FAULT IN OUR STARS

   

     Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of my first love. It is normally a day that I find myself busying my way through a list that makes Santa’s pale in comparison, just to keep the thoughts at bay. But, instead, I burrowed in on my home world, and spent the entire day cuddling and talking with the true loves of my life, my children. Focusing upon them helped the thoughts of sadness that still trickle in, even after so very long, dissipate into the air. I pushed happiness of the now into all of the holes of emptiness from long ago. Then, like an intuitive little fairy who finds the path to your deepest feelings, my oldest, without knowing what day it was for the mommy, asked me to spend the evening with her at the movies. “Bring your Kleenex,” she said. It sounded like a perfect place to maybe burn off the excess emotional energy in a flourish, via a good old-fashioned sad ass love story.

      

 Once inside the theater, the buzz in the air sounded as though we'd been dropped into the core of a bee hive. Excited chatter gave way to a camaraderie that I only remember having witnessed during the initial screening of Sex In The City the movie. Looking around, we saw the hunormous movieplex audience of wall to wall girls and women, but for a stray male date here and there. Now, the Neilsen ratings folks handing out surveys at the entrance to the theater made sense. Twenty-one minutes of bad demographic-skewed previews later, we were dropped into the world of Hazel Grace Lancaster, a teen girl whose constant fashion accessories are an oxygen tank and her cancer. Hazel tells us right off the bat that this is not to be the happy-go-lucky love story we might be used to. She promises that what we will witness is The Truth. And it is assumed that is what we all want, and I like her for setting that out as the welcome mat. What unfolds over the next 125 minutes is the love story of Hazel and the plucky, cute boy, Augustus, who she meets after reluctantly attending a teen cancer support group. 

 

It’s based upon a book that flew off the shelves and into the hands of teen girls, and secretly, some teen boys, as well as a lot of women in the 18-55 demographic, and into the hearts of those very readers. Shailene Woodley expertly and sweetly worked her way into the hearts of her audience with a performance that was pitch perfect as she presented us with a girl who refused to fall into the sappy, maudlin mess that she was entitled to, given the fact that Hazel was dealing with Stage 4 cancer, and the inevitability of her death. That she falls in love with another cancer survivor,  makes it all the more impressive not to have fall into the maudlin.

It has been so widely read, and adored, that most of the people in the theater came in knowing that one of the young lovers would die. But that didn’t keep all of us from being swept up into the drama. Anyone who knows movies, or how scripts go, was able to predict the ups and downs of this particular ride before it ever began.

Plot Point 1:  Sick Girl is lonely. 

Plot Point 2:  Sick Girl meets Boy Who Used To Be Sick. 

Plot Point 3:  Sick Girl eschews Boy Who Used To Be Sick. 

Plot Point 4: Sick girl and Boy Who Used To Be Sick fall in 

                     love. 

Plot Point 5: Sick girl and Boy Who Used To Be Sick decide to 

                     just be friends. 

Plot Point 6:  Sick girl and Boy Who Used To Be Sick fall in 

                      love again. 

Plot Point 7:  One of them dies. 

Plot Point 8: Lesson learned--Love is worth the pain. 

The End.

With Robert McKee in my head, I saw the twists and turns before I even strapped on my seat belt. Even still, this movie got me. The universal language of young love and hope intertwined with our own ideas of love, either by personal experience, or dreams and hopes, and made everyone watching not mind so much that we all knew what was inevitable in the story of Hazel Grace and Augustus. This isn’t an “important” movie. It doesn’t deal with some looming geo-political issue. But it does say something about us. We crave stories of hope. We are willing to look into the abyss of sadness and pull out the love. Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber did a fine job on the script, but for the ending, that feels like an add-on once it was discovered that the story was taking too long to tell, and a Dave Chappelle Wrap-It-Up-Box was looming over Director John Green’s head. The ending lacked the depth or realness that the rest of the movie displayed. There’s a missed connection that I don’t think would have been there if they’d bothered to bring a woman on board to give some female juju to the very female-driven visual interpretation.

Final analysis is that it is a lovely story, and a lovely film that shows off the abilities of both Shailene Woodley, and Laura Dern as her mother. That they foot faulted in the final minutes, is a shame. But, I say it’s still worth it as a night at the movies. And for this particular moviegoer, it was a cathartic 4-Kleenex reminder that love is worth it, no matter what.

Take a look:  Fault In Our Stars Extended Trailer

 

She Taught the World the Song of All Caged Birds

            In the days after I was hurt in the field by school, my fear of the world around me became a quiet, but forceful rage. I was convinced that I might just explode from within, leaving my body split in half on the floor or sidewalk, depending upon where I happened to be when it occurred. I thought of this often, and how it would need to be cleaned up, and about who would be forced to do my final dirty work. It would be the human version of the snake sheddings I saw in the park across the street. This seemed all the more plausible because it had felt like I was split in two that day, and I was still bleeding “down there,” which might actually be the first sign of this whole body split in half snake shedding thing. I wasn’t sure.

