At The Border: Difference between revisions

Jump to navigation Jump to search

At The Border (view source)

Revision as of 21:00, 26 July 2023

6,690 bytes added ,  26 July 2023
no edit summary
No edit summary
No edit summary
Line 24: Line 24:


== Synopsis ==
== Synopsis ==
Joe walks up to a beautiful woman in a restaurant, tells her she will
fall madly in love with him.
Joe, manic for walking, walks from LA to Vancouver, writes a book
about the psychopathology of tramps, mentions the Russian religious
sect the Wanderers.<ref>I can't find this.  There were wandering monks
in 19th century Russia, not a sect.  See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_the_Pilgrim 'The Way of the Pilgrim'] </ref>
3:50: A Pakistani woman dreamt of walking across the ocean to Karbala,
Saudi Arabia, where they made a fortune.<ref>There's a Karbala in Iraq;
I can't find a likely name in Saudi Arabia.</ref>  Inspired by this dream
they set out on ships; most drown.
5:00: 'Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' - Nietzsche.
Joe recalls Bolkonsky's death at the battle of Borodino in <i>War and
Peace.</i>
5:45: 'The famous writer once asked...  are we any more significant
than microbes under a microscope?'
6:10: Last Christmas, Joe's landlady, dreaming that dogs were
attacking her, threw her baby daughter against the wall, killing her.
She found it droll, began to doubt reality, got her nose trepanned.
7:30: Joe used to go out with a woman whose father had lost his nose
as a child to a fungus, had a variety of prostheses.  Joe describes
her beautiful mother, her dress and manner.  The daughter was
nondescript so Joe stopped dating her.
9:30: Joe asks if all our past experiences form our present state or
if we can be free of them.
10:10: Joe tells the story of Odysseus returning from Troy, hearing an
account of his travails, cries for the first time.
11:00: Polish Jews tried to pass themselves as gentiles when the
Russians occupied.  Eastern European immigrants to the west passed
themselves off as nobles.
11:40: 'Snowflakes under a microscope, a desert caravan with camels on
a horizon, rain on a railroad coach window, pebbles in a mountain
stream, moonlight over the jungle, old photographs, summer lightning,
cool white sheets of crater on the horizon.'
13:40: Joe gives an imagined description of the invention and use of
umbrellas.
16:30: Joe describes a construction site on an old potters' field.
Apparently Joe is the architect, sees that the house will not match
his plans.
17:30: Joe tells a story from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czes%C5%82aw_Mi%C5%82osz Czeslaw Milosz]
about a Soviet soldier killing a German POW for his sheepskin coat.
This story is nearly the same as the original, which is in <i>The
Parallax View</i>.
19:20: Kierkegaard on despair, apparently an accurate reference.
20:00: Joe talks about the movie <i>The invisible man</i>, observes that he
had to put clothes and bandages on to be seen, asks what we expect
people to see in us.
20:50: Joe says that wild animals are comfortable with themselves,
aren't self-conscious.
22:10: Joe asks what we think about TV talk shows that see both sides
of every issue.
22:40: Joe tells about going to sort-of-church last Sunday.
23:30: Joe tells of a Russian sect that worshipped holes, drills a
hole to worship.
25:10: 'Oh, wondrous void, eternal nothingness.  I offer myself so
that you might cast your inscrutable dear silence upon me.  Oh
lustrous hole, symbol of the greater glory of absence, darkness, and
mystery beyond the realm of human thought.  Let me ask for your grace
and forgiveness in the knowledge that I shall serve you all the days
of my meaningless life.'
27:00: 'I was either a businessman in New York, or I had killed a
businessman in New York.  Two detectives came to arrest me.  I asked
them to wait one more day, but they handcuffed me and put me in the
back of their car.  Then, driving down Wall Street, they offered to
let me go if I'd meet them at 10:30 tomorrow morning at the Stock
Exchange and give myself up.  If the Stock Exchange was closed due to
a holiday, we'd meet in front of the building.  I agreed.'
27:40: 'Last winter, I was determined to get sick.  I walked around my
