If I could remake the world

If I could remake the world, from beginning to end, in the manner of God, I'd start with the land. I'd make the land go on forever, and when I created man and woman, I wouldn't pull the woman from the man's rib, I'd create her from dust as well. And I would create numerous people so that there wouldn't be questions about incest. Although incest is really a taboo only because of the birth defects. Maybe my world would be like Game of Thrones, and there would be some incest. But, now, you see, I've already gotten off track. How does one go about creating a world?

I'd start then with the water. Everything would be water. And I'd create one, maybe two whales, both asexual, so there would be no question of incest. The whales would be immortal, and they'd swim around in the depths of the sea for all of eternity with nothing else around, except the two of them, powering through the water like trains. In time, these whales would become enemies, something like lovers, friends, king and subject, serf and master. They'd be forced into these roles, which sound very human, given an eternity to act them out. In an infinite amount of time one supposes that even asexual whales would figure some things out.

In short, I'd create a world that wouldn't be very much like this one. You'd still be there, and maybe a whale or two. We'd both be otters, or some other creature that we can't quite conceive of that has webbed feet, but maybe also webbed eyes and a rough sense of humor. Maybe we'd swim into the sea or the river, or maybe there wouldn't be a sea or a river. Maybe we'd swim towards the sun, across the water, with that late evening tinge of gold, tethered to the light. You see, in this world, the light will be something that you can attach yourself to, and as we swim towards the light, two strange things that might be like otters, we'll pull ourselves so close together that our swimming will be as one.

Of course, that world doesn't exist yet either because I haven't gotten around to creating it. In this one, I'm looking at a painting, red and pink with little flecks of white that could be birds or cherry blossoms. In this one life is different, but I'm still able to get off the couch, to slip out of my clothes and dive into the painting. The pink, red, and white water parts round me like veils, like blossoms, like the hair of women I have loved. In this world, I'm swimming out towards the horizon. Mid-way along the journey, I realize that I'll never make it, but I keep swimming anyway, like those goddamn stupid otter things in the other story. I swim because to swim through a red painting filled with white light is to give life meaning. The wind from the air conditioning unit is moving the peacock feathers in the distance. What does it mean that I can put a name to it? To the wind, to the feathers, to anything?

I could write for hours like this, but unlike God I don't have an eternity. I have a few moments at the end of the day to try and bring order to the chaos. So I sit down with my daughter, I pull open a page in her coloring book, and the two of us sit, side by side, furiously making the princesses dress the right shade of purple. Neither of us says a word, but you can feel between us, between our two warm and breathing bodies, a kind of connection, of furious work, of love.

This is How I'd Change the World

              

  I awoke from a dream. In the dream, a raven was sitting on the window sill, his velvety beak in profile. When I awoke, a crow was sitting on the window sill, his velvety beak in profile. I carried this image around with me for the rest of the day, wondering what it meant that I had dreamed of my life before it happened. That day there was a cold rain falling from a slate grey sky. A woman at the bus stop tossed the rain from her umbrella, it made small arcs that reminded me of a small wooden helicopter that I’d had as a child. We waited for the bus for ten minutes or so, this woman and I, who kept looking at her watch, at her phone, peering down the street as if the bus would arrive faster if only she gazed enough. And, finally, after the long day of thinking about the crow and the raven and the space on my window sill, I was finally able to shake the dream. She got on the bus quickly, without looking up, running a card across the scanner while I tossed change into the slot like a foreigner though I’ve lived here my whole life. I walked to the back of the bus and sat next to a man in his fifties, who was staring blankly ahead as though the world held no secrets, no magic. As I sat, our arms brushed, and I felt the warmth of his arm against mine as though it were tender. I knew then what sort of dream I wanted to have that night. I wanted to dream of this moment on the bus, of the woman waiting at the bus stop, and the man sitting in his seat, staring blankly out into the void. I closed my eyes and tried to dream the scene into existence as I had with the raven and the crow. I only wanted to change a single thing about that moment, those people, like the raven for the crow. I wanted the woman waiting at the bus stop to smile and say hello, and I wanted the man on the bus, his face weathered with age, to lift his eyes and smile. The rhythm of the bus reminded me of the sea, and I felt myself being carried down into the depths of dreams where I could still change the world.

