Keep that Edit

Adjustments

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:21:00 +0000

What's happened in ~~three~~ nearly five months? I went to Texas, translated a novel, and am moving to a new place with M in the next few months. It will be one that we'll own though, so that's a major step for us. Looks like I'll also be doing much more translation work.

The dog has grown. We're going to NYC in April, so we're definitely hoping to move before that happens, or at least before the summer.

I started going to the gym and I never thought I'd be happy to run a 10 minute mile, but I finally can. It's sad though, because I ran track in high school and could run a 2:20 half-mile. Hopefully I can keep improving.

My friend Stevie Edwards got into the Cornell and Michigan MFA for poetry. Congrats to her! I forgot about the MFA application season. I'm sure it got pretty crazy on the MFA blog, as usual.

Up the coast

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:24:00 +0000

We went to Arcata to visit my sister last weekend and met her boyfriend Andrew, and after the trip I realized that I really like Humboldt County. No, not because of the weed, but maybe because it has so much potential as a source of literary inspiration. Take, for example, this story that Andrew told us:

Both he and my sister worked at a bakery owned by a wealthy man who opened a French cafe in town. The impression I got while this story was being told was that the guy had no culinary experience and poor management ability. So, I guess he opened the cafe because he was rich and he felt like it. That's logical, right?

After he opened the cafe and bakery, he took his pastry chef to Tartine in SF (for those of you who don't know, Tartine is a famous bakery on 18th and Guerrero, known for amazing baked goods. Check it out.), and supposedly "stole" a bunch of their recipes and ideas and whatnot.

It seems like a true story to me. Some of the baked goods in the cafe look like exact copies of stuff in Tartine. I suppose it doesn't really matter, but because it's a small town with only a couple of good bakeries, it's a funny story. I feel a sense of small town drama in it. Apparently, Andrew's current employer (another bakery) is set to expand and compete with the other guy's bakery.

Arcata reminds me of something, but I can't place it. Maybe it's Berkeley, or what Berkeley sometimes stands for - independence and a refusal to become commercialized and hip. There are a lot of local businesses in both places, but it seems as though Berkeley can't staunch the flow of big business for long.

I bought my sister the Tartine bread book for her birthday, and now I wish I'd bought myself one as well.

Below: Ming and Mia at the visitor's center of a redwood forest, the avenue of the giants, and a coast view north of Fort Bragg on the PCH as you leave the redwoods.

You have to think about these things

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 06:49:00 +0000

It seems like a lot of people have stopped blogging, which is depressing. I used to have a ton of new posts on my dashboard when I would log in, and now there are none. It's too bad, really. Now, my links area is very depressingly low on people. But I've finally updated it!

Oh hey, Jonathan Franzen's new novel, "Freedom," is out, and this time, Franzen didn't object to it being an Oprah's Book Club pick. I find that a little strange. Am I the only one who would want to reject Oprah twice? Nevertheless, it's been a long wait, and I bought the book a couple of days ago, so I'll be starting it soon.

What I'm even more excited about is David Mitchell's "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," which I also just bought. There's no rational reason for this excitement, since I thought "Cloud Atlas" was very slightly overrated, but this historical novel is about early 19th century Japan, and the protagonist is Danish, which implies insane amounts of research. From the first five pages it is evident that this should be good!

Also, Rick Moody's "The Four Fingers of Death" is out! Need I say more?

Anyone read any good short stories lately? I've kind of fallen behind on all that stuff.

What just happened?

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:33:00 +0000

Haha, there's been some interesting stuff floating around online lately. What was that thing about Anis Shivani? Oh yeah, along with that really ridiculous post about the most overrated writers in America, he's got the best HuffPost article titles, like, EVER.

Check 'em out.

In other news, Mia now weighs 7 lbs and has her own Twitter account ;) I know you care!

Still haven't taken the time to update the links. Still haven't really written anything about anything. Bought Alice Munro's short story collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Read a few stories and still think that Runaway is a far superior collection.

