#we all loved each other so much

[sundaynightfilms]

We All Loved Each Other So Much, 1974

[honeygleam]

we all loved each other so much (1974) dir. ettore scola

[veryslowreader]

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

We All Loved Each Other So Much

[frnndlcs]

C'eravamo tanto amati, Ettore Scola, 1974

[byneddiedingo]

Stefano Satta Flores, Vittorio Gassman, and Nino Manfredi in We All Loved Each Other So Much (Ettore Scola, 1974)

Cast: Nino Manfredi, Vittorio Gassman, Stefania Sandrinelli, Stefano Satta Flores, Giovanna Ralli, Aldo Fabrizi. Screenplay: Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli, Ettore Scola. Cinematography: Claudio Cirillo. Production design: Luciano Ricceri. Film editing: Raimondo Crociani. Music: Armando Trovajoli.

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[egophiliac]

buckle up lads we're going BACK INTO THE BOOK

[ludocorradino]

Summer.

The heat reaches the bones, the sun colors the skin, the waves crash exhaustedly against the rocks. I never know if I truly live the summer, if I feel the laughter within me, or if it's just a distant sound provoked by my subconscious. I never know if I really live.

I'm not sure what I expect from summer every year, I just know that I can never get it. No summer satisfies me as it should, as I would like. Perhaps that's why I lose myself in scenes from movies wrapped in such nostalgic, comforting reality that suffocates me. Perhaps that's why I am no longer myself.

I am made up of poetic verses, past songs, forced laughter, stories told too many times, and terrifying desires.

Small gestures bring me back to living moments I've never experienced. Perhaps that's why I smoke, maybe the act of bringing the cigarette to my lips, inhaling, exhaling while my eyes seek a grip to drown in, to find a feeling of an impossible time, to recognize myself. I believe that's also why I read because if I saw myself from the outside, bent over a book narrating about a man lost in himself, maybe I could sink into familiarity.

Yes, I write, dress, speak, draw, play... for this reason. I don't think I do things for myself in the first person; rather, I do things in the second person. For me, looking at myself from inside out, from outside in, by doing certain things, I can experience something that I'm not actually living, something I'll never live and never have lived. I live in the second person, in the third person, and in the fourth person but never in the first.

And in the second person, I wait, first and foremost for summer, but never the next one: always the last one and the one before. I wait to swallow the sun with all its warmth; I wait to swallow Neruda with his love and his words and Dalì with his eyes. I wait to blend into the films with their soundtracks; I wait for the cigarette to transform me into beauty and the shoe into a mountain.

But in the darkest of night, I get up from bed, open the window, fall onto the streets soiled with humanity, and start walking.

I walk, walk, walk, and then walk some more, with yet another cigarette between my lips, marked by love, with another jazz song played in the distance.

Then I stop and cry because my feet hurt, and I've been walking for hours. I cry because my heart is heavy, because my mind is agonizing, because I've burned my lungs waiting, but summer has not yet arrived, and with it, neither have I.

Estate.

il caldo raggiunge le ossa, il sole colora la pelle, le onde si infrangono esauste sugli scogli. Non so mai se vivo davvero l’estate, non so mai se sento le risate dentro me o sono solo un lontanto suono provocato dal mio subconscio. Non so mai se vivo davvero.

Non so bene cosa mi aspetto ogni anno dall’estate, so solo che non riesco mai ad ottenerla. Nessun’estate mi soddisfa come dovrebbe, come vorrei. Forse è per questo che mi perdo tra scene di film avvolti da una realtà così nostalgica, accogliente che mi soffoca. Forse è per questo che non sono più io.

Mi compongo di versi poetici, canzoni passate, risate forzate, storie raccontate troppe volte e desideri terrorizzanti.

Piccoli gesti mi riportano a vivere momenti mai vissuti. Forse è per questo che fumo, forse il gesto di portare alle labbra la sigaretta, ispirare, espirare mentre gli occhi cercano un appiglio in cui affogare, in cui trovare una sensazione di un tempo impossibile, in cui riconoscermi. Credo sia anche per questo che leggo, perché se mi vedessi da fuori china su un libro che narra di qualche uomo perso in se stesso, magari potrei sprofondare nella famigliarità.

Si, scrivo, mi vesto, parlo, disegno, suono… per questo. Non penso io faccia le cose per me in prima persona, più che altro faccio le cose per in seconda persona. Per me che guardandomi dal dentro al fuori, dal fuori al dentro, facendo certe cose riesco a vivere qualcosa che non sto effettivamente vivendo, che non vivrò mai e che non ho mai vissuto. Vivo in seconda persona, in terza persona e in quarta persona ma mai in prima.

