We’re Not Screw Ups: Why I Love Film.
“We have a cardboard window.”
Sometimes you just need a beautiful film to remind you that, you are ok, or that you’re going to be ok – that even when everything around you seems foreign, crazy and unrecognizable as reasonable or sane, that you’re still going to be ok.
Film is often written off as a lot of things. Often it is supposed that I chose this degree because it’s “easy.” Film is a lot of things, none of which are easy. Because of course I would pick something that as its basis in history must battle uphill to prove that it is not simple – that it is not an art form that lacks intelligence. That in the face of everything that is “normal” – sculpture, writing, painting – that it too is art, something that deserves as much appriciation, and requires more from its audience than something static does. So that is why you break my heart when you assume that that which I love is simple-minded – that I am simple-minded.
You don’t always say it this clearly, but this is what is in your face. This is what I hear. This is what I see… The old argument articulated here by Benjamin, “Duhamel calls the movie ‘a pasttime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries . . . , a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence . . . , which kindles no light in the heart and awakens no hope other than the ridiculous one of someonday becoming a ’star’ in Los Angeles.’”
I don’t agree. I don’t agree with what you see. I see importance. I see something that saves. I see something that speaks. And if you cannot see that, then my heart breaks for you – for what you are missing… for the small life you choose. Because there is something abundant in film… And you are missing it. You have written it off… and there is life in it for you. And you are missing it.
Not Enough.
Something about repetition, like we need to hear that we are loved about 30 times to drill through the layers of clay and then it gets in deep.
Sometimes when a woman so beautiful, and so brilliant says something like that… you just find yourself erupting. And, maybe it comes out something liiike this:
…There are other things… a million other things… but they’re going to have to wait. Because… because. Because that’s life. Because I can’t put everything out when I want to. Because we live in other states. Because I CAN’T COLLAPSE ON YOUR COUCH WITH A GLASS OF WINE. Because I hate that I have to type everything. Because I hate that it takes so long (and I type damn fast). And I have so much to say, and.. and… I don’t have time. And even if I did… I don’t want to say these things this way. Any of these things. I want to see your beautiful face. I want to HEAR you laughing, or crying, or screaming. I want to wake up and have coffee with you. I hate this. I want to touch you, and see you in real life. Real, living, breathing, horrible, no make-up, sore cheeks LIFE. THIS IS NO LONGER ENOUGH FOR ME. *sigh* I’m thankful. I’m so very thankful. I don’t want that message to be muddled, or confused. I’m thankful. I’m thankful for you. BUT HOLY HELL THIS IS NOT ENOUGH. I want to tell you about my day today. I want to come over, and throw my bag on the floor, and just spill it all. I want to have a drink with you. I want to just BE. And so I sit here tonight, and I’m yelling… THIS IS NOT ENOUGH. I want the bad hair days, I want the holy-smokes-you’re-really-hot days. I WANT TO HAVE DAYS WITH YOU. I want to eat, and share meals with you.. I want to cook, and hang out in your kitchen. I want to talk while things simmer, and boil, and bake, and brown… I want a life with you. A real life. Not this cyber life. My desire is for a life with you, where this computer does not exist. Cyber friendship is a very poor excuse for friendship. Like cyber sex… you can’t equate the two. Real friendship, real sex… you can’t put that shit online and call it the same. So yes. I am thankful. I am THANKFUL for you. For your friendship. For who you are. I’m THANKFUL that you are in my life. But for all of that, because of all of that I am saying…. not enough. Not ok.
ppppshhhhhh…. welluhh
Oh hell. Someone’s ass sat on the remote control of my life and it’s holding down the fast forward button.
The weeks fly by under stacks of shoes and papers and jackets and books… and late, peel-your-dry-sticky-eyelids-from-your-eyeballs-late nights. Every hour seems unbearably painful, but each week seems to be gone in an instant.
On the weekends, I traipse about… vagabond-like, every night somewhere new. Lugging my life between that which I have to do (school) and that which sustains me (friends, laughter, food, wine).
