Getting Stronger Every Day - Miranda July´s short story

"There are two movies I saw on TV about boys who were taken from their families and then returned to them years later. One boy was on a fun spaceship for years and the other boy was kidnapped and molested. These boys were never the same again and they just couldn't re-integrate into the family. I saw these movies when I was little. I've often described them to people, always paired together. They are sort of the comedy and tragedy version of the same story and it is a mundanely spiritual story. Getting Stronger Every Day includes these boys' tales, but they are like mystical objects placed on the living reality of the man storyteller. In other parts of the movie actual mystical objects hover in peoples lives without a myth or story attached. I like to think about how these dimensions interact simply and can be enacted: real life / story / worldly / spirit / video / flat drawing." Miranda July

Atlanta - Miranda July´s short video

1996, 10 minutes
A 12 year-old Olympic swimmer and her mother (both played by July) speak to the public about "going for the gold".

Videoed by Miranda July, Wu La Dawson, and Summer Mastous
Edited by Miranda July

Miranda July makes movies, performances, recordings and combinations of these things. July's first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know premiered in January 2005 at the Sundance Film Festival, where it received a special jury prize for originality of vision. It debuted internationally at the Cannes Film Festival where it was awarded with four prizes, including the Camera d'Or. It was released theatrically in July of 2005. July's videos ( Haysha Royko, The Amateurist, Nest of Tens, Getting Stronger Every Day ) have been screened internationally at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in the 2002 Whitney Biennial. July participated in the 2004 Whitney Biennial with learningtoloveyoumore.com. July's multi-media performances ( Love Diamond, The Swan Tool, How I Learned to Draw ) have been presented at venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Art in London and The Kitchen in New York. July's stories can be read in The Paris Review, The Harvard Review and Zoetrope All Story.

Miranda July´s - Neumo´s Seattle

The acclaimed filmmaker, performer and writer reads short stories from her book "No One Belongs Here More Than You." A Q&A with the audience follows the reading.

Miranda July´s reading at Hammer Museum @ UCLA

I have first had contact with Miranda July´s work by her movie You and Me and Everyone We Know a while ago. Since then I have been following her work which spreads itself through performances, art, interventions, books, acting, music and videos, for example. She is trully a multi-artist and I love her artistic tone. She has insightful ideas and questions, as every person should have and as every artist must have.

You will enjoy this video.

Miranda July´s interview

Miranda July is a prolific performance and video artist. She stepped into the mainstream limelight when her 2005 film Me and You and Everyone We Know became an international hit. But instead of rushing into another feature film project, Miranda has been "in a hurry to do everything else". Like making exhibitions featuring the delicate and personal do-it-yourself art from the ever-expanding Learning To Love You More web project. We met Miranda at MU, an art space in Eindhoven, a few hours before the opening of the exhibition. Miranda July is the first in a new series of Pretty Cool People Interviews.

Miranda July Interviews her own book: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Miranda July´s Book No one belongs here more than you!

That´s it: four different color that you can choose from.

Miranda Interview her own book. It´s funny! 

Check it out:

Funny video montage a fan put together about Miranda´s work

"Things We Don't Understand And Are Definitely Not Going To Talk About" - Miranda July

A tale of heartbreak and obsession so familiar you could tell it yourself.

performance at The Kitchen 03/02/07 by Miranda JUly

Birthmark - Miranda July

Birthmark

by Miranda July

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being childbirth, this will be a three.

A three? Really?

Yes. That's what they say.

What other things are a three?

Well, five is supposed to be having your jaw reset. So it's not as bad as that.

No.

What's two?

Having your foot run over by a car.

Wow, so it's worse than that?

Just a little worse, not much.

Okay, well, I'm ready. No - wait; let me adjust my sweater.

Okay, I'm ready.

Alright then.

Here goes a three.

Right. Here we go then.

The laser, which had been described as pure white light, was more like a fist slammed against a countertop, and her body was a cup on this counter, jumping with each slam. It turned out three was just a number. It didn't describe the pain any more than money describes the things it buys. Two thousand dollars for a port-wine stain removed. A kind of birthmark that seems messy and accidental, as if this red area covering one whole cheek were the careless result of too much fun. She spoke to her body like an animal at the vet, Shhh, it's okay, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry we have to do this to you. This is not unusual; most people feel that their bodies are innocent of their crimes, like animals or plants. Not that this was a crime. She had waited patiently from the time she was fourteen for aesthetic surgery to get cheap, like computers. Nineteen ninety-eight was the year lasers came to the people as good bread, eat and be full, be finally perfect. Oh yes, perfect. She didn't think she would have bothered if she hadn't been what people call "very beautiful except for." This is a special group of citizens living under special laws. Nobody knows what to do with them. We mostly want to stare at them like the optical illusion of a vase made out of the silhouette of two people kissing. Now it is vase ... now it could only be two people kissing ... oh but it is so completely a vase. It is both! Can the world sustain such a contradiction. Only this was better, because as the illusion of prettiness and horribleness flipped back and forth, we flipped with it. Now we were uglier than her, now we were lucky not to be her, oh but then again, at this angle she was too lovely to bear. She was both, we were both, and the world continued to spin.

