1.29.23

talking to ____ about movies, I get the sense we are just beginning to learn how to really know one another. sometimes I think still that we are mirror images, one a reversed image of the other, thinking we are moving in the same direction, making the same expressions, but never once being able to see our own true faces when we look in the mirror. in the theater alone i thought to myself that filmmaking was mythmaking. 

so let me tell you a story. driving into salt lake city at night, i could not take my eyes off the mountains covered in snow. i want to be as quiet as the snow on the mountain i thought. i cried and held _____'s hand walking down the hill. i'm scared, i told her, i don't know what's next. we are here to watch movies so why am i so afraid of everything. i asked for her care and i couldn't receive it even when she tried to give it to me. it seems that on our way to ourselves, we meet everybody else.

back home in the city, i look at the letter i wrote ____. i wrote, ____, it's so hard to practice in the city. my life, buoyed and underscored with my letters to the people i love. last night after the movie ______ and I walked down the street and every once in a while we would stop and I would kiss their hands face eyes cheek. we put our palms next to each other like they did in the movie to see if the lines across them formed a royal barge (meaning we are meant for each other, said the characters in the film). don't you see it? they said. there's something warm here, I thought, when they reached for my hand in the dark. i wanted us to be soft together. 

to be misunderstood. i talk to ____ about movies because I think he might understand the way I see the world. i think i watch movies differently now. how so? i think i can watch movies now without putting myself in them. and in the moment i meant it. but even last night, watching the characters on screen i thought: is that me? am i so alive? and if not now, then when will I be?