The creativity I conjure up that I am most proud of, often comes to me while wandering the empty streets at a time when seemingly nobody else is awake.
Sometimes walking, sometimes skateboarding, sometimes driving around with the windows down, music up and heater cranked up, but almost always at an hour in which any normal person would be sleeping. Although I do write about sports, sneakers, and randomly ramble about randomness, writing for myself, and a few loving souls I’ve shared intimate relationships with, is an escape for me. It gives me a sense of comfort and relaxation that very few experiences in life have compared.
Tonight I watched Midnight in Paris for the second or third time. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorite movies for countless reasons. I can completely relate to the character of Gil played by Owen Wilson in many ways. The naivete of Gil in his relationship, the romanticist or idealist aspects of him, and the amazingness he can find within his own mind in the middle of the night while walking the streets in Paris, are all familiar to me in my own life experience. Even fantasizing about another era in time and feeling like I don’t fit in to the current world is typical for me.
Each time I watch it, something new sticks with me. Tonight, the brief speech by the character of Ernest Hemingway on the relationship between fear of death and the experience of love was a staying point in my mind.
Ernest Hemingway: Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?
Gil: Actually, my fiancé is pretty sexy.
Ernest Hemingway: And when you make love to her you feel true and beautiful passion. And you for at least that moment lose your fear of death.
Gil: No, that doesn’t happen.
Ernest Hemingway: I believe that love that is true and real, creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing. And then the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino-hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave… It is because they make love with sufficient passion, to push death out of their minds… until it returns, as it does, to all men… and then you must make really good love again.
The idea of making love, whether in the physical, spiritual, or emotional sense, providing courage to proceed in life without fear is a beautiful truth. It’s essentially the same refocusing I went to San Francisco for.
Watching the movie has me wanting to go to Paris. So in the next week or so, I’m going to get my passport. You know, just in case…
because…
you really never know what opportunity will present itself when you put it out there.
More to come…
pic from afn.org