Somerset: "We're talking about everyday life here. You — you can't afford to be this naïve!"
Mills: "Fuck off. See, you should listen to yourself. Yeah. You say that the problem with people is that they don't care, so I don't care about people. It makes no sense. You know why?"
Somerset: "You care?"
Mills: "Damn right."
Somerset: "And you're gonna make a difference?"
Mills: "Whatever."
Se7en.
Mills: "Do you like what you do for a living? These things you see?"
Massage Parlor Proprietor: "No, I don't. But that's life."
Se7en.
******
John Doe: "Do you hear me, Detective? I'm trying to tell you how much I admire you…"
Se7en.
do you peoples know how much i admire you? you're an astonishing bunch. every day, you link us to updates, news of the world, or personal tales of trials, travails, fervently hoping that, in their names or for your—our—sakes, we understand, laugh, take action: hell, sympathize. of all aforementioned truly yours, it's the sting of your powerful, personal swings—triumphs and downfalls—which ring 'round one, mismatched, face-off:
a swift but soft landing smack.
a bee-ware butterfly before the uppercut: let's box.
beat bloody, blind I: Kerouac.
come to seeing brilliant yellow stars, fireflies of awe and "Awww…"
your gut punches strike this sucker dumb—and founded.
John Doe: "Wanting people to listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you'll notice you've got their strict attention."
Se7en.
Mills: "Honestly, have you ever seen anything like this?"
Somerset: "No."
Se7en.
California: "Somebody call…somebody."
Se7en.
******
John Doe: "It seems that envy is my sin."
Se7en.
envy gets a bad rap.
admiring, envying you, my remarkable friends, does not within me stir the desire to behead you. i like your heads! they produce said stories, thoughts, compulsions to act in the name of justice, righteousness, emotion, confession and, honestly, when i look upon your heads set squarely beside your admirable words, i think, "What lovely, lovely heads they are! Cellar-door beautiful, in fact!"
heads… in boxes…
John Doe: "I didn't do that."
so yes, i envy you admirable folk and your stupefying, everyday feats. you may not recognize them as such but, oh, i do. you played with your son today and, after audaciously plucking from your child's hand his prime, Optimus Prime placement, your boy transferred back said Transformer from your ignorant hand, curtly informing you, "Daddy, you don't get to be Optimus Prime. I do. You are Bumblebee." or you successfully battled a migraine without the aid of opiates and, royal miracle, upon your weary, woeful crown i gently dub you Queen of Pain for i know that Sting all too well and fuck the rest, they who don't understand untreated suffering: you are majesty, you are majestic. or you, bleeding out your poetic, prosthetic, prose-etic vains and, in turn, receive a return shot, an onslaught of misunderstood bullets and what poetic injustice: their aim, unfathomably untrue. yet, you do not fall. you shed for them not one drop of red.
i envy you. you and all the rest of my friends. i admire you so.
John Doe: "You should be very proud."
the expression made sincerely, genuinely for you should: be proud. pride within carries no sin. (so long as you don't cross over into pretense, arrogance, hubris…basically, don't get all big-headed.) however, pride poses a question: am i sinful, admiring and envying you wondrous beings living and loving and meaning in your everyday doings?
Mills: "Who knows? So many freaks out there doin' their little evil deeds they don't wanna do… 'The voices made me do it. My dog made me do it. Jodie Foster told me to do it.'"
no. there's no sin in admiration and my envy is pure, unwilled of ill, no evil intention: both, for you, seed, root, grow, and flower from my heart, bloomin' love.
******
Somerset: "Apathy is the solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work."
Se7en.
Somerset: "Ernest Hemingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part."
Se7en.
California: "This isn't even my desk!"
Se7en.
John Doe has the upper hand. i've hit a bottom today, a low so depthless i cannot see light. saltwater stings, blurs, blinds everything—details are unimportant. within, a flicker, an enzyme of hope zooming aimlessly around my heart but directionless, disabled, blind to my brain's pathway: my head, cut off.
Mills: "Awwwww, what's in the box?"
i assure you, it's not a bisected head: nothing bipolar, manic, depressive. this, always, the first conclusion jumped upon when people know your mind is halved but know that mine is whole, attached and the poles, aligned.
but, on the other sleeve, my heart is hole.
so weary, exhausted, overwhelmed, overcome, overtaken. the hormones, you see, i'm awash in them, they tsunami an insanity unlike anything chemicals could ever imbalance. the essence…i'm so whelmed over, eating is not only a chore, worried upon me by my anxious mother, but now, to eat? an impossible feat.
the antithesis of gluttony: unwilling starvation. does that mean i'm up for canonization?
my poor mother. this morning, my stepfather encountered me in my standard, black-before-break-of-day repose: outside, lawn chair seated, laptop lapped, fingertips tapped, coffee capped. after exchanging our perfunctory "Good morning," greetings, he paused at the car door, sighing, "Boy, I think your mom has had it with those dogs. They're driving her nuts! She's just plain mantic!"
and i laughed until tears ran. not to mock my stepdad and his occasional breakthroughs of verbal dyslexia, but because the word was so apt. "Mantic." yes, manic, frantic—this, the condition my current condition wreaks upon not just stupid, sickly me, but those i love—those who, every day, desperately, frantically, wit-endingly, exhaustively extend when helping and caring for stupid, sickly me.
that…is a sin: willfully or, through no fault of your own, creating within your loved ones hindering, overwhelming, overpowering, mantic states. sinful, wrestling them with wrath.
mantic: adj. Of, relating to, or having the power of divination; prophetic.
that, not the state sickly, stupid me summons. oh, were that it was… to know what is coming, what's for sure, what will happen, if all will work out and, finally, be…okay.
"The surprise." I'm not sure what it is, but the rest applies.
Mantic: what divinity divine must be! to prophesize!
"I didn't say I was different or better. I'm not. Hell, I sympathize."
******
Mills: "Whatever. I don't think you're quitting because you believe these things you say. I don't. I think you want to believe them, because you're quitting. And you want me to agree with you, and you want me to say, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. It's all fucked up. It's a fucking mess. We should all go live in a fucking log cabin.' But I won't. I don't agree with you. I do not. I can't."
Se7en.
***
Mills: "Fuckin' Dante… Poetry-writing faggot pieceofshit motherfucker!"
best line of the film, despite the awful homophobic slur. true to character, though, which is essential to good—great—writing, and after this incoherent babble? thought you could use a bit of great writing. (if you'll please excuse the homophobic slur.)
the following? couldn't resist. oh-so John Doe apropos. McBrilliant, if i do say so.
Anne'd i do.
John Doe: "It's more comfortable for you to label me as insane."
Mills: "It's very comfortable."
John Doe: "I'm setting the example. What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed…forever."*
*Quote referencing Annie's blog. Image showing: Annie's blog.
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