Love

But I can’t stay inside, because out in that foreboding world, you exist.

I’ve met you many times before. You come in many different shapes, and when you’re present, I would walk on thin ice to have you in my arms.

I’m afraid of weather, vague outside threats, rejection – but I find you in the hearts of many, and it makes the world seem that much safer.

Right now, you live in a dear friend of mine. We speak your name to each other, though there’s something muted about it – he says your name to someone else with more force. You can carry many meanings, sometimes romantic and sometimes platonic. He and I say the latter but are both aware I crave the former, too. You are almost a threat – the last time we discussed you in your naked wholeness, he spoke of fears. That to invoke you meant making promises he doesn’t feel prepared for, that this other guy came with less expectations. I never felt like I wanted too much – but I’ve always gotten the sense that I’m never aware how much I demand.

That you can drive us so, it’s only natural you likewise spark terror.

But even as that desire hangs over me, I’m so thankful to have you in the form he and I do share. To have someone worth going outside to see, to speak of my fears and desires, it’s a beautiful thing. I just wish you could quiet down sometimes, or maybe you could someday embed some of your power inside my own heart – but then I’d again have nothing to seek out in this scary world.

Even if I never get what I currently find myself wanting, I know you’re always there. I may not know where to find you at a specific moment, but I’m as sure of you as I am of life itself.

Even when you leave, I trust you to return. You’re a blessing and a curse, but I’ll give you that positive tilt – you’re the reason life is worth living.

In

I reached out a few weeks back and apologized for seeming to disappear for several months. I’ve been so depressed this past year that I kind of shut down, ultimately neglecting most of my social connections.

I mentioned that I always felt unwanted because no one invites me – I always end up doing the inviting. I figured people would reach out, especially after what I was going through, but the burden of contact always fell back on me.

You mentioned you never invite me because you assume I’d say no – I’d want to remain in my own safe place. Am I such a hermit people simply skip over offering me a chance to get out? How did I end up like this?

It’s always been this empty cycle – I convince myself I bother people and stop contacting them as much, and then they don’t contact me because they’re used to me being the one to reach out. Then I start believing I was right, that I am a bother, and they’ll be happier without me. I have lost so many friends through simple silence.

Am I a colder person than I realize? I want to belong. I want to feel like people enjoy spending time with me. What signals do I keep sending that suggest I don’t want to be included?

I might as well stay inside. At least I can’t be disappointed if I shut everyone else out.

Falling

I decided to swing by Taco Bell on the way home – I was having to rush to therapy after work and needed something quick to eat. Unfortunately, the building sitting a bit off campus meant none of the sidewalks had been cleared.

I’ve always been terrified of ice. Back in Mt. Zion, one of the houses on the way to the bus stop had left their hose running for nearly a year. I was always curious why – didn’t that cost a ton of money? Did no one notice? Their driveway and the street was always covered in water. Winter that year must have come in with some heavy snow, skipping all the other nasty stuff. The walk was easy, but with that layer of snow I completely forgot about the hose. I fell hard – thankfully, my school had the tendency to overload us with homework and a stack of books softened the fall.

I wasn’t so lucky the week before my trip to Taco Bell – I was rushing to clear the car before heading out to catch Green Book and The Kid Who Would Be King for my two-movie-reviews-a-week goal. While stepping back inside, I fell hard on my back. I still ache a week and a half later, and considering the feeling, I might have done something to my tailbone. I just laid on the ground for a bit, afraid to get hurt again.

When I got safely to Taco Bell, I was paranoid enough that I called and asked you to pick me up. You jabbed at me – it was only two blocks from our house. But you came to my rescue anyway.

We got back home and I froze outside the car. The passenger side was covered in ice, and I asked if I could simply pass my food over the railing of our porch. If I did fall, I wanted to make sure my hands were at least free. You said sure, but then I realized any slight movement made me feel like I would lose my balance. Even one step to the railing seemed impossible.

So I panicked. I began crying hysterically. I don’t know what got me so scared to break down like that. You saw my tears and rushed down, placed by food on the ledge and took my hand. I felt so powerless, needing my ex-husband to guide me to safety.

