The Unexplained

The first episode on my list today, The Plan, begins with the death of a man who is terminally ill with cancer. The dying man’s wife, Eileen, is portrayed so whimsically by Mare Winningham. Eileen is a psychic. In the episode she awakens from a dream where her husband is packing their car to leave for a trip. In her dream her husband yells at her to bring the dog to the car for the trip. Eileen wakes to her husband mumbling about the dog. An older woman sitting next to the dying man asks Eileen about the dog. Eileen confesses to the woman that they had owned a dog when they lived in Boulder, Colorado. Her husband awakens and she goes to his side to comfort him. He is frightened and agitated from his pain. His wife tells him that it is okay to let go and to move on. The nurses come in to give him more morphine to ease his discomfort. As he settles down Eileen notices a glowing golden light over her husband’s head. In this moment the show's signature graphic announces to the audience that the man has died. 

The series uses the writing device of the living being able to see and communicate with the dead as a way to reveal internal motivations and thoughts of the characters. I believe this device is what originally made the show so appealing to me because, yes, I see dead people. There...I’m out. I have gradually been coming out to more and more people over the last several years. I have been able to see dead people for as far back as I can remember. 

My mother tells me how, when I was four or five years old, we moved into this incredibly creepy rental home and she had an experience where she saw a ghost. While she was downstairs having her experience, I was in the bed upstairs with my grandparents who had helped us move into the house. My grandparents told my mother I was lying between them sweating, staring at the ceiling, and telling them about the red and blue lights on the ceiling. Apparently, I couldn’t stop looking at them. I’m not sure if this experience was what brought on my ability to see, but it is one that I still vaguely recall--or maybe I’ve heard the story so many times I have created the memory for myself. 

To this day I still see people and hear things. However, only recently have I let myself be in my knowing about my ability. I fought it for a long time. I feared it. I even asked the universe to take this ability away from me if it was something evil. It has taken me this long to understand that what I see is not evil. Also, my ability no longer scares me. Truth be told, what I've seen has never really scared me…it simply overwhelmed me as a teenager. I cannot express the stress of being able to see and hear dead people back then. This ability felt like a tidal wave of information that I never asked for and had no idea how to process. My life was traumatic enough just going through the transitions into adulthood without the ability to see and hear my friends’ deceased family members. I hated leaving the house, because there are legions of dead moving around as energies, connected to places and to living people. This is part of why I still find it exhausting to go out in public. It was, and still can be, exhausting to feel these things. And, to be honest, that is how is these entities reveal themselves to me: As feelings. People have asked me if it’s like seeing a living person standing in the room. Yes, sometimes it is. But it is not so much a visualization as it is a feeling, empathic perception of these presences, as well as auditory and visual stimuli which can sometimes be captured on media. 

My friend Maria helped me come out to people about seeing. She and I shared a dorm room together in graduate school. One evening she showed me photos from her honeymoon. She and her husband stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast. As I looked at the pictures I noticed a man in many of the pictures who I knew was a presence. I blurted out to Maria about the man. I told her what he looked like and where he stood in the photos. Maria sat silent as I described the man. She didn’t say anything in the moment. Later she asked me if I’d ever been to that particular bed and breakfast. I hadn’t…hell, at that point I’d never been to Pennsylvania in my life (but remind me another Memorial Day to tell you what it feels like to inadvertently exit the interstate at Gettysburg).  Later, after dinner, Maria told me how her honeymoon was in a very well-known haunted bed and breakfast, and much of what I saw in the photos had been reported by others who see. It was nice to be validated in what I could see. 

Up to then I had not experienced much positive response to my ability to see. My boyfriend at the time was incredibly cruel about my ability and called me a liar--he accused me of making up what I saw in guise of getting attention. That accusation hurt me to my core; because I loved him I was being honest with him. But he used my love for him to make me feel inadequate as a person and to make me feel like there was something wrong with me. He nearly destroyed so much of my spirituality and my faith in my abilities. I recently attempted a friendship with this ex-boyfriend which, unfortunately, did not work out. He has changed so much for the positive and he’s managing to stay clean of drugs, but our memories of what we were are too much for us both. I feel he needs to work more on himself and that he is just not good for me. I just cannot trust him, and though I don’t understand why, he claims he cannot trust me. Maybe one day I’ll figure out why he has this issue, being that I was nothing but honest with him. These are his issues, I suppose. I do hope he can stay on a positive path, but I’m nervous for him. I saw him start slipping back into classic addictive behaviors, so I told him I could not be an active part of his life right now. 

The positive about the friendship we attempted was that it did help me to again see myself as I was before he hurt me. Not only did he apologize for cheating on me, but he went on to apologize for not being more supportive and nurturing of my needs, for making me feel so horrible about my body, and for not believing in my ability to see what I see. He told me that in his recovery he’d seen things and met people like me and that he now believed in my abilities. It was nice to be validated and it was nice to have some closure to the unresolved pain my loving him caused me. I love that man more than I care to admit, but sometimes love is just not enough. There will always be a place in my heart for him. 

