T/K: A Fragment, A Letter, A Dream, and Some Movies
One of the more memorable parasocial relationships I’ve been in began in a used bookstore. You never know what you’re gonna get at Grey Matter Books in New Haven. Like a month or so ago, I walked in for my usual five-book haul of texts for which I had no idea I was searching. Near the toilet, under “Miscellaneous,” it found me: an abused copy of Franz Kafka’s love letters to Milena. I assumed it was put under “Miscellaneous” because it had half of the paperback cover torn off, leaving only a corny bespectacled writer with a Marxy beard and a wild stare—it didn’t even look like Mr. Franz—looking at a woman who wasn’t there, for she was torn off. You could only see a strand of her hair, a shade of strawberry blonde. The paperback itself was underlined to hell, with chicken scratch marginalia written in a smudgy lead-pencil graphite that I couldn’t for the life of me decipher. The dedication, written in inky blue pen, was also nigh-impossible to make out. I could only read a few phrases: “extraordinary love,” “so blessed!” and “with the fervency of Franz.” I will return to it at a later time, because it pains me that I can’t read what was written. Anyway: I have always preferred lived-in copies of books to the brand-new, so I bought the book. One ninety-five.
It was while rifling through the book at home that it happened. From the crumbly yellowed 50s-era pages, out came tumbling the most delicate assortment of objects: a collection of movie tickets for the Cleveland Cinemathèque, an unsent letter to a “K” about a dream that the writer “T” had, and the fragment of a short story that had been clearly abandoned. The letter and the fragment were written on Leuchtturm 1917 notebook paper, ruled, and were folded up three times, fitting snugly inside the Kafka. I gather “K” and “T” were involved at some point. I gather “K” never read what “T” wrote about “K.”
When I read the texts, I lost my shit. It was too good to be true. So I contacted the Cleveland Review of Booksand told them about the whole story, the Cleveland angle to it. They took a look at the letters. They, too, were verklempt. They instructed me not to change a word of it. I only report what I see. “T,” wherever you are, please stand up. I am sorry to take credit for your words. And thank you for letting me have your Kafka.
And I hasten to emphasize: these letters are for real. They really exist.
—Carlos Valladares
*
3:52 AM
3 January
K,
Yet another crazy dream. I don’t know how often I will keep sending you these dreams. I know we haven’t talked in a while. If you want me to stop, please tell me. Please be honest. You know I listen to whatever you want.
I finally saw the two Bresson movies you told me to watch: Four Nights of a Dreamer, and Lancelot of the Lake. In lieu of a review, I think this dream should suffice. Interpret away. As always, it’s a bit much.
In my dream, you and I were crossing, not knowing why, a series of bridges across moats. Think like Knights of the Holy Grail time. But the bridge resembled the Pont Neuf; the moats were the Seine. We walked across the bridges, I texted you the map of where we were going in Invisible Ink mode. I think I had a place in mind to visit—like an old thirteenthth-century cathedral or a chapel on the Île de la Cité—but I didn’t know at the time what it was called, where it was, or why I wanted to take you. You were intrigued, and when I mumble-mentioned our final destination your dimples arched and a schemey delirious look washed over you.
I wore heavy chain-link mail and, at my side, I panned and potted a sword that, tufted with the finest horse-hairs, was gushing blood (I remember killing nothing). You had on a red scarf that flashed with Impressionistic indigo-white studs, like 240 pixels of streetlamp light bouncing off the Seine at midnight. I’d stolen the scarf for you at the bodega near your apartment, because you let slip by one night, to see if I was listening, that you adored that studdy scarf as I took you home, talking incessantly about Love in the Western World. You wore green eyes, like Guinevere’s, but they weren’t like yours. And your feet were so tired, you had walked for miles and needed to nap. Your feet cried out for less, please, less. I only wanted to make you see more clearly. So at one point, miraculous, I turned into the Pont for you. Only briefly. But still. I was the bridge.
We had been walking for so long to the forgotten castle—my idea, as usual—and your feet had begun to give. Like proper feet. And, depleted, you stretched your feet along my bricks, my damp embankment where the Seine laps on a transient sextet of legs, my wads of dry chewed gum, my lovers’ locks (but only the locks with initials uneroded). Your face now went out-of-focus. Your freckles, fading. But the feet lingered. So to thank you, since you rarely felt this safe, this late at night, this far from home, I sang to you in Portuguese: Eu sou um porto aberto pra canção. I don’t even know Portuguese.
