Hi sweetheart, big hugs & many kisses hello, I hope your journey went smoothly. Ah, it's all behind you now, hopefully you're settling in between nice clean soft sheets, laptop in your lap, reading my message by lamplight. I'm pooped at the moment, dearest, just finished vacuuming the downstairs. Before that I'd sipped a delicious cup of coffee and ate as delicately as I could, a sliced half of an almond croissant, whose flaky layers dissolved into flakes as I broke off bites of it - so possibly I saved some calories that way? Is that a French woman's diet secret? Leave behind shards of croissant, all that fat darling, as one might the slightest traces of signature perfume...

My dearest Bacchus, how are you darling? I hope all is well with you, that you're happy. I'm okay. Right - to continue backing up through my afternoon - before the cafe - I'd gone to the cinema, and saw Young Adult, starring Charlize Theron. And I have to say, it really resonated with me, is staying with me, and I'm finding myself thinking about it a lot more than many other movies I see - ones I even expected to think about more - such as the one about Marilyn Monroe, or the Keira Knightley one with Freud & Jung. No - darling - the latter films - as much as I enjoyed them at the moment I was viewing them - dissipated in my mind like so many dissolved croissant crumbs that, once I was finished with my coffee, I swept with the side of my hand onto the saucer - possibly to make less work for a server, but also so that the server wouldn't think, my goodness, that woman left a shower of crumbs at her plate.

Young Adult is very well done. I love that it depicted an ornery, difficult, essentially unlikeable character, played against other characters, each quirky, or unique -- I don't know, the whole thing was extremely well-observed. Charlize Theron plays a writer -- and I thought the film quite deftly portrayed aspects of being a writer -- such as the constant listening for background snippets of anonymous conversations, that can be woven into whatever one's trying to write. Theron plays not so much as a renowned writer - as the ghostwriter of a renowned writer. That was such an interesting twist, too. I related to the storyline a little bit - I'm not as extreme as the Theron character, but perhaps I'm somewhere along that spectrum. She wants her 1.0 back --- and (unlike me) actively pursues him, returns to her hometown where he lives with his wife & new baby, in an active bid to get him back. And meets others along the way, on her journey... a man who in high-school had the locker right next to hers - the two of them, for the days that she's in town, become friends. Even her poor little dog - she's so neglectful of it! - and yet it hangs on, and forgives her again & again...

Maybe I even related to the scenes of suburban coziness, with lots of family over, for all sorts of occasions, such as 'baby-naming' ceremonies... and Charlize appearing with an other-agenda, and not relating at all to the simple, insular life she'd made a point to move to "Mini-Apple" to leave behind...

I don't mean any spoilers - but I love the scene towards the end, when one of the characters, a middle-age woman left behind in her own way, admits to the Charlize character - how Charlize represents the one who got away, managed to escape the binds of "Mercury", Minnesota. It's a wonderful scene, because Theron suddenly sees herself not in her self-involved way, as a disconnected failure, but as others who didn't have her looks, talent ("you actually wrote a book") - view her - with not so much envy - as awe.

And that's it darling, for a film review. I'm glad I saw something that was unexpectedly, to me, so good - so honest, true -- a depiction of an "Alice" of sorts. I so appreciate that.

And there was a "girl band" in the film - formed of a circle of the small-town new moms -- the lead singer reminded me of Patti Smith -- which I thought was awesome - just do it, bang a drum, sing a song --

Sweetheart - I guess what I'm saying is - if you get a chance - do you know? check out this film - I think that in the way it has touched me for some reason - it's got something, it really does - and I hope of course that it might touch you too

anyway - I don't mean to get maudlin here, far from it
it's been so frigidly cold, in the single digits all day long
but all systems have been chugging along nicely
and I loved a scene where the Theron character, checking into a motel (OMG, it reminded me so much of the difficult moments I had at that Amherst motel - I felt so lonely - and I didn't even have a contraband cute loving Pekinese in my bag)
anyway, she spills out her toiletries & gadgets, and it's not the one I have, but I'm pretty sure (at least in my own imagination) that it wasn't a curling iron

all my love sweetheart
I will see you later, for sure, when I think of you
in the midnight hours