Last night while I was trying to fall asleep and not think about the raging headache I spent all of Sunday pretending didn’t exist (because that which does not kill you is usually something that you can ignore and hope it goes away), I was thinking about what I needed to write down in here and how I should just get up already and walk into my office and write it (headache) down so that I (ow) didn’t forget it but if I did do that, then I’d most assuredly be awake (dull throb) all night and never be able to fully invest myself into my little mind movie in which I am rescued from the ocean by Russell Crowe who is the captain of a ship and who has a ponytail and a shirt that has a habit of falling open sometimes to expose his Russell Crowe chest hair and also breeches. Tight breeches.
So I figured that I’d remember and then of course, now it is morning and the headache has sort of given up and gone back to whatever hell inside my brain it came from and took along with it everything I planned to write about here. That’s a really horribly constructed sentence. Ha!
I spent the entire holiday weekend doing a lot of nothing. Or rather, catching up on a million little things around the house and also, having horrible cramps. I spent the entirety of Thursday sitting on the chaise with a heating pad toasting my abdomen and having nothing more to show for it than a canker sore from mainline Advil and also the fact that I made it through all 26 episodes of How I Met Your Mother in one sitting. Or mostly one sitting, since I did have to get up and moan dramatically at Esteban every now and then, as is my way. You know, it’s clear that I was born to be a consumptive Victorian heroine. I was totally robbed.
I also made it through my Netflix pile, which is sort of amazing, considering that it’s been sitting untouched for weeks and months. One of the DVDs was “Just Like Heaven”, added to the queue during my brief Mark Ruffalo crush. It was predictable and mushy and aside from the fact that ghost Reese Witherspoon’s lip gloss was incredible and also managed to change from scene to scene (seriously, I have to find out where she got it, because it was sort of this great pinky apricot that had depth and reminds me of my perfectly glossed lip effect that required $80 worth of product to achieve a completely natural mouth that had just perhaps chomped on really sweet ripe strawberries and then had a messy swig of Bellini) but also because there was another love interest in the movie in that it was set in San Francisco and many outdoorsy scenes were perfectly shot to show the city’s best angles in just the perfect flattering light. And those evil tricks made me emotionally connected to the story, because who can blame an ethereal Reese Witherspoon for her reluctance to leave that place? Not me.
In a way, the movie became a bit painful, like looking at the wedding pictures of your ex-boyfriend. One of the things that I wrote in my offline journal during my last trip was an entire question of whether or not I should just stop visiting San Francisco because each time I feel more as though I belong there and each time it is acutely more painful to leave it. But also, the striking difference between my online and offline journals is how obnoxiously writerly the prose is, as though I think myself a beat poet and the lines of my Moleskine are a hushed audience waiting to give me snaps. I never intend it to be that way, but when I reread, I almost dislocate my eye sockets from all the furious rolling. Why do my internal thoughts come out with a cadence, exactly, especially since I don’t think in poems and refuse to go gentle into that good night? Why the ta tah ta tah ta tah daaaaah? And crazy slant rhymes? Why? Who do I think I am–Jewel? Even so, when watching movies that are in love with San Francisco, I can see Obnoxious Serious Writer Girl’s point because unlike the headache, it’s an ow that is more difficult to ignore.
Also, I don’t know if I’ve ever written about this on this page, but about a year ago, I had a major epiphany and it is this:
“Just Like Heaven” is my favorite song of all time.
I always knew that I loved the song but it took 15 years before I was really feeling that I could commit to it. I don’t know why it was such a relief and I doubt that I had realized that this unanswered question of ‘What Is Your Favorite Song?’ was causing me low level stress for years on end. I think it was just the certainty, like the moment you realize that the person you’re with is The One. The one that you’re never going to get sick of. The one you can wake up to every morning of every day for the rest of your life. “Just Like Heaven” is my One True Song. I’m sure that this says a lot about me somehow, in some way, and I could probably fill fifteen loopy pages in my Moleskine that will make me snort with derision in four months but there it is. I’m not ruling out the notion that a 45-year-old Weetabix will change her mind and say that it’s “Such Great Heights”. But at this point, you can show me how you do that thing and I promise you. I promise.
The Comments want to know what your favorite song of all time is. And if you say some song from within the last year, then we’ll know you’re only fooling yourself.
