Click images for desktop size: "One" by dimage After near collapsing yesterday I awoke at 3 and watched the silent film “Passion Of Joan Of Arc” by Theodor Dyer.
It's a great film that stretched the tech of the times past its limits - huge beautiful closeups filled with silver nitrate swirling grain. And the saddest, proudest actress (at least in closeup and silence) that ever lived in the lead, Maria Falconetti (even her name is cool).
Antoine Artaud has a role in it, for anyone obsessed with the Theatre Of Cruelty and Baudelaire.
I've always liked that the only existing print of this film was discovered in the 1980's when they cleaned out a basement of a Danish Insane Asylum.
Watching the film reminded me of younger times, going to the Cinematheque in Paris then sitting at a cafe with new found friends who were binded together only through a love of movies (a term which too many of them refused to use). We didn't realize that our dreams were dreams.
We saw them as inevitability.
A few of that crowd distinguished themselves and made movies back at home. Some, like me, worked in movies. A bunch of expatriate kids who were two steps onto the path of making dreams real by the sheer insanity of being teenagers who had gone to Europe seeking beauty and validation of the answers we already knew. And for me to check out some of the waves in Portugal.
I can still remember the softer focus of the Parisian light as we sat with the smell of the city and the people around us, arguing over what we'd just seen and then cutting the argument short as we had to scurry back to the Cinematheque to see the next film we'd all pencilled into our schedules.
Memories of the past must always lead to planning for the future and extolling the present.
And then the other memories - the kind man with a pocket full of cookies for the dogs he might encounter - the beautiful woman who looks you full in the eye and says, “I didn't mean to, but I've fallen in love with you,” then she looks down in a moment of fear after daring such a brave thing - a pretty girl who comes over and tells you that you are the prettiest thing she's ever seen, and then dances away - the woman who hands you a rich burrito because she has an extra and sees that you are hungry - the Chinese man who offers you his last cigarette and asks you if the world is really different in America. So many memories that flood in and take over your waking moments and lead you to avoid thinking of what led you to this.


Click images for desktop size: "Girl" by GRC Which lead me to why I keep this blog that is turning into a “death watch” kind of thing. A death watch is sure not what I intended . . . sure not what I intended.
It started out as a way to “mass communicate”. Several of you have noticed that I talk to a lot of people everyday and that it means my details get shorter and shorter as I get bored in the retelling. It was/is a good thing to spend an hour or so meditating on the days events. With the puppy it seems I seldom have that spare hour!

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