Only May

This week I've experienced the two extremes of the work-day: The Day That Flew By and The Day That Dragged Ass. Today was one of those days that just felt like it was never going to end. I was exhausted and cranky by lunch and the end of the day saw me examining the bags under my eyes in the bathroom mirror. I felt like I was trying to wade through molasses in my cute, summery heels. But oh, oh Tuesday and Wednesday disappeared before my very eyes. One moment it was 10am and I was having my toast and marmite and the next it was just about 4pm and I marvelled at the fact that leaving the office on time was a reality.

It was funny, because my partner in crime felt it too, felt the day being whisked away. For some time now, she and I like to say the date very slowly while looking intensely at each other. "Woowww - today is MAY twenty-first... Maaaay... twenty-FIRST!" It feels like our season just started the other day and now... now we only have five more weeks left of it. People have said to me that it feels like I just started, when really, I started six months ago. My job at work usually has me thinking and planning for a week ahead, so to me, it's pretty much June. And June means the end of our peak travel season, which is the end of my busy times at work, which potentially means me not working in the office over the summer (because, let's face it, even though I'm awesome doesn't mean that there's much business sense in paying me to sit around and tell people to recycle better), and THAT means that I get to buy plane tickets and fly over oceans and greet people with hugs and oh-em-gee I should probably start thinking about dates and buying those plane tickets NOW.

*wheezes into a paper bag*

Sometimes, the speed at which life moves scares me.

This is, for the most part, how my brain works: quickly and unnecessarily, aka jumping to conclusions. I don't know that I'm not staying in the office over the summer; I'm just making that assumption based on some random pieces of information I put together from conversations I had with three separate people. And this is probably one of my greatest weaknesses: my affinity for making things up and masking it behind l'aire du sense. When really, it makes no sense at all to make myself worry for no reason. I don't know anything, but I hope lots.

All too often I lie in bed, awake at night, and muse to myself about more than what's going to happen at work the next day or what my plans for the weekend are. I tumble through the flurry of mind-bytes that wonder what my life has become, and what it will be - what am I doing, where am I going, and how am I going to get there? And if I don't feel like I belong in any of the situations that I currently find myself in, nor the ones I've made for myself, then surely it means that I must not belong anywhere. And if ultimately I am going nowhere, then what the heck is it that I am doing in the right here and now? Lying awake in bed has suddenly become one of the more terrifying activities I've ever engaged myself in.

Amidst all the fear and worry of a future that lies so uncertain before me, there is a gentle, timid hope that wants to grow stronger. As much as I can't fall asleep for all my pessimism, I'd like to think that it is mostly my optimism that keeps my body and spirits up at night. I may play scenes from my past that I desperately want to re-live, but I also create ones that I hope will come to meet true life soon. I calculate invisible money and purchase non-existent tickets to far-off places in the world. I can feel laughter and taste colour. In my mind I make art with skills I don't have, I hear music that hasn't been written, and make love to a man I don't know yet.

I take a deep breath and count my lucky stars. So glad that it is just only May.
10:35 PM

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Mainstream Movie Minded

I'm notorious among friends for being particularly clueless when it comes to pop culture. I don't go to the movies often, and when I do, it's to the indie theatre to find obscure films like my darling favourites, The Motorcycle Diaries and Millions, or Amal and The Diving Bell and The Butterfly. The friends who really know me typically don't invite me out to see the big ticket movies at the local Googleplex theatres and only upon either high, high recommendations or a simple desire to hang out will I go to see something a little more mainstream. I admit that I never meant to be a movie snob, and I'm decidedly not - it's just that I don't seem to care for making the efforts to be caught up with Hollywood in any way. Despite the indie-movie persona I've managed to give myself, I do try to watch something every now and then so that I can at least keep up with some of the conversations in the lunch room at work.

In my defense, I will say this: At the theatre last night, I noticed something while watching the trailers before our feature that reminded me why I don't want to see any of the blockbusters: they all look the same. Take Terminator, Transformers and GI Joe, for instance, the three trailers I saw last night. Robots, killing, blowing things up. I could have been watching one trailer for one very long movie for all I knew - if there wasn't a break between them I wouldn't have been able to tell them apart. Now, I don't really have anything against robots and blowing things up - unless it harms or kills people, which I don't prefer (unless they're evil).

Take for example, Wall-E, which I saw because friends highly recommended it to me and knew that I would love it. Now, there's a movie all about robots and the bleak, bleak future that I ADORE. I only saw this a few weeks ago and AWW!! Robot love has never been cuter. Whenever I watch a human couple do the dance around a relationship, I'm more annoyed than anything at how our inherent ways never fail to bungle up a relationship. I think I'm quickly becoming a fan of animated, machinized romances.

And with a simple desire to hang out, I saw Star Trek last night, and I'm pleased as punch that I did. I've never been into science fiction, or movies about space and alien species in the future and I admit to only having watched half an episode of Star Trek during a class in high school (the one where they meet a race of beings that don't have genders - it was supposed to prove a point and incite discussion over ...something). Anyway, I found myself enjoying all two hours of it - mostly because I developed a Spock crush. Kirk is great and all, but I'd choose those dark, mysterious, un-feeling Vulcan eyes over the blonde-haired, blue-eyed bad-boy any day. Also, have you SEEN Zach Quinto when he's not Spock? He may have been cute in space, but HUBBA HUBBA. He's like young Spock meets young Pierce Brosnan who can really pull off a good pair of geeky glasses. I have a new reason to start watching Heroes.

So there we go - indie movie snob no more! A robot movie AND a space movie which had lots of things blowing up. I may have liked them for funny reasons, but hey, at least I'm keeping an open mind.

10:57 AM