Christian Petzold

I haven't been feeling well of late.

Little energy and a persistent nausea have kept me low. This isn't good, I'm in the middle of a project (Lucas's Ubiquitous Serpentine), but the oomph just isn't there most days.

I was laid up all of Saturday. Fortunately, I've found a streaming website to watch college football, so that is all I did.

I got up a couple times, went downstairs once, grabbed a cup of jo from the senior center across the street, felt terrible, returned to my lair. Back to bed.

I cancelled a Monday appointment with Lucas (we meet today, but I'm not completely recovered so it may be a waste).

I have a medical appointment on Monday. Hope I don't get any scary news on Halloween.

When my energy is low like it has been since Friday, I get somewhat morbid. I've always had a dark and silent streak. Sickness just elevates it. I never wanted to be a mere mote, a dot on a six-billion human flow chart.

I've always wanted to live forever. Despite your best efforts, it's difficult to make life count.

Who's watching? Who gives a damn?

Still down last night, I watched a pair of films by the German director Christian Petzold.

Petzold is a leading figure in the newest New German Cinema, or the "Berlin School." The two films I watched last evening, Yella and Jerichow, concern life in Germany since reunification in 1990.

They are far different than the German historical films I've reflexively regarded as the best Germany offers.

Who knew this isn't 1933-1945?

I'll put it this way--Petzold does for venture capitalism in the new Germany what Fassbinder did for Nazism in The Marriage of Maria Braun, i.e., to elucidate that life doesn't revolve around ideology, but rather around the crudeness of the survival instinct.

Necessarily, darkness falls.

How beautiful is that? Watching Petzold's films, it's as if I'm asking for it.

So be it.



TS