To Film or Not to Film

I’m dabbling in a movie love affair. I say dabbling because I’m only, like, flirting with film. Watching the There Will Be Bloods and the No Countries for Old Men, the Little Miss Sunshines; waiting to relax and sip a drink with the Junos and Atonements; catching up on the Magnolias and Requiems for a Dream; DVR-ing the Chinatowns and Tsotsis; avoiding the Mans of the Year. I’m no movie connoisseur. Still drinking bargain merlots with the bourgeois eyes of someone who hasn’t yet taken in the Godfather and who fell asleep watching Amelie.

Although, my maturation level has reached new heights: Now I turn on the subtitles of EVERY MOVIE just so I can soak in every single word. In fact, my husband has said that I’m every deaf man’s dream. Meanwhile, I dream of movies.

I dream of my Flirtatious Movie Love Affair progressing into something more. I dream of intimate knowledge. I want to learn about its angles and sideways glances and cameras. I want to learn the ins and outs of screenwriting. And, fittingly, somewhere within this affair is my frivolous life Dream, a Dream that I haven’t yet begun to attack, a Dream that is still very much only a dream. (Probably because I won't go public and subject myself to a friendly dose of accountability.)

My move toward movies actually began with my infatuation with words. Books, etc. Once I started reading about film regularly, I began to see it differently. I began to see it as an art form that has the capacity to possess not only beautiful, witty, smart, emotional language (like a book!) but also drama, cinematography, music … You get the idea. It’s a whole team of talents.

I automatically feel a sort of bond with someone who likes the movies that I like. Case in point: While filling out the below survey, I knew that I was missing some key movies. Movies that, after I watched them, left me sitting on the couch satisfied because I had participated in an experience rather than an entertainment. But, since I’m now 25 and experiencing an inexplicable memory loss, I looked up (thanks, Facebook) a couple of close friends’ movies. Divinely, there were my missing pieces. There were my friends – people who I feel really, truly know me – holding my pieces. I didn’t know specifically what I would find when I looked up their movie lists, just that their movie lists would undoubtedly connect with mine.

My preferences within media – specifically within writings, books, films, sometimes music – are like little manifestations (thesaurus, please give me a less scary word) of what inside me threads me to other individuals. And I think that thread is a shared interest in the human condition: why we do what we do, why we feel what we feel, why we hide what we hide and why we expose what we expose. It’s the raw presentation of human emotion/love/sin to which I’m attracted.

Because when we understand what’s most deeply inside of us, then we can understand what exactly it is that God is healing. And in that I find security. I find security in knowing that there are others out there who aren’t afraid of a little mess, and that there are others out there with whom I can do a little cleaning up.

Hogwash

Not only does Harry P. not have to be out of my life forever, but I also have an incentive for having children: I can read them Harry's stories and re-live the magic all over again! Why didn't I think of this before?? Being a parent finally sounds like fun.

Never fear

I love a good dystopia: Big Brother, barren women, bald Natalie Portmans and Brave New Worlds. Social restrictions stifle, and I quiver on the couch while clutching my Mexican blanket, fearful of doom and all its inevitabilities. My husband sits beside me, cheerfully eating Blue Bell ice cream.

"Don't you KNOW that the world is going to be one giant Oppression? Probably tomorrow? And that I won't be able to have CHILDREN?"

"You don't even like children."

"True, but the government is going to start watching us through our TELEVISION."

I'm not sure when I took on such a dismal mind-set, but working at a newspaper certainly heightens it, as does life in general, sometimes. For instance, even a lost, gentle golden retriever isn't enough to spur goodwill nowadays.

Who knows how long Macy meandered through our friends' neighborhood, gazing at neighbors with confused eyes and a wagging tail. And who knows how many of these good neighbors thought, "Oh, I have to get to my pedicure in 10 minutes, so Nancy down the road will surely help the dog, who looks like the epitome of tenderness." And so Nancy becomes Bill, who becomes Josie, who becomes Niles, who becomes the unforgiving Ford Explorer. Then a family mourns, and those who should be ashamed aren't.

One by one, neighbors become a bit more callous and scoot even closer to the center of their islands. Would I have helped Macy? I don't know, but I hope I would have.

Luckily for me, I live with someone whose life-giving optimism pushes through bleakness, someone who deserves to enjoy a big bowl of his favorite ice cream. He's the hero of the dystopia film, the human equivalent of this:

To have and to hold

Parking three blocks from my downtown workplace has many cons and only three pros: I don't have to pay the $30 a month to park in the lot across from my workplace, I get some exercise (you know how they say to take the stairs instead of the elevator? this walk is my justification for not taking the stairs), and I pass the Christ Episcopal Church Book Store.

Yesterday after work I was feeling particularly unspiritual, I needed a book to read to my new cat, and I like to buy things, so the bookstore sensed my vulnerability and gave a shout out. I knew that I wanted a Lamott book, for I was also feeling particularly unwriterly and wanted inspiration.

(All those things are important in their own right and deserve to be noted, but reading and writing really don't have much at all to do with my point. Shopping does.)

I like shopping because I like Things. I am a gifts person. I am tactile,
and I think I would pray more if I were Catholic, because of the rosary. I admittedly know nothing about rosaries, except that my Irish great-aunt who's a very short nun in France gave one to my mom and that I want it.

(Kyle and I are doing a "love languages" group study, and during the "gifts" week one of the leaders said that he believes Jesus was a gifts person. I felt quite smug; I take all I can get.)

When I spend a night alone, I sleep with my Bible, for extra protection. God is actually there with me, when I hug my Bible.

At the wedding of Kyle and me, I was adamant that the preacher not explain the unity candle. Symbolism speaks for itself, I said. Things can say a lot, if you listen.

So when I stood at the counter, paying for my new book with part of the $30 I saved this month, my eye was caught by a little basket of "angel prayer charms" that had little birthstones stuck right into their hollow chests and functioned like lockets. I picked the one that held a blue stone for September. I paid the man again and left.

Today at work I typed up a 9-point-font, sentence-long prayer and folded it neatly into the angel and attached it to my key ring. I sat it in front of me, beside my cell phone and red coffee mug.

When I look at that little angel -- as when I felt it in my coat pocket on my three-block walk to work this morning -- I breathe a prayer, and I know that Kyle is safe in Georgia. I just know it, and the tiny blue stone twinkles.