My poor ticker

Saw yet another movie tonight where someone has both a bad heart, and...you guessed it, problems of the HEART. "The Wrestler" has been getting major accolades, especially with the beat-up Mickey Rourke making his comeback as the beat up Randy The Ram, who is also making a comeback. There is a formula at work here...the unraveling of yet another shambling mound in yet another corner of ramshackle Americana. It's a classic Sundance-style indie film, gritty and genuine without really having a point. Anyone who doesn't know exactly what's going to happen after 15 minutes or so has never seen an American indie before...Me, I felt cheated at the end. That's all?

Sometimes I get really effected by the physical nature of a film, however. Rourke's big, scarred, surgically altered mask-like face has hung on me since the movie ended. When I got home I laid down to give my wife a goodnight hug and felt so huge and male. I wonder what, on an electrical or chemical level is happening when you come out of a film feeling so different. Staring into his big mug, blown up huge on the Metreon's screens was enveloping. Somehow I felt thick, older.

The movie is about being used up, about a life lived for youth and what happens when youth is gone. Despite its predictable nature and silly ending, it got me to pondering on how little I fear age. I fear death terribly, but aging doesn't bother me that much. I'd love to always be able to run and exercise and all that, but otherwise I like the idea of wisdom and learning and calming. Turning 40 this year didn't really affect me much, I actually feel more spry than I have during some depressing periods in my past. Vigor is partially attached to age, but it's also attached to motion.

I feel like my parents' generation (though not necessarily my actual parents) has spent a lot of time trying to retain the energy and spontaneity of youth, of the thrill they felt in the '60s. Maybe it's because I belong to a late-blooming generation who grew up under the more limiting cloud of nuclear threat and multiple recessions, but I feel happy for the trappings of maturity (late as they may have come). We got a washer and dryer on Craigslist this weekend, and I was positively giddy. Yow.