stock-taking

At this age, birthdays are generally bittersweet - gone are the days of eating jellybeans with potato chips and playing the chocolate game (which is a damned good game btw - maybe I'll play it on my 30th birthday as a sort of regression therapy - though maybe I should subsititute the chocolate with something healthy? Hmm. The tofu game doesn't have the same allure somehow...). Sugar-crazed romps have been replaced with the rather more morose sitting around by yourself and taking stock of your life - where you thought you would be at this age, where others are at this age, why you're not where they're at... and so on. I distinctly remember in my early twenties, one goal was to have made my first critically acclaimed feature by 25, because Orson Welles was 25 when he made Citizen Kane, which is still regarded by most critical polls as the best film of all time - I mean, I don't see it myself, but that's irrelevant. Here I am, yet to even crack a script someone wants to make, and 25 is long, long, looong gone.

I was thinking about this stuff the other night, eating dinner with Stephen, and we were talking about retirement and where we saw ourselves at 70, and I suddenly had this image of me at 70, on set. Quite unexpectedly, an indescribable wave of excitement and well-being washed over me.

See, this filmmaking malarkey, this stuff I'm doing right now, is what I want to do until I grow old and die. I don't want to retire, I don't want to do something else, I'm not trying to make money now so I can relax later, this is what I want to do until I draw last breath. And for a moment I felt like I did when I was like 22 - my whole life was ahead of me, and it always would be, and it didn't feel like 'shit what do I have to show for myself now I'm old', it was like 'shit, I can't wait to do more of this stuff as I get older!'. It's been a long time since I've felt excited like this. Sure, stuff happens, stuff changes, and who knows how I'm actually going to feel as the years go by, but right now, I don't see myself wanting to do anything else - more than that, I see myself wanting to do this in old age, which for me, is a wonderfully warming thought.

This is how I want to die: I want to be over 80 at least, and I want to be on the set of my, say, 30th film. I want it to be the martini shot of the whole damn film. Maybe we've done this take 17 times or something, and I'm frustrated, everybody's frustrated, it's been a long day, and something's missing. I talk quietly to the actors, I don't know who comes up with the something missing - maybe me, maybe them. They do it again. This time, the crew become suddenly still as the actors completely nail it. It's perfection. I call cut, and it's a wrap. The AD thanks everybody, and I thank my DOP, and my editor is standing by, and we have a small chat, and I know we completely see eye to eye on this film. That night, on the way home, during a wee kip in the shuttle, I slide gently off this mortal coil.

Don't laugh! Of all days, today I'm allowed my indulgences!

So, stock-taking. I'm sitting here at my desk in our little house 2Kms from a wild, stormy beach (we can't see it), in my pyjamas. The PJ top has a little cat on it, and the text underneath it reads "...Purrrfect...". It's 10.02am. Stephen is on his way to work in the city - this morning, he cooked me a hot breakfast, and it was delicious. I don't have any really pressing business today, so options include blobbing in bed and watching the DVDs I really need to return to Marc because I've kept them for so long; scanning articles for skiting in my website; and writing. The writing is probably the most important thing, but I'm procrastinating. I want to bask in the honeymoon glow of the good feedback we got for our treatment before embarking on the next painful, yet worthy leg of this trip. This evening I'm seeing family, and all my little nephews. It's going to be good. And messy. And loud. Funtime!

Things are pretty good. And not so good as well. Our most-probably terminal cat, which I got last birthday, is sleeping on our bed. It's going to be so hard to say goodbye. I'm looong past 25, and I haven't made anything close to Citizen Kane. Will I ever? Time will tell. We have a big fat mortgage, and I feel guilty I'm not earning at least as much as Stephen. There's war, and inequality, and general lack of basic humanity in the world the likes of which I can't comprehend, much less do something about. I saw Miyazaki's The Grave of the Fireflies last night, and I cried bitterly. I felt so awful, in my comfortable home in the bush, plenty of food in my fridge.

This is my life, this stock-taking day of 2007 - the last in my 20s. And I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Breakfast:
French toast, free-range bacon (go freedom farms!), grilled banana with maple syrup.

Verdict:
Wonderfully delicious. The secret ingredient was love. No sniggering!