When a girl skips class to bake you cake...

First of all, anyone else notice how sappy the Olympics are? I nearly cry every time I watch it. I'm a veritable waterworks anyway, and then when they throw in the stories of Olympic athletes in life threatening accidents and their doting families, I'm pretty much a goner. Have not cracked yet, though.

Kevin Pearce

I was talking with Dear Friend G. the other day. I'm trying to overcome my dislike for the phone, since the distance between my friends and I is not getting any shorter. We were talking about our lives and we brushed on relationships, and I told him, "I think everyone should have their heart broken at least once." He did not seem as gun-ho about that idea. Listen, I'm not being flippant. I'm not saying everything about heart brokenness is great. It's a rather unpleasant experience, in the whole. But I've also found a whole lot of growth, maturity, and self knowledge in it. I've known people who've never had their heart broken. Sometimes I think they're too scared to. Once you've had your heart broken once, you know what'll be worth the risk again.

Of course, on the flip side, I once bought Dear Friend G. "A Walk to Remember" for Christmas. I was sort of joking. He loved it.

Talk about waterworks!

Day 3 - Ironed out the rom com logline, I think. Might test it out with a few more people. Broke down the first act of Keys to the Garden on notecards. Most productive writing I've done in the past few weeks... without actually writing. I'm gettin' back into it.

I Just Like the Music

I've run the gauntlet when it comes to romantic entanglements. I may not have the depth of experience, but boy do I have the breadth. I've got it covered. From serious long-term relationship to blind date. Years long crush that resulted in a relationship to years long crush that resulted in a relationship for one of my best friends. Secret out-of-state flings to in-state impulses and all our friends involved. UPS delivered flowers to awkward first date double dates on Valentine's day. I dare you to name a situation I haven't been in.

Everyone seems to be getting together or breaking up, this year more than any other. The romantic landscape is reshaped every couple of weeks. I was in Michigan this weekend and the topic inevitably came up with some friends. And while talking with a few of my friends, I felt very strongly convicted of some truth I stumbled upon while stumbling around in other people's lives, that during a storm, lightning really strikes very few times.

Honestly, I'm in continual awe about how many relationships there actually are. These people all really like each other that much? There have only ever been two people in my life that so radically shifted my life into silly irresponsibility and illogicality, and only one of those people liked me in return at the same time. Of all the people I've met, over my (relatively short) life, only two -- TWO -- have completely distracted me. I find those odds a little insane.

On the flip side, it doesn't really worry me during those times where it's just me. Not that anyone enjoys being alone, but how many times do I expect - or want - to fall in love? If it happened all the time, would it be so devastatingly wonderful? I may only ever trip delightfully into the life of one other person -- but one is all I need.


; )

"If you were a melody...I used only the good notes."

I was walking back to my house today, and I passed this tall, kind of goofy looking kid with large earphones, and I had a flash of sudden realization/dread.

I don't know if anyone else ever inadvertently daydreams about how they're going to meet their future spouse, but I have -- you know, only once or twice.

My two best friends from high school are getting married this summer. They're making smart choices. One is marrying an engineer, the other is marrying a film major - but he's got a plan. So they're both making practical choices. Here's the thing. I'm not going to make the practical choice. I'm going to run into someone on the street, he'll say something sorta goofy, and I'll be completely smitten, which will be a sign since I've been so rarely smote on a first meeting, etc. etc. etc. Sounds cute enough, right? So what's with the dread?

I know I'm going to make a completely irrational, impratical choice --
I'm going to marry a musician.

The Trouble with Love Is

Not that we're talking about my love life, dear Reader. Only once in the past six months have I let myself spill anything relating to that and was subsequently ridiculed by dear friend A. So now I'd blush to think of doing such a thing again - at least for another six months.

