Hannah and Her Sisters

I really appreciate everyone who has contacted me or made efforts to. I really do.

It's weird how there are expectations for grief and wondering if you are living up to them, measuring your own reactions and your own actions by some imagined yardstick of how people are supposed to grieve, of what is or is not appropriate. How I called in sick yesterday and today because it just would not seem appropriate to go into work hours after learning your father had died. I had Paul and Greg over tonight to watch a Woody Allen movie with me, Hannah and her Sisters, and when I opened the door for Paul and he asked me how I was doing, I told him that I was doing all right, feeling kind of weird, and that my dad died yesterday. This shocked Paul that I mentioned this so casually and that I was having him over to watch a movie, and he asked me if I was sure that I was okay, if I didn't need to just blghfskh - that is sort of the noise he made, this noise that I understood, which meant to just be a mess and be alone and not make conversation and watch a comedy.

I think Paul thinks that I am mental and that I am secretly a mess and put on a happy face. But I think I admit to being a mess, but am a happy one, one whose happiness is so dependent upon that messiness, of knowing how in flux everything is and how I am so happy to just be riding the crest of this wave until it finally does crash.

There are a couple house parties this weekend that I want to go to. If I don't go, the Allen marathon will continue. They are all I want to watch at this moment, that they bring up all these concerns I have in a way that I can deal with right now, these themes of death and what exactly our purpose in life is, and strikes such a positive note on the theme, almost Beatlesish, in that all you need is love. But doesn't do so in a syrupy way, in a way that I can stomach and totally appreciate. I am prety smitten with Allen lately and lucikly he has about forty movies out there for me to consume, only eleven of which I have seen.

I really do love this and people and all of it.

From Hannah and Her Sisters, while Allen is watching a Marx Brothers film:

And I went upstairs to the balcony and I sat down. The movie was a film I'd seen many times in my life and I always loved it. I'm watching these people up on the screen and I started getting really hooked on the film, you know? And I started to feel, "How can you even think of killing yourself? I mean, isn't is so stupid. Look at all the people up there on the screen. They're real funny, and what if the worst is true - what if there's no God, and you only go around once, and that's it? Well, you know, don't you want to be part of the experience? You know, what the hell, it's not all a drag?" And I'm thinking to myself, "Jeez, I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never going to get and just enjoy it while it lasts. And after, who knows? You know, after, who knows, maybe there is something. Nobody really knows. I know maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that's the best we have." And then I started to sit back and I actually began to enjoy myself.