The Myth of Edgy: Why Real Sex on Camera Is a Step Backwards

The Myth of Edgy: Why Real Sex on Camera Is Not Even Sexy

By Paolina Weber

 

As an emerging female director, when I saw IndieWire’s recent article listing films that featured real sex, I felt a major ick—like a step backward into old-school male gaze:

 

Murky boundaries. Haphazard requests. Silence.

 

I remember one moment in film school when I was asked to go topless for a student scene. There was no intimacy coordinator, no conversation. I didn’t want to be difficult. But inside, I felt erased—like I’d been moved from collaborator to object in an instant.

 

Then—the camera department spoke up. “I don’t feel comfortable.” And suddenly—I was back.

 

Intimacy coordinators exist to eliminate those quiet collapses. And that includes the crew, too. Because even behind a closed set, everyone witnessing intimacy has a right to feel safe. Everything is agreed upon. Non-sexual touch is rehearsed. Consent is built in—and ongoing. You can pull the plug at any time. So what is the result of all this safety?

 

Art.

Not abuse captured on film.

So when we suggest that it’s cooler or more “real” to cross boundaries in the name of edginess, we're missing the point of creating desire filmically. Like honestly, it’s not even that sexy.

 

I didn’t always know how to name it, but Magic Mike XXL helped me understand the female gaze—so much that I wanted to lick the screen. Black bodies, big bodies, all races and types—the camera wasn’t looking, it was with us, as we felt it. It was electric.

 

The female gaze isn’t about performance—it  doesn’t even require a female director. It doesn’t objectify. It welcomes everybody, every gender, and the goal is truth. How?

1. It shows feeling from the inside.

2. With a deep questioning eye of the character.

3. And a connection to a viewer that’s open-ended.

Timothée Chalamet’s performance in Call Me by Your Name is an example of the female gaze at work—because of how it lingers in Elio's waiting, never reducing him to a body to be consumed.

Even though as a mom, it kinda felt like grooming bro, like where's the fucking mom.

 

So female gaze is about feeling—and sometimes that even means NOT being aroused.

That’s why I made the short Red Glove Snow about a young woman losing her virginity—to show the moment ‘objectification’ fails. How is she supposed to feel? Realizing her body has been built up as a receptacle for male pleasure. And now you’re stuck. So what do you do? My character decides to go numb. That’s why the scene after the sex scene is her in a cherry blossom orchard, with the petals raining like tears. From now on, I’m gonna be armored.

 

So in terms of actual sex scenes in movies, the people coming up—like me—are not interested in the old myths about pushing past people’s limits. We’re interested in telling the truth.

 

So “rawness” of actual sex is not even cool.

 

Sex scenes aren’t about showing a performance—they are about asking questions: what is sexy, and to whom?

 

Our job as directors is to put a character in a situation that they discover themselves, genuinely—which artists can only do when they are in safe environments

 

About the Author
Paolina Weber is an emerging director whose work explores intimacy, identity, and the boundaries of power. She recently won Best Experimental Film at the Seoul Short Film Festival, was awarded Best Director at the Citrus Circuit Film Festival, and was a semi-finalist at Cannes Indie Shorts. She is currently preparing to release a new short film about losing her virginity and is in development on her debut feature—a bold, queer reimagining of the painter Caravaggio and his trans best friend

Time, Memory, and Cinema: Tarkovsky Through Lynne Ramsay’s Gasman

Image: A still from Gasman (1997) by Lynne Ramsay, featuring the pivotal moment where the father lifts his daughter atop the hill's horizon--- love suspended at the edge of memory..​

Time, Memory, and Cinema: 

Tarkovsky Through Lynne Ramsay’s Gasman

Tarkovsky argues that cinema is based on observation. It is a poetic distillation of reality, like a hieroglyphic. He writes: “The point [of cinema] is to pick out and join together the bits of sequential facts, knowing, seeing and hearing precisely what lies beneath them and what kind of chain holds them together” (*Sculpting in Time*, p. 65).

This is especially significant to me when thinking about Lynne Ramsay, who creates highly complex visual images—cinematic poetry not driven by plot, but by propulsion through images and sound. In her framing, she often leaves out details: she cuts faces in half, obscures full views, and in doing so, allows true observation. The camera never instructs us on how to feel about her characters. It simply *watches*.

