November 6th, 2004
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Saturday sun
I’m tired. But I feel good. It’s like an accepting kind of good, something to realize and know in the base of your neck, and my arms are heavy.
The construction workers are finishing the outside of the new apartment building across the street. The smell of hot tarmac and sulfur is thick, it adds weight to the air.
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I can feel the individual hairs bristle in my mustache’, stiff with oil and fatigue. The sun is falling faster now. It’s November but seventy degrees outside. The light sways gently in stenciled patterns through the fruit trees outside my window, a soft, blurred layer on top of the stubbled concrete wall outside my eastern window.
Children were playing in the park, and a builder was eating lunch, his white, plastic hard hat scuffed and resting on the bench beside him.
I went to bed fairly early last night, it was probably the smartest thing I’ve done all week. I was content to lay on my wrecked sofa bed and stare at the television.
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I watched End of Evangelion today. It was better than the companion TV episodes twenty-five and twenty-six, but the ending still left me feeling flat and let down. Shinji is a rat; a whiny, poor excuse of a human who’s outstanding qualities consist of screaming, crying, and doing nothing while his friends are butchered and destroyed. I’ve never loathed a lead character so much before. Though Hideki Anno is a great director and visual artist, the climaxes of his writing are less like a tense moment coupled with the sweet release of denouement, and more closely resemble a punch right after a kiss, followed by a long, three hour diatribe that wanders in circles reminding you of all the weak things you’ve done in your life.
Still, I liked the series overall. It was passionate, and the characters were well developed for the most part, until they all let each other down at the end, quickly growing lethargic and stale. Despite the agonizing inaction of the series end, the visual montages and live film stock were actually quite beautiful, and they gave me things I hope to use in my own work.
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I want to ride my bicycle, but it’s two thirty, and I’m still weak from the company new project “kick off” party last night. However, the weather tomorrow should reproduce the pleasant conditions we’re having today, so I think I’ll just go to bed early and get outside tomorrow morning.
For now, I think I need a shower; a shower, and some quiet time to just be inactive, cold and numb… inactive, cold, and numb like Shinji; like all people should be sometimes.
