Sunday, December 14, 2008
stoned ponderings on my way to and from the usual bodega where i buy my camels.u
i have an idea formulating in my head about a documentary type movie/short that i want to create. so far, i dont think i want any real dialogue, maybe just a soundtrack that evokes the feelings i would want the audience to experience in juxtaposition with the imagery. i want it to portray the mindset of a cigarette smoker, why they smoke, the duality of the desire and repulsion/the love and hate a smoker feels every time they inhale or buy a pack....i dunno, just an idea so far. i don't even have a camera.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
for the hell of it
The Place of Rhetoric in Italian Film
Rhetoric is the act of catering to an audience by evoking emotion and utlizing logic to persuade them to see things in the light of the speaker, or in this case the director. Benito Mussolini was a huge fan of rhetoric, using propaganda to sway the Italian masses to see and do things his way. Because Mussolini and Fascist Italy were so involved in rhetoric, naturally anti-fascists, such as Neorealist filmmakers, were interested in antirhetoric. In Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, Millicent Marcus argues that exact point, pertaining particularly to Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City. The idea of Italian films being antirhetorical will be discussed through the analysis of Vittorio DiSica’s Ladri di biciclette. Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria will be analyzed to provide the counterargument (Italian films as rhetoric). Federico Fellini’s divergence from rhetoric, anti- or otherwise, will be discussed using La Strada as an example.
Marcus maintains that Rome, Open City is antirhetorical both in style and story. Rossellini’s masterpiece is technically speaking, rather minimalist. He rejected conventional cinema (Fascist approved propaganda) and instead conjured his own voice through the means available to him (the gritty newsreel quality of the filmstock, location shooting, outdated equipment), thus intrinsically creating the antirhetoric. His storyline is more a dramatic chronicling of events rather than an escapist narrative like the white telephone comedies of the same era. He depicts the facts and the hard truths that were being ignored in an up front, take-it-for-what-it-is way, unlike the obvious manipulative rhetoric in Mussolini’s propaganda films. He was not purposely trying to change people’s minds or even raise awareness in a plea for help; he merely saw a skewed aesthetic in the hope of the marginalized people and thought that ought to be chronicled in the only way he knew how—cinema.
However, Marcus’s use of the term “antirhetoric” is a misnomer. Rhetoric is effectively using (cinematic) language to convey a message in hopes of changing the audiences’ mind. Given the definition of rhetoric, antirhetoric suggests that there is no message being conveyed at all. This is not the case with Italian Neorealist films. A true antirhetorical film would be, perhaps, a Rita Hayworth film. Marcus’ antirhetorical films could more appropriately be labeled as anti-Mussolini’s rhetoric, anti-convention, or even rhetorical with a leftist persuasion. Instead of the “empty bombast” (Marcus, p. 34) elicited in Mussolini’s rhetoric, Italian Neorealist directors such as Vittorio De Sica and Michelangelo Antonioni created a new type of cinematic language; a fusion of their prose and their technical styles to make accessible art with interpretive complexities.
