Gene's Blog

An odd evening

I know it is not the current political climate that has me so emotionally riled up these days, something deeper is going on and I don’t know what. I just feel like talking about last night. I was in no mood for television so decided I would watch an old movie or two and ended up watching four of my favorites. I began with the Princess Bride, directed by Rob Reiner and I still think one of his best movies ever, a multi-layered testament to “true love” and its power. I found myself bursting into tears half way through it. I’m not really a burst into tears guy, though I have shed my share. It was then I realized the evening was about my emotional state which is, for some reason I don’t really yet understand, pretty raw. This movie introduced Robin Wright, later Robin Wright Penn, she made a wonderful Princess. It ends with this song, Storybook Love, which I will never understand not having been a big hit. It is with me.

I moved on to Made in Heaven, with Tim Hutton and Kelly McGillis, another magical movie filled with Neil Young music, he’s IN the movie as is Tom Petty. It has the most beautiful description of heaven I’ve ever read, it isn’t quite accurate but it is incredibly beautiful and loving. I can’t tell you how long I had to wait for this movie to come out in DVD. This clip has the main theme song of the movie in it plus a bit of the ending of the movie as well. This one too brought me tears. We Never Danced, I don’t know what the subtitles are about, but the rest is wonderful. Anyone guess who Emmett really was? I did. I don’t think I ever saw her in another movie.

Then, to City of Angels with Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage, another just amazing movie with a magical view of love and what it really means, how it connects us all. Of course, with a favorite song, from one of my favorite artists of all time, Sarah MaLachlan, In the Arms of the Angels, hauntingly beautiful. I do have this CD, but this clip is from the movie. I have experienced this it seems, it feels, incredibly painful loss, twice, as my sons have both preceded me, though as Seth says, I would not have changed anything for one touch of their hands, one kiss, one smile made the time we had together worth it all. So great is love.

Last, I pulled out Contact, the only fiction Carl Sagan ever wrote. I already knew of him, had Cosmos and This Demon Haunted World, and Contact came out the year my youngest son died, 1997, I saw it first with my oldest son. Its about love too only in a different way, this love is universal. It says we are most definitely not alone, that this is not all there is. And I knew that. My entire main site is about that. Carl did a magnificent job. and still virtually the only one, of saying that if there are others out there, why do we assume they are hostile? Hollywood has made so many movies about aliens and they are all the same. Horrifying. They say that if there are other intelligences out there, they come to kill us. Which is patently ridiculous to me and always has been as I grew up reading Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, two literary and philosophical giants of the 20th century. There are 400 BILLION stars in just our tiny galaxy, the Milky Way, tucked out here at the edge of the universe, and countless billions more in countless billions of galaxies. Why would any species intelligent enough to be able to reach this planet bother coming here for our fresh water when there are certainly billions of uninhabited planets to harvest, if harvest they must. But we here on this tiny blue oasis in space thrive on fear when love is our only salvation, our only ultimate truth. I was again overpowered by Jodie Foster’s performance and dug around until I found my copy of Contact and began rereading it. The books are always ever so much better than the movies. I’ll find Cosmos and Carl’s other works too. I’m not a math guy, but he, and Stephen Hawking in his A Brief History of Time, gave me a big picture view of physics that I could never have come to on my own, one that fits tidily within the view, the truth, I have within me. I’ll be forever grateful to both for that. Actually to all of the people involved with all of what I’ve just written. They have expanded my view of the universe, of love, in ways beautiful and wondrous. The tears aren’t sad, though in a way I suppose they are, they’re tears for what I miss most, Home. Would that I could give what I have seen, felt, even for just a split second to everyone. Jodie says that in the ending of Contact. I say it here. We both mean the same thing. The world would never be the same. I think that a good thing. I know it would be. It might even be our salvation because as it is the tears are also for what we are doing to this beautiful planet we live on and all who share it with us out of greed, out of money before everything mindsets. We are not good stewards but we could be. If we were simply to choose again. I live in hope that we will. One day.

If today brings even one choice your way,
Choose to be a Bringer of the Light :^) gene