One day after school, I could not focus to do the day’s homework. I had stuffed my face with three days’ worth of snacks, until I heaved over the toilet, puking out sweet release of everything except what refused to leave my body. I walked back to the living room and fell to the floor, crying and screaming. Finally. I somehow ended up on all fours, screaming into the floor, every cubic foot of air that resided in my 8-year-old little body. I screamed until my head hit the floor in exhaustion. And then I screamed some more. As I went to bring my head up, my nose scraped against the itchy carpeting. It hurt. And the hurt somehow also felt good, so I did it again. And then again and again. When this vomiting of rage was over, I laid their exhausted, nose already scabbing over from the rug burn that would remain. The first thing I saw when I finally pulled myself up, was the book my mother had told me I wasn’t old enough to read. I decided in that moment that I was now old enough. So I took the little forbidden paperback into my room. Since I’d vomited as proof, I was deemed sick enough for Grandma Betty days, and my book went with me. When Grandma saw the book I was reading, as she brought me my ginger ale and cinnamon toast, she looked a little surprised.

“Honey, where did you get that book?” she asked, trying to remain unfazed.

“From the bookshelf,” I answered, matter-of-factly.

“I’m not sure you are old enough to be reading that,” she said, still standing there.

“I am,” I answered, and looked up and smiled at her. “Thank you for my toast.”

“You are welcome, you cute little imp, you,” she said, as she walked back into the kitchen, laughing to herself.

Over those few days on her sofa, I read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings from cover to cover. When I got to the chapter where Maya Angelou is raped, it felt like someone had lifted a load of bricks from my chest. My mind spun. That is what happened to me, I thought. I am not the only girl. It was such a small realization. I am not the only girl. I am not the only girl. I am not the only girl. Without realizing it, I had tears running down my face.

“What’s wrong?” Grandma asked, now standing right in front of me. “Is your tumtum bothering you?”

“God doesn’t hate me,” I said, before breaking down, letting the book fall to the floor.

“Of course not, Sweetie,” she said, as she sat down next to me and pulled me in to her pillowy chest. “God loves you. And so does your old grandma.”

I cried in her arms for a long time. And she sat and allowed me to do so for as long as I needed.

“Is everything ok?” she finally asked.

I nodded yes, because it was all I could muster.

I wasn’t sure who this Maya Angelou lady was. I wasn’t even sure I understood the grown up meaning of this title, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. But I did know that she might have saved my life. Well, her and Grandma Betty. Cuz after that day, I didn’t feel as much like walking out in front of a car like I had planned to do when I went back to school, just to be taken away from the hurting. And I was thankful for that.

 

"Maya Angelou had a profound effect" on my life...here is a great collection of who she was.

© 2014 Charise M. Studesville

The Truth. Capital 'T'

Whitney Houston died yesterday afternoon just down the road from me. Like everyone else who loved her in real life or from afar as a fan of her music, I'd really hoped she would get the proverbial drug monkey off her back.  None of us will ever know her particular chaos that dwelled inside her brain. And that's the part, to me, that is so heart-achingly sad. Even surrounded by a staff of handlers, friends, family (and maybe even a sobriety coach? I haven't any idea about that one)---even with all of that, she was alone.  In the inner world of the human mind, we are ultimately at our most alone. There are illnesses that cause complete physical paralysis, while leaving the brain perfectly intact. One, in essence, becomes a captive of their body, like a patient waking from anesthesia, mid-surgery, and being unable to scream.  In actuality, we live a version of that everyday. Some more than others. It's why the ubiquitous neighbor of a serial killer news interview is always some version of, "He was a nice, normal guy. I never would have known." And that's the point. We never really know. This is an absolute that we absolutely know.  Even the most adept communicator cannot convey a 360˚ view of their thoughts and feelings. By virtue of the fact that even with the power to convey a 360˚ view, the person listening has their own 360˚ view that assesses all incoming information via its own prismatic alteration of that original truth.  So, as much as everyone in Hollywood this Grammy weekend wants to figure out and understand, it's a futile effort.  Whitney kept her secrets, and took them with her.  And those who will inevitably claim to know what was in her mind? All we'll ever know from them is their interpretation, not The Truth. 


It occurs to me as so odd that we all go through life knowing that death is part of the deal, and are still rendered utterly dumbfounded when it shows up in close proximity to us. I'm beginning to think that we run around in this world of social constructs, mostly ignoring the fact that much of it balances upon untruths. Then The Truth shows up. Because death is an ablsolute truth. And I think that's the most confusing concept imagineable to us. Our no longer existing is the thing. But the scary addendum on that is that too many of us stop existing long before The Truth in the form of death arrives. I guess it's up to each of us to decide which end to existing is more tragic.

I pray that she finds the peace that so eluded her while she was here.