there will be blood . the years

took a day off from college today, saw a film and read a book. i loved “there will be blood” with the long drawn out scenes of silences and the overwrought apocalyptic scenes where humiliation and revenge on other human beings and god are sought. the desert landscape was brutal and beautiful and the story about a maverick oilman harvesting fields for black gold in california took its time to be told. thankfully. daniel day lewis was fantastic.

virginia woolf’s “the years” covers pretty much the same years that the film was set in except that here the landscape is the city of london with interiors of curtained parlours with pictures on the walls of little girls. characters from a family sit and watch the years go by with memories that drift in and out of internal monologues connecting brothers to sisters to lovers to servants to daughters… all the ‘what if’s and ‘so then’s and ‘why cant he’s and ‘can i’s..

meanwhile there is a mongrel in the white house and having lived near dc for two years the incongruity of it reminds me of the vietnam war memorial in washington dc. the black granite scar slices into the green mall and violently marks the overwhelmingly white classicism around.