Insta-Friend

Okay. I did my morning pages. I DID! All of them, all three long-hand. I’m not actually going to do the whole Artist’s Way program with the Pioneer – I’ve done it recently enough, thank you. Kicked my creative ass, but in a nice way. It’s sooo worth doing. But I’m using the group’s generated creative-wind-power to get me writing the real ones again. Jeez, for over a year I’ve considered my blog a version of morning pages. Know what? It ain’t. I KNOW people read it, and while I try to toss that knowledge out and just write, I can’t do it. I’m writing for an audience. My morning pages barely have ME as an audience. I don’t ever even go back to re-read – I would yawn myself right off the chair.

But I’ve already had a small Big Thought, even today, the first day back to ’em. Good to be back.

Thanks for all the fun comments yesterday – I love oddball names. Wendy – Porn-wise, I’d be SweetPea Sunshine. Hee! Alison – I LOVE Motorcycle. That’s hot.

And now, for the thoughts I had yesterday afternoon, full of chocolate and happy.

I walked down to my local theatre for a matinee of Capturing the Friedmans. It was a gorgeous afternoon, just a little too warm for my LoTech Sweat (but I wore it anyway – there, that’s my knitting content), and I did it the right way – hit the 7-11 in order to smuggle in an Orangina and some chocolate, arrived early, bought the popcorn and kicked up my feet and read the atrocious Bay Times. My local place is one of those older theatres, a second-run art house where the screening rooms have been subdivided into little thirty-seat rooms, cozy and small. Like being at home, but with popcorn and a really big-ass screen.

For a while, during the previews, I thought I would watch the whole thing alone (why does that inspire guilt? As if I’m not worthy, somehow, of someone running the projector for lil ole me….) Then another woman came in, and sat right in front of me. I never get that. Totally empty, and that one person will always sit too close. I was slightly irritated that I’d have to be considerate with my candy-opening noise, but I got over it.

The movie was intense. I hadn’t realized how fully the family had self-documented itself, from film of Arnie’s sister who had died fifty years before in childhood, right down to hours before conviction, filming Jesse fooling around on the court-house steps. What I loved about it was its shading. There was NO black and white. You leave the theatre knowing that something happened, but even within the immediate family, there was a sense that no one really knew the truth. I was ridiculously moved by the compassion the filmmakers took with the family and I cried when the credits rolled (one of the best parts of watching a movie by yourself).

I had blocked out, completely, the woman sitting in front of me. I took my time picking up my trash and depositing it in the can, but when I went out the front, she was waiting, holding the door for me. We spent the next three blocks talking. She had spent thirty years in prosecution, so had a very unique viewpoint. I’ve spent some time on the other side – the law enforcement side, the side that takes the very first call – that of the hysterical and enraged parent or the bewildered aunt or babysitter. But the movie placed us both right into the middle of ambiguity. And isn’t that the point?

It was lovely walking in the fast-dropping night with an insta-friend. Much eye-holding, much nodding, a wave goodnight of greatest warmth. It was one of those moments that are rare and shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t LET them be rare. It was so easily grasped and so needed after an emotional experience like that.

On a totally different, frivolous note, I have to admit a deep dark secret. Reno 911! is a freaking hysterical TV show.

Don’t tell anyone.

You deserve a glamour shot now. This is Christy’s nineteen year old cat, Sebastian. This is him playing.