Also have been reading Roberto Bolaño's short story collection The Return, which feels eerily like a practice run at The Savage Detectives and 2666. Probably one of the best and not Bolaño-related stories in the first half is Snow, about a Russian mobster and his henchman. Probably worth the price of the collection.

I'm a week late on this, but please check out Christine Lee Zilka's literary auction for Jennifer Derilo, who was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Worth your time and money!

I'm in LA working on a Hellraiser reboot. Lots of screaming involved.

Dog

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 01:16:00 +0000

I got back to SF last week, and we got the dog the same day, so we've had her for a week now. She's pretty quiet and loves to cuddle, except when she doesn't see one of us and starts crying. So it's been a bit of a challenge to go anywhere. She got motion sickness on the first day when we were going home and threw up on me three times.

Her name is Mia and she just turned three months old. Next week we'll be able to take her out to play with other dogs, and I'll post more pictures :)

Shooting on stage is fun

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 06:15:00 +0000

That's a lie. It's not fun at all, but at least it's easier than being on location. Anyway, this is my weekly update since I'm working 14 hour days. Next week I'm going back to SF and M and I are getting a puppy! This is going to be awesome. I will post extensive pictures.

It's always sunny in LA

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 07:21:00 +0000

No really. Except for that one day, Wednesday, when it looked like SF from the air, a blanket of clouds covering the valley as far as I could see. And then when I got home it was sunny, so that was more in line with expectations.

I have a shoot starting in 9 hours. I should really get some sleep. I'll most likely be back in SF in about three weeks.

It feels like summer here! And it's kind of nice, if I don't think about the lack of public transportation and culture.

Does anyone have any good book recommendations?

Touristy

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:19:00 +0000

We rode the cable cars a few weeks ago, walked one of the routes on foot, visited Fort Mason and the Aquatic Park, and saw various interesting things in the last month. I turned 26 nearly three weeks ago. What a trip.

I'm sick again. I thought allergies must be causing this, but I'm pretty sure allergies don't cause fevers. I think the worst has been over since Friday morning. Now just the cough remains.

Do I have a job yet? It looks like I'm going to LA to work on a low budget film within the next two weeks. I'm not sure I'm very excited about going to LA, but it will probably be nice to get out of town and get a tan or something. The microclimates in San Francisco are killing me.

I keep thinking I should write something but I can't focus on anything. The other week I wrote something down about a guy sitting across the aisle from me on the BART, but it didn't really matter in the end. He was just some guy with splashes of paint on his clothes and hands, eating nuts out of a can.

I went to a very good reading at the VONA workshop several weeks ago, which reminds me that I have to update my links, but I can get to that later. The reading featured the writers who led the VONA workshop at USF, and I really enjoyed it. I hadn't been to a reading in at least a year, so it was refreshing. I particularly enjoyed David Mura and Suheir Hammad.

Elmaz Abinader's excerpt about the Lebanese civil war reminded me of my former professor, a woman who was key to my development as a poet about six years ago (wow, I've been writing for six years?). One of her books of poetry focused on the stories of Lebanese civil war survivors, and the poems within it were what I was suddenly reminded of while Elmaz was reading.

Off to sleep. Go watch Inception - you will probably like it!

Hemingway again

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:39:00 +0000

I'm reading "A Moveable Feast," which is Hemingway's memoir on his life as an expat in Paris. It's very jarring at times, and it elaborates his fascination with machismo and heroism, but it also provides some interesting character studies of the people he knew. One of my favorite chapters so far has been about Gertrude Stein, whom he portrays as a complete bitch. I'm not sure how much of this is fiction, but it is certainly entertaining to see famous writers in the context of their friends, who are or eventually become famous writers themselves.

Just watched "Elegy," with Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz. It's an adaptation of Roth's "The Dying Animal," and it makes me want to read the novel. I really enjoyed this film.

Germany plays Spain in a few short hours for the final spot in the world cup finals match!

