The Prestidigitator

Damp earth Mutilated id
Murky waters Forgotten vows
Pungent air Unfinished sentences
Colorless skies Broken resolves
Old bromides are new again Now that
Lines long aligned Diverge once more

© 2009 Punnen Syriac

I’d be lying if I told you that I haven’t thought about you since. It creeps on me during the strangest of times. I wouldn’t call it painful but it certainly is far from desirable, the reminiscing. Remember Almora? We talked about it; we spent the entire night under the influence of what may or may not have been hashish, discussing isolation and taxes. I remember because you mentioned it was too cold to be pondering meaninglessness.

You joked about how Zarathushtra may have been just a mad man suffering from some variation of cabin fever. In hindsight, I doubt it. The overman, we concluded, was a farce. We laughed at our seeming cleverness.  And I cannot help but wonder if that night had anything to do with what happened after. Did it?

No, don’t answer that.

I concede that a year is a long time. I do not wish to bring up the unpleasantness but I want to tell you that I’ll take you up on the offer. I’d rather spend a year away from this noise with you. In isolation. We can still prove that the overman is a collective.

I’ll hang up now.

Richard Dawkins’s new book is a strange animal. Marketed as a textbook to illuminate, it turns out to be a polemic of sorts and as a result, is bound to infuriate what should have been his core audience – deniers of evolution.

Being an avowed nontheist myself, I find it a little bothersome that Dawkins refers to creationists as ‘history deniers’ and often places them on the same allegorical boat as holocaust deniers. This is especially funny because Ben Stein and his ilk constantly draw parallels between evolutionists and the Nazis. Tangled web, this.

I’ve been a little wary of the ‘New Atheist’ movement spearheaded by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens (with the occasional cracker-defilement by a certain tentacled professor) mostly because they tend to come across as a tad intimidating. Make no mistake; I greatly admire their writings and have spent hours in front of my computer listening to them bemoan the stupidity of our species. However, I’m of the opinion that if one can’t be convinced by reason and logic, he/she ought to be ignored. There is only so much that can be done for people who insist on finding meaning in silly stories. If you believe that virgins give birth or that you’ll be a ‘well-hung billionaire with wings‘ in your next life, you mostly likely spend a lot of your free time away from what we call, the real world. Let evolution take its course, I say.

(See what I did there?)

The book, however, does a lot of things right. Dawkins explains in painstaking detail how evolution and dating techniques really work and dispels myths about the absence of transitional fossils and other such media fuelled fallacies. Personally, I feel very strongly about this; what is at stake here is the grandest theory in history that provides an all encompassing view of life. Despite the abundance of information out there in the public domain, I was asked why a worm still exists (sic) if we evolved from it . Nevermind that I threw a fit at the mere insinuation, it is imperative that one possesses a rudimentary understanding of what one wants to argue against. And for that, this book is a brilliant start. It is informative and dare I say, entertaining.

Dawkins’s book is a clear and lucid case against anti-evolutionists though he does resort to name-calling once every ten pages. If you can overlook that, the book will provide hours of great science reading. Despite being such an elegant theory, Dawkins reiterates what makes evolution truly remarkable. It can be disproved. But it hasn’t. Not by anyone credible, anyway.

Going through back issues at the local comic book store, I chanced upon this cover.

Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt Issue #7.  Circa 1992.

I love it when something so seemingly unimportant unleashes all these associated memories ranging from food smells to parental admonishments. It’s been happening a lot lately.

Something this profound deserves a nostalgic albeit narcissistic rant. Damn my inarticulacy.

I counted seven of them; passed out on the floor surrounded by smoking paraphernalia and empty jello cases. The faint strain of a Marvin Gaye song came from somewhere in the decrepit apartment.

“What the hell does your boytoy want, Gwen?”

Gwen motioned me to follow her in.

“This is the guy I told you about Stu. He’s the one who wants….”

“Yeah yeah.”

Stu walked in from the toilet, wiped his hands on his khakis and plopped himself on the stained couch. The room reeked of cannabis and urine. There were copies of High Times, Extreme Golf and back issues of comic books I’d never heard of strewn about. In one corner of the room, there were giant stainless steel boxes that had wires going in and out of them. Temperature controlled vaults. Nonetheless, the place was the antithesis of what I had expected. Weren’t these people supposed to be a bit more, disciplined?

Stu sized me up and let out a condescending chuckle. I took that he wasn’t too impressed. I looked over to Gwen who seemed to be showing no emotion. Enter paranoia.

“I told you I wouldn’t sell to any wannabe latte sipping yuppie after last time Gwen. Why do you bring these little fuckers over?”

I tugged at Gwen’s sleeve but she didn’t seem to notice. I didn’t want to inconvenience the man any further. He probably had vegetative substance to get back to.

“He isn’t like the others Stu. Besides, why do you care for what he does with it?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t care what he does with it Lady Guinevere. You do. We all do.”

“We’re not having that conversation again. Stop being an elitist prick and just give him what he wants.”

Second thoughts now. An unemployed pothead was on the verge of putting me through another bout of existential angst. And from the looks of it, it’d take more than three bottles of vodka and a Dario Argento film to fix it.

