At this point on my journey, I don’t know exactly what will materialize out of what I envision, but the spiritual dimension does seem to be real and we’re on it— there is a collective. We’re all spiritual. We can condense time and bring it into the present, that too, so that’s basically been my experiment with The Oldest Storyteller as its own special tale that remains somewhat formless for the moment. The beginning was dramatic, a fantasy meets psychological fiction, letting go of the past, much more structured.
Death leads me back through my childhood, but then, it’s your whole life, flashing before your eyes — Death’s question being “what does that mean?” He only sees the value in a person, which shocked me as a thought, full of meaning, so Death is also a teacher. I was searching for a higher perspective, so why would I expect? For it to be swayed by base human understandings? Not that it’s all base, meaning, below, but Death isn’t a judge but a door. He looks a man straight in the eye— I am neither above nor below —
He’s been a part of every story every told, performs a sacred duty.
I felt that was a powerful position in fact— not at all seduced by the human condition, what we think power is, what we think God is, even, Death exists regardless of what you believe in. He was never in a rush, not exactly interested in being menacing, coming after you, though that door appears for everyone. Incorruptible, Death, it turned out.
He decided to — as the oldest storyteller — engage in this story because a child is a powerful figure. In my pink room, his eyes between the shadows of my pink blinds, I struggled with humanity itself, that too, what that was, what this place was, because I came from a sordid past, a disabled terribly wounded mother, immoral even, and a sick father I still don’t know what to do with, but then, that’s over, what can I tell you?
I saw Death’s boots walking into this story, looking at a four-year-old — people die at all ages — and you are a whole person. Your whole life. I was blamed so early, so young, for a ridiculous nonsensical story, and it was just a touch too common, so my struggle with self in Death's eyes becomes useful. So when I lost hope that there was something of value in all this, he didn’t. But the human matter, mind, even, the way “it” goes, what is considered to be human nature, in his eyes, there was so much unknown.
Drama, even, the struggle, some people have so much of it.
I couldn’t even get through a movie, but I’m doing it. I got through A Little Princess.
We got through the drama, the deep-seated ideas that I was not aware of, we went on a healing journey, which had its bumps in the road, its swerves into the darkness, though it was brief, and I reached a completely new beginning. Not the same world. And what’s next?
We’re past that part, but I’m still on the journey, stretching into a new dimension of being. Death is still there, still there regardless, and I’m trying to materialize my dreams now — I have them, I am not pretending like I don’t, and I’m leaving room to discover what they are.
I suppose moving to Paris was a dream, but I also decided that I was moving there and going to NYU because I felt time bend, literally. Death and I had a ball of a time straightening that one out. “Neurologist,” he said, “I would have taken you to see a neurologist.” But then, my father had a disorder, and I expressed symptoms.
I don’t regret my choices, but I worked out so much that I wouldn’t have necessarily made the same choices. I could have gone to Paris at any time, you see. I’m just being honest about these pockets I was in. When I understood what was really driving my engines, it was stunning, shocking, and there seems to be a divine reorganization that begins to occur when you start healing — and so I feel nothing is lost.
Yesterday, I might have blown a fuse, I was so excited about writing a movie synopsis. I couldn’t even— I walked, explored ancient palazzos, and even the Oldest Storyteller became more real. I was just so moved because that’s what I wanted to do since I was a kid, more or less. Sitting there with Death, who is there regardless, with a latté, not very Italian, he had to admit, as I laughed. My cousins tell me how I’m just so Neapolitan and on this trip, literally, not a single person out there in the Neapolitan world ever thinks I am.
Anyway, I started thinking about Miracle Mile, these four years I spent in another family’s house because my mother accused my father of being a child molester — a whole ordeal. And I thought about another way to treat it since that’s been my exercise this week, a most wonderful exercise. And it does relate to healing.
So let’s say, a father wakes up in this story and forces the moment to its crisis, gets his daughter out, even through an illness, and they drive home — kick out Dr. J, he punches the escort in the face, his daughter even has to step in, and yes, it’s totally believable that my mother might attack me — Dr. J. Basically, a father and a daughter have to start over from that. Maybe she wants to be an actress, which is what I wanted, and he gets noticed, at his age, and she’s maybe a comedian, in fact, so you have these scenes with her on stage — talking to people about her life, Dr. J, all that, throughout the movie.
They take on Hollywood together.
In the dark of the acting class, which is where I really was as a child, we’re passing tissue boxes working on Stanislavsky. I just pictured…some father who’s somewhat there, at least, walking into this woman’s house to hear his daughter at ten years old interviewing her mother’s former lover — what the hell is going on? Maybe he tries to work with this “other family” who…kept his kid, broke her down, even if “she needed it,” played some fucked up game with him…? Um, I have to think about that from a new perspective.
Hilarious, strange, “do you want rum cake?”
“No, wait, what?” Losing it. He can hilariously lose it. I guess?
