thoughts on watching 'garden state'

it's hard to watch a movie that makes you want to cry when you are sitting beside your little brother who, as far as you know, has never seen you emote beyond general happiness and random moments of anger (random - a word that is used a great deal in this movie. more on that later)

some of my most intense feelings of anger (you know, as an aside, it's really hard for me to be angry. i get sad, and i accept. i repress. i don't usually get angry. during my ill-fated excursion into self exploration and mental heeling (sorry for the sarcasm, there), glen the therapist kept asking me "but don't you feel angry? and my answer was inevitably... no) have occured surrounding the betrayal i feel after mr. m slowly but surely talked me into letting down my barriers. he refused to let me keep my walls up and made me talk to him, made me be in touch with my feelings where he was concerned. then, he left me with all of these feelings and emotions that i had no way of dealing with. i was furious with him for making me open myself up - i had these great walls, these great protections, these great totems. he made me let them go. now i don't have them anymore and i'm open up to all of this....... stuff.

the main character of garden state has been on lithium for as long as he can remember. his mom dies and he decides to take himself off because he can't remember the last time he FELT anything. the film takes place over these four days when he returns to his home town, watches his friends seek out the oblivion he's trying so hard to escape, and falls in love with this girl. she says to him in words much more eloquently than this: "it's life... sometimes it hurts, but it's all we've got".

i can't decide if i want this or not. i'm torn between wanting the oblivion i had - not feeling anything is better than feeling so much pain - and craving the happiness that i had just started to remember.

more than anything i'm tired of fucking wasting time. i feel like i'm one of those wind up toys that just keeps bumping against the walls.. bumping bumping over and over again until my mechanism winds down and i collapse exhausted.

it's some kind of fucked up marxist alienation - i'm just part of the machine of economy. i sleepwalk through my days going through the motions of emotion. i work and eat and sleep and fuck and work and eat and sleep and fuck and go to the movies and smile my mechanical smile until the wheels slowly grind to a stop and then i'm dead.

i'm tired of fucking wasting time. i want to create something. i want to be part of something bigger than i am. i want to feel joy again. i want to spread my arms and tilt back my head and spin and spin and spin till i fall down laughing with joy and the rain fills my mouth and then i'm crying and i can't tell the difference between laughing and crying anymore cause really they're the same thing. it's the same thing.