Crying Over Spilled Milk

[sisabet]

I have two passes to see a preview of Elizabethtown tonight in Hamburg, and no one to go with. I've got co-workers who always say they want to go to the movies, but never do. Dawn has to work and The Boy is grounded. I know I know other people and I supposed I could make the effort of picking up my cell phone, but meh. It's Tuesday night - I'll go by myself.

Part of me is already cringing in advance over how the people from Kentucky will or will not be portrayed. Cameron Crowe seems really taken with our music, so here is hoping SmallTownKentucky does not equal IgnorantRedneckHicks who are merely an amusing background setting for our much more advanced and urbane Leads.

Not that E-Town isn't full of redneck hicks - it is, don't get me wrong. I just want some balance. Also, I don't find Orlando Bloom hot. I don't find him unattractive, I mean, if he asked me out I'd be all over that - I just don't get all "oooooh Orlando!" when I see him.

In other news: I am almost finished with a vid. This is a big, fucking deal. You have no idea. I'm also taken my new habit of feeling the sudden urge to burst into tears in stride. It's probably some kind of hormonal shift my body has to adjust to or just a side effect of stress and the crap this time of year always brings. It doesn't appear to be anything to worry about - it is just new.

And kind of neat. Like - I can sit and think about something and all of a sudden my thoughts will turn and I'll realize something and I will have to cry. And then I feel fine again. Or I'll be watching television and I'll see something and I'll have to cry and then it is over. It is like a little tiny five minute breakdown. I thought they were all hurricane related when it started but it hasn't stopped - if anything I can count on it being more regular.

And it isn't as if I don't ever cry, I do. I just usually save up a bunch of stuff and then have a big huge tantrum complete with sobs and snot and a nasty headache and exhaustion and snuffling. It ain't pretty. This is really different - it is like my emotional pressure valve broke and the slightest thing will cause me to choke up and it is like a little mini-whirlwind and then I take a deep breath and not only am I fine - I feel better.

And it is amazing the things that can cause these fits. Like, I was watching this nature documentary - episode one of "The Blue Planet" and there was this long drawn out scene where these sharks kill this gray whale calf and the mother whale mourns and she reminded me of Moya and I lost it. Then I was fine.

I saw a car that made me sad because the paint job was sloppy and I felt bad for the car and while I didn't actually cry this time, my throat started hurting. If I had kept thinking about it - what that car has gone through and how it got from there to here, I totally would have lost it. Thankfully, the light changed and I made a left turn away.

Just today I was thinking about something that exists only in my head. And I was talking to pipsqueaky last night and she said something that slid all these puzzle pieces into place about this character, that isn't even a fictional character I've swiped to play with - she isn't real at all - and she went from being this kinda, sorta caricature of an old college roommate, to being real and making sense and I started crying because what I had done in my head really hurt her. And I felt bad for her. Except she isn't real and in effect the only thing I have done is tell a story, to myself, that made me cry.

But for only a few minutes and then I was fine. I wonder if this just means I am getting more shallow? Cause I don't think it is gonna be possible for me to lose anymore depth, here. I'm pretty much just all surface anymore.

Comments

[movies-michelle.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of with you on the nervous about how "Elizabethtown" is going to portray the area and its inhabitants. But I have hope that since he was going to premiere the movie in the area as a thank you for letting him film there, it'll be good.

And, really, I was only kind of curious about the movie until I saw the trailer and the discussion about how to pronounce Louisville. *g*

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen that trailer - I did see one where Kirsten Dunst swoops down and says "Loo-uh-vul, Kentucky" and while I was impressed she pronounced Louisville correctly (and really - flight attendents almost always do), I was worried there was mocking in her tone. And I am allowed to mock. She is not.

I am not worried that he won't portray locals as big-hearted - I think that will possibly be one of the messages of the movie. It is more the "bumpkin" image I am concerned with. Because, yes - we are/can be bumpkins, there are degrees of bumpkinhood and it is a very sensitive thing, one that I almost think you have to know from the inside out.

[movies-michelle.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's like all the tourists who would come in every year for the Derby and crack jokes about how surprised they were everyone wore shoes. Fuckyouverymuch, dude.

