Family Easter

These may or may not be a few weeks late..

(Both of my sisters, one of my cousins, and my Oma)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

     As you can probably guess by the title of this post, I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind today. I have had this movie in my Netflix queue for forever, but due to my short attention span, I hadn't watched it until now (I am not really a huge movie person).

     I was a little wary of the cast line up, since I am used to seeing Jim Carey as more a a comedy actor, and a lot of the actors are familiar faces (something that weirds me out since I see them as the actor and less as the character). However, the movie was amazing. Everything was beautifully done, and all of the back stories came together in such a stunning way (especially Kirsten Dunst's plotline, did not see that one coming).

     Basically, Clementine and Joel (Kate Winslet and Jim Carey) start the film broken up and hating each other, to the point where they were both using a memory-eraser in order to forget about each other. But as the memory-eraser-people erase Joel's memories, forcing him to relive them (while they get shwasted and high), he ends up wanting Clementine back. Crazy stuff.

It's an interesting concept, forgetting someone that broke your heart in any way, one that I am sure most of us (myself included) have though about at some point or another.

My English teacher in high school said that all forms of literary expression (books, movies, etc.) have two purposes: two inform, and entertain. Too often, movies only entertain. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does both. It made me think.

My second favorite scene barely lasts five seconds, but it involves this little old lady having memories of her dead husband removed. She is bawling, and my heart breaks for her. partly because she reminds me of my Oma (after my Opa died), and partly because it's an intense scene.

     The ending was by far the the part of this movie that made it the amazing picture that it is to me. When couples are broken up in most movies, they will be happily reunited like nothing happened, even if their problems aren't actually solved. Without spoiling the ending for you guys, this doesn't happen, making this piece a lot more honest.



If you could forget someone who broke your heart, even if they were a huge part of your life, would you?

The Madness Vase

     I swear, I am normal on occasion. However, tonight is just not one of those nights. After hanging out with my Oma, I stopped in to visit my friend Kristen, and I ended up reading. Yes, you read that right, reading.

Wow. Even I am amazed at the new level of nerd that I have just reached. And no, it wasn't because Kristen is boring (in fact, her life is super entertaining. She usually does most of the talking when we hang out because I just love her stories that much).

She showed me her latest book buys Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Johnathon Safran Foer and The Madness Vase by Andrea Gibson. I didn't have a positive experience with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but since The Madness Vase is a collection of poems, I figured that it'd be easy to read (and keep conversation).

And it was quite amazing. Haunting, in the most beautiful way. I only made it halfway through, so my new mission is finding this book and making it my own.

Here is an excerpt from her poem entitled "Sleeping"

 I’m exactly like him
We both have wrinkles around our eyes, a hundred years older than our ages
We both carry ourselves like ambulances with someone dead inside
hoping we’ll get there in time.
I didn’t get here in time.


And here is a link to the preview of these poems.

You're welcome (they are that good).