Every October I start to get the hankering to watch scary movies. I'm partial to the kind where somebody goes nuts or has some supernatural visions or gift that goes horribly awry.
Less interested in the hack and slash killers or monsters.
Of course stories about "man's hubris" are always classics...some idiotic version of a scientist on his knees screaming to the heavens "Oh God! What have I done?"
Haunted places: sometimes. Haunted houses, not so much. Condemned psychiatric or tuberculosis wards with horrific pasts, yes. Human transformations from man to beast: yes. Things with children in them: no. Unless the kid is a vampire. Or has precognition.
But the moral of the story is, I hate scary movies. They scare the shit out of me. But I watch them anyway in October.
Why? I think it's because I may be addicted to the notion of overcoming adversity.
I once talked to a friend of mine about how much I love winter. The ice. The feel of a cold wind on my cheek. It's bracing. Invigorating.
And my friend observed:
"No...I don't think you love the winter. I think you just love overcoming adversity."
While I denied it at the time, I think there might be something to that.
It's really not so interesting when things or victories come easy. Not that I've ever had a particular problem with too many easy victories. Not so much.
But winning decisively, winning easily...
It holds no interest for me.
I want there to be a struggle. Some epic battle, where everything is down to the wire and victor arises from the ashes, bloodied and bruised but surviving to fight another day.
It's possible that's why THIS year, I'm particularly interested in the elections.
When I was a kid some garage sale sold boxes and boxes of those little seven part balsa wood airplanes in plastic baggies for a dime each (seven parts: fuselage, front wing, rear wing, tail, propeller, landing gear, rubber band). We bought scores of them.
You'd assemble them, wind up the rubber-band powered propeller, set them down, and they'd fly like magic.
Whenever I'd wind those puppies up, I'd put them on the ground and let them take off from their wheels...
...but was always disappointed that the take off was so effortless for the little plane. It spent a fraction of a second on the runway.
So I'd cut down the size of the wings with an exacto knife to make the take off more dramatic.
I wanted that plane to bumble down the runway (the middle of the road) for a respectable spell as it built up enough speed to lift off.
And in my own flying dreams it was never a soaring, but a constant flapping...the crowds of zombies chasing me, as I run down the road flapping my arms and leaping trying to get enough loft to escape.
There's just something compelling about the struggle itself.
The adversity of this election cycle, 2010, is compelling to me. It's more compelling than if we were to just breeze through the election in another sweeping Democratic victory. No no...it's something we have to WORK for. To FIGHT for.
Because the fight is all there is. Absolutely nothing is going to come to us. Absolutely nothing is going to stay in our favor without a constant battle. It's never going to end. We're never going to be able to relax. Because the zombies are always going to want to eat our brains. The vampires will always want to suck our blood. Some outside aliens from outer space will always come in to interrupt our progress. The body snatchers will snatch bodies. And the very homes we live in will become haunted and want to possess our children with some demonic ideas.
That's kind of how Democracy is. And endless series of uprisings and battles to keep the forces of evil at bay.
So....
...while we're cornered here in this log cabin in the middle of the woods, surrounded by the Evil Dead of 2010, I'm going to strap a chainsaw to my severed hand. Because it just seems like the right thing to do.