January 12, 2008

Wonderful time last night at Asheville Pizza with most of the cast of Crown of Shadows. We went to see the movie Across the Universe, a 60's musical buoyed up by Beatles’s songs. They probably didn’t know how much it meant to be to be invited, especially after the gloom day I was having. The film didn’t move me as much as I think it was supposed to, but I was delighted by my companions’ full-blooded reaction. They brought sparklers and set them off at an appropriate moment. The management gave us ice cream. The very big man I was sitting next to moved and gasped at scenes he especially liked (having seen the movie a dozen times already), and it was fascinating to compare his enthusiastic body language with what was going on on the screen. I thought I knew how to have a good time, but some people leave me in the dust.

Belve looks sensational in his new haircut.

Coffee with JS to talk about his graduate school applications. I wondered what it was like to be beautiful and smart and young and tall and committed and brave and stand at the edge of an infinitude of possibilities. I’ve had a few of those things, but not all, and never all at once. He thinks he is requiring a task of me, but he is really allowing me to bask for a moment in human glory. Maybe our gratitude evens out somewhere in the middle.