It’s not like I’ll stop writing if I don’t recieve a comment, I just can’t help but wonder.  I talk to myself all the time, what’s different about this?  Sometimes I’ll find myself whispering or thinking aloud without realizing that I’m making sound.  I’ve heard some say it’s a sign of genius.  But I’ve also heard that it’s a sign of insanity.  I’ve also been diagnosed as a verbal learner, finding it easier to absorb information if I tell someone about it.  So, for whatever reason, talking to myself is as easy breathing, sometimes easier, so don’t feel obligated, but if you have something to say, whoever you are, I’m all ears. 

           I am currently a phlegm factory.  It was misery drag myself to the alarm clock, hitting the snooze button three times, only to drop myself into a strangling pile of sheets and blankets.  I haven’t been sleeping well lately, and I know this, not because I’m a light sleeper (I’m a sleepwalker), but because I’ve been waking up with half my bedding on the floor and wrapped awkwardly around me.  You know that part in the newest Parent Trap where the girls prank the cabin with tons of booby traps?  That’s what I feel like in the morning nowaday, slimy, crusty and tangled. 

          Well better luck tomorrow- maybe I can work on my morning entrances

So I went to see Remember Me because a) I was intrigued.  I love a good romance as much as the next girl and b) I am of the strong belief that I cannot have an opinion about something without being informed.  Because of his poor performance in Twilight, I felt that couldn’t judge Robert as an actor until I did so outside of the Twilight franchise.

And I was impressed.

My awe at the movie is mostly because of how the director treated the ending.  spoiler alert: this movie has a 9/11 finale.  I remember the day the towers were hit.  Anyone over the age of five probably does.  My parents took my brothers and me out of school so that they could explain the situation to us themselves.  I watched footage the entire day.  Everything changed that day, and while I remember feeling scared of war and shocked at the tragedy of the whole thing, I never truly understood the impact.  my fifth grade mind wasn’t that far along in empathy to be able comprehend the entire tragedy.  But this movie made me understand.  This movie forced me to realize that on that day, people who had their whole lives ahead of them, were cut off.

The entire movie is not about 9/11.  It was about a broken family.  A young man, whose brother had committed suicide, whose sister was struggling to fit in, whose father was emotionally and verbally abusive, and whose sense of morality is being tested to it’s limit, meets a girl, who shares his own angst.  This girl adopts his family, his struggles and his pain.  By the end of the movie, everyone is starting to have faith in each other again.  And then the main character dies in the two towers, waiting for his dad who has begun to repent of his awful behavior.

I was shocked.  They didn’t prepare you for this ending at all.  There were no hints.  They didn’t allude to the date until the very end of the movie.  They spent the entire movie making you invest in this family, in these broken people, and then it shatters it.  I felt like I had lost something in the towers.  I cried.  The story was about to have, if not a happy, then a hopeful ending, and it was gone.

The directors handled this with great taste.  They didn’t use any real footage.  I would have probably shut down if they had.  They didn’t show the towers after the planes.  They didn’t even say the what was happening outloud.  The audience just saw the family’s reaction, and saw the family at the protagonist’s grave.  It was meant to speak to those who had been there; those who remember; those who, like me, maybe couldn’t quite express what happened that day.  This is for those people who lost something that day, that they couldn’t quite identify at the time.  I’ve never felt so moved by September 11th.  I have rarely felt so connected and invested in a movie.

A note- while I thought the film was extremely poignant, there is a handful of innapropriate moments: sexual content and a few f-bombs, but the film is rated pg-13- so they reign it in.  These are purposely broken characters, imperfect for a reason.

So Robert- good for you- maybe there’s hope for you after all

Are they breathing?

Quietly opening the door

Just to hear them inhale.

Are they up?

Pausing the movie several times

To check the doors are locked.

To count the toes and fingers,

To watch them,

And whisper your affections.

If they only knew the fuss you made,

As they wander

Through scattered, heavy-eyed visions.

I am happy that the fabulous Sandra Bullock got Best Actress.

My last comment on the event is that I was surprised and pleased at Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin’s performance- very funny men :)  That’s all today- I’m going to take a bit of a me day.

Once again, a successful trip to the movies.