house with the windows open, exposing myself to drafts, bathed my feet
in cold water, and visited friends who had viral infections.  But
nothing happened - I was immune.  Then, when I was about to take a
positive, decisive step in my life, I came down with bronchitis.'
28:20: 'I'm deeply moved whenever I see a woman weeping...'  Joe feels
most desire for crying women, prays.
30:10: 'The Bible says, in the beginning was the word. But which
word?...'
30:40: Joe used to be a psychoanalyst, was annoyed by a patient who
arrived late.
31:50: Joe can't sleep in a room where there's a dead body.
32:20: Joe feels slighted when people cut in front of him.
33:50: Joe describes the violent bathhouse across the street.
35:50: Joe describes suffering from compulsive memories.
36:40: 'Now here's a paradox: Sartre spent years writing in a cafe
about alienated people and the breakdown in communication.  And in
doing so, he became the least alienated person in France.  Everyone
knew him, everyone respected him.  He had millions of readers. He was
a celebrity.'
37:10: 'Another paradox: The tiniest thing has become the most
powerful: The atom: Split it, and you destroy the world.  Yes, when I
think of human ingenuity, why the arteries in my neck swell with
pride.'
38:40: Joe talks about the ambiguities of life, how facts become
obsolete, that complete understanding is impossible.
43:00: Joe describes a surreal trip on a horizontal elevator, calling
his father for help; he smokes a pack of Chesterfields in the phone
booth all at once.
46:10: 'Oh, wondrous void, eternal nothingness, I offer myself so that
you might cast your inscrutable dear silence upon me.  Oh lustrous
hole, symbol of the greater glory of absence, darkness, and mystery,
beyond the realm of human thought - let me ask for your grace and your
forgiveness.'
46:50: Joe describes early restaurants, before waiters, their
evolution.
50:10: Joe describes catering a fancy wedding.  The doves that were
supposed to fly out of the top layer of the cake were all dead,
casting a pall on on the marriage.
53:40: Joe tells of his farmer father, who lost it to debt.  They
moved to the city where he took a job at a screw factory, got caught
in the threader, was threaded to death.
55:00: Joe took his place, was attracted to the woman who worked next
to him.  They walked a mountain path to a cliff, looked out over the
empty quarter.
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:100%; overflow:auto;">
<div style="font-weight:bold;line-height:1.6;">Legacy Synopsis</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
Joe meets a woman at a party, tells her she will become obsessed with him.  The compulsion to wander. The psychopathology of the tramp. A religious sect known as the wanderers.  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. War and peace.  A woman kills her child, begins to doubt the reality of things.  Dating a woman whose father has a prosthetic nose and whose mother is enchanting.  Can you cut off yourself from your past?  Odysseus cries as his story is read to him.  People who change their identities to fit the times.  A list of memories:
Joe meets a woman at a party, tells her she will become obsessed with him.  The compulsion to wander. The psychopathology of the tramp. A religious sect known as the wanderers.  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. War and peace.  A woman kills her child, begins to doubt the reality of things.  Dating a woman whose father has a prosthetic nose and whose mother is enchanting.  Can you cut off yourself from your past?  Odysseus cries as his story is read to him.  People who change their identities to fit the times.  A list of memories:
*Snowflakes under a microscope
*Snowflakes under a microscope
Line 52: Line 207:
<div class="mw-references-wrap"><ol class="references">
<div class="mw-references-wrap"><ol class="references">


==Commentary==
The legacy synopsis was of [[At The Border (Remix)]] - an excusable mistake because many stations misidentified.
[[Category:Absurd_Monologue]]
[[Category:Absurd_Monologue]]
[[Category:Sound_Effects]]
[[Category:Sound_Effects]]
Retrieved from "https://jfwiki.org/index.php?title=Special:MobileDiff/24899"

Navigation menu