Thursday, January 19, 2006

Who Gets My Mail?

am watching You've Got Mail. I love it. I don't know what it is about the movie that gets me going. I think it's Meg Ryan in manner of a sweet tempered girl. I love the movie. I think the lines are so adorable...

But moving past the ridiculously cute lines and cheesy plot, I think the movie itself is pretty real. i am especially fond of the scenes where she and Tom Hanks are exchanging emails. They seem so real. Two people who barely know each other but are learning more and more about each other. They do what we all REALLY do, and that's talk about nothing:


"The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino. " says Hanks in reply to Meg Ryan's telling him about a butterfly she saw on the subway.


But most importantly I think it's so endearing when they show Meg Ryan at night, wondering about her life sending an email to the one person she wanted to hear her heart. She didn't want an answer, and he didn't even have to respond. She just wanted it to be heard...

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life. Well, valuable but small.And sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void."


We all have the person we would send that question to...or else we are still looking for them.

Guilty??? Or Innocent?? YOU decide!

Well, this morning I received the following email from My Mystery Man.



From: Mystery@rMysteryMan.com
Subject: I didn't do it.
Date: January 19, 2006 10:59:57 AM PST
To: elizabeth.alvarez@pepperdine.edu


It wasn't me:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060119/ap_on_en_ot/poe_mystery_visitor

Mystery


The link, if you click on it, contains the following story:

Mystery Man Places Roses on Poe Gravesite
By KASEY JONES, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 52 minutes ago
BALTIMORE - For the 57th straight year, a mystery man paid tribute to Edgar Allan Poe by placing roses and a bottle of cognac on the writer's grave to mark his birthday.


Some of the 25 spectators drawn to a tiny, locked graveyard in downtown Baltimore for the ceremony climbed over the walls of the site and were "running all over the place trying to find out how the guy gets in," according to Jeff Jerome, the most faithful viewer of the event.

Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum, said early Thursday he had to chase people out of the graveyard, fearing they would interfere with the mystery visitor's ceremony.

"In letting people know about this tribute, I've been contributing to these people's desire to catch this guy," Jerome said. "It's such a touching tribute, and it's been disrupted by the actions of a few people trying to interfere and expose this guy."

Jerome has seen the mysterious visitor every Jan. 19 since 1976.

"They had a game plan," Jerome said of the spectators. "They knew from previous years when the guy would appear."

But Jerome declined to reveal details of what the Poe toaster was wearing, what he did at Poe's grave, and whether he left anything besides the roses and cognac, such as a note.

It was a the crisp, cold, clear night. "I was hoping for wind and rain in keeping with a Poe story," Jerome said.

But the museum curator was saddened by the disrespectful spectators.

"I hope to preserve this tribute. It's one of those things that make Baltimore so unique," he said.

For decades, a frail figure made the visit to Poe's grave. In 1993 the original visitor left a cryptic note saying, "The torch will be passed." A later note said the man, who apparently died in 1998, had handed the tradition on to his sons.

Poe, who wrote poems and horror stories such as "The Raven" and "The Telltale Heart," died Oct. 7, 1849 in Baltimore at the age of 40 after collapsing in a tavern.




Is he guilty? you decide....

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Compliments

So tonight after a small "tiff" with my Mystery Man this evening, a long talk followed. Sometimes the best things you learn come from silence.

When Mystery Man is in a hole, and he'll tell you this himself, he keeps on digging until he can't get out anymore. He just hopes, he says, that he can come out the other side. It all starts with a word not meant...and then more words come that we both hope we will each forget.

So my accent makes me sound dumber? And that's true right Mystery Man, because you say "the polls" say so? Oh, and I shouldn't let people make me upset because then I lose control.

Ok so I tuned you out long ago you jerk. You just don't hear yourself do you? You are so busy being so logical you don't notice the girl next to you, the one next to you when no one else even knows you exist - ya her, she's crying. You don't know though because you are busy showing how you "were wrong" but you have to do it in the smarter fashion. It has to be in the way most logical huh? You are SO competitive you can't even just be sorry unless you win at it.


Behind all the words, are the silent thoughts we knew before...

I should learn to be more quiet, less sensitive.

Buy maybe you should learn to be less cold.

I should learn to breathe easier.

Maybe.

But you should learn to apologize.

I need to give you the benefit of the doubt; sure.

But you need to meet me half way.

Don't you even care????


But i'm so upset I don't hear you apologize. I don't see your hands shaking, your voice quiverring. You can't believe you hurt my feellings; and it was all from a statement that wouldn't make you flinch. You mean well don't you?

I didn't see your eyes open wider with concern, nor did I hear your voice sound so shaky until I was done being upset. I didn't see your facial expression...untill i was done crying enough to look

I thought you were turning away from me, but the whole time you were wishing I'd understand you were lost down a road you didn't know how to navigate.

At the end of the night, a few shaky voices and tears later, I find out that only a fool would let my friendship go...and I am a friend that's hard to find. Yes, yes he DOES care, more than he can show.

I won't put words in your mouth anymore Mystery Man. I know you care. :-)

So you care..and you just don't know how else to show me? So you can only demonstrate this over the long term...what? What exactly? What I already knew...before you said the only people you'd intentionally hurt in this life would be the ones that hurt me....that it's a good thing I was quiet during this or I may have missed it.

As you wish.