Now began the part of her life where she was just very beautiful. Except for nothing. Only winners will know what this feels like. Have you ever wanted something very badly and then gotten it. Then you know that winning is many things, but it is never the thing you thought it would be. Poor people who win the lottery do not become rich people. They become poor people who won the lottery. She was a very beautiful person who was missing something very ugly. Her winnings were the absence of something, and this quality hung around her. There was so much potential in the imagined removal of the birthmark, any fool on the bus could play the game of guessing how perfect she would look without it. Now there was not this game to play, there was just a spent feeling. And she was not an idiot, she could sense it. In the first few months after the surgery she received many compliments, but they were always coupled with confusion.

Now you can wear your hair up and show off your face more.

Yeah, I'm going to try it that way.

Wait, say that again.

I'm going to try it that way. What?

Your little accent is gone.

What accent?

You know, the little Norwegian thing.

Norwegian?

Isn't your mom Norwegian?

She's from Denver.

But you have that little bit of an accent, that little way of saying things.

I do?

Well not anymore, it's gone now.

And she felt a real sense of loss. Even though she knew that she had never had an accent. It was just the birthmark, which in its density had lent color to even her voice. She didn't miss the birthmark, but she missed her Norwegian heritage, like learning of new relatives after they have died.

All in all though, this was minor, less disruptive than insomnia (but more severe than déja vu). Over time she knew more and more people who had never known her with the birthmark. And you would assume that these people didn't feel any haunting absence, because why should they. Her husband was one of these people. You could tell by looking at him. Not that he wouldn't have married a woman with a port-wine stain. But he wouldn't have. Most people don't and are none the worse for it. Of course sometimes it would happen that she would see a couple and one of them would have a port-wine stain and the other one would clearly be in love with this person, and she would hate her husband a little. Which was ridiculous because he was innocent. But he wasn't an idiot and so he would notice.

Are you being weird?

No.

You are.

Actually I'm not. I'm just eating my salad.

I can see them too you know. I saw them come in.

Hers is worse than mine was. Mine didn't go down on my neck like that.

Do you want to try this soup?

I bet he's an environmentalist. Doesn't he look like one?

Maybe you should go sit with them.

Maybe I will.

I don't see you moving.

Did you just finish the soup?

I thought we were splitting. I offered it to you.

Well you can't have any of this salad then.

It was a small thing, but it was a thing, and things have a way of either dying or growing, and it wasn't dying. Years went by. This thing grew, like a child, microscopically, every day. And since they were team, and all teams want to win, they continuously adjusted their vision to keep its growth invisible. They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love and they worked together to fill these rooms with high-end, consumer-grade equipment. It was a tight situation. The next sudden move would have to be through the wall. What happened was this. She was trying to get the lid off a new jar of jam and she was banging it on the counter. This is a well-known tip, a kitchen trick, a bang to loosen the lid. It's not witchery or black magic or anything, it's just a way to release the pressure under the lid. She banged it too hard and the jar broke. She screamed. Her husband came running when he heard the sound. There was red everywhere and in that instant he saw blood. Hallucinatory clarity: you know for sure. But in the next moment your mind relinquishes control, and gives you back to reality; it was jam. Everywhere. She was laughing, picking up the shards of glass out of the strawberry mash. She was laughing at the mess and her face was down, looking at the floor, and her hair was around her face like a curtain and then she looked up at him and said, Can you bring the trash can over here?

And it happened again. For a moment he thought he saw a port-wine stain on her cheek. It was fiercely red and bigger than he had ever imagined. It was bloodier than even blood, like sick blood, animal blood, the blood racist people think beats inside of people of other races: blood that shouldn't touch my own. And the next moment it was just jam and he laughed and rubbed the kitchen towel on her cheek. Her clean cheek. Her port-wine stain.

Honey.

Can you get the trashcan?

Honey.

What?

Go look in the mirror.

What?

Go look in the mirror.

Stop talking like that. Why are you talking like that? What?

He was looking at her cheek and she instinctively put her hand on the mark, and then she ran to bathroom.

She was in there for a long time. Maybe thirty minutes. You've never had thirty minutes like these. She stared at the port-wine stain and she breathed in and she breathed out.

