slippage
Seems surreal to think it’s been almost three weeks since my last blog entry. In that time, I’ve dealt with the dentist, class, the hot (food) party, and just life in general. My last grandparent passed away recently, my older granddaughter just turned three a couple weeks ago, a friend of mine had his 37th or so birthday today, and my 44th is coming up in a couple weeks. Last night I was watching a movie on tv, and when it was over, I had the very distinct feeling that I was waiting for something.
What I was waiting for, I have no idea. It didn’t feel like it was good or bad, only that I was waiting. Which made me a bit philosophical. Why, with just over half my life over, am I waiting for anything? Looking back, I’ve done a lot of things in the first half of my life, but honestly, right now I have to say they haven’t really lead me anywhere. All I see are a series of beginnings and endings, and in a couple of cases, some drawn out middles. There were times when I was happy, a lot where I wasn’t, and some where I just was.
So I did what I often do when such a mood strikes - I flipped another movie into the dvd player. Not just any movie, mind you - one of the best sci-fi films of all time, that was released before dvd’s were invented. The theatrical release was unavailable on dvd until it’s 25th anniversary collector’s edition release not long before Christmas 2007. I am talking about none other than the magnificent work of Ridley Scott - BladeRunner. It seemed that once the Star Wars phenomena hit in 1977, science fiction movies became purely about action, rather than exploring such fundamental themes of what is it to be human?
Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott may have hated the added narration, but it gives the movie a film noir feel, at once human and gritty. Besides dealing with our innate humanity, the movie also examines what it’s like to look at our lives when we know we’re getting close to our own end.
I don’t mean to be morbid, or fatalistic, it’s just that time itself has been on my mind a lot lately. I’m wondering where I spend mine, and why I spend it doing things that don’t lead where I want to go. The unexamined life is not worth living, according to Socrates, though sometimes I wonder if I examine mine a little too much. I think sometimes I need to spend more time living it and less time examining it.
Gray thoughts for a gray day, apparently.