Daily Archives: July 26, 2010

The Girl From Yesterday

Memoirs

Once in everyone’s lifetime a critical moment is reached with a significance that has a life-impacting effect.  For some, it is a bush with death that brings about this feeling; for others, it is the realization of something previously unknown; for me, it was the moment I asked out the girl of my dreams.

For over six years Anne and I worked in separate departments of the same hotel, yet we always seemed to share lunch or dinner together in the hotel’s employee cafeteria.  During these meal breaks, we shared intimacies with each other few other people had ever shared with either of us.  Many times, these breaks went over their allotted times because we were too deep into the conversation of that time.  Whenever I left her, I went back to my job wishing I could have spent just one more moment, even one instant, with her before having to part from her company.

Over those six years, I agonized over the realization that I could never garner up the courage that was required for me to ask her out.  Over the years I made simple, yet believable, excuses that served to convince myself that the timing had in fact been wrong each time I let an opportune moment pass me by.  Sometimes I told myself that she wasn’t really interested in me; other times I told myself that there had to be someone else involved with her because she was way too beautiful to be going home alone each and every night; and then there were times when I convinced myself that she was worth waiting for just the right moment.

But that moment never came.  We continued to have long, interesting conversations where I found myself fascinated by anything she had to say, even if she was reading to me from the phone book.  For those six, long years, I never made a move or said the words that reflected how I truly felt.

It was at the end of this waiting period, at this nexus of false hopes, that I realized why I could never truly ask her out.  I was so scared of being turned down by her, of discovering she truly didn’t want to become involved with me.  I was living in this make-believe world where my fantasy woman was waiting for me to say the words that would bring us together forever.  Calling her on my fantasy just might show me how little I really meant to her.  Then I would not only lose our intimate conversations, but my fantasy would die right along with them.  I would be left with nothing but a shattered, six-year dream.

However, after six years, I told myself I could wait no longer.  I was only fooling myself with this illusion, and it needed to be fleshed out or dissolved once and for all.  So, in one of our friendly conversations, I took the big step and asked her out.

There’s no denying the fact that this was the most difficult thing I had ever done.  I was a military veteran who had stared death in the eye on more than one occasion, but I would have gladly gone back to those moments rather than to have been there staring into those beautiful eyes as they looked deeply into my own as I asked the question.

My palms were sweating, my stomach was turning, and I could barely form coherent sentences.  She appeared so natural before me as I came to believe I was talking to her from another planet through a tunnel that seemed to stretch forever.  Even when I said the words I had to say, I couldn’t be sure I was saying them in the right language.

But at that moment, I fulfilled a destiny that I had been considering for over six years, a destiny that would have haunted me the rest of my life if I had not taken that simple, yet brave step.  I had asked out the girl of my dreams, and no matter what happened, I would never live to regret the fact that I had let the opportunity of my life get away from me, that I had wimped out where I needed to be strong, even if I didn’t feel that way when I accomplished the task.  Planets could form or die, but the mission of my life was completed; I had done the one thing I might never have attempted, and my future could only be an easier task for it.

In the end, Anne never did go out with me.  She told me she would get back to me with an answer, even sounding positive as she said it.  But in essence, she never did get back to me, and we did grow further and further apart after that moment.  The one thing I did fear might happen, that she would turn away from me and I would lose our precious moments together, actually did happen.  However, this didn’t bother me as much as I thought it might.  When I first considered this possibility, I still believed that there was a chance between us, the fantasy still going strong in my mind.  Yet, when she didn’t respond positively, I no longer craved those moments together; our precious time no longer seemed precious to me.

On that fatal day, a large part of my life died.  For six years, I had dreamed and faltered, always hoping for the opportunity to make my dream come true.  However, my only regret was not that I had asked her out and lost her companionship for the rest of my future but the fact that it had taken me so long to ask her and bury a dream that had no substance in reality.  Even as I still see those beautiful eyes in my memories, I can look to the future and the belief that there is someone else out there who will find me the suitable choice.  I can only imagine the tragedy of having waited another six years only to discover much later that I was waiting for a dream that wasn’t going to happen.

