Vacketta Family Blogs

I have a search engine working for me to trace the contemporary references to Samurai warriors and especially to their two swords. It’s amazing to see how much of this “stuff” is out there.

Several weeks ago, I noticed a reference to an on-line comic book called “Hereville, How Mirka Got Her Sword.” By an artist named Barry Deutsch. I didn’t dwell on it; other references seem more relevant to my needs.

Well, it just so happens that, thanks to my cosmopolitan contacts, I have been able to read the graphic novel version of this story, cued to kids from 9 to 12, in the Abrams edition that will hit the booksellers in November. It’s quite a read! And it’s a wonderful take on the necessity of having a sword close at hand if you set out to become a dragon-slayer!, and to keep it around once you’ve grown out of that particular project. 

Once again, we see what a wonderful gift it is to have a loving family as a trampoline, first in imaginative flights, then in less imaginative ones. Mirka is made strong with these family ties, and jumps from that base toward ennemies far beyond the ken of kids without her privileges.

Don’t ask me to comment on the difference between lit for kids and lit for adults. Now we seem to have replaced the teen-ager with the emerging adult. And all of this comes with book recomendations: businessmen searching frantically for niche customers. All I can say is that “Hereville” is a wonderful graphic novel. Read it as soon as you can. Given the Jewish blood-line in the Gerulski family, this ought to be additional motivation to see how independent and liberated orthodox Jews actually are. (As apropos of Witness, where we saw how happy and “liberated” the Amish actually are.)

Mary, or “Dannie” Tillman is not a dream figure, but a real life person. Yet there are many who would recommend she she let go of her pain, get over it and get on with life, just as Leo must get on with his in the story-line of Inception. I hope no one minds this comparison. Please get rid of the needles and pins.

“Dannie” comes off in this documentary as someone whose roots go back to the Greeks, to Antigone. She draws you into the story, into more than the story: she draws you into her own blind outrage, her own “suspicious mind” — the sneaking suspicion that’s we’re being played for fools and taken down garden paths. That government is one ceaseless state of exception where people can do whatever they damn well want to do, without having to worry about being held accountable and in cynical ignorance of the catastrophic effects of such a state on citizens.

When I first wrote this post, I quoted from “Boots on the Ground at Dusk.” To get a visual image of Mary’s outrage. “I lit my cigarette wondering what I would do if I couldn’t smoke, if I couldn’t blow out my anger, frustration, and sense of crippling loss into the night.”

The big news of this documentary film is the fact that it is so resolutely focused on the family. And the focus shows us people who are articulate and in outrage that our government be so disarticulated, allowing power plays to run away with the act. I can think of hardly any comparable examples of family testimony that don’t move immediately to the saccharine conclusion that life must go on. Few if any examples of families that refuse to play this game until justice is rendered.

I’m sure that David felt this peculiar specific form of pain and outrage himself. He decided, from within this pale, to commence the journey down to Ushuaia. It was his own path out of the dead-end of pure rage. “Hit the road Jack.” In order to double up, in his own way and in his own terms, on Mary’s book: “Tires on the road by dusk.” You have to do something, you can’t just sit around and read comments that it’s too late and that you can only carry on with your own life. You have to interrupt that, and find a solution.

I wrote about Plato in the original post. I won’t include that here. Poros and Penia. A bit too much in these circumstances.

Instead, I’ll concentrate on one moment in the inner life of Pat’s mother’s matabolization of this trauma. It’s down in writing, and, unlike Pat’s journal entries, were not destroyed.  Mary’s reactions, exigencies and thoughts are out there and waiting for extensions. At one point in her anger and rage, she wondered if the fratricide was not itself a mask for a pure and simple assassination. This is, for all of us, a moment of madness. But in that madness, there is a nugget of insight. Assuming as we must that Pat’s death was an accident, a tragic accident, we can remain with Mary at her maddest and most insane, and say: accidents are revealing. Accidents occur, but never accidentally.

Pat was beyond a shadow of a doubt a bit too much to handle. Bigger than life, and bigger than the reigning normality of a situation growing day by day less and less normal. The men under Pat’s command, and his fellow soldiers — his fratrie — could not possibly not be angered and flustered by such a pure and improbable existence as the one out there with them in Afghanistan. Someone who reads and keeps a journal, someone who doesn’t believe in God, and someone who fights like a bat out of hell and says in the evenings when there is supposed to be respite that the war effort in Iran was illegal and this one wrong-headed! I think this must have been difficult to stomach, along with the glory and aura and sex-appeal of a man who refused it all to come over here with the rest of us and fight this stupid fucking war. This man favored by the Gods at birth who comes in our midst and fucks with our minds, even when he’s saying nothing, even when he’s silent, or writing in the goddamn journal of his. And now I hear he’s going to meet up with Chomsky. And the atheist is now reading the Koran! I mean, come on!

