The Movie "Paterson"

I watched Jim Jarmusch's "Paterson," which I had intended to watch over the New Year holidays.

It was a film where twins appeared again and again.
Twins that seem the same, yet are not.

It seemed to point not so much to a "meaning," but to the structure itself.

Every day, he wakes up at the same time.
He walks the same path, drives the same bus, stops at the same bar, and drinks the same beer.

If you look only at the layer of Doing,
it is nothing more than "repetition."

However, this is what the twins teach us.

Identity is a matter of form,
while the content is constantly being updated.

The same faces.
The same clothes.
The same timing.

But they are subtly different.
No, they are definitely different.

The same was true of daily life.

People call their days "repetition," but in reality, they are filled with
twin-like non-identity .

Doing repeats the form.
Being updates the content.

And symbols bring that difference to the surface.

Poetry played that role.
Poetry does not interpret daily life; it simply accepts it as it is seen.
Not as meaning, but as a phenomenon.

That is the kind of film it was.

After finishing it, I thought:

If "Perfect Days" is "daily life as salvation,"
then "Paterson" is "daily life as poetry."

Neither requires noise.
They need no revolutions, no miracles, and no success.

It was enough that
difference dwells within repetition.

My own days lately are the same.

I wake up at about the same time,
take a photo of the sky,
drop the kids off at daycare,
perform treatments if there are appointments,
interact with AI if there are none,
and leave the spilled words on note.

Seen through Doing, it is a monotonous loop.
Seen through Being, no two days are ever the same.

Even without any flashiness,
the message as a symbol keeps descending.

The twins were simply
“an existence that showed it to us clearly.”

Days that seem the same, but are not.
The form repeats, but the content is updated.

When you learn that structure,
everyday life changes from boredom into poetry.

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