Dear Jonas:

i have a confession to make. This evening you were beside yourself. You are teething again, so you have a little fever sometimes and a lot of drool. You have less of an appetite and, quite frankly, you cry a lot. In fact, every once and a while you do something i would almost call a tantrum. You had a needy day, and wanted to be held a lot, and grabbed ahold of my legs when you wanted to walk somewhere with me. You usually have a fantastic sense of humor and laugh easily. Funny noises and goofy faces provoke you to belly laughs, and the cats crack you up. These are the things i was thinking (Jonas is tired, Jonas likes animals, Jonas is funny) when i did what i did.

i sat you next to me on the couch and turned on the TV and started flipping through the Netflix instant cue, thinking that the sound of a movie in the background might help you stop crying. i wasn't intending to actually have you watch something, but then i saw it. Jonas, tonight you actually watched about half of a movie. That's exciting, right? The lame part of this event? It was Beverly Hills Chihuahua. For the record, you didn't laugh once. You watched. Quietly. But you were not impressed.

I Can't Sleep

Dear Jonas: I can't sleep. i'm not sure if it's because of my cold or if it's the medication my doctor has me taking to stop these weird panic attack fainting spells i've been having, but it's very strange. Usually, i can't stay awake. i fall asleep on the train, during every movie i try to watch, and in countless other inconvenient situations. i love to sleep. i prefer to sleep. i thought Thomas Pynchon's new book, Inherent Vice, would knock me out. No such luck; i can't put it down. i worked brunch today, which usually guarantees that i'll be napping for hours when i get home. Not today. i gave you a bath and after you went to bed we watched Claire Denis's film I Can't Sleep. i needed company.

If the grand reduction of Ozu's work is "Isn't life disappointing," then Denis's tagline could be something like: "Isn't life disappointing in a way that is complicated and interesting?" When we finished I Can't Sleep, your Dad asked: "Isn't it sad?" i said, no, not exactly sad, although i suppose it is sad. Arguing that a movie "about" a serial killer who preys on old women, broken love affairs, and a troublesome immigration to Paris is not sad might seem perverse, but sometimes it is invigorating to be reminded that difficult, inscrutable things just happen, and happen, and happen. Or, as the title of another of Denis's films has it, there is "trouble every day." The fun part is training yourself how to convert trouble into something you can live for, or with, or in.

"For it is what is what happens between people, Brecht insists, that provides them with all the material they can discuss." Jameson

Dear Jonas,
You don't like it if someone on the street doesn't smile at you. In the rare event that this happens, you crane your neck around and stare them down. Your favorite thing to do right now is to push your own stroller. You enjoy doing this so much that it has begun to impair our trips to the park and back. When we're about halfway home, you start squirming and stare me down until i take you out and let you "walk." Every so often you sit down for a second and then either start pushing again or take off in an exuberant crawl down the sidewalk. i chase you down, reposition you behind the stroller, and we try it again. This goes on for a city block or two, then you're back in the stroller with black fingertips and dusty knees. Yesterday some men driving by on Metropolitan Ave. yelled at us, "You better wash his hands." i was so thankful for that. i'm sure i never would've thought to do it otherwise.

Tonight our friends Jimmy and Borcu came over and sat with you so your Dad and i could go see a movie. You were already asleep when they got here. i wonder if you had any notion that we were gone? We met at Union Square and walked down to Film Forum for the first time since shortly before i had you. On that last trip, we saw Encounters at the End of the World. While we were waiting for the film to start, your Dad told you about the director, Werner Herzog, and he explained what he thought the film would be about.

We went to see The Headless Woman, an eerie, mesmerizing Argentinean film by the director Lucrecia Martel. The plot gestates around the asphyxiating moral ambiguity of Vero, a wealthy and well-connected dentist, aging beauty, and mother of grown children. Vero hits and kills a child (so we think--it is crucial to the film's order that we are never 100 percent positive on this) and a dog as she answers her cell phone while driving down a dusty country road. Out of this event, the film makes good on its title's promise of the bizarre ways that class and gender can bewitch subjectivity. Her disconnection to her pre-accident world at first seems to be the result of a head injury sustained during the crash, but as the days pass, her actions reveal her to be more present than we expect, and her inability to proceed normally exposes itself as at least equal parts emotional and physical trauma. As she realizes that the men in her life are not only hiding from her what they have uncovered about the event, but have also erased all evidence of her crime, she dies her platinum hair black--a silent nod of complicity with their plans. The film refuses to verify what actually happened, and Vero's deed is never legally punished. Its riveting narrative rhythm elicits a sympathetic character from a repulsive act of careless class privilege, the viewer is forced to let this small part stand in for the much larger impasses of history. How many times, and in how many ways, is this process repeated, and what is lost in the transaction?