Caveat: Wandering in a straight line

I was listening to the U2 song "The Wanderer" just now – the one Johnny Cash sings vocals, and there's this vivid post-apocalyptic image of a man walking down an "old eight lane" highway.  I was thinking of that book I read a while back, The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  Then I was thinking of Wim Wenders' movie, Paris, Texas.  One of the greatest movies.  How it opens:  the amnesiac Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) walking along through the Texas desert, in a sort of mindless straight line, clearly disturbed, obsessed, broken.

I feel like that man sometimes.  Just walking through the world in a line, no longer with any purpose except to move forwards.  Wandering, in a straight line.

And so then I was thinking of other movies I love, and I thought of Fitzcarraldo (by Werner Herzog).  I looked it up on wikipedia, and discovered a wonderful quote by the director:  he described himself as a "conquistador of the useless" in discussing the fact that rather than use special effects, he actually moved a real, giant steamship over a hill in the making of the movie (which is about moving a giant river steamship over a hill in 1890's Peru).

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