#the racket

Real Story Book / A. Dick / The Racket

New-to-me movies seen in 2024: The Racket (1951)

"Born with an alibi in your mouth, huh?"

We hope that you enjoyed FNF prez Eddie Muller’s presentation of THE RACKET this weekend on @turnerclassicmovies Noir Alley. We devoted NOIR CITY e-magazine No. 2 to the multi-faceted actor Robert Ryan who co-starred in the film. Buy it here.

You know that moment when you first wake, even before you open your crusty eyes? That moment of not-knowing. What day it is, or what time. Even where you are. Like the first few nights in a new city, a new bed, new traffic sounds outside the window. Car horns sound differently in different countries. The air smells differently too, maybe heavy with humidity and clay roads, or dry through your sinuses from the heater on blast all night. Or you’re suddenly waking, back in your childhood bedroom. 

That split moment of not-knowing as I’m just waking, maybe that’s something like what the Buddhists refer to when they speak of not-knowing. Not ignorance. Just, not-knowing. A vague openness to my awakeness, to the day ahead. Before I scrunch up my face, hit snooze, and roll over. Before scrolling through the notifications on my phone or checking my calendar. Before I remember how things are different. 

I get out of bed and splash water on my face, brush my teeth. Make the bed (most of the time) and change into my clothes for the day. I hold onto these little routines even if I have nowhere to go, nobody to see. Smear some SPF moisturizer on my face as a promise to my future self to try to go outside, catch some sunshine. While I hold my toothbrush or start up the kettle waiting for the water to boil, I wonder how many hundreds or thousands of times I have performed these little rituals. These passing in-between moments that weave a constant through my days. 

Even now. 

Sometimes, it’s while I’m getting ready in the morning, standing at my sink and he’s sitting there, on the edge of the tub to my left. Or as I putter around the kitchen waiting for the water to boil for my morning mug of lemon ginger tea. And he’s right next to me, saying hello or reaching out to me. And just as I turn, he’s gone. This is the closest thing I know to ghosts. Memories—or maybe they are spirits—apparating into my present blip of time and space. 

And more than remembering, I feel the black hole in my chest, knowing he’s gone. They say grief comes in waves. One after another as I move through my little universe and come across these invisible black holes throughout my day. One by one. Heart sinking, breaking open wide each time in the gravity of it all. 

“Break often, not like porcelain but like waves.” - these words by poet and psychologist Scherezade Siobhan that I have clung to for many years while learning how to ride these waves of life.

I like to believe there is light on the other end of this black hole. All that matter, all the light of the universe must go somewhere, right? Each time my heart breaks, maybe it cracks open a little wider. So I can hold a little more, care a little deeper. 

As I ride these entropy swells, while everything changes within me and all around, the bittersweetness of loss and love glows in me. I can feel it here in my heart. Oh, how I wish I could just hold him again, comfort him. How he feels both like my child and also an elder—a teacher—all at the same time. Even in his final days, as I curled up in a sleeping bag on the floor next to him, he reached his white paw to my face. Yearning to be held? Or maybe to console me. 

Even when he couldn’t eat, refusing the fresh chicken I fed him by hand. Even when he lost his strength to stand. I carried him to the piano where he used to jump up, stretch out, paws dangling over the strings. Eyes closed, content, purring. And I played him all the songs he knows. I brought my guitar to his bedside and sang him this song [”Say a Little Prayer”]. Letting my song be a form of prayer too. Nourishment comes in many forms. 

This is my own precious loss, my tide pool within our ocean of pain, suffering, fear. Love and loneliness and loss. Our dreams and our grief. That we are all swimming in right now. Maybe not even swimming, maybe some of us are doggy paddling. Or treading desperately to keep our heads just above the choppy waters. All of us—I see our faces, I can feel our hearts—just beings, bobbing together among the entropy swells. 

Do prayers work? I don’t really know. I do like to think we’re all connected in some way deeper than we might know. So here I am, not-knowing, yet again. And singing along with Lianne and Aretha and Dianna. And I say a little prayer. Like sending off a paper airplane love letter. Sometimes for him and his memory-ghost. And more often, for all the rest of us, still here and riding these waves. Sometimes, the moment I wake up... And also while brushing my teeth or while waiting for the water to boil as I prepare my tea.

--

In memory of Tiger (05/2007 - 4/12/2020)

Written for and read as part of The Racket Reading Series: Songs from a Room, Thursday 4/16/20 via Zoom during the covid-19 quarantine, by invitation of Noah Sanders.

Prompt: choose a song that has been helping you get through these times and write about it

The Racket | John Cromwell (& others) | 1951