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2024.05.13 20:33 genZcommentary I watched NATLA before watching the cartoon and now I'm watching the cartoon. Here are my thoughts on Book 2, Episodes 12-13
Hello! Here we are again, back for another ATLA commentary.
Before we get started I do want to point out that I’m numbering and labeling episodes according to how they appear on Netflix. Episode 12, as I understand it, is actually two episodes. However, since they’re presented as one thing here, that’s how I’m watching it.
Brief update on other projects: I thought I’d try watching the first Harry Potter movie, but realized it’s two and a half hours long. That’s, at the bare minimum, five hours of commentary writing. So… yeah, we’re gonna hold off on that lol I’m also considering watching a superhero/comic book show called The Boys, because I accidentally caught part of a trailer for it that my girlfriend was watching and it looks very interesting. I’ll be doing the new Game of Thrones commentary next, not sure when exactly.
Okay, let’s go!
Episode 12- The Secret of the Fire Nation
Yeah… I’m kind of surprised Aang is taking Appa’s loss as well as he is, considering how he reacted last episode. Since Sokka is talking about walking to Ba Sing Se, I take it they’re not going to be spending time looking for him? But then, didn’t the sandbenders say they sold him to a merchant from Ba Sing Se? Maybe he’s there, and Aang’s banking on that hope.
The cabbage merchant! Always a delight to see him and his cabbages! Also hilarious that a bunch of people are impersonating Aang (thought it probably would be less hilarious if any of them met Azula). If passports are necessary, how did Zuko and Iroh get tickets? Also, good on Toph for taking advantage of her privilege lol
Hey! I think that’s Suki! Her eyes are drawn really distinctively and her voice sounds familiar! Two seconds after pressing play: it is Suki! Don’t you just love my long winning streak of figuring things out right before they let us know? Lol
Well damn, Suki got her armor and makeup on real quick, didn’t she? Hm… Sokka’s worried about her. I think Suki’s going to interpret that as him being sexist again but he’s probably traumatized from losing Yue. He’s been through way too much to still be sexist. If he still had a misogynistic bone in his body, Toph would have beaten it out of him by now.
Holy shit! Nope, I would not be walking along a cliff path that narrow! I will build a rowboat and paddle my way to Ba Sing Se.
Toph is really carrying the team (and some refugees too) this episode.
Ow! Geez, that rejected hug hurt me lol Katara’s right though. Bottling up emotions just makes them worse in the long run. You have to allow yourself to feel bad sometimes. Granted, you can’t fly off the handle like he did last episode, but that’s a reaction. You can control your reactions, but you can’t control your feelings.
“It’s a beautiful moon.” “Yeah, it really is.” Okay, I know Sokka said last episode that Yue is the moon, but he was tripping on peyote. Does he actually believe that Yue is the moon now? Is Yue the moon now? I interpreted her death as he sacrificing herself to bring the moon spirit back to life, not to become the new moon spirit.
“Who is this guy? Is he taller than me?” Dude, we were having a moment. Damn it, just kiss her! Well actually, the moon’s right there so if Yue really did turn into the new moon spirit, it might be a tad awkward to kiss in front of her. But what’s he gonna do, only ever show intimacy during the day?
Of course Iroh believes in second chances. He’s the best. And also, he’s living proof that some people deserve a second chance.
Is that the unagi?! I think that’s what it’s called/spelled but I haven’t seen that episode in a while. It would be fitting if Suki and the sea serpent both share the same episodes lol No that’s not the unagi. It’s a different color. Um… what exactly was Sokka planning to do if the sea serpent actually accepted his offer and ate Momo? Considering how he reacted to losing Appa, I don’t think Aang would be too happy with him.
Oh, now she’s making an ice bridge. Not as much of a flex as maintaining an air bubble so they plumb the depths but it is faster. Oh, Toph can’t see on ice. And she can’t swim? An earthbender not being able to swim feels like a stereotype for some reason, even though I have absolutely no reason to think that lol
“You can go ahead and let me drown now.” That’s gonna be a favorite joke of mine, I just know it lol And I’m pretty sure this is probably a jumping point for a Sokka/Toph ship. What does the community call that? Soph? Tokka? (How old is Toph, anyway? Probably Aang’s age, right? That’s… probably not an appropriate ship then)
Baby Hope, eh? Probably not a super common name in this world.
Oh? Was that Aang’s way of telling Katara he loves her without actually saying it? Aww. And hey, he’s heading off on his own to search for Appa. Which… honestly kind of feels like he should have been doing that this whole time lol
Yes! Get some, Sokka! Wait, nevermind. I fucking hate that line. Ugh No! I’m not gonna be a bitter old lady on this watch-through! They’re kissing and it’s very sweet and I love that for them!
Um… there’s a giant metal dildo on the way to penetrate Ba Sing Se! Lol but seriously, how technologically advanced is the Fire Nation? A giant mobile drill of that scale would be a marvel of engineering even by our modern standards.
And this is why we love Azula. She’s not just a scary villain, she’s a competent villain.
Yes! I love that they acknowledge Sokka as the “Idea Guy”!
Iroh has got rizz for days lol I’m kind of surprised he only ever had one son. Jet wants to recruit Zuko. I’m totally down for that! They’re such an interesting pair!
Okay, engineer Sokka figured it out. It’s all a little too easy, isn’t it?
Oh yeah, I guess this is a pretty high stakes battle for them, huh? If they lose Ba Sing Se, they basically lose the entire Earth Kingdom, right? Omashu’s already fallen, the smaller villages and whatnot have no real defense. Ba Sing Se is the last big puzzle piece to world domination (aside from the water tribes, but they’re so isolated they’re not really a threat).
I love that Toph’s nickname for Aang is Twinkle Toes. Also I laughed at the War Minister’s face when he was side-eyeing Azula just then. +That’s the face of a man who’s about to be punished!
Ty Lee dives into the slurry after Katara and Sokka while Mai refuses. Yeah, Mai is the weak link here in Ozai’s Angels (I love that name, by the way).
She beat him! He’s unconscious! Okay, well not anymore lol See… that right there was hubris (actually, it was kid’s show writing but whatever)! He was out for like fifteen seconds. She should have roasted him where he lay instead of picking him up and gloating.
Another fight with Azula ends in a draw with neither one beating the other! I’m starting to get a little peeved with all this edging lol but that was great! Azula is an absolute beast!
So Hope’s probably going to grow up in pretty interesting times!
Um… is Ba Sing Se a city or is it a little walled country? Cuz all I see are farms and plains!
Katara, I love you, but you’re wrong. Team Avatar is going to catch on because it’s awesome, and that’s that.
Episode 13- City of Walls and Secrets
Walls inside that help maintain order? You mean walls that protect the rich and elite from the dirty poors? Lol Oh, Katara just confirmed it. They pen up all the poor people into a walled ghetto.
Toph knows what’s up. Joo Dee is purposefully brushing Sokka off and distracting the group. I’m not sure why at the moment, but something is clearly up.
Someone important is trying to keep them under constant surveillance and prevent them from seeing the Earth King. In NATLA, there were spies in Omashu. Since Ba Sing Se is much bigger and more important, I imagine it’s riddled with Fire Nation spies as well, and somebody high ranking might be a traitor.
It’s lucky that Iroh borrowed his neighbor’s spark rocks, but why would he refrain from firebending in what he assumes is privacy? Unless he knows he’s being watched.
The lost boys- I mean, freedom fighters are turning on Peter Pa- I mean, Jet. The weird thing is… he’s right! They are firebenders! But his behavior still isn’t healthy!
This Long Feng guy is cultural minister to the king, which means he’s probably the bad guy! And also we haven’t met any other high ranking government officials with names, so he’s currently the only option lol
Yeah… can’t blame them for arresting Jet. He did look like a crazy person.
The Dai Li’s specific brand of earthbending is very cool! It almost doesn’t seem like bending at all, if that makes sense. The stones they use are like a part of their own body. And of course Long Feng is their leader.
Okay I get the king is just a puppet and Long Feng is the real rule of the country, but I still don’t understand why he doesn’t allow mention of the war in the city. I mean, it’s common knowledge! A significant portion of their population are literally refugees fleeing war! Who doesn’t know
Oh… is it the king? Does the king just not know there’s a war happening and Long Feng keeps it from him so he can stay in charge? I mean, that’s still a stretch but it would explain why he doesn’t want Team Avatar talking to the king.
I didn’t think Joo Dee could be any scarier but here we are! This episode almost has horror movie vibes.
Concluding thoughts: This was a fantastic couple/throuple of episodes! I loved seeing Suki again, and I really enjoyed how the refugee subplot ties so perfectly in with Iroh and Zuko. The whole drill sequence was probably the best “action” the show has had thus far and that’s saying something. It’s also nice to have my suspicions that the Earth Kingdom has its own corruption problems and bad guys confirmed.
I have a new theory to replace my “Iroh’s going to die theory”. They’ve been showing us all season how Zuko isn’t really cut out for life on the run, whereas Iroh embraces it. I think they’re driving to a separation between Zuko and Iroh. He may not have died, but narratively speaking Zuko and Iroh have to part ways permanently or semi-permanently for his character to grow. Iroh has been propping him up and supporting him this whole time, now it’s time for Zuko to leave the nest and become his own person.
My new theory is that Iroh will enjoy his new life in Ba Sing Se so much that he elects to stay there permanently, whereas Zuko is too restless to do so. He can’t go back to the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom will not accept him, so his only choice is to join Team Avatar, where he will likely end up teaching Aang firebending.
And to expand further on a previous theory of mine, which was: Azula will kill or depose Ozai. I’ve accepted at this point that death is off the table. Kid’s show and all that. But I noticed something… lots of people were quick to say that Azula would never kill Ozai. But not one person has said she wouldn’t depose him in those refutations (unless I’m misremembering but I don’t think I am). Since you all know not to hint at things or spoil them, I think your eagerness to point out that she won’t kill Ozai is an attempt to mislead me into thinking the whole theory is wrong so I’ll be surprised when she ends up deposing (not killing) him. I mean, I could be wrong but I have a strong feeling that the final villain is going to be Fire Lord Azula, with Ozai in exile somewhere (that would be fitting! The man who banishes his own son ends up being banished himself!).
Maybe that will even be the conclusion of Zuko’s arc! While Aang goes off to save the world from Azula, Zuko splits up to confront Ozai himself! Where we are in the show right now, it really does feel like Azula is Aang’s primary antagonist whereas Ozai is Zuko’s primary antagonist.
By the way, from here on out, no confirming or denying my theories either way, okay? Let it unfold naturally, and let me figure things out on my own. I mean, where’s the fun in just giving me the answers?
And also, some of you could be a little nicer with your criticisms. I had to block someone last time I posted and I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s fine to disagree with me, it’s fine to explain why you disagree with me. Hell, most of you do! I don’t mind that, I like that we all have different views of things even if I don’t agree. It makes things interesting! But don’t talk down to me, don’t use belittling language, don’t be disrespectful. Whenever I don’t like something about ATLA (or like something about NATLA) some of you seem to take it as a personal insult or something.
Just be polite, that’s all I ask.
Okay, I’ll see you same time next week probably!
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Before we get started I do want to point out that I’m numbering and labeling episodes according to how they appear on Netflix. Episode 12, as I understand it, is actually two episodes. However, since they’re presented as one thing here, that’s how I’m watching it.
Brief update on other projects: I thought I’d try watching the first Harry Potter movie, but realized it’s two and a half hours long. That’s, at the bare minimum, five hours of commentary writing. So… yeah, we’re gonna hold off on that lol I’m also considering watching a superhero/comic book show called The Boys, because I accidentally caught part of a trailer for it that my girlfriend was watching and it looks very interesting. I’ll be doing the new Game of Thrones commentary next, not sure when exactly.
Okay, let’s go!
Episode 12- The Secret of the Fire Nation
- Well that’s a heck of a title! I hope we learn something juicy!
Yeah… I’m kind of surprised Aang is taking Appa’s loss as well as he is, considering how he reacted last episode. Since Sokka is talking about walking to Ba Sing Se, I take it they’re not going to be spending time looking for him? But then, didn’t the sandbenders say they sold him to a merchant from Ba Sing Se? Maybe he’s there, and Aang’s banking on that hope.
- I know I keep applying real-world logic to a cartoon show, but wouldn’t Ba Sing Se get awfully crowded if they’re constantly taking in refugees from the rest of the Earth Kingdom? Iroh put the city under siege for almost two years. What if the Fire Nation does that again? More mouths to feed makes starvation quicker!
The cabbage merchant! Always a delight to see him and his cabbages! Also hilarious that a bunch of people are impersonating Aang (thought it probably would be less hilarious if any of them met Azula). If passports are necessary, how did Zuko and Iroh get tickets? Also, good on Toph for taking advantage of her privilege lol
Hey! I think that’s Suki! Her eyes are drawn really distinctively and her voice sounds familiar! Two seconds after pressing play: it is Suki! Don’t you just love my long winning streak of figuring things out right before they let us know? Lol
- Glad to see ATLA Suki appreciates Sokka’s muscles just as much as NATLA Suki lol
Well damn, Suki got her armor and makeup on real quick, didn’t she? Hm… Sokka’s worried about her. I think Suki’s going to interpret that as him being sexist again but he’s probably traumatized from losing Yue. He’s been through way too much to still be sexist. If he still had a misogynistic bone in his body, Toph would have beaten it out of him by now.
- Well the Serpent’s Pass looks terrifying. Also, this pregnant lady took one look at some scratched graffiti saying “Abandon Hope” and immediately started crying, saying “How can we abandon hope? It’s all we have!” Like… come on, lady lol Just because you see graffiti telling you to do something doesn’t mean you have to, otherwise I would have called quite a few people for a good time by now.
Holy shit! Nope, I would not be walking along a cliff path that narrow! I will build a rowboat and paddle my way to Ba Sing Se.
Toph is really carrying the team (and some refugees too) this episode.
- There’s a fine line between being protective and being smothering and Sokka has hopped, jumped, and skipped right over it.
Ow! Geez, that rejected hug hurt me lol Katara’s right though. Bottling up emotions just makes them worse in the long run. You have to allow yourself to feel bad sometimes. Granted, you can’t fly off the handle like he did last episode, but that’s a reaction. You can control your reactions, but you can’t control your feelings.
“It’s a beautiful moon.” “Yeah, it really is.” Okay, I know Sokka said last episode that Yue is the moon, but he was tripping on peyote. Does he actually believe that Yue is the moon now? Is Yue the moon now? I interpreted her death as he sacrificing herself to bring the moon spirit back to life, not to become the new moon spirit.
“Who is this guy? Is he taller than me?” Dude, we were having a moment. Damn it, just kiss her! Well actually, the moon’s right there so if Yue really did turn into the new moon spirit, it might be a tad awkward to kiss in front of her. But what’s he gonna do, only ever show intimacy during the day?
- Um… I’m probably reading too much into this Smellerbee scene with Iroh and Longshot and I’m almost hesitant to say what I’m thinking because I can just imagine the backlash I could get for voicing it. And it’s not like ATLA has had great LGBTQ representation up to this point, so… Yeah, I’m probably just seeing things that aren’t there.
Of course Iroh believes in second chances. He’s the best. And also, he’s living proof that some people deserve a second chance.
- Uh… Katara parting the sea while leading refugees to safety invokes a certain comparison, doesn’t it? But can I just say that I love how her solution to crossing the gap is to literally walk through the ocean instead of making a raft out of ice and floating across. She just never misses an opportunity to flex on everyone, does she? Lol
Is that the unagi?! I think that’s what it’s called/spelled but I haven’t seen that episode in a while. It would be fitting if Suki and the sea serpent both share the same episodes lol No that’s not the unagi. It’s a different color. Um… what exactly was Sokka planning to do if the sea serpent actually accepted his offer and ate Momo? Considering how he reacted to losing Appa, I don’t think Aang would be too happy with him.
Oh, now she’s making an ice bridge. Not as much of a flex as maintaining an air bubble so they plumb the depths but it is faster. Oh, Toph can’t see on ice. And she can’t swim? An earthbender not being able to swim feels like a stereotype for some reason, even though I have absolutely no reason to think that lol
“You can go ahead and let me drown now.” That’s gonna be a favorite joke of mine, I just know it lol And I’m pretty sure this is probably a jumping point for a Sokka/Toph ship. What does the community call that? Soph? Tokka? (How old is Toph, anyway? Probably Aang’s age, right? That’s… probably not an appropriate ship then)
- Why does Ba Sing Se’s wall remind me of The Wall from Game of Thrones? Obviously not made of ice though lol
- Like I said earlier, ATLA isn’t heavy on the LGBTQ representation, but I swear I’m picking up on some tension and chemistry between Jet and Zuko (Juko? Jeko? Zet?). And now half of Jet’s little group is an LGBTQ allegory for me lol Even the dialogue between Jet and Zuko in this scene is slightly suggestive.
Baby Hope, eh? Probably not a super common name in this world.
Oh? Was that Aang’s way of telling Katara he loves her without actually saying it? Aww. And hey, he’s heading off on his own to search for Appa. Which… honestly kind of feels like he should have been doing that this whole time lol
Yes! Get some, Sokka! Wait, nevermind. I fucking hate that line. Ugh No! I’m not gonna be a bitter old lady on this watch-through! They’re kissing and it’s very sweet and I love that for them!
Um… there’s a giant metal dildo on the way to penetrate Ba Sing Se! Lol but seriously, how technologically advanced is the Fire Nation? A giant mobile drill of that scale would be a marvel of engineering even by our modern standards.
- Well hey, there’s the title card letting me know when the next episode starts.
And this is why we love Azula. She’s not just a scary villain, she’s a competent villain.
- And the Earth Kingdom general shares the War Minister’s hubris. Why are the people in charge always the worst people to be in charge? Also, I love that Toph is the one to point out that Iroh broke through the wall.
Yes! I love that they acknowledge Sokka as the “Idea Guy”!
Iroh has got rizz for days lol I’m kind of surprised he only ever had one son. Jet wants to recruit Zuko. I’m totally down for that! They’re such an interesting pair!
- I really love that Katara, whose probably the best waterbender in the world at this point, respects Ty Lee enough to recognize how dangerous she is. And Sokka had an idea! They’re going to take down the drill from the inside. Because how the hell else are they going to stop something that big?
Okay, engineer Sokka figured it out. It’s all a little too easy, isn’t it?
- Ah shit, Jet just realized the truth, because Iroh used firebending to heat up his tea lol I think he’s getting a little too relaxed.
