Meditations in an Emergency

LOVE STREAMS John Cassavetes, 1984, 141 mins

there are at least twelve beautiful women tumbling onscreen but we are all falling deeply in love with Gena Rowlands

her blond curled bob her square chin her peppery eyes her thick bottom, we are all falling deeply in love with her thick bottom beneath a blue skirt suit

Gena’s love is too strong for her family, she will not win in court because practically everyone knows she is insane with love and can’t help it

in one scene she is drinking gin, in another scene she is drinking white wine with ice, in another scene she and john are drinking dickel whiskey

in another, the rock-ola jukebox lights up like stained glass in the holy house of Mildred Bailey which is when Gena and John touch palms in dance

this looks a lot like rescue until a plot happens but oh we understand that transactional love but for Gena, she is at the bowling alley

she is bowling in a cocktail dress and black stockings, lining them up and pushing them down, about to go home with a stranger

red rotary phone is ringing in another room and her daughter and her husband are somewhere in California forgetting her

women are walking into bar rooms into oceans into traffic into marriages into doctor’s offices into courtrooms into bedrooms, all in the name of

Gena walks into a shelter and walks out with a handsome billy goat, two white geese, small furry chicks, a couple miniature horses, and a green parakeet

why are you waiting for a punchline?

3 WOMEN Robert Altman, 1977, 124 mins

In one scene Pinkie is wearing pink and Millie is wearing yellow and they

are throwing a dinner party with olives and sociables and cheese from a can

In the same scene there are six jars of cocktail sauce and the guests never

arrive, Millie in her corsage of yellow roses to match her yellow dress

In another Millie is talking about scrabble to a locker room of girls who are not listening

words, there are so many of them     she says into the mirror

In another Pinkie is pretending to be old and hurt and Millie guides her

into the therapy pool, the water gracefully parting around their young thighs

In the therapy pool all the wrinkled elbows of the elderly dip beneath

the cool soft surface of the water simultaneously

In the next scene Willie is crouched and pregnant, using cornflower blue

to paint an ocean at the bottom of the emptied pool

In the scene where Willie goes into labor a flute sounds a high c note over the screaming

In the movie there are three generations of women and the water between them is wet

In the background men are riding dirt bikes in circles, kicking up dust

MAUVAIS SANG Leos Carax, 1986, 116 mins

what if the world is ending and in the sky a comet is burning and on earth burning loins and bloodthirsty mobsters and Juliet Binoche in a red sweater

she is falling from the sky like a comet or from a plane they are skydiving or he is holding her like a parachute or in the center of the atmosphere a hole

a hole perhaps in the condom, which translates to danger in the french future where fucking without feeling is a communicable disease

but giddyup heart go into your next love like a bowie song played on a radio in a summer at the end of the world

you were young once and mistook this for beauty, all those brightly colored tissues, a hemophilia of tears, red red yellow yelow blue

what will you do with your perfection, this private responsibility to live tenderly, to do the least damage possible, and what to do with the possible

is it even possible to grow old and just die anymore, the audience would like to know