January 30th, 2021

And Thou Shalt Judge The Expiring Soccer Mom

after Servant, Season Two, Episode Three, Pizza

Surveil from silk sheets your mortal estate.
On suburban streets, death, afterlife vie
behind grandiose gates. Above play dates,
teammates, cheese pizza parties, skeletonize 
with the greatest of ease.  Caretakers doze
in proximate chairs.  Delicate wraith
tiptoes upstairs in prim servant’s clothes 
with bowls of puréed sustenance.  Your faith 
remakes a cadaverous countenance,
nasal cannula dispensable soon. 
Expiring soccer mom circumstances 
avoidable if you only commune 
with a macilent maiden magistrate.
Worthiness for rebirth, she calculates.

Annotation:

Servant Season Two has landed with a bang not a whimper. I just watched Episode Three of Season Two, Pizza Thursday as soon as it turned midnight eastern time when the new episodes drop on Apple. I won’t spoil anything but if you have not watched this show, I envy you an incredible binging experience. If you haven’t watched this episode, it was one of the best ones yet. I literally watched it at 11:00, Central time, when I had to be up very early the next day and could not help myself to watch it immediately again. All I will say about the details of the episode is that a member of a cult who may be able to resurrect a person is seen inside a suburban mansion of a dying woman in a bed upstairs — with lots of little uniformed soccer children on the floor beneath partaking in a pizza party.

I love television that has so many layers, and this show is the epitome of that. I want to watch episodes multiple times and ponder it and write sonnets about it. Not every show gives you this chance but Servant most certainly does. This episode is also incredible as it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter Ishana Night Shymalan who was only 20 years old at the time she directed the episode. It’s a masterful piece and the director, who attends NYU, has an assuredly great career ahead of her.

I feel so lucky to have this series in my life right now. I’ve been going through a lot of chaos in my homelife due to living in a remodel after hurricane destruction. As a person who requires a lot of order in their life to feel safe and sane, it has been a rough period of months. This show came into my life and has become a kind of ritual of watching, rewatching, reading and researching then writing my heart out about it with each new piece of the puzzle. What is so wonderful is that it’s ongoing and there is so much more to explore. It’s more than a television show to me now. It’s a little cult of artists who, like Leanne the nanny with some powers of resurrection, I serve with my small power of words and sonnets.

It’s nice to have other worlds in which to escape. I hope that my own work provides that to people at times. This television series certainly does that for me again and again.