WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Time to Die: Blade Runner star Rutger Hauer dies at 75
byVanderleunonJuly 24, 2019
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears…in…rain. Time to die.”
We give an of course nod to the satisfying power of your testimonial to those you love and have loved, Gerard, those who have not died . . . period, but who have died . . . comma, and who await your eventual arrival in their midst, above and beyond. Thank you for sharing them with us.
Donald SensingJuly 25, 2019, 7:54 AM
I have read elsewhere that Hauer ad-libbed those lines at that moment; they were not in the screenplay.
That said, I think an equally compelling role of his was as the Soviet Army officer Alexander ‘Sasha’ Pechersky in Escape From Sobibor, the true story of the only Nazi concentration/death camp to have a mass escape. The Youtube trailer is here.
I was always impressed that at the very end, with the clock rapidly winding down to zero but time and strength enough still left, Hauer’s character could still easily have taken Deckard with him, but let him live. A fine piece of writing indeed.
SpudnikJuly 27, 2019, 8:30 AM
One of the greatest scenes ever filmed. In one of the greatest movies.
Our SciFi fan club (NESFA) all went to see that film together. When Rutger finished those lines, my wife wept.
Christopher L HuntJuly 28, 2019, 8:57 AM
My brother was in the film Past Midnight with Rutger Hauer. During filming at night, in the Northwest, my brother had to lie on the hood of a car in the background of the scene. There were so many takes that he started to shiver uncontrollably. Rutger Hauer gave him his wetsuit to wear under his costume.
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
from Preludes
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
ARTIST: CASEY KLAHN
Song of Myself
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Gerard Van der Leun
Lay down these words
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
The scientists are in terror
Comments on this entry are closed.
Sad day.
I’ll see your Blade Runner, and raise you one: The Mill and the Cross.
https://youtu.be/8EyqGK2blDw
May he rest in peace.
Rest in Peace.
The irony is that those words, and that performance will live on like a diamond glittering in the sun.
We give an of course nod to the satisfying power of your testimonial to those you love and have loved, Gerard, those who have not died . . . period, but who have died . . . comma, and who await your eventual arrival in their midst, above and beyond. Thank you for sharing them with us.
I have read elsewhere that Hauer ad-libbed those lines at that moment; they were not in the screenplay.
OK, here is how Hauer changed his closing lines.
That said, I think an equally compelling role of his was as the Soviet Army officer Alexander ‘Sasha’ Pechersky in Escape From Sobibor, the true story of the only Nazi concentration/death camp to have a mass escape. The Youtube trailer is here.
The movie is on Amazon Prime, but is also online at Daily Motion in excellent quality.
I was always impressed that at the very end, with the clock rapidly winding down to zero but time and strength enough still left, Hauer’s character could still easily have taken Deckard with him, but let him live. A fine piece of writing indeed.
One of the greatest scenes ever filmed. In one of the greatest movies.
Our SciFi fan club (NESFA) all went to see that film together. When Rutger finished those lines, my wife wept.
My brother was in the film Past Midnight with Rutger Hauer. During filming at night, in the Northwest, my brother had to lie on the hood of a car in the background of the scene. There were so many takes that he started to shiver uncontrollably. Rutger Hauer gave him his wetsuit to wear under his costume.