'The Aviator' - Come Fly!!

This weekend, my darling husband, who was obviously saddened and disturbed by my state of candescent agitation, decided to give me a gentle push in the right direction. He must have pondered the ramifications of my ‘condition’, to put it mildly, and felt understandably helpless. But the precious love of my life, that he is, he could just not let me suffer in my own turmoil. Instead of trying to talk to me he did something outrageously simple. He asked me out on a date and he took me to the movies. Some time during the picture, he patted my hand, leaned over and said, “There is a reason why I brought you to this one”.

We saw ‘The Aviator’. One of the most brilliant pictures I have seen in a while. Martin Scorcese outdid himself. I was simply blown away by the performances of Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett, playing Howard Hughes and Katherine Hepburn. Cate Blanchett deserved her Oscar every bit. The movie won 4 more Oscars for editing, art direction, cinematography and costumes. I enjoyed Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardener as well. But this is not a movie review.

I am amazed at the ingenuity of the man and his passionate, obsessive resolve to carry through his dream. It was a perfect jolt of graphic emotion for me, given how I have been feeling lately. This was the same way I felt when I saw ‘A beautiful Mind’ and zillions of other movies. Given the potential that each of us carries within us, it is ultimately a battle that we fight. What is it against...ourselves or our environments? Ultimately, the purpose of the battle is for that innate potential to materialize, be birthed! I am no aviator or movie maker or mathematician. But I know my potential…I know what can be, if only I tapped my potential!! And I know just what levels of integrity and ownership I am capable of.

As the picture ended….and Howard Hughes repeatedly said ‘the way to the future’, I watched!! There is more to this man than his OCD and eccentricities. Even if the entire world wants to concentrate their collective attention on just those ‘weird’ things, there is no true way that one can deny that it is the fire in him that kept many a heart and dream alive!!!

As his lips uttered the same thing, over and over, his eyes were saying something different each time…the intensity of the moment was blackened by nothing…and I knew in my heart! I knew that I will be all I am meant to be. As the picture hall emptied out, I sat there at the edge of my seat, hands folded in front of me head hanging down, and in my closed eyes I felt the music lifting me up into the realms of reality that will be one day!! The silence that followed after the titles, when Howard Shore put down his wand was soothingly harmonious compared to all my dissonances. The patterns of my life can be changed, after all!!

I found these quotes while browsing….

“Once you consent to some concession, you can never cancel it and put things back the way they are.” – Howard Hughes

“It is impossible to think of Howard Hughes without seeing the apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and what we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the people we love. In a nation which increasingly appears to prize social virtues, Howard Hughes remains not merely antisocial but grandly, brilliantly, surpassingly asocial. He is the last primitive man, the dream we no longer admit.” - Joan Didion

I wonder if there is another ‘spruce goose’ is in the making somewhere in the world!! I hope there is…..