In the last year I have been guest lecturing my friend Maria’s Haunted Pennsylvania class at Central Penn via Skype. I have seen some amazing things. I have heard some amazing stories based on what I see. I love doing the classes, but they can be exhausting. The exhaustion is the most difficult part of doing readings. Mostly, and I do not mean this to sound cruel or with the intention to hurt anyone, people’s selfish needs to communicate with deceased loved ones makes many people unreasonable. I understand the pain of loss of a loved one and that desire to have unanswered questions resolved, for the living and the dead. But, I never know what someone's loved ones who have passed will do or say. I often have no idea who they are, and often have no idea who they are attached to...especially when there are multiple presences. I encourage people I’m doing readings for to be gracious. Obviously I’m not amused by those who take it upon themselves to prove I’m a fraud. Part of me finds these people and their determination comical. The other part of me needs a nap after dealing with them. They are draining and suck the energy out of a room. I will say that at this point in my life I’m not out to prove myself to anyone. I am who I am, and I see what I see.  

In the same 6FU episode Nate and Brenda have a discussion about the afterlife. Brenda doesn’t believe in heaven and hell. Nate throws in her face her belief about people being wounded and about our wounds leaving marks in time and space. She says that she does believe because she believes we are all energies and energies affect matter. In a certain regard that is what I believe. I believe I am perceiving energies and that I am merely more attuned to these energies than most. I do, however, believe all living beings can do what I do if they want to and open themselves up to their personal abilities. I believe that I can see because the universe needs certain people to work as catalysts for change. I honestly believe I am one of those people. I believe a large percentage of people who are born to teach are catalysts for change. Maybe that makes me sound like I think I am divine but, in reality, aren’t we all divine? We are all, in fact, spiritual beings having a human experience. I believe this. I’ve seen this. I know this to be true. This is my knowing.

Here is a video montage of some of the deaths from the series. Enjoy.

High: It's All About Flow

Today’s trio of episodes share a theme that smacked me in the face and reeked of more pot smoke with gin and juice than some of the tents at the Coachella Festival. The sheer volume of drugs I watched consumed on screen today was astounding. In fact, the lead-in for the story In the Game was the death of a young actress who overdoses on cocaine. (This popular episode is also the one where Nate accidentally takes an ecstasy tablet that David had hidden away in an old aspirin bottle in the kitchen cabinet, and Nate’s high is absolutely euphoric.) In Knock, Knock the addict Gabriel again surrenders to smoking pot. In Out, Out Brief Candle another of Claire’s stoner classmates freaks out smoking a joint laced by Gabriel with mortuary-strength formaldehyde. Overall, the drug use on 6FU is the one key component of the series I don’t particularly identify with. Youthful experimentation is behind me. I choose not to do such drugs. There...I said it. 

I do consume alcohol, but with this year I do not drink as much as I did a few times last year, while I was getting my feet wet in the local film community, drinking more than I care to admit. I drank because I was nervous. I felt like I was taking a huge leap into the very public arena of our local filmmakers. Example: In the first short film I produced, I appeared in a scene wearing nothing but a tank top and panties. 

What tends to amaze me is that when I write scripts with overt actions, and I have myself in mind for certain characters as I’m writing, I’m quite aware that I may have to perform these actions on film or stage. Yet I’m so detached from my own acting while I’m writing the character. (I think of what I’m writing for my other actors and I take what those actors can and cannot do into consideration, but I guess when it comes to writing for myself, I try to challenge my personal boundaries as an actor.) Three days before the festival I began to have an incredible amount of anxiety. My fear of an audience not being able to get past my physical appearance felt like it would cripple me. 

The night of the festival I drank a lot. And by a lot I mean I drank a fifth of Scotch whiskey and a fifth of Honey Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey. I had no idea I was drinking so much as I was drinking it. When the intro graphic for our team’s film appeared on screen, I might have vomited into my purse...except it would have been impossible, because to vomit I would’ve had to breathe. I’m really not sure I was breathing, sitting between Phillip and Miss Gracey Casterline, clinging to their hands. At that point I couldn’t have looked away from the screen if I’d wanted to. 

The viewing went much better than I had imagined. I'd had visions of people throwing vegetables at the movie screen and asking why a cow in a wig and red panties was allowed to act in a film.

Yes, I know I’m incredibly critical on myself. I am dealing with that. My ex-fiance Grant used to tell me that he often tried to be kinder to me than most others might be, because he knew no matter how tough the world is to me, I’m a hundred times tougher on myself. When he first told me that, I was absolutely stunned. I thought everybody else picked themselves apart to their very core just as I did. 

The 2012 festival circuit went much like this for me until the Knoxville Horror Film Fest "Grindhouse Grind-Out" competition, which was a special level of frightening for me.

The one thing I can say about myself is that I take very calculated risks as an artist. So I had researched the audience of the Grindhouse event--I do that with every performance-based event I work on, because knowledge of audience is so important. I had neglected that once long ago, and I made the mistake of reading a poem about my own ass at a fundraiser for the Baptist Church. (In my defense, I had no idea it was a fundraiser for the Baptist Church or I would not have chosen to perform that specific poem.) It was the first and only public performance I participated in where I actually had someone unplug my microphone from the wall. More insulting still, this same idiot running the event went on to tell a gentlemen in the audience whom I'd met five minutes before the reading that I "needed to be controlled.” When the kinder man sought me out afterwards to recount this, I just laughed. People had tried to control me well before that judging ass-hat and they had also failed…yeah, good luck with that, buddy. And, if you’re curious, I kept on performing the poem to completion without the microphone plugged in. I’m a big believer in the band playing on. 

