Thursday, June 29, 2000

 

11:36 p.m. Yes, folks ... as the end of the month nears, we come upon those dual moments in journaling culture: the On Display mad cattle rush to the finish line, and (in certain web journals) the thrilling changeover of the monthly template. Oh. Will the excitement ever abate?

And to think, just a week or so ago, I was experiencing the inevitable letdown and general malaise of a year's anniversary ... and now? Well, thanks to many kind emails and ethereal hugs and pats on my virtual back, I am recharged and thrilled and full of energy for the future.

Or maybe it's the edamame ...

But we take our enthusiasms where we find them, and this month the topic to tackle is "passion." I will cut to the punch line and tell you that you're soaking in it. My passion is this web site, and all its little bits and pieces. I love finding photos that may or may not mean something. I enjoy my nightly romp through the synapses as I bring you a few sentences fresh from the brain pan.

My passion teeters into insanity when it comes to those little animations, I'll admit, but how much harm is there in loosing a perpetual motion into being? No matter when you hit this page, as long as the pixels hold onto the electrons, this little critter will will still be reading the paper:

No need to feel lonely. The pages still turn. Somebody is out there reading.

The very first time I every heard the word passion used with a straight face to describe one's commitment was the day I came to loathe the word. It was ten years ago, and we were still living in Manhattan but our eyes had turned toward California and our shopping bags were weighted down with books on screenwriting and making movies.

We had our first bona fide meeting with a Hollywood producer and his wife and the producer used that word: passion. As in: "I have a passion to make this movie. It has always been a passion of mine to ... " Or, I am passionate about this project." We, naive New Yorkers that we were, we took him at his word. After all, he said he was passionate.

On just the strength of his passion, we packed up our little yellow car, put all the rest of our earthly goods into storage, wore three sets of clothing to save space and drove all the way across the country to meet him in LA and make passionate movies together.

You can imagine the rest.

We did manage to hunt him down and we did eventually have a meeting, but oddly, he was only passionate about the Next Big Thing, which was somewhere out there over some other horizon. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard the word used in meetings since that first meeting -- and it's always hollow and it's always code for: "See ya later!"

People really shouldn't lie. It's so hard to make plans.

The good news is that all our earthly goods arrived here safe and sound, except for the elastic in various waistbands. Due to the extreme cold of the storage place, the elastic only had one more crackly popping stretch in its fibers, and then it went limp and distended.

Unlike our hopes and our enthusiasms, and yes -- our native passions -- which, in spite of all the pulling and stretching, are just as resilient as ever.