After all that trouble to get food, I didn’t eat for fifteen minutes. I was so shaken I messaged my therapist and asked to reschedule, terrified of having to go back out there on the ice. I had so many plans for the evening, but I simply sat there paralyzed at my computer.

Can I please never go outside again?

Help

While walking the half mile home from the bus stop, you sped by and pointed a gun at me.

I’m not sure who you were – not that I’ve forgotten. You were several years older, I recognized you from the halls but never learned your name. I’m sure I could dig out an old year book and find you – but I’d rather live without you.

A few friends were with you, though I never saw their faces. The only clear image I got was you in the passenger seat, window rolled down as your arm rested on the door, gun in your hand. I’m not even sure if the gun was real or not.

Why were you following me of all people?

You turned around at the end of the street and came back. I wasn’t sure what to do; I had just moved to my step-dad’s place, didn’t know the neighbors. Did I sneak into backyards and explain what was happening if someone caught me lurking?

You drove by a fourth time and I noticed a chunk of the road that had broken off through wear. I stopped and looked ahead.

You must have turned off of a side road and left. This was some stupid game for bored high school boys in a small town; intimidate some kid you didn’t know just because there was nothing better to do.

Am I wrong for wishing you turned back one last time, just so I could throw that slab of street through your windshield? Even my weak throw would have done some real damage with the speed you were going. Maybe I could have even lobbed it through the passenger window, bust open your ugly face.

I don’t like to have violent thoughts, but I had never felt more willing to hurt someone in that moment. I never told anyone what happened – I had reported lighter encounters to the principal’s office and been asked for proof, and why would they believe something like this? Maybe that’s why I wanted to hurt you – that would be proof something happened. I wanted to be believed.

Maybe I would have tossed that chunk and you would have retaliated with an actual shot. We could have both lost so much that day, and we were nothing to each other.

Looking back, I probably should have reported this. Even if you did nothing that day, who knows what you were capable of – I can’t imagine you got better with age. Who have you actually hurt by this point?

I think that’s the worst thing you’ve left me with – this feeling that I couldn’t do anything to bring punishment upon you. You gave me all the warning signs of a psychopath in a world where I felt powerless to speak up. No one was around to help, either as you drove by or in the places that were supposed to be safe.

How did anyone convince me to go outside?

Can’t

My school district had a series of bomb threats back in the early 2000s. I was out sick when the one at my elementary school took place, and it turned out to be from a girl who thought she could get a few days off – third graders can be kind of stupid.

They were all essentially pranks, but they stemmed from a real fear – in that post-Columbine world, were we wrong to panic at the idea that one of these kids might be serious?

This was the same year as the attacks on September 11. I didn’t know what the World Trade Centers were – I didn’t even know what Muslims were. That whole section of the world was a vague concept, introduced to me through one violent day.

Mine was a childhood defined by paranoia – I’ve been anxious since those early days, but I’m certain this experience went beyond me. The early 2000s were a culture of fear.

I remember my mother picking me up, telling me how they got let out of work because her company could be a potential target. The following weeks, I was glued to the television set – which was a normal experience, except Spongebob was replaced by those two burning towers collapsing into dust.

In those following months, I learned of anthrax, snipers, the proper way to seal doors in case of gas attacks. There were weapons of mass destruction, terrorist cells, liquid bombs. None of this had happened in my town – yet. But the media wanted to make it clear that it could.

The news of the outside world can really creep into your private life – as a child, I had no clear idea of how to delineate why and where these things happened. But that box in my own living room kept saying the same thing over and over: be afraid, be afraid, be afraid…

Home was mostly safe. The only thing that could reach me there was one of those big bombs, but it’s not like anywhere outside would be safe from that either. There were tornadoes, sure – but it was somehow easier to accept that. Being in a town of 5,000 people located in the Midwest, they were certainly a bigger threat in my day-to-day life than anything man-made. Luckily, I had the news to keep me focused on the real danger.

So, there might be places to visit, people to see, but I’d much rather stay inside. You can’t make me leave. Everything I need is on the television set.

