cutting the other edge
Best of the Decade ’00-’09
“No Man’s Land”, 2001
May 30th
Rarely has a movie knocked me on my ass quite like this one.
Set in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the civil war in 1993, it follows two enemy soldiers, Ciki and Nino, who become trapped together in a trench between battle lines. Ciki’s friend has been booby trapped by Nino’s side, the Serbs: he is laying on a bouncing bomb, which will explode if he moves, and Nino can’t disarm it. The two enemies must watch over him until help comes in the form of UN troops—if it does come.
Branko Djuric, who plays Ciki, was incredibly easy to watch. He has a sort of dangerous innocence, and his mobile facial expressions add almost a second dialogue to his part. I found it difficult to look away from the screen, and not just because the movie’s in subtitles—I didn’t want to miss one moment of the nonverbal interaction of the actors.
“No Man’s Land” won Bosnia an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Director Danis Tanovic takes a well-used plot device—enemies thrown together in unexpected intimacy—and a simple stage-set backdrop, and transcends them both with a vengeance. The film drops violence, humor, satire, horror, and pathos, with no warning, building in the viewer a raw and incredible emotion.
The characters are extremely human in a way that stings. The shots are close up; you feel trapped right there with them. No punches will be pulled; but you’re alive enough to take them.
Many reviewers of this movie focus on its portrayal of the absurdities of war, with the two soldiers as symbols of the entire Yugoslav conflict. It affected me more directly—I saw it as a reflection of the ridiculousness of interpersonal hatreds, of how arbitrary and yet intractable they can be.
But the best aspect of the movie is that it avoids the tendency of a typical war film to either shy away into abstraction and analysis, or numb itself with bloodspill and spectacle. Here, themes take a backseat to reality, just as in life. The bullets are less important than the pain, both emotional and physical, that they cause. Movies like “No Man’s Land” are mirrors, showing us a vital humanity that we all have, dangerously, in common.
MGMT: This funny, sad, sunny day
May 29th
All my life, “post-apocalyptic” has been a phrase used to describe the alarming future. After a bomb, most likely, we’d be eating mystery meat from cans and wearing aluminum shoulderpads and big hair. We’d be simultaneously grubby and overly made-up. And our innate savage nature would prevail.
But what if the apocalypse has already been and gone? What if we were it? The music of MGMT, a Brooklyn, New York-based electronic-pop band, perfectly captures the feel of waking up outside, mildly hungover, and realizing that the awesome party the night before had actually been the end of the world.
Yes, the music admits, there were things that we wish we’d done, before it all went boom. But supposing it’s better this way? After all, this crazy new landscape holds its own adventures. At the very least, it offers a bittersweet freedom, the chance to use this wreckage to serve the great god Fun.
Our culture’s spent the past eight or nine years perfecting its implosion, and can now collapse on itself with astonishing efficiency. MGMT suggests a bright side: our rules hold as much sway now, as do the ones that reduced our future to rubble. Clothe yourself in what you wish, and dance.
Eventually, one gets used to the dark undercurrent weaving its way through these crazy times.
City’s gone? Let’s go find a beach.
Purple Bar, Bitches
Nov 30th
Well, the fastest November I’ve ever experienced has ended, and so has the NaNoWriMo competition. And I’m absolutely floored to have won, my very first year. The completion rate is about 17%. Beating those odds has really forced me to see how seriously I desire to take writing as a profession. I’m in this to win, November and the rest of the year. And I may actually have a chance!
There have been too many times, in the last half-decade or so, when I’ve been forced to quit something I cared about–finances, exhaustion, disillusionment conspiring to pull me away from something before I’d had a chance to give it my all. And that’s not counting the things I’ve decided sucked, and walked away from. It ‘s meant a lot to me, seeing this novel project through from start to finish. It’s restored my confidence in myself that I can actually finish something.
I’ll be thinking of things for a while, that this experience has taught me. They were right when they warned that it would change the way you see yourself, the way you see the experiences of your life, the way you read, and the way you approach any creative work that you do. All for the better, I say. I cannot recommend this highly enough. Even if I had lost, I’ve had so much fun, met some awesome local writers, and thought up a pile of ideas for future works (thanks Rance!).
Fifty thousand words in 30 days. I can’t wait until next November!
