an incomplete picture (closer)

Melkis and I saw Closer in the Square the weekend before we left for break. We loved it. Right after it ended I clung to Melkis's arm and all I could say was, "That was so good. That was so intense." I can compare it to no other movie experience. I've seen a lot of intense movies but none that made me hurt in quite the way that this one did. Not that it was more valuable than the other kinds of strong feelings that movies in the past have evoked, but just that this was singular.

It was painful and fascinating to witness how deeply and how effectively--and how efficiently (that word seems to convey the tone of the movie fairly well)--people can and will hurt each other. There were moments when I literally hurt. Why is this unusual? That always happens when I see people being cruel to one another. In some cases, it's a simple repulsion by inexplicable unkindness; in others there's a more complicated empathy involved; the actions may be cruel but the intentions can be understandable. The kind of things Closer depicted were more of the latter sort, but for some reason they scared me in a way I don't think I've experienced before. Because they were so real, so understandable in the context in which they were placed. The things that were said, and that were done, were things I would never have imagined people actually saying and doing, but when they were said and done in the film, they seemed so natural. And that was scary. And even scarier that the original source of these incredibly hurtful things was love. Love is powerful, most movies optimistically tell us, love can surmount all things, they say. Closer doesn’t deny this but it makes distinctions between love and compassion and kindness—love is in fact so powerful that it can destroy any inclination to practice the latter two virtues.

I mentioned some of this to Andrea and she asked me whether I've seen/experienced that kind of hurt in real life, and I said yes, but in real life these incidents and feelings are diluted over long passages of time, place and experience, so witnessing them full-force on-screen, you recognize and feel them much differently. Particularly in this movie, which was so compact. So concise--every word or lack thereof meant something, and lifetimes and a million musings fit easily and comfortably into four characters--four bodies, really--and a plot that could be summarized in a few sentences. Maybe this is where my vague dissatisfaction with real life stems from; I want that level of intensity, all the time. I think I talked to Sarah about that once and she said something along the lines of, why would you want that, you’d be drained and exhausted. This is probably true, and reminds me of what Foucault says about never being able to experience things fully and directly, using the example of the sun—you can never experience the sun as it really is because our interaction with it is too intangible and even if it were tangible it’d be too intense; you can only see its light reflected onto other things and feel its warmth, diluted by distance and particles in the air.

Most of the time I’m more than content with that, even incredibly grateful and happy for that because there are moments when even as it is things are too much, and so beautiful (a la American Beauty). But I wonder sometimes whether that is sufficient, or we only think so because it’s all we can have. I like to think, though, that maybe things are beautiful because even only a fraction of the whole can have such impact, and we’re left to imagine how amazing the complete image would be.

inarticulation

Two people in the past two days have made fun of my inability to articulate exactly what I mean. And I get that all the time. Someone told me that I say “I don’t know” a lot. This is true, and not just in the context of answering questions but more importantly in trying to explain things. I never noticed it much until I encountered a certain person compelled to ask “why?” Not many people have pushed me to explain myself fully, and I rarely voluntarily do it. I think ninety percent of the time I have no idea how to express in words what it is that I feel and mean. It’s harder than people think to translate from individual to individual. English is a lie. People don’t really speak the same language.

Cold sunny days have this weird, almost endearing physically-numbing mentally-stimulating effect on me. I've been thinking about a million things today--no time to write about them. I will when the week is over, if I can still remember. When will the week be over??!

Walking back home from class my iPod malfunctioned. Silence for a few cold seconds, then I was unexpectedly and serendipitously warmed by The Cure.

you were stone white/so delicate/lost in the cold

adams winter formal

In getting ready for the formal, I concluded that I indeed have never learned to be a girl. How does mascara really work? Why are there different powders for blush and eyeshadow when you're just putting color on some part of your face? Why do I not care about lipstick when there's food to be eaten? Why is there no dress that fits me exactly right and does not require some sort of adjusting? Why do 90% of the girls wear black to winter formals? Next year--bright yellow, once I find that perfect yellow dress. Why do I look just as ordinary made-up and dressed-up as in my Friday sweatshirt and jeans? Why wear heels when girls taller than me are also wearing heels? Why not just dance barefoot? It's a confusing system, and these are the important questions, evidently.

Anyway, it's still fun.

Song highlights: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Heaven on Earth, I Touch Myself, Total Eclipse of the Heart, (hint of the 80s anyone?), I Like That ("This song's for Melkis"), CRAZY IN LOVE (that was pretty damn crazy, I must say).

