Love Is Strange: More thoughts on 'Blue Valentine'

After watching Blue Valentine for the third time tonight, something hit me: love is strange. Complicated. Messy. And probably more than anything, disappointing. Similar to what every Yasujirō Ozu film would tell us about life.

Each time I've watched Blue Valentine, I've seen it differently. The first time, it was all about the highs and the lows. Smiling from grin to grin, heartbreaks going up and down. Left to right. Fits of rage, sexual passion, dancing to a song titled, 'You & Me.' It was all there. And I felt it. Everyone did.

The second time, I noticed it was a story about dealing with (and accepting) relational brokenness. Like the doomed fate of a child who still believes in Santa Claus (e.g., one day, that belief will be dropped), love is (sometimes) all about disappointment. Going from the honeymoon of dating to the throws of a difficult relationship, there are more than just a few bumps along the way. People tell me, 'it's not all bad. It's really worth it.' So why are there so many movies like this out there telling us how sticky, tricky, and just-plain-horrendous marriages can be? Isn't it because it's but a reflection of what see? Or is it just what we choose to see? Or is it just our selfish desires getting in the way of making the other happy? Is it happiness for us, first, that gets in the way? Or do we all just want to feel special and that's when things start to go south?

The third time seeing Blue Valentine, I kept noticing how in the first act both characters talks about 'feelings.' This was the feeling they had, and so, they went with it and 'poof!' what happened? Their risk failed. Their love failed. Their feelings, failed. Like a Greek tragedy, like Romeo + Juliet, it was all lost. And the two people standing face-to-face by the film's end looked more like strangers than former lovers. What happened? Don't they remember? The beginning? The past? The journey along the way? In their attempt to take the risk of love, they end up seeing just how unfortunate (and painful) love can be. They see how loves sometimes turns us into strangers. Strangers to the people we once were, to the people we once loved. But is it really all lost?

As the song by Mickey & Sylvia goes: "Love. Love is strange. A lot of people take it for a game. Once you get it you never want to quit. After you've had it, you're in an awful fix."

In Blue Valentine, both characters were in more than just an 'awful fix.' For them, the stars failed to align. Instead, clouds came, fireworks blasted off, and the burning blues of their future (room) was the only thing made clear. This was their clarity. And not surprisingly, they both couldn't face it.

Sitting in the audience, we want to believe that hearts would soften, minds would be cleared, and their lives would change. Some way. We plead, silently, from the inside-out and hope. A hug. A kiss. A touch. A glance. Something. Something to (maybe) make the other person--and maybe even the person, themselves--change. Do we believe that love changes? Or is it merely that the feelings do? Can we find our way back into love? Or is it like trying to find your way back into being a kid again? Achievable on days when you're at Disneyland or on the playground or coloring with crayons but seemingly impossible anywhere else.

Perhaps this is why Blue Valentine is so rare, so pure, so good. For it presents us with two people, two dreamers, two kids, essentially. Kids trying to grow up in a very broken, very difficult world. Are they ready for love? Maybe that isn't so much the question as is this: are they ready to receive love and not only give it? This is, perhaps, the biggest thing no one tells you about getting into a relationship. It's not just about what you give, what you take, what you're willing to sacrifice. It's also about what the other person is willing to receive. And, also, what they're not willing to receive. Are the two souls in Blue Valentine willing to let themselves be loved? It's hard to say for certain, but I'm doubtful (that's why they seem so insecure, so self-protective, so distant in times of pain, confusion, and loss).

A song can bring them together but it can't keep them from falling apart.

Maybe this is part of the film's power, its mystery, its wonder, and tragedy. For two hours, we get to see the evolution (and destruction) of a relationship, played out as if time ran parallel--the bad running alongside the good. The only problem is, the music has stopped and the couple (may be) beyond repair. Are they?

I guess that depends on who you are and how you see it.

