August Rush

I watched August Rush last night. Shut. Up. It brought me back to a familiar theme.

I've been thinking about films like that (the music prodigy aspect of it aside, which was actually kind of sweet) quite a bit lately. I mean more the fairy-tale like quality of them, the completely improbable perfect hook-up and resulting love story. If I'd watched a film like that twenty years ago, I'd have fallen for it completely.

These types of films were what dictated our expectations, as young women. Small wonder we are so consistently disappointed by our relationships, if we are expecting this sort of thing to go on.

But then, on the other hand.. how much better is it to develop this thick cynical skin, and not wish for anything of the sort at all. It was interesting to watch myself saying OH COME ON LIKE THAT WOULD EVER HAPPEN..

And so i stopped, and tried for just a moment to get back into that old mindset. It was so illuminating, this stark contrast. This loss of simple hope we carry around, as we get older. I don't mean just romantically speaking, but about life, about the future, about everything.

And so, I am making a conscious effort to increase my average daily level of hope. With thanks to august rush. For crying out loud.

The Mouths of Babes

My daughter : “I made a mother’s day card for Courtney (her father's new wife) with Papa.”
Me : “Oh? Is Courtney somebody’s Mama?”
My daughter : “Yes, Papa has two Mamas. Gammy, and Courtney.”

Best. Mother's Day. Present. Ever.

An Open Letter To My Best Friend

Dear Best Friend,

This week I witnessed something beautiful and pure between you and your daughter, the unabashed giving and receiving of the words “I love you”. It was sweet and tender and untouched by any outside influence. I felt a little like an invader just listening, that just being in the room with you would taint it somehow. But I also felt blessed to be a witness to it and to be able to catch a little of the loving spill-over.

I ask one thing of you my dear friend, please don’t ever become too busy, too distracted, too frustrated or too caught up in the little things in life that seem so big to ever respond with a heartfelt and pure “I love you” when those words are said to you by your daughter.
I know that sometimes life can seem to get too big, too hurried, too much and we lose sight of the things that really matter.

I remember when I was a little girl, not much older than your girl is now; my mother and I had our own loving back and forth. I would say “Mom? Guess what? I love you” and she would respond with “I love you too. You’re my favouritest Jennie in the whole wide world”. One day I said my part and my mom responded with a distracted “Yeah, uh-huh” and it broke my heart in a way that only a little girl’s heart can be broken.

Please don’t ever let that happen to your and your daughter, for all the little girl and big girl hearts of the world. I know that’s a lot of pressure but I know you can handle it.

Love,

Me

After

The longer I look at the "after" eyelashes, the more disturbed I feel. Try it.

REALITY BITES

Reality Bites explored the lives of four generation-x college graduates looking for work and love in Houston, Texas. The main character (played by Winona Ryder) is an aspiring film-maker who documents their lives, hoping to make a film from the footage. The film was released in early 1994, when i was 25 years old.

I'm simply not sure whether I am remembering this correctly or not, so perhaps my fellow gen-xers can help me out. I remember watching this movie and thinking OH MY GOD, SOMEBODY FINALLY GETS ME! THIS IS MY LIFE! THIS IS SO GREAT! ETHAN HAWKE IS SO AMAZING AND DISTANT AND COOL AND MISUNDERSTOOD, I WANT TO DATE SOMEONE JUST LIKE HIM! WINONA RYDER IS SO BORED AND SMART AND SARCASTIC AND UNDERVALUED - I'M SURE I'M JUST LIKE HER! I'm so GLAD they got back together at the end! That's JUST how it works out in REAL LIFE, when the boy FINALLY realizes he screwed up, and he comes back changed, loving and PERFECT and after that they stay together FOREVER!

I didn't watch it again for years, but I carried around this memory of a movie that had encapsulated my life at that time MOST perfectly. I'd refer to it from time to time fondly, reminiscing about the plot as though I was reminiscing about my own memories.

Last night I watched this film again, for the first time in fifteen years (in two weeks, it will be the fifteenth anniversary of its release).

OH MY FREAKING GOD. The SHALLOWNESS of the characters! The INSIPIDNESS of their lives! The TRANSPARENCE of Ethan Hawke's ridiculous detached facade! The HORROR of Winona Ryder's acting! The TRITENESS and PREDICTABILITY and CERTAINTY OF RELATIONSHIP DOOM of the final reunion love scene!

The only saving grace was Janeane Garofalo. Her character was at least SOMEWHAT three-dimensional, and she was, as always, brilliant. Why didn't I want to be HER??

I'm not certain what upsets me more.. the fact that I was so FREAKING naive at 25 (was that SERIOUSLY my life???) .. or the fact that I'm so UNREMITTINGLY cynical at 40.

Dedication

I saw the Sarah McLachlan show at Roy Thompson Hall on Saturday night with an old friend, and it was simply wonderful, of course. Not only for Sarah (who was, as always, spectacular) but more in fact, for the opening act. Her name was Meaghan Smith, and she was sweet, funny, lovable, engaging, smart, pretty and a Truly Great Singer. I was in laughter and in tears throughout her entire set, and can't recommend her show enough if she comes your way (Victoria, I think she'll be in California next week, heads up!) .. this one goes out to Auntie Jennie.