The film short (a trailer for an otherwise nonexistent exploitation genre film, per the competition rules) my Team She Wonder made for the Grind-Out featured me as the personification of menstruation, "Aunt Flo." I had a wig under my panties and I was dripping from waist to ankles with fake blood. Okay, I thought it was hysterical when I wrote it. I think it is funny now to watch it. I even thought it was amusing while we filmed it. However, two nights after we shot the short I found myself pacing the floor of my best friend’s apartment so freaked out that I thought my head might actually explode. Mike assured me it couldn’t be that bad. “My thighs,” I say nearly in tears. “An audience of hundreds of people are going to be staring up the gateway to my va jay-jay displayed on a huge screen...in high definition.” I watched Mike’s face as I showed him some raw footage we shot. His only response was a slight twitch of his left eyebrow and a barely-there smirk. “Okay,” he said. “You need to chill out. This is fine. People will love it, Kali. You have a real sense of your audience and they are not going to see you as grotesque, but rather Aunt Flo as grotesque.” 

The night of the Grind-Out viewing, I forgot to eat and started drinking early. I was more nervous than I had ever been about any of my other creative work. I began with Jello shots…how can anyone go wrong with Jello shots, right? I will admit that after about half of all the trailers had viewed, I was feeling much better about my Aunt Flo. By the time all the films had viewed I had forgotten there would be awards. I was starving and talking to Phillip about finding some food somewhere when I suddenly heard William Mahaffey, the man who founded the Knoxville Horror Film Fest, say the name "Aunt Flo" into the microphone. Phillip and I looked at each other for what felt like a minute. My team leader, Jennifer Skeen, grabbed me by the shoulders and with a giant grin told me I had just won the award for Best Performance (female or male). Honestly, I was in absolute shock. Finally, local judges 'got me' as a performer. A panel of judges had looked at my giant thighs and said, “That brave bitch has talent!”  And, if I hadn’t eliminated any question of it by nearly exposing my girlie bits, they could have also said I had some pretty big balls. 

It wasn’t until I stood up to accept the award that I realized how very drunk I was. I dropped my camera, which was saved by fellow filmmaker Leigh Ann Jernigan’s lovely husband Matt. The award itself, a spray-painted VHS tape with the Knoxville Horror Film Fest logo on it, was still wet with paint and it stuck to my hand when William handed it to me. That moment was an absolute high…and made me wish I’d eaten beforehand and not drank so damn much. I was fine for about another hour, until I stood up from the middle of a conversation and announced louder than I meant to that I was going to vomit. I went to the bathroom where Jennifer and her sister offered to hold my hair--which I felt was an incredible honor and made me fall head over heels in love with both and cherish them so much as amazing and loving young women…their mama did so good with them. I didn’t puke in the bathroom. No, I vomited on the back passenger tire of my other creative partner Keri McClain’s SUV...and on my boots. I was so disappointed in myself for letting myself get so out of control just because I was afraid I’d be misunderstood as an artist. I also felt guilty I puked on my friend’s car. I immediately texted my friend Mike: “I just puked on my boots. I’m going home.” Within seconds his reply arrived: “Excellent.” 

The next day I drank a gallon of water and ate pain relievers like M&Ms. I stared at the VHS tape I'd won, now displayed on the television in my bedroom. Phillip sat next to me. I told him how stupid I felt for getting so drunk. Without missing a beat he told me that now that I had won that award for performance, I didn’t need to worry anymore how people saw me. Apparently they got me and were okay with me as a physical being. I did feel a certain relief, and that relief spilled over into the Fifty-four Film Festival this year, where I had just one beer. And when I co-hosted the Knoxville Film & Music Festival's KnOscars Party, I had only half a martini. I guess I’m not afraid anymore.

This being said, I also guess I can now understand the appeal of recreational drugs, even though I choose not to participate in that form of recreation. My late father smoked so much pot that he was difficult to get to know. I understand him a little better now. My father’s addictive use of pot was my initiation into drugs and how they can affect behavior. I also fell head over heels (twice) in love with a man who is a recovering addict. It’s not easy loving an addict. The sort of love I felt both for my father and for this love nearly destroyed me emotionally. I think that is a part of the collateral damage of alcoholism and all addiction. I don’t think I’m an alcoholic, but I was not happy with how much I drank at these festivals just to feel more secure. That is insanity and could have led me down a road to addiction. At my core, I just want to be lovable and not suffer anymore. I want peace. I want balance. I want flow. That’s truly the best high of all.

I wrote and produced this short film Fag Hag. I play Hag, also. The short film also features Kevin Buchanan as Fag, Graclyn Casterline as The Waitress, and Kwame Rock as The Doctor.

Here is the link to Aunt Flo: A True Period Piece.

Just Breathe

I’m ready for the weekend and a break from the writing. I feel somewhat overwhelmed by this experiment, and I’m less than a week in at this point. I’m not giving up, though. I do, however, feel that this evening’s blog might be a tad shorter than usual.

While watching the episodes on today’s list I noticed a recurring theme of breathing and breath. The most prevalent example involved Ruth in The Trip. Nicolai, Ruth’s boss at the flower shop and one of her love interests, tells her she can no longer make floral arrangements because the customers have been complaining that her floral arrangements are too...funereal. 

Ruth is bothered by this because it was the creative aspect of working at a floral shop that appeals to her the most. Nicolai demotes her to only working the register. Ruth decides to educate herself and takes a class at the learning annex in floral arrangement. This episode also featured one of my all-time favorite guests to the show, Mary Gross, whom I have loved since she was on Saturday Night Live. She is well-suited to play the role of the aging hippie and former control freak who teaches Ruth’s class on floral arrangement. 

