 The World Forgot |
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Let's hear it for substance abuse, a sure sign of springtime! My mother and I worked in my front yard on Saturday, breaking our backs lugging around top soil, laying down sod, and most of all digging up two very old azaleas and a couple of other bushes that shall not be named because I have no idea what they were. Those roots, I swear to God, were the devil. During our heavy labor, the mail came, and I was so excited to see an envelope I've been waiting to arrive for six weeks that I ran inside to open it away from the watchful eyes of my pro-Bush mother, and the fucking envelope was empty. (I fired off some more wrath about this at The Moat.) So don't buy anything from this useless excuse for a company unless you want to be charged to wait six weeks for a package utterly devoid of merchandise! Saturday night was a blur of merlot and crab dip. The guy who asked for my number must be avoided due to conflicts of interest through our mutual friend who I firmly believe is in love with him, and as I do not foresee him as my soulmate, I am going to defer to the friendship (albeit a new one) over the guy. I did some drunk dialing and sent an inebriated message to the notify list. Luckily, J. and I were able to have a good laugh over my drunken text message the next morning. He apologized for being too busy in a mosh pit to hear his phone ring. I spent most of Sunday with H. and A., going through old high school notes and pictures, eating boiled crawfish, drinking cheap beer, and laughing so hard that I fell out of the hammock. My older brother and his girlfriend broke up yesterday. My sister and I took him to eat steak last night, and we actually embraced in the parking lot and once again joked about how the four of us are going to end up in a sibling commune one day and we might as well not fight the inevitable. Meanwhile, my little brother called me to announce, "I don't want to steal our brother's flavor, but I'm totally breaking up with my girlfriend today. It's pointless and not going anywhere and I need to tell her that." I advised rather that he just say, "It's not you, it's me," because she's at the age where she still might buy a line like that. BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO. I sent my older brother an exceedingly lively midi file of the Growing Pains theme song, and I hope it serves as some small consolation. (Seriously. Listen to the whole thing. You will rock out.) Do not miss Kate Winslet on Inside the Actors Studio. Do not miss it because you will love to hear her refuse to tap dance because she is lactating, you will love to see her reenactment of an improvisation with Harvey Keitel during Holy Smoke during which he instructed her to pretend he was her dying dog and Jane Campion got so excited about it that she encouraged them to do it with Enya playing in the background to boot, complete with accents, you will love to see her overflowing with love and affection in a spontaneous outburst of tears about her husband and newborn baby, and you will love having her charm your socks off in every single way.  And speaking of breaking up and Kate Winslet, even though this weekend contained many laughs and good times along with the sad ones, the very best part of the weekend was seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with my sister on Friday night. (Don't worry, I won't spoil anything here.) I loved this movie. I mean, I really loved it on a deep level. Obviously, it's gorgeous to look at and the convoluted narrative structure inherent in the plot is wild and weird and exciting and convoluted and cool, but at its heart, this is a simple story. To me, at least, it asks simply, what would you change if you could? Would you or wouldn't you? If you could, would you wipe out the bad memories if it meant also wiping out the good? And I walked away with the conviction that my answer to that question would be a resounding no. And that's something. Even if I've known that all along, it was beautiful to be convinced all over again while swimming along with this crazy ride of a film as it unfolded before my eyes with so much color and music and light. It was beautiful, it was magical, and I think I might have held my breath the entire time. It smashed my heart into little pieces and put it back together again over and over and over, which was, I expect, the point. Because isn't that what memories do? Ultimately, I can't think about this story without thinking about how I felt when it was over, which was moved and stunned and still and alive and lost and found.
About this time in ...
© Copyright 2004 elb |
The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd |
