So D and I just went to watch
The Hours. It's a beautiful movie, but I have the feeling that it has more resonance for (most) women than it does for (most) men. It seems to speak to me of a despair and entrapment that permeates the lives of many women.
Sometimes I wonder if you have to be tortured to write well. For that matter, do you have to be tortured to create? I'd like to believe that you don't, that you only need to be a thinking, reflective person with a story or idea to tell.
I also wonder: at what point does possibility turn into fulfilment? In the movie, Richard speaks of the endless potential which he saw when he was young, and expresses regret for the end of this infinity. It seems to me, however, that endless possibility with no resolution leads to vagueness, leads to a sense of waiting for the future, waiting for perfect fulfilment. At some point you need to bite down and make a choice. You can't fiffle-faffle forever, or you'll always be waiting, always exploring and never there. D said that to be fulfilled is to have reached the end of your journey and to no longer be alive. My argument in response is that there needs to be some resolution - not necessarily complete, but
some kind of resolution. You need a plateau to sit and rest on, to contemplate your next move on. If you never have any, not even the slightest, resolution, you never have any joy and satisfaction, and human beings need satisfaction. To dwell always only in possibility is to court despair.