Oh yeah, I guess this is a pretty high stakes battle for them, huh? If they lose Ba Sing Se, they basically lose the entire Earth Kingdom, right? Omashu’s already fallen, the smaller villages and whatnot have no real defense. Ba Sing Se is the last big puzzle piece to world domination (aside from the water tribes, but they’re so isolated they’re not really a threat).
I love that Toph’s nickname for Aang is Twinkle Toes. Also I laughed at the War Minister’s face when he was side-eyeing Azula just then. +That’s the face of a man who’s about to be punished!
- lol Sokka’s the only one with more rizz than Iroh! Maybe a legitimate battle strategy here would be to woo Ty Lee into switching sides? Aside from Azula she seems to be the most dangerous one. No offense to Mai, but she is kind of the odd woman out here.
Ty Lee dives into the slurry after Katara and Sokka while Mai refuses. Yeah, Mai is the weak link here in Ozai’s Angels (I love that name, by the way).
- Did Aang seriously think the general was going to hear him from that high up? Lol Toph’s helping Katara bend the slurry (how convenient that it’s both water and earth!). Ty Lee’s still trapped in it and the drill is about to blow. If I hadn’t learned my lesson on the last post, I’d probably be worried she might die in the explosion. But this is a kid’s show, she’ll be fine.
She beat him! He’s unconscious! Okay, well not anymore lol See… that right there was hubris (actually, it was kid’s show writing but whatever)! He was out for like fifteen seconds. She should have roasted him where he lay instead of picking him up and gloating.
Another fight with Azula ends in a draw with neither one beating the other! I’m starting to get a little peeved with all this edging lol but that was great! Azula is an absolute beast!
- Okay, the way Aang hammered that rock spike into the drill was pretty epic. Mai’s “We lost” (and thank you for your contribution to the fight, Mai lol) is interesting. It’s true, they did lose. Not in the combat sense, Aang couldn’t beat Azula, but he didn’t have to. He just had to hold her off. Maybe that’s kind of a metaphor for the Fire Nation military in general. It’s very powerful, but it’s also marred by incompetence and weaknesses. Many of its generals are prideful and blind to their own weaknesses, or just outright incompetent. Look at this fight: even Mai just kind of gave up halfway through. If Ty Lee wasn’t trapped in the slurry, she might very well have been able to beat Katara, Sokka, and Toph, especially since they don’t Appa this time to bail them out. And if Mai had been with her, she might have been to break Katara’s concentration with a thrown weapon, thus freeing Ty Lee from the slurry.
- Looks like Jet’s going to be causing a problem for Iroh and Zuko. I wonder if his relationship with them is what’s going to finally let him realize that not all Fire Nation people are inherently evil?
So Hope’s probably going to grow up in pretty interesting times!
Um… is Ba Sing Se a city or is it a little walled country? Cuz all I see are farms and plains!
Katara, I love you, but you’re wrong. Team Avatar is going to catch on because it’s awesome, and that’s that.
Episode 13- City of Walls and Secrets
- Oh, there’s an inner wall. So Ba Sing Se is kind of like the country in Attack on Titan! Oh yeah, in all of the excitement I almost forgot about Appa. Seriously, how many episodes has he been missing now? Damn, now that’s a city!
Walls inside that help maintain order? You mean walls that protect the rich and elite from the dirty poors? Lol Oh, Katara just confirmed it. They pen up all the poor people into a walled ghetto.
- lol when Iroh’s talking about someone bringing home a lady friend, does he mean himself? Or Zuko? It is really interesting how their views of Ba Sing Se differ though. Iroh’s talking about getting a home, socializing, building a life, and he’s even found them jobs! Zuko sees the same situation as a prison.
Toph knows what’s up. Joo Dee is purposefully brushing Sokka off and distracting the group. I’m not sure why at the moment, but something is clearly up.
- Of course they’re going to work in a tea shop! Lol Zuko’s right btw, all tea is hot leaf juice. Well, except for the teas that are hot root juice.
Someone important is trying to keep them under constant surveillance and prevent them from seeing the Earth King. In NATLA, there were spies in Omashu. Since Ba Sing Se is much bigger and more important, I imagine it’s riddled with Fire Nation spies as well, and somebody high ranking might be a traitor.
- Joo Dee is kind of scary lol and clearly the citizens are terrified of her. But what’s interesting to me is that she’s preventing them from giving information about Appa, which suggests that whoever is stopping them from seeing the Earth King also has Appa. But why? What would be the point of keeping Aang away from Appa? Is it to restrict his mobility and make him easier to capture?
It’s lucky that Iroh borrowed his neighbor’s spark rocks, but why would he refrain from firebending in what he assumes is privacy? Unless he knows he’s being watched.
- Huh, is the king’s pet bear the first normal animal on the show? Lol I am digging this undercover plan though.
The lost boys- I mean, freedom fighters are turning on Peter Pa- I mean, Jet. The weird thing is… he’s right! They are firebenders! But his behavior still isn’t healthy!
- Okay, let’s go! Jet’s hurling accusations and attacking them in public! And now Zuko’s fighting back with swords. It’s the duel of the dual-wielders! Honestly, this is probably good for Zuko. He needs to blow off some steam after everything he’s been through.
This Long Feng guy is cultural minister to the king, which means he’s probably the bad guy! And also we haven’t met any other high ranking government officials with names, so he’s currently the only option lol
- Geez, Zuko straight up intended to decapitate Jet right there. If Jet were a little slower, he would have! Man, I hope they do this fight scene in NATLA.
Yeah… can’t blame them for arresting Jet. He did look like a crazy person.
The Dai Li’s specific brand of earthbending is very cool! It almost doesn’t seem like bending at all, if that makes sense. The stones they use are like a part of their own body. And of course Long Feng is their leader.
Okay I get the king is just a puppet and Long Feng is the real rule of the country, but I still don’t understand why he doesn’t allow mention of the war in the city. I mean, it’s common knowledge! A significant portion of their population are literally refugees fleeing war! Who doesn’t know
Oh… is it the king? Does the king just not know there’s a war happening and Long Feng keeps it from him so he can stay in charge? I mean, that’s still a stretch but it would explain why he doesn’t want Team Avatar talking to the king.
- Jet is being hypnotized. Also, I do want to point out that I have seen “There is no (whatever) in Ba Sing Se” many times in the wild lol it’s nice to see where it comes from!
I didn’t think Joo Dee could be any scarier but here we are! This episode almost has horror movie vibes.
Concluding thoughts: This was a fantastic couple/throuple of episodes! I loved seeing Suki again, and I really enjoyed how the refugee subplot ties so perfectly in with Iroh and Zuko. The whole drill sequence was probably the best “action” the show has had thus far and that’s saying something. It’s also nice to have my suspicions that the Earth Kingdom has its own corruption problems and bad guys confirmed.
I have a new theory to replace my “Iroh’s going to die theory”. They’ve been showing us all season how Zuko isn’t really cut out for life on the run, whereas Iroh embraces it. I think they’re driving to a separation between Zuko and Iroh. He may not have died, but narratively speaking Zuko and Iroh have to part ways permanently or semi-permanently for his character to grow. Iroh has been propping him up and supporting him this whole time, now it’s time for Zuko to leave the nest and become his own person.
My new theory is that Iroh will enjoy his new life in Ba Sing Se so much that he elects to stay there permanently, whereas Zuko is too restless to do so. He can’t go back to the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom will not accept him, so his only choice is to join Team Avatar, where he will likely end up teaching Aang firebending.
And to expand further on a previous theory of mine, which was: Azula will kill or depose Ozai. I’ve accepted at this point that death is off the table. Kid’s show and all that. But I noticed something… lots of people were quick to say that Azula would never kill Ozai. But not one person has said she wouldn’t depose him in those refutations (unless I’m misremembering but I don’t think I am). Since you all know not to hint at things or spoil them, I think your eagerness to point out that she won’t kill Ozai is an attempt to mislead me into thinking the whole theory is wrong so I’ll be surprised when she ends up deposing (not killing) him. I mean, I could be wrong but I have a strong feeling that the final villain is going to be Fire Lord Azula, with Ozai in exile somewhere (that would be fitting! The man who banishes his own son ends up being banished himself!).
Maybe that will even be the conclusion of Zuko’s arc! While Aang goes off to save the world from Azula, Zuko splits up to confront Ozai himself! Where we are in the show right now, it really does feel like Azula is Aang’s primary antagonist whereas Ozai is Zuko’s primary antagonist.
By the way, from here on out, no confirming or denying my theories either way, okay? Let it unfold naturally, and let me figure things out on my own. I mean, where’s the fun in just giving me the answers?
And also, some of you could be a little nicer with your criticisms. I had to block someone last time I posted and I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s fine to disagree with me, it’s fine to explain why you disagree with me. Hell, most of you do! I don’t mind that, I like that we all have different views of things even if I don’t agree. It makes things interesting! But don’t talk down to me, don’t use belittling language, don’t be disrespectful. Whenever I don’t like something about ATLA (or like something about NATLA) some of you seem to take it as a personal insult or something.
Just be polite, that’s all I ask.
Okay, I’ll see you same time next week probably!
2024.05.13 20:32 genZcommentary I watched NATLA before the cartoon and now I'm watching the cartoon. Here are my thoughts on Book 2 Episodes 12-13
Hello! Here we are again, back for another ATLA commentary.
Before we get started I do want to point out that I’m numbering and labeling episodes according to how they appear on Netflix. Episode 12, as I understand it, is actually two episodes. However, since they’re presented as one thing here, that’s how I’m watching it.
Brief update on other projects: I thought I’d try watching the first Harry Potter movie, but realized it’s two and a half hours long. That’s, at the bare minimum, five hours of commentary writing. So… yeah, we’re gonna hold off on that lol I’m also considering watching a superhero/comic book show called The Boys, because I accidentally caught part of a trailer for it that my girlfriend was watching and it looks very interesting. I’ll be doing the new Game of Thrones commentary next, not sure when exactly.
Okay, let’s go!
Episode 12- The Secret of the Fire Nation
Yeah… I’m kind of surprised Aang is taking Appa’s loss as well as he is, considering how he reacted last episode. Since Sokka is talking about walking to Ba Sing Se, I take it they’re not going to be spending time looking for him? But then, didn’t the sandbenders say they sold him to a merchant from Ba Sing Se? Maybe he’s there, and Aang’s banking on that hope.
The cabbage merchant! Always a delight to see him and his cabbages! Also hilarious that a bunch of people are impersonating Aang (thought it probably would be less hilarious if any of them met Azula). If passports are necessary, how did Zuko and Iroh get tickets? Also, good on Toph for taking advantage of her privilege lol
Hey! I think that’s Suki! Her eyes are drawn really distinctively and her voice sounds familiar! Two seconds after pressing play: it is Suki! Don’t you just love my long winning streak of figuring things out right before they let us know? Lol
Well damn, Suki got her armor and makeup on real quick, didn’t she? Hm… Sokka’s worried about her. I think Suki’s going to interpret that as him being sexist again but he’s probably traumatized from losing Yue. He’s been through way too much to still be sexist. If he still had a misogynistic bone in his body, Toph would have beaten it out of him by now.
Holy shit! Nope, I would not be walking along a cliff path that narrow! I will build a rowboat and paddle my way to Ba Sing Se.
Toph is really carrying the team (and some refugees too) this episode.
Ow! Geez, that rejected hug hurt me lol Katara’s right though. Bottling up emotions just makes them worse in the long run. You have to allow yourself to feel bad sometimes. Granted, you can’t fly off the handle like he did last episode, but that’s a reaction. You can control your reactions, but you can’t control your feelings.
“It’s a beautiful moon.” “Yeah, it really is.” Okay, I know Sokka said last episode that Yue is the moon, but he was tripping on peyote. Does he actually believe that Yue is the moon now? Is Yue the moon now? I interpreted her death as he sacrificing herself to bring the moon spirit back to life, not to become the new moon spirit.
“Who is this guy? Is he taller than me?” Dude, we were having a moment. Damn it, just kiss her! Well actually, the moon’s right there so if Yue really did turn into the new moon spirit, it might be a tad awkward to kiss in front of her. But what’s he gonna do, only ever show intimacy during the day?
Of course Iroh believes in second chances. He’s the best. And also, he’s living proof that some people deserve a second chance.
Is that the unagi?! I think that’s what it’s called/spelled but I haven’t seen that episode in a while. It would be fitting if Suki and the sea serpent both share the same episodes lol No that’s not the unagi. It’s a different color. Um… what exactly was Sokka planning to do if the sea serpent actually accepted his offer and ate Momo? Considering how he reacted to losing Appa, I don’t think Aang would be too happy with him.
Oh, now she’s making an ice bridge. Not as much of a flex as maintaining an air bubble so they plumb the depths but it is faster. Oh, Toph can’t see on ice. And she can’t swim? An earthbender not being able to swim feels like a stereotype for some reason, even though I have absolutely no reason to think that lol
“You can go ahead and let me drown now.” That’s gonna be a favorite joke of mine, I just know it lol And I’m pretty sure this is probably a jumping point for a Sokka/Toph ship. What does the community call that? Soph? Tokka? (How old is Toph, anyway? Probably Aang’s age, right? That’s… probably not an appropriate ship then)
Baby Hope, eh? Probably not a super common name in this world.
Oh? Was that Aang’s way of telling Katara he loves her without actually saying it? Aww. And hey, he’s heading off on his own to search for Appa. Which… honestly kind of feels like he should have been doing that this whole time lol
Yes! Get some, Sokka! Wait, nevermind. I fucking hate that line. Ugh No! I’m not gonna be a bitter old lady on this watch-through! They’re kissing and it’s very sweet and I love that for them!
Um… there’s a giant metal dildo on the way to penetrate Ba Sing Se! Lol but seriously, how technologically advanced is the Fire Nation? A giant mobile drill of that scale would be a marvel of engineering even by our modern standards.
And this is why we love Azula. She’s not just a scary villain, she’s a competent villain.
Yes! I love that they acknowledge Sokka as the “Idea Guy”!
Iroh has got rizz for days lol I’m kind of surprised he only ever had one son. Jet wants to recruit Zuko. I’m totally down for that! They’re such an interesting pair!
Okay, engineer Sokka figured it out. It’s all a little too easy, isn’t it?
Oh yeah, I guess this is a pretty high stakes battle for them, huh? If they lose Ba Sing Se, they basically lose the entire Earth Kingdom, right? Omashu’s already fallen, the smaller villages and whatnot have no real defense. Ba Sing Se is the last big puzzle piece to world domination (aside from the water tribes, but they’re so isolated they’re not really a threat).
I love that Toph’s nickname for Aang is Twinkle Toes. Also I laughed at the War Minister’s face when he was side-eyeing Azula just then. +That’s the face of a man who’s about to be punished!
Ty Lee dives into the slurry after Katara and Sokka while Mai refuses. Yeah, Mai is the weak link here in Ozai’s Angels (I love that name, by the way).
She beat him! He’s unconscious! Okay, well not anymore lol See… that right there was hubris (actually, it was kid’s show writing but whatever)! He was out for like fifteen seconds. She should have roasted him where he lay instead of picking him up and gloating.
Another fight with Azula ends in a draw with neither one beating the other! I’m starting to get a little peeved with all this edging lol but that was great! Azula is an absolute beast!
So Hope’s probably going to grow up in pretty interesting times!
Um… is Ba Sing Se a city or is it a little walled country? Cuz all I see are farms and plains!
Katara, I love you, but you’re wrong. Team Avatar is going to catch on because it’s awesome, and that’s that.
Episode 13- City of Walls and Secrets
Walls inside that help maintain order? You mean walls that protect the rich and elite from the dirty poors? Lol Oh, Katara just confirmed it. They pen up all the poor people into a walled ghetto.
Toph knows what’s up. Joo Dee is purposefully brushing Sokka off and distracting the group. I’m not sure why at the moment, but something is clearly up.
Someone important is trying to keep them under constant surveillance and prevent them from seeing the Earth King. In NATLA, there were spies in Omashu. Since Ba Sing Se is much bigger and more important, I imagine it’s riddled with Fire Nation spies as well, and somebody high ranking might be a traitor.
It’s lucky that Iroh borrowed his neighbor’s spark rocks, but why would he refrain from firebending in what he assumes is privacy? Unless he knows he’s being watched.
The lost boys- I mean, freedom fighters are turning on Peter Pa- I mean, Jet. The weird thing is… he’s right! They are firebenders! But his behavior still isn’t healthy!
This Long Feng guy is cultural minister to the king, which means he’s probably the bad guy! And also we haven’t met any other high ranking government officials with names, so he’s currently the only option lol
Yeah… can’t blame them for arresting Jet. He did look like a crazy person.
The Dai Li’s specific brand of earthbending is very cool! It almost doesn’t seem like bending at all, if that makes sense. The stones they use are like a part of their own body. And of course Long Feng is their leader.
Okay I get the king is just a puppet and Long Feng is the real rule of the country, but I still don’t understand why he doesn’t allow mention of the war in the city. I mean, it’s common knowledge! A significant portion of their population are literally refugees fleeing war! Who doesn’t know
Oh… is it the king? Does the king just not know there’s a war happening and Long Feng keeps it from him so he can stay in charge? I mean, that’s still a stretch but it would explain why he doesn’t want Team Avatar talking to the king.
I didn’t think Joo Dee could be any scarier but here we are! This episode almost has horror movie vibes.
Concluding thoughts: This was a fantastic couple/throuple of episodes! I loved seeing Suki again, and I really enjoyed how the refugee subplot ties so perfectly in with Iroh and Zuko. The whole drill sequence was probably the best “action” the show has had thus far and that’s saying something. It’s also nice to have my suspicions that the Earth Kingdom has its own corruption problems and bad guys confirmed.
I have a new theory to replace my “Iroh’s going to die theory”. They’ve been showing us all season how Zuko isn’t really cut out for life on the run, whereas Iroh embraces it. I think they’re driving to a separation between Zuko and Iroh. He may not have died, but narratively speaking Zuko and Iroh have to part ways permanently or semi-permanently for his character to grow. Iroh has been propping him up and supporting him this whole time, now it’s time for Zuko to leave the nest and become his own person.
My new theory is that Iroh will enjoy his new life in Ba Sing Se so much that he elects to stay there permanently, whereas Zuko is too restless to do so. He can’t go back to the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom will not accept him, so his only choice is to join Team Avatar, where he will likely end up teaching Aang firebending.
