the month of august

The last few weeks have been full of scattered incidents, connected only by the fact that they were experienced by me. So as much as I like to categorize things, this summary is going to lack a theme. Which is actually probably a good thing, because I'm starting to realize that my worst moments arise when I want to do two things at once--to experience things, good and bad, that are beyond explanation, and to make sense of things. I think I need to loosen my grip on the second to ever come close to the first.

So, things that happened...

Collateral: My dad fell asleep, but I loved it. There are so many good movies about New York City, but until this movie I couldn’t really name one about Los Angeles. I love that it drew on negative aspects of the city—its disconnectedness, traffic, crime, darkness—to somehow make the city more appealing than the typical sunny California depictions. As rarely as I really become consumed by things in my own life, it’s so easy for me to get swept up in fiction. I was so immersed in the floating, detached atmosphere that the movie created. When the characters connected under both natural and unexpected circumstances, I felt such relief. I didn’t even realize until then that I’d been tense (maybe because when you feel a steady flow of any one emotion for a long enough time, it all ends up feeling the same—numb). And purely visually, Los Angeles has never looked so beautiful on screen.

Kristina's Annual End-of-Summer Birthday Party: My fifth installment of the running series of Kristina’s parties. I think it all hit us that we are really moving in different directions now, because everyone was out of town and who knows where the three of us will be next summer? But the dynamic is such that I don’t miss the old but I don’t long for the new either. I’m just happy with what we’ve been, how we are now, and what I think we’ll be later. Even though we talked seriously about what’s been going on in our lives, we fell back comfortably into the same conversations we’ve always been able to have, about the Real World and music and people, and into the same things we’ve always done. Ate ice cream downtown, sifted through pictures, drove around, watched a movie, and ate her mom’s famous dip.

Movin' Out: The show itself was really disappointing, both un-musical like and un-Billy Joel like. But the best part was racing through the streets in our semi-formal wear to the theater (why do we always end up running whenever we’re in San Francisco?). The storyline was nonexistent, but the idea of moving out reminded me of something I recently saw on the highway, that I told Victoria and Richard about in the BART station after the show. In the traffic heading home from work, I was driving in the next lane behind a compact family car, fairly normal looking—except for the woman stretched horizontally in the back, sleeping next to a fully open rear window. She was atop a bunch of mattresses and blankets so she was nearly touching the roof of the car. When I noticed this, that’s when I realized the car was stuffed in every corner with the family’s belongings. Then I moved ahead alongside it, and I saw two pairs of kid-sized feet pressed against the window, also close to the roof of the car. Apparently the children were also lying on top of the possessions they had in the car. I don’t know why, but long after I passed it, I couldn’t stop thinking about that car. Sometimes it’s still disorienting for me to have one life on the West Coast, and another on the East Coast, which I think everyone experiences with home and college. I’m not more or less materialistic than the average person. I’m just used to thinking of myself and my life in terms of locations, and in terms of the things I have in these locations that recall experiences I’ve had. But here’s this family, with everything they have in just one car. Everything that matters to them is with them—this would probably be true even if their car weren’t full of things, but that image just made it visible. I wonder what it feels like to go anywhere and feel like everything you own is with you.

Garden State: One of my favorite movies of the summer, and tied with The Professional as my favorite Natalie Portman movie (I still can’t believe I didn’t know that was her until this year). Everything came together so beautifully—the characters, writing, scenery and music. I loved how Natalie’s character felt so much and Zach Braff’s character felt so little, so opposite but somehow I related to both of them.

What’s more interesting about the movie, though, is that it confirms a running theory of mine. Remember how the black cat in The Matrix signifies the matrix because Neo saw it twice? Well, I’ve decided that in real life, Audrey is a sign of the matrix. I’m going to get to how this relates to Garden State. Before we saw the movie, we had lunch, and Audrey talked about how a 35-year-old millionaire paid for lunch for her entire Japanese class because he’d made a fortune in his twenties off something connected to Amazon and is now retired. So now he does things like take summer classes to learn Japanese. I said that I didn’t think I could handle going through something like that because I’d be so bored and directionless with all of that money and nothing to do and to work towards. Then, in Garden State, there’s a character who’s gotten rich by inventing silent Velcro, and who now lives in a big house with no furniture and is feeling exactly the way I had just told Audrey I would imagine I’d feel in that situation. When Zach Braff asks the rich guy what he’s been up to, he says, “Nothing. I bought a lot of stuff, but yeah…nothing.” So, maybe that was a coincidence. But then, in the car on the way to the movie, I mentioned that I didn’t know how to ride a bike, and Audrey said that that made her feel better because her boyfriend had said to her that every normal kid grows up riding a bike. And I replied that I don’t know how to do a lot of that normal stuff—for example, I said, I also didn’t know how to swim. Then, in Garden State, Zach Braff’s character can’t swim and by way of explanation he says, “There’s a lot of normal kid stuff I missed out on.” And something else less direct—a few days before the movie I was listening to Coldplay’s Parachutes album, which I hadn’t played in awhile. So I was listening to “Don’t Panic,” and I was reminded of something Audrey said senior year. She was upset or stressed over something; I don’t remember whether it was an actual incident or just a general feeling, but then she said she drove to school listening to Coldplay, and their singing about how we live in a beautiful world made her feel all right again. When we went to the movie, Victo went to get seats while Aud and I went to the bathroom. When we entered the theater the movie had already started and the first thing we heard was “Don’t Panic.”

