Farewell To the Cement Bungalow Plus Sister/Sister Dysfunctional Film Fesitval

[mallorys_camera]

Amazing. The concrete bungalow got sold. I need to be out by May 31.

That’s a month earlier than I’d planned to be out. There’ll be some scrambling, fashure. My chief concern is Milo. I love Milo and want to make sure he has a good home, but Ben can’t take him till the end of June. Also I’m having some major oral surgery at the beginning of May and there’ll probably be a six to eight week healing period associated with that.

All in all, though, I’m not terribly upset. For the first time in a long, long while, I don’t feel as though the future is waiting to ambush and beat the shit out of me. I’m actually looking forward to it.

Watched the deeply disturbing film Martha Marcy May Marlene last night. As a very young teenager my mother signed me over to a cult called Synanon for a couple of months. It was supposed to cure my drug problems. It didn’t. Instead it left me with a profound distrust of group dynamics. I have a kind of protective amnesia about the whole experience, which was pretty grim. My most vivid memory is performing paramilitary tai kwon do exercises overlooking Tomales Bay while the mist rose from the hillside. I once started to write a novel about Synanon survivors but gave it up after a single chapter -- too Don DeLillo.

For the first few years after my mother died, I hosted a Mother/Daughter Dysfunctional Film Festival on her birthday. You know the lineup -- Mommie Dearest, Carrie, White Oleander. I’m now thinking there’s an entire genre of dysfunctional sister/sister movies as well. Like Martha Marcy May Marlene would be a great double bill with A Streetcar Named Desire. The Olsen non-twin, by the way, was amazingly good in this.

Comments

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

That timing kind of sucks. At least you were indeed planning to move out soon.

[bel-ebat.livejournal.com]

even with the bad timing, it must feel good to know it is all set when the concrete bungalow will be gone-gone-gone.

i think margot at the wedding and rachel getting married can also fit into the sister/sister dysfunctional category. and i know there are so many more that i can't think of at the moment. i think i actually love films and books about dysfunctional female/female family relationships. i don't even have a sister, but the way i could be different if i did have one has never been lost on me.

white oleander is a huge gap in my reading in this area, and i plan to read it when finals are over. i avoided reading it or watching the film in its entirety for a long time, because my mom liked it (whole other issue/story, but i was basically being a difficult teenager). another dysfunctional mother-daughter movie is frances (the story of frances farmer in general was also loved by my mother), though it could have been much better if they hadn't cut a lot of the development of their dynamic in favor of the totally fictional romance they wanted to be the center.

[ccjohn.livejournal.com]

Synanon, Jesus. When I took Psych I, it was "evolving new modalities and treatments for addiction, but there's concern borders between patient and practitioner are less clear than in older Western therapies." Now, from what I've read, it turns out they were a cult all along. Like the Children of God. They looked utopian, cheerful enough, there was free love but it all seemed voluntary -- later people realized, some learned to co-opt the trust built into idealism and the possibility of escape from trauma, made people confused pawns. Stole their money. Abused kids.

I was a Deadhead. No matter how much peace and love, you couldn't escape these flashes of manipulation, abuse, con jobs. I met a lot of gurus. Every one was a dirtbag. I don't trust group dynamics either, there is this permanent craving for scapegoating. The group doesn't like being bound by rules it can't see. The group has this tendency to self-justification that can be terrifying.

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

synanon! I remember it. I remember it early, when the respectable residents of Santa Monica didn't want it in their backyard. I remember it when it got respectable itself, and was purported to be "The Answer." I remember the jazz band performing at the newly created Venice Pavilion. The Synanon Games sounded pretty cruel even in the days when Synanon was The Answer. I knew a man who attended. I thought he was crazy. I remember they owned a lot of real estate but not as much as the Scientologists own now. The I remember hearing about the mailbox incident. Protective amnesia is probably a good thing, but stuff like that fascinates me, so if you ever write the novel about the survivors, I'll read it.

[alumiere.livejournal.com]

You sound rather hopeful here, oral surgery aside. I'm glad for you.

[nodressrehersal.livejournal.com]

I hope the move isn't too traumatic for the oral surgery healing process - you'll have lots of help, yes?

[cwmackowski.livejournal.com]

Congrats and good luck with everything. Sounds like a full plate! :-)

[a1icey.livejournal.com]

ohh glad to hear about the oral surgery. we're both going to go through major upheavals this summer, crazy, huh?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a practical challenge, certainly. But not a derailment.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Rachel Getting Married, yes! A film I really loved.

Loved the novel White Oleander. It gets filed in my mind with the very fine Anywhere But Here which startled me when I first read it, along the lines of Wait! My mother was her mother too? Films made from both books were pretty dreadful.

The film Frances didn't work at all for me. In the title role, Jessica Lange just wasn't charismatic enough in the early scenes.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Synanon was built around the charismatic personality of its founder, Chuck Diederich, whom I suspect was an undiagnosed paranoid-schitzophrenic. It was certainly a very destructive place and it damaged a lot of people in permanent ways, possibly me among them.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

The Game felt liberating, but of course interactions like that are the building block of fascism. Synanon billed itself as a religion. The reason why Synanon the Religion failed, and Scientology the Religion succeeded (and Latter Day Saints the Religion before it) is because Synanon's founder Chuck Diederich didn't have the insight to die the way L. Ron Hubbard (and Joseph Smith before him) did. No, he stuck around, growing crazier and crazier and crazier.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Thanks, darlin'.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Not much help, no. But I'm Freecycling the small amount of furniture I'm not giving to Ben and I'll hire someone to haul the leftovers no one wants to the dump. And then this part of my life will be over!!!! Yipeeee!!!!

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Thanks, my friend.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the oral surgery will make a big difference in my confidence level. Upheaval is something I seem to attract without wanting it. It must me something I'm inviting into my life since it seems to be a chronic state. I wish it were otherwise.

[bel-ebat.livejournal.com]

i'll add anywhere but here to my list, too (in this case, i have seen the movie in its entirety and didn't even know it was based on the novel). christopher recommended it in november, but i'd forgotten all about it. thanks for jogging the memory!

and i agree about jessica lange in frances. i didn't understand how she would attract so many people.

[hotelsamurai.livejournal.com]

Speaking of sister/sister movies, have you seen Tiny Furniture?

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane

So where are you moving?