Ants Film Quotes

Às vezes, a maior prova de amor que podemos nos dar é justamente abrir mão de algo que gostamos e desejamos muito se não estamos preparados para lidar com aquilo. E era assim que eu me sentia. A vida não se resumia a encontrar alguém que vá nos querer acima de tudo ou perder alguém que amamos muito. A gente não podia nem devia se envolver com uma pessoa sem antes estar bem com nós mesmas. Com nosso corpo, nossa mente, nossa essência. Aprendi que amor-próprio não era o mar de rosas que os filmes contam, mas é necessário, mesmo sem todo aquele glamour. Só ele pode te salvar dos seus pensamentos mais sombrios.

but was this funny? was this funny? was this funny? why was this funny? why was Sugar Kane funny? why were men dressed as women funny? why were men made up as women funny? why were men staggering in high heels funny? why was Sugar Kane funny, was Sugar Kane the supreme female impersonator? was this funny? why was this funny? why is female funny? why were people going to laugh at Sugar Kane & fall in love with Sugar Kane? why, another time? why would Sugar Kane Kovalchick girl ukulelist be such a box office success in America? why dazzling-blond girl ukulelist alcoholic Sugar Kane Kovalchick a success? why Some Like It Hot a masterpiece? why Monroe's masterpiece? why Monroe's most commercial movie? why did they love her? why when her life was in shreds like clawed silk? why when her life was in pieces like smashed glass? why when her insides had bled out? why when her insides had been scooped out? why when she carried poison in her womb? why when her head was ringing with pain? her mouth stinging with red ants? why when everybody on the set of the film hated her? resented her? feared her? why when she was drowning before their eyes? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do! why was Sugar Kane Kovalchick of Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters so seductive? I wanna be kissed by nobody else but you I wanna! I wanna! I wanna be loved by you alone but why? why was Marilyn so funny? why did the world adore Marilyn? who despised herself? was that why? why did the world love Marilyn? why when Marilyn had killed her baby? why when Marilyn had killed her babies? why did the world want to fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to fuck fuck fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to jam itself to the bloody hilt like a great tumescent sword in Marilyn? was it a riddle? was it a warning? was it just another joke? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do nobody else but you nobody else but you nobody else

On the whole, however, art is free, shameless, irresponsible, and, as I said: the movement is intense, almost feverish, like, it seems to me, a snakeskin full of ants. The snake itself has long been dead, eaten, deprived of its poison, but the skin moves, filled with meddlesome life.

Far more creativity, today, goes into the marketing of products than into the products themselves, athletic shoes or feature films.

Ele voltou para a cama, se deitou ao lado dela e lhe beijou o rosto. Ela estava triste antes, depois do filme, mas agora estava feliz. Estava nas mãos de Connell fazê-la feliz. Era algo que ele poderia simplesmente dar a ela, como dinheiro ou sexo.

El cinematógrafo es un arte esencialmente internacional y, como tal, muy representativo de nuestra época. Pero para ser digno de esa internacionalidad, un buen film se halla en la obligación de parecerse al país de que brota, de reflejar sus problemas, sus paisajes, sus costumbres, sus ciudades, su pasado, su presente. Hasta es su medio mejor y más seguro. […] El cinematógrafo es nuestro medio de hacer de la tierra entera nuestro dominio, el inmenso parque, privado y público a la vez, en que cada uno de nosotros pasea sus curiosidades, sus ocios, sin más esfuerzo que el de sentarse en la platea (cierto es que en Estados Unidos y en Europa, hay que hacer antes cola, entretenimiento muy discutible) […] La más voraz empresa cinematográfica se había establecido definitivamente en Hollywood. Hollywood se había convertido en el melting pot en que hervían los talentos llegados de los cuatro puntos cardinales. Con franceses, italianos, checos, alemanes, noruegos, mejicanos, etc., actores o metteurs en scene, fotógrafos o directores, Hollywood conseguía films americanos cien por ciento. […] Hollywood se apoderaba del tesoro internacional de talento y de belleza. (V.O., 1950)

