The Secret Garden

I remember that, one day when I was younger, my great-grandmother took me to see the movie The Secret Garden in a theatre near her house in Palm Springs. I seem to remember it being a rather small theatre—certainly much less grandiose than the monolithic cinemas we are surrounded by today—and that you had to walk through a small, lattice, ivy-laced archway and into a simple portico to get to the theatre’s front door. I have no idea if this description of the theatre even remotely resembles the truth about the place; it’s just what I envision now, for whatever reason.

If I recall, I believe I stayed the night at my great-grandmother’s house the night before, and she had explained that this was going to be our plan for the next day.

For some completely inexplicable reason, I simply knew that The Secret Garden was going to become my favorite movie. I think I may have even told my great-grandmother this. I was, of course, very excited the night before, to be going to see my favorite movie for the first time.

I have no idea why I had simply decided that this movie was going to be my favorite. I knew nothing of the story at the time. I hadn’t read the book – probably, at the time, I didn’t even know it was based on a book.

But I was eight years old. So of course I was excited; of course I could predict the future.

I think something about the idea of a magical garden appealed to me. Though I had not yet seen enough of the world or of the forest or of trees to realize how intimately spiritual they can be, still, I think that somehow I was vaguely aware that plant life had some sort of near-magical quality to it that was worth pondering, and certainly worth making a movie about.

So The Secret Garden was going to be my favorite movie, and that was the end of it.

The big day came, and we saw the movie. I remember liking every moment that the main characters were in the garden—the “secret” garden—exploring, wandering, giving in to its magic. And I thought Colin seemed like a rather interesting person, someone I might even like to know, even though he was quite grumpy at first.

Once the movie ended, however, I remember thinking that the whole movie felt like it was leading up to this surreal (a word I, no doubt, did not know at the time) climax (another word I did not know), but that it sort of just fizzled out. (Did I know “fizzle” then? – probably not.) There was something about a fire towards the end, I believe. (Or was that fire in the beginning? Now I seem to recall the movie pretty much starting with a fire…)

Anymore, though, I can’t remember a single other thing about the climax or the ending. Also, I remember that I thought most every moment of movie outside of the garden was actually kind of flat. (I don’t think that, at the time, I’d have considered using the word “flat” synonymously with “boring” – movie scenes are not deflated balls, after all.)

But I had already decided that The Secret Garden was going to be my favorite movie; there was no changing that now.

I don’t remember what we did after we left the theatre—back across the patio, back through the lattice archway—but I believe that at some point before we even returned to my great-grandmother’s house, I had to admit that, actually, The Secret Garden was probably my second favorite movie. I mean, sure, it was a great movie, but it wasn’t actually the very best. There was, after all, Jurassic Park, which came out two months previously and which I saw a total of seven times in the theatre. (Was it really seven whole times? I say that number now, but actually I really can’t say if this number is exactly true. It was certainly several times, at the very least.)

I only saw The Secret Garden once in the theatre. In fact, I’ve only seen The Secret Garden once ever.

I can’t say precisely how long I continued to say that The Secret Garden was my second favorite movie, but I’d be surprised to find out that it was longer than a week, two at most.

How could I possibly have known that my prediction of the future would be wrong? I was a mighty eight years old, after all. I knew everything else.

 

Thomas

First of all, a tiny preface:

Yes, I like playing video games. Despite this, I’ve tried to avoid the topic of video games in my blog here. I know they simply don’t interest everyone, and, anyway, I have plenty of other things to talk about besides nerding it up and talking about whatever cool new game I played recently.

However…

Thomas Was Alone is a masterpiece.

The narrative structure presented in the game Thomas Was Alone is truly exceptional, easily on par with some great post-modern pieces of literature.

The plot is extremely simplistic: some lines of computer code become self-aware, including the little red rectangle Thomas, who finds himself inside a set of geometric cells. There is portal which leads him out of one cell and into another, and along the way he meets several friends—other quadrilaterals of various sizes and colors—all of whom have distinct personalities.

Yes, rectangles.

The official website for the game describes it as “a minimalist game about friendship and jumping and floating and bouncing and anti-gravity.” This sums up the gameplay, sure. But the characterizations are brilliant, evoking personalities that go deeper than many popular movies and books out there.

If a game can make you care about sentient rectangles—make you anxious about if they’ll achieve their goals and learn to work together and overcome their self-esteem issues—then it must be doing something very right.