World cup group stages coming to an end

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:39:00 +0000

Well, it looks like the US might finally get some respect for its football skills, as long as they beat Algeria in seven hours. It will be interesting to see if England can make it out of group play with the way they've been playing. M and I will be watching both games at a bar in SF in the morning.

All the good and the bad

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:27:00 +0000

Just watched the Spain - Switzerland replay on ESPN. It was a pretty dull first half and Spain missed a lot of great chances to get shots on goal. The second half was really good after Switzerland scored a goal and then defended for twenty minutes to win 1-0. Benaglio, the Swiss goalkeeper, is really good. I'm looking forward to more Swiss matches. I really hope they make it out of the group stage.

Got back in touch with a few old friends and have had a good time meeting up with them during this short bit of free time. Woke up today being unable to speak because of a sore throat and then coughed up an incredible piece of congealed phlegm. It was huge. I'm still amazed. I hope I'm not allergic to the cats, otherwise I'll be spending lots of time in Emeryville.

Just remembered that my birthday is coming up in two weeks. I keep reminding people that we'll be doing something, but I have no idea what we're actually doing. Maybe I should get on that.

A lot of the people whose blogs I used to read aren't active anymore, which is a big shame, so I'll be updating my links list with new entries. It's been a while since I added links, so I think now is as good a time as any.

It's Thursday and I'm going hiking this weekend. Oh yeah.

Theories of movement

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 23:18:00 +0000

I've been living in San Francisco for almost two weeks now and I like the climate changes that occur when you go downtown. It's always foggy and cold in the outlying districts and sunny and warm in the financial district, which can sometimes be surprising when you look out your window and it's misting but when you get downtown you see people wearing shorts.

M and I have been spending a lot of time doing pretty much nothing but eating. I feel a little bit like a kid around her. She listens to disco music in the car and I don't mind.

I picked up Nam Le's "The Boat" a couple of days ago. Despite the glowing reviews it received when it was published two years ago, I'm left slightly disappointed after the first three stories. There's no doubt that Le has talent - his lyricism is impressive. I have problems with the subject matter, especially the teenage assassin in Medellin. That story feels like a way to showcase Le's ventriloquism, a cheap trick.

Besides his awkward attempts at proving that he's a capable writer, Le seems to have no idea of how to finish a story. No matter how moving some of these stories are, the endings are too open. What happened to having a strong conclusion? Maybe the rest of the stories will redeem this collection.

Has anyone been watching the World Cup?

Yeah, I know

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Thu, 27 May 2010 05:38:00 +0000

Not enough writing, not enough communication with you, some of whom are faithful readers. I'm sorry, but mostly this is an apology to myself for not pursuing this creative outlet as much as I should have.

I'm moving to San Francisco next week, almost exactly a year to the day after I left the Bay Area. If you know me then you know how important it has been for me to get back to the city. Everything and everyone I care about is there. I believe that SF will be the key to my personal and professional success, especially now that I've graduated and have a chance to discover what it is I can really do on my own.

I won't write too much about the film I just finished working on. The industry is such that outsiders aren't welcome, and discussing set happenings on a blog just seems to invade the privacy of everyone I've worked with. I will say that I spent a great two months in Detroit.

I need to get back into reading good books. Like I said when I was in Michigan, I've felt really disconnected from the literary scene for several months. I think that now is the time to start gearing up for a summer's worth of reading and writing.

In Memoriam

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Sun, 16 May 2010 06:01:00 +0000

Today, UCLA alumnae and immigration activists Tam Tran and Cinthya Perez died in a car accident in Maine. Though I knew neither personally other than having had a conversation with Cinthya in regards to why I had added her as a friend on Facebook, I feel that this post is necessary in a way that few others on this blog are.

Tam and Cinthya were enormously important to the Dream Act movement. They proved that undocumented immigrants can be successful and did what many of us should have been doing long ago - giving voice to those who could not speak for themselves. More importantly, they were a prime example of what can be accomplished with hard work and dedication, and served as a counter-argument to nativist cries that immigrants are detrimental to US interests.

