Tag Archives: valerian

The Buffy Diaries 8-3-2017

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10:13 PM 8/3/2017

It seems like the last few days I’m getting one rock-solid Buffynicity per episode.

Buffynicity #1:  Just a few minutes before I went to run I was killing time, refusing to get up and go, I was fooling around and looking for things on my computer to distract me.  I opened up my Xbox Live account, and was looking at games I haven’t played in months.  I tried “Stand of Food” and quickly realized why I hadn’t played it in months – it’s ridiculously overcomplicated.  Then I clicked on “Overkill 3” which is a shooting gallery game, a lone soldier wandering through urban wreckage, shooting at bad guys.  I played a few rounds and quickly got bored. 

By then I was making myself late to run.  It really was a strange situation to have part of my mind insisting on playing this dumb game when I had something important to do.  But then during the episode, Serenity goes to rescue the doctor and his sister, and Jayne is aiming a sniper rifle down a the villagers with a red laser sight just like the guns in the game I had been playing.  And in the next episode he is talking about making upgrades to his favorite weapon, “Vera”, just like the upgrades that were taking up my time in the video game I’d started playing ten minutes before I went to run.

Buffynicity #2: Very minor perhaps, I went to see Valerian again today, and I loved it.  Valerian’s girlfriend, soon to be wife Laureline is a killer agent and in the comics she has red hair.  In tonight’s episode Mal gets somehow married to Saffron, who has red hair and seems to be some kind of spy (I haven’t finished the episode).

And then in another synchronicity – dare I call it a Buffynicity? …

On Monday I was at the grocery store and I saw a new book by Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes.  Or rather it’s a few years old but I guess it’s on the stands again because they are making a TV show out of it, which is out this year – I saw the book on Monday, and on Tuesday I saw a web article about the TV show and noted the coincidence.  But then tonight I was on the way home on the train, I looked over and saw a woman reading a paperback book whose cover I had seen before.  I just posted it separately.  Years ago I bought a set of Magic: The Gathering card sleeves with this same cover art on it.  It has a psychic significance I’m not going to explain here.  So after all these years I see where this art came from and it turns out the main character in this novel is named Mercedes. 

So all that amounts to some serious synchronicity tonight.

The Moon trine Uranus and squared Chiron this afternoon while I was unexpectedly watching Valerian again. I love this movie now.  I think the unexpected timing of seeing this, and then also the unexpected way it’s entered my life – first it seemed a little slow but now it has grown on me so I find it hauntingly beautiful – are related to Uranus, also the outlandish nature of the setting and the scenery.  And the Chiron aspect is related to the suffering of the telepaths in the movie and also my use of hypnosis to access the energy states of all the movies I have seen in my life – I feel I am mastering this trance.  And I just think this movie is so beautiful it hurts.  It also hurts a little to know it’s not making a lot of money in this stupid, shallow world.

Moon entered Capricorn and I was messing around on my computer, feeling overwhelmed and behind on housekeeping.  But at least I have had good Buffynicities and a very cool synchronicity tonight. 

Moon trining Mercury tomorrow and Jupiter squaring Pluto – I expect a big channeling breakthrough as Kara has been coming through louder every day and the Buffynicities are also getting more focused.  Moon inconjunct Mars should be exciting, getting ready for an exciting weeekend.  I expect to have a lot of energy.  I expect to perceive Kara much more clearly.

In the evening Moon inconjuncts the Sun and sextiles Neptune.  I’m looking forward to some good telepathy, especially with the Sun inconjuncting Neptune on Saturday while I’m at Flashback Weekend. 

We’ll see how this Moon-Capricorn phase goes, whether I’m mastering the energies well enough to avoid disaster. 

A Million Miles Away: Valerian

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This book was supposed to be about rock singles, but today I went to see Valerian for the second time and it was so deep and so beautiful that I wanted to capture the sense of immersion in a world of feeling.  Suddenly as I write I feel very heavy, some center of attention in my mind crosses over into a supernatural frequency.  This happens all the time but tonight because I am attempting this I have a deeper frame of reference, I can say “I am here” or “I am there”.  I know so much of what I wanted to create artistically wasn’t art at all but rather the communication of this other frequency, the reality of this other world.

I don’t know if this piece will make it into my book – I still like the formal idea of making it all about pop singles, but because I’m turning my attention in this direction I felt like making the attempt to articulate my feelings about this movie, good and bad.

The first time I saw it I thought it was very slow and also sentimental.  But I found it eerily fascinating and over the weekend it grew on me so I just went to see it again and I love it.  I know it’s going to stick with me forever.

Part of this has to do with the original graphic novel.  Over the weekend I went to my comic store and picked up a promotional booklet that had a story and a lot of quotes from Luc Besson about how much he loved it, and how it was part of the inspiration for The Fifth Element.  I also found the Fifth Element a little cheesy the first time I saw it, but came to love it later.  I’m sure this has to do with Besson’s sense of timing.  Ultimately it winds up being a much deeper emotional experience, quite against the grain of Hollywood at this time.

I have to think about how the link to a long-running graphic novel series affects me.  I’m a sucker for the sense of “establishment” and roots in time.

I’m also rooting for Besson, making an independent film that goes agains the grain.

And I think Cara Delevingne is hot.  Dane Dehaan is also very charismatic.  I think he sounds exactly like Keanu Reeves, which was jarring at first but ultimately Keanu sounds great and so does Dane.  I love Dehaan’s style.  I really bought into the love story and I want to see more of them. 

The first time I saw it I was a little uncomfortable with Laureline’s climactic speech.  I didn’t want to make the emotional adaptation to her.  But the second time I accepted it fully.  In other words, she convinced me.  I had a very similar reaction to The Fifth Element, feeling a little put off the first time but ulitmately being won over.

The depth of the world created in this story is luxurious.  I’m so glad I saw it and I might even convince myself to see it again.  I intend to read the graphic novels. 

I was very disappointed at the horse-race figures for the first weekend.   I hope it does better in Europe than it has here.

I’m not sure this piece will make it into the final version of “A Million Miles Away” but I am finding my own voice and emotional space on the web, getting used to writing freely about entertainment and not giving a damn what anyone thinks.