This little cartoon caused me more grief than any ten other items.
It has to do with truth.
It has to do with living in podunk places. It has to do with having friends.
I've lived in the *boonies* for a LONG time.
I've hated it the whole time.
I really am a city boy.
I want mass transit that takes me directly from my residence to the grocery, the party district, and the employment matrix. I want to go to the IMAX.
I had that, sometime back, in Austin.
While I've not enjoyed rural life in the least, I was at least copacetic with the reality.
And mostly, I realized what it means to be a member of a local community.
Though I might not personally enjoy the edges of the universe, I'm not out to make it a miserable place for anyone else.
And I DO make a point of buying things from my friends.
And I make a point of teamwork (when it happens).
About the only thing in that movie I thought of as 'fiction' was the spectacular SW landscape. It's nowhere near that breathtaking in real-life. There are views like in the movie, just spread out over about six hundred more miles. It looks MUCH nicer in the movies than it does in person.
In person, it looks a shitload better in the rear-view mirror, and entirely better as a memory seen through bay-area fog. Some people have more of an enhanced appreciation for light, shadow, rock, and dust than I.
The rest of the movie was kind of 'fact' except that it was only factual from my point of view.
I was watching it with a lying prima-donna who had disdain for the local yokels (and me, though I was still pretty clueless about that part at that time).
She had dragged me to the smallest town I'd ever even thought about living in, and I was watching her run out of gas bitching about living in the boonies, while simultaneously ensuring that we continued to be stuck here.
If I'd just been clued in that she was lying and not crazy, I'd have been in much better straits.
Anyway, I cried for almost a solid hour (the whole last hour of the movie). It went overboard about the time that the Ferrari showed up at Luigi's.
Now, I have the faith to doubt love. I don't know it's an *enhancement*, but it's definitely a very different experience than before.
I don't know that it will protect me from falling, but at least if I fall in the future I won't hit unknown terrain when I land.
At least I hope to be able to see the disconnect between what someone *says* is important, and what they evidence as important by their actions.
Actions speak louder than words. In fact, actions speak, while words are mute.
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