Tuesday, January 31, 2006

some three-year-old musings on MDD and the movie Magnolia

Thursday, August 08, 2002 – 1:25 AM

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past month and a half but not a lot of writing. In fact, no writing at all, so I figure its about time to get started again. After all, I have to wrack my brain for a travel essay topic and eventually compose twelve artful pages that say something about something. And this is a bad sign. The swirling minutia of irrelevant thoughts that managed to keep me up past midnight suddenly backtracked into nothingness the moment I decided to end my writing fast. Oh, well. Maybe my thoughts will return eventually. In the interim, as I listen to jars of clay and Switchfoot, here’s a movie review of sorts; after all, in the old days, when I actually managed to keep a diary, I included everything from movie reviews to silly lists of what I consumed that day (trix, cinnabon, chocolate-chip-oatmeal cookies, three fruit snacks, a piece of pizza, a third of a donut, and a piece of gum).

Magnolia: A bizarre movie that intermittently follows the lives of twelve very different people, pulling their lives from pure randomness to an intricate web of interconnectedness. At its heart this movie seems to be searching for something to explain the strange coincidences that commingle to form our lives. Falling frogs and ironic deaths also accentuate the movie’s strange taste in storytelling. While I could easily add some plot summary or interesting observations, there’s a reason this movie, which I watched about three weeks ago, popped into my head, and at the moment—and what a brief moment it shall be, because while david gray may be able to bob his head tirelessly to babylon, its putting me to sleep—I want to talk about me. So, as I turned my massive (yet insignificant) to do list over in my mind, pending emails shot to the forefront. One such email will be addressed to Pam; among other things, this email will have to explain why I sometimes feel ‘sick of myself.’ As I was considering this, I stumbled upon the issue of me being or not being depressed (and likewise, this spawned parallel thoughts concerning Sarah and Marianne, but I have only so much space and even less time). Wow, this is gonna’ take forever. So here’s the connection to magnolia. At one point in the movie william h macy (the reason I checked the movie out from the library in the first place) says something like “I’m not depressed, I’m melancholy. There’s a difference.” And he’s right. Lately, however, I haven’t really been feeling either. That’s good news. Thanks Jesus. Goodnight.

1/31/06 post-script:
i still think fondly of that disturbing magnolia movie. i have several friends that live in magnolia. i don't know if they're depressed, but i feel fine. well, mostly fine; the wind keeps waking the motion-sensored light outside my bedroom window, so i've been posting messages to the ESL chat rooms (as, you guessed it, the17pointscale), hoping that talk of em dashes might put me to sleep. in any case, i like the idea of listing my meals for the day--it was ahead of its time. oatmeal, ritz crackers, vanilla wafers, bacon and egg scramble, milk...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

peanut butter toast, odwalla juice, coffee, mcdonalds spicy chicken sandwich, tonight... who knows?

andrew said...

is this what you really ate? you weren't just dreaming of the chicken sandwich?

by the way, MDD = Major Depressive Disorder and is not an entirely appropriate title word. i just liked the sound of mmmmm...soMe Musings on Mdd and the Movie Magnolia.

Anonymous said...

what I really ate. flashing online advertising works on me.