the common ether (Hitchcockian)
North by Northwest, by Alfred Hitchcock, 1959
Recently watched Alfred Hitchcock’s great North by Northwest for the third or fourth time. The shot above, in particular, arrested me.
North by Northwest
(the common ether)
When the man in a suit
standing opposite you
on an empty prairie road
finally boards the bus
he’s been waiting for,
you’ll know something
crucial:
he has somewhere to be;
it is anywhere but here with you
on this void stretch:
an office, a leafy park, his mistress,
a dinner, church, an abiding
precipice.
Until then, all you can do
is hope for the arrival
of a daily mover: the bus
or a car, passenger train,
a crop-duster, balloon—
anything that will lift him up
and into the common ether,
where he can evaporate
into his own version
of happiness, or perhaps
flame out, or even
(a remote possibility),
take you with him.
But what he won’t do is
cross that road in his suit
to stab you in your heart.
A wonderful movie. James Mason showed me the right way for a fictional villain to act.
I can't remember much of what the movie was about, but I love your poem re-imagining the scene in the photo and all the possibilities pertaining to what's going on and what could happen next. So much of life is like that--infinite possibilities collapsing into one finite outcome.