The rest of the women in the class produce these beautiful loose arrangements while Ruth’s arrangements are so tight. The instructor of the course pulls Ruth aside and tells her she needs to stop breathing from her head and to breathe from her gut. Ruth is confused and says her lungs are neither in her head or her gut. The instructor then tells Ruth that she is speaking metaphorically. Basically, the instructor tells Ruth that she is over-thinking her arrangements and that she needs to let go of being such a control freak. Ruth seems shocked to hear this and denies that she is a control freak. It is the fact that the part of the instructor is played by Mary Gross that makes her response to Ruth so nonthreatening: “Yes, and control freaks do not make good arrangers. Believe me, I know. I used to be a control freak too. But you know what? You can get over it. All you have to do is learn to breathe.” 

Breathing is such an odd thing to discuss, I guess, but I’m always shocked at how few people do it correctly. I have learned much about proper breathing during my life. I first learned about proper breathing in a high school theatre course. My theatre teacher, Glenna Maglio, taught her students that many mistakes actors made were based on the actors’ inability to control their breathing. She had us do an exercise that I particularly excelled at. We had to inhale as much air as we could into our lungs and then say the prose poem The Queen of Hearts repeatedly until we were completely out of air and could no longer speak. The only person in class better than me was Tera Satriano, and she could only manage one more paragraph than I did. 

It wasn’t until I was in recovery for my rape that I understood the power breathing truly has. While in therapy I would notice that, whenever I tried to express difficult ideas and memories, I would gasp and struggle for air. My therapist at the time explained that this physical response is very common in survivors of a traumatic experience. I did some research on why it is a survivor’s inclination to struggle and fight the act of breathing. Through my own experience and the little research I did, I think it has to do with the psychological need the victim of an assault has to end the assault. It is almost as if should they stop breathing then they can stop and maybe travel outside that moment. Maybe I’m grasping but that is the best I can remember about my own assault experience. I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe and then being outside my own body. Like I was capable of astral travel. 

I worked on my stress levels and breathing. To breathe correctly you must breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Something happens as we age and we being to breathe through our mouths. I think it has to do with trauma and negative experience. Each negative experience we have pushes us into breathing through our mouths instead of our noses. Our bodies are not designed to breathe through our mouths. The reason we have those tiny hairs inside our nostrils is to catch all the crap we should not be breathing. I tell my students this. I have actually spent some of my office hours time teaching my students how to breathe correctly. 

Breathing correctly will help you live longer. The benefits of proper breathing are astounding. The most common effect is the release of toxins, but also, proper breathing massages your internal organs, relieves tension, eases pain, increases muscle mass, improves posture and blood flow, aids in digestion, strengthens the heart, improves cell regeneration, assists in weight control, boosts energy levels and stamina, and brings so many other health benefits.

In working on my breathing I have come up with a philosophy about acting, much like my teacher Glenna’s but maybe more direct. I tutor private acting classes and the first thing I say to people who want to act is, “Can you breathe?” If they say yes I tell them that’s good...that means they can act. I then work on proper breathing with them. I notice that what throws actors off is their nervous responses; they stop breathing properly and their bodies think they need more oxygen, so they struggle and gasp for air. They forget where to move and what to say. And why shouldn’t they? Their poor bodies are convincing them that they are dying and need more air, though they really do not. It’s an amusing act of nature that keeps many people out of the public spotlight. 

I did love when Ruth finally got her breathing on. She began to huff and buff like Randy Quaid trying to wash his own back in the shower. There’s this great moment when she finally just lets go of her need to feel in control. And honestly, maybe that has more to do with our fears than anything else. To breathe properly is to let go of control and of the fears that keep us unhealthy and living too much inside our own heads. I know I’ve had better luck working on my own breathing after my chats with my dear friend Mike. He is the first person in my life who actually looked me in the face and told me to get the fuck out of my head. I needed that. Actually, until I met Mike and he told me to get out of my own head, I never knew it was an option. It is one of the things I put on my grateful-for-Mike list. I’m truly happier out of my head, and I definitely breathe better. I’m in no way an expert breather, but I’m getting there. 

This is a song that changed me like Six Feet Under changed me. It's a song that will remind me how very strong my love is, and how much I will withstand for it when it is intoxicating. 

If It Barks Like a Dog, Is It a Bitch?

I’m not going to lie: I’m just not feeling the writing today, and I had the most difficult time staying focused on the episodes. I was up pretty late last night, and (excuse the candor) today my period sucker-punched me like it is Mike Tyson circa 1987 and I'm Robin Givens. I don’t want to bend, walk, lie down, breathe, talk, or move in anyway. Yes, I feel bitchy, and yes, I could probably take someone’s head clean off with my bare hands for one of Coffee and Chocolate’s sea salt dark chocolate-covered caramels. The three episodes today had certain moments, but nothing that made any one of them better than the other two. Since I’m feeling sort of bitchy, I suppose I will focus on Brenda. 

What I’ll never understand is how many Six Feet Under fans really dislike Brenda. I remember talking with my friend Sarah Campbell about the series in Fall 2006 after I had watched all five seasons. Everyone I knew who watched 6FU identified with Claire, and as I recall Sarah was in the Claire camp...although now that I think about it, she may have been a huge Nate person. Anyway, what I do recall is that when I told her I was a Brenda person, Sarah looked confused. I remember her asking me why I liked Brenda. I told her that I identified with Brenda because her sense of purpose, boundaries, ethics, and humor were so very akin to my own. I’d had real-life conversations with people precisely the same as those Brenda had on the show; I’d even said phrases Brenda said. After a brief silence Sarah said, “But Brenda’s such a bitch,” and she stared at me as if to say she thought I was a nicer person than Brenda.

