I just saw Lady in the Water and then An Inconvinient Truth–two amazing films.
After seeing Lady in the Water, I was left with the idea that the most powerful films these days are those that tell stories of people finding inspiration, finding joy and youth, truth beyond the benality of the life we know–finding interconnectedness in all things and being able to die knowing that life is still larger and more mystical than we may ever know. But these films that tell of characters achieving enlightenment only serve to inpspire the viewers to dream of enlightenment rather than take action to create enlightenment.
Just then, an Inconvienient Truth spun a different, yet equally inspiring web. Arguments, counter arguments and solutions to current turmoil, world crisis, pain and triumph. No magic, no mystery, just facts. Explosive and frightening, yet managable if people want to take action, the problems seemed fierce and overwhelming, then simple.
I dreamed that my friend Deric died of cancer. I heard about it on the web. Nobody ever told me he had cancer but everyone else seemed to know. Everyone in Arcata threw him a wake but I was only able to watch it over online streaming media.
Everyone was there.
Our high school English teacher, Mr. Edwards was cracking odd jokes.
Some of the jocks from our school had become transvestites and were talking about how much they loved him.
Countless girls swooned by his memory.
And then the webcast ended and a banner popped up, advertising that the wake was happening on the 4th of July, the day after tomorrow.
I called in to work and drove down to CA. The website said there were job opportunities at the wake. People were going to setup booths and street performers would have a go at their trades.
I didn’t have a plan but I brought my accordion.
On my way down, I was stopped by a cop. He hassled me for a while but had no reason to arrest me. I told him I wanted to make a complaint about my detention. Luckily, there were cop comment stations every hundred meters for situations as common as this. The cop followed me to fill out his side of the story. He had a carbon copy form of which I was to take the messy page. In a stack of comment cards, I tried to find one with his name on it but they all had the name of one particular cop whom somehow we both knew. The files were dated all the way back to 1932, which we found odd since the officer in question was in his mid-twenties. The offending cop shrugged at me and crossed out the other officer’s name. As I was filling out a report, I noticed a couple of kids spraying graffiti just a few meters away. The cop didn’t notice as I tried to distract him with lame conversation about sports and weather (neither about which I knew anything).