Game of Thrones: Season 5 Episode 10 Mother's of Mercy

              

  Another season of Thrones has ended, which means we are headed into the long night, and this time without the comforting voice of Melisande to remind us that the night is dark and full of terrors and low cut dresses weather be damned, though I assume if we light enough children on fire it will stay bright. Much like last season, the final episode reshuffled the deck in an almost crazed way, killing off beloved characters, blinding others, or leaving them alone with barbarian hordes and sleepy dragons, or sending them on trust jumps off the wall. In the end, as in last season’s finale, the deck has been reshuffled yet again. 

                I don’t know if a show like GOT has existed in the history of television, where, multiple times a main character is killed off the show mid-story. I say mid-story because we’re used to long hero or even anti-hero arcs at this point. What we’re not used to is having our ambition for a character to be thwarted so frequently, so fully. Nothing quite says failure like having your page run a sword through your belly in front of a cross that says traitor, props to the men of the Watch for at least spelling it right. 

                I think at this point the shock value is actually starting to wear thin on some of these moments. Yes, it was a shock to see Jon bleeding out in the snow, but only if you haven’t been paying close attention. Stannis told John that it was best to keep your enemies far away, and that Sir Allistair should be sent on a long trip to a far away wall. John, seeking to keep some kind of peace, wound up keeping him around long enough to get killed by him. And if GOT has taught us anything it’s that toasting to someone’s return is a great way to spend an evening before you wind up dead. Well, all that and Olly glaring down at John from every available parapet for the better part of the season. You have to figure he canvassed the entire area just for good spots to glare menacingly down at John. 

                Of course, the unfair, or what feels unfair part about John’s death is that it didn’t feel quite earned in the strategic sense that Rob and Eddard’s did. Their failings were rather obvious in the context of the entire season whereas John’s seemed like miscalculations. After the battle of Hardhome, the best set piece on the show to date, it was clear that John was right to save the Wildlings, clear that he was right to push the Watch to a new place. Sure he should have send away Sir Allistair, but it was a forgivable error. If anything, the death served as a reminder that the Watch isn’t made up of nice men. It’s made up of murderers and rapists and thieves and John should have stayed on the horse when he tried to ride away, and really it’s Sam’s fault that he’s dead. At this rate, the show is going to wind up being a story about Sam, studying books, Hot Pie baking, and Bronn singing about the virtues of Dornish women. (I'd be remiss if I didn't take one last moment to appreciate how the snow fell and stuck just perfectly in John Snow's hair. Nor, as a friend noted, to reflect on just how he kept his hair so clean and well-tended at the Night's Watch. We must have missed the episode where they talked about the availability of a hot shower and volumizing conditioner for men).

                The first part of the show was as clumsy as it was climactic. Brienne, who’s been peering at the tower for roughly, what? No joke, a month, two months? Decides to leave at the exact moment that Sansa lights the fire…Hey, show runners! Just have her try and escape and get caught. We don’t need a moment of almost but not quite at this point. This is not a blockbuster movie you’re selling us. It’s a nihilistic show about how systemic change is hard and people who attempt it are probably going to wind up dead. We don’t need moments of almost happening. Of course, it got clumsier before it got better, Stannis, alone in the wilderness having his death sentenced pronounced by Brienne. We’re all willing to suspend our disbelief for movies, but it’s hard to watch a show that tells us time and time again that having hopes and dreams is a great way of getting them crushed only to give us an implausibly constructed death scene. 