Tam was a PhD student in American Civilization at Brown University and Cinthya was the first undocumented student to attend Columbia's School of Public Health. Tam testified before Congress and her family was detained because she spoke up for her rights. I can't imagine any individuals more important to US interests.

I'm echoing another blog post when I say let's not forget Tam and Cinthya. Let's remember that they were great women, not numbers in a system that refused to recognize them as such.

It's a great, sad irony that this news comes to us only a couple of days before students all across the country receive their diplomas.

So long Tam. So long Cinthya. I celebrate your lives.

Back in it

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Sat, 15 May 2010 07:16:00 +0000

Back in it for good but what I miss is the rooftop overlooking Detroit, the luminous clouds, the bridge across the infinite river I can never cross, and the city itself, standing guard over so many deserted factories.

We climb twelve flights of broken stairs to reach the roof of the station. The top floor is a collection of broken floorboards and supports scattered over every available space, a bombed out vision. Graffiti covers everything.

Up top, downtown is less sprawling than I imagined. We walk over to the other side of the building, careful not to step into an open elevator shaft that plunges into the darkness. We can see Canada across the river.

\\\

She's selling the bed we slept in. I couldn't really understand.

Two weeks

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:45:00 +0000

Only eight days of shooting remain and each day blurs into the next. I find myself missing the west coast with its abundance of public transportation and accessible bookstores.

It rained on Saturday night and we shot outside, sodden after twelve hours of misery.

When I get back I will read Alice Munro's "Too Much Happiness" and hopefully some other good stuff. I miss the feeling of being contained inside a story or a novel. I miss good stories. I miss good people.

Looks like the sun has reached me.

Briefly

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 08:17:00 +0000

We're halfway done and our most difficult week starts today. In less than four weeks I should be back on the west coast unless some work comes my way here. I finally purchased a new phone, and yes, it is an iPhone. It's pretty good. At least I hope to take some quality pictures this week without having to lug my regular camera around.

I just rediscovered Pandora. Forgot how much I missed it. Last weekend I got shot in the face with an airsoft gun. It was not a pleasant experience, and became less pleasant when I realized I had blood running down my cheek. I've yet to enact my revenge.

I haven't left Monroe since I got here, but it isn't so bad because I do nothing besides sleeping and working. I hope I can see more of Detroit before I leave. I'd love to write a piece about it. There's so much going on here culturally.

See you next week.

And finally

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:44:00 +0000

A brief moment to myself.

I called J last night just to hear her voice on the answering machine. You know perfectly well the scene: I've had too much to drink or maybe just enough to start thinking about the city. It started raining and, in a flash of ridiculously misplaced anger, I punched the wood paneled wall with my good hand, the hand on which the skin has yet to split, and to my surprise, I could have kept going. The skin would have held me together.

I'd know that voice anywhere. If I were asleep and she spoke in some other room, the sound would reverberate in my skull and I would dream of her face, our mismatched smiles in the mirror, brief glints of sunshine on the building across the way.

You haven't changed. At least the recording of you hasn't changed, the timbre of your voice the same as if we'd spoken just yesterday, or kissed at the bus stop for the first time, or you laid your hand on my leg as I spoke to my buddy Richard about music.

Nothing ever leaves us.

Nights

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:35:00 +0000

This begins day three of night shoots and day six of shooting. I'm pretty sure I'm not as excited as I should be, but the locations have been great. We shot in the largest mosque in North America on Day 1, Ann Arbor (home to UM) on Day 2, and in and around the original Detroit Model T Factory (now abandoned) on Days 3 and 4. We're in the factory again tonight, after which we go down south to a little town called Monroe for almost four weeks of night shoots.

I haven't been reading anything at all. I feel really disconnected from writing and reading, and I'm sure this will continue until the end of the shoot. It's almost nice to not think about those things and to focus only on this job. I think we're very lucky to have good people on the crew. We have fun and we get things done.

April 6th. One month left until I start writing again. I may post some photos here soon.

Personal time

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 21:22:00 +0000

I haven't had any, which is why this blog hasn't been updated in a week. Between seven hour meetings, location and tech scouts, and getting 7 hours of sleep or less each night, there's hardly any time to write or relax.

