The film is narrated by a stereotypical story-teller-older-man voice, which initially threw me off, but was subtle and agreeable enough that it only added to the charm of the movie. The narrator starts out by insisting that “this is not a love story, but a story about love.” We come to understand that this means that the story of Tom and Summer is not a tale of two people who love each other, but one striving to show something about love, fate and destiny.

The story successfully makes a point about serendipitous events, in particular people encountering one another because they happened to be at the same place at the same time and were somehow drawn together. It may be interpreted by some as fate that these two people were “meant to be together”, and (500) Days of Summer makes a strong case for this theory, throwing in an ironic and comical twist to the end of a story about love.

THEY were too sweetly closed, too similar, too pleasing.
As compatible as a pair of golden retrievers-
gentle and undeniably mundane.
They did not hide beneath masks- no they were hermits behind mirrors.

Looking backwards, forwards, up and down, she wondered why did we bother kiss at all? I’d open my eyes to find yours closed
Were you searching?

I realized in the shower, late.
(Always so cursedly late the birds sing and its not natural! It’s not right that they’re UP and I’m not even down).
I was thinking about Aveda and aphrodisiacs when I realized.
There is such a thing as too much abstraction.

Our kindness flakes away into glassy apathy and I’m left wondering
…?
Me and you- it’s like wandering through a labyrinth.
The only thing I know is true is that it’s not love.

No

I will not allow
the blood to run down
crossing the street
I will not allow it.
We can sit in the car
in silence
cringing at the light years
of
mirror
that separates. No you cringe while I judge your judging.
Judge what? my lions yellow my blue peacock blue
this
is
PRIDE.
Are you strong enough
are my fingertips
reddened
clutching? the levees thunder and the crimson scent sits
metallic
like a coat of oil.

But you cannot hinder me. I have been this since the first sphinx I have been this since Babel. Fear? It may simply be that I am supremely human,
Endowed with instincts of enduring self preservation
whatever
I will not allow

A century-old dispute in Western Sudan has erupted into genocide. Knowing the nation’s violent history helps to understand how this has come about.
Sudan is a large country in the east of Africa, with major borders on the Red Sea to the east and Chad to the west. Darfur, the region in western Sudan which is wrought with conflict, has long been occupied by native African tribes, such as the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes. However, nomadic Arab tribes, traveling west into Darfur, discovered its arable lands and sought to keep them for their own. The native African tribes were not willing to give up the lands farmed by their people for centuries, and the two peoples clashed in conflict over possession of the land.
Fighting between the Arabs and natives continued on in this way without great change until the 1990’s, when an Arab man, Omar Al-Bashir, took his place as president, and proceeded to purge the government of all non-Arabs. As a result, rebel groups formed in Darfur, protesting racial discrimination. Rebels first attacked government targets in February 2003, and soon after an Arab military group called the Janjawid appeared in Darfur, attacking non-Arab villages in a planned and systematic way. The Sudanese government, claiming no link to the Janjawid, said that they have only built up militia force in self-defense against the rebels. However, it is believed that the government is tied to or even controls the Janjawid, and is behind a plot to drive out all non- Arabs from the region once and for all. The Sudanese government expelled the UN envoy from Khartoum, the capital, claiming the reports he wrote on his personal blog about the situation was “psychological war against the Sudanese army”. In August of 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, Paul Salopek, was held in detention in Sudan before being expelled from the country, and many believe that this is meant as a warning to other foreign journalists.
Today, the Janjawid ride into Darfur villages on camels and horses to kill, steal and plunder until the village is beyond recognition, raping women and girls and burning old women alive in their homes. Although the occupants of some villages are able to flee as soon as they see the columns of smoke rising from neighboring villages, some other villages are attacked three, sometimes four times before its people can escape or are murdered. Mostly killing and terrorizing the natives of Darfur, the Janjawid also take prisoners, mostly women and girls for sex slaves, and castrating men or boys before shooting them in the head.
Because of the tragic situation, it is very difficult to say precisely how many people have been killed, but a report from Amnesty International delegates who recently went on a research mission to Darfur believe that at least 200,000 have been killed, and at least two million people have been turned into refugees, many fleeing to camps within their own country, and almost 200,000 fleeing to neighboring Chad. Although humanitarian aid groups are trying to help the homeless refugees, at least 20,000 live without access to health care and any kind of sanitation facilities.
The Sudanese government has blocked all international attempts at putting an end to the killing, but has not been able to resist the African Union (AU) from placing a force of 7,000 troops in the country, meant to “monitor” a ceasefire signed as part of the Darfur Peace Agreement made in May 2006 between the rebels and the Sudanese government. The Sudanese only signed the agreement under immense international pressure, and have made no effort to adhere to it. The UN Security Council wrote a resolution in July 2004 demanding that the Janjawid be disarmed, to no avail. The same demand was written into the Peace Agreement and the Sudanese Government agreed to disarm the Janjawid under the threat of sanctions, but has once again ignored this promise.
The government has even added troops to flesh out the number of fighters within the Janjawid, and has proceeded to bomb villages in Northern Darfur.
The UN aimed to place a peacekeepers force of 20,000 troops in Sudan, but the government denied them access and declared that the countries trying to get involved are attempting a re-colonization of Sudan, and only want control of the country.
In July 2008, a humanitarian lawyer from the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno Ocampo, requested an arrest warrant against President Al-Bashir for ten charges, three counts of genocide, five for crimes against humanity and two for murder. But it will be months before any decision will be made over the evidence.
It is impossible to say how best this crisis is to be ended, but it is obvious that it must be stopped immediately, and that the UN needs international support to further interfere. The Janjawid must be stopped, and if the Sudanese government is going to different tactics in the future to complete its ethnic cleansing of Darfur, it must be stopped at all costs before Sudan is a country scarred forever.