                Stannis’ downfall, slow at first, then became Fast and Furious. Apparently, burning one’s own beloved daughter, a problematic moment for me last week, turned out not to have been quite the move that Melisandre promised. Instead, Stannis lost his troops, his wife, his daughter and ultimately his life, but not before seeing, with those hard eyes of his that he had been a damn fool, which was actually a bit nice. If his actual death was melodrama than his swift fall was Shakespearean. It’s easy to picture Lear or Othello in those final moments of his life as he sat against the tree realizing that his calculations had all turned to ash. I’m told that book reader’s love Stannis and his precipitous fall was probably a surprise to them as well. On the show, his character was first to slow to develop and finally, too quick to fall. And yet, like John Snow, it’s strange to lose someone who has been there since the beginning.

                Thank goodness after Stannis’ clumsy death we headed straight to a scene of Ramsay doing a victory lap over a bunch of dying corpses. If I don’t see him doing something horrendous at least once an episode I might forget that he’s not Frodo Baggins. From there we get to the long awaited rescue of Sansa, with Theon sending Ramsay’s former lover on a short trip off a high wall. Personally, it’s not clear that Theon had to run at that point, I’m guessing Ramsay didn’t want Sansa to be killed by his once and future lover anyway. However, their escape over the wall, taking place at the exact moment of Ramsay’s return, thank you dramatic moment, leads to them, after holding hands, close up shot!, jumping into the snow. It’s unclear how master tracker Ramsay with the aid of his wild dogs isn’t going to track them down, but I suppose we’ll save that for another day. I’d guess that Sansa goes north to find John and discovers that he’s been killed at which point she’ll be married off to Sir Allistair. Fingers crossed. 

                In the House of Black and White, things are finally happening. Well, they finally start happening after Arya spends some quality time with Meryn Trant, rearranging his face in a different configuration. No eyes and then no mouth. Well, this after we witness Meryn applying a switch to under aged women. In case you forgot, he’s bad. This is becoming a bit of a problem. The nuanced Lannister’s played so excellently were either world class bad, like Joffrey, or played with panache and character like Jaime and Cersei. Recent villains on the show are merely that, villains and that’s a problem because the narrative isn’t as complex when the definitions are so clear. Anyhow, besides the incredible waste of time that was the House of Black and White this year, we finally get a scene in which something happens..and it appears to be one of our beloved characters getting blinded or worse. At least they didn’t burn her at the stake? 

                In Mereen, we learn that Dany didn’t really have control of Drogon when she left, which leaves her lovers to pick up the pieces. And, in one of the nicest moments of the show, Tyrion is finally put back in power, along with the Varus, to finally get that piece of shit city Mereen in order. Though there is no one more qualified to do it, there is also no time less qualified to be dealing with the nuances of city rule because a horde of undead are waiting beyond the wall. But thank God Dany is out of Mereen. 

                Ser Jorah and handsome Daario head of into the wilderness to fine her, using the rather vague direction, north as a guide. Why is the search party two people? Can they at least bring a few Unsullied or are they all needed to lose in fights with Sons of the Harpy? 

                Meanwhile, Dany, delightfully dirty, is watching her dragon sleep away the afternoons when she decides to wander away for a walk---only to be surrounded by a barbarian horde…again. I think I speak for everyone when I  say that she’s going to probably eat a horse heart and marry one of these dudes because that’s just how Dany’s plot works. She, being fire to the Walkers Ice, is rather foolproof when it comes to surprising death. And though it’s nice that the traditional hero role is being filled by a female, it’d be even nicer if she hadn’t dithered for the better part of 2.5 seasons. 

                In everyone’s favorite story line, The Sand Snakes finally get their revenge, but at least they do it by using their sexuality….Sigh. This story line. What a mess. Anyway, we finally get the moment of truth that we’ve been waiting for, a father and daughter hug between Jaime and Marcella, acceptance, and of course, a poisoning. It’s unclear whether she’s dead or just on the verge of death, but it was another GOT gotcha moment, which were too frequent this season. Look, she loves her father, now she’s going to pay for it. 