As you stretched, I kept mumbling the word, but you knew it already. I said it again. You didn’t say it back, but you wanted me to say it again. So I did, not knowing that you didn’t truly want me to say it again, that you’d known what I was saying for some time now. That it was an eruptive word to both of us. But I’m obliging—more than in real life. Besides, it’s only words. To solidify, to escape the reality of the false, other elements must be added for balance: flesh, your feet, beat, clacking.
“Thank you for your love,” I called out as, recharged from the nap, you rode into the city ahead of me. “Thank you for the happiness you bring me.” And you went off to paint a better landscape than I could ever muster up. I stayed the Pont Neuf. Riderless horses gallop across me. Locks strewn about my hair.
Then I wake up. The Grail is somewhere in the pile of clothes gathering wrinkle and dust below my bed. I realize, scratching at the pile to find the Grail, that I’ve given away something I don’t have to somebody who doesn’t want it. I’m not sure of much, but I’m sure that I saw that gushing sword with the horse-hair. And, the ache that your socks absorbed. Or maybe it was the image of a gush, the image of your pooled footsweat’s rank.
Then I wake up again, and write out this dream.
What do you think it means?
T.
*
Now: the Cleveland Cinematheque tickets. These were quite interesting, as upon them were notes clearly scribbled by the writer during the projection of the film. There were references to K and T throughout. They must have seen these movies together.
The tickets were for the following: The Conformist, Lost in Translation, Trouble in Paradise, Angel, Cléo from 5 to 7, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 3 Women, The Age of Innocence, Deep End, Stolen Kisses, Shadow of a Doubt, Amy, No Bears. For a few of the films, the writer had written out full paragraphs of thought on that Leuchtturm 1917 notebook paper, ruled, that I mentioned. Sometimes it is T writing; sometimes, it is K. When they write in the haste demanded by their rushing thoughts on the films they’ve just seen, they get more scribbly and they blend.
*
The Conformist (1970, dir. Bernardo Bertolucci)
Went with K, for whom it was a horrifying experience. Total hatred from K towards Jean-Louis Trintignant, a “weaselly fascist-by-default moving in untrustworthy staccato bursts of energy.” (K’s words.)
I said, But like that’s the point.
K said, violently, For once I wish you wouldn’t just say “That’s the point.” You can say that about anything and make it agree with what you want it to say
I was silent.
When outbursts like this happened, it meant the movie had once again shone a spotlight on a crack of K’s that should best be left unexposed.
Knowing my silence, I think K knows me better through my nonwords than my words, my endless gushings on Conformist:
The normal, simple-faced, painfully shy, bourgeois wife (Stefania Sandrelli) says “ché amo” to Trintignant. She says it in a dress that’s slatted exactly like the curtains in her house. Light seeps through the curtains which adds to the slat of it all. It’s a genuine “ché amo,” but the slats make it farcical. I can’t take her “ché amo” seriously when she looks like her house. And probably wants to be the house. She has no other future.
It’s literally about posturing: Dominique Sanda the Marxist freedom-fighter is all loose-limbs, womanspreads, cigarettes in the corner of mouths and casual staredowns (she knows how to stand, and what she stands for), while Trintignant the “neutral” roach speedwalks tightly, coiled-in, hands perpetually folded behind his back. Never trust anyone who walks like this; the hands may conceal a knife.
Bertolucci: To have a neutral position is still a position—the most pernicious of all, because they'll still end up hating you on the other side, and you'll merely end up confused, a joke, alone.
“Help! I feel so happy that in the next minute I know I’m gonna feel terrible!”
Pasolini, 1975, on the set of Salo: “"Man has always been a conformist to whatever power or type of life he's born into. Man's principle trait is to conform."
Pasolini, also, 1971 TV interview: “The type of people I love the most, by far, are perhaps the people who never even reached fourth grade. Very plain and simple people—and those aren’t just empty words on my part. I say this because the culture of the petit bourgeoisie always brings corruption and impurity along with it, while the illiterate, or those who barely finish first grade, always have a certain grace, which is lost as they’re exposed to culture. Then it’s found once again at a very high level of culture. But conventional culture always corrupts.”
F—an ex-friend of K’s I used to regularly hook up with—looks a lot like Dominique Sanda. K hated F—this happened way before me and F were hooking up, and before I knew K. Part of it had to do, I suspect, with the fact that F was an unrepentant Marxist (read: romantic) who stood for solids and said the right words that K wanted to say. Albeit calmer. And with an airiness, a Babitzian levity, like Pacific wind whistling through a thousand and one pores of SpongeBob’s butterfly net. If one day K said the words that came so easily to F—too easily, and that’s why I only liked F, but love K—if that day came K would be the chief force of the world and bliss would reign.
