deus ex machina

well, i just finished watching donnie darko with tim.

mmph.

the troubling thing about it is that i can't grasp it, you know? i can't wrap my mind around a feeling about it, like there's a blank spot in the place where my understanding should be. and i get little bits and pieces, and i'm making up some of my own pieces, but i have no idea where to start.

i would love to ask the writer if he or she thinks beauty and darkness can co-exist.

if they can't, then beauty is not what i think it is. nor is darkness, i suppose.

see, i think the way i think of darkness is that it's broken beauty. and if beauty is truly beautiful, then it can reclaim what was once it's own, right? so any dark thing can, if we're going with my thought process here, be reclaimed and become beautiful again.

*i wonder if she's an idealist . . .*

but this movie. in this movie beauty was reclaimed by destroying the darkness, not reforming it. donnie was removed so that gretchen could exist.

that's why it's troubling, i think. because then, if that's true, beauty is not any more powerful than darkness because it can't co-exist with it and overcome it. because in order to overcome something you have to co-exist with it first. and when i say overcome i think i mean change/reclaim.

i know that there is beauty in everything. i really believe that. but what i'm struggling with at this point in my life is whether that means that everything is beautiful or not. i think i live like everything is beautiful, but i'm not so sure that's true.

but it's got to be.

please.

at the same time, it's impossible. it's not possible for everything to be definitively beautiful. if everything was beautiful then nothing would be. so there must be some things that aren't. there must be some things that are dark. but people? are there people who are dark?

of course there are. but does that mean that they are simply broken beauties or does that mean that they have nothing in them to reclaim?

(this is my drive to be a psychologist, by the way - being part of the process of reclaiming people's beauty. i think some people call it a savior complex . . .)

all this rambling about two words that i couldn't define for you if i tried. beauty? darkness? i have feelings for them, i have colors and melodies and impulses and emotions and fuzzy memories that are attached to each one, but if i had to come out with a discrete definition . . .

and even if i could, anything i would come up with would absolutely cheapen them. you almost have to paint them, you know? or sculpt or sing or play them. i think ideas like beauty and darkness can only ever be represented, never defined.


you know, schizophrenics are delusional. i wonder if donnie's delusion was that beauty and darkness couldn't co-exist. i wonder if that was the point, you know, the statement the writer was trying to make.

that's why i'd like to ask him or her. i think it'd clear a lot of things up. about the movie, at least. life in general would still be a bit patchy. but what would i do if i had all of the answers, honestly, you know? i would be bored. and frustrated. because i have a feeling that knowing the answer wouldn't make getting there any easier.

*sigh*

i feel better now. my picture is forming, the blank spot isn't as big. i will have to watch it again, though.


time travel, by the way. time travel was his deus ex machina, i think.


i want to live where soul meets body . . .

[death cab]