No, I’m not. However, I do not think Brenda is unkind. She does so many kind things in the series that I feel are overlooked because so many people focus on Brenda’s behavior, behavior American culture has deemed unbecoming in women. 

First, Brenda is highly intelligent. The character’s IQ is stated to be 15 points higher than mine (and yet I still cannot beat that stupid pins-in-the-triangle game at Cracker Barrel). It has been my experience that smart women are seen as a threat by many men and even more women. Moreover, where I feel Brenda and I are most similar is that we are both hyper-critical. I have to admit, I have lost friendships over my ability to be critical, an ability I see as a blessing. The potential problem with being critical is that many people do not understand the difference between criticism and judgement. 

There is a substantial difference between criticism and judgement. What stands out to me is that other people I know who are as critical as I am are also the least judgmental people I know in the world. Hyper-critical people do not equate another person’s worth or value with isolated actions or words or lifestyles; to do so would clearly be making a judgement about another individual, and that is just not how I roll. I don’t care who fucks whom or what they say or how else they behave. 

To judge is to find value in, or perhaps to devalue, an object. Criticism is to study, evaluate, and interpret a person’s work based on a set of principles, standards, and social trends that can determine how and why the observed subject takes shape, its cultural significance, and its ability to withstand the test of time. Criticism offers as its product a critique, which gives the person something to build and grow from. Judgement offers a verdict, and a verdict (desirable or not) takes the power out of the object’s hands. There is nothing in judgement that allows the object the opportunity for growth. 

Here’s where I think the honest breakdown is on this debate: People do not always appreciate sincere criticism because it means they may still have unfinished work to do on whatever is being critiqued. Also, many people have a difficult time sifting through criticism and taking what they need from it in order to move on and grow into someone wiser...even wise enough to recognize that not all criticism matters. The trick to criticism is having faith in the principles of interpersonal knowledge sharing. In fact, I believe oftentimes people unconsciously prefer being judged to being criticized, because in judgement there is a (perhaps unearned) sense of closure and finality. 

Brenda is critical, not judgmental. She has a line of criticism in Episode 8, an observation so astute it ends a moment of tension between her brother Billy and Nate. Billy is over-intellectualizing the death of a six year old boy who accidentally shot himself in the face. Nate posits a more emotional analysis of the death of this young child whose funeral is being planned at Fisher and Sons Funeral Home. In the midst of this argument Brenda very calmly interjects: “Do you know what I find interesting? If you lose a spouse, you're called a widow or a widower. If you're a child and you lose your parents, then you're an orphan. But what's the word to describe a parent who loses a child? I guess that's just too fucking awful to even have a name.” This is a prime example of how Brenda can take a subject and critique it. Seriously, go back and look at the definition I offered up above. That’s exactly what she’s doing here. 

More than anything else, I think Brenda’s ability to be critical directly affects her establishment of emotional boundaries. There is this fantastic sequence in the same episode where, after Nate fails the first try on his funeral director’s exam, Brenda takes him out window shopping at other funeral homes, to see how others do the job. After two visits--the first with a guy cluelessly merchandising after Brenda fabricates this hysterical story of her parents being killed in a helicopter crash, and a second one where the funeral director feigns concern to swindle them out of money--Brenda enters the third location, leaving Nate alone with this director long enough to disguise herself as a terminal cancer patient planning her own funeral. It’s a move that pushes Nate over an emotional cliff. Brenda never strays from her act. Nate loses his temper and exits, which only serves to validate Brenda’s means. Back in the van, Nate accuses Brenda of playing head games with him. Brenda apologizes but points out to Nate that he is, in fact, entering an undertaking where he will have to deal with every aspect of death on a daily basis. She tells him this is odd to her because he has such a fear of dying. Nate rationalizes, saying everyone fears death; Brenda says she doesn’t. 

Nate then becomes judgmental and tells Brenda that sane people fear death. Brenda uses her humor to defuse the situation, by barking like a dog as she had as a child in the biographical case study Charlotte Light and Dark, but it is clearly a moment of Nate projecting his judgement and fear-based opinions onto Brenda. In my opinion, he is being unfair, and yet more people find Brenda’s actions more offensive than Nate’s actions. That is difficult for me to understand. To me, being upset over Brenda’s actions is like asking for an ice cream cone with bubble gum flavored ice cream and then getting pissed off when the ice cream is blue instead of pink. It still tastes like fucking bubble gum. What is the freaking problem? You asked for bubble gum, and you got bubble gum. Nate was fine going into the first two funeral homes and losing an imaginary uncle and imaginary parents, but an imaginary wife was too much for him. It’s hypocrisy at a gut level. But I’ve always felt Nate is a bit of a hypocrite, because of his bizarre love/hate relationship with his own need to be helpful to others. Then again, as I warned in my opening paragraph, maybe I’m just being a bitch?