Thomas Was Alone could have easily been a children’s picture book (except, perhaps, for a single use of the word “damn,” a few minor pop-culture references, and the highly-conceptual nature of various ideas here and there). On the printed page, however, we would have lost the British narrator, Danny Wallace. A word on Danny Wallace: I’d even consider listening to Twilight if Danny Wallace narrated it; he was that good.*

Throughout the 100 levels of the game, each includes 1-4 sentences/lines of story, many of which include the thoughts of the various quadrilaterals—let’s average it to about 250 narrated lines.

All this to say:

Utilizing only about 250 lines of text (in other words, about 4-6 Microsoft Word pages) and a few variously-colored rectangles, Thomas Was Alone achieves more with its structure and its characterizations than many feature films or full-length novels out there. It is a brilliantly told story that any writer should take seriously, regardless of his/her impressions of video games.

Really, it’s nothing to me if you play it. But it might be something to you if you do.

http://www.mikebithellgames.com/thomaswasalone/

*Actually, this probably isn’t exactly true. I don’t think anything could make me want to listen to the Twilight audio book. But Danny Wallace is as good as they come.

How My Mind Works

(Recently, I undertook a data-entry project at work that involved getting people’s contact information off of business cards. This idea began when I came across the business card for a bookkeeper…)

You know what’s a funny word? Bookkeeping. It has three double letters in a row. I can’t think of another word that does that. It reminds me of Charlotte’s Web—there’s that crazy goose that is always trying to spell things, and he always spells everything with double letters. You know what I’m talking about: Double E, double A, double R…And then there’s Charlotte, that cute but creepy spider that somehow knows how to spell everything. I mean, I guess the fact that Charlotte can spell isn’t any stranger than a goose who can speak, so that crazy goose isn’t really the weirdest part. It’s a children’s book anyway—strange things can happen in children’s books. Like Pinocchio—WEIRD. Not at all like the Disney cartoon. I mean, I haven’t read the book myself, but my wife told me about it and it sounds insane. That Carlos Collodi was one crazy Italian dude. Kind of like Mario (of the Super Mario Bros. variety). Do you even remember that Mario was a plumber living in Brooklyn? What happened to that? Now he doesn’t seem to have any occupation other than Super Hero (even Batman/Bruce Wayne has a job outside of his heroism—geez…), and now he lives in the Mushroom Kingdom. What happened to Brooklyn? I shouldn’t complain though, because the Super Mario games have gotten amazing. I’m currently working on playing through Super Mario Galaxy, which is a very fun, unique game. I’ve already played Super Mario Galaxy 2 (I got both the games as gifts, but out of order). Galaxy 2 was better, but the first one certainly has its charm. In fact, to be perfectly fair, the story of Super Mario Galaxy was one of the major inspirations for my most recent children’s book, which has a lot to do with astronomy. And my children’s book has some weird/surreal things in it too, so I shouldn’t complain about Charlotte’s Web. I didn’t really care for Charlotte’s Web that much though. But, to be honest, I didn’t really like pretty much any books back when I read it, so—who knows?—maybe it’s not so bad. I’d say maybe I should re-read it nowadays, but let’s face it: I know I’m not going to. There are too many other great books left to read without going back to the old ones, the ones that I didn’t really like the first time. It makes you wonder though: how many things have I experienced that I didn’t properly appreciate in its time, but maybe I would appreciate them now, but since I didn’t like them the first time around, my mind has been tainted against them, and so now I’ll never experience them, even though I could quite enjoy them now? I think this might happen a lot with books and movies, for example. The first time I read Till We Have Faces, I actually didn’t much care for it, but then I had occasion to read it a second time, and it’s become one of my very favorite books. So I’m glad I took the time/risk to re-read it, because now I love it. What other things am I missing out on? And of course, there’s the opposite: sometimes you experience something once and LOVE it, and then when you go back for a second time, it’s like the magic is just gone. Like Disneyland. I used to love Disneyland as a kid. Although, to be fair, all throughout growing up in Southern California, I preferred Knott’s Berry Farm—but, to be quite frank, looking back I think I preferred Knott’s because I just wanted to be different than everyone else, who always seemed to favor Disneyland. This same concept applied to holidays when I was younger: everyone’s favorite holiday was always Christmas, so I said mine was Easter. Easter has its charm, to be sure, but really, it’s probably not actually better than Christmas. Nowadays I sometimes say Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, but the truth is I don’t really care for Thanksgiving that much either. It sounds good in theory, but in reality—eh. I guess I just don’t like holidays in general. Christmas is still nice though. Disneyland is still nice too; I’m sure I’ll go there again sometime, if for no reason other than to take my son Emerson, who was named after one of my very favorite authors, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson never wrote any children’s books, but he’s still pretty good. As far as I know, he never wrote any fiction either. He’s a really good author—a lot of the inspiration for my own writing comes from him (even though I mostly focus on fiction). I kind of hope that if my Emerson (the one who I wrote my most recent children’s book for) agrees with the ideals of Ralph Waldo, I think he’ll be alright, because Ralph Waldo certainly knew what was up when it came to just about everything—kind of like Abraham Lincoln, which I know now because I saw the new movie Lincoln and it was amazing and Daniel Day-Lewis was unbelievable as Abe, and both Abe and Ralph Waldo hated slavery with a passion and anybody who can hate something so bad with such a fervor is bound to be a great guy, and I think my son will be a great guy, and maybe starting him with the right books will be a good start. I hated reading when I was younger, but I think I turned out okay, and maybe if Emerson loves reading he’ll be ahead of the game, and can pass me up, which is really what I think most parents want: to be outlived and outshined by their kids. At least that’s what I want, and I feel like what I want in this case is normal, so I assume that this must be what most people want, but who knows really.

