today

i was having such a great day until i sat down at this table on the highline and started finding chocolate all over myself. i somehow failed to notice that this table was covered in melted milk chocolate. it stained the right part of my shirt you tuck in and the hem of the right leg of my shorts and got on the back of my red notebook and looked altogether so much industrially produced poop that i made a point of laughing heartily to try to feel less ashamed, thinking that people wouldn't think i had poop on myself if i looked so amused.

i really need to romanticize this lonely thing, something k once told me about. i need to invent dashing intent where there is only flailing loneliness. i also need very much to stop chatting with people on facebook because the lonely thing erupts out of me in unattractively unsolicited paragraphs of sociability. i really need to work on the codes of that kind of thing.

in other news, i watched 7 samurai and that was pretty much a day. there's a lot of terrific stuff in that movie, but i'm kind of skeptical of how we salute the epic for its size. it certainly was a big thing, but isn't it ultimately trite and silly to be mentioning that the movie's 3 hours long in criterion's synopsis of it? you can argue that you should tell people what they're getting into -- "an unforgettable ride" -- but i think it's evidence that we see that length as a big part of the achievement, which really makes us a lot of cows. it IS an unforgettable ride though and there is really great stuff in it, though it'd probably be better if it'd been split up into a million little pieces so we could appreciate the things that actually happen rather than how much happened. synthesizing such a majestic whole kind of ends up imitating life a bit too closely. but really though, it is a pretty fucking wonderful movie. and the ending is terrific, i was really worried that the battle was going to be won a bit too easily. it's a beautiful idea that fighting always means defeat.

another thing: these j.d. salinger stories are exhaustingly heavy on the dialogue, but i really love the initial opacity of people's ages. i think it's obvious salinger really loved kids, the greatest delight in these stories is matching up the banter retrospectively. you have to take the hint that ramona, of uncle wiggily in connecticut, is avidly picking her nose to realize that she is probably significantly younger than daffy eloise. but the words they speak speak to other hierarchies.