Catch-22: The Meaning of Life

Today one of my top 5 episodes was on the watch list. I love the third episode of the first season. The Room is focused on the identity of Nathaniel Senior. Nate takes the hearse to have the oil changed and discovers that his father had been exchanging services and goods for funeral arrangements. In researching the deceased father’s bartering system, Nate learns his dad had a sense of humor, smoked pot, and had a secret room over an Indian restaurant. I think this episode left a lasting impression on me because I have so many unanswered questions about my own father. And, much like Nate, I wonder what my father truly thought of me... if he was proud of me. 

I fear the repercussions this particular blog might have. It seems that every time I write anything about my father, my family becomes upset and calls me everything but a fat white woman. I do not understand this. It hurts, because I love my family, and I have had to ‘block’ and take several of them off my Facebook Friends list. I hate this. What I cannot get them to understand is, well, me, mostly. I have to explain why I choose to change my name--which seems to bother them the most...like we are the Rockefellers or something. I guess I can see where they are coming from, but I don’t understand why it upsets them so, especially because Phillip and I have done so much research on my family and discovered that thanks to a census worker our German heritage was altered. We went from Meister to Miester and became Americanized. So, actually, I’m honoring my family and my German heritage. 

I also changed my first name from Kally to Kali. I’m Pagan and wanted to honor my Goddess self, and so I chose Kali because it was close to my real name and I identify with Kali on a personal level. Kali, the Dark Mother, is a Goddess with whom devotees have a very loving and intimate bond, in spite of her fearful appearance. In this relationship, the worshipper becomes a child and Kali assumes the form of the ever-caring mother. Kali went out to fight against evil forces and became so entrenched in her battle that she lost sight of whom she was truly fighting. She is female anger energy. She is the mother whose anger overcomes her to the point she destroys anything that comes into her path. She is on an out-of-control rampage until Lord Shiva throws himself at Kali’s feet in an effort to awaken her from her place of rage. I get that. I am so angry. I have been angry as far back as I can remember. My hostility and need for vengeance have bubbled and festered inside me to the point I thought I might burst from my gut. I have worked on my anger for years. Most my anger is toward my father, whom I feel abandoned by.

What I try to get my family to understand is my knowledge of the roles people play in other people’s lives. I remember learning about this in a college psychology course. Each of us is a different person when we are with different individuals or groups. An example is that I am different with my mother from how I am with my friend Mike. There are things my mother knows about me that no one else does, but there are things Mike knows about me that no one else does (and it better stay that way, buddy). The conflict is when these two worlds collide. Some of the stuff one of them knows to be true about me would be unbelievable for the other person. That is just not their experience of me. My experience with my father was often difficult. 

The man I knew as my father was a pot-smoking, guitar-playing, giant pirate, with a love of carnations and canned tamales covered in Catalina or French salad dressing. Just the thought of those tamales still sets off waves of nausea inside me. He was smart. He was a visionary who I feel was incredibly misunderstood at times. And, he loved me. It took me a long time to be able to believe that. No matter how much my family tried to tell me he loved me I could never trust that. I had to figure out his love for me on my own. My paternal grandmother, the last time we spoke to each other face to face, told me that she truly believed my father died from a broken heart. And, if our wounds kill us, that--I suppose--would be true. His giant heart gave out on him shortly after his 40th birthday. It baffles me that I have outlived my father by two years. I was twenty years old when he died, and at that time he seemed so old to me. Now that I’m forty-two I understand how much life he had yet to live and what was truly stolen from those who loved him. 

Nate and I share this need to know--and ability to feel--others’ pain. I always found it odd I didn’t identify more with Nate. I think there’s a selfishness in Nate’s character that I could never look past. But part of me got him, and loved him for his beauty and flaws...much like Brenda does. I am so very Brenda. 

In this episode Nate has a fantasy sequence involving all these scenarios of the life his father led and who his father was. They are comical, desperate, and tragic in their contexts. I understand Nate’s need to supply a story where there is none, because I like to play out these fantasies in my head about what it would have been like if my father were still alive, or if he had actually gone with Steve Walsh and become a huge rock star. Or maybe he went and still never made it. In some fantasies I’m a rock princess like Kelly Osbourne... dancing with the stars.  

What I love about the episode is how it concludes with Nate discovering that he is more like his father than he originally thought, and that his father was a very good man. The audience also learns that Nathaniel Senior was a Vietnam veteran in this episode and that he served as a medic, which makes his decision to go into the funeral business seem just a bit sadder than it was in the first three episodes. The audience gets to see Nathaniel and Nate as two people who are each compelled to process death on a more personal level than the average person. 

The scene that changed me when I first watched this episode was a scene where Nate smokes pot and talks with the ghost of his father. Nate asks his father all these questions about himself. His father yells at Nate, exclaiming “So many questions!” and he asks why Nate never asked him these questions while he was alive. I remember sobbing during this scene. I thought of the nights I sat up, unable to sleep, and begged the universe to give me just one more chance to ask my father all the questions I never got answered while he was alive. Later in the episode Nate hangs with his father’s ghost. This exchange helped me process so much pain I carried around about my father. 

Nate: When are you going to stop fucking with me?

Nathaniel Senior: When are you going to stop caring about what I thought. (He pretends to cry imitating his son) “I never knew my father. I didn’t...” --Get over it. Please. Life is just too fuckin’ short. 

My father would not want me to carry this pain around. I believe that. I have to believe he loved me to move forward. And the universe has given me such proof that this is true. It has sent me such wonderful men in my adult life--my Grant, Phillip, Mike, Rob, Vania, Danny, Kevin, Kelly, Jacob, Jeffery, Mitch, and Patrick...and it gave me my surrogate father Gary and his embrace and wisdom when I needed my father the most. It gave me Paul’s influence when I had lost sight of where I was going. It gave me my brothers who are so like my father. And, for all of this, I feel loved by my father and blessed.