And to expand further on a previous theory of mine, which was: Azula will kill or depose Ozai. I’ve accepted at this point that death is off the table. Kid’s show and all that. But I noticed something… lots of people were quick to say that Azula would never kill Ozai. But not one person has said she wouldn’t depose him in those refutations (unless I’m misremembering but I don’t think I am). Since you all know not to hint at things or spoil them, I think your eagerness to point out that she won’t kill Ozai is an attempt to mislead me into thinking the whole theory is wrong so I’ll be surprised when she ends up deposing (not killing) him. I mean, I could be wrong but I have a strong feeling that the final villain is going to be Fire Lord Azula, with Ozai in exile somewhere (that would be fitting! The man who banishes his own son ends up being banished himself!).
Maybe that will even be the conclusion of Zuko’s arc! While Aang goes off to save the world from Azula, Zuko splits up to confront Ozai himself! Where we are in the show right now, it really does feel like Azula is Aang’s primary antagonist whereas Ozai is Zuko’s primary antagonist.
By the way, from here on out, no confirming or denying my theories either way, okay? Let it unfold naturally, and let me figure things out on my own. I mean, where’s the fun in just giving me the answers?
And also, some of you could be a little nicer with your criticisms. I had to block someone last time I posted and I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s fine to disagree with me, it’s fine to explain why you disagree with me. Hell, most of you do! I don’t mind that, I like that we all have different views of things even if I don’t agree. It makes things interesting! But don’t talk down to me, don’t use belittling language, don’t be disrespectful. Whenever I don’t like something about ATLA (or like something about NATLA) some of you seem to take it as a personal insult or something.
Just be polite, that’s all I ask.
Okay, I’ll see you same time next week probably!
submitted by genZcommentary to TheLastAirbender [link] [comments]
Before we get started I do want to point out that I’m numbering and labeling episodes according to how they appear on Netflix. Episode 12, as I understand it, is actually two episodes. However, since they’re presented as one thing here, that’s how I’m watching it.
Brief update on other projects: I thought I’d try watching the first Harry Potter movie, but realized it’s two and a half hours long. That’s, at the bare minimum, five hours of commentary writing. So… yeah, we’re gonna hold off on that lol I’m also considering watching a superhero/comic book show called The Boys, because I accidentally caught part of a trailer for it that my girlfriend was watching and it looks very interesting. I’ll be doing the new Game of Thrones commentary next, not sure when exactly.
Okay, let’s go!
Episode 12- The Secret of the Fire Nation
- Well that’s a heck of a title! I hope we learn something juicy!
Yeah… I’m kind of surprised Aang is taking Appa’s loss as well as he is, considering how he reacted last episode. Since Sokka is talking about walking to Ba Sing Se, I take it they’re not going to be spending time looking for him? But then, didn’t the sandbenders say they sold him to a merchant from Ba Sing Se? Maybe he’s there, and Aang’s banking on that hope.
- I know I keep applying real-world logic to a cartoon show, but wouldn’t Ba Sing Se get awfully crowded if they’re constantly taking in refugees from the rest of the Earth Kingdom? Iroh put the city under siege for almost two years. What if the Fire Nation does that again? More mouths to feed makes starvation quicker!
The cabbage merchant! Always a delight to see him and his cabbages! Also hilarious that a bunch of people are impersonating Aang (thought it probably would be less hilarious if any of them met Azula). If passports are necessary, how did Zuko and Iroh get tickets? Also, good on Toph for taking advantage of her privilege lol
Hey! I think that’s Suki! Her eyes are drawn really distinctively and her voice sounds familiar! Two seconds after pressing play: it is Suki! Don’t you just love my long winning streak of figuring things out right before they let us know? Lol
- Glad to see ATLA Suki appreciates Sokka’s muscles just as much as NATLA Suki lol
Well damn, Suki got her armor and makeup on real quick, didn’t she? Hm… Sokka’s worried about her. I think Suki’s going to interpret that as him being sexist again but he’s probably traumatized from losing Yue. He’s been through way too much to still be sexist. If he still had a misogynistic bone in his body, Toph would have beaten it out of him by now.
- Well the Serpent’s Pass looks terrifying. Also, this pregnant lady took one look at some scratched graffiti saying “Abandon Hope” and immediately started crying, saying “How can we abandon hope? It’s all we have!” Like… come on, lady lol Just because you see graffiti telling you to do something doesn’t mean you have to, otherwise I would have called quite a few people for a good time by now.
Holy shit! Nope, I would not be walking along a cliff path that narrow! I will build a rowboat and paddle my way to Ba Sing Se.
Toph is really carrying the team (and some refugees too) this episode.
- There’s a fine line between being protective and being smothering and Sokka has hopped, jumped, and skipped right over it.
Ow! Geez, that rejected hug hurt me lol Katara’s right though. Bottling up emotions just makes them worse in the long run. You have to allow yourself to feel bad sometimes. Granted, you can’t fly off the handle like he did last episode, but that’s a reaction. You can control your reactions, but you can’t control your feelings.
“It’s a beautiful moon.” “Yeah, it really is.” Okay, I know Sokka said last episode that Yue is the moon, but he was tripping on peyote. Does he actually believe that Yue is the moon now? Is Yue the moon now? I interpreted her death as he sacrificing herself to bring the moon spirit back to life, not to become the new moon spirit.
“Who is this guy? Is he taller than me?” Dude, we were having a moment. Damn it, just kiss her! Well actually, the moon’s right there so if Yue really did turn into the new moon spirit, it might be a tad awkward to kiss in front of her. But what’s he gonna do, only ever show intimacy during the day?
- Um… I’m probably reading too much into this Smellerbee scene with Iroh and Longshot and I’m almost hesitant to say what I’m thinking because I can just imagine the backlash I could get for voicing it. And it’s not like ATLA has had great LGBTQ representation up to this point, so… Yeah, I’m probably just seeing things that aren’t there.
Of course Iroh believes in second chances. He’s the best. And also, he’s living proof that some people deserve a second chance.
- Uh… Katara parting the sea while leading refugees to safety invokes a certain comparison, doesn’t it? But can I just say that I love how her solution to crossing the gap is to literally walk through the ocean instead of making a raft out of ice and floating across. She just never misses an opportunity to flex on everyone, does she? Lol
Is that the unagi?! I think that’s what it’s called/spelled but I haven’t seen that episode in a while. It would be fitting if Suki and the sea serpent both share the same episodes lol No that’s not the unagi. It’s a different color. Um… what exactly was Sokka planning to do if the sea serpent actually accepted his offer and ate Momo? Considering how he reacted to losing Appa, I don’t think Aang would be too happy with him.
Oh, now she’s making an ice bridge. Not as much of a flex as maintaining an air bubble so they plumb the depths but it is faster. Oh, Toph can’t see on ice. And she can’t swim? An earthbender not being able to swim feels like a stereotype for some reason, even though I have absolutely no reason to think that lol
“You can go ahead and let me drown now.” That’s gonna be a favorite joke of mine, I just know it lol And I’m pretty sure this is probably a jumping point for a Sokka/Toph ship. What does the community call that? Soph? Tokka? (How old is Toph, anyway? Probably Aang’s age, right? That’s… probably not an appropriate ship then)
- Why does Ba Sing Se’s wall remind me of The Wall from Game of Thrones? Obviously not made of ice though lol
- Like I said earlier, ATLA isn’t heavy on the LGBTQ representation, but I swear I’m picking up on some tension and chemistry between Jet and Zuko (Juko? Jeko? Zet?). And now half of Jet’s little group is an LGBTQ allegory for me lol Even the dialogue between Jet and Zuko in this scene is slightly suggestive.
Baby Hope, eh? Probably not a super common name in this world.
Oh? Was that Aang’s way of telling Katara he loves her without actually saying it? Aww. And hey, he’s heading off on his own to search for Appa. Which… honestly kind of feels like he should have been doing that this whole time lol
Yes! Get some, Sokka! Wait, nevermind. I fucking hate that line. Ugh No! I’m not gonna be a bitter old lady on this watch-through! They’re kissing and it’s very sweet and I love that for them!
Um… there’s a giant metal dildo on the way to penetrate Ba Sing Se! Lol but seriously, how technologically advanced is the Fire Nation? A giant mobile drill of that scale would be a marvel of engineering even by our modern standards.
- Well hey, there’s the title card letting me know when the next episode starts.
And this is why we love Azula. She’s not just a scary villain, she’s a competent villain.
- And the Earth Kingdom general shares the War Minister’s hubris. Why are the people in charge always the worst people to be in charge? Also, I love that Toph is the one to point out that Iroh broke through the wall.
Yes! I love that they acknowledge Sokka as the “Idea Guy”!
Iroh has got rizz for days lol I’m kind of surprised he only ever had one son. Jet wants to recruit Zuko. I’m totally down for that! They’re such an interesting pair!
- I really love that Katara, whose probably the best waterbender in the world at this point, respects Ty Lee enough to recognize how dangerous she is. And Sokka had an idea! They’re going to take down the drill from the inside. Because how the hell else are they going to stop something that big?
Okay, engineer Sokka figured it out. It’s all a little too easy, isn’t it?
- Ah shit, Jet just realized the truth, because Iroh used firebending to heat up his tea lol I think he’s getting a little too relaxed.
Oh yeah, I guess this is a pretty high stakes battle for them, huh? If they lose Ba Sing Se, they basically lose the entire Earth Kingdom, right? Omashu’s already fallen, the smaller villages and whatnot have no real defense. Ba Sing Se is the last big puzzle piece to world domination (aside from the water tribes, but they’re so isolated they’re not really a threat).
I love that Toph’s nickname for Aang is Twinkle Toes. Also I laughed at the War Minister’s face when he was side-eyeing Azula just then. +That’s the face of a man who’s about to be punished!
- lol Sokka’s the only one with more rizz than Iroh! Maybe a legitimate battle strategy here would be to woo Ty Lee into switching sides? Aside from Azula she seems to be the most dangerous one. No offense to Mai, but she is kind of the odd woman out here.
Ty Lee dives into the slurry after Katara and Sokka while Mai refuses. Yeah, Mai is the weak link here in Ozai’s Angels (I love that name, by the way).
- Did Aang seriously think the general was going to hear him from that high up? Lol Toph’s helping Katara bend the slurry (how convenient that it’s both water and earth!). Ty Lee’s still trapped in it and the drill is about to blow. If I hadn’t learned my lesson on the last post, I’d probably be worried she might die in the explosion. But this is a kid’s show, she’ll be fine.
She beat him! He’s unconscious! Okay, well not anymore lol See… that right there was hubris (actually, it was kid’s show writing but whatever)! He was out for like fifteen seconds. She should have roasted him where he lay instead of picking him up and gloating.
Another fight with Azula ends in a draw with neither one beating the other! I’m starting to get a little peeved with all this edging lol but that was great! Azula is an absolute beast!
- Okay, the way Aang hammered that rock spike into the drill was pretty epic. Mai’s “We lost” (and thank you for your contribution to the fight, Mai lol) is interesting. It’s true, they did lose. Not in the combat sense, Aang couldn’t beat Azula, but he didn’t have to. He just had to hold her off. Maybe that’s kind of a metaphor for the Fire Nation military in general. It’s very powerful, but it’s also marred by incompetence and weaknesses. Many of its generals are prideful and blind to their own weaknesses, or just outright incompetent. Look at this fight: even Mai just kind of gave up halfway through. If Ty Lee wasn’t trapped in the slurry, she might very well have been able to beat Katara, Sokka, and Toph, especially since they don’t Appa this time to bail them out. And if Mai had been with her, she might have been to break Katara’s concentration with a thrown weapon, thus freeing Ty Lee from the slurry.
- Looks like Jet’s going to be causing a problem for Iroh and Zuko. I wonder if his relationship with them is what’s going to finally let him realize that not all Fire Nation people are inherently evil?
So Hope’s probably going to grow up in pretty interesting times!
Um… is Ba Sing Se a city or is it a little walled country? Cuz all I see are farms and plains!
Katara, I love you, but you’re wrong. Team Avatar is going to catch on because it’s awesome, and that’s that.
Episode 13- City of Walls and Secrets
- Oh, there’s an inner wall. So Ba Sing Se is kind of like the country in Attack on Titan! Oh yeah, in all of the excitement I almost forgot about Appa. Seriously, how many episodes has he been missing now? Damn, now that’s a city!
Walls inside that help maintain order? You mean walls that protect the rich and elite from the dirty poors? Lol Oh, Katara just confirmed it. They pen up all the poor people into a walled ghetto.
- lol when Iroh’s talking about someone bringing home a lady friend, does he mean himself? Or Zuko? It is really interesting how their views of Ba Sing Se differ though. Iroh’s talking about getting a home, socializing, building a life, and he’s even found them jobs! Zuko sees the same situation as a prison.
Toph knows what’s up. Joo Dee is purposefully brushing Sokka off and distracting the group. I’m not sure why at the moment, but something is clearly up.
- Of course they’re going to work in a tea shop! Lol Zuko’s right btw, all tea is hot leaf juice. Well, except for the teas that are hot root juice.
Someone important is trying to keep them under constant surveillance and prevent them from seeing the Earth King. In NATLA, there were spies in Omashu. Since Ba Sing Se is much bigger and more important, I imagine it’s riddled with Fire Nation spies as well, and somebody high ranking might be a traitor.
- Joo Dee is kind of scary lol and clearly the citizens are terrified of her. But what’s interesting to me is that she’s preventing them from giving information about Appa, which suggests that whoever is stopping them from seeing the Earth King also has Appa. But why? What would be the point of keeping Aang away from Appa? Is it to restrict his mobility and make him easier to capture?
It’s lucky that Iroh borrowed his neighbor’s spark rocks, but why would he refrain from firebending in what he assumes is privacy? Unless he knows he’s being watched.
- Huh, is the king’s pet bear the first normal animal on the show? Lol I am digging this undercover plan though.
The lost boys- I mean, freedom fighters are turning on Peter Pa- I mean, Jet. The weird thing is… he’s right! They are firebenders! But his behavior still isn’t healthy!
- Okay, let’s go! Jet’s hurling accusations and attacking them in public! And now Zuko’s fighting back with swords. It’s the duel of the dual-wielders! Honestly, this is probably good for Zuko. He needs to blow off some steam after everything he’s been through.
This Long Feng guy is cultural minister to the king, which means he’s probably the bad guy! And also we haven’t met any other high ranking government officials with names, so he’s currently the only option lol
- Geez, Zuko straight up intended to decapitate Jet right there. If Jet were a little slower, he would have! Man, I hope they do this fight scene in NATLA.
Yeah… can’t blame them for arresting Jet. He did look like a crazy person.
The Dai Li’s specific brand of earthbending is very cool! It almost doesn’t seem like bending at all, if that makes sense. The stones they use are like a part of their own body. And of course Long Feng is their leader.
Okay I get the king is just a puppet and Long Feng is the real rule of the country, but I still don’t understand why he doesn’t allow mention of the war in the city. I mean, it’s common knowledge! A significant portion of their population are literally refugees fleeing war! Who doesn’t know
Oh… is it the king? Does the king just not know there’s a war happening and Long Feng keeps it from him so he can stay in charge? I mean, that’s still a stretch but it would explain why he doesn’t want Team Avatar talking to the king.
- Jet is being hypnotized. Also, I do want to point out that I have seen “There is no (whatever) in Ba Sing Se” many times in the wild lol it’s nice to see where it comes from!
I didn’t think Joo Dee could be any scarier but here we are! This episode almost has horror movie vibes.
Concluding thoughts: This was a fantastic couple/throuple of episodes! I loved seeing Suki again, and I really enjoyed how the refugee subplot ties so perfectly in with Iroh and Zuko. The whole drill sequence was probably the best “action” the show has had thus far and that’s saying something. It’s also nice to have my suspicions that the Earth Kingdom has its own corruption problems and bad guys confirmed.
I have a new theory to replace my “Iroh’s going to die theory”. They’ve been showing us all season how Zuko isn’t really cut out for life on the run, whereas Iroh embraces it. I think they’re driving to a separation between Zuko and Iroh. He may not have died, but narratively speaking Zuko and Iroh have to part ways permanently or semi-permanently for his character to grow. Iroh has been propping him up and supporting him this whole time, now it’s time for Zuko to leave the nest and become his own person.
My new theory is that Iroh will enjoy his new life in Ba Sing Se so much that he elects to stay there permanently, whereas Zuko is too restless to do so. He can’t go back to the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom will not accept him, so his only choice is to join Team Avatar, where he will likely end up teaching Aang firebending.
And to expand further on a previous theory of mine, which was: Azula will kill or depose Ozai. I’ve accepted at this point that death is off the table. Kid’s show and all that. But I noticed something… lots of people were quick to say that Azula would never kill Ozai. But not one person has said she wouldn’t depose him in those refutations (unless I’m misremembering but I don’t think I am). Since you all know not to hint at things or spoil them, I think your eagerness to point out that she won’t kill Ozai is an attempt to mislead me into thinking the whole theory is wrong so I’ll be surprised when she ends up deposing (not killing) him. I mean, I could be wrong but I have a strong feeling that the final villain is going to be Fire Lord Azula, with Ozai in exile somewhere (that would be fitting! The man who banishes his own son ends up being banished himself!).
Maybe that will even be the conclusion of Zuko’s arc! While Aang goes off to save the world from Azula, Zuko splits up to confront Ozai himself! Where we are in the show right now, it really does feel like Azula is Aang’s primary antagonist whereas Ozai is Zuko’s primary antagonist.
By the way, from here on out, no confirming or denying my theories either way, okay? Let it unfold naturally, and let me figure things out on my own. I mean, where’s the fun in just giving me the answers?
And also, some of you could be a little nicer with your criticisms. I had to block someone last time I posted and I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s fine to disagree with me, it’s fine to explain why you disagree with me. Hell, most of you do! I don’t mind that, I like that we all have different views of things even if I don’t agree. It makes things interesting! But don’t talk down to me, don’t use belittling language, don’t be disrespectful. Whenever I don’t like something about ATLA (or like something about NATLA) some of you seem to take it as a personal insult or something.
Just be polite, that’s all I ask.
Okay, I’ll see you same time next week probably!
2024.05.13 15:49 davo9656 Lost: Giant "Aqua Lily" swim mat in Kanata
In the category of random and strange things to lose: On Friday I was driving to the cottage with an Aqua Lily, one of those giant yellow swimming rafts (aka lily pad) in my trailer. Unfortunately it came loose somewhere on Eagleson between Bridlewood and 417, or on 417 between March onramp and HWY 7 exit and I didn't see it fall off. If anyone located a giant yellow swim raft on the road, that was me and I would appreciate you reaching out. In the 10 minutes it took me to drive back, it was gone. It was a birthday present for my daughter so I would really appreciate tracking it down. And yes, I'll save you the snarky replies, I learned my lesson the hard way, it could have caused an accident, yes I know all of that, been kicking myself all weekend over it. Thanks Ottawa,
submitted by davo9656 to ottawa [link] [comments]
2024.05.12 21:08 wasntvcashmoneyofu Boating gets scarier every year!!!
