Inconvenient truths

First of all, is it wrong to make out during “An Inconvenient Truth”? Just asking. I didn’t learn much new, really, but I think that’s because we love to read about new scientific developments. (Really! That’s why!) It was, as promised, the scariest movie of the year. I do recommend it, even though half of it is Al Gore speaking with his charts. He’s gotten a personality in the past few years, though, and learned to let his passion show. If this Al Gore had run for President, it would’ve been a landslide, with no need for the Supreme Court or Katherine Harris’ intervention.

L’Ailee found it particularly scary, even tear-inducing. As I’ve mentioned, she’s from Siberia. She whispered at a couple of points, “That’s what my aunt was talking about!” They regularly correspond by e-mail, with her aunt posting from an internet café. She documents a Siberia that is changing, and when it comes to environmental issues, not for the better. I think in terms of the cute animals—the thought of polar bears drowning devastates me! L’Ailee thinks in terms of home, and wanting to visit it again one day, and the idea that the few things she truly loved and missed might be gone before she can. I feel, once again, so grateful that I can go home.

If nothing else, you’ll make sure you turned every light and appliance off before you go to bed. I’m watching a race tonight; it hit me hard that I may have to give that up, that we in the NASCAR Nation may have to give that up, or else it’ll have to change drastically. Maybe NASCAR will place itself at the forefront of fuel alternative technology, for lack of other choices? I wouldn’t mind.

L’Ailee and I had a minor disagreement. Just for background’s sake, many of my paternal relatives don’t like my mom, or many choices I made in my life (like moving up north), or my wife. One of the friends we went to see “An Inconvenient Truth” and I were talking about not being too impressed with the people we see on TV. “After all,” I joked, “my Uncle Cletus was on all the local stations plus Cops after he knocked over that liquor store, and we weren’t all that impressed.” Everyone around us—we went as an eight-some—laughed.

“Do you really have an Uncle Cletus?” my friend asked.
“She might. On her father’s side,” L’Ailee blurted.
I shot her a look. “I do not have an Uncle Cletus. And none of my people were on Cops.”
“As far as we know. We don’t watch Cops,” L’Ailee added.
“Quit it!” I later had to explain the concept of “I can joke about them because they’re mine and you can’t” to her. I almost miss how she was before we got married, unable to really talk around anyone but a very few people and afraid to blurt out the first thing she was thinking. Almost! :-)

I can’t stop thinking about my friend “Vivian.” (My coven sisters let me use their Craft names. Mine, incidentally, is Violet Stormchaser.) Her dad should step forward and donate that kidney—he took the function away from her, after all. Or her mom. But if “ifs” and “buts” were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas. I feel so grateful I get to live my own relatively healthy life and so horrible for feeling grateful at Vivian’s expense. Last night she told me she’s grateful for getting to 25 and being married to her awesome husband and having several other experiences. But I remember the teenage track star; I remember the computer guts strewn all over her room and all her amazing invention ideas. You ever look at somebody and think “she has so much more for the world?” I feel that way about Vivian.

I keep thinking, tragedy and pain are in our backgrounds. They were in the foreground before; they may be again. I keep thinking of my grandfather’s admonishment about not hunting too hard for excitement, because it comes to you soon enough. I keep thinking, we all take turns being troubled so we can all help each other. But what happens when you don’t quite know how to help, when it seems like much too much of a big-girl job for you? Maybe you wipe your wife’s tear away in the theater, and it turns into making out, and you go on like normal even though you kind of want to and kind of don't. Or something like that.