Woke up to a fair amount of snow here - and it's still snowing. I didn't listen to the weather predictions yesterday since I was busy, so it took me by surprise.
It's been a strange couple of weeks. I still have the flu, although I'm told this lingers and not to expect to feel better for weeks. I'm trying to divide my limited energy among what needs to be done and blogging - alas!- falls by the wayside some days. I miss it but don't have the time or energy to get back at it full blast quite yet.
Mostly at night I find myself exhausted, trying to decide which DVD to watch. Night before last I saw Becoming Jane, which starred James McAvoy (who played the character with muscular dystophy in Rory O'Shea Was Here). Becoming Jane wasn't a bad film although I heard it panned when it came out. I enjoyed the repartee between McAvoy and Hathaway, who played Jane. Last night I saw The Martian Child with John Cusack and thought that had its redeeming moments too.
When I don't feel well, movies feel like ships in a bottle that float up with messages attached. Instead of dissecting the film, I wind up going right to the chase and seeking out the message - not a bad approach to take. In the Martian Child, the message was how important it is for each human being to have people to belong to, for each child to feel loved and as if he/she belongs. Even if he thinks he's a Martian.
And in Becoming Jane, the message was how love can shape our expressions and the way we "are" in the world. How love makes us choose - or not choose - different people - out of not only our love for them but for the ones they love.
I'm not a big believer in dwelling on unrequited love. There's too much love out there to do that. One of the differences between the world of Jane Austen and ours are the number of choices young women have. Becoming Jane, even if for whatever reason you don't find the film engaging, does a good job of showing the very limited choices young women had within the confines of the society and family life they inhabited.
Well it's still snowing here and my pile of work is still as high, so back I go.