Hi everyone!
My whitewater anxiety has been ramping up the last couple of years and it’s starting to prevent me from boating.
Today I put my raft on my trailer, got alll dressed in gear, and headed to the take out to meet with friends I have boated with numerous times to do a river I’ve been running for years.
But the fear hit. I have 2 kinds of anxiety. The first one is a normal un-easy feeling that I am able to logically work through and eventually push past. I can still have a good time.
The second kind seems completely irrational, no amount of working through it mentally makes any difference. I get tunnel vision and can’t seem to function as well. If anyone interacts with me it’s like I have to strain over the fear just to be able to hear them.
I don’t know exactly what triggers it other than the thought of rowing my boat down the river in a certain rapid (that I have never had carnage at, either). I know I could swim this whole river if I had to. I know I can flip my raft back up if anything went wrong.
It feels like a very irrational physical reaction.
I also kayak too but got a raft 2 years ago because I was so sick of being sick to my stomach just to go boating which used to be so much fun for me. So I figured maybe a raft would be good for me and it did help a bit.
I started boating several years ago and was able to get on the river many times a week. Since then I decided to go back to school and haven’t been able to juggle my time management enough to get on the river all the time. I get chronic migraines too so after working and schooling a long week I often need rest and sadly cannot just push myself to get on the river as much as I used to.
I can tell I am out of shape. I am a small female and I have lost weight being inside working at a desk all the time so I think I am perceiving myself as weak and I don’t have the confidence that I will be able to control ANY situation that gets thrown at me which psychs me out.
I know the only solution is to boat more and get strong again and i wanna make it happen this summer. But each time I boat it seems like the anxiety is even worse than before to the point where it’s like… what is the point of me doing this if it’s awful all the time.
I understand the importance of getting myself out my comfort zone repetitively.
So I feel like I know the solution, I know the problem, maybe I’m not looking for answers but if anyone has suggestions or has been here before let me know!!!
submitted by wasntvcashmoneyofu to whitewater [link] [comments]
My whitewater anxiety has been ramping up the last couple of years and it’s starting to prevent me from boating.
Today I put my raft on my trailer, got alll dressed in gear, and headed to the take out to meet with friends I have boated with numerous times to do a river I’ve been running for years.
But the fear hit. I have 2 kinds of anxiety. The first one is a normal un-easy feeling that I am able to logically work through and eventually push past. I can still have a good time.
The second kind seems completely irrational, no amount of working through it mentally makes any difference. I get tunnel vision and can’t seem to function as well. If anyone interacts with me it’s like I have to strain over the fear just to be able to hear them.
I don’t know exactly what triggers it other than the thought of rowing my boat down the river in a certain rapid (that I have never had carnage at, either). I know I could swim this whole river if I had to. I know I can flip my raft back up if anything went wrong.
It feels like a very irrational physical reaction.
I also kayak too but got a raft 2 years ago because I was so sick of being sick to my stomach just to go boating which used to be so much fun for me. So I figured maybe a raft would be good for me and it did help a bit.
I started boating several years ago and was able to get on the river many times a week. Since then I decided to go back to school and haven’t been able to juggle my time management enough to get on the river all the time. I get chronic migraines too so after working and schooling a long week I often need rest and sadly cannot just push myself to get on the river as much as I used to.
I can tell I am out of shape. I am a small female and I have lost weight being inside working at a desk all the time so I think I am perceiving myself as weak and I don’t have the confidence that I will be able to control ANY situation that gets thrown at me which psychs me out.
I know the only solution is to boat more and get strong again and i wanna make it happen this summer. But each time I boat it seems like the anxiety is even worse than before to the point where it’s like… what is the point of me doing this if it’s awful all the time.
I understand the importance of getting myself out my comfort zone repetitively.
So I feel like I know the solution, I know the problem, maybe I’m not looking for answers but if anyone has suggestions or has been here before let me know!!!
2024.04.29 20:16 skeeter1996 Light off-road & towing towing capabilities, reliable with luxury, what car should I buy? (45k budget)
As the title insinuates, I am looking for a daily driver that is capable in the mountains. I live in Denver, Colorado and occasionally tow a small trailer and raft. I love the mountains so I will need 4WD/AWD.
I don’t need an off-road tailored vehicle since I spend 80% of the time in and around the city. I’d like it to be comfortable. I want something pretty reliable with some luxury.
I’m looking at used vehicles as long as the tech isn’t super dated. Would love to hear everyone’s recommendations!
submitted by skeeter1996 to whatcarshouldIbuy [link] [comments]
I don’t need an off-road tailored vehicle since I spend 80% of the time in and around the city. I’d like it to be comfortable. I want something pretty reliable with some luxury.
I’m looking at used vehicles as long as the tech isn’t super dated. Would love to hear everyone’s recommendations!
2024.04.27 15:08 Fheang [NA] ASA Sunnyvale Trailer Park No Wipe PVE Cluster Boosted w/ FAST breeding
https://preview.redd.it/w21vlemrt0xc1.png?width=700&format=png&auto=webp&s=2bff1843f15d8ebd72ecde39e07caf4de050e1b7
~WELCOME TO THE TRAILER PARK~
~Discord~ : KqpUB9FqMw
Server Names ~Island~ : Sunnyvale Trailer Park [ISLAND] 5xXP 20xT ~Scorched~ : Sunnyvale Trailer Park [SCORCH] 2.5xXP 10xT
We are a friendly cluster of servers perfect for new players, casual players, or players who just wanna chill with their dino pals! Our servers are moderately boosted with fast breeding. As we are still a growing server there is PLENTY OF SPACE TO BUILD! We are also looking for like minded people wanting to help the server grow, provide feedback, & make suggestions that could make the server better than ever!
We are proud to offer some custom content to our players:
submitted by Fheang to ARKServers [link] [comments]
~WELCOME TO THE TRAILER PARK~
~Discord~ : KqpUB9FqMw
Server Names ~Island~ : Sunnyvale Trailer Park [ISLAND] 5xXP 20xT ~Scorched~ : Sunnyvale Trailer Park [SCORCH] 2.5xXP 10xT
We are a friendly cluster of servers perfect for new players, casual players, or players who just wanna chill with their dino pals! Our servers are moderately boosted with fast breeding. As we are still a growing server there is PLENTY OF SPACE TO BUILD! We are also looking for like minded people wanting to help the server grow, provide feedback, & make suggestions that could make the server better than ever!
We are proud to offer some custom content to our players:
- Starter Kits & Admin shop
- Growing economy using Berrybush Seeds
- Increased stack size & carry weight
- Flyer, Dino, & Player speed leveling
- Cryopod Mod & Other QOL Mods
- Max Dino 210 / Wyvern 280
- Tek Binos, Replicators @ lvl 50, Teleporters lvl 1!
- Community center & donation boxes
- Cross platform game play
- Pelayori's Cryo Storage
- Automated Ark
- Custom Dino Levels
- Additions Ascended: Ceratosaurus
- Gigantoraptor
- Better Rafts (Island Only)
- Arkitect Structures Remastered (Island Only)
- Foundation Ceilings (Island Only)
2024.04.21 20:56 Administrative_Art43 Big raft small trailer
Hi, I've got a 14ft raft on a 9ft flat trailer. It seems to be working out fine except I'm having trouble making sure my license plate and tail lights are visible. I'm thinking I'll put the tail lights on the sides. But us there anything against putting the license plate on the raft itself? I really haven't been able to figure out how to make it visible. Also I've hear that you aren't required to have tail lights during the day is that true? I'm in colorado. Any help is appreciated, thanks
submitted by Administrative_Art43 to rafting [link] [comments]
2024.04.16 00:22 LordDMX The Endless Ocean (Ocean RP in celebration of finding out about a new Endless Ocean game!)
Hello hello everyone! I am in a very good mood today. Why, you may ask? I found out a great diving game, Endless Ocean, is getting a new game soon after 15 years! Now, I am late, as the announcement trailer was a month ago, but I'm still so excited!
To explain, Endless Ocean is a series about diving and exploring the ocean. You dive deep into the endless blue, finding flora, fauna, and maybe even an ancient ruin or two! They're very calming games and I highly recommend them along with In Other Waters, a game where you play as an AI helping a diver in an alien planet's ocean.
So, to celebrate, I would love to do an RP about what covers 70 percent of our great planet...the ocean! It can be about diving, fishing, sailing, even being creatures inside the ocean! Whatever you're up for, I'm happy with!
For diving, I can see us working as researchers, be it biologist, geologists, or even finding ancient empires covered by the sea! We can also be speargun hunters, taking on some of the strongest creatures in the ocean for food and glory. That can be set to the side if it's too serious, of course.
Sailing could be very fun as well. It can be set in any era from when humanity first rowed on crude rafts to pirates, the modern era, even the future! I think during the Age of Exploration could be fun. Many people from all over the globe go to find foreign lands and seas and learn all they can about them.
It doesn't have to just take place on Earth either. Maybe humanity finds a new planet teeming with life, covered in water, and makes floating and undersea colonies to study, survive and thrive in this new world. It can be a fantasy world where gods live in the deep and the world is many islands. Whatever you want to do, I'm game for.
Anyways, I've probably rambled enough. This doesn't have to be anything serious, just having fun in a watery world. I'm fine with messages or Discord and I can write in first and third person, whatever is most comfortable for you. Let's talk soon and have a great day!
submitted by LordDMX to Roleplay [link] [comments]
To explain, Endless Ocean is a series about diving and exploring the ocean. You dive deep into the endless blue, finding flora, fauna, and maybe even an ancient ruin or two! They're very calming games and I highly recommend them along with In Other Waters, a game where you play as an AI helping a diver in an alien planet's ocean.
So, to celebrate, I would love to do an RP about what covers 70 percent of our great planet...the ocean! It can be about diving, fishing, sailing, even being creatures inside the ocean! Whatever you're up for, I'm happy with!
For diving, I can see us working as researchers, be it biologist, geologists, or even finding ancient empires covered by the sea! We can also be speargun hunters, taking on some of the strongest creatures in the ocean for food and glory. That can be set to the side if it's too serious, of course.
Sailing could be very fun as well. It can be set in any era from when humanity first rowed on crude rafts to pirates, the modern era, even the future! I think during the Age of Exploration could be fun. Many people from all over the globe go to find foreign lands and seas and learn all they can about them.
It doesn't have to just take place on Earth either. Maybe humanity finds a new planet teeming with life, covered in water, and makes floating and undersea colonies to study, survive and thrive in this new world. It can be a fantasy world where gods live in the deep and the world is many islands. Whatever you want to do, I'm game for.
Anyways, I've probably rambled enough. This doesn't have to be anything serious, just having fun in a watery world. I'm fine with messages or Discord and I can write in first and third person, whatever is most comfortable for you. Let's talk soon and have a great day!
2024.04.14 18:58 boomjackgame Boomerang Jack - Recall Interactive - Piratey Zelda-Like with over-the-top Boomerang Combat
Steam - Demo & Trailer Twitter Discord
Hey Games! We're a team of 3 from Texas, excited to show you our over-the-top action game, Boomerang Jack. Boomerang Jack is a pirate action-adventure with a heavy emphasis on combat.
Fights present combat puzzles involving prioritizing enemies, parkour platforming to them, managing your health and surroundings, using the right abilities against the right foes, and expressing your own unique style. Snappy controls allow you to make decisions on the fly and keep up with the breakneck action.
Time-Bending and Telekinesis: Kick projectiles back matrix-style, dash in an instant to evade attacks, and combine a kick and dash to slide across the arena kicking projectiles in bullet-time. Pull enemies and explosives in with a telekinetic tornado, halt time while you aim, and launch them back out. Shockwave enemies to stun and freeze them in time. Combine these abilities to turn the tides and dominate the arena.
Enemy Combinations: 26 unique enemy types playing a specific role in combat like a chess piece are combined with distinct arena design, powerups, hazards, and traversal challenges to create a uniquely challenging arena fight every time.
Boss Fights: 8 multi-phase boss fights challenge a number of skills - from tight timing of parries (in the form of kicks) and dashes, to management of one's health and surroundings, to fluid parkour platforming.
Parkour Platforming: Combat arenas are designed to challenge movement skills mid-battle. Traveling to a new area with a new target may entail swinging between a chain of grappling hooks, getting shot out of a bullet-time cannon, riding a raft, avoiding lasers and spikes, triple dashing, or a combination of moves, to create fluid, parkour-style platforming sequences.
Skill Tree: 50 ways to upgrade your boomerang combos, dash powers, shockwave add-ons, kicking techniques, tornadoes and firepower. Upgrades are designed to change how you play the game, adding on more depth and complexity to each mechanic rather than giving small stat increments. All items are unlocked with in-game treasure only, with the ability to re-spec at any time.
Style Meter and Accessibility: The style meter goes from D to SSS and allows anyone to enjoy the game, while 6 difficulty options allow tuning enemy speed and aggressiveness. Coming out on top with an SSS rank requires a strong command of all of Jack's abilities, incentivizing an intelligently aggressive playstyle where players will have the most fun.
Boomerang Battles: Combine light and heavy attacks to create stylish combos with unique purposes. Some cover a wide area, others a narrow area but do massive damage, and some pull enemies in or push them away.
Jack's Quest: Plunge into a shrouded realm of primordial threats and untapped power in this swashbuckling action-adventure. Guide Jack through seas, ships, swamps, snow, caverns, mountains, volcanoes and ruins to uncover a dark impending reality that will shake the world.
We're planning on releasing the full game in 2024, and would love for you to try our free demo preview. Hope you'll check it out and wishlist if you like it. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
submitted by boomjackgame to Games [link] [comments]
Hey Games! We're a team of 3 from Texas, excited to show you our over-the-top action game, Boomerang Jack. Boomerang Jack is a pirate action-adventure with a heavy emphasis on combat.
Fights present combat puzzles involving prioritizing enemies, parkour platforming to them, managing your health and surroundings, using the right abilities against the right foes, and expressing your own unique style. Snappy controls allow you to make decisions on the fly and keep up with the breakneck action.
Time-Bending and Telekinesis: Kick projectiles back matrix-style, dash in an instant to evade attacks, and combine a kick and dash to slide across the arena kicking projectiles in bullet-time. Pull enemies and explosives in with a telekinetic tornado, halt time while you aim, and launch them back out. Shockwave enemies to stun and freeze them in time. Combine these abilities to turn the tides and dominate the arena.
Enemy Combinations: 26 unique enemy types playing a specific role in combat like a chess piece are combined with distinct arena design, powerups, hazards, and traversal challenges to create a uniquely challenging arena fight every time.
Boss Fights: 8 multi-phase boss fights challenge a number of skills - from tight timing of parries (in the form of kicks) and dashes, to management of one's health and surroundings, to fluid parkour platforming.
Parkour Platforming: Combat arenas are designed to challenge movement skills mid-battle. Traveling to a new area with a new target may entail swinging between a chain of grappling hooks, getting shot out of a bullet-time cannon, riding a raft, avoiding lasers and spikes, triple dashing, or a combination of moves, to create fluid, parkour-style platforming sequences.
Skill Tree: 50 ways to upgrade your boomerang combos, dash powers, shockwave add-ons, kicking techniques, tornadoes and firepower. Upgrades are designed to change how you play the game, adding on more depth and complexity to each mechanic rather than giving small stat increments. All items are unlocked with in-game treasure only, with the ability to re-spec at any time.
Style Meter and Accessibility: The style meter goes from D to SSS and allows anyone to enjoy the game, while 6 difficulty options allow tuning enemy speed and aggressiveness. Coming out on top with an SSS rank requires a strong command of all of Jack's abilities, incentivizing an intelligently aggressive playstyle where players will have the most fun.
Boomerang Battles: Combine light and heavy attacks to create stylish combos with unique purposes. Some cover a wide area, others a narrow area but do massive damage, and some pull enemies in or push them away.
Jack's Quest: Plunge into a shrouded realm of primordial threats and untapped power in this swashbuckling action-adventure. Guide Jack through seas, ships, swamps, snow, caverns, mountains, volcanoes and ruins to uncover a dark impending reality that will shake the world.
We're planning on releasing the full game in 2024, and would love for you to try our free demo preview. Hope you'll check it out and wishlist if you like it. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
2024.04.11 01:04 skeeter1996 Should I sell both of my cars and buy one?
I’m 27 and am in a good financial position with my job. Last year I bought a 2018 S6 that I daily drive (now has 35k miles & stage 1 tune). I also have a 2011 ford f-150 (190k miles) that continues to have problems. I live in Colorado and am thinking about selling both cars and having 1 that does it all. Insurance for both cars and car payment for one totals $850/month, which I’d like to bring down as I look to buy a house. Outstanding P&I payments on the Audi is ~20k.
I’ll need the new car to be good in snow, light towing (small trailer and raft), mild off-road capabilities, some sportiness preferred but not required. It needs to fit enough gear for long camping trips and miscellaneous road trips (no small SUVs or sedans).
What should I be looking at? Should I keep both of them and continue to fix the truck as it eventually breaks?
submitted by skeeter1996 to whatcarshouldIbuy [link] [comments]
I’ll need the new car to be good in snow, light towing (small trailer and raft), mild off-road capabilities, some sportiness preferred but not required. It needs to fit enough gear for long camping trips and miscellaneous road trips (no small SUVs or sedans).
What should I be looking at? Should I keep both of them and continue to fix the truck as it eventually breaks?
2024.04.06 12:42 MO0N5H1N3 What are some similar films to this?
 | submitted by MO0N5H1N3 to Letterboxd [link] [comments] |
2024.04.04 09:04 Serious_Position5472 [POEM] Some Very Popular Songs by Rolf Dieter Brinkmann
This poem is INSANE.
SOME VERY POPULAR SONGS
for example cows beneath the moon, peaceful souls, ruminating, Buddha-guts in the high grass, hidden between small trees and
clumps of brush in the constant greenness, a practical black-and-white- spotted metaphysics, tormented by summer flies which stick to their
saliva. The space hangs inside their eyes like a gong, which beckons to the slaughterhouse. Or a blue rain barrel in the south, where
the sky is an endless continuation of blue, hallucinated spaces during the day, but real. The tricks of the Rolling Stones are over.