The Road–a movie that shows that they can still make decent films

Movies, , , , , ,

Last night, I finally got around to seeing The Road. For those of you who don’t know, the movie is about a dystopian future that stars Viggo Mortensen (best known for The Lord of the Rings) as a man who has survived some type of holocaust with his son. Together, they are trying to reach the coast where the father believes better chances of survival exist. The world as they know it is bitter, cold, dark and unforgiving. People are predators to the point where you really can’t trust anyone, even if they appear to be trustworthy. The story becomes one of survival and family, in a way that the much earlier, yet similarly like premise 1975’s A Boy and His Dog, staring Don Johnson, attempted to portray. Whereas the earlier movie became campy, The Road never falls into that childish type of narrative, maintaining throughout the Cormac Mcarthy vision of the future being a surviving daffodil in a desert of horrific surroundings.

It was one of those movies where I kept waiting for “Hollywood” moments, but they never appeared, and I was so glad to see that. The hero’s wife/girlfriend (never made clear) was played by Charlize Theron in a very demure role that shows both how important and insignificant it was all in one cloak. She only appears in flashback scenes, but it was so obvious that her character is with the hero throughout the entire movie, and her lack of appearance throughout any of the present moments makes her character all that more powerful. There is a scene involving the finding of a piano in an abandoned home where her presence in a previous scene playing the piano becomes so much more poignant because of that earlier moment. I’ve rarely seen a movie that is capable of pulling off such a juxtaposition so that the viewer is so aware of the importance of the symbolism of a few played musical notes.

The scenery of the movie is practically a character all on its own. I was seriously reminded of a computer game, of all things, and I’m thinking specifically of Fallout 3, where you wander the wastelands of what’s left of an alternative reality’s dystopian Washington, D.C. It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t played that game, but there are moments in the game when the day starts to turn to evening, and the world starts to turn very grey. That is the sense one has of this movie, in that every scene was of that eternal evening from the game, where things can pop out at you at any moment, yet remains centered in reality, where the fear is all that does show up, and mostly the wilderness is empty and uninviting.

There are a couple of cameo actors who show up in the movie that really feed into the narrative. One of whom is Robert Duvall, who plays a very old man (claims he’s 90, even though the main hero doesn’t buy it). It’s a very small part, but with so few actors appearing in the movie, it becomes that much more powerful. Another cameo that shows up is a gang member played by Garret Dillahunt, who is known in sci-fi circles from the various roles that he plays, most significant being The 4400 and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. He has a very small part in the movie, but it was probably the one moment where I couldn’t help but notice who the actor was, something that doesn’t happen with any other character. I guess he’s a little too typecast from his previous roles because I had a hard time separating him from the other characters I’ve come to know. But such recognition did not take away from the fact that Dillahunt is a very good, seasoned actor, and the part that he plays is very important for that moment of the film, and I honestly don’t think too many other actors could have pulled off that one, crucial scene.

What was most important about this movie is that it is probably one of the few movies ever made that has been capable of portraying the emotional feeling of despair, because that is the one thread moving throughout this entire movie. The future the movie inhabits is a horrible one, but the main character never gives up, convinced that he will bring his son to a better world, even if he has to travel the length of the world to find it. There is a huge scene between the hero and his son where the whole “don’t you know what I’ve done for you” gets rightfully translated into “we’re both in this, not just you” from a crucial dialogue delivered by the son, Kodi Smit-McPhee. Up until this moment, I just saw him as “the kid”, and it was this moment where you realized that the stellar acting was not just limited to the adults.

Sadly, they don’t make movies like this any more, or at least they don’t make enough of them. The last few years have been dismal in movie-making, with some of the crappiest movies ever released being thrust upon the viewing public with outrageous ticket fees. This movie goes up against the blockbusters of this era and promises great things, while the reality of our own dystopian present reveals something much worse because the movie did not do very well. It was almost a footnote in the releases of movies, with people avoiding it like a bad Megan Fox movie (okay, any movie with Megan Fox would probably qualify as a “bad” Megan Fox movie). One can hope that more movies like this one get made, but unfortunately, I don’t think it made enough money to cause Hollywood to think twice about the tripe that it tends to release as major releases.

I highly recommend it as it’s one of those movies you probably won’t get to see very often.