02 April 2007

Fourteen/twenty-four: Still, fool

Just saw The Virgin Suicides (thanks, Jen, for the gift DVD).

At the beginning, I envied Lux for being the elusive object of Trip's desire. Trip, who was every girl's fantasy. After the Lisbon sisters' suicides, he, already an adult, was interviewed and said his love for Lux was the real thing.

When I was in high school, my goals consisted of writing a graphic novel, find the nearest available puppy love and construe it as the real thing. Just finding things to call mine. I never had both.

By the next half of the film, it was suggested that Trip had been mentally unstable. I felt a strange relief, because their love failed, or that there wasn't any solid love at all.

After the many small accumulations in life, there is this and that that I proudly and securely call mine. But I'm still confused with reality. It's very hard for me to convince other people that I love them as well as it is hard for me to be convinced I am loved.

Finally Trip said that he was happy he experienced it, because other people just don't. It being the thing he and Lux supposedly shared.

The relief had been taken away from me. What if it indeed was the real thing? He left Lux alone in the field, in the cold. —Left her the burden of their irresponsibility. He promised Lux's parents he'd take her home. But what if for the briefest moment there was really love? That they've had it and I just won't?

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