by Don Hall

I never mean to make my mother feel bad but when pressed by the question "How do like coming to Wichita?" my answer is almost always "It's like doing time in an Italian prison."

I know this irks mom. She loves Wichita. When she and dad lived out in the sticks of Marion, KS, she went a bit stir crazy because it was so small, so remote, with virtually nothing to do. She craved coming back to Wichita because it was her home and was filled with a city-life which Marion could not compete. I do not love Wichita. I love Chicago. Amanda Knox (you know, the college girl accused and convicted of murdering her roommate and her boyfriend and wrongfully imprisoned in Italy for a few years) wrote about her time in the Italian prison that for awhile she kept thinking of getting out of prison, freedom, as her life. She suddenly realized that her life was that moment, that incarceration was her life.

She stared at her reflection and saw the truth.

While not incarcerated, I am a bit isolated here in Kansas. Granted much of that isolation is by choice. The dual purpose tools in my bag—trust and optimism—aren't functioning the way they used to. Instead of opportunities to act upon, I mostly see obstacles in the way, the worst possible outcomes for any endeavor.

This is different. I keep thinking I'll snap out of it or will myself into those happier places.

I have my family and they are a universal good in my days. They need me and I'm needing to be useful. They're also funny and wise and I need both of those as well. That said, there are too many moments of that shell-shocked thousand-yard stare in my days, too much napping and then insomnia, stuffing all of it down (as I do) and then suddenly finding myself in a hard, ugly cry at an episode of Star Trek.

I am on a loop of looking into my past as if there is no future worth thinking about like a self-involved accident victim, only able to see and feel the scars of yesterday. There are a couple of films lately that, like Knox looking into her own pool of narcissism and self revelation, remind me of exactly who and how I am at this moment in my life.

The Omega Man (1971)

Chuck Heston is the last human alive on planet Earth. He lives in a high-rise apartment in an abandoned L.A., driving his hot car around during the day to forage for food and stuff and getting back in to his chess and books at night when the vampires come out. He holds conversations with a marble bust of Caesar, his chess opponent.

I started playing online chess in the past few months. It’s absorbing and is easy to get sucked into when sitting in a single apartment. I forage by day and hide in my place at night.

Heston has to find an unbearably hot Rosalind Cash to shock himself out his routine. He has to find other people to protect from the human monsters out in the streets at night. He has to find a purpose. Then he dies, like Christ, in a fountain.

Uplifting stuff.

The Brood (1979)

Divorce is brutal. Even if it ends up being for the best, it is the severing of a limb, the cutting out of a vital organ, a culling of all that supported a unified vision of self. It hurts. Some broken marriages result in petty but righteous anger with both sides doing all they can to destroy their ex if only for something to do apart from mourn the loss. Set the world on fire rather than experience the anguish alone.

Enter a young David Cronenberg fresh off a handful of indie body horror successes, Shivers and Rabid. Cronenberg had also just gone through his own divorce so he created The Brood—the lunatic tale of Hal Raglan, a man investigating the controversial Somafree Institute of Psychoplasmics where his estranged wife is institutionalized. Amidst their bitter custody battle, Hal discovers a series of murders connected to the Institute.

The murders are the deformed, unnatural progeny of his wife birthed from her deep-seated rage and trauma.

Yeah. Divorce sucks.

Groundhog Day (1993)

Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a Pittsburgh news reporter who believes he is above everyone. He believes he is special and important and looks down at anyone and everyone in his path—his cameraman (Chris Elliott in a role I can watch him in and not feel like punching him in the nuts), his producer (Andie McDowell), the town elders, the waitresses, the townsfolk—everyone. Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania is to Phil what Wichita, Kansas is to me. Stuck in this tiny, ordinary, American place he begins reliving the same day. I read somewhere that, if mathematically calculated, Phil relives February 2nd for over 30 years.

He commits suicide over and over. He sleeps with every remotely available woman. He robs the banks. Then he decides that his producer is his way out. That if she falls in love with him, he will move on to February 3rd. He gets to the point where he has won her heart (in a fake and manipulative manner) and... he is still stuck in purgatory.

He decides, while he is there, to access his natural curiosity about the world and learn things. To play piano. To ice sculpt. To cook. He starts helping people—changing the tire that always goes flat, catching the kid that always falls from the tree. He begins to love the people around him. He sees them as fully realized human beings. He no longer feels that he is special; he sees that in this town of hicks and rubes that he is, in fact, the least of them all. They are special and he is common.

And only then does he fall in love and that love is returned and he wakes up on February 3rd. Which is, coincidentally, my birthday.

Less grim, more on point, and funny. On my best days I can laugh at all of this with a gallows sense of humor. I'm not quite ready to either try suicide or ice sculpting but, in principle, I understand the message Ramis is sending.

Yes Man (2008)

Carl, a bank loan officer played by pre-Andy Kaufman meltdown Jim Carrey, has become withdrawn since his divorce. He has an increasingly negative outlook on his life and routinely ignores his friends Peter and Rooney. On the advice of an old colleague he attends a motivational seminar that encourages people to seize the opportunity to say "Yes!" At the seminar, Carl meets inspirational guru Terrence, who tells him to enter a "covenant with the universe" and say yes to anything asked of him.

Strangely, I can actually feel the early scenes as Carl chooses to isolate instead of engage like a wound that won't heal. There is a comfort in avoiding the entanglements of people especially when the ability to trust almost anyone is crippled.

I wrote in the book about my third divorce that I'm the peripheral character in the lives of those whom I connect. I'm that guy—that guy who has all the stories of love and loss and stupidly stumbling through life without a compass.

The only way I get back to being that guy is if I start saying yes again. After a year and change, I may be ready to living things in the affirmative.