Ladri di biciclette is one of De Sica and Zavattini’s masterpieces. It expands Rossellini’s idea of Neorealism by maintaining social issues of Post-WWII Italy and at the same time focusing on a micro-level (a personal journey for one man and his son) rather than a chronicling of historical events. By 1948, when Ladri di biciclette was released, the Neorealist motif had shifted from the Resistance to the insipid daily lives of the proletariat during post-war restoration. Ladri di biciclette is a simple story of a desperately determined man combing the streets of Rome in a futile attempt to find his stolen bicycle so he can provide for his family. De Sica stretches this simplistic plot into ninety-three minutes of beautifully touching “neorealist superspectacle.” (p. 56) Like Rossellini, De Sica tediously shot and edited his film to create an illusion of effortlessness but unlike Rossellini, De Sica had a generous budget to aid his vision of self-concealing artistry. De Sica’s rhetoric about cinematic conventions comes into play here; despite his million lire budget and huge cast, his distaste for commercial films can be plainly seen in the irony of the main character’s, Antonio Ricci’s, bicycle being stolen in front of a movie theatre as he pastes a poster of Rita Hayworth as Gilda on the wall and a sly reference from a driver noting how he does not even want to go see a movie even though it is raining. De Sica’s ultimate purpose for Ladri di biciclette, disregarding his personal contempt for commercial films, was to take a commonplace situation (something that could have easily happened to any one member of his audience) and portray it in a heart wrenchingly dramatic yet simplistic fashion so as to plainly reveal the everyday injustices committed against the sub-marginalized populace. The quintessential example of how De Sica rends neorealist simplicity to capture his audiences’ emotions is the mere one line uttered by the police officer after a journalist asks for any news to report on—“No, nothing, just a bicycle”. The audience knows that this is not just a bicycle; it is a man’s life, and the lives of his family. And the audience can relate to Ricci because the audience is Ricci, but the audience is also the police officer, the thief, and all the other nameless faces roaming around Rome with distant dreams of a better life. That sentiment is what one feels after Ladri di biciclette is over, that sentiment is exactly what De Sica wanted from his audience, and that sentiment is why this film is “antirhetorical”, or rather rhetorical through the lens of a leftist.
Before Neorealism, there was the cinematic movement that prompted the birth of it. The first Golden Age of Italian Cinema (1908-1914) predated even Mussolini’s reign of Fascism. In the first Golden Age, however, lie the roots of Mussolini’s propagandistic films. The first Golden Age of Italian Cinema included films like The Last Days of Pompeii, The Fall of Troy, Assunta Spina, and most notably, Cabiria; they were films experimenting with the idea of film as an artistic medium. They were mostly loose adaptations of plays or epic battles and contained much spectacle but they all had the underlying theme of Italian Unification. Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria is the perfect example of a spectacular epic that had little to do with plot, lots to do with visual stimulation, and left the audience with a feeling of happy Italian identity. Cinema was still new and had not yet developed into the 7th art form that it is accepted as today; people still mainly wanted to see things they had never seen before—the exotic. However, directors quickly understood the potential properties of film that make people feel differently or think differently. Cabiria enmeshes the idea of the unseen exotic and the idea of using film to invoke emotion from the audience together to create a spectacular metaphor. Pastrone’s Cabiria uses awesome shots of volcanic eruption, laughably exaggerated acting, enormous and intricate set designs, decadently poetic intertitles, voluptuous, silk-laden, hyper-feminine women, and oily, loincloth-laden, hyper-masculine men to create an exotic spectacular. Cabiria is the title character and Sofonisba is her foil. Cabiria represents Rome and Sofonsiba represents Carthage. Cabiria’s drama parallels the Third Punic War; Sofonsiba’s highly stylized, dramatic, and drawn out death scene symbolizes the death of Carthage—or more importantly, the victory of Rome. The character of Maciste, the devoted servant and exotic “other”, symbolizes the unerring loyalty of Numidia to Rome during the Third Punic War. Cabiria is a political allegory that was released with the intent to create a sense of pride for Italians. Thus, Cabiria can be seen as the beginning of rhetorical film.
Federico Fellini represents both the decline of Neorealism and the rise of Auteur Cinema. His La Strada has many aspects that could cause one to label it as a Neorealist film, but Fellini was more interested in an entirely new form of cinema, one that indeed portrayed impoverished characters in a bleak environment but strayed from “traditional” Neorealism in that its main concern was Fellini’s personal artistic expression. Film theorist Andre Bazin calls La Strada “neorealism of the person”, meaning it examines human problems apart from historical or societal contexts. (p. 146) Thus, La Strada has no political rhetoric or antirhetoric. Fellini was tired of the genre and wanted to create his own genre—films that when watched, one would recognize it not as a western or musical or Neorealistic, but as a Fellini film. His characters, like Gelsomina, Zampano, and The Fool, do not represent a socioeconomic class but are individuals with depth that the audience can grow to care for in a different way than they cared for Pina or Don Pietro from Rome, Open City. When Don Pietro dies, it is a symbolic death that inspires hope in the audience. When Gelsomina dies, the audience watches as Zampano has a personal epiphany. It is the same difference as reading Shakespeare’s historical drama Henry V1 or reading Shakespeare’s fictional comedy Much Ado About Nothing. This analogy represents the core of Auteur Theory, where the filmmaker becomes the author and the camera becomes the pen.
