Puppet Maker’s Hand, 2006
H.o.p. trying his hand again at making paper mache puppets the other day, which didn’t turn out so well and he decided it was too much work. But I did get this picture and liked the way there was an ungooped spot on his hand where you could see the flour/salt crystals.
I’m in and out of deep at work on writing which means a lot of staring at the wall. Because I’m writing (staring at the wall) this will mean not much text blogging. Perhaps pic blogging for a while instead and some occasional updates for old wayward picture urls that are out of date will be going through the RSS feed. But nothing too involving, at least no more involving than a movie blog. Though I won’t be doing one of “The Blob” which we watched the other night in Criterion color. However tempting it is to blog “The Blob”, what with a 25-year-old Helen Crump playing the teen heroine and a 28-year-old Steve McQueen as the earnest, kind-of angsty teen hero. They are actually pretty decent (more than decent when you consider with what they’re working) though there’s a definite read off McQueen that he knew he couldn’t be the teen so was playing it straight, which did cause some problems with how the parental figure actors interacted with him. Their lines often enough seemed directed to a cardboard cut-out of the teen they were supposed to be playing against but wasn’t there. Aneta Corsaut (Helen Crump), somehow sidestepped this both with McQueen and the other actors. Not that she has a whole hell of a lot to do other than worry about a little dog being eaten by the blob. And when confronted with monsters, she hasn’t the scripted imagination to do much other than fall down and not be able to get back up.
This reminds me of when I was 15 and off at a Young Life weekend getaway with some friends. Yes, Young Life, which was a Christian thing. A good friend of mine by the name of Martha was attending and I can’t imagine my going to a meeting for any reason other than Martha, who was very much unlike me in that she was gregarious, talked nonestop, seemed to get along with everyone and though she was most every parent’s idea of wholesome she wasn’t so much so that she wasn’t a lot of fun, because she was funny as hell and smart, which is an especially good combination when the person is good natured. Team all that up with really good fitting Levis and there was a kind of trustworthy factor that wouldn’t have happened if she was in ill-fitting Wranglers handing out bible tracts. Which she didn’t do. Martha wasn’t ultra-religious. Martha just wanted to have fun.
Martha fit into Young Life, but Martha fit in just about anywhere as long as that anywhere wasn’t likely to get her into trouble. I was always the outsider and would be the outsider there as well for the brief time I went to meetings, which to the best of my memory was only about two meetings, because they were boring, people sitting around singing John Denver songs, and sometimes people can smile too much, if you know what I mean. Plus I had been promised that boys would be there, and there were only boys at the first meeting I went to (some friends), at least the kind of boys that I thought were interesting. And there was an ex-boyfriend there and that was no good. Especially when a meeting was held at his house. I forget whether it was the first or second.
I’ve blogged a bit about this before. In fact, it was another post on The Blob. I really can’t tell you why when I think of The Blob I’m immediately reminded of Young Life.
Anyway. Young Life held these weekend getaways in the mountains. Martha was a mountain kind of person. She was a member of the kind of family that went skiing on snow in the winter and on water in the summer. I wasn’t a mountain kind of person but a bunch of girls and boys together for a couple of days sounded good to me, especially if I was going with Martha because she wasn’t the kind of friend to hook up with a guy and abandon you.
I recollect so very little about that Young Life weekend in the mountains, I may as well not have been there.
The one thing I do remember is the mock attack. It was night and Martha and some other girl and I were walking down a woodsy road. There were no lights and it was quite dark. The next thing I remember there was a split second of commotion, two threatening shadows appearing in front of us suddenly, one large and one smaller, and out the corner of my eye I saw Martha dropping to the ground and the other girl freezing. The adrenaline already kicking in, the one conscious thought I had was, “What in the hell does Martha think she’s doing?” but I didn’t stop to check, none of this grab your friend by the arm chivalrously and help them out of a situation stuff, because adrenaline was doing my thinking for me which meant I was gone, tearing through the woods, no brain leading me, body relying on speed and an ability to dodge branches and trees and ravines in the dark to get me out of harm’s way. The only other vague thought I’d had was that one girl frozen in fear on the road and one girl unreasonably lying on the road meant a possibility that the two shadows might be preoccupied and not so likely to spend energy pursuing a third body into the woods.
What had happened was ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend had decided to stage a mock horror show attack on us on that woodsy road. They were on the road as well, had heard us coming, hidden in the woods, and then jumped upon us. The girl I didn’t know had frozen and was immedately nabbed. Martha? Her adrenaline didn’t blot out her brain which decided that the thing to do was drop to the ground and hope that no one would notice her lying there in the dark. What hadn’t been expected was that I would tear off into the woods, my brain temporarily on hold while fight or flight chemicals did my thinking. For me, it seemed, to scream would mean diverting necessary energy away from running, so I never screamed, I just ran. They ran after me, yelling to me to stop, that it was a joke, but being drenched in adrenaline I didn’t hear them for a long while. Or rather I did but my adrenaline self felt that as long as I could hear voices and footsteps then I wasn’t out of harm’s way, so keep running hard until those voices and footsteps are muffled by distance. I don’t know how I did it but somehow I managed to tear through the trees and branches without falling, and eventually sensing that danger had dropped far behind me, I began to come to and hear that these were familiar voices wailing for me to stop, that things were all right, that it was just a joke. I stopped running and listened to make sure I was hearing correctly. I recollect I was on the other side of a small gulley and a couple of fallen trees; perhaps the adrenaline self had recognized these logs as a decent place to take cover, if necessary. I listened and realized those were familiar voices yelling and that they were yelling my name. I began to backtrack, stepping over logs that I’d nimbly leaped over, quite unconsciously, in the dark. The ex-boyfriend appeared, out of breath, frightened. Everyone was frightened and one of the girls was crying. I’d scared them as they’d been unable to catch up with me and they were afraid of what would happen to me in the woods. Afraid of me getting lost in the woods at night. Afraid of me being eaten by bears. Probably afraid of getting in trouble for a joke going wrong and losing a friend in the woods.
I was rather amazed at the obstacle course I’d navigated without conscious thought.
Afterwards, I thought if the threat had been real I probably had the best chance of surviving. The brain driven on adrenlin didn’t, however, turn me and have me race back up the road to the lodge. I don’t know why. Instead that brain plunged me into the forest. Had we been a horror film then I would have been the girl, I guess, that theater-goers would have been chiding for being so stupid to run into the woods. “Why is she running into the woods? That idiot! Why doesn’t she run back down the road?” Perhaps the adrenalin-driven brain sensed the bigger shadow would have been able to catch up with me on a straight-out road and thought it a better bet for me to dive into the woods.
I felt at least I’d done better than Martha and the other girl. As mentioned, I’d seen there were two shadows and one of the girls freezing and the other dropping to the road, as I took off, I’d figured those two shadows would be preoccupied long enough with what was right in front of them to give me a chance to get away.
Some friend I was, hey?
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