While wandering in a nearby town, we passed this charming old streamline moderne movie theater. While it's not disused as such, I think it's now only used for special events. At any rate, it was empty at the time we were passing by.
I'd seen a few movies here in my youth. Mostly it was my cousins who hung out here. It was their preferred spot for date nights. As for me, though, I don't have any particular memories attached to it, besides seeing one of the less-impressive Indiana Jones films a long time ago.
And as for my husband...well, he's not from around here, so he'd never seen the place before in his life.
None of this mattered when we walked by and felt what we would call the atmosphere (or maybe the ambience) of the place. We stopped and breathed it in. We compared notes.
"It's almost creepy, except it's not," said husband.
"It feels energetic, alive" said I.
"It feels as if there are a hundred theaters here, all existing at once"
"It's like...."
At which point I again ran into the problem of not having words to describe such a thing.
Thinking about it later that evening, I realized part of the problem is that I'm a more of a visual person, so these feelings often come with mental imagery. Most of which would sound stark-raving insane if spoken aloud. But I did hit upon the idea of trying to use a collection of images to convey what it was that I felt there (I also discovered that my computer no longer has a program to create a photo collage. Grr.)
So here goes Some of these may obviously be related to movie theaters, some less so, some extremely not so, but it's as near as I can get to what was going through my mind when standing outside the doors. In no particular order:
Anthropomorphic food, anyone?
I cannot guess what the images above would convey to anyone else, but personally, they seem to suggest a particular sort of happiness, an innocent, giddy materialism. Analogous perhaps to being a child in Woolworth's, knowing that you could buy something in this multi-colored wonderland with your nickel.
I asked the hubs what he thought, if these images reflected what he'd sensed outside the theater.
"Pretty much," he said "though I would have added cars. 1940's era cars." Middle son hadn't been at the theater with us, but I thought it would be fun to get his opinion anyway. I asked what this collection of images suggested to him.
"Pure 1950's" he said.
"Even though some of these images are from the 70's or later?"
"It's the color scheme. It screams 50's."
He was right about this, although the 60's and 70's had been in my thoughts as well. It does seem, in a way, like a version of "a hundred theaters all existing at once." Maybe a hundred layers of pop culture, consumer culture, existing all together.
Perhaps decades of happy movie-goers lining up there had left their echo. Always looking forward, always optimistic. A bit like that atomic-age architecture, reaching for the sky.
I did some research on the theater the other night, and discovered it's said to be haunted. I don't doubt it. After all, there's really no good reason a haunting can't be happy.
Just about a year ago, on Kentucky Derby day, we were watching TV in the living room, waiting for the race to begin.
Suddenly,
there was a frantic ringing of the doorbell. We opened the door to find
a figure dressed all in blue. It jumped up and down a few times and did
a little dance. Then it ran away, but not before graciously posing for
this picture...
I'm 99.9% sure that's my middle son, but to this day he won't admit it. :)
Almost any memory, I suppose, can create an air of importance if it's intense enough. Even hard times can acquire a sort of mythos, the status of a personal legend.
It was four years ago now that I packed up my children, pets and anything I could carry, and drove away from my home. My partner stood on the brick walkway, holding one last box of his belongings. He was waiting for us to go before he began the walk to the place he'd live until some indefinite time in the future.
I felt for him. How lonely it must have been, that walk. I had a long drive ahead of me, and the children and pets to occupy my thoughts. He only had the sidewalks and the stars and the gibbous moon waxing overhead. I tried to keep this mental image at bay as I pulled onto the road. If there was regret, for the children's sake I kept it to myself. I would have loved to turn around, prolong the inevitable goodbye a little longer, but despite my tendency to get lost in the past, I don't like to turn back once a decision is made.
The sky had rapidly sunk from twilight into navy blue. Small details came into focus, the way they do at times like these. The little man on the crosswalk sign that never gave you quite enough time to cross; moths and June bugs flittering around the street lights. Through the windows at the Coastal mart, I could see Velma working the register. I thought that I should have said goodbye to her at least, but guessed my husband would probably stop in on his way. He'd buy a bottle of water and a pack of Malvita* biscuits, and maybe not mention that his whole family had just moved away, because who knows what to say to that. I'd be right, but wouldn't know that until later. At the moment, there was nothing to do but drive on.
We turned onto Rio Grande street, then Main. We searched for music to keep us cheerful. The kids rejected Stereolab as too gloomy and French, they would rather have The Pillows instead. We drove out of town, pretending like it was some great adventure when really we were just sad.
At the truck stop on highway 90, we took a break, unwinding ourselves from the boxes and crates to take the dog out. The kids bought snacks and I bought a coffee and a pack of spearmint gum. The coffee was the consistency of motor oil, but I'm not complaining. It was comforting, somehow.
We hung around for a while, watching the traffic pass. So many cars coming and going. I wondered who else was making a difficult journey. I wondered how they would cope with what was ahead of them. The parking lot was a sort of limbo, I suppose. The florescent lights marked out a sacred space where time didn't exist and all options are - theoretically, at least - still open. When you aren't looking forward to your future, spending eternity in a truck stop parking lot doesn't seem so bad.
...
Back on the road, I tried not to think about the line of falling dominoes that had lead to this point, but such things are easier said than done. There had been plenty of signs that things were going wrong. We'd watched with some trepidation, then outright anxiety, as prospects dimmed all over town. We told ourselves that things might get better, we'd keep hanging on, but I'd managed to put aside the thing that would eventually lead to this night drive - my mother's deteriorating mental state.
Well, she'd always been a piece of work, you know, even when she was younger. There was a good reason I'd hardly been back since I'd left home. Not my problem anymore, I'd said. Until the day came when it was. By then, there was no one left to deal with it but me. The least-favored, most ungolden child.