Rhetoric is a concept that is hard to avoid. It can be used to persuade the audience to do whatever the speaker (or director) suggests. From the very birth of the cinematic medium, films like Pastrone’s Cabiria were being made to conjure emotion from the audience in hopes of changing the audiences’ perspective. Mussolini used propagandistic rhetorical films to unite Italy over Fascism. Neorealist directors, like Rossellini and De Sica, made films that overtly opposed the Fascist Party by depicting a desolate Post-War Italy and the tribulations of the people that have to live there. Although Neorealist directors opposed the Fascists’ use of rhetoric, they used it themselves through a leftists’ point of view. Fellini heralded the decline of Neorealism and the purposeful eschewing of rhetoric in favor of the artistic expression that Auteur Cinema had to offer.
Rhetoric is the act of catering to an audience by evoking emotion and utlizing logic to persuade them to see things in the light of the speaker, or in this case the director. Benito Mussolini was a huge fan of rhetoric, using propaganda to sway the Italian masses to see and do things his way. Because Mussolini and Fascist Italy were so involved in rhetoric, naturally anti-fascists, such as Neorealist filmmakers, were interested in antirhetoric. In Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, Millicent Marcus argues that exact point, pertaining particularly to Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City. The idea of Italian films being antirhetorical will be discussed through the analysis of Vittorio DiSica’s Ladri di biciclette. Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria will be analyzed to provide the counterargument (Italian films as rhetoric). Federico Fellini’s divergence from rhetoric, anti- or otherwise, will be discussed using La Strada as an example.
Marcus maintains that Rome, Open City is antirhetorical both in style and story. Rossellini’s masterpiece is technically speaking, rather minimalist. He rejected conventional cinema (Fascist approved propaganda) and instead conjured his own voice through the means available to him (the gritty newsreel quality of the filmstock, location shooting, outdated equipment), thus intrinsically creating the antirhetoric. His storyline is more a dramatic chronicling of events rather than an escapist narrative like the white telephone comedies of the same era. He depicts the facts and the hard truths that were being ignored in an up front, take-it-for-what-it-is way, unlike the obvious manipulative rhetoric in Mussolini’s propaganda films. He was not purposely trying to change people’s minds or even raise awareness in a plea for help; he merely saw a skewed aesthetic in the hope of the marginalized people and thought that ought to be chronicled in the only way he knew how—cinema.
However, Marcus’s use of the term “antirhetoric” is a misnomer. Rhetoric is effectively using (cinematic) language to convey a message in hopes of changing the audiences’ mind. Given the definition of rhetoric, antirhetoric suggests that there is no message being conveyed at all. This is not the case with Italian Neorealist films. A true antirhetorical film would be, perhaps, a Rita Hayworth film. Marcus’ antirhetorical films could more appropriately be labeled as anti-Mussolini’s rhetoric, anti-convention, or even rhetorical with a leftist persuasion. Instead of the “empty bombast” (Marcus, p. 34) elicited in Mussolini’s rhetoric, Italian Neorealist directors such as Vittorio De Sica and Michelangelo Antonioni created a new type of cinematic language; a fusion of their prose and their technical styles to make accessible art with interpretive complexities.
