PARIS, TEXAS      Wim Wenders, 1984, 146 mins

 

one needn’t say anything, practically nothing, mute despite the shameful sun, to come call this way for nothing, in search of what exactly? 

of how perhaps one chose this direction among so many, the sun being one compass, the other being the cool shade of one’s personal shadow

the other being one’s favorite color, magenta let’s say, and how one could make all decisions based on that color, the mood of it 

guiding like a planchet across all the loves one ever had, to have come all this way, for nothing? for something surely, but to forget the reason

or if reasonless, to remember only the way one used to talk with a certain confidence, a twang of spirit, in saying words like love or you or here

and to live a half-life, lowly, chafing against time, until the edges of one’s being collect in a neat pile of pencil shavings 

to stare blankly at the absent faces of headless statues in museums and to feel them staring back

one needn’t travel places to come to a conclusion, to travel great distances, miles and miles, No.  

one needn’t move an inch to break a fall