Tonight I saw the film I'm Not There up in Salt Lake. Incredible. It really has me thinking about this obsession I have to define myself. It is ludicrous and pointless and time-consuming and weak and silly and lame. I feel like a million different people all the time, yet I wake up in the morning and try to convince myself that I am the person I was just hours before. How can we ever know what soul or feeling or movement or being is contained within us at any given moment? It's impossible.
My favorite line from the film:
"The more you live a certain way, the less it feels like freedom."
On the ride out of the city I heard this song and it really made me feel lucky for the simple twist in fate that has come my way. An opportunity to roll out of this death bed I've been sleeping in voluntarily for years. To drive down the street and not know what's coming up on the next left turn, to see only unfamiliar faces, and to find myself a stranger in an even stranger world. To not be scared of my own thoughts and to care less about the meaning of other people's actions. To find a day *even just a single day* that I can live in and be alive for no other reason than just to feel it.
"Simple Twist of Fate" -- Bob Dylan
They sat together in the park
As the evening sky grew dark,
She looked at him and he felt a spark tingle to his bones.
'Twas then he felt alone and wished that he'd gone straight
And watched out for a simple twist of fate.
They walked along by the old canal
A little confused, I remember well
And stopped into a strange hotel with a neon burnin' bright.
He felt the heat of the night hit him like a freight train
Moving with a simple twist of fate.
A saxophone someplace far off played
As she was walkin' by the arcade.
As the light bust through a beat-up shade where he was wakin' up,
She dropped a coin into the cup of a blind man at the gate
And forgot about a simple twist of fate.
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care, pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.
He hears the ticking of the clocks
And walks along with a parrot that talks,
Hunts her down by the waterfront docks where the sailers all come in.
Maybe she'll pick him out again, how long must he wait
Once more for a simple twist of fate.
People tell me it's a sin
To know and feel too much within.
I still believe she was my twin, but I lost the ring.
She was born in spring, but I was born too late
Blame it on a simple twist of fate.