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***excerpt, Via De Luna, chapter 7:
My feet met the hot road, and I started walking up towards the corner. My mind was on nothing, really, just the road. How it felt on my feet, the drifted sand grinding under my toes, the occasional pebble pressing into my heel, the warmth. Drips of water ran down the back of my thighs from my soaked shorts. I reached Via de Luna, the main beach road and turned left, towards where I’d parked my car, what seemed so long ago. As I waited to cross the road to my car, a fresh breeze blew in my face, drying the saltwater there, making me shiver. A memory of other winds, other heat. I’d left something behind, I was open, headlong, sightless, glowing. No cars were coming. I walked out into the road, an uncontrollable smile stretching my salty face. Angling a bit towards my car, I breathed in a lungful of the warm beach air, and fell…
through heartbreaking sweetness
I came to flat on my back. Realizing I was laying in the road, I scrambled up hastily, looking around me. Then came to a dead standstill. The houses were gone. Every one of them. The beach was empty, just dunes and gnarled beach trees, and one long, straight road, as far as my eye could see. I breathed very slowly, very calmly, and waited for things to return to normal. And waited. I mentally congratulated myself that my breathing remained so steady and regular. The road continued to stretch into the hazy distance in the east, absolutely absent of any cars. Perhaps they were behind me. I would look. I turned, again clamly, towards the west, towards the sun. Well. No buildings that way, either. I was all alone on an extremely deserted beach. This was where my breathing started to come a little faster, then a lot. I laughed a bit unbelievingly, my mind at a complete loss to process. For want of instructions, my feet began carrying me in the direction I was facing, which happened to be west. I’d say I got a good twenty or thirty feet before the shock broke.
I stopped in my tracks. “Hello!” I screamed. “Hello! Where—“ And then I admit, I just screamed, period. Once.
I slowly caught my breath, feeling a lot better, except for the rawness in my throat. Okay. Where was I. That was a good question, let’s start with that.
Well, I was still on the beach. I knew the layout of the land, and more importantly the feel of it, as well as I knew anything in the world. But there were blatant differences. The complete and utter lack of sign of any people was one. The tall dunes were another. Some were two stories high, topped with waving gold sea oats. The no cars, no buildings thing was another, and that was the one my mind kept coming giddily back to. The sun was the same, in the same late afternoon place in the same silver blue sky. It was hot. I was still wet. And now I also had sand on my back, from having laid in the road.
Laid in the road. I turned around and ran back the way I’d come, fifteen feet, twenty, thirty. Forty. Fifty. Nothing happened. I slowed down. Catching my breath, as much from panic as from running, I turned back around. No car, no people, no difference, no nothing. I knew one second of utter terror. Then I sighed, and again began walking west. After about twelve paces, I came to a very clear mark in the sand that spread in thin drifts over parts of the road. It was about a foot and a half feet wide by three feet. My back. I bent and touched it, then turned around and laid down in it, closing my eyes. Sparkling blackness. The sound of wind blowing sand. A feeling of absurdity. I opened my eyes and looked straight up into blue nothing. Then I took a deep breath and got back up.
I stood for a moment in the spot with my head bowed. It felt like an island in the middle of a strange wilderness. I was reluctant to leave it. But the idea of being out here alone when night fell terrified me into the farthest corners of my soul. Bending again, I wiped out the mark of my back with my hand, for reasons I’ll never know. Then, straightening, I turned west and began once more to walk.
Au Revoir, Provence
Nov 25th
I leave Aix-en-Provence, France, for Edinburgh, Scotland, on December 6. I’ll be staying with Rance, my friend who’s a student at the University of Edinburgh. Ever since my decision to switch majors and pursue a degree in writing instead of one in art, I’ve debated whether or not to even finish this semester. The case for finishing is so that I won’t have wasted my money, and so that I won’t have to feel like a quitter, someone who just couldn’t hack it and gave up. The case against finishing was actually longer: due to health problems, I’m very behind, and the amount of effort I’d have to make to catch up in time is more than the aforementioned health problem will allow; I feel really uncomfortable around my art program director, and not too eager to subject myself to another of his “critiques”, especially after hurting myself to catch up; I’m fucking sick of art, and of crapping out on demanding things that my heart isn’t into, especially when demanded by people who don’t care about me anyway; and I have a lot more soul-satisfying things I could do with those three weeks of my life.
Besides, I didn’t waste a cent. This has been totally worthwhile, whatever some “grade” says. And who cares if I’m a quitter? Who cares if I’m 27 and withdrawing from class, switching schools and majors again? Anyone who would judge me as “weak” or “a quitter” for that, given these circumstances, doesn’t know me at all. They sound more like Alan than any friend of mine. People like he and I do have “being hard on ourselves” in common; but the difference between him and I is that I can quit doing it. If this time in France has taught me anything at all, it is to stop drill-sergenting myself, and start living soul-first. And my soul says quit.
