Strangers on a train

Whew, i'm back.  i've kept on thinking about things that might be worth blogging about...but i've been a little busy lately, and certainly a little tired...so i've just never managed to get my thoughts together with my time until right now, this moment.

First off, for the past 2 weeks i've been going to bartending school, learning about making drinks and stuff - definitely been having a blast,  but i've had to wake up around 6AM, a lot earlier than i am used to, so it's wiped me out a lot when i get back home in the afternoon. 

But now i'm here.

So which thoughts should i begin with for my first post in a while?  Let's start with the Metro.  i love the metro.  i love riding it.  i love going in a tunnel and coming out the other end in a totally new place.  i love the people on it, they're the best!  Last week i saw a guy reading Thomas Hardy start surreptitiously, but totally checking out this one girl who got on reading Henry James.  i saw a girl reading The Irresistible Revolution, which was just nice to see.  Also nice to see was the guy going through Deuteronomy - i'm not sure if he was trying to do the whole bible cover to cover or what, but it was cool no matter what.

but here's what i really like about being on the metro: that feeling of knowing just exactly where i'm going.  When you're a tourist, you have to carry around a book and a map with you so you know which attractions to see and where they are.  There's plenty of hurry-up-and-wait involved while you figure your surroundings out.  But i'm not a tourist here - i don't know the city like the back of my hand or anything, but i'm definitely not a tourist.  i'm familiar with the metro lines, where they go, what's at the major stops - so when i get on, i sit down take out my book, and keep a tally in my head of the numbers of stops we've gone through.  And when i reach my stop, i get off, quickly find the escalator to my next train if i'm transferring (sometimes running to catch it if i'm lucky enough to have it waiting for me), and i'm good.  i'm confidant, comfortable.  i know where i'm going.

Of course, we very seldom get that opportunity in life, knowing where we're going and how to get there.  But here's this one chance to make sure you've got it figured out.  And it isn't hard to look around and see who's ridden that line a thousand times, and who's just trying to get in to see the monuments.  i like to imagine the tourists seeing me and thinking, "Oh, we could ask him, he probably knows what to do."

On my more profound days, this is the part where i might try to find some interesting sermon-esque way of tying this all up with Christianity or something.  Maaaybe that we have confidence in living with Christ, so it's okay if we don't know where we're going?  Or we can take comfort in Christ the same way we take comfort in the things that help us know where we're going?  i'm not sure...i had a few more in the back of my head, but i'm not gonna do any of that.  i'd just be forcing it, it doesn't come naturally to me this time.  So i'm just gonna let it stay as is - i enjoy the comfort that comes from being one of those guys on the metro who knows what's up.  Feels good.  Nothing more complicated than that.

I just thought that ice tongs was the way to do it.

Wow, i did not realize it had been more than a week since my last post.

i haven't been on here because, although i've watched several movies in the past week or two, none of them have completely totally knocked me off my feet (the way, say, Titus did), so i was waiting for a collection.  Also, i've spent some time watching some TV shows, in light of the Emmy nominations announcement.  namely, catching up on Nurse Jackie and watching the first season of The Good Wife.  My parents told me that show was good, but i didn't have time this past year to keep up with it, but now i have, and it is indeed good.  i enjoy a good legal procedural, and this one manages to keep the characters in focus and interesting (similar to one of my favorites, Boston Legal, but on the serious side).

As for movies:

i finally rewatched Shutter Island, a movie that has now blown me away not once, but twice.  Its mixed and negative reviews must surely be from people who are stupid. 

The African Queen, with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn.  A really fun adventure movie (i would assume one of the first of the "adventure" genre as we know it today).  i was watching with an interesting perspective though, thinking, "In today's Hollywood, i don't think anyone could make a movie about a riverboat escaping Germans in WWI occupied Africa...and still manage to make it a bit of a romantic comedy, without it being lambasted as political incorrect and insulting in tremendous ways."  Yet we look back and view this film as a classic.  Interesting how situations reverse and flip and turn oh all sorts of ways.

Poltergeist - really exciting horror movie from the early eighties.  Written and produced by Steven Spielberg, though not officially directed by him.  However, many have come to believe Spielberg to be the de facto man behind the curtain, and those familiar with the look and feel of Spielberg's movies (especially the earlier ones), can easily see his thumbprint all over this movie - with the possible exception of the final sequence where suspense and supernatural thrills turns to all out horror (coffins popping up out of the ground and skeletons falling out, all in the mud and rain, etc etc).  Really well worth the time for an example of how a movie doesn't have to be a scare-a-minute kind of scary to still work.

