Drive My Car

September 11, 2024

B and I saw Drive My Car last night in an old theater on the corner of Clinton and 26^th, where the screen is framed by an arch that rises to a rounded peak

The film takes its time, the opening titles shown forty minutes in

A whole world before then – a wife telling stories to her husband in bed – her infidelity, her death

Sometimes, we just hear the sound of the car’s engine

A long scene, driving north from Hiroshima to Hokkaido – according to Google maps, a twenty-seven-hour trip – two people, not speaking, the woman twenty-three – the same age as the man’s daughter would have been, had she lived  

Whipping rain and wind on a ferry

Silence of snow

When they do speak, their words are Japanese, a language I don’t know

Instead, I read the subtitles

A silent activity

A three-hour movie

B and I sitting side by side in the dark, the road ahead lit on the screen

It’s like we’re on a trip together, driving through the night

Passing factories and broad bodies of water, through a tunnel as long as our own city

The rubble of a house beneath a landslide

In the movie, the man is staging the Russian play Uncle Vanya, and the actor who portrays Yelena speaks Mandarin and English

The actor who plays Sonya speaks in Korean sign language – her hands like wings shaping words

I didn’t sleep the night before, my mind a tangle of live wires – now, in the theater, I drift off now and then – not really sleeping, but relaxing my grip, easing into the story of these characters, these people

How many times has B seen the film?

Watching a movie he loves is like stepping inside his heart – treading softly beneath leafy branches, my sleeve brushing a fragrance of his inner life

My son, who was once an infant to whom I used to sing in the night

With whom I used to walk around Mt. Tabor and smell the scent of fir needles and berries and damp earth

B talks about how the grieving father in the movie is now a father figure to other people’s children

When my father died, I knew him as I hadn’t known him before

I saw that every part of him was beautiful – I saw the tenderness that was there even when he was in a temper – the flames of which were sometimes hard to part when he was living

Sitting here today, on a chair in our damp yard, a wool blanket over my lap, I see our neighbor’s elm tree, untouched by chainsaws, left to tower and spread and break when the wind comes

The flower island in our grass looks so puny in comparison – feverfew, black-eyed susan, coneflower – but the blossoms add color – white and yellow, black and gold, pink and salmon

The distant traffic of Highway 26 is muted – we’ve lived here for almost 34 years – the sound so familiar – it could be the ocean

B was born just after we moved in, then I got my driver’s license so we could go places together without having to bump a stroller up the steps to the bus and hold him while I balanced on the moving vehicle and put my quarters in the fare box

Confession – I worried about him crying and disturbing the other passengers

A mistake? A character flaw? A mother who didn’t yet know herself?

We bought a big, beautiful boat of a car back then – no, it was ugly, faded to a silvery green, musty, cracked seats – if you rolled down the windows too far, you couldn’t roll them back up again – but the silent beast could move – gracefully – up hills, around green curves – and B and I would sing – Lena Horne: “It’s Love,” Frank Sinatra: “Let’s Take It Nice and Easy”

B knew every word

Eventually, he sang whole songs for our friends: “On the Street Where You Live,” “Witchcraft”

Oh

Nostalgia? Now?

Why polish the same misty mirror over and over again, flipping through the same faded pictures in the plastic sleeves?

The crows are calling this morning, and a yellow leaf from the Virginia creeper that grows on the warehouse behind me has landed in the fragrant arms of the rosemary bush – time to go inside to check on the dog, who is probably awake now

and wondering where everyone has gone.

 *

B (aka Bennett Campbell Ferguson) is a film critic. You can read his review of Drive My Car here.

 

 

 

 

Summer Scribbling

I've been hanging out at Washington Park since I was a kid. 

Still new things to see....

Déjà Vu All Over Again

Here's a poem that was originally published in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems from the Garden. Written in 2016, this one is not about flowers.

