talk about the weather

Since seeing Melancholia a couple months ago, I have found myself retracing plot points from it, recalling specific imagery. It's a beautiful film that talks about how terrifying existence is and it does so in a slow-burn fashion that builds this terror in you, the viewer, as well.

I thought of the film again today. Something is not right with the planet. Some people, many people actually, have cheered this mild winter that it now seems we are officially done with. The weather today was in the high 60s. Tomorrow, it will be in the 70s. My body has come to expect certain things, has physical responses that coincide with certain months, the body expecting certain temperatures in December, January, and February. My body never relaxed this winter, kept on tensely awaiting the arrival of it. The dog had run away and I couldn't sit comfortably on the couch. He was probably gone for good, the Lost Dog signs up for weeks with no response, but still my body tensed at any noise outside, wondering if that might be him.

That other planet, Melancholia, is bearing down on Earth and for most of the film, it is ignored. People continue to hope for the best, believe that it will pass Earth by, rather than crashing into it, but at a certain point in the film, it becomes inevitable, and there is the slow, painful wait for the event to occur, a wait in which every character must confront the reality that they will die, that everyone they know will die, that the earth will be no more, and that everything they have known, everything that constitutes life for them, will be no more.

That is how I felt today, walking down Broadway in the beautiful weather, that it was too beautiful, too nice out, ominously so. The planet is fucked. Normal weather patterns have been thrown into disarray by global warming and we are all going to have a catastrophic end. But, vain, easily-pleased creatures that we are, we are happy because we can wear spring clothes, can show more skin to the world, don't have to wear socks and winter jackets any longer.