Roberto is a PhD recipient in Philosophy and Postcolonial Literature.
“A word — you know: a corpse. Come let us wash it, come let us comb it, come let us turn its eye heavenward.” — Paul Célan, “Nocturnally Pursed” In 1951, a little more than six years after the Nazis were defeated and the last camp debarred, the German philosopher and critical theorist Theodor Adorno…
To Leonard Cohen, Eliezer who went just before the big wave rose. A bulldozer wanders the streets, threatening buildings in ruins through a little Polish village that little knows about its decay. It circulates through the narrow streets silently, streets that remain unwitting to its presence. A mobile bridge appears, a ferry. A lone passenger…
In memoriam: American Democracy Mystics heal borders. They are the frontiers’ physicians. Surgeons of the lines. As scalpels come their words, their prayers that no one hears, for no one knows silence better than those whose words shall meet no ears. As scalpels come their prayers, immersed all in flesh and blood, in infatuated vessels…
Occupied village. Crying babies. Mothers many. Babies doze. Japanese colony. Korean village. Woman leaves. Baby stays. Both cry. Off goes. Jap’s house. The opening scene of Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden leaves no room for blinking. That is the secret of its hypnotic pace swimmingly swinging from a contemplative eye which leaves it all to a…
Xavier Dolan opens It’s Only the End of the World with the caption: “Somewhere a while ago, already.” The comma is extremely important, as it plays with the past tense of a while ago and the present tense of the already, almost as a physical presence, already there. It was a while ago since I…
“Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world.” — Ron Padgett, “How to be Perfect” Interior, bedroom — Monday morning. An aerial shot on a sleeping couple. It’s about 15 seconds before the clock hits 6:12 and Paterson (Adam Driver, “Star Wars:…
Crimson petals. Red rose. Scarlet sheets. Silk shirt. That’s Julieta’s torso, moving with a breath of agony as she packs her stuff. When we finally see her face, we see the evened eyes of long held pain, the kind that leaves deep-carved scars in what seems to be a life-long depression. It would not be…
