A little more magic

I was looking up some old movies to watch tonight.. it was a nice night out, nice walk tonight.  I ran across Wag The Dog and I paused because I've actually watched that movie three times but never seen it.  How is that possible?  Let me tell you then.  It was actually my on-flight movie on the way to Italy.  I did not buy the in-flight headphones and chose to simply write and listen to music instead.  Typical!  So, I saw the lips move and just wondered occasionally what was happening.  As it happens I saw the movie again while I was actually in Italy.. my cousin Franca took me out where they showed it on a huge screen in an outdoor soccer field.  In any case, I saw the movie in another language and that was confusing.  Years later I saw it on TV somewhere, I don't remember really well, but I'm pretty sure it was the last 10 minutes of it.  No help there either!  Now I'm just confused every time I see tied shoes on a telephone poll.   Tonight I was absolutely convinced I am never supposed to see this movie, and have no desire to either.. so I passed.  We watched Fireflies in the Garden instead; it was fantastic.  How's that for a story with no point?  But Wag The Dog, the nice walk tonight, and how late it is to be all by myself... the whole thing reminds me of an actual really great story that is probably too inappropriate and therefore exactly what I'd like to write about.

We stayed for a month with family in Italy, and I was so lucky I got my own room.  I'd spend so many nights to myself happily reading or writing in my journal about what I did and the flowers I picked and smell them over and over after I pressed them between the pages.  So this kept me up for hours, one particular night, and I was reading and listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers Under the Bridge and timing it perfectly (along with Only in Dreams) to the little guitar strings in my heart, all while contemplating how thirsty I was.  16 year olds can, in theory, do so many things!  Well I didn't want to wake anyone, I was a guest and didn't speak enough Italian to explain what I was doing.... but at the same time I was very thirsty.  Somehow that led me out to the patio on the top floor of the apartment in only these white underwear I had on (it was a hot 1998 summer there) and I sat my (yes 16 year old self ) into a chair sipping a glass of OJ and looking down on everything.  It's funny because well, it is just funny... what was I thinking anyway? but at the time I was seeing the world was full of this amazing and awfully large sense of freedom that previously I either knew nothing about or wasn't supposed to know about.  A kind of cheerful "whatever" !  I decided to be a part of it by doing something just because I felt like it and not caring one bit if any other lonely person was outside at midnight and happen to see me.   HI HELLO I'M ENJOYING LIFE... how about you??

How could I possibly let that go on without me.

[taken on our walk]