Repetition Island

Day Sleeper. That’s what the sign on the door said. It meant Mardi worked nights. Slept days, worked nights. The sun goes down and she enters El Cerrito. The sun comes up and she’s back in her room, the secret place of the stairs, the green bed, cedar beams, the roar of the passing trucks on the highway outside.

When all was said and done there was nothing new under the California sun. Beckett said that and somebody else. Wasn’t it a song too? Mardi read a lot at dawn and in the evening before setting out. She worked as a projectionist at the Cerrito Theatre on San Pablo Avenue and after screenings she did extra shifts serving food and beer until the place shut for the night. It’s true she was home by 3 am but she was still wired and too awake for sleep. Spikenard oil helped a little with that. She’d rub some on her chest and swore her heart was slowing down as it seeped through the skin.

The best thing was watching the movies, though, over and over. Last week, it was the remake of Breathless. Richard Gere as Belmondo, in blinding tartan trousers pursuing a wild Jerry Lee Lewis kind of west coast revolution. Destiny and tragedy. He died at midnight, every night, and it was a beautiful, inevitable thing. She played the Byrd’s Turn, Turn Turn, over the pa when the lights came up and she was sure the patrons got it.

The almond tree and the grasshopper, thought Mardi. Ever the silver cord be loosed….

Mardi is a suspense sex mystery. She stops before a poster stapled to the trunk of a palm tree. It reads: Each of us is born with a share of the family jewels. Everyone except Mardi, she thinks. She dresses in a blonde French twist and a tropical-green suit. Her satin girdle swishes against the tropical-green gabardine of her pencil skirt. This is the image she’s going for, contained, repressed. In other words, irresistible. She stares off in the distance as she moves across the island, taking, taking. A man with dark hair witnesses her persistent filching, mostly money, but also emeralds from the local mine, and an occasional tube of lipstick. He thinks he’s the only one to see this, and so he falls in love with her. Mardi struggles against his fake American accent. The man wants to give Mardi his family jewels, so he turns his back to her, hoping she’ll reach out and grab them. Mardi considers the family jewels, their pink, sweaty glistening, but she doesn’t budge. She can tell the difference between fake unawares and true macho vulnerability. She’s determined this man will never see what he’s already seen, beneath her tropical-green suit, the raw red thrumming as her hand glides toward bounty she was unborn for.

John Lock hunts boars. boars get killed. maybe later, out of the frame, they get eaten. that we don’t see. some don’t get killed. frightened and frightening they escape. they run out of the frame. these boars, running and escaping, are not eaten. they go in the forest. at least we presume they do. at least we know they go out of the frame. where they go that we don’t see. later, or very soon after, they remain there, there where we don’t know. John Lock doesn’t hunt anymore, he doesn’t kill, neither frightened nor frightening no one eats them. over the 5 years and as many remaining seasons of Lost on ABC channel, boars are gone.

I remember my brother telling me once how he couldn’t watch movies anymore because he was obsessed with a hat forgotten by Cary Grant in his train cabin, a door left open as it should have been closed, a cigarette not put off in the ashtray, the character leaving the room, the whole world not disappearing in the chaos of flames behind him. boars are like that. they have been forgotten. they left the screen and left the script. frightening and frightened. they ran so far, breathless out of the frame and their absence, the general indifference of the world to this gap in the fiction, leaves the obsession of a question echoing another: where did the boars go when their script was interrupted?

in French there is a word that is probably impossible to translate in its ful intensity as it performs what it designates : la souille. if the question is still valid there lies our answer : when the boars fall out of the frame, they go in la souille. in this place of la souille they perform their absence out of the script of the island. in its language la souille has two meanings, it is the den as a place of mud where animals lay themselves and grovel, but it is also the place in the sand where boats come to die, la souille names this concave space of the boat’s imprint in the wet sand of its graveyard.

la souille is nothing in itself, it exists only as the negative space resulting from the slow pressure of a an external body. i like to think that if boars and boats were to be taken out of their respective mud very quickly, for few seconds, la souille would appear to our eyes for a moment. before vanishing, it would reveal itself fully to our eyes, and on a retina suddenly made of mud would fade as an afterimage in the intimacy of our shut eyelids.

Vendredi appeared to Robinson on Friday, and the day gives its name to his frightened face coming out of the bush. Vendredi is, for Robinson, the figure of an event making possible all events once again. before Vendredi, Robinson’s desperate time had a name: la souille. in the heart of the island, letting his body slide in the mud hole left warm by boars, Robinson suspends the script of a possible life on the island. in this place, he suspends law, economy, language, structures, all the narratives he invented to give depth and dimensions to his world deserted by the figure of the other. there, in the warmth of the soil, he abandons his figure to a place where man is not even yet a possible fiction and slips out of the frame into the unscripted real of la souille. Before Vendredi, everyday on the island was called Mardi.

