The Circle that Ends – Until it Circles Back Around – Maybe

“These moments we're left with

May you always remember

These moments are shared by few

And those harbor lights, lord, they're coming into view

We'll bid our farewells much too soon

So drink it up, this one's for you

it's been a lovely cruise…”

~ Jimmy Buffett, Lovely Cruise

The last movie that I shared with y’all was Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein which to my mind, was a masterpiece of filmmaking and storytelling.

Now I have another film to share with you that felt significant and meaningful and poignant.

“Jay Kelly” starring George Clooney and Adam Sandler, written and directed by Noah Baumbach is in my estimation another modern masterpiece of the cinema.

It is the art of screenplay writing, directing, cinematography, and acting at it highest evolution.

At least, it was for me.

Like Del Toro’s film, I might avoid ever watching it again.

It’s like an unexpected romance that was once experienced over a holiday weekend - never to be revisited - and never to be forgotten... not that I’ve even know such a romance in this lifetime.

But I imagine that such a romance should unfold as they do in any book or movie of that genre… all romance novels and movies end at the beginning.

That’s how they preserve those final feelings of joy, connection, and depth of understanding. They end, at the beginning.

I won’t tell you anything about Jay Kelly beyond how hard the final line hit me – (spoiler alert) If you don’t want to know, stop reading now.

******

In the final scene Jay Kelly looks into the camera and says:

“Can we go again? I’d like another.”

Our mortal lives can seem like an old-time movie that unravels from a giant spool of film in steady progression until suddenly you see the credits rolling and you hear that the slap, slap, slapping sound of the film breaking free of its origins,

announcing that this in not an intermission –

it’s the end.

But within our mortal lives, unlike making a movie, we only get “one take.”

There are no rehearsals.

There are no re-dos or editing in real time.

There is only the flashing of light and life before our eyes – with us wasting far too much precious film time on meaningless dialogue and aimless actions without any thoughtful plot…

just unnecessary drama, meaningless sex, and self-destructive violence.

Too often, we are making a “B movie”

while thinking that it goes on forever –

but nothing does.

When you get to the place in a man’s life where I find myself, you see and feel things that are not at all unlike that final scene in Jay Kelly.

You find yourself looking at young people and asking…

“Can we go again? I’d like another.”

But this is it.

So, we’d better stop acting up and get to living it up.

I do my best everyday – sometimes I fail… I get up and try again.

And just as much as every man or woman might look back and wonder – “can we go again?”

I’m so glad that I have lived when I did.

I actually got to swim among living coral reefs with corals of every shape, size, and color - that were the homes of millions of tropical fish.

Now, there is only bleached skeletons, gray rubble and a few lonely fish wandering around like homeless people in an abandoned subway tunnel.

I heard wild Florida panthers screaming in the palmettos and wandered the everglades before the vanishing of its clean water and native wildlife, and the invasion of pythons, people, and ICE prisons.

I saw forests without roads and wetland without marinas.

I’m glad I lived when I did and am still alive to tell about it.

And that’s my job now – to tell about it and help us all find a way together as we write a new script.

And that is my message for today my friends.

We get one take and we never know when the credits will role and the film of our life’s journey will unravel.

Live Every Day – with Gratitude, Joy, Loving -Kindness, Light Hearted Humor, Courage, and Wisdom.

Keep Casting Forward!