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another sentimental fool With the sun hidden from view as I drove home this morning, the words from My Antonia filled the space in the car around me. As I was listening I started to think about time and the people that have come and gone in my life. In the novel we the reader or in this case the listener get to hear how Jim and Antonia grow up and then apart from one another. This made sense since they were only so close and people do tend to drift away from one another over time. Without trying too hard, the same could be said for my life. What I mean is that I can't think of anyone in my life besides my immediate family who has known me for more than fifteen years. Honestly when I think about it some more, I don't think that I've spoken to any of my high school friends in years. I should, however, get a chance next year since it'll be my fifteen year reunion. In general people seem to wander in and out of my life and sometimes I wonder why I let myself get too attached. Will that person still be here for me a year from now? I can see why people want to form a family of their own and or search for that one person to be there for him or her. They call that stability. Hopefully they made the right decision when they choose that person and decide to make another smaller version of life. Sometimes it seems an odd way to live, but people do it all the time. I still can't picture a smaller version of me walking the earth. To be able to see someone grow and learn from me seems strange even though other people spend their lives trying to build a family. As I've said before I love to hear Nicole talk about her son and I also find it fun to watch and listen to my niece. To them the world is new and still has hope in it and I can see why people love children so much. They offer something that can't be found in adults or something that most people seem to lose as they age. Maybe I'm more of a romantic than I care to admit, because without a doubt the book affected me more than I thought that it would. As often happens to me I started to care about the people in the book. They became real to me. Yes, a good story can get to me. Jim and Antonia never were together, but the longing was there on his side and she thought of him from time to time. Of course if they had gotten together that would have changed everything. Unrequited love is the purest kind in literature. None of the flaws of humanity can come to surface and destroy the illusion. ... Sadly I didn't write much when I was younger so in some small ways those years are lost to me. All that I have are my memories of what I was like when I was growing up and memories aren't always the surest version of reality. They can and do change with time. Of course one can lie in writing as well. An edit here or there or maybe a complete omission of something that happened that one wanted to forget. We are the creators our own reality. There are a few journals from when I was in my twenties and even now those strike as being a different version of me. Interests have changed slightly and so have my opinions. ... I had yet another discussion with someone about the Spider Man movie and it seems that I am still in the minority. This person liked it so much that he saw it five times. I don't think that I have ever paid to see a movie five times. Obviously this person is far more interested in Spider Man than I am, but I guess that that is to be expected since he works at my local comic book store. I guess that there are just a few elements of the Spider Man mythos that appeal to me and most of them were largely absent from the movie. Gwen Stacy, John Jameson, Morbius, Kraven and Felicia Hardy all make Peter more interesting and were completely forgotten in the movie. Whenever he interacted with them he was more real to me. I also missed the much loved banter that Spider Man spouts whenever he fights someone. Of course where movies fail the most, whenever they use a book as source material, would be the inner thoughts of the character and that was certainly true here. Pete is known for his self doubt and moral dilemmas and those were almost over looked in the movie. All that we got was a voiceover in the beginning and at the end. It wasn't enough in my opinion. There should have been less slapstick and more thought. That would have made me happy.
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