I'm a House Plant

We've been conditioned to believe we should be happy all the time.  Other people are.  We should be, too.  Other people don't get bored.  You can see them out, eating, laughing, being fashionable. When we are not there or that. . . what?  Do they have more inner resources?  They seem to enjoy everything.  "OMG!"  It's a Barbie World.  

Maybe that is the attraction of a Wes Anderson film.  Not that everyone is happy and having fun.  Just the opposite.  It is a through the looking glass world of vacant emotions. Things happen, but nobody gets excited in his Xanax/Prozac universe.  

Those happy people are a middle-class version of The New American Dream.  Everyone can have it all.  It's a Rainbow World.  I'll admit, it is a nice alternative to the redneck culture of hate and destruction.  It is a swell relief from the schlubs shopping at the Dollar Store, to panhandling drug addicts and tent cities.  So sure. . . yea. . . I'll go to brunch.  Or I would if. . . . 

Anderson's view, though, is an upper crust world of Victorian masks that disguise both pleasure and pain.  Emotions are gaudy.  It is a wonderful relief from the World of Oprahs.  

It is better to say, "I am very angry" in a flat, dull voice than to show it.  There should be subtlety to both love and hate.  

I have learned in most situations to be a house plant.  That, at least, is my internal mantra when shit gets wild.  

"I'm a house plant, I'm a house plant, I'm a houseplant."  

It works most times, but it can drive people crazy, too.  Well, I mean people on the verge of crazy already.  

In conclusion, the hoi polloi love to see emotion.  They like to cry or be outraged when the cameras roll.  Or they like to scream and shout and give the old bull horn hand gesture to show how much fun they are having.  Subtlety is not there in their purview.  

Redneck and hillbilly haters like to talk through clenched jaws, eyes narrowed, fists clenched, ready to fight the world.  And they love Jesus.    

Neither of them can really stand that upper class Victorian mask of equanimity.  

So. . . how in the fuck has Anderson's new film become so popular?  It is setting box office records, I've read.  

Oh. . . I wrote "Astroid City" yesterday instead of "Asteroid City."  Oops.  They're both words.  

It's all a mystery to me.  "Succession" was a good example of restrained emotions, but people liked that one because they envy the wealthy.  There is no obvious wealth in "Asteroid City."  And yet. . . . 

Obviously I'm a writer in search of a subject.  What if you wrote a blog and nobody came?  It wouldn't matter.  It's just a blog.  

I spent yesterday in a vacuum chamber.  Nothing happened.  There is nothing to report.  I'm living with the universal hum.  There is only this. 

"I'm a house plant. . . I'm a house plant. . . ."