The Concept of Nothing

In section 202 housing, giving notice is apparently irrelevant for someone in my condition, so I got up to look for a hotel, found one, not that I know if this establishment has a vacancy. I'll find out this morning, I'll pack a few things, and then I am not coming back to this building, if ever, until I have an attorney, in succinct summation, reminiscent of seeing Brazil in university theater, still part communal experience, in the late 80's. No streaming, imagine. That was reserved for Zero Theorem, the last film in Gilliam's ostensible trilogy. Gilliam's style of ostentation, now out of fashion, never sat particularly well with me, even though the absurdist disruptions in all three films can be interpreted as distractions to prevent  the characters, the audience, from actualizing the Orwellian state in which they (we) inhabit: the only reason I was ever able to feel the tide on my legs, as a young girl, was because my grandfather dragged my wheelchair from the planked walkway which led out to the beach at Wildwood all the way to the damn Atlantic ocean, and I've carried the guilt of his labor ever since, a good twenty minutes, like a pack horse, and my chair, not being titanium, but the older mid-20th century stainless steel models, rusted through at the axle, embedded in one of my most ironclad memories, my only experience of the ocean meeting the shore, never imagining forcing sunset in a virtual horizon, manipulating it like a beach ball, even if the real Orwellian modular affect of human society is grimmer than Gilliam's ornate constructs allows for, despite certain poignant cessations, which doesn't quite occur in this last take on his exaggerated antics. Still, as aware as we are of what we're doing to ourselves, we hurdle along, due to mostly mindless group dynamics. I am going to dress, go grab a cold wrap, eat, and where I land by week's end may come down to commiseration, or general lack of forgiveness for failure, unless I go back to rest my fatigue another few hours, too old for all of this, fight and flight.

Trail Mix

I wanted to discuss the Gilliam box set in depth, but the very nature of his direction makes this an arduous proposition, and The Fisher King, despite its humor towards social stratification and disruption, is too much Hollywood shellac on The Big Apple. This leads me to recycle Robin Williams and my wrestling match with his talent and sentimentality, his concealed diagnosis, and his interesting ambiguity in maturity, probably not a good idea to continue on in this vein, a bit puss weary from the radiator vapor, and good for me, I caught my drop in the toilet, but if not an accident, neither was it a clean run. IBS and Crohn’s disease doesn’t quite fit my issues with impaction; ulcerative colitis might be closer, and hence, I may not be able to struggle with Septa to go back to daddy until later tomorrow, or very early Thursday. Have I fucked myself royally? Should I take kimmy? I can’t really carry the carrier, meeting up with the wry Johnathan Pryce in the nuisance of Brazil’s blue dyed dystopia. Pryce was the best cast, and Brazil had the best doomed aspirational appeal of all four films, with its conclusion suggestive of clinical torture escaped through mythos with Kim Greist as nihilistic as it gets, gift wrapped in the fantastical, unless it’s Twelve Monkeys, with its muzzle flash panache. Willis and Pitt do a good job in this narrative puzzle, with its sinister subplot, but in terms of aesthetic criteria, this member of the box set pleases me least. Perhaps I will return for kimmy, but this opens more worms with futurist bag ladies and cats. If Brazil is midnight blue in its tenor, Monkeys is a garish yellow, a tilt toward Ra and the Earth’s inevitable roast in a nova, a proclivity toward human error doomed to repeat cycles of destruction. Both Monkeys and The Zero Theorem link mental affect to social disease, with mixed results, as any delusional state is a reflection of its place and time, like the rise of autism as an evolutionary subroutine. In terms of Gilliam’s legacy and his signature, a unique imprimatur in the marketplace of intellectual angst and our defeat by our own processes, this isn’t enough for my digestion, but I am disengaging my anchor at an age no one should, wondering how Robin’s hesitation marks apply. Brazil has a particular significance, of course, a shadow over my own aspiration, as fun as it was on the cinematic screen. It was not the last movie I’d experience in the traditional method of projector technology, but it was one of the best of the last, rivaled only by AI, with AI’s bummer of an end.