This Floating Life

Saw Fight Club last night, which was much weirder and more subversive than I could have imagined. I hadn't actually wrangled intellectually with a Hollywood movie since . . . hmm. What's a good example of a recent Hollywood art movie?

I don't really watch movies. For me, watching a movie is like falling in love with someone who is slightly crazy: Suddenly his or her madness becomes your madness.

I grew up going to a lot of movies. It was the usual fare for a kid of that era: Superman, Star Wars, Muppet Movie. Often, it was just my dad and I, but I remember my mom came with us to see Muppet Movie. When we got home, my parents ordered me to go in my bedroom and shut the door. I was horrified, yowling that I hadn't done anything! They insisted. And when I stomped into my room and closed the door, I saw that they had affixed the Muppet Movie poster to the back of my bedroom door. The soundtrack record was leaning against the wall!

Sometime not long after my mom died, I remember my dad took me to see Young Frankenstein. In the scene in which the doctor and Inga stroll alongside a shelf lined with skulls, each of a different age, I remember asking my father, Is that what Mommy looks like now? Is that one?

Later I learned that it's typical of kids that age to try to understand death very literally/gorily. I still feel such horror that I could have done that to my dad.

Sometimes I think I stay away from movies now because I saw so many movies during that painful period. Or maybe I've seen too many painful movies.

Despite this aversion to pain, I have taken up punching for sport. Like Fight Club, only with gloves.

Pow.