Life’s safer with the news turned on.

Review: Shoplifters (2018)

Shoplifters is only my third film from director Hirokazu Kore-eda, but based off of this in combination with Nobody Knows, I am convinced he has proven himself one of the most capable masters of tackling life in poverty.

A makeshift family comes together and navigates life; Osamu acts as the father of the family, teaching young Shota how to shoplift. The wife Nobuyo works with laundry, stealing whatever trinkets she can find forgotten in pockets. Elderly Hatsue acts as the matriarch, collecting pensions and running scams, while Aki works at a hostess club. One day, as Osamu and Shota return home, they come across a neglected young girl and end up bringing her into their family, rescuing her from abuse but legally kidnapping her.

Kore-eda balances this tale in such a way that we are fully engaged with their struggle to survive while keeping us at enough distance to question who these people are. Their connections are blurred, to the audience and even each other. They operate as a family, living together and having each other’s backs, but they rarely allow the others into their internal struggles. Kore-eda knows to let questions linger, adding an air of mystery to an otherwise straightforward tale.

The subject matter feels like the perfect topic for a slow cinema film, and it carries the painterly aesthetic of that movement, but Shoplifters is anything but slow. All six members have their own poignant tales, bringing life into each scene. This is not a tale of people wallowing in misery, but rather finding beauty in the most surprising places.

The central theme of Shoplifters is the concept of what makes a family. Is it simply biological, or does it really consist of the people who care for you? This question appears to have its most obvious answer in the little girl, Yuri, who finds safety in this new home. But Kore-eda knows it’s not that simple – as Osamu and Nobuyo observe, they feel like broken people, and what do they truly have to offer? They give love and their own warped sense of care, but they can’t offer a brighter future or security.

Shoplifters exists in a similar visual realm to Ozu films; the central focus is framing. Kore-eda perfectly considers the boundary of the image, where each object is placed, crafting a vibrant visual landscape even in desperate settings. A particularly standout sequence finds Aki performing at work; the way her schoolgirl outfit clashes with the usual imagery, the patron writing on a white board to communicate as he sits obscured in near-total darkness on the other side of glass, the surprisingly touching moment they share as they go back for a direct session. Every shot carries obvious consideration.

That brief moment between Aki and her guest perfectly captures the heart of the film – as broken as people can feel they are, there’s something magnificent about how they can come together, understand one another. Certain directors make similar films and get derided for making ‘poverty porn,’ as if they are simply exploiting the poor for the entertainment of the better off. But there’s no sense of exploitation here – this is an honest tale of fully-realized characters, as true-to-life as it can be. This is not a study of poverty but a celebration of life itself told through the eyes of some of its most vulnerable people.

Works as compellingly mundane as Shoplifters are a rare treat. Kore-eda never comes off as simply trying to spread a message; this film is a consideration. He wants us to ponder our own connections, how we view the world. Whenever an easy answer seems to bubble up, Kore-eda squashes it back down, culminating in a harrowing finale. Kore-eda never offers us answers, but rather gives us questions we rarely think to ask.

4.5 Stars Out of 5

Review: They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

Peter Jackson has put together a World War I documentary consisting purely of archival footage and other media from the era, reconstructed and colorized with modern film technology. It is both a testament to what can be done in the name of film preservation (and beyond) and a richly visceral dive into the Great War.

They Shall Not Grow Old is a sensory experience; it doesn’t cover new ground as much as it attempts to make you feel. In a way, it is a fantasy upon itself – so much is crafted through guesswork. Improvements upon the clarity of the image are always welcome, and I feel like that’s the place a lot of preservationists would stop. Peter Jackson goes several steps further – adding color, mixing in imagined sound. It creates a more immediate resonance, but also adds a layer of artifice – the addition of people voicing the soldiers in the footage felt especially jarring to me.

The most effective moments of the film come from a more simple element; it’s the way in which Jackson mixes the footage with post-war interviews. Soldiers recount tales of their experience, Jackson jumping between unrelated interviews until he crafts a more general view of the war experience – this is a glimpse of the war from the ground level, the daily lives of those who fought in it. The overall narrative design is sometimes simplistic but always carries such incredible force.