In her 1997 short *Gasman*, the opening sequence is made of wide close-up shots and skewed angles. The power of the sequence lies in what Ramsay does not allow us to see. A little boy sprinkles sugar on a toy car to imagine snow, then sends the car speeding through it, crashing. We don’t see his face. A girl struggles to put on her shoes, saying, "there’s no place like home," dancing around. She lifts her arms to slip into a party dress. Only then do we see her face. Slowly, we piece together that they’re getting ready for a party. The brother doesn’t want to go.

These moments are, in Tarkovsky’s words, visual hieroglyphics.

Tarkovsky also writes that time is a subjective and spiritual category. “The time we have lived settles in our soul as an experience placed within time” (p. 58). And further: “Time is a state: the flame in which there lives the salamander of the human soul” (p. 57). For Tarkovsky, time gives rise to moral searching. Memory becomes not just a record, but a fragile vessel for meaning.

This poetic treatment of time and memory is central to Ramsay’s work. Her images feel like fragments from a deep, interior archive. Her moments are highly liminal: the order of things suspended. We cross a threshold with her. She invites us to make our own kinetic connections to memory and trauma.

In *Gasman*, Ramsay flags important memories by contrasting flat, compressed shots with scenes of profound depth. After the interior, domestic shots, the film opens up into a long exterior shot with incredible depth of field: the family walking up a hill to the party. The parallel lines of sidewalk, grass, and street all converge at a distant horizon. There’s a street lamp at the hill's apex. The daughter runs diagonally across the frame. The father picks her up and spins her around, silhouetted at the top of the hill—a moment of pure connection. It pierces us. In that moment, love triumphs over context.

But the next sequence delivers a quiet devastation. We arrive at the train tracks. Again: parallel lines. But this time, they lead not to joy, but to revelation. The little girl sees her father’s *other* family. The betrayal is not spoken aloud. It is felt, seen. And it stays.

Tarkovsky believed that the past only exists in the present. The present itself goes unnoticed until it is remembered. Meaning is not in the moment, but in its recollection. Pain, meaning, and art live in that remembrance.

*Gasman* lets us experience a child’s trauma exactly in that Tarkovskian way: through observation, fragmentation, and time. It creates, as Tarkovsky might say, the flame of recognition and heartache.

—Paolina Weber  

Originally written Nov 18, 2019 | Revised for publication

Image Source: IMDb Media Gallery for Gasman​IMDb+1IMDb+1

A Portal To Marlon

A Portal To Marlon

Socrates: Pao. Where have you been?

I've been writing scripts but nobody taught me how to do it. How do you do it?

Socrates: And why do you think you can do such a thing?

Arrogance.

Socrates: But your voice is still muffled?

Austin said it's okay to be embarrassed by audaciousness.

( But he also said don't talk about your process. Nobody cares. )

Nevertheless, a while back, I had a magical moment, worthy of sharing, stupid word.

I found a picture of Tennessee Williams on Bill Clerk's table.

Inside a big pile of images.

That had made a 'stop'.

Diana, had reached out through time and space and said, "Paolina, learn from this artist."

So there I was, seeing him. Wait, is this real?

Yes I developed a roll, I need to send it to the sister. I'm sorry are you sure I can touch this?

There was even a roll that hadn't been developed, so Bill had developed it.

In these pictures Marlon was a wistful boy.

Doing homework, bored out of his mind.

He stops,  He asks his mother to take pictures of him.

He puts on a Greek theatrical mask that she had sitting on the kitchen table.

He stands in his attic bedroom, by the window and he looks out at me, through time and space

I am unbelieving. Am I seeing this?

Why am I seeing you, nobody has seen these, how could I be seeing this?

I get very quiet,

The sky was very open.

The light was clean.

Was he on a farm? Was this the midwesr.

The sun was so clean

The room was the same as the phot from Patchin' place.

He must like ceilings sloping down on him.

The light was afternoon light, on another day it would be dusty.

The mother is extraordinary.

These masks are Etruscan.

Time is not real, I see you I can't speak into your eyes. they are inside the myth.

Hearing his heartbeat and feeling his thoughts.

Do you know who it was?

Marlon Brando.

Will he know someone saw these.

What happened to him, how do you give up on humanity.

On time.

You live these moments of connection and rush the rest.

Jaded is how I saw his work always giving up 

From a roll of film that hadn't been developed. 

There he was looking back at me, as a 16 year old.

See me touch my eternal thoughts.

When Marlon Brando died, all his personal photos were on Bill Clerk's table in the country. 

Bill was his sister's best friend.  So he was sending them to her at Patching Place.

