Foreign Parts: A Joint Effort

Those of you who know me well, know that at times I tend to talk about certain films out of, well, my ass. It's a flaw, but one that's not going anywhere. As evidenced by what I'm about to say about a movie Jonathan saw, wrote about, and talked about with me.

Those of you who know guest blogger Jonathan Alexandratos well, know that he manages to come across films that escape the radar screens of most of us. Hence Foreign Parts, a 2010 documentary that tries to capture a neighborhood that is slated for annihilation. It's sort of a pre-apocalyptic movie on a local scale. The neighborhood, shadowed by the Mets new stadium in Queens and anchored by a massive junk yard, is slated to be destroyed to make room for stuff like Best Buy and whatnot. This loss is a given. The people interviewed express a range of emotions about the imminent destruction of their neighborhood and livelihood.

Jonathan and I agreed that stuff changes, and that's not a bad thing. There is a botany to growing cities, and it means that places and environments have to die in order for a place to remain vibrant. But it is a bad thing to forget--to not document the people and lives that were and now aren't. And that's what Foreign Parts aims to do. And because (I hear) the film is such an unconventional documentary, less narrative and more impressionistic, and because Jonathan is creatively empathetic, he wrote his review as a poem. And here it is.

WHITE SPACE

Or

IF IPHIGENIA WROTE FILM REVIEWS

Or

A REVIEW OF FOREIGN PARTS WRITTEN IN FREE VERSE

By Jonathan Alexandratos

To kill time between sacrifices,

Iphigenia watches documentaries.

One, Foreign Parts,

Set in Willet’s Point,

Comforted her in Tauris

By giving her misery a bonded bedfellow.

She watches,

As a 5’2” man in a Parka

Saws at the bowels of a steering wheel

And then drags it

Across a snow-covered scab

That doubles as a driveway.

A part she doesn’t know the name of

Goes clackety-clack along the way,

Sounding like all the seconds of a clock

That will never get ticked.

Iphigenia hates to be morbid about it,

But she can’t help but reference the spinal cords

Of prisoners, and heathens, and other entities “xeno-”

That have met the other side of the knife.

An old man worries that the AirTrain

Will trample on

And re-gash the landscape of his last 76 years.

He wonders, “Where are you gonna put the bulkhead!?”

He knows his vote doesn’t count

Because he never bought a computer

And therefore doesn’t get the emails

That change dates and times and the urgency of things.

He says “plane” instead of “plan”:

“What kind of plane do you have!?”

Or is it “plain”?

Iphigenia tries to choose her words carefully.

She never purchases WhiteOut,

For fear this will only give her permission

To make mistakes,

Thus embarrassing her, fatally, at the alter.

Possibly the same guy who decapitated that steering wheel,

Is the same guy who dances to the “Mister Softee” theme,

As the ice cream truck Dopplers from there to here and beyond.

He dances on the white part of the concrete

Flanked by two rivers of sludge

Even after the truck has long passed,

Its tracks thinned by the wheels of a small pushcart,

Making Iphigenia think the dance and the ice cream truck

Were just a happy coincidence,

And not evidence of some dry cause/effect relationship.

The mouths

Of a man and a woman

Give birth to albino ectoplasm

As the ponder the annihilation of their world.

Iphigenia reminds herself that Tauris,

Too,

Might someday be a shopping mall.

And that really would make ceremonial solemnity of the place

A great deal more awkward,

If it had to come with, say, a coupon.

Hasidim offer to do a mitzvah

And another mitzvah

And another mitzvah,

If that one doesn’t take.

The Taurians do not wear snow

The same way they do in Willet’s Point.

In Willet’s Point,

You can take a car radio,

And tune it to “I Wanna Be Sedated,”

And let the rims

And the tires

And the pleather

And the applefire red toolboxes

Do the rest.

A plane,

JFK or LaGuardia-bound,

Ripples through a puddle

That tells the brief story

Of a car

And a splash

And a street light

And the commerce that secures it

And the puny gasps

Of a coral road below,

The sound cutting through with a/

WHHHBBBBBBBZZZZZZSSSSS

Iphigenia reminds herself that she hates to fly

Ever since she flew Athena Air,

And was never offered any peanuts.

White marker –

Not chalk –

Counts off tires.

The numbers seem to carry great meaning,

Though they themselves seem meaningless.

E.L. Tires,

Who does not speak English,

 stands in a row of doors.

One comes from an Intrepid.

One comes from a Camry.

One comes from a Maxima.

One comes

From a Taurus.

Together,

They seem to make a full car.

But the doors,

By themselves,

Move.

A forklift

Aborts a gas tank

From the trunk of a sedan.

Iphigenia

Straightens her hair

In the rear-view mirror

That she saved

After her first car

Which was a Fisher Price

Power Wheels

Barbie Jammin’

Jeep Wrangler.

A woman in Foreign Parts

Does likewise

In something similar,

Except it’s a more adult car.

The woman wants to look good

For her husband

Who just got out of prison –

He would have been back sooner,

But he argued with the guard,

Making the guard detain him

Until 2, instead of noon.

Iphigenia sympathizes with this,

As she hopes that,

If she were ever rescued,

Her hair might also be straight,

And not yet white.

But,

In the mean time,

Iphigenia waits

In the shadow of

Bob’s Furniture

Citibank

Sony

Budweiser

Izod

And the Home of the Mets,

Until she can distinguish between her letters

And the white space between them.