Dear Oaklie

 

I wish the presidential campaign were over; the suspense is terrible. What if the wrong candidate is elected? Will we undergo a massive upheaval?

        But I trust the strength of our democratic institutions. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Constitutional Convention, the Constitution. The Bill of Rights. The traditions we’ve honored for two centuries. How can these just crumble? How could the whims of one man bring our nation crashing to the ground?

        Oh, how I wish it would rain. Just saw the saddest-looking oakleaf hydrangea. It was in my neighbor’s yard. The big, decorative leaves; they’ve hardly had a chance to change color. Now they’re folded and drooping. I enjoy October’s clear blue sky. I enjoy temperatures in the 70s. They make me doff my sweater. What is that Mother Goose rhyme about the sun beating down on a man walking down the road? Makes him remove one layer of clothing after another.

        I wish I were writing a novel. I’d write about a woman who loses her memory and sets out find it. It distresses her. Each day she remembers less and less. I’d give her a hydrangea name, Oaklie.

        One day – this happens while Oaklie is walking in her neighborhood – one by one her memories change color and tumble from the trees. That magnificently full maple tree in Smithtons’ yard, its color a deep dark red? It startles her, though it does the same thing every year. She asks the maple, Are you a particular kind of tree?

Magic

 

It started yesterday, the experiment, with a review by Michael Dirda, of The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, by Ann Schmiesing. Dirda’s title was: “Once upon a time, there were two brothers.” I went to the fairy tales by Jacob and Wihelm Grimm, who lived in the late 18^th and first half of the 19^th centuries. The first tale begins, “In old times when wishing still helped one, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful.”

Wishing?  

At bedtime, reading Isaac Asimov’s Casebook of the Black Widowers, I detected a pattern. Six men gather monthly for a banquet. They consider Henry, the waiter who attends them, a member of their group. Each month the six launch into a passionate discussion on a particular topic. It raises a problem. At the end each time, Henry modestly provides a solution. The first six are sketchily described. I can’t picture them. But Henry’s quiet and sure demeanor rings true.

Asimov’s story entitled “Middle Name” reminded me of “Rumpelstiltskin,” where again everything turns on the recognition of someone’s name. But then the author of a Time magazine article on romance novels said, “For the spell to work, you need the reader’s total trust.”

The spell?

I thought about the Brothers Grimm, for whom magic was a factor. I thought about the Asimov stories, where pattern is a factor. And about Henry, who consistently performs the magic of resolution. What is it about story? What magic occurs when Author takes up his or her pen?

Is it a story?

 

This is an experiment. Can I write 335 words a day, six days a week, for 25 weeks? 150 days of writing would yield an ideal 50,250 words.  

    Can I also manage a blog? I’d post 250 words a day, three times a week. Each post would polish a 335-word segment.

            I didn’t know if I would have a theme. Then one presented itself, in an op-ed column in The Washington Post. Megan McCardle discusses aging presidents and the issue of cognitive capacity. She goes on to ask whether a constitutional amendment could set an upper age limit for holders of the office. She suggests seventy-two.

            Her suggestion solves a problem for me, perhaps more than one. First, as a writer, what shall I write about? Second, I enjoy time-limited projects. Third, I am 85 years old and am experiencing cognitive issues, mainly concerning memory. I could lengthen the list, but these are enough for one day.

            The influence of the world interests me. There is the self; all our lives we work to establish it. There is the world; it influences us in many different ways.

I had searched for a theme in fairy tales and mythology. Religious stories are in the same category. I had searched the internet and found types of story structure. In one, “monomyth,” a story is based on a single tale, etc.

            I’m more worried about my cognitive situation. I’ve entered a new world. How do I live in it? Is it a story?

Theology and "What Maisie Knew"

            What do theology and ethics have to do with the movies? Let’s define our terms.

            Theology is a critical, analytical discipline which explores a religious tradition for the coherence and comprehensiveness of its beliefs (Marsh, 163). Christian theology sees itself as having the task of providing a response to everyday experiences, including the experience of watching a movie (Johnston, 111). Ethics, in general terms, is the study of what makes for a good life, and of the ways in which human beings pursue the good life. Christian ethics includes working for the good lives of others, following the teaching and example of Jesus (Lovin, 11-12). What do this discipline and this concern have to do with the movies, which are a good that people pursue for the sake of entertainment and relaxation?

