Selected Scenes: The Angels’ Melancholia

A spoiler-heavy multi-scene film analysis & review.

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Hmm. Another shot of a woman peeing. She pees standing up at a sit-down toilet, pees on the floor, and pees on a dead guy’s face. Sometimes she poops, too: often at the same time as Number 1, lit sultrily by a bonfire where our protagonists are burning the disemboweled corpse of one of their own. Characters stick their fingers in each other’s holes and you are guaranteed a money-shot of their shit-stained fingers after, too. “Oh, well there’s that” I thought to myself as another disturbing image passed my view while I sat on my couch, high and alone at 10 PM on my Friday night.

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don’t lose my number

A poem.

i prowl methodically,
judicious in my seeing
but there has to be days when you just let it go.
where you just be.
and you communicate
in that old imitable way that our youth betrays.

i hope youre okay
and that your hair still hangs,
with eyes that stare through the bangs.
the tears would well up in your face
when we talked about how we loved
betrothed and entwined
through our own slippery grasp of experience combined.

just the slightest bit of skin is like a beacon,
beckoning for reason.
so when the unreasonable becomes your cure,
please dont lose my number.

//jf 6.13.2020

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sitzfleisch

A poem.

isolation with my lover is a dogfight of disposition.
who can get to the tv first?

i imagine a future with no internet
and being lost on the couch in her world.
why dont we do something,
anything else?
im too tired for anything else, she cries,
making sure the neighbors hear who is in charge.

i imagine a future with no electricity
and she is lost in the covers of her own despondent world.
why dont we do something,
anything else?
im too depressed for anything else, she moans
making sure to spread her piteousness
on the burnt, black toast of my indifference.

i imagine a future where she is gone
and the lights inside are permanently dimmed
and i am sitting outside by myself in the quiet of natures dawn.
i am reading.
soon ill be reeling.
i would rather have someone than no one.

//jf 6.10.2020

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3517

A micro-story.

the enormity of life confronts us all. i stand before a wall that separates me from my better half. this wall stretches the imagination, and i am alone. like a scrapbook it is covered in photos of people i knew; who i had lost; who had lost me. but as my bare toes sink in to the warm sand, i am not afraid. i am full of love. with a gentle push, this wall comes tumbling down. and the blue sky above me no longer splits across its middle but extends into the horizon, where a still blue ocean sits below and the sound of waves crashing rests miles away. i am in my happy place: a cove, a short swim around an inlet on oahu. any time i would visit, there wouldn’t be another living soul: like i was the first. in truth it was inconvenient enough for the kids and the families, but we were not the first. no one can be the first: not anymore. i sit in reverence to those who came before me, whose drawings are carved along the cavern walls. drawings that tell a story: one with layers, a new one uncovered with every visit.

//jf 6.6.2020

 

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Selected Scenes: M

A spoiler-heavy single-scene film review & analysis.

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In the last “Selected Scenes”, I noted that The Canterbury Tales the Book was a staple of modern courses in English. To set the stage for today’s edition (and it’s a doozy), here is the exact quote presented pedantically and unsarcastically:

“…the final shot of the crowd paying tribute could be interpreted as the common public, approving of Chaucer’s work as much as the artist himself. And they did: The Canterbury Tales the Book has been a staple of Middle English literature in Universities everywhere, obscenity-be-damned.”

I don’t think anyone will debate me on this but it did have me thinking. One of the first things you learn as an essay writer is to cite your sources: produce a bibliography to that academic specification we all remember from high school (start with the last name of the author and follow the format, tabbing the second line, etcetera) and make sure that you can prove something before you say something. I never cited any “official” sources that said Canterbury Tales was taught in English courses: it’s just something I know. Isn’t that why quote-unquote “classics” are given that designation? Because they have risen above anonymity and in to the social pantheon of common parlance?

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