Even with the rather wide scope of the film, the best moments come down to specificity. A rather gross yet memorable sequence discusses the lack of toilets and the simplistic systems used in their place – one soldier recounts a time where a group of soldiers fell off the pole they were sitting on into the pit below. A more disturbing moment comes not from the combat directly but the state of the trenches – a soldier describes watching a young man slowly drown in the mud, no one really able to reach out and help.

They Shall Not Grow Old exists in this weird state of contradiction. As a documentary it seeks to expose the truth, but then it modifies the truth it has to be more presentable to a modern audience. It is likewise composed of individual memories, strung together until the voices of these individual soldiers become lost in the crowd – in a way, this film shares a lot with the collectivist storytelling of early Soviet cinema.

The question I keep returning to is, what is the purpose? Is it simply to give World War I a wider reach? It’s certainly a harrowing topic, but even with all the modernized footage, it’s the voices of the soldiers that leave the most impact. Were their words not enough to convey the horror?

They Shall Not Grow Old is an impressive technical feat, a journey into how far cinematic technology has come – but it also comes off more as a document than a great work of art. Pieces that already existed are cast in a new light; its mere existence has value, but it is also limited by its goal. The version I saw had an introduction by Peter Jackson, where he discusses being approached for the project; a hundred years later, what new meaning could be brought out of this old footage?

I don’t think anything particularly new was found – however, Jackson has constructed the perfect entry point for people unfamiliar with the war, the type of film I can see serving an honorable purpose in classrooms across the world. With the materials provided and the intended goal of the project, I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job than Jackson did here.

4 Stars Out of 5

A Hopeful Wedding

I don’t want us to look back and say this was all for nothing. We carried each other through our first years away from our family, and nothing was telling us these feelings would fade. Could anyone blame us for getting married after five years together? It seemed right.

We can listen to “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space” and feel sad for what is no longer there – but it was there. We have those memories, we can know that there is someone out there who really got us better than anyone else, and knowing that means knowing there are other people out there, too. There is love in us. We shouldn’t be ashamed because we got so close that we imagined devoting our entire lives to each other. That closeness is such a beautiful thing, even if it didn’t last as long as we had hoped.

I guess the concept of marriage is tainted for us now. How will either of us learn to trust again? No, how can I ever trust myself to know what I really want? I was so sure of this, but I was the one to ask for the end. I don’t want to hurt anyone else – I’m damaged goods.

But, no, I’m capable of more. I can rebuild myself, and you can, too. We don’t know how to move forward, but we are moving forward. Every new day we reconstruct ourselves further. We can choose to be ashamed of that label, of being ‘divorced,’ but it’s a sign that we once allowed ourselves to love someone fully. There’s nothing wrong with having been young and in love – this can be such a lonely world, and you gave me freedom from that feeling for so long.

Even as we soon part ways, you going off to either claim your PhD or moving back in with your family for a bit, me staying behind in this same college town, a part of you will remain within me for life. I assure you, there’s no replacing what we had together – but new towers will dot our skylines.

A Scandalous Wedding

You teased me the day before the wedding, referring to a close friend of mine as my boyfriend. We were in an open relationship, but it wasn’t until that talk that I realized you found it acceptable for me to actually date others. I shared the idea with him in a half-joke, but we soon agreed that, sure, that sounded like an apt descriptor for what we were. I was happy, having these two loves in my life and not having it be a problem. It was a bit awkward to realize the timing meant I would have two anniversaries back to back, but whatever, I was happy.

He attended the wedding, and I know now the whole situation was rather awkward for him. He would later confide in another friend that he felt pressured into the label, and that other friend eventually let that slip to me. I’ll never get that; why would you let yourself be pressured into something as big and meaningful as a relationship?

But I guess that also describes my wedding, so can I really blame him?

He sat at the same table as another friend I’ve always had a slight thing for, a person I’ve messed around with a few times in the past. At the same table was the guy you cheated on me with and his boyfriend. We joked about that being the furry table, but that wasn’t even half of it.

