Your greatest creation is the life you lead...

check out this movie...

Tarnation has to be one of the most compelling documentaries I have seen in a long long time.

Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more -- culled from 19 years of his life.

It was quite uncanny, seeing images of Jonathan acting, hearing his voice talking about his mother, his memories exploding and melting before our eyes as a blur of sounds, of panic in motion.

It was quite uncanny to see images of somebody being subjected to shock therapy (a medium shot of the rubber mouthpiece inserted into the mouth to prevent the patient from biting on their own tongue), and to see an old clip intercut as part of this montage, an image hauntingly familiar to me. It was actually quite bizarre and bordering on creepy - a panic and fear stricken lost mind, groping and clawing at the air around him, that look of despondency, vapid thoughts, industrial whirring sounds that start from the base of the spine and throb incessantly behind you eye sockets.

And while watching those images, I remembered that moment all too well.

I wasn't the only one who felt that way

the movie was an hour and 45 minutes. From the opening to the closing credits, I sat riveted to my couch. The cats made my stomach their trampoline, my legs their feline labyrinth, but nothing could pull my attention away.

Sometimes in life, you reach a period when suffering seems like a solitary experience. The pain and fear inside is unique as your DNA; but then sometimes, there is some one who reaches out, tugs on a hidden strand or two and in that moment, what seems like a tangled web are actually pieces of a common thread.

I now believe that the path to hell and back is a familiar one for many of us who have suffered, and perhaps, we have all seen each other at some point along the way.




and in my midst of creative angst, despair and worry, the tagline to the film speaks to me in so many, many ways.


Your greatest creation is the life you lead...