SHITTY MOVIE SHMONDAY

Okay, I was going to do this yesterday so it'd be shitty movie shunday, which is clever-er than whatever I spat up there, but whatever, let's do this. Also I guess it's tuesday but whatever? I don't really care at this point, because I just sat through 2 hours and 38 minutes of... 

2012. 

The main reason I didn't do this yesterday was because the version we have on disc is from, like, a camcorder in a movie theatre and it was all low quality and shaky and man this is a Roland Emmerich film you better goddamn believe I want to see it in high quality. 

I love Roland Emmerich movies. He did The Day After Tomorrow, and Independence Day, and I'm sure some other movies too but I don't really care. Those two movies are sincerely and completely some of my favourites. I think it might be more for Will Smith fighting aliens and Donnie Darko fighting global warming, though. 

I really had high hopes for this one, though. I love Roland Emmerich, I love John Cusack (High Fidelity is one of my all time favourite movies), and I love Chiwetel Ejiofor (he was in Serenity and Love Actually and shut up I like those movies). The problem with it is 2012. 2012 just pisses me off. The whole theory behind it, all the pseudoscience involved, everything. It annoys me, it's just so sensationalistic and stupid and holy shit what does it matter if the world is going to end or change or whatever in 2 years? It's two years away! You don't know where you'll be in 2 years, and if you start to act like the world is going to end then, then guess what? It will, because you'll have no plans, no hopes, nothing beyond that. You can't shape your life around some vague or specific point in the future, you can't just let your life drop off after that. I'm not saying you need plans, but you need something. What'll happen to all these people who believe in 2012 (if these people actually exist, I don't even know if they do still) after 2012? If they're right, then hey, they're dead or changed or whatever and you can't plan for that, and if they're wrong, they have nothing left, they're just dropped off. 

Anyways, 2012 pisses me off. But what really pisses me off is that this could've been a damned good movie if 2012 wasn't a part of it. I know Roland Emmerich movies subsist on pseudo-science, but the amount here could choke a string theorists (I heard string theory isn't a sound theory, I think I heard it from XKCD). And all that could've been avoided if, I don't know, they didn't try to shoehorn in all the 2012 theories. They could've just made some bullshit theory for why the tectonic plates are going crazy, I don't know man, they could've found a reason. Because if the movie was just about that, earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis, then it could've been amazing. If they whittled down the beginning, and a bit of the ending, then I would've loved it. The special effects are sometimes a bit obvious, but they are amazing, and there are some amazing scenes of destruction porn in it. L.A. being destroyed (which I thought already happened in The Day After Tomorrow?) was so fuckin' cool and amazing and oh my goodness I loved it so much. 

And I don't know man, I think I like these movies because, really, it's a clean slate. The characters in this movie are given the chance to start over, no matter who they were before hand. Humanity as a whole has a chance to restart, saving only the best of the previous world, and carrying all the knowledge into a bright future on Africa. It's kind of amazing, and it's awesome to think about. And I don't know it seems like one of those escapist fantasies. I mean, I love the world, but fuck it sometimes I would love to take off with only a few books in my bag and maybe some music. There are just the responsibilities and consequences and friends and love holding me in place. But if all of that was destroyed by solar flares or some shit like that, then I'd be free. 

Bottom line for 2012: I like it, but only the middle bit and then select parts of the end. 

DIALOGUE AND THE TRANSCENDENCE

Madame, here's how it'll go down. I, clutching a mug of green tea close to my chest like the bulletproof idea of open skies, will take you down to the sea, and there you will meet a mermaid. The mermaid, unlike her more vicious cousins, will not devour your soul with a glance and reduce you to a painting of pure lust and suffering. Instead she will breathe the life of the apocalypse through your lips and your eyes will explode into transient candles. 

Sir, dear sir, I must protest. For I do not want to go to the ocean and I do not want to meet a meek mermaid there and I don't want the life of the apocalypse breathed into me and I do not want my eyes to explode into transient candles!

Madame, why not? All you will lose is your earthly sight. You'll light the passages of time. You'll be the solitary flame so delicate and wonderful striking soul into sacred verse of star-crossed maniacs behind candy cane prison bars. You'll burn out. What is more noble and romantic than that?

Sir, please, I would rather retain my eyes. I would miss the earthly sensation far too much. I would miss watching the moon rise over red brick buildings. I would miss staring into the jellyfish tank at the zoo. I would miss glancing over my shoulder at the stranger walking too close behind me in the bad part of town. I would miss my eyes so much, sir, I would miss the Earth. 

I like how I wrote this piece, I was running around my apartment, yelling about definitions and wordplay, then I rushed back to my typewriter and clacked down a few more words and then ran around again to get some tea and it was good. It felt right, it felt natural. And I like what came out. I like the diction, the words, how it looks on a page, and I hope it worked out well. I personally think it did. I personally hope it did. 

I think things are going to get a little bit pretentious here on out, so be warned. Of course, the opening piece is kind of pretentious, too, so I figured if you stuck through that, then you have a pretty good resistance to it. Please don't judge me, I only want to do good. 