Ladri di biciclette is one of De Sica and Zavattini’s masterpieces. It expands Rossellini’s idea of Neorealism by maintaining social issues of Post-WWII Italy and at the same time focusing on a micro-level (a personal journey for one man and his son) rather than a chronicling of historical events. By 1948, when Ladri di biciclette was released, the Neorealist motif had shifted from the Resistance to the insipid daily lives of the proletariat during post-war restoration. Ladri di biciclette is a simple story of a desperately determined man combing the streets of Rome in a futile attempt to find his stolen bicycle so he can provide for his family. De Sica stretches this simplistic plot into ninety-three minutes of beautifully touching “neorealist superspectacle.” (p. 56) Like Rossellini, De Sica tediously shot and edited his film to create an illusion of effortlessness but unlike Rossellini, De Sica had a generous budget to aid his vision of self-concealing artistry. De Sica’s rhetoric about cinematic conventions comes into play here; despite his million lire budget and huge cast, his distaste for commercial films can be plainly seen in the irony of the main character’s, Antonio Ricci’s, bicycle being stolen in front of a movie theatre as he pastes a poster of Rita Hayworth as Gilda on the wall and a sly reference from a driver noting how he does not even want to go see a movie even though it is raining. De Sica’s ultimate purpose for Ladri di biciclette, disregarding his personal contempt for commercial films, was to take a commonplace situation (something that could have easily happened to any one member of his audience) and portray it in a heart wrenchingly dramatic yet simplistic fashion so as to plainly reveal the everyday injustices committed against the sub-marginalized populace. The quintessential example of how De Sica rends neorealist simplicity to capture his audiences’ emotions is the mere one line uttered by the police officer after a journalist asks for any news to report on—“No, nothing, just a bicycle”. The audience knows that this is not just a bicycle; it is a man’s life, and the lives of his family. And the audience can relate to Ricci because the audience is Ricci, but the audience is also the police officer, the thief, and all the other nameless faces roaming around Rome with distant dreams of a better life. That sentiment is what one feels after Ladri di biciclette is over, that sentiment is exactly what De Sica wanted from his audience, and that sentiment is why this film is “antirhetorical”, or rather rhetorical through the lens of a leftist.
Before Neorealism, there was the cinematic movement that prompted the birth of it. The first Golden Age of Italian Cinema (1908-1914) predated even Mussolini’s reign of Fascism. In the first Golden Age, however, lie the roots of Mussolini’s propagandistic films. The first Golden Age of Italian Cinema included films like The Last Days of Pompeii, The Fall of Troy, Assunta Spina, and most notably, Cabiria; they were films experimenting with the idea of film as an artistic medium. They were mostly loose adaptations of plays or epic battles and contained much spectacle but they all had the underlying theme of Italian Unification. Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria is the perfect example of a spectacular epic that had little to do with plot, lots to do with visual stimulation, and left the audience with a feeling of happy Italian identity. Cinema was still new and had not yet developed into the 7th art form that it is accepted as today; people still mainly wanted to see things they had never seen before—the exotic. However, directors quickly understood the potential properties of film that make people feel differently or think differently. Cabiria enmeshes the idea of the unseen exotic and the idea of using film to invoke emotion from the audience together to create a spectacular metaphor. Pastrone’s Cabiria uses awesome shots of volcanic eruption, laughably exaggerated acting, enormous and intricate set designs, decadently poetic intertitles, voluptuous, silk-laden, hyper-feminine women, and oily, loincloth-laden, hyper-masculine men to create an exotic spectacular. Cabiria is the title character and Sofonisba is her foil. Cabiria represents Rome and Sofonsiba represents Carthage. Cabiria’s drama parallels the Third Punic War; Sofonsiba’s highly stylized, dramatic, and drawn out death scene symbolizes the death of Carthage—or more importantly, the victory of Rome. The character of Maciste, the devoted servant and exotic “other”, symbolizes the unerring loyalty of Numidia to Rome during the Third Punic War. Cabiria is a political allegory that was released with the intent to create a sense of pride for Italians. Thus, Cabiria can be seen as the beginning of rhetorical film.
