Me You and Everyone We Know Back and Forth Forever

"I'll love you forever." You've probably said it. You may accept even meant it. On the one paw, of course, loving someone forever in the quotidian sense of the give-and-take (if there is a quotidian sense of the discussion "forever") is impossible. In that sense, it is somewhat akin to saying "I'll be playing basketball forever," which, in applied terms, really means "I'll exist playing basketball game for as long as my physical wellness and stamina hold out." Saying "I'll be playing basketball game forever" is more than of a mark for just how important basketball is to you at this moment in time—"forever" is a kind of superlative: "basketball is i of the best things in my life, for at present at least."

Perhaps when i says "I'll love you forever" they have something similar at stake (notice I don't write "in mind"—nosotros may lie to ourselves in such moments). It becomes the equivalent of saying "I volition honey yous as long as I proceed to feel this way." This makes the statement something of a tautology insofar as beloved is defined past "feeling this way" and and so by definition love persists ancillary to that feeling.

On the other paw, we seem to have something else in heed when nosotros say "I'll love yous forever." If the quotidian notion of forever entails an impossibility for human life insofar equally "forever" far transcends our relatively meager corporeality of time in beingness, mayhap the "forever" in "I'll dear you lot forever" works otherwise. Perhaps I don't mean that I will be forever as the entity that loves you in this way (which, of course, I won't). Perhaps another notion of "forever" is at stake here. I seem to be saying that this love has a kind of permanence, a kind of wholeness that doesn't require my continual enactment of it (as a living being) for information technology to perpetuate. If the quotidian notion of dearest is a line that, owing to our mortality, has a beginning and an cease, then this notion of "love forever" bends into a kind of circular stability.

In a strange kind of way, Miranda July'southward quietly charming characteristic moving picture, Me and You lot and Everyone Nosotros Know (2005), is about these two competing notions of "forever" in relation to love and the desire for the nearness of another. The motion-picture show traces the mostly stilted interactions amid an array of characters who relate to each other through employment, proximity of residence, winsome affection, and happenstance. Christine (Miranda July) is an aspiring video creative person and operates a cab service for senior citizens. She meets and fall improbably in love with shoe salesman Richard (John Hawkes) who has recently separated from his married woman (JoNell Kennedy), with whom he now shares custody of his 2 sons Peter (Miles Thompson) and Robby (Brandon Ratcliff).

Moving picture Strip past joseph_alban (Pixabay License / Pixabay)

Richard has moved into a relatively low-rent neighborhood well-nigh his coworker Andrew (Brad William Henke) whose teasing flirtation with ii underage girls, Heather (Natasha Slatyon) and Rebecca (Najarra Townsend), chop-chop escalates, traversing dangerous territory. Peter befriends an awkward neighborhood girl, Sylvie (Carlie Westerman) who can't be more than than eight- or nine-years-sometime and all the same has already amassed a hope chest of household items bought with her own coin that she considers her dowry and intends for her future husband and daughter. Meanwhile, in an act of randomly adorable perversity, half dozen-year-one-time Robby unwittingly carries on a torrid exchange of messages via a dating app with Nancy Herrington (Tracy Wright), the curator of a contemporary art museum with whom Christine attempts to curry favor, hoping to have her piece of work shown at that place.

Each character, aside perhaps from the preternaturally centered Robby, careens from happenstance to happenstance. Each—again, aside from Robby, to whom we will render—is driven to push forward without a visible goal. They often project improbable and idealized goals, inappropriate to their age or situation. Sylvie no longer inhabits her own life; she lives for and inside a future that may never come to be. She longs to announced older than she is; she acts older than she is, to the dismay of her female parent and the bored clerks presiding over a department store sale.

Nancy seems established in the fine art world in her role every bit curator; indeed, she acts every bit a gatekeeper, belongings aspirants such every bit Christine at bay and making sternly eccentric proclamations concerning the centrality of suffering to the digital age ("there would be no email without AIDS")—proclamations at once pretentious and revealing, supercilious and vulnerable. And yet, the security of her position belies a haunted loneliness and suffuses her, sending her to seek companionship on the internet and coming closest to finding it in the coprophilic musings of a six-twelvemonth-quondam boy.

