serape

Originally Posted on FEBRUARY 17, 2018

My 15-year-old son walked in my bedroom while I was watching Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre. He walked in on the part where the elephant is dying and there is a blood shower coming from his trunk. He sat on my bed and watched the whole film and when it was over he said he was going to bed, but he was really in his room looking up Santa Sangre on YouTube and re-watching the entire film again.

The next morning he comes into my room again and says, “Mom, that movie fucked me up last night.”

When my son was born, his father and I decided we weren’t going to put a lot of bullshit rules and regulations on him. So, in other words, we’d try to not be petty. Only harp on him about things like his grades in school and the way he treats our animals.

My son says he loves El Topo even more than Santa Sangre. He splices scenes from that film and overlays it with Ice Cube’s “It Was A Good Day.” He asks me for money so he can buy an editing app. He wants his father to take him to the mountains so he can make a short film with his friends. He says he has finally decided to reconstruct the western. I imagine my son and his friends as fake cowboys, tripping over poison berry bushes and rolling down hills.

Last year, my son wanted me to buy him a thick black and red serape at the Santa Cruz flea market. I told him he should wait for the right occasion.