Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Sarah Connor and Gratitude

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

A crow was lamenting—something was sad. I was listening from my car in a sunny parking lot eating a nice big sandwich.  My life was good. Strangely, for a creature of nature, the bird cried at precise five second intervals, “Craaw…(five seconds) craaw…(five seconds) craaw…” Perhaps the crow thought, “These are emotional times, serious times, where crying is more important than conserving caloric energy.”

Deja vu. I was reminded of a murder of crows at the top of Primrose Hill, the highest point of London. They had been walking and flapping about the cowling of a motionless Martian Fighting Machine, which was standing high on three stilt-like legs. An hour ago, as I had been crossing a canal, forcing my way through the Red Weed, I heard the Martian operator, still alive, activating his call, the only sound in dead London, at five second intervals. “Ulla… ulla… ulla…” By the time I reached the hill, at twilight, the Machine was standing still as death, only the crows left alive.

In my sunny car, as the bird wasted calories—how unnatural—I played a compact disc with the compositions of Bear Cleary for his soundtrack to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Cleary’s music is somber, plaintive, and lonely in the dark, as if Cleary had included a night train whistle. (but he didn’t) Tunes like Cromartie in the Hospital and Derek’s Mission are relieved by only two lyrical songs, sardonic and superficial, one with the bouncy descending line: “Ain’t we famous baby, ain’t we famous we are.” 

Forget fame. Sarah’s world portrays two time-space locations: the present Los Angeles, sunny and bright, and 2027—rubble and bunkers. To Sarah, and to everyone surviving in the future, fame is frivolous. A few resistance fighters come through to the present: They focus on their mission even though they are suddenly on easy street. A young traveler screams at a family because, in her eyes… they don’t how lucky they are! They don’t get it! They don’t know anything about the coming rubble, starvation and bleached skulls…

To Sarah and her son John the values society disregards today are in fact the classic values, such as bravery, kindness and being helpful. And relationships. How superficial to the Connors are the frivolous things we of today place so much pride in, such as working long hard hours, away from our family, at the office striving for a bigger car, fancy possessions and silly fame. We should be grateful we live in these easy times, where it’s so easy to kid ourselves about what matters. In the backs of our minds, surely, we know we have built our values on flimsy foundations of paper. And paper can so quickly burn to ashes, blown away on the nuclear wind. I think of that sad crow looking down on our misplaced lives.

The 2008 TV show, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, was canceled for having low ratings. Someone thought the ratings were from having too much philosophy and not enough car explosions. I don’t agree; I found Sarah’s musings and the philosophical plots quite interesting. Maybe if ever this world is to be saved it will be from more philosophy, not less. 

During our war on terror that, by the very definition of “war,” is always in our minds and in my essays, it is quite noticeable to me that terrorists place no value on philosophy, and put a second-class value on “their” womenfolk who, if given equal rights like Sarah, might think about building a peaceful world for their sons. As a Canadian Muslim put it, terrorists never have degrees in the liberal arts. They never analyze stories.

If the Berlin Wall has fallen and yet our culture still tells stories of apocalypse, lately stories about plagues of zombies, then surely there are sound psychological reasons. I wonder if we are creating these stories subconsciously to remind ourselves to see the world with fresh, grateful eyes. In Sarah’s world, one angry time-traveling officer, enraged by somebody drifting away from the mission, says: “I took you from hell and brought you to paradise!” Yes. 

I try to take a moment, on a sunny day, in my air conditioned car, to reflect: ...I am living in paradise.


Sean Crawford
Calgary
July
2017

Footnotes:
~in 2014, starting from the sand pit on the common near the house of H. G. Wells (his house has a plaque) I made my way to Primrose Hill. It’s out beyond the tourist map of Central London, and yes I did have to walk along a canal to get there.

~There was a fierce blockade during the first world war. German troops were desperately short on food and material. When a great mass of troops from the eastern front were freed up by Russia’s surrender, the Germans tried their last great offensive of the war. 

(Too bad the Germans had put their war under military, not civilian control—not like in a democracy—because the presence of all those troops could have been graciously presented as a reason for the Allies to agree to a peace treaty—but of course, the army guys couldn't think that creatively) 

According to my high school teacher, the attack stalled… partly, my teacher said, because the troops slowed down to loot the plentiful food.
Sometimes, I guess, bloodless sanctions and cruel blockades are more effective than bayonets.

~Perhaps, if you are reading this in some future library, you are wondering why I would sacrifice the natural flow of my essay to suddenly, three paragraphs from the end, go sideways to  referring to the war on terror. To me it’s obvious, but maybe I could answer you in a sidebar, next week. 

