Been watching Rio 2 tonight.
The original movie was about a blue something-or-other toucan, thought to be the last in the world, who lives a comfortable life with some enthusiastic yet dorky ornithologists who ends up in Rio because they found another of his species… and it’s female!
You can imagine the awkwardness that ensues. Talk about pressure!
But of course, Jewel (the female) eventually falls in love with him when she sees how brave he is in some contrived danger or other, they make friends with wacky characters along the way, and it all ends happily.
In the sequel, Blu and Jewel have three kids, consisting of the crazy adventurous “that was awesome!” one, the nerdy “by my calculations” one, and the apparently teenaged “What-EVER” one. I say “apparently” because according to a throwaway line, she is only 3.5 minutes older than the younger of the other too.
Why do movies do things like that to innocent people like me? These kinds of continuity paradoxes hurt people of the “always thinks things through” variety like me.
Anyhoo, this time their adventure starts when a flock of wild blue whatever toucans is discovered in the depths of the Amazon rainforest, and they go on a trip to find them.
Blue is a likable character because he starts out as a pampered, spoiled city bird with no idea how to survive in the wild, and has what to me are entirely sensible reactions to situations of danger, discomfort, and distress. Almost all of his reactions are the same I would have, and he says what I would say, more or less.
Still, I am enjoying the sequel more than I did the original. The first one felt formulaic and forced. This one is far more original and has a lot more personality, especially in the character animations.
Plus, it isn’t CGI, so it looks all warm and pretty.
Other than my adventures with a certain hapless but lovable toucan, today has been quite quiet. The wrestling match with my life as I know it and my life as I want it to be continues. It takes a lot of rounds to win a fall against the habits and securities and especially the false beliefs that are deeply ingrained in my mind, but the fight never ends, so victory is inevitable.
Every day, I ask myself why I am still spending most of my days playing video games or sleeping, like I am always semi-hibernating. What is wrong with seeking out more active things to do? It sure beats letting the days go by.
Yesterday did me a lot of good, despite the fact that my body did not stop hurting for the whole time I was walking. I guess it has been so long since I have done the out and about thing that my body got rather rusty. What usually happens is that my body complains at first, but at some point, it grudgingly admits that we are doing this and kicks into a healthier gear.
But not yesterday. I get the feeling it was the lack of sunshine that did it. Being out in the dark and the rain is always a little depressing, and there was insufficient positive stimuli from my environment to arouse me fully from my torpor.
That’s the only way to describe my standard lifestyle : torpor. I don’t do much, I don’t say much, I keep things ridiculously low stimulus, and I can sleepwalk through my days, weeks, months, and years.
My advice to all young people : get your shit together now and DO THINGS. Don’t let yourself become a basement troll who plays WoW all day. Or if you do, be the one who organizes the raids, or the reliable DPS guy, or whatever.
You are young, resilient, and energetic. It will never be easier for you to take risks and try things. Go find the world you belong in, then hang onto it.
As for me, I am 41, soon to be 42, and I am just now finally going through a weak form of emotional teen-hood. It is entirely possible to have a severe form of arrested development and not realize it for years… decades, even.
And it is a tough pill to swallow when you are my age. Your pride resists the realization that you have a whole lot of growing up to do. Nobody wants to admit, even to themselves, that they are still a child inside and have never matured past, at best, the junior high level.
But to be honest, it’s more like elementary school, at least for me.
I try not to blame myself. That’s a wrestling match too. Depression makes it so the most negative and damning thoughts are the easiest to think. You even take a terrible sort of comfort from being the worst.
After all, nobody expects anything of you then.
But a lot of shit happened to me through no fault of my own. Nobody was looking out for me or trying to teach me how to live. I was left entirely to my own devices. I grew up wild. I grew up free. I grew up with all the doors flung open.
I grew up scared. And meek. Too meek to stick up for myself and demand my needs be met.
I would love to be able to go back in time and ask my parents why I was treated differently than the other 3. I would love to see if I could get them to admit it was because I was an accident and they just plain did not want to deal with an extra kid and so they arranged it so I would take care of myself as much as humanly possible and make it as much like they had never had me as I possibly could. No wonder I grew up feeling abandoned, despite what on the surface appeared to be a cozy middle class life.
No amount of money can save you from bad parenting.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.