#and only me + another friend (british) were like you guys r fucking insane

[dreamertrilogys]

there’s a lot of posts on how white suburbs are deeply awful + filled w ppl unable to conceptualize a world outside their own bubble + steeped in racism etc. which obviously is true and all but as someone who’s personally seen many suburbs filled w/ diff ethnic groups (not functionally diverse suburbs just for example suburb 1 filled entirely w chinese immigrants, 2 filled w only pakistanis, etc) the overall results aren’t much better. like at the end of the day the issue lies not in the whiteness of suburban residents but rather the way their lifestyles (car dependancy -> can’t go anywhere else/see other ppl, have never sat on the bus and seen regular ppl etc) allow them to genuinely live their entire lives in an extremely minuscule bubble of homogenous ppl who look & live (esp economically!!!) exactly like them

[rialynne]

1917 Review

I’m feeling motivated to do another movie review again so here we go. In an attempt to stop myself from watching Little Women for a third time in theaters, I decided to go and watch another Oscar nominated film. Here is that review.

TLDR: It is rated R so fair warning but it is an extremely surreal and incredibly Human movie that includes probably the best editing and the best practical effects that I have seen in a long time. I highly recommend to see it in theaters.

Onward Spoilers:

With war films they often tend to go for ginormous and epic action sequences, the story lines tend to be quite similar in various forms in regards to violence, shock and horror. But never had I watched a war movie that was so intricately shot and so poignant to the human condition like 1917 has done. 

The technical achievements that this film displays are astounding. For all those who have somehow not gotten this tidbit from the movie, this film was shot and edited to appear to be that of a one take film. Therefore, the story of the film does feel as though it is happening in real time and that we are the third person in a two man mission. The film was edited in such a way that it can be hard to tell at first glance where the film was connected together. When Schofield and Blake are making their way through No Man’s Land, the way the camera follows them so smoothly even when they go into the holes at their level and how it makes sure to get the details of how dirty their uniforms have become, is absolutely stunning. The light flares that go off when Schofield is making his way through the bombed out French town, the floating bodies in the river that Schofield has to climb over to get himself out of the water, and the battle when the first wave of soldiers start to surge and Schofield takes off and runs along the outside of the trench. Absolutely beautiful shots and sequences that made it feel extremely real.     

They also created and mapped out the set locations and rehearsed the sequences months in advance. The set design is absolutely incredible the way the trenches were made between the British and the German ones highlighting subtle differences in terms of war strategies. The British trenches were more haphazard and built with an offensive mind set while the German Trenches were more well formed and organized and had even sleeping quarters to indicate a more defensive strategy. It’s also insane to me that we technically only saw a handful of German soldiers this entire film, but yet the tension and suspense was there the entire time. 

I think what pulls this movie off for me and something that I think not enough people are talking about is how the story is so simple yet tells so much about the Human condition in times of war. Everything in this story doesE’t stop, it just keeps on going forward. Blake and Schofield have a mission that while is life or death, is a minor mission in the grand scheme of things in war. They are both lower ranking soldiers that were sent out to deliver a message to call off an attack. Blake’s brother is a part of the forces ordered to call off the attack and he has a desire to want to save his older brother. Schofield is chosen to go along as well and ultimately is the only one to make it towards the end. In the short amount of time while we don’t go supper in depth with the characters we go deep enough to get a basic gist of their desires and wished and how they both essentially want the war to be over, Schofield especially with him even trading a medal for wine, indicating his disdain for war. In the midst of traversing through No Mans Land, we see Schofield injure his hand on barbed wire, and plunging that same hand in a decaying corpse that had a rat in it a few seconds prior, and getting covered in rubble when a rat activated a tripwire (That shit made me jump out of my seat). 

Blake’s death was so sad as he was just a few moments prior cracking jokes and talking about how in his childhood he used to help pick cherry trees with his brother, and then a German plane crashes and the guy they saved proceeds to stab him. Being a kind decent human being doesn’t save your life in war. You have to fight to be the last man standing. Which is exactly what Schofield does. He doesn’t even have time to grieve his dead friend, he has to complete the mission. He just wants to burst into tears on the caravan ride he gets, but doesn’t. It’s not until he escapes from the destroyed french town and gets out of the river does he get to break down briefly, until he finds the English soldier singing to the army group he was looking for. And then when he decides to run OUTSIDE of the trench as a short cut wow, so epic, and all for General Mackenzie to eventually accept the orders, lament about how ultimately the orders will change quickly again, and tells Schofield to fuck off. This really drives home that ultimately Schofield risked his life for a simple delivery of a message, that in the grand scheme of things may prove to be insignificant the next day. 

