This is just the phase of nothing-makes-it-better. And it feels like you are back-tracking. Letting out the slack….like Jimmy letting Karen believe she’s getting designer gowns…and coaxing her down the sidewalk….ushering her along…..confusing her….the whole time he’s trying to smooth out the inevitable….
No one cares about anyone. No one wants to be the bad guy.
Could it be that the highway calls to those of us who have nothing left to hope for? And isn’t that the dream…? To leave it all behind you? To get in your car and drive the stretch of road that will take you all the way until the pain subsides? And when you get to that motel the whiskey takes over where the highway left off. And there’s always somewhere new to go. You can leave the past behind daily. Until it catches up with you somewhere and somehow when you least expect it. And then you’ve got more heartache than you started with. And where do you go? What do you do?
The message here is universal. “Crazy Heart” has something for us all. Some of us are better at escaping/coping/being functional in this world where sometimes there is no happy ending. But there are moments of clarity when we are faced with a choice. And if we make the right one, things get better. Lighter. Bittersweet.
Scott Cooper’s “Crazy Heart” is a story of being reckless. And soulful. And cool. And incidentally broken. And if you wallow in that brokenness…productivity and art might become unnatainable. And sometimes mistakes irrecovable are made.
Jeff Bridges plays Bad Blake, a fifty-something country musician past his prime, but soulful and intending to keep going. Because he has nothing else to do. And no money. And you feel the notion of barely hanging on. Some of us never know that notion. And some of us do. That is the magic of this film. Bad Blake is a poet. An interpreter of the inarticulacy that pervades our deepest concerns, when we let ourselves go there. But in true Shakespearean style, even poets have tragic flaws. And what to do then? What do any of us do?
This is a movie that reaffirms the heart. The hardships. The broken places. You will leave with a poignancy and an inner reflection. Or maybe not.
First morning of the new year. The sun is shining and I’ve opened all the blinds. I remember how much I love the natural lighting in my little home!
Lounging on the couch drinking coffee and flipping through magazines. “Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami” reruns on.
Soft boiled eggs for me and my doggies. Fresh vine-ripened tomatoes with sea salt, cracked pepper and basil.
I think I’ve been given a fresh start. I am ok with things in this moment. I am ok with me. And anticipatory…
Happy 2010.
The only thing to do is to go where there are people.
The biggest, oldest, richest, most-full-of-people place. Where everything smells good. And everyone is beautiful.
Especially during Christmastime. When you should be merrily memory making… With warm lighting. And rich food. And belly laughs and hold-you-tights. And I’m so thankful for you in my life… Bollucks.
Not everyone thinks like this. But heartache, and even heartbreak, will do this. It will have you walking alone through crowded places. To be inadvertently involved in myriad conversations not your own. To be a part of human………interaction. When yours has been thwarted by the confusion of prematurely aborted love.
still typing…
me: I know. The thing that frustrates me
me: is that I can be so level-headed in so many areas of life…
Marin Kennedy: yeah…
me: but when it comes to love
me: …i can be a nutjob!!!
Marin Kennedy: LOL!! Dude, totally!!! Me too…
me: WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?
Marin Kennedy: nothing is wrong with you.
Marin Kennedy: you’ve just been hurt a lot and there’s more at stake when you’re older…
me: yeah..but he doesn’t know that. All he sees is a big flashing “nutjob” sign!!!
Marin Kennedy: LOL! you don’t know that Jules… guys don’t think like we do…
Marin Kennedy: he doesn’t think the way you do about yourself…
me: I guess…
Marin Kennedy: Remember that illustration we heard once in a sermon?
Marin Kennedy: it’s like you’re riding your bike and someone else comes up along side you and begins to ride with you and you’re both just going in the same direction together?
me: Dude…my path isn’t a straight path…it’s crooked…
Marin Kennedy: LOL! Then his probably will be too!
I leaned my hip against the conveyor belt platform. Might as well rest a sec. It wasn’t moving. Nothing was moving. Except the thin, white-haired man at the check out who was counting out his payment in change. “Eighty-five, ninety-five, six dollars.”
The cashier was picking up each coin one at a time. “Sir,” she stammered. “The total was $13.51.” He curled his upper lip over his gums and repeated, “Thirteen fifty-one? No, how can that be?” The cashier, who could be about sixty herself, hit a few buttons on the check-out screen and a receipt tape advanced. She tore it off and showed it to him.
“Well, the Virginia Slims were six fifty and the Marlboros came to five seventy-five and with tax…” her voice trailed off as she held the receipt up to him and waited for a response. I stood staring at him, watching him process the figures. I rolled my eyes as far back in my head as they would go. I secretly hoped the stems of my eyeballs would rip and I’d cause a big scene with blood pouring from my eye sockets. “It’s his fault!” I’d scream. “It’s 2009! Why is he paying in change?! Why doesn’t he know what he’s doing?!!! Why isn’t the ‘You’ve-exceeded-the-time-limit-in-the-10-items-or-less-line’ alarm going off????? WHY???????”
Instead, the younger man in line next to me begins a conversation. “What’ya thing of Obama?” He says. “I hear another stimulus package is going out. But you know it’ll go straight to the automotive companies!” And then he laughed through his nostrils.