But despite the Secret Service–like behavior, and the regal nomenclature, there’s nothing hierarchical about the way an ant colony does its thinking. “Although queen is a term that reminds us of human political systems,” Gordon explains, “the queen is not an authority figure. She lays eggs and is fed and cared for by the workers. She does not decide which worker does what. In a harvester ant colony, many feet of intricate tunnels and chambers and thousands of ants separate the queen, surrounded by interior workers, from the ants working outside the nest and using only the chambers near the surface. It would be physically impossible for the queen to direct every worker’s decision about which task to perform and when.” The harvester ants that carry the queen off to her escape hatch do so not because they’ve been ordered to by their leader; they do it because the queen ant is responsible for giving birth to all the members of the colony, and so it’s in the colony’s best interest—and the colony’s gene pool—to keep the queen safe. Their genes instruct them to protect their mother, the same way their genes instruct them to forage for food. In other words, the matriarch doesn’t train her servants to protect her, evolution does. Popular culture trades in Stalinist ant stereotypes—witness the authoritarian colony regime in the animated film Antz—but in fact, colonies are the exact opposite of command economies. While they are capable of remarkably coordinated feats of task allocation, there are no Five-Year Plans in the ant kingdom. The colonies that Gordon studies display some of nature’s most mesmerizing decentralized behavior: intelligence and personality and learning that emerges from the bottom up.

If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings;1 that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath;2 that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the “secret brand”); that a man’s genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov’s plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums. Yes, not only Chekhov’s heroes, but what normal Russian at the beginning of the century, including any member of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, could have believed, would have tolerated, such a slander against the bright future? What had been acceptable under Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in the seventeenth century, what had already been regarded as barbarism under Peter the Great, what might have been used against ten or twenty people in all during the time of Biron in the mid-eighteenth century, what had already become totally impossible under Catherine the Great, was all being practiced during the flowering of the glorious twentieth century—in a society based on socialist principles, and at a time when airplanes were flying and the radio and talking films had already appeared—not by one scoundrel alone in one secret place only, but by tens of thousands of specially trained human beasts standing over millions of defenseless victims. Was it only that explosion of atavism which is now evasively called “the cult of personality” that was so horrible?

Progresivamente me aficioné a las películas, me convertí en espectador asiduo y ahora pienso que la sala de un cinematógrafo es el lugar que yo elegiría para esperar el fin del mundo. Me enamoré, simultánea o sucesivamente, de las actrices de cine Louise Brooks, Marie Prévost, Dorothy Mackay, Marion Davis, Evelyn Brent y Anna May Wong. De estos amores imposibles, el que tuve por Louise Brooks fue el más v ivo, el mas desdichado. ¡Me disgustaba tanto creer que nunca la conoscería! Peor aún, que nunca volvería a verla. Esto, precisamente, fue lo que sucedió. Despuesde tres o cuatros películas, en que la vi embeselado, Louise Brooks desapareció de las pantallas de Buenos Aires. Sentí esa desaparición, primero, como un desgarriamento; después, como una derrota personal. Debía admitir que si Louise Brooks hubiera gustado al público, no hubiera desaparecido. La verdad (o lo que yo sentía) es que no sólo pasó inadvertida por el gran público, sino también por las personas que yo conocía. Si concedían que era linda – más bien ‘bonitilla’ – , lamentaban que fuera mala actriz; si encontraban que era una actriz inteligente, lamentaban que no fuera más bella. Como ante la derrota de Firpo, comprobé que la realidad y yo no estábamos de acuerdo. Muchos años despés, en París, vi una película (creo que de Jessua) en que el héroe, como yo (cuando estaba por escribir Corazón de payaso, uno de mis primeros intentos literarios), inconteniblemente echaba todo a la broma y, de ese modo, se hacía odiar por la mujer querida. El personaje tenía otro parecido conmigo: admiraba a Louise Brooks. Desde entonces, en mi país y en otros, encuentro continuas pruebas de esa admiración, y también pruebas que la actriz la merecía. En el New Yorker y en los Cahiers du cinéma leí articulos sobre ella, admirativos e inteligentes. Leí, asimismo, Lulú en Hollywood, un divertido libro de recuerdos, escrito por Louise Brooks. En el 73 o en el 75, mi amigo Edgardo Cozarinsky me cito una tarde en un cafe de la Place de L’Alma, en Paris, para que conociera a una muchacha que haria el papel de Louise Brooks en un filme en preparacion. Yo era el experto que debia decirle si la muchacha era aceptable o no para el papel. Le dije que si, no solamente para ayudar a la posible actriz. Es claro que si me huberian hecho la pregunta en tiempos de mi angustiosa pasion, quiza la respuesta hubiera sido distinta. Para me, entonces, nadie se parecia a Louise Brooks.

