Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015)
As a child I used to walk from my house to my Grandparents' house quite a lot. Back and forth, forth and back. I knew that route like the back of my hand. I still know it like that. One of my favourite things about that walk was the ants. A nest would appear every summer on the corner of a building and I spent many an hour sitting on the street in the heat watching the ants. One time an old man came by and talked to me about how nice it was to see a child spending so much time looking at ants. Well... to begin with he thought I was killing them, but I set him straight on that one, yes indeed. I hadn't killed any insects since that day at Primary school when I came to the rescue of a fellow classmate, and stepped on what was either a bee or a wasp. Boy howdy, did I ever get reprimanded for that! "Imagine how you would feel being stepped on like that" said one of the teachers, so I did. That imagination track made me feel deeply unpleasant, so I didn't do it again.
So I set that old guy straight and then he went on to another tack: started talking about simple times and simple pleasures. He may have mentioned Huck Finn at some point, that sounds about right. He was dressed all in white, and had a hat and cane. I jest you not. That is a straight up fact.
What I didn't mention to this old man was that it was all the terror in the nest that was really drawing me to it. The sheer number of ants, and the mania that they all seemed to be possessed by was fascinating. They moved so fast, and I knew quite well how strong and agile and communicative and acid-firing they were. I used to wonder what it was like *inside* that nest: in the dark, in a narrow winding mass of tunnels. Years later I read an interview with a man called David Lynch and it turns out he used to spend summer days doing the same thing, although I would posit that there's an important difference in my ants being something I was passing, whereas his ants were in his own garden. That's not the same thing at all.
One of the elements I liked least about that walk was the dog. It was an Alsatian, and lived in a basement flat. It was owned by an old lady, who kept her door open all day, but had a kind of saloon door thing, so the top half was open, while the bottom half was closed and bolted. That top half was always open, and that darn dog would scare the bejeezus out of me every time I passed. And the kicker of it all is that I knew the damn thing was there, but it still got me, every time. It had a bark that was pure rage. As though it was waiting for the day the old lady would leave the lower door open so it could bound up the stairs and tear your throat out. Man, I really hated that dog.
Something I didn't hate was the Fishmongers. It was underneath my Grandparents' house and one of the guys who worked there would always call me in and give me a small paper bag of humbugs. It was the olden days back then, and people could just do nice things without everyone freaking the hell out. The humbugs were great, but what I really liked was seeing the shellfish, particularly the crabs. The fish were okay, but they were dead and the crabs were alive, and there they were: moving and lazily snapping their claws, like clockwork Ray Harryhausen creatures slowly winding down. So alien. It was difficult to process that they were actually real.
Sometimes I would go a slightly different route so that I could see the crane fly. The crane fly was squished, smooshed, splattered. It was on a white wall and it was there for years and years and years. Its tenure on the wall demarcated my entire childhood. One day it just wasn't there any more, and I don't remember that transition, I just remember it being there, and now there is nothing but its absence.
So I set that old guy straight and then he went on to another tack: started talking about simple times and simple pleasures. He may have mentioned Huck Finn at some point, that sounds about right. He was dressed all in white, and had a hat and cane. I jest you not. That is a straight up fact.
What I didn't mention to this old man was that it was all the terror in the nest that was really drawing me to it. The sheer number of ants, and the mania that they all seemed to be possessed by was fascinating. They moved so fast, and I knew quite well how strong and agile and communicative and acid-firing they were. I used to wonder what it was like *inside* that nest: in the dark, in a narrow winding mass of tunnels. Years later I read an interview with a man called David Lynch and it turns out he used to spend summer days doing the same thing, although I would posit that there's an important difference in my ants being something I was passing, whereas his ants were in his own garden. That's not the same thing at all.
One of the elements I liked least about that walk was the dog. It was an Alsatian, and lived in a basement flat. It was owned by an old lady, who kept her door open all day, but had a kind of saloon door thing, so the top half was open, while the bottom half was closed and bolted. That top half was always open, and that darn dog would scare the bejeezus out of me every time I passed. And the kicker of it all is that I knew the damn thing was there, but it still got me, every time. It had a bark that was pure rage. As though it was waiting for the day the old lady would leave the lower door open so it could bound up the stairs and tear your throat out. Man, I really hated that dog.
Something I didn't hate was the Fishmongers. It was underneath my Grandparents' house and one of the guys who worked there would always call me in and give me a small paper bag of humbugs. It was the olden days back then, and people could just do nice things without everyone freaking the hell out. The humbugs were great, but what I really liked was seeing the shellfish, particularly the crabs. The fish were okay, but they were dead and the crabs were alive, and there they were: moving and lazily snapping their claws, like clockwork Ray Harryhausen creatures slowly winding down. So alien. It was difficult to process that they were actually real.
Sometimes I would go a slightly different route so that I could see the crane fly. The crane fly was squished, smooshed, splattered. It was on a white wall and it was there for years and years and years. Its tenure on the wall demarcated my entire childhood. One day it just wasn't there any more, and I don't remember that transition, I just remember it being there, and now there is nothing but its absence.