No, I am talking about the trouble with love in movies. Have you ever spent time thinking about the relationships in movies - whether or not they're realistic or well supported or even written well? What about when you're writing a relationship - ever realized how incredibly difficult it is to do, especially without resorting to the stock montage of dinner-movie-walk on the beach? I was thinking about how it pops up in my writing, and here's what I realized:

Nobody ever falls in love before the midpoint in any of my feature length specs. In 2 of my specs, they've known/had feelings for the person since before the movie started, in 1 nobody falls in love, and in The 4:05, the only spec where characters first meet and then fall in love, it's not until the very end of the movie. It's also incredibly difficult to establish why two people are in love. I don't think we can blame that on writing, necessarily; I think that's more the fault of love. I'm trying to write a webseries, and in the first five minute episode I have to establish the history of a long and loving relationship between two characters who are currently going through a rough patch. That's tough. What sort of three minute scene can you write to show the history of trust and care between two people? Love is difficult stuff to write. Especially in the constraints of two hours.

But let's reflect on the plethora of romantic movies out there.

Catch and Release - This movie didn't get great reviews. However, I was impressed with the writing - because for some odd, inexplicable reason, it had me thinking that Timothy Olyphant was ultimately better for Jennifer Garner than Sam Jaeger was. Frankly, I should have been outraged that she didn't fall for Jaeger. He had been secretly in love with her all along and he was a much sweeter guy than Olyphant. And as a friend pointed out, there wasn't much support for a real love developing between Olyphant and Garner. I'm not saying there wasn't a relationship there, but there definitely needed to be more of a friendship.

Walk the Line - Brilliant. Why? My guess is because 1. it spanned several years and loads of heartbreak for both characters but 2. more importantly, the relationship between June and John went outside of mushy love feelings to grace, forgiveness, caring, and real devotion.

27 Dresses - Another cute movie. But even though Marsden helped Heigl with problems outside of their tense relationship, it just didn't ring "great true love" to me. So he pointed out that she had some major wedding issues and gave her a Blackberry. I don't know, maybe I just disliked the advice he gave after the rehearsal dinner and that tainted the entire thing for me.

Atonement - Look, I loved Atonement. It was beautiful and depressing and James McAvoy would definitely be able to get any woman to fall in love with him. But, I'm sorry, when was it that he and Knightley fell in love? Was it when they were twelve and still talking? Or at college when she avoided him like the plague? And her show of devotion and faith in him was truly moving - though I kept wondering why she had such faith in him. If it was because she loved him, well, I could have used a little more convincing on that.

Dan in Real Life - Cute movie, but I do not remember the last time I got hit on by a random stranger, felt comfortable enough to spend a life-sharing hour over tea with him, then been so tormented by that unfinished conversation that - even though we were under the eye of his entire family and therefore had to play distance games the entire time - I had to abandon my current relationship and run away.

Definitely Maybe - I liked this one, because I felt like there were very many real aspects of relationships there. Or maybe it was more about how relationships fall apart than how they stay together. I'm not saying it didn't have its quirky moments, but I think the relationship between Reynolds and Fisher had a very honest quality - people who care about each other for years, who are invested in each others' lives, who make mistakes, hold on, and finally get forgiven.

Garden State - This should scream disaster movie for me. At the end Zach Braff tells Natalie Portman, "You've changed my life and I've only known you four days." That doesn't happen in real life, are you kidding me? When was the last time your life was changed by someone you met four days ago? However, anyone who knows me knows this is my favourite movie in the world. While I'm generally skeptical about any movies where the characters have just met before falling in love, there are some that work. In Garden State, like in Trust last night, the characters who fell in love were looking for life change. I think that makes a life changing relationship a heck of a lot more believable, because there's an openness and honesty that comes when a person is looking for life change. The second reason why Garden State works is that, in those four days, Braff and Portman actually talk. About a lot of things, about their views on life, about their pasts and how it's screwed them up, about their present. If you're looking for life change, and you're going to be honest, and you find someone who is willing to be just as honest with you and care about you, you've totally sold me on their relationship.

Pushing Daisies - This is a great example (albeit being TV), because Chuck and Ned can't touch each other. There goes the storyteller's easiest method of expressing love.

An Officer and a Gentleman - I'm not going to analyze this one. I just like it.

Why worry about this so much? Why draw up theories about the relationships in your own writing and do case studies on produced movies? Why spend so much time on this?

