Vitalina
by
Still from Vitalina Varela (2019) – Pedro Costa

The last movie I saw in theaters before the pandemic was Vitalina Varela by Pedro Costa, on February 26, 2020. I took two pages of notes while watching. When I checked to see what I’d made of the movie, I saw that I’d written sentence after sentence on top of one another, producing a mostly illegible tangle of language. Resolved so far as possible from near-abstraction into words, my recorded thoughts on Vitalina Varela are as follows:

   
  Procession

        I film,
Early soldiers molten, to where ghosts ghosts
    of town
Fro ntal shots, like portraits.
Characters waiting, washing,
        standing
Like               a Greek chorus
       their heads turned down
    —the welcoming crew   

Often
  Logorrhea
Something — Ventura’s glinting babbling. the
darkness
Not senseless pupils, but a leather jacket like Beckett’s 
Not I or Play. a discombobulated
    reconstruction of events
One of de Cooch’s interiors, but 
            Dilapidated, darkened. Angular
diagonal rooms, alleyways —
Cabinet not of a stories Caligari
                                                  photos?

Because they don’t communicate 
duration
   the 
Ebneverstion-tongue, tongue, onsy utter casuals no
To wanted, pornlegal, 140 I stoll yestry cudgel
“I’ll die” 
from Focal Point
And thus the procession
The lyrical motorcade glimpsed only by me
Bow — laugh — dance
Behold the king of the muses the carny the revenant
Sibley’s Guide to Midwest Birds
Illustrated guide to Midwest birds.
Two Poems
It’s definitely stupid but it explains the cosmos.
It makes me angry that you object.
Did your reverence do much good?
Often our talent blinds us.