"Life is more than just mere survival"...

Tonight is the kind of night you refer to when you start a story with, "It all happened on a night just like this..."  Fall leaves swirling in the wind that echoes like a ghostly cry.  It would have been much more appropriate on Halloween and not some random Wednesday in November and cut off the power for 30 seconds in the middle of my changing out of my work clothes.  Eerie, unsettling, and yet, sitting at the traffic light on the way home from the office, my car buffeted by that relentless wind, it was comforting.  I always say I like fall the best.  I guess I'm just more nostalgic during these crisp months.

I read various, eclectic blogs -- all loads better than mine -- and one that I visit regularly is My New Plaid Pants.  A movie-driven blog, the author has various features (my particular favorite is "Thursday's Ways Not to Die"), including "Everything You Need to Know About Life..." wherein he posts a quote from a movie possessing sometimes off-the-wall insight.  Yesterday's quote was from Woody Allen's recent film, Midnight in Paris, and had an impact on me.  You can view the blog here, but I'll re-print the quote directly:

Paul: Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present... 

the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous 

notion that a different time period is better than the one one's 

living in - it's a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people 

who find it difficult to cope with the present.

And now I want to see the movie exclusively to hear Michael Sheen, who plays Paul, say this bit of dialogue...

Anyway, my first response was that this is absolutely true.  My second was that I am not necessarily dealing with a painful present.  The point, however, is that this isn't world-shattering information, but sometimes someone can articulate something so well that a gong of clarity sounds in your head and for a few minutes you feel like you've been shown the answer to the meaning of life.  And now I can't get that quote out of my head.

So admiring the leaves of fall dancing and frolicking in the air is just a way to deal with the here and now, I suppose.  

And even with the TV playing 'Mr. Belvedere' in the background, the wind insists on being heard...