It's Friday: I'm in love

~ from Threadless tees

Friday I'm in love, by The Cure

Neil Patrick Harris in September

Neil Patrick Harris killed at the Emmys as host and made a special appearance as Dr. Horrible.

Tonight, he'll make more folks (that'll be me) happy when Season 5 of "How I Met Your Mother" premieres. Here's a fun catch-up trailer to get us excited about the first episode. Not that we really need the encouragement, but it's a good one!

The lives we could lead

"In My Next Life" by Mark Perlberg

I will own a sailboat sleek
as fingers of wind
and ply the green islands
of the gulf of Maine.
In my next life I will pilot a plane,
and enjoy the light artillery
of the air as I fly to our island
and set down with aplomb
on its grass runway.
I'll be a whiz at math, master five or six
of the world's languages, write poems
strong as Frost and Milosz.
In my next life I won't wonder why
I lie awake from four till daybreak.
I'll be amiable, mostly, but large
and formidable.

I'll insist you be present
in my next life—and the one after that.

I read this poem earlier this month on The Writer's Almanac, and knew immediately that I wanted to write about it. Something in the tone moved me and set me dreaming of the things I have yet to do, things I don't have to wait for a next life to make happen but that I can do next year or the one after.

I also thought of the things I didn't do, that I may never do for all kinds of reasons. The lives we aren't meant to lead, those we forsake for the one that we choose. When I was little, I wanted to be a pianist or a pharmacist. I never imagined myself a writing instructor or an English teacher. But when I became one, I was not startled. I realize that I shed the possibility of those other lives so easily that I didn't realize they had disappeared till much later. Regrets? I only wish there were some way I could live through all those other lives just to see what they would have been before returning to my real one. I'm curious about the person I might have become with each of those other choices.

As for the life I have, I am just as curious about it. There are many things that are still unknown and uncertain. Sometimes, this pains me. At other times, I gaze upon the unknown and remember what it really means - possibilities abound.

What will I take with me?

"All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is." ~ Aleksandar Hemon (from The Lazarus Project)

More than life, by Whitley
Take it with me, by Tom Waits

How much does your life weigh?

I've had my eye on this film for a while now, but it was DSD who gave me the heads-up about the latest trailer. It has a wonderful monologue about the objects and people that make up or weigh down our lives. Baggage, of the metaphorical kind.

People and our relationships with them - they're the heaviest. Not all are heavy though; the lightweights are the ones we shed no tears for when they vanish from our lives. The brief acquaintances, friends of convenience, distant colleagues, the hollow ones, the aloof, hostile, ingratiating. The heavies mark our lives, all through the years, like beacons on hills and cliffs. And who among them do we draw near to? Who among them do we carry with us as we arrive and depart from cities and towns; who do we remember at the ends and beginnings, the birthdays, anniversaries, memorials, and reunions?

At the end of the trailer, swans receive a mention. An example of symbiotic creatures who carry each other throughout their lives. Often, this makes the baggage lighter; you don't carry it alone, or sometimes you persuade each other to let go of some of it. But altogether, somehow, there's more to carry. So some people prefer to be sharks. They hunt, feed, and then they go about their way. No ties, no complications.

There are days when I think it's better to be a shark and others when I think I'd choose a swan's life over a shark's any time. But still I wonder how either could ever be better than the other. Perhaps we will be both all through our lives, transforming with the seasons, with the experiences; it's just the one we become at the end of our days that we'll remember ourselves as. And how heavy will our lives be then, or so very light?

Michael And Heather At The Baggage Claim, by Fountains of Wayne
Swans, by Unkle Bob