Watching Steve around the camp was witnessing a man at one with his environment. Steve had spent all his life perfecting his bush skills, first learning them at his father’s side when he was a boy. He hero-worshiped Bob and finally became like his dad and then some. Steve took all the knowledge he’d acquired over the years and added his own experience. Nothing seemed to daunt him, from green ants, mozzies, sand flies, and leeches, to constant wet weather. On Cape York we faced the obvious wildlife hazards, including feral pigs, venomous snakes, and huge crocodiles. I never saw Steve afraid of anything, except the chance of harm coming to someone he loved. He learned how to take care of himself over the years he spent alone in the bush. But as his life took a sharp turn, into the unknown territory of celebrity-naturalist, he suddenly found himself with a whole film crew to watch out for. Filming wildlife documentaries couldn’t have happened without John Stainton, our producer. Steve always referred to John as the genius behind the camera, and that was true. The music orchestration, the editing, the knowledge of what would make good television and what wouldn’t--these were all areas of John’s clear expertise. But on the ground, under the water, or in the bush, while we were actually filming, it was 100 percent Steve. He took care of the crew and eventually his family as well, while filming in some of the most remote, inaccessible, and dangerous areas on earth. Steve kept the cameraman alive by telling him exactly when to shoot and when to run. He orchestrated what to film and where to film, and then located the wildlife. Steve’s first rule, which he repeated to the crew over and over, was a simple one: Film everything, no matter what happens. “If something goes wrong,” he told the crew, “you are not going to be of any use to me lugging a camera and waving your other arm around trying to help. Just keep rolling. Whatever the sticky situation is, I will get out of it.” Just keep rolling. Steve’s mantra.

We were taking a DC-10 all the way across the country, from the east coast to the west. Together we flew into the Red Centre, the interior of the continent and the location of Ayers Rock--one of Australia’s most recognizable icons. “Have a look at it,” Steve said when we arrived. “It’s the heart of Australia.” I could see why. A huge red mountain rose up out of the flat, sandy landscape. The rock appeared out of place in the great expanse of the desert. The Aborigines knew it as Uluru, and they preferred that tourists did not clamber over their sacred site. We respectfully filmed only the areas we were allowed to access with the local Aborigines’ blessing. As we approached the rock, Steve saw a lizard nearby. He turned to the camera to talk about it. I was concentrating on Steve, Steve was concentrating on the lizard, and John was filming. Bindi was with us, and she could barely take two steps on her own at this point, so I knew I could afford to watch Steve. But after John called out, “Got it,” and we turned back to Bindi, we were amazed at what we saw. Bindi was leaning against the base of Ayer’s Rock. She had placed both her palms against the smooth stone, gently put her cheek up to the rock, and stood there, mesmerized. “She’s listening,” Steve whispered. It was an eerie moment. The whole crew stopped and stared. Then Bindi suddenly seemed to come out of her trance. She plopped down and started stuffing the red sand of Uluru into her mouth like it was delicious. We also filmed a thorny devil busily licking up ants from the sandy soil. The one-of-a-kind lizard is covered with big, lumpy, bumpy scales and spikes. “When it rains,” Steve told the camera, “the water droplets run along its body and end up channeling over its face, so that if there is any rain at all, the thorny devil can get a drink without having to look for water!” It’s a pity she won’t remember any of it, I thought, watching Bindi crouch down to examine the thorny devil’s tongue as it madly ate ants. But we had the photos and the footage. What a lucky little girl, I thought. We’ll have all these special experiences recorded for her to take out and enjoy anytime she wants to remember.

