mmdcccxxxviii

“Is her name really Meerkat?”

Says the man during a conversation
about one of my favorite film directors.
Back to form? he says and I wonder skep

tically when she ever lost her so-called 

form in the first place?  This is petty

of me, I think, given that his was
at least a back-handed compliment.
There is a ritual that for decades now
has given me unfathomable amounts
of joy: watching film trailers.  For hours
sometimes.  Only these days it’s only
the trailers (just like it’s only me).
I’ve been at the cinema twice in
the past three years (as compared
to the zillions of times the previous 

three).  So I can speak to this, no? 

Occasionally, I’ve taken Netflix up 

on a free month or two, but even 

then I cannot watch a thing in there. 

It’s not the screen being so small. It 

is my inability to dismiss the surroundings 

of my present predicament; the questions 

that demand decisive and urgent answers.

My retrieval into the celebrity of the small 

screen has been meandering but thorough. 

Only now, since I just tore my back, I’ll be 

going on an indefinite leave. “It’s all con

nected. We can get to the 

bottom of it.”

My weapon of
choice (martial arts-wise) is the
killer umbrella.  A killer umbrella?
Or, until now at least, it was my
go-to.  Probably more than any
other reason because it’s so…
unlikely?  At least in that historical
Hong Kong martial arts flick
cinematic genre’s original way.
It is outlandishly imaginative
and was at first just plain beyond 

my version of possibility.  There is
no right word, much as I am
positive there is one, for
this phenomenon, this notion
of umbrella as magical realist
weapon. As I attempt to stare
at a future self everything begins
to make sense in this killer umbrellas
sense.  What a lost form.  Torn
abdomens.  Families of meerkats
with no names, only so someone
who concocts names can give birth
to something, some anomaly.
And what results is a person
named Meerkat.  And this is for
life (will it inevitably have the 

pizazz of Cher or Madonna, say?
Likely not!).  And so I wonder,
why this pyrotechnical eureka,
this everything making sense
all of a sudden (like that
moment during the first sem-
ester of my sophomore year of
undergrad, nearly two-thirds of
the way through the term, during
which my courses were Physics III,
Organic Chemistry II and a class
that gave dramatic/cinematic
closure—with the scary pro-
bability of a sequel—to all
of the mathematics/algebra/
trigonometry/calculus courses I 

had thus far endured)?  Everything 

makes sense sometimes, right?  Or

is it just me?  Do we not each
have such moments?  I wouldn’t
know, of course.  But did you
know (as I now do, and am
compelled to share) that
meerkats are “social, desert-

dwelling mongooses known for 

their cooperative society, with 

members taking on roles like 

sentries and babysitters to 

protect the group.”  And that 

in large groups they’re called 

mobs or clans?