Sex for Money

I found this site that allows you to send in a week's worth of you and your partner having sex - 1 hour a day, so 7 hours total - and they'll pay you $2000. I was all prepared to hate the thing and get all reactive and feminist about exploitation blah blah blah. But I watched the short bits they have of each couple on the promotional page, and was, in spite of myself, completely and utterly charmed. These are (for the most part) really sweet people. Funny, silly, both smart and stupid.. all human. I can't for the life of me get pissed off about it.

Something else, harder to put my finger on. The simple joy and goofiness these people seem to have in their relationships with each other.. it opens a window into what a relationship could possibly be, once you scrape all that self-conscious, egotistical, judgemental crap out of the away. Is that sort of thing only possible when you're really young and in love? When we get older, do we start to expect too much out of people, and somehow suck all the possibility of joy out of everything, trying to make perfection happen?

Just wondering.

a rough weekend

i've been trying to come to terms with the fact that now that my daughter is in school, i must give up my afternoons and evenings with her to her father.

he and his girlfriend took frith out for dinner yesterday, and when she came home she announced that she wanted to go live with papa and courtney, and she started packing. only the rain turned her back, as she walked past the driveway pulling her suitcase behind her.

the new arrangement means i will see her much less, and i already miss her awfully. she is growing up so quickly, and so much of the time i DO get to spend with her is taken up with running madly to get ready for school in the morning, or shopping for food, or cleaning the house, or driving to visit with relatives clamouring for frith time, or whatever.

it isn't logical, but i am so very jealous of her papa spending every day of the first three years of her life just BEING with her. i never had that chance. and now, i will never get it.

Slogan Hell

Last night it was : JOAN THINK OF A SEXY GREEN PARTY SLOGAN FOR US!

I couldn't, to save my life. The best I could come up with :

1. this election season : green is the new black

or else

2. there's no shame in being green (accompanied by a picture of eve with a fig leaf)

Anyhow .. the first was too racist sounding which was NOT my intention.. has NOBODY read any fashion magazines in the past fifty years? .. and the second just not positive enough.

Any thoughts??

Law and Order is Making Me Fat

According to new research by a professor at Erasmus University, people who are thinking about their own deaths want to consume more.

As in EAT MORE and SHOP MORE.

Here's the quote : “Consumers, especially those with a lower self-esteem, might be more susceptible to over-consumption when faced with images of death during the news or their favorite crime-scene investigation shows.”

Man. That explains EVERYTHING.

Perfect

I take issue with the photos of perfect love shown on internet dating sites - photos where relationships are portrayed as pure, and clean, and white; unwrinkled, unsullied, blonde and happy.

This is love? These are the relationships we are striving to have? No wonder we always feel so completely inadequate in our own sad, hairy, smelly, squalid, screaming, stained, sordid little love nests. NOBODY'S relationship looks like that indefinitely.

NOBODY'S.

Oh For Crying Out Loud

Two quotes from this spectacularly horrifying little column by Miriam Silverberg I found in a free paper called Epoch Times, which I picked up while grocery shopping :



(1) Most women look better with clothes than without.

(2) Being pregnant is a wonderful, glorious time in a woman's life and she can and should look her best. To my mind that does not include accentuating her huge belly.

Bugger off, Miriam.

Selfish and Green

I've been volunteering on the executive for the local green party, and it has started to piss me off - mostly because it feels like we're just not getting through to people. They've always got somewhere else to be, something else to to, and it is nearly impossible to convince anyone to change. They may wish to be noble and good, but when it comes down to the crunch, they look away, put their fingers in their ears, and keep doing things the way they've always been done.

So I had a thought today. Why not appeal to the less noble instincts? Like this :

If you won't do it for the environment, the world, the future.. then do it for yourself.

• Go vegan because 97% of vegans live longer, get less cancer, are orgasmic, less depressed and more in love.
• Stop eating meat and using plastic to store your food, and menopause won't hit so hard because your hormones won't be completely out of whack.
• Stop eating dairy, and your hair will stop falling out, because your body will finally be able to absorb iron.
• Stop buying expensive processed foods and your bank account will thank you.
• Stop feeding your children junk food and sugary crap and you'll find them turning back into calm, responsive and loving family members.
• Use less water and your water bill will be lower.
• Turn off all those lights - we all look better by candle light anyway.
• Air dry your clothes and your hydro bill will go down.
• Quit smoking and your face won't get as wrinkled.
• Ride your bicycle or walk instead of drive and your body will be more beautiful.
• Use fewer toxic body care products and your skin will clear up.
• Donate to green charities and you'll get a hefty tax refund.
• Donate to the green party and you'll get an even more hefty tax refund.

Do yourself a favour.. live green.

Infinity

An agnostic : a person who claims that they cannot have true knowledge about the existence of god - but does not deny that god might exist.

From Life of Pi , regarding agnosticism : to choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

But, it is a given that the universe is infinitely vast, nicht wa? So does it not follow that within this infinite vastness must exist an infinite number of things, an infinite number of possibilities? So, just as there must be a world where people are blue and made of cheese, and another one where my exact double lives a life completely parallel to my own.. is there not a place in this infinity for gods?

Yes, even an old man with a beard, sitting on a cloud.

Not that I believe that, it is so obviously ludicrous. But on the other hand, it seems a little presumptuous to make sweeping statements about what can not possibly exist, in a universe filled with infinite possibility.