2 result(s) tagged “Memento”

I start an essay for most every movie I see. Whether I actually finish the essay — or even make any headway on a thesis — is another matter entirely.

Today I’ll be the old man who runs out of candy at Halloween and starts handing out worthless crap that’s lying around the house. July was tiring, and the first weekend of August was exhausting, and in the absence of having something real to give you, you get this.

I’ll spare you the beginnings of an essay on George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, because the two paragraphs I wrote bear a striking resemblance to something written more than four years earlier, but everything else is fair game. Coherence, cogency, and complete sentences are neither promised nor implied.

Why bother?

For one thing, my Google Docs and hard drive are clogged with these fragments, and by publishing them I am freeing myself, turning my demons into angels.

Second, I think it’s really funny to see exactly how far I didn’t get in writing about Eastern Promises and Stranger Than Fiction, even though I have notes (with the former) and some recorded ramblings (with the latter) that would serve as ample raw material.

Third, maybe somebody wants an intimate look at my writing process. Not likely, but ... .

Fourth, maybe there’s an idea or reading that might interest somebody. The Memento piece is actually fairly substantial, although it’s missing context and connective tissue.

(This brief essay was inspired by Jim Emerson’s “Opening Shots” project.)

A man’s hand holds a Polaroid photograph, but who would want to commemorate such a gruesome scene? The picture shows a body lying face-down on a floor, blood everywhere.

This might be a crime-scene photo, but that conclusion doesn’t feel right. If the man were a police photographer or officer, why would he linger over this particular image? It’s mundane for that line of work, yet the man holds it for half a minute, as if studying it.

Then he shakes it, and we notice something on his hand, dark but unclear. And the photograph begins to fade. We might observe that the darkness on his hand is a tattoo, with letters: “i” and “s.”