Mess of Humanity, Sea of Pain

Coincidences.

I am a mess, as I keep telling you again and again.  It is a plea for help, sure, but since you don't know who I am, it is a rather empty yell.  But I figure it is universal, so maybe it has its own appeal.

Here are some fun examples.

Today I mucked about as I had predicted I would.  I didn't want to do anything.  And I didn't right up until the end.  By five, though, I was feeling rather derelict, so I got up from a nap and got dressed for the gym, and after a quick workout, I stopped at Faux Foods to get some things I needed.  While I was looking over the stand of mangoes and avocados, a pretty young girl caught my eye.  She was looking at me in a. . . well, you would not believe me if I told you about it.  You would have to see for yourself.  But young girls have a strange. . . I know I can't say it. . . but they do.  My (ex)girlfriends can tell you.  It is strange but it is true.  And I am Balthusian in my tastes and appetites for good or (mostly) ill.  That is to say, I did nothing to interrupt the strangeness of it.  I saw her again in another aisle and then again at checkout.  She was with someone I used to know, someone whose wife I had secretly gone out with before they were married when she was still deciding what she wanted to do.  He is younger than I, but not so much as he once was, and I have not seen his wife for many, many years.  But she was a beauty then.  I swear.

I am dim sometimes.  It took me more than a moment to recognize that this was his daughter.  Their daughter.  I looked away quickly so as not to catch his eye.  I did not want to go through all that.  They were standing two checkout aisles away, and from time to time I would look up to see her watching me.

Skip ahead.

I went home and showered and decided I would try to make the 6:30 movie at the small art movie house that has caught on too well of late.  It is almost impossible to get a seat on the weekends now, especially when a good movie is playing which is almost all of the time.  But "Moonrise Kingdom" had opened and I thought it would be the best time I could have if I went to see it.  And so I hurried and took a chance.

I got there just as the previews should have been starting.  There was no line at the ticket window and I quickly found a place to park.  This was a good omen, I thought, but when I got to the window, a sign said the movie was sold out.  I bent to the little speaker opening and queried the pretty girl inside, "Aren't you going to have one ticket left?"  She said maybe and hold on.  But just then a pretty older woman asked if anyone needed one ticket.  "I do," I said, and she handed it to me.  "I'll buy you a beer," I said, and she smiled.  "I'm only drinking vodka," she said as she headed for the door.  I fell in behind her.  Inside we looked around.  The place was packed, but I knew that if there was a table with a seat, I could ask to sit with them and chances were good that they would say yes.  The pretty woman who had given me the ticket walked down to the main floor and found the friends she had come to meet, and I stood scouring the room.  "You can sit with us," an older woman said, and her friend offered me the seat next to him.  I love life sometimes.  It is just that way.

And so I sat and ordered a big beer and looked about at the audience as the waiters and waitresses took orders before the movie began.  It was an older crowd, the kind who go to 6:30 art films in expensive funky clothing and drink bottles of chilled wine and a cocktail or two. And I liked them.  I liked all of it.  They were educated and somewhat cultured and polite and liberal and they drank and loved and maybe had a few drinks after the movie and then went home slightly drunk early enough to do no harm.  They were kind and enviable people who listened to NPR and read the New York Times on Sundays.  The traveled to interesting places and went to museums and and ballets and listened to classical music and jazz.  They were the kind of people "edgy" people make fun of for being tepid.  And I know what they mean.  But they are the people you want on your jury when you get popped for living your "edgy" life, and they are the ones you want to run home to when everything goes in the toilet.  I'm not saying I want to be with them on an intimate level.  I'm just saying they are the kind to give you a ticket to a movie and let you sit in a good seat that they needed have.  They were absolutely all right with me.

Then the lights went down and the movie began.  And from the beginning, all I could think of was Balthus and me.  The movie is an adolescent (is twelve adolescent?) love story extraodinaire.  And my throat was clenched for Kara Hayward's character from the start.

I won't tell you about the movie.  It is impossible, really, as it is with any Wes Anderson production.  It is quirky and stylized and wrong (read "perfect").  Before you go to see it, though, study up on Balthus.  You can see his influence throughout, I think.  It is a story of adolescent love, but it is something else, too.  Anderson reveals himself here.  And he outs others in the making.  And opposing the youthful love story are all the old heroes going south.  Murray, Willis, McDormand, et. al. looking much the same as the people who swelled the audience.

And now I'm home, wondering if a quarter bottle of scotch is going to be enough.  It isn't, I know, but I have other things to get me through, and I am too lazy to drive to the liquor store.  I plan on an early bed and an early rise.  Having let this day go by, there is much that must be done tomorrow.  And at that, I'm not much good.

And so I end up where I began.  You can't help me, I know, but you can think about it, and you can relate, and in so doing perhaps you can palliate my pain.  We are one, you and I, a mess of humanity in a sea of pain.

(Link)

Enjoy.