Destiny

An excellent film with the company of good friends is just the thing to make me forget about the world’s madness. Last Thursday was the final installment of the Fritz Lang film festival sponsored by the Goethe Institut, and I enjoyed this film even more than the previous one. That’s really saying a lot as to Destiny’s superiority. It could be though that satisfaction is owed to the fact that I’m such a sap. Top that with Cynthia Alexander crooning after a memorable line as this: “/…because love is stronger than death…/” and you have the—ahem—transcendental movie experience.

It was great to see Anina Abola and Larry Ypil there too, even if I did make a spectacle of myself out of showing how I felt.


***

Because she can say it, period. This:


Parousia

Love of my life, you
Are lost and I am
Young again.

A few years pass.
The air fills
With girlish music;
In the front yard
The apple tree is
Studded with blossoms.

I try to win you back,
That is the point
Of the writing.
But you are gone forever,
As in Russian novels, saying
A few words I don't remember-

How lush the world is,
How full of things that don't belong to me-

I watch the blossoms shatter,
No longer pink,
But old, old, a yellowish white-
The petals seem
To float on the bright grass,
Fluttering slightly.

What a nothing you were,
To be changed so quickly
Into an image, an odor-
You are everywhere, source
Of wisdom and anguish.


(Louise Glûck)

***

Film festivals are all about—Belgian art films, Japanese classic horror films, Cine Manga, advanced screenings for Cinemanila—thus, a good excuse to see friends. There goes one happy, happy kid again.