You really also see the parallels in this film more starkly towards the end. The story starts with a tree, and ends with a tree, but with only Schofield alive and still thinking of his wife and daughters. The french lady and the young baby she found also remind him of his own family that he left behind and tries to do some good and leave milk for the baby. Also the motif of the cherry blossoms from the farm house to the river where Schofield gets a second chance at life to survive, like damn. What really seals the deal for me is when Schofield finds Blake’s brother and when he gives him Blake’s belongings, you see his brother parallel the same grief Schofield had that he ultimately represses down, with a simple handshake being the most intimate one might have become in times of war. The simple message of that we really don’t have the time to grieve in though situations, we just have to keep on moving really hit me and humanized a lot of the people involved in the great war. 

With some of the most technological, practical achievements brought to the screen, 1917 is a war film that I highly recommend that you all experience in theaters. You may see it initially for the one shot take and other technological achievements it performs, but you will leave with a deeper understanding of war and how it affects everyday people who want nothing more than to be with their loved ones again.               

[twodatesaweek]

better on paper

a thread of my last two weeks has been a guy i met at a party i didn’t really expect to go to, or at least stay at, for as long as i did. he was tall, dressed like  young professionals newly released into new york often do, in dark jeans and a nice button down. his hair was tousled, curls fell into his eyes, giving him a sort of sheepish posture when he talked, pushing his hair to the side when he smiled -- i saw him watch me when i walked in the door, but i immediately thought to myself: not at all the hunk i had in mind after tripping on psychedelics in france and envisioning my future partner. and also there was a bleary-eyed girl in a purple dress sitting next to him. girlfriend, i thought, then later, sister? as i noticed him leave her to filter around the room and chat with the other guests. by the time he made it to me, i was sure they were just friends, or something like friends. 

people were filtering out, i was just hoping for one last glass of champagne, but i also didn’t want to leave without trying my hand at chatting with the cute boys (including the guy) standing around with the bottle. i wasn’t so interested at first when the guy started speaking to me, and felt a little self-conscious at how aggressive his attention seemed, directed solely on me in a group of people. he was british, his accent thick enough that i had to narrow my focus to make the words out. and i tried to move the conversation around the small group we were standing in but it became impossible after i said i liked ferns and he revealed himself to have studied plants in school -- he began typing into his phone, pulling something up for me to look at. you’re going to want to sit down for this one, he said, guiding me towards a nearby couch. i sat down and we were conspiratorial peeking at his phone screen at an adorable bryophyte that grew like miniature palm trees. we chatted wildly about various realms of the plant kingdom: ferns of the loire valley, moss, books on moss. he leaned in close to me, my face felt red, and i thought about how i’d been working with my soy fermentation project all day.

i feel self conscious that you’re sitting so close to me, i said

oh don’t worry, he responded a little too quickly

no no, i said, seeing that he might have thought i was addressing the closeness of our bodies -- that, i liked. i feel self-conscious, i said, because i probably smell like soy sauce. i’ve been fermenting it at home all day

he laughed. i used to make wine, he said and we were back to chatting like children do, me adjusting myself to sit curled up with my knees on the couch so i could face him to tell him about how there were new moderators of the fern subreddit, he began to tell me how much he loves r/whatisthisplant. the girl in the purple dress suddenly barged in to tell us they were leaving to go to a bar in the city, and i said there was no way i was going to the city. i was a little let down that he’d be going so soon, i could feel, for the first time since E, the desire and the ease of desire that comes when you would just like very much to kiss someone. but i saw that it wasn’t my story that night and turned back around to play with some tarot cards that another party guest had placed in my hands. 

on his way out, the guy got my attention. how will i talk to you, wei? i asked him if he’d like my number and he gave me his phone to plug it in. i asked if he’d be around the following day and he said unfortunately no, that he’d be on his way back to England then. 

