Tuesday, March 31, 2009

as you, my soul, are holy

It's 6:10am, six eleven now... six twelve in a moment... I haven't written anything meaningful here for weeks, months... time means less and less.

I feel compelled to write, but am too far from my trustful, confident, paper-bound friend to make the four-step journey across the carpet I only tell myself is vast to reconcile my laziness with my urgency. And the pen might be lost after all.

This screen is close, these keys familiar, so I will lay the way I am; numb, staring, moving only my fingers and a little bit around the wrists, the syntax in my brain moving less even than that.

But I will stare, and type, and purge - ha! Yes, I'll call it purging; to rid - that's what it means, right? Sure, let's call it that, though it will never be.

Writing there - the paper-bound confidant, whose pages receive without hesitation or judgment is like speaking in a confessional as a child who has no understanding of the shadow through the screen, believing that he is speaking to a ghost, one that is holy, or so he's told: "I stole." "I lied." "I made my sister cry." "I watched a friend stare absently at a bird who struggled, ridden with BB-gun pellets, whose wings flapped helplessly against the cold ground spattered with odd-colored fluid, moving slower and slower, the shriek and scraping caused fear to rise in my spine, but I watched... I watched... his absent stare pulling me in... I watched; if a hand wanted to carry that bird back to the sky it made no such resistance.. I watched... how and for what should I ask forgiveness?"

Writing here is as if scrawling on a bathroom wall.

I'm not sure which is truer.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

so freaking awesome

Trailers aren't always the best indicators of a movie's worth, but if this is half as good as the trailer, I'll be a happy man. Spike Jonze, Dave Eggers, Catherine Keener, The Arcade Fire, and good ol' fashioned childhood nostalgia... I mean, come on, this is gonna rock.



I'll be there opening night, who wants to come with?

Thursday, March 5, 2009

i'm just a little person, and you're the one i like the best


Upon my third viewing, which took place this afternoon, I've decided that I have a new favorite film. I've considered Magnolia my favorite film for a very, very long time, but it was bumped today. I've given this a lot of thought, because I take these things very seriously, so this is a big deal. Hence the blog about it.

The first time I saw it I was overwhelmed, and confused, but entirely moved. It was... startling... I guess, something more, really. I'm still piecing it all together, but there is beauty there... so much beauty.

This is a quote, which should be a poem, so I have broken it up as one.

"What was once before you - an exciting, mysterious future -
is now behind you.
Lived; understood; disappointing.
You realize you are not special.
You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it.
This is everyone's experience.

Every single one.

The specifics hardly matter.
Everyone's everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive.

You are Ellen.

All her meager sadnesses are yours;
all her loneliness;
the gray, straw-like hair;
her red raw hands.
It's yours.
It is time for you to understand this.

Walk.

As the people who adore you stop adoring you;
as they die; as they move on;
as you shed them; as you shed your beauty;
your youth; as the world forgets you;
as you recognize your transience;
as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one;
as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was,
you think only about driving - not coming from any place;
not arriving any place. Just driving,
counting off time.

Now you are here, at 7:43.
Now you are here, at 7:44.
Now you are...
Gone."