pee-wee's big adventure [1985]

if shoring up fragments is the norm for our post-post-modernity than i must be one average mofo at the moment. i've not watched a full movie or read a book straight thru in some weeks now. i catch bits and pieces, fragments, here and there, my book reading is done in pieces, sometimes reading say a few poems here and a few poems there, or an essay at the back first and work my way to the beginning, until the book is finished. as for movies, and tv shows too, i catch scenes, moments, favorite parts, before moving off to do something else.

perhaps it is the life of a parent of a small child, a man who also labors all day and writes his fragments at night, like an old jazzman. maybe that's too romantic a detail. the pace of life quickens and i run to catch up. lately i've been thinking about the state of joy. i don't know what it is but when it is missing from my waking and dreaming life i badly so want it back. i believe some people live and do their work from an opposite state. sometimes for me too. joy is not always the force that thru the green fuse drives the flower.

pleasure indeed. for me it's absolutely critical for my mental well-being and if i'm not in a relatively calm mind then my writing, and my waking and dreaming life, is too fucked up for any one's good. particularly mine. so it was with great good pleasure that i caught a few bits of this paul reubens/tim burton feature last night when nicholas was in the bath and anna was in the other room. the word i'd use to describe this movie is EFFERVESCENT. every frame of this flick, goofy as it is, bursts with the joys of being. picture the scene in the biker bar when the boy-man gets the bikers on his side by doing a silly dance to the champs' tune 'tequila' or the ending when every single person pee-wee encountered in his quest to retrieve his stolen bike is at the drive-in watching the movie of his life as portrayed by james brolin. the drive-in! can burton have a greater homage to b-movies than that?

it was just the thing i needed, for what that's worth, for me to shore up a few bits of my fragments. that's the magic of cinema and why awards shows and box-office receipts fade into the near-future leaving the movies to stand or fall and sometimes both at the same time. a great good pleasure of being alive.