A Passage to India - David Lean's final movie, another epic.  This time set in India (obviously), it is, as Lean's work always is, incredible to look at.  As with Doctor Zhivago, it's difficult to avoid getting sucked in and immersed in all the sights and sounds...but then again, why would you want to avoid it?  That's the experience!  This movie is benefited by a better story than Doctor Zhivago, focusing its energies on the class system of British Imperial India, and the friendships and relationships therein, rather than on a romance.  i can't think of much to say specifically, except that it has held up really well over almost 30 years, is fascinating and enjoyable. 

Finally, i've been continuing in my viewings of Woody Allen movies, still enjoying them immensely.  Of particular note is Zelig, a faux documentary about a man in the 20s and 30s who had a particular chameleon-like genetic trait, allowing him to develop the features of those around him, and therefore, blend in.  (For instance, when standing next to Orthodox Jews, he grew a beard almost instantly.  His skin color would even change around African and Native Americans.)  it sounds absurd when i simplify it as such, but it was really amusing and interesting.  A psychiatrist (or psychologist...) played by Mia Farrow is determined to help figure out his condition and help him control it.  Between the lines, it's a movie about learning to be comfortable with ourselves as we are and not feel the need to conform to whatever seems to be the easiest way for us to get by.  Taken on that level...well, it was a really great film.

That's it for now, i guess.

shalom, y'all!

a father's love

So this weird thing happened at the gym the other day.  i saw a guy, a dad, working with some free weights, and this guy looks like he takes his weightlifting seriously.  i could tell because of his special weightlifting gloves and belt.  he was with a kid, i assume his son, who looks...let's say 10th grade?  And the dad is teaching the son the ropes - basic lifts and lifting technique.  i know the son is new at this because there's about a 30-40 lb. difference between his weights and his dad's (and even i'm using about 10-15 lbs. more than him, so that's really saying something). 

But the funny thing wasn't that a dad was teaching his son about lifting weights.  It's that he just seemed so stinkin' happy about it.  It was all acted out like a scene from a movie, but a cheesy movie where the facial expressions are so transparent that i feel somewhat confident in the story i created to go with them.  The dad looked to me as if he was thinking how proud he was of his son for choosing to do this thing that he loved - happy that his son was following in his footsteps.  He even pointed out some other (totally ripped) guys at the bench press as if to say, "Look at them, son.  You could have muscles like that some day.  You could life that much weight some day.  Just stick with me and I'll show you how."  But...as wonderful as that sounds, there was something off about the whole thing.  Because behind that happiness and pride, i felt that i almost detected a certain gratefulness.  Grateful that his son was choosing to lift weights like his old man, instead of, oh i dunno, join the chess team?  take ballet classes?  go to cooking school?  be a member of whatever the opposite political party is?  or what have you...

i'm sure the son wanted to be there, or else he wouldn't have been there (because in 10th grade, we don't do things we don't want to do, or at least not without being a jerk about it in the process).  but i couldn't help wondering, what if he didn't want to be there?  would that father still have been as proud and jovial? 

Now i add the extra layer to this.  Curiously, at the same time i was observing all of this and creating the little backstories (which again, i feel confident in, because the scene really was awfully cliched), a song by Jason Upton came on my ipod called "Come Up Here," in which there are very few actual written lyrics (as Upton has a tendency to improvise in his worship songs...like, a lot), but among them are, "Come up here, come up now/ My beloved, my beloved," which i took be a reference to God's proclamation at Jesus' baptism that that was his beloved son, with whom he was well pleased.  And, without trying too hard to judge the father in my story, who i am certain loves his son very much, i could not help but see the juxtaposition and contemplate on unconditional love and wonder if the portrait i saw of fathers and sons in the gym actually displayed it.  Or were those weights actually strings attached to the father's heart?  Was it a conditional love?  i have no reason to believe it was anything but unconditional, and i certainly hope that's exactly what it was.  i have been lucky fortunate blessed to have a father who loves me all the time because of/in spite of all the things i am and love, as well as a Father who loves me even more than that!  i guess when i was at the gym, i was reminded of that...and i hope that kid has the same blessing in his life, even if he puts the weights down.