I listen to Leonard Cohen singing, there is a war between the men and the women, why don’t you come on back to the war, it’s just be-
ginning. Various grasses grow along the edges, enchanted green. The grass is moved, moves itself, and all the years came, like
always, one after the other: good- bye, fast cloud, goodbye blue sky in the window frames, good- bye, dried grass,
naked in the first twilight, goodbye. A wet barbed wire fence stands there, crooked posts, goodbye, suburbs, as though
no one lives there, fragments of biographies and newspapers, the senseless waving. Some lines are like the waving of children from a
train window while passing through strange cities in the afternoon, passing the rows of low-rent apartments with the single faces at the windows:
if all the confessions in the world that were ever given and written down in the courts of the world were put together and
dragged by one after the other, what an endless misery it would be to be in the world. Someone calls, dials any old
number, and I hear only their breath, and there again is the distance, the soft crackling noise of the
confusion in another place, and otherwise nothing there in the afternoon. And in the morning, when you get up and stare at the hotel
breakfast and you don’t understand why you’re in this hotel room, where you actually are, and you think about what you can do at eight in the morning
after an almost sleepless night, and nothing else comes to mind except to take the three dirty shirts to the laundry, having already
showered at seven, do you embrace the morning light at nine? Or do you say, goodbye, morning light? And then you hear the rush
of a flushing toilet while you walk along a long hallway and what do you feel then? That everything is in order? At ten someone calls and
talks about death, and you make a joke about the film projectionist with cancer who’s been with the company for 25 years, and whoever else is in the room
laughs as well. Who goes through the rooms, unfamiliar, and remembers the lines from the song: Green leaves, how are you alone? What sort of damned lonely
business letters are being written. The signatures don’t matter at all. And you sing your song, “Lady, I’m out of here!” That also belongs to the popular
songs. The peaceful Buddha-souls lie spotted black-and-white in the greenness. They chew beneath the same light the soft green grass again.
like the franc into centimes and the English pound into the cheap tobacco of Spanish coins, where the ostmark breaks into eye-wrinkles and a
tractor stands in the candlelight, where the Swedish öre disintegrates into insurance like world empires, where the sturgeon dies in the rivers and the herring
in the North Sea, where the distances between the cities grow like the disintegration among the single cities, where the yen is changed into the cruzeiro,
where too much is invested in soap, where the Bulgarian tin cans are converted into Argentinean bank drafts, disintegrating like the Finnish
currency, where forests are rafted down the rivers, where bone meal becomes plastic, where sums are copied, where the geese become zlotys
and are frozen in black aspic, where the dinar drives the camel, the corn rots in the fields, decaying like teeth which will be exchanged, where the
peso dies miserably, the black underwear rises, disintegrating like revenue stamps into whichever sort of coins the faces may disintegrate, into whatever bodily needs, piss, dirt paths, rest
rooms and bed sheets, where the army is financing the study of poetry, where the technical institutes explain the world, the twitching heart of a turtle
hanging from a thread for all to see, where the licenses set the limits, decomposing into animal-pictures, where signatures are needed, testaments, accounts, where the bank
holidays are there for a sigh of relief, to hang out the flags and decorate the day, where the carbide stank, where the bottles burst, where the rubble lay strewn and the tattoos,
the companies proliferate like the mass media, the chunks of stone and rubble have been cleared aside, the pain and the sorrow sold off, decomposed into monthly wages,
where there is still something to do, the specter of unemployment drives them together, the ghosts of the owners, the ghosts of the employees, where all of them are busy
administering this world, or what they consider to be this world, traps, driven together in the offices, but the offices disintegrate, where the rooms have many doors and glass
walls, the elevator shafts disintegrate, the arcades disintegrate, smashed store windows, mold spores, wild vegetation, in between store-window
mannequins, rats scurrying through long ruined arcades, rats in the pale empty corridors of the skyscrapers, where the last cripples are still being
driven together, everyone driven together to administrate this world, these walls, cyclone fences, entrances, the class- rooms like ruined swimming pools,
like signatures which disintegrate, where nights the children scream in the apartment towers, dismally bound to the silence, where the children throw up
their baby food again, where the bodies lie next to each other in the darkness and masturbate in order to go to sleep, finally exhausted and empty, decomposing
like the face of a television announcer in the half-insane dream, who makes new announcements in different voices like on scratched records, disintegrating
like shillings, where the twisted pain becomes jokes in a dialect, applauded by the ranks, where the ranks finally disintegrate, where a radio announcer
pulls her tampon out of the hairy hole between her legs on the toilet in the office of the National Public Radio during a pause in which poems are read, where the
Sundays are endless, decayed like sick lungs, where it is said, that is not your face, that is not your face, where the coins disintegrate into faces, old
faces, dead faces, grieved and hideous on the banknotes which disintegrate, where we go, simple daylight sparkles in the rain puddles, sparkles in the
dripping trees, pleasure, the astonishment of the eyes, when you laughed as you saw your trailer, the beautiful laughter of a total lack of understanding as you opened
the car door, where the checks corroded the surroundings, paper disintegrated into nickel, decayed like a currency made from black dream-slag, which crumbles at the
next touch, where a woman has no other chance than forward through the bushes, like Bolivar disintegrating into centimos, where maybe you’re in a dream,
it’s time that we tell each other more stories, where one doesn’t stand with their back to the wall, but rather in an open door, in the daylight, which doesn’t disintegrate like the
wavy plateau with the lethargic chicken hawks circling above, quiet black movements, clear in the air, where the sky no longer fits in the picture and together with the clouds
passes by in the window. Who’s calling through the frozen forests? Who’s wandering through the snowed-in halls? Who’s freezing and huddled together in the endless
transfer station, where the rupees disintegrate, changed into dirhams, faces upon them, theories of probability, dog bones, death a white apparition in a
white invisible tent, Jeep tracks with dust clouds trailing behind, death is a dried-up camel skeleton by the wayside, death is a
dead skunk on the highway, death is a dead cat on an empty parking lot, death is the long rows of suits on the chromed
rack in the next men’s department, death is a chopped down tree, where the shadow-shoes lie, worn out, where the houses have no
walls anymore, where the electric lights wander about in the rooms, nuclear decay, multiplication, optical lenses, behind the frost patterns on the window the book is shut
and a face cries, a brain is opened, the exhilaration of a dark, clear winter night is illuminated by constellations and does not fall, where death is a dried-
up river bed, white gravel and the plateaus fly by, you see that, we saw them spread out, the plateaus, flying by white in the headlights,
I went back into the hastily constructed apartment, the dreams continuing, the plateau white, I stared into the aluminum pot, at the rest of the broccoli under the light,
the plateau passing by, white, with the slight indication that we make, where a dirty, rickety claw is a clean hand stroking a mahogany
table, having plundered the many daydreams, now it lies rickety and crooked on the clean surface, where the Luxembourgean francs become Malian
dollars, which disintegrate into Cuban pesos, who is it who shits out money and lets a forest die so that he can appear in the comics, massaged on the beach, he with the mantraps
and self-inflicted gunshots, observed by helicopters, a marked man, who is it who drags their suitcase through the bus station, who is it who drops a coin into the TV automat, who is it who skims the
psychoanalytical journals in order to solve a case, who is it who interprets the world, who is it who interprets the next construction- site fence, who is it who interprets the apartment,
shadows of people burned into the asphalt, stones with human shadows on exhibit, aerial photographs of the landscape allowed for postcard greetings
by the Minister of War, he who allows, believes he has the rights for fencing in, where the piastres are scrap, poetry is not a waiting room where one stays overnight, tired,
behind a newspaper opened to the swarming masses of war, every word is war, scrap-words like death, driven together in herds, without differences,
should I have slept with your wife, should I have had more magazines, should I have used the dish- washer, should I have followed the movie
posters, filigree-gray hypothetical questions, tendrils, cement ornamentation, where the dreams die off like plateaus, a canister on the shark, the daily view out the
window into this side street, which you don’t know, where the dollar disintegrates into kopecks and the ruble into cents, where pesetas are wrung from the bones,
but the pleasure is greater than the sorrow, the drachma is smaller than the lust, reduced to a hundred lepta, which disappear at the next opportunity,
where the Turkish pounds are extracted from the tendons, decayed, decayed in the buildings of the 19th & 20th centuries in West Germany, extensions, bills, obligations, everything
the same, pawned off, worn out, trashed, pawned off again on television, from the serial, from the jukebox. Gentle face, in the middle of the crowd you’ve seen
the twitching body, suddenly the concert was over, did you stammer, did you cry, where the corridors are cement, where the speaker boxes boomed, where the faces
broke into dream-wrinkles, where the city maps have white spots, where the color white in no way means death, where the dog fur fails to warm, where the ways end, Ivory Coast is a
fantastic name, tattoos, scars, moving in, moving out, many thanks.
today look like the smile of Eva Braun. The photos reproduce themselves. I was not, I know, born in a photograph. Snow fell in April,
as I was born, shrouded in the ornamental cloth of the baptism ritual. The war, I don’t understand what that is, which language is where? Eva Braun
smiled at Adolf Hitler, that was in Berlin. What did Adolf Hitler first say to Eva Braun? Which distances exist between the permanent waves on the
photo and the old fashioned curling iron for permanent waves which I saw later on a windowsill? As I slept in the Academy of Art in Berlin, I thought about
this curling iron for permanent waves. The photo was a memory which I looked at. Twenty years later I looked at a fat face in the daily
paper, which drank ersatz coffee in a Berlin hotel from a hotel coffee cup, the title was Professor, the title was not to be identi- fied. Eva Braun, was your neck shaved?
Eva Braun, what did you think about the Sarotti chocolates? Adolf Hitler, as you went through Munich with your Pelikan watercolors, what did you see? The Sütterlin script ruined the
handwriting. From the handwriting I was supposed to learn. Adolf Hitler skimmed over the city maps. Eva Braun looked in the crystal mirror at her cunt. Which size
did your thighs have, Eva Braun? I know girls who look exactly like the Eva Braun who looks like Eva Braun in the photo. I grew up, considered my pubic hairs, considered
nipples, considered the reeds, years later I considered the picture of Eva Braun. In the same month a breast of the wife of the American president would be
cut off, in another historical photo old men polished their assholes on brocade-lined armchairs after the conference, the southern afternoon is full of
junk, dust, crumbling constructions. What was with the intestinal worms which Adolf Hitler’s German shepherd had? What was with Eva Braun? A storybook story which one suppressed
like years later the interpretations, ended. Half of Austria arrived in a train, kissed Eva Braun’s hand, looked at her tits, sealed with permanent waves. Adolf Hitler
passed out postcards. I saw my mother in a photo in a long row sitting and laughing, I saw my father in a photo going along a tree-lined avenue,
naive in uniform like an avenue tree, what were they playing as they were photographed? I saw the creases in the pants of Adolf Hitler in a photo, I saw, four years
old, a dark train station passing by in 1944, I saw an enameled sign with blue and yellow wool and knitting needles on the red brick wall of a train station,
Eva Braun, did Adolf Hitler tenderly stroke your pussy with his tongue? Adolf Hitler, did Eva tenderly suck your cock? Or was that taboo thanks to
the state and politics? Come stains on the winter coat, a couple of generals in the toilet, they drew battle plans on the shitty wall, named names, heights, deployments,
Eva Braun, what did you feel when you got the capsule? Did you simply think you’d had your chance? Did you think, now I’ve had it? And the teeth of the German shepherd
fell out of his jaw after the strong injection. The orgasm of death is cheaper than the orgasm of life, although it’s questionable whether the orgasm of death isn’t simply pent up
life that explodes. Why isn’t life in the multitudes every day? Why permanent waves, Eva Braun? Why are you smiling, Eva Braun? Why
do you take cough syrup, Eva Braun? Didn’t Adolf Hitler know that the Austrian psychoanalysis, lying in the sentences, lies? I was never at the river Inn, also
have no desire to look at the water, also have no desire to look at the water in Cologne, dead water, full of dead fish and plants, dead water, which they fought over, borders,
coals, fires for the industry, furnaces, embers in the night, dancing figures before the open fires of the industrial complexes, no holy saint swims in these dead waters, no holy saint spits
out the apartment window, the crude passing through is better than taking pills, the patents, Eva Braun, how was it for you under the shower, German charcoal, flamingo flowers, Spanish irises
and pails? Adolf Hitler in a nightshirt, in the cement, under the earth’s surface, sparkle of nerves, dancing over the files, he dreamed madly in the cement bunker,
supposedly never hit anyone personally, he had others enough to do his hitting, there are always others who sign, hit, hang, indeed there are
always others, employees, secretaries, office boys, insanity, Eva Braun, you straw puppet, smoke, cyanide, trace elements, signatures, which suddenly become single living
persons, things, the shabby things, they’re standing in the room. Did Adolf Hitler stand before you in the room with a stiff cock, Eva Braun? Who washed your bra, Eva Braun? Did you think about
Persil laundry soap? World history in the form of industrial comics, Eva Braun, a lace dress in the large hall, among the human voices, shoulders lifted high, did you see them? What’s with
the dyed hair? What’s with that old high German? What’s with the fossilized love stories? Word-ghosts, dirty bastards of history, stumbling through the rhymes,
between the film-shadows of Berlin, shadow gestures, projection-screen-shadows, shadow-screams, collapsing shadows, later accompanied by a soundtrack, synchronised
lip movements, Eva Braun, in which magazines were you reading? I have to remember: my mother loved airplanes and ghosts, which reappeared, phantoms, she dreamed of them,
even before she cooked for the men at the airfield, in her odd French, my father borrowed a car in his school-English, the top rolled back, they
stopped in the countryside, they fucked at the edge of a warm yellow wheat field in July. My mother loved cheap paperbacks, she looked to see if the seam in her stockings was straight, she went
across the meadow in a silky shimmering dress. The father-in-law left his library to the state of Israel for a sentimental reason, and what happened before, that these forms
developed, more sentimental than the memory of house-corners and street names? More sentimental than permanent waves in a photo? I have to remember the pale suburban settlement, I
have to think about the truck that suddenly stopped in front of the house, packed with people and their belongings, billets to make the foreignness even foreigner, checked off
the lists, bedpans, briefcases, pomaded and parted, they had nothing, owned the in- sanity of never-owned imaginary goods, if they spoke, from where they came, the biographies ruined
by dead Austria, old myths, fallow fields, the opposite is not the industry, the oppo- site disappears in the old photos, in which history disintegrated all around, Eva Braun, opaque
window glass, portals, coma in a Swedish hotel room, shots in the leg above the stocking garter. Now the computers are tossing bones in the air, Stanley Kubrick, the film trick
is revealed, despite four-channel-stereo in the red-plush cinemas of Soho, where I am one rainy evening, walking through London alone, quiet, collected, in the light gray, windy
February evening, decaying London, elegiac West End streets, elegiac advertisements, elegiac theater buildings and striptease clubs, elegiac filthy book stores under aged,
murky dust, rusted leaky water pipes along the house fronts, a senselessly ringing alarm on a house wall, dismally yellowed paint, entrances with the names of bodily flesh,
which for a few moments can be bought, contact between a lonely cock and a cold cunt before the weak gas heater of the rented room, miserable and lost in the
maze of numbers, bleak and frozen in the money. Eva Braun, who wrote you postcards? Eva Braun, have you ever stood freezing in Piccadilly? Eva Braun, what did you say in the moment
when that photo was taken? After the movie I crawl shivering under the thin blanket of a cheap hotel in Bayswater, Odeon station, the monster quarter of London, crumbling courtyards, buried
bodies, the gas-fired fireplace doesn’t heat, the wallpaper is stained, I read a few more poems by Frank O’Hara and W.C. Williams, I drink the rest of some cold coffee out of
the paper cup that stands on the marble mantle over the fireplace, I’m alone in these American poems and see myself in them in the middle of this London night, yellow fog lights along the
streets, Victorian monster-columns and portals the whole street long, windows patched with cardboard, curtain-scraps, and suddenly, in the silence, completely crazy, I remember the call sign
of the BBC radio one morning during the war. I remember the after-the-war-chocolate of the English soldiers, blue plums on a cart, which was being pushed through a courtyard,
Strauss waltzes, a dark movie theater and war. A bone tossed in the air, a killer’s tool on the white screen of the memory, a flickering shadow, hidden behind ornamental flowers,
together with the shadow-noises from the stereo speakers is nothing but a shadow in the eerie, insane ballroom of Death, which is the air, Death blows bubbles in the air, it’s much better to relax
peacefully with a liverwurst sandwich during the lunch break, better to eat the plums out of the icebox without saying you’re sorry, better to drink cold coffee from a paper cup
in a hotel room at night, better than moving pictures, aerial photographs, Eva Braun, I’m thinking here in this Cologne night, stuffy and dismal, while I look at a photo, which tells of the love
story, kitschy and hand-colored, Eva Braun, little monster among the decor, smiling stupid and sad in the photo, and before the photo was taken,
really. The eyebrows are touched up, your mouth is open, lipstick on the lips, are the stocking seams straight? Are you wearing a flowered dress? Has someone
messed up your hair? What’s with the accent? Did someone give you a horny look, your slightly fat baby face? Have you forgotten your cunt? Did your cunt dry up out of fear as the war began?
Berlin sky, as I flew in with a Pan Am plane, I first saw a cemetery between the houses, the gentlemen laid their newspapers on the empty seats,
the taxi driver swore about the passers-by as the lights went on. In the subway hall someone held their bloody, dripping face between their hands and turned toward the tiled wall
as the automatic doors slammed shut. Did you mend your stockings with Güterman’s silk thread? How did you look in a swimsuit? Did you shave your armpits?
Shaved armpits always look like soap and deodorant, stubbly and slick. Fantasy has taken over the industry with its employees.
