*chirp chirp* The Notebook *tweet tweet*

So, first, I haven't written anything much political, and I haven't yet gotten my fill of ranting to people in person about 'The Notebook', by penultimate tear-jerker himself, Nicholas Sparks.

I was sitting at dinner with my family and at some point someone asked somebody else if he/she had seen the flick. And I'm like, "Oh jeez, is that the one about the whole, she lost her first love and never really stopped loving him and then he comes out of nowhere..."

And, of course I get these looks as if I've totally oversimplified an unbelievably complex love story and I really just don't get it.

They begin to all explain to me (including my dad, for goodness sake) how, really, Shawn, you ought to keep an open mind about this one because, Sheesh!, it's pretty good (obligatory, 'I'm not kidding here, I'm a guy and I'm talking about a chick-flick' eyes of emphasis jump across the table at me to really convince me).

And my brother gives me this look that says, "Dude, I'm telling you, if I hadn't been sitting next to K in that movie theatre, I pretty much would have actually cried man-tears." (Which, by the way, a single actual released drop of saline from our eyeball across the threshold of the lower eyelid splashing onto our cheek is pretty much bawling for guys, you know.)

And they all, knowing my skepticism and usual disdain for something like 90% of all movies, were telling me, "You really ought to check it out, it's... it's better than you'd think, man. A good flick," and so on.

So at some point I'm like, "Ok, I'll borrow the danged thing, and we'll see," to which they respond, of course, that it would probably be somehow wrong or unnatural to see this movie by myself but at this point in my life I pretty much have little choice and I'm bound and determined to find out what all the fuss is about.

So just a night or two later, I'm sitting in my bedroom ALONE, watching an unusually complex and profound love story unfold before my very eyes - as follows:

1. Boy meets girl. [note the incredibly unusual beginning to the love story. I think they waited about two seconds after developing the deep emotional characteristics of our heroes before plunging into this vital plot twist.
2. Girl and boy are from 'different sides of the tracks'. [Again, note the sweeping originality.]
3. Boy acts rather irrational to try to win girl over, since he pretty much has nothing else to work with. [Wow, I never realized guys do stupid things for women.]
4. Boy wins girl! [I think we're about four minutes into the movie at this point. It sounds shallow now, but if you'd just watch the film you'd see how much amazing substance was built into those few shining moments.]
5. Boy proceeds to make girl fall in love with him by being unusual and quirky, drawing her out of her shell. [Gag me. .. Oh, sorry, was that cynicism at the fact that we still have no actual substance to this relationship at all - that we merely have a couple of kids who have a crush on one another???]
6. They head for the sack. [I know you didn't see that coming. HOWEVER - to preserve their innocence while not still being 'holier-than-thou', they are conveniently interrupted before this vital development of their 'relationship' actually takes place.]
7. Wealthy Girl's Parents are - (get ready for a real shocker) - NOT favorable toward the relationship and see it merely as a summer fling. [Now the fact that this is actually a rational response to the circumstances we've been presented doesn't keep the parents from being shown as eeeevil, cruel, uncaring beasts of parents, except that the father sort of has a heart for his daughter even though he knows in his heart he's really evil and heartless. In another shocking plot twist, by the way, Boy's dad, who is just a 'poor workin' man' (read: pure as the wind-driven snow) trusts them both inherently and wishes them only the best (do you hear the birds singing? I do too.).
8. Her family moves away abruptly, to cut short the love affair since they were going to have to leave soon enough anyway. There is confusion wherein they break up because everything is just so difficult to deal with and to know how to handle and he's not sure she really loves him anyway (without any explicable explanation for such) and he tries to make 'a clean break' for her sake. Naturally, just at the moment she leaves, she manages to convey to him that she loves him, changing everything as if he hadn't, in fact, pretty much known she loved him to begin with...
9. Boy goes loopy and mails her a letter EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR A YEAR. Now, why does it have to be every single day, and why did he stop after exactly one year???? These mysteries cannot be explained... But that bizarre behavior is then turned back on him when he receives not a single reply the entire year.
10. Girl slips into high society and meets a New Guy who respects her and happens to be rich [read: eeeeevil].
11. Boy has an utterly meaningless relationship with a divorcee purely to satisfy his prurient needs while he rebuilds a home he'd promised to Girl while they were living in fantasy-land (which, BTW, Pure-as-the-wind-driven-snow Father gives up all of his life savings and home to buy for his son).
12. Girl becomes engaged. [And we are shown, if it is possible, even less of any redeeming qualities of the relationship between this New Guy and Girl than we were shown between Girl and Boy - so that we cannot possibly be tempted into thinking he's actually a nice guy and "Why shouldn't she go ahead and stick with him?"]
13. Boy has gazillions of offers to sell the home he has rebuilt but, since he is absolutely undeniably (I'm not kidding here) Psychotic, he runs them off the property (with a gun, mind you) even though he was the one offering to sell.
14. Girl happens to see photo of Boy in front of said plantation home. She promptly faints and then deceives her fiance to go see Boy.
15. Boy (mind you, he is insane) woos Girl and with some very important persuasive arguments such as 'being on a lake in the rain together' and 'the woman I recently stopped having meaningless sex with approves of you' into having about an entire day's worth of non-stop passionate sex-romping. [Do I need to give a little rational perspective to this? Ok. Ok, good. I was worried there.]
16. Eeeeevil mother shows up and Girl discovers that the 365 (honest to goodness, they use the actual number so we know it was precisely one year's worth of letters.. what if they'd fallen in love on a leap-year, would the movie's bedrock foundation have been completely undone??) letters had all been smuggled away by her mother, who (A). Gives them to her daughter - the wisest possible thing she can do in the face of her daughter abandoning her fiance for a summer fling like 15 years ago or something... and (B). Proceeds to tell her how her husband, Girl's Father, was really just a practical choice, and came in second in passion and intensity and, really, the vital, important parts, to a lumbermill worker. Oh wait.. that's the wisest possible counsel she can give her daughter in this intensely difficult moral dilemma...
17. Fiance discovers all and, demonstrating freakishly committed mercy and understanding, agrees to work through this unbelievable breach of trust and violation of relationship, asking her to seriously consider what the right thing to do is.
18. Knowing that she must do the right thing, Girl abandons her fiance for insane-boy. And, naturally, they live happily ever after.

