The United States of Sad

Too many movies. It's strange how there are days when I can have the tv going constantly and others when one film gives me a migraine and strains my eyes. I think it really comes down to how many things I watch that I concentrate on. I watched too many things I wanted to concentrate on today. Which is why I usually stick with the same-old-shit. I tune it out while I paint or make a box, or tailor a shirt.

I made a little box for my NY ornament, and a little cloth bag for the owl Fawna gave me. I can't tell you how much pleasure those simple acts give me! I keep trying to work out ways to make those activities a bigger part of my life, bring them in in a way that involves revenue. But I think I need to come up with something sweet to go in them. That's the bit that stumps me. I make my little boxes for things that already exist. (why didn't I bring that tiny ceramic doll?) Why didn't I bring Sendak's Nutcracker either? Or my equipment for developing film? These questions never cease to perplex me.

I'll be blogging a lot(!) over the next two months. I'll be on my ass in an office style job- in front of a computer. I heard Dana Carvey use the expression "A major case of the Fuck-its." When I got back to the apartment today, I had a fair amount of the fuck-its in me. Even though I am, first and foremost, happy to have a job, and even excited about the work- I can't help feeling below it all the realization that this isn't what I want to be doing- not for 40 hours a week. I don't mean so much so that I'd quit like Momo, but just enough that I think it makes me feel that fuck-it mentality. I will enjoy this work, I will conquer it and what ever aspects are difficult or challenging. I will master it. But when I relax inside and listen closely I'll hear my inner voice sigh. Because this is work, it's all hard work, and a minor battle over who I actually am. I will be conquering and mastering myself in the process. And that makes me tired at times.

Jeff is watching Family Guy over a cup of milk and a ho ho to recover from The United States of Leland. Something about a well told story makes me surge inside. Even if it's sad, or tragic, or maybe terrifying... This is the second time I've watched it and I cried this time. I wanted to cry, not because I was in pain, but more because I wanted to cry with him for the sadness in our lives, in life, in the world. He let it over-take him. I think it made him unable to believe in the good or the beautiful. All the bad in life and people canceled out their good. At least at first... Maybe in the end his perspective did shift? I don't think he minded dying, maybe he wanted it? Maybe it was the only way he could really stop carrying all that sadness? Like Ryan, or at least how he saw Ryan. When I was first watching the movie I thought the opening scene was about him being attacked as a boy, the movie ends with the same moment, only different characters, but each, in a sense, baring a similar motive. Leland, I think, wanted to release Ryan from the sadness of his own life, and maybe he felt it would help him release his own too. The kid in the end wanted to make things right in Ryan's family. "It's over". The moments could be interchanged, the words equally applied to both. Leland became Ryan, died the same way, on the grass, stretched out long, eyes closed, a peaceful face, a quiet moment.

Most of all, what I felt this time around, what I've felt for a long time is that suffering is meant to be a part of life, that it serves a deep purpose. I can bring no justification for this, only this feeling. It is like a fire that refines us, can refine us. There is a special, nuanced beauty that people posses who have suffered deeply. Their character is rich, and in their damage, in their pain they enter an incredible connection with everyone who has suffered. It is a bond, the true road to empathy. It is clear in the movie that Leland is designed to be special, in touch. That despite what he has done who he is is beautiful. The two greatest crimes that I see Leland as committing are that instead of seeing a root to bring happiness to Ryan, instead of trying to be a part of that root, he takes his life and that he doesn't anticipate the fallout. The devastation on Ryan's family. A wound from which they will never recover, that they have been crippled by the tragedy. He has stolen two things, a boy's life and the ability of an entire family to live normal lives.

We have a peculiar problem with the cold tap in the bathroom that I have never encountered before. The only way I can really describe it is that it seems to shut itself off. I turn it, it runs for a fraction of a second and stops with a grand "thunk" from under the cabinet. Repeat indefinitely until I give up and rinse my mouth with hot water. Or brush in the kitchen sink. What would make it do that?

Maybe I'll read. I was so tired before. Didn't sleep enough last night and rose early to train.