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WHY

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Arthur Siegel, 1949

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Can't stand still

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Silent Hill 2 (PS2, 2001)

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Ash-Covered Wings of Bloody Constellations and Black Eyed Angels

I jumped in the river, what did I see? Black-eyed angels swam with me, a moon full of stars and astral cars. All my lovers were there with me. All my past and futures and we all went to heaven in a little row boat. There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt. // Radiohead, Pyramid Song

Ruby, gemstone of the sun. Her laugh - bubbly and bright and a melody I’d follow for tomorrows would most certainly be filled with rain. Ruby, bringer of good fortune. Like her eyes wide and curious, so was the love and joy she brought into our lives. Young, newly married, and starry-eyed for the future, most of those early days Eilin and I spent lazy mornings bleeding into afternoons watching Ruby wiggle and stretch, tracing every ray of sun beaming from her face with our eyes of love and adoration.

Eilin was stable in the beginning. A sweet singing bird that brought me back and away from the mud. She was good like that. Strong. Especially when Ruby was born. We both stumbled as we went, but Eilin took everything with grace and stride without missing a beat, adapting to life as we knew it morphing into something we thought we’d never know. I, not so much. Ruby was the only good thing I brought into this world. Everything else stood bloody under a moonless, starless sky, stuck in the mud. I held her in arms that would and could never be worthy while the sin of being destined for damnation clung to my back like broken, ash-covered wings.

Three things I knew immediately.

First, it was them. Ruby by the sight of the studded earrings I gave her on her fifth birthday. Eilin by the freckles on her thigh that formed my favorite constellation, the very freckles I traced that first midnight in May. Everything about the sweet and beautiful life we were building had been decimated, swept and drowned in the undertow of a fatal tidal wave, swallowed by the monster.

The first frost brought with it the stale taste of late autumn giving way to winter’s pull. A season of death and decay becoming more palpable the darker and deeper night’s got. A picturesque backdrop for two funerals in one. I don’t remember how many layers I tried on that morning. An attempt to hide the impenetrable, unmelting ice that had formed around my heart. A mirage of senses leaving all logic and feeling behind. What I do remember are feet and shoes. I couldn’t look up because every time I did, black eyes from a fallen angel willed their way into the dead oceans of mine. So feet it was.

The pungent stench of flowers attempting to hide the scent of death distracted me from whispers and sobs. I was underwater, just beneath the surface - an echo chamber. Pressure settled in my lungs and water clogged my throat. Arms kept missing bodies as countless pulled me in for hugs I didn’t consent to. I was a ship off its course. The only arms I wanted around me had been cut, burnt, and torn.

Second, it was him. There was only one monster capable of producing this much destruction: Henry J. Edwards. I had spent a full year chasing his trail of bodies left up and down the coast. Bodies that turned to ghosts and rooted themselves in the mud on the shores of my mind. Ghosts whose deafening hauntings hushed into white noise the moment I met Eilin. I knew his pattern, his movements, even his thoughts … the ash covered wings that pulled me closer to Hell’s unhinged, unlatched jaw.

Caskets were closed for obvious reasons. The heinousness committed to the bodies were leaked by some rookie spilling details about the case to his girlfriend who then shared them with her friends and so on and so forth. A sensationalized case. Reporters not only wanted to know if Henry had returned but if anyone had caught a glimpse of the bodies. Like vultures, they wanted to pick at the already gaping wound, the raw and rotting flesh.

Third, I wish I hadn’t caught a glimpse.

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meanwhileinnowhere

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anish kapoor's descension

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Let's Get Lost (1988). Documentary on the life of jazz trumpeter and drug addict Chet Baker. Fascinating series of interviews with friends, family, associates and lovers, interspersed with film from Baker's earlier life and some modern-day performances.

What a documentary! An incredibly well-directed, harrowing, tender portrait of jazz musician, Chet Baker, made only months before his death at the age of 58. The juxtaposition between the dynamic young musician and the ruined older one, after being ravaged by drugs, is tragic to say the least, but everyone seems to enter it both honestly and with compassion. Just really, really good filmmaking. 9/10.

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hearts of darkness (1991) dir. eleanor coppola, george hickenlooper, fax bahr

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Leila Chatti, from "Postcard from Gone"