Cinematic

Dated: 2/26/06

I’m going to make a movie someday. And in it – I can only see so well what will be in it. I imagine there will be much walking, the way people walk and think no one in the world is watching, or that everyone on the block is focused intently on the saddle of the hip, the length of the stride. The complete self-consciousness of one foot in front of the other, the skin of ankle exposed to sun. And I was thinking – there are certain people you have seen only at night, and could never imagine their skin touched by daylight: an aura would burst, crumple, or englaze itself around clothing as if you had never seen them in this way before. Without the tight smoke of night. And there will be the hot pressure of summer night and the rumble of the car on a green block, sweaty bands singing about departures and backseats. That was the summer I imagined to look back on, but that I never had – a white magnolia drenched summer with the lover’s lawn open and spread like a warm hand. A window and hair trailing wildly, I wanted that. And if only I had something more special to say, that only she wanted to listen to. Well there will be a road glistening with heat and the smell of wheat or barley, the smell of draught-dried grass hitting the face without apologies, without apologies. I guess maybe this was a song, a conglomerate of songs that were never truly listened to, because when you strip the music the words scatter and are left behind losing speed to the rumble of the engine. And maybe a movie will bring them back. The glaze of the screen will enshrine them in a dank way, the way old café lights look like how musk would smell. This must all be in it, everything I can see now. And there is not a moment to lose, not even a small one, not the second of crossing through the wet grass. Not the paper cut, the congregating birds behind the fence, the pluck that was so essential. There is a restaurant called pizzicato, you know. That was summer, too. And so was smoking in the heat under the big umbrella, watching the tourists pass and the midday go slow. There will be a church, yes, a place outside of our city, but not quaint. We were never quaint. It would be old and smelling of closet, the closets we played in between the open inside of the house and the sprawling dappled green that spilled from the brick stairs. Back and forth, crossing the empty hazy streets.

“Is this what you want?”

Your hands, I knew. And that will be in a movie, too, the way I saw them, the way I measured the distance between the centers of your eyes. Now I forget the number, but it isn’t important. The distance swept naturally across the points of brown, I followed the markings studiously. But how to remember these things? You were sitting on the couch, breathing. Your instrument was at your feet, a sheath of black.

No, we have to go back. You were sitting on the couch, breathing. You were breathing and did not know it, but I knew it.

Photo by Karen Christine Hubbard: Violin cases at Caras