The Garden of the Universe

And on Earth, the garden of the universe, some walked with ivory birds on their shoulders, and some pierced the breasts of scarlet birds to show who was boss, and some stretched and inhaled the scent of morning jasmine, and some stepped over the sweet stench of rotting flesh, and some wore veils and whispered their daily prayers under peach trees, and some flung off their veils and raised their fists, and some marched and shouted at those who wouldn’t march and shout with them, and some swatted the bees whose drones interrupted their dreams, and some manufactured golden apples in the test tubes of white laboratories, and some built cars that could turn the blossoms of the garden into a blur, and some cursed the bleating of sheep and some cursed the keening of coyotes, and some slept in towers that pricked the stars, and some slept on warm sands that conformed to the curves of their spines, and some leapt from cliffs and tried to fly, and some never looked another creature in the eye, and some swooned at the sound of a voice on the radio, and some shaved their hair and some braided their hair and some painted their hands and some powdered their wigs, and some wove armor out of shards of bone and dried grass, and some danced on ponds of glass, and some made laws that said ‘No Music,’ and some made sculptures they tucked under ferns, and some murmured poems beneath the brooks, and some made signs that spelled their own names in electric lights, and some kissed for the joy of kissing and some kissed out of curiosity and some kissed because their lips were cold and some kissed to keep the kissees from speaking, and some picked all the pears and stored them behind secret doors, and some scooped up all the salmon, and some shared the last olive with a distant cousin, and some climbed sequoias and proclaimed themselves monarchs, and some loved the monarchs like a mother, and some bowed to the monarchs then mocked them when the monarchs were out of earshot, and some monarchs learned how to stoke fires and some monarchs learned how to grow flowers, and some of their subjects warned that the garden would surely die if everyone didn’t bless it with warm tears, and some threw stones at those who issued warnings, and some lay awake at night listening for their instructions in the silence, and some offered arias to empty skies, and some drew plans for ships that could carry them to a planet where they could start a new garden, and we all took our first icy breaths on Earth, the garden of the universe; and we all trembled at the thought of death, even when we believed it was just a story that was sure to end happily.

Let's Get Musical

I'm singing in the car and spinning in the kitchen, thanks to these two exuberant productions. You can click the links to read my reviews.

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical

Jersey Boys

What joy to be writing for Oregon ArtsWatch!

Feverfew

Ever hear the one about the writer who dismissed poems about "flowers and grandmothers"?

Yeah, me too.

Don't get me wrong. I love the work of this particular poet, who happens to be male. 

Is that last detail relevant? I don't know. Don't we all, at times, swallow ideas whole, without chewing, without tasting?

Still.

Here's an early piece about my flowers, my grandmother. She was a rock, a rockstar in my family's world. Someone who'd had a tough life, but made it look gracious and easy for over a century, a feat that required grit and—yes!—delicacy.

Feverfew

 

One day Gram brought over two plants for me,

and now they grow everywhere—

through the cracks in the sidewalk and the rock wall

and behind the garage and even in a ring

around the plum tree. Just this morning,

I took out the garbage and found one blooming,

as tall as my knees, at the side of the house.

 

Some of the neighbors call them “weeds,” and once

someone tried to tell me they were really chamomile,

but I know differently—

 

like miniature daisies, these small white flowers

with the dab of yellow and the wide, laughing leaves

are called feverfew, Chrysanthemum Parthenium,

or, more simply, “Gram flowers,”

and every time I see them she is with me—

her slender ankles and silver hair, her tablecloths

and place cards and sheer stockings:

 

Gram of the frozen cookies and the flutes of cranberry juice,

Gram of the rose bushes and the ripe tomatoes,

Gram of the BLT’s and the patio swing,

of timecards and two weeks' vacation and an onyx ring,

of lawn bowls, tea rooms, swimming pools and ‘How-do!’

Gram, ancestress of my skinny feet and private grumbling—

gone for a year and still around me,

growing, blooming, scenting the air I breathe—

the air you, too, are breathing.

Four Reviews and a Poem

Here are links to my latest Willamette Week reviews:

Uncle Vanya

The Brother and the Bird

The Play About My Father

Perfect Arrangement

Between shows, I'm also a poet.

Here's a poem that was published in Quintessence: Aspects of the Soul.

Today

Too many words

crowding my brain,

tickle of ants,

beating wings –

synonyms scratching hyperboles,

while twining lines compete with a cacophony

of talons and beaks

and crowns of striped fungi sprout

with the perpetual reach

of new fingers rising

from the fragrant wounds

of felled trees –

add to this an abundance of furred verbs:

slink, scurry, stalk and pounce –

I can almost taste the raw flesh

dangling from their mouths.

Sometimes I just want

to lie on the grass

and feel the warm hands

of the earth hold my back –

I want to look up and find clouds

that are simply clouds,

not the grandfather I never met

raising his ax.

Today I’m determined

to look at clouds and see

nothing but water and scattered light –

a collective sigh cradled by sky.

There's No Business

I've had a happy, busy winter of seeing plays. Here are links to my latest Willamette Week theater reviews:

Walk on the Wilde Side: Actors and audiences mingle in Experience Theatre Project's production of The Importance of Being Earnest.

The Dictator: A parable of Hitler's rise reflects the disintegration of our own democracy in Twilight Theater's production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.