Equally often the characters meander in search of some grounding foundation, something that will requite their lives significant. Peter seeks a friend in his bad-mannered teenage angst turned resentful, probable in response to the collapse of his parents' wedlock. Richard is impatient to outset living again (as he puts it), seeking some moment of magic (even if it means lighting his own hand ablaze), so condign immediately skeptical of romantic possibility during his meet-cute interactions with Christine. Christine wants to belong—to the art world, to Richard, to something—and is caught in that in-betweenness of feeling as though she has met her calling in art and yet finding no acceptance in that location, an in-betweenness that is recapitulated in her stilted encounters with Richard.

In a schematic sense, we might envision these characters occupying diverse trajectories, diverse lines, hurtling toward an unforeseen that the characters both fear and desire. They want something else. Merely information technology isn't as though they don't care what that is. They don't want an culling regardless of what it is. They just don't desire to continue to inhabit the space they inhabit and the straight line seems like the best way (the "shortest path") out of that situation. They want better just they are unsure not only how to get it but even what better would or should look like. So, they rush ahead perversely into unreachable unknown, longing for a seemingly unattainable wholeness, like lines longing to bend into circles.

Miranda July as Christine Jesperson in (IMDB)

Imagine a direct line, unbounded on both ends (which, of course, ways there are no ends). It stretches from an undefined—indeed undefinable—point and disappears into the infinite distance. Indeed, this image is what many of us think of when we consider infinity. It is non, however, the simply kind of infinity. Let that go for now. From a by immemorial to a future beyond reach: notice how easily our paradigm of the infinite line becomes an image of space fourth dimension. The line (provided it is a straight line) is fully adamant. It will stretch in those two directions (the past and the future, backwards and forwards) toward determined but constantly deferred goals.

Discover how the concept of the infinite line stretches our notion of space. Our concept of space is also infinite (information technology would have to be to accommodate an infinite line) but when we bargain with infinite (whether practically, or imaginatively, or in most cases even conceptually) we think of it as being the groundwork to location. We find a thing located in space. But the infinite line challenges that conception. From somewhere in the infinite expanse of the centre of that line, provided it is space, we are no closer to 1 end than the other because, past definition, at that place are no ends, and thus, by definition, the line betrays the very notion of location. The ends can't be located considering the line goes on forever.

This is what we, post-obit thinkers such as GWF Hegel, will call a bad infinity. This infinity isn't the true infinity for Hegel because it is predicated on the uncomplicated negation of the bounded line. We can't conceptualize the totality of the infinite line, we just accept its fatalistic determinism, its insistence in going on forever, arriving literally nowhere, insisting on a place that is not a location.

At present consider the circumvolve. I don't accept to write "bounded circle", because the circle is, by definition bounded. Information technology is, indeed, cocky-binding; it rounds about upon itself to create a whole. Unlike the unbounded line, the circle is a clear, believable totality, not the mere negation of wholeness. Only like the unbounded line, the circle has no beginning and no cease. Rather, the circumvolve obeys the logic of requite and accept. Breathing is round—flowing in and flowing out; tides are round—ebb and flow, flux and reflux. This is a different type of infinity, the bounded infinity of recirculation, a good infinity. In that location is no one goal hither but rather the continuation of the flow. The circle is not static but it is non condemned to wayward, empty becoming either. The circle's repletion counteracts the line'southward nihilism.

Observe that the circumvolve posits a different conception of time. As opposed to the endless next thing of the line, the circle offers endurance and sustenance. Circular time is the fourth dimension of the seasons, of change rounded out into beneficial, meaning-providing repetition, the signifying wholeness of the eternal recurrence. Circular time is the fourth dimension of habituation: not empty habits that we would do well to repudiate, but the habituation that accrues to found what nosotros are, how we are with ourselves, with our world, and with others in that globe. Fourth dimension here flows into itself—static and moving at once. It is its own goal; it needn't become anywhere and yet it keeps going. The repletion of the circle is the better these characters seek, without whatever of them putting it in quite this style. They long for the circle and fearfulness they are doomed to the line.

