Never learned to ice skate myself. At some point my sisters took it up and I remember looking at their skates and seeing how thin the blade was and wondering how the hell did they do it, Still wonder about that, but I do like to watch.
My favorite movie is Badlands, whose director, Terrence Malick, is kind of a philosophic guy. In the Tree of Life there is a scene at the end where all the characters appear again and they are wearing biblical clothing in some rocky desert and just walking around, not saying anything, just kind of looking at each other and the sky and milling about. Well what the hell was that all about? Afterwards I cranked up the google machine and looked it up, but everybody else was puzzled about it too, and of course the director was not giving any explanation.
Well I just marked it down as a flaw. Still a good movie. There is an excellent twenty minute sequence which begins with the big bang and goes on to the creation of the planet, the dinosaurs and finally that apple of God's eye, the big ape with the gargantuan brain which is really cool. Anyway I gave it three stars and went on with my life.
And then a few years back I found myself at the skating rink at Millennium park and it hit me like a bolt from the blue. That's what Malick should have done with the end of his movie. He should have put all the characters in winter clothes and had them on an ice rink, still the same inscrutable expressions on their faces, but now instead of ambling randomly, going round and round, going forward but not really getting anywhere, just round and round and round.
When I was very young my conception of heaven was like the one in the cartoons, wearing a robe walking around on clouds looking down at what was going on on earth, having wings, being able to fly. Pretty cool.
But the preachers that took the altar at Elsdon Methodist Church could not back that up. Their version was considerably more abstract. I got the vision of everybody in this huge auditorium and on the stage there was God. And you just sat in your seat, and you looked at God and you loved him and that was pretty much it, just going on for eternity. Did not seem too cool.
Seems like the bible is kind of down on life on earth, a vale of tears and all that, woes and sorrows and struggles to get to heaven. But I rather like it here. I like the scenery and the food. Oh there are some crappy things, too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, sickness and disease, injustice and stupidity, but all in all things are pretty good, and I'd like to just smooth out those rough spots, not so cold in the winter, not so hot in the summer, no sickness, not so much pain. That would be plenty good for me.
Kind of like being on an ice rink, rich and poor, skilled and unskilled, young and old, and everybody getting along just fine, and when somebody falls on their butt, they are not really hurt and they get up laughing, and everybody else is laughing too, not at them, but with them. Just the way heaven should be. Oh, but maybe the music would be better, not so much organ and definitely no disco.
I came across some more news in something called The Daily Kos. There was an interview with a neighbor who said they were terrible parents, going out and getting drunk and leaving the eight year old kid alone, big Trumpists, and the father had a six figure income, but it didn't say what his or her occupation was. Still curious to me about how little is getting out. I wonder if that has something to do with lawyers.
Thank you so much for this about skating. Having my own slice of heaven today namely taking our 11-year-old ice skating for the fourth time for them ever, and they are really liking it now. Liking it enough that they've asked 4 other 11-year olds to come along and skate with us too so that's so good. There will be 3 parents sitting on chairs and watching the kids. The kids have various abilities some new some pretty good. They will skate, fall down, socialize in general and have fun, and there will be 3 or 4 stranger-adults (it's a public-skate 2 hour period) plus myself out there on the ice, practicing our moves. I hope to fall down at least twice, else I'm skating within-my-envelope and not growing in skill.
ReplyDeleteIn other words a mostly-empty ice rink, due to the Pandemic. It's heaven I'm telling you, it's heaven. One can skate backwards, or super-duper-fast, and no one complains as there is hardly anyone there. (we adults leave lots of safety margin when near the kids.)
[aside] sorry to have seemed MIA this year, I misplaced my blog link due to computer swap -- and couldn't remember! Took some memory joggling to find my way back here. -FreeTim