Someone who had read my blog and then met me in person said that I hadn't said anything bad about Michigan yet. There's really not much to say though. I like it here but I wouldn't want to live here. We drove through Detroit a couple of days ago. This city is tragically empty - full of enormous gutted buildings, and I've never seen so much destruction. Detroit is the post-apocalyptic city of our time. I told a girl last night that I imagine that this is what the cities of the future will look like after everyone has moved away. Not that there aren't other abandoned cities in the world today, it's just that there aren't too many in the United States, at least not on this scale. In a couple of weeks I'll be going downtown to explore.

I cut my head in the shower a couple of days ago. I think the curtain rod fell on top of me after I tore it out of the wall with my momentum. I bled for almost an hour but it seems to be healing really well.

I can't believe I've been here for two and a half weeks already. We start shooting on Wednesday and there's tons of work to be done before then.

Speaking of personal work...revision revision revision.

Cross the river

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:34:00 +0000

In my dream I cross the river. In the winter, I guess it's possible to cross the icy stretch, but now there is nothing but sun and open water. I move northeast, through settings characterized by Munro, farms and spaces on the edge.

At the bar, D blows smoke at the people having a birthday party in the center of the room. We try to think of good films and when we do, both of us talk about them for a few seconds.

"I've never been into Scorsese," he says, "but I respect him."

Outside it has begun to rain, the temperature dropping to the low thirties. We expect snow. He tells me Detroit would be a good place to shoot a zombie film.

"You have to start with The Usual Suspects, because that film was revolutionary."

"Fincher is a god," I reply. "Zodiac? A masterpiece of mood."

I dream of crossing the river. Not by the bridge Eugenides describes, not by the tunnel, not in any imaginable way. Maybe I fly.

Soul Classic

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:09:00 +0000

We were the idealized couple and you, you were in awe, enthralled and enraged by our perfection. We had it all, I suppose - the afternoon sex, the guava tree in the kitchen, the art school teaching positions. We didn't understand or care to know the struggle of those destitute of love. On Mondays I would sleep in while Regina let out the cat and practiced yoga on the balcony. I think she liked to show off for the neighbor across the way, or the itinerants on the corner, and I liked that.

I didn't care about the novel you were writing, your feat of technical prose. I didn't care that my mother had cancer and jumped into an oncoming train. There were few things to care about besides money. We all had strange names and attended pretentious literary events where graduate students read balefully miserable poetry on the metaphysics of cardigan sweaters. Or birds, always baleful wild birds in flight. We didn't know anything but pretended to have read Lolita and The Catcher in the Rye and In Search of Lost Time and some of us had indeed read those masterpieces, not to mention Ulysses. But no one mentioned Ulysses or Bolaño and we sat in the back, rapturously devouring every word, every enjambed line.

When you finally finished the novel, an epistolary romance in the style of Dostoyevsky's Poor Folk, none of us had any idea of what to do. We thought the canon would take care of you, like the free market. The book didn't sell well but certain subcultures adopted is as the new anti-machismo, so we were satisfied, though none of us even knew what machismo meant. Some believed in you. Others thought of it as mental masturbation, narcissism, the crypto-mythological bullshit of modern art.

When you slit your wrists, some of us quoted Esenin and Mayakovsky while others preferred to pretend they didn't know you. Still others alleged they were with you in the final moments.

No one knew where you had come from. You appeared like the parable where Christ rides a horse into the mountains to seek enlightenment. We were the mountains but you found no enlightenment. We assumed you were bitter and moved off, on the way to other readings, other coffee shops, other downtown lofts. You had always sat in the back, taking notes when you should have been socializing and arguing about Proust with the rest of us.

None of it made sense, not the warm water or the sharp blade. You'd been living in the studio then, scraping by on a modicum of respect and tips, writing by night. I didn't care. I wanted to keep having sex whenever I damn well pleased. One of the boys offered you his couch and there you stayed after the money ran out.

