my mind is restless, and my body is lazy. it’s noon and i have to turn on the lights in the apartment. there is thunder outside.

i watched “billy elliot” and it made me cry. i cannot imagine what it’s like to have a body so very full of emotion. emotions that leak out in the form of movement. it’s like he’s filled with so much that he cannot contain it. i envy that.

a few weeks ago bridget, a woman i work with, and i had an argument about “dancer in the dark.” she hated it with a passion, i loved it almost as passionately. she said it was so dark and brutal that she turned it off, rewound it and took it back to the video store. she didn’t want it in her house.

i said it was so dark and brutal, i couldn’t turn it off. i watched with horror as selma’s fate unfolded. i sobbed. i loved it. it was moving. i like movies like that. movies that make me feel, move me to cry or laugh uncontrollably, movies that make me think.

movies like dancer in the dark and billy elliot, they make me feel alive.