 (I also was a young artist myself, like we could have gone dancing.)

And in that pile was also the Tennessee Williams photo.

It was a picture of the two of them somewhere, from the time of Streetcar Named Desire, Now he's thirty maybe, some press tour to Mexico, or LA, sitting on a couch, a late night party. laughing uncontrollably.

Taken from someone's hacienda house, I could tell from the plaster walls.

I have never seen so much energy.

A visitation from the heroes and an invitation to join them, catch up Pao.

Bye Marlon and thank you Universe.

 I'm Acting As If,  deeper, tighter, glazing through time, ravenously.

Working as quickly as I can.

Pao 10/07/24

I Remember Him Really Well

Mommy and Jean-Michel in her gallery. 

Photo by Naoki Okamoto

I remember him really well, painting barefoot.

I would come from the UN school to go to my mother’s gallery. I hadn’t gotten into Bronx Science yet. I would wear these Agnes B. mini skirts and cropped sweatshirts with pearl snaps. Yellow boots — a white stripe down the center — like Doc Martens, but not. I had been taking myself to school on the train since I was ten years old. I was very, very independent.

I would take the train and get off on Prince Street. My mother would be very busy in the back office, so I would stay at the front desk, doing homework, staring out the big windows.
Jean-Michel would be downstairs. There was a huge staircase with a green banister with big knobs. I would open the back door of the gallery and go say hi.

He would have papers all over the floor, xerox copies of his work. So many sentences would fly out at me — “Peso Neto,” “arroz con pollo,” "lead."

He was always there; he had a very soft voice, with a smile from the inside. It was strange because he was a grown-up, but he was somebody really familiar, so I didn’t need to explain anything.

The people around him were Rammellzee — who I didn’t really understand but who was not there much, just when he did a show. She did do a show for him too; his long metal paintings about future refugee warfare. But I remember my mom being mad at Rammellzee and then Jean-Michel, and being upset about them.

I remember him always happy. The very first time I met him was when his father Gerard and Nora took us (me and my mom) to this fancy chicken restaurant on the Upper East Side. I remember it was a 'chicken restaurant' because it was American, and I ordered chicken.

I was a kid, so it was a big deal for me to go to a restaurant with an artist, mother, and father. I had been to many restaurants in Italy or during art fairs, but I had never gone with a family — like a mother and father — who seemed very proper and organized and friendly. The chairs were round chairs with rungs, like half moons, with yellow wood, and the lighting was very dark and the walls were red.

Back at the gallery, I remember feeling very comfortable when he was around. On Saturdays, I would be around him all day. He would come up to get something from Dean and DeLuca. He had linen pants on, with leather sandals — very chic — and it’s strange because I thought he was wearing an Armani suit, a grey one. (But in your film, I found out he later wore Comme des Garçons.) The jacket was buttoned up, no shirt underneath — really beautiful and nondescript.

I remember collectors would come by, and they made jingling noises with jewelry or sparkled with overly enthusiastic smiles.

Mainly, I remember my mother was really loud on the phone in the back, speaking with her accent on fire, usually screaming “NO” or “WHAT?” and then laughing as broadly as her yells were loud.

Then I remember when my mother found him the space on Crosby Street behind the gallery. It was sad when he moved because the basement was so bright, like this big bright elephant’s ribcage. His canvases would start off white. The sunlight would come streaming inside — the back wall was sloped like a greenhouse, made of many panels of windows.

You mentioned his art was not as much about aesthetics as it was about ideas. But to me, it was an encyclopedia of aesthetics. It was as if he was filtering all of art history through his art.

As if the X axis was history — starting from the birth of the earth, the Mesopotamians, the Romans, and then colonization, Haiti, to now.

The Y axis was form — the form that the art could take — from frescoes on ancient Roman villas, to Matisse cutouts, to Caravaggio portraits, to huge paintings by Goya about the French Revolution, to Christ paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, to urinals by Duchamp, to Aztec art.

Then the Z axis, which was all his personal memories — the emotional life he would filter: superheroes, or hearing Charlie Parker, or reading The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac, or crime novels, and then all the broken hearts and joys of life.

So his paintings would exist at the intersection of these three planes. You could be studying a still life, while processing the invention of the cotton gin, while contemplating what it means to be loyal.

Then, add this to the art-making process: the fact that while you are making art, you are listening to Ravel, or Fab Five Freddy, or even better, coming up with music yourself. Then, you put on sneakers because you don't like the bathroom downstairs; you run upstairs. Or you want to take a shower, then you run back downstairs. Your high tops got dirt on them — from the dirt on the stairs — which you have trailed back downstairs, so it’s now landed on your work.