Pictures of crazy people I love. Sorry for the disarray, and the lack of elaboration. I'm sleepy. And for those of you who complain that I never post pictures of myself...too bad.

a journal within a journal

I was three-fourths done with an entry about what and how much writing means to me. Two faulty computer clicks and it was all gone. Five seconds of a daze and a fury later, I start again.

I, like anyone else who reads or writes a public journal, wonder sometimes about public versus private writing. A lot of people argue that you can't judge someone by their blog, that inevitably the writer is more complex and multidimensional than the writing. I definitely see the truth in that--the selectivity that comes with choosing words will always impose limitations on what you can express and in turn what the reader can perceive. But I also think that often you can get more from entries than from direct communication. Not that this should necessarily be the way it is, but the nature of relationships and personal interaction makes it so.

I think this applies to self-perception too. I haven't written in my own journal since the beginning of October. The other night I was organizing my book shelf and came across it. It's amazing how long two months can feel, how distant I feel from the last thing I wrote, how easily I forget things that I felt so strongly at one point. I don't know what's more valid, my memories (or lack thereof) of actual experiences--memories that change with each day--or the writing that records and encapsulates them at the time. Either way, I'm glad I wrote them down. I recognize that writing as a medium is just that--a medium, a catalyst--that can't relay experience directly, but I also think that it can be an agent for more than that.

June 7
I'm finally back home.
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Everything here is the same, and I'm not. At every point in my life I think I know myself more completely and accurately than the last.
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Something Barnes said resonated with me. He said when you're young you live for the fullness of the seasons whereas when you grow older you appreciate the in-between moments because you've recognized--resigned to?--the uncertainty of life. It seems reversed for me right now, though. College definitely cemented the presence and reality of uncertainty in my life forever, but I'm not afraid of it anymore and I want those full seasons to come--why should there ever be in-between moments?
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This is solely for me; no need to explain or show anything because I will know what I meant, and reinterpret, in the future.

June 9
How funny and fitting that so far "May" is my favorite chapter in The Jane Austen Book Club. It's about Prudie hosting the book club meeting on Mansfield Park (but never actually doing so). Prudie never knows what's real; it's blurred by false and imagined memories, fairy tales, images. Loves France but never wants to go there. Maker of lists, but not a prisoner of them.

June 11
When I'm with others, I feel so ordinary. Does recognizing the possibility of the extraordinary make an ordinary person any less so? If not, what a life this person leads, to be able to see possibility and to never attain it. Capote says that with the gift comes the whip for self-flagellation. Maybe I have only one or the other, more likely neither.
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It's good to be back home. Amidst traffic today I saw the most breathtaking view of Fremont's brown hills against Northern California's wispy clouded skies. Stephen always thinks Fremont hills are only beautiful when green. His eye for beauty is much more selective than mine. The brown touches me in a different but equally powerful way. They're always there, and that's my favorite part about them. What I do miss about the East Coast--the walking. I liked walking places. The trade-offs, I suppose.

June 20
He's the one who's made me so afraid of being selfish, so much so that I made my number one goal to become more selfless.

Deep down I know how hard it's been for him.

July 14
I waver between using my interests to define who I am and hating being defined by my interests.
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So much easier to write than to speak.
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He is one of those people who makes me feel so good because for some reason I've made an impact on his life, one of those people whose lives I feel genuinely include me. I don't see or talk to him all the time but somehow he always remembers me, has managed to still want to talk to me after all these years. In that respect he's the most loyal person I know.
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A six year old girl told me today, "You're a kid too."

August 15
Even though they're both unusually emotional, whenever they talk about love, it's so analytical. It's about the girl's qualities, rarely ever simple, pure feeling--the kind of inexplicable emotion that doesn't need and actually resists analysis, no explanation, no reason. I wonder if that's the kind of love most people feel, and I wonder which I will encounter, if either.
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I just want to go back to school and move my life forward instead of simply organizing for change here.

September 5
Home from Hawaii. Exhausted. Mixed feelings. Only one week left, wish I had at least two. As anxious as I've been for school to start, something's suddenly brought my heart back here. I don't know what it is. I still can't wait for school, but now I wish I could be in two places at once.

September 10
I want to soak up the last remnants of home with as little introspection as possible--just my parents, the couch, good food, packing, tv music and movies. Is it possible to miss things before you leave them?

September 14
So much has been racing through my mind this past week--I know now why we were made to sleep.
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I love being a couch potato with my dad, such closeness in that silence.
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I've been thinking a lot about what it means to know someone. I wish sometimes there was someone who wanted to know the stupid little details of my personality. I wonder if those kinds of things will change over the years. It seems like the most insignificant components of ourselves are the ones that endure the longest.

October 4
"He had all the bones and joints of other men, without any of their proportions."
-Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans