There are a thousand and one important things that I should be doing right now, but I have something even more important to tell you.
I watched Valhalla Rising (2009) last night, with a friend and a Hot & Spicy Pineapple French Toast Sandwich. Yeah, that's right. Desperation and hunger sparks things in the right brain, I learned. And it was absolutely delicious! But I digress...
Valhalla Rising- it confused us, carried us far beyond our comfort zones, and took our minds on a twisted journey we were not at all prepared for. That was the thing. I normally read about whatever I am about to try, whether it is a movie or a book, and prepare myself for the sensory onslaught.
But the randomness of yesterday evening (which included a trip Downtown to a redneck pub, that- I learned later today- was visited by Newt Gingrich last year during his run up to a failed presidential campaign) left me no time to read reviews, and before I knew it, there we were, two oblivious children with their lukewarm pineapple sandwiches watching one of the most mind-frying pieces of visual art I have seen in a very long time.
And I do not wish to spoil the fun for you. I want you to feel just like I did- toenail-curling, teeth-clenching confusion. I will only tell you that Valhalla Rising is not going to be what you expect it to be.
Set in around 1000 AD, it is supposedly the story of a warrior, who escapes his captors and partakes on a mysterious journey in search of the Holy Land across the oceans that leads him to Hell. But I warn you, this is not what it sounds like.
Valhalla Rising is not an action or horror movie. It is not the story of a war hero. It just does not fit under any conventional label. It is bloody, gory and bleak with a bitter taste of history. It is not complex- quite on the contrary, it is a very simple, straight plot. No build ups, no climaxes or anticlimaxes as you would expect. No meaning. It just is. My friend despised it. "I wasted one and a half hours of my life," he said. So I reckon this is not for everyone.
And the music! According to the the director, Nicolas Refn, this is what "non-music" or "silence" would sound like. Eerie, dark and unsettling, yet strangely beautiful. It haunts the landscapes, the vast, breathtaking plains of Scotland, where this film was shot.
Everything that throws its audience off-balance in this movie is based on the element of surprise. There is no better mind-fuck than the confusion you create yourself, desperately trying to make sense of a world that has no meaning.
In the director's own words:
"It's almost like: How do you create a movie like a drug? If you take LSD, the way you do that is you consume it and then you wait for it to take over. Ant the waiting period is frustrating because you don't know when or how it's going to hit you. Valhalla is conceived like that." read more...
It has been more than a year, and I wonder why I have never mentioned it in my confessional rants before. I am certain it must have reared its ugly head somewhere in between the lines of my prose, but I have never addressed the monster directly, looked into its eyes. May be I subconsciously avoided speaking of it, for ignorance is momentary escape.
I feel I am ready now, to speak of first degree murder that most of us are guilty or victim of at some point in our lives. Melodramatic, this sounds, now doesn't it? To speak of a broken heart as the end of life seems sadly realistic on the one hand, but immature and weak on the other. How can you let another human creep so deep under your skin, letting their poison seep into your blood to the point that you become addicted to that very psychosis of love?
I remember waking up that morning, my eyes groggy after hours of crying. In those days I had a habit of sleeping on the floor to escape the heat of the tropics, and lying there, I opened my eyes to the most beautiful paintings of light on my walls. Their radiance blinded my tired eyes. Checkered patterns of warm hues of red and gold covered my walls, and as I watched the sun slowly rise, the patterns descended upon me, ran up my feet, ignited the sheets and made me flinch a little.
I had died the night before. And with the rising sun, I was born again. Happens to all of us- not only Jesus. So when I say that heartbreak is death- nay, murder of the first degree- I say so with hope in my heart. There is an Afterlife. I tell you because I have been there, done that.
I am one of those doubly-unfortunate individuals whose "life closed twice before its close". In the dark wake of heartbreak come the ghosts of desperation. A time where you cling to every last shred of hope like a leech, sucking life out of Life itself. Every street you walk down has a story that reminds you of what was, and you become deeply conscious of the cold emptiness beside you and within you. You hold on to little tokens that, like tombstones of the past, remind you of what had been. Music, which ones soothed your sores, becomes like acid to your heart. The nights are long, restless and cold, and when sleep eventually comes, your dreams haunt you, your mind plays tricks on you, making you momentarily believe that all is fine again. The line between imagination and reality begins to fade. Was what you had a dream too good to be true? Or your loss merely a nightmare of absolute darkness? Had it been an imagination all along?
In this aftermath of broken consciousness, the past is series of photos with a sepia filter applied. Your mind brings you to the zenith of madness by selectively erasing your memory. You remember all the beautiful moments of romance- of watching fireworks across a lake, kissing in the rain. You forget the fighting, the distance, the pain. You begin to see the thousands and thousands of mistakes you made. You become a prisoner of your own guilt. You place yourself in shackles for your own murder, and call it suicide.
This is when the if-only's begin to trickle into your head. You recreate scenarios, rewrite imaginary histories, and fill them with color and fairy-tale endings. You begin a strange austere existence, finding happiness in frugal attempts to give life to a corpse.
In Lord Buddha's time, a wealthy woman named Kisagothami lost her child to disease. Struck with grief, she walked from house to house with the corpse, begging for some medicine to cure the child. The aftermath of heartbreak, though seemingly less painful than the loss of a child, does just that to you. You believe there is some way to rekindle what is gone. Everyone else knows there is no hope, but you fight on, feebly but stubbornly.
Kisagothami was advised by someone to see the Buddha, and that he might be able to bring the dead back to life. When she came to him, he understood that telling her that the child is dead, as so many had already tried to explain to her, would be futile. Instead he said, "I might be able to cure your child. But you must bring me some mustard seeds from someone whose family members or friends have never died."
Finding some mustard seeds seemed easy, and Kisagothami set off with her dead child in her arms. She knocked on doors and asked for mustard. Everyone was willing to offer her a few seeds, but when she asked them if anyone they knew or were related to had ever succumbed to death, the answer was always yes. Everyone had a story to tell- about a parent, a sibling, a friend, a child they had lost. Kisagothami slowly began to understand the nature of death. She realized she was not alone in her suffering. It is said that she laid her child to rest in a forest, and came back to the Buddha to become his disciple.
But I am no disciple, and the only solace I found was in the presence of friends, to whom I am forever grateful. (During all this drama did become more spiritual- something I will leave aside for another blog post.)
Thus the months rolled by, and we watched bubbles of hope rise and break again. The second death came upon more slowly, I watched it creep upon me. I lay in hospice, coming to terms with the inevitable. But it did not make things less painful when the moment eventually came. I was broken, but also relieved. Another two years had passed between the first and second death, and the time in between was a patchwork of good and bad, mostly bad and tedious attempts to keep living a lie that had left me drained. I was devastated, but had lost the resolve to wallow in pain.
Over the years, I had reduced myself to a shadow of what I thought was expected of me, of what I imagined would make him happy and want to stay. My perils had only helped wash away the little respect both he and I had for the person I used to be. I had become a doll, willing to please, demanding love in return for the sacrifices I made in giving up the essence of life I had had in me. I had become so insignificant, that even killing me with some dignity had become too much of a bother to him. A Facebook message was how he decided to end things.
Looking back, I can say that I am very fond of the life I have recreated for myself. I know I will never be the same again, but I am content being the person I am today. I have a little 5-year-plan jotted out in my head, which sometimes excites me and sometimes scares me. I walk the streets alone at night and don't feel lonely anymore.
I listen to music, even songs that remind me of him. I read love stories and weep, sometimes for the characters, sometimes for us. I often catch myself comparing the men who walk into my life to him, but I have taught myself to see in them the colors and music I may otherwise have never discovered. Every new friendship I make and every old bond I hold on to reminds me of the beauty that would have been lost to me if I had spent all my energy living with a corpse.
The key to resurrection, I have learned, is to form new memories on top of the old, to let the past be layered with a myriad of things new and exciting. A difficult thing to do at first, but trust me, with time it becomes an addiction.
Will I ever love again? That is a question I cannot answer, yet. I carry with me a shadow of distrust and bitterness that may be detrimental to "moving on", but to me it is only a healthy dose of realism that reminds me that pain is part of being alive. If there was no pain, how would we ever be able to experience joy? Even if we experienced happiness, would we embrace it the way we do if had not seen a darker time in life?
The reason that led me to write this, probably the longest and most detailed account of my life published publicly, is because I know I am not alone in this. And by no means am I intending to devalue anyone else's experiences of loss, perhaps even more severe than the ending of a relationship.
I am not here to tell you that there are more fish in the sea, or that there is light at the end of the tunnel. All I have to say is, Shit happens, and sometimes you've just got to deal with it.
