Oh The Guardian! How I loved you.

I saw this movie last night after wanting to see it for quite a while, and it did not let me down. But likely that’s because I wasn’t expecting much beyond “Top Gun in the water”. The Guardian was cheesy and formulaic, but damn it! That formula works for me!

The story is about rescue swimmers in the US Coast Guard, and centres around the characters of Ben Randall (or, as we loving know him “Senior Chief”) and Jake Fischer (okay, heh). You follow them through a course at A School where Randall, as a shining star of the USCG, goes to lick some wounds, and where Jake goes to prove himself and (whadaya know!) lick some wounds.

Most people will want to keep this as a renter, probably, as there is absolutely nothing new here. And hey, maybe the recruitment numbers for the USCG will go up (I’m sure they’re hoping for that effect). But Ashton is pretty and can cry really well, and Kevin isn’t so bad himself after all this years. Myself, I loved seeing Dule Hill (yay Charlie!) in a small film role.

This book has been sitting on my To Be Read shelf for, oh, 8 years now. I bought it back in my early university days (when it first came out) but just never managed to find the time to read it.

And I haven’t yet. Not the whole thing, anyway. I read one section for my book club last month, as we were all sort of out of other suggestions and kind of wanted to tick this one off our mental list.

It turns out that my sympathy for all things anti-corporate, and my desire to whole-heartedly embrace activism of any sort died a couple of years back. I just didn’t care, and I’m sure that I went out for MCDonald’s wearing Nike and driving a car that I filled up with shell has shortly after I put the book down.

It’s certainly not any faults within the book that caused the lack of interest. It was well-written and seemingly well researched. Naomi Klein certainly wrote a timely piece. And that’s likely the problem: it was far too timely and has now become dated.

I very rarely get lonely anymore, but it does happen. In those moments when you’re not expecting it. In the little things. It comes in the moments when I realize that there is no one who knows the small but intimate details of my life, no one there to remind me to make appointments I should have made months ago. No one who will be there automatically without every giving it a second thought.

Loneliness happens when I realize I haven’t experienced a warm and intimate touch in months, and if it weren’t for a fling in Europe, it would be more than a year. The lack of touch means so so much more than simple sex. A hug with both arms that lasts for more than 2 seconds.

Yes, loneliness is when a 15 second hug seems like a truly foreign luxery.

Although just because I am sometimes lonely does not mean I am sad. There’s a purity to it, an awareness of being alone, but necessarily wallowing in it. Being alone certainly has its very good points. For instance, I can:

• Sing as loud as I want to
• Stay up as late as I like
• Sit around in only my underwear
• Leave dishes on the coffee table

Solitude certainly seems to be my natural state these days, with friends moving on to different stages of life and trying on the new locales that come with them, being somebody’s “ex” in the real meaning of the word, even cherised & familiar colleagues are gone. It’s hard, but 30 is approaching and with all these changes life seems to be screaming and flashing a neon “PHASE THREE!!” sign at me. Childhood far behind, the excitement of youth & young adulthood past, but not so far past that I can’t see it on the horizon if I look over my shoulder.

Solid, everyday, worn-in-shoe-comfortable, regular, old Adulthood is mere steps ahead of me. And while she beckons with friendly gestures, and doesn’t capitulate her pace like Youth, I have to say, she dresses drabbily.

“Nothing endures but change.” A truism if ever there was one. I’m not sure if I’m protesting my own changes or everyone elses, and are not the two a cause and effect pair?

For now I can just be glad that this change no longer precipitates an angsty, keening wail, but comes with only a slight, acceptable, ache.

Today I am thankful I did not kill anyone.

What a fucking waste of a day. PMS is got me in a headlock, that’s for sure.