Tree of Life

“You can run all your life

And not go anywhere.”

   (Take Away This) Ball and Chain,” Social Distortion

 

Prior to playing “Ball and Chain” for his daily Facebook performance, son Dave wrote that he was feeling a little socially distorted, given the enduring self-isolation caused by the pandemic. In the background was a poster of his high school band LINT. Dave’s previous selection was “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne in honor of co-founder Adam Schlesinger, who passed away from COVID-19.  Also R.I.P., Bill Withers.  “Ain’t No Sunshine” with them gone.

 

Knowing what an acclaimed director Terrence Malick is, I watched “The Tree of Life” (2011), which I found rather pretentious and boring despite stellar performances by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as the postwar parents of three boys.  Scenes depicting the formation of the earth reminded me of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”  Critic Roger Ebert loved tit and summed up the theme of all Malick movies in this way: “Human lives diminish beneath the overwhelming majesty of the world.” Maybe, but the flick could have used more action and some resolution.

My favorite reporter, Chesterton Tribune's Kevin Nevers, has been self-isolating with wife Meredith, Kate and Andie, and their cats for the past two weeks.  In “Thoughts on a Pandemic” he describes himself as “a tired hack who after 23 years at the Tribune has very nearly run out of words, so the slower pace of teleworking suits me just fine.” Erudite without being pedantic, Nevers incorporated the words paradigm and apparatchik, made reference to second mate Stubb on the deck of the “Pequod,” the whaling ship in “Moby Dick,” and wrote: “I’ve always been a homebody, so living in my pajamas and shaving once every five days come naturally to me.”  He described having beers with his best friend in his garage 12 feet from him with hand sanitizer between them.  He predicted that the pandemic will “mutate the DNA of our way of life [and] distort notions of personal space, norms of etiquette, forms of consumption, seismically shift the terms and structures of politics, and transform how we celebrate and grieve, woo and worship.”

 

In “Rabbit Is Rich” John Updike referred to America in 1979 “littered with pull-tabs and bottlecaps and pieces of broken mufflers.” Forty years later, it’s much worse – millions of plastic bags that will scar the earth’s land and seas for centuries.

 

In my current Steel Shavings magazine I wax nostalgic about playing Spin the Bottle at a party Ray Bates held, searching for used Fats Domino records at Montgomeryville flea market, giving girls back rubs (and sometimes having them be reciprocated) in home ec teacher Mrs. Davis’s homeroom, and being interrupted while parking in the Van Sant farm long dirt road by Chief of Police Ottinger. With plans for my 60^th high school reunion in possible jeopardy, this paragraph seems bittersweet:

    In 1980 I shared a smoke with Gaard Murphy and husband Chuck; in 1990 Sue Floyd asked me to dance to “Proud Mary” and I mistook Carolyn Aubel for Carolyn Ott and blurted out that I’d had a rush on her.  In 1995 I got Wayne Wylie (who never dances, wife Fran warned) to boogie with me to “I Wanna Be Sedated”.  Favorite math teacher Mr. Taddei came to the 40^th, Mrs. Polsky and Mr. Bek to the 45^th, and several first-timers to the 50^th, including Jay Bumm and Wendy Henry wearing, unbelievably, her Homecoming Queen tiara. In 2015 I trading senior Little League memories with Eddie Piszek, and deejay Fred Scott played hits from 1960, including The Twist” and “Go, Jimmy, Go.”