But isn't that always the way?
There was a storm brewing in the West as we wound our way through the countryside. We could see lightning in the distant clouds. Had I been better with metaphors, I might have seen this as symbolic, but instead it just seemed like Spring. Or more damned crappy luck.
The storm broke a couple of hours after we arrived. It was short-lived but the lightning was fierce, the likes of which we never saw in Victoria. Another thing I'd forgotten in all the years I'd been gone. Mother had forgotten things too. When she talked about her children, she seemed not to remember that I'd once been one of them. It was fitting enough, I suppose. My future was unclear. Now my past was in doubt, too.
...
Maybe it's because of this that I become obsessed with fixing all these details in my mind. Perhaps this post should be called the persistence of emotion instead. Memory fails, but emotions remain, attached to even the most hazy recollections of color, temperature and light. It bothers me that I can't recall what shirt I was wearing the night I left. Everything else, yes - DKNY capri pants, black ballet flats, a forest green cardigan - but what shirt? It hardly matters, except it does. How did I let this detail get away from me? How many more will go when I'm not looking?
I can tell you what we did, the kids and me, as we tried to adjust to our circumstances. Navigating the new parts of town that had sprung up in my absence. Buying shoes and extension cords.Walking the dog. I can tell you what we did, but I can't make you feel how it felt. I'm not clever enough. I'm no Robert Coover or anything. The best I can do is try to anchor these emotions to a specific place in time, lest they escape and run amok.
There is no way to describe how at sea we were, doing those things. Who the heck remembers buying an extension cord at Home Depot? Oh, but I do, and also, since when is there a Home Depot here? And this street? Why is the sunlight so white** and who are all these people? What am I going to do about my mother? The most ordinary things return with a pang. Wandering the lonely aisles at Walgreen's. Rainwater swirling at the bottom of hills. And my son and me, in this sort of sleepless underwater haze at 5 AM, watching Popeye cartoons, because we knew his dad in back in Victoria was watching too, and for that hour at least we felt connected.
We drove a lot in those early days, while we tried to learn our way around. We searched through all the new radio stations. Victoria had always been short on radio. The song we liked the most was Miike Snow's Paddling Out.
It seems somehow fitting now.
It was four months later that my husband and I finally came to understand that there was not going to be a simple solution for my mother, that Victoria was finished for both of us, and this splitting of the family was far harder than it was worth. He packed his bags, and I left before sunrise to bring him back. I bought a Kolache and a coffee on the way out of town, and for that moment - a reverse of what had gone before - I was happy.
I'll always feel a bit glum about our life in Victoria that skidded to a halt so suddenly, and the rapid changes that beset our family. That life can only live on in feeling and memory now. The brick walkway does not belong to us anymore. We are all together, though, and for that I am grateful.
* typo, and it stays.
**it's the limestone, we eventually figured out. The sun reflecting off the limestone. On cloudy days, it's gloomier than Victoria could ever dream of.
It was in the produce department that things began to get strange.
We'd gone out to the grocery store, late, but not too late. It was only about 9 PM, but the store was much emptier than you'd expect, even at that hour. There was hardly a shopper to be seen.
Even so, there was nothing especially peculiar about this, nothing uncanny - it was a Sunday, after all - and we went about our shopping the way we usually do. We picked up bread and milk, and found a coupon for free barbecue sauce and White Wing tortillas if you bought a 12 pack of sausages. A good deal, but no sign that anything weird was afoot.
We wound our way round past the wine and cheese, down toward the produce, and it was then that the feeling of loneliness really became apparent, an almost aching sense of solitude.
I said to my spouse (who's used to this by now) "do you feel that?" He nodded and said, "yeah, it's like we're the last people on Earth."
It was maybe an odd thing to think about while staring down a bunch of carrots.
We continued to shop, carefully picking over the cherries and nectarines, but the feeling grew more intense, more haunting. Colors took on new vividness. The corners seemed to close around us in a silent, secretive way. In short, it was beginning to feel like that well-worn but still mysterious phrase, "the thinning of the veil."
Of course, this phrase is something one might associate with frosty fields on Halloween, or nature walks on Summer evenings. Grocery stores, not so much. But there it was. My spouse jokingly said as much as we walked out the door with our bags. "It doesn't normally seem like the produce department might be another dimension."
Outside in the parking lot, though, this strange atmosphere was everywhere. So quiet and lonely, with a tinge of something more nebulous. The cars in the parking lot might as well have been abandoned, all signs of life gone missing. Below the hill, the city lights blazed enthusiastically, so it couldn't have been that the whole town was asleep. It was not even 10 o'clock at night, yet it was just like - as my husband pointed out - 2 or 3 AM.
On the drive home, we speculated about causes. The weather was cooler, maybe, but no mist or fog. What was it that might have changed? We noticed that all the lights looked...different. Different how? Just different. We tried to put a word to it, some adjective, and failed. Just somehow noticeably, but indescribably, different.The Shell station on the corner shone like a beacon with this eerie light, and I wondered about the clerks inside working, if they'd had been affected by the loneliness, too.
After we arrived home, we sent our 14 year old around back to put out the bins. When he came back in a while later, he pulled me aside. He said, "Mother, this might sound strange...but you know how they say that plants have feelings? Well, I got this strong feeling outside tonight that the plants, all the vegetation, are lonely. Call me crazy, but that's how it feels."
He'd picked it up, too, that loneliness. As for his theory, I could not really disagree with him. It was as good an explanation as any. It was May Day, after all.
It's not so hard to imagine that what we all sensed that night was the primeval force of nature, roving across the land, searching high and low for its May Queen.