E in seconda persona aspetto, l’estate prima di tutto ma mai la prossima: sempre quella prima e prima ancora. Aspetto di ingoiare il sole con tutto il suo calore, aspetto di ingoiare Neruda con il suo amore e le sue parole e Dalì con i suoi occhi. Aspetto di sfumare nei film con le loro colonne sonore, aspetto che la sigaretta mi trasformi in bellezza e la scarpa in montagna.

Ma nel buio più atroce della notte mi alzo dal letto, apro la finestra, cado sulle strade lerce di umanità e inizio a camminare.

Cammino, cammino, cammino e poi cammino ancora con ancora un’altra sigaretta tra le labbra, sfregiate dall’amore, con ancora un’altra canzone jazz suonata in lontananza.

Poi mi fermo e piango perché i piedi mi fanno male e sono ore che cammino, piango perché ho il cuore pesante, perché ho la mente agonizzante, perché mi sono bruciata i polmoni ad aspettare ma l’estate non è ancora arrivata e con lei nemmeno io.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Council of lovefools.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[ducktracy]

there are a lot of evil people in the world and a lot of darkness in the world and so it’s very important for me to stress that now more than ever is the time to spread kindness and compassion. combat the evil by not only not partaking in it, but actively refuting it. destroy the notion that being compassionate or generous or kind to someone is uncool or embarrassing or even scary. be the change you want to see. start a chain reaction. positivity only breeds more positivity. do an act of kindness for someone so that that person who is too afraid to do it themselves can see you, realize that they’re not alone, and perhaps sheepishly follow your example. and then the next person who is too afraid but sees that person can do the same. when bad news comes out about bad people or horrible atrocities in the world it’s such an easy impulse to despair, and obviously it’s important to feel what you need to feel. grieve. be angry. be sorrowful. be empathetic. but dust off your pants and get up and be a part of a chain reaction that, no matter how small the scale, and spread compassion and love and care. all the reasons why you might not—“it’s hard! it’s scary! people will make fun of me! it’s useless because there’s too much evil!” are all grade A arguments as to why you should. you have no idea how many people you could inspire to do the same. even if it doesn’t get you anyway far, you can at least say you have the nobility of trying. please choose love and please choose life. you are worth loving and you are worth inspiring others to love

[laniidae-passerine]

don’t get how you can watch iwtv and be a sincere diehard lestat hater. like the world’s biggest lestat hater is louis and that man can’t even commit to it for more than five minutes before literally hallucinating lestat wearing a wedding ring and talking pretty to him. this show is about louis and every road leads back to lestat for that man

[sundaynightfilms]

We All Loved Each Other So Much, 1974

[wibblyv]

Moiraine laughed and hugged Siuan. She could not help it. She truly had come home. They had come home.

—New Spring, Robert Jordan

[mydarlinglaszlo]

never gonna stop losing my mind over this scene i fear

[frnndlcs]

C'eravamo tanto amati, Ettore Scola, 1974

[cheswirls]

short asl thing based on @where-does-the-heart-lie's modern au :) i started this over a year ago but the beginning is all dialogue and felt more like a script to me i suppose??? which deflated my desire to work on it. anyway i checked it over recently and it's completely fine lmfao, self-confidence restored here we go !

-

"Yo. Aren't you usually in the middle of your shift by now?"

"I've been banned from the hospital."

"Like, for life?"

"No. For the next, uh.. Twenty-two hours."

"That's oddly specific."

"It was twenty-four, but I fell asleep after leaving the building."

"That wouldn't have to do with why they kicked you out, at all?"

"Hmmm. I'm too sleep-deprived, apparently."

"Ah. And, um, you called me because...?"

"I pressed a random number in my call log after waking up. Lucky you, I guess."

"Yeah. Right. Lucky me. And your car keys are...?"

"Confiscated."

"Ah, right, of course."

A beat of silence. Two. Three, then "Look, if you're busy, then–"

"No, no.  You called me, so I'll be there. Give me twenty minutes."

"Alright. Thank–"

"Thank someone else. Also, if you fall asleep in my car, I'm taking it as express permission to drive you around wherever I want."

"Ugh, go die. I don't even know why I bothered."

"LUCKY YOU, I guess," sounds off way too loudly in his ear. "No take backs. See you in ten."

