gattaca

Every time I see Gattaca, I have a need to write some long deep ramble about it, but it's the sort of thing one runs out of material about quickly, no matter how much one identifies with parts of it.

It is a terribly simplistic film, with everything either over-explicated or completely glossed over, but in keeping with everything that I love -- it has it's own vocabularly, deeply rooted in the visual, of a world not quite our own -- and that's a funny thing, when I can say I love Gattaca for the same reasons I love Moulin Rouge, or anything Todd Haynes or Sam Mendes has done.

At any rate, in many ways, Gattaca is a story barred to me -- I am not a boy, and I have no siblings, but yet every time I watch it, it is with a terror of the story having suddenly and slightly changed, as if some strange vestage of my own story will appear there.

Swimming, although I enjoy it, and am rather good at it now, is a particular horror for me when evoked in any way that isn't the clinical nature of an olympic race on television. I was taught to swim at summer camp, when I was in fifth grade, in a lake with seaweed and crayfish at the bottom, instructors that I was too critically aware of as men, forcing my head underwater and holding it there as I locked my knees and struggled as if for my very life. Later, swimming just a few stroes in that shallow water, between them for safety, humiliated into it and feeling safer than being held under, in my blue bathing suit with red metallic hearts on it, I remember the other children on the docks applauding for me, as if in a reminder I was only slightly less pathetic that day, than the day before, and they would always be up there, and I would always be below, in the water and the mud.

When I swim, I prefer to swim alone, endless laps in empty pools. I lose track of time, and when I was in Los Angeles, I swam so long and hard in a ridiculous, empty rooftop Beverly Hills hotel pool, with French disco blasting, that when I woke up from the nap I took afterwards, and stood up to dress for a meeting, I fell over, my muscles having completely locked up.

I always cry when I see Gattaca -- because of all that, because I have a heart condition, because I have all sorts of inane things wrong with me that were always made more of than was probably necessary -- because as an only and lonely child I lived in a world of gods, and believed what they told me, believed in their worry, and their silence. I cry because I could barely run the mile I had to in the time I had to to graduate high school. I cry because of the heart problem motif, and the swimming.

Surely, I have always taken my truth from books and movies, I know that, because my parents often worried over it, scolding me preemptively, when I would lie on the arm of their couch and pretend to fly as a toddler. "Girls can't fly" I was told, and I always wondered, if they thought boys could; I was not stupid and disliked being denied my game. But I'm not sure there are simple sentences that get at it all in with those older and earlier talismans -- I know often those things don't exist, it is a feeling, a color, a movement to sound (The Piano is the keenest example of this, the talismans one of the melodic themes, there is nothing to quote).

Gattaca maybe was the first one that was so simple. Just once sentence. One that I should write on my wall. Since I live that way, it would do well to be mindful of it. To use it. Because it comes before all the other sentences, because it is the beginning of the story, that explain what I am doing now, what I want and what on earth makes me think those desires are so perfectly plausible.

"I never saved anything for the way back."

I have always felt strongly that the new Jerome in Gattaca, does not expect to come back from his mission to Titan, not because of his expiration date, but because there is just something not quite right about this race to a moon that is never explained to us -- the best and brightest bred to sacrifice; the human race, as primative as ever, just with the aid of science to make it both more spectacular and efficient. I don't know if that's something that I'm supposed to see in the film, and it has always bothered me so much, I've not brought it up before. But that notion to me, is one of the great moments of horror and eroticism about the film, which is in the end, a rather stylish porn movie for the ages of AIDS and hand sanitizer.

italy, streamers, and the family propensity for magical thinking

When I was about thirteen, my parents took me to Italy over winter break, because my wacky Jewish mother thought it would be cool to be in Rome for Christmas. This was the mis-eightees, so ATMs were not ubiquitous nor ammenable to foreign cards, and we hadn't realized that December and January in Italy would be one giant bank holiday. Aside from this, there seemed to be no Italians anywhere -- in either Rome, or later, in Florence. In fact, German tourists were about the only humans we saw -- they overran our pensione, the few open restaurants, and then finally, the luxury hotel my father made us switch too because the pensione had no hot water (we were able to stay with the pensione in Florence, and although more run down in a lot of ways, I have very strong and emotional affection for the place, but that's another story).

At any rate, as Christmas Eve and New Year's approached, we realized it might be quite a struggle to find somewhere to dine out that was appropriately festive -- afterall, the Italians were all either with their families or had fled the country entirely. Ultimately, my parents, after a bit of research, came to the conclusion that the only things open, and of interest to them, were in trastevere, which from the vague impression I was given at the time, was a bit like Soho in the late 70s or perhaps even the East Village, when neither of those neighborhoods are what they are today.

My mother made a reservation at a restaurant, and (and I can't recall if it was for Christmas or New Years) we got a taxi to take us there. This, however, took several tries. Surely, we were tourists and did not want to go to a part of town like that -- didn't we understand it was dangerous? We were so talked out of it, we were actually scared by the time we finally found a car to take us there, and worried profusely about finding one to take us home.

I don't remember much of the neighborhood, just the ordinary cement building the restaurant was in, and its ordinary cement walls, barely lit by candels, large solid wooden tables, and children running about everywhere, from small room to small room -- each connected with stone arches -- the ceilings were not too low, but one felt closed in, like one had to duck to move about.

Just before midnight, we were all given baskets of streamers to throw, and everyone did -- creating a lattice over the tables and chairs and diners. I had a small lovers knot ring I had had since I was a very small child (two of the other rings I wear today I've had since I was eight, and this predated those by at least four years), that flew off of my hand as I stood on a chair and threw my red and white streamers. I heard it hit -- whether it was the ground, or one of the dented metal water pitchers on every table, I don't know. I never found it, and while I felt bad about it (I tend to feel immeasureable paralyzing guilt of my ability to take care of things that are given to me and become my responsibility), I remember my mother saying it was a good occassion to lose such a thing.

Maybe that's where all my superstition comes from, a family like that -- omens of rings and birds and death and loss and strange long bred fortune. Good luck wherever we care to make some up. It's served me well, and remembering that night now, perhaps better that I've ever expected, certainly in ways still yet to be.