            Yesterday Paco and I saw What Maisie Knew, a movie based on the novel by Henry James. It’s about a little girl who is at the center of a bitter tug of war between her divorced parents. The parents remarry but before long separate from their new spouses, Margo and Lincoln. These two are the ones who, in the end, loving Maisie and discovering each other, take care of her.

No one sees a movie like this only for entertainment and relaxation. Movie-goers are in pursuit of another good, a good story. Stories are central to people’s lives, and movies happen to be our culture’s “primary story-telling medium” (Johnston, 50).

            Then how do movies, as a medium, do their work? Unlike novels, which depend entirely on text, movies tell their stories through images, which often have symbolic power, and through  settings, music, other sound, dialogue, and the physical movements and facial expressions of the actors. For example, an image of kites appears twice in What Maisie Knew. The first time, Maisie is on the streets of New York City and on her way to school. She looks up and sees a standard kite trapped in power lines overhead. The second time, near the end of the movie, Margo has taken her to the seaside and she sees two colorful, marvelously made kites flying high overhead. In another opposition, she sees model boats on a lake in the city and then, at the seaside, a real boat that, she is promised, she will ride on the next day. The sets of opposites—trapped kite vs. free kites; remote-controlled boats vs. a real boat with a human pilot; crowded city vs. wide-open seaside—are intentional. They illustrate Maisie’s development as a character from one who is trapped in a battle zone to one who will demand a happier existence. We are largely unaware, as we watch the movie, that we are becoming saturated with its images and with the values it is expressing through them.

            In our day, especially in the developed world, people depend a great deal on movies and the rest of popular culture for help in making sense of their lives (Marsh, 2). A cautionary tale like What Maisie Knew is the only place where some learn about the importance of stability and emotional constancy in a child’s life. This is something to think about. We live in a technological, media-dominated age. How do people work out the meaning and purpose of their lives when they have no church, synagogue or mosque? They do so in the shared space of media culture (Marsh, 25, 31), which becomes for them a sacred space.

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Whew! The previous three posts are really, really, really rough drafts. I’m back at the drawing board now. The main problem is the theology; it’s fragmentary, maybe even incoherent. And David, he’s only 20 years old, while Clive, I do believe he’s more like 60. Otherwise, how does Bob get away with calling him “old man”? Nevertheless, I did accomplish one thing. Two, actually. I learned the basics of formatting a screenplay (the very rough basics) and I invented a story world. It’s got birds and people and food and stuff.

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Cinema Grandpa (conclusion)

BOB

David and I had a tête-a-tête in the kitchen, and he posed an interesting question. If I remember rightly, David, it was that how theology and the movies talk to each other is just as important as what they say. How they communicate.
                                 (looks at David questioningly)

DAVID

(more animated than before lunch)

I mean, after hearing Grandpa, movies communicate not just with words but with pictures and music. With feelings.

CLIVE

Movies communicate primarily with emotions, that’s true.

DAVID

Yeah, but it’s unconscious, you know? Theology’s conscious, it’s deliberate. You don’t just dream your reactions.

ROBIN

In other words, Davey, how does theology do it?

DAVID

Yes. And ethics. Theological ethics. Christian ethics. How do they think things through before they say what they’re going to say?

BOB

All right. How shall we think through “Where Joe Lives”? I always say (pause) we start with experiencing the movie. We sit there and watch it, not thinking about it very much but letting it take hold of us in whatever way it will. Later—this is what I do, but I’m a college professor and I teach the stuff—you make a few notes while the movie’s still fresh in your mind. You ask yourself, what was the main character’s moral problem? You put what you know about theology and ethics beside this. You look back into the movie for a standard of theological judgment.

CLIVE

Alister McGrath calls it casting theology like a net over the experience, to capture its meaning.

BOB

My sense is that Joe’s story is about his and his community’s need for redemption.

DAVID

You mean from sin?

BOB

You could say Joe was sinful in that he separated himself from God’s love by running away.

