Bittersweet Existance And A Decade Or 2 of Fermintation so it's just right and ready to be tasted older wiser and more appreciative

The United States of Leland (2003)

Leland: You want a why. Well, maybe there isn't one. Maybe... Maybe this is just something that happened.

Mrs. Calderon: You have to believe that life is more than the sum of its parts, kiddo.

Leland: This one is something a friend of mine said to me. "You have to believe that life is more than the sum of its parts, kiddo." I remember it right now to the "kiddo" part. But when I think about what she said, the same thing always comes into my head. What if you can't put the pieces together in the first place?

Leland: The worst part is knowing that there is goodness in people. Mostly it stays deep down and buried. Maybe we don't have God because we're scared of the bad stuff. Maybe we're really scared of the good stuff. Because if there's no God, well, that means it's inside of us and we could be good all the time if we wanted. So when we do bad things, it'd be because we want to or because we have to. Or maybe we just need the bad stuff to remind us what the good stuff is in the first place.

Leland: I think there are two ways you can see the world. You either see the sadness that's behind everything or you choose to keep it all out.

Leland: It covers my eyes. It's all I can see. Say there's some kids playing baseball. All I see is the one kid they won't let play because he tells corny jokes. And no-one thinks they're funny. Or I see a boy and a girl in love and kissing, you know. I just see that they're gonna be one of those sad old couples one day who just cheats on each other and can't even look at each other in the eye. And I feel it. I feel all of their sadness. I feel it probably even worse than that sad old couple or that corny kid will ever feel it.

Leland: When I say I don't remember that day, I'm not lying. I wish I did, but I just don't. Sometimes the most important stuff goes away. Goes away so bad it's like it was never there to begin with.

Leland: And that's when I figured out that tears couldn't make somebody who was dead alive again. There's another thing to learn about tears, they can't make somebody who doesn't love you any more love you again. It's the same with prayers. I wonder how much of their lives people waste crying and praying to God. If you ask me, the devil makes more sense than God does. I can at least see why people would want him around. It's good to have somebody to blame for the bad stuff they do. Maybe God's there because people get scared of all the bad stuff they do. They figure that God and the Devil are always playing this game of tug-of-war game with them. And they never know which side they're gonna wind up on. I guess that tug-of-war idea explains how sometimes, even when people try to do something good, it still turns out bad.

Leland: Maybe it makes sense now. Maybe somewhere in all of this there's a reason. Maybe somewhere in all of this there's a why. Maybe somewhere there's that thing that lets you tie it all up with a neat bow and bury it in the backyard. But nothing, not getting angry, not prayers, and not tears, nothing can make something that happened unhappen.

Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988)

Alfredo: Living here day by day, you think it's the center of the world. You believe nothing will ever change. Then you leave: a year, two years. When you come back, everything's changed. The thread's broken. What you came to find isn't there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away for a long time... many years... before you can come back and find your people. The land where you were born. But now, no. It's not possible. Right now you're blinder than I am.
Salvatore: Who said that? Gary Cooper? James Stewart? Henry Fonda? Eh?
Alfredo: No, Toto. Nobody said it. This time it's all me. Life isn't like in the movies. Life... is much harder.

Alfredo: Once upon a time, a king gave a feast. And there came the most beautiful princesses of the realm. Now, a soldier, who was standing guard, saw the king's daughter go by. She was the most beautiful one, and he immediately fell in love with her. But what could a poor soldier do when it came to the daughter of the king? Well, finally, one day, he managed to meet her, and he told her that he could no longer live without her. The princess was so impressed by his strong feelings that she said to the soldier: "If you can wait 100 days and 100 nights under my balcony, then at the end of it, I shall be yours." Damn! The soldier immediately went there and waited one day. And two days. And ten. And then twenty. And every evening, the princess looked out of her window, but he never moved. During rain, during wind, during snow, he was always there. The bird shat on his head, and the bees stung him, but he didn't budge. After ninety nights, he had become all dried up, all white, and the tears streamed from his eyes. He couldn't hold them back. He no longer had the strength to sleep. All that time, the princess watched him. And on the 99th night, the soldier stood up, took his chair, and went away.
Salvatore: [later in the film, Toto gives Alfredo his interpretation] ... In one more night, the princess would have been his. But she also could not possibly have kept her promise. And it would have been terrible. He would have died. This way, however, at least for 99 days, he was living under the illusion that she was there, waiting for him.

