Slash And Burn

EXT. WOODS-DAWN

The Boy opens his eyes, he hasn't been asleep, listening to the Man cough, worried. The Man returns and eyes the worried boy.

Man: What's wrong?
Boy: I had a weird dream.
Man: What about?
Boy: I don't want to tell you.
Man: Why not?

The Boy considers it.

Boy: I heard you coughing in the night.
Man: Were you awake?
Boy: It was in my dream. Then it woke me up.
Man: What else was in the dream?
Boy: Just you.
Man: What happened to me?

The Boy's face crinkles up, he starts to sob.

Man: Listen, when you dream about bad things happening it shows you're still fighting. You're still alive. It's when you start to dream about good things you should start to worry.
Boy: Do you dream about bad things too?
Man: All the time.

The Road

I watched the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road" yesterday. I haven't read the book though I had been told it was a rather bleak and depressing tale and that the film translated accordingly. A landscape washed free of color then filled with fire and ash, shadows and blood. Though filled with suffering and despair, I found the film to be hypnotic. Violence left in ruby ribbons splashed against the snow of an endless winter. In such a hopeless universe, gestures of compassion burn like flares. I found myself, like the characters, turning to stone or having my heart constantly shattered. A father and his son wandering a desolate world of bones and the barely living. There is a sense that this boy reserves one of the last slivers of divinity and innocence left in the world, and his father will do anything to protect it as it is the last piece of himself, may be the last piece of any of us...

Man: You have to keep carrying the fire.
Boy: What fire?
Man: The fire inside you.

Which ties into another McCarthy adaptation that made a huge impact on me- the film "No Country For Old Men." Another journey through a sparse landscape riddled with bullets, tense flights of escape, men and all their darkest questions...it ends with the telling of a dream:



Despite all these terse images, my dream in the afternoon was rather tame:

I got a call from a lover. She was at work but it had been turned into some sort of gallery and she had several pieces that had been chosen to be in it. i went walking to the cafe to get an espresso. it was getting dark and i noticed some change on the ground. i bent to scoop it up only to find more and more change appearing. i was most excited about a handful of quarters and felt like iwas becoming greedy and protective when a middle-aged couple stopped to gather coins too. i got to the Delta and an old foreign man with a thick accent began asking me questions in a somewhat condescending tone. he said he needed some scuba gear and seemed annoyed when i told him we didn't have any but for whatever reason i was amused and politely told him to go to the store across the street. He insisted that others had given him terrible directions to things before and he didn't trust me so i offered to walk him across the street. the cafe at this point had turned into Rutamaya, the cafe i used to work at in Austin. I didn't recognize any of the stores and quickly apologized to the man, admitting he was right about misdirections, but excusing myself with the fact that i hadn't lived in austin in a long time and i no longer knew its landscape as well as i once had. this frustrated me a bit...

p.s.sst

albums that soundtracked today-

MV & EE with the Golden Road "Drone Trailer"

Jose James "Black Magic"

Ekkehard Ehlers & Paul Wirkus "Ballads"

Cocteau Twins "BBC Sessions"