I bought a biography (a lengthy, credible one) on e.e. cummings today.

I read the preface to his part in WWI and his lonely stint in Paris after his arbitrary, three-month imprisonment at La-Ferte Mace. I saw the pictures that chronograph (however incompletely) his life in a psuedosummation that can't have scratched any surface. I read of the impossibly red sky which backlit the New York City of 1917 and the snow which was “carefully everywhere descending” on the Atlantic during his humble return.

I read of his search for the prostitute, Marie-Louise, who claimed his heart in Paris through platonic lunch-dates and meanderings, and why every woman fell short of this prototype he had perfected in illusions and delusions of benevolence (truth and fiction are equal sometimes) because they were not her.

Just before dying the same way my grandfather died, he penned:

n
OthI
n

g can

s
urPas
s

the m

y
SteR
y

of

ss
tiLnes
s

I feel utterly inadequate in adapting this into a screenplay, and I‘m determined to find out why he thought stillness was to be imbalanced. Why did he add the that first s? Was it a last joke? Was it his handle on something I haven’t gotten yet, that "renders death and forever in each breathing?" Is stillness a myth? Can I write this screenplay?

Is life really this short?

All or nothing. All or nothing. All or nothing.