I rewatched one of my favorite movies last night, The Wings of Desire, and my breath caught at the moment when Bruno Ganz (his angel name escapes me at the moment) touches Marion's bare shoulder after she has unzipped her circus costume. So gorgeous. This movie is so ridiculously me, with its numerous philosophical and historical ruminations via oodles of voice-over and dreamy montages. It's a fluid visual poem, with its sing-song German phrases and circus imagery (I'll always associate this film with Paris, where I first saw it, and where I became captivated by Cirque Plume). Weirdly enough, whenever I watch it, I yearn to be like the angels...to hear the secret thoughts of passersby, to get a taste of the inner workings of minds other than my own. I've always felt imprisoned by the confines of my own body. At times I've been truly desperate to break free from myself, to release all the stuff (emotional and spiritual and intellectual and otherwise) that seems trapped inside of my physical being. Although I generally am unimpressed with Lord Byron's poetry, I do feel a twinge of sympathy whenever he describes (with palpable anguish) his violent desire to break free from the lowly earthly prison of his body and take flight into the heavens. There are so many limits to human existence: time, place, discrete physical selfhood (biology, physics, etc). These are the same things that the angels in the film, especially Bruno Ganz's character, wish so desperately to experience. I would much rather be light of step and to melt in and out and between space and time, and to feel true empathy and a sense of connection with all these strangers swarming around me, who seem so alien to me right now. I find it so strange when Marion comments that she is at last alone when she finally finds her "man." I suppose she means that he is part of her, and thus she maintains the integrity of her selfhood, since it encompasses him. Is one more alone if she can physically exist and interact with other people but with exposure only to their external selves, or if she can hear their innermost thoughts and spiritual yearnings while not having a physical presence for interaction? I would vote for the former, but of course, that's the only option I've actually experienced.