My thoughts on Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

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I know this is taboo in the literary community, but I first saw the movie version of this novel. This faux pas was because I had no idea this fantastic series existed, and it was entirely by accident that I discovered the first book of this trilogy. I loved the concept that the film presented. This idea of being invaded, but not to the point of our destruction, but to a new level of annihilation that involves absorption and a strange/ beautiful kind of evolution. So, like any sci-fi geek, I went in search of merch. I found a shirt on Red Bubble depicting the all-female expedition team entering into what the movie calls “The Shimmer.” Then, lo and behold, I kept finding links to Amazon, which led to a near orgasmic revelation that this was a book first. I ordered the first book, which shares the same title as the movie. And from that point on, I was immersed and what Vandermeer referred to as Area X. (Although, here’s another naughty confession… I like the name “The Shimmer” due to the symbolic visual it creates with the idea of hypnotic trances and all the beautiful light references in the text itself. )   

Four female characters (a manipulative psychologist/hypnotist, an anthropologist, a surveyor, and our protagonist, the biologist) are dispatched into this quarantined area in an intense state of hypnosis, making the slow reveal of the surreal Giger-esque flora and fauna even more terrifying. And just another reason why I may or may not be avoiding finding a new psychologist. I love the idea that such a strange place could exist in Florida for so long without anyone else in the world questioning it outside of it just being taped off as the site of environmental disaster/ industrial oopsie. As a Florida resident, sometimes I feel like I live in Area X and the people and the animals are fascinating and occasionally frightening alien-made amalgamations and doppelgangers. I suspect my DNA has become genetically modified with Vandermeer’s philosophy writing lichen and a splash of lazy iguana. I know it is an invasive species, but I wasn’t born down here, so I feel it makes sense. 

 I have already ordered the second book, Authority, and when it arrives, to quote one badass biologist, “don’t follow me,” I will be tucked away in my reading chair, and “I am not returning home.” Send snacks! 

Final Thoughts and Looking Forward.

It’s time to see exactly what’s happening at the mysterious Southern Reach Corporation or the ones “in charge” of this weird slice of SoFlo, which I suspect may be a subsidiary of the devious Umbrella Corporation. The logos sure look similar. 

The Second Lost Generation

When it comes to comprehending the emotional obstacles of an incoming generation to academia, I think creative writing professors like myself have an advantage. Our assignments pull from that same preternatural place of creativity that also houses all their joy, trauma, and anger. There is so much more happening to them than most teachers, the media, and even their parents realize.

Even though I warn my creative writing students against clichés, this is the only way to describe them. They are walking, talking open books. But lately, I have noticed many of them are ending up on shelves marked for tragedy, horror, and sad memoirs. Oh, and let’s not forget the very symbolic dystopian future, which many of them are convinced is just getting started. Last year, when 2020 started to ramp up into a category five shit storm, I began to receive poetry and fiction from my creative writing classes that made me question when people would realize this was becoming a problem. And, if we all don’t cut out all of our collective crap, these young people are going to have a mental breakdown of Hemmingway-esque proportions. In fact, in my mind, I don’t refer to them as “Gen Z”; I often refer to them as the second lost generation. And their writing has the same sad echoes of the one that proceeded them in the 1920s, ironically not long after a global bird flu pandemic and WWI ended.

I got odes to their dead family members that died alone on ventilators. When it was time for creative nonfiction, many of them were pumping out essays on how they had lost hope that anything would ever be normal again. I also got pieces primed with anger towards the authorities, the government, and anyone that they had every right to blame for not taking the threat as seriously as they should have. Then, I got work that was nothing but them just experiencing the terrifying void of isolation. Some were poetically crying for their mothers, like preschoolers starting their first day. The ones that gave me a chill were the pieces prepping for the possibility that they were about to die before legally being able to quite this fear a little through alcoholic means.  In 2021, I have noticed they have slipped into a state of sad acceptance that their lives will never be the same. Recently, I had them read Gail White’s “My Personal Recollections on Not Being Asked to Prom.” It’s a rather humorous poem. I’ll provide a link to it at the bottom. To sum it up, it is an English sonnet on how she didn’t find prom to be that big of a deal. Also, she would make jokes about how boys weren’t looking at her “that way” and, at the time, preferred “big boobs over brains.” I got responses from a few of my students that made me curl up in bed and cry for them.

In short, a lot of them could not relate to the overall theme of the poem. A lot of them did not have a prom before entering college because of COVID. One girl said it would have been nice to have the option to go or not to go. Another student said they would have preferred if they could have gone to their graduation instead. One said they would have been the first one to walk across that graduation stage in two generations. And the ones that stuck with me the most were them joking that they probably won’t have a semi-normal graduation experience at the end of their college senior year as well.

The first lost generation (a term coined by one of its talented writers Gertrude Stein) constantly created poetry and prose that reflected their tempestuous mental states. Their themes were often a turbulent mixture of loss, hopelessness, and disillusionment. Writers like Ernest Hemmingway, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald were all suspected of suffering from crippling depression, war-related PTSD, Bipolar I and II, schizophrenia, narcissism, and borderline personality disorders. Many of them developed drug addictions to self-medicate. The most common one was alcohol.

Granted, these people were not saints. Hemmingway had an infamously lousy temper and was not above inflicting violence on someone who irked him. Fitzgerald was in a codependent marriage with the famous and equally talented Zelda Fitzgerald. They both had affairs on multiple occasions and suffered from depression and alcoholism. Pound was a well-known anti-Semite, charged with treason, and spent a large portion of his life in an asylum for the criminally insane. He was diagnosed with a toxic mix of narcissistic personality disorder and schizophrenia. However, this current generation is not brimming with saints as well. They are ripping apart bathrooms and hitting teachers for likes on Tik-Tok. The problem is they have access to more technology, meaning they can do more irreversible damage to their reputations and futures.   

