THE ACTIVE SHOO-IN & YOUR MOMENT OF TRUTH

This essay is a reflection on 'the moment of truth'. The movies you may see before or after reading this reflection are:

The Bicycle Thief (1948, Italy), All About Eve (1950, USA), and The Road Home (1999, China).

Here are some thoughts of life that linger as I finish a film or a book, as I remember devouring movies back in 1990s, when I was in my twenties. I have watched movies the way I read the person, the character or the persona. And there is also almost always a reminder of a book I have read. I watch life at times like in a school, while being amid other lives being students, and a somewhat-classroom was that old theater with its seats for those to suspend themselves before returning to other realness of the world.

. . .

June was supposed to mean beautiful with its choice of light rain, and sun, setting the scene for summer.

For me, June is one of those months that do not feel like a woman or a man, the way July feels like a harsh man with its heat and the way early November may feel like a young one for its colours.

And so I ask myself, how do I change this, what I just said?

There are times when I would like to emulate a person I have watched in a movie, or read in books, and when it is June, I may not feel like it. And when in November, I have this feeling-- this sense that it is a nice time to be a nice human within the cozy days. But bad domestic matters happen, active shooters, and shocking knifings.

I know of a red hoodie of mine that fits just right, and when I wear it, I feel cool; I feel like I can be watched, while there is some flag nearby and I can definitely feel like I can represent that flag while I feel cool.

But there will be someone who will watch me the way a possible bicycle thief is watched and even anticipated.

And as for summer, I am left wearing a simple shirt because the weather has me disrobing to simplicity. And when you-- as the reader or writer, read or write - you may not want to read or write of anyone in something thick or armored in any sense of that word. Clothes, I have felt, manage to disappear when you feel like there is a moment of truth to happen—from you.

So when you walk in a theater, or a room, for a class, for example, and see the wooden floors, or the wooden effect of the room, making it feel old or homely, have you been influenced already to a state of calm and coziness?

When you ask yourself ‘who am I‘ in a room with lots of anything wooden, you may not realize that your answer to that may be different as when you walk in a room of tiles or metal.

By the time you read this as a review, or part of a book, maybe there is no worry of a pandemic or maybe there is something new. You might still be reading inside your home which you have stayed in for so long. And I sense it possible that there is a slight weight off your heart, even though you are reading when you should be outside enjoying the times that you were not able to do a few years ago. It was once all about COVID, then all about the evenings that will never happen. It was once, just a few years ago, all about the women I may not see for aver long time.

Some of us did think, as I did, that just maybe the world will not be the same, so much so that the sight of the streets would either be littered with some anarchy or of death.

I tell myself that there are still buildings we are in, and therefore there is still solace. I tell myself that there are still such things as keys, and therefore a way to lock and be safe inside.

I can remind myself that there is such a person as a woman; and some men may not like to admit it, but such a kind of person is a source of good solace, and reason to stay rationale -- from the sight of a beautiful face to the sight of a very slow friendly elder or stranger. And then, unfortunately, domestic mess happens, like an active shoe about to damage a series of threads of lives.

If the world was ending, I don’t’ think the stars will start disappearing; and by stars, I mean the singers and celebrities.

I remember several years ago, after a long walk or long ride of my bicycle; I stepped out one evening, and by chance looked up the sky. I saw one strange reddish bright dot, which I thought was unusual. In some strange silly act, I waved as if for a brief moment wondered if someone was able to look back at my earth or my nearby sun.

That star, that light, blinked- Once.

And I stood for a while, and wondered some more about that chance or luck. And I had to stay rationale-- that it was a satellite, and it did sense me somehow but it was also a coincidence.

If you, the viewer, the audience member, the student or attendant of some class or session, are seated, there may be a teacher in front of you, as if s-he is on stage. And there are these moments when someone up front talking is not necessarily talking to you directly, but if you, the one seated, wave back, s-he just might catch it.

There is someone out there who is minding her own business in life, or his own, and if you catch her attention, you will, for the first time, start to exist when you didn’t just a few seconds before that. It is a moment that the truth is that you do exist, with all your imperfect face and hair and legs and unfashionable garb.

In those first few seconds of that moment when s-he acknowledges you exist, s-he might still not like you—how you look, how you dress, and for what intentions you got his attention. This person, if s-he didn’t like you and if s-he felt you might do this again, may then have a plan to avoid you-- if there is a next time, after all the previous times when it was all about you, whoever you are, whoever he is whoever she is.

To this person, you would have to become someone whom s-he will want to confront if this keeps up-- this misunderstanding of trying to get her or his attention.

I remember a long time ago seeing a book called Homesick at a dollar-store. I liked the title by a writer names Sela Ward, and I liked the old look of the cover. I read it months after someone in my life passed away. And I became attached to the author’s life even though her lifestyle was so different from mine. I think I liked that her childhood life was something I would have wanted for me --- and eventually for me and my future kids. And this was from someone who lived in a part of Mississippi that used (to have particular supremacists) to burn black churches.

As a future writer, I (or you) should be wary of what words can do especially as your titles. I would not have picked up a book in my sad times if a fictional book was called Perfect Times in My New House in Bel-Air; or I Can’t Believe You’re a Billionaire and You Don’t Have a Balcony. I hope those titles don’t exist.