The act of creation, which is what I do, I was going to try to be humble and say I'm not creating anything, but I am. I'm not sure if it's good, or pure, or worthy of the word creation. But creation is a strange word, because really everyone creates everything. It's not hard. Make a pot of coffee? Creation. Sharpened a pencil? Creation. Almost all acts are acts of creation. Anyways, the act of creation, and especially the creation of art, which I guess is what I do? I don't know, art is such a stupid word, I don't know what it means, and if people consider my work art then more power to them, but for now I'll use the word because I don't know what the hell else to call it. The act of creating art has really, really, goddamn blurry boundaries. The line between the creator and the creation isn't always noticeable. There are so many pieces that don't make sense unless you know the creator, unless you understand the creator. At the same time, the line between the creator and the world at large is so goddamn blurry. I constantly fluctuate between considering myself a unique snowflake, a social pariah, and part of humanity as a whole because I am here and you are here and he is here and we are all here and if we're all here we're all together and we're altogether humanity and how could I consider myself apart from that? What I do and what you do are the same thing, really, because they are human acts. 

My point is, which has been buried under all this bullshit, is that I honestly am starting to lose the thread where the world ends and I begin and where I end and my writing begins. Does the poem begin when I look at the flower, or did it begin before that in me and the flower just brought it out, like triggering a memory, or does the poem only begin when it exists outside of me, on the page or in my voice or whatever. It is not hard for me to actually, visually see myself as one with the world. I am my chair I am my gloves I am this cup of coffee I am this pavement. This all feels so connected. I feel like I am in a constant flux between the world, myself and poetry. And it's weird, and maybe I'm making too big of a deal of all this, and maybe I'm making too big of a deal about myself but this feels important, this feels significant. 

I can feel walls being torn down. I can feel communication floating in the air. Everything's getting blurry. This feels significant. It all does. It's scary, yeah, it's terrifying. But I can throw in any word there, and holy shit you'll just have to take my word for it. Man am I lying this whole time. I don't think I am, I don't feel I am, but you can't really believe that. You can't really believe me. You can either trust me or you can't. That's all there is. You can trust me when I say I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm in love, I'm angry. There is so much trust here, how could I compromise that? I don't understand how people can commit libel. I don't understand lying. I don't understand hate. I never want to lie. I never want to. 

I'm getting out of here before I get too ridiculous. God bless. Sorry about this. 

I have started to drink a lot of tea. 

This is a recent development. 

Tea and coffee form a dichotomy of hot drinks within in my life. 

They provoke opposing moods, opposing mindsets, opposing desires. 

But they are never in opposition, they never clash, they absorb one another, co-exist in their own nihilation. 

It is beautiful. 

I have created a playlist of autumn songs. 

I am unsure as to why, any song is good when you listen to it on a fall afternoon. 

Any song can fit the mood.

Any song does. 

Cats are wonderful. 

Simply marvellous. 

part3: Delilah. The Moon's name is Delilah :::: from the story "The Relief of Rock at the Side of the Road"

Sorry about the wait. If you were waiting, that is. Longer=more time.

people will, in fact, be dancing in the streets.

ello lee. hello. (I found this written here, it didn't seem like my place to interfere)

Today I walked barefoot. I think I promised my parents I wouldn't do that anymore, and for that, I'm sorry Mom and Dad. I just woke up this morning with my heart bursting poetry, and this doesn't really happen all that often. I woke up with the sun on my face and contemplated how it parkour'd it's way down from heaven, along the clouds, through the trees and red brick buildings of my neighbourhood to wake me with a kiss and a smile. My shower head serenaded me, sang to me, "Hush little baby, don't you cry" like a refugee mother hiding from el policia on a boat, keeping her babe quiet. And I stepped out to get some milk and cereal, wearing shoes, and decided I didn't want to do that today. Today would be a day for poetry and music and barefootedness. I hope that's a good enough reason, mum and dad, I didn't hurt myself this time at least. 

I have hurt myself going barefoot before, I once stepped on some jagged wood on someone's lawn, went straight into my foot. The blood came out and I was far from anyone I knew. I considered hoofing it home but after a few steps in my blood soaked flipflops I decided to call in a miracle instead, and I called my friend who's house I just left. They picked me up, and I got the best care expired pharmaceuticals and pre-med students can give me. For that I was eternally grateful, I don't even have a scar. 

I guess that's the thing about going barefoot, I get hurt. I get cuts and my feet ache and my feet get cold and really it isn't that pleasant of an experience, but I'm never scarred, it's never permanent. And for some reason it makes me feel good, it makes me feel like I know who I am. 

And I guess it makes me feel like I know who I am because it makes me feel like I'm not a nobody, because I'm not a nobody, I'm that kid you saw on the street not wearing shoes even though it's the first day of the year that you could reasonably wear a coat without being a pussy about it, and though his feet must be freezing, when you catch his eye he is inexplicably smiling back, and you look away and get back to your business. And because I don't feel like a nobody, I feel like I can be somebody, and I have no shame in being a somebody. 

I let the music flowing from my iPod flow through my veins, so I can twitch and shake along and smile at the clouds and stop in the middle of the sidewalk to write a poem and laugh out loud to funny things that people say around me, and I catch people staring and they have no shame in staring. I have no shame and they have no shame and where there is no shame there is only pride, there is only heads held high and eyes not afraid of looking at each other and discovering the oceans of the rivers bursting their banks behind eyelids and smiles come a little bit easier to lips and thus kind words and laughter bursts across the streets and you know what man, that's what I want to build where ever I go. Fuck foundations of stone and great fortresses to stand on top of and observe the stars. I want to build block parties where I go, where people bring out their goddamn guitars and sacrilegious sagacious songs of peace and love and all those bullshit Beatles ideals. I want people to be singing in the street. I want people to fall in love under streetlights. I want people to be beautiful again. Beautiful and pure and barefoot. 

Boy howdy that was fun to write. 

Kisses!

Lee

The Relief of Rock at the Side of the Road part 2 :: LAMP-POST

Tuesday's Post.
No Guff
Alter Ego: