Sometimes

Taormina, Sicily

Sometimes I want to crawl inside a movie. And live there for a while. Feel the heat and humidity. Smell the honeysuckle. Really understand what it means to have a headache in 1963 Mississippi. Or to be tethered but weightless, sleeping in a capsule on the moon listening to something more silent than feathers. Or to endure sniper fire in the rain, soaked to the skin in mud and sweat applying pressure to my friend's wound knowing it is only prolonging the inevitable. Just for a while. Be there. Be somewhere else, absorbed by somewhere else. Sometimes.

When I was a kid I thought I would be in the movies. Probably not as an actor but a writer. Inside that big black air conditioned box, on a springy seat, my thoughts, my ideas, my words alive like geese in formation moving across the screen. My imagination galvanized in the flick of an eye, a nuanced gesture, a witty comment, a devastating twist. Or in a film effect like a point of view shot or like a scene in slow motion or better yet, reverse. I am still a sucker for reverse. "Behold the swelling scene!"

Sometimes I am so thankful for good films, for distractions, for being rapt. Sometimes I long for things that will likely never happen now. But there are other things still left to do. And sometimes, that is enough.