Federico Fellini represents both the decline of Neorealism and the rise of Auteur Cinema. His La Strada has many aspects that could cause one to label it as a Neorealist film, but Fellini was more interested in an entirely new form of cinema, one that indeed portrayed impoverished characters in a bleak environment but strayed from “traditional” Neorealism in that its main concern was Fellini’s personal artistic expression. Film theorist Andre Bazin calls La Strada “neorealism of the person”, meaning it examines human problems apart from historical or societal contexts. (p. 146) Thus, La Strada has no political rhetoric or antirhetoric. Fellini was tired of the genre and wanted to create his own genre—films that when watched, one would recognize it not as a western or musical or Neorealistic, but as a Fellini film. His characters, like Gelsomina, Zampano, and The Fool, do not represent a socioeconomic class but are individuals with depth that the audience can grow to care for in a different way than they cared for Pina or Don Pietro from Rome, Open City. When Don Pietro dies, it is a symbolic death that inspires hope in the audience. When Gelsomina dies, the audience watches as Zampano has a personal epiphany. It is the same difference as reading Shakespeare’s historical drama Henry V1 or reading Shakespeare’s fictional comedy Much Ado About Nothing. This analogy represents the core of Auteur Theory, where the filmmaker becomes the author and the camera becomes the pen.
Rhetoric is a concept that is hard to avoid. It can be used to persuade the audience to do whatever the speaker (or director) suggests. From the very birth of the cinematic medium, films like Pastrone’s Cabiria were being made to conjure emotion from the audience in hopes of changing the audiences’ perspective. Mussolini used propagandistic rhetorical films to unite Italy over Fascism. Neorealist directors, like Rossellini and De Sica, made films that overtly opposed the Fascist Party by depicting a desolate Post-War Italy and the tribulations of the people that have to live there. Although Neorealist directors opposed the Fascists’ use of rhetoric, they used it themselves through a leftists’ point of view. Fellini heralded the decline of Neorealism and the purposeful eschewing of rhetoric in favor of the artistic expression that Auteur Cinema had to offer.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
just in case my e-mail didn't work
A Brief Comparison
Douglas Sirk’s 1955 melodrama All That Heaven Allows and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1974 take of the melodrama Ali: Fear Eats the Soul are two drastically stylistically opposite yet kindred films. They both ultimately deal with two people who love each other but cannot utilize that love to overcome societal conventions. Rather, the women involved cannot fully surrender to love; the men seem to have pretty solid ideals. Both directors manipulate the cinematic medium to convey very strong stances. Sirk disguises his rhetoric with accessible emotion; Fassbinder slaps you in the face with his rhetoric using Brechtian techniques. Essentially, they are the same film, dealing with (mostly) the same issues but one is Hollywood at its finest and the other is anti-Hollywood.
Yet, Sirk’s film is not entirely Hollywood. It is superficially Hollywood and surely made a pretty penny because of that, but one may argue that it could be parodying the mother that birthed it. In any event, Sirk most certainly knew who his audience would be—scopophiliatic Americans; people who are, ironically, blinded by the pleasure of looking. However, he does attempt to educate the masses. One can almost laugh at his use of clichés (i.e. deer =nature, mink coat=success) to hammer in his rhetoric to a blissfully oblivious populace. And what is his rhetoric? All That Heaven Allows is a fiction depicting/critiquing (depending on who is watching) the realities of 1950’s American petit-bourgeois society—the downward spiral of womanhood after they are married off to Suitor #1 (or #2, or #3…), the boredom that births the pitting of woman against woman (i.e. the gossip chain), the utter rut one experiences when they allow themselves to be played by the game of life instead of being an active player. Sirk depicts this maddeningly to a tee. But he offers an alternative in Ron, played by Rock Hudson. The idea of Ron is the counterargument to the “ideological safety valve” that some view All That Heaven Allows as. To the ignorant this film can be seen as a portrayal of society without challenging it but it is not. Sirk was trying to make clear that Ron’s way of life is right and Carrie’s way of life is awful. Ron’s Tao is explicitly revealed in the Shakespeare reference (“To thine own self be true”) and the Thoreau excerpt Carrie reads. Carrie’s Tao is revealed when her children buy her a television for Christmas. Thank divinity that Carrie chose Ron at the end. From a feminists’ viewpoint, it is a pity that Ron’s character had to be the man and Carrie’s character had to be the woman but Sirk was trying to make a profit and that character-sex-swap might have been a little too before its time.
Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was made in the 70’s (twenty years after) and in a different country than Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, thusly it was made unabashedly and without the façade Sirk constructs to appeal to an audience. Fassbinder assumes his audience is willing to participate in thinking rather than using the cinema as means for an escape or as means to identify. In his assumption, he adopts Bertold Brecht’s theory of distanciation to separate the raw emotion from the raw facts of life. Firstly, his purposeful use of ugly actors achieves the audience in noticing the absence of beautiful people, which is a step in the right direction for the audience noticing something. Secondly, he uses extreme tableaux to prevent the audience from getting too wrapped up in plot and also to provide a moment of reflection upon what may have just occurred (and what it might mean) and appreciation for his stark aesthetic. In terms of plot, Fassbinder’s film is different than Sirk’s in that his is less concerned with the elite versus the enlightened and more concerned with race and economic issues. Emmi is but a cleaning lady, but Ali is a Moroccan migrant worker, the lowest of the low. Also, in All That Heaven Allows, the character of Ron is very sure of himself and his ideals but all that Ali is sure of is that he wants cous cous. Both Ron and Ali share the dislike in being objectified (both seem rather disinterested in their respective partner’s want to “show them off”) but at least men are being objectified for once.
Douglas Sirk’s 1955 melodrama All That Heaven Allows and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1974 take of the melodrama Ali: Fear Eats the Soul are two drastically stylistically opposite yet kindred films. They both ultimately deal with two people who love each other but cannot utilize that love to overcome societal conventions. Rather, the women involved cannot fully surrender to love; the men seem to have pretty solid ideals. Both directors manipulate the cinematic medium to convey very strong stances. Sirk disguises his rhetoric with accessible emotion; Fassbinder slaps you in the face with his rhetoric using Brechtian techniques. Essentially, they are the same film, dealing with (mostly) the same issues but one is Hollywood at its finest and the other is anti-Hollywood.
Yet, Sirk’s film is not entirely Hollywood. It is superficially Hollywood and surely made a pretty penny because of that, but one may argue that it could be parodying the mother that birthed it. In any event, Sirk most certainly knew who his audience would be—scopophiliatic Americans; people who are, ironically, blinded by the pleasure of looking. However, he does attempt to educate the masses. One can almost laugh at his use of clichés (i.e. deer =nature, mink coat=success) to hammer in his rhetoric to a blissfully oblivious populace. And what is his rhetoric? All That Heaven Allows is a fiction depicting/critiquing (depending on who is watching) the realities of 1950’s American petit-bourgeois society—the downward spiral of womanhood after they are married off to Suitor #1 (or #2, or #3…), the boredom that births the pitting of woman against woman (i.e. the gossip chain), the utter rut one experiences when they allow themselves to be played by the game of life instead of being an active player. Sirk depicts this maddeningly to a tee. But he offers an alternative in Ron, played by Rock Hudson. The idea of Ron is the counterargument to the “ideological safety valve” that some view All That Heaven Allows as. To the ignorant this film can be seen as a portrayal of society without challenging it but it is not. Sirk was trying to make clear that Ron’s way of life is right and Carrie’s way of life is awful. Ron’s Tao is explicitly revealed in the Shakespeare reference (“To thine own self be true”) and the Thoreau excerpt Carrie reads. Carrie’s Tao is revealed when her children buy her a television for Christmas. Thank divinity that Carrie chose Ron at the end. From a feminists’ viewpoint, it is a pity that Ron’s character had to be the man and Carrie’s character had to be the woman but Sirk was trying to make a profit and that character-sex-swap might have been a little too before its time.
Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was made in the 70’s (twenty years after) and in a different country than Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, thusly it was made unabashedly and without the façade Sirk constructs to appeal to an audience. Fassbinder assumes his audience is willing to participate in thinking rather than using the cinema as means for an escape or as means to identify. In his assumption, he adopts Bertold Brecht’s theory of distanciation to separate the raw emotion from the raw facts of life. Firstly, his purposeful use of ugly actors achieves the audience in noticing the absence of beautiful people, which is a step in the right direction for the audience noticing something. Secondly, he uses extreme tableaux to prevent the audience from getting too wrapped up in plot and also to provide a moment of reflection upon what may have just occurred (and what it might mean) and appreciation for his stark aesthetic. In terms of plot, Fassbinder’s film is different than Sirk’s in that his is less concerned with the elite versus the enlightened and more concerned with race and economic issues. Emmi is but a cleaning lady, but Ali is a Moroccan migrant worker, the lowest of the low. Also, in All That Heaven Allows, the character of Ron is very sure of himself and his ideals but all that Ali is sure of is that he wants cous cous. Both Ron and Ali share the dislike in being objectified (both seem rather disinterested in their respective partner’s want to “show them off”) but at least men are being objectified for once.
