Friday, February 28, 2014

Book of Magic

waiting for The Wind to Rise, Miyazaki's The Wind Rises. At 10:30, the projected start time, nothing happened. We waited a half hour and Genevieve finally asked me how long we were willing to give it. I said 7 minutes. 4 minutes later the manager came in and apologized and said the movie would be up momentarily. 2 minutes later the movie started. Hardly a minute to spare.

But I knew, before the movie even started, I was in the hands of magic. So when asked I just picked a magic number. 7.

I'm just remembering there was a 7 prominent in the movie too, on the side of an airplane.

But the amazing part for me is what we did about that half hour. I told Genevieve 3 stories. First we talked about how heart breaking it is that Sofia breaks out in tears after we catch her doing something she's not supposed to be. We agree that working on responding to her rather than reacting is the better way. Anger can drive behavior, but has the negative effect of teaching one how to be angry and reactive.

Then, after a moment of silence, looking at a black screen bathed in a soft light I told Gen about my experience seeing Derek Jarman's Blue in the theater, looking at that Maxfield Parrish blue screen for 2 hours while Jarman's actors delivered his thoughts on death as he was dying.

Finally I told her the story I had read that morning in Leonard Cohen's biography. When Cohen was...