The Tillman family will set a world-record in terms of the time necessary for mourning. The German influenced shrinks set that time at about two years. We’re now in year seven of that process. No end in sight, because there is no end to the labyrinth that was Pat Tillman. It’s impossible to erect a statue to the guy, without recalling his absolute refusal of such cop-outs. This tension and frustration is not conducive to peace and reconciliation. But perhaps we are all late-comers, feeling the winds of this story while its protagonists are far ahead of us all. People like David and his own private road-movie (published on their blog, nevertheless). In talking, writing, appearing in this film, and repeating day after day the number of things Pat rendered inoperant and stupid, perhaps they have already exited a tunnel that now encloses only the likes of us, who have to live through it all over again, in absentia.

Cognizance, then interest in the story, are among the spinoffs of this family blog. Now it’s going to assume greater dimensions in the public eye. The film is due out on the 20th, and it proves to be, truly, a family affair. The trailer is all over the place on the net. As are the first reactions of those who already have access to the film.

Who’s going to say to Mary Tillman that she just has to let go of this?

What do you think of Mark Warren writing about Tillman’s family as “a foul-mouthed and eclectic bunch of square-jawed hippies from San Jose.” The film was refused GP-13 rating because of the f-word. One of the last words Pat pronounced: “I’m Pat fucking Tillman.”   The film tells the story of these already “famous last words.”  And makes a mockery of the people who classify films according to rules of propriety.  The only thing I’d take issue with in Warren’s description is the word “hippy.” If the Tillman family are a bunch of hippies, then I’m a coffee-pot.

The youngest brother, Richard, in early May 2004, at a memorial ceremony oozing with ceremonial feelings, puts a damper on the whole thing with these words: “Pat isn’t with God. He’s fucking dead. He wasn’t religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he’s fucking dead.”  Fools rush in, where angels fear to walk.  (or something like that.)  It’s hard to believe that someone put a stop to all the play-acting and myth-making with these simple, “foul-mouthed” words.  He’s fucking dead.

What a family! I’d love to show them around Paris, and introduce them to a few people who fought in Vietnam. Those that fought in Vietnam won’t be along for long, but it’s not too late yet.

Aunt Nina has long since received sainthood from just about everybody. Here is straight-shooting Mary Tillman about her son: “by putting this kind of saintly quality to him, you’re taking away the struggle of being a human being.”  Take that, people, and run with it, if you can!

I’m basically a religious person.  That’s no longer a secret for anyone.  But the Tillmans are my brethern.  They don’t need me, but I need them.  They’re stars in my firmament.  We’re more than a generation of foul-mouthed people who don’t have the good looks or the ungodly talents of Pat but we once knew the spirit that animated him and his folks.  Now we’re all trying to clean up our generational act by getting rid of the foul language.  But are we out there with the people trying to get rid of all the foul lies of those invested with symbolic powers?

I’m sitting on another long post trying not to fuck up with the Pat Tillman story.  I think it belongs here, along with “Winking Aunt Nina.”  Mutatis mutandis.  That’s a tall order, to state and demand mutatis mutandis.  “All other things being equal.”  All other things being equal, Aunt Nina was neither saint nor hero: just an ordinary Vacketta immigrant and emigrant.  Was Pat Tillman an icon or a hero?  That effort was botched.  But, mutatis mutandis, I think that’s what he’s becoming.  At least for another season.  He would have understood how important seasons are for the American psyche.

I’m back with the same old experience of feeling I’m back home because of a novel. This took place throughout the whole weekend, on a French-German TV channel, which decided to spend 48 hours on the life and death and legacy of Elvis Presley. I’m sure there are many Presley fans “out there” or “over there.” The Presely I prefer is the guy that staged with his managers and musicians the incredible comeback in Las Vegas in 1968.

There has been much written on these blogs about childbirth. I’d like to add this, from “Plainsong,” because it’s so close to what we know, or have heard, or talk about concerning these events. Men assist at child births now, but are usually assigned the active role of getting things ready back home, signing the papers, and (here in France at least) going to the townhouse and declaring a birth, along with a name. Few men, I think, are capable of describing the actual process, at least 9 months long, as well as Kent Haruf. Here it is, less for you enjoyment than for your reminiscence, yours, mine, everybody’s!:

So the doctor said.  Miss Roubideaux, as I expect you already know, you are pregnant.  Something over three months, I’d say.  Closer to four.   … Well, you can expect to have a baby in the spring.   The middle of April, I calculate, give or take a few weeks on either side.  But I’m wondering, I don’t know whether this is good news to you or not.