Does that make sense? So Jean-Michel's paintings from my mother’s gallery, for example, could be about Las Meninas, Twombly, and memory. As much as he was writing visual poetry, he was painting time-space portraits.

This was also art for art’s sake; the doors were chosen because they were proportional — otherwise, he could have been writing on bricks.

Anyway, back to my memories. We were in Italy, sitting in the back of the car, and my mother was driving. He was showing me all his Polaroids, telling me about the models he liked the most, the girl he had the biggest crush on. I didn't know what to say — the girls were a lot older than me. Then we started talking about Central Park and spending time in Sheep's Meadow. We compared the fronts of our arms. He had his left leg crossed, looking out the open window.

Except my mother started to interrupt and talk to him about not going to Modena, or something about not doing a show in Modena and how she didn’t want him to give the paintings to the dealer Emilio Mazzoli. She was always right. My mom wanted to protect Jean-Michel. She sold them carefully — never for profit — it was always about spreading the work to important collectors and museums for the history of art.

She was a teacher.

I remember she had to scream this and turn her head. The sea was blowing in from Via Aurelia. I felt so lucky he wanted to sit with me, but she had to scream into the wind. Plus, he was listening to mixtapes.

He stayed with us at my mother’s house at the beach. He usually did his own thing, and for me, that was a big deal because I was terrified of my mother, so it made a big impression that he would insist on his way.

He liked Rome, also.

I also remember going to Los Angeles to see his first show at Larry Gagosian.

At that point, my memory of him shifts to me really contemplating his art, seeing all those paintings I knew by heart. Looking up at Famous Negro Athletes, I learned about "exceptionalism" — the painting showed the concept. A tribute that looked like a "line-up."

I would step into them — seeing my mother on the phone with the huge black painting, the white crown figure in the center. She had this huge rectangular wooden desk, and the painting seemed to be made just to sit right behind her. It was as long as the wall — as if he was saying, “OK, don’t mess with her."

Anyway, this is what it was like for me to know him as a kid.

-Paolina Weber

(originally written as an email to his niece)

6/6/21

Vipers don't need to pine or coil 

They loll on large temples 

Languidly scanning 

Soaking up sun

Undisturbed and focused 

Listening 

I spot them so easily 

it makes no difference if they have the triangular head because they don't really move 

they're not supposed to leave that beautiful space 

Just know that if you're clumsy 

at sunset

that's when you're a nuisance.  

Stepping on the loose Path 

as they make their routine glide 

back to their cool rock.  

That's on you.  

Why not just stay on that temple 

watch the sunset 

and go home after dark.  

It's your sunset too and the dark is not scary.  

You can be the carrier pidgeon.  
You can never stop you can never soften 
you can be you you can be childless 
you can be scathing 
you can be a killer 
you can play chess around me and move on every square 
you can be the queen or the king or the night or the wing. 


I want to touch that wing is all.   
And wrap myself through this carpet.   
Let me thread myself inside your being I'm not here to hurt you


You can leave and leaving can be our arrival.  
Leaving can be our language.   
We can learn to love leaving.   
Leaving each other can be our bliss and our connection 
leave me a million different ways 
from different parts of me next to yours.  

Over my tiny speaker I hear
the tinny twang of his guitar strumming a gentle,
somber song of pleading devotion his voice lilting on lyrics
longing for his lover as I muse on you
o gentle mother
between us a river
may just as well be an ocean independence fireworks blossoming in undulating cacophony
every pop and burst
unsettling my love song
And he sings, “there goes my life”
My fingers ache
I’ve been twisted and ripped holding onto this life
and what lovely pose
did you strike
showing your starlets
your muscled modeling replete with Pilates perfection entreat to melt in my mouth the notes of song
when earlier I
sauntering down the sidewalk dared whistle and hum
dared tangle my arm in yours near Lincoln Center

You did signal me to come
your beacon oscillating
over radio waves and
routed signals from the Ethernet. and you tasted my breeze
and liked it
and I was scared but kind
I pine
for the delicate,
melting morsels of your work those stage strewn vignettes Where do you rest your head to close your eyes
to draw the shades on those kind, silken cornflowers where golden curled tresses lay warm on your cheek
after you’ve tucked in
your babies
and wiped clean
your lashes
And the bombs have stopped and the ashes
gently float to earth
and the rain now falls bending the bows
running rivulets
to wash the ash away
Would your heart flutter,
like mine?
Would you warm
my dark, rainy earth
with your sunshine?

