using a multiverse as a narrative framework to tell an immigrant story really is THE best possible implementation of this concept. like the idea that every time you make a decision in your life a different branching universe splits off where you chose differently, while obviously broadly universal because of course everyone wonders what if (what if i had chosen differently, what would my life look like then), really does hit such a specific core question that is imo fundamental to the immigrant experience
all the time my parents talk about imagining what lives they might have lived if they had chosen differently, if they had never left home, if they had never come here, if they had not raised their daughter in a world and a culture so utterly foreign to their own where she might make her own choices that are painfully incomprehensible to them. it’s all tied up with a sense of grief and loss and regret and almost existential melancholy, not necessarily because they think they chose wrong specifically, not because they think they’d actually choose differently if they had a chance to do it over again, but merely because that choice is such a monumental one and the enormity of it and the ripples it would end up causing are only obvious in retrospect. you make the choice to uproot your life and move to a different world, a different universe, and once you cross that bridge you can never go back. you can never truly go home again. and when we do go back to visit, we see in their old friends and classmates and relatives funhouse versions of ourselves, people we might have been but never were and never will be.
every immigrant story is a ghost story and the ghosts that haunt you are all the people you left behind including yourself—versions of yourself, of your family, of your children, of the people that are you but that you are not, lives that you recognize but are not yours. immigrant stories are ghost stories are multiverse stories and in multiverse stories all of your ghosts inhabit your body simultaneously, everyone who came before you and after you and everyone you left behind, everything that is and everything that never was… it really is everything everywhere all at once i am going to scream
everything everywhere all at once is about intergenerational trauma. about depression and passive suicidality and the gravitational appeal of nothingness. about aging, getting older in your twenties and getting older in your fifties. about the specific hurt mothers can cause their daughters and daughters their mothers. about the harsh reality of the immigrant experience and the american dream. but it’s mostly about kindness and family and it’s about choosing to sit at home talking about taxes with someone who loves you, and it’s about telling your daughter that you’d choose her over the entire universe, and it’s about how even in the universes where life didn’t form, love can still exist. and it’s really all of that at once.
“It was still dark. I threw the rope over a tree but it didn’t catch hold. I tried once, twice but to no avail. So then I climbed the tree and tied the rope on tight. Then I felt something soft under my hand. Mulberries. Deliciously sweet mulberries. I ate one. It was succulent, then a second and third. Suddenly, I noticed that the sun was rising over the mountaintop… What sun, what scenery, what greenery! All of a sudden, I heard children heading off to school. They stopped to look at me. They asked me to shake the tree. The mulberries fell and they ate. I felt happy.”
Taste of Cherry (…طعم گيلاس) dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1997
mrmalcolmslist: Courting season is upon us. Based on the novel and short film, MR. MALCOLM’S LIST from @bleeckerstfilms is coming to theaters on July 1st. Trailer drops tomorrow!
ik we all refer to this as a hellsite but its actually nice… people use little hearts or smiley faces at the end of their sentences… and send asks of cute animals when someone is sad… we tag eachother in picrews… its so nice here…
i play minecaft like keepinventory easy mode mobgriefing off firespread off and also if anything starts killing me i turn it on peaceful until im better
the only reason its on easy at all is because i like making and eating food
i play minecraft on hardcore firespread on tickspeed 200000 and also i modded it to make all the beds explode no matter what. Every time a monster kills me my computer sends an email to my boss about how much i love using company time to kiss men and then catches on fire
Lee Young-aeinSympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005) dir. Park Chan-wook Brigitte HelminMetropolis (1927) dir. Fritz Lang Maggie MulubwainI Am Not a Witch (2017) dir. Rungano Nyoni Gong Li inFarewell My Concubine (1993) dir. Chen Kaige Romy Schneider inL’Enfer (1964) dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot Isabelle AdjaniinPossession (1981) dir. Andrzej Żuławski Deepika PadukoneinOm Shanti Om (2007) dir. Farah Khan Aokbab ChutimoninHappy Old Year (2019) dir. Ter Nawapol Michelle YeohinEverything Everywhere All At Once (2022) dir. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
kind of lame that graffiti is considered vandalism, while advertisements being forcefully beamed into my eyes via every inch of visible wall, road, and social media feed isn’t