After that, it was only a matter of Rance doing a little persuading, convincing me to change my EasyJet flight to Edinburgh to about two weeks earlier. He’ll be finishing his essays for his classes, and I will have some time to myself to reflect on things, with the added bonus of not actually having to be in France anymore. Because this place is driving me crazy.
Ten Most Beautiful Sights I’ve Seen
1. Paris at night from the top of the Eiffel Tower
2. The highest garden point of the Medieval hilltop city of Eze, hundreds of feet over the Cote d’Azur coastline
3. Aix streets and alleys, yellow and blue in sun and shade, or shiny after rain
4. The pale aqua Rhone River in Arles
5. Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Odilon Redon, Rembrandt, and Art Nouveau furniture
6. Stained glass inside Notre Dame, Paris
7. The colored autumn leaves falling in the Alexanderplatz, East Berlin
8. Sunrise over the Mediterranean from the top of a cliff
9. Mont St Victoire at sunset, with clouds cresting up from behind it
10. Landing in Nice, deep blue water on one side, and sunlit, snow-covered Alps on the other
Ten Worst Moments
1. Missing a field trip to de Sade’s ancestral home, due to food poisoning from an American restaurant
2. Realizing my first host mother had gone through my things
3. Realizing my second host mother was attempting to financially scam me
4. Having to kill about 100 spiders in my new studio apartment (became funny)
5. Feeling excluded and looked down on within the Marchutz School
6. Having an allergy that gave me a tickly-throat cough until I was almost sick
7. Getting thrown out of a doctor’s office for insisting I needed more allergy medicine (became funny)
8. Pulling a year’s worth of luggage up 200 steps to the hostel in Montmartre–sleep-deprived, starving, and with cramps
9. Taking a shower in flickering strobe lights and pitch darkness, because my landlord paid the wrong power bill
10. Getting my face grabbed and being told to shut the fuck up and paint
Ten Best Moments
1. My first sight of Europe after years of waiting and a long flight: Cornwall at dawn from the air
2. Rance and I sitting by the Seine at sunset, looking over at Notre Dame, drinking wine and talking about art
3. Wandering through Paris at night, and almost being run down by a giant herd of about 10,000 rollerbladers
4. Dancing around the living room of my French studio apartment, trashy ’80′s metal on my iPod
5. Wandering through the damp forest trails north of Giverny, enjoying feeling healthy for a change
6. Berlin. Just…all of it.
7. Leaving a Friday art criticism seminar at Marchutz, and feeling like I could see everything deeper and better
8. Sitting in the Cave (the basement of our school), blogging, drinking 89-cent champagne, and watching the “Family Guy” movie with my friends
9. All the wandering, drinking, eating, discussions, and laughter with Tara
10. Sitting in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower with Rance, eating and chatting, watching the sun set–when suddenly the Tower lit up and sparkled brilliantly
I Can’t Believe I Did This
1. Saw a letter from Napoleon to Josephine, and the Berlin Wall
2. Let a Frenchwoman know I thought her cooking was inedible (it was)
3. Took a taxi to class when I was late for my own presentation
4. Went topless with friends on a beach in Antibes (too bad about the perverts)
5. Spent a lot of my time in Monte Carlo wandering around the Casino parking lot and garage, checking out the cars
6. Cleaned a stranger’s vomit out of a friend’s sweater, in the ladies’ room of a Mafia-run 24-hour diner
7. Encouraged a drunk friend to pee into an o.j. bottle during a field-trip bus ride (she almost did it)
8. Slept in Paris’s Orly airport lounge, with cool Eleonore from Kazakhstan
9. Made out with a random Swiss guy in the hallway of a Berlin hostel, until he picked me up and fell over and I hit my head
10. Used a squat toilet while completely, hysterically wasted
Ahhh…Success!
Jun 7th
Sitting in the basement of the VCU Cabell Library, blogging via wireless internet. I wanted to make sure that the AirPort card was working properly before I made it over to France. I’ll be using this laptop to connect to the internet there, and I sure didn’t want to get there and find out there was a problem getting online. But all is well.
Sure is creepy to know that websites are flying through the air, perhaps through my body, to reach this little machine. Sure is strange to think that when I hit “publish”, my own words will swirl though the air, passing through skin and plastic and wire before reaching your screen. It’s one thing to say “all is one”, and quite another to literally sit in a vortex made of your own information.
Over and out.