Joy

"Alone, even with all the wisdom in the world, we are powerless: castaways adrift in an impersonal ocean. You can't love a computer or a software program or even a book as you can love another person. Sometimes you just need a human." -Tim Sanders, Love Is The Killer App

My last post just after Thanksgiving focused in on 'hurt'. In it, I was approaching the subject from a variety of perspectives, from a sea of ambiguous faces all trying not to say what I really wanted to say. It was a bit maddening. I wanted to write within my current state of disappointment, darkness, and distressed anxiety, but it was difficult. After all, how do you articulate the hurt that so (unassumingly) creeps up on you? How do you put into workable words ideas so steeped in emotion, pain, suffering?

Sometimes, writing feels like a bi-polar, inner-self dance. A dance between the writer's insecurity and their own (failed) attempts to get out the right words, to speak the appropriate truth. The truth, that exists, just in that moment.

Since that day after Thanksgiving, when I wrote about the subject of 'hurt,' I've experienced--particularly in the past week--a grandiose amount of joy. From so many angles, it keeps piercing me, like an unexpected rush of good fortune, good cheer, goodness. Like the word 'Radiant' webbed by Charlotte to save her dear (pig) friend Wilbur, I feel--in some weird way--like the last 5 days have been a gift. A gift so undeserved, blessed, and profoundly overwhelming, I feel as though I can't take it. I'm speechless. In awe. So struck by the beauty and gift of the moment I have to scatter around on the floor in my head to catch my breath.

Blindsided by joy, if you will.

In the Psalms, the writer writes, "My heart leaps for joy, and I will give thanks to him in song." I like this image. Joy leaping up at us via song. One of the first songs that comes to mind after reading this line is the lovely Mac Davis tune, "I Believe In Music." The chorus to the song, says it all: I believe in music, I believe in love, I believe in music, I believe in love.

I think this is partly what I was getting at a few weeks ago when I wrote. My hurt was a loss of faith. A loss of love, in a way. Love for myself, love for my voice as a writer, for my humanness. We all have such a hard time loving ourselves, I think. We don't think we deserve it. We often choose people to love who don't love us well because we don't think we deserve a love worthy of who we really (truly) are. So we settle. Settle for lies over truths, productiveness over playfulness, criticism over kindness. But it's never too late to see it a different way.

Catholic priest Brennan Manning calls the lack of love for self, 'self-hatred'. He believes it is the antithesis of God. The ultimate slap-in-the-face to creation, humanity, and love. Author Donald Miller believes it's one of the most difficult concepts to grasp in life. The still-small-sinking-sick voice telling us we're not worthy, we're not good enough, we're not lovable, often drowns out the simple love-of-self voice within us.

Thankfully, people come into our lives sometimes who help us see the love we're too stingy to give ourselves. For me, this came in three forms (and then some) this past week: 1) a screenwriting professor, 2) a kindred spirit sharing a wonderful art piece with me courtesy of U.P.S., and 3) a new, breath-of-kind-and-fresh-air, friend, who loved on me in a way only a person who doesn't know you can. All seemed to come out of nowhere, yet, all (also) seemed to connect with me at just the right time, just the right moment. It's baffling to me now, even still. I feel joyful, but writing that seems so silly. So insignificant in capturing the rapturous feeling of ecstasy it has brought me.

I've come to realize (this feeling) is more than joy, really. Much more. It's a joy, transformed; transformed into utter gratitude. A gratitude that thanks God, karma, and all the other broken-people-humans out there who've been so gracious, so wise enough to love on me when I can't seem to love myself.

This is when one of Anne Lamott's two prayers is all that can be expressed, at the end of a week like I've had. I must simply close my eyes, sit and silence, and utter: "Thank you, thank you, thank you." That's all I feel now, too. My heart feels full, drunk on gratitude, spinning over too much love, too much grace, too much goodness, kindness, gentleness, happiness.

This is pure joy. What often comes after the hurt.