I got a message from an admirer in Arabia this morning that was so sweet—and so perplexing linguistically, I had to share it…
“In two words; you’ve got me longtime ago.”
Two words?
Have you seen Jia Zhang-Ke’s Still Life? It’s a film about two people who have become separated from their spouses, one for 2 years, the other for 16, each seeking a different kind of resolution to his/her separation. Mirroring their displacement, and as a backdrop, are the people being displaced by the Three Gorges Dam project in southern China, and the destruction of their villages. It’s such a beautifully told story, and told in a way that’s closer to reality than cinematic narrative, except that Jia does these totally wild things like has a building abruptly launch into the sky, or a UFO suddenly flies by, wild things that bring us back into cinematic space. Two words: I love him.
So my Foreign Correspondent: He’s of Greek, Italian and Palestinian descent, the gene pool of my fantasies. I’m all set to dive right in, but we’re separated by a lot of earth and a lot of fish, not to mention barriers of language, communication, intimacy and just about all sensory input and expression. And yet, a virtual romance blossoms.