In the midst of all of this madness – where nothing feels normal – I have found myself more grounded than I have been in a very long time. Things are still hard. Still Strange. …but just when I needed it, an important friend reappeared. Someone who has made an indelible impression on me. And I feel more at home. More myself. I often forget how deeply friends affect me, how I become more fully who I am when they are around. And I have missed myself. It is nothing shy of miraculous the amount of laughter and love that this friendship has brought into my life. The feeling that nothing has changed, has made all the change seem so normal. …and I need a little normal.
Coping
I haven’t started chewing on sticks yet, but sometimes I think I’m not too far away from that. I’ve been quiet, spending most of my time writing papers – lost in my own little world of films, theories, histories and criticisms.
If I were more disciplined I could be spending my Sunday afternoon at a tea shop, reading The Atlantic and enjoying the fall weather instead of what I am doing… sitting at my computer in the basement typing, typing, typing, typing—desperately trying to avoid becoming, as this brilliantly hilarious and deeply honest woman said, “[feeling] like and eyeball and a finger attached to a computer.” (A visual that never fails to bring a smile to my face.)
If last semester was the semester of barely-hanging-on, this semester seems to be shaping up as the semester of mindlessly drifting. Papers are being finished, midterms handed in, tests completed—nothing going awry… and I’m 1/2 way done with Fall Semester 2009. I’m working hard, but assignments just seem to keep coming in and going out—a well oiled machine. Not in a completely calm way, more in the vein of Chaplin in Modern Times (Charles Chaplin,1936). I am still awaiting the deluge of work waiting to dump itself upon me when my weekend course on Hitchcock starts 10 October. More reading, more discussion, more watching, listening and writing. As much as I would like to say that I am fully! present! in! my! current! situation! it just isn’t true. I simply stand, like the tramp, screwing in bolts as they pass in front of me. Waiting for the whistle that tells me I can stop.
But until then it is Sunday, with an entire service dedicated to blessing little kids goldfish, old ladies cats and family dogs, with football, newspaper, The Amazing Race, Mad Men, and the Ladies are back!… and, least you become too relaxed, the ever-looming paper due in the morning.
A New Love
To be completely vulnerable with another person.
To allow them to love you in ways that you cannot love yourself.
To know that someone could hurt you deeply.
To trust.
To always give the benefit of the doubt.
To know the sound of their voice.
To love with both feet off the ground. Crazy, foolish, beautiful love.
… to hold them loosely, allowing them to persue their dreams.
5 years! A Bellis Perennis anniversary. As this year needs more reminders of smiles and happiness and joy, a daisy seems just right.
Projects
When all else fails, and you can’t deal with the strange twilight zone that your life has become, what better way to cope than to completely dive into work? Keeping busy painting “my” room, picking out Flor Tiles, bedding… and sort of writing papers while the paint dries. Literally.
One thing is for sure, I feel that I cannot keep up with the lifestyle of the ever-popular gals at 2720. Or for that matter the lifestyle of my almost 2-year-old niece – she’s hosting her own toga parties, obviously. C-l-e-a-r-l-y cooler than I am. It’s been a wonderful, completely exhausting weekend. I just wish that I could crawl into my own bed at the end of these long, long days.
sticky wednesday
My thoughts are a little drained out for the time being, having just turned in my first paper for Film Theory & Criticism. However, I did watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920) last night and not only did I think it was an incredible film, but it seems I will continually be blown away at the amount of things that are going on in a film – the layering of meanings – even opposing meanings, the allegory, the political what-have-yous, the boldness, the creativity, the industry, the frame…
So rent it. Place it in your queue. Enjoy.
Didn’t see it coming
I walked outside tonight, and truthfully – it no longer smelled like summer. And my heart leapt. I love summer. I love being able to eat outside. I love wearing flip-flops. I love lawn games. I love the smell of Jasmine. I love going to the lake house in upstate NY. I love porch sitting, and camping, and going to the beach. I love entire meals cooked off of the BBQ. But my heart… my SOUL loves the fall. There was a SMELL outside tonight. And it was autumn.
