The Popcorn I Ate Watching Tsai Ming-liang's Face

The way my shirt flapped, only its top button done, a green embroidered button-down, short-sleeve, as I twisted torso, legs, forearms light-dappled with Los Angeles 7pm, amidst the seats of the bistro, surging Los Feliz sidewalk occupation of theirs, clatter bottles aswirl. Drove somewhat fast to make it, coil of freeways, their distorted hurdle-ness like windswept hair unclipped gushing toppling fall. Entrance then, sluiced betwixt front lights radiant, tumbled into then with post-internship delirium, PDF ticket stirring alive on my phone, bought it at the desk hours ago amidst office chatter remixed by California palm tree bashing wrestling brawl of the window curled open. Waited for the popcorn, and the guy handed me the bag with an uneasy smile. Two or three pieces fall on my way now to the back room, strange location after a strange hallway, indigo upon indigo. Large flap doors exhale me into. Get to the seat, unreserved here because happenstance and chaos, velvet curtain ghost forms plowing into the void. Full theater. Sit in the seat at the right edge. My phone dying in my lap. Time, alas, to confront this mysterious Face.

Eating my popcorn. Odd taste, sensorily ancillary, waxen tongue tinge. Disbelief, disadvantage, o the rejection of me from it, to it. Fingers loose as if to be obsolete metal prongs of a claw machine, grip an anti-grip, sullen now. When is this film going to start. Devouring I am now, exhausting, plowing because perhaps gold, butter, something, an elixir, exists in the vortex whirlpool of this paper/plastic bag, this supposed heavenly Bermuda Triangle motion picture delicacy, trying to remain delicate and agape, how to keep the mind ajar.

The film unspooling now. The Louvre unrecognizable. I last in the cascading slowness of shots and frames wearisome in their extended timescapes. At this turn—the white snow falling around the mirrors in the forest, angry French ramble retort on the phone call amidst, this room not watching a film solely, this tablet of interpretation an abstract line to follow into abstract lines multiple, this film now our film performance and installation too. Segment of my life watching a woman annul a window with black duct tape. Most disgusting butter in my gums. I try to look at the people sitting to my left, people I’ll never know, personalities hushed, this hapless bathroom counter acid mania magic carpet of my tongue, o holy darkness, dampness. But people here who love art films like I do around me, here. Found whimsy of that. A man, then, heard snoring discernible. Adjacent muffled desperate laughter at it then, overpassing us a half-worry, a floating arch of dread. The director perhaps floating above this trial, perhaps wretching.

Watching a film in Los Angeles involves learning to meditate through the crisscrossing of extremity. I feel each crevice of each piece of popcorn, each landmine fulminating into me, each dilation, La Brea Tar Pits foaming asphalt, tiny craters hurtling somersaulting. I might like this taste one day, fizz to settle across the corridor that is my tongue. How much did I spend on this, sighing sighs soft, phone still unmediated and threatening, crepuscular hand of mine twitching beneath the wide orifice of screen, do I understand this, why can’t I understand, do I have to. Meditating inside the imagined interior of a single piece of blown-up corn. The women in the film doing strange things. Tomato sauce, liminal background of plastic drapery, flaps of angular light afloat and dangling, half-nude a woman inching closer, silvery bursts of chuckle as if a novelty windchime dropped cracked outrang on the porch from this dark array of seating. 

What is an asymptotic film? What is an asymptotic viewing experience?

Unpleasant texture of this bag, capitalism materiality, and the waste of it. Scared oil, butter, juice of it and grease, seepage, can trickle through the bag into my lap. My symbiotic relationship with the popcorn I can’t put down. Kernel in my mouth, peering into a screen where animals and people struggle in this vast expanse of Parisian urbanism. Film as a battle, way of counteracting, revolving solace. Holding the bag in a way to not make any sound in the theater. Hardwired and fraying we are as people, tiny hot arguments each piece of popcorn, not looking inspecting each one but still sponging into, still additive and here, vile yet entrancing, making a wasteland of me, the stomach acid, corrosion of it, all. I look up, can’t help but wonder what time it is, my phone conceivably passed out, urge to tap touch compose swipe see watch before this solid massive wall now, of immobility, can’t tell the camera to cut despite, conditioned to sprint pare down amplify receptors pleasure hormones despite, the cracking of my elbows reposition, trek back to the parking lot I’ll have to do, mouth odious harbor, popcorn only plaything, I have chiefly it in this unending nevermore freakish ravishing otherworld tape, this American Cinematheque Retrospective cyclorama sublimation rabbit hole.
Bag unfinished. Bites the sum total of my chew, perhaps more than it, less than it, both. Last shot a huge open circle fountain, loose animal, somehow made it there. Silent departure of the mass then, us. I leave the theater and Los Angeles looks like a chandelier. Pinafore pleats of facades architectural blow into me, the crowd a background fading. I throw away the bag in a trash can, a fly quick to encircle this remainder vile skidding off my palm, darting now between new customers outside of the restaurant me, tired, this romantic midnight moonshine aperture holed up in I am. Ultramarine painterly Los Angeles Los Feliz lunge into me, tear me open now.

In my seat, ignition, then this review into my Letterboxd:

I drive home still tasting, peering into a landscape I’ve known and not known for years and years.