           So today I am off to the movies to watch Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.  I am very excited- even though I heard the reviews were bad.  I don’t always like what Tim puts out there, but I’ve got to give him points for originality.  I don’t really think I could be a movie critic, because I don’t think I could ever call a movie bad.  My stragedy is to pick out what I like and what I don’t like, but I don’t think I could disqualify a director’s piece of work. 

           One more thought: I am going to be diligently watching the Oscars this weekend for my birthday.  I love to see actors take their art seriously, instead of seeing the tabloids tear down their characters- they really don’t deserve that.  I would love for Meryl to get another Oscar- she was just so charming in Julie & Julia.

       Is it obvious yet that there is some deep, nagging desire inside of me to be abroad?  I’ve known some people who wish to leave their hometown simply to get away from their families.  This is by no means my case.  After only a semester in college, I’ve been told more than once “no, Jasmine, you may not come home next weekend,” as my parents lovingly prod me from my nest.  Being so close to home makes it a temptation to stay, well, close to home.  But this ache for mountains, this craving for chickpeas, this longing for the hum of foreign tongues, can’t be explained by an aversion to where I’m at.  It can only be explained by a curiousity of where I have not yet been.

         Now that I have the desire, I have to recognize my personal obstacles.  I have three glaring hurtles: my ordinary essence, my short attention span, and my passive agression.

         If I am a bird leaving the nest, I think that I’m a Robin.  Pigeons remind me of soaring architecture.  Eagles inspire mountains.  Crows make me think of Poe, and gloomy moors.  Even sparrows remind me of either a tipsy pirate or questing knights.  But I am a robin, a bird that sits in my pine tree in America’s midwest.  It has a call that isn’t pleasant like the loon, or haunting, like the crows.  This is what I am.  It’s the bird I see the most, and it catches my attention the least.  I’m plain looking, and my experiences are the same.  I’m not even experiencing college away from my own native forest.  I have yet to do anything that adds a little bit of sparkle to my wings.  Maybe that’s why I’m feeling restless for travel: I want to migrate.  I have unused wings.  But hopefully the ordinary of my Robinness will be an empty canvas for the people, places, and histories that I hope to encounter.

           The second obstacle is my short attention span.  I am interested in anything and everything.  I want to know about every part of the world.  If I could have my wish I would know every language, be an expert in all mythologies, and connect with each people group on Earth.  Perhaps this is the writer in me, that balks at the idea of being contained in one subject or using the same set of words over and over again.  But while this makes the world around me a wonderfully distracting place that I can’t see enough of, it also tends to prevent me from becoming truly versed in any one thing.  I went into the library one day to check out of book of Native American lore, because my grandfather now does a lot of work with various reservations and he sparked my curiosity.  I came out of the library with books on Russian, English, Native American, and Irish lore.  I can’t know enough, and therefore I probably never will know much.  As Mr. Monk would say: it’s a blessing… and a curse.

            Finally, I am passive agressive.  I don’t always see the harm in this.  after all, passive aggression is still a form of aggression- isn’t it?  Well, maybe you can tell me about it sometime… if you want to.  But in all seriuosness, no matter how much I defend my round-about way of doing things, I can’t deny that it would hinder any adventure or exploring that I plan on doing.  I tend to be scared of initiating conversations, and I’m terrified of speaking to someone in a different language.  Something about fumbling over conjugations and incorrect verbs makes me blush for myself and for those I impose it on, but how else do you meet people?  So, if I am to be the writer, the traveler, and the person I want to be, I need to work on getting the moxy it takes to walk up to a person and say, “Je ne parle pas francais, mais, je ce parle.”  Then I can throw in what little I know about pantaloons and Versaille, and I’ve started a clumsy, possibly incorrect, giggly conversation, but a conversation none-the-less. 

         And maybe that’s the real adventure, daring to do what ordinarily makes me want to curl up and eat pretzels dipped in chocolate frosting while watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians.  My new adventures are going to be whatever scares me.  Whatever makes me feel so alone that I’m forced to turn to myself for counsel and deal witht he consequences.  Whatever forces me to migrate.

No, really, stop and feel it.

Don’t you feel like you could fall into the sky?

Like very little is holding you to the grass?

You’re dizzy,

You’re dazzled,

You’re floating,

You’re a little bit sick.

There’s a pull on your sneakers,

Your fingertips stretch toward the sky.

And if he doesn’t hold your hand,

You’ll be lost to the stars forever.