An illustration of the perilous nature of the line comes early on in the film. Christine is driving i of her elderly clients when they notice that a human has unwittingly left a newly purchased goldfish in a plastic bag of water precariously perched on the roof of his truck. The fish, oblivious by nature, and the man and his daughter (presumably the recipient of this new pet) remain blithely unaware of their predicament. It was a mere oversight, not intentional cruelty; just the danger persists all the aforementioned. Christine and her client drive alongside the truck, unsure of what to exercise. When Christine suggests that they somehow inform the man of the situation, the client insists that doing so would be fatal to the fish. If they speed up, the fish will fly backwards; cease and the fish is catapulted frontwards. The best thing for the fish, the customer offers, is if the truck could proceed in the same direction and at the aforementioned speed "forever".

This dream of an e'er-standing line of flight for the fish wouldn't solve the fish'south problem (even if information technology were realizable). All it would do is to extend the bespeak of precariousness. To get out the fish forever in danger is deemed the simply style to prevent utter disaster. The line doesn't redeem the fish, it simply prolongs the discomfort and defers the moment of absolute plummet—which, in the finish, comes yet. The line is an empty promise for mortal beings considering nosotros don't become on forever—neither in comfort nor in discomfort. Somewhen, the fish will fall to its doom. The client reassures Christine that at to the lowest degree they tin can exist there to commemorate its passing, to see information technology to the terminate of its line. This scene resonates with a subsequently moment when the client reveals that his girlfriend, whom he adores, broke upward with him one time she realized that her death was imminent. She wouldn't let him to witness the end of her line.

Most of the characters are defenseless up in their own lines while seeking something better, or at to the lowest degree while seeking an escape. While the customer's girlfriend refuses a witness to the finish of her line, Christine, eager to capture the attending of the curator Nancy, desires acknowledgment of an end. Nancy had twice dismissed Christine's work for her upcoming prove; she refused to watch more than than a few seconds of her video admission. Simply later in the evening, by casual accident, she saw the end of the tape, during which Christine voices her supposition that the submission will never be viewed in its entirety. At the end of the tape, Christine provides her telephone number and requests that if Nancy were to run into this part of the tape, if she were to brand it to the cease of this particular line, that she call the number and simply say "Macaroni". It is in such pocket-size gestures that we sometimes escape the lines that trap us.

Sylvie can't bring herself to inhabit the space of the line she traverses without attempting to bound ahead to a time when she will no longer be a child, no longer be ignored or forgotten or dismissed. She describes her vision of her future kitchen to Peter who lies beside her on the flooring, staring up at a ceiling lamp. Peter claims he would like to live at that place, in that projection, which he envisions within the space of the lamp. Sylvie then turns literalist. Yes, she says, but if that were the instance and then all of the items in this room would be above you and come crashing down upon your head, killing you lot. Sylvie'south perfect wholeness, projected into an irredeemable hereafter, is continually crushed by the ineluctable and suffocating linearity of her nowadays.

The two teens, Rebecca and Heather, enjoy their ability to agitate Andrew. He knows they are as well young and they recognize that he knows. The illicit nature of the proposition of an encounter is what all 3 of them seem to find exhilarating. But they merely engage in however some other line. Heather flashes her panties at Andrew, who stares at them through his window. She and Rebecca kiss, convinced that Andrew is pleasuring himself while watching them. Andrew begins posting provocative notes in his window, detailing what he would similar to practise to them.

The girls exercise oral sex on Peter to see if they are up to the chore of seducing Andrew; they convince themselves that information technology wouldn't affair if they weren't that good at sex because they don't care about Andrew; and, anyhow, they would exist together. Andrew continues to postal service notes. This line of escalation could go along endlessly. Eventually, the girls knock on Andrew's door. He falls to the flooring to hide himself. The girls run off laughing. Improbability collides with possibility and collapses their line, the girls relieved by their escape, Andrew horrified past his proximity to the abyss.