It was like being twenty-three again, but she was thirty-eight now. Fifteen years without it, and now, here it was. In exactly the same place. She rubbed her finger around its edges. It came as high as her right eye, over to the edge of her nostril, across her whole cheek to the ear, ending at her jawbone. In purplish-red. She wasn't thinking anything, she wasn't afraid or disappointed or worried. She was just looking at the stain the way you would look at yourself fifteen years after your own death. Oh, you again. Now it was obvious that it had always been there, just around the corner. She had startled it forward, back into sight. She looked into its redness and breathed in and breathed out and found herself in a kind of trance. She thought: I am in a kind of trance. But she didn't try to shake out of it, instead she shallowed her breathing for fear of waking up. In the trance there was one sound and one smell and one sight and one sensation and it was the sound and smell and sight and sensation of her port-wine stain and this stain was her, it was her body. She didn't have to think because plants don't have to think about themselves and weather doesn't have to think about itself, it just blows around. It was this kind of trance, she was just blowing around. It's hard to describe it any more than that, except to say that it lasted about twenty-five minutes. That is a very, very long time just to be blowing around. Mostly you waft for a second or two, a half-second maybe. And then you spend the rest of your life trying to describe it, to regain the perspective. You say: It was like I was just blowing around, and you wave your arms in the air. But there were no arms like that and you know it. It's become this long story you tell about this half-second of your life. Only for her it was twenty-five minutes. Do you understand? Twenty. Five. Minutes. If it could have lasted forever, she would have gladly lived there, inside the stain, a red and limbless world. She came back like a plane taking off, she was no longer in the stain, but looking at it from above. It grew smaller and smaller until it was just a tiny region in a larger mass, one which this pilot favored, hovered above, but would not touch down on again. She pulled some toilet paper off the roll and blew her nose.

He found himself kneeling. He was waiting for her on his knees. He was worried she would not let him love her with the stain. He had already decided, long ago, twenty or thirty minutes ago, that the stain was fine. He had only seen it for a moment but he was already used to it. It was good. It somehow allowed them to have more. They could have a child now, he thought. There was a loose feeling in the air. The jam was still on the floor and that was okay. He would just kneel here and wait for her to come out and hope he would be able to tell her about the looseness in a loose way. He wanted to keep the feeling. He hoped she wasn't removing it somehow, the stain. She should keep it and they should have a kid. He could hear her blowing her nose, now she was opening the door. He would stay on his knees, just like this. She would see him this way and understand.

The Man on the Stairs - Miranda July

                                    The Man on the Stairs

                                 by Miranda July

It was a tiny sound but it woke me up because it was a human sound. I held my breath and it happened again, then again; it was footsteps on the stairs. I tried to whisper, There's someone coming up the stairs, but my breath was cowering, I couldn't shape it. I squeezed Kevin's wrist in pulsing units, three pulses, then two pulses, then three pulses. I was trying to invent a physical language that could enter his sleep. But after a while I realized I wasn't even squeezing his wrist, I was just pulsing the air.That's how scared I was; I was squeezing air. And still the sound continued, the man coming up the stairs. He was walking up in the slowest possible way. He had all the time in the world for this, my god did he have time. I have never taken such care with anything. That is my problem with life, I just rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea.When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down like I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest. Or if I'm in a hot tub with some other people and we're all looking up at the stars, I'll be the first to say It's so beautiful here. I only say it because I know it has to be said and I'm trying to hurry the experience along. The sooner you say It's so beautiful here the quicker you can say Wow, I'm getting overheated.

The man on the stairs was the total opposite of me, his thing was How long can I make this last? He was taking so long that I would forget the danger for whole moments at a time, and almost slip back in to sleep, only to be woken up by him shifting his weight. I was going to die and it was taking so long. I stopped trying to wake Kevin up because I was worried that he would make some sound upon waking, like he might say What. Or What honey.The man on the stairs would hear this and know how vulnerable we were. He would know my boyfriend called me Honey. He might even hear my boyfriend's slight annoyance, his exhaustion after our fight last night.We both fantasize about other people when we're having sex, but he likes to tell me who the other people are, and I don't.Why should I? It's my own private business. It's not my fault that he gets off on having me know. He likes to report it the second after he cums, like a cat presenting the gift of a dead bird. I never asked for it.

