For Summer, Pt. 4
LESTER: They say your entire life flashes in front of your eyes when you die. It’s not really your entire life… It’s just the moments that stood out… And they’re not the ones you’d expect, either…The moments you remember are tiny ones, some you haven’t thought of in years… If you’ve thought of them at all… But in the last second of your life, you remember them with astonishing clarity… Because they’re just so… beautiful… that they must have been imprinted, on like a cellular level…
For me it was, lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars…
And yellow leaves from the ginkgo trees that lined our street…
Or my grandmother’s hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper…
And the first time I saw my cousin Tony’s brand new GTO…
And the way I felt when Angela first smiled at me…
-This is also from American Beauty
Just in general, I love the water. I love quiet lakes. You see the wind and currents play across the water, and I wonder how much activity that relatively peaceful exterior hides. I know that fish and other animals swim in the waters. From the biggest to the smallest, they all wait just under the surface. I love rivers. You watch it flow past you, and you wonder where this water has come from, where it is going. At least some of this water will return to the air, and then up in the clouds. Other water will run the entire course of the river, and empty into larger rivers, which empty into even larger rivers. All of them eventually lead to the ocean. All of the water we have has been in the ocean at some point, more than likely. Where is the water you bathe in, the water you drink, where is it originally from? I love the ocean. I’ve only seen it twice, but I love the raw power of the ocean. The shore puts up continual resistance, yet it never stops the tide from coming in. It doesn’t stop the waves from their relentless assault. And gradually, the ocean wins. The power of the waves is amazing, really. What would it take to destroy a rock quay? Just as the ocean, it will tell you-pressure and time. I love riding the waves, your body helpless to fight the immense power of the water. I love letting the water take control over your body, letting it decide where you will float to next. I love riding tubes down a river, closing your eyes and letting the water take you.and then the next thing you know, you wake up and have no idea where you are. I love waking up not knowing where I am.
And I love music, and painting, and poetry, and the theater. I love the symphony. I love watching all the members of the symphony play their part to issue a masterpiece. Watching each section of the orchestra do it’s part to bring forth it’s sounds, and each smaller section break into it’s tasks. I love the theater. Watching people be someone else, exploring themselves to craft the likeness of someone else. I like suspending my critical eyes long enough to entrust myself to the author or playwright. I love walking around the art museum, looking at the paintings, seeing how the artists chose to represent the reality they saw. I wonder about what they felt as they put brush to canvas. I concentrate on the emotions that the painting makes me experience. I stand before the paintings like an acolyte before an altar, deep in concentration, looking for the response the painting draws from me. I love Monet. He didn’t see things is sharp distinction-he saw everything blurring together.light and shadow. I would have loved to sit down and talk to him. Did he ever get tired of looking at the same pond of water lilies? I’ll bet he didn’t. No one tired of a simple flower could have painted them so splendidly so many times. What did the haystacks really look like to him? Was Venice as beautiful as his paintings portray it to be? London? What did he see that we miss? A building wasn’t just a building to Monet, I’ll bet my life on it. It was an opportunity.