Friday

diamonds on my windshield

Diamonds on my windshield
And these tears from heaven
I'm pullin' into town on the Interstate
I got me a steel train in the rain
And the wind bites my cheek through the wing
And it's these late nights and this freeway flying
That always makes me sing
'Cuz lookee here
There's a duster tryin' to change my tune
He's pullin' up fast on the right
Rollin' restlessly by a twenty-four hour moon
And a Wisconsin hiker with a cue-ball head
Wishin' he's home in a Wisconsin bed
But there's fifteen feet of snow in the East
It's colder than a welldigger's ass
I said, it's colder than a welldigger's ass

And now Oceanside, she ends the ride,
With San Clemente coming up
And them Sunday desperadoes slip by
And cruise with a dry back
And the orange drive-in, and the neon billin',
And the theatre's fillin' to the brim,
You got slave girls and a hot spur and bucket full of sin
In that metropolitan area
With all them interchanging connections
And fly-by-nights from Riverside
And out-of-state plates, running a little late

Now the sailors jockey for the fast lane
So 101 don't miss it
You got rollin' hills and concrete fields
And that broken line's on your mind
And the 8s go east and the 5s go north
And the merging exits back and forth
You see your sign, you cross the line, you signal with a blink
'Cuz that radio's gone off the air,
Gonna give you time to think
And you hear the rumble as you're fumblin' for a cigarette
Go on blaze on through that midnight jungle
You remember someone and you can't forget

And one more block, that engine talks
And whispers: home at last
I said, one more block, that engine talks
And whispers: home at last

'Cuz you got diamonds on your windshield
And them tears from heaven
Pullin' into town on the Interstate
With a steel train in the rain
And the wind bites my cheek through the wing
It's these late nights and this freeway flying
That always makes me sing

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Monday

hippos on holiday

is not really the title of a movie
but if it was I would be sure to see it.
I love their short legs and big heads,
the whole hippo look.
Hundreds of them would frolic
in the mud of a wide, slow-moving river,
and I would eat my popcorn
in the dark of a neighborhood theater.
When they opened their enormous mouths
lined with big stubby teeth
I would drink my enormous Coke.

I would be both in my seat
and in the water playing with the hippos,
which is the way it is
with a truly great movie.
Only a mean-spirited reviewer
would ask on holiday from what?

- Billy Collins, "Hippos on Holiday"
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interpretation

          A film should stand on its own. It's absurd if a filmmaker needs to say what a film means in words. The world in the film is a created one, and people sometimes love going into that world. For them that world is real. And if people find out certain things about how something was done, or how this means this or that means that, the next time they see the film, these things enter into the experience. And then the film becomes different. I think it's so precious and important to maintain that world and not say certain things that could break the experience.
         You don't need anything outside of the work. There have been a lot of great books written, and the authors are long since dead, and you can't dig them up. But you've got that book, and a book can make you dream and make you think about things.
         People sometimes say they have trouble understanding a film, but I think they understand much more than they realize. Because we're all blessed with intuition -- we really have the gift of intuiting things.
         Someone might say, I don't understand music; but most people experience music emotionally and would agree that music is an abstraction. You don't need to put music into words right away -- you just listen.
         Cinema is a lot like music. It can be very abstract, but people have a yearning to make intellectual sense of it, to put it right into words. And when they can't do that, it feels frustrating. But they can come up with an explanation from within, if they just allow it. If they started talking to their friends, soon they would see things -- what something is and what something isn't. And they might agree with their friends or argue with their friends -- but how could they agree or argue if they don't already know? The interesting thing is, they really do know more than they think. And by voicing what they know, it becomes clearer. And when they see something, they could try to clarify that a little more and, again, go back and forth with a friend. And they would come to some conclusion. And that would be valid.

- David Lynch, "Interpretation," Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, pp. 19-20
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