After Conformist, we went home. The sex that was had was distracted, automatic. That night her normally warm bare back had the clammy sheath of the chrome from the moped once owned by my Dominque Sanda double. That night, I dreamt I slammed the chrome hard; K was inside; I screamed K’s name. But all that came out was the name of F. She wouldn’t open the door. I came to, crying, consoled by K. I touched her back. Clam.
*
Shadow of a Doubt (1943, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
(This entry was clearly not shaped. Loose notes.)
The violence of a man’s reaction and the sweetness he conveys in the aftermath—both of them are like that, Uncle Charlie (Joe Cotton) and Young Charlie (Teresa Wright). like K who said that before she met me she had a tremendous temper tantrum, she says—she was famous for it, but she never proved it to me.
Pretty inspiring figure, this Uncle Charlie. Hates money–shit talks the bank to the head banker’s face, hates photographs, hates talk of the past and the future, “today’s the thing”—not very Meet Me in St Louis, is it? even beyond the fact that he’s wanted—he’s once again more interesting than this family which prides itself on being “un-average” ….
“my husband is in business….u know the way men are.” – Emma (Patricia Collinge)
this disturbing and interesting moment when Young Charlie gawked for being apart from the crowd and crossing when she wasn’t supposed to …. women eye her, the guard reprimands her GET BACK instead of allowing her to advance. hitch even includes a fascinating shot of young charlie being gawked outside the library.
YC is closer to Unc than she thinks or wants! now it turns into mutually assured destruction between Teresa Wright and Joe Cotton.
women curious about sex—minors sex, incest, the thought of being choked, all the taboo desires ….
“i don’t make anything up. i get everything from my books. they’re all true.”—lil ann, after the church scene walking down the street—is she us?? watching cinema??
this beautifully allegorical night scene after Teresa checks the sawed stair at night …. the ego meeting the violent id in the dark of night …. the id decides to stay, to rest in suburbia and comfort, to destroy its twin (the “good” charlie).
“we don’t get that good a speech with American speakers …. seems like foreigners make the best talkers.” And I only want to be estranged, I only want to speak in a tongue that’s not mine, even when I can rightfully claim it as mine.
*
Deep End (1970, dir. Jerzy Skolimowski)
"Ah Force of whatever Exists, help me, Thou whom they call the God. Why does the horrible-terrible call me? that I in my horror want? because my demon is murderous and fears no punishment: but the crime is more important than the punishment. I enliven all of me in my happy instinct for destruction." —Clarice Lispector, Agua Viva (1973)
“The sheet was red.” —Truffaut, Two English Girls (1971)
T loved it. He likes desire-logged, poetic stuff like Deep End where the people swirl, the scenes peter and eddy, and the film doesn’t reveal what it knows. We fell asleep that night in each other’s arms, reading. I read Alex Pope. He read Zoo, or Letters Not About Love. That night, I dreamed we were in the Civil War, I got a bullet lodged in my bicep, and my arm had to be hacked off. He hacked it. But I was sad: there was no geyser of red, like in the Deep End finale. No torrent. He was amazed at my capacity to stay steady. “After you screwed on the plastic arm on my stump,” I said, “you fainted.” He laughed his living hyena laugh. That’s ridiculous, he said, he can stomach the sight of non-red.
*
Stolen Kisses (1968, dir. François Truffaut)
DREAM: I get jealous when I think about Jean-Pierre Léaud’s lip blessing every freckle on Claude Jade’s face because I know he’s really thinking about K.