I didn't want the man on the stairs knowing these things about us. But he would know.The second he threw on the lights and pulled out his gun, or his knife, or his rope, or his heavy rock, the second he held the gun at my head, or the knife at my heart or the rope around my neck or the heavy rock over my chest, he would know. He would see it in my boyfriend's eyes: You can have her, just let me live.And in my eyes he would see the words: I never really knew true love. Would he empathize with us? Does he know what it's like? Most people do. You always feel like you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is just crazy for each other, but it's not true. Generally, people don't like each other very much. And that goes for friends too. Sometimes I lay in bed trying to decide which of my friends I really care about and I always come to the same conclusion: None of them. I thought these were just my starter friends and the real ones would come along later. But no.These are my real friends. They are people with jobs in their field of interest. My oldest friend, Marilyn, loves to sing and she is head of enrollment at a prestigious music school. It's a good job, but not as good as just opening your mouth and singing. La. I always thought I would be friends with a professional singer. A jazz singer. A best friend who is a jazz singer and a reckless but safe driver. That is more what I pictured for myself. I also imagined friends who adored me.These friends think I'm a drag. I fantasize about starting over and eliminating the thin film of dragginess that hangs over me. I think I have a handle on it now. There are three main things that make me a drag:

I never return phone calls.

I am falsely modest.

I have a disproportionate amount of guilt about these two

things and it is unpleasant to be around.

It wouldn't be so hard to return calls and be more genuinely modest, but it's too late for these friends. They wouldn't be able to see that I'm not a drag any more. I need clean new people who associate me with fun.This is my number two problem: I am never satisfied with what I have. It goes hand in hand with my number one problem: rushing. Maybe they aren't so much hand in hand, as two hands of the same beast. Maybe they are my hands; I am the beast.

I had a crush on Kevin for thirteen years before he finally started liking me back. He wasn't interested at first because I was a child. I was twelve and he was twenty-five.Then after I turned eighteen it took him seven more years to think of me as a real adult, not his student anymore. On our first date I wore a dress that I had bought when I was seventeen especially for this occasion. It was out of style but I'm superstitious so I wore it. On the way to the restaurant we stopped at a gas station. I sat in the car and watched a teenage boy clean the windshield while Kevin pumped the gas. The boy used the squeegee with a kind precision that made you know that this wasn't just his field of interest, this was exactly it, this was all he had ever wanted to do. La. As we pulled out of the gas station I stared through my perfect, clean window at the teenager and I thought: I should be with him.

The man on the stairs pauses for such incredibly long periods of time I almost wonder if he is having a problem. Like maybe he's disabled, or very old. Or maybe just really tired. Maybe he's already killed everyone else on the block and now he's all worn out. In moments I can almost see him, leaning against the banister, his eyes swimming in the darkness. My eyes are open too. Kevin's eyes are shut, he is so far away and he always will be. The silent pause stretches longer and longer and gradually I wonder if the man is there at all. The only sound is Kevin breathing. What if I spend the rest of my life in this bed, listening to Kevin breathe. But lo. A strong and certain creak issues from the stairwell and what I feel is thrilling relief. He is really there, he is on the stairs, and he is coming closer in his own breathtakingly slow way. If I lived to see daylight I would never forget this lesson in care. He was putting more care in to hunting me than I had ever put into anything in my life. And it was worth it, because he had earned my admiration. I don't think anyone has ever admired me the way I admired him. What if I were to spend this much time listening to Marilyn, what would happen? Maybe she would adore me and then I would respect her and we would both become professional jazz singers or at least reckless but safe drivers. Maybe. Maybe the man on the stairs would come in our car with us and when he looked scared by our reckless driving I would hold his head close to my lips and whisper: It's safer than walking.

I opened the covers and stepped out of bed. I was only wearing a tee shirt and I didn't put on pants because who cares. Maybe he would be halfnaked too; maybe he would be headless and covered in blood. I stood in the doorway of the stairwell, on the top step. It was darker there than in the bedroom, and I could see nothing. I stood and waited to die or for my eyes to adjust, whichever came first. Before I could see anything, I could hear him breathing. He was right in front of me. I leaned forward into the darkness; I could feel his breath. Our faces were almost together. I could smell his sourness. It wasn't good, he wasn't good, he did not have good intentions. I stood there, and he stood there, and he breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in.And I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it in to his lungs. My eyes were adjusting and I saw a man, an ordinary man, a stranger. We were staring into each other's eyes and suddenly I felt angry. Go away, I whispered. Get out. Get out of my house.

After we pulled out of the gas station, we drove to a restaurant that Kevin thought I might like. But I was still thinking about the boy with the squeegee and I systematically did the opposite of everything that Kevin wanted. I didn't order desert or wine, just a little salad, which I complained about. But he did not give up; he made jokes, ridiculous jokes in the car on the way back to my apartment. I steeled myself against laughter; I would rather die than laugh. I didn't laugh, I did not laugh. But I died; I did die.

