You've Got Mail

Good late night my darlings, it is a bit late for me to be up and doing anything but be sensible and just try to sleep. But here I am, awake, none the less; and blogging for that matter. The last few days, I have felt the urge to watch an old time favorite of mine that I grew up watching: You've Got Mail, with Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Dave Chapelle, Steve Zahn, and a few other people I don't remember; oh, Yea! And Greg Kinnear. Meg Ryan is the small time bookstore owner, and Tom Hanks is the "price club" of books who is just opening up a new store in the same neighborhood as Meg Ryan's store, threatening to shut down her business.

This whole movie is full of so many sweet truths and the sweet seed of hope. Makes me think of all the endless hours as a child I spent at the Barnes and Noble in the Aurora neighborhood I grew up in. I can't even begin to describe all the lovely bits of this movie without rambling on for hours, and even rambling wouldn't fully get the feeling across for this film. I am a very non-verbal person, always using my hands, my face, and my expressions to tell a lot of my story for me.

This movie was in its' own way, my cult classic I grew up with. As I got older, it got put on the shelf where it collected dust, and I remember having turned twenty-one years old, and I pulled it out to watch, and my life was so different from where it had started and where it ended up at the time and even where it is now, and I remember watching it there, curled up in the corner of a ratty old couch that was my bedroom.... And I felt nothing for it. I didn't even finish it. It was like one of those sub conscience wake up calls, or like my conscience calling me from far away: asking me where did that part of me go that was comfortable just being myself? Where did that girl go that didn't have to act hard all the time? Where did that girl go that even when there wasn't someone else she was interested in romantically, she still had the dream of someone else?... Where did she go? I think that was one of the first poignant self evaluations I had of myself and the former life I was committed to.
I spent four years drifting away from this core classic of myself, and I am happy to say, it only took me two years to fight my way back. One of the emails that Meg Ryan and Joe Fox (tom hanks) share in the beginning epitomizes my sad poor pathetic addiction to Starbucks coffee and makes me laugh at myself thinking there is probably much more truth to what he says than I'd like to expand on, but I'm o.k. just laughing about it and considering it probably really is the truth, and I'm not going to fight it. It's who I am, and I am content with who I am, so why should I feel bad about it?

So, I will leave you with his opinion of people and Starbucks and I now realize it is one o'clock in the morning, so have a peaceful rest of your night.

"The whole reason of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. So, people who don't know what the they're doing or who on earth they are, can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee, but an absolutely defining sense of self."

~Joe Fox- Tom Hanks

And I have to say, the movie ends with Over the Rainbow.... It isn't the version by Iz, but I don't think it existed yet, so the Harry Nilson version just had to suffice in the meantime, and maybe the Iz version did already exist, I just didn't know about it yet.. But I know about it now, and they say when you find the real thing to hold onto it, so I will. And I wish you the same.

Hope Springs..... Eternal

Good Early Morning my loves, it is the "madrugada" as they say in Spanish. I am awake and just thinking, about cycles that we go through and cycles of the year, cycles of emotions, cycles, cycles, cycles.. Around and around in my head.  

I had begun to watch this movie Hope Springs with Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, and Steve Carrel with my grandparents a few weeks ago. It is about a married couple that have been married for thirty plus years, and the wife realizes she needs more from their relationship, she wants intimacy again, something they lost somewhere along the road. Meryl plays the wife, Kay, Jones is the cantankerous husband, and Carrel is the therapist.  I didn't get to finish watching it with my grandparents,  but I knew I had to see how it ended, so I purchased it, and having now laughed and cried to Hope Springs in the madrugada. 

I am always thinking about the same topics it seems, just from different new angles, re-evaluating how I understand something. Sometimes that gets me in trouble, because I drift away from the true foundation understandings of certain things that really don't require any further verification or definition. I am getting better at not doing that: a lot of that I now know is stemming from trust issues.... I have a hard time trusting.. Pretty much anything and everything, and unfortunately everyone. In some ways, it is a good safety mechanism to protect myself [probably the very reason the issue manifested within me: self preservation]... But, in other ways, not being able to trust cripples me, horribly.   

  I have learned that when you finally find people that love you, and you love them back, you Must trust them: you must commit that to them; because, I guarantee there will be times you go through different experiences and you may not understand exactly the choices your loved ones are making, but you Must trust them to know that while you may not "understand" completely, you do know they love you, and you love each other, and you know they would never do anything to hurt you. 

 

I am going to leave you with the therapists closing monologue that talks about marriage, but just makes me think about how what he says just applies to life in general; and how when you set out to do something because it's the right thing and you have love driving you on.. You have only wonderful things to look forward to. I think about how for so long I was tied down to the life I had, and it wasn't till I moved to Texas and decided to marry and commit to the life I wanted for myself that  I really started living a life I can be proud of. Before, the relationship between me and my life was like one of the couples that never should have gotten married, I did things based on emotional decisions and none of them worked out.  The last thing Steve Carrel says is so true, and I am going to remind myself of it whenever I feel like giving up. 

