24 In Quick Takes

24 in Quick Takes

1.
In Buffy The Vampire Slayer's wise and underrated final season, there was an episode called "Help," written (typical for the Rebecca Rand Kirschner, the show's weakest writer) without a shred of credibility, but with a haunting ending. In retrospect, the ending must have been decided first and the rest of the episode become an excuse for it - Buffy, in her new position as Guidance Counselor at Sunnydale High, meets Cassie, who swears (via precognition, natch) that she'll be dead in a week. Buffy, certain she can change her fate, stops all the supernatural foes in Cassie's way but woefully doesn't understand that Cassie has a terminal health problem. In the penultimate scene, Buffy and Dawn cry together, wondering why to bother if they just can't help anyway.

Dawn tearfully says, "So what do we do?" It cuts to its final shot: Buffy coming into the office the next day and sitting at her desk.

2.
For those of you who don't know, I work in an alternative school doubling as day treatment for emotionally disturbed middle schoolers. Today, my favorite kid was arrested. Randy - not his real name, I signed far too many papers - was on probation, violated the terms, and without divulging too many specifics, I'll say I will likely never see him again. My time in day treatment has been a rough entryway into the world of mental health - I see what happens when things work, I see when it doesn't. I later asked about a couple of other kids of ours who'd wound up with similar fates - neither are doing well.

Yesterday, before we knew of this, I was asked to join Randy's treatment team, as I seemed to be the adult he trusted most. I was honored - I love this kid, and I quite easily forgive all he's done. In fact, considering the actual experience of my daily work life, it's safe to say I am a forgiving person in general, and have a high threshold for the sort of things 14-year-olds will do. Randy - a bright kid, a kid who wants to go to college - wanted to turn things around. He recorded an impersonation I did of Arnold Schwarzenegger on an MP3 player.

We waited as my principal asked Randy to gather his personal belongings from his locker. I asked her what would happen to him. With a mournful look and a shrug, she said, "Detention and lockup maybe?" He'd used up his warnings, and once you've been to day treatment, the likelihood of a last straw is higher than normal.

Later, a teacher told me in her last job in mental health, they used to measure success rates simply, "by the number of kids who, at age 18, were not incarcerated." Not necessarily employed, in school, childless, or healthy - simply, not incarcerated.

One unquestionably true fact in James Frey's A Million Little Pieces: 15% of those seeking treatment for substance abuse addiction will stay clean. This is in a highly successful treatment facility.So what do we do?

3.
The pleading lyrics to Sleater-Kinney's "Night Light" that I thought of all day: "How do you do it, with visions of worse to come/ live in the present and spin off the rays of the sun."

4.
Of the many many revelations in the extraordinary season premiere of The Sopranos, none was more chilling than the sight of Eugene Pontecorvo staring at seashells on his end table. An eyeline match with the sea-shells and Eugene's eyes (embodied to typical Sopranos perfection by Robert Funaro) revealed he was seconds away from hanging himself. We watched every excrutaiting twitch and huff that eminated at the end of his life.

Eugene wanted to retire. He'd gotten inheritance and wanted to move to Florida, to be done and finish his years with his wife and kids. But his son was on drugs and in "The Family," the oath trumps long-term dreams.

How do we get the things we want in life? How do we do good deeds with our time, make an impact? Go right back to work like Buffy or stare at the seashells like Eugene (who never "did good")? How can you keep up the hope when the best you can hope for, sometimes, is not incarceration?

5.
I bought a shirt from Hollister this weekend. Hollister doesn't seem like a clothing store, it seems like the most happening cabana around. There aren't racks for merchandise inside, there are hard maple shelving. The room is barely visible, lined with chairs, magazines, deafeningly cheerful pop-punk music, mannequins with no arms or heads, but perfectly defined abdominal muscles.

It occurred to me that in order to plant the notion that you wanted to buy their clothes, Hollister had to convince you that you were living your life in the wrong way. This is what people are supposed to do - chill by the beach in California (even in Colorado), look at fashion magazines, not be able to hear your closest friends, and be determined by the success of sculpting your body parts.

The salesman who helped me wore a bright pink muscle-t shirt, plaid shorts, flip flops, had a dyed blonde mohawk and looked perfectly at home. Later, when I saw him in line for food at the Hot Dog On a Stick, snow blowing outside, he looked more ridiculous than the yellow-and-blue striped hotdog server behind the counter.

6.
My dad was dejected last Fall at the notion that Bush's miserable approval ratings - only slightly higher than Nixon's post-Watergate - would never lead to an end of the Republican order. He said to me, "Sometimes I think we were wrong about things in the 60's, that people caring then was just a fluke. This is the way people really are. They don't care. We can't do any good."

That feeling has to be rampant in the Democratic party - what other explanation is there for not staging a coup when President Bush makes statements as baffling as "I ask you not to focus on the bloodshed, but on the positive influences of the War in Iraq."

What are those, exactly? The civil war? Still, no talk of a coup, no certainty this Fall's election will be at all useful for getting any Democrats elected (and who doesn't sometimes feel like also adding - why would we want to?).

I still believe all I can try to do with my life is make things better when I leave my life than when I came in. My father might not, but he continues to be the only lawyer advancing liberal defenses in El Paso and Teller Counties in central Colorado. He remains my favorite person on the planet.

7.
My roommate and I this evening watched Andrew Bujalski's uber-indie movie Funny Ha Ha. Shot on 16mm, and with dialogue realistic enough to make you certain you're catching every recent-college-grad's average Friday night, the movie had the DIY aesthetic of a 70's porn movie, and a storyline in which most people who attended college would recognize themselves (not necessarily a compliment).

The message I got from Funny Ha Ha? Life is a string of rather awkward, fruitless encounters, none of it meaning much of anything.

Marnie, its main character, turns 24 towards the end of the movie. She sits on the steps of an ornate public building and writes a list of goals - learn to play chess, spend more time outside, don't drink for one month.

I identified with the movie - for any of it to work, I'm forced to - but probably not for the reason it wanted to me. I identified with feeling aimless, a wanderer in a nonsensical play of encounters that don't add up to anything of clear purpose.

I'm with Buffy, though - I'm going back to work tomorrow.