Sheer and Utter Indolence

Two of my children asked me the same question today at different times: "Mom, why do you like foreign movies so much?" 

I woke up with a severe pain in my neck on Thursday, and it wasn't metaphorical. So, in between hobbling around making sure my smaller children actually got something to eat and hissing through my teeth in pain or dabbing away an errant tear every time I was forced to bend or turn, I lay down and watched movies. I watched movies all day on Thursday, squinting at my computer monitor from the bed in order to read the subtitles while the actors babbled on in French, Hindi, or Korean. 

On Friday morning, I woke up pretty much pain free. Sadly, one hour after getting up, pleased at the speed with which I had healed, I slipped on my way up the stairs and jarred my back and neck so badly I was forced back into bed. So, on Friday, I watched movies in Norwegian, Icelandic, Japanese, and Hindi (again) (I have a thing for Indian cinema). 

Today, I have actually been out of doors, and the regular doses of ibuprofen are keeping me from crumpling, though being upright for long leaves me aching and grumpy. More Indian movies, then, and thus, the questions. 

"You know you're slipping discs!" exclaimed Ruth, Jazzee the Dog's real mom, when I talked to her on the phone. "I know all about spine problems, considering I've had eleventy-billion surgeries on my crumbling vertabrae!" (She didn't really say "eleventy-billion," but I can't remember how many surgeries she said she's had on her back, and eleventy-billion is close enough). She sounded just a little bit pleased that someone could share her pain, though I know she doesn't really mean it. I'm pretty sure.

Whatever is causing my irritating back muscle spasms, my education in foreign film has continued from my time at college, where foreign film watching was required in one of my classes. I remember a night when my roommate and I had sat through two of the three reels of one of Akira Kurosawa's epic period dramas, Kagemusha, two hours into the three hour total. When the third reel started, we were puzzled by the picture. Was this artistic license? Were we watching horse riders as a reflection on a still lake? Nope. The reel had been wound upside down and backward -- not that we could tell from the fact that the actors were now speaking backwards Japanese. A backlit head popped out of the projector booth window and told us all to come back tomorrow. 

I never did finish that movie. I had a life, and I couldn't sit through the first two hours again just to get to the end. 

Now, however, I'll sit through two and a half hours of something in Hindi mixed with English just because I never know what to expect next. Even the French movies were fun, and the Norwegian one was really good, as well. I always like Korean cinema. 

Now, if only someone would pay me to watch foreign movies, I wouldn't be so worried about getting back to work. Fortunately, Husband hasn't let the kids starve, bless his strong back.