not written by me

Wonderflesh wonderful wonder how I got this way, over the hill, two kids, a dirty apartment and no sex. It all comes from wishes and hope. The hope that someone will change or the wonder at someone's beauty. The awe in their ridges. The ridges of their jaw, their neck, their skin, their sac, I can't write scrotum. I'm too proper. But the wonder and awe of someone's body and how skin can fold on top of skin, like little bumpy waves and carry you under it, the flesh, or ride you beneath it, wondering how you got here. I got here because I made a choice that day during Fleet Week when we met. Yes, a sailor I picked up in Central Park; so not wonderful. And yet it was, in a way, to meet someone from so far, who steps off a boat and onto a bedrock island and walks to a park and meets his wife. I hate that word. Rather his Other, the admirer of his ridges and the candy of their swirling.
Now I wonder where this all works. Go back home to my children, to their wondrous flesh so puffy and soft. Their golden eyes and their wonder at me. They feel everything, they say it to the word.
"FUCK" from my two year old's mouth or "fuckin' underwear" from my four year old this morning. As in, "I don't want to wear those fuckin' underwear."
I fell into her comforter, my head fell into this sheet. Hold me up and cradle my head. This can't be where all this wonder ended up.
She said she copied mommy, or he said she "must have copied mommy" and so she repeated "mommy said it when she gets angry".
I wonder how it got to this? "Grab your shoes, not your golden shoes, fine, I'll take you to school."
The hug on 72nd Street, "it's going to be OK, it's going to be OK" and then my heart I hate so much, the one inside me that sees nothing and has amnesia.
I went to buy her a gift at the Toys 'r Us, and a Thomas the Train bag, for my wonderful two year old. They will be OK, Mamma will buy you a present.
And when I went to pay, the three ATM cards were missing from my wallet. "You should report it," said the teller. Drama avoidance alarm. I counted my bills, my quarters, my dimes and came up with thirty-four dollars and eighty two cents. I wonder how it came to this.
"I have your cards, you can get them when I see you" said the text message.
I looked down on the concrete in Times Square, sat in those red chairs and made a phone call.

I am named after my grandmother Paulina Friedman.

The Friedman's were jewish. 

This is the first time I ever wrote this down.  

My grandmother's Polish family lived in Warsaw and were sent to Lotz and from there they died in Auschwitz.

I don't ever acknowledge this because I was never told this fact.

I can't trace my ancestors. I can't pray for them in Hebrew, I can't even walk into a temple.  

My grandmother's niece was Giovanna Ukleja.  She married Roman Ukleja when they left Auchwitz, one of the few who survived.  I have been told that they met when he pulled her out of the line to the showers.  He was a Polish worker in the camp. 

I walked by the monument to the relatives of Auschwitz survivors my whole life, on Riverside and 83 Street, by the flower bed at the end of the path that starts at 96th street.  I learned to ride my bike on this path.   

I wish I could explain the sense of not belonging that I feel.  In a neighborhood where everyone is Jewish and I don't have the words to say I am one of you.  I am always floating under the Jewish people.  

I am an origami

Marriage is not like a math equation

Given a) exploitation

over, he doesn't pay for anything

then, b) neglect squared by n

n being we never go out

minus that time I ate those crazy good mushrooms at x

x being the insanely expensive restaurant on 19th street off Park

find x (who's name I forget)

Daddy used to live in a loft right down the street

I hate that whole street

How he forgot his weekend so I

called

his assistant from a pay phone

and she took me to Brooklyn to sleep under her big Boxer

who felt droolly nice

Apply this to the present

(Oh, the name for x is Craft)

When one is inside a Marriage Box

small things are mood altering,

admiring the Spring 2011 Marc Jacobs white silk dress

with happy big red yellow orange stripes in diagonal

Or wondering how I can transform the shower curtains I saw at Anthropologie into my window curtains (can shower curtains be so nice?)

Hypothetical curtains defined: layers of a blue Fez (Morocco) divided by white frilly frills that are more (the dog) Cock-a-Poo than linen

jingle

small things get me through the day.

And then I find myself declaring "absolutes"

in the vein of "I'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore"

Confide (pause) I am exploited

Cry (not audibly) at the dive Big Nicks

(you gotta be from the Upper West Side to know about their free pickles.)

as I say to my husband:

I wanted a marriage that was EXPANSIVE,

to go to india

"you want to go to India?"

