pt III: Persons Unknown

So I've been reading In Cold Blood, tackling it in bursts of 20-pages-or-so (known as the Guthrie method,) and something's been troubling me. The subject matter of the book to be precise.

It seems like everything these days is death.

Naturally, this started with the funeral, and then it sorta developed. Eric and I watched "The Grizzly Man" a few nights ago, and that's as grim a movie as I've ever seen. Tragic, indeed. A documentary directed by Werner Herzog, it tells the story of Timothy Treadwell, who spent 13 summers living with bears in Alaska. For the last several, (numbers differ between parties,) he brought a camera and documented the experience, accumulating some 100 hours of footage. Treadwell, a gentile, docile man who loved bears and hated humans (although the emotion he feels seems to go beyond hatred and into resentment and frustration,) and is, in the end, eaten by a bear. It should be noted that the bear in question was one he was not familiar with, during a time of the year he would not normally be there. The footage was even captured by the video camera, though thankfully the lens cap was on. "You must never listen to this," Herzog tells a friend of Treadwell's who possesses the tape, after he listens to it himself, through headphones. "In fact, you must destroy it."

The film is narrated by Herzog in a somewhat disaffectionate German tone, with no sympathy nor remorse for Treadwell, only observance that nature is chaos, and that he was a mere man (peaceful and unarmed,) living among fierce predators. Beautiful and tragic.

And that brings me to In Cold Blood. In case you aren't familiar, the book, written by Truman "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Capote, is the true account of a violent murder committed nearly 50 years ago in rural Kansas, with no apparent motive. The family of four were God-fearing, salt-of-the-Earth innocents. The murderers already convicted criminals, one strongly superstitious the other baudy and rough; both apparently bisexual (the former likely higher on the Kinsey+ scale.)

It has caused me to sleep uneasily. Not for fear of my own safety, but fear of my own imagination. It's not that I think these things could happen, it's that I worry about thinking about it and formulated how it could happen.

I watched the movie today and designed the credits. I've got it all worked out, I suppose, and now need only deal with the process of rendering and burning it. I have to say, from a critical standpoint, it was difficult for me to watch the whole way through. There are parts I'm extremely happy with, and parts where I feel I fumbled. I'm sure somebody will enjoy it.

My confidence in being a journalist is wavering. At times, like today, I feel like I could do it. At other times, I don't imagine I could. Today I feel that way because of the exercise Roy Wilson led, where he acted as mouthpiece during a mock-Press Conference for some Drum and Bugle Corps event. Otherwise, a generally uneventful day.

Xena was here. the dog's such a pain. She riles Max up, and uses the house as a toilet without asking to go outside. I'd hate to have her over for a lengthy span of time (unless I were being paid, in which case maybe I wouldn't care.)

I wish I had done some writing, but I can't choose between the various things I could be writing, and thus settle down and focus. Life's a bitch in that way.

Keep on rockin'
-Scott