Choices and In Bruges (some spoilers)

(Given that I'm writing this post at a sad point in my year, I feel like I should clarify that this is just a thought I've been chewing on independent of anything else. Also, hi Blogspot, how are you?)

There's this song that plays during my favorite scene in In Bruges, when the fat assassin (I honestly forget his name) is about to throw himself out of the tower, and the young "heroes" are kissing and laughing, and death is striding toward them all with one eye covered in a bandage, and this song plays. This sad Irish love song. About how the lady was clearly a bitch and would lead him to angst, but he loved her anyway and gave her everything and so now he's sad because she let him down.

And that scene, that song, kill me every time. If I watch it alone, I bawl. If I watch it with someone, my face twists up so I don't bawl.

And the thing is, I never, ever, hear that song as being about relationships. That's never what pictures it stirs up for me. It's totally about choices and agency. About the job. About chasing after something that you know is going to end badly, but disregarding because there's something beautiful and thrilling right here right now. In the context of that movie, it's about this guy, the fat assassin (I feel really bad that I don't remember his name, but I'm not taking the simple step to Google it, either, because I'm writing about what's in my head right now), who has spent his whole life being really good at this job that is, right now, killing him.

And yet, of course that's how it would end for him. Because he's a killer. We've spent this whole movie loving this character, but he's a killer. And he's dying like a killer. And that's exactly--fucking exactly--what he saw coming down the road, if not when he started the job (we don't know), then certainly later on. And what we, as the audience, should have seen. And it's a reminder, right before the final chase starts, that we would be naive to expect or feel entitled to a happy ending for Colin Farrell's character, who made the choice to chase after the same bitch of a job.

The library

Last night, I went to the empty Central Branch library with my mom. Someone somewhere decided to throw a party for the building before the renovations begin. There were a lot of Westside assholes, and a lot of hipsters, and a lot of very nice people too, and this woman who had worked at the building since it was first built, who showed me the models and drawings from the 1960s of how glorious this new library was going to be, with images of 60s mothers holding the hands of 60s children and striding eagerly up the steps. And a lot of art installations that must have been so much fun to make - some were dumb, but some were really neat uses of the library fixtures. Because if you're going to gut a building, why not play with it first? Why not go out with music and beer and catalog cards all over the walls and little blue microfiche butterflies hanging from the ceiling? Crap, I just cried a little right there.

Growing up, I spent so many hours in that building on weekends: first the children's section, curled up over horse books and Boxcar Children and then young adult fantasy starring women with swords. And then I wormed my way to the adult fiction down the hall. Then finally downstairs to nonfiction and poetry, though that included an embarrassing jaunt into the Wicca shelves in my early teens. I don't remember where my parents were in all of this: just that I was downtown, and in the library, and often exiting with stacks of books bigger than I could really carry. I felt like a Viking, just back from a good pillage. Not that I ever got through every book I checked out. But just having that stack sitting on my desk made me feel rich.

So anyway, that particular configuration of space just has this safe, quiet, churchy feel to me. There was a certain expectant-yet-placid way I always felt when I got to the top of the stairs, right next to the little fountain with the pixie statue in it. I didn't realize, until I saw that there was going to be a party, that I had feelings about the upcoming renovations. And that my mom was really the perfect person to bring with.

Edit: Now I can't stop thinking about that set of lines my reading interests created out over the years. The progression through rooms, rows of shelves, point A to B to B.201ac, and so on, and how that would be different for everyone. I want to make a map of it, I want to see other people's maps.

How's it going, abandoned Blogspot?

No promises.

Went to our nation's capital.

Wi Recall

Today feels like a scary/hopeful mix of "today is the final exam in your hardest subject" and "you are six and it is Christmas and you really hope you get that toy pony."

So much has happened since February 14. We have grown in ways we did not expect.


All my love Wisconsin, Wisconsinites. Vote wisely.