Transcending Transformers
This last Saturday I retreated from the heat to the cool enticements of an air conditioned theatre. I saw Transformers…
There was a moment during the Transformers movie where I felt a kinship to my childhood of two decades past. I fused that space of then and now in tears as I watched that semi first transform into Optimus Prime. My body quaked in the tingles of expectance as the truck rolled up. And as the robot came out of his disguise, I too came out. Sitting in the theatre, I there and then felt my eyes wetting as I began to cry. I did not fight it back, but just accepted the outburst as proper.
Reliving a moment of my childhood far superior to how it originally went. A memory from the past made more perfect through clarity and quality. I saw it now not just as a twenty-six year old, nor a four year old, but as both and with new eyes. For any questions or concerns his modernized look could arise, the sound of his voice gave all the necessary reassurance. That voice is a father to me, and to many other children of the Eighties. Optimus Prime could tell me anything, and I would hear it.
I am not easy to tears, though such an event does happen. More often for the worse reasons, but a good one (a happy cry) may slide in on rare occasion. Rare, in that the degree of emotion must be quite severe to go beyond a smile, a laugh, and even the chills. The chills are customarily my benchmark for cinematic excitement, though I guess now I can go further.
I am at a loss to express the magical fusion between two eras of my life. For one moment I was a captivated child absorbing every sensation in the room indiscriminately as well as a reasoning adult awed at the technical achievement and execution playing out before me. We stride from our youth never to regain such innocence or such a beautiful account of the world. Memories can be sharp, but never with same emotive thrust of our earlier years. For one minute on a Saturday afternoon I was able to experience a childhood memory as even better than it originally was.
Touching… although it seems perhaps more likely that this story is part of an elaborate Davin cover-up!!! Were those really tears streaming down your face?! I must ask, only because I know your proclivities for both trying to ‘hold it’ through even the most painfully long movies, and also for, well, PEEING ALL OVER YOUR OWN FACE!
I rest my case.
No Bjorn. I did not urinate on my face, again. Though the risk of holding some bladder cargo was a scary one, I never met it.
And to add to the record: Nothing streamed down my cheek. My eyes moistend but stayed between the lashes. Thank you much for the references to my finer past moments.
Crikey! Face urine is one of “those” topics. The kind whose mere mention can wipe (sorry, couldn’t help it) the words you had intended to type in the comment box clean out of your mind. And at some point I will meditate on Pee being more comfortable for a male friend to envision upon your visage than tears. Interesting.
What I had intended to say was that smells, songs, TV shows, long lost favorite shirts, books and all kinds of stuff can be really good at giving that bizarre feeling that slams you with the passage of time. It’s a sucker-punch from the ruthlessness of change, and the impermanence of even your self as it appears to yourself.Who cares what the science books say, the universe really is expanding, everything moving away from you at imperceptable but still shitty little velocities. Certainly a moment worth eyelash moisture. But if you’re on a date when this happens again dry your eyes somehow so it all doesn’t dry in a gross crusty mass around your eyes by the end of the movie.
At this point it seems to be in your best interest that a lot of women NOT read your blog. I have to say you’re not coming across as really appealing at this particular juncture.
Ouch Mani, you would care to suggest that 51% of the population surf right past this site? And for future reference… what was the greater masculine faux pas, the crying in a theatre or peeing out of toilet?