My Blueberry Nights

My favorite thing about Wong Kar Wai's films in general is that they're just honest. They're never cynical, or pessimistic, but they also never shy away from the soul-shattering devastation that often accompanies love. Sometimes there isn't a happy ending. Sometimes the girl just leaves to go to California and doesn't come back. Or the man picks the other woman. The end. There is no one else waiting across the street.

But even in the pain, there's always hope. The characters move on. They cry. They suffer. They grow. They clean house. Repeatedly. But his optimism is sincere, and doesn't have the cynical ring to it that so many Hollywood romantic comedies do, where you know that no one involved in the film actually believes in any of it, they're just giving the audience what they think it wants.

My Blueberry Nights is a strange movie. It's probably Wong Kar Wai's most flawed film, but also it might be one of my favorites already. I watched it twice last week, 2 nights in a row, and I haven't stopped thinking about it all weekend. It almost feels like an imitation Kar Wai film, made by somebody who knows what they're doing and knows how to hit all the right notes, but just falls inexplicably short somewhere along the way.



For one, there's some really weird violence in the middle of it that's never really showed up in his films before, and one scene even veers very uncomfortably close to being frighteningly mysogynistic. Is this intentional? Is he trying to play to American sensibilities (or critquing them), or am I just reading too much into it? Both times I watched the film, though, the scene disturbed me. A lot. Not least because you're called to identify so strongly with the perpetrator, and afterwards, no one in the film seems nearly as disturbed by any of it as I was.

But, like all of his films, there's also such a sweet sadness to it. Chan Marshall (aka, Cat Power) makes an all-too-brief cameo, and for some reason the weight of her scene just killed me both times I watched it. Even though nothing really happens in it. It's just about that lost connection, that fire in your heart that slowly dims, but never really goes out.



Which sort of seems to be what the whole film is about. The pain is never denied. But there's a way through it. Sometimes that journey is physical, sometimes it's solely emotional. But there's always a way. Blueberry Nights is a road movie through the terrain of the broken heart, from one side to the other. It's more than a Band-Aid, but it's never fixed, either. It just is what it is. There's always more for you out there, the film says, if you're willing to be brave and embrace it.

But we're not supposed to be happy...are we?

The other day at work, one of my co-workers told me I was hateful and bitter, to which I laughed heartily. She actually is one of my favorite co-workers and we get along really well, and she was mostly teasing me, but I think there was some truth in her condemnation. Then the other day she asked me if I considered myself a happy person. When I asked her why she was asking, she told me she found it disturbing how miserable and bitter so many of the people that worked there seemed to be. And since she considered herself to be mostly pretty happy, and since so many of the people that work there are so young, she just wondered why so many people seemed so unhappy.

Aside from the fact that I think working retail just brings that out of you (particularly where we work, where it's pretty much written in the rule book that customers are allowed to abuse you however they see fit, because a sense of entitlement is something the company wants to foster among the customers), I also think sometimes that's a byproduct of being young. As one gets older, I think maybe they learn to appreciate the small things more. After a certain age, I think people start getting broken down into accepting that mostly everything sucks and that's just the way it is, so they stop expecting things to be different, which is what causes so much misery among the young and idealistic.

Well, okay, maybe that's the just case with me. Once I realized that pretty much nothing works out the way you want it to, that relationships are always gonna fall apart, that most things are gonna hurt, that anything worth having takes an enormous struggle, and that nobody owes you shit, I was much happier. Or, at the very least, I kind of stopped having expectations. Which in turn made me happier. Or more accepting. I stopped fighting so much. As my mother told me after my last wretched breakup when I was crying on the phone to her, I had to learn to accept things as they are, and stop trying to force everything all the time.

All of which is to say, even though I haven't yet read the book, this guy might be my new hero.

He's mentioned in an article on Salon this morning about the quiet rebellion of psychologists and therapists against our pill-crazed culture.

To that end, Eric Wilson's "Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy" is a loopy, feeble blow against the empire. The new book is a heartfelt defense of being bummed out. The chairman of the Wake Forest University English department, Wilson is Hamlet-mad for sadness. He extols depression the way 19th-century aesthetes swooned over tuberculosis because it made them fashionably pale and broody.

Life means pain and death, Wilson repeatedly reminds us, and we must embrace these to find our "sorrowful joy." But most people are too harried and hollow to grasp this, too distracted by happy pills and shopping malls. We've probably never taken the time to walk through "autumn's multihued lustrousness ... with hearts irreparably ripped." Nor have we "stared for an hour at the sparrow lying stiff on the soiled snow."

I was on antidepressants once, briefly, and they helped me tremendously, but it wasn't the kind of help I needed. I could get out of bed in the morning; I could hold down a job and still get good grades at school; I could go out with my friends and laugh and have a good time and be engaged; I could still take care of myself and eat right and shave. I also didn't realize they helped so much until I stopped taking them, and then started feeling like hell again and not sleeping. But what I didn't need was a pill; what I needed was to learn adequate methods of handling my emotions so they didn't feel so fucking overwhelming to me. I'm a lot better now than I used to be, but I still sometimes feel myself facing the options of either being totally overwhelmed, or just shutting down. Lately I've been finding it much easier to shut down. When I really need to feel something, I go to bed.

