tonight sunshine and I watched this movie Garden State which left me wondering how pieces of my brain got stuck in someone else's head that they might make this movie with a boat perched on an infinite abyss and tap-dancing by firelight and a knight eating his wheaties. too cute, too cute, but in a totally tolerable way. it's very romantic and it has great twenty-something romantic music and in the end the lights go up and all the happy couples look at each other with this baby, that's so us look and some of them smooch or even hold each other in a way and all I can think is, unlikely. not impossible but unlikely. we look prettier through the mirror of someone else's fiction.

but at least they can think it. at least they can get all misty and go home and make slow love like they would in the movies and for a few days it'll be really sweet and their hearts will be all swollen with imagining. at least they have that. I feel bad for the poor couple in the third row who doesn't really like each other that much, even though this is probably the stage where they should be smitten, but they just aren't for some reason and they're watching this really sweet movie about people who are smitten and even though they don't think, oh that's not us at all, they're still left mildly uncomfortable. like they have something sticky on the side of their hand.

I remember one time I saw a romantic movie and it made me realize that I wasn't in love. and though one probably should not hold out hope for that crystaline thing they call love in hollywood, it turns out that I really wasn't in love and it kind of took the hope of moviemaking to snap me out of my numbstate. maybe that'll happen to them. they'll look down at their hands and realize that they're not sticky at all and that actually, really, they're just not in love.

I think I recommend this movie.
________________________________

post note: me and sunshine aren't in either group. we're the casual observers. though I reserve the right to make love like they do in the movies and to have my heart swollen with imaginings. it's the right of every casual observer.