In my defense, I didn’t know Midnight in Paris was a Woody Allen movie until the credits, and by that time I was committed to Paris and, of course, Owen Wilson.
In many ways, it was a typical Woody Allen romcom, with a bumbling hero who finds love with a beautiful girl. Differences: Not the girl you expect, and Wilson is bumbling because he’s trying to find his path in life, rather than clownishly neurotic. Wilson brings a sweetness to every good guy he plays that just salves my inner wounds.
In the course of the movie, Our Hero meets artistic and literary idols of the past, who live up to their reputations but (with the possible exception of Hemingway) seem like actual people you might meet, early enough in their career that they’re unaware (with the definite exception of Dali) of their greatness.
Even the inevitable moral-of-the-story speech by the hero felt sincere — or, as Hemingway would have said, good and true and fine.
Woody Allen, but highly recommended, even so.
My nails this week were supposed to be Once Upon A Time, but I’ve jumped that ship, so I changed my mind. Maybe I shouldn’t have: This was one of those Manis From Hell. I couldn’t get a good pickup, I messed up reverse painting, I dropped two (count ’em, TWO) polish brushes, one of them hitting my comfy pants. I’m not happy with how they came out, but I was DONE.
The Totoro plate is from mundo de unas. The leaves and raindrops are from Maniology’s M278. All the polishes are Maniology. The base coat is Tutu Mele, the Totoros are Folklore, the Totoro white bits are Bam! White, the umbrellas are Fireside, the falling leaves are Poison, and the falling raindrops are Inkidon.
Here’s hoping next week goes better.
A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: A change of mind and/or heart.
MA
Michael Hodges
April 4, 2022 at 9:27amMy son adored the younger sister from the movie Totoro, always said “She’s funny, and she’s just like a little kid would be.” He said this at a surprisingly young age, being a little kid himself. And that was a large part of Miyazaki’s charm: little things we recognize that lend substance to the world. Hayao Miyazaki paid attention.
A change of mind and/or heart . . . Your prompts DO always make me think, woman! Whether I stop to weigh a thing or recall events and moments all in a flash because you’ve spurred memory, you make me think, and I like that.
A change of mind and heart:
I suppose I’ve been passionate many times, and in a fashion, I have loved many times for there are degrees of love, all united by the act of giving. In the truest we give not just of ourselves, but give ourselves over. I know that sounds slavish or obsessive. Perhaps in a marvelous way it is, for in my truest loves I have learned to be a slave to Trust and Acceptance, to acknowledge that there are things in this live more important than ever I shall be.
So I have been passionate many times, and loved in many ways; but I have been what I call in love, that is what we consider romantically, twice.
Both ended badly for me. This is perhaps less because of the act of “losing” someone, more because of the aftermath. When one gives over to Trust and Acceptance, one agrees to lie naked on the table, blemishes, spots, pimples, moles, skin tags, warts, that one weird hair that’s like a pig bristle, smells in crevices, fat where we wish fat wasn’t, boniness where we wish there was an appealing curvature — the works . . . and all the ugly stuff we feel doesn’t work.
It’s quite beautiful, really; especially if someone else Accepts with that capital A, gratifying our Trust with it’s capital T. We feel beautiful. We ARE beautiful. And we feel loved, feel safe.
For me, lying naked on the table means opening up my skull and sharing my brain with all its odd wrinkles and folds and peculiarities. I don’t know whether it’s child-like or childish, the way I open up all the torrent of babble and I-can’t-seem-to-stop, but I invite a person into my world fully. Every meal, every step, every star in the sky, every question. I want to know them, what they think, and to share what I think. I want to see and to hold, sometimes to discuss and other times just to breathe.
I love that place where I can speak, or I can listen, or I can just be present, breathing.
I love when I can sleep with someone, like sleep that good sleep, nap the good stuff, the drugs of Morpheus and rest and contentment, like waking up from a rainy Sunday nap that only lasted a half hour and gave you energy for a thousand years.
But as I said, both times ended badly for me.
They changed their minds, you see. Whatever the reason, whatever the scope, they changed their minds.
And I’ll tell you what, I thought I was going to die. Coming from a place of starvation, having grown up with virtually no love in my life, I believed i would die. Everybody fears hunger, but nobody fears it like the person who has starved before, who knows famine.
And because I am who I am, because of how I have twice opened my world as fully as any blossom can unfold, twice my world has been inhabited by ghosts who wailed loss and fear and whispered to me all the monsters of the deep.
It IS, after all, very like being pushed out of a boat far in the middle of a trackless nowhere, watching someone wave goodbye while they mouth things like I’m sorry and I wish there was something I could do to help. But the boat keeps chug-chug-chugging away, whether into distance or into fog. Maybe both.
And I thought I was going to die.
I remember treading water. I remember days when there was nothing under my legs, remember nights filled with stars that sang songs with lyrics like Remember When…? and The Way We Used To Do…
I remember unseen things brushing up against me in the ocean, and the way my arms and legs grew so tired and heavy.
In the course of my life I’ve heard people use the phrase haunted by the past quite a few times. That phrase is misleading, you know. We’re not haunted by the past. We’re haunted by the things we haven’t yet come to terms with.
I swam and I swam and I swam.
I swam until I heard waves instead of a haunting susurrus. I swam until I touched bottom and could stand. That part took a while, because I had to remember how to stand; but I did it. And when I walked onto the shore and looked up, the stars were finally familiar. They had the voices they’d spoken to me with all my life, and not someone else’s voice.
When I could look at the stars and she was no longer there, I knew something had changed.
it was my mind. I had changed my mind, deciding I wasn’t going to die after all. I’d known it all along, of course; but there’s rather a difference between knowledge of the mind and knowledge of the guts. Academicians may or may not know this, but those who raise the dead certainly do.
I’d gone into the waters and died there.
I’d walked out whole, something of me having died. Or maybe simply having been shed.
I’ve definitely changed my mind about a lot of things, a key one being what I really need in order to love. Turns out I only needed me, no matter how many others I invite along for the ride. So I reckon there’s that.
Marian Allen
April 4, 2022 at 3:10pmCharlie and I met after we had each given up the pursuit of romantic companionship. Imagine our surprise when we found it in each other! A part of me did die when I lost him. I thought it was the best part of myself, but I’m finding that he left me a great deal of that; it was just hidden inside me, where life with him planted it. <3
Dan Antion
April 4, 2022 at 8:47amI hope yo can save your comfy pants – oh the horror of falling brushes,
I love “ Woody Allen, but highly recommended, even so.” It’s pretty much how you have to couch any nice comments.
I hope you have a great week.
Marian Allen
April 4, 2022 at 2:59pmThanks for the good wishes. I just got my second COVID booster, so fingers crossed I don’t have too bad a reaction. 🙂
Dan Antion
April 4, 2022 at 3:12pm🤞