This Person - Miranda July

This Person

by Miranda July

Someone is getting excited. Somebody somewhere is shaking with excitement because something tremendous is about to happen to this person. This person has dressed for the occasion. This person has hoped and dreamed and now it is really happening and this person can hardly believe it. But believing is not an issue here, the time for faith and fantasy is over, it is really really happening. It involves stepping forward and bowing. Possibly there is some kneeling, such as when one is knighted. One is almost never knighted. But this person may kneel and receive a tap on each shoulder with a sword. Or, more likely, this person will be in a car or a store or under a vinyl canopy when it happens. Or online or on the phone. It could be an e-mail re: your knighthood. Or a long, laughing, rambling phone message in which every person this person has ever known is talking on a speakerphone and they are all saying, You have passed the test, it was all just a test, we were only kidding, real life is so much better than that. This person is laughing out loud with relief and playing the message back to get the address of the place where every person this person has ever known is waiting to hug this person and bring her into the fold of life. It is really exciting, and it's not just a dream, it's real.

They are all waiting by a picnic table in a park this person has driven past many times before. There they are, it's everyone. There are balloons taped to the benches, and the girl this person used to stand next to at the bus stop is waving a streamer. Everyone is smiling. For a moment this person is almost creeped out by the scene, but it would be so like this person to become depressed on the happiest day ever, and so this person bucks up and joins the crowd.

Teachers of subjects that this person wasn't even good at are kissing this person and renouncing the very subjects they taught. Math teachers are saying that math was just a funny way of saying "I love you." But now they are simply saying it, I love you, and the chemistry and PE teachers are also saying it and this person can tell they really mean it. It's totally amazing. Certain jerks and idiots and assholes appear from time to time, and it is as if they have had plastic surgery, their faces are disfigured with love. The handsome assholes are plain and kind, and the ugly jerks are sweet, and they are folding this person's sweater and putting it somewhere where it won't get dirty. Best of all, every person this person has ever loved is there. Even the ones who got away. They hold this person's hand and tell this person how hard it was to pretend to get mad and drive off and never come back. This person almost can't believe it, it seemed so real, this person's heart was broken and has healed and now this person hardly knows what to think. This person is almost mad. But everyone soothes this person. Everyone explains that it was absolutely necessary to know how strong this person was. Oh, look, there's the doctor who prescribed the medicine that made this person temporarily blind. And the man who paid this person two thousand dollars to have sex with him three times when this person was very broke. Both of these men are in attendance, they seem to know each other. They both have little medals that they are pinning on this person; they are badges of great honor and strength. The badges sparkle in the sunlight, and everyone cheers.

This person suddenly feels the need to check her post office box. It is an old habit, and even if everything is going to be terrific from now on, this person still wants mail. This person says she will be right back and everyone this person has ever known says, Fine, take your time. This person gets in her car and drives to the post office and opens the box and there is nothing. Even though it is a Tuesday, which is famously a good day for mail. This person is so disappointed, this person gets back in the car and, having completely forgotten about the picnic, drives home and checks the voice mail and there are no new messages, just the old one about "passing the test" and "life being better." There are no e-mails, either, probably because everyone is at the picnic. This person can't seem to go back to the picnic. This person realizes that staying home means blowing off everyone this person has ever known. But the desire to stay in is very strong. This person wants to run a bath and then read in bed.

In the bathtub this person pushes the bubbles around and listens to the sound of millions of them popping at once. It almost makes one smooth sound instead of many tiny sounds. This person's breasts barely jut out of the water. This person pushes the bubbles onto the breasts and makes weird shapes with the foam. By now everyone must have realized that this person is not coming back to the picnic. Everyone was wrong; this person is not who they thought this person was. This person plunges underwater and moves her hair around like a sea anemone. This person can stay underwater for an impressively long time but only in a bathtub. This person wonders if there will ever be an Olympic contest for holding your breath under bathwater. If there were such a contest, this person would surely win it. An Olympic medal might redeem this person in the eyes of everyone this person has ever known. But no such contest exists, so there will be no redeeming. This person mourns the fact that she has ruined her one chance to be loved by everyone; as this person climbs into bed, the weight of this tragedy seems to bear down upon this person's chest. And it is a comforting weight, almost human in heft. This person sighs. This person's eyes begin to close, this person sleeps.

Excerpted from No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. Copyright © 2007 by Miranda July. Excerpted by permission from Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Miranda July - Are You The Favorite Person of Anybody?

Thats an interesting question which makes you think if YOU are the favorite person of soemone.

It´s kind of scary to think about it, because sometimes you are just not.

Well, for that, there are always oranges.

Take three... 

Diesel Store's Design

Japanese designer Chikara Ohno of Sinato has created the ROLLS installation at the Diesel Denim Gallery Aoyama in Minato-ku, Tokyo.