Unsaid: to go back to Madurai, east of Madras and rent a place by the sea

To EXPAND my world not become an origami

I am an origami

I made myself into an origami from this box

I like this pickle.

It was all about that he was tall

and that he was American american

He thinks it's about money, EXPENSIVE

Like I’m some rich girl

"Do you see me buying bags? ",

I blurted out in couples therapy.

I hear his dissmissive undercurrent: I'm "worldly."

How do you make a noun into an adverb?

as in: it's a sin to attach to this world

1/7/11

weary and rattled
can you really see my thoughts?

The gym blurred
and I was free to slide and jump
with abandon and clarity
It was only a dance class

I pulled away from my lines

down under my feet soared my fifth finger


big
small
in-in
turn
 forward
back
lean
grip

up
wind and
pull the eyes deeper
(free the neck look in front)
tail
reach
turn
(pull away from inside knee)
out
up
big toe big toe
up
slide up
reach
down
lengthen down
back of knee
open
down
line the back behind me
bow
heal
pivot
these were my thoughts
and there was joy
for all my twists were
contained and washed into becoming

Is there an eye watching?
God I offer myself to you
to do with me as thou wilt
take away my difficulties

blanket

I thread my needle with smoke from dirty bathrooms in 2 million dollar apartments.

With ashes falling down bathtubs

And extension cords strung from baby toy hooks

Over shower curtains

and fans about to fall out windows.

I thread this needle with overly dramatic men listening to horrible self obsessed whiny country music about Jack Daniels and bad heavy metal

Years too late,

Hoping to bond with their toddler who just woke from his blissful nap and is now held into the computer screen at full volume listening to some song on you tube that means nothing to the little boy

Who is now pressing his lovely body on his fathers protruding empty belly.

Then when I look inside the eye of this needle I see mothers, biting their five year olds earlobes and dragging them away from their bedroom by the hair screaming don't wake me up.

And seven year old's writing sorry notes I love you I'll be better and slipping them under mommy's door

Making their own lunch

Walking themselves to the school bus but forgetting they had to brush their teeth

At least remembering to put on a ballet uniform so they could look more appealing for the child molester waiting for them when they got back off the bus all excited to go home to an empty house with Fred Flintstone and Nestle quick.

The thread is frayed and almost invisible. Made of absent husbands who forget to pick up their children from school, and when reminded, cab it there late, but just in time in time to show their wives contempt for routine, an inability to be reliable, a secret rage at helping.

"What I thought is you would go jogging and then just remember to pick up him up"... even though I slept till 1045am

And you got up at 7am

And took two kids to school in different directions:

At 820am on 70th street and 9am on Broadway and 84th street

Then for sheer sanity went running, by the river

Sunk your feet into the earth,

Finding roots with your toes and phoenixes in the clouds and octopuses in the river, praying there's a God.

I take this thread and use a fabric I made myself. To sew a cloth filled with charity and joy and care and attention and verbal communication and developing cognitive landmarks and taking daughters to the ballet and building wooden fire trucks for my son and flying big butterfly kites in the hallway

On days with no wind

And bringing both of them to the firehouse

So she could ring the bell and he could sit inside the truck.

And never giving my son chocolate ice cream because he is allergic but always having strawberry ice cream ready and still giving her the chocolate which is what she wants, but making it seem less appealing to him.

No one is deprived here or bitten. I will swing and play tag; I will take them to the Museum, to the new water park in Brooklyn, to swim on Sundays,

I will provide and we will cover ourselves with my blanket and I will protect them

And together we will wait for the next right action, all enfolded inside this quilt as we watch Mickey Mouse cartoons, in the meantime.

Paolina Weber

Copyright

Oct. 21, 2010

Squared by copper orange
I bend into Matte

Tocami nel cuore non
Ho piu spazio per amore

Sono spenta dalle candele
Non ce vento qui

L'aria gira dentro la bicycletta
Ma sopra sono diventata panna

Dondolami nel vento
Prendimi sulla terrazza
Tirami fuori sopra le onde


Andavo in barca quando sogniavo del futuro
Aperta e coperta di lana griggia
Giorni passano
Dove sono

Oggi ho visto amore
Schiarito da niente
Chiaro come'l vento

Entrando da te
Girata e sciolta
La strada e davanti
Come sara possibile?