“Be nice.” I thought to myself. “You be nice to this man who is obviously unaffected by the two idiots holding us up. He is attempting to be jovial with you. Be decent!”
“Gosh,” I began, forcibly ”I don’t even know anymore.” I tried to smile. Looking beyond him I see the white-haired man handing the cashier the pack of Virginia Slims. “How much will it be if we take this off?” he says. I want to stab myself in the heart with an ice pick.
“Wait!” she exclaimed, popping her torso into an upright position and grabbing his hand. “Before you continue that thought we have to establish some roots of friendship.”
His blue eyes peeped at her beneath his thick, brindle lashes. Pink lips apart, he sat astonished at being interrupted while in the midst of such loftiness. The milk steamer on the espresso machine launched into full-on screeching, foam-making mode. Coffee patrons in the background stood straining their necks to read the myriad latte concoctions. She let go of his hand. He took a sip of his coffee. Intrigued though, he smiled and nestled back into his chair, intertwining his fingers in his lap. “Alright,” he said.
“See,” she began. “if we don’t make some kind of connection before we talk about politics, then when you say what I sense you’re going to say and I feel like punching you, I won’t. Because I’ll remember that we have a deeper connection. I want to care about you first.”
Donning a toothy grin that squinched the outer corners of his eyes handsomely, he leaned forward, smoothing his beard. ”Well,” he replied softly, looking right at her, “what do you want to know?”
I think my love life is done.
My story has been written. The book is closed.
Bummer…
Does that mean I should have married I, or J, or C…? No. They are as they should be.
I am stuck. Stuck between remembering being loved. Loved.
Loved.
Loved.
Loved.
And being the object of non-reciprocal inclinations towards….
the ones my nonsensical heart picks.
For whatever reasons. For reasons I can’t explain.
I don’t even want them right now
for family picutes at Disney World.
That might never be my life.
I just need them.
“I need to use you,” I’ll say.
Just pretend for a moment that I am yours.
And let me be comforted by you.
And then we can go separate…
You have your crazy ways.
And I have mine.
Sometimes
a girl just wants to be held.
Ugh. This is when I hate being single.
Sometimes
a girl just feels exposed. Like she needs a giant rock to hide behind. Or a thick coat to wrap around her.
Shielding her from…nothing really. Just the feeling. The tricky, slippery, comes-on-for-no-reason feeling that maybe she is unsafe. That maybe things won’t be ok. That maybe this ache won’t go away. That maybe she is alone.
Sometimes
she just needs a chest to lay her head on. To close her eyes against and feel safe inside of…
Arms. Tight, soothing away that ache. That’s all. Just a few minutes. Doesn’t even have to be a boyfriend.
Sometimes
I just want to ask strangers. Men I don’t know. Or even ones I do. “Could you just hold me for a few minutes?”
It could be their kind deed of the day. Like walking an elderly person across the street. Or picking up something that someone dropped. An act of compassion. A humanitarian effort.
Sometimes.
I went to church this morning for the first time in a long time.
This is nothing monumental. It just means I chose something good, rather than something selfish. Everyone has their reasons for not going to church. Mine were two parts laziness. One part frustration. I’ve grown up in church. Various churches, in fact. I’ve had good experiences and bad ones. This is nothing new.
The hill I got tired of attempting to climb was the same hill I encountered during high school. The hill of popularity and coolness. Usually I’d climb that hill and end up on a train back down it. A swift retreat from all of the crap, that may or may not be just in my head. I realize that I am a sensitive person. But it really ticks me off.
Nevertheless. I’ve just come to conclude that I am a bonehead for not having gone to church. I have missed listening to the Word being taught. And singing collectively to the God who has given me more than I can even realize at this moment.
And the very message I need to hear is that I am loved for who I am. And that is the very message of the God who gave up so much for me.
And people are either friendly or fake. And that is life. They are not one or the other all the time. And neither am I. That is being human. But it’s still a struggle of mine.
Some people are friendly / but they’ll never be your friend / Sometimes this has bent me to the ground… -Rich Mullins
At least I’m not alone in my thoughts…
The point is though, and it’s the point whether or not you go to church. The point is that there was a man who was born on this planet about 2000 years ago. And history tells me that he said some pretty radical things. But I don’t know that I would have been one who was moved by his radical claims.
I’ve known since I was a little girl, broken at a young age, who Jesus of Nazareth is. He is the dream I wanted to wake up to every day. He is the one who never tires of my personality, because he made me this way. He is the lover of the not-so-stable, not-so-cool, not-so-’with it’ people. Who struggle. And feel ashamed. And desperately, desperately want to be loved anyway.
I wouldn’t have been the one on the side of the crowd, listening to him teach people. I would have been the one to run screaming to him. I would have been like Lazarus’s sister who was so full of grief that she took off for him. And who he caught as she fell at his feet sobbing. And he would call me sweetheart.
Because He Knows My Heart I am Never Alone
I’ve got it in me at thirty-two
to be reminded You don’t change.
If I’d been there long ago
in some Jewish town
I’d have made my move.
Nosing my way
Through the multitude,
slick minnow jerks separating cloaks.
Their dusty thickness blocking out the sun.
I am not outwardly lame
or blind
or bleeding
but I belong there.
Years of not being heard
stretching out my throat.
You heal.
