Wandering amongst dead frogs...

Tonight I watched the movie Magnolia for the first time. I was bored from moment one. But because it had Phillip Seymour Hoffman in it, I was certain it would get better, so I kept watching. It didn't. I know part of the reason I didn't attach to it was because of the dark matter that it portrayed. Now anyone who reads this blog knows that I am attracted to dark things, but when it comes down to the dirt of everyday reality, I can't handle it. So I was aware that this made me extremely uncomfortable throughout. But my main complaint is the fact that I believe a storyteller's job is to lead the audience to their own conclusion, and I didn't feel that was done properly. I could read a book, you could read the same book, and we could come to two completely opposite conclusions. But if the reader carried us to them, then he did his job. With this story, I just didn't feel carried. I felt forced to an empty field. Whether this is true, or it is just a reflection of where I am in my life is unclear. But I felt angry with the writer for manipulating me. I don't mind being manipulated to a certain extent if it hides a certain purpose. But in this case, I felt he threw several bits at me and made me do all the work to put them back together. But after three hours of being pelted, I really didn't have it in me to care.

In thinking more about it as I watched the credits roll, thanking God that it was finally over, I thought how much it resembled true life. God throws us all these scrambled pieces and expects us to do all the work putting them together and trying to make some semblance of order without so much as an instruction manual in Korean. I thought about the story I just finished, Hiding in the Spotlight, and how many normally wonderful people of God's creation banded together to torture two little girls. I thought about the slaves in the book I am currently reading, The Ties That Bind, and the people who took their lives away from them, made them living robots. And, then of all the people in the movie, of David Letterman cracking jokes on national television about his wife's broken heart, and I felt sick to my stomach. I felt manipulated. Here are all these tiny messed up distorted defunct pieces, now put them together to come to some conclusion. No wonder so many people get frustrated and angry with God. We are beings of order in a chaotic universe. How is that supposed to work? And why were we put into such an impossible position?

Mind you, I am not angry with God. Because I happen to believe that there is a higher purpose that we can't understand. But I must admit I feel a little lost most of the time wandering through all the dead frogs.


Drifting along like driftwood...