Don't watch Nightwatch if you can avoid it. Now I know why this movie was put in the "action" section instead of the "horror" section of
Blockbuster. Despite the fact the
serial killer in the movie has sex with prostitutes he has recently killed AND cuts out their eyes afterward as a macabre calling card, it wasn't horrifying. You've got Patricia Arquette, Ewen McGregor, and Nick Nolte. Not a bad cast, huh? Sadly it wasn't enough to save this
action film.
We had watched it early last night, so there was a lot of night left. He had to run some money and I figured we'd kill two birds and I'd return the tapes we rented 2 days before. Movies, beer, and wine. It's all we can do these days, and it's getting like ramen, it's getting me down.
I talk a lot. He knows this, but he likes to hear me talk, which is good and helpful, if he wants to be stuck with me much longer. My car smells like feet because last week I was driving and eating some fast food when the drink spilled into my footwell. It smells even worse than my smoke.
We talk about being broke, or rather, I talk about it. Talk about how, every morning on the drive to work, I'm expecting some freak accident. My luck would have it that the one obese hotel maid waiting for the bus would walk out in front of my car, of all days and weeks. I count to him on my fingers, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 seven more days until I can breathe, until I get paid and give my landlord all my earnings, only to turn around and tell him I am not renewing my lease. "If I get this apartment," I tell him, "everything will work out, I think." I don't know why I believe this but I do.
We talked about politics briefly, since I am very ignorant (for a while there I thought it was the Japanese who we spied on in the big plane, but he corrected me that it was the Chinese), and we talked about debt. Maggie and Dale, who go to my church, are indeed broke as vagrants, but they have no debt. They didn't go to college, don't own a car, and owe no one, nothing. He reminded me of something I already knew, that in the end, we will not be asked if we paid back all our debts, if we were financially secure. We will be asked if we clothed the naked, housed the poor, fed the hungry. And then he said, "I might say, then, that I was the poor, the naked and the hungry, but when I could help others, I did."
Dale said that while he had a hard time dealing with people, that being broke helped him work through that. Instead of being able to blow his money however he wanted, he hung out with people. Talking to people when you're at this stage is helpful. Hanging out with people pulls you out of your self-centered view and forces you to pay attention to other people for a change. It is easier to be poor among others than poor alone. Being poor alone is what causes elderly women to crawl into freezers, or younger people to cut themselves off from the world (other things do this too, of course, but...). The world doesn't seem to want you, or need you. I even told him that I get those thoughts, because it wears me out to keep fighting, but they are only thoughts, I stress, and he understands.
I wake up this morning and it's raining, and I am one more day closer to a goal.