Where to pick up the pieces, and which pieces to pick up, those are my questions right now. Creatively I’m finally almost back on top. School, on the other hand, is not good...not good at all. I am so burnt out on it and have no motivation. Kind of stuck in this unpleasant stage between leaving one place and starting a brilliant new chapter. Six months on Maui! And San Francisco afterwards. I am the luckiest S.O.B. ever, and it's weird to have this one family member - and one so fabulous it's like I invented him myself out of some psychic need - care enough to extend this invitation to me, after living a life in which "family" has always been pretty much nonexistent, or else depressing and tragic to the point where I just have to shut it out to keep from going to pieces. And I've kind of been going to pieces lately.
Oddly - but not oddly for me, really - it's a new movie that's instigated a sort of landslide of emotions that has been threatening to bury me lately. It's Brideshead Revisited, the new film version, which came out late last year - I saw it alone in a theater full of elderly nursing home church people of some kind (I had to pick a Sunday afternoon!), who were probably all hooked on the '80s miniseries, and watched the film in total silence, then shuffled out, possibly completely offended by some of the bold changes in the new version (including the one brief kiss between Charles and Sebastian that brings the gay subtext to the surface, and the brilliant ending that switches Charles' conversion to Catholicism into a tolerance of faith despite his own professed atheism) - but it is these very changes that I love so much, I know I've been one of those people in the past who vehemently protests when someone does a modern "update" and changes an author's work, so this is an example of seeing the other side of that debate. Then again I haven't read the novel yet, although I purchased a copy I plan to read on Maui - with the poster imagery from the new film version on the cover! I may be the only one talking so passionately about this film, but hey, never stopped me before. And then of course there is Ben Whishaw, who I've already sung a thousand love songs to before, and his, in my opinion almost astonishing performance as Sebastian in the new version. I'm in the peculiar place of being enamored of this character on the one hand, wanting him to be real, wanting to know him, wanting to save him from self-destruction, and on the other hand feeling that he represents me, in some ways, more than any other character I've seen in a film in half of forever. But he's different than me, too, and Ben's performance is helping make me a better person. I've watched it a number of times recently with four different groups of people - definition of friendship: people you share your obsessions with! - and I study his character - his gentleness, his manner of speaking (God the British accent is hot! Maybe the hottest of all), just the look in his eyes - and take from it things I can use to improve my own personality. This is a roundabout way of saying that I'm in love - I really am, like head over heels, and this never happens to me - with a character from a film, and by extension, with the actor who portrayed him (there's no denying looks are part of the equation!) The unfortunate thing is that this being in love business can be dreadfully depressing - the worst soul ache a human can feel, I think, except maybe a mother losing her offspring, I'm guessing. It happened to me long ago with a real person, ONCE, and I simply couldn't bear the pain of it and made a resolution to never let it happen to me again, so I gave up love and sex and relationships and the whole thing and just said it's better to be alone, and that's how I've been forever. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it's a harbinger of good things to come. I'm definitely approaching a major turning point.
I am so glad Sam Adams didn’t have to resign in the face of this artificial, tawdry, tabloid-in-a-teapot controversy. At the same time, I will say that I would never advocate damaging newspaper boxes because people don’t agree with your opinion, which apparently happened to Just Out. Marty Davis posted something a while back cautioning people to beware that everything they post on Facebook can be read by every major media outlet in Portland. I’m sure that caution wasn’t intended for me, because it’s probably pretty obvious that I’m not very shy when it comes to revealing personal thoughts as well as vehement opinions on virtually any subject. I COPIED my letter to WW’s editor to every major media outlet in Portland! I also sometimes write about some really personal stuff and put it up on public websites. I’m not fully sure why, some form of mass confession maybe, but also simply because I want people to know me, warts and all, and then I guess I really write a lot of it for myself, a self-psycho-analysis thing, and in case it's interesting enough for anyone else, why not share it? I don't really care if people know the less savory things about me or the sometimes severe mistakes I make or the more unhealthy impulses I sometimes succumb to. I don't want to hide anything. I disclose everything and I like people who are similarly honest and strong enough to make themselves as vulnerable as I sometimes do. I believe in myself and that is the only faith I need.
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