Mystery Life

....oh those pesky forces of nature...

Ingmar Bergman died last week. Perhaps because I spent a significant chunk of my childhood driving through the (holycrapcanwesayboring) forests of Sweden on the way to my grandparents' farm in Norway, the news of his passing has affected me quite a bit. I haven't been this sad about an entertainment figure passing away since Oliver, the original singer of Good Morning Sunshine from the hit musical Hair, succumbed to cancer in 2000. Ah, Oliver. I still hear his song occasionally, played late at night on the golden oldies station, but I'll tell you, it's just not the same; I hear it as Good Morning, I'm Dead now, and I find this is a less perky version, even if the scooby-dooby-bow-wow chorus lyrics haven't changed.

I mention this because last night the kids and I made some popcorn and flipped on The Seventh Seal and what do you know, for the first time EVER there were all these themes of DEATH and HELL flashing at me and it was all very confusing. I've watched this movie at least three thousand times, and, until last night, all I'd seen were happy Swedish beach scenes complete with hunky Swedish stud-muffins playing chess. People think beach volleyball is all that and then some, but, wow, you really haven't seen anything until you've watched a beach chess game. Raaar. Anyway, it's all different now: Just because Bergman is dead, his cute and, let's be honest, chick-flick genre movies have become PHILOSOPHICAL NIGHTMARES for me. I must have a morbid personality or something. What's wrong with me??

Death ruins everything.

Anyway, because the movie got me thinking about death and hell and things, I thought I'd share with you that generally speaking, I am of the opinion that hell is:

70% other people (Not you. OTHER people. THOSE people. You know who I mean.)

5% Mr. IQ

15% entropy (With regards to my messy house, not the thermodynamic-y thing-y.) (Yes, it is official, I will only be teaching chemistry next school year; piss off.)

10% gravity

That's right, you heard me, gravity. My dinner plate-sized hands have never really reconciled themselves to "playing for the team" and they're always fumbling stuff, making my life a misery. They're spiteful things too and like to drop things on my feet, and when they're not doing this, High Intensity is doing it for them. And of course every ten seconds or so, old Baby Fangs is hurdling her tiny baby frame down a flight of stairs or crashing down from a shelf or something. Then she cries a lot and the whole house is miserable for a while, feeling her pain and then some. Gravity is horrible. I hate it.

I mention all this for a reason.

Because I am a very lazy person, when the cloud of inertia descends on my spirit, I tend to try to fight it. That is, I sometimes try to fight it. At least once a month, in a desperate attempt to once and for all rid myself of the "slothful bum " label, I force myself to do something that I absolutely hate doing. This usually involves tackling some ridiculous and grim household chore like "cleaning out the fridge" or "colour coordinating the dried legume jars in the cupboard" or "light dusting of the mantelpiece and cocktails." It takes much inner dialogue, but I usually manage to do something. Or, at very least, get started.

A few days ago, when every bone in my body was directing me to go lie down on the couch and re-read East of Eden for the 786th time because it would be comforting for my brain and non-demanding on my body, I managed to summon the will necessary to clean and shine our hardwood floors. I didn't really want to do it, oh god, I soooo didn't want to do it, but I got myself into the kitchen and under the sink to search for the necessary cleaning supplies. Naturally, I perked up momentarily when I discovered we were out of Murphy's Wood Oil, but I didn't let myself get off that easy. Giving myself a stern, if silent rebuke, I stubbornly grabbed the wood furniture cleaner and defiantly got down on my hands and knees and gave the whole house a good floor polishing. Actually, the furniture stuff did a beautiful job. The floors glowed. I lay on my couch under my Penis Wall Hanging feeling very self-satisfied, and, cool beverage in hand, congratulated myself on a job well done.

What I didn't know was that furniture polish, when used on hardwood floors, takes the notion of a "frictionless surface" to a whole new level. We spent a scary and tense day wiping out and showing off our bruises. By evening, both Baby Fangs AND High Intensity had reverted to their crawling stage, fearful of another skidding fall. It was terrible. I silently calculated the cost of carpeting the place in sandpaper. We were pretty miserable.

Then Mr. IQ came home.