Regina had soul in spite of everything. You told her no one asked you your name. You liked the anonymity. You told her about soul classics. "A soul classic," you said, "captures the imagination of the lovelorn man or woman desperate for some hope of redemption through romance." What did that mean? we wondered. We really wondered about that one, about what a man born thirty years after the advent of soul knew about soul classics. What could kids born fifty years after The Beatles performed in New York know about The Beatles? Shit, everyone knew something. The cancer had spread to her stomach and lungs and she couldn't figure out why she wasn't always able to breathe.

We tried not to think about it too much. We played soul classics at your funeral, and though there was some disagreement (some thought Joy Division would have been more apropos), everything turned out alright. We were alright. We were alright.

I tried to forget about finding you squared in the tub, the water tinged a surprisingly mellow red. No one asked about us and that's just as well.

Hey, soul sister

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:55:00 +0000

I used to listen to Train a bunch when their first single came out 12 years or so ago. Damn, that was a long time ago. Their new single seems like a step in a more pop-oriented direction, complete with weird references to gangsters and thugs, as if Pat Monahan and the songwriters were paying homage to the newly minted listeners of the late 2000s. He sounds great but if you listen to the lyrics you'll notice little idiosyncrasies.

Today I spent nine hours doing a script breakdown on Scenechronize, a web solution to production management. It's a cool website but the learning curve is somewhat steep. I think other people will have some trouble. Seems like I'm the only one updating anything right now, and I'm pretty sure the other ADs won't be logging on at all. I still prefer the old paper chase.

We start shooting on the 31st and go for six weeks. I'm thinking about stopping in Iowa on the way back or maybe going to NYC or something of the sort. I'd like to meet some friends from Canada. Maybe they can make it out one of these days.

I keep thinking and thinking about J and I can't stop. All the losses keep adding up.

Detroit

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:32:00 +0000

We've been here for six days, in a city made up of small, interconnected townships. Driving through the barren plateau plains of Wyoming we saw rivers of snow flow across the road, obscuring the lane markers. Outside, the wind chill sent the temperature to bitter lows. In 36 hours, we covered 2300 miles. I slept in the front, occasionally dreaming but mostly feeling the road beneath us. In Iowa, smoking at rest stops is illegal. We drove on and I woke up as we neared Chicago six hours later.

Michigan has no expression, only forests punctuated by strip malls and adult stores. Pre-production began on Monday. We start shooting on the 31st, working six five-day weeks until May 6th. I should be on the way back to LA by the tenth.

I finally know why "8 Mile" was titled that way. I completely forgot that Eminem was raised in Detroit.

Finished Wells Tower's "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned," and I'm not extremely impressed. It feels very much like a collection about the problems of white men, which begin to grate on the reader after a certain amount of time. The stories begin with the humorous and meander to the more serious until finally, we see trauma and a brief attempt to regain the sense of humor we started with, namely by an account of a bunch of down on their luck Vikings who decide to rape and pillage a neighboring island, and in the process, come upon some rather surprising discoveries.

It's not that it was badly written. Tower definitely has a way with verbs, but his empathy and connection seem lacking.

Still Haunted

noreply@blogger.com (Denis) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:53:00 +0000

Still haunted by your absence, I enter the city prepared. On campus I forget you. I do not look for you or go to your apartment. I do not even remember you: the unbound knot of your spine, our awkward first trip to the city, photographs of your mouth on my body.

I do not walk the five blocks to see you. I forget about the distance.

In the city, we do not speak of you, your present absence. We forget. We drink wine and compliment each other. I do not dream of you. You do not approach me.

I see no one. All are names and blank faces striding past into the darkness.

I am one of a group which boards the train at the station and miraculously moves as one through the tunnels. We surprise each other upon arrival, for we are unintended.

I board the plane with Proust. Outside, the runway lights imitate a flower or the curvature of your profile, two intersecting lines of brightness reflected into my eyes.

I remember you. I let you go. I let myself go into the darkness of the world, the unending horizon.