I have been addicted to love stories of late. In last week I have watched Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, The Notebook and tonight I watched Titanic. I love these three films. In Romeo + Juliet, Baz Luhrmann creates the perfect meeting of two lovers in the scene where they are separated by the fish tank and when they catch each others eye it is love at first sight. The all too palpable passion between Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in The Notebook cuts through me like a knife every time I see it. The love between them is there from the instant they meet and yet they deny it for a time. They allow the strictures of her parents to come between them, but as with all true love that can only hold it back for a time because it is all too powerful for the material world to deny and when they finally succumb to their passion it is overwhelming.
However, none of this compares to what Titanic wrings out of me… I wrote a few comments as certain moments in the film hit me and they are below. I am emotionally exhausted from watching this film again and it was just as powerful as the first time I saw it. I can write no more for now and I will allow the following to speak for itself…
I cried the moment Rose saw her drawing on the TV. Imagine seeing a physical remnant of the greatest love you have ever known 84 years later. I cry now in the memory of the memory of her memory.
Jack won his ticket aboard Titanic in an all or nothing final round of a poker game. He has bet everything he and his friend have. He says, “When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.” He wins the tickets and passage to America. He wins his own death and a love greater than words can describe. The question is was his Love worth the sacrifice of his life. I say yes, a hundred thousand times infinity, yes. Yes, yes, yes. To have known that kind of love is worth any sacrifice, including one’s own life.
Jack is dancing with a little girl below decks named Cora. The music changes and he tells her that he is going to dance with Rose now. Cora stands off to the side with a forlorn look upon her face. You know that Jack has been waiting all night to dance with Rose, but upon seeing the look of sadness upon Cora’s face, he takes the time to look her directly in the eyes and tell says to her, “You’re still my best girl Cora.” With these few heartfelt words he puts a smile upon her that brightens her entire face. That moment describes the kind of man that I am.
Rose is at tea with her Mother and rich friends. She is half listening to her Mother prattle on about her ineptitude when she notices a little girl and her mother. The mother is physically nudging the girl up into a proper sitting posture and then the girl takes her napkin and places it on her lap and then holds it with her hand in an all too ungodly proper position. In this moment, with that visual in her eyes and her Mother’s degrading prattle in her ear, she sees the bars of her cage and in that moment she realizes that she will not be caged. She goes to find jack at the bow of the ship. He asks her to close her eyes and he helps her up onto the bow’s railing, then he spreads her arms wide, like the wings of a phoenix, and as he holds her tightly he tells her to open her eyes. She sees nothing but ocean moving past her at incredible speeds and the joy of freedom enters her eyes as she proclaims, “I’m flying... Jack.” The phoenix has found her wings. Their hands touch and their eyes lock and their lips touch and passion erupts, for only in freedom can true love be found.
A moment on the touching of hands. I feel that the kiss is the ultimate expression of passion and love, with the touching of hands a close second. Now, don’t get me wrong, sex is an amazing and intimate thing, but in our society, in general, the genitals are something that is kept hidden and secret and are only in the last century beginning to gradually lose their taboo. On the other hand, our lips, our tongue, and our hands are used every day in order to explore our world and it is my contention that the touching of hands, lips and tongue show a far grander intent, for it is with the sense of touch that is found therein that we begin our attempt to explore the soul that lies within. I feel that I am under-explaining the magnitude that these things hold for me. The touching of fingers, holds within it the more sensory awareness than sex can ever hope of attaining in and of itself. When fingers touch and eyes lock, the soul becomes the third part of a shared trinity. A kiss will then increase this connection, this trinity, and sex will eventually allow it to transcend all physical boundaries. However, it begins with a touch and a look, for you see, without that sex is nothing but a base physical pleasure and will never attain the intimacy and the transcendent experience that it can be.
Rose drops the Heart of the Ocean diamond into the ocean and at that moment she returns her heart to her true love and she dies in her sleep that night. Then her soul journeys down to the wreck of the Titanic and it sours through the watery wreckage and the wreck transforms before our eyes into its former glory. Her soul floats to the main doors and a crewman is there with a smile to welcome her in and she floats into the room that holds the grand staircase and the souls move aside to give her passage and there he is, standing before her at the top of the stairs watching the clock, waiting for her, he senses her and turns around and he smiles at her as he holds out his hand and she takes it and they are reunited at last in an eternal kiss. I weep at this moment every time I see this film. I weep uncontrollably. I weep now as I write this. It is more than I can bear. My soul aches and I don’t know why. I have never known love like this and yet I weep for it to the point of breathlessness. I think that perhaps I weep like this because I have known this love, just not in this lifetime. I weep for my soulmate whom I miss terribly and I wish she would hurry up and find me because I ache for her.
Have you ever seen The Godfather: Part III? It’s by far the lesser of the trilogy, but there is a moment at the end when Michael has lost someone very dear to him and he lets out a sob so deep that it emits no sound. The pain is too deep to allow him the breath for sound and then he sucks in air like a drowning man and is finally able to let that pain escape vocally. Have you ever experienced that? A pain that is so deep that it can only be expressed in a silent scream? This is how I feel every time I see that final scene in Titanic. I have, for a long time, assumed this was due to unresolved grief from my Father’s death. However, tonight I remembered another time that I cried this deeply and it involved another film and I saw this film before my Father died. It was called “The Magic of Lassie.” I don’t know if you know about Lassie, but it’s a film and television series based on a Collie dog. Well, in this film, featured Jimmy Stewart, Lassie is taken away from her family and she undergoes a cross-country journey to get back them. Well, at the end of the film the family is sitting around the dinner table and the boy is saying a prayer in which he prays for Lassie’s safe return. Then, during this prayer, the boy begins to hear a dog barking and then, with the look of hope that only a child can have, he gets up from the table and goes to the door while the entire time the bark continues to get louder. The boy opens the door and he sees his dog standing on the top of a hill across the farm and they begin running toward each other as the music swells, reaching its crescendo as they embrace. Cheesy, I know, but when I was a kid this scene made me weep so uncontrollably that I felt embarrassed enough to hide my response from my family. It’s the act of reuniting that gets me, that sends me into uncontrollable sobbing even to this day.
It is the connection that was severed before this lifetime even began that makes me weep at these moments. One day I will meet the other half of me and I will weep at the sight of her because I will know her in a way that I have never known anyone in this lifetime and it is for her that I wait. I do not know how I will feel when I meet her. I only know that I have not felt it yet.
...Hello San Francisco.
My memory fades in on my return to the world from Narnia. Now, this was not C.S. Lewis' Narnia, but that is what I chose to name it because this was a place that existed within the folds of our own world, just like Narnia. I remember that I had an adventure there, but I had left things unfinished and I knew that I must soon return. However, first I knew that I must go home and see my family and so I did. My home in the dream ended up being my grandparents' house, which no longer exists in the waking world. 
