Let's be honest

"All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction."

- The Portrait of Mr. W. H. by Sandra Williamson, quoting "Erskine"

Napkin notes

"In the Mood for Love"

"Pi" - Darren Arronofsky

Tarkovsky - "Stalker", "The Mirror", "Solaris"

"Koyanisqatsi"

"Russian Ark"

Out of the entire conversation I had with David Rosfeld, this is what stuck with me:

• You don't need a green screen for car scenes if you have small microphones and a guy strapped to the hood of the car.
• Don't be drunk on set.
• It's actually better to shoot scenes with only one camera. It just takes multiple takes and lots and lots of editing.
• Consider the character, setting and story before considering how a scene will be shot.
• Don't try to perform Beethoven's 9th at Carnegie Hall with only six months of piano lessons.
• The gaffer is the electric guy.
• Sound quality and editing is more important than the cinematography.
• It's easier when you're young to ask for favors.
• Invest the most money in good food for the crew. They'll be a lot more willing to do everything you ask if you're super nice to them. Also, allow for mealtime to be downtime.
• You're probably going to suck for the next six or seven years.
• Going to a film-geek-populated town will make you average, irritating and completely un-extraordinary. It's the best kick in the ass you could ever ask for.
• You have to accept that you're going to fail horribly. There's no chance you won't. But those failures are tiles in a floor, and the more you make, the further you go.

today

I'm single today.

No doting boyfriend.

No courageous knight.

No tall, dark, handsome stranger.

No perfect match.

No cosmic pair.

No prince charming.

No.

No.

No.

My family members are dying, one by one.

Wraith

Death has extended

his icy hand,

so it would

appear,

a smirk drying his chapped lips

as he singularly taps the

unsuspecting

shoulder of my family

and blows cold breath

onto its cheeks.

With slender,

black

fingers,

Death

penetrates the

spring

chest

of my relatives

and mind,

syrup leaking

into the veins

and trickling

through the circulatory system

before

blood

and

ink

drip out

of our slightly

open

mouths.

"Why?"

"Why us?"

Death's smirk

simply

grows

into a grin

and he shrugs

his

bony

shoulders,

causing a temporal ripple

down his arms

and

lanky

legs.

He's so thin.

My mother escaped.

She clenched her rosy fists

and shook her head,

demanding a doctor's visit,

albeit somewhat unaware

of the feat she'd just mastered.

Death raises

his

mo

las

ses

brow,

tilts

his

languid

head.

"Which would be worse -

to live as a monster

or die as a good man?"

"I'm never watching that again."

"I warned you."

"Yeah, but I'm never watching that movie again."

Yet, for some reason,

the name

Scorsese

reminds me of a

butterfly.

"It was weird."

"Yeah."

"Something's going on."

"Yeah, I agree."

"It's definitely spiritual."

"Yeah."

And I look to my

finger

nails,

wanting

the subject

to

change.

How long

until Death

rights his

silky head,

ends his

curly smirk

and

dips his

tar-

drenched

finger

nail

into

my

mother's

sternum?

Or mine,

for that

matter?

Her cheeks emulate roses.

A Pretty Bad Poem

Violet Transgressions


While I draw within the lines in the confines of my mind, I sip from the chalice of creative malice and consider the callousness of me. I am a simpleton, a ditzy blonde with nothing left to lose, and while I consider this, I also consider you. You seem to me so full of life, insight and trite, but I know your tightly rife hindsight. You smoke with superiority and bottoms-up your individualism while I stand back and compete with witticism and petulance. I am a mood cloud and you are a false one but at least I rain creativity where you reign with insanity.

Conceivably, I pull these words from some recess left untouched, and yet somehow I make them rhyme.

Wringing forth the purple art from my gel-cap brain I stagger north in tripping arcs and leave marks on some Aurora Borealis of my transcendentalist culture. I am a beautiful butterfly that has no feel for algebra or hard work at all really and oh my, this soup's delicious. But still I tiptoe because for some reason it seems more effective. My Mona Lisa has yet to rouse herself from her hazy wonderings of republicans, democrats, and how the Lord giveth but still taketh away. I may be a sorry excuse of a poet, but at least I'm not the best. I see the rest in a soft limelight and though it makes me crave, I still smirk at your oblivious snobbery.

Conceivably, I feel unwanted and surround myself with fluttering negativities, and yet somehow I have the world thanking me for my coarse fingertips.

(Midnight was three minutes ago, but dusty twilight still stuffs my nostrils. As a recovering Ibuprofen addict, consider me relapsed.)

In the bear traps of my hometown, I start most sentences with a prepositional phrase and drive with my head out the window. To be a widow is to be severed, I think, and to be so tethered to sociocultural norms is so collectivist, don't you think? So rather than making like a tree, let's all be Socrates and shed some purple to those poor dwellers in the caves with nauseatingly fluorescent lights. Speaking of nausea, I know a little too much about internal infections and how they can kill if left untreated.

Garden of Eden

I had another strange dream.

There was a young, blonde girl there, and somehow I knew that she was Alice from Alice in Wonderland. We were in Wonderland already, and she was showing us around. Us being a young man and maybe me, if I was even there. She brought us to a closed gate that looked more like a wall.

"Do you know the password?" she asked the young man. "I think I might've forgotten."

He seemed puzzled as he scanned the blank wall with only a blue, horizontal line. "No, I don't know."

Alice looked back up to it and thought for a few moments. "Maybe it's The Green Tree, because I know there's a green tree in there somewhere." She picked up a paintbrush and painted the words 'the green tree' onto the wall with green paint that seemed to materialize from the brush itself.

"Now we have to create our own birds," she explained, moving over to the other side of the gate. The paint color in the brush changed based on what you wanted to paint, and she painted a red and orange bird with her small form atop it. "You're not going to be able to ride anything if you don't paint it on here first." With that, she handed the young man a brush. After a few moments of confusion, he too began to paint birds with little miniatures of himself riding them. They both laughed, and as they did, the gate broke apart and opened, and Alice took his hand and led him inside.

She took him to a red table and they sat across from each other. Behind Alice was a large tree. "This is the game. You have a dream of something and it comes true. For instance, I have a dream of a rain shower." Out of nowhere, rain fell onto the young man, despite his protests. "And you have to beat it," Alice continued, watching idly.

The young man looked completely confused, but then started beating away the raindrops somehow, and the rain eventually disappeared.

Alice grinned now. "Too easy. I have a dream of a place to play."

The tree all of a sudden opened up into a garden, and the two of them went inside. It right outside the tree's doorway, there was a smaller tree with bright green leaves and a red fruit hanging from one of the low branches. The two played games for a while before their time was up and they returned to the table outside of the tree.

"My turn?" the young man asked, clearly having fun with this. As she was about to warn him to be careful, he closed his eyes, leaned back, and spoke the words, "I have a dream of another dream, of another Wonderland, that's dark and mysterious."

"That's too much," Alice answered, but the tree opened up and a loud, shrieking, whirling wind came to pull them in, but before it could, I got a glimpse of the new Wonderland the boy had created. It was the same as the garden that Alice had created, but everything looked dead and sinister. The sky was dark red and the trees were black silhouettes against it. Black birds flew out of the thin branches. The small tree now had black branches with no leaves, and the red fruit still hung from a low branch, but now seemed evil rather than juicy.

But, then I woke up.