Tuesday 14 June 2011

Free fall and trust

Image from Samma Samadhi
I will admit it.  I have a problem with trust.

No, not with the little things, like trusting someone else to make the dinner reservations or drive the car pool.  But with the big things.  Like trusting friends to be around when they say they will, or trusting in the universe to provide.

But most of all, I have a problem in the whole idea of trusting someone to take care of me, when I need help.

I won't go into the reasons why.  There are several, and they have left me shaky in many ways. But the why is not important.  It's the effect that matters now.

I am about to leap into a free fall.  And it will involve trusting someone to be there, to take care of me, until I can get my bearings, and find a new direction.  And I am scared.  Really scared.

I love the man I am trusting to catch me.  My husband is an amazing person, a strong, gentle, loving, caring man.

And yet....it's freefall.

I'm scared.

Monday 13 June 2011

Midnight in Paris -- ahhhhhhhhhh

This weekend, I took myself to a movie. Now before you feel sorry for me, let me tell you, I love going to a movie by myself.  It's relaxing, I can focus entirely on the film, and I don't have to worry about whether anyone else liked it, or it wasn't their kind of film, etc.

A lot of the movies I've seen lately have been "okay, but..." kind of films.  As in "It was okay, but it kind of dragged a bit..." or "It was good, but they showed all the really great scenes in the previews..."  You understand, right?

Saturday night, I went to see Midnight in Paris.  This movie was NOT an "okay, but...." film!  It was not the stupid, trite romantic comedy the preview made it seem.  It was a "Wow, can I see it again, because it was so rich, I am sure I missed things" kind of film.

It was Paris (and better than that, part of it was Paris in the rain!)

  • It was the 1920's
  • It was Hemingway and Stein and Picasso and Dos Passos and the Fitzgeralds (especially loved Zelda) and...the list went on and on
  • It had a message that resonated - really resonated
  • It had dialog that WAS dialog, the way people really talk, with interruptions and  hesitation and misstatements -- rather than a script where lines are delivered (writer/director Woody Allen is a master at that....even if you hate his films --- and this is NOT a Woody Allen film in any way you would expect -- you have to give him credit for that)
  • The cinematography was beautiful 
Can you tell I kind of liked it????  

 It came out of the film festivals -- Cannes, to be exact, which explains the quality.   But in a world where movies so often mean violence and more attention paid to special effects than content, this movie was a wonderful treat. 

And I am so ready for a walk on a rainy Paris night, at midnight.....soon!  Soon!

Okay,.so here's the questions for you...
1) Do you like going to the movies alone?
2) What is the best film you've seen in the last 3 months?

And there is a give away!  A randomly selected commenter will receive a Paris gift basket (Unfortunately, sent from Florida, unless someone want to send me a ticket to Paris, so I can be really authentic and mail it from there!)

Ready to play? 

Wednesday 8 June 2011

The need to share

Let me say, I am not an eavesdropper. But sometimes you can't help but hear something....

I overheard a man telling another about some sad news he had just received...a member of his extended family had been killed in a car accident.  I wasn't trying to listen, but from where I was sitting, it was impossible to not hear.  After he shared the news, he explained his relationship, shared a couple of memories of the person. The other man listened, and said he was sorry to hear, and that he understood how hard it is to get news like that.  And then they parted.

The whole exchange took maybe 2 minutes.  But it reminded me how very much that kind of sharing is hard-wired into our lives as humans.  For as long as we can go back in history, there have been funeral rites of one kind of another.  And mourning.  And however it's couched in terms of the next world, the fact is the process is really for living.  It's a way to share and to be comforted in that sharing.

Decades ago in our culture, the exchange I overheard would have been unnecessary. People in his community/town/neighborhood would have known the relative.  And they would have gone to him, to express their sympathy.  Odds are, they would have known the relative who died, too, so everyone would have shared their stories and memories.

It's much harder now.  We have to find someone to share with...a coworker, a friend, an acquaintance.  Our blog readers. Or even a stranger, like I did when I started to cry in a restaurant a couple of weeks after my mom passed and the waitress sat down and listened.

I've found myself in that "stranger who listens" role a lot lately.  I've been giving away some furniture using Freecycle, and people are sharing their stories of why they need the items I have to offer.  I haven't asked...but I hear that they need to share, even though we are complete strangers. So I listen, because I can tell that these are stories they need to tell. And I am touched that they are trusting me with these pieces of their lives.

A few years ago, I wrote a post about how isolated we've become, and how most Americans have on average only about 2 people in their lives they can really talk to about important, soul-touching things.
So we share our sorrows -- and our joys -- in little pieces with whomever we find who will listen.

The question is, is it enough?