by Yash SEYEDBAGHERI

Cousin San­dro and I light joints, turn on The Big Lebows­ki. We’re writ­ers in our twen­ties, world de­mand­ing. Get jobs, de­vel­op game plans. World doesn’t rec­og­nize cre­ativ­i­ty or as­pir­ing screenwriters.

Tonight, we shut off the world. In­hale epic di­a­logue, words like “nomen­cla­ture,” and “mic­turate,” words that the world deems too cre­ative and high-mind­ed. Armed with per­son­al joints, we laugh at The Dude, at a sto­ry trig­gered by men mic­turat­ing on a rug. Sweet con­vo­lu­tion. Gun-tot­ing John Good­man doesn’t bowl on Shab­bos. Ni­hilists threat­en cas­tra­tion. White Rus­sians and joints abound. 

This is life, un­tram­meled by ar­bi­trary lines, no­tions of log­ic and starched smiles. By no­tions of win­ners and losers, de­fined by mon­ey and of­fice space.

To­mor­row, we’ll walk in­to re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, don feal­ty to Amer­i­can dreams. Pre­tend to be am­bi­tious and cap­i­tal­is­tic. But tonight, we rel­ish time with The Dude. 

When they call the Dude a los­er, a bum, we cheer him on. We dream of screen­plays about screen­writ­ers, meta, out-of-touch screen­plays about pok­ing the bear and rel­ish­ing it. That’s what we want. Dude wants his rug and to smoke pot in peace. We love it. We’re bums, maybe bet­ter dressed than the Dude, but still bums. Sim­pli­fy, sim­pli­fy. Abide. Abide.

Movie end­ing, Dude abid­ing, we try to abide the inevitable.

We whis­per that word, abide, abide, the night dark­en­ing, darkening.

Filed under Films on December 27th, 2019

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