Moving Pictures

I'm a little like a magpie when something shiny catches my eye. Last night the shiny thing was Tom Hanks' acceptance speech for his Oscar for Philadelphia. References to it always remind me I'm sorry I missed it, but it turns out nothing's ever really gone anymore. (God Bless Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. I do love me some YouTube.)

Watched Tom's speech for Philadelphia, then for Forest Gump, then got lost in others: Shirley MacLaine, Halle Berry, Jack Nicholson, Denzel Washington, Cuba Gooding, Jr.

This morning I'm struck by the way video captures images like mastodon tracks in sediment. The earth continues to spin but inside the code, nothing changes. Marlee Matlin can never lose the unfortunate baby's breath, Roberto Benigni is always delightful, Cloris Leachman still beautiful, and Forest Whitaker brilliant and gracious.

Outside though, outside the code, everything changes. Check out photos of Tom Hanks in Big and then in Charlie Wilson's War. They'll put the fear of God in you, even if God is not fearsome to you.

Younger does not always equal better, but older always equals closer to the time when someone else is taking up the space we now occupy, breathing the oxygen now apportioned to us, absorbing the blessings now showered upon us. That'll make us crazy unless we dance to the music of time's drumbeat and leave our own tracks in the stone floors of our "one wild and precious life."