I think I probably like horror movies the same way I like men.
I like being able to be in a sort of controlled danger and have tunnel vision focus on something beautiful. It gives me hope.
Like right now, I’m watching this movie called The Devil All The time because I can’t sleep.
It’s about how grief or hunger for an answer from God can distort your perception and have you doin fucked up shit. Its about how devils live in churches and prey on this very human cycle. Maybe it’s a weakness in the human spirit, our response to grief, a lot of the time, is angry retaliation. That’s why it’s important to know how to hear god. Feel his rhythm the same way we feel colonial time. It’s different for everyone. Colonialism says it’ll all be the same but that is a lie. God enters our lives in numerous unique forms and that was never something to be fighting about. I knew that when I was small.
There is a woman named Lenora in the movie. And a baby. And that scene was really pretty. Someone was calling for Lenora in the morning while the camera panned over the baby playing with her toes and someone was singing something nice. It reminded me of home. Sweet place in the middle of terror island. It’s gone now. A woman in the movie was just killed. A man thought she should be a sacrifice to god. And now the wind is blowing and he thinks it’s god. He thought he could earn the gift of resurrection. But she is just dead. He’s really upset. There’s an undertone of confusion and betrayal as he shouts “resurrect! God!” It was his own wife. He stabbed her in the neck with a screwdriver because he thought he would be able to resurrect her. Because he’d trapped himself in a closet and waited for god for a fortnight. I don’t know how long that is. Lenora is such a pretty name. Such a pretty name. If I ever get to fall in love, I hope I can have a baby. And maybe I will call her Lenora.
Love is getting to hold a piece of hope in your mouth. Under your tongue like a secret. Maybe when I find men living in fear I don’t always understand that it is their own fears they’ve committed to. And not the worldly ones trapping us all. Or something like that. And I think my relationships with men are getting progressively better. And I don’t want to love a man I’m afraid of that’s not what I mean. The baby’s name is Lenora.
I think I just want to be in love, so I could be held the way the scene with Lenora felt, all the time. Being in love is like living inside a glimmer of light. Like if you lived in the warm sun spot on your grannies sticky floral carpet , in the living room on the old tv with sci-fi movies, all the time. If that rooom was your skin. And then to share it with another, that’s like Lenora too.
So much scary stuff. Don’t look. Just look at Lenora. look how how precious and sacred and still burning she is. People are dying. But Lenora is here. Warm and safe and smiling.
When I was a kid. I could smile at my siblings in all the terror. But there is so much distance now. The smile is not the same. The warmth is cold now. Always cold.
I am finding more rooms in my body to hold me. So that is good.
Lenora is a pretty name. It means compassion, light.
I want to be somebody’s Lenora. I never got to be.
I’m afraid I never got to be a daughter, or a boy, and now that grief is hindering my ability to be a proper adult, and amongst other things a true ogbanje man. Which one of these rooms am I in now? With this film the devil all the time ? Is it my own? Can it be new?
In my mamas living room. I think my siblings and I spent a lot of time loving each other , watching movies, scary ones like this one, and feeling it all together. And that was a kind of secret. I don’t know why. Maybe because we weren’t allowed to be loud like kids I know now. Maybe that’s why I see love the way I do now. This rich, life saving secret. Maybe I don’t need the room to be new.
I don’t know.
Lenora is a pretty name.
Yorumlar