the Blue House

There is a small blue house just down the street from the center of the city. The business sector suddenly ends, and then there is a row of houses, just like that. The blue one is the third or fourth house down from the cut-off between business and residential.

As far as I know, the house is not for sale. At least, there are no signs in the yard indicating that it is. And yet, I can’t help but think that I would like to live there. You thought so too, and said as much when we were last there in the city. We agreed that we would probably be quite happy in that small blue house.

* * *

I finally got the chance to show you around the city. We were on foot, so I didn’t get to show you much of it. But there is enough of interest within just a few city blocks to make it worth the visit.

Not long after we began walking, we stumbled upon a certain street, one that has become rather special in my mind. I almost forgot the street was there until we were actually upon it. I told you that whenever I come here in my dreams, for some reason I often dream about this street.

Who knows what dreams mean, really, but the street feels important because of its prominence in my dreams. Dreams can do that: add meaning to something that would otherwise be inconsequential. The street always looks a bit different, of course—different stores and restaurants, different neon signs and intersections—but déjà vu tells me that it is always the same street, even if it is re-imagined by my mind each time.

We went into a small bookstore on the street and quickly split ways, looking in different sections for books that interested us. You were looking for British classics, and I was hoping to find a section devoted to the Oxford World’s Classics series. No such section existed—it turned out—but it was just as well.

I turned my attention to looking for a book by a foreign author whose name I can’t even spell, let alone pronounce. Pierdoit? Peridot? Peirot? His first name was Andres…or, at least, something that started with an A. They didn’t have anything by him—it was a rather small bookstore, after all, and he’s a decently obscure author. French, if I recall. The thought came to mind that perhaps I was confusing this author with Georges Perec, but then that didn’t sound right.

After a few minutes of looking around on our own, you and I found each other again. You had found a book you wanted to buy, something by Jane Austen. Even though you already had a copy of it at home, this was a special edition. And anyway, it would be a good memento for your visit to the city. I also told you that this was the store where I bought my first copy of Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis, and, for that reason, the store held a special nostalgia for me.

After we left the bookstore, we continued down the street. It must have snowed the night before, because the further away from the city center we got, the more snow and ice there was on the ground. Though I’m not much of an ice skater, still, we decided to skate along the sidewalk and the street, me in my black Converse, you in your yellow. It was while we were skating that we came across the small blue house, the one we wanted to buy, the house where we would be happy.

And then we started heading back into the city, and I woke up.

Oh, London—do you even exist?

PS
Not all is lost: for what it’s worth, you really do have yellow Converse.

London: a Short Story (or Two-?)

Every time I’m in London, there is a particular restaurant I like to go to. This is a bit odd, because generally I don’t much care for the food in London. But there is that one restaurant I never let myself miss—in fact, just to make sure I get a chance to eat there during my visit to London, I might just go straight there from the aeroport.