The characteristic of the material used for this installation, which is aluminum, is that it is very thin and easily bent by hands, yet harder than cloth or paper. Therefore it possesses both soft and hard qualities. By winding and sometimes extending this single, long strip of aluminum from the entrance to the back-end of the store, it creates a beautiful waving form, changing its function and features as the material strength changes. This flexible quality of the material represents a gentle connection between the softness of clothes and hardness of architecture.

I think it is really cool but it has serious acessability issues.

Serge Tiroche Podcast

In this edition of the ArtTactic Podcast, we're joined by Serge Tiroche, Founder of ST-ART, the first Israeli artist incubator project. Serge breaks down what an artist incubator project in addition to discussing some of the ways in which ST-ART aids their artists throughout their integration into the art world while simultaneously investing in their future success.

Then, he speculates as to whether or not this business model could become more prevalent in the future in the art world. Lastly, Serge speaks on the development of the Israeli contemporary art market over the past few years.

Listen to the podcast HERE!

I wonder WHY - Brandon Ratcliff

I Wonder Why…
Riming poem by Brandon Ratcliff

I wonder why clocks go tick?
And why minutes are so quick?
What makes the hands on it move?
And why does it have a tick tock groove?

I wonder why the sea is blue?
And how come sea cows don’t go moooooooo?
The animals down there are so cool.
I wish I had them in my pool.

I wonder why people cut down our pretty trees?
And why my mom makes me eat yucky peas!
You know these are really mean things to do
I wish Scooby Doo could give me a tricky clue.

I wonder why the night sky is so bright with stars?
And do aleins really live on the planet Mars?
I want to discover this so bad it makes me want to cry!
All these things and a hole lot more make my brain say
I wonder why?

Miranda July´s Movie

ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW

2005, 90 minutes

Christine Jesperson is a lonely artist and “Eldercab” driver who uses her fantastical artistic visions to draw her aspirations and objects of desire closer to her. Richard Swersey (John Hawkes), a newly single shoe salesman and father of two boys, is prepared for amazing things to happen. But when he meets Christine, he panics. Life is not so oblique for Richard’s seven-year-old Robby, who is having a risqué internet romance with a stranger, and his fourteen- year-old brother Peter who becomes the guinea pig for neighborhood girls— practicing for their futureof romance and marriage.In July’s modern world, the mundane is transcendent and everyday people become radiant characters who speak their innermost thoughts, act on secret impulses, and experience truthful human moments that at times approach the surreal. They seek together-ness through tortured routes and find redemption in small moments that connect them to someoneelse on earth.An IFC/FILM FOUR and Gina Kwon Production

BEST ALTERNATIVE SCENE 

of the movie

Check the movie´s BLOG

Miranda July´s Short Story - The Shared Patio

The Shared Patio 

by Miranda July

He is in love with me but he doesn't know it. It still counts even though it happened when he was unconscious. It counts doubly because the conscious mind often makes mistakes, falls for the wrong person. But down there in the well, where there is no light and only thousand-year-old water, a man has no reason to make mistakes. God says do it and you do it. Love her, and it is so. He is my neighbor. He is Korean. His name is Vincent Chang. He doesn't do hapkido. When you say the wordKorean some people automatically think of Jackie Chan's South Korean hapkido instructor, Grandmaster Jin Pal Kim; I think of Vincent.

What is the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to you? Did it involve a car? Was it on a boat? Did an animal do it? If you answered yes to any of these questions then I am not surprised. Cars crash, boats sink, and animals are just scary. Why not do yourself a favor and stay away from these things.

Vincent has a girlfriend named Helena. She is Greek with blond hair. It's dyed. I was going to be polite and not mention that it's dyed, but I really don't think she cares if anyone knows. In fact, I think she is going for the dyed look, with the roots showing. What if she and I were close friends. What if I borrowed her clothes and she said, That looks better on you, you should keep it. What if she called me in tears, and I had to come over and soothe her in the kitchen, and Vincent tried to come into the kitchen and we said, Stay out, this is girl talk! I saw something like that happen on TV; these two women were talking about some stolen underwear and a man came in and they said, Stay out, this is girl talk! One reason Helena and I would never be close friends is that I am about half as tall as she. People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.

If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him or her the answer to the question, Why are you sad? If you don't know anyone, call the operator and tell him or her. Most people don't know that the operator has to listen, it is a law. Also, the postman is not allowed to go inside your house, but you can talk to him on public property for up to four minutes or until he wants to go, whichever comes first.

Vincent was on the shared patio. I'll tell you about this patio. It is shared. If you look at it you will think it is only Helena and Vincent's patio, because it begins at their back door and there is a fence around it. But when I moved in the landlord said that it was the patio for both the downstairs units, A and B. I'm in B. He said, Don't be shy about using it, because you pay just as much rent as they do. What I don't know for sure is if he told Vincent and Helena that it is a shared patio. I have tried to demonstrate ownership by occasionally leaving something over there, like my shoes, or one time I left an Easter flag. I also try to spend exactly the same amount of time on the patio as they do. That way I know that we are each getting our value. Every time I see them out there, I put a little mark on my calendar. Then the next time the patio is empty, I go sit on it. Then I cross off the mark. Sometimes I lag behind and I have to sit out there a lot toward the end of the month, to catch up.