Did you eat a liverwurst sandwich? Did the liverwurst sandwich taste good? Did Adolf Hitler have sweaty feet? Did he kiss your hand? Did he talk in his sleep? What did you take
against the headaches? What did you think as you were chauffeured along the Kurfürstendamm? In the fading shadows of 5 in the morning I sit there between the folded up,
locked up patio chairs and tables, smoke kif in the shadow of the Café Kranzler awning and walk through the tear gas clouds and shards of glass from the shattered storefront windows, the whores
having hastily retreated as the street battle began a few hours ago, then I take the first subway train to the Wannsee, where a couple of swans are rocking between the garbage along the shore, a lifeless pier,
a weak dawn, light gray. What kind of fur coat did you wear? What kind of toothpaste did you use? I tremble in the first dawn in Berlin, take the socks from the radiator,
let down the shades. It’s a pity that you didn’t invent love, Eva Braun. I write this rock ‘n’ roll song about your terrible insanity, Eva Braun. Would you have
liked this song? Would you have sweated as you danced? What did you talk about as you were alone in the cement bunker? Why the color brown? What did the tongue demand? No one loved Adolf Hitler, and that was why he
had to win the war? Did you see the bodies? Did you see the hand-to-hand combat? Did you see the flame-throwers? Did you see the burned faces? Did you see the gas-cripples? Did you
see the killer-virus spores? Did you see the flower-shadows? Did you look out the window? Did you turn off the nightstand lamp? The permanent waves of
order on your head, your fat, bare shoulder, your underwear from the department store, your pierced ear lobe for the jewel, your handkerchief with the mucous, the camellia
between the legs, your ass-shapes in the garter belt, your nipples, will they remain a secret? In the middle of the historical showplaces of the war, the war is a showplace, who even
looks? Is a love story necessary that needs so many questions? Now you’ve disappeared in the historical photo. Now the disguises are going around. Now the story is broken down and over.
shreds of paper against it,
the misery (foreign countries), which invests in this country, sits on every furtively glanced-at
street corner, sad, tired faces, without expression, bags under the eyes, lines around the tight-lipped mouth,
a young woman cries from exhaustion in a two-and-a-half room apartment, in the unfolded architecture of geometry, it’s night and the heating pipes are ticking,
Quote: “The most dangerous animal that exists is the architect. He has destroyed more than the war.”
Hair loss following birth, fear on the street, in the middle of the day, if one stands still, surrounded by the multitudes, the absent
glances, waking up, coughing & spitting
in the sink, postponed material circumstances, the delicate bodies pushed up against the walls by the cars, the same rows of suburban streets
all the way into the inner city,
single, running bodies between the
convoys of the auto industry, blurred figures
behind the dirt-flecked security glass windows, smaller than their own bodies in the industrial shells,
the newspaper rips in the headwind,
shreds of paper drift over the narrow gardens along the tracks, kites made of stinky printer’s ink, collages of the daily gradual madness,
frozen swirls of words: brand names,
reptile brains, hate, slander, semantics, the
big families continue on. In the streets the skinny girls’ bodies, bones with a little skin over them, in colorful rags from the second-hand store,
“when the music’s over” between the rain-
faded old advertisements, (neon-light extinguished curiosity to live, calligraphy)
extinguished poetry. The dawns
are damp and impassable, masses of bent-over figures, they disappear in the offices, they go into the stores, they have to go to schools, kindergartens,
their ways of life distinctive between
rows of products and shelves, in the pestilent-light-flicker of the TV at night the faces of the politicians appear and discuss, in the pestilent-light-flicker
of the TV the strange faces appear on the wall of the room: do you remember
“until the end” the dark house entrances, in which we stood together,
do you remember your own kisses in the stairwell, do you remember kisses
at all? (Or what
you felt?) Submerged in the glowing grass along the paths, seen from the open train window, we let the newspaper shreds fly.
Yellow afternoon light reflects in the windows which we pass by, September-yellow
and what kind of country is this,
what kind of thoughts are
thought to the finish here, finally to the end,
the end “the aristocracy
of feelings,” hahahaha, that’s
not to my taste,
if anyone should have anything to do with that at all, IBM-typewriter-feelings and kisses,
I stretch out my feet, how does that one over the other, in this fit together? compartment, the white Converse All
Star basketball shoes, 12 dollars, on the red plastic seat, and once again the piece of newspaper torn for the child at the open
train window: how the words fly (masks),
the fragments, it’s one of those gentle afternoons that we rarely have, light over the pale, monotone cities, soft afternoon light
on the crumbling facades of the suburbs
and tract homes, soft September-afternoon-light
on the faces in the open windows which we pass by, gentle human-faces in September,
the hate of the newspapers rips, flutters as paper in the hand, that cheerful sound in the moving
D-Train: it brings us from the northwest regions of West Germany through the zones of industry and profit,
dead, abandoned winding-towers, black wheels in the air, slag heaps, dead roads, black, sooty steam locomotives on a dead
track, rusted railway lines
& dust-coated Scotch broom along the embankment, do you really remember your own kisses?
And when the West (“Oh to be out of here, German industry here where everything went collapses? as wished except for the new”)
“Here in this land I live!”: do you really live? (“To be far away and in a foreign No, not this country.” E.P.) sensation.
Until now this was a foreign country, wherever you look,
Memory: I hear the shaky The chestnut voice of the poet on a record tree in the in an apartment, evening, lightless sinister hallways narrow courtyard, and without voices, maybe 60 names on the nameplate in the entryway still-standing by the glass door, locked early, elevators, the stairwell light out, a red glowing light switch at the end of the hall, the calendar and then in the midst of the lifelessness picture television film sounds behind a door on a as I walk along there / the voice of the office wall, poet stuttering in on a Sunday morning, and sun now, after the hallways, in this blinds, West German apartment years later suddenly again)
Prone Venus and Coca Cola 1974, verbs in a continuous chronology, “this Coca Cola of the entire world”
why do you want to speak nicely?
“Must we be idiots and dream in the partial obscurities of a dubious mood in order to be poets?“ (W.C.W.)
Burned out in a beautiful September light, the personal economy: a total disaster,
is the economy a personal feeling? Contradictions because I speak, contradictions because I think
about it: notes in the newspaper margin, being torn to shreds. The few friends scattered about the suburbs, the new friends strewn singly across the country-
side. Different voices, different biographies,
deviations, “good so.”
Discussion: Where everything is forced to connect…
What did you feel as you touched the naked body with your lips, what did you
feel in the middle of the trashed
landscape, word-gods, side-street-sex, under the arranged machines? Let me remember, you say, let me remember, leave me
alone, you say, leave me, gentle face
in a soft September light, like now: answer softly
answer, “in the midst of the daily plundering, or?”
Like the faces in the open afternoon-windows don’t answer. There is a sheet-metal field, dented,
“valse d’autumn” or how such a feeling is called,
not the clarity of looking out a D-Train window, gentle, gentle rhythm here now,
let me, let me remember, you say. Small train stations appear and remain behind,
meaningless structures, : remain behind? meaningless stops : meaningless?
yellow-red fire in a scrap yard,
gentle, gentle woods, last remains of forests in which the thin morning fog still hangs, traces of dampness, not
bent over, small peaceful ponds, forgotten
at the edge of an estate (:“we’re coming back,” in that house, we’re coming home, home?) for the eyes a fugitive rest, from the train window
looking out, the long, slow
even view across this country. There is a hunkered-down green, fantastic green, which passes by, and a child’s hand stretched out the train
window.
Why sadness? All: you gentle
faces in the afternoon light (no faces : you gentle faces between for the coins) the billboards, you gentle
faces in the window frames,
you gentle faces in the September light, you gentle faces of West Germany, tired and sad, you gentle faces, hungry for cunt, cock, tits, hungry for an exotic everyday
life, hungry for a kiss, hungry to feel your own kiss between the walls,
hungry between the advertisements, hungry between the classified ads, hungry between the pictures,
the advertising sales department closes at nine in the evening the movie theaters are darkened, to show a
little more life, the box offices close a quarter-hour after the main feature begins,
the television station broadcasts until shortly after midnight, hungry in the narrow
gardens, hungry for a gentle embrace,
what do you give your selves? What kind of a horror is that, when one stops in the middle of the street, standing among the passers-by,
& each for everyone a passer-by.
submitted by Serious_Position5472 to Poetry [link] [comments]
SOME VERY POPULAR SONGS
for example cows beneath the moon, peaceful souls, ruminating, Buddha-guts in the high grass, hidden between small trees and
clumps of brush in the constant greenness, a practical black-and-white- spotted metaphysics, tormented by summer flies which stick to their
saliva. The space hangs inside their eyes like a gong, which beckons to the slaughterhouse. Or a blue rain barrel in the south, where
the sky is an endless continuation of blue, hallucinated spaces during the day, but real. The tricks of the Rolling Stones are over.
I listen to Leonard Cohen singing, there is a war between the men and the women, why don’t you come on back to the war, it’s just be-
ginning. Various grasses grow along the edges, enchanted green. The grass is moved, moves itself, and all the years came, like
always, one after the other: good- bye, fast cloud, goodbye blue sky in the window frames, good- bye, dried grass,
naked in the first twilight, goodbye. A wet barbed wire fence stands there, crooked posts, goodbye, suburbs, as though
no one lives there, fragments of biographies and newspapers, the senseless waving. Some lines are like the waving of children from a
train window while passing through strange cities in the afternoon, passing the rows of low-rent apartments with the single faces at the windows:
if all the confessions in the world that were ever given and written down in the courts of the world were put together and
dragged by one after the other, what an endless misery it would be to be in the world. Someone calls, dials any old
number, and I hear only their breath, and there again is the distance, the soft crackling noise of the
confusion in another place, and otherwise nothing there in the afternoon. And in the morning, when you get up and stare at the hotel
breakfast and you don’t understand why you’re in this hotel room, where you actually are, and you think about what you can do at eight in the morning
after an almost sleepless night, and nothing else comes to mind except to take the three dirty shirts to the laundry, having already
showered at seven, do you embrace the morning light at nine? Or do you say, goodbye, morning light? And then you hear the rush
of a flushing toilet while you walk along a long hallway and what do you feel then? That everything is in order? At ten someone calls and
talks about death, and you make a joke about the film projectionist with cancer who’s been with the company for 25 years, and whoever else is in the room
laughs as well. Who goes through the rooms, unfamiliar, and remembers the lines from the song: Green leaves, how are you alone? What sort of damned lonely
business letters are being written. The signatures don’t matter at all. And you sing your song, “Lady, I’m out of here!” That also belongs to the popular
songs. The peaceful Buddha-souls lie spotted black-and-white in the greenness. They chew beneath the same light the soft green grass again.
- (for H.S.)
like the franc into centimes and the English pound into the cheap tobacco of Spanish coins, where the ostmark breaks into eye-wrinkles and a
tractor stands in the candlelight, where the Swedish öre disintegrates into insurance like world empires, where the sturgeon dies in the rivers and the herring
in the North Sea, where the distances between the cities grow like the disintegration among the single cities, where the yen is changed into the cruzeiro,
where too much is invested in soap, where the Bulgarian tin cans are converted into Argentinean bank drafts, disintegrating like the Finnish
currency, where forests are rafted down the rivers, where bone meal becomes plastic, where sums are copied, where the geese become zlotys
and are frozen in black aspic, where the dinar drives the camel, the corn rots in the fields, decaying like teeth which will be exchanged, where the
peso dies miserably, the black underwear rises, disintegrating like revenue stamps into whichever sort of coins the faces may disintegrate, into whatever bodily needs, piss, dirt paths, rest
rooms and bed sheets, where the army is financing the study of poetry, where the technical institutes explain the world, the twitching heart of a turtle
hanging from a thread for all to see, where the licenses set the limits, decomposing into animal-pictures, where signatures are needed, testaments, accounts, where the bank
holidays are there for a sigh of relief, to hang out the flags and decorate the day, where the carbide stank, where the bottles burst, where the rubble lay strewn and the tattoos,
the companies proliferate like the mass media, the chunks of stone and rubble have been cleared aside, the pain and the sorrow sold off, decomposed into monthly wages,
where there is still something to do, the specter of unemployment drives them together, the ghosts of the owners, the ghosts of the employees, where all of them are busy
administering this world, or what they consider to be this world, traps, driven together in the offices, but the offices disintegrate, where the rooms have many doors and glass
walls, the elevator shafts disintegrate, the arcades disintegrate, smashed store windows, mold spores, wild vegetation, in between store-window
mannequins, rats scurrying through long ruined arcades, rats in the pale empty corridors of the skyscrapers, where the last cripples are still being
driven together, everyone driven together to administrate this world, these walls, cyclone fences, entrances, the class- rooms like ruined swimming pools,
like signatures which disintegrate, where nights the children scream in the apartment towers, dismally bound to the silence, where the children throw up
their baby food again, where the bodies lie next to each other in the darkness and masturbate in order to go to sleep, finally exhausted and empty, decomposing
like the face of a television announcer in the half-insane dream, who makes new announcements in different voices like on scratched records, disintegrating
like shillings, where the twisted pain becomes jokes in a dialect, applauded by the ranks, where the ranks finally disintegrate, where a radio announcer
pulls her tampon out of the hairy hole between her legs on the toilet in the office of the National Public Radio during a pause in which poems are read, where the
Sundays are endless, decayed like sick lungs, where it is said, that is not your face, that is not your face, where the coins disintegrate into faces, old
faces, dead faces, grieved and hideous on the banknotes which disintegrate, where we go, simple daylight sparkles in the rain puddles, sparkles in the
dripping trees, pleasure, the astonishment of the eyes, when you laughed as you saw your trailer, the beautiful laughter of a total lack of understanding as you opened
the car door, where the checks corroded the surroundings, paper disintegrated into nickel, decayed like a currency made from black dream-slag, which crumbles at the
next touch, where a woman has no other chance than forward through the bushes, like Bolivar disintegrating into centimos, where maybe you’re in a dream,
it’s time that we tell each other more stories, where one doesn’t stand with their back to the wall, but rather in an open door, in the daylight, which doesn’t disintegrate like the
wavy plateau with the lethargic chicken hawks circling above, quiet black movements, clear in the air, where the sky no longer fits in the picture and together with the clouds
passes by in the window. Who’s calling through the frozen forests? Who’s wandering through the snowed-in halls? Who’s freezing and huddled together in the endless
transfer station, where the rupees disintegrate, changed into dirhams, faces upon them, theories of probability, dog bones, death a white apparition in a
white invisible tent, Jeep tracks with dust clouds trailing behind, death is a dried-up camel skeleton by the wayside, death is a
dead skunk on the highway, death is a dead cat on an empty parking lot, death is the long rows of suits on the chromed
rack in the next men’s department, death is a chopped down tree, where the shadow-shoes lie, worn out, where the houses have no
walls anymore, where the electric lights wander about in the rooms, nuclear decay, multiplication, optical lenses, behind the frost patterns on the window the book is shut
and a face cries, a brain is opened, the exhilaration of a dark, clear winter night is illuminated by constellations and does not fall, where death is a dried-
up river bed, white gravel and the plateaus fly by, you see that, we saw them spread out, the plateaus, flying by white in the headlights,
I went back into the hastily constructed apartment, the dreams continuing, the plateau white, I stared into the aluminum pot, at the rest of the broccoli under the light,
the plateau passing by, white, with the slight indication that we make, where a dirty, rickety claw is a clean hand stroking a mahogany
table, having plundered the many daydreams, now it lies rickety and crooked on the clean surface, where the Luxembourgean francs become Malian
dollars, which disintegrate into Cuban pesos, who is it who shits out money and lets a forest die so that he can appear in the comics, massaged on the beach, he with the mantraps
and self-inflicted gunshots, observed by helicopters, a marked man, who is it who drags their suitcase through the bus station, who is it who drops a coin into the TV automat, who is it who skims the
psychoanalytical journals in order to solve a case, who is it who interprets the world, who is it who interprets the next construction- site fence, who is it who interprets the apartment,
shadows of people burned into the asphalt, stones with human shadows on exhibit, aerial photographs of the landscape allowed for postcard greetings
by the Minister of War, he who allows, believes he has the rights for fencing in, where the piastres are scrap, poetry is not a waiting room where one stays overnight, tired,
behind a newspaper opened to the swarming masses of war, every word is war, scrap-words like death, driven together in herds, without differences,
should I have slept with your wife, should I have had more magazines, should I have used the dish- washer, should I have followed the movie
posters, filigree-gray hypothetical questions, tendrils, cement ornamentation, where the dreams die off like plateaus, a canister on the shark, the daily view out the
window into this side street, which you don’t know, where the dollar disintegrates into kopecks and the ruble into cents, where pesetas are wrung from the bones,
but the pleasure is greater than the sorrow, the drachma is smaller than the lust, reduced to a hundred lepta, which disappear at the next opportunity,
where the Turkish pounds are extracted from the tendons, decayed, decayed in the buildings of the 19th & 20th centuries in West Germany, extensions, bills, obligations, everything
the same, pawned off, worn out, trashed, pawned off again on television, from the serial, from the jukebox. Gentle face, in the middle of the crowd you’ve seen
the twitching body, suddenly the concert was over, did you stammer, did you cry, where the corridors are cement, where the speaker boxes boomed, where the faces
broke into dream-wrinkles, where the city maps have white spots, where the color white in no way means death, where the dog fur fails to warm, where the ways end, Ivory Coast is a
fantastic name, tattoos, scars, moving in, moving out, many thanks.
- (History)
today look like the smile of Eva Braun. The photos reproduce themselves. I was not, I know, born in a photograph. Snow fell in April,
as I was born, shrouded in the ornamental cloth of the baptism ritual. The war, I don’t understand what that is, which language is where? Eva Braun
smiled at Adolf Hitler, that was in Berlin. What did Adolf Hitler first say to Eva Braun? Which distances exist between the permanent waves on the
photo and the old fashioned curling iron for permanent waves which I saw later on a windowsill? As I slept in the Academy of Art in Berlin, I thought about
this curling iron for permanent waves. The photo was a memory which I looked at. Twenty years later I looked at a fat face in the daily
paper, which drank ersatz coffee in a Berlin hotel from a hotel coffee cup, the title was Professor, the title was not to be identi- fied. Eva Braun, was your neck shaved?
