Heat wave coming.
The evening is spectacular.
I watched the afterglow of the sunset from a thousand different points all over town courtesy of my bicycle.
Burning red tones. And just the most perfect, I repeat perfectly dry breeze.
All the warmth of a VHS rental at midnight on a sleepover in 1997.
I’ve got Fried Green Tomatoes on the telly in the living room and my local college’s “Juke Joint” broadcast going on my old kitchen radio, my particular branch of NPR- the same program that recently I wrote in with a message for the host, Ryan Barklay, who annoyed me in my early 20s but whom I have since come to revere as a relic from a fond and bygone era. He has been gone for weeks now, I am finding out tonight, for “back surgery, and learning to walk again.” He has been listening, but that’s not a great prognosis. The rally behind him from the station (they mention his name the whole show) makes me think everyone wants him to come back, and expects him to. I hope he does. Here’s wishing you well, Duke of Juke.
Something about Friend Green Tomatoes always goes with warm nights and open windows and billowy drapes courtesy of the various fans purring in the dark. This movie is such a miracle to me. I can’t think of another completely female centric, female friendship (lovers?) story that has gripped me with such fondness as to elicit an eternal and never ending desire to watch and re-watch it.
I feel like it’s mostly Mary Louise Parker crushing it as the rookie actor, backed up by Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy as the veteran anchors. Mary Louise Parker’s face does so much heavy emotional lifting it seems effortless and from a place of endless energy and is sublime to watch.
The other thing that does it for me is the setting. The Whistle Stop Cafe with the handful of little town buildings next to the train depot. It’s interesting because it doesn’t just function as a character in the story, but it functions as a character that we know dies at some point between the back story we are watching unfold and the present. One of the first shots is of the town’s corpse, as Kathy and Ed pause in the ghost town and experience the ghost of the train that used to come through, but no longer.
Very early on Buddy, out of nowhere, is taken from us by that train. We understand the stakes are fatal, and final. We understand that at some point this whole world- these cute little stores and this cozy little diner with it’s old white cottage board walls and melting single pane window glass- is going to be gone.
As someone who studies places very much like this that exist within my proximity, something there resonates deeply with me. I can’t say what.
My favorite phrase now is just “I don’t know.”
I find myself saying it all the time in conversation with people. Almost more than anything else. Sometimes it’s because I don’t feel like doing any cerebral lifting for the person, but most of the times it’s just the truth. Has always been the truth, in fact, yet somehow I say it more now than I ever have.
I’ve spent so much time in my life watching my predictions get turned on their heads and the rules I thought I could trust become something else entirely, something part ignorant and part malicious- to the effect that I give up on abstract decisions and have instead decided to focus almost exclusively on discovering exactly what I can discover about anything and everything so long as it’s real and true.
It’s a nice lane to be in. Feels like home.
Loading comments...