well....

That was crap. I always laugh at my efforts when I try to condense my thoughts into a poem or short story. They always seem like the product of a 14 year old's creative writing project.

It's important that you know that. I'm so envious of those who possess that talent to write beautifully. It flows out of them, it seeps out. They couldn't contain it even if they wanted. In the meantime, I frown at my screen for an hour, attacking my keys for not being able to type the words themselves. "I know I have it in me, but these keys aren't cooperating. Those jealous bastards!" Writing skilfully is innate, you can't fool someone into thinking you are a great writer. You can fool someone into think you have style, you are smart or even that you are funny. You cannot mask the fact that you are languid and dry.

Is there some irony in that sentence? But I'm not trying to fool you! How dare you!

Back on point (was there ever was one? There's no way of knowing...), I have been thinking lately about the trailer for Gus Van Sant's Restless I saw the other day. In the trailer, a character talks about a special songbird. This bird thinks it dies every time the sun goes down. When it wakes up, it is so surprised to be alive that it chirps a beautiful tune.

I was reading A Streetcar Named Desire a few days back, and I've just been thinking about Blanche and the songbird. I can't explain this feeling, the lump in my throat when I think of the two. There's something tragic yet hopeful about the songbird. Blanche is the same.

But the analogy doesn't quite fit does it? I wonder what it is like to be that songbird. To wake up with a fresh view of the world every morning. To feel so relieved that you are alive again.Opening your heavy lids and feeling happiness because there's light and green and shade. Maybe the bird isn't so tragic at all, maybe it's liberating.

I guess in my head Blanche and the bird were linked because they both have so much hope. But the bird is hopeful and the Blanche is hopeless.

Blanche is more like a moth- fluttery and scatterd, drawn to the light,hoping to find beauty and to be guided, only to get stung. And like a moth, she will do it again and again.

Maybe the bird gives up too easily, its too easily fooled by the darkness. The shadows trick it into thinking there won't be light. That the darkness is all it has left.

In my head, Blanche was a songbird because every time life has let her down she collapses. She can't see that the darkness is ephemeral. But then what does she have when the shadows disappear? Light, the light that betrays her. There is no liberation in finding the light, it only hurts.

Argh, I'm so annoyed I spent all this time thinking about this. When it all leads to nothing.