Hustle, Flow, and the Chungking Express

yesterday was a miserable overcast Wednesday, replete with trips to big box stores and a impotent restlessness that could only be described as maddening if it had carried some sort of profundity within it. this was not the case, however, and i found myself piddling through the day, trying to get things done, trying to read, trying to write, trying to get beyond whatever self-erected roadblock had appeared overnight. but this is beside the point.

the point is that i never did. i got nothing done, i overcome no roadblocks, and i spent two (failed) hours trying to write a paragraph that didn't want to come. i read:

two measly chapters in Heartbreak Tango

twenty incomprehensible pages of quantum physics

and nothing about Zen Buddhism.

i meditated twice and experienced no satori, drank coffee and felt no caffeination, ate ice cream and enjoyed no gluttony.

(this is a rambling attempt to recreate a day that wasn't,
written by a person who wasn't there.)

i finally opened my copy of Immemory and found this quote by Boris Souvarine inside:

"History is something that never happened,
recounted by someone who wasn't there."

(i knew, as soon as i read it,
that i would make it my own.)

eventually night fell, and i tried to watch this film:

Hustle & Flow

but found it to be a preposterous inversion of the "hooker with a heart of gold" scenario. this convention is itself tired, and refiguring it into a "pimp with a heart of gold" story is simply ridiculous. my yin and i stopped thirty minutes in, and put in this film:

Chungking Express

which was infinitely more rewarding. my predilection for Wong Kar-wai is well-documented, and this film evidenced an immaturity that can only be described as charming – a word i never though i would use in described Wong's work. the same familiar themes of memory, time, and timing were all there, but Chungking Express also has a playfulness about it, an endearing naivete that overshadows the loss and heartache that come to define his later films.

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i woke this morning with Faye Wong still ringing in my ears: