Disability is in Everything (including our villains): THE FOG

Warning: HARK! There are spoilers here, traveler. Take the road less littered with thought.

The Fog (1980 dir. John Carpenter) is probably my favorite seaside horror out there. A glowing blanket of fog, slowly rolls over a sleepy town in California, ringing in the anniversary of those crunchy rocks on the shore tearing into a pirate crew's ship, merely 100 years ago; deliberate forces reveal themselves behind a piece of masonry and a grandfather's voice, blows in with the 1880's dust; a diary is discovered. The truth and the town's fate, along with it.

The legend, literally and metaphorically, is a foggy trail for protagonists, hitch-hiker Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis), radio personality and lighthouse keeper Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau), and local resident Nick Castle (Tom Atkins) for them to both out-run, while simultaneously waiting for it to clear and explain away the vengeful ghosts, looking for a massacre. Take their revenge out on the town, for reasons no one, except Father Malone, seem to know why; the term "founders" always brings about dark humor due to their inability to actually find anything undiscovered. Stumbling onto lands, flourishingly lived. Finding nothing but tarnished ruin and culpable violence, already awaiting them within their fists. Or in this case, finding a horrific reason to deliberately sink a ship (for fear of another "founder", a captain afflicted by leprosy, creating a nearby haven for other exiled folks).

It seems possible that the illusion of Antonio Bay, and its beaconed virtues, symbolized by the revolving eye of the lighthouse, is a lot like the murky ideas we have of our own history; clouds of denial, sinful remembrance for blanketed lies, and gloomed death hovering down at our feet and never having the chance to rise like smoke and water the eyes of ones who like to keep the world dry.

Something about The Fog reminded me of our current understanding of brain fog and its connection with disease, long-covid, and ADHD. Being seen as a crisis. A crime at work.

When I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at age 11, I ironically remember a lot of times when I struggled with forgetting. Where sleep stole my memories. The smog of my days, smoking out from the exhaust of my body. My words and mind were like a vapor after a day of surviving in academic spaces that routinely denied the existence of autism and learning disabilities and illegally refused me my accommodations; what are some lingering effects, the consequences of this, though lately, I've been able to give my body the rest that it historically craved, long ago? Misplaced ghosts, I would say. The hazy memory of a child, looking to kill on the coastal ridge of denial and being met with nothing, yet having all this newfound energy. A thirst for revenge, but settling for the rotten wood, and destroying their own ship instead.

If you can, I suggest letting the fog come. Sit with its cooling hold of the mind. Allow smothering film of distraction to blow away your plans and errands for the day; if the denial of bodily autonomy was the start, why would I let my fear of being un-productive move like the rigid shores of my past? Oppose the ghosts of my body, begging to rest, until they revolt and justly lead themselves to calmer waters? Move where my future, refuses to row.

Inheritance is not the makings of great fortunes if it is inherited from treasured violence; sometimes un-dealt grief can come back as an anniversary with Neptune. As misty omens, stroking us with cautious dreams and demanding that we sometimes let the ghosts win.