My toes are a little too cold.
I needed a sweater to go outside tonight.
And then – as if by MAGIC. THE smell. THE autumn smell came wafting over. Sneaking through bushes, and yards, and still ripening tomato plants…. fire. Not forest fire. Hearth fire. Fire in a fireplace. Someone just lit the first fire of the season in their fireplace! I almost wanted to cry and jump around – to sprawl on the driveway, and stare into the sky and just take it in. Usually on these evenings Sean is around, and he holds me and smiles and kisses me, and says yes to taking the dog on a walk at night just so that I can SMELL the coming season. That smell…
The spring is difficult for me because winter hangs on SO LONG, and the spring seems only to tease me with the coming summer. I’m READY for summer, and spring seems to simply be an annoyance, a penance I have to pay to get through to summer. But autumn.. ahhhh my love.
Favorite fall films are Dan In Real Life, and You’ve Got Mail….Hocus Pocus, Ghostbusters, and Sleepy Hollow. As well as a smattering of Halloween cartoon tales Charlie Brown, and Ichabod Crane…
I will miss this most about Colorado. The real smell of fall. I will miss FOUR! VERY! DISTINCT! SEASONS! I will miss the last winds of fall that are so cold they make my nose turn bright red and run. I will miss the snow at Christmas. I will miss ducking into cafes for some coffee & warmth. I will miss the elation that comes in spring – the almost righteous anger at winter that you can yell out at the sky that has been pelting you with snow, “Take that bitch – summer’s coming!” And then sweet, sweet give-you-your-life-back summer with all that it brings.
And it’s as if I am ONE with Mother Nature … I picked up some Pumpkin Ale earlier today when I was out. I know, I’m really chomping on the bit when I’m buying pumpkin ale on the 6th of September. But it’s my FAVORITE. No surprise there. And they only have it for TWO MONTHS. And now… NOW I get to have my pumpkin ale, and let the first smells of autumn waft in the windows while I watch Mad Men.
Tomorrow morning I will wake up, and the sun will be bright and still hot, hot, hot. And it will still feel like summer. And that will be all right. I’m not one to kick summer out ungratefully… But I needed the smile and excitement that fall brings me.
Everything The Same, Nothing Familiar
I’ve started something new for someone old. A project.
And I am starting to catch glimpses of myself again.
Last Day Of Work
After almost 40 years of teaching, etc., etc., this man, my father is retiring today.
He will now have time to play endlessly with his replacement child Cody – a beautiful, albeit rambunctious, Red Golden Retriever Puppy. And obsess about his lawn, and listen to baseball games, and watch basketball and football, and visit his actual children, and granddaughters in so cal, drive around in his little red car, and have friends over for dinner, and maybe just maybe he’ll now have time to go on a vacation…
I have watched this man work harder than anyone else in my life, and I am excited to watch him now do something that I have never witnessed in my life – relax endlessly. He has provided everything his family ever needed – but more importantly, we have always felt loved, and known, and cared for by him. My father is generous to a fault, and I hope that he is as generous with himself during his retirement, as he has always been with his friends and family.
We could not be more proud of him, and we could not be more excited for what awaits him.
It is difficult to believe that he is actually retiring. As my beautiful niece Gwen asked him, “Are you joking me?”
(…just look at that baby face! Ron McCraw age 30, about 6 years after he started teaching.)
Sour Cherry Pie
Heading over to our friend’s house this evening to eat this pie, catch up, and relax.
We bring the pie, they open the wine and make espresso.
Breakfast
My mornings, however you want to define them, have been full of wonderful food, great espresso, newspapers, and books. Beautiful. Lazy. Wonderful. Give-me-my-life-back mornings.
I will forever remember this.
…As the year I spent more hours glued to my computer screen than I did living.
…As the year I fought harder for myself than I ever have before.
