Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Dialogue from the film Synecdoche, New York

          "Everything is more complicated than  
          you think. You only see a tenth of 
          what is true. There are a million  
          little strings attached to every 
          choice you make; you can destroy 
          your life every time you choose. 
          But maybe you won't know for twenty  
          years. And you'll never ever trace 
          it to its source. And you only get 
          one chance to play it out. Just try  
          and figure out your own divorce. 
          And they say there is no fate, but 
          there is: it's what you create.  
          Even though the world goes on for  
          eons and eons, you are here for a  
          fraction of a fraction of a second.  
          Most of your time is spent being 
          dead or not yet born. But while  
          alive, you wait in vain, wasting 
          years, for a phone call or a letter  
          or a look from someone or something  
          to make it all right. And it never 
          comes or it seems to but doesn't 
          really. And so you spend your time 
          in vague regret or vaguer hope for 
          something good to come along.  
          Something to make you feel 
          connected, to make you feel whole, 
          to make you feel loved." 

          From Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York 





 

Synecdoche, New York

"This is a film with the richness of great fiction... it's not that you have to return to understand it. It's that you have to return to realize how fine it really is. The surface may daunt you. The depths enfold you. The whole reveals itself, and then you may return to it like a talisman." Roger Ebert review of Synecdoche, New York. A true gem, written and directed by Charlie Kaufman.


Thursday, January 26, 2017

Common Fears


The cold air blew outside the house,
inside we shared solitude and distance.
You sat in one corner on the chair I gave you, 

while bricks and stones between us
enhanced the reality of our isolation.


All the facts and reasonable thoughts
hung in the air; heavenly eternal.
All that we screamed at each other
now whispered, continuously, inside our mind: 

reasons, facts, doubts and lies
fused together inseparably.

As real as the cold air outside
we threw words around unconcerned, 

anguishing only to diminish the anger, 
and as sure as if it should have been: 
we, who once were unbreakable,
had already made reality
out of all the fears,
we ironically shared all those years. 

Sunday, January 22, 2017

A Brick

Alone
you get to decide
where a brick goes:
you can put it here
you can put it there.

In your hands,
a brick is free
to be anything or nothing.

A poet,
from the baltic sea,
found grandiose desires
in each brick he saw,
and when he parted this life,
he had not a brick to show;
yet his structures
will outlast us all.

If you have
all that you small soul desires,
you can place a brick
behind your front door,
to prevent someone
from taking your possessions.

I wish
that bricks were free
to be anything they desire,
God,
made it eternal,                                                                                                       
and cursed man with free will 
and infinite crossroads
with no undergrowth;
only plenitude.

With so many roads ahead,
man despairs,
and in doubt,
grabs a brick
and set his roots 
here, there,
anywhere:
creates a village, meets a girl
makes other men
to sacrifice for.

Nothing makes a man prouder
than sacrificing for a new generation:
among all the species,
man is the only one
that can exude heroism
while in full retreat.

The bible
talks about man
but it says nothing about bricks:
man was created
at God’s own image;
but man perishes
in a well of uncertainty,
bricks are everywhere:
solid, determined, eternal.

At the end of his life  
every man should have one brick
to leave behind,
somewhere,
for a child to find.

Saturday, January 14, 2017

Kurt Vonnegut - Life