Death and Early Cinematography

Every film maker's first 

film explores death, naturally.

Morpheus, Terminal, 

Expiry, or just The End,

the sweet kiss of poison 

on curiosity's lips, probing 

the world for mortality 

with their lens to capture

the mystery of our 

enchantment with the

loss of being.  You see it

in the shadows, the ghosts, 

as if  their art breathes life

into some lifeless scene --

a blade flashing in the

blazing sun, a blind frigate

bird soaring to the sun

and then falling like some 

dumb boomerang into the sea,

Dirk Bogarde, stumbling 

and pathetic, sweating 

in the plague-heat of the

Venice beach, puckering

on the sand like some 

old carp.  In my brother's film

I'm caught in slow motion,

a stupor, climbing a dune,

grasping the weeds to 

pull myself up, then the 

obligatory montage, cut 

to the westbound  Amtrak

effacing me, cut to 

staring at the mirror

and seeing nothing but 

the silvery darkness, the

liquid memory pool of 

nothingness, the old

existentialist trappings,

cut to a graveyard, 

lichen-spotted stones and

the camera swings skyward

to the November cold,

but once the production

is splashed on the screen

the great mystery is 

reduced to a scrim of 

slippery images sliding

before our eyes--there's no

transcendence, no epiphany,

no elegy, the sweet cello

fades, it's a film, after all,

about nothing, the other side

of a story, a sequence 

of dead flowers left beside

the road, a field of chopped

corn stalks in the snow,

a redemption, a benediction,

a way of being that can't

be sensed or repeated,

and that failure, grandiose

or felt, cannot be captured

or known by image, it

can only be known by

surrender, whether 

by the eros of music or

first person narrative, 

limited.