I know exactly how to get to this restaurant from various parts of town. Up ahead to the next corner, turn right, and it’s only two blocks down the street from there. I’m not very familiar with the layout of London (it’s a big city and I’ve not been there very many times), but I never have trouble finding this restaurant whenever I’m in town.

Despite the fact that I don’t much care for the food in London, there are, of course, exceptions to this. They use Irish beef at most of their burger joints, which is very different from—and I’d say better than—American beef. Even the McDonald’s restaurants are better in London, not only because of the Irish beef, but also because they serve Cadbury Crème Egg McFlurry’s and curly fries. That said, as odd as it may sound, McDonald’s is still worth a visit whenever I’m in London.

I find it of special interest how sometimes our dreams can taint our memories, sometimes even making the two nearly indistinguishable.

An example: My first time in London, there was a specific McDonald’s I went to. I no longer remember exactly where in the city it was, but I want to say it was on a side-street off of Trafalgar Square. The other buildings all around it weren’t very distinctly marked—I suppose they must have been residences, though I’m really not sure. While at this McDonald’s, I remember thinking I’d rather work at a McDonald’s in London than have a nicer, higher-paying job in the U.S.

But here’s where it gets fuzzy:

I rather clearly remember ordering a Happy Meal in that specific McDonald’s and getting a Super Mario Bros.-based toy. It was, if I recall, a Lakitu in his cloud on wheels (for those of you familiar with the Super Mario Bros. games, you’ll recall that Lakitu is the turtle-ish creature that moves around in the cloud and throws the spike balls down at you from above. In later Mario games, he also serves as the "cameraman").

This may sound alright so far, but here’s the problem with this memory:

Yes, I’m pretty certain that this Lakitu toy is real, but it came out over ten years before the first time I was in London. In fact, I have another memory of when I got that toy, but it was in California, at a McDonald’s inside of a mall. I was with my parents—I couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old. Of course I no longer have the toy.

How did this memory get mixed up with my memory of the McDonald’s in London? I think a dream must have connected them, though it’s hard to say. But now, for whatever reason, I can’t think of that specific McDonald’s in London without thinking of the Lakitu toy, and the memory gets all muddled.

But back to this special restaurant in London…

Though I always know how to get to the restaurant when I’m in town (and though I’ve been there several times), I could never give anyone else directions to it. I don’t know the name of the street it is on. In fact, I don’t even know the name of it. When I look at the sign hanging above the front door, I can’t read it. The first letter seems to be a ‘P’, but the rest is hazy…

…the classic sign of a dream.

When I woke up, I realized that the restaurant isn’t even real.

Shortly after waking up, I met with a friend at a New Mexican restaurant here in town and told all of this to her. I told it to her just as I’m telling it now, acting as though the restaurant is real before I finally drop the surprise that it’s not real; it was all a dream. I feel like it’s more fun/dramatic/interesting that way, I suppose.

Interestingly, I’ve dreamed about the restaurant several times though. She, too, thought this was interesting: Is it a sign? Does it mean something? Is the restaurant actually real, and I’ve actually been there, but I’m just not remembering it from reality?

I told her that I don’t think any of these things are the case. The entire premise was a bit silly anyway—me thinking that every time I’m in London I go to this one specific restaurant. In fact, I’ve only been to London twice. Two times hardly qualifies as saying something happens every time.

Mind you, I’ve had many dreams about London. And in those dreams, yes: I’ve gone to restaurants. And parks and malls and bus stations and aeroports and special city streets. The dreams of the malls are the most interesting, because I always happen to know where the malls are (I never stumble upon them by mistake, unlike every other type of place in my London-dreams), and they usually have crazy layouts and architecture and stores.

Also, this is especially odd because there are no malls in London.

In fact, before going to the restaurant, I went to one of these whacky malls. Weird.

A question: Is there an archetype for dream symbolism regarding unique malls or restaurants?

Anyway.

The other thing odd about the entire London-dream-restaurant idea is that the restaurant was a New Mexican restaurant. I don’t like New Mexican food. And there are no New Mexican restaurants in London. At least, as far as I know, there are no New Mexican restaurants in London. I certainly can’t imagine there being one (though my psyche may disagree with me on that).

While sitting there with my friend, she asked when the more recent of the two times was that I had been to London. I told her it was last night.

Wait.

That doesn’t make sense.

