I call this, what are things that will make you realise? Days are empty, everything is insipid and distant. When things are real, they are too real, they are overwhelming, they are devastating. It is so difficult to pull back, from pain or numb, and remember what it means to be myself.

What are things that will make you realise?

1. someone telling you "I love you", when it is someone you really want to hear that from them
2. taking a bath while looking at a book you love but don't want to read again any time soon
3. sitting on a comfortable chair that you can sink into, in a dimly lit room with steady ambient noise (fan, white noise, noise generator, anything) to block out anything but your own thoughts
4. lying on your back lost in the woods, looking up at the trees and listening to them creak; especially when it is too hot and humid, or too cold and dry, and you can sit there long enough to forget those things
5. remembering all the wonderful things, all the things that brought you here, for better or for worse; don't remember in words, look at photographs and walk through your childhood spots and smell old books that were loaned to you because then you will remember that person's faint smell and well as the pleasant odor of stale pages
6. remember the times you cried, and how things got worse but eventually things went away; especially if you can't cry right now
7. make long lists of everything you're going to need when you finally run away and nobody will know where you went; did you ever think of running away when you were a small child? what did you decide to bring? better bring it this time, too
8. think about your enemies from long ago and realise that they weren't so bad after all
9. think about your enemies from long ago and realise how wonderful things are now that you don't have to worry about them anymore
10. look at your old drawings, notebooks, read your dream journals, recipes, free verse poetry, look at the doodles you drew in your textbooks and old magazines you kept for one article you liked; be happy that you're sure these things happened
11. find all the nick-nacks and little things your friends and parents have given you to commemorate something, as a souvenir, as a way of saying, "this reminded me of you"; think about the things you've given
12. read old love letters, feel your heart flutter again
13. right now, write down anything that will remind yourself of things that will make you realise.

Age of Progress

I will say something for digital film and
technology; it has made filmmakers a bit bolder. A fascinating offshoot in experimental filmmaking took off midway through this last decade that many revered directors have fronted. While teenage boys like Zach Snyder put their masturbatory digital effects on display for 300 and Watchmen, art house directors took the new advances in stride and used them for interesting forays into once-popular genres. Lars Von Trier used digital technology in his films Dogville and Manderlay to take on American drama and the conventions of small towns that populate a century of laconic small-town plays. He stripped down his set to an elaborate, empty stage, not unlike a black box theatre and used mostly foreign actors to comment on American hypocrisy and challenge hypocrisy Eric Rohmer used it for his film The Lady and the Duke to recreate the French Revolution using enormous spliced-in oil paintings as backgrounds for each outdoor scene, giving the film the unromantic historical feel it needs. Michel Gondry's movies wouldn't exist were it not for the things he does with digital technology. So while I will from time to time rail against digital filmmaking taking all the backbone out of epic filmmaking (Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Pirates Of The Carribbean) there are some people who decide to use this power for good.