An old poem and some thoughts on past TV shows

The Man with the Yellow Ruler

A desire for forms and limits overwhelms us.

---Garcia Lorca, Ode to Salvidor Dali

The man with the Yellow Ruler

measures my form from a sheet

of cold pressed paper,

cuts me out with

a pair of sharp scissors,

pastes me into his landscape painting

of a winding back road

stretching beyond

the serrated mountains,

a river reflecting tangerine-streaked sky,

goose-feather wings like scars.

There, against the Impressionist shapes

of his painting,

I feel a tingle up my thighs,

a pulse bounding in my chest,

I feel watercolor brilliant.

I turn

and run into the background

wherever the winding road

to his watercolor blueprint

will take me.

Stop, he screams,

Stop.

***

This may or may not have anything to do with the above post. You be the judge. Lately I've been browsing some old YouTube clips from the 60s TV show The Prisoner, even came across a banned episode. Just think about the cultural milieu of the day: an unpopular war, Nixon announcing his enemy list, the hippies and the peace movement, the fight for racial equality, The Chicago Seven, feminism, Timothy Leary, the awakening of self-consciousness, the Kent State Massacres, Sgt. Pepper, you're over the hill after 30 or don't trust anyone after that age. Good-bye Columbus.  Bob, Ted, Carol, and Alice.  Be yourself.

I wasn't a big fan of the show when it first came out. But looking back, it was probably one of the most intelligent shows of that era, along with Secret Agent, Slattery's People, Rt. 66, and a couple of others. (McGoohan, the show's star and creator, wrote most of the scripts, sometimes under a pen name. Jeez, this sounds familiar. He was also the aloof but charismatic John Drake of Secret Agent and Danger Man.)

Although at times, I found the show a bit dogmatic about insisting that one must be an individual, and one must follow one's true self (whatever that is). On some days, I'm just too lazy to fight the system and I feel comfortable in following the crowd. But if you ever have the chance, watch the final episode of The Prisoner. It was pretty amazing, mind-blowing to use a 60's term. And No. 6 came through on his promise: he blew up that island. And in the background, the Beatles were singing All You Need Is Love.

I wonder if there was a message in this somewhere.



And let's not forget this one hot super sexy agent--Miss Emma Peel.