--

before i fell asleep, i’d found him on whatsapp and sent him an article i’d written long ago on ferns, not thinking much of it. by the time i woke up, he’d sent me a beautifully composed note about a story regarding fern flowers he’d heard once in estonia. so elegantly romantic, i couldn’t help but feel thrilled.

and yet -- since i’d left the party, a wild suspicion that i’d been gamed. how could we have had so much in common? how could he have been so handsome? how could he have been so immediately interested in me? i fear i have something like truman show delusion, but in particular when it comes to love -- to feel that something so sweet, so coincidental, so romantic, couldn’t be anything but a set up. in my mind that evening, the near certainty that he was a fabulist. i assume he’s the sort of person who can make anyone feel like she’s the only person in the room i said to another guest who asked me what had passed between the two of us, what i thought of him. still, i don’t think it’s ever wrong to be a weary, so long as you aren’t rude. it can be so difficult to tease out your own projections from another person’s!!

it seems too uncanny, then, that it was around this time i realized that the girl in the purple dress from the previous night had been an instagram influencer with an immense following and a habit for trump-like behavior -- lashing out at her ‘enemies’ regulating what her followers commented, deleting anything that was at all critical. i sat aghast, reading through countless posts she’d made in the past week since she’d met him in england and then flown home early to meet him again in nyc. her story started out as a meet cute -- hitting it off at a cafe, spending a night together at his cottage, the wild promise of another night in new york. she wrote in treacly anticipation of his arrival, calling him her lover. even i was at the edge of my seat by the time i arrived at the post where she sat posing in her purple dress with flowers in her hair, hours before bringing her new friend to the party where i’d inevitably meet him.

i was hooked -- reading her write about falling apart after something happened between them that night. i laughed out loud, joking with my friends that i was now in a love triangle with this influencer. hubristically, i assumed that she’d gotten upset that he asked me for my number, and felt a little thrill at having lured him away from her. but as the days passed, the posts she wrote felt more alarming -- that perhaps something non consensual had passed between them.

the guy kept texting me every day -- on whatsapp we chatted warmly about our interests, pacing through the farthest, vaguest reaches of the vast territory that two people might populate together with time and proximity. it can feel so safe to do this without the physicality of another person’s body, to surrender to affection and a belief that the cosmos has encouraged two people to make the seemingly arbitrary decisions that lead them to each other. i tiptoed around it, softening to how hidden it was, how all of it could be seen and interpreted in any way: the morphology of ferns, where we might be in the upcoming months, the ways in which science is attempting to solve the problem of dying. all the while i don’t even know his surname, all i have is a tiny square profile image of his figure, cross-legged on the floor, his face in profile. 

--

by the time the influencer had revealed the guy’s betrayal towards her, i was picking out what to wear for the day, given that i had a date that night with an attorney from a dating app who seemed promising.

she wrote that the guy had asked her to ‘fuck without kissing’ and i felt gut punched and a little defensive. the same guy who kept googling my writing to talk with me about it? it felt unreal, but then again, what did i really know about either of them and the spell was wearing off some. i had become so curious -- as had all my friends, maybe of whom were now following along with the influencer’s retelling romance of which i was inevitably a part. 

before i left for my date, i wrote to the guy and asked what exactly had happened? what had he done to make this poor influencer to inspire her to wage character assassination on him. 

my date, J, was also from tennessee and had made a point to say that he had served as legal aid for migrant workers in the tomato fields of my old hometown. his parents had moved to the south to contribute to the civil rights movement -- his father was a mental health professional, his mother an attorney, too. he’d gone to all the right schools, was working at a white shoe law firm. he picked out a romantic cocktail bar nearby where i’d be taking french class and came down from the city during a torrential downpour. he was sweet and curious about my work when he arrived, a little out of shape but he had a nice face and was tall. 

but after a drink, he started to fall apart, talking to me about his stress and depression from working twelve hour days at his law firm. disclosed that he’d been laid off, that he was on lexapro. you could just...leave I kept suggesting to no avail. he had five drinks over the course of the night, increasingly grew messier and messier until by midnight he was asking me to have a cigarette outside. there was something too familiar about all of this -- me captivated in some whirlwind of talk and fun, without being listened to much, myself. a couple nearby was making out aggressively and i observed that they seemed as though they’d been together for a while. oh i thought it was a first date, J, said, sidling next to me. we kissed a little, and it felt like a relief just to be kissing anyone else but E, but it also felt like being twenty-two and not quite in my body, being somewhere else.

the guy messaged me while J was settling up, and though i was scattered and hazy from drinks my attention immediately shot to it. J came back and I waved him away to read what must have been a 3,000 word explanation of the guy’s side of the story versus the influencer’s. 

