movies, movies

Amitodana is a large black dyslexic woman ex-Southern Baptist turned Buddhist pothead who comes off older (in her letters) than she is in reality. I got stoned and figured this out while editing a version of chapter twenty, the third of five letters by Ami's hand.

Tomorrow is my regularly scheduled writing night but tomorrow night is the second presidential debate and S reserved us seats at a viewing of it at the Long Center, and I wanted to get my hour of writing in for the week. Next Tuesday evening, I'll have just arrived back from Nashville (where, coincidentally, the debate is taking place), so I'm not sure I'll be writing that night either, but I'll have lots of time to write on the plane, or potentially will, if I take advantage of it.

Wow, my mind just wondered. I was thinking about C, whose name I can't remember, only that it begins with a C but doesn't resemble a name that would start with a C. The young model/actor friend of M's (from the dance) who told his father to say hi to me when he was visiting from California. There's nothing more to that.

S and I watched The Graduate a few nights ago. At the beginning, when he's on the plane, I got very claustrophobic feeling. Then I remembered I was high. Later, when he's in the pool in the scuba suit, I felt claustrophobic again. Why am I so claustrophobic as I get older. Of course it has to do with the pot, but it didn't always used to be that way. Is that the way I picture death coming? Feeling closed in and then slipping away? If that's what I think, it's a good opportunity to get comfortable with the feeling. When he was on the plane I was thinking about Paris, about my trip to Paris in March, my loooong plane ride to France.

Randy Reardon is supposedly afraid of flying but I don't feel like I've captured it yet. I've decided I will journal all the way to France, write about my claustrophobia if it strikes, describe the panic attack if I have one. It could be very useful for the book.

If my fear is based on death, I think I've approached my fear of death already and I don't really fear it in a fundamental way anymore. If the plane crashes and I die, that's the absolute worst thing that could happen, so there's nothing to worry about, right? I just hope it happens on the way home and not on the way there, if it's gonna happen!

I guess a bigger fear would be being paralyzed. So I'll state right here and now that, yes, you should pull the plug on me. Whomever, however, I don't want to be kept alive on a machine. (I'm glad I go that out of the way.)

I went to see Man on Wire a couple of nights ago. I had wanted to see it for some time, and I was afraid it was going to disappear from the movie theater by the time I got around to it, particularly since I'm spending next weekend out of town. S has become drastically conservative financially, will only go out if someone else is paying (except when he goes out for his Saturday night beer or two at the Chaindrive, but maybe somebody buys for him there -- he does have that charm or whatever it is that makes people want to treat him). I don't mind sometimes, but I like to go when I like to go and don't want to have to coordinate.

That's the best thing about our relationship, I think. We aren't boyfriends or partners or whatever; we don't have to get permission from each other. We don't have to answer for ourselves unless we want to, but we don't have to. I think it makes for a more comfortable and realistic relationship.

Man on Wire is a film about the man who tight wire walked between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. It's an amazing film. I'm not usually afraid of heights, but for at least a third of the movie my knees were jelly and my stomach was in my throat. It was exciting. It's a very well-made film, very stylized. I loved it.

Last night, M and I went to see a friend of hers do a reading at BookPeople, and afterward we talked about relationships, hers and my lack of one. In many ways I want a relationship, a "significant other," but it just doesn't seem to be happening for me, and I'm trying to come to terms with that. Then again, I'm going to Nashville for a boy, so we'll see what comes of that. I know I'm not moving to Nashville, so it has limitations.

Last week, S and I watched Carnal Knowledge. I had never seen it (nor had I seen The Graduate). S's writing a paper for his history class on Mike Nichols, or on his films, rather, or at least on those two plus Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It's for his history class, so he's writing the paper from some sort of historical perspective, the late 60s/early 70s, something like that.

Great film, Carnal Knowledge. The Graduate, too. But I liked Carnal Knowledge a little better. I love Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I hope that's in the queue. I've seen it at least once before, but would love to see it again.