thumbs
Every time you blink, you cut your life into the frames of your life's movie. Your waking day and your dreams are your cinema of the familiar, the routine and the surprising.
Like any film, particularly one as long as a lifeti me, there are the story lines that you recall with vivid, reaction eliciting clarity. Entire scenes, pivotal for you or sometimes for the players before you, play over and over as you attempt to understand them, their subtext and their importance to the tale. There are images, moments; a kneel and a velvet box, a back turning away, a baby's first shivering gasp for air; that sit you straight up in your seat. The baby breathes. For a second, you don't.
In hindsight, your thumbs up and thumbs down evaluations shape who you are. What you edit out reveals a bit of who you are. What you keep reveals even more. What you share even more still. You affect your audience with the stars you award.
This morning, as I began my commute, not twenty yards from my driveway did I see a pair of lovers tucked into the corner of an open car door. They kissed joyfully, the girl smirking perhaps laughing out of embarrassment at the traffic inching past. They didn't seem to want to stop and I smiled for them and at them. They did not notice. Nor should they have.
Further along, at a stoplight on Olympic Boulevard, I saw a woman probably in her 60s, a daughter, stroking her elderly, wheelchair-bound mother's white hair. They were waiting for the light to change so that they could cross the street, daughter pushing mother. The tenderness made me take notice. The daughter's black sweater and rust colored skirt. The mother's navy coat and slowed expression. At her age, this stroke was welcomed.
Walking to dinner, I passed a retirement home in front of which is a small putting green. A black woman, elegant in creams and tans toyed with a golf ball while her husband sat and observed. Her grandson retrieved the dimpled balls that had wandered onto the rough. She looked shy. Her grandson was young and handsome.
To kiss. To touch. To be kind. For me, these are the moments that I clipped from the reel today to be archived and re-released when I find myself reviewing my past. There are plenty of scenes that star me and my cohorts, but sometimes, the final cut includes the inadvertent exposure of real moments for real people in a world that can sometimes seem less a tour de force and more a force of habit. Though they may never read the review, I give those real people four heartfelt stars and a standing ovation of gratitude. They remind me that passion and care exist in the world. Two thumbs up.
Like any film, particularly one as long as a lifeti me, there are the story lines that you recall with vivid, reaction eliciting clarity. Entire scenes, pivotal for you or sometimes for the players before you, play over and over as you attempt to understand them, their subtext and their importance to the tale. There are images, moments; a kneel and a velvet box, a back turning away, a baby's first shivering gasp for air; that sit you straight up in your seat. The baby breathes. For a second, you don't.
In hindsight, your thumbs up and thumbs down evaluations shape who you are. What you edit out reveals a bit of who you are. What you keep reveals even more. What you share even more still. You affect your audience with the stars you award.
This morning, as I began my commute, not twenty yards from my driveway did I see a pair of lovers tucked into the corner of an open car door. They kissed joyfully, the girl smirking perhaps laughing out of embarrassment at the traffic inching past. They didn't seem to want to stop and I smiled for them and at them. They did not notice. Nor should they have.
Further along, at a stoplight on Olympic Boulevard, I saw a woman probably in her 60s, a daughter, stroking her elderly, wheelchair-bound mother's white hair. They were waiting for the light to change so that they could cross the street, daughter pushing mother. The tenderness made me take notice. The daughter's black sweater and rust colored skirt. The mother's navy coat and slowed expression. At her age, this stroke was welcomed.
Walking to dinner, I passed a retirement home in front of which is a small putting green. A black woman, elegant in creams and tans toyed with a golf ball while her husband sat and observed. Her grandson retrieved the dimpled balls that had wandered onto the rough. She looked shy. Her grandson was young and handsome.
To kiss. To touch. To be kind. For me, these are the moments that I clipped from the reel today to be archived and re-released when I find myself reviewing my past. There are plenty of scenes that star me and my cohorts, but sometimes, the final cut includes the inadvertent exposure of real moments for real people in a world that can sometimes seem less a tour de force and more a force of habit. Though they may never read the review, I give those real people four heartfelt stars and a standing ovation of gratitude. They remind me that passion and care exist in the world. Two thumbs up.
posted by Katie at 12:52 AM
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