed bullman and maternally lecherous silent transvestite can both outrun a broken girl.
I'm not doing this. I want to save her. Never before, and ever so much more intensely than with Saint Maude, have I wanted to step inside the screen and save someone. Empathy, jealousy, brown yearning.
Now a ritual. An importance with the motions of these events. I know that this is a movie, whatever's going to happen has already happened. There is nothing that I can do.
Then I remembered. I said, I'm the goddamn Magus of Irreverence, Reality is a plaything in my hands, I'm going to save her: and I damn well did.
Coda
A Special Love
One Sunday I was lucky enough to wake up fully supplied. The day was warm, mild, cool, breezy, clouds and sun. The Jehovah Witnesses paid a visit, and stood among my cans. I was watching Reaction Videos, one way to feel alive in the solitude of Sundays. Two girls with accents that sounded Northern European, they may have been lesbians, were watching the last two episodes of Breaking Bad. I watched intently, through solitary, sentimental midSunday drinking, the girl on my right. The quintessential Northern Europe model type, a private citizen exposed on screen in her vulnerability, real. And as he touched his drug-making equipment one last time with a proud smile, and the Badfinger song cranked in, I watched her peachy face bright red eyes and cheeks through the tones of the song, like someone waving goodbye to someone leaving on a train as a deafening plane flies over, her passionate eyes welling to climax. And suddenly, emotional release, wide hot tears long, and, as soon as I saw, I had a release, too.
That feeling she had of having watched for weeks, got to know people, an atmosphere of reality. Living with them. And coming to these last tense and farewell moments. Him lying there, arms spread like the Joker from the '80s Batman movie, or a Christ. To have that song to remember. Though we never meet. Different times, different worlds, countries. Sharing the same emotion, the same response. Maybe you'll have the same experience sometime, and think of me. One day, if I see this girl, from afar, not totally sure it's her, her possibly a lesbian anyway, I can smile, with knowing sadness in my eyes that once we shared, together unknowingly, unclose, as I say silently, The special love I have for you.
I was watching Incident in a Ghost Land. And it was night. Maybe back in February. Seems right. I'd watched another movie by the director, and saw that another of his movies was called this, but what enriched the desire to watch it more was Emilia Jones. So one night I watched. I paused at the store scene, the mother and daughters stop to get gas. Emilia Jones is one of the daughters, a writer of stories, horror stories, and I pause on her there looking at the cheap books on the rack in the store. How old is she? 17 maybe. But, is it her? She looks a little different. Hair darker, big framed glasses. I know she's playing a part, a role, a character. But, more, that face under those glasses, curtained by the long dark hair. Of course, that's Emilia Jones, with the good ominous initials, E. J. But, that's also Matilda. The secret angel of the supermarket. I knew that she would be here. There has always been that connection, since I first watched Locke & Key, between Emilia Jones and Matilda, why I watched that show with such enthusiasm. And here at night, alone in the cold solitude of the month of Saint Valentine, the two have merged together in my dark vision, clutching my dark heart, the only source of warmth in a solitary world. She's there, before me on my tv screen, a writer of stories, like me.
Let her stay. I paused and left off watching the movie for a few days. Better to stand out under the stars we legitimately share, or go to bed. It's late, even for movies. That kind of dark night.
A few nights later, still cold, though the climate is a trickster of moods, as late as before, I pick up where I left her. That's Matilda. That's her if I knew her. If this were a dream, I'd be invested, and this is a movie, a dream of many together, so I'm drinking and invested. Heavy. Dark, and bright is Emilia's darkness, her strangeness, sad like me, alone where she goes. Matilda's double, the kind that could know me, like in a dream.
Upstairs in the new house, the kind the hip sister never approves of; what I would be giddy over entering on this late, distant night out in the farmhouse country. A place to find old portraits on the walls, a typewriter, and my own personal Violet Baudelaire, in her lowkey way, appreciates.
But it's not long before the weremen come, appropriately pulling up nonchalantly in a van. The dog-eared serial killer days of the '70s are alive. And Emilia Jones experiences it all. . . .
Back and back into those psychotic breaks, a safe future as a successful author, living the days of wine and roses; if I was there, how could I bring her back? To what these men are doing to her, and then away. Away from all that. All this.
She is Matilda, and Emilia Jones, who I've come to love as an orphaned sister, assaulted child-bride, not by me. That large man has her. Dressed and painted up like a doll, dress and stockings and makeup and hair, by the transvestite man. A darling of browns. She is a real doll. The director has her handled this way. But Matilda's eyes are blue. Not green like Emily's. Emilia's brown eyes are as a porchlight lighting only the beauteous curves of her pale face. A doll in the hands of a large man who smells her between her legs and sniffs with grunts around her ears and neck. Maybe 15 when this was shot. I feel the guilt of love. The desire that comes with the instinct to save, protect. Emilia Jones, I have never loved you so . . . The retarded man who holds her, I feel for him, I feel the guilt he doesn't know, the fear that only confuses makes me certain and afraid. I want to hold you like that, Emilia Jones. To have Matilda through you, an actress. Through her silence, fear erupting inside, like a child who knows dangers never taught, all I want is for her to be ok. Her eyes, her aghast, petrified expression, she reminds . . . she looks like my sister, my daughter, me. I'm the entire room. The house. We're this. My guilt and fear and love and tearhot desires.
She stabs him, with what?, the silver butterfly pin in her hair?
This is not the time to lose reality. She's there in that other world again. Even in madness nothing's ever gone with the wind.
She has to wake up. The clock reflects her. A window. Her sister. Get outside, and then what, though? A stabbed bullman and maternally lecherous silent transvestite can both outrun a broken girl.
I'm not doing this. I want to save her. Never before, and ever so much more intensely than with Saint Maude, have I wanted to step inside the screen and save someone. Empathy, jealousy, brown yearning.
Now a ritual. An importance with the motions of these events. I know that this is a movie, whatever's going to happen has already happened. There is nothing that I can do.
Then I remembered. I said, I'm the goddamn Magus of Irreverence, Reality is a plaything in my hands, I'm going to save her: and I damn well did.
Coda
A Special Love
One Sunday I was lucky enough to wake up fully supplied. The day was warm, mild, cool, breezy, clouds and sun. The Jehovah Witnesses paid a visit, and stood among my cans. I was watching Reaction Videos, one way to feel alive in the solitude of Sundays. Two girls with accents that sounded Northern European, they may have been lesbians, were watching the last two episodes of Breaking Bad. I watched intently, through solitary, sentimental midSunday drinking, the girl on my right. The quintessential Northern Europe model type, a private citizen exposed on screen in her vulnerability, real. And as he touched his drug-making equipment one last time with a proud smile, and the Badfinger song cranked in, I watched her peachy face bright red eyes and cheeks through the tones of the song, like someone waving goodbye to someone leaving on a train as a deafening plane flies over, her passionate eyes welling to climax. And suddenly, emotional release, wide hot tears long, and, as soon as I saw, I had a release, too.
That feeling she had of having watched for weeks, got to know people, an atmosphere of reality. Living with them. And coming to these last tense and farewell moments. Him lying there, arms spread like the Joker from the '80s Batman movie, or a Christ. To have that song to remember. Though we never meet. Different times, different worlds, countries. Sharing the same emotion, the same response. Maybe you'll have the same experience sometime, and think of me. One day, if I see this girl, from afar, not totally sure it's her, her possibly a lesbian anyway, I can smile, with knowing sadness in my eyes that once we shared, together unknowingly, unclose, as I say silently, The special love I have for you.