all the leaves are brown. and, the sky is grey.
at long last, I've been assasinated, which means that I can walk around this campus without constantly shooting suspicious glances at every person who passes me. I can return to a life free of paranoia and waiting outside of people's classes for them to emerge and present their asses to me on a silver platter. in a few days, I won't even talk about it anymore.
other than playing this asinine (get it? ASSinine!?) yet seductive game, I've been doing a whole lot of nothing and only marginally enjoying doing it. I've been watching a bunch of movies: Cabaret, Dirty Pretty Things, Triplets of Belleville, Todo Sobre Mi Madre. It was my second time with the first and my first (finally) with the rest. I really liked all of them. I had forgotten how depressing Cabaret was and how well it does what it does. The others can be described in the same way: they all do it so well. What it is, exactly, that they do, is a larger question. I wish I had seen Triplets on a larger screen so that I could enjoy the animation properly, but as it was I was astounded by how well such limited dialogue can create a cohesive narrative. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the power that images have or our ability to understand a story told almost completely through gorgeous animation. In fact, I'm not surprised at all. But I love words so much, and have so much invested in them. And I found that I wasn't able to "understand" the movie without giving its story a nice little explanatory voiceover in my head. So, does that mean that I (we?) can understand a story without words but need words to understand it properly? Or that I would get it anyway but am somehow dependent on the structure that a "He said that, she did this" narrative supplies?
Discuss. 500 words or less...
And Todo Sobre Mi Madre was great because it was a lot like 100 Years of Solitude in the way crazy characters showed up and had all sorts of things happen to them at the drop of a hat. Though it's Spanish, not Latin American. Still, it's amazing the way such theatrics can add up to something that makes a lot of real-life sense.
I managed to not go to my last french drill class today, because my alarm didn't go off. Instead, I went running. I haven't gone running in at least two years. I wanted to call Cady and tell him about it, but I decided that it would be best to keep it up for at least a few more days before patting myself on the back. It was cold but so nice to move; it's been too long since frisbee ended.
Tomorrow is the last day of classes and in many ways this room and this semester still feel new to me. At least christmas lights have finally been put up in the hall and in honor of the decorations, we're having a party tomorrow night modeled after what we imagine suburban 50s christmas parties must have been like. swinging was suggested, but then we realized that too many people have singles so it really just means that we would be sleeping in one another's beds. and that would be weird.
other than playing this asinine (get it? ASSinine!?) yet seductive game, I've been doing a whole lot of nothing and only marginally enjoying doing it. I've been watching a bunch of movies: Cabaret, Dirty Pretty Things, Triplets of Belleville, Todo Sobre Mi Madre. It was my second time with the first and my first (finally) with the rest. I really liked all of them. I had forgotten how depressing Cabaret was and how well it does what it does. The others can be described in the same way: they all do it so well. What it is, exactly, that they do, is a larger question. I wish I had seen Triplets on a larger screen so that I could enjoy the animation properly, but as it was I was astounded by how well such limited dialogue can create a cohesive narrative. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the power that images have or our ability to understand a story told almost completely through gorgeous animation. In fact, I'm not surprised at all. But I love words so much, and have so much invested in them. And I found that I wasn't able to "understand" the movie without giving its story a nice little explanatory voiceover in my head. So, does that mean that I (we?) can understand a story without words but need words to understand it properly? Or that I would get it anyway but am somehow dependent on the structure that a "He said that, she did this" narrative supplies?
Discuss. 500 words or less...
And Todo Sobre Mi Madre was great because it was a lot like 100 Years of Solitude in the way crazy characters showed up and had all sorts of things happen to them at the drop of a hat. Though it's Spanish, not Latin American. Still, it's amazing the way such theatrics can add up to something that makes a lot of real-life sense.
I managed to not go to my last french drill class today, because my alarm didn't go off. Instead, I went running. I haven't gone running in at least two years. I wanted to call Cady and tell him about it, but I decided that it would be best to keep it up for at least a few more days before patting myself on the back. It was cold but so nice to move; it's been too long since frisbee ended.
Tomorrow is the last day of classes and in many ways this room and this semester still feel new to me. At least christmas lights have finally been put up in the hall and in honor of the decorations, we're having a party tomorrow night modeled after what we imagine suburban 50s christmas parties must have been like. swinging was suggested, but then we realized that too many people have singles so it really just means that we would be sleeping in one another's beds. and that would be weird.