Cookie-wise

That’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.

            There’s a certain charm to the way Jack Lemon (A.K.A C.C. Baxter) delivers his lines he thought. The way the screen legend moved his body, quivered a lip, and used his eyes to dig deep into the meaning of Billy Wilder’s words is something else. So much so that the light reflecting off of his glasses ensured his eyes were wide and dry; the people on screen didn’t look like him, but that didn’t matter—what mattered was the feeling. Maybe it was feeling understood or the feeling of being seen or even the feeling of witnessing a great moment between two

people/actors/performers/artists. Truth be told, he wouldn’t like me writing this, but it could quite possibly be the fact that Shirley McClain (A.K.A Ms. Kubelik) questioned once too many times.

            I just have this talent for falling in love with wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

            Why can’t I ever fall in love with someone nice like you?

            I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.

            It can’t always be about love; it isn’t always about love – a broken mirror tells more than the story of a broken heart. A broken mirror tells the story of someone shattered, on the edge of losing a piece of themselves – one tough jilt away from the shard of heated sand falling and smashing itself into the past. He knows it isn’t about love, but there is no easier scape goat than someone saying ‘why me?’ ‘why wasn’t I chosen?’ Smiling and laughing away he understands this, and with the light still shedding a glow onto his silhouetted face, he thinks about the moments that ensure it can’t always be about love. Moments where instead of lying-in bed alone watching films off his laptop, he’d be with someone else, somewhere else, watching images he loved projected onto walls and silver-screens. Moments where he wouldn’t second guess a story: the decision to write a murder mystery set in the throes of a high-school’s drama club instead of the political thriller set in the LA Riots of ’92. Moments where he would gladly say what he was thinking and not think what the fuck is wrong with me? These moments make him smile just as any moment in your life you think back on and wonder how is it possible that I had it so good and did not know it? So you see it can’t always be about love, and it isn’t always about love—external or self-love—it is rather about the small innate things that are supposed to be shown rather than told.

            It’s a wonderful thing dinner for two?

            Do you usually eat alone?

            Oh no. Sometimes I have dinner with Ed Sullivan. Sometimes with Dinah Dash, or Perry Como. The other night I had dinner with Mae West. Of course she was much younger then.

            He can’t quite discern the charm of it all, of why something so old and so… white is so charming. White isn’t a derogatory term here, but a narrative centered on an accountant in the sixties whose sole concern is keeping their Manhattan apartment—that he shares with his superiors for his own personal gain in the shape of promotion—to himself is quite possibly a very Caucasian narrative… especially since it’s the 60s. That doesn’t mean he loathes the film, he loves it, the fucking guy still hasn’t stopped smiling. Ms. Kubelik just made another joke about jumping out a window and he is grinning from ear to ear. 

            That being said there’s only so much a smile can hide. You can only smile so many times before you fatigue the muscle, no matter how strong it is – muscles wear out faster than a person’s tolerance for people. Truth be told, I think that he smiles for the simple fact that he does not know what else to do—he can’t be in a state of constant contemplation… but what else is he supposed to do as a writer? Isn’t that what writers do? If he doesn’t do that then is he truly a writer? 

            He simply hopes that if and when he writes and creates that he can write and create for one person: for you. For you to smile, laugh and maybe even have a flutter in your gut. Yet, he feels like a fake, a phoney, like someone shunned by everyone simply because he has a hard time being himself.

            Diving further into the depths of the lights that envelope him I don’t think he realizes that that’s the way it crumbles – cookie-wise. It’s a little too complex at times, even for me to understand takes a lot more than what I can grasp. I’m only here to see what condition, what condition he’s in, other than that I am of no mind or body – simply a purposeless voice on the electronic page with some megalomaniac creating me every essence of being in the hopes of imbuing a different kind of affective experience.

            Some people take, some people get took. And they know they’re getting took and there’s nothing they can do about it.

            It is quite possibly the essence of being critical that ensures a writer remains inspired or that they are able to do their work with the time they have—especially if financially independent. Nothing is meant to be as simple or as easy, we live and we grow desensitized to whatever throe life has us in, which is probably why a lot of us enjoy the mindless entertainment that is mass produced. We live in one reality and are bound to many – the responsibility to the one that constitutes our reality weighs heavy – so much so that our necks bend further & further and are closer to snapping with each added tug of the rope. It blinds the possibility of helping to create and establish new realities – comparison, jealousy, all he sees is what he should be and not what he can be.

            Ya know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe; I mean, shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw your footprint in the sand, and there you were.

            With the light still casting a silhouette across his face, he thinks

            “You have to feel scared; you have to feel uneasy; you have to feel as if one wrong move will topple the house of cards. SO just breathe. Feel the air fill your nostrils and lungs, feel it leaving your lungs deflated. For your sake more than anything, please just try to understand that you have actually come so far. That you are a nice person, you can write, you can create stories… The only question is not ‘are you deserving?’ but ‘are you going to give yourself the space to do it?’”

            I truly do believe he means it. He’s not at his worst and his worst does not define him, him asking “is this okay?” for a text is him not at his best, but it is him trying to build himself up. Be scared, but only for a moment. After that moment roar. For fucks sake, Pottermore says he’s a Gryffindor. I think he’s working on it, and that’s all you can ask for—for someone to work on it—cause that’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.