                The best piece of this episode happened in King’s Landing, and a large credit for that goes to Lena Heady, who never made looking naked on HBO less sexual. Cersei, who as Jaime points out, doesn’t love anyone but her children, is forced to walk naked through the streets, and Headey, dominates the scene, her face slowly crumbling in fear, her eyes, showing a fearsome kind of loss and hurt. The show runners didn’t do a good job showing how much of the city was behind the Faith militant, but it was clear in this episode and anyone with a Biblical history can make at least a vague connection to the crucifixion. What’s it like to be hated by thousands? What does that feel like? How much pain can someone endure? It was the best moment because it flipped things on their head. Viewers, like myself, who have long hated Cersei, are now kind of rooting for her and Sir Frankenstein to exact some revenge. I’m sorry that so many good characters have died, John, Rob, Eddard, etc, while others like Ramsay have persisted, but it’s been kind of a wonder to watch Lena Headey play Cersei and this was one of her finest moments. It was painful to watch. 

                One thing that GOT teaches you is that the narrative doesn’t owe you anything. Character, even main characters, may be tossed aside like so much chicken bone after one of The Hound’s meals. Remember him? And yet, I wonder when the accumulation of “shocking” deaths will end. Certainly John’s death didn’t surprise me as much as Rob’s or Eddard’s. I’m not saying the show has lost its mojo, but it is going to have to do some expansive and quick character work to make us believe that the world is worth saving from ice zombies, and I don’ t think it can just be Dany. Well, it can be, Dany and her team of advisers, but I think that’d be a mistake. We’ve spent most of our time in Westeros, watching the war for the kings. Eventually, as a viewer, we’ll want to see someone start to succeed. Sure, there are still people to root for, Tormund and Sir Davos, Bran and Shaggy Dog and Osha, but we’ll need to be reminded of them quickly. We’ll need to start to believe in something besides magic and dragons if the show is going to end with as satisfying a note as it began. At some point, shocking deaths need to be replaced by shocking success, by a group of people that believe in more than table scraps for the next day. The arc of history is long, but it tends toward justice.

I understand now

                I should tell you that all I’ve ever wanted to is as light as the seeds on a dandelion.

                All I’ve ever wanted is to float above the fence posts and out towards the bruised sky.

                But instead, I’m sitting here, looking out the kitchen window at the leaves

                Wondering when the rains will come. Wondering when the black eyed Susans will open.

                Wondering when I’ll finally be so light that I can float up into the sky. 

I understand that a person generates fantasies about home and about being a child as well. A home is less an authentic space moored in a place and time than an idea. It’s a series of memories burnished by the years into something golden. The strawberries in the side yard of my neighbor’s house were not just strawberries, but the best strawberries I’d ever eaten. The dappled light in Bidwell Park is not just the dappled light of any park, but the finest dappling of light that I’ve ever seen in my life. You would want to dapple everything in this light, trust me. These false constructions are what make being a human being livable. Imagine if our insignificance was routinely made manifest?

Home is the place where I peed in the backyard. Home is the place where I gathered dandelions. Home is the place where I threw a blanket over a heater and trapped in the warmth. Home is the place where I was loved very deeply and specifically, as it seems to me now, only a child can be loved.

Perhaps I’m just trying to force meaning, for we are animals of meaning, onto a summer devoid of it. Perhaps that summer meant nothing. And yet, I remember deconstructing a deck, pausing on the iridescent glimmer of a snake’s shed skin. And later, after we have finished pulling out the rotten boards, we rebuilt the deck, putting new boards over that shed skin, burying it yet again. For the purposes of the metaphor imagine that the skin did not move, imagine that I am a skin, imagine that a summer and a self are like skin, easy to shed.

