introspectively speaking
there's a line playing in my head from the movie, "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" in the manner of a song that just repeats and repeats. it's, "i'm not a concept. i'm just a girl looking for her own peace of mind." and then tangerine, the character, goes on to tell her male counterpart that she's not going to save him. and he replies, "ok," before proceeding to believe that she will.
i wake up these days with half-formed thoughts in my head and then approach this site as a place to talk, to myself, until meaning is wrested from the haze of the morning, or alternately, sometimes i invent a character to whom i target my language. either route, it's like writing a letter into the dark, which is actually another line, this time paraphrased, from Tennessee Williams in the foreword of the first play i ever read ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof") in high school, bought from Copperfield Used Books in Spring, TX, next to the TCBY on Louetta for $1.50. he claimed that he wrote every play as a letter to a stranger whom he regarded as an intimate friend. and again, there was something about speaking into the dark.
it's the dark that catches me today; it's the idea of not being a concept; that catches me this morning. i'm sitting in my underwear, cross-legged on my twin bed with my laptop propped on my feet.
perhaps it is this. there have been many who talk to me through the night but never ask me to lunch the next day or introduce me to their friends or invite me to a show or teach me to throw a frisbee. and my guess is that, to them, i'm a concept, a gesture in the dark, something interesting and romantic existing in a safe vacuum into which they can dip and be saved and depart into their newly reconstituted lives while i stay here, because i only have this one reality.
i am the intimate stranger in the dark.
i wake up these days with half-formed thoughts in my head and then approach this site as a place to talk, to myself, until meaning is wrested from the haze of the morning, or alternately, sometimes i invent a character to whom i target my language. either route, it's like writing a letter into the dark, which is actually another line, this time paraphrased, from Tennessee Williams in the foreword of the first play i ever read ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof") in high school, bought from Copperfield Used Books in Spring, TX, next to the TCBY on Louetta for $1.50. he claimed that he wrote every play as a letter to a stranger whom he regarded as an intimate friend. and again, there was something about speaking into the dark.
it's the dark that catches me today; it's the idea of not being a concept; that catches me this morning. i'm sitting in my underwear, cross-legged on my twin bed with my laptop propped on my feet.
perhaps it is this. there have been many who talk to me through the night but never ask me to lunch the next day or introduce me to their friends or invite me to a show or teach me to throw a frisbee. and my guess is that, to them, i'm a concept, a gesture in the dark, something interesting and romantic existing in a safe vacuum into which they can dip and be saved and depart into their newly reconstituted lives while i stay here, because i only have this one reality.
i am the intimate stranger in the dark.
posted by J. at 9:26 AM
1 Comments:
That is a great part of an even better movie, and I think there are several ideas from it that can be applicable to real life.
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