My students may be traumatized, but they are not stupid. They realize we live in Florida, where the COVID rates shot up because school mask mandates started to vary from county to county due to Governor DeSantis trying to appeal to Trump supporters by getting them banned from all schools. How about we stop quarreling over masks and vaccines and take a good hard look at how it affects young people and what they are missing out on and sack up and do the right thing. This generation has already seen a significant spike in many mental health/behavioral problems due to the pandemic.  Get the vaccine. Where a mask. Or I’m afraid they are just going to get lost on the shelves between young adult dystopian despair and the existential zombie novellas while being neighbors to the first lost, but not the last “lost” generation.

https://www2.latech.edu/~bmagee/louisiana_anthology/303_download/texts/need_permission_1st/white/white_poems.html

Don’t forget that September is National Suicide Prevention Month. The Suicide Hotline is open 24/7 ☎️18002738255

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Don’t forget that September is National Suicide Prevention Month. The Suicide Hotline is open 24/7 ☎️18002738255

My Grandfather is My Anchor in the Year 2021.

There are times when I tend to respond very negatively to anyone that reminds me of my father. As crazy as this is, this includes older men like Donald Trump and Governor DeSantis. They both have this undulating aura of toxic masculine bravado. The type of energy that says, not only do I think I know everything, but also I will gaslight you into thinking that you’re the odd one out for not jumping on board my crazy train. So, to remind me that there are incredible men out there, I force myself to remember my grandfather. 

 My grandfather was a World War II Navy veteran. I can’t even imagine being on board a ship and wondering if my death will come from above or below. Will I die from a Nazi sub or a Japanese machine gun mounted on a plane that would also have no problem slamming into the deck above my head? What’s crazy is that my grandfather was only 15. Yup, you read that right! My great-grandmother decided that the war was an excellent time to start investing. Unfortunately, instead of war bonds, she decided to gamble on the lives of all her sons. My grandfather didn’t have a birth certificate because if you were born down south during the height of The Great Depression, it was unlikely that your family would have access to such a luxury item. 

To top it all off, he walked into the draft office with nothing but a third-grade education because he was too busy helping to support his family to even make it past grade school. My great-grandmother made sure all of his and his brothers’ checks were sent to her. It makes me nauseous just thinking about it. I try to imagine the moment when they asked for his age. And, it’s not out of malice for the obviously desperate or possibly nearsighted recruiting officer. It’s because my grandfather was not much of a liar, and he was so thin and diminutive that he looked even younger than 15. I can’t imagine him trying to pull off such a thing. I’ve seen pictures of him during this frightening yet fascinating time in his life. My favorite one is of him and his shipmates standing on a set of bleachers. He is surrounded by these men who look like they are all blood relatives of the guy on the Brawny paper towels logo. If you play a hardcore game of Where’s Waldo, you will eventually find him nudged in between two men that are at least three times his size.  

I was lucky to inherit his uniform. To give you another visual of how small he was, you must know I am 5’4 and 180-ish pounds. The last time I was able to fit in my grandfather’s uniform was in middle school. It looks like it belongs to a child. 

After the war, my grandfather went on to become an electrician. Remember, he had not finished school before being swept out to sea by my great-grandmother’s greed. Also, my mother suspects he had some sort of learning disability and struggled with reading. Amazingly, through a lot of effort and studying, he overcame all of that and passed the necessary tests and apprenticeships. He went on to work on some of the most famous damns across this country and overseas. There’s a picture, which I am particularly fond of, of him in his electrician uniform and helmet working on one of the damns at Niagara Falls. Yeah, my little grandfather helped maintain larger-than-life structures built to hold back the wrath and harness the power of large rivers that often remind me of all the boisterous and bullheaded men that get on my nerves. He was stronger than them in so many ways. 

And it wasn’t just his career achievements that calm me down whenever the news is congested with greasy and growling men that have no regard for other people’s emotional and physical well-being. He was also a very kind and gentle soul. It’s no secret that my mother was more than likely the product of an affair. However, my grandfather did not treat her any differently than his other two sons. He loved her very much, even though she was a constant walking talking reminder of my grandmother’s infidelity. 

Then, when I came into the picture, he treated me no differently than any other of his grandchildren. I look nothing like my cousins. I remember him teaching me how to use a slingshot, fish, and most importantly, he was the grand purveyor of hugs and was not afraid to show emotions. I think the most important thing he taught me was that men don’t have to be larger than life, stubborn, and walk around with some strange sense of entitlement that comes with having a cock. When he finally succumbed to Parkinson’s disease, it was like watching a flame flicker way too long and too hard into the wind. 

So when I see DeSantis making all these decisions that are nothing but him grandstanding and trying to measure up to Trump, and all my innards twist and coil up with rage, I remember my grandfather. I could picture him handling all of this with ease and a sense of calm that only someone like him could have. He would be the first in line to get a vaccine, and he would make sure that everyone in his family circle wore masks. He would understand that this is not just about him and his family but the safety of everyone around him. His time in the United States Navy made him see that we can either die together or keep the ship moving forward. 

self

orange peels fresh in the sinkmy finger tips scented by their honeyoutside the heat lectures the breezelittle birds lined up fluffy down ornamentsi ask myselfself what will you do todayand i answer i dont knowyou do that everyday selfarent you tiredand i answer yes but not like how you thinkthe birds are stillthe window thick […]

self

A lovely poem!

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