2003-07-29 � Accidental Art

I've been away, friends. I've been visiting my parents in Oklahoma. It was a lovely trip, dripping with chili con queso and other TexMexy delights. Everyone seems well, though my mother has been worried about the deteriorating health of my grandparents. They looked ok to me, though I did note the addition of an oxygen tank that assists my grandmother in her battle with the onset of smoking related complications and that my grandfather's gait has become a pronounced shuffle.

I missed a visit by my cousin, Julie, by about a day. A little over a year ago, Julie made my grandparents great-grandparents with the arrival of Adam, the first of his generation in my family. She is currently four months pregnant with her second. My grandparents could not be happier about this.

"Well," says my grandmother with tears welling up in her eyes, "at least I lived long enough to see one of my grandbabies become a mamma." Then she gets lost in thought staring out into space.

My grandparents are both feeling their own mortality. As they age they attend more and more funerals, suffer more and more loss, and shoulder greater and greater physical limitations. This has served to make them quite moribund and preoccupied with death. And not just their own deaths, but the death of any living creature. My sister, a sensitive soul, has no real desire to be a part of such conversations, so these discussions drive her from the room. Here are a few samples from the past week.

"Is your cat ok? Because last night we heard something get a cat. Maybe a coyote. Helen, you think it was a coyote? Boy, we heard the hissing and screaming and carrying on and then just silence. I guess it was a coyote. It weren't your cat, were it?"

"We's down at that�whatchacallit. Helen? Where were we when we was seeing�oh yeah. Down at that new�whatchacallit. Aquarium. And they was feeding the�you know. Feeding the sea amenities. Boy, they drop them fish in there and they swim right into them�whatchacallits. Tentacles. And boy them old fish just go limp. See they get paralyzed by the sea amenity. And then that sucker just kind of�sschlurp! Like that see. Sschlurp! And you can see the fish inside the amenity getting ate up."

"Now, Brian, I's tellin' your dad now, we've just finished paying off our funerals. They'll even provide the preacher if you want. And last week we ordered a grave marker and it's being carved and they're going to place it out in Southern Hills Cemetery on Thursday at our plots. We all ought to go see it after lunch."

"Down in Africa they got them meerkats. And there is a hawk that dearly loves to eat meerkats, and they was showing how that ole hawk he swoops down and he gets that meerkat up in that tree and he uses his talons to just rip him in half. Just ripped him in half."

Adam is one of the few things that distracts them from the process of dying. In fact, he motivated my grandfather to dig out his old camcorder, circa 1987, to get a few pictures over his last visit. They asked me if I wanted to see the pictures of Adam, and I hadn't seen him walking yet, so we plugged the tape in.

The footage my grandfather shot is accidentally brilliant. I will attempt to describe the experience, though it will be at a detriment to the material. First a few technical notes. My grandfather has developed a minor tremor in his hands. This results in inadvertently double clicking the on/off button from time to time. Of course double clicking here means that you believe the camera to be off, but it is instead recording everything it sees. Second, the batteries are fifteen years old and can hold a very minor charge, so he was able to shoot for about five minutes for each night the battery spent in the charger.

My grandparents have a dog. It is a teacup poodle by breed, but you would never know it to look at it. It has been fed to obesity. It has a thyroid disease which has caused most of its formerly pink hair to fall out and it's skin to turn black. Tufts of fur remain in odd places scattered over its body. The thyroid problem has also caused one if its eyes to bulge oddly from its socket. It has ulcers on its tongue, which is inordinately long. It is far more science experiment than pet, yet they love the dog dearly and dote on her unrelentingly.

My grandfather's film opens on a shot of that dog's ass. The dog, barely able to walk on its own, rests its considerable bulk and still turned away from the camera looks out over the living room. There is about 45 seconds of watching the dog try to sit. In the background a war movie is playing on the television and during the entire 45 seconds blood-curdling screams are heard as the Axis powers viciously torture a prisoner.

Cut to a blurry, distorted image of my grandmother doing the dishes. Above the kitchen sink is a bar that looks out over the livingroom. The bar is cluttered with all manner of bottles and plants and brick-a-brack. It soon becomes clear that we are looking at my grandmother through an empty bottle. Suddenly the camera angle shifts violently and we can see movement through leaves and when the air moves the leaves just the right way we are treated to a glimpse of my grandmother, still hard at work on the dishes.

It is clear that behind the camera something very interesting is going on, though we never learn exactly what. Slam! Wham wham thud. Tinkle tinkle WHAM! What is making these sounds? Why does grandmother look so perturbed? Another sudden violent shift and we see my grandmother working through the loose lattice of a whicker basket. The sounds continue throughout. There is three minutes of this.

Cut to a shot on the front porch of their house. My grandmother's back is to the camera and she is walking away. It is clear that she is angry with my grandfather. I surmise they've probably been fighting. The camera clicks off and then back on. "...figure out how to work this thing," says my grandfather. We are now at waist level and flying up to the side of the car. The camera is pressed up against the door and the only image is an unrelenting field of white. There is no speaking.

Bang bang bang BANG bang! Scuttle scuttle. BANG! In the white there is no escaping the sound, though we do not hear sounds that indicated my grandfather is trying to get into the car. What is he doing? It is a mystery.

Then, the door opens and we fly through the car in a wide and graceful arc. We come to rest on the floorboard next to my grandmother's feet. She is wearing black open toed flats and the seam from her stockings can be seen just under the line created by her pedicure. There are more indecipherable sounds.

Then, thud thund BANG "SON OF A BITCH!" It seems my grandmother was the last to drive the car and she didn't move the seat back. There are sounds associated with moving the car seat and we hear my grandfather settle in. My grandmother says nothing, though her toe taps vigorously.

Once he gets settled we hear him say, "one more thing and I'm going back in the house." It is clearly a threat. My grandmother says nothing.

They are going to see Adam, hence the camcorder, who is visiting his grandmother, my aunt. My aunt lives two blocks from my grandparents.

We hear the kachunk of the gear shift as my grandfather drops the car into reverse. We hear the sounds of the engine and the tires on the driveway as he backs out onto the street. They stop. Kachunk. Now we're in drive. Forward motion a few seconds. Then stop for the stop sign. Whrrrrrrrrr as we pull forward to the next block and stop for another stop sign. We pull forward again and slow as we turn into my aunt's driveway. There are crunchy rumbly sounds as they pull over the gravel by the curb and then smooth motion sounds when they hit the pavement again by the garage.

Then it all goes black. The lens cap has been snapped on. We can hear the doors open, and the chime of the car to tell my grandfather he's not yet removed the key. There are the sounds of insects and footsteps and the occasional dog bark. Then a doorbell. The sounds of greeting and more steps.

My grandfather tells my grandmother to go stand with my aunt so he can get their picture. The lens cap comes back off and we can see my grandmother and aunt in silhouette in the dark. "I think it's already on," says my aunt pointing at the camera. Cut to six seconds of silent black.

Then we see Adam who has just begun to walk. He takes three steps on his own when the camcorder battery dies.

There is no more footage.

Though there is a brief glimpse of Adam at the very end, he certainly is not the star. I encouraged my grandfather to use the camera as often as he thinks of it with the hope that more hilarity will be forthcoming. I have already told my parents that when my grandparents do die, I want that tape. It captured them and their lives so perfectly that I can't imagine a better memento.

Posted at 12:18 p.m.

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