The Big Questions:

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

For my last night of freedom before school I went to see Must Love Dogs. It was really very cute. Had very good 80s flashbacks from pre-collagen replacement therapy John Cusack. I thought he might grow old gracefully. Why doesn't anyone tell these actors and actresses that the plastic surgery doesn't fool anyone! They just look like an old actor with issues growing old... Frankly, that make them seem even older to me. Anyway, he wasn't too weird in this movie. More the Say Anything... Cusack not the Gross Pointe Blank kind of Cusack.
Besides collagen-face, i.e. Cusack... I really enjoyed Diane Lane. She kept making faces like a friend of mine, Kara. She's really funny and it only made me love the character more. I also was a big fan of the dog, Mother Theresa, as well.
It was a refreshing look at love. Nice to see a movie about people who don't want the fantasy (grown men after women half their age) and the fantasy is actually everyone's reality... or is it their ideal reality? I don't know but she just wanted someone to love her and have breakfast with her on Sunday morning.
I think that really is the big perk of having someone to love. Just knowing that we won't have to work the next morning and that we will wake up and eat cinnamon rolls and drink coffee and watch cartoons makes us sleep better with that little smile on our face. Its almost as if we can't wait to wake up. I just love men who love cartoons. I think it has something to do with Saturday mornings sitting with my Grandpa... sooo relaxing. The breakfast routine is probably my German heritage. Too bad that the American crazy - open 24 hours a day 7 days a week- work ethic ruins so many of these moments. They exist though and damn they're good.
The woman in the movie (Sarah played by Diane Lane) had a big Irish family. Made me miss having family around. Then on the way out I saw a woman about my mother's age walking out of the theatre with her husband. Looked just like her from behind. She had her hands shoved into the pockets just like Mom and she had Mom's walk. I can miss them so much sometimes. Not having a big family and being lil' ole' me here in Iowa really makes me question a lot. Why are we all here? What is the purpose of life?
The big Paul Gauguin painting. Ironically enough that painting is really fitting for this movie in an off-beat sort of way. Here is Gauguin who leaves his family and is all alone on a Tahitian Island with his Javanese hottie, wallowing in the depth of it all until ultimately he killed himself. His ideal seemed to be the thing that sent him to his grave. Well, OK maybe it was the turpentine or the alcohol he drank but it was the choices he made or the pain of it all that made him turn to the booze.
This cute little movie had so many real to live senerios... The older man who has survived past his wife (the love of his life). The wife whose husband left her for a younger woman. The husband whose wife divorced him and took him for everything he had. The happy gay couple always there when the going get rough... The big family there to shove reality into one's fave. Then trying to re-group and continue to live and believe in love.
As I'm growing older and now that I'm marrying I think about the "what if"s... I think about the time that's continually passing and how I know I don't have this life thing figured out. Artists never pretended to have it all figured out. They always see the broad scope of things. That's why they are always depressed and in pain. Its salt in the wound that they see what people themselves can't see. Oh yeah, and some are just plain egocentric- actually I think artists are egocentric by definition.
Anyway, this is what happens when I go to the movies alone. I get to thinking way too much and end up thinking about some painting somewhere. Eventually, I start to think about death and life and living until I'm so into my thoughts I can't even fall asleep. Perhaps, I should stop while I'm ahead. I need a good night's rest for tomorrow. I have a feeling its going to be a difficult transition.