In reality, no one told my father anything because he wasn’t there, you see, I was in charge, so the entrance of a father who tries, who begins to show up — finds himself with a girl — he’s going to have to tell her to stop since I “launched an undercover investigation into what just happened,” but this is another story, so “were you going to tell me?” He could ask this Brazilian mother making rum cakes, and in this case, she doesn’t have to be Brazilian. What would she even say? I kept saying “don’t insult me,” because of everything I’ve just went through, and it made me laugh, picturing a father…taking this in.
“Interested in the human condition?”
“Maybe she was, you know, maybe she came out of a terrible place,” and they really have to let a lot go.
In other words, briefly, maybe that aspect of myself as a kid who didn’t live out that dream of being a child actor — might have a chance. Maybe this father and daughter do have a chance, and maybe he might pass away, he might get sick, which he did, and there’s a great kid out there who might really shine as me back then. There was so much meaning I found in that fiction idea based on real events. I had to wrap my head around what it would mean to be affectionate with a father, watching A Little Princess totally baffled, so I could think about the real journey these two people go on — due to what they’ve been through, for real. Something real. That’s what I mean about divine reorganization. I could write a new story about a girl who, really, wanted to break into the “biz” early. “I’m getting in.” And then, he gets noticed, which I loved.
“Riveting.”
An acting class looking at him.
She’s a total wreck, can’t audition, and he starts getting roles left and right, but she might be a comedian, you see, so he throws her on stage one night — just bomb, just bomb, just get it over with, so they band together with real problems. And she turns out to be pretty good, her stand-up might be a through line. Comedy being healing.
She’s so afraid of auditioning, and look, if someone called my daughter the biggest bitch that ever was, I mean, I have to rewrite some of it, because I suppose I felt like the worse person at such a young age, I felt so bad, and he might feel bad, but I’m such a good person, you know, and maybe that’s part of the exchange. Him learning — okay, why didn’t ANYONE call me, oh, right because I was a child molester? Nodding.
A fiction side by side with the real story evidently amplifies what that really was.
So maybe, you know, I mean, this version of my father has quite a journey to go on because we were really in a hell hole. And he can meet a rather inspirational kid. We get cool sunglasses, a cooler car, no? Since he’s getting work left and right, I’m finding my way as a comedian in platforms from Payless. She’ll get better shoes, I guess, he’ll have to deal with all this in cooler sunglasses. She’s “not about labels,” she can say up there on stage, “I got a nicer jacket.”
Maybe they go to Italy to see their cousins — stirring their beverages.
He’s getting some title role or is in some version of the Golden Girls though male, something, because my father was sixty when I was born, though he was stopped on the street because he looked that young. His attire, if you would, was confusing, but for ten years he didn’t age. So maybe his method, you see, will also take off. I don’t know. “Well,” he uses these oils. He starts making potions.
What an inspiring flip.
What wonderful problems to solve, I thought.
I had such a good time seeing a father and daughter team — sitting there in therapy — her arms crossed — just the mess that it was. “Dr. J.” Maybe he meets someone, thumbs up, maybe she still stares off not knowing what this world is…he has to snap her out of it. I see her getting into some cart with platforms from Playless on set with her dad. The problems with her mother — don't exactly stop. Or, she’s in some institution, or they try to get her help, but have to give up on that. Nothing but potential there, if not the opportunity to learn what the options might be. In any case, he likes his new car.
I saw a scene of them getting lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel — famished.
So I took out the Oldest Storyteller again — at this point — since he’s the ultimate guide, still there, and I’m on the other side of the childhood chapter, and from here and there there was so much I could do, so I like to keep that in mind as I keep stretching and getting rid of anything that would hold me back…like, nah, I can’t do that, I can’t write a movie, “why not?” In his eyes, there is really nothing that isn’t impossible, and I always think about Babette’s Feast, in that the colonel, as a youth, believes that some things are impossible, but then, at the end of his life, he discovers how much is — possible.
“Fall in love with your life,” Death said to me in the beginning before I understood why, because it wasn’t cheesy, so that’s what I’m getting used to: falling in love with it. We’re not looking back, that was the recent adjustment. There’s nothing to say other than — you’re here now.
It turns out that Portici was the vacation spot before the unification of Italy, so the wealthy used to come here, they built palazzos, so that’s been my hunt — “a splendid architecture.” That’s you, me, and this world.
Besides, can you condense time? Do you talk to it as if it’s already happened? Is there something moving, maybe not dramatic, though it is, about the Oldest Storyteller walking beside someone through the journey of their life…I mean, this part. My experiment, in a sense, was to imagine where I would be — when I get to The Oldest Storyteller not even knowing exactly the form it would take, though the year of magical healing is solid.
Death just can’t change that he exists, though what that means is another question. I’m not that concerned with shaping the stuff over there, and his seat as a storyteller helps with all that, since people craft so much out of this stuff, but he stands on a foundation of energy. I had enough mysterious experiences here to meditate on — so Death performs a role, a good one, in leading a person through that flash, in a sense, and, I thought about that flash in my case since my whole perspective changed. It’s Death on the brink of dawn. And he sits there too. He did, for me.