Dio mi abandono alla tua maggia
Aspetero fin' a sempre
A partire da ora
Mio desiderio e davanti

there is nothing to hold
there is nothing to see
there is nothing to wish for
there is nothing to be
there is never a moment
there will never be

the only reason for this wish
is so that I see
the person I am
and the one I need to be


A grateful
dollop of merangue
Put me on your tongue and feel me dissolve

I want to stain the clouds with love
And trace outlines in the tall grass

to
narrow all angles and
hover over dark maple groves
to
Lie tinglingly zipped
into composure and
pulled into my denser self

A Cold Grey Summer Day
anywhere
The pink crabs were
not in the sand
I dug more and
more
waiting for their little legs
tickling
my knuckles
she wanted to see those crabs
bucket-fulls
like last year

digging in the sand
forming little sand avalanches
in the sandy water
 at sea level
digging for
 crab bodies,
hundreds
just under the dry surface

she had held five at a time
tickling her
in her
five year old palm


Inside this poem, in the future, you will find out, that we went to the wrong beach, this year.

The crabs were in Far Rockaway,
not Long Beach
we remembered that on the train, going home.


Yesterday we had postponed the beach
"you can't go when your brother has a fever!'

and even "no" on the day before yesterday
"you can't go when your brother is throwing up"

This happened right in front of the babysitting area of my job
I  masked his fever with a triple dose of tylenol
 so that I could teach Pilates

 I hope no other kid got coxacky,
it's a virus
also called foot, hand and mouth disease

His sister's two-days-straight disapointment
rattled her all the way to 66th street
"Let's go ask the doctor, if you don't believe me"
Were the words that came from inside me
"I want to go to Long Beach"
She  screamed  and ran away
from the taxi's open door
her sick brother and me inside
Straight up the street in her rage, past the Century 21
while I waited
growling




and on and on went the whining
till I was a shaking skeleton




The next day I gathered everything
 into the crackling blue Ikea bag :

The sexy water shooter,
which is two cylanders of plastic
 that you pump
to squirt the water out of.
A Circus Tent,
in red and yellow; a flag on top.
Two cheese sandwiches
 on brioche rolls,
in a dinosour lunchbox.
A red crayola  thermos
with a twist-top cup, shaped like the tip of the crayon
Two organic fruit bars
 "with psyllium flaxseed and inulin"
A lightening McQueen bucket
Three organic peppers that match the circus tent, in red, yellow and orange
a cash ledger book
 rose water perfume
a pen that looks like  red lipstick
And my gold string Bikini

---a man in the ocean tried to pick me up
saying "I like your bathing suit, other people around here are provincial"

(It's not like a stripper's because
The gold has black trim and black strings.)


plus, I really like provincial

(Just ask my husband who drives the Staten Island Ferry
 with his black haired scowl and soft blue eyes)

Today is a special day
The LIRR is a diesel train
 and she says "don't let go of my hand " to her younger brother
 "there are scary people in Penn Station,"
 she listens sometimes.



That was before she said
I hate everything
this whole day
and the sandwiches have sand in them
 and the day is ruined



so I said back:
that little girl  doesn't want to play with you
and is leaving because of you






I can't cope with all this
is not a poetic thing to write
 all that planning
 then nothing to hold on to

 just my speachless son,  seeing his mommy be mean to his sister

Long Beach
why wouldn't it be provincial ?
its a province of new york

I'm always  alone with these two kids
regardless
So I planned today like a reunion
so nice

except I was mean

I told her "Im so sorry I was so mean"

Because in my script

We made smiley faces in the sand

with jelly fish eyes

and sea weed hair

 and I traced the heads with my big toe

and ate the peppers in the circus tent


I hope you can 'erase the future' she said later that night



He fell asleep on the train home,
wrapped in a yellow blanket,
with his blue nail polish showing,
my four year old boy.
(don't be so provincial about his blue nail polish)
Leandro,
the Lion Man.

And Aurelia means Golden Crown,
like the senators in the First Roman Republic,
she's the six year old girl.