In times of pandemic, there was someone who did not follow the rules, those who still were in a cycle of thievery; and you want to follow rules because you would be scared. And I was very conscious of people not following rules like masking or staying at home. I would like a kid trying to tell the teacher that a classmate was breaking rules.

There are steps to being seen in life, when you want to be seen. You would want to be remembered by those close to you, someone across from you. And at some point you should be satisfied that that is enough.

A thinker named Susan Sontag once asked, “Who believes today that war can be abolished -- no one, not even pacifists-- we hope only to stop ... genocide... “. (Ch. 1. Regarding the Pain of Others. Picador. 2013).

My response to this is that we have abolished war-- regionally. That is a step from a step. There is no war between Canada and Mexico and that sense of tension or war is abolished. It takes time; it works.

And step by step, I also can abolish my sense of tension or war with others, in my family or across the hallway, or across the street or anywhere within the city.

You also have to (try to) abolish your own sense of anger and maybe timidity. But there is that the moment of peace just before deciding whether to confront a situation or not. It is also momentous that it is from where a sense of peace may be lost when you finally confront.

There is a place-- that peace. And you will know the time when to test it by your principles--- and you might become unforgettable to someone.

There is a beautiful person among us that if we stare at such a person long enough, s-he will blink, stare back, or look away. And you would have made someone feel like somebody who is being written in somebody else’s brain in the wrong way. This is ideal, though. Terror does happen from those who must have looked at you and from those who, by stereotype, might have a weapon nearby or with a desire to return with.

I remember when I was younger reading a book called Ivanhoe by a Sir Walter Scott. I liked the cover, it had knights and armor; and that was all I remembered for years. In the time of an epidemic, in the silence and in the emptiness of the streets, I did wonder of some traveling knight on some horse, from a long time ago, whether stolen during an escape, or whether looking like a motorbike, heaved from another era, who may have traveled for miles and miles, on a road, homeward bound, and maybe seeing my small suburb for the first time.

And then I wondered what the knight’s intent would be, in his own moment of truth, as a young knight or as an aging knight, to save…someone or someone else… or eradicate what… exactly. He -- (I would imagine a woman riding the horse if only there were more stories of female knights saving and being gallant) --- he would probably like to have a song written after him. I can do that, to save myself. I can definitely do that for a female knight, as she would already be unforgettable to me in any season.

My goal in this review grew to become a reminder-- that there is no one exactly like me, the watcher-turned-writer, and no one like you, the watcher-turned-reader. I am sure we may have a commonality of the type of hero we have in mind. I am also sure that the future writer in any of us would not be able to completely express in one book just how unique one personality can be on its road outside of home, or on its road for a semblance of justice, instead of waiting for justice to pass by.

And if the end of the world was to happen, I unfortunately believe that any sense of unique beautiful personality of a person will diminish by the speed of instincts and natural simplicity.

A writer John Donne once had a poem called Go and Catch a Falling Star. I would like the future to come up with a new perspective on what a star does. Yes, it looks like it is falling, this thing we call meteor or meteorites or comets or asteroids. But the perspective changes when you free a flying star, or touch a passing teardrop of flame. However; whatever.

There are two main people in watching a character, in reading a character—the reader, the writer (and the Director if you ponder on created the Life unfolding). And in the reader likes this feeling in the heart that the writer knew that you were going to react that way or this way, fall out or fall in love.

And the writer can only step back and hope or invisibly wonder that you are somewhere being reflective and comfortable with his book. It so happens that bad readers turn to a different weapon and their active brain, for some reason, becomes de-sensitized to the onslaught of imageries that may happen.

I sometimes think that the reader may place herself somewhere outside her room, mentally, or even beyond the sky and wonder if her favorite character is there with her.

It is in this moment that I don’t think it is in vain that the writer and watcher (or reader) can meet where there is so much peace and only imagination that the writer and reader met at some place that is lost to almost everyone, except the two. A desperate man who becomes perceived as a thief cannot unravel his harsh life in front of the viewer in a matter of time between 0 second to 1 second.

And the watcher will someday meet in real-life a someone else-- who has nothing to do with the book he or she is in, or s-he is in, and a someone else who has nothing to do with her life, who will remind her of some villain or hero, and s-he will wonder whether the female character in her should confront this guy or this somebody who is staring at her.

I can be here in the Midwest, of America, and offer the advice that a simple calm note of ‘what, what happened ?’ may do, as we watch or have watched the news or our monitors; I can offer an advice to a somewhere farther place like to Liverpool or Boston, and offer some words I can expect to be inter-changed to ‘can I help?’, as I read or watch some more.

By having asked that simple question, one of us really should feel like a hero, even though you may not feel like using the word and even though your heart may be thumping like crazy during a dilemma or situation. In those moments, all your fascination with that Eve or that guy or that neighbor does not seem to matter, since, regardless, the moment in which the truth of your actions belongs to you.

What is the point in remembering a hero or a favorite character in a book, when there is an unstoppable epidemic of violence or when the world will end soon (enough)?

There is a method to confronting, and it can be as simple as breathing better, looking around, and actively modifying your heart. It can be as simple a start as seeing oneself as a shoo-in, as one of necessary two or three: one, you, the confronter, the other- who needs confronting, and if there be a third, the Other, you, or whom you may witness, or who may be a part of the conscience pre-judging, judging, and judging long after the confrontation.

L.A.

Instagram: @Aceronhouse