Leave No Trace [2018)

What a horrible day.

Valentine’s Day.

My favorite holiday.

To understand young men whom the economy has left behind.

Young men turning to violence and mischief.

Hating the state.

No more funicular.

Reach out to someone with PTSD today.

Even if you don’t have the right thing to say.

Just make an effort.

I did.

Sure, I want someone to give a fuck about me.

It sucks to be thoroughly disrespected.

This film is better than Jojo Rabbit.

But it has no sense of humor.

Living hand-to-mouth is not funny.

Homeschooling is the best.

But our society has been ruined.

Our societies have been ruined.

Hearing helicopters is too much.

Bringing you back to a mind frame where no moment is safe.

This film is no Hanna.

But this is still a poignant story.

Saoirse has lost her touch.

It was all too much for Thora and Dennings.

Thomasin is the hope for acting.

The best actress working today.

But she has only made one film that is good.

And that film is perfect.

And that film is Last Night in Soho.

Living off the grid.

War is hard on kids.

Kids want to play.

We need fun.

All work and no play makes us fucking crazy.

God bless the truckers who are reclaiming our freedoms.

KEEP GOING!!!

Sitting on a velvet couch in a cabin.

Velour.

The luxury.

Well-worn.

For years living on the forrest floor.

Now to curl your feet up sideways.

Instant karma.

It means something.

It all means something.

And we are back to hellish life.

American flags.

Get to know your neighbors.

My life has been stolen.

But I have successfully stopped drinking.

Haven’t touched the stuff for well over a year.

And I have successfully quit tobacco.

Haven’t touched the stuff for well over a year.

No nicotine up in here.

The challenge is living with something like GAD.

Sounds so easy.

Anxiety.

But tack onto that tachycardia.

A level serious enough to require medication.

And tack onto that high blood pressure.

A level serious enough to require medication.

Good luck relaxing.

You can’t.

Good luck being independent of medications.

My daily struggle and challenge is to become less dependent on my medications.

It is like building a fucking pyramid.

The progress is infinitesimally-small.

Each day.

Some days are a step backwards.

Every day.

Marking.

Tallying it up.

Am I making progress?

Yes.

SLOW.

S L O W.

Very disheartening to be alone again.

Grand gestures.

Wasted.

All for naught.

Bad match.

She needed to be the fucked-up one.

But I got problems too.

And vice-versa.

I’m trying not to judge.

I’m still trying to reach out.

On my favorite holiday.

With a hole in my heart.

War zone.

What’s your joy?

No joy.

I just dream of an actress from New Zealand.

Because her story speaks to me.

It is the hope that someone out there will love me in spite of all my flaws.

I look really bad on paper.

Because I am really bad in reality.

But I am still a person.

And I am not dead yet.

I hope the cats do their job.

Be nice.

Keep company.

My family.

Till the end.

I’m not blocking any energies.

I’m not blocking anything.

Except a couple of dickheads on TikTok.

Starting over.

I can’t breathe.

Everyone is gay.

Or lesbian.

Or whatever.

The whole world is fucking crazy.

And I need the crazy that fits with my crazy.

The crazy that matches me.

Reach out to someone with PTSD.

Don’t judge.

Don’t worry if you don’t say quite the right thing.

Don’t worry if you don’t get a response.

I’m lonely as fuck.

Instant karma.

It means something.

It all means something.

Thank you, God, for giving me a friend for awhile.

Please be merciful and let me not die of loneliness.

This is the loneliest life I have ever known.

45 years.

-PD

Žert [1969)

It would be, perhaps, best to list this as a Slovak film.

Slovakia.

We always talk about Prague.

But not enough about Bratislava.

Yet all of this would make little difference were this film not notable.

And it is quite notable.

The direction by Jaromil Jireš is admirable.

He plays with time.  A very unusual montage of flashbacks.

Haunted.  Haunting.  Hunted by communism.

This, then, would be a subversive film.

To show the corruption within Czechoslovakia.

To show the nightmare of reeducation.

The term is never named as such, but that’s what it is.

Punitive military service.

The soldiers with no weapons.

Because their country doesn’t trust them with such.

In the mines.

On the ground.

Relay.

Hup hup hup.

Power trip of professional army in service to socialism.

Trotsky is forbidden.

And so is humor.

Don’t make your jokes too pointed.

There’s no squirming out of the fact that you stand in opposition to the ethos of your government.

I.

It may not be a momentous occasion to realize that literature is being made.

For it skips under your nose as mere nonsensical rubbish.

Poppycock.  Hogwash.  Eyewash.

Tropes and memes and drupelets hanging low.  Evolving necks.  Giraffes.

I am of two Yiddish species:

schlub and schmuck.

Unattractive.  Fool.

Me and Josef Somr.  Who lives!  Age 82.

A masterful performance.  As real as my daily routine.

Shirt coming untucked.

I have kept my hair, but his combover parallels my gut (his too).  Sucked in.

Beware of jokes.

You are being watched.

Your letters are being intercepted.

And you will have to answer for your words.

Just what exactly did you mean by, “…” ???

Well, this is Milan Kundera with the story.

And I rebelled all the way.

I drew Baudelaire with lightening bolts.  And chartreuse dreams.

Kundera lives!  Age 87.

Born in Brno. (!)

But let’s back to this love-hate.

Not Mintzberg.

At the same time.

Alternating.  A constant election.

Affinities.

I will achieve 17,000-word vocabulary.  Just you watch.

I almost hate my town too.  I know.

Was I imprisoned?

No.

But I lost music.

Like Ludvík.

The name is significant.

Like lost hearing.

And so the clarinet is indispensable.

I mention Jana Dítětová because she was from Plzeň.

Pilsen.  Pillsbury.

The selfish gene.

Tricked.  Objectified.  MILF revenge reified.

Pithy memetics.

MIKE MILF.

Markéta is significant.

LazarováTwo years previous.

A permanent opium war of mankind.

Opiate of the masses.  Asses.  Snippets of military abuse.

You’ve never seen…like this.

We can still insult liberalism.  And neoliberalism.  And neoconservatism.

We can still find Starbucks artless.  And Subway.

But Wal-Mart passes over to kitsch.  Of which Kundera would understand.

Like Warhol meets Flavin.

All that fluorescence.

Non-stop.

Europe endless.

Schubert.

Dip the waves.

Coyoacán borough of Mexico City.  D.F.  Day effay.

Trotsky died the same year Conlon Nancarrow moved to Mexico.

1940.

And Nancarrow would make Mexico City his home.

Las Águilas.  With his Ampico player pianos.

Ludvík is expelled from his teaching position like Dr. James Tracy.

History is always with us.

We see the corruption of good intentions.

Communism.  Socialism.

Teachers of Marxism.

How the country had slid.

And Věra Křesadlová eats her cotton candy.  Stunning.

We wonder why the movie couldn’t have been about her.

But we needed the schlub/schmuck.

And the attempted suicide with laxatives.

Which is to say, there are far more than six stories in narrative history.

Bollocks Schenkerian analysis.

 

-PD