La ficcionalización del documental Entre las estrategias que usan los documentales para asemejarse a las ficciones están: Dramatizaciones: a falta de material audiovisual del hecho relatado, se recurre a actores y actrices para interpretar lo que sucedió. El documental Chuck Norris vs. Communism (Ilinca Călugăreanu, 2015) está construido en muy buena parte por dramatizaciones de los hechos que tuvieron lugar tal como son recordados por los sujetos del filme. Reencuadres y retakes: las entrevistas y ciertos sucesos para los documentales pueden repetirse, en caso de que cierto ángulo o posición de la cámara resulte más atractivo, o para tener la cantidad suficiente de tomas en la edición: se le pide al sujeto que vuelva a servirse comida, o que diga de nuevo alguna frase en voz alta, de modo similar a los retakes en las películas de ficción. Animaciones, representaciones de sueños, fantasías, alucinaciones: ante la incapacidad de conseguir material audiovisual, se recurren a animaciones o distorsiones de la imagen y el sonido con tal de representar cómo se sintió/vio desde la subjetividad del personaje. The Nightmare (Rodney Ascher, 2015) cuenta el problema de parálisis de sueño que de manera crónica sufren los sujetos, y sus pesadillas son relatadas por medio de animaciones y distorsiones de la imagen (ralentización, filtros de colores, sombras digitales, etcétera). Música para dramatizar: a pesar de que el diseño de sonido en los documentales es visto como algo de poca manipulación, es cierto que en otros documentales puede resultar enormemente significativo para ambientar o dirigir los hechos (en documentales sobre músicos, como Gimme Shelter, Charlotte Zwerin y Albert y David Maysles, 1970); y en otros casos, es la música la que dirige el montaje de las imágenes (como la famosa saga inaugurada por Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio, 1982). Esta segunda alternativa produce una espectacularización de la edición, y con ello, de la construcción artificial del mundo a través de ella con un interés emotivo-dramático. En general, el uso de recursos narrativos estructurales (arcos narrativos, clímax, turning points, suspenso, sorpresa): para mantener interés en el relato, como tener una pregunta guía al inicio y responderla hasta el final; u ocultar la verdadera identidad o relación con los hechos de un personaje, como en el documental Life 2.0 (Jason Spingarn-Koff, 2010), donde poco a poco, con la manipulación de la luz, se va revelando el aspecto físico de la persona con el avatar de niña que pone bombas en plazas comerciales de Second Life.

No filme, The Matrix, Neo finalmente encontra o criador da Matrix. Neo era “o escolhido”, e teria de definir quem vivia e quem morreria. Ele deveria aceitar a morte de todos, em nome de reiniciar a Matrix. O criador o colocou na condição de que ele decidiria o futuro de todos, em nome de uma causa maior, que seria reiniciar a Matrix rumo a uma Matrix. Similar fábula de Noé, o criador queria limpar a Matrix do fato de que deu errado de novo, e ele já havia feito isso antes, e dera errado também. O criador, decepcionado com sua criação, já havia destruído antes a Matrix. A Matrix era uma mentira contada aos habitantes. Eles vivem felizes, enquanto as máquinas os usavam como bateria humana. Neo, diferente dos outros, fez uma escolha diferente: ele voltou, não fugiu que nem Noé, covarde. Noé juntou algumas peças de animais e sua família, e ficou caladinho.

She remembers an eerily young Sean Connery, in that first James Bond film, using fine clear Scottish spit to paste one of his gorgeous black hairs across the gap between the jamb and the door of his hotel room.

¿Acaso no buscamos algo todos? Pero antes tenemos que mantener los ojos bien abiertos, si es que vamos a encontrar alguna cosa.

Se de facto este é um tema fundante dos film studies, não podemos, no entanto e apesar da temática, deixar de olhar com uma aura de singularidade para o presente livro de José Bogalheiro, que corresponde à edição da sua tese de doutoramento em psicologia, especialidade psicanálise. Com uma fulgurante e invulgar erudição e com um estilo que, ao mimar na escrita científica o ideal do “cineasta tecelão” (p. 371) que “pensa poeticamente” (p. 472), o livro propõese indagar, no interior da experiência fílmica, das diferentes dimensões e sentidos de uma noção que o autor apelida de “figuração cinematográfica”.(...)essa qualidade evidenciada pelas teias – “a tenacidade, resistência e a elasticidade” – são também o seu “modo de produção” (p. 378), isto é, essas são as qualidades de toda esta investigação como um todo, que, ante o parco panorama da publicação de obras desta natureza em Portugal, se afigura como um monumento singular, poético, rigoroso, sobre o qual o leitor se sentirá impelido a voltar por certo no futuro, tal qual “rebobinador” confesso. CARLOS EDUARDO NATÁLIO

No filme The Matrix, Neo finalmente encontra o criador da Matrix. Neo era “o escolhido”, e teria de definir quem vivia e quem morreria. Ele deveria aceitar a morte de todos, em nome de reiniciar a Matrix. O criador, decepcionado com sua criação, já havia destruído antes a Matrix. A Matrix era uma mentira contada aos habitantes. Eles vivem felizes, enquanto as máquinas os usavam como bateria humana. Neo, diferente dos outros, fez uma escolha diferente: ele voltou, não fugiu que nem Noé, covarde. Noé juntou algumas peças de animais e sua família, e ficou caladinho.

Estas decisiones de relato implican a todos los elementos, visuales o sonoros, que conforman la imagen y que tienen que ver, se activan, por las decisiones del director (es una competencia implícita a la función) sobre lo que exhibe y lo que no y sobre cómo lo que muestra afecta a las escenas y situaciones descritas por el guión, a la apariencia y a lo que se ve y lo que no se ve de los escenarios, a los personajes y el modo de encarnarlos por el actor (la construcción del personaje es una labor de creación entre actor y director), a los objetos que pueblan la escena o que forman parte del mundo de los personajes, a la fotogenia –manera de iluminar y retratar– de los escenarios y un largo etcétera sin menospreciar el tiempo que la imagen se hace patente ante la mirada del espectador (la duración del plano ejecutada en el montaje). Este proceso otorga dimensión artística y comunicativa al filme, que reclama la inventiva y la intuición para imaginar e incluso previsualizar antes de poder materializar la imagen (guión planificado, bocetos artísticos, storyboard, animatics, etc.), que exige una creación expresiva que se materializa en la puesta en escena y en la voluntad de transmitir emoción estética y que moviliza la articulación de tantos lenguajes y códigos de estructuración de los mismos como materias de la expresión. Se incorpora lenguaje icónico y cinemático (de la representación del movimiento), lenguaje plástico (de la composición perspectiva del plano bidimensional), lenguaje verbal hablado (de los diálogos y voces que forman parte de la historia), lenguaje verbal escrito (a veces funcional con la historia, otras expresión del discurso mental de los personajes), lenguaje musical (formando parte de la historia o provocando la empatía emocional), etc.