One unintended consequence of defining depression downward has been an inability to distinguish -- with any accuracy -- severe depression from garden-variety glumness. Drug companies and doctors started a cascade, a blurring of categories between depression and anxiety, anger, laziness or low self-esteem. Treating them represented a huge market expansion into "lifestyle issues." As a result, millions of people have been prescribed pills -- that is, treated as if they were ill -- when they were just feeling, well, sad.

I'm glad the Salon article goes on to extol the virtues of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), and the statistics that it works (reports as high a success rate with clients) as well as taking antidepressants. But yes, it takes time, and it's painful, two things Americans are vastly opposed to as a group.

Ironically, it was CBT that really enabled me to grasp that concept, to love my pain and misery and welcome it whenever it knocked. I haven't been the most gracious host, admittedly, but I know what I need to do, and that's half the battle, right? I'm trying. My misery and I have formed a tenuous friendship, a light give-and-take, that sometimes is kind of comforting in a twisted way.

Good God, it's like a coalition of monkeys. But non-evolved monkeys.

A big part of me hopes that they're all just joking, that this is a big leg-pull of the American people. Or maybe they're pulling their own legs. God help us if even one of these wackos gets within a foot of the White House next year. I have to say, though, that the American people have been suffering so much under this kind of right-wing, dare I say idiotic, thinking for the past 7 years, and they've seen what it yields. I'm fairly certain most of them have had enough.

What if Roe v. Wade was repealed? I think Guiliani's answer is probably by far the worst, most incoherent, and most insincere. That man is a fucking moron.

And evolution? I'm sorry they asked. I like how McCain hesitates before he answers, as if he's thinking about what the correct answer should be.

The last time I saw so many phonies was when I was shopping in the Fashion District in L.A.

Lurker II: Dark Son of Night

You know what the worst thing is about working retail on Valentine's Day? All those really cute sexually ambiguous boys that you vaguely flirt with as you're ringing up their items that come in all the time, by themselves, and just buy a few little things (which clearly means they live alone) end up coming to your store and spending $60 on flowers, and $20 on chocolate, and buy a $30 bottle of wine.

Which completely smashes all hopes you ever had of ever actually flirting with them enough to get them to flirt back.

It's not that you're surprised they're straight and have girlfriends, it's just that it ruins the fantasy, and now you have to start all over and find all new really cute sexually ambiguous regular customers to flirt with.

And I know they're straight because if they were gay they'd be single, and probably have just arbitrarily decided the week before to just stop returning the calls of whatever incredibly fabulous boy they'd been dating for the past month. Like the idiots that they are.*

*Any bitterness noted by the reader in that last sentence is a purely subjective inference on the part of said reader.

Suckers

I've always hated Valentine's Day. Always. Even when I was happily in relationships, so you can't attribute my hatred towards it to bitterness, like you can most every other aspect of my personality.

In lieu of writing my own, unfunny (read: bitter) rant against VD, I'll simply point you to GayProf, who has eloquently written his own loving tribute to that most Holy of Hated Days, on his blog, Center of Gravitas.

I'll let him speak for me, since he seems to do it quite well. (I like his last suggestion the best, in case anyone feels like treating me to a little Valentine's gift!)

Enjoy!

Foley

I've been debating for a short time about whether or not to comment on this whole Foley scandal, but now that 2 inevitable things have happened, I feel the need to post. The first being Foley announcing his alcoholism and molestation as a child. Boo hoo! I have nothing but the utmost sympathy for people with emotional problems, addictions, and traumatic childhoods, but to start using those things as defenses in a situation like this is irrelevant, misguided and cheap.

But come on, take some god damn responsibility. Real responsibility.

I'm tempted to feel a little sorry for the guy, honestly. Only someone with a deeply imbedded shame about who they are would do these kinds of things, and go so fucking far out of their way to present themselves as the complete opposite kind of person, and even enact bills and laws to more severely punish people for doing things that they do. It's really sad and it's sick, and I'm glad the man is getting treatment, but obviously he knew he had these issues, and has apparently been preying on teenagers for at least 11 years now. Why did it take him getting "outed" to finally seek help? Was getting outed his "rock bottom?" I'm tempted to say no, since it seems he probably would still be doing the same predatory things, and keeping on keeping on had he not finally been busted. So I can firmly say, "Fuck you, Mark Foley!" There are lots of people out there who have substance abuse problems and were molested or abused as children, or who suffer from intense shame about who they are, and what their desires are, that don't wreck other people's lives. And shame on everybody for sitting on this. It makes me wanna fucking throw up. To me, this is almost the same as gay bashers using the gay panic defense, which seems to be pretty in vogue these days.

Which brings me to my next point, which is that I've actually been very impressed with how little the mainstream media has jumped on the whole gay aspect of this, but of course the pathetic, small-minded conservatives have now started their typical hateful harping. Check out some of those quotes. They're pretty priceless. Or this enlightening article from a Christian newspaper blaming the GOP party for "flirting" with pro-homosexual policies, when there is clearly a "predatory component to male homosexuality." Um, what about the fact that at least 2 out of 3 male congressman are probably fucking their female pages? I'm just saying.