"I thought you said–" Sabo breaks off as the call ends, leaving him staring blankly at his phone's too-dim screen. He squints, turns the brightness all the way up, and still squints as the sunlight proves too strong for the display.

Ace shows up in more than ten but decidedly less than twenty minutes. Sabo doesn't waste much brain power on it, only climbing into the passenger seat and yawning into his palm while his other hand fixes the seatbelt into the buckle. Not a second too soon, too, as Ace roars the engine to life and peels away from the curb at record speed.

Ace fiddles with the radio. He turns the music up, then dial it back down to inaudible. They hit the expressway and he leans over the steering wheel, frowning with his eyes fixed on the road far ahead. Sabo yawns again and this appears to be the limit to his patience. 

"Hey, so, I had a thought after you hung up on me."

Sabo grimaces. "You mean you–"

"Today's Wednesday."

He doesn't elaborate. Sabo is too tired to process. "Yes," he follows, after a second. He glances at the sky out the front window. "What time is it?"

"Oh, uh." Ace fumbles with hand placement so he can lift his watch to his face. "Nine forty."

Sabo takes a couple beats to try and process this, moves his eyes away from the skyline, and sighs as he pulls his phone out. 2:47 is what the display reads, which sounds much more believable.

"How did the minute hand get off?" he mutters to himself, chancing a look at Ace's busted wristwatch. Ace raises a brow, taking his gaze off the road to scrutinize Sabo. "No, it doesn't matter," he mutters to himself once more, sliding his phone away back on his person and out of his hands.

"My point is," Ace continues, like he hasn't just been interrupted by a whole thing. "Your timeout will be done midday Thursday. Did they switch your days off?"

"No." Sabo sighs. "They technically gave me the next thirty-six hours. Technically closer to forty. Something like that. I go back in on Friday. Sometime.” He tries to smile and it turns out very lopsided, from that he can make out in the rearview mirror. “Can you tell I’m tired?”

“I don’t think ‘tired’ is an accurate description,” Ace quips. “When did you eat a proper meal last?”

“Uh, yesterday. Maybe.”

“Maybe??”

“A ‘proper meal’ means different things to the two of us,” Sabo huffs. “On my account it was yesterday. I’ve had food since then, of course.”

“Alright, so here’s the plan,” Ace announces before absolutely whipping it around a curve. Sabo is his passenger in the passenger seat and had fully prepared to be so when he got in the vehicle, but he’d been vastly underprepared for this sudden course of action, which is how he ends up halfway out of his seat with his cheek slammed into the cold window. Ace doesn’t quite notice his brother’s terminal velocity until the car is once again on the straight and narrow, and only then it’s because of the audible thunk Sabo’s face makes when it collides with the glass.

“Aw shit. You good bro?”

“Ow,” Sabo mutters. “If I have broken bones I’m suing your ass.”

“Well, if you’re good enough to make jokes, I think you’re better than you’re letting on.” Ace keeps the wheel steady with one knee while he takes both hands away to crack his fingers. When he glances over at Sabo again, he looks even more pathetic – like he’s becoming one with the glass. “Anyway, as I was saying.

“I’m taking your ass home. You’re going straight to sleep and while you crash, I’ll make you something decent to eat and stick it in the fridge for you to heat up later. I’ll even make you two servings to eat two different times, since you clearly can’t be trusted to take care of yourself correctly.”

“Ouch.”

“I want you to conk out for as long as your body allows. We can reset your sleep schedule tomorrow, alright? Put your phone on silent; do not answer any calls. In fact, you know what, just give it to me.

Sabo glances over to see Ace’s hand held out to him, palm up. Fingers wiggling expectantly. His lips pull up into a grimace. “I’m not doing that.”

“Fine.” Ace takes his hand back. “But you will comply with everything else.”

“Wow! It’s so funny, I didn’t realize you turned into my mother overnight! Really tapped into your mom potential, huh? Anything exciting happen in your life that would cause that? I guess I wouldn’t know, since I’ve been a zombie for the past two days.”

“There’s nothing wrong with acting like your older brother, you dipshit, especially if you keep putting yourself through the wringer like this. You go home. You sleep. You wake up and eat. You go back to sleep. Then we do laundry. Does that sound agreeable?”

“That’s negotiable, at the least,” Sabo mumbles. “I will accept good food as a form of bribery.”

“Oh, nice, because I’m flat broke at the moment.”

Sabo makes a mental note of that, and then they’re pulling into the driveway. Ace lets him exit the vehicle by himself and then promptly manhandles him all the way onto the couch where it will be easier to force his body to relax than in a real bed. Ace knows this, so he calls him weird before chucking a loose blanket at his head. Sabo is almost too tired to function at this point, so he lets Ace have the last laugh in favor of finally closing his eyes.

