Old Man Sweaters and Broken Clocks

As I sort through my clothing, tossing the desirables into a large garbage bag to soon drag up to Brooklyn, I keep my sweaters aside, reminding myself that it is indeed fall. The smokey sky, puffs of air that escape my lungs in the morning, and giant spider outside my screen door all remind me of this fact as we approach jacket season together. 

Later, sitting outside my hometown coffee shop, I watch a puddle of dog urine slowly creep along the street, evaporating slowly. I wonder where those piss molecules go to, and start thinking about cloud filters, Brita filters, and an idea for a Prozac filter my mother had jokingly come up with years ago. Like the pee, time trickles onwards, though the grey sky shows no sign of the sun's progression. Truthfully, days like today seem to hover as we wrap our jackets more tightly around ourselves, turning on our heat and moving indoors. My latte grows colder, my only sense of time.

I don't feel, but rather know that our move to a new city is imminent, through packing, through phone calls, through the fading shadows of summer. A classic rock station sings songs about days I don't remember, days I never lived through and I feel as though I myself am floating. The world is built not of concrete, but of whisps of cloud and smoke and small accomplishments: two guitars sold, half a home packed, small assignments completed, successful book recommendations to my boyfriend. 

While I do homework, he reads a book on American Noir that I lent him, a book I had purchased years back from the Smithsonian. It's fascinating how strongly noir is rooted in the disillusionment of the post WW2 era, stemming from artists who had grown discontent with their government, but rather than preaching outright dissent, they internalized their feelings into tragic anti-heroes and brutal femme fatales. For a brief period, I had contemplated doing my senior thesis on the relationship between post-war disillusionment, noir novels and film, and the psychological stages of mourning. Well, I guess it's still a consideration.

A Thought: Nothing is isolated into it's own field. Look at noir, a dark artistic movement that stems from history and mirrors psychology. Think of how mathematical music is, how scientific color theory is. These interconnections are where the most growth and transcendence can occur for a creative person, by playing on the interconnections and stretching them to their utmost reaches.

A Find: Not necessarily new, but the film Double Indemnity, adapted from the novel by James M. Cain by director Billy Wilder, is an amazing film and one of the earliest big-time American noir films. Starring Fred McMurray, Barbara Stanwick, and Edward G. Robinson, it's a forerunner off of which many later noir films have been adapted and modeled.