Homage to Hattori Hanzo

Exchange between Elle Driver and Budd from the movie Kill Bill Vol 2.

Budd: So, which "R" you filled with?
Elle Driver: What?
Budd: They say the number one killer of old people is retirement. People got 'em a job to do; they tend to live a little longer so they can do it. I've always figured warriors and their enemies share the same relationship. So, now you ain't gonna hafta face your enemy on the battlefield no more, which "R" are you filled with: Relief or Regret?
Elle Driver: A little bit of both.
Budd: Bullshit. I'm sure you do feel a little bit of both. But I know damn well you feel one more than you feel the other. The question was which one?
Elle Driver: Regret.”

Having just finished renovating my living room I’d like to answer Budd’s question with the following. Relief. Now it isn’t that I consider my living room the “enemy”, simply the task to renovate it has been one filled with its own set of challenges. When I think of the movie The Exorcist, inevitably I think of green pea soup - Linda Blair vomiting all over the place like a green pea soup faucet going rogue. That is exactly what my living room “used” to look like – a palace to green pea soup, the color of its walls. Yes, Linda Blair lived with me every day for the past almost five years. That is…until I made the decision to start from scratch. Gone were the flower/leaf picture frames and the book shelves and CD holders; gone forever to some dark corner of the basement, somewhere in Amityville Horror land.

Paint roller in hand, it was time to face the music… As if holding a Hattori Hanzo (Kill Bill reference) sword, I slayed and sliced at the walls with the paint roller, causing irreversibly damaging internal bleeding. Heads were chopped off, limbs went flying, and suddenly I was The Bride (Uma Thurman’s character in Kill Bill). Paint dripped all around me – a massacre of biblical proportions. Goodbye green pea vomit – enter, tranquil/serene lilac. Yes, lilac damnit! The darkness is now gone, and in its place, tranquility, light, a sense of serenity I have not felt in that living room for almost 5 years.

As the last touches were made last night, paintings, mirrors, new picture frames going up, I felt it - Relief. Linda Blair was gone and in her place, a cool, loungy looking living room where I plan to plot my next series of writing escapades and frantic mischief.

Relief. I can put the Hattori Hanzo blade down.