There is bumpkin/hick/redneck abounding. But it's not the be-all, end-all definition. And we're not all just sitting there for the Big City types to come and make our lives better. Nor are most of us waiting for the Big City types to come around and be "enriched" by our "simple, unsophisticated" ways.

I keep thinking about that article in one of the Seatlle papers here a couple of years ago that was part of a series they were doing with the reporter "crossing America." It was the one she did in Louisville, and it epitomized everything I hated, because she was so "charmed" by the uneducated, poor black woman, sitting in the swing on the porch of her white washed house, etc. It was all, "Isn't this just quiant?!" and I wanted to track down and smack the crap out of her for treating the whole thing like a tourist trap photo op rather than a person and her home. Argh.

[luminosity]

Orlando Bloom elicits the Mighty Shrug.

This thing about crying for 5 minutes. I sort of do that, too. I mean, if there was *EVER* a time when I needed to have a couple of those big, honkin', snot-filled, headache-inducing, nearly hysterical crying jags, both good and bad, it's been this year. And yet? I don't. I haven't. Sometimes I wonder why, and then I rationalize it all down to something like "well, what's the point really and this changes nothing really and my eyes are going to feel like they're on stalks for two days and I'll be *exhausted* because the aftermath of the fit is worse than the fit itself, so I've Pavloved myself but in a good way, but is it a good way...yeah, well. Um." And the stuff that makes me tear up? Telling my husband about good things that happen to me. WTF? Watching Aeryn in standing in the snow with D'Argo's Qualta blade. The little 7-year-old boy walking his dog down my street. It has to be some sort of hormonal coping mechanism, because I used to cry every single day--like a release valve was opened everyday and I sprayed everything with angst and depression and hurt feelings and stuff.

We can be shallow together. It's neater.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Look at the Angel. Isn't he pretty. Mmmmmmm....Angel.

[luminosity]

**sniffle** Remember him? Remember when he double-staked those guys? Remember when he jumped off the balcony with Cordy? Remember Lindsey? That guy. And Remember Wesley, in the leather? And Darla? Remember when Angel threw Darla through the french doors in his suite? And remember how he suddenly got pants on between his shocked awakening to Darla in his bed out to the porch? Remember that? And remember when he told us that he was going to be a father? And remember his kid? wow. what a brat, but what an upbringing! And remember when he went all glowy that time and got mortal for a minute? And BUFFY! Remember her? Remember when Spike came back and bothered the hell out of Angel for months? And then, they got all close and stuff? Remember that? Oh yeah, and remember Illyria? That crazy chick. She could alter time and shit. Remember?

I do.

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

I end up crying like a baby at the close of every episode of The Ghost Whisperer, but that's because it is a nice, safe thing to cry over. If I started crying over the big stuff in my life and the world right now, I'd never stop. So hooray for the shallow, it's easier to cope with.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Shallow is not bad. I can live in the shallows.

[miss-pryss.livejournal.com]

I saw a car that made me sad because the paint job was sloppy and I felt bad for the car and while I didn't actually cry this time, my throat started hurting. If I had kept thinking about it - what that car has gone through and how it got from there to here, I totally would have lost it. Thankfully, the light changed and I made a left turn away.

I'm... really glad I'm not the only person this happens to.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

It really depends on the car, you know? But some cars have stories and sometimes life is not fair to them.

[saraslash.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. Commercials totally make me cry, and children's books, and I get SO much shit for it. :)

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

There used to be this long distance commercial about this girl away at school and she calls home and speaks to her father and she'll always be his little ballerina!! Or something. It wrecks me.

[saraslash.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The one I absolutely cannot watch without crying is Sylvan Learning Center. They actually have a couple, all about kids, like, getting tutoring and suddenly they're really proud and able to tell their parents they love reading now.

There's also one for...a credit card, maybe?...where the dad is going on a business trip and his little girl packs her teddy bear in his suitcase so he won't be lonely.

*sob!*

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I'm quite envious of your crying. I can't cry except at the very worst (and, usually, most private) of moments. The last time I sobbed was about seven years ago. I miss it.