   
Vincent was on the shared patio. I'll tell you about Vincent. He is an example of a New Man. You might have read the article about the New Men in True magazine last month. New Men are more in touch with their feelings than even women are, and New Men cry. New Men want to have children, they long to give birth, so sometimes when they are crying it is because they can't; there is nowhere for a baby to come out of. New Men just give and give and give. Vincent is like that. Once I saw him give Helena a massage on the shared patio. This is kind of ironic because it is Vincent who needs the massage. He has a mild form of epilepsy. My landlord told me this when I moved in, as a safety precaution. New Men are often a little frail, and also Vincent's job is Art Director, and that is very New Man. He told me this one day when we were both leaving the building at the same time. He is Art Director of a magazine called Punt. This is an unusual coincidence because I am the Floor Manager of a printer and we sometimes print magazines. We don't print Punt, but we print a magazine with a similar name, Positive. It's actually more like a newsletter; it's for people who are HIV positive.

Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the Earth, again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet, day after day, alone.

Vincent was on the shared patio. I was already behind in my patio use, so it made me a little anxious to see him out there, so late in the month. Then I had an idea; I could sit out there with him. There were two reasons I could do this. One: It's a free country, and two: Why not? I put on Bermuda shorts and sunglasses and suntan oil. Even though it was October I still felt summery; I had a summery tableau in mind. In truth though, it was really quite windy out there and I had to run back in for a sweater and a few minutes later I ran back inside for pants. Finally I sat in a lawn chair beside Vincent on the shared patio and watched the suntan oil soak through the fabric of my khakis. He said he always liked the smell of suntan oil. This was a very graceful way of acknowledging my situation. A man with grace, that's the New Man. I asked him how things were going at Punt and he told me a funny story about a typo. Because we are in the same business, he didn't have to explain that typo is short for typographical error. If Helena had come out we would have had to stop using our industry lingo so that she could understand us, but she didn't come out because she was still at work. She's a physician's assistant, which may or may not be the same thing as a nurse.
   
I asked Vincent more questions, and his answers became longer and longer until they hit a kind of cruising altitude and I didn't have to ask, he just orated. It was unexpected, like suddenly finding oneself at work on a weekend. What was I doing here? Where was my Roman Holiday? My American in Paris? This was just more of the same, an American in America. I had not labored all week for this. At moments he would pause and squint up at the sky and I would think that he was constructing the perfect question for me, a fantastic question that I would have to rise to the challenge of, drawing from everything I knew about myself and mythology and this black Earth. But he was pausing only to emphasize what he was saying about how the cover design was not actually his fault, and then he finally did ask me something; he asked, Did I think it was his fault, you know, based on everything he had just told me? I looked at the sky, just to see what it felt like. I pretended that I was pausing before telling him about the secret feeling of joy that I hide in my chest, waiting, waiting, waiting for someone to notice that I rise each morning seemingly with nothing to live for, but I do rise, and it is only because of this secret joy, God's love, in my chest. I looked down from the sky and into his eyes and I said, It wasn't your fault. I excused him for the cover and for everything else. For not yet being a New Man. We fell into silence then; he did not ask me any more questions. I was still happy to sit there beside him, but that is only because I have very, very low expectations of most people, and he had now become Most People.
   
Then he lurched forward. With a sudden motion he leaned forward at an inhuman angle, and stayed there. It was not the behavior of Most People, nor of New Men; it was perhaps something that an old man would do, an elderly man. I said, Vincent. Vincent. I yelled, Vincent Chang! But he only leaned forward silently, his chest almost to his knees. I kneeled down and looked into his eyes. They were open, but closed like a store that is closed and looks ghostly with all the lights off. With the lights off, I could now see how luminous he had been the moment before, even in his selfishness. And it struck me that maybe True magazine had been wrong. Maybe there are no New Men. Maybe there are only the living and the dead, and all those who are living deserve each other and are equal to each other. I pushed his shoulders back so that he was upright in his chair again. I didn't know anything about epilepsy, but I had imagined more shaking and spasmodic action. I moved his hair out of his face. I put my hand under his nose and felt gentle, even breaths. I pressed my lips against his ear and whispered, again, It's not your fault. Perhaps this was really the only thing I had ever wanted to say to anyone, and be told. I imagined couples at the altar, standing before the priest, declaring It's not your fault to each other, before kissing in the union.
   