CLIVE

You could say he had to recover his understanding of what it means to be human.

BOB

His family and friends had to be turned around from their judgmental and indifferent attitudes.

CLIVE

It’s practical theology, my lad. At Nottingham, students of many religious sensibilities come to our classes: born-again Christians, other kinds of believers, secularists. We’ve found that these students are more alike than they are different. They’re all trying to work out meaning for themselves and, lo and behold, they’re using the same media products to do it, including film. We try to show them how to engage critically both the media and their own meaning-making efforts.

ROBIN

(looking at his watch)

Oh, my goodness, Clive. You have a plane to catch, don’t you?

BOB

(lurching forward in his chair)

I’m ready when you are, old man.

CLIVE

One more word with our clever pupil, gentlemen. David, for theology and ethics to have a dialogue with culture, including the movies; a critical dialogue: it’s vital. Vitally important. It’s what the church has been doing for 2,000 years. Keep asking questions, my lad. You’ll go a long way.

The sound of a barbershop quartet, singing about love in the springtime, takes over.

INSERT  —  David’s face, smiling abashedly but with pleasure.

The four stand up and shake hands. The animals stand up, too, looking quizzical and alert. Clive and Bob leave the frame.

FADE OUT.

As the credits roll the song continues, overlaying the sounds of people and equipment in a bowling alley.

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Cinema Grandpa (cont.)

[VERY ROUGH DRAFT]

ROBIN sips his iced tea reflectively. At the sound of birds twittering excitedly he looks toward a clump of honeysuckle mounded on the fence outside. INSERT Inside the clump are four sparrows hopping around, all twittering at once. The sound fades.

ROBIN: There is something. I can’t help thinking of Bonhoeffer’s divine mandates.

DAVID: Divine mandates? What are those?

ROBIN: It was during the Second World War in Germany, when the Nazis were trying to take over the church and some church people were caving in.

DAVID (looking puzzled): Was there something like that in the movie?

ROBIN: No, the movie showed the mandates pretty well balanced. There was the church. Well, first there was Lars’ family, which is how it should be since family, ideally, is where we first learn about God. There were cultural institutions: Lars’ workplace; the doctor, ambulance and hospital; the beauty parlor and the bowling alley. There was even a small mention of government: Bianca gets herself elected to the school board.

DAVID: Grandpa, can we backtrack a little? What’s a mandate?

ROBIN: A mandate is an authoritative order or command. Dietriech Bonhoeffer believed that God gave us these institutions as places where we could hear his Word and absorb it as a guide for our lives. They are distinct from one another, but they are interdependent.

ROBIN: Okay, the Word of God was pretty evident in the scenes of Reverend Bock, but what about, like, the bowling alley?

CLIVE: The lad asks good questions, Robin.

BOB rattles the ice in his glass and takes a sip of tea.

ROBIN: Did you see what Lars was going through? It was a lot. He looks at Margo, he rubs his eyes, once he starts to cry, he starts interacting with the other guys, he learns how to bowl.

DAVID: I don’t get it. What do you mean?

ROBIN: He’s been hearing the Word of God from the beginning. He’s been experiencing the reaction of his family and friends to Reverend Bock’s question, What would Jesus do. In the bowling alley the Word comes to fruit in him. (beat) I just remembered. Nancy made some egg salad sandwiches, too.

BOB: I’ll help, David. Show me the kitchen.

DAVID turns off the recorder and stands up. Throughout the following sequence: non-diegetic sound of a song in a male voice with the refrain, “Why won’t you talk to me, pretty girl?” INSERT an oil painting depicting two people in conversation. Walking to the kitchen, DAVID and BOB pass the painting, which is hung on a wall.

Cuts back and forth between DAVID and BOB in the kitchen, gathering sandwiches and plates and talking in a lively manner; and CLIVE and ROBIN in more subdued conversation on the porch. ROBIN stands up and walks to the screen door to admit a cat and a mid-sized, mixed-breed dog.

Final cut of sequence: the porch table is at the center. The men eat sandwiches from plates on their laps. DAVID leaves the frame, returns with a pitcher of lemonade, sits down to eat.

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