I already knew, if that’s what you mean, the girl said.  I felt sure of it.

Yes, I thought you must have, he said.  But that doesn’t answer my question.  He put her chart out of the way on the counter.  He drew a chair up and sat near her in his blue suit and white shirt, looking at her where she sat slightly over him on the examing table, her hands in her lap, waiting, her face flushed and guarded.

I want to be straightforward with you, he said.  This doesn’t have to go anywhere but right here.  Do you understand?   You and I are talking.  Having a brief conversation in the privacy of this room. 

What do you mean? the girl said.

Miss Roubideaux,he said.  Do you want this baby?

Quickly she raised her eyes to him.  She was frightened now, her eyes dark and intent,waiting.  Yes, she said.  I want it.

You feel certain of that, do you?  Absolutely certain?

She looked at his face.  Do you mean if I want to put it up for adoption?

That too, perhaps, he said.  But more, I meant are you going to keep this baby?  Carry it full-term and give birth to it?

I plan to.

And you do want it, don’t you.

Yes.

And now that you’ve told me that, you’re not going to do anything foolish such as tring to stop it by yourself by some means.

No.

No, he said.  That’s fine, then.  I believe you.  That’s what I needed to know.  You will have various kinds of  trouble, I expect.  That’s what happens.  Many teenage mothers do.  You’re not supposed to be having babies yet.  Your body’s not ready.  You’re too young.  On the other hand, you do seem strong.  You don’t appear to be the hysterical kind.  Are you the hysterical kind, Miss Roubideaux?

I don’t think so. 

Then you should be all right … … Do you have any questions?

For the first time the girl released the hold on herself a little.  Her eyes welled up.  It was as if what she wanted to ask him was more important and more frightening that anything either one of them had said or done so far.  She said: Is the baby all right?  Would you tell me that?

Oh, he said.   Why yes.  So far as I can tell, everything is fine. …

She let herself cry silently just a little, while her shoulders slumped forward and her hair fell about her face.  The old doctor freached up and took her hand and held it warmly between both of his hands for a moment and was quiet with her, simply looking into her face, serenely, grandfatherly, but not talking, treating her out of respect and kindness, out of his own long experience of patients in examination rooms.

So, why did I put this up here?  I hesitated, because just before this there is a scene with the doctor explaining to Miss Roubideau what a speculum is.  And that too is a candidate for future anthologies.  As is the first scene in David Mitchell’s “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,” which is another great set-piece of child-birth, and of a peculiar brand of Japanese-Western mid-wiferey.  But the scene above is, to my mind, well-nigh perfect. 

I believe Miss Roubideaux belongs to the long line of people culminating in Juno played by Ellen Page.  I’m slowly learning to let go of my fascination with Mal (in Inception) and to appreciate how level-headed and doctor-like Ellen Page is in the movie.  Like the physician here.

I suppose my strongest, deepest reason is the following.  I dare anyone, from any spot on the political spectrum, to turn this passage into a political allegory.  This is uniquely a family affair, in a town where families are respected and cared for because they respect and care for their own.

It’ll be awhile before we can see this documterary film over here. It doesn’t play to the same audience as Inception. Due to, or thanks to this blog, I now feel like there’s an automatic link in my brain and in heart to this “affair” which has become a family affair for me. I’ve asked my hacker friends to get ahold of a copy for me, but in the meantime I’d just like to express my admiration for Pat’s father’s letters to the Army and White House higher-ups concerning the affair. I’m sure you’ve already seen this letter, written in red-hot anger and eloquence, with precise language and precise demands for justice at the level of the event that has to be accurately. If there is still someone who hasn’t read this letter, it can be read on Sam Stein’s post of 08/12/2010 on Huff Post.

I’ve recovered a copy of my own reaction to the affair, entitled “Pat Tillman and David Gerulski” which I will copy out at a later date. In the meantime, Marin, I can understand the multiple reasons you may be reticent to respond on a blog that has dissed your efforts to pitch and support the Lacrosse club so close to your heart, but now there is an altogether new context with this film out. Your facebook portrait reveals that you are a follower of everything in this affair that is not yet set to rest. Please, if possible, switch from face-book mode to family mode. The family mode is not a natural habitat. It’s a work of expression and art.