4 AVENTURES DE REINETTE ET MIRABELLE, 1987, ÉRIC ROHMER.

 

The Blue Hour scene
Finally, Rohmer's straw men take a backseat and make way for two women to talk to each other incessantly about something other than them! 4 Aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle is an overlooked gem, a random piece of art by Eric Rohmer, only made as a filler short whilst he was filming sunset shots for Le rayon vert. It features real-life people, amateur at acting, who improvised most of their dialogue and it’s about two women, Reinette, a gullible, empathic to a fault farm girl who likes to make erotic surrealist paintings and a too-cool-for-school, street-smart Mirabelle, developing a wholesome friendship. The film tied four of their adventures together that started off with a flat tire in the countryside. Two personalities, two very different views on life.
The most beautiful of the bunch is the first adventure, with its earthy pastoral setting, the spur-of-the-moment conversation with the real-life Housseau family who are actual farmers, their gawky dancing at night and Reinette's colorful elucidation of "The Blue Hour", which is not an hour but a second, not a sound but a brief silence between darkness and light, when the night birds stop singing and the day birds haven't begun. The next two adventures, after the first one ended with them deciding to live together in Paris, transitioned smoothly to the urban architecture, packed streets, cafés and fluorescent-lighted supermarkets. The two women are very different in their responses to the city and to the people who live there and they frequently argue about their differences in personality and beliefs but these stressful debates are so natural and human than schismatic that they end up growing much closer together, their friendship always winning out over their conflicting opinions. I truly feel warmth in my heart for these women. And although it feels like a clunky Jacques Tati plot at this point, it still creates space for contemplation on modern society. Reinette's annoying morality episodes are barf but I'm 100% sure I would've wanted to be her in my teens even though I'm actually an average-looking Mirabelle who's apathetic and enjoys bizarro sleuthing. The most significant aspect of the film though is the character development in the fourth adventure titled "Selling the Painting" when Reinette is cash-strapped and had to sell her paintings without talking almost like letting her art speak for itself, with Fabrice Luchini, as the archly jargonizing art dealer, whose quips are reminiscent to the comedy of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
A Rohmer film is a safe place, like nestling under the sheets. I rue the day I run out of films to watch by him. No one could direct life's simplicity as beautifully as he did. He's a genius in making the most banal moments sublime and as someone who enjoys reading and loves to reflect, observe and travel to interact with locals, this kind of cinematic experience, the "nothing happens-ness" when it's mostly just characters making connections, wandering around and making conversation, is the most interesting to me. This one is another lapidary exercise in the metaphysics of small details allowing flawed but deeply sympathetic characters to reflect on themselves with all the humor that comes from the disjunction between principle and lived experience. Ah et la scène du partage de la minute bleue est magique!
In other news, Johnny bought me a copy of A Little Life by Hanya Yanigihara for our anniversary and I’m a tad confused by this gesture considering how depressing it is. I started reading it this week after putting it off for years. I've heard about the collective breakdowns over this book and how deeply demoralising it is so I'm taking my time and reading it in between Schopenhauer, although I'm unwilling to put it down and fully intrigued by the character Jude. So mysterious. I've also been heavily existential since March (hence the Schopes) and heightened every month when I have my period. It's awful! Always glutted by fear, I wake up from my nap as if I'm drowning and I lie in my bed motionless for hours. I don't know how to explain it better than Ottessa Moshfegh did in Death in Her Hands: “How did people go on with their lives as though death weren't all around them?” Not even entirely sure if my fear is that my life will end or that no one's paying attention to it. So I hold onto things -- to Johnny mostly, a future I wanna create, my ocd to take control, seeing my best friend Aida again, a class on existential therapy I started taking, Christina Rossetti poems (Why cry for a soul set free?), Rick & Morty (“Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die. Come watch TV.”), etc. -- ANY THING, for some sort of insight/ diversion and I'd really like to say I'm doing well day by day. 
Wrapping the blanket around me, I sit outside the balcony tonight for some grounding (join me?). The endless stretch of night with the yellow lights, the howling of the wind and the people aimlessly walking around begin to feel less intimidating. Life is strange and I cherish it and I think I'll wait for the blue hour with Reinette and Mirabelle in the morning.

