Here’s my story a day for yesterday, written in the whee of this morn. This is a true story.
A man lies in a vaporous clawfoot bathtub watching the movie Airplane! – dubbed in Spanish. He doesn’t speak Spanish, but can recognize a few words here and there. He hasn’t seen Aiplane! in any language for probably 20 years. The experience is strangely satisfying, mystical.
For him, the movie carries deep associations to youth, he was in his late teens when it was released. A good movie, surreal and goofy. Iconic scenes well remembered and yet… they are inaccessible.
Watching it in Spanish is like having a stroke, the actors lines are almost intelligible, he sort of remembers what they should be saying, and yet the humor zooms by. It’s all familiar and yet deliciously remote, alien.
The loss can be savored because it is just a game. It’s a choice, something to do while having a hot soak. Revisiting a warmly familiar story told in a language that he doesn’t know. Just like life.
How often moments with friends or family are relived in a unknown tongue, with new characters and mis-remembered history. We are only half erased, incompletely duplicated, partially obscured with mirrors and smoke.