            Her name back then was different. It was near Easter. Her cheeks were pale and round. She was wearing a blue dress with white polka dots. We were sitting on the crushed grass in her parent’s back yard, counting the small chocolate candies gathered from plastic eggs. And then, just like that, it’s gone, and the next thing I remember is five kids, her included, wandering onto the train tracks that ran behind her house, though our parents had promised that there would be hell to pay if we did. I remember the older kids talking about putting a penny on the tracks, talking about how that might derail the train. And then, the small breeze of a late April day, thin clouds making whorls as if they are fingertips. We are waiting for the train. Oh please let it come before our parents arrive and carry us home.

Game of Thrones: Season 5 Episode 9 A Dance of Dragons

We’re five seasons in to Game of Thrones, which means we understand that if someone gives a moving speech about uniting people, or to their children, or finally gets to sleep with their son’s lover that they were probably going to die in some horrible way, though Tywin may have had it coming. But still, tonight’s episode, in which Stannis voluntarily burned his, theoretically, beloved daughter Shireen was a bit of a show stopper. I have an MFA in creative writing and have slogged my way through a narrative or two. I don’t actually believe that a storyteller, in this case Beneioff and Weiss, owe anything to the watcher or viewer narratively. It’s not essential that the story goes in the direction I’d like. There are too many people to please. 

                But before we talk about people sailing away on dragons, hello problematic CGI budget, it’s worth talking about whether the narrative punch was provided by having Stannis sacrifice his daughter. The answer is an unequivocal, I don’t know. As a viewer and a narcissistic one at that, which is to say ,a normal human being, I like to identify with characters and GOT is constantly subverting that desire. Oh, Stannis loves his daughter and is stepping into a more vital role? Guess what, he kills his daughter. Robb Stark is going to lead everyone to victory, not with a wolf’s head sewn on he isn’t. 

                It’s troubling to watch a little girl burned alive, even on a television show where the stakes aren’t real, just as it’s troubling to watch Sir Meren taking part in the human sex trafficking world with an under aged girl. Note that I’m not going to spend a lot of time trying to parse that particular detail this week. Was it narratively necessary to show that Sir Meren was kind of a douche? Probably not, which makes the detail of his sexual proclivities largely unnecessary, but this show is never one to want you to confuse your villains. Joffery did take his wife on a walk to see the decapitated head of her father. At this point that particular proclivity or design of the show was known. 

                If you suspected that the show had largely spent its weight on Hardhome then you didn’t feel wrong in watching “A Dance of Dragons.” Watching Dany mount and ride Drogon off into the sunset was dramatic, yes, but it felt more than a few steps behind the battle and the Night’s King. In fact, almost every season has had a different hero, and this season’s hero has been Jon Snow, not Dany, so her triumphal ride wasn’t quite as moving as I think it was intended to be. 

                The action up North went roughly as sketched out. Sir Allister brooding over Jon’s kindness, Olly, standing off in the distance looking down coldly at the snow flakes just begging to get caught in a lock of Jon’s hair. And yet, it felt like a missed opportunity, watching Jon stand in the snow channeling his inner emo. Tired as they were, it was time for another rousing speech, time to hoist up the main sails and get everyone working on mounting a defense against the coming menace, hell, maybe end the episode with Jon trying to wake everyone up. 

                Down a bit south, Ramsey, was once again rewarded for his daring and general tom foolery. When he’s not waiting for Levensees he’s off burning crops and taking sexual advantage of unsuspecting women. Who wouldn’t want to see him succeed? Well, me for one. It turns out that we like vengeance in our stories and one of the tricks that Thrones has pulled is leaving Walder Frey out of the show altogether, though next week’s episode title hints that his time in the world may not be long. The consequences of Ramsey’s action are as usual, dire. 

                Stannis, his troops mired in snow and remembering his brief stint as a smoke monster is seduced into killing his own daughter. Though, mercifully, he first sends away his King’s Hand, the Onion Knight, who she taught to read, on a mission to bring more men. Jon Snow is unlikely to send men away from the wall at this point, which is another reason he should have been trumpeting what happened from all corners sending ravens to the far reaches of the kingdom. However, watching the touching scene with Davos and Shireen was as rewarding as it was a warning. Ah, shit they’re going to do it. And do it they did, strapping her to a cross and giving the viewer only the merciful moment of her mother, her horrendous mother, finally breaking down and trying to reach her daughter. 

