Monday, January 31, 2011

film-stills: an education





what a lovely movie; this and the last one i picked at (the vicious kind) are perfect if you have ever been a girl in love with the trixter prince; the irresistibly disconsolate
the film is notably woman-written, nick hornby-teased into a screenplay and woman-directed.
that carey mulligan... she is a dream

Thursday, January 27, 2011

film-stills: the vicious kind





"Sometimes people do things that they know are wrong, but they just do them anyway."

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

grasps

i love movies because i can process them
in stills, maddeningly inaccurate in regards to the whole
but nonetheless an important, readable slice into the texture of the film
it is like how i process life, able only to pin down small slippery bits with my words while the whole of it rushes roaring by;
i wake up a fawn who grows into a doe
my brain the size of a clementine orange &
my doe-chest pulsing with breath

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

film stills: mother (마더)








i've only seen half; i got sleepy. the film is very sweet & slightly less silly than these shots imply. it was frustrating not to be able to capture the kinetic energy & charm of the mother character. in the opening scene (first 2 stills) she dances alone in a field with passion and sadness.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

the most reliable trees

on accident i re-open
a finger wound,
weeping blood out
that dries in exquisite flakes;

in drifts of cherry-blossom blood petals
& sinusfuls of ache
with bare branches
with my hands in my head in my hands,
split in 2 covering more at a cost

my friend leans in &
whispers "they are not trees,
they are the lungs of the earth
sprouting out-ward"

Saturday, January 15, 2011

omar khayyám, 1048-1131 a.d.

خيام اگر ز باده مستى خوش باش
با ماه رخى اگر نشستى خوش باش
چون عاقبت كار جهان نيستى است
انگار كه نيستى، چو هستى خوش باش
If with wine you are drunk be happy,
If seated with a moon-faced beauty, be happy,
Since the end purpose of the universe is nothing-ness;
Hence picture your nothing-ness, then while you are, be happy!

آنانكه ز پيش رفته‌اند اى ساقى

درخاك غرور خفته‌اند اى ساقى

رو باده خور و حقيقت از من بشنو

باد است هرآنچه گفته‌اند اى ساقى

Those who have gone forth, thou cup-bearer,
Have fallen upon the dust of pride, thou cup-bearer,
Drink wine and hear from me the truth:
Air is all that they have said, thou cup-bearer.

where to go

out of lincoln & the first morning this week where i woke up and was able to breathe, & the racing, tumbling, out-of-control cursing rabid screaming demon thoughts had slowed their circuit to a manageable degree.

i dreamed the francine was one of those 3-sides-of-a-square apartment complexes with a gated courtyard in the middle. we managed to flood the courtyard with warm aquamarine water and swam like mermaid children, waving to those in the windows of the first floor who cheered and came running out to join. eventually myrna came, she'd brought a boy i went to school with who later joined the army, she stood and crossed her arms while he yelled at us and the pool drained through the gate.

i dreamed then of being cursed with knowing everyone's secrets, sifting the scraps of lives and words said and written. i was born a vessel and a human lodestone. i cannot know anybody because i then know them too well, can't look at their faces/eyes because i will See Everything and it will overwhelm, obsess and crush me. the lines of intention, chance, and ambiguity web out from them, stringing occurrences and other people in an intricately plotted graph. the graph is laughing and flings wide as a tuna net.
the balance can be maintained but is fragile; often one must detach.
i'm on the floor of my childhood neighbors' house, having broken in. i didn't know they were home. i grip the wainscoting and scoot like a penguin across the tile, silent.

in the final chapter i am on a cruise ship, gleaming and brassy like a steampunk titanic. all of the other passengers except for a handful of us have mysteriously vanished, and we are adrift, free to roam. in the mahogany dining room with gilded cutlery we feast on fruits, meats, and cheeses from the stainless steel kitchens. there are ballrooms to dance in and massive presidential suites but after days we find ourselves clumped socially in odd places, the gift shop, small alcoves. The mood is uniformly relaxed and festive. looking at a map in the captain's office, a line leads up into the mountains, then snarls into a black illegible spiral. The novel ends when, while sitting on a chilly upper deck sailing the arctic sea, the generators flicker and cease to hum.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

film stills: brothers of the head








came for sexy conjoined twins; stayed for sexy conjoined twins

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

fisty-cuffs


my parents told me if i was a boy i would have been named shane.

Monday, January 10, 2011

cutting

to lose ahold of one's shit
release the gently bitten tongue

the bobcat plowed the snow across the street, backing up frequently, from 2-7 a.m.
the lincoln police department non-emergency line operator working at 4 a.m. did not care. it's okay, i was chewed up in an emo panic-state and being perhaps somewhat unreasonable.

turning out of a parking lot today i almost hit a woman i didn't see; the slush was too deep and i was hanging halfway out on O so that i couldn't stop and she just windmilled and wailed angrily while my spinning tired sprayed and I screamed I'm SOR-ry I am SORRY SORRY I AM SORRY and then sat in the next errand's parking lot sobbing

a day ago i was the queen of cups over-flowing, and here i am whittled back to the bitter quick, slogging in last year's snow with last year's lamentable bullshit stinking under my nose.
it is not so bad to feel cold and hard like a war-horse with feathers in its mane;
nostril-plumes of steam spelling the words "fuck" and "you,"
no it is SO much better than the alternative

it is good to breathe the fresh clean air

Monday, January 3, 2011

two-thousand&11 one - Rosemary's Baby

I like movies
and friends
("hail satan; hail, satan")

Sunday, January 2, 2011

these videos are the only reason i had my data backed up when repairin my soup-drowned macbok pro





they aren't remotely good or anything (shot with my wee canon which is now broken too), but i didn't want to forget the ants

p.s. my shiny computron is back, is nice