12/25/15
i'm thankful that we were late to the new star wars. i'm thankful that when we entered the theater, sure that the pre-show trailers would still be playing, instead, we were met by the the thundering brass fanfare of the overture and the crawl of yellow text scrolling away across an endless starfield. i'm thankful, when we entered our theater and realized the movie had already started, for how primally dark it was, for how when i took a step away from d to try to find a row with empty seats, she was completely lost in the vast black and i had to reach out blindly to find her warm arm again.
i'm thankful for these things because the origin story, as it were, of my parents' relationship (and, therefore, my origin story, in a way), involves my parents in high school going, on their first date, to see the empire strikes back just after it was released. i'm thankful for the story, oft-repeated in family lore, of how my dad was stressed out and annoyed through the beginning of the date because they were running late and by the time they entered the theatre, the movie had already started, laser beams zipping over the icy expanse of hoth, walkers in the distance. i'm thankful for the punchline of the story, which is that my mom felt bad about making them late to the movie until it became clear, as they talked afterward, that my dad had already seen the movie and that this was his second viewing. i'm thankful for my dad's ridiculousness (which, as i get older, becomes clearer and clearer is also my ridiculousness, a genetic inheritance) and my mom's love for that ridiculousness most of the time and for her saintly ability to tolerate it even when she doesn't love it. i'm thankful that their first date wasn't their last date.
i'm thankful, as d and i walked across town yesterday morning to the crappy movie theater by the old mall (it takes about an hour and fifteen minutes) to see the new star wars, i reminded her of this story in a joking way. i'm thankful for the moment later in the trip, when we were hustling along a suburban street so as to hopefully not miss many of the trailers, how impressed i was at the speed of her power walking. i'm thankful that unlike my dad, who was late to a movie he thought was important decades before the invention of prozac, i didn't really care that we were late to the movie, even though i was excited about seeing it and even though i don't normally like being late for things. i'm thankful that when we arrived, though it seemed like our eyes would never adjust well enough to the darkness for us to be able to find seats, eventually they did and we did. i'm thankful that as i groped along a row near the center of the seating, still heavily visually impaired, i didn't accidentally run into anyone because the row i had picked turned out to be empty (i'm thankful i didn't follow my first instinct and try going one row back, where there turned out to be a large group of people). i'm thankful that though d didn't follow me down the row as i thought she did and that she felt briefly alone and scared standing in the aisle, she was soon able to see me motioning to her and make her way to the seat beside me. i'm thankful that d and i are both short and quiet, so hopefully we didn't ruin the first shot of the new star wars for anyone by trying to get to our seats for the journey across the galaxy.
i'm thankful that the new star wars was so great. i'm thankful that for d, who doesn't think she's seen any of the original trilogy, though she has hazy memories of yoda training luke on dagobah, the new star wars was so great. i'm thankful that for me, who watched the original trilogy millions of times as a child, the new star wars was so great. i'm thankful for the beautiful grinning energy of john boyega, especially, but also for the smiles and grunts and grimaces, the leaps and feints, of daisy ridley and oscar isaac and even adam driver, whose performance was so good and interesting that it almost just made me forget his character from girls while watching him (though that required cognitive strain and i think it would be better if he just wore the mask almost all the time). i'm thankful for the sweetness and the humor, which are self-reflexive and winking and joyful without ever descending into the meaninglessly whedonesque. i'm thankful for the genius with which the movie recapitulates scenes and images and ideas and narrative threads from the original without feeling like it's rehashing them, how it absorbs the essence and projects it into the body of the present. i'm thankful for the magic trick light touch of the illusions and the allusions.
i'm thankful for the weird experience i had in the bathroom halfway through the movie when i left to pee. i'm thankful that, for some reason, this movie theater's men's bathroom doesn't have any mirrors, so that as you wash your hands, you aren't able to see your own image. i'm thankful to fantasize that this is not because the mirrors broke or for any kind of banal practical reason, but for art's sake, to allow you to stay locked in the world of the film you're watching rather than confronting your self, the afterimages projecting from your eyes onto the screen of the blank concrete wall. i'm thankful, after listening to the adorable puppyish burbles and bleeps of bb8, watching him roll across the dunes of jakku, for the moment when i stuck my hands under the motion-sensor paper towel dispenser. i'm thankful for the slight delay as the black box's sensors recognized my presence and then the almost animal mechanical whine of it unspooling a segment of brown paper for me to take. i'm thankful how for a moment, rather than being a banal convenience, another meaningless product, the machine made me feel like i was living in the future.