Richard and Christine walk a line toward their cars one afternoon when Christine stops by the shoe store. They analogize the walk to a relationship. At the road where they take to go in dissimilar directions, they will part. Does the road correspond months, 20 years, a lifetime? It hardly matters in this linear view of love. Regardless of timespan, they volition part. The line threatens eternal deferral but it somewhen ends. That'southward the pernicious nature of the line. Whatever goal is promised or envisioned never materializes.

Christine longs to vest; Richard longs to begin. They are both longing to pause the trajectories they've established, to interruption free of the countless string of events leading nowhere. But unlike what nosotros saw with Heather and Rebecca, escape will not suffice. A new line volition ever begin if information technology doesn't eventuate in something else. What is needed is not the linear blitz to a "forever" of deferral, a "forever" that lacks redemption. What is needed is a circle, a "forever" that can, in some manner, endure.

The image of that circle manifests in one of the nearly celebrated and perverse aspects of the film. Peter entertains himself and Robby by perusing dating chat sites and flirting with the anonymous, faceless writers (this is a quite primitive site—amounting to no more than a username and lines of text). Peter asks afterwards his interlocutor's "bosoms" and is convinced he is talking to a man pretending to exist a woman. Six-twelvemonth-old Robby suggests that they should send a bewildering dispatch: "I want to poop back and forth." In his delightfully halting cadence, Robby explains his intention: "Like, I'll poop into her butthole and so she'll poop it back…into my butthole. And then we'll proceed doing it back and forth, forever." In a later chat session, Robby devises a symbol to illustrate his concept: ))<>((

Brandon Ratcliff as Robby (IMDB)

Observe the symbol is symmetrical (indeed palindromic) and thus circles in upon itself. Information technology is closed and yet implies perpetuation and reciprocity, an infinity of apportionment, not endless distention. Of course, the coprophilic obsession of a six-year-old (and its ability to seduce a grown and established woman) is amusing. Information technology is also telling. Robby recognizes that poop is a part of his body, his being, that he doesn't proceed, that he gives to the world. The fact that it is deemed waste is beside the point. Annihilation the trunk divests itself of can be considered waste (including other actual emissions we happily exchange in acts of love). But what I requite can be accepted by another; and what I requite can always return to me. Our laughter at Robby's innocent perversity only belies the fact that his vision of the reciprocity of the circle, the endless flow of exchange, the recycling of parts of the cocky is a childish but notwithstanding penetrating symbol for what all of these characters seek.

Here a different kind of "forever" is broached. This isn't the "forever" of linearity, stretching off impossibly beyond all horizons of experience. This is the "forever" of the flux and reflux, the breathing in and the breathing out, the giving and the receiving. When I aptly say "I will love y'all forever" this is possibly what I intend. I will inevitably perish and so will yous. We will die and we will thus terminate to exist. But insofar as I am I and you are you, I remain that which flows into yous and you are that which flows into me. What I requite, you receive, and give back to me in turn, augmented by its having been yours, returning to me ever stronger, ever more certain, redeemed and infinite.

The circle is infinite, in this sense, not because information technology lasts forever but because information technology persists as what it is. It doesn't long for a faraway, unreachable, indeterminate goal. It abides here in the flux from me to you lot and yous back to me. And when nosotros reach the end, our dearest persists in that it volition always exist what it is, because it is. It becomes and it adapts without ever losing what information technology is. Thus, when we achieve the end of our personal line, we won't have to wonder, we volition know who bears witness, who affirms our being.

"Macaroni."

Criterion Drove now releases a wonderful Blu-ray edition of Miranda July's beguiling feature-film debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know. The disc is packed with extra, supplementary fabric, including an interview between July and Lena Dunham, a 2017 documentary on July's interfaith charity shop, a documentary on July's Joanie iv Jackie video chain letter projection along with four films from that project, and two other brusk early films: The Amateurist (1998) and Nest of Tens (2000). It is a quirky and fitting tribute to this alluring moving-picture show.

Me You and Everyone We Know Back and Forth Forever

Source: https://www.popmatters.com/miranda-july-me-you-everyone-2646318394.html

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