...quiet, about a lot of things...

First a totally unrelated, and therefor,deeply entangled side note:

I am hear by calling a moratorium on any more pictures of me on this blog. I used to be wildly opposed to this practice..But seeing that it is October..I have found my obsessed with my face and all it's changing topography. Always happens to me this time of year. I am so tempted to rip them all down..But that would be a lie. Like saying I never have these moods...and I do...But ENOUGH ALREADY! I'm sick to death of it.... Now let's get on with the show..


I've been in need of some serious distraction lately. So yesterday I went to the movies at 12:20 in the afternoon. By myself. I used to do this all the time, when I was just me. I would sit and watch the dreams go by, without the slightest twinge of guilt.

My daughter had seen ACROSS THE UNIVERSE and told me I should see it. So, I did.

I loved the movie. Many will hate it. I was blown away. There is not much of a plot..Boy leaves home. Boy meets girl. and so on and so forth. But that is the plot of my life..so why belittle it? The movie is contrived. Again, so what? It presents the lyrics in a way they have always been most profound to me..as poetry.

The music dazzles less than the words. Most times, just the way I like it. Man, what a body of work. Amazing.

I'll link to the trailer...If you go and see it..cool...If you hate it..oh well. No harm, no foul.However, that is not what this post is about. It's about my experience in the theatre.


I walked in to find one other person in the theatre. A man, probably mid 50's with short grey hair..(Why do all men in my life lately..have grey hair?)He seemed a bit surprised to see me..and I was a bit surprised to see just him..

I took my seat about 6 rows behind him, slightly askew, so I could watch his profile, and the screen at the same time.

The movie started. I watched him, I watched the screen. Ten minutes later, the third person, a lovely silhouetted women, again in her 50's (I think) slid into one of the rows between us. She sat slightly askew, also. We formed a lopsided triangle. Flying in some kind of odd formation. The leader and his wing men..um girls... um..women.

I noticed some things during the movie. Women of this age have pea sized bladders. The silver queen was clearly frustrated with the need to relieve herself in the middle of the movie. Both of my companions had popcorn, and soda. I had nothing...I knew that being here when I should be somewhere else, was enough of a sin. (I also know better. I hate missing parts of movies.)

The man was squirming a bit in his seat..clearly feeling the same urges..but unwilling to succumb. At certain scenes he would run his hand across the top of his short shorn grey hair. Very sexy, uncensored. He had clearly forgot I or We were even there. He was swept away. Very cool.

I watched as the silver queen swayed her head to the music. So incredibly beautiful and alive.

No one was behind me, to observe me. I was the end.

I am the end. Of the baby boomers. The last year of their kind. I was four in the time of this movie. The time of the Columbia riots. The time of dropping in and dropping out. Instead of living it, I had absorbed it, in my tang and grilled cheese sandwiches. It filtered in my ears as I drifted off to sleep, my mom ironing shirts and listening to the news of Martin Luther King's slaying. I had no idea that it was just a piece of time. To me it was the world. I closed my eyes and napped to the sound of choppers and odd sounding words like Napalm and Saigon.

The two in front of me had probably lived it in the action. Been there. Done that.
But we were both there, and here we all sat. It was a wild ride.

I came back to find my daughters already home. I thanked Rach for her recommendation. She asked me who I went with, the idea of going alone, clearly not formed yet. I told her I went and hung with my hommies..The boomers.

This year my daughter will apply to Columbia. She is very politically active. But she will find no such fight left on that campus. A professor, who was there, and still is, wrote that the resistances are pale by comparison now. Because we have no draft. People can choose not to fight. People educated at Columbia, can now aspire to be brokers, bankers and lawyers. That's were the power is now. They are no longer are forced cogs in the war machine.

But there are still cogs..plenty of them, outside the gates in Harlem..and all the poor creases in this tired county of ours.

This professor calls the military the employer of last resort. Still very much alive and well in this day, in this age of ceaseless fighting and fires.

My daughter may go to Columbia next year, or to Berkeley, or to Brown. How I hope she will be one of the first of a new generation of activists. Of those raised to look beyond the piles of privilege afforded her by birth. I hope she rekindles that spirit of revolution.

I say "I want a revolution. I want US to change the world."

and, by the way..love IS all you need.

Imagine!