3.23.2006

Trainspotting Eleanor Rigby

You're here. You're reading these words. Is this a coincidence? Maybe you think fate is only for others. Maybe you're ashamed to be reading about loneliness - maybe someone will catch you and then they'll know your secret stain. And then maybe you're not even very sure what loneliness is - that's common. We cripple our children for life by not telling them what loneliness is, all of its shades and tones and implications. When it clubs us on the head, usually just after we leave home, we're blindsided. We have no idea what his us. We think we're diseased, schizoid, bipolar, monstrous and lacking in dietary chromium. It takes us until thirty to figure out what it was that sucked the joy from our youth, that made our brains shriek and burn on the inside even when our exteriors made us seem as confident and bronzed as Quantas pilots. Loneliness.
- From "Eleanor Rigby" by Douglas Coupland

It's an excellent, excellent book that perfectly captures loneliness. And not just loneliness as a concept but it describes and illustrates those certain specific moments which only you thought was lonely. At the same time, it's very funny and witty. And heartwarming and heartbreaking. It makes you fall in love and it breaks your heart in between hilarious adjectives and similes. Douglas Coupland captures the emotions, even the specific moments, so well that you just smile and silently tell nobody in particular, "How true," or "HMFH, I'm not alone afterall," or "omg I have to go to Italy... Or Vienna."

Another paragraph from the book:

And so we watched the six o'clock news together. it was nice to do something boring with another person. Usually, I avoid TV news because sundowns is such a hard time, always has been - a time of day that puts italics on your loneliness. Unless I'm in really good shape watching the news at six, I fuzz out into a lonely blur - except when there's a story about a dog trapped in icy waters, whereupon I blubber. Id things go from bad to worse, I'll eat a platter of microwaved cinnamon buns at one sitting, and then go for a drive. If I drive when I'm lonely, I easily fall into mind games with other drivers who are just as lonely too. I've tailgated creeps through an entire rainstorm just to screech at them Shame on you! for tossing a cigarette butt out the window near Deep Cove. I don't know what I"m accomplishing by screaming at them. Something is going on inside me; I simply wish I knew what.

---

I've finally watched Trainspotting by the way. I just finished watching it. A very, very good movie. Up there in the life-changing-and-subliminally-beautiful kind of movies. Sometimes the really strong scot accent fcks up your hearing though you get used to it easy I guess. (At least a lot easier than really strong gypsy Irish like in Snatch or something.) I sort of got the Italian subtitles easier than the actual dialogue at one point where the subtitles showed up though.

So yeah, download this song Born Slippy by Underworld.

1 Comments:

Blogger Byeong said...

Jena you should name this your Puregold Jayson Encounter. ahaha

Si, si. Naks, victorious. ahaha

1:44 PM  

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LAYOUT IMAGE from AllStars-Online.Net with Kate Moss from a Rolling Stone mag shoot. All words from David Coupland's Shampoo Planet, Chapter 1.

you have only an essence

AM likes breakfasts and cooking pasta; can run solely on fruit shakes, green tea, and soy milk for a whole day; watches Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Adult Swim, Coupling, Less Than Perfect, reality tv crap, PRISON BREAK, Grey's Anatomy, Monk, blablabla; listens to alot of electro/electropop, britpop, alt, and an odd assortment of pop acts; reads Pahlaniuk, Douglas Adams, Douglas Coupland, JD Salinger and other stuff like Martin Amis, Alex Garland, Matthew McIntosh; 's favourite books are Catcher In The Rye, Well, Eleanor Rigby, Olivia Joules, Non-fiction, Hitchhiker's Guide, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower; watches a load of movies and some of her favourites are Fight Club, Jeux d'Enfants, Amelie, Life Aquatic, Godfather, Collateral, Wag The Dog, The Terminal, Requiem for a Dream, Mickey Blue Eyes, Lost In Translation, Central Station, The Last Samurai, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Trainspotting, Snatch, etc. AM likes boring people with details on this site.

you're all potential, waiting to be rewritten

a sense of rootlessness

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