Rain Man (1988)

"It is not your fault if you have no unused phrase for what you feel... it is enough that you feel... 

I club her thighs with my dong, ..."

 Under the Roofs of Paris, Henry Miller

"We need a penny's worth of human sympathy."

Wise Blood (1979)

"You are face to face with your brother and you withhold the embrace. That is what I can't forgive you for. Look at Max! He is almost your double! Three times around the globe and now you have met yourself face to face. How can you run away from him? ... 

... You died, you say, and you've been holding one long funeral ever since. But you're not dead, and you know you're not. What the hell does spiritual death matter when Max is standing before you? Die, die, die a thousand deaths--but don't refuse to recognize the living man. Don't make a problem of him. It's flesh and blood, Boris. Flesh and blood. He's screaming and you pretend not to hear. You are deliberately making yourself deaf, dumb, and blind. You are dead before the living flesh. Dead before your own flesh and blood. You will gain nothing, neither in spirit, nor in the flesh, if you do not recognize Max your true brother."

The Cosmological Eye, Henry Miller

"You'll realize light is as important as the body itself."

Cronos (1993)

"Live alone, in a room where the windows are painted stuck. Old salmon paint that reminds you of those who were beautiful when you were a child. They were still young when this paint was slapped on creamy over dust. They saw streetcars in the traffic out the window. The war was over. Now you are as old. They seemed happier. 

You'll need a BEFORE. A concentration camp photo of a cousin that looked like you. Or someone fat. Here the resemblance needs be less exact. Especially if it's passport size and overexposed. You'll realize light is as important as the body itself. Begin to experiment. Shawl your head with a towel after a bath. You're only a blur in the steamy mirror, and the glow from the bare bathroom bulb shimmers about you like a halo. 

Extra time can be spent visiting churches. Each day walk to one farther away. You won't get lost -- sooner or later you'll come to a church and inside will be the same smell of the Middle Ages, their weather of cool plaster and smokey light. You'll discover the past can be preserved if enclosed in a temple. Though the empty vestibules return you to modern times -- cheap racks of free holy cards. Imagine the saints naked. 

Knotted muscle in forearms. Biceps bulging. Neck tapers from shoulders with the grace of marble. Shoulders sculptured into a chest defined as armor. Stomach flat. Legs rippling power, planted on the floor as you continue to heave upward, fists knurled through handles, straining at the stuck window. 

Finally it's time to confront the mirror in a skin of natural daylight. The hottest August anyone can remember. Slick with sweat, bare, gazing at your body. Face no longer important, spirit inseparable."

"To Acquire a Beautiful Body," Brass Knuckles, Stuart Dybek

"the taste of doorknobs / you kiss before squinting"

The Conversation (1979)

"(The story goes the priest / has carried a torch for Cherry / since grammar school / when he was just Wally Zwia, / nobody's father, not this saint / drunk enough to have removed his collar, / neck raw as a watchdog's.)"

"Cherry," Brass Knuckles, Stuart Dybek