I know it's ridiculous to get mad about this, and of course the conservatives are going to do everything in their power to distance themselves from this, but still, I just can't believe that these are the people running our country.

And to top it all off, Dennis Hastert needs to be hung from a tree by his dick. What a fucking smug, shady idiot. It's fascinating to me how quickly politicians can spin this shit to make it have absolutely nothing, but nothing, to do with the real issue at hand. I'm not saying that only Republicans do this, but they sure have been good at it lately.

It also seems to me that perhaps it's not the Democrats, but the Republicans, who are the ones with really convenient timing. Sacrificing one for the sake of the Coach, eh boys?

And last, but not least, this ad that ran in a NY bar zine is by far the tackiest and most irresponsible ad I've seen in awhile:
Nice.

I need to get off the internet today.

Little Earthquakes

Every now and then I'll be reading a book or a story, and I'll come across a quote that literally makes me stop what I'm doing to look up and just ponder what it is I've just read, that hits me with such a fierce and knowing wisdom, that seems both so simple and also like such a complex truth that I'm a little dumbfounded for a moment. It's moments like these that really make me cherish literature and realize that sometimes it's not always the big picture, but the small details that really make up life.

Below are two such quotes that I've read recently that I want to share:

If I had been twenty years older, perhaps, I could have explained that nothing is quite as bad as that, that at the end of what is called "the sexual life" the only love which has lasted is the love that has accepted everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.
-Graham Greene

I hold his hands. We're here, right here, as the future closes up around us. Something will happen next. Something always does. We live with unspeakable losses, and most of us carry on. We find new lovers, change jobs, move to another state. We continue to know animal pleasures; we eat and have sex, buy new clothes. Hardly anyone is destroyed, I mean truly annihilated, by loss. We're designed for endurance.
-Michael Cunningham

Adelante

In relation to Meredith's blog entry the other day, I have another question to sort of add to it.

If, as she says, the search for relief from your suffering is ultimately what relieves it, and not, so to speak, a specific cure, can the same thing be said for wisdom? If there is no cure for your suffering and hopelessness, except to search for the cure, then is it also the ultimate in wisdom to finally admit that you know nothing? Can it be that the older you get, and supposedly the smarter you get, that ultimately you have to face up to the fact that you're a complete idiot? That you know nothing? That the black & white rules you lived by in your youth are now completely meaningless to you?

Is wisdom actually the subtraction of knowledge? Or pseudo-knowledge? The young think they know it all. They think they've got it all figured out. Maybe no one over the age of 22 should be allowed to be put into any position of importance whatsoever. Maybe the older we get, if we're truly honest with ourselves, the less we actually know. But we can only admit this because we know it to be true, which is its own sort of wisdom. So really, the accumulation of wisdom through age is really just an acknowledgement that life and people are just too complex and confounding to comprehend or decipher in any meaningful way.

We impart meaning to things because we have to. It is simply too painful to admit that maybe, just maybe, that relationship you were in that lasted for a year, or 2 years, or 8 years, and ultimately ended, in the end, meant absolutely nothing. For example. We can sit back and say, "Well, I certainly learned a lot from that," but what if what you learned isn't helpful? What if what you learned about yourself, or about the other person, or about people in general (is an "understanding" of collective behavior wisdom, or just a smoke-screen to keep from having to admit that people are just idiots and cowards?), is just terrifying and hopeless? What if what you learned is that when you fall in love you hate the person that you become? Does that mean your heart should close up shop because it's hopeless, or does it mean that you just fall for the wrong people, or does it mean you just haven't discovered exactly what it is yet that's compatible with that whiny, clingy, insecure, subserviant but demanding and terrified child inside of you?

Great. So you have to suffer through tortorous relationship after tortorous relationship just to figure that out, and the person who will supposedly fit with those pieces of you eventually (or not) comes along, and that person then renders all previous relationships totally meaningless. Yes? No?

If the giving up of hope is what leads to contentment, is the giving up on any kind of true wisdom what also leads to enlightenment? Is the giving up of any expectations what brings you happiness? What the hell is happiness? Beats the shit out of me. Does it just mean you don't want things to change? Does it mean you don't feel like throwing yourself in front of a bus every day? Does it mean that you feel ecstatic joy every minute of the day? I guess Happiness, like Love, is too abstract to have a satisfiable definition. Do you just know it when you feel it?

I feel like once I finally decided to stop trying to figure it all out is when I achieved some sort of peace. When I finally decided to throw up my hands and say, "To hell with it, I'm done, I can no longer analyze, critique, or take apart this or that or whatever," is when I finally could let it go. Which came first? The letting go or the resignation?

I just drank about six glasses of incredibly cheap vodka in my friend Greg's room with him and Princeton. We listened to Harry Nilson and a bunch of other shit. I put on a Mexican wrestling mask and took off my shirt and ran around the room growling and howling while Greg took pictures. It was pretty funny.

I need to study but instead I'm going to sleep.