There's something to be said for sadness. Something to be conveyed about the bittersweetness of heartbreak in this life. I can't say the rhyme or reason that things can go from super strong raw emotion to a huge empty whole that consumes every little bit of goodness. Today and most of this week it's been a huge fixture in my mind and in my heart. So deeply entrenched that I want to reach out and make it better again but at the same time my hands are tied. I understand it the way Leland says it and as I sat and watched this movie again for the third time. It just is. It will always be. Maybe not in the way that he says completely. But I get something from another block of lines he has. Becky breaks up with him and she tries to do it gently like many do, making us men all vulnerable cause the truth is theres no easy way to get that shit done. Leland tries to understand it and he can't wrap his brain around it. And he thinks it has to do something with the way he expresses his love. And he says maybe if I hit you or scream at you or cheat on you my love will reflect better in your eyes. And he's like I don't want to do that and neither would I but I really ponder if that's this type of drama that's required to keep someone. I have this friend in California who always said you gotta keep it interesting. Like the rollercoaster that exists in films but in Life there is no happy ending. In life that rollercoaster just keeps going.

Something else in The United States of Leland the flawableness of us human things. Earlier this week when I felt like the world was crashing down around me. I went through my entire phonebook and called everyone I know and lied to every single one of them. My mother, my friends, anyone I found their name. Why would I do this? I think it's cause I'm ready to run some more away. In a way I think it's cause when it doesn't matter to do good or right or avoid fucking up. If you give up on that belief you just wanna say fuck it all. How bad can it be, can it get. I haven't felt truly what Leland felt about other people. When my eyes become red and my heart is consumed with sadness, I only blame myself. And if I lose a handle on reality, it feels and I think that no one is real. Like this is all some kind of fantasy of my own concoction. I feel like I shouldn't talk to anyone but I feel so alone that I try to impulsively. It's hard to explain. I may never really understand and be left to accept the truth that these feelings really control me instead of the other way around. Especially when all the goodness falls apart. Leaving just a void for what once was. Between today and yesturday I think I could do the latter of Lelands premise to view the world and just not let anything or anyone in. But in order to do that and succeed I need to cut all ties.

The last thought, Cineama Paradiso, it's so true you go to a preverbal place that you've been so many times and you go back there cause your attached to it and the way it once made you feel but one time, one time you'll return there and everything will have changed, with no hope of it changing back. It's not until you leave, you leave in a way to never turn back and much later you return and it's not back to the way it was, instead everything has changed sooo much but the nostalgia of how it was is strong that a smile or just a look from another person who witnessed it in all it's glory is enough for you to embrace it. The bad shit that's happened mixes to gether with all the good into a ballet and orchestrated canvas of beauty cause instead of the little pieces of it that you liked, like a track or 2 from an album, when you go back much later you can embrace the whole album, like you needed all that time to pass to appreciate the grandness of the entirety of that compilation. Today I wish I had a time machine to speed ahead a decade or two to see those eyes and those people and how we've grown. Unfortunetly I see myself living a life like Yeats for a bit. Internalizing my misfortunes, weighing what dreams I dreamt, weighing everything and wondering if crying will solve it. But today I know there is no answer. This to shall pass, as the winds of change move subtly and slowly. Way to slow for this roaming, lonely, empty lost soul. But it will take hold soon enough and hopefully I can hide my mistakes in a nice tin box and burry it under a shady tree to come back to and remember when the winds have changed, wrinkled, and weathered me enough to appreciate every little bit of this life in a 2 CD set that I impulsively bought cause 5 or 6 of the tracks were so breathtaking.