Frida spent a lot of time bedridden because of various physical ailments she suffered throughout her life. Because of this, I believe that she had time for endless introspection. She was also enabled to study her physical self by a mirror on the ceiling above her. To me, this amount of self examination not only explains why Frida created so many self portraits, autorretratos, but why they are so powerful and full of what can only be Frida herself.

The paintings displayed are all powerful and full of life, but the self portraits themselves contain an incredible force. Standing before the one that I originally felt most drawn to, I realized what it was about the painting in front of me that I was so captured by. I felt like I was experiencing an understanding of Frida herself. It was as if the very essence of who Frida was, not merely her physical self, but something more complete, was present there in the tall blonde room. Aside from radiating a severe, dignified beauty, Frida exudes a self-assuredness that may come from such great self knowledge. This assuredness is so rigorous that it feels intimidating.

Beyond the last room full of paintings are other two rooms. One contains black and white photos of Frida with her family, but in the other, there is a wall dedicated to Pasin por Frida. Here are displayed stories and pictures of people who have dedicated art and events to the painter and her work. It is apparent that a large amount of people are intrigued, fascinated, even obsessed with Frida. It makes sense to me now, and I think I can see why. It may be that people feel a human connection within the frames of Fridas portraits. Here is a woman who is graceful and elegant. A woman who knows herself through and through and knows how to express, illustrate, and convey every facet of that self to the world though beautiful art. Maybe they recognize the same presence as I did, and in its vitality, in its humanity, they encounter something unique and powerful, a bond between beings of the same species that seems to have gone missing from the sterile world we now know.

I scrape my fingernails down the hillsides

the dark soft trees crumble off

moist

under my nails, sun-warmed like the soil in my garden on Thursdays.

Lying in the gorge my body winds its way like the river between the canyon walls

cooling, soaking in the lapping water. My elbows rest on either side, propped

luxuriously on the fearsome cliffs as 

they listen to their own names swelling between

my tongue and palate

Walla Walla. Wallula.

Crouched under the enormous firs

shivering in the gusty drizzle as I lick the dark

wet sky (grey) and the trees’ own words

Coniferous deciduous.

Here my mind is

empty.

Yet

as I

breathe in and out

Every cell breathes in and out

I breath the hills, rocky, staggered, smooth faces

I breath the childishly unpredictable wet winds, swooping up from the pavement

I breath in the trees solemn unquestioning.

and I am

full.