THESE ARE THE THEMES OF OUR LIVES...

Some people play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Lately, I seem to be playing Six Degrees of Milan Kundera. His philosophical musings have found their way into my every day. Of course, having the ridiculous long-term memory that I do, I'm restricted to pondering Immortality, my favorite novel of his to date, but also the one I reread last week. In it, he mentions that each of our lives has an inescapable theme. (I can't quote because I unbelievably lent my copy to someone. Someone I don't even know except that he makes the best damn coffee around, and for that, we trust him. And hope he's at the coffee shop next week.)

So, to recap: Each of our lives has a theme. We can go round and round, but we are merely circling in the eventuality of that theme. Through its iterations, shades, manipulations, morphings, and scalings. But it's always there. Mr. Kundera, if you're reading this, sorry for the bastard paraphrasing of your beautiful work. Oh, and... do you have a girlfriend?

Now. Let us tie Immortality to yet another fanciful piece of art. Before Sunset, the recent film starring Ethan "one tooth forward, one tooth back" Hawke. Am I bitter that on his book tour he never answered questions about his book? Yes. Are you bitter that I went to his book tour? Yes. Do you believe that I actually *read* his first book? Suspend the disbelief and let's get on with it.

In Before Sunset, it seems a point might be that our lives never escape the memory of one person who has affected us or connected with us. In the first volume (aptly titled Before Sunrise), his French girl had cankles, a brown plaid flannel tied around her waist, and an English vocabulary including but not limited to "groundskeeper" and "ferris wheel". But I'm not here to judge his taste, and neither are you. The point is that, in Before Sunset, her cankles are covered. No, that is not the point. Just a witty observation on my part.

The theme for Jessie (Jamie? Johnnie? Jeffrey? not sure. I was pretty focused on The Tooth) is Celine. No matter how his life has marched forward, a part of him has remained attached to her. He says that on his wedding day he was thinking about her (it is unclear if this was before or after he 'thought he saw her'. We find out it *was* her, nudge nudge, wink wink. They must have borrowed the Serendipity screenwriters for that bit.)

My question is -- can your theme BE a person? Or is the person a human manifestation of (part of?) your theme? Particularly in the case of a one-night stand (however partially cerebral), I have a hard time accepting that possibility. If it is possible for your theme to be a person, then is there a quality/quantity requirement? Does it have to be the person you were involved with for the longest? Or the person you had a first experience with? Does it even have to be someone you dated?

I just seem to have a hard time absorbing this concept that one person, particularly someone you know so little, can affect you (or Jamie/Jessie/Jeffie) so profoundly. Perhaps it was the mystery of it, the Love Jones, defined as "the possibility of a thing" that continued to connect him to her for all those years. (My male counsel always remind me that 'men want what they can't have' and I'm led to wonder if by standing him up at a Viennese train station, Celine did the right thing.)

The argument that he was one half of a shotgun marriage doesn't help his case (in the District Court of Lilly) any. And if we accept that your theme can be a person, what the cosmic mathematical likelihood that you're theirs as well? I simply felt her connection to him was not as strong. Even if she was his theme, I was not as ready to accept (despite her haunting guitar waltz - don't ask) that he was hers.

Maybe I still don't understand love. And that's okay. Maybe this was evident when I kept pointing out the extras' exaggerated hand and foot movements and the overt usage (and resusage) of Americans in French scenes to divert myself from the love story unfolding before me (gaaaaaaag).

Maybe a focus on the absurd is my theme.

I just hope it isn't "cankles".