Maybe this is the only way to sit down and write about Mardi: on the balcony of an overpriced villa overlooking the sea, with your own pool and deck chairs, naked.

The tiles of this pool are not soft, they don’t let your feet glide over them, covered by just the right amount of slime, these tiles are worn, the glaze is off most. It doesn’t hurt, it just feels tired.

If I look ahead of me, my glance avoiding the white stucco pillar holding up Mardi’s second floor terrace, I see, on the deck below our (our?) liver shaped pool a beige cement balcony–is it still a balcony if it’s so big?–with 3 blue adjustable lounge chairs, two greenish reclining bamboo fauteuils and a white plastic, nonadjustable recliner (the other 7 are piled on top of one another in the shadiest corner–we like sitting in the sun.)

Our neighbors have a better view. Mardi used to say: ‘They always do.’ I wonder: if one were able to purchase the most expensive villa here on the coast, money really no option, if on the day the deal closed one would sit satisfied on one’s very own pool deck and look right and see the pool deck of one’s new neighbor jutting out three extra feet and think, ‘I should have bought that one.’ Does everyone do that? Does everyone wonder as often as Mardi and I do, ‘have we made the right choice?’ Whenever we acquire something Mardi asks me: ‘Do we have the best one?’ And she plants a notion as beefy as viral advertising that squirms around in my brain forcing me to compare & evaluate –repeat–measure & gauge & resolve–repeat–Is there anything better out there? I wonder if it’s got to do with wanting to be not only own the best. I mean is it the same kind of habitual diligence that steers personal careers or is it different because when Mardi asks and I listen it’s applied to things?

Mardi tells anyone who will listen about routine diligence, ‘that skillful but slow moving “arranger” who begins by letting our minds suffer for weeks on end in temporary quarters, but whom our minds are nonetheless only too happy to discover at last.’ For without it, she warns, the klinking of the ice cubes in her sweaty gin and tonic harmoniously sounding along with her sneered counsel, ‘reduced to their own devices, our minds would be powerless to make any room seem habitable.’

Mardi is a dancer. He was born on Repetition Island. He grew up without his parents, as it often happens in this island. He was raised in a community with 29 other children of different ages. He’s tall and keeps is hair long. Mardi is the last interpreter of a specific ritualistic dance created in Repetition Island some 180 years ago. An older woman was his teacher, or his companion, as he mentions her. First she taught Mardi how to breathe. Then she initiated him in his process of vibrating – a complex set of actions that allows the body to receive, interpret and transmit different types of messages. Later he learned how to distinct these feelings. Mardi lives from his work in the community. He doesn’t speak any word of any language. When he’s dancing he closes his eyes while repeating his choreography, the choreography he has invented from his daily actions. He doesn’t keep any drawings or schemes of his choreographies; he memorizes them and creates new movements when needed. He doesn’t need music to dance. He performs a dedicate and precise set of acts, physical and intellectual, from which it comes shapes of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit. Mardi still dances every day.

Mardi had had enough. She quit. She quit yesterday too. But today was too much. The shake machine wasn’t working. She ran out of ketchup, and now someone’s broken the toilet seat.

She didn’t want to quit. But running this McDonald’s on her own is just too much. She thought that if she got up early enough she could plan for everything. She diced the onions, thawed the meat, even counted out change in advance of sales so that everything would be as efficient as possible during the day.

She wanted just a little restaurant, to run her own business without the risk of bankruptcy. And what’s less risky than McDonald’s? She made her own toys at night to put into the Happy Meals the next day. She invented her own sandwiches like not just “The Big Mac” but “The Biggest Mac” which was five hamburgers stacked on top of each other. It was fun.

But this was too much. The line went out the door and snaked around the building. The first thing to go was the drive through. She couldn’t be in two places at once. Taking the order from the microphone and serving customers at the counter got too confusing. And then she had to close Playland because someone took a shit in the ball pool and there just wasn’t time to clean it all out.

She thought being the only employee of her own McDonald’s would be fun and unique. And for the first week or so it was. But now word has spread and everyone’s coming. A lot of them are rude. They’re tired of waiting in line and she rarely sees a friendly face. It’s not like Mardi to quit. She has worked almost every day of her life since she was fifteen. But she wanted this job to be fun, not another habit to fall into. Today, she promises herself, will be her last day.

