In Praise Of Damage

Today is my fifty-seventh birthday. I don't fear aging like I once did. For years now, I've noticed that as I go through life I'm gaining knowledge, skills, wisdom, maturity, and who knows what else? I've also get scars, some physical and some psychological. That's to be expected.

I helped a guy print some things at the library where I work a couple of months back. He was old and struggled a little to get around. He mentioned to me that he was a first responder for 9/11. I asked him if he had health problems from that. He tapped his chest with his fingers and said, "Oh, yeah." I said, "That sucks." He said something I wish I could quote but I can't remember it. What was more important than the exact phrase was the meaning it conveyed which was essentially, the damage is part of who I am. Life shapes us while we shape it.

I take this not as celebrating victimization. It could feel that way in that he brought up his role during 9/11 without being asked. I feel like I would have a hard time keeping that to myself too. We each have some aspect of our lives that makes us feel like we were cheated out of something that most other people seem to have gotten: food, love, peace, normalcy, whatever. That absolutely sucks, but each of us has our own story and most of us go through something horrible if we only live long enough. 

I take this as our story. The physical body and the non-physical mind become records of everything we've ever experienced and thought. If we start out as a blank journal, we end up covered in scribbles and words and doodles, with torn pages, mutilated covers, water damage, piss stains, and a plethora of other harsh treatments. This is what happens to journals and other physical objects over time, including us. It's completely understandable to be bitter, but maybe there will come a time where you integrate your damage as so much a part of yourself (along with all the love, thrills, and card games you've gotten to enjoy) that you simply see it as you.

As I digested what this guy told me, I was reminded of a couple of lines from Jean Cocteau's Orpheus which reached into my core the first time I saw the film. Near the end, Orpheus is about to be torn apart by an angry mob and says (in the English translation I saw):

"What does marble think when it's being sculpted? It thinks, 'I am struck, insulted, ruined, lost.' Life is sculpting me, let it finish its work."

La Belle et la Bête

Josette Day and Jean Marais as the title characters.

 

Finally saw Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946) after years of it sitting on my to-be-watched list. I saw it on HBOmax and it's usually on the Criterion Channel as well. The story moves along at a decent pace and has enough weirdness throughout to keep me interested. I especially like the moving heads of the sculptures. What impressed me was how much it felt like a Hollywood picture of the same era. Cocteau's Orpheus (1950), on the other hand feels much more like an indie film. Is it the budget? Or is Beauty's surrealism subsumed by the fairy tale nature of the story while that of Orpheus stands out in sharper contrast, affecting our biases? I recommend this film to people who have exactly my tastes.