itsallovernow | Long Weekend

I've been a little out of touch - busy and lazy and the weird combination of both that lead to no work getting done, but much relaxation. Much much needed relaxation.

I've been mainlining Doctor Who thanks to the fabulous

veritykindle and enjoying it thoroughly. However, Katya my darling, the DVD's with three episodes won't play the third episode so I'm missing eps 3, 6 and 9.

I, well, my crush on Christopher Eccleston and the Doctor has far surpassed normalcy. He's just so very... shameless, and heartbroken and delighted and crazy and manic. I am utterly in love. I am also highly amused that the credits are using the Farscape font and that the good doctor had clearly encountered John Crichton along the way because he was playing with the silver ball from BoD in Father's Day.

I've also finally caught up with the rest of the world in terms of popular entertainment, taking in Batman Begins, Howl's Moving Castle and War of the Worlds. I give them all a thumbs up.

I think I've talked about the musical version that my dad had, and the utter terror it evoked in me. It scared me so much that I couldn't be in the room when the record played, would have nightmares at the thought of the pictures in the libretto. And now I own that record, holding on to that sort of fear and the awe that I feel at the scope of that fear in the face of what was behind it.

So I went to the Chinese to see War of the World's by myself in an effort to exorcise some of those old fears. Unsurprisingly, the movie scared the hell out of me. The same things that frightened me as a child are hard wired in my brain, scared me still - the people being destroyed, just dissappearing into ash, the haunting sounds of the tripods, of the martians, the utter fear and hopelessness of the people at the mercy of these invaders, the red algae and the defeat, the fact that it was nothing we did to save ourselves, just the basic building blocks of life. I think Spielberg did a fabulous job creating menace, creating a scope of destruction and fear and helplessness while still layering in this very uneasy family. And while I think he may be losing his mind, Tom Cruise was very good. Thing that kills me, Dakota Fanning was even better. She's somehow managing to negotiate past the precocious child actor thing to portray real emotion, real child based emotion.

Batman was fabulous in an entirely different way, dark and sharp and scary, making me want to read Batman, to write about Bruce Wayne and this life he is trying to lead. I loved that the scenes of Batman doing his work, taking care of criminals was palpably frightening, that it felt like watching a hunt and even though I knew that the people being attacked were supposed to be the enemy, my hands clenched the seat beside me and I held my breath until it was finished.
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And since I spent much of the weekend at the movies, a little mid Terra Firma drabble. I've a love/hate relationship with fics that show me aliens partaking in human life. If it's done well, I eat it up, and if it's done poorly, I still happily read and then grimace, so I'm forgiving myself the construct.

My Life in Pictures

The sound pushes you back into the seat, cold and loud and all encompassing, that low hum that wraps and warps and fills up the theater and it's so fucking familiar that you grip the armrest, praise George Lucas, offer up thanks that the sound still makes you think of Star Wars and starry eyes and starring in your own life. It sounds like the beginning of a universe, a world of infinite variety and jest. It doesn't ring out like reality, bangs and purrs instead like a beautiful, plastic future. A perfect sound.

The prowler sounds like a scratched LP in comparison, harsh and grainy and sputtering, firing up like a distillation burn, like a spiral of lashing pain and power, still a little thrilling after all these cycles. Moya sounds like a lover's gasp, a child's breath, a hitch and a gasp and a sigh of kind disapproval.

Aeryn doesn't flinch at the noise, at the way this giant theater fills up like a flooded pool, sonic waves soaking into the skin of the people surrounding you. Your mouth pulls down and you hate your own pettiness, hate that you wanted to see her wince.

You took her to the theater because she said she wanted to do something normal, demanded in that hard tight voice that you show her something normal, something human, something you've discussed a thousand times or more before carbon scoring and hetch drives and maddium steel became materials that fell more trippingly from the tongue than celluloid and picture tubes.

The morning was clean, full of cutting words and blue sky and dark hurt in grey eyes. You lost track of the other alien life forms, your rainbow coalition family, as you and Aeryn stood in front of the pool slinging stinging verbs at each other like barbs and pulse blasts and when you ran out of false ammo, you stood there with your hands clenched and looked to her to offer you a way out. You're good at getting in, but she's always been better at the getaway. You've always needed her to get out. You think somewhere in that hash of prose and prosidy, there was mention of your other, better, deader self and the false promises he'd made about this blue green world. Or that could have been the movie you see in your head on endless repeat, the John Crichton variety hour where you promise to take the love of your life home and you die a vicious, radioactive death instead.

"Show me something… normal." She said, throwing it at you like a dare, a wish, a taunt. "Your normal. You owe me that."

You won't say that you don't owe her anything. Some lies stay too long, stink like dead fish, linger.

The theater is cold, air conditioning cranked and your shoulder starts to ache halfway through the movie. You don't know if it's tension or old wounds or the woman sitting at your side, knee pressed restlessly against yours in the cramped aisle. She's wearing jeans and a small clipped smile that she's learned to put on in front of humans. They don't know what to do, stare anyway, don't smile back but there isn't any joy in Aeryn's eyes and you don't know if she cares anyway. You think she probably does. You know she'll never say it out loud.

The pictures flicker on the screen and you've got no idea what the A plot or the B plot or the frelling title even is, just see people up there larger than life, mouthing pithy, pretty phrases. You brought her here out of spite and she's stubborn enough to sit here in the dark with you, ride out your temper tantrum, ride out your fears, meet you head on in a crowded theater. A gun shot echoes on the screen and someone crumples to the ground under the fall of rain, the sound of water against pavement perfectly choreographed, orchestrated so that you feel the beat of the raindrops in the back of your head and the back of your throat, hear a scream of anguish, rhythmic and raw and timed to the precipitation, intercut with the sounds of traffic in the background.

That's not what dying sounds like, or rain, or the mix of weapons fire and rough weather. The theater smells like Freon and rancid canola oil, stale and a little dank, like sodden wool. It's turning your stomach and suddenly, all you want is sunshine and the warm smell of worn leather, the grease of a gun and the scent of Aeryn's hair and skin and anger.

You keep staring at the screen, but fumble to the side, finding the bones of her fingers, her rigid fists, gripping her hand.

"Let's get out of here." You don't look away from the screen, from the blue and whites racing to the scene, plowing through the rain.

"I want to know how it ends." But she doesn't pull her hand away. Someone hushes you both.

"Runs every couple of hours." You glance at her finally, see the glint of her skin in the ambient light, in the flickering of the projector. Her features are awash in mosaic, a watercolor of moving pictures. You have to look hard to see her under the reflection. "You could always come back."

"No," she says, voice full of intent. "I couldn't."

"You could stay," soft now, not sure what you're offering, if it's a threat or a gift.

"No. Not alone. Not here."

"I wouldn't…" you stop, the veracity choking your throat. "I wouldn't leave you here…alone."

Conversations weave together on the screen, foleys and creeks and the filtered noises of a constructed life.

"Good," she says. "Then let's go."