Por que você me proíbe de rezar sabendo que isso é ilegal?”, perguntei a ele quando ficamos amigos. “Poderia não ter feito isso, mas teriam me dado algum trabalho sujo.” Ele me contou também que ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■ tinha dado a ordem de me impedir de praticar qualquer atividade religiosa. ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ disse ainda: “Vou para o inferno por ter proibido você de rezar”. ■■■■■■■■■■■ ficou felicíssimo quando recebeu ordens para me tratar bem. “Na verdade, gosto mais de estar aqui com você do que estar em casa”, disse ele com franqueza. Era um cara muito generoso; trazia-me bolinhos, filmes e jogos de Play Station 2. Antes de ir embora, deixou que eu escolhesse entre dois jogos, Madden 2004 e Nascar 2004. Escolhi Nascar 2004, que ainda tenho. Acima de tudo, ■■■■■■■■■■■■ proporcionava um bom entretenimento. Ele costumava exagerar e me contava todo tipo de coisa. Às vezes me dava informação demais, coisas que eu não queria nem devia saber. ■■■■■■■■■■■ era um viciado em jogos. Jogava videogames o tempo todo. Sou péssimo em videogames; não dou para isso. Sempre dizia aos carcereiros: “Os americanos não passam de bebês crescidos. Em meu país, não é adequado que uma pessoa da minha idade se sente diante de um console e perca tempo jogando videogames”. Com efeito, um dos castigos da civilização dos americanos é que eles são viciados em videogames.

FILM Voir] Ant-Man et la Guêpe : Quantumania [FR] Streaming VF (2023) GRATUIT en Francais?

In general, it could be said that we talk about many things. I’ll try to list them in no particular order. 1) The Latin American hell that, especially on weekends, is concentrated around some Kentucky Fried Chickens and McDonald’s. 2) The doings of the Buenos Aires photographer Alfredo Garófano, childhood friend of Rodrigo and now a friend of mine and of anyone with the least bit of discernment. 3) Bad translations. 4) Serial killers and mass murderers. 5) Prospective leisure as the antidote to prospective poetry. 6) The vast number of writers who should retire after writing their first book or their second or their third or their fourth or their fifth. 7) The superiority of the work of Basquiat to that of Haring, or vice versa. 8) The works of Borges and the works of Bioy. 9) The advisablity of retiring to a ranch in Mexico near a volcano to finish writing The Turkey Buzzard Trilogy. 10) Wrinkles in the space-time continuum. 11) The kind of majestic women you’ve never met who come up to you in a bar and whisper in your ear that they have AIDS (or that they don’t). 12) Gombrowicz and his conception of immaturity. 13) Philip K. Dick, whom we both unreservedly admire. 14) The likelihood of a war between Chile and Argentina and its possible and impossible consequences. 15) The life of Proust and the life of Stendhal. 16) The activities of some professors in the United States. 17) The sexual practices of titi monkeys and ants and great cetaceans. 18) Colleagues who must be avoided like limpet mines. 19) Ignacio Echevarría, whom both of us love and admire. 20) Some Mexican writers liked by me and not by him, and some Argentine writers liked by me and not by him. 21) Barcelonan manners. 22) David Lynch and the prolixity of David Foster Wallace. 23) Chabon and Palahniuk, whom he likes and I don’t. 24) Wittgenstein and his plumbing and carpentry skills. 25) Some twilit dinners, which actually, to the surprise of the diner, become theater pieces in five acts. 26) Trashy TV game shows. 27) The end of the world. 28) Kubrick’s films, which Fresán loves so much that I’m beginning to hate them. 29) The incredible war between the planet of the novel-creatures and the planet of the story-beings. 30) The possibility that when the novel awakes from its iron dreams, the story will still be there.

Two German kayakers arrive from the north at nightfall. They set up camp on the cape beach, about a third of a mile from the cabin, and come up to recharge their equipment on my solar batteries. We have to look at their photos, their films, exchange e-mail addresses. When you meet someone nowadays, right after the handshake and a quick glance you write down the website and blog information. Conversation has given way to a session in front of the screen. Afterwards, you won’t remember faces or tones of voice, but you’ll have cards with scribbled numbers. Human society’s dream has come true: we rub our antennae together like ants. One day we’ll just take a sniff.

