The Torch

I saw THE ARTIST this evening at Baxter Avenue Theatre and it made me swoon. Old movies, for whatever reason, seem to hypnotize me.  I love them.  The melodrama. The grand gestures. The biting dialogue.  It’s genius!  They don’t make movies that way anymore. 

THE ARTIST is a love letter to the Hollywoodland of the past, and as expected, I absolutely loved every minute of it.  The main character, played by Jean Dujardin, is mouthwatering in his portrayal of George Valentin, a silent-movie star who refuses to become an actor in “The Talkies.”  Berenice Bejo plays the female lead, and her eyes are magical.  There is one scene in particular where she is watching George Valentin’s last movie, “Tears of Love,” in the balcony of a theater, and her eyes shimmer with tears that pool above her lids as she stares in awe at the screen.  That single moment captured how I felt about the entire movie.

My life currently feels like a Karen Carpenter song. I am convinced that it largely has to do with the weather. Rain makes me so lazy. I don’t want to get out of bed. I just want to lay. Read a book. Catch up on sleep. Watch a movie. It takes all of my willpower just to pull myself out of bed in the morning. I used to jump out of bed at 7am. And now I have to hit the snooze button twice to even THINK about waking up.

Everything is up in the air. I need to have plans. I can’t just exist. I don’t work that way. In the past weeks, I have been forced into merely existing and it isn’t conducive to me being productive. I want to get out. I want to run. I want to walk. I want to GET OUT, but it is so nasty outside that it seems futile to try. I need some sun. Not heat. I don’t need heat. It is January, and that means fires and hot chocolate and coats, and I’m perfectly fine with that. But could I please have just a bit of sunlight, God? Please? Or at least have all of these clouds culminate in snow and not rain? Rain is so depressing.

It makes me not want to go out. But going out is the only thing that keeps me sane. I’m prone to being stir-crazy. All of this makes me feel even more paradoxical than usual.

Eventually the light will come in. I will be energized. I will get life back. I will smile. Things will get done. My finances will be stable. But until then, I’m ticking off the days. I’m waiting with my teeth clenched. I’m trying not to lose patience. And I’m trying not to drive David crazy with my malcontent. But I don’t know if it is working.

I am a force to be reckoned with and until now I have been lying dormant.  The sleep-state is over, and now that I am awake, here are some things I plan to do:

**I will finish my short story.  In fact, I want to write more.  I want to write at least a little bit every day. I want to present new writing every month at the NuLu open-mic night.  I will be inspired by life again.  I don’t care if the art I make is shit…it is still creating SOMETHING.**

**I will get in shape. I’m not fat, but nor am I defined.  David and I now have Zumba for Kinect and I’ve completed two classes on it. Man, it is really kicking my ass.  To get in shape, I’m going to commit to completing a Kinect Zumba class twice per week.  While on the subject of exercise, I want to make it a personal goal of mine to run in a mini-marathon.  This means I need to start training.**

**I will pay more attention to my house. I currently go on “cleaning binges” that I wouldn’t have to do if I spent a little time every day cleaning. I will spend at least twenty minutes per day doing something productive that involves upkeep of my house.**

**I know that if I start my day off by taking a bath, I’m not going to get anything finished. Baths should be reserved as a relaxing treat at the end of the day to wind down.**

So I had a dream last night that I was driving with a friend from high school (Kyle) to Pennsylvania to provide moral support for him. He was reuniting with his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in years.  In this particular dream, his mother’s name is Marta  There is a lot of driving and then when we finally get there, who shows up but Caroline Wheeler, who is someone who works in the social services field for people with disabilities.

It turns out in this dream that Caroline is a friend of Kyle’s mother.  She has met us before Kyle reunites with his mother to relay a message: Marta is not the same as she was several years ago. In fact, she is now a man and has had sexual reassignment surgery.  Kyle isn’t emotionally prepared for this, so I spend a long time comforting him.  We both decide that regardless of what Kyle thinks, Marta is his parent and Kyle needs to reunite with his family.  So we go in to meet Marta at the house where he lives and it turns out Marta is also Filipino. Marta doesn’t even remotely look like a woman.  He is a pudgy, slightly balding man with a very large, gray mustache. It also turns out that Kyle has a baby sister because Marta and his wife have somehow miraculously conceived a child, which is also Filipino. Kyle is morally repulsed by the situation, but agrees to hold his baby sister and while he is holding her, he smiles. She falls asleep in his arms.

Anybody have an idea as to what this dream means?

 You know this.  I know this.  Exhibit A:

Family is a weird thing for me.  I’m very different from the rest of my family. Night and day.  I’m similar to a select few of them in certain aspects, but I often feel alienated.  Is this my own doing? Is this because of the way THEY see me or because of the way I see myself? And what exactly does all of this mean?

I don’t feel that sense of attachment to my family.  I feel that attachment more with David’s family. Isn’t that odd? 

What is it about them that just rubs me the wrong way?  Is it because secretly, I feel none of them are really okay with my sexual orientation?  Sure, they say they’re fine with it…but how many times do I get calls from my mother asking me to remove some kind of comment or picture (none of which are inappropriate) from my facebook profile because it has caused some uproar in the family?  Who is it that keeps talking about me?  What are they saying? I’m curious…

I really don’t want to make it about education.  I don’t want to dislike people because they didn’t get an education.  Some are never given the chance for that and I can’t dislike them because they weren’t given the same circumstances that I have.  I don’t want to be “that guy” who yells at the homeless man on the street and tells him to get a job and stop being lazy.  But is that what this is?  Is that why I don’t like them?

I feel like I can’t relate to them on a lot of levels.  They’re from an old tradition of not talking about things.  You’re gay?  That’s fine…but let’s not talk about it.  Sex exists in the world?  That’s fine…but don’t say the word “sex” or Jesus might hear you.  You drink?  Don’t talk about it…because then you might be unholy and we don’t fraternize with unholy people…even though some of us drink too much, still live with our parents when it’s well past time to leave, still keep having kids with different people, still keep doing things that someone our age should be smart enough to stay away from.

I don’t hate these people.  Some of them have had hard lives.  Life is a constant struggle.  But even if I understand why people are the way they are…I still don’t think it means they should be able to do whatever they want and not have to pay any sort of consequence.  At what point do I get to say, “That’s fine. I don’t want to tell you how to live your life…I just don’t want to be a part of it?”

At what point is it OKAY to say, “I don’t really care anymore?”

At what point does it no longer become my problem?

Does that make me selfish?  Does that make me a bad person?