A fickle little twister
I usually read before I go to bed. It’s a nice way to end the day, as it’s one of the most relaxing actives I can think of. At least, normally it is. Tonight my reading material was American Psycho (a book that is not titled ironically) and I read a part that was so completely ghastly and horrifying, now I can’t fall asleep. It was really gruesome. In any case, that’s why I’m awake right now, sitting on my bed with my laptop, writing this.
You may hasten to call me a wimp, a loser, a dummy, but understand that it’s not just this book. I’ve been exposed (or, more accurately, been exposing myself) to a lot of unsettling stuff lately. Yesterday, for instance, I saw the new Michael Moore movie Sicko in the afternoon. The movie itself wasn’t disturbing in the traditional sense (it didn’t feature a man’s eyeball being extracted with a pocket knife, for instance), but it that unnerved you with the whole “this-is-a-real-person-put-in-a-horrible-situation-look-at-how-sad-they-are-what-if-this-happened-to-me??” kind of thing.
Then that night Matt showed me this Korean movie from 1995 called Oldboy. My opinion about this movie is still being formed. If I think about it objectively, it was really pretty good. But right now, all my memories of the movie are inextricably linked with a couple of scenes that constitute the absolute most disturbing/frightening/horrible/emotionally-scarring things I have ever seen in a movie, EVER. There are multiple scenes in this movie that make ANYTHING you see in ANY overtly violent American movies (Apocalypto, Gladiator) look like some Disney channel cartoon (and I mean the ones they show early in the morning that are intended for really little kids. The difference between Oldboy and Apocalypto is so extreme I won’t even compare it to the more mature-themed Disney programming, like Brink and that show about the black girl who travels through time). I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but for those who know, it’s the tongue scene that all throughout the day has made me shudder. It’s like post-traumatic stress disorder. All day long I try to forget, but it just keeps reappearing in my mind, suddenly, when I least expect it.
Then tonight before I settled into American Psycho I watched The Science of Sleep, a movie that I expected to be light and fun the whole time but that also ended up in a rather dark place.
I don’t know why I assumed that writing out all the things that are making it difficult for me to sleep would help the problem in any way. Maybe it’s because writing is supposed to be therapy, used to exorcise demons. Maybe it’s because a few days ago I promised myself that I would start doing some sort of writing for at least twenty minutes every day (not a difficult task since I’ve been doing approximately jack shit with my time while home) and this is the first time I’ve actually done it. Maybe I’m still a little stoned (I smoked a little before watching Science of Sleep, for what should be obvious reason). Will I ever really know?
P.S. Even though my comments about Oldboy would lead you to believe I hate the movie, if you ask me what I thought about it in a few days I will probably say it’s great. Even though I almost had a seizure watching it. Movies confuse me.
You may hasten to call me a wimp, a loser, a dummy, but understand that it’s not just this book. I’ve been exposed (or, more accurately, been exposing myself) to a lot of unsettling stuff lately. Yesterday, for instance, I saw the new Michael Moore movie Sicko in the afternoon. The movie itself wasn’t disturbing in the traditional sense (it didn’t feature a man’s eyeball being extracted with a pocket knife, for instance), but it that unnerved you with the whole “this-is-a-real-person-put-in-a-horrible-situation-look-at-how-sad-they-are-what-if-this-happened-to-me??” kind of thing.
Then that night Matt showed me this Korean movie from 1995 called Oldboy. My opinion about this movie is still being formed. If I think about it objectively, it was really pretty good. But right now, all my memories of the movie are inextricably linked with a couple of scenes that constitute the absolute most disturbing/frightening/horrible/emotionally-scarring things I have ever seen in a movie, EVER. There are multiple scenes in this movie that make ANYTHING you see in ANY overtly violent American movies (Apocalypto, Gladiator) look like some Disney channel cartoon (and I mean the ones they show early in the morning that are intended for really little kids. The difference between Oldboy and Apocalypto is so extreme I won’t even compare it to the more mature-themed Disney programming, like Brink and that show about the black girl who travels through time). I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but for those who know, it’s the tongue scene that all throughout the day has made me shudder. It’s like post-traumatic stress disorder. All day long I try to forget, but it just keeps reappearing in my mind, suddenly, when I least expect it.
Then tonight before I settled into American Psycho I watched The Science of Sleep, a movie that I expected to be light and fun the whole time but that also ended up in a rather dark place.
I don’t know why I assumed that writing out all the things that are making it difficult for me to sleep would help the problem in any way. Maybe it’s because writing is supposed to be therapy, used to exorcise demons. Maybe it’s because a few days ago I promised myself that I would start doing some sort of writing for at least twenty minutes every day (not a difficult task since I’ve been doing approximately jack shit with my time while home) and this is the first time I’ve actually done it. Maybe I’m still a little stoned (I smoked a little before watching Science of Sleep, for what should be obvious reason). Will I ever really know?
P.S. Even though my comments about Oldboy would lead you to believe I hate the movie, if you ask me what I thought about it in a few days I will probably say it’s great. Even though I almost had a seizure watching it. Movies confuse me.