The rise of Marvel Studios over the past decade has been one of the most extraordinary stories in Hollywood history. Utilizing a crew of second-rate superheroes and run by a team of unproven executives, Marvel upended the industry’s conventional wisdom. Previously, almost everyone in Hollywood believed that the general public was interested only in marquee superheroes like Batman and Spider-Man, and nobody would see a movie about Ant-Man or the Guardians of the Galaxy; that the resources and experience of major studios gave them an unbeatable advantage over upstarts; that tightly managing budgets on would-be global “event” movies was penny-wise but pound-foolish; that tying together the plots of disparate films was too risky because if one failed, they all would; and that the only Hollywood brand name that meant anything to consumers was Disney.

O SUICÍDIO É UMA FORMA DE ASSASSINATO – assassinato premeditado. Não é algo que se faz da primeira vez que se pensa em fazer. A gente precisa se acostumar com a ideia. E precisa dos meios, da oportunidade, do motivo. Um suicídio bem-sucedido exige boa organização e cabeça fria, coisas geralmente incompatíveis com o estado de espírito de quem quer se suicidar. É importante cultivar um distanciamento. Uma forma de fazer isso é imaginar-se morta ou morrendo. Havendo uma janela, deve-se imaginar o próprio corpo caindo da janela. Havendo uma faca, deve-se imaginar essa faca penetrando na própria pele. Havendo um trem que já vai chegar, deve-se imaginar o próprio corpo esmagado sob as rodas. Esses exercícios são essenciais para atingir o distanciamento necessário. O motivo é de suma importância. Sem um motivo forte, vai tudo por água abaixo. Meus motivos eram fracos: um trabalho de História Americana que eu não queria fazer e a pergunta que eu me propusera meses antes: “Por que não me matar?”. Morta, eu não precisaria fazer o trabalho. Nem precisaria ficar ponderando aquela pergunta. Essa ponderação me desgastava. Depois que a gente se faz uma pergunta dessas, ela não nos larga mais. Acho que muita gente se mata só para pôr fim ao dilema de se matar ou não. Tudo o que eu pensava ou fazia era imediatamente incorporado ao dilema. Fiz um comentário idiota – por que não me mato? Perdi o ônibus – melhor acabar com tudo. Até o que era bom entrava no jogo. Gostei desse filme – talvez eu não devesse me matar. Na verdade, eu só queria matar uma parte de mim: a parte que queria se matar, que me arrastava para o dilema do suicídio e transformava cada janela, cada utensílio de cozinha e cada estação de metrô no ensaio de uma tragédia. Só fui descobrir tudo isso, porém, depois de engolir cinquenta aspirinas.

O HOSPITAL FICAVA EM UMA COLINA na periferia da cidade, igual aos hospitais que vemos em filmes sobre loucos. Nosso hospital era famoso e havia abrigado grandes poetas e cantores. O hospital se especializou em poetas e cantores, ou será que os poetas e cantores se especializaram na loucura? O mais famoso de todos os ex-pacientes era Ray Charles. Vivíamos esperando que ele voltasse e fizesse serenatas da janela do pavilhão de recuperação de drogados. Ele nunca voltou. Contudo, tínhamos a família Taylor: Kate e Livingston estavam lá, embora James tivesse sido promovido para outro hospital antes da minha chegada. Na falta de Ray Charles, seus blues com sotaque da Carolina do Norte eram o bastante para nos entristecer. Os tristes precisam ouvir o som de sua tristeza. Robert Lowell também não passou por ali durante a minha estada. Sylvia Plath chegara e partira. Por que será que a métrica, a cadência e o ritmo provocam loucura em quem os produz?