And just how did I get to this restaurant with her? I don’t remember waking up or getting ready or agreeing to meet her or driving here. In fact, this girl isn’t even a friend of mine…

It turns out I’ve only been to London once.

Run

“The roof of the kingdom

within has collapsed! When I say the

word you, I mean a hundred universes.”

from the poem The Death of Saladin by Rumi

Oddly, I actually don’t mind the coldness rushing in from my left, spilling in through my window as I drive away. Normally I have an aversion to the cold, but tonight it seems to make sense, almost as though this one small corner of the universe is conspiring to make me feel a very specific sensation or emotion as I drive towards nowhere. I’m not nowhere, of course; I’m somewhere, though it feels like I’m constantly at the edge of nowhere, like it’s always just a step away.

The moon is nowhere to be found, and through the darkness I almost can’t tell that it’s softly raining outside. It is only when I pass beneath a street light that I can see all the raindrops splayed across my windshield, lit up like a thousand sparks. And in those moments I am blinded by those droplets of water, those countless tiny mirrors reflecting light and only light. But instantly the moment passes and there is darkness again, on the other side of every window.

The inside of my car is bathed with a subtle neon glow from the face of my stereo which is, at the moment, playing Set the Fire to the Third Bar by Snow Patrol. This song, this mood, this lighting, these sparks are all leaving me breathing slowly and feeling vaguely haunted. But this is nothing new. I have heard these sounds and seen this light before. Perhaps it is the precision, this specific combination of elements, this atmosphere that surrounds me as I face off against the darkness that is haunting me now.

 

I don’t mind the coldness pouring in, but you are not in the breeze. I don’t mind the rain that is occasionally blinding me, but you are not in the water or in the mirrors. And I don’t mind the darkness…but surely—wherever you are—you are in the darkness too. Probably it is just another darkness that you are in, a darkness different than mine, a different edge of the circular nowhere that is at the heart of the universe. But of course that universe is only you and me and our ghosts.

The truth is that I’m running, but even I don’t know if it’s toward you or away from you. I can only hope you are just as magnanimous now as you were then, because there’s simply no way to explain how we are fading.

Seagulls Only Die Until 5pm

The moment you step outside of my office, you are immediately confronted by the sound of a thousand seagulls dying. They’re not seagulls, of course—we’re about 800 miles from the sea, give or take a handful. But still, there they are: the sound of the seagulls, cawing, flapping their wings amidst screeches as they plummet to the earth or to the water. At least this is how I picture them dying, falling out of the sky, still struggling all throughout their descent. I’ve never seen it happen. And I’m certainly not going to around here, 800 miles from the sea.

You can only hear them until 5pm, when the lights are turned off, when it’s time to go home from the factory.

I hear them if I happen to go outside on my lunch break, or on the days I go home early. Other days—the days when I don’t leave the building until 5 o’clock—I don’t hear the seagulls. I presume they’re still there throughout the day, dying, though there’s no way of knowing for certain. If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around…but how absurd. Of course seagulls die even when we’re not looking.

My son cries when I’m not looking, though his crying is not so clockwork as the sound of the seagulls. Here and there, now and again throughout the day he’ll cry, but of course that’s normal for a three-month-old boy.

But sometimes he smiles, and that’s when I remember that it’s all worth it. I don’t mean to say that it’s only worth it when he smiles—certainly it’s all worth it when he’s crying and frowning too. I just mean that it’s easier to see that it’s worth it when he’s happy.

And of course smiling doesn’t make a sound. Perhaps happiness is a quiet emotion, because we don’t necessarily feel the need to share it. I am happy, and that is enough. But when we decide to share our happiness, when we show someone else our smile, we realize that happiness should not be a private affair, that others need our happiness just as much as we ourselves need it.

Sometimes when I awaken, I see that my son is already awake, looking around in awe, smiling at anything and everything, and even at me. I wonder: how often does he smile, even when I’m not looking?

I think that one of the saddest things in life, rather than seeing tragedy, is not seeing happiness. Surely happiness is happening all around us, even when we’re not looking. It makes me sad to think about all of the smiles that I miss from my son or from my wife when I’m not around, all the symphonic laughter that I’m not a part of and that I’ll never know, because I’m asleep or at work or in the other room or somehow otherwise just away.

The seagulls have their beginning and their end. They are from 8 to 5, and they are a distraction. But happiness doesn’t have a clock. It is forever—or at least, it should be. And I hope that I always do my part to let it be.