So I'll take them to far Rockaway
The last stop on the A,
with the crummy old streets
and the disgustingly dirty pizzaria.
"Don't touch anything, not one thing nothing, not anything, do you understand."
I'll  plan for an hour and a half trip this time,
and not bring my script
about future memories and being a good mother

Just carry my bucket of empty dreams
in one hand Paolina

for Stephen Mueller

I am holding myself

I keep seeing lights

bright colors

dashing across the pale long beach

robes of yellow

pink Saris

orange bodies

Refugees chasing freedom

scattered for happy life

across the fence

I flow in dazzling lavender

terrified I will be shot

I am not American

I am still holding myself

Alone

cold fire burns upward

rings surround my heart

my throat dries black

deep emptiness

vacancy unfulfilled

I will not speak again

I refuse to step up to the mark

tears flow forever

my ankle shatters first

My friend died

And yet I keep seeing lights

lights around my people

glowing from behind their backs

pulling me onward

warming me me,

in sheep's wool fat

burning me,

in acid heat

dragging me,

in buzz pressured movements movement

false electricity, ... and hope?

I am leaving my body

It is not my time to go

arid rocks

scattered in these manly ridges

grated by these Aegean cliffs

Fast rushing dry speed

where the horizon line meets my memories

of my base demonstrations:

me as young and yin

with the blue darkness in front of me

and the SpiderCo knife in my boot

quickly strapped but holstered

spotted in the pipe's eye

ready to dash from those chasing lights

immortalized

Except that I miss the soil

Charlie's squinty big smile eyes

the comfort smells of rosemary

a marble kitchen table with grapefruit stains

plush brown velvet armchairs

serene solitude

a chamomile under a a warm afternoon sun

while the Cicadas creek

and Children's feet tickle my cheek

my mother

mine

mesmerize me

momentarily

I am me

"tutti

mi chiaman

mare,

mama remma"

Maremma

Time stops here with motherhood

no more catching

There, can I rest in the lights

only here, in my quiet yellow inside

that is kept clean by a purple circle

am I safe now

I am the dot

with a purple purpose

the kiss peace

The egg

and the water cleans us all

I am back on the beach

in my family of waves

The time reliable flow

of even measurements

and predictable dispersion

Order gliding walls

as heavy as iron

Where I can float

lightly without fear

still blinded by the lights

and spotted in the tube

but now protected by the salt

all over me.

In the long distance I see

my friend suspended,

lighting up the sky

I will join the aerial,

speckled clean by the stars,

but not before

this little prince has found the fox

11/5/96

I had a party on the roof today to honor my daughter's goodbye to pre-K and hello to K

K as in Kindergarden

In Scarsdale it is called a stepping up party

for us it was called "Aurelia's goodbye to all her friends party"

Nine children in the windy summer sun

lined up for makeup

Aurelia chose a vampire

Leandro had a snake drawn in the center of his brow

how suitable for my Egyption prince

Goofy Gary had clown shoes

big floppy over-sized

ones

and a bit of a New York "watch it" to his tone when the kid pulled on his bow tie.

That's OK

he's real

I loved his hankerchief that wouldn't disappear five times it didn't work

on purpose

until everybody everybody said

igby something wiggie the magic words

he asked the kids what are the magic words

one kid said abracadabra and aurelia raised her hand and said HoCus Pocus

she is so smart.

no they were

iggy ziggy wiggie

which kept reminding me of For Esme with Love and Squalor

the iggy (igby) word mixed with wiggie

wiggie is actually my husbands nickname at work

but to me he is GiGi

The wind was perfect

a couple of balloons disappeared, one I traced over the Level Club, the building next to the Ansonia that must have competed for grandure back in the day when Babe Ruth and Caruso shared an elevator.

What will it be like to remember this day

It was so lovely over the city, with the park in one view, those two doric towers and The River

We were on this wooden deck

A lovely little girl poured herself two unsweetened cold green teas, I knew she wouldn't like it, and the yogurt drink, which I drank

There were lots and lots of cookies and juice boxes

Leandro had a balloon hat

made of a yellow heart

blue stalks and a red halo

and I felt like I kept saying I need you to hold me to my husband, as if I were a cat, just running up at his shin underfoot

but I probably was more occupied pulling it all off

interwoven wire
corrogated steel

brass grills
iron gratings
rusted copper
molten silver
vented aluminum
flattened alloys

Beaten and cut
traced and realized
jiggled and wiggled
fitted and shaken
melted and scratched
prodded and glossed
edged
turned
screwed
bolted
derived
split
cooled
pounded
and abrased

I am a grateful dollop of meringue
to put under your tongue and feel dissolve
To stain the clouds with love, and trace outlines

in the tall grass. To narrow all angles

and hover over maple groves, to lie

tinglingly zipped into my denser self

Squared by copper
I bend into matte
toccami nel cuore
non ho più spazio per amore
sono spenta
dalle candele non ce vento qui
l'aria gira nella bicicletta
ma sopra sono diventata panna