No one should ever be afraid of their own house. I’ve been watching Paranormal State a lot lately, so this is something I’ve been thinking about. I’d never experienced “house fear” until moving here and checking out the basement den. Initially, the basement was one of the things that excited us the most about this house—it came with a wall unit for the TV and our many DVDs, as well as a laundry room. But once we stepped into it, we both instantly felt that the basement had a creepyness to it, regardless of its awesome practical features. The wood paneling and dark lace curtains that came with the room only added to its bleak feeling.

The first step was simply cleaning. We borrowed Derrick’s mom’s steam mop and went over the floor three or four times before returning the mop. Though the house didn’t come with a stench, it was obvious that the previous tenants were smokers and layer after layer of dirt came off the floor. Though the linoleum still wouldn’t be my first pick of flooring, it lost its dingy look and grimy feel after the multiple mops.

The second step was filling the room. Our central piece of furniture is a futon. We keep buying this futon over and over. We had it in Asheville, got rid of it. We had it in Flagstaff, got rid of it. We got it again here (though thankfully Dad talked Big Lots into letting us take the floor model—yay for skipping installation!) It is a simple black futon, and it’s already been slept on multiple times by guests. But simply filling the space wasn’t enough. The black coloring only brought out what was already dark in the room. I began keeping an eye on futon cover prices, and I eventually found a reasonable red one at Walmart.

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Nobody ever can explain to you what it’s like to lose a loved one. It’s unimaginable how something unexpected can ripple throughout your life. I’m not as much of a reader as I used to be, so I haven’t sought out books on grief, but I’ve watched my share of movies and TV. Hell, I’ve watched eleven seasons of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit this semester. I thought that Pfeiffer’s character, Linda, in the movie Personal Effects really got it right when she said, “I’ve never even been to court before all this happened. It’s like a foreign country in there, the words they use and how things happen, it’s just… It’s like I got on a wrong plane and got off at some fucked up country I’m not supposed to be in.”

This movie hit closer to home than anything else I’ve come across. When I saw the movie poster on Netflix, I remembered the plot vaguely and thought “Oh yea, this seemed like a more serious I Could Never Be Your Woman.” This takes the concept of an unconventional relationship (not quite Harold & Maude) and puts it in the midst of tragedy. Michelle Pfeiffer and Ashton Kutcher play characters who meet in a “murder grief counseling” group. Not only do they eventually develop a romantic relationship, but Kutcher’s character works to help her deaf, bitter son deal with his father’s death. Even in darkness, there is some comic relief provided by Kutcher’s character who has taken the job of a chicken outside a restaurant. Pfeiffer identifies him as the sad chicken, which becomes a metaphor for his whole existence.

I would recommend this movie to anyone, whether you’ve experienced a recent loss or not. I thought the film was surprisingly well made, considering I haven’t really heard anything about it. I had no complaints about anyones’ performance. Pfeiffer’s always wonderful. I thought that this was Kutcher’s best role since The Butterfly Effect. Kathy Bates succeeds in a small part as Kutcher’s mother, focused on helping organized a charity rummage sale.

What really rang true to me in this film were moments like when the grief counselor says something about family of the deceased finding a crutch in the legal system, but the legal system can rarely ever succeed in providing the answers or solutions. For us, we have NO answers. I’ve been really depressed for the last few weeks. My emails to the media have fallen on deaf ears/eyes probably because the law enforcement is providing them with information that contradicts what the district attorney says.

It has been a year and one month since my uncle, Thomas A. Rice Jr., was killed by a gunshot wound to the head. His cause of death is listed as unknown on his death certificate. Nobody cares what happened to him. A complete investigation was never conducted by either local law enforcement or the ABI, which was brought in to investigate but subsequently denied being brought in. Sheriff Grover Smith of Atmore, AL hasn’t responded to my mom’s emails in nine months. Our world is corrupt and cruel.

But you know what? This movie made me feel a little bit better about it all. And I think that’s pretty awesome. Watch it.

Grades were due at 9 this morning, and almost everyone is gone. When first applying for my MA, I wasn’t just picking a school. I was picking a town where I thought I could LIVE. I didn’t pick a town like Phoenix with raging heat and stressful highways. I picked a mountain town, a train town with lots of nice little restaurants and bars—lots of stuff for us to DO. The same thing applied to my MFA selection. Of course, the main thing was for us to return to the South, but we also picked smaller towns with personality.

Milledgeville might be a little too small for Derrick’s taste (and even I think we’re too far from an airport for regular Vegas getaways), but I like this town and I’m glad that we’ve made our home here. I like our comfy house. I like my regular weekend shopping routine of Walmart, Big Lots, and Dollar Tree. When we’ve wanted to do something a little different, we’re in reasonable driving distance away from tons of cool museums, my two favorites so far being the Laurel & Hardy Museum in Harlem and the Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins. We’ve spent weekends away in Chattanooga and at Jekyll Island. A 6 hour driving radius around Milledgeville has TONS of opportunity.

Here’s your backstory: After my sophomore year of college, I moved out of the dorms and into a house. From that point on, I either took summer school classes or worked at the gym during the summer. I would go home for like a week, but that was it. Only about half of my friends went home for the summer—most of them still dorm-livers. Summer was still filled with lots of parties and movie nights.

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Hurricane

by Ernest J. Berry

hurricane
the candle goes out
with the cat