Gold Into Tin
Aug. 24th, 2002 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tedwordsTonight we'll be watching Amelie for the second time. I really loved Amelie when I saw it at the Cable Car in Providence last winter. It was really a cool movie.
There's one scene that I adore because there's a delightful element of incongruouity--Nino Quincampoix is working at "Palace Video, King of Porno," and having a very tender discussion about Amelie, while surrounded by dildos that--I think--he was busy pricing. Nowhere are the dildos mentioned during the scene, of course, because in his world, this sea of substitute phalluses is just part of his scenery.
I think that this speaks to the amazing ability we have to adapt and even thrive despite whatever life foists upon us. Humans are blessed with the ability to assimilate, to transform the uncommon into the everyday.
For example, a few years ago, Josie took a lampshade that we were going to throw away (because the lamp had been broken), and placed a painting her brother had created into the shade's middle, and mounted it on the wall. Voila. Instant painting frame. And we laughed and thought, "Isn't that funny?" and after a while, it was just something else we had placed on the wall. To someone visiting our house for the first time, it's going to take them aback. To us, it's just home.
Of course, this applies on a larger scale, as well. Heartaches come, we are taken aback, but we assimilate, we move on. Children, lovers, friends enter our world--we marvel at their beauty, how they make us feel, how their laughter lights up our world, but gradually, even these things become more a part of our day to day and less a source of wonder.
But sometimes it's important to peel back the scenery and glance anew at something you've learned to take for granted.
Before that something fades out of the scenery altogether.
Note: spellchecking this entry was a riot!
There's one scene that I adore because there's a delightful element of incongruouity--Nino Quincampoix is working at "Palace Video, King of Porno," and having a very tender discussion about Amelie, while surrounded by dildos that--I think--he was busy pricing. Nowhere are the dildos mentioned during the scene, of course, because in his world, this sea of substitute phalluses is just part of his scenery.
I think that this speaks to the amazing ability we have to adapt and even thrive despite whatever life foists upon us. Humans are blessed with the ability to assimilate, to transform the uncommon into the everyday.
For example, a few years ago, Josie took a lampshade that we were going to throw away (because the lamp had been broken), and placed a painting her brother had created into the shade's middle, and mounted it on the wall. Voila. Instant painting frame. And we laughed and thought, "Isn't that funny?" and after a while, it was just something else we had placed on the wall. To someone visiting our house for the first time, it's going to take them aback. To us, it's just home.
Of course, this applies on a larger scale, as well. Heartaches come, we are taken aback, but we assimilate, we move on. Children, lovers, friends enter our world--we marvel at their beauty, how they make us feel, how their laughter lights up our world, but gradually, even these things become more a part of our day to day and less a source of wonder.
But sometimes it's important to peel back the scenery and glance anew at something you've learned to take for granted.
Before that something fades out of the scenery altogether.
Note: spellchecking this entry was a riot!
