Time, Place, and Memory

I took a walk this afternoon. A park sits just to the west of the school stadium, and a nature trail winds through the woods of the park. Years ago, when I taught Emerson and Thoreau, I would walk my English classes to the park and have them sit and experience "nature," journaling about their experience.

I hadn't been on that path for years. It had changed a little. A few taller trees, a little less water in the pond thanks to our summer drought. A felt a moment of nostalgia, but the moment passed.

Earlier this week, I took another walk. The top 10% from our senior class were honored at KU's Memorial Union, and after the ceremony I strolled around the campus. I have very few memories of the campus from my years as a graduate student. I was also a new father and full-time teacher, so most of my memories are blurry at best--not to mention 75% of my classes met in Kansas City at a satellite campus. Most of my memories stem from other times, some distant and some very recent... some slightly bittersweet and some strong and good.

Here's what I've learned about place and memory: time passed isn't as much a factor to how I experience a place as the time in my life when I revisit it. The lenses I'm wearing now shape how I tell the stories of my memories, and memories without stories attached are just vague things without much form or shape.Like ghosts of feelings which, like other ghosts, can haunt.

Visiting those places often exorcises the ghosts and leaves the story. I want the story. The ghosts can stay behind.

For years, I used to feel sad when we left my mom's place in Clay Center. It was a deep, chest-squeezing sadness. I grew up in that house. My formative memories hold it at their core. Earlier this fall, as we drove away from the house for the last time, no sadness came. I was done with that part of my life--I knew it, and this part, where I am now, has no need for that old house. The lack of feeling almost surprised me, but it also reminded me that this is how it should be.The ghosts don't need to haunt us.

I have countless stories from my childhood--countless stories built from memories of that house, my neighbors, and the small town which raised me, but I don't carry sadness anymore. Stories are good, wholesome things. Human things. And I count myself lucky to be able to tell them.

What The Abominable Dr. Phibes Taught Me about Storytelling

I love classic horror films.

I simply adore 1971's The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Vincent Price is at his grandiose and macabre best playing the titular character. A major spoiler warning to those who have not seen this vintage gem: this post is about endings--the vengeful doctor's in particular.

The plot of  The Abominable Dr. Phibes revolves around revenge. Dr. Phibes seeks vengeance for his wife's untimely death on a London operating table. His mode: Old Testament plagues of the pharohs: bats, locusts, boils, rats, hail...

And in true Weird Tales style, Phibes accomplishes his murders with style (if not reality).  Phibes has a flair for the  post-steampunk with his hail-making machine wired to a car's battery (the film is set in the mid 1920s). But this post is about endings...

And the end to the movie is inevitable: Dr. Phibes chases revenge as Scotland Yard closes in on him. In the final sequences, as he forces Dr. Vesalius (Joseph Cotten) to perform surgery on Vesalius's son (to retrieve a key implanted near the boy's heart--um, did Saw really allude to Phibes? Hell yeah.), you get a sense it was all inevitable.

Phibes, through an ingenious neck transmitter to gramophone device, claims nine will die. Barks as much in Vesalius's face during surgery, in fact.

And nine do die.  But here's the storytelling magic: the ninth isn't Dr. Vesalius's son--it's Phibes himself. As the police break into the house, Vesalius rescues his boy, and Phibes's assistant Vulnavia dies under an acid bath (but she was a clockwork, I think), Phibes attaches himself to a pump in his underground vault, lies down next to his wife's corpse, and fades away as the pump removes his blood and replaces it with formaldehyde.

Yeouch.

What can a storyteller learn? The ending, even when it seems inevitable, can still surprise an audience and be right. Even though Phibes is a heartless killer throughout the film, he does it with a style and charisma which leaves the viewer (at least this viewer) cheering in the end.  Phibes seals his tomb as he dies, leaving the police wondering how he escaped and the audience in on his little secret. He never planned on escape.

It's perfect. The writers didn't choose the easy ending: revenge on Dr. Vesalius (he did save his son) and no one expected Phibes to be the ninth to die. When is the last time the police never caught the baddie? Beautiful.

So writers, ask yourself at the end: choice A or B? And then choose C.

(Need I mention Phibes plays a bad-ass pipe organ?)

Meat. And Storytelling.

I couldn't help but listen to this story from NPR...a bit of human evolutionary history coupled with mention of "storytelling" as uniquely human behavior (you have to listen closely for that last bit, but it's in there).

Further proof that barbecue is good for you. Mmmmm.

"Meat, Fire, and the Evolution of Man" by Christopher Joyce

Any day I can mention barbecue and storytelling in the same post is a good day.