Hollywood Love

I'm in Hollywood and it's raining, really raining, pissing rain. I'm about ready to build an ark. And it's not glamorous Hollywood rain, people aren't dancing in it. It's just rain, lots of it, and I'm still cold and dank from the last time I tried to go outside and do something adventurous. This little vacation isn't exactly looking like a California dream so far. I was feeling sorry for myself until I bought a New York Times and was reminded about the nightmare in Haiti. They wish they had my problems. No matter how bad you think you have it, it's nothing like Haiti. When your hear about things like that, it seems like those things are happening on some other planet. It's so far from our bourgeois utopias, where we feel depressed for not having lives that look like the ones in the movies.

Love usually lets me down, sooner or later. I think I still have the wrong idea and I'm trying to get it right. I'm trying to dream of love in a way that stands a chance in the real world. A love that not only lasts, but flourishes, even through the vapid seasons. Like it or not, life will chip away at your ideals until you see the world as it actually is. We cross a threshold when we stop talking about the way things should be, and start working with what we've got. Still, I'll always be both a romantic and a realist, hoping to coalesce the paradoxes of life and love.

Beauty, in all its forms, is fleeting. Real love transcends beauty. No, it redefines beauty. No, it bestows beauty. Anyway, God loves us out of Himself, not because we are naturally beautiful people, but because He is love. His love projects beauty onto unbecoming souls. It's not a blind love, but it is certainly optimistic. It sees beauty in the most unlikely places. I want to love more like that.

Well, the rain just stopped and the sun is fighting through the canopy of clouds. Maybe, it's a sign of better things to come. Maybe, it's time to go outside and try again. Who knows? Maybe, Steven Spielberg will spot me and ask me to be in his next film. And then maybe I'll get a star on the Hollywood Boulevard, next to a couple other tarnished stars and a homeless guy who's dreaming of his next meal.