This essay is a reflection on the brief activist we become and never again. The movies you may see before or after reading this reflection are:
Casablanca (1942, USA), The Third Man (1949, UK), and Sweet Dreams (2023,Netherlands).
Here are some thoughts of life that linger as I finish a film or a book, as I remember devouring movies back in 1990s, when I was in my twenties. I have watched movies the way I read the person, the character or the persona. And there is also almost always a reminder of a book I have read. I watch life at times like in a school, while being amid other lives being students, and a somewhat-classroom was that old theater with its seats for those to suspend themselves before returning to other realness of the world.
. . .
If in England, I think of an open garden, I may think squires as well. It’s an old visual mindset about somewhat of an assistant or an estate holder rising in social standing.
It must have been so hot wearing the outfits they wore, hide, for metals and chains, and layers of tightfitting fabric.
I have this hoodie that I wear, at times by a lakeshore and once I saw a right sunset and it made the redness of my outfit bright and glowing.
I think about the attendants or students sitting in front of a theater or a classroom, and I see the faces facing me and their half torso.
And I think about how the teacher at any time would be able to give a quote or innocuous comment and that comment or quote will be far more memorable than what s-he had planned… for one of the men, or for one of the women.
When a person looks back, and the time is the 50s, does the person look back in black and white, especially when his or her life would be perceived as black and white decades from then? That is, as time goes by, will I be fonder of my five decades than, say, what I perceive to be the best of someone else’s five decade ago in some dreamy land I have never been when and where protests never existed the would they do now?
I remember a long time ago in high school, I had a tennis racket that was gifted to me by my dad; I had placed it inside something called a school locker. And one day I returned and the lock was gone, and so was the racket. My gut told me that I had left it open and someone just saw something expensive and took it. But a part of me went creative and realized that maybe my tennis coach realized I was not even close to being great at tennis, and he was doing me a favor by being in cahoots with our lockmaster and had my racket removed so as to never play again, and maybe stick to poetry. I was at an age of no-protest.
Who was I that I could complain and have a racket return to someone who wanted no part of trouble or hassle? Who I am now is someone who can enter the mind of an old father who just wanted me to have fun and not lose things all the time; but my father has passed. And whatever dreams I had as a great son would be lost on my imagination of how my father would respond to me now.
I have yet to read a book by the beach. It hasn’t been my thing and I know I would probably value the book too much when it is new to have it lying around getting scratched by sand. A shiny cover can’t be returned when it becomes dull.
For the new writers or directors out there, summer doesn’t have to be hot or heat or sun. It doesn’t have to be boiling, although one can use bubbly like fun. I would like to read a book about a cold summer, because of the elevation of the city, or read about a summer of robotic figures either melting or being a conductor to late night lightning. That would be new.
I remember in elementary school, I bought a book that was called ‘Robotech’--- it was part of a series of books about jets transforming into giant robots, to escape aliens. I knew of the TV show then, so when I got that book from Scholastica Book Club, I don’t think I even bothered to read it or finish reading it. I did love the shiny cover. And I tried as much as possible to put them away, from sunlight and being used, as in being read-- to keep the shine. I’ve had older books that are no longer shiny, and it feels different that I can timetravel at the touch of a still shiny book, and I am at the mercy of timetravel at the touch of an old raggedy book. The thought of a white house seems similar to this; the thought of an elsewhere that seems forever untouched, even if elsewhere it is as real as irrelevant to locals who live in my untouched, almost blank, mental casing of region in my mind and heart, such as an old film.
I look back and I wish I can still figure out who took my racket from high school or at least how I myself lost it. Besides I can presume that the person who took it is much older now, and maybe decided to return it, but it would be too late and I am long gone.
There are moments I know just how vast the mind is, its extent of interest, mundane, and reach; and yet when I am reminded of an old (past) or some memory, the mind also just feels just right there, within reach, and all its thoughts so nearby. I can enter into a new bizarre topic or I can just as easily go to an old memory—as if there is someone, a man, for example, who is not only next to me, but someone I can make near to you, if you ever find some commonality with me.
I am lucky that I can easily whisk these memories away or reach them again; but I don’t think I have a traumatizing memory that I wish I can delete. I am lucky that the house of my memories does not wish to self-destruct. I am lucky in that regard.
I remember a writer named Moliere once wrote a title like The School for Wives. I don’t know if using that type of title now would garner appreciation of a man, unless it’s really quite good. There are times when the irrelevance of a writer makes him out to be the third man in literature—that he is neither the prime reason for an audience, or the second; and there would not be any protests on the matter about her or him. But even if it was good, my point to the future writer is that calling any of your works anything like that is not necessary. If you remember the vastness of the mind and the vastness therefore of what we do not know, and the extent of how we have not used language, then it should dawn on the writer that there is a vastness of usage of words and titles which can lead all of us to a new realms of understanding and stories. Moliere also write a title which has been translated as The Would-be Invalid or The Imaginary Invalid. This type of title is also not necessary now.
If you can make some social issues or problems of the world turn into a fish or a sea swimmer, how do you explain which social issue to release or let go?
The beautiful can get away with a lot of things—as can beautiful titles or perfectly standard phrases. And also, the beautiful can lose lots of respect, just as immediately; having only caught a glimpse of what overwhelming association was or can be.
And then someday the half-machine half-organic future humans will write and speak clever; and you and I, fully organic, just may feel slighted at the sidelines, with our outdated pulse for our world, along with senility—never considering the other divergence towards a beautiful convergence
L.A.
Peliplat.com
Instagram: @Aceronhouse
Deuza Diaz
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