“Mardi,” you say, “like Mardi Gras. You know: New Orleans, Rio, Samba….” You want to add Bakhtin, and a critique of meat-centric religiosity but you don’t.  The clerk looks at you, fills in the FIRST NAME blank. And continues: “Color of Eyes? Hair?” You have brown eyes and dark brown hair that is slightly thinning, despite the wonder shampoos that line the rim of your bathtub. When you had a headful of lush hair you rebelled against your name and undermined your parent’s failed creativity. You went strictly vegan. Your love of anything diary and cured meats quickly called you back to omnivorism.  Last night you had pork belly. This morning a cheese omelet—a little too runny for your taste.
“Excuse me! Do I have to repeat everything? When exactly did you lose your driver’s license?” You don’t know (you don’t really drive and avoid the wheel as much as possible). Could be anywhere between last March and yesterday.  Who checks the thing on a daily basis anyway? So you take a wild guess to make things proceed: “Friday before last.”

Spray the same perfume to clothes or the pulses of a body, everyday, and eventually the scent will no longer register. Repetition is a performance of love, eventually it erodes its object.

A movie is an island: it is aware of the world beyond its edge, but the edge is always visible. The opening sequence of Mister Lonely follows a Michael Jackson impersonator on a small motorbike around a practice track. A toy imitates a monkey and the song Mister Lonely plays, of course. The sequence ends, there is a technical fault in the cinema and the projection of the film cuts out. The cinema operators recommence the film from the beginning. The second time the opening sequence is played it feels much shorter. It seems the first time you experience something you can’t appreciate its distance.

Their life is like playing the eternal football game… There is always football being played on the island, because it is perpetual, a game can never be repeated, so M plays everyday and everyday it is the same and everyday it is different. He watches a movie, although in fact it is a documentary about movies, called Los Angeles Plays Itself. Everything about the place seems so loaded with meaning. A different video plays through M’s mind, two people in a car, subtitles read: Something happens, then it happens again, this is meaning. Yet a song or perfume may be repeated too often and some meaning disappears because its vitality is somehow diminished through familiarity. Los Angeles is always repeated in movies, so everything about that LA island, that M watches from his own island, seems so meaningful until the narrator says that really it is just a very convenient location, because it is just there, just outside all the studios. M sprays perfume in front of him and walks through the mist, this way the fragrance is a little bit weaker than how it smells in the bottle. In the bottle it is an object, in the air it contributes to atmosphere. Atmosphere is what spaces have instead of emotions. M prefers perfume ads in magazines that do not contain a sample of the smell, he considers the atmosphere inferred in the advertising image to be more descriptive and of course there is always a slight scent of the cheap glue. Perfume titles include Obsession, Mystere and Island Bermuda.

The only way to reach the island is by plane.

I threw up twice before getting on the plane.
36. Dear Dick,
No woman is an island-ess. We fall in love in hope of anchoring ourselves to someone else, to keep from falling.
—Chris Kraus, I Love Dick

When you wrote to me I thought of a story that is stuck in a loop.

M lives on an island. Each day the sun rises and falls.

Ding-dong. Door opens.

Receptionist: What’s your name?

Mardi’s sister (shouting):  MARDI! She’s asking you ‘what’s your name’.

Mardi: Oh, it’s Mardi.

Sitting. Waiting. Two pale, middle-aged women are also waiting. One calls the other auntie.

Woman: I’ve been poisoned by needles.

Auntie (Nodding, seemingly shocked face)

Woman: It’s a bad country, because WE are bad. We’re evil.

Woman: I’d rather they sell drugs than poison us with medication.

Auntie: Don’t say that. Both are bad.

Woman: NO. At least if you want to take drugs, you know what’s going to happen to you. But to mix needles with salt and water. That’s just wrong. Even this expensive pharmacy. You know, they should put them in the fridge. I take the plane and I put it in the fridge. I always do. In Switzerland, I put it in the fridge. Stick it in the fridge. They are expired that’s why they cost 750, while they should cost 7500. My daughter’s husband owns a printmaking factory. He knows about expiration dates.

Receptionist: Mardi, Mardi, Mardi!

Mardi: Oh, that’s me.

Mardi enters the dentist’s room.

Dentist: That’s bad. I can’t pull it out. Your mouth is like a piano, Mardi. Here. Where’s his number? I thought I had pulled out this tooth. Two? How come I didn’t document it into my computer? Hmmm… OK, Mardi, go see this doctor. He’s a piano specialist. Maybe we’ll leave the wisdom tooth to grow out, and just pull out the one in front of it. You can’t live with a piano-looking mouth.

Mardi: What’s’ wrong with that?

Dentist: Oh! That’s bad!!!