Today was a slow day at work. I feel restless and dazed when I haven’t anything pressing to do. I accomplish almost nothing.
Having a lot of work to do is a good thing. Even better is if it’s pressing. Strict deadlines are the best. Valuable threats are ecstacy, even.
But today there was none of that, and so I sat around and read things slowly and kept checking my email to see if anything important had come through.
On really slow days I don’t even want to go work out downstairs.
I left early (i.e., 5:30…), came home (where the dogs….I don’t know…something smelled bad…), and watched Amarcord, which I’ve already forgotten. And now it’s 10:30.
Yesterday I saw Juliet of the Spirits, which was slow and beautiful and sometimes moving. Towards the end — and I can’t explain it — the sight of trembling and broken Giulietta Masina wearing her sparkly brooch affected me greatly, nearly to tears. There was just something about the carefree optimism of it; I could imagine her sneaking a smile, daring, and pinning it on and then…and then the whole context of the brooch went to pieces. It became incongruous.
The brooch was Fellini doing what he does best: framing a scene, skewing perspectives unsubtly. It made me think of my mother, of course, and the burdens women bear, and the burdens we all bear, and how we distract ourselves from them incessantly and take such joy from small things.
How easily that joy evaporates.