And this isn’t the first time this has happened. One time, during lunch at work, I read an article about writers finding their voice, and later that very same day, without my bringing it up, Audrey talked about her voice in writing essays for school. And in LA, she asked me whether eye color was a Mendelian trait because she really wanted her kid to have green eyes. A couple of days later, at work, the people at my lab randomly start talking about the genetics of eye color. Not only that, but they were trying to figure out how green alleles are passed down because one of them has parents who both have green eyes but her sister has blue eyes. So I’ve concluded that Audrey—the person who said that The Matrix stole her idea—is the black cat in my make-believe reality.

Since I brought up Coldplay, something I just noticed—maybe it’s just because a lot of people like them, but they remind me of so many people. They remind me of my brother Stephen because of our mutual love of “Yellow” when it first came out, and of Vicki because of the night drive to her house that I talked about before, when Aud was playing it. I also gave Steph the guitar tabs for that song for Christmas. They remind me of Victo, who gave me both of their albums the day right after I’d been trying to download all their songs. They remind me of Sarah, who briefly visited me in Boston freshman year after going to their concert, and who told me that "In My Place" was my song long before I fell in love with it. And they remind me of Amy, who played their CD in Peter’s room in the beginning of sophomore year, when we were still settling in and no one was really busy. Another reason why I love Coldplay on so many levels.

The Olympics: I’ve been faithfully watching NBC’s nightly coverage for the past week. I have no idea where I was during the Sydney games because I don’t remember watching any of it, and I’ve always loved the Olympics. I was especially excited for this year’s games because classes like Alexander the Great and Rome of Augustus have endeared me to Greece even more (for awhile Melkis and I contemplated abandoning all else for Classics, haha). It just seems so distinct and apart from anywhere else in the world. The gorgeous aerial views they keep showing on TV convince me all the more that someday I want to spontaneously pack up and live there for who knows how long.

Work: For the past month it’s been intense and exhausting. But even without the hoped-for results, it’s been really good, continually interesting and challenging. Only one week left, and only a little over three weeks before I go back to Boston. I want to spend the last week before heading back blissfully bumming around, but administrative details keep coming up. I have to get my eyes checked, my teeth cleaned, and my hair cut.

But in exactly one week I will be flying to Hawaii. I’m still sad that the Curiosa Festival is on the same day I leave…but I can’t wait to see my brothers, to see Hawaii for the first time, to wade in warm ocean water, and most of all to just be somewhere different.

empty house

Coming home to my empty house this past week has not been much fun. I've never been so bothered by solitude before. Thank goodness for best friends, older brothers, and cable television.

I saw the second half of Crazy/Beautiful on TV the other day, and I didn't like it very much, but after Eternal Sunshine and this movie, Kirsten Dunst has won me over. Her natural innocence really contrasts with the emotional experience she gives to the characters she plays. Her face used to seem bland, but she does so much with it and sometimes, at certain angles, she's really beautiful. Her plainness is deceptive, which makes her more interesting than someone who is obviously not run-of-the-mill. I like that people are complicated in such a way that it's really possible to change your opinion of them. I've never wholeheartedly believed that people can change who they essentially are, especially after a certain point. But I do think that some characteristics tend to overshadow others, and it's nice to re-see people when this proportionality of their personality traits changes, and they seem completely different.

Real comfort, though, at least for me, comes from re-seeing things I liked and connected with the first time around. Sarah is a continual presence, and I never question whether I'll still be talking to her twenty years from now. The same goes for everyone else I've seen this summer; I'm just mentioning people I've seen during this somewhat lonely week. Since high school ended, my friendship with Victo has continued and grown as it always has, and spending time with her is always natural and comfortable. I like that we can take care of ourselves and each other at the same time. We saw Pieces of April which was really good and made me want to live in New York City even more. The scenes of Bobby riding through the city were so real and surreal at the same time. And I love dysfunctional family stories. We also saw Love Actually, which overall I didn't think was memorable when I saw it in theaters but I enjoyed the same little things about it as when I first saw it--the minor frustrations and feelings that only seem to matter to yourself at the moment. It's comforting to see the same stupid stuff you do acted out on screen--the Prime Minister's slap-on-forehead moment after giving a dorky wave to Natalie, the guy walking and stopping and walking after Keira Knightley realizes he's in love with her, Sarah's giddiness after she and Carl kiss for the first time, Colin Firth's jump and stomp after he gives the cab that he desperately wanted to an old lady (I obviously don't remember the names of all these characters).

And yes, I like Ashlee Simpson's first single. It seems to suit my recent mood, as I'm half-enjoying the up-in-the-air quality of the current state of things and half-waiting for these things to finally fall into place.