Un-Christmas stories

So, in line with the last post about the changing POV of movies, just watched Point Break (1991), which I saw back when it came out or soon after.  This was one of Kathryn Bigelow's early films, FYI...

The POV begins with surfers, goes to FBI and back and forth, and ends in a surfer-FBI stand-off, with the surfer mentality winning in the end.  Even though the surfers in question rob banks wearing masks of ex-presidents.

Before and during breaks, I am reading Just Kids, the book by Patti Smith about her friendship/love with Robert Mapplethorpe.

These are stories, in one case fictional, in one case non-fiction, of people going to passionate extremes.  The fictional story is of course Hollywood and therefore has all the familiar testosterone-induced tropes, seen - as done so effectively by Bigelow in The Hurt Locker - through a female director's POV.  But nonetheless is burdened with cliches.  So far the Patti Smith book is not, except of course for the fact she and Mapplethorpe met and happened upon NYC in the late 1960s, so the places, music, etc. do have a kind of familiar ring to them.  On the other hand, as someone who moved to NYC in the late 1980s (and lived in the city for a year in the early 80s), I too recognize the strange exhilaration of hitting the city broke and with 'that magic feeling, nowhere to go...nowhere to go...'

However, their companionship is inspiring even at the beginning of the book, and I look forward to reading more.

But the point here is that in the movie and the book, the POV is more 'criminal' (movie) and artist/outsider sometimes shoplifter (book).

I find it cheers me up, this POV, because the whole cop gets his/her guy thing feels tired and somewhat smugly self-satisfied.

I think as someone who is in her late 40s and newly single and essentially re-starting out in NYC (after 8 years in London), I feel a kinship to the status of outsider - not following the script...somewhere over the coloring lines and not generally fitting in to anyone's idea, including my own, of where I 'should' be right now...and guess what, after the tears and the sadness about the loss/es, what do I feel?  This same sense of exhilaration, of possibility...and a quiet knowledge that yes the book/s will get written, yes they will get published, yes it will all be OK.  There's a line in Smith's book, at the end, about recovering lost things when "We experience a moment of respite when all sense of bad luck vanishes."

I have been having these moments recently.  Then waves of inconsolable sadness.  Then these moments of respite.  It occurred to me this evening - perhaps this is the grace of getting older - you begin to understand - that is how it is.  These things follow one another.  There is no reason to fear the inconsolable sadness, because it will be followed by these moments of respite.  Rinse, repeat...

And then sometimes, even, moments of intense connection to what could be called a higher power or God or whatever, like the time I was standing at the bus stop in San Francisco and was rocketed out of the universe somehow past all the stars to I cannot tell you where, but it was past everything there is that we know and then just as quickly shot back to where I was. My feet of course never left the ground, but I have never forgotten that moment, have written about it a number of times, especially what followed - seeing a mother yelling at her son and knowing even that, too, was OK.  OK is not the right word, 'as it was meant to be' is also not the right phrase.  There is no word for this feeling, sensation...no, not feeling, not sensation - knowledge...a knowledge of something that has never left me - though I often forget it just when one would wish one would remember such a thing.  But then - no.  No, I don't.  I know it.

Life since then - I was 24 - has been all about allowing that moment to be followed through on in some profound way.  I have failed utterly at this most of the time, but it's worth it, so so worth it.  It's like the wonderful Joseph Chaikin line "To express the extreme joy of being alive at a certain moment is practically impossible and really worth trying."  But joy - even that word - doesn't cut it.  Words simply don't cut it.  They feel so partial, like the 'failures' T.S. Eliot refers to as each attempt...to describe this.....

So I will leave it there.  I call these un-Christmas stories, because they are not about following anyone or any rituals laid down by others.  If there was a Jesus, I'm not entirely sure Christmas would be his or her thing.

I've had a lovely day, except for one dip into inconsolable sadness, so this is not some adolescent snit about consumerism or the hypocrisy of religion or whatever.  It's just reaching toward something else that may not be contained in this story, the one we mostly ignore on the day anyway...or maybe it is a way of attempting to reach it as well.  I don't know.

But I will say this, if you haven't yet, and you are an artist or have ever felt called to plunge into things outside of all reason, and if you were ever/are now young and finding your way through a place as crazy-loving-strange-beautiful-unforgiving-graceful as NYC, give yourself the pleasure of reading Just Kids.  Patti Smith has always been a favorite artist/musician/lyricist/human of mine, but this is spectacular.