AVIVA and OTTO

We watched Todd Solondz' Palindromes tonight. I had wanted to see it since the previews came out on apple.com/trailers like 3 years ago. I did a monologue for a theatre class I took in university from his film Happiness. His films are so sick and twisted but the characters are so seemingly innocent and hopeful. I like the way he sees the world. The film is about a young girl from middle America who wants to have a baby "so that she will always have someone to love". She succeeds in getting pregnant and the story just kind of goes from there. Lots of semi-disturbing things happen along the way. It was refreshing. I liked it.

I was a bit distracted when the movie started because I was thinking about this cat, Luna. It is my landlady's crazy, strange cat that drools when you pet it. But today we found out that my landlady, who we had thought had been at her daughter's house since Easter weekend, had a stroke and that when they took her into the hospital to be examined they discovered brain tumours. She is thus very very sick and in the hospital. Shocking and sad and depressing. What can we do? Take care of the house, they said. But what about the cat, we asked? Is someone feeding the cat? I went downstairs to check on it, terrified that there would be a cat that was starved to death or something, but Luna was fine. We later found out that someone was re-filling his food, but he was locked in the dark basement so we let him out and I bought some wet food for him (tuna flavoured) and we tried to pet him. I'm just so sad about my landlady. She is so nice. And now she's so sick. And now I think I am taking out my feelings of compassion and longing to be helpful by trying to love the cat to death. I just want to pet the cat and comfort it somehow. The cat seems sad. Maybe it's just me.

I was on my way home tonight and feeling nerdy wearing my new bright green running shoes because there were these girls all dressed up and looking sleek and it made me feel like a bum. So it was my stop, and all these stupid thoughts of insecurity are going through my head and I am the first one off the streetcar and BAM, the doors started to close as I was getting off and whacked me right in the face! HARD! Someone was getting off right after me and totally saw. It actually made me laugh, after I was done being humiliated. Stupid streetcar door!