Strike the Sane Unbenumbed Person Tongue-Tied

• Had a date with Earthgirl past Friday night, dinner at a (very mediocre will never go back) new Thai restaurant* on Wisconsin in Bethesda, then a movie, in a theater, Bethesda Row, saw

• My take away is to again wonder why I don't enjoy movies in a theater only slightly more then I don't enjoy watching movies at all.
• The movie had a major role in my dreams Friday night, and I thought about it yesterday including typing this sentence.
• One scene, van Gogh swaying with the reeds in the wind and the sun the thirty seconds in the movie he was happy, thirty seconds, broke my heart.
• One: I know I'm devout and dumb for stations.
• Two: the priest who ran the last asylum van Gogh stayed was bad guy in 2006's Bond Casino Royale reboot and (a) that was weird, the five seconds it took, and (b) the movie stations I have are very old and silly, (c) I'm a rebel, Dottie, a loner..
• Three: I've never liked theaters and auditoriums and most venues much until the event starts, and I hurry to get out as soon as event over, people can vouch.
• Four: my eyes are better re: glaucoma but worse re: reading stamina, that's, says eyedoc, nothing anyone or anything can do, watching images on screens eventually inevitable unless I want to stare at walls for entertainment.
• Five: I don't like watching violence bordering on won't watch violence.
• Five and a half: one Humane Society ad throws me down stairs for a week, I can't take more cats, fckm.
• Six: I hate assigned seats almost nearly as much as I hate sitting still (unless I am reading).
• Seven: At Eternity's Gate, the eternal genius requires madness debate, there will be a Franz Wright poem at the end of this post.
• Eight: *The chipotle-azation of restaurants, order your carb, order your protein, be your own waiter, not only sucks for low-income workers needing a job but, certainly not uncoincidentally, sucks as food.
• Nine: one preview was for a short-film festival of sorts, a bunch of award-winning short films in two or so hours, and I'll go if you go (and I promise not to discuss how it brings up my issues with short stories, which I tried and failed again to read this past month).
• Ten: I've thought it strange since realizing at the age of four in back seat of parent's car driving back from Lizzie's to Helen's in a snowstorm how everyone's their own universe in cars on the same road. 
• Eleven: To be clear, I am smart but not a genius, I go in and out of Dark but am not mad,
• Eleven and a half: it's not an either/or a brilliant nut chooses between
• Eleven and three-quarters: despite the depiction of brilliant nuts in novels and movies.
• Twelve: Sunday morning, still thinking about the movie.
• Thirteen: more to follow, or not.
• Reminder: here's new beautiful Lampchop, I've watched it end to end countless times, I vouch.

• How to quit Apple, Microsoft, and Google. I would need to learn the skills if I ever had the will.
• Imagine the media if Sanders and Warren were true progressives.
• The oily eaters of the planet.
• What right-wing nationalism services.
• Greater Eurasia.
• American Women of the Far Right.
• On the passing of internet time.
• Anarchitechture.
• Avedon's links.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• If 100 underpants gnomes loaded up on meth....

THE FACE

Franz Wright

Is there a single thing in nature

that can approach in mystery

the absolute uniqueness of any human face, first, then   

its transformation from childhood to old age—

  

We are surrounded at every instant   

by sights that ought to strike the sane   

unbenumbed person tongue-tied, mute   

with gratitude and terror. However,

  

there may be three sane people on earth   

at any given time: and if

you got the chance to ask them how they do it,   

they would not understand.

   

I think they might just stare at you

with the embarrassment of pity. Maybe smile

the way you do when children suddenly reveal a secret   

preoccupation with their origins, careful not to cause them shame,

  

on the contrary, to evince the great congratulating pleasure   

one feels in the presence of a superior talent and intelligence;   

or simply as one smiles to greet a friend who’s waking up,

to prove no harm awaits him, you’ve dealt with and banished all harm.