Because you can't just expect that you can just slap the romance label on your movie and the audience will buy it. If you want me to believe two characters are in love, you've got to sell it to me. You can't just write the "falling in love montage" or stick in a little cutesy joke when they're snuggling or write that scene where the female protagonist finally breaks her emotional barriers down for the boy while Benny and the Jets is playing in the background. How do you express in a three minute scene the commitment, passion, history, devotion, and respect between two people? How do you take something that's often so very internal, especially the moment when you realize you love someone, and put that on the screen to be seen clearly and without question? There are a lot of standard methods, a date, a kiss, a conversation. But those alone don't demonstrate love. Maybe that the characters are having fun or that sparks are flying or they're finding each other trustworthy, but so often those motifs that we commonly think of as expressing love can express something else, feelings or emotions that can belong to just plain fun or happiness or companionship. Maybe we need to stop relying on motifs that can express something lower than romance to support the characters' love.

Maybe the problem is that we don't know what love is. I was looking for something to watch, and I stopped on "Platinum Weddings" for a few minutes, because it's wedding season here at home for the next year. The featured couple was talking about their relationship, and the girl said, "I love him because he makes me happy. Whether it's getting me ice cream or playing tennis, he always puts a smile on my face." I felt a little frightened for this girl. Because what happens when he no longer makes her happy, either because he doesn't want to or because she's gotten bored of it? That's not love.

Maybe it's not a problem of story telling. Maybe it's a problem of misdiagnosis.

Typically I don't like movies and music from the 80s...

Luckily, "Trust" was released in 1990. On the recommendation of my screenwriting professor, I watched it tonight. It was cute - I really liked it (and that's all the review you will get from me). I was reminded of "Say Anything" (1989!) during it - another great movie. I think because they are both super dramatic love stories about teenagers. If you think about "Juno," it took the whole movie for her to admit that she liked Bleeker. Of course, that's wasn't what the movie was about, really. But early in Act II in "Trust," Maria and Matt are defining love. In "Say Anything," John Cusack is letting nothing get in the way of him and his girl. There's just a level of beautiful and yet unbelievable amount of dedication in the romances of late 80s, early 90s teen movies. What are our teen romances now? Transformers and The Date Movie.

"I respect and admire you."
"Isn't that love?"
"No, that's respect and admiration."

- Trust

Get your giggles out now.

So there's this guy.

"I don't want to be cheesy, you know," was what I told a friend last night. But we have this joke, one we picked up on a leadership conference, when our team leader was talking about how nobody ever says, "Geez, it's so easy to get lost in his dreamy character." Well, now those words are spoken a little more often and not always in joke. And one thing that I appreciate, you know, without getting too cheesy, is that this guy, he really thinks about life. I don't believe enough people really contemplate life. He knows what he's doing and why he's doing it and how his past affects him and what he believes and how what he does affects others and what the most important decisions you're going to make in life are and how you're going to make them. I don't know, I just don't see that too often with people. I mean, we spend all our time doing stuff and living, but how often do we really contemplate life? I'm not going to go all Socratic on you and say an unexamined life isn't worth living. That's a little cynical, buddy. But I think too often we're encouraged to turn our brains off and disengage our critical thinking once we've left the classroom (if it was ever on in there even). We've got one shot at this; isn't it best that we pay attention? It's a mark of maturity that gets lost in the legal drinking age and right to vote, the difference between when society tells us we're adults and when we make ourselves such.

Oh, and it's not just his character, don't worry. He's got one breath-catching smile.

But I don't want to be cheesy.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I watched Waitress tonight. My moral doubts about this movie aside (can you put such things aside when evaluating a story?), I thought it was great. It made something click for me about how I view relationships, illustrated some theories I was developing, helped me realize some things about my current love life. Then I listened to Coldplay's Swallowed in the Sea and danced around the bathroom while brushing my teeth.

