Brian talked about the weather, recently. I can't believe he beat me to it, but that's what happens when you take time off...
He's right, you know. It is fucking August, and the temperature as I write this is 81 degrees. At 5:30 in the afternoon, in Oklahoma. It should be fucking 101 or so, with 95% humidity if we are lucky, resulting in a heat index of "furnace of hell" or some equally applicable tagline. But instead, it is just pleasantly warm. I think I may even take my easel outside and work on a few things.
--->tangent:
I think about taking the easel outside a lot. I like the idea of painting outside at night, under a streetlight. I'm not sure why I haven't yet. But someday I will.
/tangent
Sera talked about things that make (made) her cry.
I am going to admit, the first time I ever cried at a movie, I was watching... (deep breath, are you ready?) the first Pokemon movie.
I'll let you all laugh and clean your monitors for a moment.
Ready?
Now that you are done, allow me to explain myself.
I had been watching the cartoon in the mornings, mostly because it was on at the time I was getting up, and it was the beginning of the Poke-insanity, before it got totally out of control. So I had the whole background, from the first episode on. I had watched the evolution of the relationship between the characters of Ash and Pikachu. And in the end of the movie, when Ash gets caught in the crossfire and turned into stone, and Pikachu tries so very desperately -- and I mean with all of it's little honest self -- to shock him back into life, refusing to believe that it won't work -- oh, man, I just came undone.
I had never cried at a movie before - ever. But it had to happen sometime, I guess.
The one that got me most recently was Spiderman 2. (everyone has seen this, right? If not, you might want to skip to the next section.) It was that scene where he had gotten the train stopped. When he leaned forward, and the people reached out throught the broken windows and the hands gently held him, I started to tear up. When they crowd-surfed him back through the train, and laid him carefully on the floor, my eyes were brim-full. When they all stood there, silent, and watched him as he came to, and they spoke to him,saying don't worry, you belong to us, and the little kids gave him back his mask saying don't worry, we won't tell; I cried. When Doc Oc showed up and they stood in his way, saying you have to go through us to get him, I cried more.
I'm tearing up now, writing this.
The sense of community is vital to me. And to see Spiderman, who was almost without community, being claimed, cared for, and defended by these people; these people who are essentially the nameless faceless crowd, the ones he risks everything for, all the time;
to see them all acting together in the sake of rescuing the hero the paper vilifies, daily; to see them seeing him and accepting him as the young man, frail and human, instead of the masked superhero, who is ageless and without other identity;
oh, my friends, I wept. Shamelessly, and without inhibition. Luigi, being the wonderful and nearly perfect boyfriend that he is, had napkins ready for me, and just held my hand and petted my head when I leaned on him. He knows I leak, sometimes. And he lets me wipe my eyes (and sometimes my nose) on him, if I need to.
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ok. I think that perhaps that is enough of that.
on to something else.
Sera also talked about baby elephants. Baby elephants are some of the coolest things ever.
Did you know:
- elephants live in matriarchal communities: the older females teach all the young ones what they need to know about life; they also drive out the males when they reach a certain age, for the protection of the rest of the herd.
- elephants cry.
- if they run across the bones of another elephant, they will drag them to a mud hole, and push them in -- they bury them, folks. Think about that one for a while.
- elephants can make sounds so deep we can't hear them, but that can travel for miles. They can communicate this way. We don't know what they talk about, but we know they talk.
- there are elephants that paint -- they choose the colors, and they hold the brush. And the art they make is better than some stuff I've seen sell.
ok. What next?
OH OH OH ! I can't believe I forgot to tell you!
Pretzel and Goat are getting MARRIED!!
Have I ever told you about how wonderful they are, separately or together? Have I ever told you the story about how they got together? No? get a drink of water, this might take a minute...
They both insisted (separately) that they would never get married -- Pretzel has been married/divorced, she was horrible to him. Goat has seen some hard times and love has not been kind to her either. So when they started hanging out together, we all thought that was great. Nothing serious, they said, we just like each other, think the other is cool. We just nodded, and smiled behind our hands.
Then they decided that they really liked each other, which resulted in those friend conversations with the rest of us about "I really like him/her; does he/she like me; I just don't want to do anything to screw this up;" etc, you all know what I'm talking about. (You've all been on both ends of this conversation, at least once. )
Then, oh my, they decided to date. Gasp. And again, we all just grinned and looked at each other. We all knew that they were falling for each other, completely, and that it was not only ok, it was great.
And then, they decided to move in together. They kept saying, it's nothing really serious, we can just live together, but we all knew how crazy they each were for the other.
When Luigi and I were driving back from Dallas, Goat called us, wanting to know when we would be in town. She said she had something to tell us -- the cat was fine, the apartment was fine , the computer was fine, she just had someting to tell us. We gave her our estimate, and when Luigi hung up, I said, "what's up?" And he said, "they're getting married. " (Have I mentioned how cool my guy is? If I can only get him to guess some lottery numbers like this...)
I said, "what?? " And he said, "that's what she wants to tell us." And I said, "how do you know?" And he said,"Betcha $10 I'm right."
He wanted to call her back and call her on it, but I convinced him to let her tell us in person.
And sure enough, that was it.
They sat on the floor of their apartment with us, glowing, grinning, totally in love, and for that minute, the whole world was set right.
If I was ever going to pick a moment that would prove the chaos theory, and fix everything that was wrong in the world; it would be the moment they looked at each other and they both knew, this is the other half of my heart, my soul, my life. this is the part of me that God made and then sent from me, to grow into another person. this is the person that will make everything, no matter how bad, terrifying or evil, something I can survive. this is the person that I love, above and beyond everything else in the world.
I can only smile, with my whole self, and wish desperately that the rest of us find something near to what they have.
