it's written on the wind, it's everywhere I go

At an early-morning meeting today, one of the muckety-muck higher-ups remarked with firm conviction, while we were waiting for people to join us by teleconference, that Four Weddings and Funeral was "quite possibly one of the best movies ever made." It took everything in my power not to laugh right on the spot, or run out of the room shrieking. I exercised restraint by thinking up one-liner retorts in my head, such as:

• Dude, that's not even the best movie Hugh Grant ever made.
  
  
• I offer two words in protest: Andie MacDowell.
  
  
• You're so right, but it's a close second to Notting Hill.

For the record, I do not have anything in particular against the movie. Sure, I prefer Hugh Grant when he's playing a rake, rather than the floppy-haired aw shucks persona he inhabited during his early years. Perhaps us Americans miss something about the movie, but I have a hard time characterizing it as the best, or even the quite possibly best anything. All the more reason that I will do quite the happy dance when I get out of here.

On the other hand, yesterday I had a great dinner with V, despite a semi-absurd waitress who insisted on dropping by to check on us every two minutes. I kept V out late, but I could have kept her out much later. That is what talking to V is like. I have realized that I usually look for one thing in a friend, one aspect that makes them special, that sets them apart from a generic acquaintance. That is my bar, I suppose. With V, there are a lot of things, but what I find most rare about her is her ability to bring out conversation that is genuinely meaningful. We haven't seen each other for a long while, but we were able to talk about things that really matter to us. That, I suppose, ought to be easy, but I have a tendency to talk crap unless I am around such gems as V.

And then to top it all off, she gave me two extremely thoughtful gifts. It is times like this that I feel most acutely how unworthy I am. I never thought of myself as fortunate before- in fact, I used to characterize my life with that blues line, if it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all. But I can see now how little perspective I had.

Speaking of which, responding to yesterday's post, Brooklyn Brown asked after the spark of a somber post. It was a good lesson as far as my writing goes. It's actually not the first time I have been told that my writing gives the impression that I am frequently down in the dumps. I suppose I get introspective, and that comes across as somber, but let me assure you that I remain rather buoyant these days. I am well aware of how well things are going right now. So even though I may fret about this thing or the other, I am constantly reminded that this is one of those times in life that I will look back and marvel at how everything was falling into place.