April 6, 1992 [Delicatessen]

Delicatessen led me down to my basement--a terrible mess, an impenetrable personal archeology that goes back to childhood--and all of it encrusted with dust and rust and cobwebs, as though Delicatessen's prop-master had spent loving weeks down there, floating every dust-mote just so, aesthetically skewing each peeling magazine and long-forgotten student paper--with a mechanical bank and a Magic 8-Ball, a set of surveyor's tools and a tin box for Egyptian cigarettes someone else smoked decades ago--and on and on, mildewed books and bins full of toys and clothes and intimations--not of Wordsworthian immortality but its comforting opposite, the way of all flesh and flotsam.

Because there on the French screen the future stood like a circus clown about to juggle improbabilities--but scary and lost, the poor little handyman--poised somewhere between Emmett Kelly and a small frog (no insult intended)--fattened up for the post-apocalyptic menu.  And just like my basement the little man remains, his rhythm as perfect as his lithe frame and pushed-in face--and I remember him as the thug who hated everything in Diva--except now he is the closest thing to love in this hilarious and cruel movie, Chaplinesque without insulting Charlie.  Each cartoon bounce and Keystone Cop skitter warmed me against the cold of the world he had to live in--darker than the corner where our first-born's crib stood in neat pieces suitable for kindling and spiders.