VISIONS OF A NEW WORLD

Salut salut! It's been a hot minute! How are you? How are things holding up for you? Do people still read blogs? Curious. That being said, thank you for being here. Here's a short list of things to bridge a three-year gap before I write so hard about a movie I just watched:

* First off, I'm married! To the actual love of my life, no less. Johnny proposed with a minimalist diamond ring from the Victorian era. After a conversation with the curator, I found it came specifically from 1880! I can only imagine it being pried clean off Beatrix Potter's gardening hands. Anyway, we’re having our official city hall wedding à la Bob and Linda on October, a day before dia de los muertos defying all wedding superstitions. I'm keeping my last name though. How exciting and totally nerve-wracking! Now I've gracefully exited the maiden phase, and with no plans to reproduce (because messed up world, 140 million orphans, climate crisis, all that good stuff), our only long term goal is to "mother" our own space where we can grow our own food, restore biodiversity where we live (like our inspiration power couple Sebastião and Lélia Salgado) and create a community where we can share our abundance and live seasonally and consciously. Along the way, we hope to learn more about regenerative growing and soil health from local farmers and mentors and then create an educational space for urban youth so we can pass down the knowledge and help improve their quality of life. Still years and years from now but it's my pleasant daydream...

* I am now a level 5 vegan, "I don't eat anything that casts a shadow". For two years now, I've decided to ditch meat, dairy and products with animal derivatives in them and I brought Johnny along for the ride. Ever since I was a kid I've been toying with the idea and after watching documentaries as one does, we went vegan cold vegan-turkey. I take my B12, D3, omega 3s, etc., make my own milk, learn about how to communicate climate change (especially to kids) and how it's driven by animal agriculture, obsess over mushrooms (lion's mane is my bitch in coconut butter), steer clear of mock meat, and in true vegan fashion, slave in the kitchen on good days and give up on life eating vegan junk food on bad. It's an endless ride of making mistakes but trying over and over again because we only want to do better. It changed my life, my perspective, my relationship with my body and food and the contents of my purse (nooch in my compact instead of powder).

* Since you've been in a 3-year coma, I think it's time I talk to you about the pandemic. It's wild! We're living an actual Perfect Sense reality and I haven't even thought of it when the pandemic started last year but now that we're seeing mutation after mutation, losing our sense of smell, taste and now sight, here we are! It's an entire year cooped up in a room but a lot of things a-brewin': we've had uncomfortable conversations about racism, cried and bickered over the government's poor response to the pandemic, understood the need for hand creams, reflected on the comforts of ignorance, been socially active every minute of every day to no social interactions at all, attended a stream of online events, because we all just really need to be a part of something: Lou Doillon's live poetry reading at midnight to Questlove's live DJ sesh at breakfast, trying all forms of self-care (from sun salutations to tarot readings to shadow work to yoga), Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and the world refused to mourn, I read so many books last year some of them really good (Circe by Madeline Miller, A Separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda, My Inventions and Other Writings by Nikola Tesla, I Called Him Necktie by Milena Michiko Flasar, Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, The Magic Orange Tree and other Haitian Folktales by Diane Wolkstein), I watched so many movies last year some of them really good (The Breadwinner, Portrait of Jason, Nanook of the North, Aluna) and watched so many tv shows last year some of them really good (Outlander, The Midnight Gospel, Solar Opposites), I've had random yet surprising celebrity interactions online that I refuse to forget (waking up to Billy Porter's bisou, exchanging poetry with Pamela des Barres, a thank you note from Elektra (Pose), a few hello's with Sha'an D'anthes and sharing music with Flore Benguingui), our first inhale of the outside world when the city loosened its grip, empty parks, online food deliveries, online school, online everything I developed astigmatism, a lot of dancing, a lot of turmeric shots to boost our immunity, reunion with friends, drinking amidst the pandemic, cried so much we laughed, waged ridiculous wars with the tines of our forks, losing our sanity that we had to see our therapist again, Johnny and I in the same square room mad at each other and not speaking, the terrible news I got from my dad one October night that my mom had a stroke and needed to undergo surgery and feeling so helpless but hopeful and my family stretched in different parts of the world, crying, holding onto each other through a screen and I still can't think about it without triggering my existential dread but getting through it and my mom still being here with us is just magic, people are magic, humanity is magic, warmth is magic