It’s weird how normal that all seemed to us.

I wish this sat better with me than it did. But it hurt – to love another person and feel compelled to hide them away from my family. Perhaps I could have been braver, open with them – but there was always doubt. You were so certain of this polyamory thing, and if I wanted this to be a happy marriage, I had to learn to accept it.

I really had to accept it. You made it quite clear there was no turning back. I always had to be the one to make sacrifices.

But as long as I had both of you, it seemed acceptable.

A Regretful Wedding

The day couldn’t have been worse. Our officiant asked us to present our own vows before being reminded we were sticking to the basics; I guess I was afraid of coming up with ways of describing why I cared for you. It was a reminder of my doubts. Could I promise you anything meaningful? At least if I stuck to someone else’s script, it felt less like a real thing.

The DJ did a catastrophic job. We spent hours working on a list of what we wanted for our big day. The woman who was supposed to MC told us the DJ would try to mix in our picks, but they’d go back to the stuff that would make people actually get up and dance if our stuff didn’t ‘work.’ She also disappeared without telling anyone as the dancing actually began, failing to actually do anything to encourage people to get out of their chairs. Your mother said she was expecting something better after attending a wedding with music provided by the same company, that she could tell the woman wasn’t really trying – but she didn’t want to give a bad review.

I was so overwhelmed by the size of it all. There were so many people there celebrating us, people I had never met and now will never see again. I had always wanted a smaller wedding, but your family demanded they invite absolutely everyone. And then we get there, and my family can’t even fill two tables. Your family is bigger, but it wasn’t that. No, most of my family has simply never accepted me. They couldn’t even make it to what was supposed to be one of the best days of my life. You tried to tell me that I was becoming part of your family, but I felt so outside of it. It never felt like the wedding was about us, but about you – about your family wanting to throw a big party, even if that’s nothing like what I wanted.

I felt so alone that night.

Like in everything else, I remember the music. “One Day Like This,” “Hoppipolla,” “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space,” uplifting songs now tainted by melancholy. We both wanted “Chicago” to play during dinner but they for whatever reason played one of the quieter versions off The Avalanche. We danced alone to “Say Something Loving” because the MC did nothing, and then they went back to songs I hated using this moment as justification. We eventually begged a table of our friends to stop playing Sushi Go Party and dance to try to get the music back on track. Since I couldn’t have a more comfortable wedding size, all I really had that night was my music. Why couldn’t that stupid company have just given the safety blanket I had asked for?

We closed the night by slowly dancing to “Into My Arms.” Did I believe the words of that song back then? Would you find it more or less sad if the answer is yes?

And then you poisoned yourself. We think it’s funny now, but I was actually rather mad with you. It was an entirely pointless act, a reminder that you do whatever you want without considering the repercussions. That moment sticks out because it summarizes our relationship quite well.

The rest of the night consisted of you managing your pain, and despite my supposed asexual leanings, I had allowed myself to work up the energy to be open that night. Instead, we hung out with some faraway friends, including the guy that you had cheated on me with. But, no, that was fine, because it’s not like I ever had the nerve to tell you how much that actually bothered me.

I could never express myself honestly to you – not because I couldn’t find the words, but because I knew you would tell me how wrong I was to feel that way.

I’m sorry you have to look back on these moments aware of the inner turmoil that drove me through the last few years of our relationship. And I’m sorry I was actually happy that day. After I asked for our divorce, you kept mentioning how you wished I realized this sooner. That I didn’t put you through this, that I didn’t allow us to get married.

I’m sorry I believed that things would get better.

I’m sorry I became so overwhelmed by how much time and money your family was putting into this wedding that I was afraid to confront the cheating that occurred after our engagement. I was ashamed of the fact my own family was giving so little, it felt like I had to be along for the ride – everyone would have hated me if I called off the wedding after so much had been poured into planning it.

I stopped having a sense of self during those years – I belonged to you. I forced a smile because you were giving so much, giving me everything but taking so much too. I so desperately wanted to be happy with what we had.

And, for whatever reason, I still loved you.