Later in the episode, Nate finds some family photos and some hidden Polaroids of his nude mother. He gives the nudes to his mother and, blushing, she recalls the night the pictures were taken. Ruth monologues about how she and Nathaniel were so young and in love and how they had sex like maniacs in this tiny rented room because he was about to leave for Vietnam. She tells Nate his father swore to her that he carried the pictures in his pocket during the war to keep him safe. The irony in the scene is that Nate lies to her about where he located the pictures--he never tells her about the room. The audience is left to question whether that was the room where Nathaniel and Ruth spent that night together so many years ago. It is an endearing moment where Nate is allowed to have some questions answered about his father from beyond the grave. Sometimes, the answers we seek are within our grasp, if we let go of the urgency for an answer.  

A Good Night's Sleep

A Good Night’s Sleep 

I was excited to begin the experiment today, although last night I was feeling incredibly lonely. I’m not sure why I was feeling so lonely. I have a hard time identifying why I often feel so alone. I have just come to terms with the fact that I have felt alone since I was about seven years old...even if I’m in the middle of a crowd of people--especially if I’m in the midst of a group of people. I was grateful to have a double late night chat via IM on Facebook with two of my favorite Aries men, Mike Stanley and Patrick McCray. I was grateful because both these men have such a profound influence on me as a creative being. They both push me and challenge me in ways that have changed my art into something I can be proud of. These men have helped me achieve a place where being called an artist no longer feels like a lie. 

Last night Patrick was finally able to look at my blogs and gave his blessing on the project. I was concerned--though I should not have been--because I feared he would be offended I took this concept from him. Though it is a different television series, and my experiment is structured differently, I still worried he might feel I violated his concept. He did not feel that way. My true inner voice knew he’d be fine, but my experience in life as an artist has shown me that many artists have such fear of losing a good idea. Artists who live in fear do not like to share and can become psychotic if they feel they have been creatively violated in any manner. Patrick is not that kind of artist. This is why I adore him. He is not self-aggrandizing, and he is confident in what he knows while still understanding that he doesn’t know it all, and he seeks support and inspiration from others. Mike Stanley is exactly the same way. They “get it” as creators. They have seen how their art is crafted and they are experienced in their art. They know their craft. They have been through the best and the worst their creative careers have to offer, and through that have still managed to genuinely care about their art over time. That, in my opinion, is an incredibly rare thing. After IMing them both I felt better about beginning this today. 

It’s interesting, beginning to watch these episodes having seen them before. I tried to watch the episodes with new eyes and an ulterior motive. Ironically, though, I felt the exact same way about many of the technical aspects of the series as I did the first time I watched the show seven years ago. Frances Conroy rules the pilot. Her acting is absolutely outstanding. The emotionally tough sequences in the pilot belong to her and she pulls them off with such finesse and honesty. She has my favorite moment of dialogue in the pilot. 

“There’s been an accident. The new hearse is totaled. Your father is dead. Your father is dead, and my pot roast is ruined.”

What makes this line so fantastic, in my opinion, is how the writing and her delivery of it play with opposites. Patrick really drove the idea of playing opposites into my brain during rehearsals for Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage--a play he directed me in last year. But I don’t think I truly got the concept of this as an actor until this year, when he again directed me in the one-act Laundry and Bourbon. I realized I have always loved playing with opposites in my writing.  I believe playing with opposites is what keeps an audience interested in a story. Predictability is a plot killer and will give a limp dick to any reader or audience who truly craves a believable and involved story. I see so many directors, writers, and actors who think that they “get” what sad or happy or angry looks like, and then hold onto to that idea of an emotion as a story with some sort of death grip. That is a huge misconception. They should not focus on the emotion. Put focus on the characters and how they respond--not what they feel. Characters don’t know what they are feeling in the moment. When a writer or actor goes about being in the art in that way--to express an emotion--it’s always heavy-handed in intention, and the intentions never ring true. They never will ring true, because they will never be genuine or honest. 

The second episode, The Will, supplied me with a line that sums up my entire being and also this experiment for me. It is the line that made me realize I am Brenda. The line is the central thesis of the show and, ironically, my spiritual belief system. 

“We're all wounded. We carry our wounds around with us throughout life and eventually they kill us. Things happen that leave a mark in space, in time... in us.”

I believe this. This is the basis of my intuition--an intuition I believe we all have. All that intuition amounts to is truly looking at people. It is watching how they live their lives. I try to watch people. I watch how they move. I can tell so much just by how a person carries herself in space. The way he reacts to sunlight. The way people smile and what makes them smile. All of these things and more are part of something much bigger, but aid in the definition of the grand phenomena which are our individual selves. 

Before I begin to sound too Eckhart Tolle--and please shoot me if I ever become that big of a blowhard con artist--I feel I should give the readers who know nothing about the show a basic breakdown. Here’s one from Wikipedia (what is humorous is that I would beat my writing students about the head and neck with a Harbrace Handbook if they cited Wikipedia, but in this case I like the description of the show and this saves me so much time): 

“The show stars Peter Krause as Nathaniel Samuel ‘Nate’ Fisher, Jr., whose funeral director father (Richard Jenkins) dies and bequeaths to him and his brother David (Michael C. Hall) co-ownership of the family funeral business. The Fisher clan also includes widow Ruth (Frances Conroy) and daughter Claire (Lauren Ambrose). Other regulars include mortician and family friend Federico Diaz (Freddy Rodriguez), Nate's on-again/off-again girlfriend Brenda Chenowith (Rachel Griffiths), and David's long-term boyfriend Keith Charles (Mathew St. Patrick).

