Blue is the Warmest Color

Last night, I made a massive pot of ginger tea (totally unpretentious), created the biggest and baddest of blanket forts (four blankets, four pillows, one girl), and settled in with Netflix, specifically, Blue is the Warmest Color, a French film starring Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos. Sure, said friend had told me it would be intense, but that didn't stop me from watching it alone on a Saturday night. Lo and behold, three hours later, yes, it's three hours long, I was sitting upright in my dark room, paralyzed and lonely and afraid of losing everyone/everthing that I love. 

I know that sounds super overdramatic, but anyone who knows me at all, knows that there is only one thing that can make me cry or feel intense emotion during a movie, and that thing is watching people feel or be lonely. In the film, and I won't give anything away, but as with anything profiling the details and ultimate evolution of a relationship, loneliness exists. This is a fact that I actually kinda learned on my own this year, but that this film solidified. Sure, there's physical loneliness which can obviously be helped by being with another person, but real loneliness is something that people carry in the deepest part of themselves, that to an extent will always be there. A thing that proximity to another human can't really do anything about.  

As far as the film goes, of course it also contains the brightest parts of being a human being in a relationship, but what I'm trying to get at is that it doesn't hesitate to crush that and show how unsubstantial it can all be as well. What I took away from it was the sentiment that often we try desperately to fill ourselves with other people, when in the end that just creates larger spaces. I often struggle with trying to say exactly what I mean, but for once, I think I summed it up pretty clearly. I wasn't really planning on making this a "review", I just wanted to share what this movie made me think about, but it is worth mentioning that it's also a beautiful (albeit very graphic) film, and completely worth your time. 

Also, learning new French curse words is always fun. 

Writing about Writing (part 1, I think)

me being moody "af" feat webcam

I know it's been awhile, but as usual, I continue to struggle with how much I'm willing to share on here, and what it is that I want to write about at all. There's something so impersonal and disconnected about shooting my words out into the depths of the internet, things that feel and seem important but are quickly relegated to just a few words among the billions that exist out there. However profound they may be, there are probably others that are more profound. Like yelling the meaning of life at a distant galaxy, where in-between those two points there are an infinite amount of other, equally valid meanings.

Anyways, as I start to emerge from the cold dungeon that is Junior year of high school and can think actively about more than the ACT's and precalculus, about a thousand other projects and ideas have started to come into play, some involving this blog, some not. As usual, I'm worried that if I begin to share poems I write or excerpts from the short story I'm in the process of writing, it'll get stolen and uncredited. Also, baring your original thoughts and idea (and soul) to whatever lurks in the bowels of the internet is pretty fucking terrifying. So, yeah.

Regardless, figuring out what to talk about on here is hard. Sometimes I feel that everything I say is contrived and shallow and lacks any and all depth. My refusal to just write stems from my own monstrous case of self-doubt and I am aware of that. Doubt that readers will think all the things I worry are true about myself, that I'm shallow, and contrived, and boring, and maybe even ego-centric though I devote so much time trying not to be. But this is the plight of the writer, isn't it? If you're writing true, you'll inherently end up creating a reflection of yourself in your writing, a reflection that shows the good and the bad, which equates to, you know, being human.

This year has been the year where I've embraced my desire, no, need to write. I've learned a lot of useless shit about writing (using curses tastefully is a stylistic choice, not a sign of weak vocabulary. try not to use exclamation points too often. vary your sentence structure. blah blah) but I've also learned some things, or rather, a thing, that has changed the way I think about writing and myself as a whole. For the longest time I think I was trying to hide from myself in my own writing. I wasn't producing anything good, it all seemed fake and forced, think playing hide and seek in a mirror-walled room, and to tell you the truth it was wholly unsatisfying. Accepting the sentiment that I as an individual will be present in my work is hard. Shrouding myself in words isn't genuine and doesn't ever create genuine writing. I know now that if I want to create, really create, it has to come from a place deep within my mind, and must be able to expand freely with no reservations.