‘Spotless’
OK, so I have been forgetting to post it, but I went to see “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” on Tuesday. I had gone out and bought a bunch of jewelry-making shit (which so far has only yielded a pink-and-black necklace) and decided to see a movie (as I was dead tired and that was all I could manage that day).
I have to say thumbs up. It’s dark — much more so than the previews would lead you to believe. I just can’t stand Jim Carrey, or I probably would have loved it. Maybe give us an Orlando Bloom type to look at, and it would have been much more enjoyable. 😉
But it gives you a lot to think about — for as much as someone hurt you, do you want to eradicate them from your memory bank entirely? I mean, I shudder and snarf when I remember certain folks from my past, but really, even for as much as they broke my heart, they are a part of me (even if it’s the part that turned to gangrene and had to be surgically removed).
I ran into an old friend today. I still have a lot of unresolved hurt from that friendship, but I’ve been feeling like we were going to cross paths (it’s literally been years and hundreds of miles since we were close). Turns out that we live down the street from each other and work in similar fields. She seemed thrilled to see me (she approached me) and wanted my number. For a moment, I was taken back in time to a place where we were inseparable. And I wondered whether we could ever be close again — whether I should say, “You know, it really frosted my flakes when. …” or if I should just feel, “Hey, in a city of half a million people, we must’ve been destined to run into each other.” I don’t expect to be best friends, but particularly as Shan is preparing to make the move to Oregon, maybe I need as many allies as I can secure, even though nobody in this world can replace her.
Of course, there is always the hope that the old friend and I can just say fuck it, we’re here now. Let’s start over from the new places in our lives. And I don’t expect to be really close again, but it’s a lonely city and friendly, familiar faces are hard to come by.
Related, I keep getting calls from someone else who disappointed me. And I guess I can’t expect people to know when they’ve failed to meet my expectations (which were pretty minimal, but still), but another part of me is like, “How fucking clueless are you? I haven’t returned your calls for 10 months — get the goddamned hint!” It’s like I’ve really tried to make a clean break from everyone and everything that entered my life during that particular time — mostly because it was a conflicting series of heartbreak and numbness that did nothing but sap my energy and other things. It’s like I took the big eraser to those years — to those people — just like in the movie.
I was talking to my desiger today, and he was talking about someone who would have said, “Erase this!” in response to a particularly crazy story I told him about someone who asked me out recently (whom he can’t stand; nor can I).
I thought that statement was really eerie — I have always, always used as my coping mechanism the visual of a huge blackboard with a huge-ass eraser. Whenever I would be haunted by images of something hurtful or annoying or some other piece of mental clutter, I would envision myself writing it on the chalkboard, and I would slowly, deliberately erase the entire board until not a speck of dust remained. And the crazy part is that the nightmares would vanish — I don’t remember anything I “wrote” on the blackboard, and maybe it’s just that I entered some form of denial, but I really did wipe out some really traumatic memories. Between the conversation and the movie, it kind of unnerved yet comforted me that other people do — and want to do — the same damn thing.
In any event, insofar as making you think till your brain hurts, the movie’s an 8. Kate Winslet was hotter than Jim Carrey (and she’s so cute with her American accent and tangerine-colored hair), so I’ll go 6 on eye candy.