Evoke

A good cry soothes a lot of pains. Even growing pains. In many cases it quiets fears, if only by exhausting the thinker into numbness.

Sometimes my potential threatens to crush me. Sometime soon I’ll break free of it, grow and gain so much that it won’t be able to keep me in or under, and I’ll stretch out and shatter the walls that close in, as if they were merely those of a glass box. I’m terrified you’re going to miss it.

Every day I am sadder but wiser. Like everyone else, I sometimes wonder if anybody else can feel the way I do, as deeply, as high, as low. And if they do, how do they keep from showing it?

I went to see Finding Neverland tonight and as usual, I’ll keep my critique to myself. I generally keep my reactions and impressions to myself, too, but tonight something happened while seeing a story about imagination, which, if you didn’t know, is thought to be my forté. And imagination is the screen on which we view our memories. We all know memory assaults with a brutality no exterior villain can match; all it took was an expression, just a tilt of the head, the furrow of a brow, and a pucker of a mouth, and I was right back in the middle of a fight with a dark-haired person, one fight in a continuous string of fights that went on for years. Something about Johnny Depp’s face when his hair is long and loose and parted in the middle, something about how broad and dark is that face, with its square jaw and bottomless black eyes, evokes for me another face that I will not likely ever see again. I hope not to. I would like to remember it the way I last saw it in an airport terminal, youthful and hopeful, not angry at me or disappointed in life. Does it make sense that some people, even as you love them dearly, you do not love enough to endure seeing them age and fail and die? I couldn’t bear to see him pass through all the stages of life. In my memory and imagination, he will always be young and healthy and beautiful. True love must be when you can say to someone “I want to grow old with you,” and truly mean it. How morbid, and yet, how perfect.

What an appropriate role for a man with a boy’s name: a boy who refuses to grow up, a man who failed to grow up. I think there’s a possibility that I would love Johnny Depp even if he weren’t the muse of one of my heroes, Tim Burton. I adore anyone who can evoke pain with no visible change of expression. It’s as if he simply emits pain, and you sense it, rather than see it, and it’s still just as effective, if not moreso.

We called Mom “real quick” tonight to discuss travel plans for tomorrow, which we’ve cancelled due to weather. She had a newsflash: Brad and Jennifer are splitting up! I could see my sister’s husband going through a tedious mental list of all our assorted cousins, looking for a Brad or a Jen, with no luck. I tossed him a bone: “Pitt and Aniston, Kelly.” He made the face he reserves for moments when our family’s oddness really shines through. Honestly though, that’s the only celebrity couple I’ve ever seen Mom pay any mind to. Admit it, we all wanted them to work out.