Occupied Territories

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Closer. Farther away.
It happened, but not to you.

You survived because you were first.
You survived because you were last.
Because alone. Because the others.
Because on the left. Because on the right.
Because it was raining. Because it was sunny.
Because a shadow fell.

Luckily there was a forest.
Luckily there were no trees.
Luckily a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A frame, a turn, an inch, a second.
Luckily a straw was floating on the water.

Thanks to, thus, in spite of, and yet.
What would have happened if a hand, a leg,
One step, a hair away?

So you are here? Straight from that moment still suspended?
The net’s mesh was tight, but you? through the mesh?
I can’t stop wondering at it, can’t be silent enough.
Listen,
How quickly your heart is beating in me.

—Wisława Szymborska, “Any Case” (translated from the Polish by Grazyna Drabik and Sharon Olds)

Um, guys? This was back in 2006.

Gay Pride in Taiwan

Gay Pride in Taiwan

Poem

emissions:

To be idiomatic in a vacuum,
it is a shining thing! I

see it, it’s like being inside
a bird. Where do you live,

are you sick?
I am breathing the pure sphere

of loneliness and it is sating.
Do you know young René Rilke?

He is a rose, he is together, all
together, like a wind tunnel,

and the rest of us are testing
our wings, our straining struts.

— Frank O’Hara

(Source: ndsu.nodak.edu)

The make-up and the accents are often phony and distracting. The distant-future, chronologically final segment, after civilization has reverted to rank tribalism, is particularly off-putting, with Hanks, Berry, and others speaking some sort of pidgin comprised of Asian-inflected world-English and AAVE. If Hugh Grant in cannibal warpaint doesn’t throw your consciousness out of the proceedings, then James D’Arcy in full replicant mode certainly will. But again, these are elements that I find myself stumbling over, gnawing upon, rather than simply rejecting. (And as I said before, in no way do I find myself laughing in superiority to them.) Are these Brechtian devices, deployed by artists more accustomed to digital FX that seamlessly mould reality? As for questions of identity and its pliability, I think Ruby Rich is on target in partly understanding this aspect of Cloud Atlas as, if not an allegory, at the very least inflected by Lana Wachowski’s own life’s journey as a transgendered woman. In this respect, could it be that, if earlier models of trans-identity were shadowed by the gold-standard of “passing,” and the attendant shadow of possible failure, that a post-identity positioning evacuates this goalpost of so-called originary Being, placing all “being” under the sign of the small-b?

—

Michael Sicinski, “Star Maps: Wachowski/Tykwer/Wachowski’s Cloud Atlas”

“Phony,” “distracting,” “off-putting”: all these adjectives sound negative, but they’re, in fact, rather neutral if you think about it. I love the way this paragraph ends, in particular, as the way Cloud Atlas plays with identity is one of my favorite of its features. The parallel between the film’s subversion of earlier approaches to makeup/special effects to transform an actor’s identity and many trans individuals’ rejection of “passing” as an ideal (or even as a positive value) is particularly compelling. I can’t remember, thinking back, if I subconsciously made something like this connection or not while watching and thinking about the film, but now I can’t shake it.

Frantic (Roman Polanski, 1988)

Who is the mark and who is the master of the game? What is the real thing and what is the carefully crafted facsimile? This is always the question in Mamet. The last word of fate, the final turn in the narrative, is a moment of supreme shame for the victim. As in: I let my guard down, I didn’t watch closely enough, I wasn’t careful enough, so this is what I deserve. There is no such thing as an accident in Mamet’s world. There is only what is known and what is unknown. Who has paid the most attention? Who knows the most? This is an undeniably harsh model of existence, perhaps a peculiarly Jewish one. “It never stops,” utters one character to another in Homicide (1991), in reference to the persecution of Jews. To stave off any more catastrophes, we must all sleep with both eyes open and be always on the lookout for the Freudian slips and “tells” of our enemies.
—Kent Jones, “House of Games: On Your Mark”