tightrope

wednesday is the only weeknight when something isn't going on after work, so it's come to feel much like a sunday. in celebration of going straight home, i left work, cracked a beer, cooked myself dinner, and sat down to watch a movie: man on wire.

i was expecting only a documentary about a frenchman who walked a tightrope rigged between the world trade center towers in 1974. instead i was sucked into the story of phillippe petit's unrivaled passion and obsession with the seemingly impossible. not only was the story well told by those who lived it, but it was visually translated with some stunning black and white scenes, old photos, and playful quirks. the music was also great, making the mission's risk and its resulting tension tangible.

the story took an abrupt turn in the last, maybe, 10 minutes when the petit of the story--this creative, vibrant, incorrigible youth--crashes into the petit of present--this arrogant, self-centered, pompous man. after accomplishing a feat like that one has to change--there's no choice. and while the movie doesn't expressly mention it, it shows his once-best friend alluding to the fact that relationships were broken as a result of the feat. with a little smirk, he said it "didn't matter because, well, because we succeeded, and..." and then a few minutes of silence and he comes to absolute tears.

the story's tone so quickly turned from this amazement and euphoria to this heartbreaking nostalgia that bordered on regret. that said, the fact the film showed this downturn and ended there made it so much more complex and real.

when watching i wondered what petit felt when he learned that the two buildings, these two buildings that he thought were built for him and his tightrope, were destroyed. the answer didn't fit into the movie but it did make me wonder about the connections he have to non-living things and the "lives" that those things "live".

* * *

today i came home and after going through the mail picked up this book i'd bought at target earlier in the week. i knew it was about some event happening in new york in the 70s but not more than that, and i only bought it because it won the national book award and was on sale. from the book's jacket, "In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people."

couldn't have picked a better book myself. seriously. i couldn't.

a friend gave me the road by cormac mccarthy for my birthday. it comes at a perfect time: just finished an interesting, action-adventure book that was fun, if not fluffy. the wild girl was relief after reading 660 pages about somewhat worthless, allwhat depressing characters in seven types of ambiguity. not that that book wasn't excellent, because it was. there were passages that made me feel like perhaps truer words had never been spoken about the human race. (sorry mr. shakespeare.) it was also very inter-connected and layered, which one might expect with a title like that...nonetheless it was a long, descriptive book and i was looking for some punchy writing. then along came the road, and knocked all my teeth out.

not only is this book a stark contrast from the past 1500 pages of reading i've done, it's pretty much unlike any other book i've read. this man describes gray in more ways than the eskimos name ice. not to mention he infuses suspense into pages where the same thing is happening, which is more or less nothing. i'm only about 70 pages in, but i'm hooked. also, the guy doesn't use apostrophes in contracted modals like couldn't, shouldn't, etc. i feel like that's on par with salinger's use of italics in dialogue. and even though i don't like salinger, i can still recognize his genius.

also, i can't read this book before i go to bed anymore.
because it's gotten scary.
and i'm a little girl.

white teeth- zadie smith

And there should be nothing to worry about and there is nothing to worry about, except maybe that outside in the streets it is cold packed on cold, even the dogshit has crystallized, there is the first suggestion of ice on the windscreens and Clara has been in that house through the winters. She knows what it means. Oh, wonderfully bright at 6:00 a.m., yes, wonderfully clear for an hour. But the shorter the days, the longer the nights, the darker the house, the easier it is, the easier it is, the easier it is, to mistake a shadow for the writing on the wall, the sound of overland footsteps for the distant crack of thunder, and the midnight chime of a New Year clock for the bell that tolls for the end of the world.