3 comments:

  1. Sucks that's a mooovie...
    eaten-up by allah the lemmings
    who dont care to know which Way
    is leading toward Seventh-Heaven.
    But, yet, I have faith in you, too;
    you also shall git Holy Spirit's
    guidance to wiseabove to the
    Great Beyond soon by...

    If you're not too concerned
    with WWIII and N. Korea,
    you better follow us:

    Find-out what RCIA means and join.
    trustNjesus.
    ALWAYS.
    God bless your indelible soul.

    'Saving souls from Hell
    should be your primary occupation'
    -Jesus, July 10th

    Yes, dear, Jesus sed a lot moe
    than what's in the mortally-thin-Bible.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dunno if you saw this before
    ...yet, here it is once moe, curly:

    Greetings, earthling!
    Need summore new-fangled-thots N ideers? Look no firdr, brudda. Can't stay long. Done gotta git, Paw... yet, if Im a sower, we plant the Seed; if Im an artist, we RITE the Word:

    Would U please help a plethora of King Size, wildchild, rawkuss poetry/wordz which are lookin 4 a home in thy novelty?? Thx. Whew. They're pretty insane. They're bereft of reason. Oi! Blimey! They're bloody PINK spiders!

    Gotta gobba lotta shrewd, surreal, supersonic, sardonic satires, sassy N savvy elixers N electronic elegance (and palpable nuance) on our YOUTHwitheTRUTH blogs. Wannum? Have'm. N'joym. Gettm outta my hair!!!

    How mucha wanna betcha our sugar-high-mojo, pleasure-beyond-measure, fuse-blowin-exploits R a copious madhouse of one lavish bookay D.O.A.? Our proFUSE NRGod who leads U.S. to explosive fairy-tales in the 'one-stop-shop' symphony Upstairs? Almighty God's the BigDude, the Owner of ElysianFields, the Grand Prize, the Austere Overdrive, NoPurchaseNecessary: our bombastic tenaCITY on a Hill which'll plant the Seeds 4u2 grow-up to new N greater heights!! Mama mia! Thatsa good pasta!!

    CAUTION: our 22ish, avant-guard, accurately-atrocious, offa-the-reservation-like-Jimmy-Hoffa, metal breadcrumms R sooo out-of-order, toots, they're an intimate wealth of bottomless sophistication. And dats da lethal fak, Jak. Go ahead. Sue me. Yawn. But, yet, here's the perennial KOO D'TAH: who else has actually SEEN the Great Beyond in spirit & lived to tella youse bout the bionic, bloated, brevity-like-earth we're living on?? Yes, earthling, Im an NDE, almost salivating4salvation. So gain altitude, never attitude: death has no intrinsick favorites.

    If Mr. abSUREditty's an ultra-great-reward, and not everyone enters, Q: why is it an excruciating deluge of epic-.357-caliber where the quality's a limitless bulldozer plowin, pushin-your-power-cord with eternal goodies? A: the Prize-A+-TheEnd just gives U.S. moe-curley-graphix 2 VitSee: an explosion-of-extravagance which few R asking 4 anymore! Grrr. They're too concerned withe grotesque sanity of ambivilant piss-ants which swiftly crawl like lemmings to their scorecard destruction. C'est la guerre.

    THANK GAWWWD!!! the Don has the ebullient BAWLS!!! to do the Manifest Destiny!!! To lead U.S. forward to the White House Upstairs with his SQUARES!!!

    So, break-free, earthling; be like a contraversial outgrowth of incredibly-intoxicating-effusiveness in your zeitgeist to give the ultimate, stunning, backknuckle potency: Wiseabove. Wanna join this useFULL idiot Upstairs 4 the most zany, kooky, X-acto-knife antidotes? Extremely exquisite, explicit endorphins in abundance? Puh-lenty of pulverizingly-tantalizing psychopathic psychosomatics with eXtras? i2i-kick-velocity's-ass-ultra-maximum-rocket-fuel-party-hardy at my pad ya ever encountered without d'New Joisey accent 4 an eternal slew of precarious, magnanimous & primeval absurdities indelibly etched in the granite corridors of eternity with a total-barrage-of-melt-in-thy-mouth 'depth-of-undenial'???

    Make Your Choice  -SAW
    ...cuzz nobody gitts outta here alive, earthling.

    ReplyDelete
  3. As blog administrator, I am leaving those two comments in place. Reason:

    To say that when people go off their medication, thoughts can be messy. Sometimes people live alone, and no one else notices when they stop taking their meds.

    When a college classmate stopped, I got her to see the college physician, not a college counsellor (because she wouldn't have gone) She was able to get back on her meds, and graduate in the summer.

    ReplyDelete