The Mud Movie (That Wasn’t Filmed)

It feels like we are all in a movie.

Every day, the theatre and filming of our lives, our culture, our country, our most private and personal thoughts, feelings, indulgences, ceremonies, situations, everything… all of it documented.

Somehow we are all playing a part in something so profoundly wrong, while we don’t even recognize it as wrong. Or if we do, we don’t quite know what to do about it.

And the options to get out of it are becoming fewer and fewer, as the wealth of the few becomes larger and gains still more power.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

It could simply be mud. Deep mud. Sucking usin, daring us to get out. There was a movie about mud before the days of documentation and surveillance.

I was in the mud movie, but it wasn’t filmed.

My mother, her best friend, Beverly and 4 of their children were canoeing along a small part of the Illinois River.

As Beverly stepped out of the boat to pull us ashore, her leg sunk down into the mud, stopping at her upper thigh. She was stuck. Pink Bermuda shorts, matching pink tennis shoes. One leg in the boat, the other swallowed whole by the deep, deep mud.