hit girl in a green sari…

girls always make me cry. i’m gonna find a way to let the boys make me cry though. just you wait and see. so the other night on Letterman, Julia Roberts was the guest star and she was on the show to promote her new film Eat Love Pray, which opens next week. sometimes you know something is going to be so good just from a few strands of information that leak out. catchy scenes in movie trailers are the main thing, but often, a keen interviewer will extract something bigger than ANY scene in a trailer could ever do to sell a movie. Julia and David have been friends for a really long time. what kind of friends? i don’t really know. they probably go out for dinner after he interviews her on his show but has she ever had him over for Thanksgiving dinner? i doubt it. still, there is a really strong heart connection between the two. David loves Julia. and she loves him. it’s a mutual respect kinda thing.

so they have this nervous tension thing going on too. they make eyes at each other. she teases him about his hair (which i think looks great because he’s letting it grow out a little bit). and then they start to talk about the new movie and she asks him if he’s even seen the whole thing. (as if he would LIE to HER!?) then he let’s the cat out of the bag. yes, i saw it. and i was moved by it. she tries to get him to say which scene in the movie “moved” him… and goes on to describe the setting of several different scenes that she thinks were “powerful”. no. not that one. no. not that one. and he says, i don’t want to give it away. i don’t want to ruin it for anyone. and she says, “was i in india?” yes. “was i wearing a green sari, standing on a rooftop?” yes.

and i’ll tell you. i don’t know what the hell happened because i have not seen the movie. i have not seen anything but the trailers. i have not read the book. but there is energy in the air about this movie. you could feel the emotion emanating from David. it was bouncing between them. it was vibrant. it came through my t.v. screen and i freaking started to cry. god dammit i’m crying now just remembering seeing these two people dodging bullets NOT describing this scene from this movie. how can this be????

and i read today that Julia Roberts has converted to Hinduism. she has become a practicing Hindu. she goes to temple at least once a week to chant and meditate. and she takes her children. does that NOT sound like she has found a guru and is going to an ashram??? omg, i cannot WAIT to see this movie. i wish that i had the patience to read books. because i would read this one. i need to be messed up inside by a holy revolutionizing love story and by god i think this movie is it.  if anyone wants to go see it with me, i’m going to the late show next friday night at the cinearts in pleasant hill.

so i watched another movie last night. a movie that made me laugh (really hard) and cry too… a movie that makes absolutely no sense. by that i mean, that it makes no sense for a man my age to find humor or tragedy in a crazy movie made for teenagers. the movie is called Kick Ass and it’s about a loser geek boy that decides to fight bullies in his town. it’s a story of the hero, really. which is great. but it’s told in an and unbelievable outrageous fashion. this is not meant to be a review or analysis about the film though. there is one character in the film that touched my heart. an 11 year old girl named Mindy, but some reason that was unclear to me she becomes a super hero and calls herself Hit Girl. i’m getting really scattered in my meaning here. it would be better if i were to write this more like a review, but i don’t want to.

so there are shades of THE PROFESSIONAL in this relationship this little girl has with her father. (part of my problem in describing this to you properly is that my copy of the film was really pretty bad. the sound was out of sync, so it was hard for me to concentrate fully.) In The Professional, a young orphan girl sides up with a professional hit man in Paris and takes on a bad cop/drug lord. he teaches her how to kill with guns. it’s serious drama. Kick Ass is comical, but there is some real heart felt relationship drama conveyed, sort of. it’s all fantasy, ok, i admit it. but this little girl is so freaking cute. she is TINY and wears a super hero outfit that is too large for her so there is something more mythical that is conveyed through her angst. she walks tough. talks tough. and looks at you through her crooked mask with a mean and angry glare that makes you think someone smashed up her dollhouse or something (this is where i’m lacking details because of the poor quality of my copy of the movie).

she comes into this room full of gangsters and does these clumsy acrobatics wielding guns that are too large for her to hold and shoots them all dead. i swear to god, it’s enough to make any grown man proud of his little girl. or in my case, proud of a little girl that i wish that i had. and this is where my story becomes deeper, and more private. and i’m not sure i’m ready to talk about it here yet.