A recurring plot device consists of a character having an imaginary conversation with the deceased; for example, Nate, David, and Federico sometimes "converse" with the person who died at the beginning of the episode, while they are being embalmed or planning or during the funeral. Sometimes, the conversation is with other recurring deceased characters, most notably Nathaniel Fisher, Sr.

Alan Ball, the show's creator, avers that this represents the living character's internal dialogue by exposing it as an external conversation.”

I should add that I loved the fake commercials that were in the pilot episode. Though I understand why Alan Ball cut them from the rest of the series, I was sad to see them go. I especially loved the Franklin Earth Dispenser commercial which featured actors dressed in Old Navy khakis and dancing in unison to KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Shake Your Booty” while the voiceover announces how the shaker puts the fun back in funeral. I noticed the concept of this commercial was so ridiculous that it took me a second to laugh at it. I think that is why the show did so well. In our culture there is very little exploration of the marketing of death. And, like everything else, death does have a marketable service industry, which must be a tad ridiculous.  

The final of the three episodes for today (The Foot) is an episode that was never one of my favorites. It was a huge character-development and relationship-establishment episode. I will say that if you skip it, you are screwed and confused for the rest of the first season. I really dislike the big mislead with Claire’s character, who comes off as queen teen psycho. In fact, I noticed all of the principal female roles come off as psychotic in the first three episodes. I may need to do some research on the writing team and see what happened to help define these women in a less whacked-out way later in the season. 

Well, I’m late getting this written and on the page. It was a long day of creative networking and work. I’m appropriately and happily ready for sleep. Oh, and in case you were wondering why I titled this blog entry “A Good Night’s Sleep,” I will explain before I  retire to my comfy bed. The pilot episode concludes with the ghost of Nathaniel Sr. who is sitting on a bench with an ad for an attorney with the word “Accident?” painted across it. He is waiting to be carried off to his eternal slumber on a bus (just like the one that totaled his hearse and him too) with a billboard on the side that features eyes under a sleep mask and text that reads “A Good Night’s Sleep...”  Nate leans against a nearby wall where someone has tagged a “No Loitering” sign. Nathaniel gets on the bus and, as he sits, he notices his son and waves goodbye to him. Nate is motionless in front of the “No Loitering” sign as he watches the bus pull away. People on the street walk past him. He exchanges glances with these people as they pass him. These strangers are part of this visual cue that allows the audience to see Nate as the central character who’s been letting life pass him by. It is literally Nate’s wake-up call to really start living because death is unavoidable. This scene is such a great way to end the pilot episode. 

My own pillow is calling me and the sleeping pug in my bed needs her cuddling partner. Tomorrow is another day. Thank you for reading my blog. Oh, and please leave comments. 

Click this link to see Frances Conroy's amazing acting.

31 Days of Six Feet Under.

Actually, it will be 21 days not counting the weekends. Beginning May 20th I will start watching three episodes a day every Monday through Friday until I have finished all five seasons. 

This is the baby version of my friend’s experiment. I am curious to see where this takes me. 

I’m going to do blogs and videos for everyday I watch episodes. I have no idea how long these videos or blogs will be. I am interested in the possibility of having other people here while this is going on. It will be nice having others to discuss the series with and around while I do this. I could even bring the episodes to other people. I will say there are certain episodes I already know I will want to watch alone, though--especially the final episode.

Here is the schedule. It begins Monday. Please, keep up with my little journey with the Fisher family via this blog. 

WEEK ONE

May 20th: (Season One) The Pilot, The Will, The Foot

May 21st: Familia, An Open Book, The Room

May 22nd: Brotherhood, Crossroads, Life’s Too Short

May 23rd: The New Person, The Trip, A Private Life

May 24th: Knock, Knock, (Season Two) In the Game, Out, Out Brief Candle

WEEK TWO

May 27th: The Plan, Driving Mr. Mossback, The Invisible Woman

May 28th: In Place of Anger, Back to the Garden, It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

May 29th: Someone Else’s Eyes, The Secret, The Liar and the Whore

May 30th: I’ll Take You, The Last Time, (Season Three) Perfect Circles

May 31st: You Never Know, The Eye Inside, Nobody Sleeps, 

WEEK THREE

June 3rd: The Trap, Making Love Work, Timing and Space

June 4th: Tears, Bones, and Desire, The Opening, Everyone Leaves

June 5th:  Death Works Overtime, Twilight, I’m Sorry, I’m Lost

June 6th: (Season Four) Falling Into Place, In Case of Rapture, Parallel Play

June 7th: Can I Come Up Now? That’s My Dog, Terror Starts at Home

WEEK FOUR

June 10th: The Dare, Coming and Going, Grinding the Corn, 

June 11th: The Black Forest, Bomb Shelter, Untitled

June 12th: (Season Five) A Coat of White Primer, Dancing for Me, Hold My Hand

June 13th: Time Flies, Eat a Peach, The Rainbow of Her Reasons

June 14th: The Silence, Singing for Our Lives, Ecotone

WEEK FIVE

June 17th: All Alone, Static, Everyone’s Waiting