Well, I didn’t paint the kitchen yesterday. I walked all the way downstairs and sat on the couch and after I had been sitting there for some goodly amount of hours, Facebook broke the tragic news that 2016 killed Princess Leia. So of course then I really couldn’t do anything. I lay further back into the cushions and watched the first two Star Wars movies that have Princess Leia in them. What are they called?
I like the idea of the calendar year being the dealer of death. I saw three memes trying to explain to me that this isn’t so. That the body just dies. People get sick or imbibe too many nefarious substances and it is for these reasons that famous people die. I think that’s ridiculous. Of course the Spirit of the Year (much like The Spirit of Christmas) kills beloved actors off. We ordinary mortals just die, but the gods of our age can’t be taken out by something so mundane. Time Itself must be out for them. It, as I heard someone once say, stands to reason.
I also really loved the memes of Princess Leia finally joined to Obi Wan, Yoda and some other guy I couldn’t recognize. Of course Carrie Fischer is now one with the force. This is, and I beg you will not try to contradict me, the religion of our time. If you want to know what Americans, even Christian Americans, believe about God, you just have to turn on A New Hope and watch up until the scene where Luke is blindfolded and told to “Trust your feelings” to know where the little lasers were going to arrive. That single moment (and maybe all the years leading up to it) spelled the corruption of the American’s ability to think reasonably. The feelings, already way more important than they ever needed to be, suddenly became the Balm, the Center, the Truth, the Norm that norms all other norms.
Anyway, I didn’t even see A New Hope or the other ones until the 90s, huddled in the cold of North Dakota, taking refuge with my dear Aunt and Uncle, who not only fed me nice things but filled in this incredible cultural gap. I had managed to play Princess Leia for some years in Africa as a small child, without ever seeing the movie. My parents saw it, I think maybe even in a theater, and then came home and told me, and the other children, all about it. Whereas I never knew about Michael Jackson, or Prince, or that guy that died the other day, some famous singer or other, I Did know about Princess Leia. I was enraptured by the two bun look and the long flowing white Jedi dress.
And, as an adult, I won’t lie, I loved that Princess Leia grew up and wore grey and brown as a general in the Force Awakens. Somehow, and this shows you how shallow and insecure I am and have been in every decade, she has made it ok for women to age. From 1977 to 2015 we all had to be Princess Leia–young when our bodies were aging, feisty when we were tired, filled with enthusiasm in the face of every kind of disappointment. But then, at just the right time, she came back on screen and snapped her fingers and broke the hypnotic spell. Not a caricature of her younger self, not an old woman pretending to be young, not bright and cheerful, but real. Age at its gracious and dignified best.
And now I will arise and not paint the kitchen because that moment has passed. I will clean the house. May the force, as one might say, be with you. (To which I hope you will respond in the comments, “And also with you.”)
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