NOTE
Scraps from a conversation.
Tangent
I think early on in adolescence I knew soulmates were ridiculous. Finding your one, and all that stuff. There are a host of potential partners who you would find suitable and who would love you if given the correct context (I’m not sure I’d go as strong as anyone could love anyone, but maybe with the right tech).
Love was easily transferred, and if things didn’t work out they’d build up elsewhere in someone else you find. What I feel with that list, and life in general is that connection seems somewhat rare. Now I am not sure if I am the source of this artificial rareness by my actions and temperament, or it is actually existentially rare.
I suspect it is the former, but I am unfortunately in every single relationship that I am in.
Out of all of the humans in the world, I can hold in my hands such a pitiful, meager quantity. Some of them I felt things towards. Idealistically, it’s common but in practice it is rare. It definitely puts a certain imperative on nurturing connection, but also when that feeling is defeated it is out of reach.
A lingering look. A possibility. It might be all we get.
On Broken Flowers
Plot seems related to that perverse desire I have to restart every conversation I have on my messaging platforms one day.
I liked the setting. Just mostly wandering through nondescript tri-state suburbs. There’s some retroactive charm to the printed map quests. I could still see Bill Murray printing those out today. The structure reminded me of “Two Days, One Night” in that you didn’t know what to expect from each encounter.
He knew these people but actually didn’t. People drift from your memory of them and change. Their context is unstable. He was going into fundamentally an unknown situation each time despite knowing the person.
Received different greetings, sometimes even two in one prior to them recognizing him. At first I was wondering if each would be a literary allusion, with Lolita. I’d count his detective friend and his wife as one of the relationship investigations. It seems the most “whole” to establish everything, subsequently broken. Also that caring “Green Sun” florist kind of stood out. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but now I feel it was deliberate build up for the non-interaction he’d feel at the gravesite. Fully on, then fully off.
Regarding the ending, I had read that guy we see in the car is Murray’s actual son. It was kind of neat how he was chasing his past, and convergently his past was chasing him with his son. Need to puzzle out more but there has to be something with that and his little presentism speech. “The past is gone, I know that” - yeah because everyone is changed.
Definitely appreciated the lack of resolution. It split each interaction in two valid interpretations. Is he actual being a nutso to this vagabond boy, or is he acting correct? Much better than “oh, whoever he sees last will be the mother”.
So much of my life’s connection to others seems like a mystery. With people I love romantically there’s such a vulnerability that seems required initially. It feels counter intuitive. Imagine scanning a social profile of a girl you are interested and accidentally liking a post from her mother in 2017. There’s this forbidden territory to the page, and your action that is counter to your aims of making something out of it. Flirting has the feel of deniability baked in. I’ll talk to a girl, with intent or at least curiosity, but will struggle to be overt. So now it is all masked in this mystery of concealed feelings, and hints and interpretations.
Flowers - Wendy Cope
Tangent in my mind with the bifurcated, subjective view of things, and the title broken flowers. I didn’t read into why the title was called that but I was reminded of that famous poem by Wendy Cope “Flowers”
Flowers Some men never think of it. You did. You’d come along And say you’d nearly brought me flowers But something had gone wrong. The shop was closed. Or you had doubts - The sort that minds like ours Dream up incessantly. You thought I might not want your flowers. It made me smile and hug you then. Now I can only smile. But, look, the flowers you nearly brought Have lasted all this while.
There are varying interpretations of this. I just brought it up because it reminded me of the multiple ways of seeing the relationship. Some people will read this as ~“it’s the thought that counts” but others a bit more sarcastic and pained. Action is what counts, you had your doubts, things got in the way and the flowers never came. Obviously it’s a mix of both in the end but I thought about it recently, which is why the poem was in my head. It’s easy to be in your head, and love this concept of something. But I also like the idea of a pointless pursuit. A physical flower produced, ridiculous and cultural, being the end result of an impossible quest.