I wanted to get out and go to my favorite movie theater the other night. For me, it's not about the movie, it's about the theater. No, folks, I ain't talking about the neon glow from the United Artists 64 plex in suburbia. I'm talking about the classic theaters like The Cove in La Jolla (sadly closed now), The Palm in San Luis Obispo, and The Mayan down the street from my house in Denver.
Megan picked the movie Before Sunset and we were out the door. I knew a little bit about the movie because I had seen Julie Delpy on Leno a few nights previously. Her anti-american sentiment was seething underneath her skin. There was this movie Before Sunrise back in '94 where Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy have this wild fling and never exchange phone numbers. In this movie, they meet up again (in partial happenstance) in 10 years. Neither one of them has been able to let go of the experience and they have a long conversation about it. That's the movie. Sounds boring? Actually, the movie was done very well. I've never seen dialogue so well acted. I had a personal connection with the movie.
I, too, had a fling with a European woman back in '98 while I was in France. It wasn't quite the rowdy fling of the movie, but the circumstances were similar. I was staying with a family for the weekend and this girl from Germany shows up. Her english is limited, but she speaks French fluently which is how we communicate. The next week was spent ditching class and running all over Paris. After my classes were over I went to visit her in Germany. Sounds romantic right?
We continued to email for years afterwards. Whenever I was down or fed up with my life I could always retreat into my dreams of running of to Europe and revisiting the fling I had several years previously.
"So what happened," you ask? I've been happily married for 3 years to a woman that I met in college. I haven't emailed or even thought about that fling in 4 years. When I get down or frustrated with life or even my marriage, I don't go revisitng that fling.
This movie did cause me to think about what would happen if I ran into her again somewhere. Just when my mind started to wonder about that, Julie Delpy brings out a guitar and sings a song for her long lost fling. Interestingly enough, she pulls out this Yamaha guitar and it's the exact same model that I have! I've always had this analogy in my mind about that guitar. Most people would have dumped the starter guitar a long time ago and forked out a lot of money for the Martin guitar. Instead, I've worn in that guitar. I had it worked on several times and even learned how to work on it myself to improve the sound. There's nothing that can improve the sound of a guitar like age can. Even 5 years can make a big difference in the quality. Do I want a different guitar, then? No way. There's no shiny, new, fancy guitar that even tempts me. I play them in the shop and they don't sound nearly as good as my Yamaha 411G-S. Well, that's what marriage is like, to me. Not that you are trying to work on your spouse to improve him/her. It's just what happens when you are in a healthy relationship for a long time. You should be improving with age (as a couple and as a person). When you retreat to long lost fantasies in times of difficulty, you don't grow with age, you become sour.
After seeing Delpy play that song on the Yamaha guitar, she ceased to represent that long, lost fling, but became my lovely wife. We've been to Paris twice on spur of the moment trips. We've found a beautiful apartment right in the lively part of Paris that we like to rent. Our romantic getaways put the fling in that movie, Before Sunrise to shame. What's more, it doesn't end, she's there every morning when I wake up. Sure there are quibbles, fights, and ugly moments, but there is also fling after fling to beautiful spots in Colorado, California, and elsewhere in the world. There's also a good aging process that only improves the quality of our relationship.
