Relationships and Memories: 3 Movie Sunday

I finally did it. I genuinely spent a whole Sunday doing nothing, and feeling no guilt over it. Not an easy feat.

Friday was nice. A bar, a cute girl with a boyfriend, getting lost in a farm.

Saturday was fun. Waking up to a phone call at noon, my guy asking for his jacket back from the night before. Regret and confusion for everything that happened. An introduction to a ski course at some crazy guy’s home, out in the boondocks. Then, a vaporizer pen. Active noise cancellation headphones. Faces by Mac Miller blasting. Get lost again. Bother the shit out of everybody. Sorry, Faaiz.

A comedy show called Homecoming by Hasan Minhaj watched at midnight in the afterglow of the vape gone by. I don’t usually like these ABCD comedians, but there was something sweet about watching this guy. My son will probably be like him.

Come Sunday morning. Jerked awake by a bad dream. I yelled at some guy, and him and his meathead friends beat up my little brother. I wasn’t there to do anything. There’s a girl my brother was flirting with who is crying just looking at him, all covered in bruises. She begs me to do something, it was my fault. I run around trying to find them. I find them later at a car crash, all dead except for the main culprit. He’s fucking huge, and now I’m gonna get my ass kicked too. Or I just go all out and try to kill him with the broken glass. I come awake, still unable to think of a better solution.

There is no afterglow now, only stress. Pace a bit, let it wash away. Let’s get back to reality.

Home alone. Heater turned up to toasty, snuggled up on the couch in the hallway, pillows and blankets around me. There’s no way to actually know what time it is. Comfy sweatshirt and sweatpants on. Socks, too. No tough guy shit today.

Brushing your teeth is the biggest thing. Don’t shower, that’s negotiable, but if you don’t brush, you will be depressed for the rest of the day. So I brush. Check the time, I’m super early.

Fuck it, that dream was awful. I need a break. Today I’m staying a little smelly, a little chill, and a little happy. I mean, I’ll try, at least.

Still lying back on the couch, pillow on my lap, laptop on the pillow, fire up Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I saw it before, around a decade ago. Nothing made sense, for some reason. I was unsatisfied. This time I’m sad. It’s a sad movie. What is a relationship? What is a memory? What is erasure? What are the humiliations we run from? What are the dark corners of memory we bring our partners into, trying to intertwine our minds with theirs? What is sweetness? What are the forgotten smiles, locked away behind gates of bitterness? What are the mysteries behind the ripped out pages in our notebooks? What is that gray looming sadness that takes over our lives? The whole movie is a mix of the dearest and the damnedest of memories that live in us, polluting and populating every waking second. Think about the first time you met someone special. Think about the last. Think about every moment in between. The good and the terrible. Let it all just wash over you. Feels like a relaxing bath at Guantanamo Bay.

Movie is over, but this is not one to end on. It is way too cerebral, way too emotional. It’s also way too early. I’ll have to be productive after this. But I can’t jump into something too light directly. There needs to be a bridge. I am two levels above existence.

Stranger than Fiction. Another film from a decade ago, when I was doing anything to escape reality. Another film I know I liked deep down, but couldn’t fully get. Even if I did, I don’t remember now.

My housemate comes home in the middle of the movie, but leaves again in a bit. I keep watching. A subdued performance about a subdued man, who is counting away his life, living in numbers. A robot, seemingly bred specially for the IRS. That is, until he begins to hear the voice narrating his existence, and announcing his death. He fights to stay alive, and discovers a reason to as a result. A reason more than just numbers. Second movie of the day about finding love, not avoiding it™. The movie is calm, with no sudden changes, no sudden movements. We spend our time in bakeries and a professor’s office. The robot finds love. The question arises, are we seizing life? Are we happy with everything? What happened to all the things we never did? I am floating on clouds. I feel like I’m in my mother’s arms again.

But I’m still one level above existence. I need to come back down. Upstarts. An Indian movie about three friends making a startup. The dialog, though a little wooden at times, sounds exactly like how actual Desis talk. Feels like home. Startup dreams are also obviously very close to heart, an object of daily fantasy for me and every monkey around me. The plot is predictable, with sprinklings of Badmash Company and Silicon Valley noticeable everywhere. The movie also rushes by way too fast, and cannot decide what it wants to focus on. The cliché good-guys-win ending became obvious 30 minutes before the film ended, but it was a good way to come back down to Level 0. Back to earth.

Time to clean my room and write this down. Clear up the skill-backlog, too. It’s nice sometimes to go a few levels higher. I should probably go find love soon. The movie I related to most was the one about an asshole trying to get rich at any cost.