Cycles

As I pulled into my driveway this morning after running errands, I saw two impatiens blossoms, white and open as full as any jazz trumpet, waving in the morning breeze to greet me.  Add these gracious hosts to the still vibrant lilac blooms on the butterfly bush by my back gate and the lurid pink mouths of the sweetheart roses near the door, and no one would believe we were midway through October.

These flowers and their extravagant shocks of color woke me up this morning to an idea that's been tickling at my brainstem for awhile but wouldn't quite come into focus until now.  I've been thinking so much about timing lately, about seasons, about the cycles we follow by rote, the ones we follow blindly, the one we adhere to without even realizing they exist, and the ways those cycle dictate a life to us that may not be the one that is most authentic to us as individuals.

Katherine Anne Porter wrote: “There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own.”  


If she is right--and my life over the last couple of years certainly dictates that she is--and we are all living lives of almost pure chaos, then our feigning rightness, order, and certainty must be a huge part of what contributes to humankind's general unhappiness.


I have many friends in the throes of crisis today, personal, professional, internal, external, tangible and intangible, and at the heart of all of that suffering--and at the heart of my own--lies an overwhelming need to do what we all feel we "should" as opposed to doing what we want.  I keep wondering what it is that has convinced us all that we don't deserve the joyous lives we envision for ourselves, what keeps us running around the track, chasing a mechanical bunny that never slows down, that always eludes us, that never ever ever satisfies.


And then, I think about my flowers.  The rose and butterfly bushes are perennial, meant to return each year, but they are both far past their blooming season, and by all practical calculation the impatiens, an annual flower I plant each spring because their bobbing blooms always seem like nature nodding yes to me whenever I want to scream no, should really be dead by now.  But they're not.  These flowers aren't adhering to any cycle that seeks to see them wilt, die out, shrivel, or go underground for another year.  These flowers are blooming--blooming!--right here by my door, reminding me that the only limits to my own blossoming are the ones I set for myself.  


Today, I choose color and life and beauty, joy and brightness and blooming.  I hope you, dear reader, do the same.

Sympathy for Delicious

I just finished watching this movie, while also dyeing my hair--get ready kids, it's way redder than intended--and I cannot recommend it enough.  The movie, not the hair color.  Though, I am happy with both.

Sympathy for Delicious is Mark Ruffalo's directorial debut, he also stars in it. I've been wanting to see it since I first read about it months ago somewhere I can't possibly remember.  The basic premise is that Dean "Delicious" O'Dwyer, an up and coming dj, is recently disabled and seeks out the world of faith healing as a means of coping.  Christopher Thornton, who plays Delicious, also wrote the screenplay, and while I had not heard of him prior, I am now completely impressed,intrigued and maybe a touch obsessed with him.

Thornton had been a working actor for some time when, at 25, he was in an accident that took the use of his legs.  He was unsure of his future in acting, but six months after his accident he was cast as Estragon in a production of "Waiting for Godot."  He played the role in his wheelchair and was so astounding that he won a Drama-Logue award for his performance.  In 2000, he played the role of Hamlet and received incredible reviews; he is the only actor known to have played that role from a wheelchair.  As a former actress and current director, I can only imagine the limitations that must have caused, but I am also fascinated by what amazing freedom that would have given an actor to rely so solely on his face, his gestures, his inflection.  Imagine if all you had to communicate your rage, your terror, your love was your face and arms, your tears and hands, your voice...incredible.

It's stories like this one--Thornton's and the one at the heart of the film--that simply humble me within an inch of my life.  I have been through quite a bit of personal trauma over the last few years, but it pales in comparison to the revision of life that must take place when something as fundamental as your mobility ceases to be what you had known before.

The film speaks to me on several levels--it is a story of personal failure, redemption, faith--both losing and regaining it--but it is fundamentally a story of what it means to be on the road to figuring out who you are, not always liking that person, but knowing there is no other damn road you could possibly be on.  Juliette Lewis--who most recently blew me away in the film Conviction (another totally worth the price of rental)--was brilliant as a drug addled musician trying to connect to anyone who would see her, and Mark Ruffalo's priest intent on being a bright light in the lives of his Skid Row congregants was understated and powerful and sexy as always--that part's not integral to the film, but Lord is that man attractive.

I am learning to let my life unfold before me with no plans or expectations because I am learning that no amount of perceived control ever feels as good as the genuine surprise and gratitude that stems from things working out on their own.  This film and the story of its writer both reminded me today of how, even after seemingly horrifying moments, our lives have a way of turning towards the sun unexpectedly, and a brightness is revealed that would never have been visible to us had we not spent so much time in the dark.