Maybe those tiny five-minute breakdowns mean your feelings are more available to you, and you don't have to store up all those little things anymore. You can be affected by something, feel it, and move on instead of carrying around all the baggage for a rainy day.

I wish I could learn that. And I wish I lived near you so I could go see Elizabethtown with you. I think that would be a great way to spend the evening. (:

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Well, I am having to readjust my attitudes toward crying in public, that is for damn sure. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe it is hormones, maybe I am repressing and don't know I am Bruce Willis.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure you have more hair than he does.

[pipsqueaky.livejournal.com]

omg what did I say?!?

*does not remember saying anything of any importance last night*

The short frequent crying spells are no better or worse than the big huge infrequent ones. They're just different ways of dealing with emotional buildup. It IS like a pressure valve; you can either let it out a little at a time, or wait until you're full and then release it all at once. The end result is the same. Doing it the first way doesn't make you shallow. And I tell myself stories that make me cry ALL THE TIME. I love it. 'Sprobably why I read so much deathfic; I get to weep and break down and wail about how so-and-so killed Fraser, THOSE BASTARDS, omg my poor Mountie, and it gets mixed in with whatever else I have been sad about, like the hurricane or family troubles or job stress or politics or loneliness or what-have-you, and you can use the fic (or Random Trigger Event of the Moment) to get all that stuff out and let yourself *feel* it for a couple minutes, and then the happy can take back over. It really is good for you. And somehow I switched POV in the middle of a sentence. Hmm.

Be sure to report back on Elizabethtown. It looks funny and cute and charming in the previews, but yeah - movies set in the South have a tendency to get all Look At The Dumb Hicks Hahaha.

I find it incredibly adorable that you felt bad for the car with the crappy paint job. Which I'm sure is not what you want to hear, as it sounds like it was quite the traumatic event. But that doesn't make it any less adorable. *g*

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Oh - you told me where she was from - which led to me trying to figure out where she got to the point in life she was at, and why she was doing what she was doing and it all just came together and you know, while still being really and extremely annoying, her reasoning and motivations make sense (at least to me) and I can see why she makes the choices she does and why she goes for what she goes for and she is really going to be hurt. On the plus side, she's young. She can take it. But still - I feel really terrible for creating her with just the sole purpose of breaking her heart.

[pipsqueaky.livejournal.com]

Well, hell, isn't that why *every character ever* is created? If they don't have angst and woe, they ain't interesting. And it could be worse for her. Tracey on Firefly was created with the sole purpose of dying tragically. So was Irene Zuko. Or hey, let's talk about main characters - Angel was created with the sole purpose of SUFFERING EVERY DAMN DAY OF HIS LIFE. And he looks mighty mighty fine while doing it, too. Fraser's heart got shattered into itty bitty pieces, and he is a hundred times more fragile than Social Worker Girlfriend Becky. So, you know, she should quit complaining, and be glad that she gets to have her heart broken by Ray Kowalski, cause as tragic events go? That's one of the better ones.

No, I am not jealous of her. Why do you ask?

ahem.

If you still feel bad you could write her a happy little epilogue where she moves to Denver and becomes a little older and a little wiser and eventually hooks up with a nice stable architect or something.

[sunlit5.livejournal.com]

where are you from hon?


Sun

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

A small town in South Central Kentucky

[sunlit5.livejournal.com]

*raises hand*

Cinti here.

Sun

[sweetestdrain]

I would go to Elizabethtown with you if I weren't already back at Mountie School! (Next time I'm in town we should hang out.)

Sometimes I have that crying thing too. It comes and goes. But crying at commercials? Totally. There was one McDonald's scholarship commercial where the girl says something to her dad, I don't even remember what, but it made me go "GAH!" and start bawling. And all car commercials where the camera view is just kind of zooming through the wilderness are just very gorgeous and make me sad.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

You need to concentrate on your Mountie School Studies. I have SO Mary Sued your college, which is absolutely fine as your college already was pretty damned Mary Sue to begin with (it has VIOLET EYES).

I love commercials. That is my biggest objection to Tivo so far is that people are missing out on commercials and it just cannot be healthy for them in the long run. How in the world will they ever know what to buy?

[sunryse00.livejournal.com]

Good times. *sniffle*