Eva Braun, what did you think about the Sarotti chocolates? Adolf Hitler, as you went through Munich with your Pelikan watercolors, what did you see? The Sütterlin script ruined the
handwriting. From the handwriting I was supposed to learn. Adolf Hitler skimmed over the city maps. Eva Braun looked in the crystal mirror at her cunt. Which size
did your thighs have, Eva Braun? I know girls who look exactly like the Eva Braun who looks like Eva Braun in the photo. I grew up, considered my pubic hairs, considered
nipples, considered the reeds, years later I considered the picture of Eva Braun. In the same month a breast of the wife of the American president would be
cut off, in another historical photo old men polished their assholes on brocade-lined armchairs after the conference, the southern afternoon is full of
junk, dust, crumbling constructions. What was with the intestinal worms which Adolf Hitler’s German shepherd had? What was with Eva Braun? A storybook story which one suppressed
like years later the interpretations, ended. Half of Austria arrived in a train, kissed Eva Braun’s hand, looked at her tits, sealed with permanent waves. Adolf Hitler
passed out postcards. I saw my mother in a photo in a long row sitting and laughing, I saw my father in a photo going along a tree-lined avenue,
naive in uniform like an avenue tree, what were they playing as they were photographed? I saw the creases in the pants of Adolf Hitler in a photo, I saw, four years
old, a dark train station passing by in 1944, I saw an enameled sign with blue and yellow wool and knitting needles on the red brick wall of a train station,
Eva Braun, did Adolf Hitler tenderly stroke your pussy with his tongue? Adolf Hitler, did Eva tenderly suck your cock? Or was that taboo thanks to
the state and politics? Come stains on the winter coat, a couple of generals in the toilet, they drew battle plans on the shitty wall, named names, heights, deployments,
Eva Braun, what did you feel when you got the capsule? Did you simply think you’d had your chance? Did you think, now I’ve had it? And the teeth of the German shepherd
fell out of his jaw after the strong injection. The orgasm of death is cheaper than the orgasm of life, although it’s questionable whether the orgasm of death isn’t simply pent up
life that explodes. Why isn’t life in the multitudes every day? Why permanent waves, Eva Braun? Why are you smiling, Eva Braun? Why
do you take cough syrup, Eva Braun? Didn’t Adolf Hitler know that the Austrian psychoanalysis, lying in the sentences, lies? I was never at the river Inn, also
have no desire to look at the water, also have no desire to look at the water in Cologne, dead water, full of dead fish and plants, dead water, which they fought over, borders,
coals, fires for the industry, furnaces, embers in the night, dancing figures before the open fires of the industrial complexes, no holy saint swims in these dead waters, no holy saint spits
out the apartment window, the crude passing through is better than taking pills, the patents, Eva Braun, how was it for you under the shower, German charcoal, flamingo flowers, Spanish irises
and pails? Adolf Hitler in a nightshirt, in the cement, under the earth’s surface, sparkle of nerves, dancing over the files, he dreamed madly in the cement bunker,
supposedly never hit anyone personally, he had others enough to do his hitting, there are always others who sign, hit, hang, indeed there are
always others, employees, secretaries, office boys, insanity, Eva Braun, you straw puppet, smoke, cyanide, trace elements, signatures, which suddenly become single living
persons, things, the shabby things, they’re standing in the room. Did Adolf Hitler stand before you in the room with a stiff cock, Eva Braun? Who washed your bra, Eva Braun? Did you think about
Persil laundry soap? World history in the form of industrial comics, Eva Braun, a lace dress in the large hall, among the human voices, shoulders lifted high, did you see them? What’s with
the dyed hair? What’s with that old high German? What’s with the fossilized love stories? Word-ghosts, dirty bastards of history, stumbling through the rhymes,
between the film-shadows of Berlin, shadow gestures, projection-screen-shadows, shadow-screams, collapsing shadows, later accompanied by a soundtrack, synchronised
lip movements, Eva Braun, in which magazines were you reading? I have to remember: my mother loved airplanes and ghosts, which reappeared, phantoms, she dreamed of them,
even before she cooked for the men at the airfield, in her odd French, my father borrowed a car in his school-English, the top rolled back, they
stopped in the countryside, they fucked at the edge of a warm yellow wheat field in July. My mother loved cheap paperbacks, she looked to see if the seam in her stockings was straight, she went
across the meadow in a silky shimmering dress. The father-in-law left his library to the state of Israel for a sentimental reason, and what happened before, that these forms
developed, more sentimental than the memory of house-corners and street names? More sentimental than permanent waves in a photo? I have to remember the pale suburban settlement, I
have to think about the truck that suddenly stopped in front of the house, packed with people and their belongings, billets to make the foreignness even foreigner, checked off
the lists, bedpans, briefcases, pomaded and parted, they had nothing, owned the in- sanity of never-owned imaginary goods, if they spoke, from where they came, the biographies ruined
by dead Austria, old myths, fallow fields, the opposite is not the industry, the oppo- site disappears in the old photos, in which history disintegrated all around, Eva Braun, opaque
window glass, portals, coma in a Swedish hotel room, shots in the leg above the stocking garter. Now the computers are tossing bones in the air, Stanley Kubrick, the film trick
is revealed, despite four-channel-stereo in the red-plush cinemas of Soho, where I am one rainy evening, walking through London alone, quiet, collected, in the light gray, windy
February evening, decaying London, elegiac West End streets, elegiac advertisements, elegiac theater buildings and striptease clubs, elegiac filthy book stores under aged,
murky dust, rusted leaky water pipes along the house fronts, a senselessly ringing alarm on a house wall, dismally yellowed paint, entrances with the names of bodily flesh,
which for a few moments can be bought, contact between a lonely cock and a cold cunt before the weak gas heater of the rented room, miserable and lost in the
maze of numbers, bleak and frozen in the money. Eva Braun, who wrote you postcards? Eva Braun, have you ever stood freezing in Piccadilly? Eva Braun, what did you say in the moment
when that photo was taken? After the movie I crawl shivering under the thin blanket of a cheap hotel in Bayswater, Odeon station, the monster quarter of London, crumbling courtyards, buried
bodies, the gas-fired fireplace doesn’t heat, the wallpaper is stained, I read a few more poems by Frank O’Hara and W.C. Williams, I drink the rest of some cold coffee out of
the paper cup that stands on the marble mantle over the fireplace, I’m alone in these American poems and see myself in them in the middle of this London night, yellow fog lights along the
streets, Victorian monster-columns and portals the whole street long, windows patched with cardboard, curtain-scraps, and suddenly, in the silence, completely crazy, I remember the call sign
of the BBC radio one morning during the war. I remember the after-the-war-chocolate of the English soldiers, blue plums on a cart, which was being pushed through a courtyard,
Strauss waltzes, a dark movie theater and war. A bone tossed in the air, a killer’s tool on the white screen of the memory, a flickering shadow, hidden behind ornamental flowers,
together with the shadow-noises from the stereo speakers is nothing but a shadow in the eerie, insane ballroom of Death, which is the air, Death blows bubbles in the air, it’s much better to relax
peacefully with a liverwurst sandwich during the lunch break, better to eat the plums out of the icebox without saying you’re sorry, better to drink cold coffee from a paper cup
in a hotel room at night, better than moving pictures, aerial photographs, Eva Braun, I’m thinking here in this Cologne night, stuffy and dismal, while I look at a photo, which tells of the love
story, kitschy and hand-colored, Eva Braun, little monster among the decor, smiling stupid and sad in the photo, and before the photo was taken,
really. The eyebrows are touched up, your mouth is open, lipstick on the lips, are the stocking seams straight? Are you wearing a flowered dress? Has someone
messed up your hair? What’s with the accent? Did someone give you a horny look, your slightly fat baby face? Have you forgotten your cunt? Did your cunt dry up out of fear as the war began?
Berlin sky, as I flew in with a Pan Am plane, I first saw a cemetery between the houses, the gentlemen laid their newspapers on the empty seats,
the taxi driver swore about the passers-by as the lights went on. In the subway hall someone held their bloody, dripping face between their hands and turned toward the tiled wall
as the automatic doors slammed shut. Did you mend your stockings with Güterman’s silk thread? How did you look in a swimsuit? Did you shave your armpits?
Shaved armpits always look like soap and deodorant, stubbly and slick. Fantasy has taken over the industry with its employees.
Did you eat a liverwurst sandwich? Did the liverwurst sandwich taste good? Did Adolf Hitler have sweaty feet? Did he kiss your hand? Did he talk in his sleep? What did you take
against the headaches? What did you think as you were chauffeured along the Kurfürstendamm? In the fading shadows of 5 in the morning I sit there between the folded up,
locked up patio chairs and tables, smoke kif in the shadow of the Café Kranzler awning and walk through the tear gas clouds and shards of glass from the shattered storefront windows, the whores
having hastily retreated as the street battle began a few hours ago, then I take the first subway train to the Wannsee, where a couple of swans are rocking between the garbage along the shore, a lifeless pier,
a weak dawn, light gray. What kind of fur coat did you wear? What kind of toothpaste did you use? I tremble in the first dawn in Berlin, take the socks from the radiator,
let down the shades. It’s a pity that you didn’t invent love, Eva Braun. I write this rock ‘n’ roll song about your terrible insanity, Eva Braun. Would you have
liked this song? Would you have sweated as you danced? What did you talk about as you were alone in the cement bunker? Why the color brown? What did the tongue demand? No one loved Adolf Hitler, and that was why he
had to win the war? Did you see the bodies? Did you see the hand-to-hand combat? Did you see the flame-throwers? Did you see the burned faces? Did you see the gas-cripples? Did you
see the killer-virus spores? Did you see the flower-shadows? Did you look out the window? Did you turn off the nightstand lamp? The permanent waves of
order on your head, your fat, bare shoulder, your underwear from the department store, your pierced ear lobe for the jewel, your handkerchief with the mucous, the camellia
between the legs, your ass-shapes in the garter belt, your nipples, will they remain a secret? In the middle of the historical showplaces of the war, the war is a showplace, who even
looks? Is a love story necessary that needs so many questions? Now you’ve disappeared in the historical photo. Now the disguises are going around. Now the story is broken down and over.
- (D-Train)
shreds of paper against it,
the misery (foreign countries), which invests in this country, sits on every furtively glanced-at
street corner, sad, tired faces, without expression, bags under the eyes, lines around the tight-lipped mouth,
a young woman cries from exhaustion in a two-and-a-half room apartment, in the unfolded architecture of geometry, it’s night and the heating pipes are ticking,
Quote: “The most dangerous animal that exists is the architect. He has destroyed more than the war.”
Hair loss following birth, fear on the street, in the middle of the day, if one stands still, surrounded by the multitudes, the absent
glances, waking up, coughing & spitting
in the sink, postponed material circumstances, the delicate bodies pushed up against the walls by the cars, the same rows of suburban streets
all the way into the inner city,
single, running bodies between the
convoys of the auto industry, blurred figures
behind the dirt-flecked security glass windows, smaller than their own bodies in the industrial shells,
the newspaper rips in the headwind,
shreds of paper drift over the narrow gardens along the tracks, kites made of stinky printer’s ink, collages of the daily gradual madness,
frozen swirls of words: brand names,
reptile brains, hate, slander, semantics, the
big families continue on. In the streets the skinny girls’ bodies, bones with a little skin over them, in colorful rags from the second-hand store,
“when the music’s over” between the rain-
faded old advertisements, (neon-light extinguished curiosity to live, calligraphy)
extinguished poetry. The dawns
are damp and impassable, masses of bent-over figures, they disappear in the offices, they go into the stores, they have to go to schools, kindergartens,
their ways of life distinctive between
rows of products and shelves, in the pestilent-light-flicker of the TV at night the faces of the politicians appear and discuss, in the pestilent-light-flicker
of the TV the strange faces appear on the wall of the room: do you remember
“until the end” the dark house entrances, in which we stood together,
do you remember your own kisses in the stairwell, do you remember kisses
at all? (Or what
you felt?) Submerged in the glowing grass along the paths, seen from the open train window, we let the newspaper shreds fly.
Yellow afternoon light reflects in the windows which we pass by, September-yellow
and what kind of country is this,
what kind of thoughts are
thought to the finish here, finally to the end,
the end “the aristocracy
of feelings,” hahahaha, that’s
not to my taste,
if anyone should have anything to do with that at all, IBM-typewriter-feelings and kisses,
I stretch out my feet, how does that one over the other, in this fit together? compartment, the white Converse All
Star basketball shoes, 12 dollars, on the red plastic seat, and once again the piece of newspaper torn for the child at the open
train window: how the words fly (masks),
the fragments, it’s one of those gentle afternoons that we rarely have, light over the pale, monotone cities, soft afternoon light
on the crumbling facades of the suburbs
and tract homes, soft September-afternoon-light
on the faces in the open windows which we pass by, gentle human-faces in September,
the hate of the newspapers rips, flutters as paper in the hand, that cheerful sound in the moving
D-Train: it brings us from the northwest regions of West Germany through the zones of industry and profit,
dead, abandoned winding-towers, black wheels in the air, slag heaps, dead roads, black, sooty steam locomotives on a dead
track, rusted railway lines
& dust-coated Scotch broom along the embankment, do you really remember your own kisses?
And when the West (“Oh to be out of here, German industry here where everything went collapses? as wished except for the new”)
“Here in this land I live!”: do you really live? (“To be far away and in a foreign No, not this country.” E.P.) sensation.
Until now this was a foreign country, wherever you look,
Memory: I hear the shaky The chestnut voice of the poet on a record tree in the in an apartment, evening, lightless sinister hallways narrow courtyard, and without voices, maybe 60 names on the nameplate in the entryway still-standing by the glass door, locked early, elevators, the stairwell light out, a red glowing light switch at the end of the hall, the calendar and then in the midst of the lifelessness picture television film sounds behind a door on a as I walk along there / the voice of the office wall, poet stuttering in on a Sunday morning, and sun now, after the hallways, in this blinds, West German apartment years later suddenly again)
Prone Venus and Coca Cola 1974, verbs in a continuous chronology, “this Coca Cola of the entire world”
why do you want to speak nicely?
“Must we be idiots and dream in the partial obscurities of a dubious mood in order to be poets?“ (W.C.W.)
Burned out in a beautiful September light, the personal economy: a total disaster,
is the economy a personal feeling? Contradictions because I speak, contradictions because I think
about it: notes in the newspaper margin, being torn to shreds. The few friends scattered about the suburbs, the new friends strewn singly across the country-
side. Different voices, different biographies,
deviations, “good so.”
Discussion: Where everything is forced to connect…
What did you feel as you touched the naked body with your lips, what did you
feel in the middle of the trashed
landscape, word-gods, side-street-sex, under the arranged machines? Let me remember, you say, let me remember, leave me
alone, you say, leave me, gentle face
in a soft September light, like now: answer softly
answer, “in the midst of the daily plundering, or?”
Like the faces in the open afternoon-windows don’t answer. There is a sheet-metal field, dented,
“valse d’autumn” or how such a feeling is called,
not the clarity of looking out a D-Train window, gentle, gentle rhythm here now,
let me, let me remember, you say. Small train stations appear and remain behind,
meaningless structures, : remain behind? meaningless stops : meaningless?
yellow-red fire in a scrap yard,
gentle, gentle woods, last remains of forests in which the thin morning fog still hangs, traces of dampness, not
bent over, small peaceful ponds, forgotten
at the edge of an estate (:“we’re coming back,” in that house, we’re coming home, home?) for the eyes a fugitive rest, from the train window
looking out, the long, slow
even view across this country. There is a hunkered-down green, fantastic green, which passes by, and a child’s hand stretched out the train
window.
Why sadness? All: you gentle
faces in the afternoon light (no faces : you gentle faces between for the coins) the billboards, you gentle
faces in the window frames,
you gentle faces in the September light, you gentle faces of West Germany, tired and sad, you gentle faces, hungry for cunt, cock, tits, hungry for an exotic everyday
life, hungry for a kiss, hungry to feel your own kiss between the walls,
hungry between the advertisements, hungry between the classified ads, hungry between the pictures,
the advertising sales department closes at nine in the evening the movie theaters are darkened, to show a
little more life, the box offices close a quarter-hour after the main feature begins,
the television station broadcasts until shortly after midnight, hungry in the narrow
gardens, hungry for a gentle embrace,
what do you give your selves? What kind of a horror is that, when one stops in the middle of the street, standing among the passers-by,
& each for everyone a passer-by.
2024.04.02 19:32 CraftyPeanut2676 Biking or scenic float on Snake River?
How are the bike paths in GTNP? How flat are they? I’m looking to rent bikes with a burley trailer for kids (will have my 1.5 year old son with me) so I’d like to do something that can accommodate that. I know it’s subjective, but would doing a float or rafting trip instead of biking be more fun/scenic? If we did the float I would be leaving my son back at the cabin with his grandmother. Just looking for some ideas here thanks!
submitted by CraftyPeanut2676 to GrandTetonNatlPark [link] [comments]
2024.03.30 22:28 Zeddblidd Up the Creek (1984) / Without a Paddle (2004)
2024-108 / Zedd MAP: 75.88 / MLZ MAP: 74.94 / Score Gap: 0.94
Wikipedia?wprov=sfti1#) / IMDb / Official Trailer / Our Collection
From IMDb: Up the Creek - Bob McGraw is in his 12th year of college, goofing his way through life, until he has to win a river rafting race with three college buddies.
2024-109 / Zedd MAP: 76.17 / MLZ MAP: 69.35 / Score 6.82
Wikipedia / IMDb / Official Trailer / Our Collection
From IMDb: Without a Paddle - After their friend dies, three men decide to fulfill their childhood dream by going on a camping expedition for the lost D. B. Cooper bounty, with calamitous results.
Did I hear a collective groan out there? Can you think of two movies not better suited to stack one on top the other? Hell, I might just (from now on) be on the continual hunt for film titles that work together. :] Anyone got any ideas?
I’m also glad we spent MLZ’s staycation doing exactly what she said she wanted to do - watching movies… but I’ll admit, as nice as its been I’m already getting that “it’s almost over” vibe and we’re wanting to wring as many motion pictures through as we can. The alternative “Movie On Madness” format of fast turn arounds on the write ups has been a good break from routine for us but Mrs. Lady Zedd told me last night she’s “itching to get writing up proper” again. I feel likewise.
That said, I wanna share with you spinning up Without a Paddle was interesting - I always remember if I’ve seen a film but sometime I get a brain-blast and this one came over me suddenly. We’d seen this one in the theater in Elk Grove, CA - that’d be our first time living in a house down Sacramento way. Little Miss Zedd had just started Kindergarten and it was the first time I attempted to set up a collection catalog. Here these thoughts are disappeared for 20 years and the theme music and opening credits for this movie just slams them into existence.
It’s crazy how your brain can work that way - I suddenly am seeing, in my minds eye, the tile floor, the front door, and even a leather jacket MLZ gifted me (that later got ruined in San Francisco). I see the spare room, the afternoon sun drifting in through the window, and the chunky desktop computer we set up in there on a cheapo-depo Walmart fiberboard desk. I had two projects: I spun up a spreadsheet for movie titles because we were up to 4 whole shelves worth. 100-120 titles, how am I going to keep track of them all. We’d also bought a flatbed scanner and I was going to scan all our paper bills in and track those too…
Life: fuck you, in particular!
Shortly after we discovered the walls in the house were full of black mold and all my fancy, lofty goals went out the window. We were forcefully moved after everything we owned went through remediation. Nightmare time. I’d forgotten about that first spreadsheet until today (despite recalling often the black mold crisis). Not exactly important stuff but if you’d asked me this morning I’d have said the first attempt to catalog my collection came in 2010.
