For most people, movies are sheer entertainment. For Green Girl? They offered inspiration. What would she do when she grew up? Where would she live? Who would she be? She found options and answers in films, not in real life role models (seriously, an emotionally unstable stay-at-home-mom, teachers, nurses, department store clerks? The Silver Screen offered a much greater range of possibility for this lass).
The Sound of Music convinced Green Girl of the quiet, peaceful beauty of convent life--until she realized that not being Catholic might prove to be a stumbling block.
The English Patient & Indiana Jones made her yearn to become an explorer/archaeologist/adventurer in the desert. Dry skin be damned--she could totally picture herself wearing khakis and billowing white blouses, crawling into caves and shining her flashlight across previously undiscovered artifacts.
She watched Ghost and Demi Moore demonstrated the art of throwing clay--what was sexier and more expressive than molding clay on a wheel? (This dream died when years later she took a night class and discovered she had NO talent at all for working with clay.)
Even at 16 Green Girl knew there was something very passionate about becoming an artist. And the phallic nature of pottery intrigued her...
She thought she wanted to be an interior designer after watching Pillow Talk, but several Doris Day films later she realized she just wanted to be Doris Day. So spunky. So well-dressed. So lovely. So impossible to become another person.
Buy an old farm in Vermont or New Hampshire and create her own line of home-grown/home-made goods? And possibly find love in the arms of the local veterinarian? Oh yeah, Baby Boom, baby.Open a restaurant with her best friend--in an old building with wooden floors, tall ceilings and the blues wafting through the breeze. She'd cook soul food--you know, Fried Green Tomatoes and shoe-fly pie for quirky locals and weary travelers--served up with a smile and a side of sass. (She soon learned that in real life restaurant work is NOT glamorous. It's dirty, rude, back-breaking and greasy.)
Travel to country manors and Italian villas for long weeks of walks, reading in libraries, pausing by picturesque views while reflecting on life, love and recent awakenings. Naturally this would occur while wearing long dresses and elaborate hats. Le Sigh. Green Girl wanted to become a lady of leisure as portrayed in all Merchant-Ivory films.
Show girl? You betcha. Of the vaudeville, Broadway tradition, of course. After watching White Christmas, Green Girl envisioned taking it to the road, playing to the crowds at the Flamingo, belting out songs while waving her feather boa in a come-hither fashion. And she'd be a show stopper with her high kicking big dance numbers.
And after a long, fulfilling life of finding troves of ancient treasures or canning organic baby food or painting clay bowls or cooking soul food, Green Girl would retire. She'd spend her summers in a cottage On Golden Pond, deep in the Maine woods. By her side would be the True Love of her life, a dear old crotchety man (like Henry Fonda?) who'd companionably pick berries, fish, do jigsaw puzzles and read books until they were called to the Hereafter.
Spill it reader, what movie fantasy did you entertain?
0 comments:
Posting Komentar