we share the same stardust, baby.
as well & good as floating around on a cloud with eli is, 2009 is creeping up on us. i want to keep floating though. alas, alas....
he confronted me yesterday about it. good thing too cause i was doing my best at keeping it aht ah mi head.
he's going to berlin. and i...am staying this side of the atlantic. [& if i had any notion of how to drive my car across the atlantic ocean i'd be fucking set]
he did most of the talking, i was too stoned and startled to say much. no, i think i was just too afraid. same old song & dance with eli as was with Xam. it went too far without much talking thus getting to the point where i was too afraid of....i don't even know what i'm afraid of. loving completely? loving at all? getting hurt? sadness...
FUCK.
fuck.
i don't know how to feel or how to act or what to say. i just want to be with you.
i've just wrote & deleted like 20 sentences.
fuck.
i don't want this to end yet. why does it have to be now? i want to get as much as i can out of you before you leave. i'll be ok once you're in germany but i can't have you this close to me and not be able to have you. but if we continue with this, will it just be harder later? i want you to have as much fun as possible in germany; meet interesting people, make love to beautiful blonde women, be able to tap fully into you're creativity, go your own way....i want you to do everything that made you want to go to germany in the first place and i don't want to be a weight on your back. i cannot be any more sincere. i'm not saying this so you can feel less guilty. i don't want you to feel guilty at all. you're free!
but it just sucks because we have a beautiful thing. i suppose our timing was off. i haven't got enough of you yet. and my feelings for you are so pure and real that i'm scared of them. i haven't felt as comfortable or kindred with any one single other person than i have with you. & i know that scares you. & it scares me too. i'm usually so detached. i love from a distance. but the only distance between us is the necessary breath we must take as we kiss.
after saying all this, i still don't have any resolve.
all i's got is one big sigh. & there's still so much to be communicated.
-stella's blue. :-(
he confronted me yesterday about it. good thing too cause i was doing my best at keeping it aht ah mi head.
he's going to berlin. and i...am staying this side of the atlantic. [& if i had any notion of how to drive my car across the atlantic ocean i'd be fucking set]
he did most of the talking, i was too stoned and startled to say much. no, i think i was just too afraid. same old song & dance with eli as was with Xam. it went too far without much talking thus getting to the point where i was too afraid of....i don't even know what i'm afraid of. loving completely? loving at all? getting hurt? sadness...
FUCK.
fuck.
i don't know how to feel or how to act or what to say. i just want to be with you.
i've just wrote & deleted like 20 sentences.
fuck.
i don't want this to end yet. why does it have to be now? i want to get as much as i can out of you before you leave. i'll be ok once you're in germany but i can't have you this close to me and not be able to have you. but if we continue with this, will it just be harder later? i want you to have as much fun as possible in germany; meet interesting people, make love to beautiful blonde women, be able to tap fully into you're creativity, go your own way....i want you to do everything that made you want to go to germany in the first place and i don't want to be a weight on your back. i cannot be any more sincere. i'm not saying this so you can feel less guilty. i don't want you to feel guilty at all. you're free!
but it just sucks because we have a beautiful thing. i suppose our timing was off. i haven't got enough of you yet. and my feelings for you are so pure and real that i'm scared of them. i haven't felt as comfortable or kindred with any one single other person than i have with you. & i know that scares you. & it scares me too. i'm usually so detached. i love from a distance. but the only distance between us is the necessary breath we must take as we kiss.
after saying all this, i still don't have any resolve.
all i's got is one big sigh. & there's still so much to be communicated.
-stella's blue. :-(
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