Funny how reconnecting with a film can flood those memories back. Does FEMA cover that? Just saying, our flood insurance has doubled in just the last couple of years, just making sure we’re getting our $900 worth (wink wink).
Back to normal come Monday :] Guess you could say we’ll resurrect standard movie on by then, leave all this madness behind us.
submitted by Zeddblidd to 500moviesorbust [link] [comments]
Wikipedia?wprov=sfti1#) / IMDb / Official Trailer / Our Collection
From IMDb: Up the Creek - Bob McGraw is in his 12th year of college, goofing his way through life, until he has to win a river rafting race with three college buddies.
2024-109 / Zedd MAP: 76.17 / MLZ MAP: 69.35 / Score 6.82
Wikipedia / IMDb / Official Trailer / Our Collection
From IMDb: Without a Paddle - After their friend dies, three men decide to fulfill their childhood dream by going on a camping expedition for the lost D. B. Cooper bounty, with calamitous results.
Did I hear a collective groan out there? Can you think of two movies not better suited to stack one on top the other? Hell, I might just (from now on) be on the continual hunt for film titles that work together. :] Anyone got any ideas?
I’m also glad we spent MLZ’s staycation doing exactly what she said she wanted to do - watching movies… but I’ll admit, as nice as its been I’m already getting that “it’s almost over” vibe and we’re wanting to wring as many motion pictures through as we can. The alternative “Movie On Madness” format of fast turn arounds on the write ups has been a good break from routine for us but Mrs. Lady Zedd told me last night she’s “itching to get writing up proper” again. I feel likewise.
That said, I wanna share with you spinning up Without a Paddle was interesting - I always remember if I’ve seen a film but sometime I get a brain-blast and this one came over me suddenly. We’d seen this one in the theater in Elk Grove, CA - that’d be our first time living in a house down Sacramento way. Little Miss Zedd had just started Kindergarten and it was the first time I attempted to set up a collection catalog. Here these thoughts are disappeared for 20 years and the theme music and opening credits for this movie just slams them into existence.
It’s crazy how your brain can work that way - I suddenly am seeing, in my minds eye, the tile floor, the front door, and even a leather jacket MLZ gifted me (that later got ruined in San Francisco). I see the spare room, the afternoon sun drifting in through the window, and the chunky desktop computer we set up in there on a cheapo-depo Walmart fiberboard desk. I had two projects: I spun up a spreadsheet for movie titles because we were up to 4 whole shelves worth. 100-120 titles, how am I going to keep track of them all. We’d also bought a flatbed scanner and I was going to scan all our paper bills in and track those too…
Life: fuck you, in particular!
Shortly after we discovered the walls in the house were full of black mold and all my fancy, lofty goals went out the window. We were forcefully moved after everything we owned went through remediation. Nightmare time. I’d forgotten about that first spreadsheet until today (despite recalling often the black mold crisis). Not exactly important stuff but if you’d asked me this morning I’d have said the first attempt to catalog my collection came in 2010.
Funny how reconnecting with a film can flood those memories back. Does FEMA cover that? Just saying, our flood insurance has doubled in just the last couple of years, just making sure we’re getting our $900 worth (wink wink).
Back to normal come Monday :] Guess you could say we’ll resurrect standard movie on by then, leave all this madness behind us.
2024.03.28 07:38 Substantial_Push3685 24 years old, Lost and confused
I live with my mother, we moved from my hometown after I graduated back in 2018-19. Going from a rich mountain town to a more city-like area was exciting at first (Summit County to Grand Junction Colorado) and I still enjoy the area sometimes. But I have become confused and very lonely here. I've dated multiple people, usually ending in turmoil or because of my depression and lack of knowledge when it comes to being in a relationship. I was at a job with good people and had a great family sense among co-workers for about a year. but had to quit because of never getting a raise and a whole list of other things, after my girlfriend from that job dumped me I burned that bridge with them all completely. That was the only Job out of 6 ish in the last 5 years where I actually made connections with people and it didn't last long, I suck at making connections.
In 2020 I lost my grandfather to cancer, This broke me completely as I was already dealing with depression before it, and my grandpa was everything to me. life still doesn't feel real without him in a way. He was my father figure, my teacher, the person who I wanted to make proud in life. I watched him die and am still tearing up just thinking about it today. I think I still live with the fear of what I love dying almost to the point where I've lost connection with most people I love.Since the Job and ex-girlfriend I mentioned earlier, I've picked up a security job and it has been great being able to go to events and travel a little bit, but the work isn't consistent, hopefully when more events kick up soon ill be able to use this job to get out of my shell more and work on my people skills. so work-wise I'm kinda doing alright, I'm broke though and I need more income.
I'm just at a really weird place in life and very lonely, I've kinda started to lose contact with the "boys" or my hometown friends although I am still trying to plan a trip with them. Me and my ex used to just do everything together and it was almost perfect.I love to create, Make music and videos, photography, travel go out on hikes road trips, rafting you name it. I love meeting new people and I honestly am a very nonjudgmental person who can and has gotten along with people from all walks of life creeds and colors, I have a deep interest in touching grass, Im trying to build up my writing portfolio as well as release music and short films soon. it's just a lot of hard work and sometimes I just feel I have a hard time staying disciplined to projects and starting things.
I admit I have been addicted to weed It is something I'm trying to work and cut down on, I am quitting porn and trying to stray away from trying to find a relationship right now although the friendship and partnership would be nice I admit. I've disabled all my social media so I can focus more on life and what really matters to me. I'm trying to plan my life to do what I want more and practice free will more, go on more hikes and road trips, meet random people create art appreciate this world and life I have
I think growing up where I did has made me uniquely appreciate the world and life so idk its like i SHOULD be happy just being me and being alone but I have this weird sense of existential dread, sometimes I feel like life isn't real. It's weird it's like my head is still trying to catch up with everything I've been through and make sense of it, I feel lost and out of it. I'm pretty lonely, I spend all of my time alone hiking the dogs or making music alone in my room, my mom works a weird schedule but I talk to her every day and am trying to learn how to be as present as possible with her, I have a very outgoing side to me but sometimes it's like I can't even look people in the eye or there's something subconsciously blocking me from making a real connection with anyone, I can get locked into single npc lines and I hate it its not me at all I'm weird and funny deep down and wish I could get to know people better and vise versa.
Even today I went out on a hike with one of my dogs and got some cool footage but still, I felt out of it, not present in the moment and forcing everything in a way. and I didn't feel good about myself getting home.Life in my 20s has been a weird time and at 24 it's confusing being where I'm at with this weird sense of disconnection and hard time being an adult. I'm 24 living with my mom with a job I barely get hours in, My mind feels scattered, I have music and my passion for expression but I really don't know what I want to be in life and I even struggle with imposter syndrome with the things I am doing. My mind is stuck in the past and I have a hard time living in the now.
And it's hard not to compare sometimes because there are people my age with houses and 401k incomes, families and children, marriage, graduating college, able to travel and here I am struggling to keep my room clean 60 dollars to my name after paying rent for a trailer. and it's not that I'd trade my life for anyone else's I just don't understand why things aren't a little brighter in my life. and why I find myself in this predicament.
I know I need therapy and am trying to get into that it's just hard for me to express what I am going through as you can tell by these rambles, I think I have ADHD and some weird part of my male ego just doesn't want to go but I know I need to.
But any advice or words for me right now are welcome! I just want to start growing real connections and kick this existential dread or "life is not real" feeling and Be more present and in tune with life again mainly and want to know if anybody else feels lost as I do, or is in a similar situation as me.
submitted by Substantial_Push3685 to DecidingToBeBetter [link] [comments]
In 2020 I lost my grandfather to cancer, This broke me completely as I was already dealing with depression before it, and my grandpa was everything to me. life still doesn't feel real without him in a way. He was my father figure, my teacher, the person who I wanted to make proud in life. I watched him die and am still tearing up just thinking about it today. I think I still live with the fear of what I love dying almost to the point where I've lost connection with most people I love.Since the Job and ex-girlfriend I mentioned earlier, I've picked up a security job and it has been great being able to go to events and travel a little bit, but the work isn't consistent, hopefully when more events kick up soon ill be able to use this job to get out of my shell more and work on my people skills. so work-wise I'm kinda doing alright, I'm broke though and I need more income.
I'm just at a really weird place in life and very lonely, I've kinda started to lose contact with the "boys" or my hometown friends although I am still trying to plan a trip with them. Me and my ex used to just do everything together and it was almost perfect.I love to create, Make music and videos, photography, travel go out on hikes road trips, rafting you name it. I love meeting new people and I honestly am a very nonjudgmental person who can and has gotten along with people from all walks of life creeds and colors, I have a deep interest in touching grass, Im trying to build up my writing portfolio as well as release music and short films soon. it's just a lot of hard work and sometimes I just feel I have a hard time staying disciplined to projects and starting things.
I admit I have been addicted to weed It is something I'm trying to work and cut down on, I am quitting porn and trying to stray away from trying to find a relationship right now although the friendship and partnership would be nice I admit. I've disabled all my social media so I can focus more on life and what really matters to me. I'm trying to plan my life to do what I want more and practice free will more, go on more hikes and road trips, meet random people create art appreciate this world and life I have
I think growing up where I did has made me uniquely appreciate the world and life so idk its like i SHOULD be happy just being me and being alone but I have this weird sense of existential dread, sometimes I feel like life isn't real. It's weird it's like my head is still trying to catch up with everything I've been through and make sense of it, I feel lost and out of it. I'm pretty lonely, I spend all of my time alone hiking the dogs or making music alone in my room, my mom works a weird schedule but I talk to her every day and am trying to learn how to be as present as possible with her, I have a very outgoing side to me but sometimes it's like I can't even look people in the eye or there's something subconsciously blocking me from making a real connection with anyone, I can get locked into single npc lines and I hate it its not me at all I'm weird and funny deep down and wish I could get to know people better and vise versa.
Even today I went out on a hike with one of my dogs and got some cool footage but still, I felt out of it, not present in the moment and forcing everything in a way. and I didn't feel good about myself getting home.Life in my 20s has been a weird time and at 24 it's confusing being where I'm at with this weird sense of disconnection and hard time being an adult. I'm 24 living with my mom with a job I barely get hours in, My mind feels scattered, I have music and my passion for expression but I really don't know what I want to be in life and I even struggle with imposter syndrome with the things I am doing. My mind is stuck in the past and I have a hard time living in the now.
And it's hard not to compare sometimes because there are people my age with houses and 401k incomes, families and children, marriage, graduating college, able to travel and here I am struggling to keep my room clean 60 dollars to my name after paying rent for a trailer. and it's not that I'd trade my life for anyone else's I just don't understand why things aren't a little brighter in my life. and why I find myself in this predicament.
I know I need therapy and am trying to get into that it's just hard for me to express what I am going through as you can tell by these rambles, I think I have ADHD and some weird part of my male ego just doesn't want to go but I know I need to.
But any advice or words for me right now are welcome! I just want to start growing real connections and kick this existential dread or "life is not real" feeling and Be more present and in tune with life again mainly and want to know if anybody else feels lost as I do, or is in a similar situation as me.
2024.03.24 10:58 MKadath Hunter - gatherer coop games
Hi, do you guys have any recommendation for survival / life sim games that are equal in both farming and combat? Recently played Dinkum and my wife loved it, but I got bored before she did because there is minimal combat and there aren't any objectives to go on.
Something like Raft I think is good I guess...? The trailers showed some sharks and the island-hopping aspect is pretty fun and adventurous (not so mundane). What do you think?
submitted by MKadath to CoOpGaming [link] [comments]
Something like Raft I think is good I guess...? The trailers showed some sharks and the island-hopping aspect is pretty fun and adventurous (not so mundane). What do you think?
2024.03.21 06:34 TheRealWillyT whys it say pre order? first time player
 | submitted by TheRealWillyT to wow [link] [comments] |
2024.03.16 00:42 andyski5000 Clay Hills road conditions?
Anyone driven down to the clay hills boat ramp on the San Juan recently? Looking for any recent intel…
The crew is considering some raft support for our packraft trip starting this weekend. (Packrafts will exit upstream, but oars would need to continue to the clay hills boat ramp) We’ve got a capable 4x4 truck and trailer, but TL is concerned the road will be a mess and not worth the hassle.
Any thoughts?
submitted by andyski5000 to whitewater [link] [comments]
The crew is considering some raft support for our packraft trip starting this weekend. (Packrafts will exit upstream, but oars would need to continue to the clay hills boat ramp) We’ve got a capable 4x4 truck and trailer, but TL is concerned the road will be a mess and not worth the hassle.
Any thoughts?
2024.03.13 22:47 RenderRoom Raft trailer purchasing
Hey all, I am planning on purchasing a raft trailer this weekend (currently on sale) and I was curious if there is any form of price negotiation applicable to trailer purchases, similar to purchasing a car from an auto dealership? Thanks!
submitted by RenderRoom to rafting [link] [comments]
2024.03.13 21:31 RenderRoom Raft trailer purchasing
I'm looking to buy a trailer this weekend that is already on sale, but I was curious if trailer dealers allow for price negotiation similar to auto dealerships?
Thanks!
submitted by RenderRoom to flyfishing [link] [comments]
Thanks!
2024.03.11 21:40 Fizzy163 Minecraft iceberg from a 1.8.9 player
 | submitted by Fizzy163 to IcebergCharts [link] [comments] |
2024.03.11 01:42 Able-Ad372 Yelawolf "RATBOY" review ("The Peanut Butter Falcon")
Spoiler Warning ‼️‼️ This is not a review of the movie, this is a review of Yelas performance ‼️‼️For anyone who doesn't know, "The Peanut Butter Falcon" is a movie that came out in 2019 and it is very much a Mark Twain inspired movie that features a mass adventure as well as a very difficult problem to solve. The movie stars Shia LaBeouf as Tyler, who delivers an absolutely amazing performance as a character who's going through many changes in learning to be more accepting, while also on the run (we will get to that), Zack Gottsagen, who plays Zak, an absolutely lovable and amazing character, who is struggling with down syndrome but learns along the way what friendship is, and he grows with Shia LaBeouf's character, Tyler. Dakota Johnson plays the third main character in the movie who is on the search for Zak's character and her job becomes online because of it, as she works at the institution that he escaped from. Along the way she learns that she needs to be more hands off with Zah because he needs to be allowed to live his life rather than being cooped up. Anyways the point is reviewing how our guy, Yelawolf, fared in his acting role in this movie, he played the character of Ratboy, who is one of the greasy trailer Park boys inspired villains who is trying to chase down Tyler and kill him for destroying his fishing equipment. Wolf has quite a few scenes in this movie where he is meant to be extremely intimidating and serve as like basically the hillbilly from hell who is supposed to be threatening and very much vilified. I like that for this movie he was casted as a bad character, it definitely fits his appearance. He only has about five scenes in the movie I would say, and for the most part he is in the background but does still deliver some lines behind the other villain who is named Duncan. He first appears in the movie after we see Tyler avoiding them originally after stealing some of their fishing equipment from the water. At this point in the movie we transition to Zak escaping from the institution that he's in with the help of a kind old man, because he is trying to get to a school of professional wrestling led by his favorite wreatler, Salt Water Redneck, and he finds his way to being in the same marina as Tyler and he hides under a blanket in Tyler's fishing boat. We then see Tyler get confronted by Duncan and Ratboy, and this is where we see Ratboy's intimidation come out, as he threatens tyler, and then him and Duncan absolutely beat down Tyler in the dirt and kicking dirt in his face, and that nice kick of dirt in the face was delivered by Yela. We then fade to later on where beat down Tyler is seeking his revenge so he lights the fishing equipment of Duncan and Ratboy on fire and then he gets in his boat and he speeds away while being pursued by the two villains. The two villains do a search of the area, and they scour the area for him until they can no longer see him because he's hidden in thick leaves of the bayou area. After this Tyler and Zak are walking together away from the boat that they've sunk as to hide the evidence, and Tyler originally tries to leave him but he gains a heart at least somewhat at this point even though he originally wanted to leave Zak defend for himself, and he returns to where he left him only to find that a kid is trying to force him to jump into the water even though he can't swim. Later on down the road after we see Tyler and Zak taking their adventure and being later on met by Dakota Johnson's character who approaches Tyler with a photograph of Zak, asking if he had seen him but Zack has nothing on his mind except the appearance of her character. But after finding out this information that Zak is on the run, Tyler views it in his mind that they now have a bond since they are both on the run. This is Then followed by a cut to where we see Duncan and Ratboy somehow finding out where Tyler and Zak had been, and they begin interrogating the kid who tried to force Zak into the water, and we can see that Ratboy gets visibly frustrated when the kid has no information for him. This is later followed by many minutes down the road Tyler and Zak getting very drunk together and Tyler builds Zak a costume he called the "Peanut Butter Falcon" to help Zak hopefully one day achieve his dreams of being a professional wrestler. This costume includes wings made of branches (that will be important). At this point, Dakota Johnson's character comes back after locating Tyler and Zak, and she originally confronts Tyler for "kidnapping" Zak, which he later merely says "it's not kidnapping he's willingly with me" (not exactly but something of the sort). This leads to them continuing to float downstream on a raft they had made, at this point now all together because Zak threw Dakota Johnson's character's keys into the water as a means of getting her to come along as he has a slight crush on her it seems. This is followed by Ratboy and Duncan finding the spot where Tyler and Zak left the wings, and Ratboy putting on the wings in a scene I honestly found very amusing, it was definitely quite funny. Later on, Ratboy and Duncan Chase down Tyler once again and threaten to shoot him through his hands if he can't come up with the money to fix their fishing equipment, Ratboy wielding the gun. Zak then comes outside and threatens Duncan and Ratboy with a shotgun, and they scurry off. Finally, Tyler and Zak find Salt Water Redneck, and he begins to train Zak how to wrestle, and as they're sitting around, completely bullshitting, Salt Water Redneck says that Zak should wrestle the upcoming day. At the match, Duncan and Ratboy approach Tyler from behind as he's coaching Zak who's getting beaten up in the ring because he wasn't truly ready, and as Duncan smacks Tyler in the back of the head with a pipe, Zak throws his opponent out of the ring, and the final time we see Yela in the movie is when his character, Ratboy, gets crushed by a fat man. Overall, I would say Yelawolf depicted a very hateful and awful character, and that was what was so good about it. I loved his portrayal of a villain, and I think he did it perfectly, I love Yelawolf and he played Ratboy the perfect amount so you absolutely hated his character. Perfect film, and perfect performance by Wolf. One of my new favorite movies for sure.
submitted by Able-Ad372 to yelawolf [link] [comments]