Line of Reason

i respect writers
i admire their lives
there is value in words
i aspire

Watching "Capote" this evening from the small Florida movie theater attached to the back side of a vast and brightly lit mall, I worried once the picture began that I would be unable to overcome the situation my friends and I had found ourselves in. The screen showed smoke grey skies followed by a desolate landscape. A house stood quietly in the distance with nothing but yellowed emptiness to shield its exterior from the winter's cold. Picture after picture glowed before us and with each new image (devoured immediately by my hungry eyes) a sharp, rigid vertical line vibrated and shifted to the left side of the screen. What was this odd and out of place string of movement doing in a film produced during our digital age? Was it a scratch in the film? A grating directorial choice? I wasn't sure.

"This is gonna get annoying," I whispered into Matt's ear, not twenty seconds into the movie. "Don't pay attention to it," he whispered back. And miracle of miracles, I didn't. A good five or ten minutes passed before the "uniqueness" that is my mind was fully able to shut the annoyance out. And eventually the scratch of movement just went away. Granted, it wasn't long before this original string was replaced by a newer, brighter and even more motion filled vertical line shifting and shaking, now at the far right side of the picture. And in addition to these stadium screen sized technical difficulties, the crack of light that peeked through an uneven floorboard to the right of my periphery was also a nuisance. As was the phone that rang during the film's most quiet scene. As was the steady hum grunting from the projector's booth. As was lord knows what else.

Anything can get under my skin. Even the sound of this keyboard from time to time. My eyes and ears are unnaturally in tune with the world at large. And my brain refuses to let any of it off easy. But, I was taught a valuable lesson tonight. A lesson that I have tried to teach myself over and over again. But one that apparently only needed to be whispered into my ear by someone who I trust.

"Don't pay attention to it."

And, with time "uniquely" enough, I didn't.