It is my firm belief that sometimes the universe approves of what I am doing and conspires, in its cosmically mysterious way, to work in my favor. The stars shift slightly in their tracts, traffic signals make minor adjustments, plants and trees take imperceptible notice as I pass - all done to shade my existence with the slightest hue of reward, a way of collectively whispering "We bear witness, and we esteem."
I realize that were I to confess that belief to a psychologist, he'd say "Hmmm..." and write "magical thinking" down as his diagnosis. But seriously, how else can I explain the three good love-related things I discuss below coming in to my life shortly after I began The Valentine's Day Experience?
I can't. That's how.
"Bright Star": Cool, restrained, mannered to a fault, this very British movie imagines the relationship between John Keats, the last of England's Romantic poets, and Fanny Brawne, a mysterious footnote in history only known of through a few mentions in Keats' personal letters.
Witty but not intellectual, Fanny struggles to capture the attention of Keats, who is evidently more interested in writing about love than in experiencing it himself.
I can see how this movie wouldn't interest everyone; as far as love stories go, it's not very passionate, and there are only so many dandy chaps in vests and be-ruffled women I can take. (In fact, I am kind of surprised I liked it at all.) But director Jane Campion makes light work beautifully for her, and Abbie Cornish, who plays Fanny, has an intelligent face and enough acting ability to make me bother to look up her previous films. This movie is a slow, beautiful meditation on love as an affair of the mind, rather than of the heart or body.
"The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss: By turns sad and funny, Krauss' story was the surprise I wasn't expecting - a popular book that actually lived up to its pancaked-on hype.
To relate its plot would take too long, but know that it's a transatlantic whirligig in which settings pinball back and forth through time, continents and generations, altogether veiled with a gauze of mystery, the clarity of which ebbs and flows unpredictably. (Whoa. Shot for the moon with that description, didn't I?)
Read it. That's all I am saying.
"Sweet Disposition" by The Temper Trap: I wrote about this song not all that long ago after hearing it on the "500 Days of Summer" soundtrack. But that was before I listened to it about 84 more times, the lead singer's voice becoming the soundtrack to my snowy evening walks home from school.
I really like the chorus (as best I can tell: "A moment of love/ A dream, a lie / a kiss, a cry") and any music video in which glass breaks in slow-motion and there is fake snow instantly wins my seal of approval.
I realize that were I to confess that belief to a psychologist, he'd say "Hmmm..." and write "magical thinking" down as his diagnosis. But seriously, how else can I explain the three good love-related things I discuss below coming in to my life shortly after I began The Valentine's Day Experience?
I can't. That's how.
"Bright Star": Cool, restrained, mannered to a fault, this very British movie imagines the relationship between John Keats, the last of England's Romantic poets, and Fanny Brawne, a mysterious footnote in history only known of through a few mentions in Keats' personal letters.
Witty but not intellectual, Fanny struggles to capture the attention of Keats, who is evidently more interested in writing about love than in experiencing it himself.
I can see how this movie wouldn't interest everyone; as far as love stories go, it's not very passionate, and there are only so many dandy chaps in vests and be-ruffled women I can take. (In fact, I am kind of surprised I liked it at all.) But director Jane Campion makes light work beautifully for her, and Abbie Cornish, who plays Fanny, has an intelligent face and enough acting ability to make me bother to look up her previous films. This movie is a slow, beautiful meditation on love as an affair of the mind, rather than of the heart or body.
"The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss: By turns sad and funny, Krauss' story was the surprise I wasn't expecting - a popular book that actually lived up to its pancaked-on hype.
To relate its plot would take too long, but know that it's a transatlantic whirligig in which settings pinball back and forth through time, continents and generations, altogether veiled with a gauze of mystery, the clarity of which ebbs and flows unpredictably. (Whoa. Shot for the moon with that description, didn't I?)
Read it. That's all I am saying.
"Sweet Disposition" by The Temper Trap: I wrote about this song not all that long ago after hearing it on the "500 Days of Summer" soundtrack. But that was before I listened to it about 84 more times, the lead singer's voice becoming the soundtrack to my snowy evening walks home from school.
I really like the chorus (as best I can tell: "A moment of love/ A dream, a lie / a kiss, a cry") and any music video in which glass breaks in slow-motion and there is fake snow instantly wins my seal of approval.
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