 "I have patients who never should have gotten married..and you are not those people.. Even great marriages have terrible years. So bad that you're tempted to just give up. But don't. Hold on. There will come a time when you will look back at this moment as the prelude to something fuller and richer than you've ever dreamed."

That being said, I hope you are able to sleep well my dears and live the life you want. I hope so many good things to those that seek the better life. Hold on. There are always just bumps in the road, none of them have been in vain. Good morning my darlings and to all a beautiful day. 

The Flintstones Christmas Carrol

Good early morning my dears, it is still night out and admitably too early.. or late (depending on your point of view) to be properly blogging, but here I am regardless of any and all those factoids. Here I am a quarter gallon of ice cream down, two movies played twice over back to back, and just thinking. ...

Anytime I watch these children's movies, I love the cozy and comfortable feeling they possess. I don't know what it is so much that strikes me at my core when I watch them, but the best way to describe it I guess is I love the feeling of "home" I get when I watch children's movies or any holiday flicks I particularly enjoy (example Fred Claus.)

I spend time with family, but I realize I don't hold it in a place in my heart that when I reminisce about fun times, family get togethers pop up to mind. Why? Why don't I, I sincerely ask myself?... I do love my family, and I don't Not like spending time with my family.. So why don't family memories hold higher regard in my inner affections more?...

My aunt asked me if holidays when I was younger were fun, and I replied honestly no. I didn't have much of a social life, I was home schooled (not to say that automatically means I did no social activities) and I really had no lasting friends or typical social grouping with a consistent bunch of people my age, until I was about sixteen years old. So, any family shin dig was painful for me: I was shy, I knew nothing of pop culture or any similar activities to talk about or really do with any of my cousins, I was very self conscience about eating in front of people (not to mention growing up I was raised according to certain religious views not to eat ham/pork, which of course was inevitably the main/second main course of any holiday dinner.) So, summed up, family get togethers as a kid only seemed to confirm to me more so every year how isolated and different from everyone else I was, and I would spend the day rotating between living rooms and bathrooms, trying to sneak out to pet the dogs, and avoiding the kitchen unless I became so hungry I just had to at least pass through for something to drink. Now that I am older, I think how sad that is, I know that for many, the kitchen is a place of warmth and safety, a place of comfort and for family; and, the fact I felt I had to avoid it, makes me realize how blatantly now I see those were the things I was missing. I am not trying to wallow in self-pity nor am I angry at the way I was raised; yes, I recognize now, childhood holidays spent with holidays should not be spent that way, but.. it is what it is, and what it was... And to pull a paragraph from a book I am reading,
           "Of course, as a child, I couldn't see it that way. It was just embarrassing and painful to me- ... I can't tell you how much I hated it..... But now, at least to some extent, I can understand...I'm not saying that it was right. It left me with scars. It was hard for a child. But what's done is done. Don't let it bother you. One good thing it did was to make me tougher. I learned firsthand that it's not easy making your way through this world. ... I'm going to go on living one way or another. I think I can do a better job of it from now on, without such pointless detours.... I don't know what you want to do. Maybe you just want to go on sleeping quietly, without ever waking up again. That's what you should do if you want to. I can't stand in your way if that's what you are hoping for. All I can do is let you go on sleeping. In any case, I wanted to say all this to you- to tell you what I have done so far in life and what I am thinking. Maybe you would have preferred not to hear of this, and if that's the case, I'm sorry to have inflicted it on you. Anyhow, I have nothing more to tell you. I've pretty much said everything I thought I ought to say. I won't bother you anymore. Now you can sleep as much as you want."

Taken from the novel 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

So... trying to organize all my thoughts and put them together in a nice, neat package....

I remember not too long ago, I was spending time with the man I fell in love with, the man I am still in love with.. and he was heartbroken he had to spend a holiday from his  family.... And at the time, I didn't understand... My life never had experienced any reason to be hurt and sad to be away from family on a holiday: that was my reality, and like with most "realities" every individual is mistaken in believing their is the true reality... So, what am I saying?....

I told my aunt yesterday, well... more like asked her, "Wow.... I never thought about it that way... What must it be like to feel heartbroken over such a thing?... what must it be like to be torn up about Not being with family for a holiday?...."

And then I answered my own question:  I really do know what that feels like, because that's what it feels like to be away from the one you love.

So, my loves, I hope that whatever family you have or whomever is closest to you, you are granted the wonderful gift to be with them. Some just pray for their dream to happen, and for good to happen, but I hope that you are wise enough to Make it happen: happiness is worked for... and where there is hope there is trial. No, happiness is earned without trial.

All those seemingly simple things like home, warmth, and love that children's movies revolve around may Seem basic, but they are the hardest things to accomplish, and maybe nowadays everyone is too busy grasping at a bigger picture someone handed down to them, they've lost sight of what makes us all tick and why.....

Never forget, I won't, I can't. With much love and sincerity my darlings,

Read Riding Hood