* Whilst in isolation, I decided to study herbalism and basic traditional Chinese medicine. I signed up for classes with The Herbal Academy of New England. However, I do feel horrible for learning folk medicine from a white institution with no native representation especially considering the diversity in Asian herbal culture, which is another topic they hastily touch up on without much thought. I didn't feel super comfortable learning ceremonial tea from a white woman and it's a learning experience I regularly meditate on and I really try to focus on the thought that ultimately, herbalism brings me so much joy, kitchen witchery and a cupboard of herbs in jars. And for the first 3 months I've read every book on herbs I could get my hands on, grew my own tea leaves, dried them myself and made my own wellness blends, filled the fridge with compote, brewed tinctures and even started on writing my book in the form of a personal materia medica that I plan to distribute to close friends. But after a while, when I've been asking too many questions and getting no answers, I signed up with the School of Evolutionary Herbalism which connects herbalism to medical astrology and planetary health and it finally felt like I found the resource for the spiritual plant path I wanted to explore. Healing with herbalism is more than just physical for me and a lot more spiritual! I loved that the conversation went beyond natural health and into how to heal trauma, how to improve our meditation, how to process jealousy, grief, depression, etc. with herbs and overall this journey has been a gateway into my own personal ethos/ connection with the Earth. I am determined. My grandma was a witch doctor and I feel connected to her this way.

* In this world of chaos, I've created an almost Wonderland bubble with another green witch fairy, my brujita, Monique, who runs a blog teaching zero waste and sustainability practices with her husband, Rocco. During the pandemic, she's been doing online talks about composting and urban farming and initiated a national discussion on going child-free which caused a stir. She's a fearless rebel druid and I'm in love with our little snow globe where we virtually watch Outlander and Practical Magic, write each other letters on facebook, create our own grimoire, share recipes and husband vasectomy procedure stories, save each other's plants when they're sick, exchange care packages (I ran out of lion's mane and she ran out of chanca piedra) and dream of visiting each other to live in a glass treehouse for a while. We plan to one day live off grid, lying in our sea of cabbages making shapes out of clouds. One day, some day! The world doesn't seem so scary.

* Before the pandemic, I had a transformative experience traveling alone to Taipei on a mission to challenge myself by establishing a yes-man rule, meet people but stay with locals, learn their histories, try local vegan food, visit Buddhist temples and have my own Taipei Story motorcycle moment of strange magic. I remembered it started rough, journaling extensively on how scared I was and how my spontaneity paired with my naïveté only piggyback carried me to danger. There was an episode of assault and the acute trauma that resulted to being so scared of everyone and feeling completely alone and so, for the first two days, I was exhausted, scared and cried hard to Johnny online without care that the poor connection would only make screenshots of my face swollen and ugly. I felt like such a dud. And I refuse to feel like such a dud, crushed by the weight of my fear and anxiety once again! So I chose to carry on and really force myself to have fun. And I fucking did!!! I had a turning point where I've decided to not think and just do and everything became an explosion of extraordinary fun that I couldn't begin to talk nor write about because I'm afraid it'll shrivel into just another boring story (but maybe some day). To watching the Local Natives live, to bathing naked with women in a bathhouse, to singing in a jazz club, to hitchhiking to Jiufen aka Spirited Away land and eating like Chihiro's parents, it was all too much, and towards the conclusion of my trip, I felt like I've shed skin that's been weighing me down for years and I came home undaunted, renewed and feeling like my purpose, or at least the purpose I've decided for myself, is to continue to go places, meet people, truly listen to their stories and grow graceful and compassionate with these experiences of human interaction and connection in my arsenal. In this world of uncertainty, mediocrity and isolation, it's nice that I have this thing, this memory, this ball of memory, my one ball of memory that's mine, my oh so holy memory to relive over and over in my mind.

* Finalement en ce moment je prends des cours de français avec Lingoda (sous mon nom français Paloma!) et un cours de Damon Dominique (qui perso m'inspire beaucoup) dans la foulée. C'est du gateau et je m'amuse avec eux, mais la conjugaison est toujours le fléau de ma vie. Jsuis à mon niveau B1 et mon objectif est de passer l'examen B2 afin que je puisse probablement aller en Indochine pour enseigner l'anglais. Jsuis très très heureuse que Johnny me soutien parce que je pas avoir un radis mdr donc je l'apprécie évidemment. Je me suis fait aussi des amis partout dans le monde en ligne et on est parle via Zoom. On regarde des films ensemble et en parle après et on joue à des jeux comme 2 truths and a lie, We're Not Really Strangers, bingo, 5-second rule, etc. etc. et c'est un truc que j'attends avec impatience chaque semaine.

These are all the relevant things I really wanna share before I move on. Crossing my fingers I'd write here (or anywhere!) more often. I have this ambitious plan to write about my witchcraft, notes on herbalism, observations on film, books, music and the usual random list of things. But then again, I'm a complex person with a complex schedule and a complex habit of watching cartoons all day so I'll forgive myself always always always

For the meantime, if you're into 70s erotica midnight dancing to spacey funk, green witch hippie folk, creature of the sea rohmeresque music, come vibe with me on spotify! I'm also more active on listography for no reason