The Illusion Of Depth Is A God Almighty Bitch
Elijah Rappaport
On one of my early morning walks through the hospital grounds I came to the realization that past, present and future are like layers of the partly see-through animation cells used by Walt Disney for his early films. To capture the superimposed and transparent artwork Disney used the multi-plane camera. The multi-plane camera moved the layers of artwork away from one another and thus created the illusion of depth. Since that morning walk I have created my own multi-plane camera. Hell. This is what happens when you have too much time, space and quiet. Fucking hospitals.
Surprisingly, the doctors were accommodating. They said it kept me busy, the fucks. But what the doctors didn’t know is that instead of Bambi in the mid-ground and a forest of leafless trees in the background, there is me in the present and my grandfather in the past. My multi-plane camera captures and moves planes of time (or reveals the illusion of time itself, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).
Grandfather’s boyish smile reveals to me I am older than him–by a lot. Let’s just say he sure as hell doesn’t make me feel any younger. Grandfather tells me how happy he is to have a grandson. “You will have many,” I tell him. And to boost his ego further I add, “great grandchildren, too.” My grandfather claps his hand in ecstasy. He reminds me of a Mickey Mouse cartoon as I wait for him to exclaim, “oh boy!” and stretch his body in impossibly cartoonish ways. What’s he so giddy about? Then I see the book in his hands with the Hebrew script. “What’s that in your hands, Grandpa?” I can’t tell you if it was a prayer book or something on Judaic law because I can’t read Hebrew. It’s why I asked him. I want him to know.
He shows me the book in his small hands. I shake my head to show ignorance and wait for the smile to disappear from his Mickey Mouse face. You should’ve seen it. It was like the great animator God Himself took His almighty thumb and smudged the smile straight off the fucker. “A siddur,” Grandfather says. You know what a siddur is? A word I haven’t heard in ages, is what. “It’s a prayer book,” Grandfather explains.
“No time for praying to the man upstairs when you’re too busy being one, grandpa.” Now Grandfather shakes his head in ignorance. And I realize kids in his time and upbringing never dreamt with their eyes open–they never watched movies. “I’m an animator, Grandpa. I make animated movies.” Grandfather lowers his siddur holding arm and tries to understand the meaning of my words, looking downcast. “My films are what today’s children dream of, Grandpa. I give children their dreams.” I admit. I feel sorry for the boy. My grandfather.
He finally breaks his thoughtful silence.“Right,” he says. “You told me about this before. All about your dreams.” He pauses again. “No,” he says, remembering something. “You will tell me about this.” Fuck. My multi-plane camera works better than I excepted. What’s the word for remembering something that hasn’t happened yet? Forwarding? Remowarding? Towarding? Yeah. This is what happens when you have too much time, space, and quiet. You start making up words. Fucking hospitals. Fucking old age.
“So you’ve done it, Elijah” Grandfather says. “I’m so happy for you.” And he starts looking all wise. I see a trace of the old man I knew, or would know, or who the fuck knows at this point. The point is he seemed truly happy that the wish I made upon a star came true. But my success was due to no fairy tale wish. I’m no praying, practicing, wish making, blue-fairy fearing Gepetto. I’m the Icarus who flew too close to the sun and landed because I built myself better wings. I built a time leaping multi-plane camera in the dusk of my days for christ sake–in a fucking hospital. In fucking Florida.
I pull the knob on the multi-plane camera to compress the thin layers of time. The boy’s sage-like countenance meets the layer of his older age like I was placing on the young face a translucent mask of his own oldness. His age now meets the sage-like expression. To see my grandfather in the age I knew him makes me feel younger than I did seconds ago. Contrast. Like how a Florida summer makes a New York July feel like winter. (Put this on a postcard: Fuck You Florida–The World’s Hottest And Largest Graveyard).
“Elijah!” layers of young and old grandfather exclaim, like two distinct tracks expertly synched, resulting in a single unique soundtrack. That’s how grandfather used to greet me at the door when I visited his house that smelled like old furniture and old people and now me. He would push the door open, slowly, as if excepting robbers to barge right through. Then how his eyes would pop wide open–a turtle peering through the door of its shell–and exclaim, “Elijah! Is that you?” He knew it was me like he knows it now. “What’s a stranger doing at my door?”
I recoil back in shyness and realize–to my discomfort–I’ve just pulled up a scene from my own childhood. I’ve stepped into my young self standing before my grandparent’s house. Boyhood infiltrates me–a nostalgic hot chocolate warming my stomach. With our heads bowed down we–young and old, sounding like Simon and Garfunkel if Simon had chugged down a goblet of his own splintery shit–confess: “It’s Elijah.”
One’s name should never feel like a confessional, a humiliating secret code that grants access to the house of one’s grandparents. I feel the child’s body shudder under mine. “Must I step inside,” the shudder says.
“You do look like Elijah,” Grandfather continues, head peering out further through the door and looking down from his throne-like stoop. He wonders whether to let his submissive subject in. He does (shocking). “Come in! come in!” Grandfather decrees.
My youthful eyes, vividly blue, narrow in anger. “Must I step inside to have my dreams ridiculed,” those eyes question. “To step inside is to admit defeat.” The little clenched fist grasps. “I don’t want your life or your God.” The clear exasperated breaths speak without voice. If only the little boy inside me knew who he will become. If only I knew who I would become. We would’ve entered with our heads held high like master animators–defiers of my grandfather’s hand-me-down destiny. So I tell the child within me: “We’ve done it.
“We’ve made movies you now could only dream of. They were never unreachable dreams, in fact, but gripping realities. You built yourself better wings. We’ve made films about angels becoming men and a house that holds memories within its paint. We’ve given children visions to stir them for a lifetime. Enter this house defiantly. Move past Grandfather triumphantly. We pushed the boundaries of animation- of technology.” I am in a trance brought on by my success, a powerful conductor hypnotized by the submissive orchestra before him. I wave my hands as if I hold the baton of accomplishment. “We’ve done it, Elijah!” I exclaim.
My battle speech is interrupted by a sharp pain in the stomach. My enthusiasm overreaches my age. But I realize the stomach pains are not due to the weak bowels of an old man. The boy within pounds me with his fists as if I’m a locked door. I’m not a locked door. He is free to roam as he pleases. The boy within pounds me out of spite. My bladder becomes full with his tears. “Stop!” I shout. “Can’t you hear what I’m telling you!”
Elijah steps out of my body and turns to examine me. He clears his teary eyes and nods his head–his gesture bringing to mind the flourish of a single and final brushstroke. It was the artist’s final judgment of a sketch before exhibition.
To escape the final design of my appearance, Elijah darts straight through me (I feel his heart breaking) and into the arms of my grandfather. The door closes before me. “You ungrateful brat!” I scream. The lantern, obscured with a spider’s web, detects dusk and turns on to illuminate the number displayed on the closed door. I haven’t pulled the knob on the multi-plane camera, and yet this number sets in motion a flood of past scenes. Blinded by background images, I reach for the camera’s knob and push it forwards. I escape into the foreground, where I step onto an empty scene and see nothing but dust falling like a rain shower.
Elijah Rappaport grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, across from a sweeping forest that is, in fact, much smaller than he remembers. After spending his high school years home schooled–primarily focusing on literature and writing–Elijah spent two years studying abroad in Israel at Machon Shlomo. He is double majoring in English and Film and will graduate in the year 2024.