--

in the end, i didn’t want to see J again, and i felt that though the influencer had been insane in her depiction of events, the guy was also not entirely innocent of it. peering into the gap between their two tellings of the story, i felt as though i was witness to something of the fearsome mystery i have lately come to know a little bit, through my work in therapy and with psychedelics. there are so many invisible things that should be obvious, as definite as objects, yet they are also so simple to reject -- for your own benefit, or because you really are so oblivious to them. 

i told him twice that i thought he’d been at best stupid and at worst cruel. he defended himself in a way that felt correct, but it’s not my place to really know much besides my own feelings. in the midst of those conversations we also started to chat about his work, attempting to create a company that addresses care for diseases that greatly foreshorten life -- i asked him how he came to it and he mentioned something about having worked as a patent attorney right out of school. 

last week, drunk from tequila with L, i felt mushy and messaged him that hearing about it made me think of my parents, watching them grow older. it also made me think of how reinventing ones life so many times can be such lonely work. you just keep shirking off layers of yourself -- from your perspective, you are letting go and growing past your circumstances. but others are often hurt and confused by it. though it wouldn’t have been out of malice, you have abandoned them certainly. how to stay the balance? how to love those who cease to fulfill your needs, your desires? is it possible to tease apart the two? 

in the morning, i felt embarrassed for having let slip how much i’d considered this -- the real emotional questions i wanted to know about, the things i would like to learn from a partner, speak to them about. at brunch today, a friend suggested that part of my embarrassment must have been derived from my feeling as though I’d crossed a boundary -- that felt right. previous to that last message, we’d been charting territory, outlining topics, but not filling them in with ourselves. my questions about loneliness and desire -- they were really my request for him to begin showing me himself, coloring in the lines. 

he suggested we skype and in my hungover state i responded quickly in the affirmative. but as the week went by i felt stranger and stranger about it. i liked the romance and the fantasy of messaging with this guy -- the affection of a handsome stranger, knowing we were still happy projections for each other. the intimacy of even a phone call risked materializing a kind of relationship with edges and corners, with expectations. now what do i have: a reminder that i am desirable, that i am lovable as myself. how could it do any good to attempt to fill that in, when the object is so far away, only as real as my imagination. i wrote to him yesterday then to say that i didn’t like the idea, that i’d rather stay penpals. “being penpals has been rather sweet,” he said, and we agreed that we would very much like to have drinks if we were ever in the same town again. 

--

it doesn’t escape me, after a long journey though my psyche, that the guy is a version of a relationship that i have always had. at a distance, safe enough for my internal alarm system to be deactivated very slowly. yet i am also seeing that anyone who allows me to take a year to grow comfortable w the idea of intimacy most likely has intimacy issues themselves. or, that has certainly been true now, boyfriend after boyfriend. 

my goal, after E broke up with me, was to investigate my patterns, to attempt to learn once and for all what is happening with me. it has been two months and i have become so much wiser about myself, and yet, i also see how broken i am. i don’t say that as a way to victimize myself, just plainly. it’s a fact about me. i have never had a close friendship that hasn’t sent my brain into mental acrobatics, simultaneously surveying the relationship for phoniness while also building an argument for why i do not need it -- what is the worst case scenario and can i handle it, is what i am preparing for. ‘an insurance policy’ my therapist calls it. it will likely never go away, but i can learn to understand it, to calm it better on my own. i know now that the relationship i want will likely terrify me, it will not feel good. if my friends do not notice my pathological push and pull it is only because i can take time on my own when it happens. 

‘i don’t know why this came to mind, but you know crabs?’ my therapist said to me this week. 

“crabs?” i said.

“yes crabs,” she said. “you know how they walk sideways?’

“kind of,” i said, bemused.

“so they walk sideways on the beach, but they still know which way is forward and they go there.”

“okay,’ i said.

“that’s you. you might move sideways, but you have enough love within you that you know which way is forward. you just have to keep going forward.” 

- W