                I don’t think it’s the worst moment in Thrones history in terms of graphic display, but it may have been the most emotionally wrenching. It’s an old philosophical problem, yes? Would you sacrifice a child to save the whole world? Stannis believes that it is his destiny to rule and to rule fairly and justly. This powerful desire, which we’ve seen from the beginning, leads him to the inevitable conclusion that he must kill his daughter. Therefore, the scene is not entirely without narrative merit. It does rather lower our interest in what happens at Winterfell, who wins and who loses, and once again it leaves the watcher wondering when they’ll have someone to root for. Even if Martin’s ur text about subverting traditional norms the last two seasons of the show need to do some work to build up their heroes. It turns out that a battle between the undead ice zombies and Stannis would be a meh proposition. 

                In Dorne, well, the less said about Dorne the better. This was actually one of the better scenes set in Dorne. Does anyone want to take me to Seville? The Sand Snakes continue to slap fight and lie around like extras in the History Channel presents The Bible and Bronn finally made it upstairs for a punch in the face. One of the ways in which the show has dropped the ball is in their presentation of Dorne. Perhaps weaving it into Oberyn’s story would have given the scenes a bit more bite. As it is, Prince Doran is only just now beginning to come into view, a realist pacifist, who is living in a land where everyone seems to desire war and death. A noble opinion, one agreed to by Tyrion during his brief discussion at the games with Dany’s fiancé, now deceased. 

                The rest of the action is in Mereen, where, guess what? The people don’t want to be ruled. They don’t want democracy. I think Dany just needs to get behind some No Child Left Behind type policies to win over these people. How come no one is talking about education? And what’s her tax policy like? Sigh. Sadly, we may not get even more minutia in Mereen, a fact which will sadden many more viewers. I was hoping for some Levitical type instructions about how many shekls it costs to repay a man for a sheep run over accidentally by your cart. 

                The problem, which many book readers are aware of, is that Dany has been mired in Mereen so long now that she doesn’t have momentum. Her mounting of Drogon, (can these dragons be bigger? Sleeth was huge? Can the budget afford for them to be full grown? I expected more fire and mayhem? These guys were kind of idly chucking spears into his back. How are we going to beat the walkers with a dragon who is too busy bonding with his lady to cook some bros like baby back ribs?) lacks the narrative tension and release that we had at Hardhome. Though admittedly the scene was rife with fear, and the chaos was generally well conveyed. The problem comes with the arrival of the dragon and the Sons of the Harpy half milling around and half chucking spears like drunken frat boys throwing beers at a trash can. 

                Hizdar is dead. Though at least he proved his innocence in death, a surprise to the handsome Daario, who, in one of the best comedic moments was praising the virtues of quickness over power just as the quick man lost his head. A moment, which brings into focus the lack of anyone interesting that Dany’s had around her in a while. A fact, which is partially remedied by Tyrion, though it appears that she’s flown off for bluer skies just at the time that someone to keep her company has just arrived. 

                I suppose I can’t really sign off without noting that Sir Jorah extended his hand to Dany in helping her to escape, a moment made so clear that we should have had a red herring. We haven’t exactly determined how grey scale is passed, but I’m not entirely certain he isn’t infecting everyone around him. A dragon siege coupled with grey scale is maybe enough momentum to drive Dany across the narrow sea. We can only hope. 

                In short, the ninth episode of most Thrones season has been where narrative ties come together or are completely broken apart. This particular episode didn’t quite live up to its predecessors. However, taken together with Hardhome, it may comprise a fantastic three episode ending to this season. I can’t wait to watch next week to see Rikkon and Shaggy Dog.