the butterflies have unionized
I was wondering why I've felt somewhat frustrated over the past few weeks and then it occurred to me that I haven't really liked anything in a while. Or maybe it's the other way around. I keep picking up books that I don't care to finish, and nothing in theaters seems worth two hours away from whatever else I might be doing.
And whatever else I was doing was, last weekend, canvasing in New Hampshire. Because we have to win this. It was kind of fun! I met a lot of enthusiastic very old people and enthusiastic very young people. On Sunday, I took a break from knocking on doors, and walked around downtown Manchester instead. I don't know what I was expecting (Well, no. That's not quite true. I was expecting something but it is extremely uncool to admit: I thought it would be like SXSW but for CNN analysts and Politico stringers. I'm sorry, but yes I wanted to see that if that's what it would be like.) Anyway, downtown Manchester on the Sunday before the primary did not look much different from downtown Manchester in a non-primary season. More signs. Some people with signs. A big old green bus that with AMY printed on it. And maybe the bookstore cafe had more young intern types on laptops than normally. And oh yeah, when I walked in the Irish pub there was a live podcast recording with Michael Moore and Chapo Trap House. More enthusiastic old and young people.
My latest piece for Filmmaker magazine is out from the paywall. It’s a look at Wim Wenders’s ecstatic and delightfully unwieldy Until the End of the World, which has just come out as a Criterion release, inside this absolutely stunning cover:
If you like that cover, you will like the movie.
Here's another thing I like. Every once in a while I get press releases for exhibitions in London that I'll never see. But sometimes the images make me wish I could. This is from Mary Yacoob's Schema:
It sort of reminds me of Tron. Maybe I'll watch that (again) and like that (again.) I always love the textures in Tron, the scaffolding, tweed blazers, and the way the characters look like cutout dolls. Wikipedia tells me that one of the screenwriters, Bonnie MacBird, is married to Alan Kay.
One reason I have been tired and frustrated is that it turns out I'm iron deficient. Terribly. The worst is feeling flutter-headed. It feels like there are butterflies flapping around inside my head and that those butterflies should be secured inside the cage that is my brain. Coffee helps but only sort of. After a cup of coffee, the butterflies are still out of the cage, but it feels like the butterflies have unionized. I'm feeling a little better now that I'm taking iron supplements. Before that I was taking that weird Floradix elixir, which tastes slightly like a rusty floral, like marigold or something, but also very much like it's full of iron. It tastes like faerie blood, basically. This is going to sound insane, so of course I will share it here: it is not that I crave blood. That would be gross. When I feel this way, I want something that tastes witchy like Floradix. But I wish I had to do something vampire-like to get it, like bite into an unripe pear. So, yes, my head is full of butterflies, I feel like I could sleep for ten years, and I want to carnivorously and vigorously bite into unripe pears—hooray!!!
Oh, another thing I like. I like this bot, JP LeBreton's As the Film Ends on Mastadon, which posts the endings of random film summaries found on Wikipedia:
We have to win!
Thanks for reading.