A lazy day...errands...cleaning...great reading...great movies...

It's nice...

I went to return movies, tonight, at my favorite little local movie house/rental place, Liberty Video...if you're ever in Lawrence, this is the place to rent movies...

My friend, Matt Toplikar, works there...and we can talk movies with someone who loves them as much as me while I find really great titles...

Tonight, I picked up three great documentaries...Born into Brothels, The Corporation, and Trembling Before G-d (I'll have to describe them later)...

While I'm in Liberty...Matt's got Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind playing...which I've watched like 5 times already this week, remember...it's near the end of the movie...when Joel is going through all the really special memories with Clementine that he won't have anymore after his memory-erasing procedure...he's hired the memory-erasers to do their thing, he doesn't want the procedure anymore, but he can't wake up to stop it...so he's trying to hide in buried memories, only to happen on really special ones with Clementine that he's making peace that will be lost when he was awaken...

It's the saddest part of the movie...

When I've watched Eternal Sunshine in the past...my own feelings have always been really at odds with the movie...I've always thought of Brandi, of course, when I've watched the movie in the past...but I've never quite watched the movie as resigned about the situation with Brandi -- at all levels -- as I do today (we don't talk, anymore)...

And, so...for the first time...I'm starting to watch the movie with the same kind of resignation with which it's told (though, in the movie, they get back together at the end)...

And it's kind of nice...

To just be able to feel the same feelings that Joel is feeling there at the end...

That feeling of resignation...and a sweet reflection on bygone memories...

It makes me cry...

But not in the same way as before...I cry, now, with more of the same resignation that Joel feels in his memories...

I don't even try to remember Brandi, anymore, truth be told...I kind of try not to, any more...though sometimes I can't help it...during a more vulnerable moment watching Eternal Sunshine, thinking about how much Kate Winslet reminds me of Brandi...or vaguely when I'm looking for spiritual company during the Martin Luther King holiday...

But I try not to, these days...

And when I cry...I cry out of a quiet, genuine sense of resignation, now...the same way Beck sings that song for the soundtrack...

...everybody's got to learn, sometime...everybody's got to learn sometime...everybody's got to learn sometime...

When I have my memories of Brandi, now...I know that a lot of people don't want to hear them...so I can't always share them...

But Charlie Kaufman has reminded me...

...that at least I have them...

So even though they just kind of rest there in a kind of vulnerable part of my heart...at least I know where to find them when I want to spend some time with them...

Enjoy the day off, if you got it...

Love,
Ben