*
The ticket that most caught my attention, however, was to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, which apparently screened on a 35mm film print in early August at the Cleveland Cinematheque. Across the top, written in the bubbly handwriting of whom I suspect was the aforementioned “K,” were written two phrases: “I will have what I had,” and “He doesn’t say ‘I love you’ back.” The final folded piece of Leuchtturm 1917 notebook paper, ruled, contained a fragment of a short story. It is hard to tell whose handwriting it is—K’s or T’s. I present it as found:
being what she was. Whenever Karina was in the heat of a movie, they told her more about herself than she could consciously say to friends, lovers, psychoanalysts, even me. She let her language guard down when she was out, there, in the black. As far as calming her drives was concerned, film phantasies were usually a better bet than those of the carnal variety. And within the reflections of those glamorous movie characters, she always let herself see a self—her Weird self, glassy, milk-moony, far from the self that lost hue and shape, the self that tended to shiver. She often hated what she saw: moshy and dumpy and normal, a moneyed girl with mint-quartz rings and a morbid intensity culled from too much obsession over Carlos Drummond de Andrade poems and Clarice Lispector novels (her father’s faves), a chicken with a taciturn avoidant vibekilling stare that it was a terror to drag around with her, concealed in her heart and ready to spring upon ravers, buskers, partygoers, bad poets at readings, protestors, nice Jewish boys with king-beds and wooden bed-frames—she, this pursuable and projectable and journal-like Thing, close to an unclothed mannequin, which had to be trotted out for friends to talk with, men to flirt at, census-takers to register. Where could she escape? she often thought. The escape hatch—gradually, over the course of her girlhood—eventually opened onto a darkened movie salle, its greying beaten seats kept warm vigil by the narcoleptic, the lost loves, and the dead.
This night, she once again saw all her lovers, ex-friends, crushes, and her soulmate (which one?) reflected with more immediacy by a crew of ’70s L.A. losers: her beloved Alana Haim, her high-school crush Bradley Cooper grown into a freakish coke-addled boyfriend of a celebrity, a slick hustler boy who was her type eleven times over (much as it pained her to admit). A grotesque need bloomed inside Karina’s heart to become the best friend of the main girl in the picture, Alana (the Alana Haim character). She wanted to push 25-year-old Alana into recognition of a bigger world beyond the pinball machine arcades and the water-bed-emporiums that her 15-year-old would-be paramour and his grotty 15-year-old friends made their exclusive fixation. Karina knew girls like Alana. They would go on reaping the endless quickie benefits of being for others, egg-and-honey-skinned girls with “off” features, Sissy Spacek types who had their conformity projected and fetishized to disastrous degrees. She thought such girls deserved better universes. She knew this Alana well. She might have been an Alana herself. “Might have”—the key phrase. She had the feeling she would not succumb to that pseudo-tragic, pinned-beauty, born-to-run fate. When she said “I love you,” she was fairly definitely sure it would be said back. Unlike most guys she knew, she didn’t mete out “I love you”’s to just any body.
But would she? Karina felt overwhelmed by a lethargy that Alana didn’t have. And not merely because she hated running. (She hated exercise in general, she was carried by wind and the gust was enough to make sweat.) How many times had she dispatched that message, “I love you,” and how many times was she greeted with a return-to-sender, scented with boomeranged bureaucracy? How many times had that phrase been dispatched internally with genuine sincerity—thoughts were as good as actions to Karina, she of little of the latter. And for good reason. She was in for another summer of bad dates from pseudo-Valentines.
For once, though, and neither she nor Paul Thomas Anderson could ever explain it, the monotony was now touching. No one to fixate one—and yet that’s how it went. Strange acceptance of the void? “They’re all shits, aren’t they?” Benny Safdie’s clandestine boyfriend in the film says to Alana. She cried at this moment, always; she knew the film had only five or so minutes left; she knew Alana’s unrequited “I love you, Gary” was just around the corner; she knew what the boyfriend said was what she would have to endure until the decay got into her bedroom. Yet esperanza kept its dangerous existence inside her, crouching. She let herself often think about Jack and Stefania, Mateo and Elizabeth, Robin and Erasmus, and T—but no no no oh no not T. hese were the moments so intense she immediately pushed them away because to even think about the possibility of the two of them caused a deeper reckoning with herself that she was not ready to tackle outside of a movie theat
and T—, she said the name, T—, T—, she thought of T— and herself.
*
I looked back on the ticket, and the bubble script: “I will have what I had.” “He doesn’t say ‘I love you’ back.” On it, squinting, I could make out a dollop of wet. Some dollops, in fact.
*
POSTSCRIPT: I now know what the dedication says. That handwritten one, in the abused copy of the Kafka letters. With the help of a crew of over-readers, you know who you are, we figured out what the chicken-scratch wanted to say:
13 June
To my T
What more appropriate gift for Flag Day than this bouquet of red flags (haw! haw!) which chronicles an extraordinary love between people who talk too much and act too little. Those were the days….we had to get through them. I’m so glad we finally did. And now: the now. The new. The us. The best part: we share the gift of extraordinary love. Though we have a happy ending, may I always continue to exist alongside you with the fervency of Franz. We are so blessed!
Always your bridge,
Karina
xx