it’s easy to feel sympathetic for girls though. girls have a power to move the hearts of men. something about the love of a father for a daughter. the wanting to protect. the watching over, the guiding… i don’t know of such experiences because i have never fathered a daughter. but i have a longing to. i can’t understand it. where has this desire come from? why is it something i feel some sense of identity with? why do i identify with it when i read about it in stories or see it in movies? i don’t even know anyone that has daughters. not entirely true, but essentially true. i have no one in my life that i am close to that i have seen the daughters of live and grow.

except once. i had a girlfriend in 1997 when i lived in Santa Cruz. she had two teenaged daughters that i got to become friends with over a 10 month period. and it was lovely. one of the richest human experiences of my life. it all was. the girlfriend especially, but the family-like intimacy melted my heart. i am so grateful that i got to see what that felt like in real life. but missing it creates a longing in me.

and see, this is where this is all going… to the talk about boys. to the talk about the heart of boys. about what boys want. about what boys feel. this is hard for me to go into because this is where the real me is going to come out. this is where the real self examination is going to occur. in this looking into my self. into analyzing MY mind. my heart. my wants. my needs. my desires. my fears. my boy. me.

through my photographic obsession with girls in cemeteries i have exposed the boy inside of me. you see what it is i desire through my images. strange isn’t it that the girls in my photographs don’t speak… they stand. they gaze. they reach. they search. but they don’t speak. well, one girl spoke. once. not sure why i have never asked any other’s to speak that way again. maybe it was because Brenna spoke so clearly for all of you. but the girls want boys. even the girls that like girls want boys. we all want to create a balance in our lives. we want to fill the missing half of our psyches. and we do what we need to to fill this emptiness that makes us lonely and depressed.

i have my cemetery girls. i have my collection of lifeless dolls that i can have imaginary conversations with. but i sleep alone. i’ve heard of married couples that are buried next to each other, side by side plots. i wonder if there are any couples that loved each so much that they died together and were buried together. in the same coffin. embracing. i wonder if there is anyone that loves someone so much, even alive today, that desires their partner so much that they want to be buried with them. and can you imagine what it is like, you people reading this that have partners, that sleep with someone every night what it is like to sleep alone? to spend your life sleeping alone? if i took out a calendar of my life i bet i could calculate with pretty decent accuracy the amount of times that i’ve actually slept the night with another person. ok, lets do a rough calculation right now. i’m 51 years old. that is approximately 18,600 days of life. i was married for 7 years. that’s 2,555 days b

ut as some of you know, those were not 7 wonderful years so i’ll say that maybe 1,800 of those days were spent sleeping with her. yes, i slept alone a LOT of that time. then 8 months with Deirdre in Santa Cruz = maybe a lucky 50 nights together? i remember one other woman i slept over night with in the back of her car with her dog at Goat Rock. (THAT was one of the greatest spiritual experiences of my life.) so i’ve slept alone 16,749 nights. tonight will be number 16,750. what have YOU done 16,750 times?

and what am i doing now? sitting alone in front of a cafe on a street where couples and families walk up and down the sidewalk after their saturday night dinners and dates. there is no one alone in sight. and do i seek any one? no. i joined okcupid. hate it. can’t stand the idea of trying to find someone and going through all of that hassle of getting to know someone. prove yourself worthy of their time. no, i like alone. i remember love though. i remember the feelings of falling in love. just a few short years ago. it was short. it was fast. thank god it did not last long enough to sink it’s teeth into me and ravish me, although the little bit of poison it got into me was enough to derail my life for 6 months. and well, the memory of it’s sting has me frozen even now from ever wanting to let it happen again. (Rachel S. you know who/what i’m talking about. *sigh*).

i’d love to be back in love with my guru again. i’d love to be blinded by her magic again. i just don’t think it can happen. oh, and as for the Ramadan fasting? i’m not strong enough for it. body or mind.

more about boys, soon. i promise.