Je t'aime.

Outside the theater, there was a young man with a cane. His face reminded me of that other one I held dear for so long. He had the same haircut, with that same mess of brown, falling in a caustic way that bit along the nape of the neck, all white-skinned and firm. There was the speculation and analysis of my placement in time, and he walked heavily across the sidewalk, with a look of satisfaction. I had played into his game of artistry. I was exactly where he wanted me. The clock read six fifteen, while the wind spoke of something else.

I was nervous about attending the film alone, so I used my cell phone as some sort of constructive way to make myself look busy. Alexander was called on first, but I got his voicemail. There was the alarming answer of that mechanical sound of monotone. It urged me to leave a message, like I would pen a letter, but I refused this, and let the cold October air, nip me in all the right places. It was this frozen game of tickling, that made me feel naked and brave. The next person I tried to dial, was my biological father. I let it ring twice, before turning into a weasel. By this time, a pretty girl, with a slightly marred mask of acne and berry-colored lipstick, showed me laughter that was inviting. She was obviously waiting for someone, but there was an insistence in her smile, that I should talk, and be talked to. We said something about the weather. There was no balance or structure. Rare birds of static, floated back in and out of our shaky speech, and we both identified in each other, a sense of loneliness. Our conversation died off, but neither of us were sad. A young man with dark-rimmed glasses, soon joined her and took her laughter as something of gold.

A conversation I had earlier in the day, brought forth an inversion of inners. My soul was floating around in the sky, all white and chalky, with tiny flecks of detriment and disease. I knew this, because of the way I leaned back within myself. I felt so invisible, waiting around at a theater at night, wishing for something kind to move me. I call these divine signs, rhyming patterns.

When I finally walked inside, the smell of popcorn produced that which is acidic. There were implications in the basic aroma, that I was to prepare myself for the lazy. There too, in the chamber of each nostril, was the foul scent of soda. It was the perfume of some segmented part of my childhood, and I got nostalgic for something I couldn’t quite remember, but merely felt the shadowing of. As I left the front lobby though, the backwash of my previous anxiety returned. I wanted to like this film. I wanted to swim in the thick of it.

The scenes where Marketa and Glen communicate some sort of missing of each other, in terms of their mentality and love, were probably what staked me up as someone that understood them. It’s constantly the disconnect, that makes art our outlet. The pain is what we shape into something brilliant.

It’s both crazy selfish, and yet, just as much, if not more, the opposite.