1. [Ooooh. Wait... They don't quite live happily ever after... I forgot. This part coming up here, this is the part that redeems the whole story from the backwash-bilge that it is up to this point.] Throughout the whole story, we see an elderly couple. One is reading this very story! to the other. After about 43 seconds of watching the film, we are aware that these two are Boy and Girl.
2. Well, the problem is, Girl (now old lady) has entirely lost her memory of all those wonderful, glorious events, and has become very skittish and prone to somewhat intense outbreaks of fear and anxiety. Naturally, knowing that the past is the past, Boy (now old man) merely loves her and provides for her, and is satisfied with the fact that he can be with her in her time of trial.
3. Oh, no... nope. Not quite... Missed it again somehow. In FACT, Boy does everything he possibly can, EVERY SINGLE DAY to attempt to revive her memory so that they can relive their youths together if even for a moment. Mind you, he is told repeatedly by doctors (and the validity of their warnings is borne out by reality) that she will likely suffer because of what he does to her and that she shouldn't be strained in that way because the sudden rocketing of emotion from one moment to the next will be too much for her.
4. No matter. He cannot love her the way she is now unless he is trying to make her remember what she was then - a beautiful twenty-something, prone to day-long sex. Of course, he revives her memory once more, only to cause her to freak out again and have to be FORCIBLY SUBDUED. If that isn't love, folks, I don't know what is.
5. Is he done abusing her? By God, no he's not. He manages to sneak into her room at night one more time, utterly desperate that she remember for good what she cannot remember. We, the audience, can't live with this constant struggle and, since the movie is obviously firmly planted in reality she can't just suddenly remember everything for real. So, the solution, like magic, produces itself - AS IF FROM GOD'S VERY HAND - she remembers as he lays there in direct violation of doctors' orders for her interest, and risking another freak-out session... and, by golly, she remembers as she looks at him there and holds his hand. Tears are welling up in every theater-goer's eyes. We can't possibly bear to see this perfect moment ruined with her waking up in shock and horror, can we?
6. SO - THEY DIE.
7. Oh, I, I am just enraptured! How can anyone have come up with a better ending to a better story of more perfect love??
8. HALLELUJA! HALLELUJA!

I cannot conceive a more spoon-fed bowl of 'romantic' PAP if I had 20,000 monkeys pounding away at keyboards for a century... This is what gets us weeping these days? I can imagine weeping for the injustice of having spent $8.50 to be hornswaggled into seeing such tripe (thank God I was not); but to think that this is an example of romance and love?!?! My heart bleeds. Really, it does.

Last, but not least - (I thought to put this in the Life section, but since I had to put the fair and balanced movie review on the main page, I'll note this here) - of all the mysteries I have tried to ferret-out the answer to in this time of being away from M (for the very crime that is so romanticized in this movie), I have really, really wanted to know what she thought of The Notebook. Because, I think that if she would tell me she was just as in love with this film as all my family seemed to be, I would know that God means for her to be with another man for sure. Someone who, basically, can look out beyond reality into what we call sentimentalism, and smile happily.

That said, I have to admit - if she found the movie half as disgusting as I did, I am all the more crushed by not having the pleasure of her company. I mean, there just aren't that many solidly sane people out there any more, let me tell you. And a girl that could possibly see this movie for the blech that it is would be quite a treasure.

I have no title; I have no deed

We are like the Levites.

We have no inheritance among the entire world. We live to serve God and have no home nor flocks but receive what God takes from the abundance of His world and though we have nothing to claim as our own, our inheritance is the amazing gift of His presence, which we are welcomed into having been anointed as priests to enter into the Holy of Holies to worship and adore him.

God is our inheritance, but we lay down rights to anything - anything of this world. The thing we cling to in this world is the very wall that we place between ourselves and God's sustaining mercy.

We have no place here. We have no claim upon food or land. God gives daily our portion from Himself. If we do not trust in that, we trust in folly and our sin hangs over us pronouncing us dead.

I will take your food tomorrow from your very hand, Lord. I will live in the shelter of your very wings, Lord, even as the storm buffets everything around me. And I will take up new life tomorrow as you give it to me, clean as a running spring every single morning. I will trust in none of these things should the world offer them to me.