I pulled my chair up beside him and leaned my head against his shoulder. And although I was genuinely scared about this epileptic seizure that I was in charge of, I slept. Why did I do this dangerous and inappropriate thing? I'd like to think that I didn't do it, that it was in fact done to me. Vincent was slowly sliding his hands up my shirt as we kissed. I tried to remember what kind of breasts I had but they were vague, like faces in dreams. He held them and from the way his hands were curved I knew these breasts were small. Larger breasts would have required a less acute angle. He held them like he had wanted to for a long time, and suddenly I saw things as they really were. He loved me. He was a complex person with layers of percolating emotions, some of them spiritual, some tortured in a more secular way; and he burned for me. This complicated flame of being was mine. I held his hot face and asked him the hard question.
     What about Helena?
     It's okay, because she's in the medical profession. They have to do whatever is the best for health.
     That's right, the Hippocratic Oath.
     She'll be sad, but she won't interfere with us because of the oath.
     Will you move your things over to my apartment?
     No, I have to keep living with Helena because of our vows.
     Your vows? What about the oath?
     It'll be okay. All that is nothing compared to our thing.
     Did you ever really love her?
     Not really, no.
     But me?
     Yes.
     Even though I have no pizzazz?
     What are you talking about, you perfect thing.
     You can see that I'm perfect?
     It's in each thing that you do. I watch you when you hang your bottom over the side of the bathtub to wash it before bed.
     You can see me do this?
     Every night.
     It's just in case.
     I know. But no one will ever enter you in your sleep.
     How can you promise that?
     Because I'm watching you.
     I thought I would have to wait until I died for this.
     From now on I am yours.
     No matter what? Even when you are with Helena and I am just the short woman in Apartment B, are you still mine then?
     Yes, it is a fact between us, even if we never speak of it again.
     I can't believe this is really happening.
   
And then Helena was there, shaking us both awake. But Vincent kept sleeping, and I wondered if he was dead and if so, had he said the things in the dream before or after he passed away, and which one was more authentic. Also, was I a criminal and would Helena have me arrested for having no human decency or common sense? I looked up at her; she was a swarm of action in her physician's assistant clothes. All the motion made me dizzy; I shut my eyes again and was about to re-enter the dream when Helena yelled, When did the seizure start? And, Why the fuck were you sleeping? But she was checking his vital signs with professional flourish and the next time she looked at me I knew I would not have to answer these questions because I had somehow become her assistant, the physician's assistant's assistant. She told me to run into their apartment for a plastic bag that would be on top of the refrigerator. I ran inside gratefully and shut the door behind me.
   
Their apartment was very quiet. I tiptoed across the living room to the kitchen and pressed my face against the freezer, breathing in the complex smells of their life. They had pictures of children on their refrigerator. They had friends, and these friends had given birth to more friends. I had never seen anything as intimate as the pictures of these children. I wanted to reach up and grab the plastic bag from the top of the refrigerator, but I also wanted to look at each child. One was named Trevor and he was having a birthday party that Saturday. Please come! the invitation said. We'll have a whale of a time! and there was a picture of a whale. It was a real whale, a photograph of a real whale. I looked into its tiny wise eye and wondered where that eye was now. Was it alive and swimming, or had it died long ago, or was it dying right that second? When a whale dies it falls down through the ocean slowly, over the course of a day. Everyone sees it fall, like a giant statue, like a building, but slowly, slowly, slowly. I focused all of my attention into the eye; I tried to reach down inside of it, toward the real whale, the dying whale, and I whispered, It's not your fault.
   
Then Helena slammed through the back door. She briefly pressed her breasts against my back as she reached over me to grab the bag and then ran back outside. I turned and watched her through the window. She was giving Vincent a shot. Vincent was waking up. She was kissing Vincent and he was rubbing his neck. I wondered what he remembered. Did he remember cupping my breasts? Did he remember that he didn't love Helena? She was sitting on his lap now, and now she had her arms wrapped around his head. They did not look up when I walked past them.

The interesting thing about Positive is that it never mentions HIV. If it weren't for the advertisements––Retrovir, Sustiva, Viramune––you would think it was a magazine about staying positive, as in upbeat. For this reason it is my favorite magazine. All the other ones build you up just to knock you down again, but the editors at Positive understand that you have already been knocked down, again and again, and at this point you really don't need to fail a quiz called "Are You So Sexy, or Just So-So?" Positive prints lists of ways to feel better, kind of like Hints from Heloise. They seem easy to write, but that's the illusion of all good advice. Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself. It is actually really hard to write something that will make a terminally ill person feel better. And Positive has rules, you can't just lift your guidance from the Bible or a book about Zen; they want original material. So far none of my submissions have gotten in, but I'm getting closer.

Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.