…As the year I found a best friend – a soulmate – a kindred spirit at 25.
…As the year that resurected the pen-pal in the most impressive way.
…As the year that pushed me far beyond any imaginable boundary I had constructed.
…As the year I lost my sister.
…As the year we moved to Denver.
…As the year my husband was accepted to Medical School.
…As the year my beautiful niece Lyla Starr was born.
…As the year I took 33 credit hours, and got straight As.
Why it matters.
“Patty Keene was stupid on purpose, which was the case with most women in Midland City. The women all had big minds because they were big animals, but they did not use them much for this reason: unusual ideas could make enemies, and the women, if they were going to achieve any sort of comfort and safety, needed all the friends they could get.
So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.”
Breakfast Of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
Early Morning. Lunch. Happy Hour.
One. More. Week. Left!
Doing my best to keep the stress to a manageable level. And what does that better than food? Well, food and incredible e-mails from friends, chats, runs, late night burger runs, lots of laughter on the phone, walks around the neighborhood, new music, and baseball games.
I know that a lot of what consumes my every-waking moment is talk of school, and papers. At times it is all consuming. But this is something big. Larger than school. Larger than University. Bigger than each paper. This is monumental. This is changing me. This is pushing me – at times to the breaking point. As I struggle through each assignment, I stumble and drag myself one more day closer, I am ever closer to walking away from believing that I cannot, to believing that I can. A lot of self-doubt is falling away, a lot of questioning, and fear. And more self-doubt, and questioning, and fear fills its space..mostly. But not completely. In those small spaces are confidence and peace. My voice is becoming more clear, and I am beginning to believe that there is real worth in that.
A wonderful and ridiculously brilliant friend of ours said to me recently, over one of the most incredible dinners ever, that my voice needs to be heard – that I needed to know that, and walk in that, and be confidant in that. There is a lot behind that, and in it, and what that will be, and look like… and it is slow in coming. But it is there. To be sure, I have not completely walked away from putting my head in the sand, but I am moving somewhere.
So I choose to struggle through 4 more papers, 1 final project, and one more exam. Hoping that at the end there is something. Something of myself. Something new. Something changed. Something different. Something better.
The End.
Slowly and painfully typing each sentence for each paper, and memorizing stacks of fatuous facts. One more novel, four more films, Six more papers, three more tests, eleven more days. And then SUMMER!
Sunday Morning
Yesterday Sean and I walked to the car a little before 7am.
Quiet streets. Sleepy people walking particularly alert dogs. Morning dew on the windows. Sunshine breaking through the buildings.
We talked a little in the car. Discussed where we thought I should park, where to meet up after the race, what I was going to do until he was finished racing.
Beautiful spring morning – sunny & a little too cold. Sean headed off to warm up and find his way to the start line, and I headed straight towards the coffee. Latte & muffin in hand, I walked around weaving my way between buildings, avoiding the shade and wandering towards the finish line. I stood, and watched as the spectators spilled in, as kids ran amok, and as the lady on the loudspeaker droned on endlessly. 16 minutes after the start of the 5K the first runners were streaming in, and few minutes later I watched as Sean crossed the finish line. Not a big race. Nothing to get overly excited about. Sean simply wanted to race so that he could practice his pacing … but sometimes it’s nice to get up early, enjoy a latte, and watch a race.
My runs this past week have been incredible. In the past they simply were. That’s all. Just something I did because it’s good to do. But something has changed. Something in this is now good for my soul, not just my body. It is almost as if my body is a side note in the whole process – yeah I’m still sucking wind while I power up hill, contemplating if my lungs are going to explode 5280 feet above sea level, but something else is also happening. Something I’ve yet to understand, discover, fully unpack… something. The wild guess being that it might have to do with the drastic life changes that are about to drop all around me.
For now, I plan to simply enjoy that which is around me – friends, family, this family, runs, coffee, packing up the bits of our life, the end of another semester, and the beginning of a new season.
1 comment