Coming to is a surreal experience, especially since the sun is still out. He must make a noise because Ace is suddenly within view. His limbs are tangled in the blanket and still so heavy that he doesn’t bother moving. “Thought you would be gone,” he half-groans, eyes slipping shut again for a moment.

“I did leave,” Ace confirms. “I had to go pilfer some stuff to make stew with. It’s almost done, so I’ll hang here until then.”

Pilfer. That could mean any number of things. Sabo chooses to believe in the option where Ace is an upstanding citizen, and then remembers Ace saying earlier that he had no money. He frowns and squirms on the cushions enough to where it looks like he’s checking his pockets. “Where’s my wallet, Ace?” he bluffs.

“Somewhere around here,” Ace pipes up. “Your stomach will thank you for your contributions to the Portgas Household’s pantry!”

“Ugh, I got robbed,” he complains. “This sucks. ‘m going back to sleep.” He rolls over so his back is to Ace.

“Yeah, you do you, bro. Stew will still be here later. I’ll see you when you’re back in the world of the living.”

—

Luffy comes in late that night and slams the front door shut as loud as humanly possible. When he appears in the main room, he doesn’t seem to be upset, so Ace writes it off as a Luffyism. Sabo hasn’t stirred at the noise, so it’s all good.

Realizing this, Luffy pads closer to Ace’s side and looks at Sabo’s unmoving body warily. “Why is Sabo passed out like a corpse? Is he sick?”

“No, he’s not sick, he just can’t take care of himself. Which is why we are going to let him sleep for as long as possible.”

Luffy just nods to this, but it’s the uncomprehending Luffy-nod that means he’s just going to end up doing whatever he wants to regardless. Ace sighs, then jerks his head towards the kitchen. “He ate a little earlier, but I want him to eat again when he wakes up. There’s stew in the fridge if you want it – just leave him a little. Got it, Monkey D. Luffy?”

Luffy throws him a salute and then runs off in his socks. “Yippee! Ace made stew!”

“Think of your brother, Luffy, and make good choices!” Ace calls after him. “He’s a pathetic man who needs food to feel better or he’ll end up sleeping through Laundry Day!”

—

Sabo does not sleep through laundry day, but he does sleep for sixteen whole hours, so it’s just around noon when he forces himself up off the couch and into a warm shower.

Ace is around, which is mildly unexpected. But he’s still half-asleep, so everything is at least a little unexpected. He glances up from playing video games with Luffy to see Sabo leaving the steam-filled bathroom with his hair hanging around his shoulders. “You look like a wet cat,” he calls.

“Sabo’s awake!” Luffy cheers. “Ace thought you died at one point.”

Ace elbows Luffy in the gut, making him hunch over. “I did not!”

“He totally checked to see if your heart was still beating!”

“I’m undead, actually,” Sabo says completely seriously.

“Does that mean you don’t need to eat anymore?” Luffy questions. “Because I ate all the stew last night.”

“I saw that coming and made extra.” Ace finger-guns in Sabo’s general direction. “That’s why I bought two sets of ingredients. With your money!”

“With my money,” Sabo echoes, because it’s such a wild statement to have to deal with this early in the day. Well, early for him. “Fuck you.”

“I mean, I can tell Luffy where I hid–”

“Thank you, Ace, for agreeing to share your quarters with both of your brothers so we can all do laundry today on your dime!” Sabo raises his pitch so his voice is mockingly squeaky when he says this. He starts moving down the hall before Ace can start to argue, letting his and Luffy’s voices bleed into the background.

When he comes back out, now dressed, it smells significantly better than before. “I reheated the stew,” Ace announces, gesturing for Sabo to take a seat at the kitchen counter. “Let’s all have lunch before we head out.”

“You have to drink this too,” Luffy tells Sabo, sliding a Gatorade across the counter so it sets in front of him when he finally does take a seat. “Ace’s orders.”

“Gotta get those nutrients back somehow.”

“Aren’t we so considerate, Sabo?”

“Do you even know what ‘considerate’ means?” Sabo asks, lips quirking up into a half-smile. At Luffy’s shrug, it turns into a real smile. “Well, thanks anyway. Both of you.”

“No sweat. And look!” Ace brandishes a five dollar bill for both to see. “I found this baby for us to use on coins! It’s all on me today–”

“Where’s my wallet, Ace?!”