Stu seemed to be contemplative all of a sudden. He picked his nose and drifted off for a minute.

“Alright, but I don’t have it sweetheart. You’ll have to see this Chinese kid. Peng.”

He turned to me, “And no asswipe, he doesn’t live with his mother.”

Hours later, I was trying to keep pace with Gwen as we raced through dingy streets and shady alleys. Screw Melbourne, this was Australia’s best kept secret. We waited by the Indian restaurant as instructed over the phone. Peng was a lot more like I’d imagined. He looked the type. Dressed in a Green Lantern t-shirt and jeans, he walked over and we shook hands awkwardly.

He seemed shy and didn’t make much eye contact with Gwen. From what I could make of his broken English, he wanted fifty more than we had agreed on. I shrugged and gave him the money. Too exhausted to haggle.

“You very lucky man. You take care of this, okay?”

I tore open the paper cover like an impatient schoolboy. Two years. Two whole years of tracking people down, forging unlikely friendships and promising unusual favors. It all boiled down to this.

I felt Gwen’s hands on my shoulder.

“Now, about that other thing.”

Right now, the upcoming Watchmen film ought to be the least of my worries; but I’ve seriously considered not watching Zack Snyder’s apparently faithful adaptation of the seminal graphic novel. You see, a comic geek scorned is a force to be reckoned with.

The first comic book I remember falling in love with was an issue of Batman (a Man Bat story arc) sometime around 1993. Frequent trips to India allowed me to source comics from airport stalls. Ever read the now discontinued and forgotten Thunderbolt? I have. And I remember specific frames from the book. Perhaps it was an escape from my relatively drama free childhood or maybe it was a rite of passage every young boy went through; whatever it was, I never got over the medium.

Third year of college. Holed up in that room, Watchmen convinced me that the comic book was far more than just colourful frames with conversation bubbles. The Comic Book had become The Graphic Novel. Characters had become morally ambiguous all of a sudden, heroes had become fallible and lofty ideals seemed suspicious. The Superhero concept had been deconstructed. Alan Moore joined the ranks of Faulkner and Fitzgerald and Dave Gibbons that of Rembrandt and Picasso. (Oh yes, comic book nerds are known to make wild exaggerations.)

I’ve been reading the book again; taking in every frame, digesting every line and assimilating concepts, some of which still strain my primitive frontal lobe. The book is an assault on the senses like no other; a work that perhaps was best left untouched.

However, I am mildly curious to see how Snyder translates something this complicated. 300 wasn’t exactly a brilliant film. If he does pull it off, will audiences be able to sit through 3 hours of an uncaring superman, an impotent vigilante and a masked anti hero who goes by the name Rorschach?

Seeing that 2008 wasn’t an especially good year (what with the economic crisis adding to my perpetual existential crisis), new year celebrations were a relatively sober affair. Relatively.

If the experts are to be believed, 2009 promises to be a shittier year and that’s saying a lot. Ah well, here’s to us. May we have the tenacity to see through these trying times.

What was it that Neitzche said about things that don’t kill you?

Maybe it’s up to me
Perhaps I’m the one to decide
Should I mold you from my squalid imagination
Or will entropy finally deliver
Am I to leave you to invisible machinations
While cheerful nihilists are betrothed
To despondent brides-to-be
And when the deluded throng the arena
To applaud the stoning of the heathen
Am I to comb the crowd for you
Or will you find me down here

I occasionally have fantasies of Julie Delpy involving sticky summer afternoons, Sartre’s writings, 400 Blows, apple juice and berets. Don’t ask. Face it, the woman is brilliant and beautiful; brilliant enough to be associated with the likes of Kieslowski and Linklater and beautiful enough to make any man weak in the knees. So there – that’s out of the way.

Her directorial venture, 2 Days in Paris is an outstanding film; an achievement in black comedy that I’d go so far as to compare with the best of Woody Allen. Remember that scene in Annie Hall where Allen’s Alvy Singer makes awkward conversation with Annie’s new found friends in showbiz? 2 Days in Paris is a lot like that except the awkward conversation lasts 2 days and includes borderline psychotic parents, mentally unstable siblings and flat out disturbing exes.

Jack, a left wing American (‘A blow job is actually a big political event in the grand scheme of things. After all it was a blow job that destroyed any chance at a healthy democracy.’) who laments the anti-intellectualism rampant in his country accompanies his French girlfriend of two years, Marion to Paris where he meets her parents and a bevy of ex boyfriends, some of whom I feel could very well be just exaggerated caricatures. As people around him converse animatedly in French, he is forced to make up his own meanings from Marion’s body language and revelations of her rather colorful sex life prior to their relationship.

His suspicions slowly give way to hostility and the film ends with a beautifully cathartic moment that never feels too forced. The film is not so much about culture clashes as it is about the false pretense of honesty in relationships; about the little half-truths and ideas that people carry to and from every relationship.

The writing is sharp and crisp and there are some genuine laugh out loud moments especially the one where Jack says he’s more of Val Kilmer fan than a Doors fan while visiting Jim Morrison’s grave. It’s those little pieces of pop culture strewn about, genuine male angst and the presence of the lovely Ms Delpy that made this one of those films I just had to rant about.