The Power of Three

I love when life throws you a bunch of things at the same time that belong together. Sometimes it's pretty average. Last weekend I accidentally had a Phoebe Cates marathon with the movies that came in from Netflix. Now that, maybe, I could have done without. But then there's this weekend and it's all worth it.

I've seen The Time Traveler's Wife around. It's been on sale in Costco, people have been talking about it here and there, it's a TV Book Club pick for heaven's sake, it's not been hiding its light under a bushel. Probably because of that I have, on numerous occasions, chosen not to read it. I have picked it up and set it down on no fewer than three trips to Costco. But ProfDoc sent it to me, she wanted me to read it so I was game.

It's a book that wrecked me. I am shattered inside, really. I mean, it has jewel colors of emotion washing all over it, it's a fairy tale love story co-written by Walt Disney and the Brothers Grimm. I want to write on it specifically but I don't know that I'm ready yet. God, maybe I do need a book club. Anyway, short synopsis is it's about a man who time travels and his wife and all the attendant kinks that the non-linear nature of time and the unpredictable nature of love bring us.

Then a movie called A Home at the End of the World rolled up on my queue. I'd put it on there ages ago when I decided to look at the Colin Farrell canon. A little indie film, "alternative lifestyles", based on a book by Michael Cunningham who wrote The Hours. It's about three people, 2 men and a woman, who fall in love and try to make that work.

Neither of the pieces is one tenth as simple as I make them sound here.

What's similar is the fact that no one person can be everything another person needs. There is a wholeness to 3 people that is comforting and simultaneously completely isolating. Even promising to do anything for love can't force something to work because the minute you throw yourself to the wolf of it you've changed in a way that doesn't serve the relationship. But there's a beauty to the trying. Also an inevitability that will gut you and leave you for dead without a second glance.

I found the end of A Home to be somewhat dissatisfying. I wanted a bit more and, at just over 90 minutes, I think they could have given it to me. But both pieces are well worth looking at. I think I might want to be buried with a copy of TTW, there's enough in there for an eternity.