I've left the forbidden tundra that is enemy territory and forged ahead to brighter skies. I'm staying with Aunt March (I wish I had enough knowledge of literature to name all my friends and family after literary characters), which should be enjoyable, despite the amount of work I realized that I should get done before Wednesday. As I was in the airport this afternoon, I thought how great it would be to get called over the loudspeaker just once, to be paged for your flight as one of those "Southwest Airlines is paging passenger John Frost, final boarding call." But I thought about how worried I would be about actually missing my flight, so worried that the only way I would let such a paging happen would be if I were actually in the waiting area by the gate, and how weird that would be if I was so paged and then stood up to board the plane. I thought, therefore, that such a thing would never happen. Well, lucky me, after passing through security, I went for breakfast at the ever-tempting Cinnabon and got distracted by the fact that there was actually free Wi-Fi. Before I knew it, I had twenty minutes before my flight left, ten before they closed the plane door, and my gate was the farthest away from Cinnabon. I packed up my stuff and discretely sprinted away, and just as I came within view of my gate, the attendant picked up the microphone to give the final boarding call, rattling off the names of the tardy customers who had yet to board.

My name wrapped up the list.

This is not fair.

doesn't matter, dear heart maker

I think there was one thing I learned in calculus my senior year of high school. I spent much more time trying to distract myself than learning (which was, quite frankly, much more practical). One thing I do remember, though, is the law of mutual exclusivity. If two things are mutual exclusive, it means they cannot both be true about an equation or a problem or whatever, not at the same time. If P is true then Q cannot also be true. It's an either/or principle.

Who said math is not applicable to real life? (Oh, me, right) If Americans landed on the moon first, it means that the Russians can no longer win the space race. You can't be both a Red Sox and a Yankees fan. If you're an insomniac, you can't be a heavy sleeper. There a lots of examples of this law of mutual exclusivity. And sometimes, it happens to people as well. You can't be in a relationship with one person, and friends with another. People swear by this law. I don't particularly like it myself, but I definitely understand why its useful. It's nothing bad; it's just life.

However, if doesn't mean that Russians can't still be interested in space exploration. It doesn't mean that insomniacs never get rest. And it doesn't mean that people can't care about each other even when they're not talking. There's no hope for the Red Sox and Yankees one. And the law is breakable. It just means that you have to make a different choice.

If you want to stick with the choice you've made, that's ok too. "I've mastered the art of dealing." I will look forward to Christmas.

William Blake

What is it about best friends that makes them so irreplacable and miss-able?

‘And throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.
As our dear Redeemer said:
“This the Wine, and this the Bread.”’


Thank you.

"I am considering not how, but why, He [God] makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you...

Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? And this difference, so far from impairing, floods with meaning the love of all blessed creatures for one another, the communion of the saints. If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note. Aristotle has told us that a city is a unity of unlikes, and St. Paul that a body is a unity of different members. Heaven is a city, and a Body, because the blessed remain eternally different: a society, because each has something to tell all the others - fresh and ever fresh news of the "My God" whom each finds in Him whom all praise as "Our God." For doubtless the continually successful, yet never completed, attempt by each soul to communicate its unique vision to all others (and that by means whereof earthy art and philosophy are but clumsy imitations) is also among the ends for which the individual was created.

For union exists only between distincts; and, perhaps, from this point of view, we catch a momentary glimpse of the meaning of all things."

- C. S. Lewis "The Problem of Pain"

Today, when it was just me and Josiah hanging out in the afternoon, he climbed up next to me and said, "Amy, I'm gonna marry you." And I laughed and asked him why. He got this sorta cross face on and said, "Just because I want to!" Then I told him that if he married me, he'd have to do everything I said. He thought about this for a minute, then said, "Mhmm." However, he also said it means I'd have to stay here in England, so I don't think it will work out.

Jessica told me I can say I got at least one proposal while I was in England. Thanks, Jessica.

I had a great idea yesterday, for that one person who knows what I'm talking about. I've been struggling a lot with finding the "joy of the Lord" or peace or happiness or whatever you want to call it. It just seemed to elude me. And then I realized what part of my problem was. To be happy, it's not just enough to make God the center of your life. He can be your focus, and you can not be looking towards other things for your happiness, and you can still miss it. You need to actually make Him the center of your happiness. The fact that He loves me is happiness. So because God is the center of my life and my happiness, I can be happy even when my life isn't causing any happiness. Or something like that. Not that you won't ever be sad, but it's a start, for me.