If the world had a kinder, gentler moon-like gravity and we were kinder, gentler moon-like people, slipping on freshly polished floors would not be so catastrophic. Mr. IQ would have gone GA-BOING GA-BOING and then landed on the sofa or something and we would all have had a good laugh because daddy looked silly END OF STORY.

But alas, we are but mortals; Earth is our playing field. And really, let's face it, Mother Earth is one impatient, grabby little bitch, isn't she? You try and jump away and she yanks you back so fast, hurting you in the process! She's a possessive mother but without the soft cushy breasts to sink into. What I'm trying to say is that there would be no gentle GA-BOING GA-BOING for old IQ as he smashed down onto the floor, despite his moon-like proportions. Oh no. Instead, 200+ pounds of solid IQ came crashing down like an avalanche the world has never seen. The house gave a kind of seismic shudder and a terrible silence followed as we collectively waited for it to collapse. Even Baby Fangs froze, waiting for the end. We watched as slowly, slowly, a mushroom cloud of fury formed above his motionless, supine body.

Sometimes, as we all know, life slows down and things move along much slower than they normally do. I always thought this happened when we were about to die, but the fact that it happens when you are witnessing the potential death of someone else came as a bit of a surprise. In the eternity that it took for him to respond to his fall, all kinds of things went flashing through my head. I thought, Aughh, I can't believe he fell! And then: Ouch, that must have hurt! And finally, I guess because I had Ingmar Bergman on the brain, a heartfelt, Gosh, I wish there had been a layer of Swedish meatballs down there to cushion his fall. High Intensity tiptoed over to see if he was OK. I think we were all a little freaked out by his lack of reaction. Was he dead? Was his life insurance policy paid up? If it was, would I buy a new dining room set with the money or take a trip to Europe first? These were some more of the things that went flashing through my head as we watched him lying there.

Then he responded.

"&$*%#@ ICE RINK &%#$*&!!FLOOR &%$@*!!! SLIPPERY$*$$*# @*$??????" I didn't try to talk. I wisely knew that the best thing for all of us would be to let him bellow incoherently for a while. Interruptions would only intensify his rage. So he went on and on and on. I played with the baby for a while, did H.I.'s hair, made a sandwich. Finally there were signs that he was calming down so I explained about the furniture polish and apologized.

"Well, I'm going to have to start wearing a @%$$!! pair of *&*#!!!! mountain spikes just to navigate around the &*%$@# house!!" he shouted. And then something shifted in his expression. The old pack rat paused and looked at me, and I could tell he was thinking... deeply. "Luckily," he said slowly (and I really hope you're a long-time reader and can appreciate what I'm about to quote off here), "Luckily," he said (he who has put me through hell and back with his massive collection of stuff), "Luckily, " he said, (and his voice reverted to his regular one), "Luckily, I have a pair in the basement." We stared at each other, not moving. And then both of us collapsed onto the ground, because honestly, that was one of the funniest thing anyone has ever said to me in my whole stupid life. I laughed until I cried and then I made him go down and get them. I tried them on and plunked around the living room in them for a while. Then High Intensity tried them on. We had a good time.

Oh Ingmar, Ingmar. I don't believe in a biblical hell, so I don't think you're there right now. If it's true that the only immortality we have is via our genes, then the 732 children you had with your 567 assorted wives and girlfriends have well-assured you of that. Death is the big mystery I guess, but the fact is, I don't get anything about this world, never mind the Great Equalizer. I don't get gravity, pain and why I would want my stupid floors to shine in the first place anyway. I don't get why breaking my hair-straightener would send me into a despair that borders on the pathologically ridiculous. And your movies! I didn't get that weird dining room scene in Hour of the Wolf where the Bjorndiggy-diggy character said, "Fonken splunken fishball plunken"; it left me confused, and searching for herring sandwiches and answers, both of which I never found. Instead I wake up each morning, drink my coffee and stumble through my day not getting anything, feeling like a fool and bawling occasionally when the news comes on.

But I got the mountain spike reference. Scenes like that that keep me going. I guess that sounds a bit more morbid that I mean it to.

Sorry.