Fighting sleep in my bed.
Running from death in a coffin.

Whenever I read a novel, or a story, or a piece of writing scribbled on a bathroom wall, it seems so damn obvious that I am going to be a writer.

And then,

I stare aimlessly at my computer screen as if it’s going to shout answers at me. Except, I don’t even know what questions to ask. And it all feels a little too much.

So, I’ll keep on writing until I unearth that question. Maybe I’ll never find it. But that’s OK.

Actually just got home at 2.30 AM and made myself a peanut butter and jam sanger. FUCK. My life is exactly where I want it to be.

When I wake up early for work in the morning, all I’m looking forward to is the nap I’ll have when I’m done. Then when I do finish, I’m not tired any more. If anything, I’m ready for some sorta active day full of activities.

Fuck, body. Get your shit together. I wanted to sleep, god dammit!

The rain plays the leaves like a drum, a syncopated percussion;

it’s all jittery snaps and staggered claps.

It sways and surges like tempered inebriation. Its careful steps are random but stressed;

an overcompensation for lack of trained thought.

Today, the rain retreats into silence. 

There is no crescendo, just a gentle admission, and the final tiny steps on soiled ground,

the invisible marks of feet.

Then, it is gone.

Need…write…
something.

Wait!
Nup.

Shit.

(I wrote this in the hour after seeing Life of Pi. Some of my more immediate thoughts, and by no means a comprehensive review)

I watched Life of Pi today. I ventured to the cinema, paid an aggressively inflated price for my ticket, perhaps inappropriately adjusted for my flimsy plastic 3D glasses; sat in a dark room with strangers foraging for remnants of sticky sweet, buttery crunch; positioned my head into an almost uncomfortable and foreign angle; and spent the next two hours wholeheartedly immersed in a story.

I need to love what im watching in a cinema. These days i truly need to feel like it was worth the trip to justify my theatrical experience. Life of Pi did just that. Its breathtaking imagery, the vibrant colours and delicate sounds, the expansive shots, and the tightly framed moments all looked so excellent on that huge screen. Richard Parker, a combination of real life tiger and cgi imagery was a marvel to watch. He felt entirely real, from his aggressive snarls and roars, to his bewildered moans and grumbled pines. The line between reality and make believe no longer existed, and i enjoyed every minute of it.

The film had its problems. Its narrative framing, flicking between past and present, was sometimes clumsy and helped stop the full immersion that i craved. The magic of fantasy was stunted, but it most likely remained the only way to adapt the source material effectively.

The titular Pi (Suraj Sharma), offers a mature and balanced performance. Director Ang Lee did well to guide this first timer through a demanding role. Sharma as Pi is both strong and stready, but enough of his performance is spontaneous and visceral that i felt a real truth to much of it. Again, the tiger Richard Parker is such a lovely, nuanced creation that Pi and he both seem to grow and respond to each other as if they both existed together on camera the whole time.

The film suffers with pacing in the initial opening sequence, and the ending loses some of the potency that its source material so effectively displayed, but Life of Pi is such a visually arresting film that these qualms can largely be forgotten. The film blurs the distinction between reality and fantasy, and asks questions of truth and embellishment in narrative. Life of Pi feels so real and so unabashedly beautiful that we needn’t worry about what is true, we should just take it that we’ll never know every truth, and simply enjoy a good story.